Authors: Pamela Freeman
“Of course I will help, if you need it,” Bramble said.
After all, wasn’t that why she was here? She found that she was breathing hard, as she did when she rode in a chase. She had the same feeling of recklessnes, of exhilaration, that she got when she was a stumble away from death.
“Will you give me what I need?” the voice asked.
Bramble’s heartbeat increased even more and she felt that one wrong word would shatter the dream, and perhaps shatter more than that. It was like talking to the local gods, she had that same feeling of being on a precipice, of pressure that threatened to take your breath if you said what was unwanted.
“You could take what you need,” she said, finally, knowing it was true, that she had nothing the Lake could not take, including her life.
Maryrose’s voice laughed, softly. “Never without asking. That is the compact. Will you give?”
“Yes.”
“Ah.” It was less Maryrose’s voice now and more a shifting slide of sound — less human, more beautiful. “And will you become one of my children?”
She shook her head without thinking, knowing in her bones that she did not belong here and never would. The Lake was absolutely still, waiting for her answer. The waves against her hut were still, the breeze dead. The whole Lake waited. Bramble cleared her throat.
“Although it would be an honor, Lady, I think I belong elsewhere.”
The waves began again, the breeze lifted her hair gently.
“So think I. Wise child, you have far to go before you reach your journey’s end.”
Then suddenly it was just before dawn, and Bramble was lying under her blanket in the clear gray light, with the air outside so cold that the tip of her nose ached. She lay for a moment, wondering, then heard Salamander call her name as his boat bumped at her doorstep.
“Time to go, beautiful rider,” he said, poking his head through the door. “Your boat is waiting.”
W
INTER CAME,
in a rush, in a matter of days. The last leaves fell, frosts hardened the ground, snow drifted down steadily and the animals were moved into the big barn, crowded by the fodder Mabry had stored there this year, instead of in the small barn. “We need to practice,” he had said to Gytha, when she complained of having to squeeze through the hay to feed the chickens.
Three weeks after they arrived, at breakfast, Elva began to have birth pains. Ash was sent to get the midwife from the cluster of houses down near the river.
“Second on the left, no, right — the yellow house,” Mabry gabbled, then raced back to the bedroom.
Ash ran, as fast as he could in the snow, slipping and sliding down the steep path in flurries of snow. But when the midwife heard why he’d come, she just nodded and went calmly about putting the things she needed into her bag. Ash hopped from one foot to the other impatiently. She shook her head at him tolerantly.
“First birth, just started the pains — she’ll be hours yet, young’un.”
So it proved. He followed the wiry legs of the midwife up the path and waited in the main room for hours. Gytha was the messenger, coming out to get fresh towels or a hot brick from the fire for Elva’s back, and each time saying, “Don’t fret, it’s all going well.”
It was dark before the midwife emerged. “Well, it didn’t take as long as I thought, after all.” She smiled at him. “Go on, then, go see the little lad.”
Ash rushed into the bedroom and stopped at the door. It was like an image from an old song: the new parents, the mother holding the swaddled babe close, the proud father bending over them. He hardly saw the others. He was struck through with envy, with a desire for what Mabry had: a wife to love, a child to raise, a home to live in and work for, a place in a village where he was known and respected. They were things he would probably never have. For a moment, he hovered on the brink of hating Mabry for that, but he remembered Doronit, her face contorted by hate for Acton’s people, and he turned the yearning into an even stronger determination not to let anything harm this family. Or, he thought for the first time, others like them.
Elva looked up from the child. “A boy. With dark hair!” she said. “I must look out the window. Draw back the shutters, Mabry.”
They had discussed this, too, in the nights before the fire, and Mabry had agreed that Elva could name the baby the Traveler way, by the sight of the first living thing she saw outside after the birth. But Mabry was prepared to go with Traveler customs only so far, and he had laid plans with Ash. He nodded to Ash now, before he touched the shutters, and Ash ran outside to where they had potted up and hidden two small trees: a cherry for a girl and a tiny cedar sapling for a boy. He positioned himself by the window and called out to Mabry, who then opened the shutters.
“What are you doing, Ash?” Elva asked, and Mabry explained.
The two girls laughed, but Elva and Martine were silent. Ash peered in. They didn’t look happy.
“Fine,” Elva said. “I can see why you did it. But you have to take the consequences. The first living thing I saw was Ash. We’ll call the baby Ash.”
Mabry expostulated, but Elva held firm.
“The gods guide us in our choice of names,” Martine said. “You think you’re the first father who’s tried to cast only the stones he wants? It never answers. It’s bad luck.”
So Mabry agreed, to Ash’s delight. He wasn’t interested in babies, but it was as though the gods had heard his yearning to be part of this family, and had given his wish to him backhandedly, as was their habit. An Ash, of Traveler blood, would grow up in this warm and loving spot, cherished and happy.
If they could stop the ghosts.
The days shortened. This far north, so close to the mountains, the winters were long and very cold. The valley was protected from the worst of the winds, but even so, there were few days when they could walk out comfortably into crisp air. On those days the sky was deep blue and the air tasted sharp and bracing on the tongue, and the women came up from the village, to see the new baby and surreptitiously assess the strangers. A couple of men from the class in the barn came too, awkwardly, and Ash realized that they were courting Drema and Gytha. Gytha grinned and flirted with her beau, but Barley, courting Drema, had a harder task. Still, Ash thought, watching the way her eyes softened as he gingerly held the baby, he might have a chance.
The evenings were spent marveling over the baby and talking, with Ash reciting almost every song he knew. At Drema’s request, he began to do it chronologically, working his way through the past, from the very earliest Traveler songs to the ballads of the landtaken and the love songs and nonsense songs of the present.
It sobered Mabry and his sisters a little. It was clear that, like most settled folk, they had never heard the full story of the landtaken: the full toll of the dead, the raped, the enslaved. The songs told of the ceaseless expansion north, which pushed back the old inhabitants to the poor, marginal land, and from there, pushed them onto the roads, to become Travelers.
The ballads were from an earlier, more robust age, where battle was a source of glory and the tally of those killed added to a warrior’s renown. Acton’s people had delighted in bloodshed. But Mabry’s people were farmers, and it was too easy, with the ghosts perhaps gathering, for them to imagine the terror and despair of those attacked.
Holmstead fell! Giant Aelred, shield of iron
Mighty sword arm for his chief.
Down came Aelred, fierce with battle cry
Sweeping all before his blade
Sweeping all before to death.
The dark people leaped to battle
A hundred strong they leaped to battle
Wielded weapons in weak arms.
Mighty Aelred led his warriors
A score of warriors came behind him
Faced the hundred.
Killed them all.
“Do we have to listen to all this blood and death?” Gytha asked.
“I think we do,” Drema said, and Mabry nodded.
“Yes. Better to know the truth. Better to understand why the enchanter the ghosts spoke of is seeking revenge.”
“Keep to the history, Ash,” Drema said. “We must start with the earliest and work our way up.”
There were kinder songs, too, and they turned to those with relief. Ash dredged his memory for early songs that were not about battle. Several times he remembered songs, or fragments of songs, that he had heard his father sing at night near the fire, but never his mother. “Useless songs,” she had said. They never performed them, because they were in the old Traveler language and would have been unpopular with audiences. But they were haunting, all in a minor key. Although it was difficult to figure out what they meant, even after Ash had translated them.
The gods’ own prey is galloping, is riding up the hill
Her hands are wet with blood and tears and dread
She is rearing on the summit and her banner floats out still
Now the killer’s hands must gather in the dead.
“It’s not a very good translation,” Ash said apologetically. “The original’s better. It’s a tricky rhythm.”
“‘The killer’s hands must gather in the dead,’” Martine mused. “It sounds like a prophecy.”
“Oh, gods, not a prophecy!” Elva exclaimed. “I hate those things. They never say what you think they mean and then they come up behind you when you least expect it and shove you into something horrible.”
She scowled. Everyone but Martine looked surprised.
“Oh, it’s not that bad, love,” she said, and smiled. “It was only a little prophecy.”
“Tell us,” Mabry said.
Elva shook her head stubbornly, but Martine laughed. “One of the old women in our village foretold when Elva was born that she would live with the gods. She’s never really known what it meant.”
“But you’ve already done that, sweetheart,” Mabry said. “When you first came here, you built a cabin next to the gods’ stone and lived with them.”
Elva’s pale face went still for a moment and then broke into a wide smile. “I did, didn’t I?” She laughed in relief. “All my life I’ve had that shagging prophecy following me around and it came true without me even noticing it! You see, that’s what I mean, it’s just typical of prophecies. You can’t trust them.”
“All right,” Martine said soothingly, “we won’t worry about some prey of the gods.”
“After all,” Ash said, “that song was written a thousand years ago. If it is a prophecy, it’s not likely to come true right now.”
“Enough songs for tonight,” Drema said firmly. “Let’s go to bed.”
Rolled comfortably in his blankets by the fire, breathing in the warm scent of apples from the drying rack over the ashes, Ash drifted off to sleep immediately, but was woken in the middle of the night by little Ash’s crying. He lay in the darkness and listened to Elva murmuring to him, and to the funny hiccup he always gave as he was put to the breast. Then there was silence, except for the slow creak of the roof under its burden of snow, the very faint hiss from the banked fire . . . and his own breathing, slow and steady.
Something about that rhythm brought back a memory from a long time before: he clung to his father’s back as they walked a road, somewhere, sometime, when he was little enough for Da to carry him most of the day. His father was singing. His father’s voice wasn’t beautiful, like Mam’s, but he liked its deep resonance, coming up through his back as Ash clung to his shoulders. Mam pushed their handcart behind them, and the rumbling of the wheels was even deeper. His father was singing old words, very odd words. Snatches of it came back to Ash, “knife cleansed, blood flows, memory calls, past shows, the bones beneath it all . . .”
“That’s a song better forgotten.” His mam’s voice had come sharply.
“No song should be forgotten,” his father had said.
Yes, Ash realized, this was why the incident had stayed in his memory, although he had been so tiny at the time. It was the first, one of the only times, he had ever heard his father disagree with his mother.
“No song should be forgotten,” his father had repeated. “You remember that, Ash.”
So he had. He remembered them all.
They had little Ash to thank that the winter did not seem endless. The few weeks before he was born had dragged out, but afterward the days flew, crammed from morning until night.
Ash would never have believed the difference one little baby made. None of them got enough sleep, except Gytha who could ignore his nighttime cries. They walked around during the day with dark circles under their eyes, and drank too many cups of cha to stay awake. Elva was the worst, of course, but she at least felt no shame in curling up with the baby for a nap. The others had chores to do, even in winter: animals to be fed and mucked out, thatch to be replaced on the barn roof, water to be carried, chamber pots to be emptied and cleaned, cooking, cleaning, felting, sewing, spinning, weaving, chopping wood.
Then there was the nappy changing, the clothes washing, the baby bathing before the fire, the walking and the soothing and the rocking to sleep. And just watching the changing expressions on that tiny face — it was a full-time job for all five of them, which was ridiculous. Perhaps not quite full-time, Ash conceded. They did have some time for other things.
Mabry was also a skilled woodcarver, and made delicate designs of flowers and plants on all sorts of items. He had made the baby’s cradle before Martine and Ash arrived. The day after little Ash was born, he set to work to carve the traditional flower for Elva’s child necklace, which all the women of Acton’s people were given who had borne a child to their husband. Cornflower was for a boy, daisy for a girl, and carved and painted by the father — that was the tradition. A stillborn child’s flower was left unpainted, to show the life unlived. When the woman died, she was buried with the necklace. The cornflower Mabry carved and painted for little Ash was a marvel, complex and delicate, almost alive. Through the long winter nights he worked at a pair of dinner plates, rectangles of wood on which he etched the spare outline of reeds.
As the days grew noticeably longer, Gytha spent nights out in the barn in case of early lambing.
Then came the first sign of spring thaw — a warm wind from the south. The five of them stood together outside, with little Ash in Martine’s arms, looking south down the valley and watching chunks of ice break away from the riverbanks and be carried away.
“Time to go,” said Martine.
Ash couldn’t tell if there was sorrow or anticipation in her voice. Perhaps both.
So they packed up that day, saying little except to plan their route. “Down the valley’s your best way,” said Mabry. “Right to the end and then come up into Cliff Domain and strike east. The roads aren’t good, but you’ll get there in a few weeks. Then north through the Golden Valley and Quiet Pass into the Last Domain. They say the Well of Secrets is there now, in Oakmere.” He paused. “It’s a long trip.”
Martine patted Mabry on the shoulder reassuringly. “We’re Travelers, born and bred.”
“The road is long and the end is death,” Ash said cheerfully.
Mabry smiled. “If we’re lucky.” He had learned the Traveler’s answer from Elva.
As they were packing, each of them came to give Ash and Martine a parting gift, things they’d worked on all winter that Ash never suspected could be for him. Gytha had woven a big goat’s-wool blanket that would cover both of them. Drema had made them felt coats, beautifully embroidered, and far warmer than anything Ash owned. Elva had dried half an orchard’s worth of fruit over the fire, “for the lean, hungry times,” she said. And Mabry gave them the plates.
“A bit heavy to carry, but lighter than pottery,” he said shyly.
Martine kissed him. Ash, embarrassed, pounded him on the shoulder.
The next morning, early, Ash, Mabry, Drema and Gytha waited outside while Martine and Elva said goodbye in the house.
“Take care of yourself,” Mabry said to Ash.