Foxmask (60 page)

The Journey was rolled up and ready to go; her bag was neatly fastened. Her own blankets were folded by the wall, the buckets covered. She would wait a little longer. Not too long; the summer days stretched out, but they must still reach the clifftop and make their way across the island to the shelter before it was too dark. Climbing up there, Creidhe thought dryly, was going to have a lot more to do with prayer and gritted teeth than with skill. Small One would be safer in his animal form: a pity she could not bid him change.

Just a little longer, and now that it was so late, surely past the time when the Fool's Tide must change back again, making safe passage to Council Fjord an impossibility until next summer, they might as well sit near the opening and let the sun touch their faces. She settled, leaning back against the rock wall and gazing out to the south where the islands of the Unspoken arose like huge, dark whales from the sea. Small One crouched beside her, clutching his blanket. They made no sound; they had promised to be quiet until Keeper returned, and perhaps, despite all her misgivings, despite Small One's earlier anxiety, the impossible might still happen. She would wait until she could wait no longer.

Creidhe found her mind turning in patterns like a child's, making bargains with the spirits that were no less heartfelt for their foolishness. Long ago, it had been:
If I stitch this seam perfectly, perhaps Father will let me ride to
Stensakir with him tomorrow. If I lend Brona my best shawl, even though I know she'll probably lose it, maybe Thorvald won't be cross with me anymore
. Now, crazily, it was:
If I am patient, if I don't cry, if I believe, then perhaps Keeper will not be dead. Please let him not be dead
.

Small One's features showed neither apprehension nor hope. He simply sat waiting for what might come. So entangled was Creidhe in the dark web of her thoughts that in the event Keeper caught her quite by surprise, swinging around the entry silent as a shadow, dropping to crouch by Small One and touch a long, dirty hand to the child's fine hair, to bestow a kiss on his pale brow, and then turning toward her with a smile that was all dazzling white teeth and eyes alight with joy.

“It is over,” he said simply. “They are gone.”

Then Creidhe saw the rough binding around his left arm, where blood stained the rags, and the livid bruise on his temple, and she struggled to speak, but could find only a wordless sound of relief, love and confusion. No tears: she had promised herself that. She would be strong, as these two were.

“Come, dear ones,” Keeper said. “We will go home now.”

The impossible ledge, then, was traversed with feet light as a gull's, the cliff face scaled as if on wings. His hand in hers was like an anchor, like a song, like the touch of the sun after a long, cold winter. The day was suddenly beautiful. When they reached the top Keeper paused, still grasping her hand, to gaze out over the water, turning his back to the setting sun, narrowing his eyes toward Council Fjord.

“Can you see them?” Creidhe asked, a shadow touching her, for there was another question to be asked, and its answer could quench her elation instantly.

“No, Creidhe. They sailed very early, soon after dawn. I thought it was a trick, designed to flush me out, leave me open to attack. So I waited. There was work to be done here; I have cleansed the island of their presence.”

She did not ask if he had added trophies to his wall. It did not take much imagination to picture how his day had been spent.

“Are you sure, then, that they are really gone?”

“They are gone. I have watched, and counted the boats as they sailed away. All have left these shores, your companions' vessel among them. And now the Fool's Tide is calm no more; there will be no safe passage across the strait before next summer. It is our time of peace.”

Small One had made his way up the cliff unaided. He stood at a distance, himself staring out to sea, but he faced southward, toward the isles of the Unspoken. He appeared quite calm. After his first, clinging response to his kinsman's
return, he had shown no sign of emotion. And now Creidhe had to ask the question.

“Thorvald,” she forced the word out. “Was he here? Did you—?” It was not quite possible to put this into words. She shivered, seeing Keeper's eyes narrow, his mouth tighten.

“He was here. He led them; they followed his orders.”

“Thorvald?”
This could not be true; surely Keeper had got it wrong. “Thorvald is no warrior. Besides, we don't even belong here—”

“He was their leader, Creidhe. A capable leader: the Long Knife people fight better for him than they ever did for Asgrim. Still, I am here, and they are gone.”

“Keeper, you must tell me. Did you—?”

He regarded her solemnly. “I did not kill your friend,” he said, “although I could have done. There were four men in his party; I accounted for two and let the others take their chances with the island. He lives, and is gone from here.”

There was nothing to say. Relief washed over her, closely followed by regret, confusion, even a kind of tender amusement as she saw the look on Keeper's face, where pride and jealousy were both evident in the bright eyes, the thin line of the mouth. And under it all, desire: a dark urging that would, very soon, be strong enough to overrun all of those other feelings. Here on the island there was nothing to get in its way, no customs, no family, no expectations. She felt its tide within her, and read its reflection on Keeper's face as they turned to walk back down to their old shelter. She knew it in the touch of his hand on her waist as he helped her down a steep incline; she heard it in his breathing and in her own. This had almost been denied them; the stark images of her dreams had made its fulfillment seem impossible. That it was granted despite those visions of death and loss would make their union sweeter still.

He had prepared for her return, and the child's; he had not come to fetch them until all was ready. The fire burned between the flat stones, and fresh fish were laid out ready for cooking. There was warm water. He had said to her,
We will go home
, and that was how it felt, in this last corner of the world, where the walls were the ancient stones that made the island's fabric, and the smoke-hole opened to a sky now dimming to the indefinable color of the long summer dusk. Keeper took out his knife and prepared the fish; Small One sat opposite, cross-legged, solemn, watching. And Creidhe, observing that Keeper had not set out his own blanket but left it crumpled in a corner,
took his, and hers, and rolled them out side by side. He glanced at her, eyes bright, saying nothing.

“Will you let me clean that wound for you, while the fish is cooking?”

“It's nothing.”

“Will you let me do it?”

“If you wish.”

He was oddly diffident about it, and when Creidhe began the process she understood why. It was not the wound itself, a deep gash probably inflicted by an arrow: that was easily washed and dressed with a strip torn from an ancient garment Keeper had produced. The problem was the closeness, the touching, especially once he removed his shirt to allow her access to the well-muscled arm the arrow had sliced. Her hands shook; his breathing faltered. His other arm came around her, his fingers stroked her hair; her lips touched his bare shoulder, her eyes closed as she tasted the salt sweetness of his skin. The fish sizzled on the coals; Small One sat silent, watching gravely.

“I wanted you last night,” Keeper whispered. “In the darkness, I wanted you. I tried to put you from my thoughts, but could not.”

“Nor I, you,” Creidhe murmured, her hand creeping around his waist, feeling the warmth of his lean body.

“I wonder if you are able to tie a knot,” Keeper said, “or whether I must fasten this bandage myself.”

“You're laughing at me.” Creidhe was a little taken aback. She forced herself to return to the task in hand, a blush rising to her cheeks.

“I have offended you?” Now he was looking wary again, shy as a wild creature. If there were rules for this, Creidhe thought, he had never had the opportunity to learn them; he had been twelve years old when he left his tribe for this life of exile.

“Terribly,” Creidhe said with mock gravity, managing to tie the ends of the bandage and tuck them in reasonably neatly. “Perhaps you should find another shirt, if you have one. It's customary to dress up on such a night. And I would like a little time alone, if I may. I'll keep an eye on the fish.”

Keeper nodded, solemn as an owl. He rose and, taking Small One's hand, made his way out of the hut without another word.

It was, Creidhe realized, her wedding night. She had imagined such a time over and over as she sat dreaming before her loom. She had pictured herself in skirt and tunic of fine wool, woven in a warm, soft blue, with a narrow border of heart's-eye. It would be spring, and she would wear a circlet of matching flowers on her head. She would wash her hair with chamomile and
brush it until it shone. Brona would help her get ready; her family would watch with pride as the vows were spoken. There would be music and dancing and feasting; one of Zaira's cakes, for certain. Later, in the quiet of the bedchamber, the undressing, the sweet exchange of touches . . . before, she had not really thought so much of what came after that. There had been a kind of blur between that moment and the waking to the dawn, warmed by her husband's body and the blue blanket. Those dreams were a girl's fantasy, lovely but unreal. They were as far from tonight as the earth is from the stars. Even the man in them had been wrong.

Tonight there was no wedding finery; there were no herbs to cleanse the hair and body; no woolen coverlets, no soft bed. There was only the night and the island. Creidhe stripped off her clothes and, shivering, washed as quickly as she could in the remnants of the warm water. She could not even change her shift. She rubbed herself dry on one of the old cloaks and struggled back into the skirt and tunic Keeper had made for her. The fish was cooking well; she turned it on the coals. She loosed her hair and combed it out, then gathered it with a cord at the nape of the neck, letting it fall down her back unplaited. That was it: a bride's preparation. She lifted the fish in its wrapping of weed and set it on a platter, wondering vaguely if she would ever eat bread again.

When the others returned, Keeper was wearing a different shirt. It was much like the first, old and ill-fitting, but bore no bloodstains. He had washed his face and hands in the stream, and had made an effort to tidy his wild hair. He stood in the entry, hesitant, with Small One a step behind him.

“You look—very handsome,” Creidhe said, studying him. “I'm proud of you. I wish I could take you home to meet my parents; that's the way it's done, usually. But all the family we have here is Small One. Shall we eat this fish?”

Keeper said nothing, but his eyes, fixed on her, spoke for him well enough.
You are my goddess
. That look silenced Creidhe; it robbed her of any appetite for the fish, though she made herself eat it. He had taken some pains to ensure this feast was ready and his hearth warm for her, even after two grueling days of battle. She would not hurt him for the world.

“Strange,” he observed after a while. “I cannot eat.”

“No,” said Creidhe. “Yet the fish is very good.”

“I cannot eat,” Keeper said again, eyes bright. “And yet, there is a hunger in me. A fierce hunger.”

“Yes,” Creidhe whispered. “I feel it too. We have a child to put to bed first.”

The moon was waning now. Nonetheless, tonight it seemed Small One had a need to watch its progress across the sky, and to greet it once more with song. Creidhe had expected the child would be exhausted after the tension and discomfort of that time of waiting, worn out with worrying about Keeper's safety, glad to be back in the hut and curling up in his own corner once more. She had expected him to fall asleep the moment he finished his supper. Instead, he left the shelter and went to sit on the rocks outside, straight-backed and small, with the moon shining in his strange eyes. Creidhe had made the mistake of forgetting, briefly, that this was not an ordinary six-year-old. One could not begin to imagine what visions the small seer had in his head, what tides of feeling flowed in his spirit. His song began softly, with a sadness in the shape of it. It was no anthem of victory, no triumphant tale of another hunt won, another dark trial survived. It was a lament. Perhaps the wordless music told of what could not be; perhaps it remembered the men who had shed their blood on the island this summer, and all the years before. Creidhe did not know. She watched Keeper across the fire, and he gazed steadily back at her. Neither made a move. Both recognized that they could not touch again until Small One slept, for to do so now was too dangerous. Once their hands clasped again, once their lips met, once their bodies pressed close, there could be no stopping the fire that had sprung up between them until it burned to its natural conclusion. And that, thought Creidhe, might be quite a quick process once they allowed it to begin. Not that she had any experience of such matters, but it seemed to her that holding back was going to be an impossibility.

Small One's song sounded through the night air, piercing and sorrowful, telling of loss and loneliness, of hurt and misunderstanding and waste. Creidhe bowed her head; it did not seem right for her heart to be so full of joy, for her body to glow thus with anticipation, while the child gave voice to this music of deepest melancholy.

“Always he sings thus, after the hunt,” Keeper whispered. “Always the same. It is not for you and me.”

“Then who is it for? Himself?”

“Perhaps. There are no words in it; I think each listener takes a different message. He is sad, maybe, because the hunt must continue, year after year.”

“Or for the men killed,” Creidhe suggested.

Keeper spat on the ground at his side. “They are nothing,” he said, his voice held quiet as the child's song rang on, out in the night. “Why would he grieve for them?”