A Turn of Light (63 page)

She blushed and sewed faster. She could recite every word.

No cider for me. I keep your letters beneath my pillow. It’s no wonder I sleep so well . . .

I wake each morning to sunlight and bird song, and my first thought is of you . . .

Dance with me, at the harvest? My sister, who taught me my steps, would tell you I’m a decent partner, who keeps to the measure and doesn’t embarrass himself. Though if I had you in my arms, I fear I’d steal a kiss. Would you forgive me?

He was shameless.

And wonderful. For most of all, Bannan wrote of himself. Private, special things. The freckled girl in the bakery who’d won his five-year-old’s heart with her cookies. Being lost in the woods with his sister, after they’d pretended to be hunters riding after wild boar, and how Lila had kept him safe and warm in her arms till they were found the next morning. The terrifying discovery he could see the truth or its lack in someone’s face, and how his father had taught him the responsibility of a truthseer and its cost. Losing both parents. Gaining Scourge, who’d tossed him from the saddle twenty-three times before accepting him as rider.

Jenn could barely wait to read each new letter, an eagerness she managed to keep to herself only because she made herself read Wyll’s first.

you Are being good careful . . .

I continue to build our magnificent castle it Has no windows . . .

why do We need a kitchen we can eat with him . . .

I do not know How to thank the small ones

they perplex me . . .

the harvest will Be soon and we will be Together always

Wyll was Wisp and loved her. She loved him. But with each new letter, the more Jenn understood Wen Treff’s warning. A change in shape did not mean a change in nature. Wyll wasn’t a man, not inside.

But he was her dearest, oldest friend. She’d made him what he was and he needed her. Eight bright and sunny mornings in a row, Jenn Nalynn awoke knowing exactly what to do. She would marry Wyll. She wouldn’t write to Bannan again. She wouldn’t read his letters. It had to stop.

Eight evenings in a row, she’d grown empty save for doubt. How could she not read and reply, when Bannan wrote from his heart to hers, and hers so needed his?

A voice interrupted her thoughts. “I know that face,” Peggs said gently.

Jenn looked up from her stitching to where her sister sat beside her on the bench. Supper done, they’d sought the porch to take advantage of the last of the daylight. “This face?” She wrinkled her nose and squinted.

“No, Dear Heart. The one you get when you’re thinking about Bannan Larmensu.”

She had a face for that? Jenn felt warm. “I do not,” she objected. “And you’re wrong. I was thinking about—about how nice it will be to see Mistress Sand again.”

The tinkers would arrive the day after tomorrow. A roasting pit was being prepared for a side of Bannan’s ox; the meat, wrapped in moist sacking, would be left to cook till the welcome feast. In other preparation, Aunt Sybb’s elegant bays, bored and sensing their journey home, were now stabled in the Emms’ barn; come the harvest, they’d settle as willingly in harness to pull hoists as her coach. Brawl and Battle, who’d pull Davi’s cart, dozed in the Treffs’. Tomorrow, the cows and calves and Good’n’Nuf the bull would be moved from the commons to graze the orchard. Wainn’s pony always trotted eagerly in the lead, ever hopeful the villagers might have forgotten to pick the apples first. The sows and Himself would stay where they were, being gracious about sharing their space with the tinkers’ wagons and beasts, and much less so about being ousted from their wallow.

Once the tinkers were here, clearing the fields and milling would take a hectic four days, all to be completed on the Golden Day, all including her birthday, their weddings, and, presumably, the Great Turn.

As if this wasn’t enough to make her head spin, the very next unimaginable day, Aunt Sybb would leave for the winter, with Uncle Horst as escort. Kydd and Peggs would move into the Nalynn loft, it had been decided, and Jenn would live in . . . what? Whatever Wyll was building for them, not that anyone had seen it. Her father tried to hide his doubt, but he’d never been good at concealing his feelings, not the important ones. Aunt Sybb wasn’t much better. She threw herself into wedding preparations with alarming fervor, and conversed, when she did pause for tea, about the preparations she would have done, had they been in Avyo and had another year.

“So you see,” Jenn finished firmly, “that was my thinking face, not a face for anyone in particular.”

“Hmm.” Peggs said in a carefully noncommittal tone. Suddenly, she tugged the embroidery hoop from Jenn’s unresisting hands and held it to the light. “Oh no. Dearest Heart—is it that time already?”

Jenn took the hoop back. She’d been preoccupied while she stitched, which wasn’t unusual, and couldn’t recall if she’d been doing a rose or a leaf.

She’d sewn a pebble. A white pebble.

Her sister was right. It was time. The sun was setting.

The hoop fell from Jenn’s hands, to roll away on the weathered planks. A sudden cramp flamed across her middle and she doubled over with a groan she couldn’t help.

Peggs’ arms came around her, held tight. “Heart’s Blood. Not again.”

Again and harder to bear. “It’ll pass,” Jenn gasped, though she wasn’t sure at all. The once-vague emptiness had grown to fierce hunger pangs and now? Now her stomach might be filled with burning coals.

“It’s getting worse. I know it is. We must tell Poppa. Aunt Sybb.”

“No. Please. There’s nothing they can do but worry.” More than they already did.

“Ancestors Distressed and Despairing. I’m worried enough for all of us.” Peggs got that look, the one that said she’d made up her mind. Sure enough, “You promised me, Dearest Heart, if things got worse you’d talk to Kydd. Well, they’re worse. We’ll go tonight, after supper.”

Unable to argue, Jenn clung to her sister and nodded. The pain faded, if not the emptiness. “At least it’s not long now,” she said, forcing cheer into her voice. “Till the Great Turn.”

“Six days,” Peggs agreed, with no more certainty than she. They trusted a voice from a dream. “Will you—can you—”

Easier to breathe, with the pain ended. “The question is,” Jenn replied, retrieving her hoop and pulling out the offending thread, “will we finish our stitching by then?”

She knew what Peggs had meant. Could she last?

She must. That was all there was to it.

Jenn gazed up the road. Tir would be coming soon. With her next letter.

Maybe she shouldn’t think of Bannan each night, or read his letter—and reread the rest—before bed.

But it kept that hunger at bay when nothing else could.

“Another letter, sir?” Tir gave a doleful shake of his head. “Seems to me you wrote one yesterday.”

“Indeed I did.” Clapping his friend on one shoulder, Bannan flourished the well-traveled envelope. “But Jenn wrote to me and I owe her an equally prompt reply.” He offered, as he had each of the previous afternoons, “I could deliver it.”

“I’ll manage, sir.” Tir took the letter. “No reason for you to leave this grand place.”

A breeze nipped Bannan’s ear. “This becomes tiresome.”

“Who asked you?” Tir scowled. “Bloody beast.”

Scourge rolled a dark eye to show red.

“Peace, the pair of you.” As far as the truthseer was concerned, the situation had passed tiresome a week ago and was well on its way to driving him mad. But it was a delicious madness, hope-filled and inspiring, and wasn’t it almost over? “Tir’s right.” At their looks, he added innocently, “Isn’t harvest to start tomorrow?”

“The day after, sir. If these tinkers show up. I’ve seen no sign.”

What he’d meant was no reply from Vorkoun, which was, Bannan thought cheerfully, Tir’s problem and not his. He’d done as promised, and done it, thank you, long enough. “They’ll be here. Then I must go to the village, mustn’t I?” he asked, trying hard not to grin. “To earn my share of flour.”

First letters, now this. Tir wasn’t one to admit defeat, but Bannan could tell from his exasperated, “Yes, sir,” that he’d won. “I’ll let you know.” Then his eyes gleamed. “Best I be going. I wouldn’t want to be late to supper at the Nalynns.”

The truthseer bowed. “Give them my regards.” Tir might share Jenn’s table, but it was his letter she’d read tonight.

Scourge snorted his impatience and headed off, though at a pace matched to the man’s shorter steps. Bannan stepped out on the road to watch until they passed safely beyond the path to the Spine, smiling at the sight of Tir’s hands gesturing, the kruar’s head bobbing. A pair and conversation as unlikely as Marrowdell itself.

The day after tomorrow he’d take the same road at last, and see her dear face, instead of imagining it.

Have her smile at him.

She would, he thought. Smile. He felt sometimes she did, as she wrote him. Especially when she wrote what gave him hope.

I might forgive a kiss. Or I might not. I assuredly can’t say ahead of time, since any kissing or forgiving would depend entirely on the circumstances, and such circumstances are highly unlikely to begin with . . .

Though I do love to dance. I would dance with you, Bannan. To see how well your sister taught you, of course . . .

I read your letters before I sleep. Within your words, I feel safe and happy, as though time isn’t rushing by and taking me with it, as though anything might truly be possible. For that, I thank you.

He’d had his share of infatuations; Vorkoun abounded with soft skin and luscious lips, and he’d fallen in and out of love like clockwork. How could mere words on a page make his heart pound?

Because Jenn Nalynn wasn’t to be found anywhere else. He’d looked for her all his life, without knowing what he sought.

Not long now.

After supper, Jenn and Peggs found Kydd Uhthoff up to his elbows in honeycomb and unsettled bees.

Which was, Jenn thought, slowing in case the bees blamed her for their imminent losses, to be expected. It was harvest time after all; honey and wax had their season, too. Wainn stood nearby, the hive’s woven lid in his hands. Bees climbed across his eyebrows and ears and he smiled with closed lips, as though otherwise they’d be tempted to walk across his teeth.

Not a moment to interrupt.

Peggs, however, was undaunted. Hair bouncing on her shoulders, she marched straight to the open hive, with a brief nod to Wainn, and demanded of her future husband, “What do you know of magic?”

Kydd, who’d been gently sweeping bees from a comb with a wide brush, looked at his future wife with a strange little smile. “I wondered when you’d ask, Dearest Heart.”

“You did?” Though taken aback, Peggs lost none of her momentum. “Well. I’m asking now. We need your help.”

“I know a great deal about what purports to be magic, but isn’t,” the beekeeper answered enigmatically, and bent to coax more bees to leave. Then his eyes, keen and bright, lifted to Jenn. “Much less about what is.”

Blood rushed to Jenn’s cheeks. Bees droned by, more busy than annoyed. A few bumped into her; most stayed on their doorstep or hovered around the beekeeper as he removed the next comb. These were cleverly suspended from bars laid across the top of the hive and, if she hadn’t been thoroughly flustered, she’d have peeked inside to look for Kydd’s books.

A page of which she’d used. “I did some,” she confessed. “I used a wishing from one of your books.”

Wainn glanced up and smiled. “I wrote it down and Aunt Sybb knew the words. They rhymed.”

“I was there,” Peggs jumped in bravely. “I helped.”

Jenn shook her head. “I did it. I threw the ash over Wisp and—and said the words.” Her lower lip trembled; she closed her teeth over it.

“So now we have Wyll.” To Jenn’s relief, Kydd didn’t appear upset. Or surprised. “You think it was the wishing.”

“What else could it be?” Peggs asked before Jenn could.

“Indeed.” The beekeeper slipped the honeycomb back in the hive and pulled off his sticky gloves. “There are wishings for any hope or desperation, our Ancestors being nothing if not inventive. I recall one for abundance in a marriage,” he told them, solemn but for the twinkle in his eye, “that requires, among other things, a shellfish from the deep ocean beyond Eldad and a vial of powdered thighbone from one’s most fertile ancestor. Even today, when civilized folk proclaim they no longer believe in magic, you can buy both in the markets of Vorkoun.”