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Brrr went to the cooking station to find out what to think about all this.
“Uyodor H’aekeem, the brave Chief of the Ghullim! This is a rare instance of superstition, for him,” Twigg observed. “He prides himself on being above that kind of thing.”
“This lot stays put until there’s a reason to move,” agreed Stemm. “But, Twigg, it’s not your job to judge how Uyodor H’aekeem makes his decisions. Some leaders do it with entrails, some with tea leaves, some with the knucklebones of pigs. He does it with dreams of storms, or storms of dreams. Same difference.”
“Do the Ghullim move often?” asked Brrr.
“We lose track,” said the tree elves simultaneously. “One forest glade is the same as any other to us,” continued Stemm. “We’re doomed to servitude our lives long, so we take no interest in our surroundings.”
“Why don’t you just leave?” asked Brrr. “You aren’t shackled in any way that I can see, and half the time no one is paying any attention to you.”
They seemed offended at that. “Really!” said Twigg. “You don’t know much, do you, Brrr? They’d be lost without us, lost. None of them have opposable thumbs. How could they possibly do a roasted leg of forest goat with a
side of ivory ferns and a saltberry pudding? I mean, really!”
“Besides,” said Stemm, “where would we go? It’s not as if there are dozens of tree-elf colonies sprouting up all over the place like, like…some sort of problem in forest population control.”
“We go where we’re told,” concluded Twigg, “and really I imagine, Brrr, so will you. Haven’t you learned anything about the sacred performance of your duties? You’ll come along with us. Unless our employers decide that your presence drew the storm from the sky and the dream upon the Chief. In that case you will need to be sacrificed, bled, roasted, sliced, and served on a leaf of buttercup lettuce.”
“With marinated shallots,” said Stemm, rubbing his hands.
“No, that’s so high summer. Let’s go autumnal. Grocer’s gourd stuffed with minced hazelnut in a chanterelle reduction and a wild rice pasticcio.”
“Will you stop?” said Brrr. “I’m not going anywhere. I mean into any cooking pans, thank you very much. And you’re lucky I was around to save you from the same fate.”
“We should have let ourselves be blown to kingdom come when we still had a chance.”
While the Ghullim began to break camp, Muhlama seemed stalled in a state of high dudgeon, huffing and hissing at anyone who came near. Brrr kept his distance, too. He saw that the tree elves were the ones who scampered aloft and untied the gauzy curtains from their boughs, and stacked the cooking utensils in wooden crates, and rolled up Uyodor’s patterned carpet, and collected scraps and bits and souvenirs. What the Ivory Tigers provided the elves, he guessed, was some sort of security, but the elves did all the work.
Most of it, that is. A ramshackle old cart came out of storage from somewhere, and Brrr was asked to push. Twigg and Stemm would sit up top and steer.
So Brrr set his shoulder against the sloping rear panel of a human cart. This required his head to cock at an angle, and he hoped to find Muhlama looking at him with a measure of gratitude. He was earning his way, see, just like the tree elves. She didn’t favor him with the pleasure of a glance, though. He worked without reward or even much assistance.
Muhlama’s tone was saturated with rancor. “Where are we going? The moon? Uyodor, do you intend to march us all the way up the slopes of the Scalps? Just how big was that dream anyway? I’m not going another step!” She seemed to have forgotten her requirement of obeisance toward her father. “Or was this so-called dream just a ruse? Had you been planning on relocating us to the highlands anyway, and forgot to tell us? Are you mincelings just going to tramp along without saying a word?”
She had to spit in disgust, which was an elegant thing and, Brrr thought, had a certain sort of sweet sexiness to it. Though his neck and shoulders were aching.
Perhaps she wore her father down, for he selected a new campground before dusk. Brrr found it impossible to estimate how far they had gone, but it couldn’t have been five or six miles, not with the cart bumping and scraping over every inch. The downed limbs, the mess of storm. In one place an entire pool had been emptied of its water; turtles were emerging from the mud and blinking at the novelty of air.
“That’s a pretty talented storm system,” observed Brrr, as conversationally as he could. Trying to lighten the mood. Muhlama paid him no mind and addressed her father, who remained confirmed about his premonitions because they had been illustrated with wind damage.
“Is this our final lodging?” she said. “Or is this just nighty-night? You get spooked by another hurricane, and tomorrow will we continue on toward the Glikkus or the over-harrowed Corn Basket? Make our home in domesticated fields like so many cowering field mice?”
His eyes flashed, but she was his daughter and he wouldn’t upbraid her in public. She would rule the Ghullim sooner or later. He couldn’t be seen to erode her authority even as she questioned his.
Brrr watched. The strange flexing arrangement that fathers exert over their children. It awed him.
He also saw that the tree elves were being directed to unpack the cart, so perhaps this really was the chosen camp for the next indefinite period. If they were marching again tomorrow, the elves wouldn’t be bothering to decorate the clearing with such swags and scrims as Ivory Tigers admire.
While the hunters skulked off to hunt down a supper, which Brrr supposed drearily would be served without anything by way of sauces or savories, he managed to straighten out the kinks in his shoulders enough to hobble up to Muhlama and look her up and down.
“What are you giving me the once-over for?” she snarled.
“You’ve spent an awful lot of time being furious today.”
“So what.”
“So”—(here it came)—“I can’t help noticing fury becomes you.”
