Weatherwitch: Book Three of The Crowthistle Chronicles (9 page)

The afternoon was waning, and the sky became overcast. Meadow-pipits were settling to roost, and every copse and thicket was raucous with their chatter. Pausing at a crossroads, the convoy’s members lit their lanterns against the gathering gloom. At this point Asrathiel and her family parted from the rest of the reveling Mai Day Eve procession, which turned down a byway leading to a great meadow bordered with flowering hawthorn hedges, glimmering in the dusk like pale galaxies of stars.

The journey of Asrathiel and her companions took them instead past the meadow, and along lanes hedged by the tangled razor-wire hoops of leafless sweetbriars. Through bare-branched nut-orchards they passed, where chaffinches chased one another from tree to tree, and through apple-orchards whose twigs were punctuated with tiny buds, and over bridges spanning swift, cold streams where water-voles lurked, and past fields lying fallow. Grass-blades shivered as dormice did some last-minute foraging amongst their roots before nightfall; the countryside teemed with life, and Asrathiel comprehended it keenly, rejoicing in the natural marvels of the world.

She rested her eyes pensively upon young Corisande and Cavalon, who were laughing in excitement as they embarked upon the annual celebrations, and a sudden wave of nostalgia swept over her. The children’s minds were as yet untroubled by loss and grief, and they were secure in the knowledge that both their parents—as well as numerous other relatives—watched over them, ever solicitous for their well-being. A loving family also surrounded Asrathiel, but her own dear parents were beyond reach. The damsel wondered how it would be for her if her mother’s suspended life were restored, and if her father came home at last, after questing long in the uncharted lands of the north. An ache centered itself beneath her ribs as she pictured her forthright and vivacious mother, Jewel, wrapped by death-like sleep within her glass-walled, rose-entwined bower. Visions of her father also formed: Arran, strong and umber-haired, solemn and steadfast, a man of integrity and wisdom, undemonstrative in public yet unreservedly loving to his closest kindred. She had lost them both in the year she turned ten Winters old, and this year, on the twenty-eighth of Aoust, she would be nineteen. There had been too many Mai Days without her parents, and she sighed, missing them anew.

“My legs are tired,” said Corisande, breaking into her aunt’s reverie. “Let us climb up into the chaise.”

“You may do so if you wish,” said Asrathiel. “For myself I prefer to walk.”

“Why walk when you can ride?” the children’s mother called out. She was teasing, for she knew the answer.

“I would rather not make poor old Dobbin work any harder than he is doing already, Albiona!” Asrathiel said in reply.

Albiona said, “Old Dobbin won’t mind—he’s used to it. In any case, you are only a feather’s weight—he’d never notice if you climbed aboard.”

“He may well be used to pulling loads, but that does not make it fair to use him so. Have you not observed the way he rolls his eyes and flattens his ears when he’s made to step backwards into the shafts?”

“But he enjoys his labor!”

“Does he indeed? The language of his body indicates otherwise. See how he plods.”

“Everyone has to work for their keep,” said Corisande sagely, walking at Asrathiel’s elbow. “He ought to work for his, too.”

“But what right have we to keep him in the first place?” asked Asrathiel, “to own him? Surely if he were not forced into service for us, he would be away on the grassy plains of the lowlands amongst the wild herds, galloping freely across the meadows, unhaltered, unharnessed, unconfined, feeding on green grass and drinking from clear streams. He does not need us to keep him, and I’m certain he would be happier if we did not.”

“You are making me feel sorry for Dobbin!” Corisande accused fretfully. “I’ll not want to ride in the chaise any more.”

“Do as you see fit,” said Asrathiel, twitching the hems of her skirts as she stepped over a fallen pinecone. “However,” she added, “do it with wisdom and compassion, above all.”

“What use is wisdom when your legs are tired?” groaned the boy.

“Much use,” answered his cousin. “Dobbin is wise, and I can recall at least one way in which the wisdom of horses has proved beneficial to both equine and human animal.”

“But horses love people! They enjoy being ridden.”

“Do they? If left to their own devices, do horses seek out saddles and wriggle their way beneath them? Do they search for metal bits to bite on? The way mankind treats horses can be summed up in one word, which we use when their wild spirits have been utterly defeated and we have made them
broken.”

Albiona had lost her bantering mood. She leaned down from her elevated seat to pour words into Asrathiel’s ear. “Please stop this lecturing, Asra,” she hissed in low tones. “You are upsetting the children. Live and let live, eh? Can you not be satisfied to abide by your own principles without pushing them on others?”

Right now you are pushing yours onto me!
Asrathiel thought, but diplomatically she refrained from saying it aloud. Averting her head so that her aunt would not bridle at the sight of her frown, Asrathiel said, “Everyone has the right to hold their own views, Albi, but intellectual liberty is very different from freedom of conduct. People may believe whatever they wish, on condition that they do no harm to others. Those who judge that mortal creatures should be abused and slaughtered do not own the moral right to act according to those convictions! History teaches that society at large once condoned
wife-beating, human slavery, bigotry, witch-burning, the labor of children in mines, and many other practices that are now universally recognized as wrong. If we do not tell people how to act with kindness, if we do not speak up on behalf of reform, then how shall reform happen?”

“Hmph! Let me inform you, some people are beginning to view you as didactic. Your preaching does nothing to endear you to others.”

“I hope I have a grander purpose in this world than to win some popularity contest,” Asrathiel replied stiffly. “Of course it is important to me to be accepted and loved, but I am prepared to risk becoming controversial and falling into disfavor and being called a pedant in the cause of justice, though I gain nothing material by my stance.”

Albiona fell silent, and Asrathiel feared that her aunt had taken insult after all. Though the two women were generally on good terms, a certain tension underlay their relationship. Yet, despite her desire to preserve family harmony, Asrathiel would never apologize for her outspokenness on this topic. If necessary she would give way on every other matter, but not this, the fierce desire to bring equity to all mortal creatures, a passion that seemed fused to the very essence of her existence.

The damsel had been ardent for this cause from her very earliest child-hood days, when she had begun to observe the wild creatures of mountain, woodland and stream, and marveled at their attributes. Their navigational skills, their speed, their finely honed senses and their elaborate social interactions had astonished and fascinated her. Later, in the lowlands, she had seen birds trapped in cages, beating their wings against the bars in a frenzied effort to be free; and bears forever chained, and dogs beaten until their bones broke, and starving horses straining to pull heavy wagons, and live deer being ripped apart by eager hunters. These acts and worse were accepted as “normal” by people who seemed, in most other respects, quite decent. Her heart had hardened implacably against cruelty and she had toiled to rescue as many creatures as possible, while broadcasting enlightenment far and wide.

The hedgerow rustled. A startled currawong arrowed across the lane to avoid the party that had disturbed it, and stationed itself in an overlooking spruce tree.

“Ryence says ‘tis nigh impossible to live without using animals,” said Cavalon.

“Once I breathed in a midge,” Corisande said. “I could not help it.”

“And back there, by that mossy stile, I accidentally stepped on a beetle,” her brother said.

“Well, it
is
impossible to live at all without causing
some
harm,” Asrathiel responded, “but that does not give us the right to do it deliberately.”

“Ryence says it is animal abuse to name a horse ‘Dobbin,’ or a dog ‘Rover,’” Cavalon declared.

“Cousin Ryence will have his little jests,” murmured Asrathiel.

“Or a parrot ‘Polly,’” the little boy supplemented. “Or a cow ‘Buttercup’ . . .”

Breaking her silence Albiona said abruptly from the driver’s seat, “Ho w can it be fitting to make such efforts to save animals when so many destitute
persons
need assistance?”

Reluctantly but adamantly her niece replied, “At the risk of appearing disagreeable and being seen to moralize excessively, I put it to you that the world is full of troubles that merit our response, and barbarity towards nonhumans is but one amongst them. We ought to endeavor to relieve distress in all situations, if ‘tis possible.” She was growing tired of having to defend herself.

Corisande lifted her piping voice. “But Ryence says—”

“Look there!” cried Asrathiel. “The roof of the Mill is showing between the trees, gleaming in the twilight. Can you see it?”

Albiona flicked the reins and with a jerk the chaise picked up speed, heading along Old Horse Lane on the last leg of the journey, until at last they arrived at the High Darioneth Mill.

The Mill was a roomy, three-storied edifice built of stone, with living quarters attached. In the walled yard stood an assemblage of outbuildings including a byre, stables and a kiln. Substantial and imposing, the manufactory nestled below the weir on the millstream. When the chaise approached, the incoming party could hear the rhythmic splashes of the great waterwheel as it turned. Black water, silver-polished, surged down the head-race and through the wooden gates that controlled the flow. As it entered the wheel-pit, it cascaded into the long buckets fastened to the outer perimeter of the mighty wheel, which turned in a direction opposite to the water’s flow. Weighed down, the full buckets sank, spilling their contents at the lowest point of the wheel’s rotation. The water then surged away down the tailrace, returning to the stream at a junction below the mill buildings.

Wheat, barley, oats, rye and other cereal crops would not thrive at these high altitudes. This was not a flour-mill but a nut-mill, and its water-driven
machinery powered not only the massive grindstones for making nut-meal, but also the shell-cracking rollers.

A family owned and ran the works. Their name, coincidentally, was “Miller,” and they had been friends to Asrathiel’s family ever since she could remember. Throughout her childhood Asrathiel had accompanied her parents and the large Miller family at the annual celebration of Mai Day. Now that she was eighteen, for old times’ sake she continued the tradition.

Asrathiel and her young cousins ran ahead of the traveling-chaise as it bowled through the gates of the mill-yard, keeping their distance from the mud thrown up by the wheels. Primrose lamplight spilled from the windows of the building. Seven white geese scattered, honking, from Dobbin’s hooves, and a thick shaft of radiance shot from an aperture as a door was flung open. A few ghostly feathers drifted in the air while the eldest son of the current mill-master came striding out to welcome the visitors. He was a young man of three-and-twenty Winters, and his name was Faramond. In his wake his siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins and parents issued from the building calling out greetings. The newcomers entered and, after they had partaken of some steaming hot soup, they and the willing members of the assembly set forth into the gloaming, lanterns held high, dragging small sleds or carrying baskets.

All across the plateau folk bearing lanterns were bringing in the mai, collecting the spume-froth of hawthorn-flowers from the laden hedgerows. The darkling woods rang with laughter and cries of delight, which were not always associated with finding good specimens of flora; Mai Day Eve was a time of unbridled fun, for which reason many parents forbade their daughters to participate in the overnight flower-gathering.

Mai Day Eve had an alternative name: “Mischief Night.” During these sunless hours, eldritch wights were wont to play practical jokes on hu-mankind. Taking advantage of this phenomenon, pranksters of the human variety indulged in an annual prodigality of lawlessness, during which their pranks, being blamed on mischievous wights, might go unpunished. It was a night for knocking on closed doors and running away, for blocking chimneys, abducting and hiding garden gates, pretending to smash windows by smacking them with the palm of the hand while breaking glass bottles, and blowing smoke through keyholes. In his youth, Asrathiel’s cousin-once-removed, Ryence Darglistel-Blackfrost, had perfected a cunning device made of buttons and string which, when hooked up correctly, could be used to tap on windowpanes from afar. He had taught the trick to several of his young relations, and still delighted in helping them confound innocent householders.

The hawthorn blossoms appeared luminous against the evening shadows; in less than an hour their shimmering pallor filled basket and sled, and Asrathiel’s companions, their lanterns swinging like pendant jewels, were wending back to the mill to partake of more refreshments. They were secure in the knowledge that the mill had been well guarded from pranksters; the miller himself, and several stalwart mill-hands, had made certain of it.