Timshel

by Lillian Turner

  The faint sounds of life led Eiland back to the southern wing and the kitchen. Mara was awake: from her dirty boots and the basketful of vegetables she upended on the table, she’d already been out to the garden this morning. She smiled at him in greeting. Her hair was tied back with a plain scarf, but it still tumbled down her back in rich chestnut waves, and her skin looked soft and clear.

  She was a beautiful woman, and Eiland felt absolutely nothing for her.

  “Good morrow,” Mara greeted. “How did you sleep?”

  Eiland nodded wordlessly and leaned against the wall by the door. Mara must have sensed his fragile mood because she asked no more questions for a long moment, just returned to sorting the vegetables in front of her. Eventually Eiland moved to join her, and she took his help without comment.

  Once they had finished, she turned to him with a warm smile. “Now. About this salve.”

  Mara, as it turned out, did have a green thumb. She already knew many of the ingredients that Eiland named and where to find many of them in the woods behind the house or the garden out front.

  She did not, however, have any skill at cooking.

  She was easily distractible, even more so than Eiland. The two of them got to chatting—Eiland relating the account of how he and Charon had first made the salve, in the woods, which Mara countered with the many failed attempts she’d made at coming up with an outright cure for the Curse, which segued into a series of anecdotes about how she and Sierrach had first come to find this house and the many hours they’d spent clearing out the few rooms they lived in and the various creatures they’d found living there already—and the next thing either of them knew, the pot of salve was bubbling over with black smoke.

  After much squawking and racing about they managed to carry the pot out the front door.

  Sierrach, coming up the winding path through the mazelike garden, stopped and put his hands on his hips. “What in the name of all the gods have you done now?”

  “We were trying,” Mara said with more dignity than she should be able to muster while flapping a cloth at the foul-smelling pot, “to make you some salve. Obviously we failed.”

  Sierrach went inside the house then came back a few moments later. “Neither of you are allowed back in my kitchen for the next two hours. Go help Charon with the goats, if they haven’t eaten him already.”

  There were a great number of animals living around Mara and Sierrach’s home, both domesticated and wild. They had one fox—The Great Bloody Beast—eight rabbits that Mara regularly bred for meat and fur, several raccoons that Sierrach and Beast were currently attempting—unsuccessfully—to drive away, a dozen aforementioned chickens, ten goats, and now a small kitten.

  The goats had proven the most difficult to manage: goats ate almost anything and they ate constantly, which meant they had to be driven out every day to pasture in different places, or they would eat everything to the ground.

  “They were very handy when we were first clearing out the house, though,” Mara commented as she and Eiland walked around the corner of the manor. Ahead of them stood a low structure that had one served as stables; now they’d been repurposed as the goat pen. “It was all overgrown, but Sierrach had brought along three of his father’s goats, and one of them was pregnant. Pretty soon we had a dozen of the little bastards running around.”

  “And I wish you’d killed them all,” said Charon’s irritable voice from inside the stables.

  They rounded the door to the stables to find him standing on the other side of a low wooden fence, surrounded, his clothes in disarray and a scowl on his face. The goats appeared to be nibbling on his sleeves and pant legs. Shadow perched on Charon’s shoulder, his black fur sticking straight up, hissing ineffectually at the herd below.

  “Oh, do you need help?” Eiland inquired. Mara leaned against his side, giggling. “Sierrach said you might require some…assistance.”

  Charon’s sour expression deepened, and he waded through his four-legged assault to open the gate and let the herd out. Eiland winced as many cloven feet trampled over his toes in their bid for freedom.

  “Absolutely.” Charon handed over a long narrow stick. “Go round them up! Don’t let any of them get away.”

  “You are a cruel, cruel man.”

  Charon made a face at him, utterly unrepentant. “You will be too, after an hour with these things. Oh, gods, this one’s trying to eat my shoe!”

  They spent most of the day steering the small goat herd through the forest and gathering more ingredients. That night they had another go at the salve, this time with Sierrach suspiciously supervising. It used almost all the gyman root that Eiland had brought with him; he was left holding one sad little tuber.

  “Well, if it doesn’t grow around here, then it doesn’t grow,” Sierrach announced pragmatically. “Besides, if you teach us how to make the hesfast draught, then we won’t need too much of the salve, right?”

  “Right,” Eiland agreed, flipping the root back and forth between his hands. He’d only ever tried the draught with Charon; it made him nervous not to have something else to give them.

  Mara took the root from him with a smile and a wink. “Give it here, Eiland. I’ll wager I can make it grow.”

  “Oh, that’s true!” Sierrach said. “Mara can make anything swell in size. I would know.”

  “Augh,” Charon exclaimed.

  “It’s all in the thumbs!” Mara chirped, and proceeded to make what Eiland suspected was a truly obscene gesture.

  “Aaaaugh.”

  Within only a few days Sierrach’s condition improved noticeably. The freshest scars around his throat lost their livid colors, fading to pale lines; his skin smoothed and repaired itself with help from the grass cream. He happily reported fewer headaches, which was one symptom that Charon had never mentioned.

  When Eiland asked him about it, as they sat together on the hillside overlooking the manor, Charon merely shrugged. “I suppose I have them, yes. It’s hard to tell—sometimes, so much else hurts that I just wouldn’t notice.”

  Eiland thought back to that night under the ridge when Charon had barely noticed the blood pouring down his nose. “Does anything hurt right now?”

  “Other than my legs, no,” Charon grumbled, casting a dark look at Shadow, who was currently kneading Charon’s thighs. Recently the kitten had been living up to his name: his mother might have been feral but Shadow had quickly grown used to humans and he followed Charon everywhere.

  Eiland grinned, reaching out to stroke the kitten’s head. “I think he’s found a new mother.”

  Charon leveled a glare at him that melted when Shadow clawed his way up the front of Charon’s shirt, bumping his head against Charon’s chin.

  Eiland laughed but sobered. “You need to tell me if something hurts. The more symptoms I know, the more I can do to help make it better.”

  Cupping one hand under Shadow’s round belly, Charon cut him a sideways look. “All right. I will.”

  “Good.” Eiland turned back to the view. If he twisted his head to the right, he could see the mountain peaks towering over them, like giants bending down to peer over their shoulder. If he turned his head to the left, the empty bowl of the valley curved up to greet him.

  It was a sunny day, and swallows darted overhead, dipping in and out of the eaves of the manor where they’d built hundreds of nests. Below them, the gardens overflowed with fruit. He could see Sierrach and Mara moving among the branches and bushes, harvesting into bowls that hung around their waists.

  The world soaked deep into Eiland’s skin, and he knew it to be the most beautiful place he had ever seen.

  * * *

  Charon improved too, in different ways than Sierrach. He filled out a bit on a steady diet of chicken eggs, bread, and fruit; Eiland had never realized how thin he was until his face grew rounder and his arms less angular.

  More than that, though, he held himself differently. Before, Charon had been curled up tight, pinched shut against t
he world, but now he smiled more readily, spoke a little louder, laughed once in a while, and sneaked glances at Eiland when he thought no one was looking.

  The draught proved much easier to reproduce than the salve, given the abundance of hesfast flowers in this part of the country. They even had honey to mix it with, something that Charon was loudly grateful for. Mara planted the gyman root in the stables; fed by dung and shielded from the cooler air, it stood a better chance at taking root. Eiland could only hope that they’d manage to keep their own supply and not have to rely on traders.

  A hot spell moved through, blowing hard winds up the ridge and ripping pollen from the trees and bushes. The flowers wilted and turned brown in the heat; Eiland and Mara made shift to harvest what they could. Mara had the bright idea to dry the hesfast flowers, sealing them in folded clothes to preserve their essence. It would prolong their supply by a goodly number of months, if not years.

  They settled into a kind of rhythm, the four of them: Eiland and Mara did most of the hard labor of tending the goat herd, hoeing the manor’s main garden, and fetching water, while Charon and Sierrach harvested eggs from the chickens and tended to the household chores.

  It all felt happily familiar to Eiland. He’d never thought to be grateful for household chores, but after a month of rain and hunger and bandits, he found unexpected joy in waking up early to tend the fire.

  Then one night he and Charon were awakened by screaming.

  It echoed all through the house, accompanied by high, frantic yips. Eiland rolled out of his bed, barely finding his feet.

  Charon caught him with one hand. “Sierrach.”

  They rushed upstairs. The Great Bloody Beast was outside the closed doors to Mara and Sierrach’s room, clawing at the wood in a near-frenzy.

  Inside, the screaming had trailed off into pained moans. Eiland started to open the door. Charon caught his wrist.

  From inside, Mara’s voice snapped, “Don’t come in! Any of you!”

  “But I can—” Eiland started, cutting off when Charon shook his head.

  He put his mouth to the door instead and called through, “He needs water and hesfast draught. I’ll bring it up and knock on the door.”

  There was no reply. Eiland exclaimed, “He needs more than that, I can help.”

  “No.” Charon forcibly pulled Eiland away down the stairs. “Leave them be. Mara has him.”

  “She doesn’t. I can do more for him than her, just let me.”

  “If you want to help,” Charon snapped, “then show me the bloody draught.”

  Eiland bit his tongue and followed Charon down to the kitchen.

  Once there he shook free of Charon’s guiding hand and walked across to the jar sitting on the table below the far window. Mara had speculated that heat and sun might cause the fireweed extract to ripen and grow more potent in the mixture, and the jar felt warm to the touch.

  Turning, he found Charon standing squarely in the doorway. Charon saw his look and pressed his own lips together.

  “Mara has a knife under her side of the mattress,” Charon said in a low voice. “It sets your father’s blade to shame. If you try to go in there right now, if you so much as step inside the door, I promise you that she’ll cut your throat.”

  Stung, Eiland set his teeth. In the doorway, Charon did not waver even as Eiland approached him. Their eyes met and held.

  After a long, silent struggle, Eiland held out the jar of hesfast draught. Charon took it slowly and just as slowly he left the doorway, walking out into the great hall and turning left to go up the wide staircase.

  Eiland watched until Charon passed out of sight, then turned and sat down at the table.

  Eventually Charon returned, carrying a fretful Beast. When he set her down she immediately scampered into the corner and peered out at them nervously.

  Eiland kept his seat at the table, watching Charon. Questions and reproaches pressed at the inside of his closed lips, but he held them back as Charon took a seat across the table and let out a long breath.

  “I know you’re itching to help, but think, Eiland. Do you have any idea how many times she’s had to protect him during his Agonies?”

  “I would never hurt him. I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

  Charon’s eyes flickered, but he said, “She wasn’t there to see that. You’re a stranger to her yet, and he is all she has.”

  That seemed wrong, but so many different wrongs rested on top of one another that Eiland couldn’t begin to peel them away.

  After a moment Charon got up from the table and went to the bucket of water set in the corner of the room. The Great Bloody Beast flinched at his approach, but he paid her no mind. Drawing a ladle of water, he walked back to Eiland, who took it in cupped hands, staring down through the clear liquid at the line his palms made. He drank.

  The kitchen was hushed in the early dawn. Only the soft sounds of Charon’s feet as he walked back to the bucket and The Great Bloody Beast’s furtive movements disturbed the quiet. Shadow had emerged as well, though he’d barely poked his whiskered nose around the corner of the doorway before he spotted The Beast in the far corner, and quickly withdrew. Despite everything, Eiland smiled to himself.

  “What was it like for your family?” Eiland asked, the water still cupped in his hands. “After you were Cursed—what happened? What did they do?”

  Charon stood by the fireplace, the poker in his hand. He looked at Eiland for a long moment before slowly, carefully putting the poker back in its place.

  “They gave me water,” he said. The morning light turned his skin bluish. He walked slowly over to the table before he continued. “They bled me. The priests said the Curse had entered me through my family’s sin, so they bled me and they bled themselves.”

  Eiland winced. Charon saw, and his mouth drew into a bitter, crooked smile. “One of my last memories of my mother, she had a knife in her hands.”

  * * *

  Some hours later he ventured back upstairs. Mara was just coming out of the bedroom with a bowl and a damp cloth. Her smile looked tired, but genuine.

  “He’s sleeping,” she murmured, pulling the door closed behind her. Eiland caught a brief glimpse of tangled sheets and sprawling, angular limbs. “You were right about the draught, I think that helped more than anything.”

  “Don’t give him too much. It thins the blood. It could make it hard to stop any bleeding.”

  “How much is too much?”

  Eiland hesitated, trying to think around too little sleep and too early an hour. He’d spent half the morning at the kitchen table with Charon, mostly in silent thought. “I’m not sure? I’m not really a healer, Mara, I, I’m making all of this up as I go. I mean, I know that you shouldn’t give him more than a bit of hesfast a day but I don’t know if—”

  “Sh, sh,” she said, taking his hand. “I’ll not give him any more for a few days, how does that sound?”

  “Um. All right. Maybe? I’m sorry.”

  “For what? You’ve done wonders for him. I only hope I can return the favor half as well. When was Charon’s last Agony, anyway?”

  Eiland blinked at her, not comprehending for a long moment. Then he did, and managed to stammer out a reply, “Not since before the Solstice.”

  Mara nodded, still smiling. “Well, you’ve time, then.”

  She went back inside her bedroom, and Eiland turned back down the stairs. As he walked to the room he shared with Charon, he turned Mara’s question over again and again in his mind.

  Charon’s last Agony had come the night before the Solstice. The moon had passed through almost a full cycle since then, and before that it’d been three-quarters past the full when they’d left Summerton.

  That meant it had been a month and three-quarters since Charon had taken Eiland from Summerton.

  “Eiland?” Charon’s voice cut into his thoughts.

  Eiland had reached their room. From the bed, Charon lifted his head off the pillow, peering at Eiland blearily. “Is Sier
rach all right?”

  Eiland stood in the doorway staring back at him. Almost two months had passed since they left Summerton; they’d been at Sierrach and Mara’s manor for two and a half weeks. It would be autumn soon, the summer months waning to gold and brown, and then to winter.

  If Eiland was to get back home before the snow began to fall they would have to leave soon.

  But Charon had said nothing about leaving.

  “Eiland?”

  “He’s fine,” Eiland answered, and went to his side of the bed, climbing in and lying with his face turned toward the wall.

  All that next day, he couldn’t get his feet under him. He felt off balance, as if he were about to take a wrong step and fall.

  An awful thought grew in the back of his mind like an infected wound. It eased a bit when he helped Mara help Sierrach—she still wouldn’t let anyone else near him, though she consented to let Charon and Eiland mix up some more draughts—but at night the idea grew in shape and form until it proved inescapable.

  Charon was not going to take him home.

  He had said that he would—but he’d said that before, or at least implied it, when he took Eiland from Summerton. He had said he wanted Eiland to teach him, and then he’d said he wanted Eiland to teach Sierrach and Mara, and now?

  Now Eiland was…he was afraid.

  He dreaded to ask what they were doing, because deep down he knew. Sierrach and Mara’s great manor-house held many empty rooms; they had fruit and sun and more goats than they knew what to do with, and a culvert that needed clearing.

  Eiland knew exactly what Charon wanted now, what he’d always truly wanted.

  That didn’t frighten Eiland the most, though. What frightened Eiland was that if Charon outright asked, Eiland did not how he would answer.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Fortunately the others were too preoccupied helping Sierrach recover from his Agony to notice Eiland’s change in mood.