Foxmask (37 page)

Small One had his thumb in his mouth; his eyes were intent on the picture, his body warm and relaxed against Keeper's. His fear was gone. He mumbled something, not words, just a sound meaning
More
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“You must remember,” Keeper said, “that there are many stories here, countless tales; each time a man looks into this web, he sees another, and another behind it. You could spend a lifetime looking, learning. I tell only one tonight. She climbed a long way, up the hill to a little house where there were friends.” He knew the house, he had been there himself, long ago. Brother Niall he remembered, a white-haired man, and another, younger. They had been kind to him. His father had beaten him for going there. “Friends . . . but . . .” The pattern ended there. The last thing he could see was a hand, reaching out into emptiness. “But in the end, they could not help her,” Keeper said, and he looked up. The goddess still lay by the fire, the curves of her body not quite concealed by the warm covers he had heaped over her. The light from the glowing embers touched the golden sheen of her hair and the faint pink of her cheeks, and showed him a pair of eyes the blue of a summer sky, wide open and watching him.

Fair is the prattle of a child
Fair a woman's voice, singing
Fairer still, silence
.

M
ONK'S MARGIN NOTE

W
hen she came out of the fever at last, Creidhe wondered if she had imagined it: the young man, tall, lean, scarred, dangerous-looking, with tattered garments and a wildness about him that suggested something less, or more, than human; and the ragged child on his knee, half-asleep, sucking its thumb, held safe by this most improbable of keepers. She recalled the look in their eyes, dazzled, enchanted, caught in the vision, her vision; she could still hear the gentle flow of his voice, telling, extraordinarily, her own story. No one had ever seen the Journey fully unfolded, save herself; no one she knew could have related what it signified as this feral creature had with his soft words and graceful, gesturing hands. She remembered that, and the way he had started, falling abruptly silent, as he had realized she was awake. After that she recalled a few things, his kindness, her fear, not of him so much, for it was plain from the moment she heard his voice that he meant her no harm, but of the island and those others who dwelt there, the ones that held Foxmask captive and, every summer, gave fierce battle to Asgrim's troops. She had come here because she had sensed it was safe; unfortunately there was little logic to such a decision. The Unspoken could not follow her here; the same could not be said for others. She remembered her alarm at discovering
she was naked under the blankets, and the way he had averted his gaze when he needed to come close, as if he knew just how she was feeling. He had fed her with baked fish, morsel by morsel as if she were a chick in the nest; he had held a cup in his long fingers, tilting it for her to drink. Above all, she had noticed that, as soon as the young man knew she was awake, the child had vanished. Simply, it was there, and then instantly not there. She concluded that this, at least, was no more than imagining.

Soon after that, lying by the fire in the tiny hut, watching through the open doorway as the summer half-dark washed across the sky, she felt fever grip her, seizing her as the sea had not, and she began to shiver and burn, and everything became a blur. That went on for quite some time, and she ceased to worry about such minor details as being thirsty or exposing her nakedness before strangers; these things were no longer of consequence. Her body ached and trembled, her head throbbed, she was running with sweat, she was freezing cold . . . she wanted to die, or if that was not possible, she wanted to go home, oh, so much . . .

The fever lasted several days, days in which the season continued to advance steadily toward midsummer. If there were other tasks her guardian was supposed to be doing, evidently he had set them aside for now. He sponged her brow, made her swallow water, changed the blankets that covered her, performed the most intimate requirements to keep her body clean. He kept the fire glowing warm; he cooked food that she could not swallow. In her rare moments of lucidity, it became increasingly plain to Creidhe that there was no child here; how could there be? Seeing that little figure on the young man's knee, she had thought of Foxmask, six years old and apparently captive somewhere on this island. But all she had seen through the mists of fever was a small, wild creature of some kind, perhaps a dog, although it was not so very hound-like, edging its way delicately up to the place where the young man baked supper in the hot coals, snatching a morsel or two, slinking off again into hiding. She thought little of that; the illness had stolen away her sense of what should be. If not for that, she would have felt alone, deserted and afraid. As it was, life existed only of the heat and the cold.

There was a night when her very bones seemed made of ice and her teeth chattered in a wild dance, and although the young man piled blankets and cloaks around her, still she shivered and trembled as the cold crept deep inside, long fingers probing, reaching to steal the small part of her that clung to life. She saw terror on his hard features that night. In the end he lay down beside her, wrapped his body around hers, arms and legs, held her close, heart to beating heart, and slowly the terrible cold went away and she drifted into
a longed-for, dreamless sleep. When she awoke, soon after dawn, he had moved away, but behind the crook of her knees the little doglike creature lay curled asleep, a ball of disheveled gray fur, pointed muzzle tucked under folded tail. She knew that morning that the fever was gone and that she would get well again.

There hadn't been much talk. The young man's words had been restricted to,
Eat, Sleep now, Drink this
. Creidhe suspected she herself had babbled incessantly through the days and nights of her illness, of what she could not imagine: perhaps of home, or of her worry for Thorvald and Sam, who would not know where she had gone. Now that her head was clear, and the young man sat across the fire doing something to a knife and glancing at her with those odd, luminous eyes, eyes the color of the deepest parts of the sea, it was hard to think what to say to him. Indeed she was not even sure he would understand her. Sometimes he gave the impression of a creature poised for flight. And yet he had told the tale of the Journey: her tale. Perhaps that, too, had been merely some fevered hallucination.

In the end what she said was entirely practical. “I need some clothes. I think I could get up now, try to look after myself. You must have other things to do.”

He ducked his head in a sort of nod. “Skirt, tunic, small shoes,” he said. “I have those; I will bring them. A gift.”

“My own old things will do—” Creidhe began, then stopped herself, for it sounded churlish. When a man's eyes wore such an expression as this, without a trace of guile in it, one did not shun his kindness. “Thank you,” she said. “I suppose mine were ruined. Anything you can manage will be fine.” She watched him a little longer, the spare, lean planes of his face, a young face but wary and self-contained, the clever, dirt-ingrained hands, the odd eyes. “You saved my life,” she added quietly. “I am grateful.”

His long mouth softened a little, not quite a smile. “The sea carried you to my shore,” he said. “I am Keeper; this task was given to me. You are safe here.”

It was a little awkward sitting up; Creidhe held the blankets around herself, hoping he would do something about the clothes as soon as possible. It was one thing to know that he had touched her, washed her, cleaned her during the sickness; it was quite another to be exposed and vulnerable now that she was herself again. He had a store of his own old things, maybe. She tried to imagine herself clad as he was, in garments sewn over with feathers, but could not quite see it. It occurred to her that there were many questions to be asked, important questions, and that she had no idea at all where to start.

“Safe,” she echoed. “But it's not safe here, is it? What about the hunt?”

His eyes met hers, level and steady over the low flames of the fire. “I am Keeper,” he said again. “You will be protected. I swear this by stone and star, by wind and wing. They will not come near you.”

His words, his tone sent a chill through her, like a memory of something dark and old. She did not doubt for a moment that this strange creature spoke the truth.

“Keeper?” she queried cautiously. “This is your name?”

He nodded gravely, then took up the knife again; he was fashioning a binding around the handle, an elaborate woven pattern of cord.

“Have you another name?” she asked him. “The one your mother and father gave you?”

There was no response to this.

“My name is Creidhe,” she offered. “I am from a far place, it's called the Light Isles. I came here because . . .” She was not quite sure how to finish this, not quite sure how much he would understand.

“You flee Asgrim?” There was an edge to his voice now, a danger in it; his care of her, Creidhe thought, had probably been far outside his usual pattern of living. There was the mark of a warrior about him, a kind of warrior who exists principally in tales and dreams. Perhaps she had indeed been drowned in the Fool's Tide, and all of this was some vision from the other side of shadow.

“You flee the Unspoken?” he added.

“Both,” Creidhe said after a moment. “I was—traded. They were taking me away. That was when I tipped the boat over and escaped.”

He waited a little before he spoke again; his hands were busy, weaving the cord over, under, looping here, twisting there. “You carried your web to my island,” he said.

Creidhe nodded, feeling an odd constriction in her throat. “I don't show it to people,” she told him. “Nobody's ever seen more than a small part of it before. It is—secret, private.”

He said nothing; his hands continued their steady work, deft, fluid. Behind him in the corner she could see a small, dark shadow and two bright eyes.

“I think—I think maybe I was dreaming,” Creidhe said. “I thought I heard you telling the story, my story. But how could you have known? How could you recognize my mother, my father?”

He looked up then and smiled, and it seemed to her a message came
with that smile, something nascent, sweet, profoundly dangerous. “It is all there in the web,” Keeper said. “I knew why you had come: to be safe.”

Creidhe wished then for her mother, or for her sister, Eanna. Only a wise woman had the skills to understand this, and she herself was no more than an ordinary girl with a clever hand for needle and loom and a few strange ideas in her head. There was nothing she could say. The more questions she asked, the more there seemed to be waiting for answers.

“Clothes,” Keeper said, rising to his feet and setting his handiwork aside. “Ready for you, Creidhe.” His voice was hesitant, trying out her name; he glanced at her sideways, shyly, as if he were not quite sure whether he might address her thus.

“Thank you,” she said, and managed a smile in return. It was not a very good one; she was still weak, her head felt strange, and she was acutely aware of her nakedness under the coarse blanket she held clutched around her body. All the same, her smile made him blush scarlet like a bashful boy. Muttering something she did not catch, he turned his back and strode out of the small hut.

She waited. Under the low stone shelf by the doorway something crouched, watching her. She sensed rather than saw it now, for as Keeper had left the hut, it had withdrawn deeper, farther in, fearful if the man was not present. Creidhe wondered what kind of creatures lived on the Isle of Clouds besides puffins, gannets, seals. She wondered how long it would be before the rest of the tribe showed itself, and what role Keeper played within their number. He seemed neither follower nor leader, but very much himself. Perhaps he stood entirely apart. She should ask him about the tribe again, and about the hunt. She should ask him about Foxmask. She did not want to ask. She did not want to contemplate the future, for it seemed to her that, between them, the Long Knife people and the Unspoken had cut her path to shreds before her feet. She had come to the Lost Isles to stand by Thorvald, her best friend, whom she loved. She had thought to support him in his quest and see him safe home again when it was done. Indeed, it was she who had found his answer for him, an answer she could not give him, for here she was, washed up on the farthest of shores alone, hunted by tribes on both sides of this long feud, cut off from her friends, helpless to aid them and, it appeared, quite unable to go back. In addition, she was weak as an infant; in Keeper's absence, she tried to rise to her feet and felt her legs collapse under her.

Yet there was a strange sense of calm over her, a certainty that she had done the right thing. As a little waft of breeze came in the door and whispered
through the fire, it came to Creidhe that she was alive and safe and that, ridiculously, she was more content than she had been for a single moment since she left the shore of Hrossey. She imagined Nessa back home by the hearth, casting on a handful of dried weed and searching for answers in the flames. She saw Eanna in the lonely hillside dwelling of the wise women, standing before her own small fire with arms outstretched and eyes shut, the better to use the eye of the spirit. Could they see her, her mother, her sister? Perhaps if she concentrated very hard, if she fixed her mind fully on them, they might catch a little of her presence. Creidhe closed her eyes, rocking in place, humming under her breath. Some things have no boundaries.

When she came to herself once more, a little dazed, for it had been longer than she intended, she saw that Keeper had come and gone quite silently without her knowing it. He had left a pile of folded cloth for her, placed with care on the flat stones by the fire pit. That first evening he had unpacked her colors; she had seen how he set them out to dry in a sequence of light to dark, day to night. Her own order for them might have seemed random, blood-red nudging midnight, periwinkle blue edging up to sun yellow, yet within that apparent chaos she had her own pattern: she knew just which went where. Now, when she checked, she found the skeins of wool back in their holder, each in the precise spot where she was accustomed to storing it.