White Wind Rising
Page 20
‘I believe you,’ Archer said. ‘And I hope you’re always on my side.’
She shrugged, though he could see she was a tiny bit less sad now. ‘Now what do I do, though? I haven’t got anywhere to go. I haven’t got anyone.’
‘You’ll live here, obviously,’ Archer said, putting his hand on her shoulder. ‘And you’ve got us. Me and Writer and Keeper and Burp. You’ll always have us.’
‘You don’t even like me, I’m horrible,’ she said, looking down. ‘I’m horrible to all of you.’
‘You’re just angry all the time,’ Archer said to her, realising he was right as he said it. ‘I get angry myself and it makes me do things without thinking.’ He paused while that thought sunk in for a moment. It seemed important, somehow. Weaver stared at him so he kept talking. ‘You’re just angry most of the time but I’m starting to realise that it’s not so bad feeling angry. It’s only bad if you do bad things while you are. If you make bad decisions. But you only make good decisions, don’t you, Weaver. And anyway, you’ve every right to be upset after what you’ve been through.’
‘So you do like me, then?’ she said, suspiciously.
‘Of course I like you. We all do. You’re our friend,’ he said, and as he did so he knew that he meant it. He squeezed her shoulder gently. ‘And you’re the bravest person I ever met.’
She looked at him, then, and smiled. ‘Whatever you say, Archibald,’ she said and punched him in the arm.
The Storm Rises
After harvest time was over, there were the weeks of preserving the food and repairing the thatch and other jobs to get ready for winter.
Archer always meant to take a day or two to walk down the Vale to see Writer and see how her spells were going. And perhaps even tell her how he liked her and everything. He also meant to go and make sure Keeper and Burp were happy.
But he never did. There always seemed to be something else to do around the farm.
One bright, cold day in the early winter, Archer was up in the hills trying to curve arrows in flight.
He had his target set up on top of a fence and he stood so that there was a tree trunk between him and the target, the bare branches jagged above him. The target was completely out of sight behind the tree trunk. As he shot the arrows, he tried with his mind to tell the white wind to push the arrow around the tree. He had been at it, on and off, for days and he must have shot hundreds of arrows.
Every single time he had hit the tree trunk.
He could not do it. The air would not obey him. He could not repeat the act of bending an arrow in flight around an object. Perhaps it truly was as Keeper had suggested and the abilities only became real when his life was in danger – or, if not his own life, perhaps that of someone he cared about.
He would not be risking his life again, of that he was certain. There would be no more running off without thinking things through properly. No more rushing into rash decisions like running in anger to the Tower and getting himself into trouble or jumping into a dragon balloon without first securing it to the Tower.
He was staying on the farm and getting to know his brothers and sisters all over again and enjoying the good food.
First, he would bend one arrow. Just one and he would be happy forever, he was sure of it. He knew now what he had to do. It was something he had said to Weaver a few weeks back. He had said it makes me do things without thinking. Now he knew just how true that was. The anger, and the fear were not the things that made the white wind come. It was just that feeling angry and feeling afraid made him not think. It was thinking that stopped the white wind. It was a feeling in his heart and in his guts, not in his head. To make the white wind rise, he had to stop himself from thinking.
He just had not worked out how to do it.
Archer nocked another arrow. He placed it onto the bowstring and held it in place with two fingers. He drew the string back to his chest, took a deep breath and held it. Reaching out with his mind, he freed his awareness into the air above, feeling the constant breeze on his cheeks, tugging at his hair. The sound of the wind whistling in the twigs above his head.
This time, he said to himself, this time I will do it.
He felt it. In his heart and in his guts.
The air around him stopped still, as if he had stepped suddenly into the lee of a building. He felt that he had accessed that part of himself that could speak to the white wind. The nothingness, the not-thinking, the mindlessness. He had spoken without words and the white wind had answered.
Into this perfect stillness, this perfect clarity, he released his arrow.
‘Archer!’ a voice cried.
He snapped out of his trance in time to see the arrow smack into the centre of the tree and snap in half, clattering among the acorns.
‘Argh!’ he cried and tossed his bow to the ground.
Who had distracted him, he wondered, as he looked all around. There was no one else there. It had sounded almost like Writer, although she was far away down the Vale with her parents.
From where had the voice come?
Archer!
He heard his name on the wind, called from far away. He turned. Weaver was far down the sheep track, tearing up the hill towards him, waving one hand over her head. She must have been down in one of the dips out of sight calling him. Which was strange because he was sure it had sounded like Writer.
He watched Weaver from a distance racing up the track at her usual sprint. She ran faster than anyone he had ever seen. She leapt fences and walls as if they were not even there, without slowing down. There was never any reason for her to be running so fast. She simply enjoyed it.
But this was different. She never called his name. And she certainly would never do anything so expressive as waving.
Weaver had taken some time to settle in at the farm and with his family. However, the plentiful and wholesome food that she wolfed down at every opportunity had an immediate effect. Weaver started to fill out all over and her thin arms and legs grew stronger and she seemed to grow taller every day – or perhaps it was just the way she was standing. Her face was less gaunt and her eyes became less sunken. The time outdoors meant her face lost its greenish tinge and was often flushed red from the cold and from running about.
She had many fights. With Archer’s brothers, sisters, cousins, the local lads and even some of the hired farm hands.
Weaver always won. Even against the hired hands who came to help around harvest time, the ones who were sixteen years old and were as big as grown men were and had moustaches. She was fast, strong, and furious. Blows that would have staggered Archer’s father she shook off as if they were nothing.
She still got hurt. Archer would often find her with a black eye, or two black eyes, or a bloody nose or a fat lip. But, like Archer, she healed completely within a day. Now all the children and young men on the farm were afraid of her and everyone gave her a lot of respect. Respect she felt she was due.
She had spent her time working hard at threshing the harvested wheat and making and stacking the hay. She had improved the efficiency of the wool gathering, spinning, and weaving, even though she hated it and swore she would never weave another inch of cloth ever again. Archer’s mother wanted Weaver to show them how to make a loom but Weaver always said no with such fury that his mother soon gave up.
What Weaver loved the most was the winter ploughing. She had spent many days turning over perfectly straight furrows up and down all of the fields that needed ploughing. It was hard work that required physical strength, endurance and intense concentration whilst being out in the cold all day, wading through heavy clay soil. Archer had tried ploughing and he was bad at it and therefore he hated it.
Archer’s father said Weaver ploughed the straightest furrows he had ever seen, even more than the most experienced ploughman did.
Archer knew that she had felt somewhat content on the days when she returned home caked in mud and starving hungry.
She careered to a stop under his tree
. Her face was flushed and she breathed heavily.
‘Keeper’s here,’ she said, panting. ‘And Burp.’
‘That’s great,’ Archer said. They had not yet made time to go see Keeper and Burp or Writer, much as he thought of them. ‘I’m so happy they have come to visit. We can take them up to—’
‘Shut up, you idiot.’ Weaver was shaking her head, breathing deeply. ‘It’s not good,’ she said, her words coming tumbling out like a landslide. ‘He says Writer has been arrested for being a witch by a man called the Witchfinder General. He’s come into the Vale with all these men calling themselves soldiers. You know soldiers, Archer? Just like Pym was. This Witchfinder is calling her an alchemist’s familiar and a witch and saying she’s as bad as alchemists are only worse because she’s a girl.’
Archer felt the white wind rising.
Weaver went on. ‘And the soldiers are going from house to house all up the Vale searching everything and everywhere. Asking about a dragon. That’s why those old blacksmiths sent Keeper here. To hide with us. Keeper don’t know what to do. He’s terrified the men are going to get Burp and he needs our help. We’re going to help him, aren’t we?’
‘What about Writer?’ Archer said, with a chill blowing through his heart. ‘What does arrested mean?’
‘It means that they’ve taken her to Morningtree to stand trial. Keeper says if she’s found guilty of being a witch they’re going to kill her,’ Weaver said, her green eyes glowing.
Archer nodded, picked up his bow and his new arrows and started down the hill. Weaver followed behind him.
‘So what’s the plan, Archer?’ Weaver said, as she came up to walk in step beside him.
A great gale blew up out of the Moon Forest and blasted a torrent of cold wind over them down into the Vale.
Archer turned to Weaver. He felt his eyes burning with white light.
‘We’re going to save her.’
The Gunpowder and Alchemy story continues in DARK WATER BREAKING
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