Consorts of Heaven

by Jaine Fenn

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For making an idiot of myself like that.’

  ‘Fear makes fools of all of us. All that matters is that it turned out for the best.’

  Damaru sat down by the fire. Sais sat on the other end of the bench, facing Kerin. As she got to work on the evening meal, he asked, ‘This falling fire that the council are worried about, does it happen every year?’ He’d have expected to remember something as regular as that.

  She shot him that perplexed expression he’d come to associate with answers that were obvious to her. ‘The winnowing times return every generation.’

  ‘And it just turns up out of the blue?’ Like me, he didn’t say.

  ‘Aye, in the weeks before star-season. So its appearance now should not be such a surprise.’

  Whenever star-season was - soon, presumably. ‘How serious is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Every family will be touched by it, and most who fall will not recover. Those who do will be left barren,’ she said grimly.

  Pretty serious then. ‘How do the winnowing times end?’

  ‘With the red rain.’ At his quizzical look she continued, ‘The falling fire is no ordinary ailment. It comes when the weight of our sin has tainted us, and we must be cleansed. It cannot be cured or treated, only endured. But soon after the festival of Sul Esgyniad the rains are stained with red. Tis the blood of Consorts, shed willingly to heal and renew Creation, just as the brighter rain of star-season is their’ - she coloured, and completed her sentence - ‘just as the rain of stars brings fertility. It is all part of the Skymothers’ plan for their children.’

  He’d have to take her word for that, given how little what she was saying meant to him. But the fact they considered this disease a heaven-sent curse did explain why the council were willing to send away their only healer. Then again, they obviously didn’t think much of Kerin. He was just glad he was going with her. ‘When do we leave?’

  ‘On the drove? In four days.’ Her brow furrowed. ‘There is much to do now we are all going.’

  ‘And did I hear right? Damaru’s going too?’ Sais found himself happy to talk about Damaru as though the boy wasn’t there. Perhaps, in some indefinable way, he wasn’t.

  ‘Aye, he goes to stand before the Cariad, the Beloved Daughter of Heaven. He will be tested to find whether he is worthy to become a Consort of the Skymothers.’ She spoke with an odd mixture of pride and sorrow. ‘Damaru is the first skyfool to be born in our village for many generations, and those few who have come before have not been found worthy. When a skyfool becomes a Consort then tis a wondrous thing for all who know him. For just as he has the sky in him while in the realm of earthly Creation, so he retains part of his earthly life when he ascends to Heaven. The Skymothers will favour the prayers of those who were known to their Consorts while they lived below.’

  Damaru chose that moment to spring to his feet and make a grab for some morsel on the table. Kerin batted at his hand. He yelped, then scooted away and jumped onto his bed, where he sat and sulked.

  ‘Are skyfool girls this badly behaved?’ asked Sais, caught between amusement and irritation. However divine and glorious Damaru’s future might be, right now he was quite a handful.

  Kerin said slowly, ‘I am not sure what you mean.’

  Sais sensed he was on dangerous ground, but he needed to know what was what. ‘Sky-touched girls? Or are skyfools always boys?’

  Kerin stood rigid, her expression pained. ‘For a girl to be touched by the sky is not a blessing. It is a curse.’ She turned away.

  Though Sais had plenty more questions, now was obviously not the time to ask them.

  Suspended, weightless—

  He could lie here forever, except for the voice, the woman calling to him. She needs his help.

  But he can’t help. He can’t even move.

  He’s trapped - trapped, and sinking.

  He opens his eyes, but the darkness remains unchanged. He wonders if it would help to panic, then decides not.

  The thick, viscous liquid begins to ooze over his limbs, dragging him down. He feels the leading edge of it creep up his flank, over his belly.

  Still he doesn’t react.

  When it reaches his ears he can hear it as well as feel it, a slow tidal surge. He shudders as it flows into his ears, intimate, vile. He can’t hear anything now, not even the woman.

  The liquid touches the corners of his mouth. Fear finally overcomes his numbness. He exerts his will to move, just a muscle, anything to escape his inevitable fate.

  He can’t. He’s dead flesh. And any moment now the liquid will reach his nose, flow down into his lungs. He’ll drown from the inside out—

  The crash is deafening.

  Sais opened his eyes.

  The darkness was filled with a vortex of sparks, blotted out by a dark figure rising in front of him. He cried out in terror.

  ‘Tis all right!’ Kerin’s whisper cut through his fear. She put out a hand to calm him, and everything dropped into place. He was in her hut, safe. ‘Your nightmare set Damaru off,’ she continued, moving away. ‘He broke a pot. I will calm him and clear up. Do not concern yourself.’

  Even as he wondered what she was talking about, he found himself slipping back towards sleep.

  He woke to the sound of rain and the smell of porridge, a meal he was already getting sick of. Kerin didn’t mention the incident in the night, and he wondered if it had been part of his dream.

  After they’d eaten Kerin said, ‘I must see if I can find us more travelling gear.’ She put on a broad-brimmed hat and stiff cloak woven from the same stuff as the mats that covered the beaten earth floor, then went out.

  Damaru settled down on the floor near the fire, and began to play with his little carved figures of men and animals. He lined them up, moved them round, then lined them up again, and again.

  Sais spent the morning sitting on the bench. For a while he faced out, watching the ragged wet curtain of rain dribble down over the doorway. When his backside went numb and his legs started to stiffen, he turned round and stared into the fire.

  He tried to order his thoughts and plan, as far as he could, for the future. He was still fragile and obviously prey to nightmares. He also needed to avoid antagonising his hostess, or upsetting the other villagers. At the same time he had to be open to anything that might help him regain his past. All in all, it was a bit of a tall order.

  Kerin returned with a pair of boots and a blanket, which didn’t look like much for a morning’s work - not that Sais said anything.

  After a meal of soggy left-over oatcakes and slivers of hard, sour cheese, Damaru went out again, wearing the cumbersome wet-weather gear Kerin had persuaded him, not without difficulty, to put on.

  There was only so much staring and thinking a man could do and, left alone again that afternoon, Sais turned his attention to the contents of the shelves. They held everything two people needed to live, albeit in what he would consider poverty. When he came across the fabric Kerin had found with him, he got it down and felt it, then held it up to the light. He even smelt it. Despite the sense of familiarity when Kerin had first showed it to him, the cloth held no new insights.

  When Kerin returned, this time with her arms full, she found him gazing into the fire, running the cloth through his hands. He saw her look at the cloth and said, on impulse, ‘I think you should have this. For all you’ve done for me. Maybe we can even find you some more, once I’ve got my life back.’ She deserved it: she could easily have lied about finding the fabric and kept it for herself. Besides, it was no use to him.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.

  That evening she cooked pottage, which tasted like the vegetable equivalent of porridge. Sais guessed meat and honey were luxuries here.

  After they’d eaten, Kerin asked Sais if he remembered how to play gem. When he shook his head she offered to remind him and got down a small roll of tanned leather from a high shelf. She spread it out on the wooden slab
she chopped her herbs on. A six-sided web of red, brown and black lines and points covered the surface, and the playing pieces were slices of bone, also stained red, black or brown. The rules, involving limited movement and taking the other player’s pieces, were deceptively simple; the strategies were complex. He wondered how long it was since she’d had someone to play with.

  That night he offered her the use of her bed back. She gave him a sharp look and he wondered if she’d misunderstood. She murmured that he was the guest and must have the bed, then went back to her place on the floor.

  The following morning Kerin brought back the last of the gear for the drove. He asked if he could help at all.

  Kerin, busy rubbing something pungent into a pair of boots, looked up and said, ‘Are you sure? Most of this is women’s work.’

  ‘That’s all right. I won’t tell the men I’m doing it.’

  She smiled and said, ‘These boots are for you, but they have not been used for some time. You need to rub the fat into the leather.’

  It was smelly, messy work. The next task was to repair a rain-hat with dried rushes. His work was uneven, and his fingertips were soon pricked with tiny cuts. If this was women’s work, they were tougher creatures than him. He kept at it, both because he’d promised Kerin he would, and because he had nothing better to do.

  The rain eased off in the afternoon, and he went outside, wearing his newly greased boots. Kerin got him to strap low wooden blocks under the boots to keep the worst of the mud off.

  Dangwern consisted of forty or so huts, ringed about with a shallow ditch and a waist-high bank. The settlement was perched on a small mound halfway up the slope, near the head of a valley. It was surrounded by low mountains, and though Sais could identify the white covering on the taller peaks as snow, he had no idea what the green, russet and purple vegetation on the mountainsides was.

  The valley curved, so he couldn’t see the end. Beside the village itself, the only evidence of human influence on the landscape were the fields and animal pens on the valley floor. He watched some men driving dark, shaggy cattle into the pens with the help of low-slung brown and white dogs.

  When that excitement was over, he walked up towards the centre of the village. He passed several women and children, all with Kerin’s dark hair, ingrained dirt and drab, worn clothes. They were a sad lot. One woman had a withered arm, and he saw a child with scabbed and crusted eyes, obviously blind. No one spoke to him, though most stopped to watch him pass.

  The moot-hall looked smaller in daylight, despite the lean-tos and animal pens crowded around the outside. Sais was pleased to find he could identify most of the animals: pigs, goats, chickens, geese, even the small, dark creature that darted up into the thatch, which he recognised as a rat. Every new fragment of knowledge was a small victory; he just wished it would come together.

  The low building opposite the moot-hall turned out to be a large roofless compound. The rough whitewashed walls were covered in stylised pictures painted in bright colours: female figures amongst stars and moons and plants and animals. One woman was unfeasibly curvaceous with red lips, golden hair and a harp in her hand; another held a set of scales; a third, with a blue apron, had a child cradled in one arm and a tool like the one Kerin used to make her thread in the other hand.

  Within the walls the ground had been covered with layers of rush matting. The inside walls were also decorated, though the far wall showed only one image, a circle bisected by a horizontal line. Below it he could make out a great table loaded and festooned with various items, including flowers, figures carved from wood or bone, bunches of leaves, pottery bowls, woven braid, even flat loaves of bread. The wind shifted and he caught a whiff of something sweet and smoky.

  This place was vital to the village, yet it meant nothing to him.

  When Sais walked back into the cramped, dark hut, the smell of stale sweat and old smoke made his eyes sting. Damaru was already home, and he commented that her son wasn’t such a fool, given he never missed meals.

  Kerin said lightly, ‘Or perhaps tis a skyfool ability not generally known about.’

  He decided that the time had come to get to grips with spiritual matters - better to bemuse Kerin now, before they left, than screw up in front of unsympathetic villagers later. Damaru’s strange affliction - or blessing - seemed a good place to start.

  ‘Actually, Kerin, I can’t quite remember what being sky-touched involves,’ he admitted.

  She looked at him for a moment, then said, ‘Skyfools do not see things as we do. They sense the underlying pattern of the world, and sometimes they influence it.’

  ‘Influence it? How?’

  ‘Why, you have experienced that for yourself! Two nights back, when Damaru picked up on your nightmare. Perhaps you do not remember—?’

  ‘I remember waking up, and you said something about a broken pot.’

  ‘Aye. Damaru broke it. He was disturbed and reached out in his panic. He stirred the fire up and broke the pot that held the shining fabric.’

  ‘I still don’t understand. I saw you get up, but I didn’t see any sign of Damaru.’

  ‘No, he was in bed.’

  ‘Then how did he break the pot?’

  ‘By moving the pattern.’

  Which left Sais none the wiser. ‘And is this the ability that’s tested by the - the Cariad?’

  ‘I am not sure. I do know that if he fails before the Beloved Daughter of Heaven, he will forfeit his life. So say the Traditions.’

  Poor cow: one way or another she would lose her son. ‘The Traditions? The council talked about those. Is there a book somewhere with all this stuff in?’

  ‘A book? Now there is proof you come from the lowlands!’

  ‘So there’s no book here I can read, to help me remember?’

  ‘If you can read, Sais, then you are not a noble, but a priest!’

  ‘I don’t know if I can read,’ he said hurriedly, ‘but I do remember books. They have them in the lowlands then, do they? For priests, of course.’

  ‘I have heard that the Reeve of Plas Aethnen has a written copy of the Traditions, and his Rhethor reads directly from it to settle matters of law.’

  Presumably Reeves were rulers, and Rhethors some sort of priestly judges. ‘And where’s Plas Aethnen?’

  ‘Tis where the cattle market is at star-season.’

  ‘Is this Cariad there too?’

  ‘No, she dwells at Dinas Emrys, the City of Light. That is further on again.’

  ‘Presumably the drove’s not going that far?’

  ‘Damaru’s guardian will accompany him for the final part of the journey.’

  ‘Are you his guardian? I thought you weren’t going on the drove until I came along.’

  ‘No,’ she said curtly, ‘it must be a man.’

  Sais was pretty sure that where he came from, women had more status.

  The next day was sunny. Kerin went out to wash some clothes.

  Despite the improved weather, Damaru stayed in, sitting on the floor at the foot of his bed with his knees drawn up, his chin resting on them. Sais suspected the disruption had finally got through to him.

  He bent down until he was in his eye-line. ‘Damaru?’

  That got a grimace and a frown. He tried again. ‘Damaru, I need your help. Please.’

  Damaru twitched his shoulders and raised his head. Sais decided to carry on. ‘I’d like you to show me where you found me. Can you do that?’

  ‘No.’ Damaru sounded incredulous at being asked.

  ‘Why not, Damaru?’

  ‘Because you are here now.’

  ‘Yes I am, that’s true. But when you first found me I wasn’t, was I?’

  Damaru thought for a while, then said, ‘No.’ He put his head back on his knees.

  Sais wasn’t sure if he was agreeing with him, claiming he had no knowledge of having ever found him or just refusing to help. He tried a different approach. ‘Do you remember before, when you found me? Can you remember
that?’

  ‘Yes,’ sighed the boy. ‘I remember.’

  ‘That’s good. So what can you tell me about how you found me?’

  ‘I go out to see the pattern. You are not part of the pattern, so I stay and watch you, to see how you change the pattern.’

  ‘Can you remember where you found me? Where the pattern was . . . wrong.’

  He shook his head. ‘Not wrong. Different.’

  ‘All right, different. Do you know where that was? Could you go there, now?’

  ‘Why?’

  Good question. Sais thought for a moment, then said, ‘Because I want to find the parts of the pattern I’ve lost.’

  Damaru nodded, as though this made perfect sense, then got up and left. Sais followed.

  Damaru led him out of the village towards the valley’s head. When they passed the stream where Kerin was spreading wet clothes on bushes to dry, she called out, ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To where Damaru found me.’

  ‘The mere? Take care. Make sure you follow Damaru closely and stay away from dark green patches of floating moss or anywhere you see the white tufts of bog-cotton.’

  ‘Will Damaru be all right?’

  ‘Aye. He will know where to tread.’

  Damaru led him up the side of one of the smaller mountains. The climb left him breathless and sore-footed. Despite his efforts with the grease, his boots were soon damp, and they rubbed his heels.

  He paused at the top to gaze down at the village. The smoke seeping up through the roofs stained the clear blue sky, and the cattle looked like specks of soot on the valley floor.

  Damaru disappeared into a small copse of odd-looking trees. Sais followed him, and they came out into reeds. The path had been well-trodden, presumably by villagers up here searching for more of his cloth. On the far side of the reeds, Damaru started striding across the boggy ground with a disconcerting certainty. Sais called out for him to slow down, and he did, grudgingly. They went on like this for a while: Damaru getting ahead, then reluctantly waiting while Sais struggled to catch up. Finally the boy stopped and crouched down, one hand on the earth. Sais took this to mean that they’d reached the place. The ground looked disturbed, but any tracks had been swallowed by the bog. There was no sign of more cloth, or any other clue as to what had happened here. He stood still for some time, while the smell of rotting plants filled his nostrils and his feet slowly sank into the mud. He waited to tune into his lost memories of how he had come to be here.