It has happened.
They look around at houses, fields, woodlands, and shore and say, “We are accursed. Let us go. Women are always in demand. I will not want to look on sea or shore that has taken my life, my love.”
We have, you know, four fairs. The women offer themselves to the king or queen as the case may be. The king makes a loud noise among the people and says, “We have women here for the taking; who needs a wife/ Hire them for a year. See if you suit. Yes, some have children at their skirts. All the better. You will know they can breed well. Come and look, tender your offer to me. I will hold the cash till we see if both of you will make it permanent or not.”
I had a mind to do this myself when I became a woman. That way you get a good look at him and can name your own price. Dugald, Maeniel, Kyra, and I had a terrible blowup about it. They wanted to marry me off, as propertied women are by their king. I was against this, royal or not. I had no wish to be bestowed in a place not of my choosing, with a man who possibly only wanted me because his kin told him it would be to his advantage to be with me.
Then Dugald flew into a rage, a terrible rage. He broke all the cooking pots without even touching them, stirred the fire to such a roar that it nearly consumed the roof, and even awakened Cymry from his tranced place among the dead. He began to scream. Kyra, Maeniel, and Black Leg ran. He told Maeniel—before he ran—that this is what came of teaching a woman to be independent and know her own mind. That she would set her face against both wisdom and the wise, and that the auguries had foretold that I would wed a king.
I stomped my foot and said, “Fine! Who can escape her fate? But if I am to wed this king, then where is he? If I am to take him to my heart late in life, then I am not minded to wait so long, but will have others before him.”
“No,” Dugald screeched. The fire began charring the roof beams. It blazed so high, fanned by his magic wrath. “No,” he repeated. I would have none before this king, and for Black Leg to get that look out of his eye. Or he would use his powers to drive him away so that he must go run with his brothers who led lowland packs. Then I stormed out weeping, following the rest.
But both Maeniel and Kyra made me promise to humor Dugald for at least another two years. A few days after that, when I and the other women had begun gathering the hazelnuts and acorns, Magetsky, the raven, returned. She lived with us off and on when she hadn’t taken up with a mate. Maeniel said she was the only bird he knew that was a tramp. Love ‘em and leave ’em.
1 had no idea what he meant, but let me tell you, Magetsky didn’t improve Dugald’s temper one bit. She’d picked up a few new tricks. Her old ones were bad enough: squirting shit on your clothes when you were bathing or pinching the tender area between forefinger and thumb if you didn’t let her share your dinner. But now she had learned to make a sound like a cow fart, and she liked to perch in the rafters while we were eating and do this. And while flying, she had perfected her ability to aim her ordure—that is the polite word—at anyone walking below.
One evening at dusk, she nailed Dugald. Splat! Right on the top of his head. Kyra and I laughed until we were sore. But Dugald called up a really bad curse, placed it on an arrow, and sent it winging after her. We didn’t see her for a few days, and Dugald walked around with a satisfied smirk on his face. But then she returned, looking bedraggled. She said it had taken her a day and a night to outfly the curse, then a storm had blown her to Ireland. The weather was deteriorating, and she had the very devil of a time getting back. She complained of Dugald to Maeniel, but he told her she deserved what she got and to think twice about using Dugald for target practice anymore.
None of us gave it a second thought. I because I was a child and children think they know everything. Maeniel didn’t because, though he is magic, he doesn’t understand much about it. Kyra did worry, but she was working hard with the other women and didn’t confide her fears to me. But some sentinel saw the effects of Dugald’s magic and passed the word to others, who had been waiting for a long time.
The dead ride hard.
Maeniel and Black Leg came by. Maeniel handed me my bow.
“Hunt,” he said. “We will be gone a few days. You, Black Leg, drive the deer toward her.”
“I thought you were both going,” I said.
“No,” he told me. “The chief won’t risk more than one man from any family. What would Dugald and you do were you left alone? I know you believe you’re grown, but I worry about you nonetheless.”
So I turned our nuts into the rest of the baskets, and Black Leg and I set out to hunt.
“So why can’t you stay home and marry me?” he asked once we were out of earshot of the other women.
“You are my brother,” I said.
“No, we are not blood relatives,” he said. “Maeniel and I have fostered you, but we are not kin.”
This was true.
“The church frowns on it,” I said.
“And since when have you ever given a damn for those mad monks living on the islands off the coast? If we followed their teaching, we would have died out years ago. Or, I should have said, you would have died out years ago. I am but a humble wolf. But you humans are a plague upon the earth.”
I began laughing.
He pushed me, and it only made me laugh the more. “I don’t know if I want to lie down under any man and wiggle and moan the way those silly girls do.”
“Well, you won’t have to,” he said, “because I don’t want to lie on top of any knobby boned woman and make her wiggle and moan. Not any woman, least of all you. I’d rather go into the forest and throw myself atop a deadfall tree. I don’t know why they want to do it anyway, and, besides, you have more sharp edges than a sack of firewood.”
I picked up a stone, threw it at him, and raised a knot on his ribs. Then ran. I said I could outrun even the wind. He chased me to the top of the hill and down the other side into the valley. He was stubborn about it, though. He wouldn’t turn wolf. If he had, he might have caught me, but he remained human, and so by the time he ran me down, though I was breathing hard, he was completely winded.
It was late afternoon by then, and we were near a lake where the deer came down to drink at dusk. We sat down on a rock to talk and wait for evening. He was still on the same subject.
“No, really, why can’t I marry you?”
“You’re younger.”
“Only by two years. It won’t be long before that won’t matter, I love you,” he said seriously. “I don’t want you to go marry some old king.”
“I’m not marrying any king. Dugald is stuffed with foolishness. Losing his place at the queen’s court turned his brain.”
“How many kings do you see hereabouts? Fool! The closest thing to it here is a chief, and he’s ancient. Oh yes, forty is to thirteen. And all he has is that prissy Issa, who is married to Bain, and he beats her. He took a swing at her when she caught him with the serving girl the last time she was pregnant,” Black Leg said. “I wouldn’t try to beat you if you married me.”
I was sitting cross legged on a sun warmed boulder. “That’s because you’re too tired when you finally catch up to me,” I said.
“No.” His face grew serious. “I love you. I don’t want things to change. No, I wouldn’t harm you if I weren’t tired. We, the gray people like Maeniel and I, aren’t dangerous in love. We could keep you fed even if all the wheat, oats, and barley died of the cold. I could kill every day and not just when the chief wants to make feast in the hall. He kept us fed when we didn’t think about men and women at all. When we lived in the mountains alone with the pack.”
He leaned against the boulder and looked up at me, and I saw he was serious. Then I became serious, too.
“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t want to sell myself to some man either, but I don’t know if I have a choice.”
“You do have a choice—me.” He stretched out his hand toward me, and I took it. “See how easy it is to make the pledge?” he said.
I pulled my hand away and looked out toward a standing stone that overlooked the sea. They called it the Beltane Stone. It is the festival of desire—on the first of May, when summer is established and men go to the assemblies to present themselves to the king, and the girls without land or other property hire themselves out looking for a permanent arrangement.
As I said, women were always in demand. There were never enough of us to go around. A strong, skilled, handsome woman could do well for herself, especially if it was her first outing and she was fair. No powerful man would want me as a first wife, but I might become a third or fourth wife of a strong lord or the successful leader of a war band. Such always wanted more women. There is no great wealth without many women. A man needs women to till his fields, spin, weave, gather wool, and tend to his dairying, not to mention to care for the children he has fostered on them. He gives the women the means to wealth—land, sheep, cattle; she spins and weaves the wool, churns the butter, makes cheese, and grinds the grain for porridge. She may claim her share for the work she contributes and her skills.
A minute later I saw movement in the heather and brush on the hillside. “Someone is here, besides us, I mean,” I whispered softly.
Black Leg immediately crouched down. I remained where I was, knowing I must have been seen. At heart Black Leg was a wolf, and wolves need no lessons in furtiveness. A few seconds later, I heard footsteps and Gray came into view on the path.
“What are you doing here, Guynifar?” he asked. “And alone?”
“She is not alone,” Black Leg said as he rose to stand beside the boulder.
Gray jumped. “So I see.”
“Yes, and if you meant her any ill will, you would not have seen me till my knife was in you.”
“Terribly suspicious people you are—Dugald’s family,” Gray said.
“Yes,” I answered. “And you have reason to be glad.”
“True,” he said. “But what are you doing?”
“When the sun is closer to the horizon, we will hunt,” I said. “The chief is giving a feast tonight for the families of the men who man the boat. We hope to get a deer, maybe two.”
Gray nodded. “I have rabbit snares here.”
“We were passing the time until twilight talking,” Black Leg said. “Talking of marriage.”
Gray chuckled. “I had thought you both too young to worry over that.”
“No,” I said. “Though we cannot understand what all the wiggling and squirming is about.”
Gray did laugh at that. Laughed till he had to sit down and wipe his eyes. “Yes, yes, I know. Being a friend of your family, I have heard the angry complaints of some of the couples you managed to surprise last year.”
“What did they want?”
“They felt you both needed a good spanking.”
Both Black Leg and I were indignant about that and expressed it. Gray shook his head.
“No, I fear all your guardians, Dugald and the Gray Watcher, are downright dangerous, and I can’t say 1 would court Kyra’s enmity either. No, I told them they brought it on themselves. Either behave better or hide better, I said to them, but I promised to speak to the Gray Watcher if your mischief continued. But then the weather turned nasty and—”
“Why do they do that?” I asked. “And why do they hide when they do it? Are they ashamed? And if so, what have they to be ashamed of and—”
“Stop—stop—stop!” Gray cried. He was laughing so hard he had to lean against the boulder I was sitting on.
Black Leg looked disgusted at the foolishness of both adults and humans.
“Oh, God, you are children,” Gray said. “And the only proper answer is that in the fullness of time, you will learn all the answers to your questions and many more you haven’t even thought of. But for right now, be content to wait. Wishing never made the tide rise or a pot boil. Only time can bring certain things about, and, lucky for the two of you, time is something you both have.”
Black Leg and I looked at each other.
“Well,” he said, “we weren’t talking about that anyway. She wants to go sell herself at the Beltane fair. I think she should stay home and marry me. We are not blood relatives, but she has been fostered among us. I am almost as good a hunter as the Gray Watcher. I can provide for her.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Gray said. “No, I don’t doubt that at all. No other family could send out two children and even hope to have them bring home a deer by nightfall. All of your people are a skilled lot, but strange, very strange,” he said.
Again, we were both indignant. “Strange?” I asked. “How strange?”
Gray met my eyes for a second, then looked away at the lake in the bottom of the valley. “No, don’t go to the Beltane fair. Not this year or even the next or the one after that. Many men would look upon you with desire not caused by your skills. Many would offer for you, but you are best bestowed with your family. And if you must marry, take Black Leg. He best understands you.”
“It’s getting late,” Black Leg said.
“And I,” Gray said, “must check my snares while there is still light.”
Black Leg vanished into the brush. I went and collected his clothes and folded them behind the rock, then picked up the bow.
“He will check for you,” I told him.
He shook his head. “Yes, I know. Is he hungry?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, but if he were, he wouldn’t eat what belonged to you.”
Gray folded his arms and looked out over the forested margins of the little lake.
“In a minute or two,” I explained, “he will be back behind the rock.”
Gray waited patiently. In a few minutes four hares and Black Leg appeared behind the rock. Gray went down on one knee and began to clean, skin, and gut the hares. I sat quiet, completely still. The sun was just touching the horizon when I could tell from small movements that Black Leg was positioning himself in the low brush at the lakeshore.
“Be still now,” I told Gray. “He’s in position.”
Gray finished with the hares. He stood. “Where is he?”
“In that little patch of willows that runs right down into the water,” I whispered.
“How can you tell?”
“I don’t know how I tell. I just know,” I whispered back. “Now, be quiet. Maeniel gets angry if I lose arrows.”