Deep Water

by Pamela Freeman

  It looked at me and the hissing increased, until it sounded like a forest in a gale, an ocean of trees tossing in the wind. The hissing came in waves and, although I cannot understand the gods, I understood this. This was not the spirit of one tree, but the guardian of many. And it wanted retribution.

  “It was my fault,” I said, “and I will pay the cost. But not now, I beg of you.” My voice broke on the words and I bit back a sob. I didn’t think this thing would understand tears.

  “Let me get my son to safety, let me raise him, and then I will pay.”

  The spirit hissed more softly, but still not pleased.

  “What are a few years to you? Just a few seasons, that’s all. Then I will pay the forfeit.”

  I stared at the ground as if it were my beloved’s face, praying to all the gods that were. The hissing dropped away to a faint shushing noise. It understood, I felt. It accepted. Then it reached one threatening hand to my son and poised its long fingers over his throat. The meaning was clear. If I did not pay, Snow would.

  “I understand,” I whispered. “When he is grown, I will come.”

  But it was not satisfied. It wanted something else. I thought frantically, and remembered the old stories, about bargains between humans and spirits. There were certain words that were always used. I had thought it was just a storyteller’s trick, but perhaps it wasn’t.

  “I am Dila, daughter of Sarni. I swear by my blood that I will return to pay the forfeit.”

  The spirit fell silent, accepting the bargain. Then it disappeared into the earth, sank into it as one sinks into a bog, but the earth was firm where it had stood.

  I went from that place as fast as I could, and I made it to the Valuer’s Plantation the next day. They took us in, just as Lidi had said they would, in those winter nights when we’d planned this trip together. They gathered us in like lost lambs, and I felt a bit like a lost lamb, I was so shaken by my meeting with the tree spirit.

  But then there was just life — working in the dairy was my main job, milking and cheese-making, although I helped with the sowing and the harvesting, like everyone else. And like everyone else I voted for the council members and said my say in the open meetings, which was one thing I would not have had in a free town, where only people who own property can vote. We had some fights in those meetings, I can tell you! Everyone helped me build a little cabin and I planted a circle of rowan trees around it to safeguard Snow while we slept, and under-planted them with larkspur, which protects from illusion. But nothing happened, except winter turning to summer and back again.

  Until the evening of Snow’s fifteenth birthday, when I had to pay the forfeit.

  I had known it was coming. Every new moon I marked his height on the back of the cabin door, and it was three months since that mark had changed. He’d reached his full growth. I had promised to return when he was grown, and that was now. How I wished I’d said it some other way: when he was an adult, when he was settled in a home of his own — anything but this, which had come so soon.

  For the last three days, every time I had walked outside the wind had risen, whipping my cheeks and tearing my hair out of its plait. Even the rowan trees seemed to hiss at me. When I walked out to empty the evening slop pail in the pig trough and the larkspurs were laid flat under the rowans by the wind, I knew in my gut it was time to go.

  I’d never told Snow about the forfeit. No need to grow up knowing a thing like that. He was a happy soul, a lot like his father, and the Plantation was the safest place in the Domains — maybe in the world — so he’d grown free and wild like children should; grown up to look everyone in the eye and respect only those who’d earned it. He was best friends with a much bigger family — four boys and three girls — who lived a stone’s throw from our cottage. He spent more time there than with me, and I knew they’d take him in, if he wanted it, and cherish him as I would. So early the next morning I went to talk to Cherry, the mother and a good friend of mine, and told her the story.

  “I have to go tomorrow,” I concluded. “Or the forfeit will fall on Snow.”

  Well, she was troubled and a bit disbelieving, but I’m not one for fancies or telling tall tales, so she took me at my word after the first surprise.

  “Do you think you’ll be coming back?” she asked, looking down and pleating her skirt with her fingers so she didn’t have to meet my eyes.

  “I doubt it.”

  “That’s a high price to pay for a bark cup!” she said indignantly. “We could get the men and go and chop those trees down! That would sort it out.”

  I laughed. It was so like her, to fire up in defense of someone she thought was being hard done by. Cherry was the loudest voice for justice in our meetings, and I loved her for it. “More likely sort us out. No. I made a bargain, Cherry, and it was a good one. I got to raise my Snow, didn’t I?” My voice broke a little on that, and she hugged me. I hugged back, glad of the comfort.

  “I’ll look after him,” she said.

  “I know.” I collected my thoughts and smoothed my skirt. “I’m not going to tell him where I’m going,” I said. “Just in case I do come back. No need to worry him. It’s a hard thing to ask, but will you tell him, if I’m not back in a day or so?”

  She made a face, but she nodded. “He can come and stay with us while you’re gone,” she said.

  “You’re cramped for space here,” I said, looking around the small house as I stood up to leave. “After I… afterward, why not let the two eldest move in with Snow? They could still come back for meals, but they’d be out from under your feet.”

  “Time enough to think of that later,” she said quietly. “Gods go with you, Apple.”

  Apple was the new name they had given me, my Valuer name, taken to show my connection to all living things and my respect for the people of the old blood and their ways. It was a good name. Homely, ordinary, but useful and sweet on occasion. I had liked the idea of being Apple, and I liked it still.

  I kissed her cheek, which was not a thing we did, normally, and went to find Snow.

  It was hard to pretend that I was just going on a trading trip to Oakmere, when what I wanted to do was grab him and cry over him and make him promise to be a good man, a man like his father, and promise to look after himself and eat properly and clean up after himself and to choose a kind, sweet girl to marry — oh, and all the rest of the things a mother worries about. But I just hugged him and kissed his brow, as I had done other times, when I went trading, and he noticed nothing, because what fifteen-year-old boy notices anything about his mother?

  Somehow that was comforting, that he was so — workaday. So unknowing that danger could lurk unseen in the wild. That he was safe here.

  Then I went. I took just enough food and drink to get me there, because I didn’t expect to come back. I didn’t take Lidi’s backpack, just a potato sack. I wanted Snow to have the backpack.

  I was surprised by how much I remembered about the way, considering how upset I had been fifteen years ago. I slept under the same holly bush I had sheltered under then, and next morning found the trail easily enough, but though I had worked hard and was still strong I wasn’t as young as I had been then, and the climb was hard. I was breathless when I reached the ridge that rimmed the little valley where I had seen the tree spirit, and I paused a moment. It was mid-morning, with the sun gilding the young leaves and the birch trunks shining brightly in the shade, almost glowing, it seemed, with the stream chuckling between ferns as though it laughed.

  I thought then, and I still think, that it was a place worth protecting. That if I were a tree spirit, I would act, too, to save it from desecration.

  I went down the slope and stood by the stream, where I had seen the spirit before, and put my sack on the ground.

  “I have come to pay my forfeit,” I said. Nothing happened. No figure, no change of sound, nothing. Then I remembered, and looked at the ground.

  There it was, waiting. Silent. It raised its arms, the long fingers
wavering as it shimmered in the sun, looking both real and unreal at the same time.

  In the old stories, the words had to be said again, almost the same as when the bargain was made. So I took a breath and said, “I am —” and then I stopped, because I did not know what to say. I had made the bargain as Dila, but now I was Apple, and glad of it. I stared at the figure in confusion, and of course it vanished as soon as I lifted my head.

  I looked back down at the ground. “I don’t know what my name is,” I said. I must have sounded daft, but it was the truth, and maybe it could hear the truth in my voice, because it hissed — to my surprise — in laughter, like a spring breeze playing in the branches. That gave me confidence.

  “I was Dila when I made your bargain. But now I am Apple.”

  The spirit hissed again, and this time it was like the wind that rises before a storm.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” I said. “I’m here to pay whatever forfeit I have to, to keep my son safe. But I can’t say to you, ‘I am Dila,’ because I’m not, anymore.”

  It tilted its head, considering, and I considered, too. Was there nothing of Dila in me? Just my love for Lidi, I thought.

  Its hissing increased, and now it was a question.

  “There’s a little part of me that is still Dila,” I confessed. Should I tell it what? It was growing impatient, I could tell. The wind was rising around us, the trees beginning to shake and the stream had small white waves. “My love for my husband. He’s dead. He died while I was still Dila, so that part of me is her.”

  It was a poor explanation, and sounded sentimental to me, but the thing paused and the wind died. For a moment, the glade was silent, waiting. The back of my neck was getting sore from staring down for so long. Then the spirit reached out a hand and placed it on my chest. I thought, goodbye Snow, and I hoped — I remember hoping — that Lidi had waited for me so we could be reborn together.

  Then I felt… Oh, I can’t explain. A kind of tearing, in my heart, in my mind, all through my body. There was blood flowing, but not from any wound, just out of my skin, out of my eyes, out of my ears. It hurt. But not unbearably. The pain was not as bad as giving birth, not nearly as bad. The strangest thing was that the blood did not sink into my clothes. It flowed over my skin and down into the ground, disappearing as the spirit had disappeared the first time I had met it.

  The spirit took its hand away.

  There I stood, whole, unmarked, the blood leaving not a trace on my hands or anywhere that I could see, the pain fading, and me still alive.

  The spirit hissed with satisfaction, and disappeared. That was it.

  I stood there stupidly for a while, expecting something else to happen, but nothing did. The golden day went on around me and the stream chuckled its way along its bed, and I stood like a booby on the grass with tears running down my cheeks, because I had expected to die and now I was alive.

  I climbed back out of the valley slowly, relishing every moment, and it wasn’t until I had reached the ridge and was looking back at the valley that I thought of Snow, and how now I would be able to tell him the story, and I thought of Lidi, who would have to wait for me a bit longer. Then I realized what the spirit had taken. The last bit of Dila. The part that loved Lidi.

  I could remember him. I could remember loving him. I could remember my grief when I lost him. But the feeling itself was gone. The part of my heart that had been full since the first day he kissed me was empty. He was just a memory, as though I’d heard about him in a story.

  I felt the empty part of my heart every day, as I went about my milking and my sowing and my cooking. I felt both lighter and less solid, as though I had been hollowed out like a gourd. I had no grief, but nothing came to take its place, and I did not think anything ever would, because that was the nature of the forfeit, that that part of me should die.

  It was a fair bargain. Blood and love and pain, for the life of my son. I would pay it again. But this was the thing: I knew that Dila badly wanted for Lidi to wait for her, so they could be reborn together. I knew that Dila, that I, thought that it was more likely he would wait for her because she continued to love him so much. So I wondered: I was Apple, wholly Apple, and Apple did not love him. So would he wait? Did I want him to?

  I didn’t care. It seemed to me that I would greet him after death merely as someone I once knew, with no more feeling than I have for the weaver in Oakmere who made my cheesecloths. But perhaps the part of me that had died already, the part that was Dila, will come back when it is time for me to go onto rebirth, and make me whole in death as I was not in life. Perhaps I will love him again, and greet him with joy.

  I will have to wait to find out.

  Leof

  THEGAN CAME WITH him to his horse the next morning, a great mark of favor. He handed Leof the stirrup cup himself, and said, “Keep me informed. You are doing well, but don’t forget to keep the officers on their estates up to date. We will be calling the levies in soon enough, I suspect.”

  Leof nodded, feeling like a traitor because his heart was leaping at the thought of returning to Sorn. He was determined not to betray Thegan, but the image of her, waiting in her hall, that shaft of sunlight gilding her autumn hair, her green eyes wide and welcoming, made his heart turn over. And there was betrayal, right there, whether he did anything about it or not.

  He had opened his mouth to say a formal goodbye when a shriek like a cold demon dying deafened them. Arrow and Bandy’s horse, Clutch, reared and Thegan stood back, swearing. Leof fought with Arrow and got her under control, but Clutch bolted down the main street, straight for the harbor.

  The shriek came again and this time Arrow stood, feet planted, head down, shaking uncontrollably. Leof looked up. Thegan was staring at the clear blue sky, his face pale. Leof followed his gaze and saw… something. A ripple in the sky, like a shadow on water; not quite a cloud, not quite anything.

  “Wind wraiths,” Thegan said, tight-mouthed.

  They were hard to see, but now he knew what was there, Leof could make out vague figures, misty and curving through the sky, long arms out as though reaching for the ground. He expected them to pass over the town.

  “Where is he?” one of them screamed. The sound scraped over Leof’s nerves and Arrow trembled so hard he thought she would collapse. He dismounted and went to her head, soothing her. She turned her face into his chest like a child seeking comfort.

  “Where is the enchanter who will feed us? Find him!” The voice was neither male nor female; it was high and low together, as a storm will have a deep voice and yet wuther high at the same time.

  Thegan stared straight up at them, his face stern. “There is no enchanter here. Begone! You are forbidden in this realm.”

  “Hah!” The shriek rose high and passed the border of hearing, but Leof’s ears still hurt as though the sound continued. “Soon!” it declared. “He will feed us spirit and body! Find him! Find him!”

  The wraiths swirled out over the town, for all the world like hunting dogs looking for a scent. They shrieked and screamed and laughed so sharply that every dog started howling, or hid in terror, and every horse they passed panicked.

  Thegan turned to Leof with sudden urgency. “Quick! Follow them. If they find this enchanter for us, so much the better!”

  Leof mounted Arrow, who was still trembling. He bent low over her neck, patting her and murmuring reassurance. Bandy had regained control of Clutch and was trotting up the street from the harbor.

  Thegan watched the wraiths intently. They were gathering around the town’s southern gate. It was hard to see them, but it looked like there was a local mist there, or a low cloud. Then it disappeared and the shrieking died away.

  “South,” Thegan said. He slapped Arrow on the rump and she jumped forward and then began trotting up the slope to the gate. “After them, Leof! Find me this enchanter!”

  Bandy clattered behind them, but Arrow was already picking up the pace. They swept through the gate at a canter and on
the level ground of the cliff plateau Leof urged her on.

  She responded to his hands and knees and began to gallop. Not her best pace, but one that she could sustain, if need be, for some time. He thanked the gods that he’d lost weight recently, having had so little time to sit down for meals and so little appetite when he did. Bandy was already far behind. Leof allowed himself a fleeting thought of Sorn, and then settled in the saddle.

  He kept his eyes on the horizon, where a flowing mist, a ripple in the sky, showed where the wraiths were flying. As he watched, they began to veer inland, following a minor road toward the farmlands of Central Domain. This was his chance to catch up with them. They were following the way the enchanter had taken, and he had clearly kept to the roads. But Arrow and he weren’t bound to marked routes. They could go cross country and perhaps even get ahead of the wind wraiths.

  Leof headed Arrow at a low stone wall and she pricked her ears with pleasure. Like all chasers, she loved the sport and had missed it in Sendat. She took the jump flying and landed with precision on new hay. Leof couldn’t bother, this time, about wrecking farming land or crops. Too much was at stake.

  “We have to win this one, sweetheart,” he said to Arrow. “This is the chase of chases.”

  Ash

  AFTER ASH HAD learned the truth about the demons of the Deep, he had been wild to discover his true shape, his animal nature. Now, with the truth promised to him, he had to wait, and wait, and wait . . .

  “I am so hungry!” Flax complained for the sixth time.

  “Well, you can always walk out of the Deep and take Cam and go back to Gabriston and eat,” Ash said, annoyed. Flax looked sheepish.

  “I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” Ash added. “You only have to fast until after the ceremony. I’ve got two more days to go.”

  “Stop talking, you boys!” Vine ordered. “We’re trying to sleep!”

  Ash and Flax exchanged glances of mutual long-suffering. They were in a group with three other young men who had arrived with their fathers during the afternoon. Each of them was at a different stage of his journey to the Deep, but each had to fast the day through before he could go to the appropriate cave and learn what he had to learn. Ash had been through all this preparation in previous years, but he was about to skip over the last couple of steps and go straight to the final test, the climb to discover his true shape. For that, he had to fast for three days, taking only water, and staying silent for the last full day.