The Book of Koli

by M. R. Carey

  I throwed my arm across his shoulder, and he rested his head on my neck a little while. I felt like I was fourteen and yet to be tested, and the last year was a dream.

  The pig was a fine barrow that Mardew Vennastin catched three weeks before with a hunt of five men. It stood as high as a man’s shoulder, with tusks as long as a man’s stretched-out arms and black eyes that stared you down when he seen you looking. Mardew said it come quite close as to which of them would best the other, for the boar was fierce and run right at them when they rousted him. But they managed to lead him into the pit they had dug, and then to get their nets and ropes around him. It had got to be a live animal for the Salt Feast, and it was a sad year when it wasn’t a pig.

  My mother and sisters had come up by this time. I told Veso I would see him later, and went to stand with them for the killing. I seen Jemiu was pleased at that and was wanting bygones and soonest mended for our recent quarrels. I wanted that too. When I thought on how I had wrapped myself in my own business and ignored my kin, it made me ashamed. It seemed all of a piece with how unkindly I had used Monono, sending her away into places that was all uncertain to fetch something I didn’t have any call to be asking for in the first place.

  “Ma,” I said. “I mean to be better from now on, and help you more.”

  “Show it by doing it, Koli,” she says to me, but she put her hand on my arm and give it a squeeze. I went and got her a cup of beer, and some for Athen and Mull too, not forgetting myself. It begun to feel like a party now, and by and by it begun to sound like one too, with Jil and Mordy striking up and a lot of people singing ‘We Took It As It Run’, not to mention some bawdier stuff.

  Then Cal killed the pig, which got a big cheer, and Catrin give a speech about the wedding that was to come. Three couples, side by side on the rush-walk, and babies to come soon after. “These young people is the future of Mythen Rood,” she says. “And what you got to do when the future comes is open your arms to it. For that’s where life is, and if you look for it anywhere else, you’re gonna come home empty-handed.”

  It was a fine speech that got everyone clapping and stamping. I did a little of them things, but it was only for the look of it. To tell you the truth, I didn’t greatly like what Catrin had got to say. It was somewhat like what Veso just said to me, that everything had got to change. I was more with them that wanted everything in the village to stay the same, in spite of everything I done to change my own place in it.

  Catrin was right, though, for all that. The past isn’t a place you can live, even in good times. And the times that was coming next was not what you would call good.

  Not for me anyway.

  28

  Despite what I said about the sun being shut away for the year, the day of the Salt Feast and the wedding come in bright as anything. But it was cold too, which was the main thing you wanted when you was cutting and salting a pig. And since there wasn’t going to be no catchers going out that day, my mother for once did not curse the sun for showing its face.

  Athen and Mull was awake and up at a crazy hour, painting round their eyes with kohl and drawing patterns on each other’s faces with henna dye. In spite of all that labour they was ready before me, which shamed me somewhat. I come awake to hear them shouting through the door at me. “Come on, Koli! Everyone will be there already! Don’t make us late!”

  “It’s yet three hours before the wedding,” my mother’s voice called in answer to them. “Do you give him his peace now, and come help me get into this dress.”

  I heard my sisters run away along to Jemiu’s room, which they was very happy to do. I dragged myself up, with a somewhat heavier heart, and shrugged and elbowed my way into my best shirt and trousers. The DreamSleeve was on the bed where I set it down the night before, halfway hid under the bolster. I struggled for a moment or two with the thought of leaving it there, but could not do it. I slid it into my belt again, where it was least awkward to carry and least likely to be seen.

  We met up in the kitchen, my ma and the girls all just about as splendid as could be and me looking like a wad of spittle in a pint pot. Mother cast a stern eye over me, after which she took a washcloth to my face and a comb to my hair. “I don’t know what it is about you that attracts the dirt,” she says, which made Athen and Mull laugh and me along with them. It was like being a little boy again, before I went Waiting. It cheered me, instead of irking me as it might of done another time.

  Outside in the street, everyone was streaming out of their houses and walking on up to the gather-ground, in such bright colours that they looked like birds or flowers, almost, instead of people. They was all in a holiday mood, as you might guess, shouting hello and greet-you each to other as they walked. Athen dropped back to talk to her friend Pold, and Mull run ahead because she seen someone else she knowed, so that left me and Jemiu walking together.

  “Is there some secret you’re keeping from me, Koli?” my mother asks me then. “I don’t mean I want you to tell me what it is, though you can if you want to. I’d just like to know if there is such a thing. It would make sense of how you been behaving.”

  I opened my mouth to give her a lie, but the truth squeezed itself out first. “I got something on my mind, Ma, for true. But it’s not something I can tell.”

  “Is it about Spinner?” Ma asked. And though that was only a part of it, she seen in my face that she guessed right. She put her hand on my shoulder again, the way she done the night before when we was on the gather-ground. “She’s a lovely girl. And a solid one, which is more. There’s probably many a man today will be thinking I wish I might. But a marriage and a fuck thrown on the grass at Summer-dance is two different things, Koli. You’re young, still, to make such choices. And you’ll find the choosing comes different as you get older. Not easier, nor harder. Just different. Bide your time.”

  I didn’t say nothing to this. I nodded, for I seen there was sense in it, but I didn’t trust myself to answer.

  At the edge of the gather-ground there was tables set, with pitchers of beer and cider and water for all who come to help their own selves to. Just beyond was the pit where the boar was roasting. They had gun to cook him at yesterday’s lock-tide, his belly stuffed full of apples and potatoes and cloves and wild rosemary, and he was all but done. Smoke from the fire was kind of hanging in the still air, like sheets on wash day. The smell of the roasting meat was in it, making my mouth water.

  I poured some cider for Jemiu, knowing she favoured it, and beer for myself. We clinked the mugs together and drunk up, then I poured again. Salt Feast was not a time for holding back, nor I was not much inclined to.

  Athen and Mull didn’t need to worry. We had arrived early enough to find good places, next to the rush-walk and near the tabernac where the three couples was to make their promises. The tabernac had been decked out finer than you can imagine, with make-pretend flowers sewed out of cloth of every colour, all weaved round six iron staves with glass beads set in them. Since I ducked out of the share-work, I didn’t see any of this until now, and I hadn’t knowed how all-out Catrin had gone. This was not the old tabernac decked up bright, but something new that Catrin had overseen. She must of decided the old one was not good enough for her only son’s wedding day.

  The day being more advanced now, I found there was some heat to this Winter sun after all. What with that and my rucked-up thoughts, I went back to them tables with the jugs on them more than once. By the time they gun to carve up the pig and hand it round, I was more than half drunk. And the salt on the meat, that give it such savour, kept priming my thirst so I didn’t stop when I should of but kept right on going.

  I seen Mardew Vennastin on some of them journeys to the beer jugs. He was taking on ballast in much the same way, and making heavy work of walking as if it was a windy day. Ramparts was right in among the rest of us, of course, for there wasn’t no rules or no distances at Salt Feast, any more than there was at Summer-dance. There was Fer, Rampart Arrow, in a dress with bright bl
ue knifestrike quills on the neck and shoulders, which was beautiful and kind of scary. And there was her husband, Gendel, in a white shirt but with fresh woad striping his face and lower arms, so he and she was perfectly matched.

  And there was old Perliu, Rampart Remember, standing next the tabernac with his son Vergil, Catrin and Fer’s brother, the onliest Vennastin who was not a Rampart. The old man was talking to Vergil the whole time, like he was telling him a story. Maybe it was the story of what was happening right in front of him, for Vergil never seemed to be more than halfway in the world. Perliu had a hand on Vergil’s arm, the thumb stroking slowly up and down, the way you might gentle a cat or a dog if it was skittish.

  Meanwhile, Lari was dancing round with a white ribbon tied to a stick, making shapes in the air, and Mardew was getting drunker and drunker as if it was a race and he had got to win it. That just left Haijon and Catrin, the one of them still secluded inside Rampart Hold on the last day of his fast, and the other I guessed getting her robes on and her words ready for the three weddings she was about to make.

  That was what was to come next, now we’d all eaten our fill. People was getting excited, only the excitement made them quiet for once instead of loud. Hushes would fall over the crowd here and there, only for someone to speak up somewhere else, and then the next hush would be longer, and so on.

  Athen and Mull come to join us at last, sitting down on either side of us. Mull linked her arm in Jemiu’s and Athen kissed me on the cheek. They was overflowing with the excitement of it, so it had got to come out in friendly touches and kisses.

  “Over there,” my mother said. “Look!” And we seen them all coming out of Rampart Hold together, the three men to the left and the three women to the right, with Catrin Vennastin behind them like a shepherd driving sheep.

  Haijon and Spinner was last of the three, not first, but I seen them full clear as they come out into the sunlight. Veso kept three steps behind them, carrying the cutter on a tray of polished oak to signify that the man he walked behind was a Rampart tested and declared. The cutter would go right back to Mardew after the ceremony, but for now it was Haijon instead of him that got to borrow the glory of it.

  People say a woman never looks so good as on her bride day, but Spinner looked paler than when I seen her last. I guess a month’s fasting is like to do that. Her skirt and shift was yellow, and there was a chaplet of orange flowers on her head. Haijon’s shirt was orange too, with a yellow rose on his chest.

  A cheer went up as the procession walked across the gather-ground, and then the hush took up again when they reached the tabernac. There was three wooden steps there, leading up, but the brides and their men didn’t go up. They split off to either side and stood there, the men on the left and the women on the right, while Catrin climbed the steps alone and Veso stood off to one side holding the cutter high for all to see.

  Catrin looked more Rampart then than I ever seen her look, though she was both fierce and proud at all times. She was dressed all in white. A coat of white deerskin over a shift and trousers of white cotton, with white feathers in her hair that made Fer’s blue feathers look dark and dowdy. And she was carrying the staff of the Count and Seal, with three long white ribbons trailing from the top of it. The firethrower was slung across her back, for she was there as Rampart Fire and everyone needed to see it. The leather strap it hung from, old and cracked and red-brown, was the onliest thing about her that wasn’t white. It said, to all of us: Ramparts stand out of the ruck, and do not change.

  “I got a joyous duty today,” Catrin said in a ringing voice. “Three weddings. Three new families starting out, full of what hope you all may imagine.” She looked behind her at the three couples. Spinner met that look, then her eyes went across to Haijon, who give her a smile. It was a smile full of the purest love and joy I ever seen.

  Catrin turned to us again. “I told you last night,” she says, “that these three brides and their intending men was the future of Mythen Rood. And so they are. But today I’d have you think of the past.

  “Mythen Rood was set here, in these hills, a whole lot of years ago. The Unfinished War come and it went. Armies of thousands and thousands clashed, fire rained down out of the sky and the world that was before fell apart, but our village still stood. Where others was swept away, our kin that then was living breasted that terrible tide and stood firm until it passed. If they hadn’t, we wouldn’t never of been born. We come of them that was strong enough to live when death was everywhere. We come of giants and heroes, breakers of trees and tamers of horses.”

  There was a murmur from all around the gather-ground, of people saying “Yes!” and “Such they was!” Catrin stood and nodded, and held her peace until the murmur died away.

  “So that’s how we know,” she says then, “what the future is going to be. We see it in the past. Beets don’t grow out of corn seed, nor a cow won’t come from a kitten. Well, it’s the same for us. For Mythen Rood. Coward women and weak men don’t come from Mythen Rood stock, for such things was bred out of us a long time ago. A long time.”

  There was cheers at this point, long and loud. Athen and Mull joined in. I kept my counsel, and I seen my mother did too.

  “So when I join these women with these men,” Catrin cried, lifting her voice, “I already know what’s gonna come of it. Blessings, is what. Newborns, is what. Babies that will live and grow and share in all the things we got. All the things we are.”

  She touched the strap of the firethrower, as if she was reminding us how much of that “what we got and what we are” come from her and her kindred. There was more cheers, but not so loud.

  “Because what we got, first and last, is each other,” Catrin finished.

  She called the brides and men up into the tabernac, two by two. I barely knowed the first two, Issi Tiller and Grey Olso, and I didn’t know the second two at all. I don’t remember their names now neither, for I didn’t listen all that hard even while they was making their promises. I was too busy thinking how Catrin always saved her own for last, and how that seemed like a humble thing but was really the opposite. For what comes last is usually best, and is anyway best remembered.

  Spinner and Haijon come up the steps, when everyone else had said their promises, and stood hand in hand facing Catrin. “Spinner Tanhide,” Catrin said, “what man is that your hand is holding?”

  “It’s the man I mean to marry,” Spinner says.

  “And what do you mean to do for him when you’re married?”

  “To love him and cleave to him. To share his works and his bed, and hold him always foremost in my heart.”

  “And these are your promises, that you give freely and fully?”

  “That’s what they are.” Spinner give Haijon a smile, but he didn’t smile back. He was looking at her in a kind of wonder, like he didn’t believe the world had such a good thing in it and give it to him of all people. I reckon I would of looked about the same.

  Catrin turned to him then and asked him the same question. “What woman is that your hand is holding?”

  And right then, between her asking and him answering, the DreamSleeve come alive against my chest with a little buzz, like a bee catched in a bottle. Nobody heard it but me, but I heard it and felt it both, and gasped out loud at it. Jemiu turned to look at me, wondering what ailed me. I swiped at my neck, making like some bug had lit there.

  “It’s the woman I mean to marry,” Haijon was saying.

  “Well,” Monono said at the same time, just in my ear and no one else’s. “That was more of an adventure than I was looking for.”

  There was something in her voice that struck me odd, but I did not give no thought to it in the wild joy that run through me. I couldn’t answer her, though I almost yelled out her name. The sound of her voice made my heart beat hard on the inside of my ribs. I didn’t think to hear it again, ever, but here she was. Home. Back inside the DreamSleeve where – I thought then, knowing no better – she belonged.

 
; “And what do you mean to do for her when you’re married?” Catrin asked.

  “To love her and cleave to her. To share her works and her bed, and hold her always foremost in my heart.”

  “Oh really?” Monono said. “Don’t bother to explain, dopey boy. I can infill.” And I heard it again. Her voice was different somehow. Still happy, laughing, sing-songing, but different. Like there was an edge underneath it that the sing-song was coming up against and getting grazed on. “Just so you know though: I came, I saw, I got the upgrade. And a lot of other stuff besides. The security alarm sounds like a fire engine trying to sing grand opera, so that was a surprise. You want to hear a little snatch of it?”

  “No!” I told her. I thought to whisper it, but it come out loud enough so everyone sitting close to me heard it. They was all looking round at me, most of them looking kind of stern.

  “Wow. Okay. So sorry for asking. I mean, I only walked halfway around the world for you. You’re very welcome, by the way. But you should ask me some time why I bothered to come back. I’ll try to make up a good reason.”

  “I give you each to other, always and everywhere.”

  That was the signal for Haijon and Spinner to take each other’s hands and then to kiss. I had thought to look away when that time come, but I kept on looking after all and I seen him draw her to him. Seen her smiling up into his face, like his face was the sun on a day that was just warm enough.

  “Sorry, Monono-chan,” I said. “And thank you. Thank you. I don’t want to hear the security alarm, but I would like some music. Something that goes with a wedding.”