Eyes of Crow

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  Rhia bit back a reply to this understatement.

  “The time has come,” Galen continued, “for you to take possession of your gift before it overwhelms you.”

  Rhia swallowed hard. “I have to go into the forest?”

  “Not only that.” He lifted his head to speak to Mayra. “Rhia needs to study with someone who has Crow magic. I sent a message to a woman named Coranna, who lives in Kalindos, a few days’ walk past the place of Bestowing.” He spoke to Rhia again. “She will train you in the ways of Crow.”

  Rhia tightened the rough brown blanket around her to stop the shivering. “How long will I stay?”

  “It’s a complicated magic, and no one here in Asermos has experience with it.”

  “How long?” Rhia repeated.

  “Perhaps a year or more, for your first phase. Later in life, as your powers develop, Coranna will teach you more.”

  Mayra clutched the edge of Rhia’s blanket with shaky hands. “Isn’t she too young?” she asked Galen. “You only said you wanted to test her. You didn’t say she had to leave now.”

  “Others have been younger.” Galen touched Mayra’s shoulder. “Asermos needs her. Think how her powers could aid your healing work.”

  Rhia’s mother looked away, then turned a few inches to move out of his reach. “You speak the truth, as usual.” Her mouth twitched as if it wanted to say more.

  The thought of witnessing a person’s death again, imminent or not, made Rhia’s heart feel like it was coiling into a knot inside her chest.

  “Two generations have passed,” Galen said to her, “since anyone here has presided over the dying process. It’s difficult for one so near the beginning of life to devote herself to its end, but won’t you consider making the journey to learn more?”

  Through the front door Rhia heard Perra sobbing, either from the joy at having her husband back or the sadness at the reminder that his life, like all others, would end one day. “When must I leave?” she asked Galen.

  He uncrossed his legs and stood. “We can begin our preparations as soon as you’re ready.”

  Rhia imagined the heart of the dark forest, remembered the eyes of the dying animals and the vision of Dorius’s bleeding body twisting in the leaves. She steeled her jaw and looked up at Galen.

  “I’m not ready.”

  03

  Two and a half years later, Rhia still wasn’t ready. After her vision of Dorius’s death, she had resolved to shut down her death-awareness. Throughout Asermos whispers persisted, words of hushed recrimination for her cowardice. On her sixteenth and seventeenth birthdays, Galen had tried again to convince her to begin training in Kalindos, and she had continued to refuse. Even her brothers had added her reluctance to their litany of things to tease her about.

  Secretly she hoped that if she denied Crow, perhaps another Spirit would take His place, one who would inspire acceptance rather than fear in herself and in those around her. But no Spirit came or spoke to her; in fact, they all seemed to drift farther away. All except Crow, who flew within the gray space between waking and sleeping, His wings offering a warm, soft promise, His eyes understanding and accepting the darkest corners of her soul.

  Each fall, as the oak leaves turned gold and fell to the earth, Rhia would haunt Dorius and examine his surroundings for anything or anyone that could give him the wounds she had seen in her vision. The most casual allusion to tensions between Asermos and one of its trading partners would steal her sleep for weeks.

  It was late summer now, and the leaves waved green and succulent on the trees adjoining the meadow where Rhia and Arcas sat close together. His family’s small flock of sheep grazed a short distance away. A few of them wandered to drink from the wide, lazy stream that curled in front of the meadow before joining the river near the heart of Asermos. Even the smallest trading ship could not navigate this shallow portion of water, so Rhia and Arcas were blissfully, blessedly alone.

  Bits of grass stuck to their outstretched feet, damp from wading. She wiggled her toes and let the sun warm her upturned face, reveling in this rare afternoon away from the farm. Her brother Lycas had taken her chores for a few hours, and she tried not to imagine what favor he might ask in return. That worry was for tomorrow or tonight. Today was here and good.

  A white cloth full of ripe raspberries, which she had collected on her way to meet Arcas, sat in her lap. He made a show of pawing through them, brushing the skin beneath her thin skirt before selecting each one, in a brazen attempt to make her blush as red as the berries themselves.

  “I can’t decide,” he said, “if I want to eat these or mash them up in your hair.”

  “My hair’s not red enough for you?” As usual, the summer sun had burnished her sable locks with ruddy overtones.

  “Your hair is perfect, but it would be fun to hear you squeal.”

  Rhia picked up a handful of berries and crushed them in her palm. “Marvelous idea.” She smeared his hair from scalp to ends.

  His yelp echoed from the stream’s opposite bank. He seized her wrist and squeezed until her hand opened to reveal the red ooze, which he wiped across the front of her dress, leaving a small, blurry handprint. “There. Explain that to your mother.”

  “I won’t have to explain anything to her today,” Rhia said.

  “What do you mean?”

  She looked at his puzzled face for a long moment before losing her nerve. “Never mind.” She searched for a topic that would deter his curiosity. “Your Bestowing last month. What was it like?”

  His dark blue eyes grew distant and guarded. The distraction had worked. “You know I’m not allowed to tell.”

  “Can you tell me if you were afraid?”

  Arcas grimaced. “I thought I was going to die.” He glanced at her stricken face. “But no one ever does.”

  “No one? Can you be sure?”

  “My father told me so. He prepares you for everything you need to know.”

  “But not for the fear. He doesn’t prepare you for that, does he?”

  Arcas gave an exasperated sigh. “Anyone who dwells on their fear as much as you do will be more than prepared.”

  She tried to turn her face away from him, but he caught it with the tips of his fingers and gently returned her gaze to meet his.

  “Rhia, love, you must go. It’s well past your time.”

  She shook her head. “I’d have to leave you.”

  “For a while. Then you’ll return with your gift.”

  She thought of the war that would slay Dorius. “But what if while I’m gone—?”

  “Shh.” He kissed her, and she pulled away.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “You didn’t see what I saw.”

  “I understand that you’re troubled, and that the only way to ease your mind is to learn how to face your powers.” His hand moved to her waist, and he nuzzled the bare spot where her shoulder met the curve of her neck. She closed her eyes for a moment to savor his lips against her skin, then gathered her nerve and returned to the subject she had avoided before.

  “I have a secret,” she said.

  He raised his head, his eyelashes flickering with intrigue, but said nothing.

  “My mother’s noticed how close we are, you and I,” Rhia continued, “and so she sent me to Silina.”

  “Silina? The Turtle woman? I thought she helped women have babies.” He drew back to stare at her belly. “Are you—”

  “Of course not. Silina does help women have babies. Or not have them.”

  Arcas cocked his head. “How? How not have babies?”

  She grinned at his innocence and incoherence. “With herbs, of course.” She pointed to the lacy white flowers waving their heads throughout the meadow. “Wild carrot. I’ve harvested the seeds at summer’s end for my mother ever since I was a little girl. She called them a woman’s ‘freedom flowers’ but would never explain.”

  “Until now.”

  “Until now. Also, the—our being together—it has
to be during the right, er, phase of the moon.”

  His gaze scampered over the blue sky until it found the moon’s waxing crescent. “Is that a good moon?”

  “For me, it’s good.” She took his hand and kissed the velvet skin inside his wrist, one of the few places on his body not tanned and toughened by his shepherd’s work. “For us, it’s very good.”

  Without another word they undressed each other, trembling more than usual, then stretched out on the soft, lush grass. They had lain like this before, exploring and enjoying each other’s bodies, yet this time would end not in longing but fulfillment.

  Rhia’s fingers followed a trickle of sweat traveling over Arcas’s broad chest and shoulders. A sudden hesitation seized her. Once they had joined together, how could she ever leave him? Now she understood why they should wait until they had both taken on their Aspects. She was incomplete.

  Arcas’s expression darkened. “What’s wrong?”

  “When I go away, will you wait for me?”

  “I will.” His thumb traced her lower lip in a motion she found both seductive and soothing. “And what about you?”

  Rhia tried to answer, tried to put into words the love that would live in her heart until the day it stopped beating. She failed.

  Instead she kissed him, long and deep, and pressed her body forward to let his heat burn away the doubt and fear in her mind. Arcas groaned, and his arms snaked down her back to wrap around her waist, eventually parting her legs to accept his searching fingers. A familiar warmth spread through her, infused with an even more familiar need.

  He rolled her on top of him, and together, fumbling, laughing at their own clumsiness, they guided him inside her.

  Ready as she was to receive him, Rhia had not expected so much pain. It radiated to the core of her body and outward again. The sharpness of her cry made Arcas freeze, his eyes wide.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Oh, love, I’m so sorry.” He stroked the hair at her temple. “Should we stop?”

  She wanted to say yes, to retreat back into her clothes and maybe even the cool river, anything to soothe the ache. Instead she took a long breath and shook her head.

  He moved more slowly inside her after that, and when her eyes were open she saw him studying her face for the signs of pain she tried to hide. Finally he lay still and placed his palms on the ground beside him.

  “You,” he said.

  Rhia paused to wonder if she could do it, if she could bring such hurt upon herself. She closed her eyes and said a prayer for strength to whatever Spirit might be listening.

  Her hips moved against his, gingerly, until she felt herself begin to expand around him. Gradually the pain subsided, to be replaced with a sensation that recalled those he had given her with his hands and mouth. Yet this feeling, she knew before long, would carry her miles beyond.

  The heat between them became oppressive, and she raised her upper body to cool it. In doing so, she drove Arcas deeper inside her. They both cried out at the shock. His back arched, muscles taut, and his gaze pleaded, “Let me…”

  “Yes,” she said, and he released himself.

  His hands moved over her as if trying to touch her everywhere at once. She cradled his head to her breast, and he pulled her nipples into his mouth as his hips surged beneath her. Never had she felt so powerful, nor so helpless. The cry that escaped her throat was that of a woman she had yet to meet.

  The last thing she saw before collapsing onto Arcas’s chest was the radiant blue sky reflected in his astonished eyes.

  They lay together in silence, their breath slowing. Arcas combed Rhia’s hair with his fingers, which slid carefully through the tangles. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

  “It will be better next time.”

  “I can’t imagine better.”

  Rhia smiled, then turned on her back, wincing at the soreness. She felt a sudden need to bathe, and sat up, extracting herself from his arms. She congratulated herself on her rare display of bravery, then stood on unsteady legs and walked to the stream. A rustle of grass told her Arcas was following.

  Minnows scattered, silver fins flashing, as her feet swished through the warm shallows. In a dozen steps the stream reached her waist. She scooped the water with cupped hands and held her arms straight before her. As it dripped through her fingers, she murmured, “Bless the Turtle who gives life.”

  At her side, Arcas answered, “And bless the wild carrot seed that prevents it.”

  She grinned at him, then bent over to splash water on her face. He tipped her over with a gentle shove. She flailed for an instant before he caught her arm in time to save her from going under.

  “Hey!” She smacked his chest with her free hand. “After what just happened, you might stop seeing me as a little girl to torment.”

  “Grown women don’t smear berries on people.” He leaned to rinse the goo from his hair. “Besides, I enjoy tormenting you. Would you rob me of that—” He straightened suddenly, whipping his gaze toward the shore. “Someone’s coming.”

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  “They’re far away.” He listened another moment, Bear senses tuned. “But coming fast.”

  They splashed through the water back to the meadow and sprinted up the hill to the place of flattened grass where they had left their clothes. Arcas helped refasten her dress, then yanked on his own trousers and shirt. Rhia heard the rumble of approaching hooves.

  Arcas faced the distant edge of the meadow, shading his eyes. Two dots moved closer, one white, one chestnut red.

  “Is that your brother, on the gray mare?” Arcas asked her. “He’s driving her awfully hard.”

  “They always do that.” Rhia sat on the grass to put on her shoes. “Especially Lycas. He can’t go to the market for milk without acting like he’s being chased by wildfire.” She chuckled to herself, even as her heart fluttered with an inchoate fear.

  “It is him. And—my cousin Gorin?” He turned to her. “They don’t even like each other. Why would they—”

  Rhia held up her hand to silence him. She saw her brother, bent low over the neck of his white horse. His hair, shiny and black like their mother’s, streamed behind him in the wind. She began to run.

  They met quickly. The rear hooves of Lycas’s pony skidded as he brought her to a halt. His face was wet with what Rhia hoped was only sweat, and his dark eyes burned into her.

  “It’s Mother,” he said. “I think she’s dying.”

  04

  Rhia clung to her brother’s waist and tried to ignore the pain that seemed to skewer her body. The pony’s gait was swift but not smooth—the impact of each galloping stride threatened to split her in half.

  Yet it mattered little. Mother was dying. Rhia had had no time to ask Lycas questions before Arcas had scooped her up behind her brother and they had taken off for her home. Now her voice would be carried away by the wind that whipped Lycas’s hair into her face—not to mention the pounding of the mare’s hooves and the heave of her breath. The poor thing was exhausted but valiant.

  Rhia turned her head, straining to hear the hoofbeats of the pony Arcas rode, the pony brought by Gorin, who had stayed behind to watch the flock. But the wind swallowed all sound, and even this slight movement threatened to unbalance her.

  Maybe she should focus on the pain, she thought; better that than the scene that lay ahead. What would she see when she entered her home? Would the heavy wings alight or rush away? She had never confronted a human whose death was imminent. Now she wished she had, so that her first should not be the person Rhia loved above all others, the one who had given her life over and over, not just at birth but every year since then.

  Lycas veered the pony suddenly to the right to avoid a small gray boulder jutting among the long meadow grasses. They turned uphill, yet their pace did not slow, not until they entered the woods, where even Lycas was not so reckless as to plunge headlong. The pony slowed to a walk, shaking her head and splattering froth on the leaves around them. Whe
n Rhia had caught her breath, she puffed out the words she’d been wanting—and not wanting—to say, “What happened?”

  “She collapsed.” Lycas’s voice was clear, his breath barely quickened from their hard ride. “Said her heart hurt.”

  Rhia’s own heart seemed to constrict. She waited for him to continue.

  “When I left—” his shoulders shuddered “—when I left to get you, she could hardly breathe.” He cursed to himself. “Spirits take these brambles.” He reached down and pushed a thick rope of wild raspberries away from his pony’s chest. Blood seeped from tiny cuts in his arm, but he didn’t wince.

  “Did someone fetch a healer?”

  “Silina was drying herbs with her when it happened. She couldn’t do much except keep Mother comfortable. Nilo went to find Galen, in case…”

  “In case?”

  “In case she dies. Someone has to prepare her spirit.” He spoke through gritted teeth. “Since we don’t have a Crow.”

  Rhia’s face burned. Her voice caught as she tried to reply. But then the clearing lay ahead of them, and Lycas dug his heels into the pony’s ribs. The horse surged forward again, her strength restored, and Rhia had to clutch her brother’s shirt to keep from falling.

  The sunlight blinded as they broke into the clearing. Her home appeared across the hill. No human puttered in the paddock or in the dogs’ pens. At the sound of their approach, three hounds came out of the kennel, stretched, bowed and wagged their tails at them behind the fence.

  When Lycas finally brought the gasping pony to a halt in front of the house, the door opened. Their brother Nilo stepped forward to grab the reins.

  “It’s all right,” he told them. “She’s resting.”

  He put his hands on Rhia’s waist and lifted her off the pony. Her body seemed to creak as she slid over the dusty, sweaty hide. Though he lowered her gently, when her feet hit the ground, it felt as if two sharp fenceposts had been driven into her hips.

  “You two go in,” Nilo said. “I’ll cool her down.” He pulled the reins over the mare’s head and led her away at a brisk walk. Rhia glanced back at him, grateful that his gaze had not pierced her with accusation as his twin’s had. Though they looked alike and sometimes even spoke in unison, Nilo’s thoughts and feelings seemed to travel inward instead of sparking out to burn those around him.