Eyes of Crow

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  “That’s because you know there’s another world we can’t see with our eyes.”

  “But I already knew. I’ve been taught about the Spirits’ dwelling place since I was a child. I believed in it.”

  “Believing is not the same as experiencing.” He slipped his hand around hers. It, too, felt insubstantial against her skin. “Enough talk about the Spirit World.”

  But that was all she wanted to talk about, think about. She sighed, which he mistook for an utterance of desire.

  “I’ve missed you.” He pulled her close and pressed his mouth against hers. She returned the kiss, but for the first time her mind was not consumed with wanting him. Part of it remained elsewhere.

  Arcas didn’t notice her distance, or if he did he sought to overcome it by crushing her tighter against him. His hard, pent-up passion demanded release.

  He whispered against her neck with breath so warm it made her shiver. “I know a place we can go.” He drew his hand over her hip.

  She pulled away before his fingers could wake her desire. “Arcas, it’s not right. I’m still in mourning.”

  He let go of her and wiped his face hard, as if to erase his embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Rhia. I forgot.”

  “You forgot my mother died?”

  “Of course not. But I miss you. Even when I see you, it’s like you’re not really here.” He reached for her hand cautiously, as if it might burn him. “Do you still love me?”

  “I do, but you can’t be the most important thing in my life right now. When you prepared for your Bestowing, I barely saw you for months.”

  “I didn’t change the way you’re changing now.”

  “Then you don’t understand.”

  “Help me, then. Help me understand.” He drew her close again, this time with tenderness instead of urgency. She pressed her cheek against his broad chest and wished she could grant his request. But even she didn’t comprehend the transformation that had begun. She only knew that becoming a Crow woman—witnessing, sharing and communing with the exit from life—would require her old self to die, either little by little or all at once. What would be born on the other side of this death might be a woman Arcas could never love.

  The clothes-laden cart threatened to roll over Rhia’s heels as she dragged it downhill toward the stream. When the entire family had lived under one roof, it had taken a pony to bear the burden of five people’s laundry, but now even Rhia’s strength sufficed.

  The sycamore trees ahead had lost all but a few amber leaves, revealing twisted, ghostly trunks. Rhia preferred their bare, tortured beauty over the demure loveliness of the surrounding pines. The oaks had already dropped their golden foliage, which relieved her. Another year had passed without Dorius’s brutal demise.

  As Rhia neared the riverbank, the sound of laughter broke her reverie. She saw with dismay two of the young village women. Tall and thin, Mali the Wasp was nineteen, more than a year older than Rhia. She was training to be one of Asermos’s few female warriors. Torynna, a blond, full-figured Sparrow woman whose song could quicken the blood and raise the spirits of the weary, had just returned from her Bestowing at sixteen years of age. Rumors claimed Torynna was trying against all advice to bear a child so she could progress to her second phase. Then her song could befuddle any who heard it, causing a brief paralysis of will or even complete obedience.

  The two women drew a cart between them and shared a piece of red fruit. They gave her halfhearted waves, then Mali said something to Torynna that Rhia couldn’t hear. They burst into cackles that made her skin crawl. Her hand froze in greeting and dropped back to the cart pole.

  “Good morning, Woman of the Crow,” Mali said with the barest hint of a sneer. “Beautiful day, don’t you think?”

  “A bit cold.” Rhia carried the clothes, washboard and soap bar to her favorite washing spot, where a long flat rock jutted into the stream. Its location had less mud and put distance between her and the other women.

  “True,” Mali said. “This may be the last washing day before the river freezes. But it’s pretty, no?”

  Rhia sensed Mali was only being cordial out of deference to her mourning. Usually the Wasp tried to devise ever snider comments on Rhia’s lack of stature and coordination.

  She nodded to Mali and dipped the first garment, one of her father’s gray work shirts, into the cold water.

  “Rhia, I like your hair short,” Torynna said.

  “I don’t,” she replied to the insincere compliment.

  “What does Arcas think of it?”

  “You’ll have to ask him.”

  “I will.”

  The washboard nearly slipped out of Rhia’s hands. Knowing the Sparrow girl’s reputation, she didn’t want her anywhere near Arcas. Torynna turned away with a flashing smile.

  The other women unloaded their wash and took seats on the edge of the bank, their skirts tucked up to keep them dry. Torynna began to hum a melody Rhia didn’t know. It sounded seductive, even to her ears.

  “Guess what I’ve heard about the Kalindons?” Mali said to her companion. “I hear they live in trees.”

  Torynna stopped humming. “In trees? Like squirrels?”

  “They have houses, silly, in the branches, and some of them don’t come down for years. My brother and his friends call them ‘termites.’”

  “If they live in trees, then where do they piss?”

  “Off the edge, of course.”

  The women’s high titters felt like pins against Rhia’s spine.

  Torynna told Mali, “I heard they eat nothing but breakfast so they can get drunk faster at night.”

  “I believe it,” Mali said. “But what I want to know is, how do they make love with those seven-inch fingernails?”

  The bar of soap scooted from Rhia’s palm and plopped into the stream. She lunged for it, soaking her sleeve. Mali and Torynna erupted in laughter. After several desperate grabs, Rhia found the bar among the pebbles at the stream bottom. She drew it out of the water, her forearm covered in cold green slime.

  “I guess some of us could use longer nails,” Torynna said, “then we wouldn’t be so clumsy.”

  Rhia turned to them. She let her eyes focus on a point far beyond Torynna and kept her face impassive.

  The Sparrow’s smile faded. She glanced over her shoulder. “What are you looking at?”

  Rhia said nothing. After a few moments, she shifted her gaze past Mali, whose eyes grew angry.

  “What are you doing?” she asked Rhia in a sharp voice.

  “Seeing…”

  “Seeing what?”

  Rhia blinked slowly, then shook her head as if to clear a vision. “Hmm…”

  “What?” Mali stood as if facing off in battle. “‘Hmm’ what?”

  “Nothing.” She turned back to the clothes. “I wouldn’t eat that apple if I were you, Mali.”

  “Why?”

  “And Torynna, you should probably stay away from water from now on.”

  “What water?” Torynna’s voice trembled. “You mean the river?”

  Rhia raised her head and stared at the opposite shore as if the answer lay there. “Yes, I think the river. Puddles are probably safe.” She went back to her washing.

  The two women exchanged hasty whispers tinged with horror, of which Rhia only caught pieces:

  “Can she really—”

  “—hasn’t been for her Bestowing.”

  “—heard she has visions.”

  Feeling a pang of mercy, Rhia gave them a broad smile.

  Mali planted her hands on her hips. “You’re joking.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “You are. You don’t really see our, our—”

  “Deaths? Probably not.”

  She picked up another shirt and promised herself that this would be the first and last time she would use her identity as death-seer to intimidate others. That vow, she felt, made up for her lack of shame in this instance.

  “I told you,” Mali said to Torynna in a
low voice. “I knew the little runt was lying.”

  “She was so spooky, though.”

  “She’s always been spooky.” A pause. “You want the rest of my apple?”

  Torynna giggled. “What were we talking about?”

  “Kalindons.” Mali’s voice took on an edge. “We have a source right here who we can ask.”

  Rhia ignored them and scrubbed her father’s shirt harder to release a muddy spot on the sleeve.

  “You mean her?” Torynna said. “She hasn’t been there yet.”

  “She doesn’t have to go there to meet Kalindon men. She spent most of her life with two of them.”

  Rhia stopped scrubbing and stared at Mali.

  “Oh, look, she doesn’t know.” Mali flipped her hand at Torynna. “Just as I thought.”

  “Doesn’t know what?” Rhia tried to keep her voice steady.

  “Lycas and Nilo’s father. He didn’t die like your mama told you. He went back to Kalindos.”

  Rhia’s fists clenched the soggy shirt. “You’re lying.”

  “Ask your brothers. They were the last to find out, the night your mother died.” She smiled at Rhia with mock sympathy. “Last, that is, except for you.”

  08

  The door to her brothers’ hut opened a few inches. One of Nilo’s black eyes peered out through the crack.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s me,” Rhia said.

  “I know.”

  “May I come in?”

  Nilo slammed the door shut. Rhia turned the latch and entered anyway.

  “I won’t leave until you explain why you’re mad at me, so if you want me gone, you’ll have to start talking.”

  Nilo’s mouth set into a grim line. He motioned her to sit on the bearskin rug next to the stove.

  It only took Rhia two steps to reach the rug. Their hovel was less than half the size of her father’s house and had fallen into a disarray beyond even what one might expect from a place where two young men lived without maternal supervision. The only clean area was a section of wall that held her brothers’ collection of daggers. The weapons, with which they had trained for nearly ten years, featured blades that varied in size from a handspan to the length of her forearm. The straight ones were for stabbing, the curved for slicing, but all were sharp, deadly, and spotless.

  To sit, she had to move a half-loaf of bread so stale it could have been used as a weapon itself. A tankard held traces of ale in the form of a gooey brown residue that smelled like the inside of a horse’s mouth.

  “It could be cleaner,” Nilo mumbled. Suppressing a gag, Rhia handed him the tankard with the tips of her thumb and forefinger. He set it next to the stove. “Other things have been on our mind besides washing.”

  “Like the fact that your father’s a Kalindon?”

  Her brother whirled on her so fast she thought she had blacked out for a moment.

  “Quiet!”

  She steeled herself. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “We’re not ashamed, we’re embarrassed. To be the last to know.”

  “You weren’t last. I was.”

  He scowled at her. “Mother thought you knew.”

  “No one told me, unless it was while I was ill. I don’t remember much about that part of my life.” Other than the wings in my head. “I only found out a few hours ago, I swear to you.” She rose and put her hand on his arm. “I would have told you if I’d known. Please believe me.”

  “Then tell me how you heard.” She hesitated. “The truth,” he said.

  “I was washing clothes today when Torynna and—and Mali came by.”

  Nilo’s head jerked. “Mali?”

  “She told me.” Rhia put up her hands. “I provoked her. Although they provoked me first.”

  “What did she say?” His fierce voice, barely above a whisper, was impossible to disobey.

  “They were discussing the things they’d heard about Kalindons, and Mali said—”

  “Good things?”

  Rhia shrugged, in a failing attempt at casualness. “It’s hard to say good or bad.”

  “I’ve heard nothing good about Kalindons, so unless Torynna and Mali have come into some secret knowledge—”

  “Secret knowledge about what?” said a voice behind them.

  Lycas stood at the door. Rhia stepped back, astonished that his burgeoning powers of stealth had allowed him to unlatch the door and slip in without her awareness.

  Nilo, on the other hand, appeared unsurprised. “She says Mali told her about our father,” he said to Lycas. “Today.”

  “Mali?” Lycas tossed a leather bag onto the table with a loud thunk. A rabbit’s stiff brown foot emerged from a tear in the seam. “I trust she spoke well of our kind?”

  “Tell him,” Nilo said to Rhia. “Tell us what she said.”

  “I don’t want to know.” Lycas picked through the flasks near the stove until he found one with contents to his liking. He took a long gulp, then wiped his mouth. “I just came in for a drink, now I need to clean these rabbits. Got three.” He reached for the bundle on the table.

  “You should listen,” Nilo said.

  “You want me to do it in here? This place is too clean for you, needs some fur and guts on the floor?”

  Nilo moved the bag of dead rabbits out of Lycas’s reach. “Rhia, start.”

  She told them everything. The three had always shared a brutal honesty, which was probably why her brothers were so hurt to think she had kept the secret about their father.

  For once, Lycas’s face was impassive. When she was finished, he grabbed the rabbit-bag and left the house.

  Nilo turned back to Rhia. “I always said Mali was no good for him. They’re too alike.” He tried to smile, then gave up, since it was an unnatural contortion for his face. “If they married, they’d kill each other, and then Asermos would lose two warriors before the battles even began.”

  “Battles?” Rhia’s pulse jumped. “What have you heard?”

  “Nothing certain. Always rumors about the Descendants.”

  She tried to hold back a shudder and only succeeded in twinging a neck muscle. “I’ve seen more of them in town lately. Why do they need to come this far north to trade?”

  “They don’t. I don’t think they’re really traders. They’re spies, seeing if our lands and towns are worth their time and weapons and lives.”

  Rhia had trouble believing that the strange men she had seen dawdling around the docks and taverns had been related to her people at one time. From their provocative dress that contained so many useless accents to the way they walked upon the earth, as if they owned the soil under their feet, they were different. Perhaps it was the ease of the southern clime they had migrated to after breaking from her people generations ago, or the great cities they had built to hold their pride. Whatever “it” was about them, the Descendants always made her feel, for a moment, ashamed to be human.

  “You think they want to invade us?” she asked.

  “They want what we have, and they don’t understand our ways. Perfect combination for an invasion.”

  “Something should be done.”

  Nilo scoffed. “The Wolverines, we’ve all been telling Torin we should capture a few of these ‘traders’ and interrogate them.” Torin, the third-phase Bear man to whom Arcas was apprenticed, served as the Asermon military leader. He was also Torynna’s father, but Rhia didn’t hold that against him.

  “What did he say?”

  “He said it wasn’t ‘strategic.’” Nilo half grinned. “Lycas told him that waking up one day to find ourselves dead wasn’t exactly strategic, either.”

  Rhia’s mind wanted to turn away from the thoughts of war, yet her powers would be indispensable in that event. “How could they defeat us? They don’t even have magic.”

  “When their army is ten times the size of ours, they don’t need magic.”

  “But if they had magic, they wouldn’t need those big armies, would they?”

 
; He smirked at her. “Your logic alone is worth a brigade or two.”

  She laughed, relieved in an odd way that a danger like war could put their sibling feud into perspective. Yet one problem needed to be addressed. She cleared her throat.

  “I’m sorry for the way Mother died, so hard and frightened. She deserved better.”

  “She did.” He returned to the stove. “But you’re going to Kalindos, to be a Crow woman.”

  “Too late.”

  “For Mother, but not for the rest of us.”

  Rhia wanted to bind Nilo’s wrists to the house so that he could never walk onto a battlefield. But he was created to fight, called to be a warrior. Unlike Rhia, her brothers embraced their Guardian Spirit. So instead she told him, “I can’t think about losing you, too.”

  He waved his hand in dismissal. “Anyway, if it’s not obvious, I forgive you. We forgive you.”

  “Thank you, but Lycas’s forgiveness is not yours to offer.”

  “True.” Nilo scowled at the dirty dishes, then swept a disgusted glance over the rest of the room. “He’d be more likely to give it if you helped us clean the house.”

  “I’ll take my chances. Give me the bread, though.”

  Nilo picked up the loaf and knocked his fist against it, making a sound like a gourd-drum. “You’ll break a tooth.”

  “It’s not for me.”

  “The dogs’ll break a tooth.”

  “Not for them, either. For ones who have no teeth.”

  “Ah.” He handed it to her. “There you go, birdie girl.” As her hand touched the latch, Nilo made one last try: “If you help us clean, we’ll give you one of those rabbits.”

  “I think I’ll get one anyway.”

  Lycas sat on a rock next to a maple tree, amidst its fallen scarlet leaves. Rhia stood within speaking distance of him but said nothing as she crumpled the stale bread in her hands to scatter the crumbs on the dirt.

  From the corner of her eye she watched Lycas hang a rabbit by its heels from the tree and start to clean it. He stabbed into it with a fury, as if the creature had insulted him. His cuts went too deep and gouged the flesh.

  Under her breath she offered prayers of thanksgiving to the bird Spirits whose kind would feast on the crumbs: Crow, Jay and—after a moment’s hesitation—even Sparrow, Torynna’s Guardian Spirit. One could not hold a grudge against the Spirits themselves for the pettiness of their human protégés. Besides, Rhia had returned Torynna’s meanness threefold by pretending to envision her death. The least she could do was give her rival’s little winged counterparts some crumbs.