The whole world was forest, in some places so thick that no group of humans could force a passage between the trees. The oaks were gigantic; the ash towering pillars gray and gold in autumn, in winter bare as the pillars of a stately hall. The waters were choked with willows, and on the mountainsides pale birch trees glowed against the bracken and dark stone. The thick trunked oaks and the brown hazel dropped nuts so thick every footstep beneath them cracked. And the women of Kyra’s people harvested the hazelnut and acorn to make an unleavened bread soft as the feathers on a young bird and sweet as an autumn sloe. They knew no cloth and wore the pelts of the beasts they hunted, but were, between the riches of the rivers and forest, all healthy and well fed. They had no need of war bands, kings, or lords. When they had a dispute or problems to solve, they called on those among them who could travel to the other world. Seers who could find a vision and place their feet on the right path.
“Dugald says stories of the other world are but dreams and the wild imaginings of poets,” 1 told them.
Kyra looked at me. She was huddled in her furs, sitting on a log, poking at the fire with a stick. Gray was working the deer hide with a stone scraper, cleaning it so it could be tanned. He chuckled.
“Don’t laugh, fool,” she said. “The journey is real and so is the risk. Some don’t return. But in a way, he’s right. Many who undertake the journey only glimpse the borderlands, but some go beyond them and leave this world and travel into another. It can be done and the more fool he for denying it, because he is one of the ones who has made his way into the passage. But—and I can hear it in his voice—he grew afraid and he turned back. Now he wants to deny the knowledge to you.”
Good smells were beginning to rise from the stone lined pit where the meat was roasting.
“Do you think… ?” I asked.
“No,” Gray and Kyra said together. “It hasn’t been enough time. Children are always impatient. The meat is not done.”
“Kyra, are you sure you should be telling her these things? And I cannot believe she is of your people,” Gray said.
Kyra snorted and fixed him with a cold stare from her one good eye.
“But,” he continued, arguing, “telling the child she is royal, Kyra, and talented in a way that bodes no good for her future—”
“If you don’t believe there is something strange about her, then what are you doing here, Gray?”
“Yes,” he said, and looked away from her into the snowy woods. “Yes,” he repeated. “When she came to tell us about the ship she saw, that fool Bain tried to ignore her, but she wouldn’t be ignored or overlooked. She forced him to pay attention to her. But letting her think she is royal…”
“I
am
royal,” I said.
“Who?” he asked.
Both he and Kyra were staring at me intently.
“Dugald and the Gray Watcher don’t want me to say.” I spoke with my eyes on the ground. “I gave them my promise.” Then I looked up. The eyes on the head were staring into mine, the hate burning in them.
Gray followed my gaze and jerked as though he’d been pinched. “God,” he whispered and made the sign of the cross. I glanced at him, drawn almost involuntarily by his outcry.
When I looked back, the head was—much as usual—ghastly but dead.
Kyra laughed.
Gray still looked frightened. “For a moment I thought… that thing almost seemed as though it were alive.”
“Yes,” Kyra said. “Now, let us speak of other things.”
And so we did. She had already begun to teach me the songs and tales her people tell about the sky. How to know the time, day, and season by the movements of the sun, moon, and stars. The meaning of the constellations—the warrior, the fish, the dragon, the twins, the bull, the lion, and many more. Each had its own song and story. They were long and the poetry was very beautiful. Easy for me to remember. There were two calendars—one for men by the sun, another for women by the moon—and the wise learned to reckon time by both. Day belonged to men, night to women; but sunset and dawn belonged to both and were more powerful than either day or night.
That was why we questioned Cymry at dusk.
At length, the meat was ready, and we feasted together. By the time we were finished eating, the snow was blue and the sun a scarlet ball on the horizon.
Dugald was at the chief’s hall feasting, and Issa had told me that they were going to surprise him with a woman. Since they found out that he was a druid taught, the townspeople had made much of him by bringing him presents and inviting him to feasts in their homes. Of course, in return they constantly worried him with their disputes, marital problems, illnesses, and injuries. He was asked to tell the future for them and their children and even to bless cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, boars, and fishing tackle. He got very little peace once they found he could do magic.
They came demanding love potions, fertility potions, poisons, philters, and things that were supposed to guarantee wedded bliss. Let any creature for miles around get into difficulties during childbearing and poor Dugald would be summoned, even if it was the dead of winter or the middle of the night. But Dugald seemed to thrive on the attention, especially that of women—the young women. That meant he stayed out of my hair and let Kyra and the Gray Watcher run our lives.
That satisfied me. Kyra taught me history. Not as the Romans knew it, the story of wars and kings, but about the journey of humankind and how we won out over both gods and beasts and now ruled over both of them. In skill we bested the animals, in magic the gods. All but for the veiled She who is fate, and even the Romans bent the knee before her.
When the sun was nothing but a red glow on the horizon, we sacrificed to Cymry. Pouring red wine and oil over his head, I saw him smack his lips, and his eyes, clouded with death, seemed clouded now with drunkenness. Gray rolled his eyes and backed up behind the log we’d been sitting on. He wouldn’t look at Cymry at all. Kyra laughed in the same brittle fashion she had the night when his eyes first opened and he looked at us. Then she took a large piece of deer meat and some of the liver she’d been saving and threw it into the fire.
It was a lot of moisture, and the flames darkened for a moment. And I saw the twin moons of the predator’s eyes glowing from beyond the fire, and I knew the Gray Watcher hadn’t been fooled by the story we had given Dugald and he was here. Clouds of smoke came up from the coals and surrounded the head hanging from the tree branch near the fire.
The eyes opened, and I looked again at the same hatred I’d seen when they first opened, but now he seemed dazed with the drink and food Kyra had given him. He moaned and said, “I taste the pleasures of the flesh again.”
“Mary, Mother of Christ!” Gray cried, and then screamed as his knife in a sheath at his belt went red, then white. It had heated and begun to burn him. He tore the sheath from his body and threw it into the darkness.
“I warned you,” Kyra snapped, “to not have any iron on your body.”
“I know. I forgot,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Cymry,” I said. “Will we be attacked next year by anyone? Not just pirates?”
The mouth worked as though chewing. “Give me more wine,” it said.
“No,” Kyra said. “I give you nothing. Make an answer or I’ll put you in the fire.”
“I will give you more, but answer me first,” I told him.
The head gave a wailing cry that made Gray shudder and cross himself again. Kyra threw a cup of something into the fire, and the flames roared up around the head. Kyra gave a snort of glee at the obvious fear in its face.
“No, no, you will not be attacked by anyone.”
“You lie,” Kyra said viciously, throwing some more of whatever she had in the cup on the logs.
“No, no, no,” the head shrieked. “I do not lie. I cannot lie.”
Flame and smoke boiled up from the logs, nearly engulfing the head.
“It’s true,” I said. “He cannot lie. Not to you or to me.”
“Tell me,” Gray said, and he shocked me because he had seemed so afraid of the magic. “Tell me, is the fair child royal?”
The wind from the sea blew away the smoke, and I saw the head wearing a human visage in the flickering firelight. It released another throbbing moan.
“Ahhh, god, ahhh, god, would that I could live again.”
“And what would you do then, pig? Make misery and sorrow for each life you touched again?” Kyra asked. “Answer the question.”
“No, no, I swear I would not.”
“Be still,” I told it. “Serve me well, and one day I will release you so you may be born again. Now, answer. Am I royal?”
“No. More than royal, worse than royal, better than royal. Do you think just anyone can enslave me? Do you think I would serve just anyone? Do you think I could be compelled to serve just anyone?”
“Go,” I said, “from whence you came and do not return until I summon you.”
“Nooooo.”
The cry was a wail of anguish, but it ended in silence. The thing was dead, returned to its former semblance, skin drawn tight over the bones, grinning teeth, and sunken, slitted eyes.
“What a question,” Kyra said to Gray. “Is she royal? Certainly. The power of the first queens is in her. Besides, what told you to give her the head?”
“I don’t know,” Gray muttered. “I have never known. But do you think I like the life of a servant in the smith’s house while Bain, the big mouth, flaunts his
royal
marriage to a chief’s daughter? Anna’s father is a strong, young man, not yet thirty five. The bastard will live to grow old while I do all the heavy work at the forge.”
“Be patient,” I said. “The answer might be no this year, but soon enough it will be yes. Besides, it’s a better life than the war band. Bide your time. I have much to learn.”
Kyra stroked my hair. “You are yet a child. Sometimes I forget.”
The Gray Watcher appeared on the other side of the fire. He unslung the head from the tree branch and replaced it in the bag. He was a man dressed for the cold in the same old clothes he usually wore: tunic, mantle, cross gartered leggings, and boots.
“You lied to Dugald,” he told me as he threw the bag over his shoulder.
“Dugald is a fool,” Kyra said.
“No,” the Gray Watcher said. “Dugald is not a fool. I think he is wrong about many things, but he is not a fool. And you” —he stared at me—“have started down a very dangerous path, one that might well bring you to ruin.”
“Down into the mud or up among the stars,” I answered. “I would rather chance the first in return for the opportunity to gain the second.”
“And your companions?” he asked. “A vengeful woman and an ambitious man.”
“You who are not always human want to search among us for noble motives,” I answered. “Even a wolf would know better. I find help where I can. I need them. Teach me how to fight. No one is better at it than you, and make Dugald teach me magic. I will need to know it. Tell him either he teaches me or I venture forward on my own.”
She was a child and a seven year old child at that, Maeniel thought as they walked back to the dwelling. Dugald had returned from the chief’s house stinking of women and perfume, and he was waiting near the door. The row started right away when he heard what the child had been doing. He stomped around the house—now it had become a house—the walls brightened by Kyra’s weavings and the dark pine posts Gray had carved that propped up the roof with entwined birds and beasts. At the bottom a fish leaped, caught in an eagle’s talons. The big spotted cat took the eagle, and the leaping cat was tangled with the wolf; the dragon above took the stag, and the antlers spread to make the sinuous shape of the tree branches that upheld the roof. Around the walls he had made benches balanced on raven wings, and the beds were salmon legged, and they leaped among wheat and barley stalks for luck. The seal protected the door lintel, and a man’s face looked from its belly.
Living among Kyra’s weavings were the symbols of all the great houses of heaven: the salmon, the warrior, the queen in her chair, the seal, and—proudest of all—the dragon and the comb.
“1 won’t have it,” Dugald shouted. He pointed at Kyra. “1 won’t have you undermining my fosterling’s education by teaching her black magic. I’ll—” He waved a finger in the air. “I’ll… I’ll…”
He couldn’t seem to settle on what he would do. Maeniel chuckled. He shouldn’t have.
“I’ll have you sold.”
The threat was a terrible one and quite real. Kyra had no kin to take her in, and she wouldn’t do as the other women had and marry. You must understand, women are always in demand. Very valuable as wives and slaves, they have many skills—and these were women of the Painted People who turned their skins into wonderful pictures with woad, carmine, red ocher, and wood ash. I had seen Kyra’s, though most of them were covered by her clothes. Vines and butterflies were around her wrists and ankles, flowers covered her breasts and belly. Spiderwebs moved wonderfully on the backs of her hands. But since she had come to us, she painted an adder around her breast and over her heart. She dyed it with something that made it look like blood and fire along its scales, and the shape of the serpent itself was dead—thick and black like the last smoke of a dying candle. When she took a deep breath, the head on her ribs opened its mouth and the fangs showed as if ready to bite. It lay among the flowers she said were painted when she was given in marriage. Not just painted, but made permanent with needles and a knife.
The ones who still had ideas of going back had hired themselves out for only a year. Others made more permanent arrangements, becoming the second and third wives of prosperous men. All had been greedily sought. All were skilled cooks and cloth workers; combers of sheep; wool spinners, dyers, and weavers. In some ways we were very lucky in Kyra. She was one of the best of them. And many women came offering her gifts in return for patterns, stitches, and other technical advice. She was one of the few who knew how to weave nettles.
At the threat, Kyra went for her knife. Maeniel caught her wrist in his hand and said, “Stop. He will do nothing.” His pronouncement was backed up by growls from both Mother and Black Leg.
“If I ask Dunnel,” Dugald shouted furiously, “he will.”