by Kim Wilkins
She clutched Linden’s hand as a trader’s cart rolled past, and then they crossed the rutted track into the crowded marketplace. Twice as many stalls as usual stood and on all sides, camped under skins or in coloured tents, were visiting folk from the other tribes. Most were fair, many were red-haired and milky skinned. The men always seemed underdressed in armless skin shirts, or without shirts altogether, their shoulders and forearms wound with blue-black tattoos. The women were small and slight, with pretty elvish faces. Rose and Linden always drew attention with their dark hair. Linden, a sturdy seven-year-old, was almost as tall as some of them.
Mother Maydew’s house was on the other side of the flurry and hum of the Ærfolc and the market stalls, so Rose pulled Linden against her hip and pushed through, winding between stalls and sidestepping families eating on woven tartan rugs. Near the bottom of the market, before the cool alley between houses that they needed to travel down, an elderly man with white whiskers growing bushy around his face sat on a tartan rug with a group of small children kneeling about him. Rose paid no heed but Linden stopped and stood firm, slipping from Rose’s grasp. She returned to see what had caught his eye.
The man had a puppet, about a foot high, in front of him. It was a red-haired warrior, shirtless, with a fuzzy beard. He danced, waving his sword and shield, and opening and closing his wooden mouth as though he were singing. But it was the puppeteer who sang, in a shaky old voice, in his Ærfolc language. The children were enthralled, but it wasn’t just the puppet who had captured their imaginations. It was the fact that it had no strings.
Rose glanced at Linden, who jammed his thumb in his mouth and stared hard at the man’s dancing fingers, how they moved the wooden warrior with magic. She wondered what he was thinking.
The song and dance eventually finished, and the children begged for more.
‘No more, no more,’ said the old man. ‘I’m tired now. You think it’s easy doing that? Off with you.’
The other children whined and begged, but eventually cleared. Only Linden, completely silent, stood there still, attention fixed on the man’s hands.
‘What is it, young fellow?’ the puppeteer said.
‘He doesn’t speak,’ Rose said.
The old man eyed Linden carefully, his pale blue eyes bright and sharp. ‘Is that so? How old is he?’
‘Seven.’
‘He will. One day he will, you’ll see.’
‘You can’t know that.’ Rose hated the hope that his offhand comment aroused, the hope that Linden would somehow become normal: a wild, noisy little thing like the other children who had gathered around the puppet.
The old man shrugged. ‘He will speak as soon as he has something to say.’ Then he bent and packed up the puppet, and Linden turned towards Mother Maydew’s street.
‘Shall we go then?’ Rose asked him, forcing a smile.
Linden nodded once, and set off down the alley, Rose following close behind.
Heath’s urging that Rowan stay hidden meant she was confined to the house, but it was her nature – had always been her nature – to roam. Every afternoon, back in Folcenham at Wengest’s court, she practised with her bow and arrows in the hazel wood behind the hall. Even in winter, when the tips of her fingers turned icy, or in rain, when rivers ran from her wrists. Before that, when she had grown up with her guardian Snowy in the Howling Wood, she wandered freely, dogs at her heels. Snowy had once described her as ‘wild and tough as a little goat’ and Rowan had thought it the highest praise.
So now she could not roam, she was trapped inside with her miserable broken heart, and decided to surrender to it completely. She returned to the bower and curled on the warm skins Mama had unrolled on the floor for her, and listened to the wind gently knocking at the shutters. Moping over Annis, nursing her outrage that Wengest still thought it fine for her to marry Annis’s brother, cursing her lack of control over her own life and choices, and wishing she had been born a peasant who could love whomever she wanted to love. She heard the door to the house open and Rose’s voice, but by now had made herself so wretched that her limbs wouldn’t allow her to rise.
After a few minutes, the bower door opened. She expected it to be her mother, but it was the little boy, Linden.
Rowan sat up. ‘Well, hello.’
He looked at her, blinking slowly. No smile, no words.
She noticed he was wearing a stiff shirt, pale blue with yellow and purple embroidery around the collar and cuffs. ‘Is that one of your new shirts? It is very fine.’
Linden looked down at his shirt, raising his arms to see the sleeves properly. Then back to her. Still no smile. His right thumb went in his mouth as he studied her. What was he thinking? It was impossible to tell. But there was a penetration to his gaze that told her he was thinking. Deeply.
Wordlessly but with speed, he turned away and went to a shelf on the other side of the room. He fetched a flat box, about two feet across, and placed it on the bed. Rowan sat very still as he sat close beside her, surprised but not wanting to scare him off. He was very warm, and smelled good. Like honey. With deft fingers, he unclipped the clasps that held the lid of the box down, and flipped it open. Underneath was a writing tray like the one Nyll, the portly trimartyr preacher at Wengest’s court, used to write his sermons and orders. Pots of ink, quills sharpened to points, and uneven scraps of thin calfskin that were covered in detailed scribbles. He leafed through them, found one, and handed it to her.
‘What’s this?’ she said, peering at it, but then it became clear she was looking at a meticulous map of Druimach, with every building marked and every distance precisely rendered. ‘Did you draw this?’ She glanced at him, but his thumb was in his mouth, his dark eyes firmly fixed on her face. She returned her attention to the map. ‘It’s very good.’
He took it from her and replaced it with another, this time a closer view of part of the map. He put them side by side in the tray and invited her with his hands to consider them.
‘Ah, yes,’ she said, picking it up. ‘I see. This is the part of the map that shows the route down to the sacred grove.’
He leaned across and gently placed the tip of his index finger on a location on the map. He tapped twice, then withdrew it.
Rowan focussed on the place he had shown her. In a clear space between the trees in the grove, he had drawn a circle, and within that a pair of antlers with a moon behind them.
‘What does this mean?’ she asked, but then reminded herself he had answered none of her other questions. Instead, he simply leaned over, tapped the moon and antlers twice again, and sat back with his eyes fixed on hers. The two taps may as well have been on her heart, which was strangely scared by these symbols, by the odd way he was drawing her attention to them.
‘This is important to me, isn’t it? That’s why you’re showing me.’
He didn’t answer. She forced a smile, and reached up to stroke a curl of his dark hair from his forehead. ‘You are a strange creature, but I like you, little brother.’
The hint, the barest hint, of a smile touched his lips, but then was gone, leaving her believing she’d imagined it.
Rose was at the door a moment later. ‘He’s not disturbing you, is he?’
‘Not at all,’ Rowan said. ‘He’s showing me his marvellous map.’ She held the map up for Rose to see.
‘That one? He won’t show it to me.’
As if to prove her point, Linden gently took the map from Rowan’s fingers and slid it upside down among the others in his writing tray.
‘The only other person he’s shown that one to is Heath. You should feel special.’
‘I do feel special,’ Rowan said, aware that Linden’s eyes were back on her face.
He was trying to tell her something. And the answer was in the sacred grove.
Thoughts of Linden’s map and the mystery in the sacred grove preoccupied Rowan, and a day spent indoors made her muscles twitch with excess energy. Sleep would not come close to her, she knew, but sh
e dutifully went to bed shortly after Linden, sensing that Heath and Rose needed some private time. She heard their soft voices for a long time, though not what they were discussing. Then she heard them make love, which was awkward and excruciating for her. When the door opened shortly after and they slid into the bed on either side of Linden, Rowan lay very still and pretended to be asleep.
All became quiet. Rowan could hear her pulse inside her skull. Time dragged its feet.
If she left the house now, nobody would see her. She could go and find what Linden had pointed to on his map – the antlers and the moon – and be back before she was missed. The cover of the night would protect her from the eyes of the tribe, too.
Softly, quietly, Rowan folded back her blanket, pulled on her dress and cloak, slipped her feet into her shoes.
One last glance back before she opened the bower door. Linden was sitting up watching her. Her heart startled a little. She froze, but he did nothing. Blinked back at her, then lay down again between Heath and Mama.
Rowan closed the door. The main living area was dimly lit by smouldering firelight. The earthy, cloying scent of peat hung in the air. Hanging from the central roof beam was the iron key Heath had told her unlocked the back gate to his compound. She quietly unhooked it, knowing she didn’t want to pass through the gatehouse and make explanations to whomever was stationed there.
Then she was outside. The chill bit her skin, even through her cloak, but she was so grateful for fresh air and the starry sky that she didn’t mind. She stayed close to the side of the house as she rounded it to the back gate, the emergency escape route for the family if the worst happened and the gatehouse fell. She had to duck under the lowest beams of the watch fire tower, and then unlocked the gate and went through. She propped the gate ajar with a rock, then headed down the hill.
The descent was steep, and her feet skidded repeatedly on gravel. Once on more even ground, Rowan could see the path to the sacred grove marked in white stones among the grass and soil. She followed, under the crescent moon and pale stars, until their light was blocked by the dense foliage of hazel and oak. Her skin tingled lightly, alerting her that there was a crossing nearby. Dardru, Rathcruick’s dead daughter, had been able to open and close the magical crossings between woods and groves all over Thyrsland. That talent had passed to Rowan in the time Rathcruick had imprisoned her, and sometimes she felt it as a churning disquiet: movement, dislocation, the dissolving and resolving of time and space. Mortals ought not know such secrets.
Eventually, Rowan came to a perfectly round clearing, laid out with stones cut into rectangles, about three feet high. At their centre was a heel stone, where the druid would stand and perform ceremonies at the rising sun on important days in the year. In the grainy dark, the stones were ghostly. She understood that this was the circle on Linden’s map, but was still no closer to knowing what he had meant by pointing out the drawing of the moon and the antlers.
She entered the circle and gazed up at the sky. The real moon was obscured by clouds now. She listened. No hoofbeats. Only the scurrying sounds of small animals in the undergrowth, the distant hoot of an owl.
The prickling of her skin intensified, grew hot. A cloud of silence gathered around her ears, condensing and pressing against her eardrums. Rowan’s stomach turned to water. Something was coming …
Then she heard footsteps behind her. She turned to see Linden standing at the edge of the circle, thumb in his mouth, bathed in a strange pale glow.
‘Linden!’ Rowan ran to him, but he seemed unperturbed by the gathering cold. She caught his hand and turned, eyes round as she thought she saw a figure resolving in the mist, then disappearing before her eyes could grasp it. A wisp of smoky moonlight, then nothing.
‘What are you doing here?’ she said, returning her attention to Linden. He wore only his nightdress and no shoes. ‘You’ll freeze. Come, let’s get you back to bed.’
Her heart hammered as she led Linden out of the grove and back up the steep slope. She wanted to ask her little brother a hundred questions. Why did you draw the map? What was that figure in the mist? But Linden couldn’t answer, or wouldn’t answer, so she kept her questions inside and trudged up the hill towards home. The only thing she knew for certain was that she would return.
Three
Blood had been spilled in this chamber. Willow knew because she had spilled it.
In fact, in the very place she had killed King Gisli, she’d had Gisli’s brother, her husband Hakon, erect a monument to the three blessed martyrs. The angel voices in her head had demanded it. The abused mother, lying on her side, her face carved of mountain stone into a mask of suffering. The two little children, their chubby limbs rendered coarse and sharp-edged by the blue-black rock, climbing across her with panicked faces. This was Willow’s hearthpit, too. The space between their roughly carved bodies was always packed with malodorous, but highly flammable, Is-hjarta bog-bricks. Liaava and her twins burned perpetually. A constant reminder of their fiery death.
It also kept the chamber very warm.
Hakon’s advisor Modolf had arrived back in Marvik that afternoon after a long trip to the southland, country of her birth and childhood. She knew he’d had many different types of business to attend to, and was even now meeting with Hakon elsewhere. But she waited for her news, pacing, an itch in her stomach. Around and around the chamber she went. Past the huge trimartyr triangle hung on the wall, past the ghoulish carvings of dark angels, past the rack of knives. In the shifting firelight, her footsteps echoed, waiting and waiting.
Waiting for news of her child.
The door to the chamber opened and she turned. Hakon stood there, tall and grim. Willow had patched the hole in his cheek with kid leather so he didn’t look quite so much like the death’s head she had met and married. Beside him, round and lavishly dressed in dyed wools and silks, was Modolf.
Willow tried not to fall upon him with her questions. ‘Any news?’ she said simply.
He had already begun to shake his head, and Willow crushed her fists together, cutting herself on her sharp, triangular ring.
‘Sit down, my queen.’
‘I don’t want to sit.’
‘Sit, wife,’ Hakon said gruffly, taking a seat himself on the carved wooden throne.
Willow gathered her skirts and sat, covertly wiping the blood from her palm. Buried voices in her head laughed at her. You lost him. You lost him.
‘I know it is difficult for a mother to hear –’ Modolf commenced.
‘I bear no mother’s love for the child,’ Willow snapped. ‘But Maava wants him here with me, and I am Maava’s servant.’ She nodded at him curtly. ‘As are you.’
‘All I can say, my queen, is that no little boy matching Avaarni’s description has been seen by any of my contacts in Thyrsland.’ He paused, and Willow was sure she saw a glint of mischief in his eye. ‘Nor any little girl.’
‘Avaarni may have been born a girl, but Maava allows only men to rule,’ Willow replied. ‘You may doubt it all you want, but I am sure he is a boy by now.’ What a miraculous morning that would have been: Avaarni waking as a strong little lad, rather than the fluttery-eyed weakling he had been. Willow gritted her teeth at the thought of missing such a miracle.
‘Nonetheless,’ Modolf said, ‘to be certain I asked about both.’
Willow remained silent, the terrible plummet of her hopes robbing her of words. What a failure she was. The angel voices intensified. Maava will forgive me, she told them defiantly. But she wasn’t sure. She was never sure.
‘Sorry to bring bad news,’ Modolf said. ‘Perhaps you might consider having another heir, with your king here in Marvik?’
Willow glared at him.
Hakon shrugged it off. ‘Let us avoid it if we can. The child may yet be found.’
Willow always took comfort knowing Hakon did not want to lie with her any more than she with him. ‘He must be found,’ she said. ‘Because that is Maava’s will.’
‘Ye
s, yes,’ Modolf said. ‘Are you interested in any other news from your homeland, my queen?’
‘No. Leave me now. I must pray and ask forgiveness.’
‘You require no forgiveness,’ Hakon said, switching to her native language, the language of Thyrsland. ‘You have done no wrong, Willow.’
‘We are all sinners,’ she replied.
Modolf made a motion with his fingers, snapping them against each other as though his hands were talking. ‘That toneless dialect. I understand everything you say, you know.’
‘We will give you your peace,’ Hakon said. ‘Come, Modolf.’
They left, closing the chamber door quietly behind them.
Willow fell bruisingly to her knees. Then, because the pain wasn’t sufficient, she stood and fell again, jarring her bones against each other. There. But she was too close to the hearth, too warm. She stood again, took herself to the cold back wall, and fell again. Pressing her face against the wall, tasting the limey rock, she began to pray.
‘Forgive me. I’m a weakling. I’m a worm. I am so low, Maava.’ Gooseflesh ran over her, thrilling her. ‘Come to me, burn before me, strip my flesh with your flame of righteousness.’
Over and over. Because in the last few months, sometimes when she prayed, she sensed Maava nearby. She knew that if she could look once upon His glorious face she could then throw herself in the fire with Liaava and the twins and happily dissolve to ash. Be free of the terrible burden of her inadequacy, her fallibility, her abject self.
‘Come to me, come to me.’
The angels mocked her. She had learned to listen beyond them, to the great booming magnificence of Maava’s power, which amassed in the infinite hollow of time and sky. She listened and she drew Him to her, closer, hotter.
‘Come to me, come to me.’
Almost. Almost. Shivering on the other side of a veil, about to be searingly present.