by Jaine Fenn
‘What’s he doing in your bedroom? What am I doing in your bedroom?’
‘You are confused. You should lie still, try to rest.’
‘Rest? In your bed? Can we at least turn the lights on?’ Maybe if he could see he could make some sense of all this.
‘I—I will open the door. Tis nearly dawn, so that should give us some light,’ the woman said. She moved off.
A scraping noise; greyish light oozed in from a rectangle beyond his feet. He started to make out his surroundings: a small circular room with a high roof and cluttered shelves around the whitewashed walls. It was completely unfamiliar. Should he know this place?
‘I will get you some water,’ she said, and crossed the room to a table; other than the shelves and beds it was the only furniture he could see. ‘You must be thirsty.’ Her voice had an emphatic lilt, pleasant, and oddly reassuring. She sounded efficient, concerned for his welfare. And she was right about him being thirsty.
She returned with a bowl and he realised that one of the nasty smells was her. Others included stale smoke, and the covers on the bed, which were a mixture of rough-woven blankets and what smelled like badly cured animal skins.
‘Can you sit up?’ asked the woman.
He was pressed against the wall, where he’d tried to get away from her. Now he tried to uncurl, though even small motions made his head spin. ‘I’m not sure. My head hurts.’
She nodded. ‘I think you may have banged it.’
‘I thought you said I was ill?’ She acted so caring, but he knew nothing about her, about how he came to be here—‘Are you lying to me? Is this some kind of trick?’ His voice rose.
She put a hand out. ‘No, no. There is no trick, master. I am trying to help you.’
Master? Why did she call him that? When he opened his mouth to ask, a cough caught him.
She held up the bowl, and said carefully, ‘You need to drink. I will dip a cloth in this bowl, then squeeze it over your mouth.’
Given how grubby everything here looked he wasn’t sure about that, but he was desperate for water. He eased himself back across the bed. She bundled the covers under his head to prop him up, then squeezed water into his mouth. Dirty it might be, but it tasted good. He finished the bowl and lay back, feeling better.
The light was brighter now; he could make out a steeply sloping ceiling above him . . . no, not a ceiling: a roughly thatched roof, smoke-blackened. It was conical: he was in a round, windowless hut. Where the hut was, and how he came to be in it, he had no idea.
A male voice said peremptorily, ‘Hungry!’
He started, then looked across to see a boy of about fifteen standing behind the woman, who was back at her table. He didn’t recognise him either.
‘I know, Damaru,’ said the woman patiently, ‘but I need to fetch fire to cook. You will have to wait.’
The boy gave a half-shrug, half-twitch and walked out without a word.
The woman called over, ‘I am sorry, master. I cannot make food or medicine without fire. I will have to go and get some.’
Fire was something she needed to go and get? He understood her words, despite the odd accent, but they didn’t make sense. He realised she was about to leave and said urgently, ‘Wait, don’t go - where am I?’
‘To answer your first question,’ she said, drawing herself up straighter, ‘you are in the village of Dangwern.’ She gave a short, barked laugh at his look of incomprehension. ‘No, master, you would not know where that is. No one more than a day’s walk from here does, and I know everyone who lives within a day’s walk.’
‘So this isn’t my home.’ That was good. Though he wasn’t sure where he belonged, he hoped it wasn’t in a filthy, stinking hovel like this one. ‘How did I get here?’
‘I do not know. We found you, up at the mere. Well, Damaru found you, and I found him.’
‘The mere?’
‘The boglands, up on the high moor. Some say it is an unholy place.’
He didn’t like the sound of that. ‘What did I have with me? Was I alone?’
‘You were naked as a newborn.’ She sounded embarrassed. Under the pungent bedclothes, he was still naked. She paused, then added, ‘There was something with you, though.’
‘What was with me? Where is it?’ He needed clues, links to his life, anything that might explain this to him.
‘I have it here.’ She reached up to one of the packed shelves that covered the far wall, got down a clay pot and pulled out two pieces of silvery-white fabric, easily the brightest, cleanest items in the hut. She brought the larger one over to him.
He hugged the cloth to his chest. The fabric was soft, with a texture that seemed familiar, or at least comforting. ‘You found this with me?’
‘It was caught on a bush near where you lay, with a smaller piece in a pool nearby.’
‘What is it?’
‘I do not know.’ She sounded confused at being asked. ‘I have never seen cloth like this before, master.’
He wished she wouldn’t call him master. Maybe she didn’t know his name—
—and neither did he. His vision darkened. The fabric slipped through his fingers.
‘What is it? Master, are you all right?’
He turned his head, anger and terror coursing through him. ‘No, I’m fucking not all right! I’ve just woken up in a strange woman’s bed, and I have no fucking idea who I am or how I got here!’
She recoiled from him and his anger evaporated. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry - I shouldn’t have shouted at you. You’re only trying to help.’ He started to sit up, only to fall back at the stabbing pain in his temples.
She stayed where she was and said firmly, ‘You need medicine, and you need food. For that, I need fire. I will go and fetch it now. I will not be long.’ Without waiting for a reply she took down something small from the shelf, stooped to pick up something else from the floor, and bustled out.
In the silence after she left he lay still, head throbbing, ashamed and afraid.
Kerin cursed herself for a fool. What did she think she was doing, bringing a stranger into her house? Did she expect him to wake up and shower her with gifts? She had already returned the only thing of value he had had with him. A cannier woman would have kept the larger piece of cloth as payment for the trouble he was putting her to. Then again, to have access to such fine material implied he was rich, perhaps a noble from a distant land. It was a shame, then, that he appeared to have no more idea of how he came to be here than she did.
There might be another explanation for his behaviour, she thought as she headed up to the moot-hall. Three summers back, Duffryn’s lad had fallen from a roof he was rethatching and landed on his head; he had been a little like this, his moods changing fast as the sky before a storm, one moment afraid, then angry, then upset. The boy never really recovered, and he died the next winter.
She loaded her basket with peat from the lean-to beside the moot-hall, then walked round and went inside. The men might already be out. They were due to start bringing the cattle down from the high pastures today. If so, she would have to deal with Gwellys and put up with the inevitable tirade. Kerin wondered if this star-season Arthen might finally take a wife to replace the one who had died giving birth to Fychan, perhaps even one who would be strong enough to stand up to the chieftain’s mother. She doubted it.
From the sounds coming from behind the curtains, it seemed the men were still here. Kerin smiled to herself, then walked up to the hearth, took a deep breath, and began to speak. ‘In the name of the Mother of Hearth and Home I beg to take the gift of flame from—’
Gwellys burst out from behind a curtain, her face flushed. ‘Vile witch-blood!’ she shouted. ‘How dare you show your face here?’
Arthen, following a few steps behind her, bellowed, ‘Mother!’
Gwellys closed her mouth and for a moment the three of them stood there, staring at each other. Apparently Gwellys was annoyed about more than just Kerin’s failure to help grind th
e oats yesterday.
Arthen said evenly, ‘Kerin, how fares your patient?’
‘He is awake, though confused.’ Kerin was surprised at how firm her voice sounded. Dealing with a raving stranger put Gwellys’s bitching into perspective.
Arthen said, ‘What ails him?’
Kerin decided against telling Arthen that the man appeared to have lost his memory. ‘A fever, from being out in the storm.’
‘Just a fever?’
Gwellys was muttering, ‘My eldest grandson has a fever too, and he cannot stand.’
Kerin said, ‘If Sionyn is unwell perhaps I could help—’
‘No!’ screamed Gwellys. ‘You are a curse on my family!’
Kerin looked at Arthen, who said, his own voice faltering, ‘Even if I disregard my mother’s wishes, there is little point in you examining my son. Prayer would be a better remedy.’
Kerin felt as though the ground had shifted beneath her. ‘Wait, you think - is it the falling fire?’
‘I believe so,’ said Arthen.
Kerin circled her breast. ‘Mothers preserve us,’ she whispered. Though it had been many years since the winnowing times had last come to the village, she still remembered the smell of the pyres.
Gwellys pointed a trembling finger at Kerin. ‘You have brought this upon us!’
Arthen said, ‘That is not for you to say, Mother! Leave us, please.’
With a last venomous look, Gwellys turned and swept back to her alcove.
For a moment Kerin thought Arthen would send her away empty-handed. Then he gestured to the hearth and said, ‘With the blessings of the Mothers, the gift of flame is mine to give, yours to take.’
She lifted her fire-pot.
In no immediate danger and feeling too drained to move, he calmed down. He looked up when the door opened, expecting to see the woman, but it was the boy. What had she called him? Damsomething—? Damaru, that was it. Trying to sound casual, he said, ‘Hullo Damaru.’
The boy ignored him.
He tried again. ‘Your mother tells me you’re the one who found me.’
He said nothing, just reached into a jug by the door with a cupped hand.
The boy’s indifference chilled him. Cold sweat prickled his skin. ‘Damaru? Damaru, can you hear me?’ Am I really here?
The boy finally looked up. He frowned and said, ‘Sais.’ Then he walked out of the hut again.
He was staring up at the tatty, smoke-stained thatch, trying to control his hammering heart, when the woman returned a few minutes later. She was carrying a basket of what looked like clods of earth, with a clay pot balanced on top. She nodded to him, then put down her burden and started to fuss with something on the floor in the centre of the hut.
With her return his fears eased. She might be shit-poor and smelly, but she wanted to help him. He took a long, slow breath, then asked as evenly as he could, ‘What’s your name?’
‘I am called Kerin, master,’ she said, still intent on whatever she was doing.
‘Kerin, right,’ he said. The name meant nothing to him. ‘Damaru was here,’ he added.
‘Hoping for food. Well, he will have to wait till I have the fire going.’
‘He called me “sais”.’
‘Oh.’ Kerin stood, and he saw her clearly for the first time, caught in the harsh light from the open door. She wore a ragged brown shawl tied across a beige shirt, and a grey apron over a long, darker grey skirt. Her curly dark brown hair was pulled back by a strip of brown cloth. Her face was lined and filthy, though she had a delicate, slightly upturned nose, which on another woman might look vacuously pretty.
Her dark eyes met his and he remembered the eyes from his dream. Dread surfaced again for a moment. Then she looked down.
‘Damaru was trying to make sense of you,’ she said. ‘I should have mentioned: my son is sky-touched.’
Sky-touched? Whatever that meant, it was something to be proud of, from the tone of her voice. He had nothing to lose, and she was being friendly. He had to trust her. ‘Kerin, I’m confused. I still don’t know why he called me sais.’
‘It means outsider, stranger. Being a skyfool, he often names things literally.’
‘That’s - that’s actually pretty accurate. You see, I can’t recall my name just now. Until I remember it, I don’t mind if you call me that. Or something else, if you prefer.’
She looked uncertain. ‘Are you sure, master? Sais is not a proper name.’
‘You have to call me something. Sais will do. Not master, all right?’ Just until his name came back to him - which it would do, soon.
‘All right,’ she said carefully, then added, ‘Sais.’ She bent down again, and a few moments later, smoke billowed past the end of the bed, curling and twisting in the draught. His eyes watered and he smelled something rich and earthy burning.
He tried to take stock of his situation. He could name stuff around him, and the very squalor of the place was oddly reassuring: this wasn’t his home, but neither was it part of the barely remembered, chaotic nightmare world that he’d awakened from. Something this mundanely grim had to be real. Yet some words and concepts - skyfool, sais, having to fetch fire - meant nothing to him. And he still had no idea who he was or how he came to be here.
Kerin interrupted his musings with a bowl of sweet-tasting medicine. Shortly after that Damaru came back. Sais - he’d call himself Sais for now, as he certainly felt like a stranger - watched the boy, searching for clues, looking for behaviour that identified him as ‘sky-touched’. His mother fussed over him, muttering something about his fingers, and led him over to the table where she had some dried plants laid out. The boy endured her attention.
Afterwards she returned to the middle of the hut. Damaru followed her and sat down at her feet. The pounding in Sais’s head had eased, and he lifted it to see what was going on. Damaru was sitting on a low bench, little more than a hewn log, staring intently into the fire burning in a shallow pit in the centre of the floor. Kerin crouched beside him, stirring a large earthenware pot that sat on a flat stone balanced half over the flames. She looked up and said, ‘The porridge will be ready soon. I will help you sit up.’
‘Porridge’ turned out to be a tepid, lumpy goo, which under other circumstances would probably have tasted disgusting, but right now was the best food in the world. The woman’s portion was half the size of his and Damaru’s. Before she took her first spoonful she made a quick circling gesture over the food with her right forefinger. Damaru just tucked in.
After he’d eaten he felt another need, which he communicated to Kerin only after some embarrassment and misunderstanding. Kerin said he was not strong enough to stand and produced a shallow bowl. He felt his face redden. It continued to burn while she helped him use the bowl to relieve himself. She worked with impersonal efficiency. Despite her care, piss splashed onto his leg, but there was nothing he could do about that - nothing he could do about any of this, except try not to panic while he waited for his strength to return and his memory to come back to him.
Though the awkward intimacy of the situation was unpleasant, it dispelled any remaining distrust in Kerin. Any woman willing to help a man go to the toilet was unlikely to mean him harm.
After that he wanted to sleep. For a while he fought the urge, scared of returning to his nightmares. In the end, his body decided for him. He closed his eyes.
CHAPTER FOUR
Even asleep, the stranger’s presence filled the hut - no, not ‘the stranger’, Sais. An odd choice of name, but she would respect it.
She found herself reacting to his needs as she did with Damaru, then catching herself when she remembered that this was not her sky-touched child but an adult stranger.
Though Sais had been confused and afraid when he had awakened, he obviously did not lack sense. He would be relying on her to help him get back the knowledge he had lost. Conversations with Damaru were often a fight to get meaning across, and everyone else spoke to her with the knowledge of her herita
ge behind their words. This man, though, knew only that she was happy to help him. She looked forward to answering his questions, and getting to know him better.
He woke from dark dreams of pursuit and pain, sweating into the rank covers. Fragments of half-remembered horrors receded when he blinked open his eyes.
For a moment he thought he wasn’t in Kerin’s hut any more: the place looked different. Then he saw that he was still in her bed, only now it was night. He expelled a relieved breath.
The lamps hanging from the roof-beams gave more light than the open door had. Other items hung from the beams too: bunches of leaves, cloth-wrapped bundles, skin pouches and woven bags. He saw several larger objects around the whitewashed walls, including a wooden frame with a triangle of dark cloth stretched over it. Stones hung from the bottom of the cloth.
Damaru sat on the floor, playing with carved wooden figures, lining them up and then moving them around like game pieces. It seemed an odd pastime for a boy in his mid-teens.
Kerin stood by the table, dangling a wooden object from a length of dark thread, teasing the thread through her fingers with firm, even strokes. She looked up and saw him watching her. ‘How do you feel?’ she asked.
‘Much better, thanks.’ He added, ‘I’m sorry if I scared you when I first woke up.’
She blinked. ‘Oh no, you did not frighten me. There is no need to apologise.’ She wound the thread around her bit of wood, then put it on a shelf. ‘I will make food.’
While she worked, he asked, ‘Are you the village doctor?’ That was the word that came to mind when he thought of being cared for in this way, though the concept didn’t quite fit the primitive surroundings.
She gave him a puzzled look. ‘I am sorry, Sais; I do not know that word.’
That made a change: he knew a word she didn’t. ‘All right, perhaps . . . a healer?’
She looked embarrassed, then defiant. ‘My husband, Neithion, was the healer. He taught me what he could.’
‘Your husband?’ He hadn’t considered who, or where, Damaru’s father was.