Leesha deflated. She knew what Elona was like. “Gared’s not like that, though,” she said.
Bruna snorted. “Midwife a village and tell me that,” she said.
“It wouldn’t even matter if I was flowered,” Leesha said. “Then Gared and I could marry, and I could do for him as a wife should.”
“Eager for that, are you?” Bruna said with a wicked grin. “It’s no sad affair, I’ll admit. Men have more uses than swinging axes and carrying heavy things.”
“What’s taking so long?” Leesha asked. “Saira and Mairy reddened their sheets in their twelfth summers, and this will be my thirteenth! What could be wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Bruna said. “Each girl bleeds in her own time. It may be you have a year yet, or more.”
“A year!” Leesha exclaimed.
“Don’t be so quick to leave childhood behind, girl,” Bruna said. “You’ll find you miss it when its gone. There’s more to the world than laying under a man and making his babies.”
“But what else could compare?” Leesha asked.
Bruna gestured to her shelf. “Choose a book,” she said. “Any book. Bring it here, and I’ll show you what else the world can offer.”
CHAPTER 5
CROWDED HOME
319 AR
LEESHA WOKE WITH A START as Bruna’s old rooster crowed to mark the dawn. She rubbed her face, feeling the imprint of the book on her cheek. Gared and Bruna were still fast asleep. The Herb Gatherer had passed out early, but despite her own fatigue, Leesha kept on reading late into the night. She had thought Herb Gathering was just setting bones and birthing babes, but there was so much more. Herb Gatherers studied the entire natural world, finding ways to combine the Creator’s many gifts for the benefit of His children.
Leesha took the ribbon that held back her dark hair and laid it across the page, closing the book as reverently as she did the Canon. She rose and stretched, laying fresh wood on the fire and stirring the embers into a flame. She put the kettle on, and then went over to shake Gared.
“Wake up, lazybones,” she said, keeping her voice low. Gared only groaned. Whatever Bruna had given him, it was strong. She shook harder, and he swatted at her, eyes still closed.
“Get up or there’ll be no breakfast for you,” Leesha laughed, kicking him.
Gared groaned again, and his eyes cracked. When Leesha drew her foot back a second time, he reached out and grabbed her leg, pulling her down on top of him with a yelp.
He rolled atop her, encircling her in his burly arms, and Leesha giggled at his kisses.
“Stop it,” she said, swatting at him halfheartedly, “you’ll wake Bruna.”
“So what if I do?” Gared asked. “The old hag is a hundred years old and blind as a bat.”
“The hag’s ears are still sharp,” Bruna said, cracking open one of her milky white eyes. Gared yelped and practically flew to his feet, distancing himself from Leesha and Bruna both.
“You keep your hands to yourself in my home, boy, or I’ll brew a potion to keep your manhood slack for a year,” Bruna said. Leesha saw the color drain from Gared’s face, and bit her lip to keep from laughing. For some reason, Bruna no longer frightened her, but she loved watching the old woman intimidate everyone else.
“We understand one another?” Bruna asked.
“Yes’m,” Gared said immediately.
“Good,” Bruna said. “Now put those burly shoulders to work and split some wood for the firebox.” Gared was out the door before she finished. Leesha laughed as the door slammed.
“Liked that, did you?” Bruna asked.
“I’ve never seen anyone send Gared scurrying like that,” Leesha said.
“Come closer, so I can see you,” Bruna said. When Leesha did, she went on, “Being village healer is more than brewing potions. A strong dose of fear is good for the biggest boy in the village. Maybe help him think twice before hurting someone.”
“Gared would never hurt anyone,” Leesha said.
“As you say,” Bruna said, but she didn’t sound at all convinced.
“Could you really have made a potion to take his manhood away?” Leesha asked.
Bruna cackled. “Not for a year,” she said. “Not with one dose, anyway. But a few days, or even a week? As easily as I dosed his tea.”
Leesha looked thoughtful.
“What is it, girl?” Bruna asked. “Having doubts your boy will leave you unplucked before your wedding?”
“I was thinking more on Steave,” Leesha said.
Bruna nodded. “And well you should,” she advised. “But have care. Your mother is wise to the trick. She came to me often when she was young, needing Gatherer’s tricks to stem her flow and keep her from getting with child while she had her fun. I didn’t see her for what she was, then, and I’m sad to say I taught her more than I should have.”
“Mum wasn’t a virgin when Da carried her across his wards?” Leesha asked in shock.
Bruna snorted. “Half the town had a roll with her before Steave drove the others away.”
Leesha’s jaw dropped. “Mum condemned Klarissa when she got with child,” she said.
Bruna spat on the floor. “Everyone turned on that poor girl. Hypocrites, all! Smitt talks of family, but he didn’t lift a finger when his wife led the town after that girl like a pack of flame demons. Half those women pointing at her and crying ‘Sin!’ were guilty of the same deed, they were just lucky enough to marry fast, or smart enough to take precautions.”
“Precautions?” Leesha asked.
Bruna shook her head. “Elona’s so eager to have a grandson she’s kept you in the dark about everything, eh?” she asked. “Tell me, girl, how are babies made?”
Leesha blushed. “The man, I mean, your husband … He …”
“Out with it, girl,” Bruna snapped, “I’m too old to wait for the red to leave your face.”
“He spends his seed in you,” Leesha said, her face reddening further.
Bruna cackled. “You can treat burns and demon wounds, but blush at how life is made?”
Leesha opened her mouth to reply, but Bruna cut her off.
“Make your boy spend his seed on your belly, and you can lie with him to your heart’s content,” Bruna said. “But boys can’t be trusted to pull from you in time, as Klarissa learned. The smarter ones come to me for tea.”
“Tea?” Leesha asked, leaning on every word.
“Pomm leaves, leached in the right dose with some other herbs, create a tea that will keep a man’s seed from taking root.”
“But Tender Michel says …” Leesha began.
“Spare me the recitation from the Canon,” Bruna cut her off. “It’s a book written by men, without a thought given towards the plight of women.”
Leesha’s mouth closed with a click.
“Your mum visited me often,” Bruna went on, “asking questions, helping me around the hut, grinding herbs for me. I had thought to make her my apprentice, but all she wanted was the secret of the tea. Once I told her how it was made, she left and never returned.”
“That does sound like her,” Leesha said.
“Pomm tea is safe enough in small doses,” Bruna said, “but Steave is lusty, and your mother took too much. The two of them must have slapped stomachs a thousand times before your father’s business began to prosper, and his purse caught her eye. By then, your mum’s womb was scraped dry.”
Leesha looked at her curiously.
“After she married your father, Elona tried for two years to conceive without success,” Bruna said. “Steave married some young girl and got her with child overnight, which only made your mum more desperate. Finally, she came back to me, begging for help.”
Leesha leaned in close, knowing her existence had hinged on whatever Bruna said next.
“Pomm tea must be taken in small doses,” Bruna repeated, “and once a month it is best to stop it and allow your flow to come. Fail this, and you risk becoming barren. I warned Elona, but she w
as a slave to her loins, and failed to listen. For months I gave her herbs and checked her flow, giving her herbs to slip into your father’s food. Finally, she conceived.”
“Me,” Leesha said. “She conceived me.”
Bruna nodded. “I feared for you, girl. Your mum’s womb was weak, and we both knew she would not have another chance. She came to me every day, asking me to check on her son.”
“Son?” Leesha asked.
“I warned her it might not be a boy,” Bruna said, “but Elona was stubborn. ‘The Creator could not be so cruel,’ she’d say, forgetting that the same Creator made the corelings.”
“So all I am is some cruel joke of the Creator?” Leesha asked.
Bruna grabbed Leesha’s chin in her bony fingers and pulled her in close. Leesha could see the long gray hairs, like cat’s whiskers, on the crone’s wrinkled lips as she spoke.
“We are what we choose to be, girl,” she said. “Let others determine your worth, and you’ve already lost, because no one wants people worth more than themselves. Elona has no one to blame but herself for her bad choices, but she’s too vain to admit it. Easier to take it out on you and poor Erny.”
“I wish she’d been exposed and run out of town,” Leesha said.
“You would betray your gender out of spite?” Bruna asked.
“I don’t understand,” Leesha said.
“There’s no shame in a girl wanting a man twixt her legs, Leesha,” Bruna said. “An Herb Gatherer can’t judge folks for doing what nature intended they do when they are young and free. It’s oath breakers I can’t abide. You say your vows, girl, you’d best plan on keeping them.”
Leesha nodded.
Gared returned, just then. “Darsy’s come to see ya back to town,” he told Bruna.
“I swear I sacked that dim-witted sow,” Bruna grumbled.
“The town council met yesterday and reinstated me,” Darsy said, pushing into the hut. She was not as tall as Gared, but she was not far off, and easily topped his weight. “It’s your own fault. No one else would take the job.”
“They can’t do that!” Bruna barked.
“Oh, yes they can,” Darsy said. “I don’t like it any more than you, but you could pass any day now, and the town needs someone to tend the sick.”
“I’ve outlived better than you,” Bruna sneered. “I’ll choose who I teach.”
“Well I’m to stay until you do,” Darsy said, looking at Leesha and baring her teeth.
“Then make yourself useful and put the porridge on,” Bruna said. “Gared’s a growing boy and needs to keep his strength up.”
Darsy scowled, but she rolled her sleeves and headed for the boiling kettle nonetheless.
“Smitt and I are going to have a little chat when I get to town,” Bruna grumbled.
“Is Darsy really so bad?” Leesha asked.
Bruna’s watery eyes turned Gared’s way. “I know you’re stronger than an ox, boy, but I imagine there are still a few cords to split out back.”
Gared didn’t need to be told twice. He was out the door in a blink, and they heard him put the axe back to work.
“Darsy’s useful enough around the hut,” Bruna admitted. “She splits wood almost as fast as your boy, and makes a fair porridge. But those meaty hands are too clumsy for healing, and she has little aptitude for the Gatherer’s art. She’ll make a passable mid-wife—any fool can pull a babe from its mother—and at setting bones she’s second to none, but the subtler work is beyond her. I weep at the thought of this town with her as Herb Gatherer.”
“You won’t make Gared much of a wife if you can’t get a simple dinner together!” Elona called.
Leesha scowled. So far as she knew, her mother had never prepared a meal in her life. It had been days since she’d had a proper sleep, but Creator forbid her mother lift a hand to help.
She had spent the day tending the sick with Bruna and Darsy. She picked up the skills quickly, causing Bruna to use her as an example to Darsy. Darsy did not care for that.
Leesha knew Bruna wanted to apprentice her. The old woman didn’t push, but she had made her intentions clear. But there was her father’s papermaking business to think of as well. She had worked in the shop, a large connected section of their house, since she was a little girl, penning messages for villagers and making sheets. Erny told her she had a gift for it. Her bindings were prettier than his, and Leesha liked to embed her pages with flower petals, which the ladies in Lakton and Fort Rizon paid more for than their husbands did for plain sheets.
Erny’s hope was to retire while Leesha ran the shop and Gared made the pulp and handled the heavy work. But paper-making had never held much interest for Leesha. She did it mostly to spend time with her father, away from the lash of her mother’s tongue.
Elona might have liked the money it made, but she hated the shop, complaining of the smell of the lye in the pulping vats and the noise of the grinder. The shop was a retreat from her that Leesha and Erny took often, a place of laughter that the house proper would never be.
Steave’s booming laugh made Leesha look up from the vegetables she was chopping for stew. He was in the common room, sitting in her father’s chair, drinking his ale. Elona sat on the chair’s arm, laughing and leaning in, her hand on his shoulder.
Leesha wished she were a flame demon, so she could spit fire on them. She had never been happy trapped in the house with Elona, but now all she could think of was Bruna’s stories. Her mother didn’t love her father and probably never had. She thought her daughter a cruel joke of the Creator. And she hadn’t been a virgin when Erny carried her across the wards.
For some reason, that cut the deepest. Bruna said there was no sin in a woman taking pleasure in a man, but her mother’s hypocrisy stung nonetheless. She had helped force Klarissa out of town to hide her own indiscretion.
“I won’t be like you,” Leesha swore. She would have her wedding day as the Creator intended, and become a woman in a proper marriage bed.
Elona squealed at something Steave said, and Leesha began to sing to herself to drown them out. Her voice was rich and pure; Tender Michel was forever asking her to sing at services.
“Leesha!” her mother barked a moment later. “Quit your warbling! We can hardly hear ourselves think out here!”
“Doesn’t sound like there’s much thinking going on,” Leesha muttered.
“What was that?” Elona demanded.
“Nothing!” Leesha called back in her most innocent voice.
They ate just after sunset, and Leesha watched proudly as Gared used the bread she had made to scrape clean his third bowl of her stew.
“She’s not much of a cook, Gared,” Elona apologized, “but it’s filling enough if you hold your nose.”
Steave, gulping ale at the time, snorted it out his nose. Gared laughed at his father, and Elona snatched the napkin from Erny’s lap to dry Steave’s face. Leesha looked to her father for support, but he kept his eyes on his bowl. He hadn’t said a word since emerging from the shop.
It was too much for Leesha. She cleared the table and retreated to her room, but there was no sanctuary there. She had forgotten that her mother had given the room to Steave for the duration of his and Gared’s indefinite stay. The giant woodcutter had tracked mud across her spotless floor, leaving his filthy boots atop her favorite book, where it lay by her bed.
She cried out and ran to the treasure, but the cover was hopelessly muddied. Her bedclothes of soft Rizonan wool were stained with Creator knew what, and stank of a foul blend of musky sweat and the expensive Angierian perfume her mother favored.
Leesha felt sick. She clutched her precious book tightly and fled to her father’s shop, weeping as she tried futilely to clean the stains from her book. It was there Gared found her.
“So this is where ya run off to,” he said, moving to encircle her in his burly arms.
Leesha pulled away, wiping her eyes and trying to compose herself. “I just needed a moment,” she said.
Leesha shook her head, trying to turn away again, but Gared held her fast.
“I was only laughing at my da,” he said. “I loved yur stew.”
“Really?” Leesha sniffed.
“Really,” he promised, pulling her close and kissing her deeply. “We could feed an army of sons on cooking like that,” he husked.
Leesha giggled. “I might have trouble squeezing out an army of little Gareds,” she said.
He held her tighter, and put his lips to her ear. “Right now, I’m only interested in you squeezing one in,” he said.
Leesha groaned, but she gently pushed him away. “We’ll be wed soon enough,” she said.
“Yesterday ent soon enough,” Gared said, but he let her go.
Leesha lay curled up in blankets by the common room fire. Steave had her room, and Gared was on a cot in the shop. The floor was drafty and cold at night, and the wool rug was rough and hard to lie upon. She longed for her own bed, though nothing short of burning would erase the stench of Steave and her mother’s sin.
She wasn’t even sure why Elona bothered with the ruse. It wasn’t as if she was fooling anyone. She might as well put Erny out in the common room and take Steave right to her bed.
Leesha couldn’t wait until she and Gared could leave.
She lay awake, listening to the demons testing the wards and imagining running the papermaking shop with Gared, her father retired and her mother and Steave sadly passed on. Her belly was round and full, and she kept books while Gared came in flexed and sweaty from working the grinder. He kissed her as their little ones raced about the shop.
The image warmed her, but she remembered Bruna’s words, and wondered if she would be missing something if she devoted her life to children and papermaking. She closed her eyes again, and imagined herself as the Herb Gatherer of Cutter’s Hollow, everyone depending on her to cure their ills, deliver their babies, and heal their wounds. It was a powerful image, but one harder to fit Gared or children into. An Herb Gatherer had to visit the sick, and the image of Gared carrying her herbs and tools from place to place didn’t ring true, nor did the idea of him keeping an eye on the children while she worked.
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