Very Best of Charles de Lint, The Read Online Free PDF

after they made a last pot of tea, for the night was warm. When they finally went to their beds, they rolled out their blankets on the grass and slept under the stars. All except for Meran.
    She couldn’t sleep, so she lay staring up at the night sky, tracing the constellations and remembering the tales her mother had told her of how they came to be. After awhile, she got up and dressed, then went to sit on the flat stones by the stream. The horses snorted at her as she went by and she gave them both a quick pat.
    By the stream the night seemed quieter still. The water moved too slowly to make a sound, the wind had died away. She took her flute from its bag at her belt and turned it over in her hands.
    A name, she thought.
    Her husband had carved the flute for her, carved it from the wood of her own lifetree when it came down in a storm. With three charms carved from its wood, he’d drawn her back from the realm of the dead—a hair comb, an oak leaf-shaped pendant, and the flute. Three charms and his love had set her free from the need of an oakmaid’s lifetree.
    The flute was very plain, but it had a lovely tone for all that it was carved from an oak. Something of a harpspell from Telynros gave its music its rich flavour.
    Shall I call you roseflute? she thought with a grin, imagining Cerin’s face when she told him. How he’d frown. Oakrose, maybe? Roseoak? The flute was so slender, perhaps she should call it Tulo Fluto.
    She stifled a giggle and looked back at the camp, then froze. Something moved close to the ground, creeping towards the sleeping figures of Tulo Jen and her husband. She was about to call out a warning to them when she recognized the shape for what it was by its striped head.
    It was a badger—like Old Badger, whom they’d left back in Abercorn. Meran knew the look of a badger by night. She’d seen it often enough, traipsing through the woods with Old Badger. But this badger looked small. A babe separated from a sow, Meran guessed.
    She rose quietly so as not to startle it and padded softly back to the wagon.
    When she reached the camp she was just in time to see the little badger crawl into Tulo Jen’s fiddle bag.
    Oh, no, you mustn’t, Meran thought.
    She hurried over and knelt by the bag, but when she touched its side, all she could feel was the shape of the fiddle and the bow inside. Slowly she drew the instrument out and studied it under the starlight. It looked the same as it had when Tulo Jen had been playing it this evening. The wood had a hue somewhere between chestnut and amber and the carved badger’s head on the scroll regarded her with a half-smile in its eyes. Meran admired the workmanship of the carving for a moment, then set the fiddle aside. She reached into the bag again, took out the bow and shook the bag, half-expecting a baby badger to tumble out, for all that the weight was wrong.
    There was nothing inside.
    She was letting the night fill her head with an impossibility, Meran thought. Too many tinker’s stories and harper’s tall tales—that was the trouble. She replaced the fiddle and bow in their bag and laid down on her own blankets beside Cerin. She’d say nothing about this in the morning, she decided, but tomorrow night, oh, she’d be watching. Never have a doubt about that.

    * * *

    She watched the next night, and the night after that, and the third night as well, but all there was in Tulo Jen’s bag was a fiddle and a bow. She gave up after the fourth night and put it down to her imagination and perhaps missing Old Badger. But she had to wonder. If she called her flute a snake, would it slither out of its bag one night and go adventuring? If she called it an oakrose, would the scent of acorns and roses spill out of the bag?
    She meant to talk to the others about it the next day, but by the time she woke, she’d forgotten, and when she did remember, she was a little embarrassed about the whole affair. The teasing she’d get from that pair—tinkers were bad