A Sterkarm Kiss (30 page)

She couldn't stay here in the hope that someone might turn up. It could be weeks before anyone did, and then they might be the wrong family. Was any direction more familiar than another? Even faintly?

Choose a direction, she ordered herself. She decided to follow the narrow valley she was in downhill, toward the larger valley it must, surely, lead into. She started, clambering over large boulders, scrambling around others through thick undergrowth, crossing and recrossing the narrow stream. She knew that she'd be walking for hours, without any sign of having got anywhere. And if she met any of the locals, she might be even sorrier than she was now.

She walked and walked. Cold streams wet her skirts, which clung chillingly to her legs. She climbed and slipped on steep banks, where the grass was wet and slick. She was rained on. When she felt tired and wanted to sit down, she trudged on. She became so absorbed in putting one foot in front of the other that she didn't notice the riders until the sound of hooves reached her.

She looked up and saw a sight both alarming and exhilarating. A horseman on a thickset black horse, its almost ground-length mane riffling in the wind. Above the rider's helmeted head towered a tall lance.

Instinct, and a certain knowledge of the Sterkarms, made her look over her shoulder. She glimpsed another rider, who immediately wheeled away, vanishing behind rocks and scrub. When she turned again, the first rider had gone.

Outriders, she thought, checking on her and this whole area. This country seemed empty, but you never knew when a shepherd or a herding child was watching. Letting her see them had probably been deliberate. They meant to worry her. They did. Were they Sterkarms? If they were, she was safe. Well—maybe. Those horsemen she'd glimpsed coming out of the Tube behind her … these horsemen might be those. Her throat felt tight, and she had to swallow hard, as her heart beat faster in a heavy, almost painful way. She could speak their language, and if she talked for her life—and since she was a woman and alone—they probably wouldn't
kill
her. (But was she sure of that?)

What if they were Grannams? She suddenly felt as soft and squishy as a snail without its shell, as small and weak as a mouse: entirely unable to defend her body against sharp edges and points. Against rape. She was so scared, it felt as if she was being stifled. You didn't think this through, Andrea.

She turned in a small circle, looking all around. There was nothing to see except the thick, flowered turf and heather, rocks, scrub, and, far above, gray sky.
“God dag!”
she called out, feeling intensely foolish even as her voice shook.
“Vordan staw day?
How stands it with you?
Yi air ayn Erlf
! I am an Elf!”

A curlew called, somewhere off to her left, in all that space. She could smell something scented and spicy in the air—thyme perhaps. And then, so faint, the jingle of a bridle. They were still near!

“I am Elf-May, Entraya! Do you mind me? Hello!”

Joe had been bumping along at the rear of the ride for a miserable age. He'd long ago lost any sense of where they were or where they were going. He was wet with both rain and sweat, though his hands, on the reins, were cold, and his nose was cold and dripping. He could only be thankful that his horse was a plodder, and be glad to still be on its back. When the ride halted at last and showed no sign of moving on, he tutted to his horse and nudged it, persuading it to move forward. Some of the other horses stamped or shifted a little as his horse came near, making him nervous, but the horses were herd mates and had been trained to stand quietly when in harness. He brought his horse up close to Per's and was relieved and glad when he saw Per looking for him, smiling when he recognized him.

Then the woman's voice called, and Joe felt his hair prickle. “I am Elf-May, Entraya!” If only it was true! He felt, in that moment, that he loved, adored, Andrea. Another Elf! To talk again with another Elf!

He looked at Per and had never seen anyone so thunderstruck. In the next instant he thought he'd never seen Per look so afraid.

“Be it her?” Per said. Ever since word had been brought of the Elves sighted on the moor, he'd hoped that Andrea was with them, and sternly denied to himself that it possible, for fear of disappointment, for fear of a trick. And now, hearing her voice, it was almost as much of a shock as if he'd had no knowledge of the Elves' return.

Joe opened his mouth to shout and found that the words of the 21st century no longer came readily to his tongue. He had to pause, and think, before shouting, “Andrea? Who is this?” His own voice, using those words, sounded like a stranger's to him.

There was a long pause. Silence settled back among the hills.

And then the woman's voice. “Joe?” It grew more excited. “Be that thee, Joe? Joe Sterkarm, from Carloel?
Air day thu, Joe
?”

A creak of leather, a thump of weighty hooves, and Per was gone from Joe's side—and the rest of the ride moved forward, creaking and tinking, the slender ends of the lances whiffling in the air.

Per came around some boulder litter, and there stood a woman, with light-brown hair blown around her head and shoulders. She was dressed like an Elf, swathed in a large coat, but he knew the generous figure that lay hidden beneath the clothes.

He had meant to be cautious, to ask her what had been his last words to her, to test her, but as his horse picked its way closer to her, he saw more and more clearly: her anxious little face, with its clear pink skin and plump cheeks, the full mouth and the gray eyes with their scared stare. And he knew. He knew it was her, and she was alone, and had changed her mind, and given up the luxuries of Elf-Land for him. There was no need for tests or questions.

He leaned down from the saddle and set his lance down on the turf, then swung from his horse, letting its reins hang. He went to her, and she came to him, and as her warm solidity filled his arms and her head fitted, as if made for it, into his shoulder, tears came to his eyes.

When Andrea saw this Per swing down from his horse and come to her with his arms spread. His face was shadowed by his helmet, but that big bright smiled was unmistakable. This was
her
Per—and could only be her Per. She knew it. No one else had ever looked at her like that.

She was clenched hard against the iron plates of his jakke and enveloped in his thick smell of horses, sheep, dogs, peat smoke, and sweat. She tightened her arms around him, and who cared if the metal plates hurt? Hug him tight, press him right into her forever, and never mind if it hurts.

But there was a message she had to give. Struggling to lift her head against his hand, she said, “Per—”

His mouth pressed her lips against her teeth, his growth of stubble sandpapered her skin, the brim of his helmet bumped her head. Behind him, the Sterkarms jeered, laughed, and cheered.

When he broke the kiss, it was to press her head into his shoulder with his gloved hand and to hug her even tighter with his other arm. She was quite unable to speak. The warning could wait a minute more. She leaned on him and closed her eyes.

For there's sweeter rest

On a truelove's breast

Than any other where.

About the Author

Susan Price is the author of the Sterkarm series. Born in Dudley, West Midlands, in England, she went on to write the Guardian Fiction Prize–winning
The Sterkarm Handshake
(1998) after visiting reiver country on the borders of Scotland. To help her imagine the Sterkarm's world, she drew on lifelong interests in history, folklore, and old ballads, as well as her hobbies of shooting with a longbow and traveling to the Scottish hills with her partner. Price continued the series with
A Sterkarm Kiss
(2004) and
A Sterkarm Tryst
(2017)
.
Her other works include the novel
The Ghost Drum
, which won the prestigious Carnegie Medal. Price lives in the Black Country, in West Midlands, England.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1998 by Susan Price

Cover design by Drew Padrutt

978-1-5040-2098-5

This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

180 Maiden Lane

New York, NY 10038

www.openroadmedia.com