She sucked in a breath at the affront and quickly looked around. “Is Emila with you this morning?” she asked, making it clear where her loyalties lay.
“No, just me today,” Dran laughed, as if they were both in on some joke. “It’s all done between me and Emila. I’m sure she will tell you all about it herself. Though, truth be told, there is not much to tell. Some things are not meant to last.”
Salka raised her eyebrows in surprise. “I didn’t know that. Though I can’t say I’m sad about it,” she said, then blushed violently, realizing Dran might have misunderstood her words.
She looked up and saw a wide smile spread across his face. She frowned. “I only meant you two were not well suited for each other,” she said and looked back to her work. Her hands were getting cold, but her head was still throbbing and she was not willing to go back into the smoky house. If only Dran would leave her be. But he seemed happy to sit next to her in silence, as if his mother hadn’t banished her three months ago. As if he hadn’t stayed silent when he could have spoken up on her behalf.
“Are you here to tell me something?” she asked, willing him gone. Munu dropped down from the roof of her mother’s house and landed heavily on her shoulder. She grunted and shook him off in annoyance. The falcon hopped onto the ground between her and Dran and looked Dran over carefully. All of a sudden, Munu made a distressed, piercing noise and pecked Dran’s foot hard before flying off.
“Munu!” Salka dropped her work in surprise. If she was to keep clear of Alma, then having her bird attack Dran was probably not the best way to go about it. “I’m so sorry, are you hurt?” she asked.
Dran made a pained expression, “Well it stings, but I’m used to the pain well enough.” He smiled and massaged his foot. Before Salka could react, he reached out and grasped her hand in his. “Thank you for caring,” he said.
She pulled her hand free. “I don’t.” She could feel the hotness in her cheeks and was angry at her body’s indiscretion. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I just came to talk. I missed you.” He picked up the small basket of rosehip and offered it to Salka. She didn’t reach for it and so he placed it down on the ground. He seemed not to notice her annoyance at being touched. “Here, I saved these for you. I know you like them.” He stood up and bowed his head. “I can see you’re busy, though. I will come again tomorrow. I can’t wait to hear all your stories from the Windry Pass. It’s been boring here without you.” He smiled and headed off, leaving Salka with a confused expression on her face and a warm impression still on her hand.
CHAPTER 21
Over the next few weeks, Salka slowly settled back into her old life. Her mother made sure to keep her daughter busy, though never out of sight. This grated on Salka who, though she understood her mother’s wish to stay close, had grown used to the freedom of being on her own.
She kept her head down, mindful of her mother’s warnings. She continued with her chores; small tasks her mother would go to great lengths to invent to keep her in the village. Before her banishment, Salka would have been happy enough to sit in the warmth and spin the soft yarn with a drop spindle while Emila sat next to her and spoke of her conquests and her plans. But Salka barely saw her old friend anymore; the physical distance which separated them over the winter months exposed the weakening of their bond. Still, Salka missed it sometimes, more for the comfort of it than anything to do with Emila’s conversation.
Salka found the village strange and familiar at the same time, the change shocking her. Her life seemed so small now, confined by the wall of swaying pines. Salka missed the expanse of the sky and would sometimes creep out at night to look up and pretend she could still feel her other heart’s connection to the world around her.
Dran had continued with his daily visits, a source of confusion and irritation to Miriat, but secretly a small comfort to Salka. Some strigas would exchange a word or two with her when passing through the village, but nobody sought her out, and nobody wished for a true conversation with her anymore. A few of the villagers had noticed Dran’s unusual attentions and thought to coax a bashful explanation out of Salka. But she would only shrug her shoulders. He came and talked, and she let him. There was no more to it than that. She only wished Emila would believe her.
Her friend saw Dran once, sitting close to Salka, helping with her work. Emila just stood there for a while, an ashen expression on her face. When Salka noticed her and waved her over, Emila walked up to them and silently passed Salka a pastry, still warm under the wrapping cloth. “Here. My mother sends thanks for the onions.” Then she turned to leave.
Salka stood up, flustered. “Wait, why not join us? We’re just talking. Dran asked me about the fishing traps I used in the Windry Pass. He means to make some as well.” She didn’t want Emila to get the wrong idea. She didn’t want Dran to get the wrong idea either. But Emila just nodded to her stiffly.
“Yes, Emila, do sit with us,” Dran said. “I know how very interested you are in trapping.”
Emila reddened. “Thank you, I have work to do.” She turned around on her heel and left.
Salka sat back down. “You didn’t have to say that!” She turned to him. “Why did you make fun of her? Now she’ll think…”
“What?” He looked at her seriously, a faint smile lingering on his lips. “What will she think?”
She looked at him for a moment, the angry words ready to leap to her lips. But she said nothing. There was nothing here she cared about, she realized. Not the gossip, not Emila’s anger, not even Dran’s hopes and assumptions. She shrugged her shoulders.
“You miss it, don’t you?” Dran asked, his elbows leaning against his thighs, his face just a bit too close to her.
“Being cold, hungry, and scared? Not really,” Salka said. What right did he have to try and guess her thoughts? Worse, what right did he have to be correct?
“No. Being free, unwatched and unjudged.”
Salka looked up at him sharply. “I don’t need to fear anyone’s judgement, Dran.”
He laughed and raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “I didn’t say you did specifically. But we are watched and judged here, all of us.” He smiled and shrugged his shoulders as if to show the invisible weight on them. “I just want you to know I don’t judge you. I wish you wouldn’t judge me.” He seemed sad at that and left without as much as a goodbye. Salka sat very still for a while, thinking how strange it was he could know so well what she managed to hide so completely from those who loved her.
The next morning Salka woke up in a foul mood, wanting nothing more than to go off into the forest alone, something she no longer felt she could do. She sat up in bed and rolled her shoulders, releasing some of the tension in her neck.
“I was thinking I might take the animals out of the gates today. They might get some proper eating on the southern slopes. They get more sun and the grass might have come up there already,” she said.
“That is at least a couple of hours away,” Miriat said in a querulous voice which grated on them both. “No. It’s too far.”
Salka looked up at her mother. She could see Miriat’s fidgeting hands and her ashen face and she tried to keep her voice level. “And how does it look to the village that you keep me here all this time? If you mean to keep others from suspecting me, the best way to do it is to have me do what I would normally do.”
Miriat sat down on her bed and watched her daughter. “Fine,” she said after a while. “The animals deserve a decent meal as much as anyone, I suppose. I’ll fix you something to eat first, and you can be on your way. Make sure you get home by nightfall though.”
The house was barely warmer than the outside and Miriat set to making a fire, while Salka used the time to clear the floor and usher their goat and the lamb out. Though the animals kept the house warm enough, their waste made the air pungent. Salka carefully collected it. It would be used to fertilize the soil and was not to be wasted. She then raked out the stinking straw fro
m the dirt floor and scrubbed it to lessen the smell of urine. By the time she was finished, her hands were red, and the house was cleaner than it had been in a while.
She had nothing else to do for a while so, as Miriat busied herself cooking, she went outside and sat on her small stool. She had no wish to walk around the village. She was initially relieved by the welcome she received when she first came back, but the noise tired her quickly after three months of quiet. She sighed and wrapped her cloak closer around her body. Ever since her mother had given her the powder to still her other heart, she felt cold, with a chill she could not shake off. Was this what it was like to be human? She leaned against the crooked wall of their house. She felt restless and tired at the same time. It felt odd to have someone else prepare your food, to make the fire. She closed her eyes and tried to enjoy the feeling. Somehow, she found it difficult. She opened her eyes again as the sounds of the village intruded on her thoughts.
The cold kept most people indoors, though as the weather improved, more hands turned to spring labor. The soil on the tiny fenced-off vegetable patches by the houses, no longer frozen solid, would be worked as the families squabbled affectionately over which crops to plant.
Most of the goats in the village were coming close to term and their heavy, pregnant bellies nearly touched the ground they walked on as they searched for a hint of grass in the snow. Miriat owned one doe, and for nearly half her crop of onions was given access to one of her neighbors’ billies in the autumn so they could expect two kids that spring. Miriat had hoped to keep at least one this time, trading the other for food and supplies with Dolas, the only trading partners available to the strigas. It was a hard life, but Miriat never complained. Salka thought back to the tall wooden houses in Heyne Town, with their painted doors and wide tables. All the riches she’d left behind. What right did Salka have to complain now?
“Here, drink this.” Miriat emerged from their house, carrying heavily spiced tea. Salka winced. Her mother kept her hand outstretched until Salka accepted the cup.
“You have to, my girl. Just a while longer.”
Salka put the mug to her lips. The liquid tasted sweet with the honey and some other spices her mother had added in for taste. However, none of it could disguise the lingering bitterness, or offer relief from the pressure in her head every time she drank it. After the first day of drinking Dola’s concoction, the headaches started. They were mild at first, though by the end of the second week the pain was enough to knock Salka off her feet.
It scared Miriat so much she even thought to stop Salka drinking it, but Trina advised against it. “If she’s meant to be drinking it for a month for the dampening effect on her powers to last, then that’s what she must do,” Trina had said, with more edge in her voice than Miriat had ever heard from her. “I have never seen a striga with a shadow that’s been allowed to flourish the way Salka’s had. Whatever Dola’s given you, Salka will need every last drop to keep her safe.” Trina looked away then, ashamed of her own sharpness.
Salka accepted Trina’s explanation and her mother’s decision ungraciously but had no other ideas to offer. And so, she went on with her headaches and the awful, empty feeling. The pain was mitigated by her mother’s herbs at least, but the dead feeling inside weighed her down even more than the oppressive atmosphere of the village.
“How does it feel?” Miriat asked once more. And once more, Salka replied, “Like nothing.” She stood up and went to pack a few necessities for the day ahead.
“I know it’s hard, love, but you will get used to this.” Miriat sat motionless, watching her daughter as she picked up a staff and shoved a piece of hard bread in her pack. Salka rarely smiled since she’d come back from the banishment. Miriat felt her chest squeeze as she watched her daughter, her child and yet a child no more, as she moved with the deliberate air of somebody who wants to get as far away as possible.
“I suppose I will.” Salka didn’t even look up. Miriat bit her lip and wrapped a piece of smoked fish inside a waxed cloth.
“You know, you’re old enough now… You might find comfort in motherhood in time…”
Salka held her breath for a moment and then gave a mirthless chuckle. “As you did?”
Miriat’s mouth fell open. She stood up abruptly, overturning her loom. She crossed the distance between them in two steps and put her hands on Salka’s shoulders. “Don’t you ever think otherwise. I didn’t expect for things to happen the way they did, but I bless every day I’ve had with you. It shames me you don’t know it!”
Salka leaned into her mother, surprising Miriat. “I know it, mama. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.” She gave her mother a kiss on the cheek and headed out. Miriat stood by the entrance to their hut and watched Salka as she led the goat and the lamb down the path towards the village gate before picking up her work once more.
Salka felt her mother’s eyes on her, but she didn’t turn around. She had little energy to reassure Miriat. In truth, she didn’t feel she could, in good conscience, reassure anybody. She was feeling her spirit drain away, and she strongly suspected it was more than just Dola’s potion.
The other strigas were friendly once more, but something had shifted inside of Salka, and she felt too detached to engage with anybody. She was there but no longer there. She could not forget the great expanse that stretched before her at the Windry Pass. She was scared then, but she preferred it to the fear which tainted her every moment now, the fear of losing the connection to the world around her that she had felt in the mountains. If she had never known what it meant to truly follow her heart, she would have been content to walk through life like the other strigas in the village. Content to live a life that was a poor reflection of the lives of the townsfolk living down below.
Salka clicked her tongue and Munu swooped down and landed on her shoulder. Salka had thought that taking Dola’s potion would make Munu more comfortable, but she had often found him looking at her shadow and cautiously try to peck and scratch at it with its talon, as if trying to revive a sick friend.
She ushered her goat through the gate and absent mindedly pet Curious. Salka smiled as the animal nuzzled her hand. The air smelled sweet as the snow melted on the slopes of the mountain and trickled down, revealing patches of moss.
She had to watch her step, and she almost fell once, after placing her foot incautiously on a frost-covered stone, which rolled away as soon as she put her weight on it. She cursed under her breath. If she twisted her ankle, her mother would make her stay in the village for a week and she would die of boredom. She surprised herself with the thought. The striga village had always been a home, a place of safety. She might have wanted to roam the forests around it, but she always knew she’d come back. Now the sight of its mud paths and crooked one-room houses brought her a deep sense of weariness.
Her mother said that Dola’s potion would permanently dampen her powers, like a muscle that atrophied from long disuse. She had once seen one of their neighbor’s legs after he broke it slipping down a slope. When they took the splinters off, his calf was shrunken and shriveled up, like an apple left too long in the sun. Was that what she was doing to her other heart? She stopped for a moment and put two fingers to her wrist. She closed her eyes and tried to listen. She could barely hear the other heartbeat. It felt as if she’d gouged her own eyes out. A new sense she was just discovering, sacrificed so she could stay in a place she no longer felt at home in. But Miriat had already left one home for her daughter, and she worked so hard to settle into the striga village. Salka couldn’t bring herself to take it from her.
“Oh, come on!” Salka said, as her lamb happily bounced away from the pregnant goat, who watched with little interest as Curious stepped on a large stone and stretched its neck to try to reach a branch holding a single dead leaf. “Curious, come here!” Salka called out, and in that moment the stone moved. The lamb lost its footing and started rolling down the slope.
“Curious!” Salka yelled and ran towards the lamb, hal
f running and half sliding. She reached the bleating lamb, and found it wedged against two forked spruces.
“Nice work taking care of your livestock.” Salka looked up, and saw Kalina standing above, petting her goat as it kept trying to eat the end of her belt. “Your mother has the total of two animals, and you can’t even herd them properly?”
Salka glared at her, and started looking for the best way back up the hill. She ushered the lamb to go in front, occasionally pushing it upwards whenever it started to slide.
“You could at least try to be useful!” Salka said through gritted teeth as she finally reached Kalina.
“Why, I’m making sure your other animal doesn’t follow you down!” Kalina smiled, gesturing towards the doe, who was nibbling on lichen and didn’t even bother looking up.
“Hope you didn’t tire yourself out,” Salka said, hoisting the lamb onto the path before pulling herself up. She took a moment to catch her breath, eyeing Kalina suspiciously. “Well? What do you want?”
Kalina hadn’t spoken more than two words to her in her entire life, though Salka had heard and seen plenty to expect nothing good from the village’s self-designated snitch and rule enforcer.
Kalina gave Salka her friendliest smile. “I haven’t had a chance to speak with you since you came back from Windry Pass. I just had to ask how you managed to survive the ordeal!”
Salka raised an eyebrow. “Couldn’t you have asked me in the village? You know, when everyone else was asking me the same question?” She once more started on the path, with Kalina joining her uninvited.
“Oh, I could have.” Kalina continued smiling, less friendly now. “But I do suspect you would have given me the same story you did the others. And I think there’s more to it.”
“Well, there was a lot more snow than I described. And a great deal more soaked cheese,” Salka said. She feigned flippancy, though the question rattled her.
Kalina made a noise but otherwise said nothing. They walked up to a narrow footbridge over a freezing stream. The water ran deep there and even though the thaw had not begun in earnest yet, the water was high, ice outlining its sides in smooth lines.
The Second Bell Page 13