Free To Bear an Iron Key by Jackie Morse Kessler Page B

Midsummer Festival and still get us what we needed.” He smiled, and Bromwyn saw a dimple in his right cheek.
    Her face warmed as she stared at the tiny flaw. How had she never noticed it before? By Nature’s grace, he looked adorable when he smiled so …
    And then he said, “I told her I was planning on wooing you away from Brend, so I needed to make a nice impression.”
    Bromwyn choked.
    “Hah! Gotcha!” Rusty doubled over from laughter. “You should see your face! Lady Witch, red as a beet!”
    That horrid, horrid boy. “You,” she gasped. “You—!”
    He cupped a hand to his ear. “What’s that? Can’t hear you over all the coughing and spluttering.”
    Oh, so he couldn’t hear her, eh?
    Bromwyn cast from the Way of Sound (a close cousin of the Way of Sight, which made it simple for her) and deftly wove a spell around Rusty. She did it so gently that he didn’t react to the soft nudge of her magic.
    Once the spell was firmly in place, she murmured, “Perhaps I should speak up.”
    Rusty shrieked like a child upon seeing a snake. Clamping his hands over his ears, he shouted, “Too loud! Too loud!”
    “What?” she said innocently. “This, you mean?”
    “YES!” He doubled over again, but this time there was no laughter, no guffaws at Bromwyn’s expense. He squealed, “Damn me, MAKE IT STOP!”
    “As my boy requests.” With a swipe of her hand, she unraveled the casting, drawing the energy from the spell into the fertile ground beneath her bare feet. Smiling sweetly, she said, “Got you back.”
    Rusty tentatively lowered his hands, then he glared at her so fiercely that she should have bled from his cutting gaze. “Masterful control of your temper, Lady Witch.”
    “That? That was not temper,” she said demurely. “That was fun.”
    “Speak for yourself.”
    “I am. And besides, you started it.”
    “It’s not my fault you’ve got no sense of humor,” he muttered, sticking one finger in his ear and wiggling it, as if he could shake out the last bits of echo.
    “I have a fine sense of humor. See my smile?”
    “You’re evil, Winnie. Absolutely evil.”
    Her smile slipped as she said, “I am sure that some in the village would agree.” Including her future husband. “Come. We do not have that much time to set up and review.”
    They walked in silence. At first, Bromwyn was too lost in her swirl of dark thoughts to strike up conversation, but then as the field gave way to the holly trees, silver birches, and rowans that marked the beginning of the woods, she became too enamored of the sights and sensations to even think of small talk. There were the smells, first and foremost—grass and leaf rot and the wild scent of hidden animals, that palpable tang of fur and fear that surrounded all prey, be they hares or squirrels or foxes. Next, the sounds—the churring of nighthawks and whippoorwills, the knocking of woodpeckers, the merry tunes of the skylarks. Beneath her bare feet, the leaf carpet was soft and damp, and more than a little cold, with rough sections of root tendrils threading across the path. Almost as an afterthought, the sights of the woods danced around her: the muted colors of orchid and heather, the bright bluebell and foxglove, all of the flowers winking in the patchy sunlight, ferns and bracken standing waist-high, and the trees, of course—towering above the birches and holly, mighty oaks stood proudly, indifferent to the deadwood of fallen limbs or to the passage of two people walking past them on the well-trod path, a dirt road kept clear of debris by rangers and witches alike.
    This was the heart of the Allenswood, home to one of the World Doors, and it was here that Bromwyn, called Darkeyes, felt most at home.
    “Creepy,” Rusty muttered, as if he were afraid to disrespect the trees.
    Bromwyn slid him a look. “If you wish to be a thief, Sir Baker, you should make your peace with the forest.” Ignoring his glower, she smiled as she said, “From all the