by Ila Mercer
The viciousness of his words were like a hard slap in the face. He had never spoken to her like this before. Oh, there were times when he had lost his temper and snapped but he had never made such horrid threats before. He could not have hurt her more if he had struck her. ‘You are truly wicked,’ Katarin said, gripping the arms of her chair. ‘And I will not marry you, Worrel. You have my word on that.’
‘We’ll see,’ he replied, and then stormed out of the room, slamming the door as he left.
She remained in the library long after he left, staring into the flames of the fire until they were little more than glowing embers.
Should she return home, she wondered? Her papa would be displeased with her, but she would beg him to find another suitor. She couldn’t marry Worrel now, for she realised he would never be able to love her, and she could never love him.
But what would happen to Ari? Who would help him? Lars, though he was kindly enough, could not be counted on, and there was no-one else who valued Ari as anything more than a curiosity.
Oh, she didn’t know what she would do. Tears slid down her cheeks, and she was pleased that there was nobody there to witness them.
A moment later she heard a gentle tap at the door.
‘Yes?’ Katarin answered, wiping her tears away with her sleeve.
‘Katarin?’ It was Mika, closely followed by a messenger. He wore the colours of her father’s house: a grey tunic over red trousers. A troubled expression clouded his features.
‘Sia Katarin?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said standing to meet him.
‘I come with bad tidings.’
Katarin’s hands began to tremble, and her legs turned to jelly. ‘I have to sit down again.’
When she was seated, the messenger cleared his throat. He could not look Katarin in the eye. Instead, he addressed Mika. ‘It’s about Senna Forgo, Sia Katarin’s father.
I am sorry to say, he is dead.’
The Peahen’s Tale
That evening, as she and Madea were readying themselves for bed, Lita suggested that they draw heavy drapes across their window. It had been Madea’s advice that gave her the idea. She reasoned that if she stopped the Change from occurring there would be no reason for anyone to suspect her difference.
The Change had been the source of all her strife. It had caused her separation from MaKiki. Had – perhaps – driven her away and was likely to drive more folk away if Lita did not tamp it down. But most unsettling was the thought that Beast blood pulsed through her body. Shutting herself away seemed to be a good remedy. And, once the nights stacked up into a calendar of normality, she might say she had rid herself of it entirely.
Madea had been puzzled at first. She could not see that it would work but Lita had been so insistent that Madea shrugged her shoulders and told Lita she could do as she wished. This was not enough for Lita though, and in the end, she made Madea promise that she too would resist the urge to Change.
After that, whenever the moon rose above the hills, Lita bolted their door from the inside. Neither she nor Madea mentioned the terrible temptation that felt like an itch. They both knew. Sometimes it took all of Lita’s self-will not to step out onto the balcony to bring on the Change. But each time she resisted, it filled her with a small sense of achievement.
*
One evening, when she went for her reading, Senna Yaron’s chamber seemed darker than usual but Lita made no comment as she settled beside the unlit hearth. Once she had adjusted to the dark, she saw that Yaron’s eyes were mere slits under the shelter of his hands, his skin pale as bleached bones. ‘Are you feeling ill, Senna Yaron?’ she asked. ‘Would you prefer for me to go?’ And she sat up from her chair.
‘No. No,’ he said, motioning her to sit down again. ‘I like your company, except you’ll strain your eyes if you try to read in this light. I can barely open mine. Even this tiny wick of light sends a shooting pain to the back of my head.’
‘Is there nothing you can do?’
He shook his head. ‘I took a tonic, and still my head throbs.’ His brow was so deeply furrowed it looked like corrugations on a track.
She wondered what she could do to distract him from his discomfort. ‘What if I tell you a tale I once heard?’ she said, remembering a story told by some troubadours that she and MaKiki had once met. But as soon as she said it, she regretted the impulse. The tale, she realised, was too close to her own truth and she wondered if the troubadours had sensed what she would one day become.
‘Yes, that would be good,’ Yaron said as he settled into his armchair and closed his eyes. His head tilted against the backrest and his hands fell together in his lap.
‘It’s an old tale from across the seas,’ she began. For a moment, she considered telling him a different tale but now a strange feeling had been roused in her. The danger of telling him, of exposing something of herself through a tale made her palms sweat, made her heart beat fast and sent a thrilling though unsettling shiver through her body. She cleared her throat.
‘Long, long ago, on the edge of a forest, there once lived a poor and lonely woodcutter.’
Yaron smiled.
‘All day he toiled,’ Lita said, ‘searching for sticks to bundle and fallen trees to cut. Then, just as he was just about to head home, he heard a cry from somewhere nearby. Thinking it was a lost child he raced towards the sound only to find that it was a peahen caught in a trap. He was astonished by the vigor with which she squawked and thrashed against the metal teeth of the trap.
‘At first, the woodcutter praised his fortune and thought about how he would sell the peahen for a good sum at the markets the next day. With the coins he would earn from the sale, he could buy several bags of flour and beans. His axe was sharp because he hadn’t used it much that day, and it would take only one swift motion to end the peahen’s life. But as he stood there, sliding his hand up the smooth handle of his axe, the peahen’s cry softened his heart and he found he could not carry out the deed. And so, bent on one knee, he gently prised open the jaws of the trap. The peahen fluttered for a moment and then spread her wings and flew off into the darkness.’ Lita glanced at Senna Yaron. His eyes were still closed but the furrows of pain had disappeared.
She continued. ‘After that, he went home. At first, he felt proud of himself for freeing the peahen, but then as his hunger grew, he regretted what he’d done.
‘When he woke the next morning, his windows rattled, the wind howled through the gap under his door and clumps of snow fell through small holes in his thatch. It put him into a terrible mood. There would be no market that day. And possibly the next too.
‘And so, he used the small amount of firewood he had collected to warm his cottage. All morning he gloomed, and then, around mid afternoon someone knocked at the door. Who could that be, in such weather? he wondered. Upon opening the door, he discovereda beautiful young maiden on the threshold. She shivered in her shabby yet finely woven garments. ‘Please,’ she said with chattery teeth, ‘may I come in? I lost my way in the storm, but then saw smoke rising from your chimney.’
‘The woodcutter brought her in. He sat her close to the fire and gave her some hot tea. After a while, when she was quite warm again, her eyelids began to droop, and she tried to hide a yawn with her hand. The woodcutter, being a kind man, made up a bed for the maiden in the back room. It was a room he rarely entered because it was where he kept his wife’s old loom. Before she died, it had made them a modest income. Though he knew he should sell the old thing, or tear it up for firewood, he had never been able to do it.
‘The following morning when he woke, a glorious smell filled the cottage. He stumbled from his bed, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and was dumbstruck to see that the maiden had fixed a hearty breakfast for them both.
‘‘Where’d you find all this food?’ he asked.
‘She lowered her eyes and bowed her head. ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I scraped the sides of the flour bin and used the last lump
of lard.’
‘He was about to give her a proper telling off when she said, ‘I know you are poor, and I want to repay your kindness. So I wove some cloth for you to sell at the market today.’ The maiden brought out the cloth and showed it to the woodcutter. He ran his fingers over the surface. It was so lovely and delicate; he knew it would fetch a very high price.
‘From that day on, the maiden wove many cloths and the woodcutter no longer had to worry about hunger. Still, she had one condition. She made the woodcutter promise that he would never look in on her while she worked at the loom. The woodcutter agreed, though he thought it was a strange thing to ask. Days and weeks went by. The woodcutter grew to love the maiden, and after a while they married. In time he grew wealthy and fat. But,’ and Lita paused for a moment. ‘Do you think he could let things be?’
Yaron smiled and shook his head.
‘No. Because he itched to know what his wife did each night behind her closed door. He thought about it day and night and finally, it occurred to him that he never saw any thread enter the house. How, he wondered, did she make her cloth? The more he thought about it, the more it bothered at him. The following night, as she worked, he put his ear to the door. All he could hear was the clackety clack of the loom, and so, with a sigh, he went and sat by the fire again.
‘The next day when he sold her cloth at the markets, he overheard the fishmonger’s daughter say, ‘That woodcutter’s wife has an unnatural talent. I think she must have made a pact with the devil.’ The woodcutter returned home with a heart as heavy as the moneybag at his waist. That night, he decided that he would spy on his wife to learn her secret.
‘He waited until the embers died in the hearth and once again rested his ear at the door. Clackety clack went the loom. As he stood there, his heart told him to honour his promise, but then he remembered the words of the fishmonger’s daughter. He turned the handle and opened the door just wide enough to peer on his wife. There at the loom, bent over the warp and weft, was an elegant peahen. She held several freshly plucked tail feathers in her beak, weaving them into the cloth one by one.
‘The peahen stopped her work, startled by the creaking of the door. Turning, she fixed her eyes on the woodcutter and he shut the door at once, but it was too late because in the next moment his wife came from the room carrying the half-finished cloth.
‘‘I was the peahen you rescued from the trap,’ she said as she placed the cloth in his hands, ‘and wanted to repay your kindness, but now that you know my true nature, I cannot stay.’ She kissed her husband on the cheek and a tear welled in her eye. Then, once she crossed the threshold of their cottage, she changed into the peahen. She stretched her silver wings and flew away into the darkness never to be seen again.
‘After that, on cold and stormy evenings, if you happened to peer through the woodcutter’s window, you would see him sitting in the glow of a small fire with his whittling knife. And if you looked to the mantle above the fire you would see a row of small wooden figures carved in the likeness of a peahen.’
Lita settled back into her chair and said nothing.
‘What a strange but lovely tale,’ Yaron said, as he rose from the chair. ‘And you have cured me of my headache.’ He strode to the window and drew back the heavy curtain. He unlatched the window and tugged the frame until it gave way with a whine. A cool evening breeze flowed into the room. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘your story makes me think of the Beasts.’
Lita stopped breathing, and her scalp prickled. ‘Why?’ she asked.
‘We fear the things we don’t understand, don’t we? That’s what the tale is really about.’
‘I always thought it was about trust and keeping secrets. If the woodcutter had only minded his business….’
‘Is that really in our nature?’ Yaron asked. ‘Sooner or later he would have looked.’
‘Maybe.’ She shrugged, not wanting to commit any thoughts in the direction of Beasts.
‘Do you know what I think?’
Lita shook her head.
‘I think the fishmonger’s daughter planted a seed of doubt in the woodcutter’s mind. She thought his new wife drew on dark powers to make her cloth and the woodcutter started thinking that way too. That’s why he had to look.’ He turned back to face the meadow. ‘It’s the same with the Beasts. We use them, but we fear them. That’s why we hide them down mines, or carding pits, and pretend they are savage things that must be contained or else they will ravage our folk or steal our children.’ He sighed and turned back to face her. ‘Sorry Lita, I’m ranting now, and you did not come here for that.’
‘I don’t mind. I like hearing your thoughts.’
Yaron turned back to face her and smiled. ‘You’re being kind.’
At that moment, a night jay whistled beneath Yaron’s sill. ‘Quick Lita,’ he said, ‘I have a bottle of seeds in my top draw. Can you get them for me?’
She obliged and brought it to him whereupon he scattered a thin line of seeds along the outer edge of his sill. Together, they watched as the small bird hopped to the sill and pecked at the seeds, eyeing them with wariness. Eventually it flitted away, but the two of them continued to gaze through the frame. It was a beautiful view and Lita realised that it was the only window in the Keep that overlooked the meadow. All the other windows gazed inward, onto the daily life of the Keep. The moon was yet to rise and the sky was tinted mauve with the sun’s lingering afterglow. Softly detailed against the fading backlight, a lone tree stood on a bare hill, its branches, like the fine filigree of delicate ironwork. Below it, the meadow stirred. The wind serpents were at work again, Lita thought. And then her eye lowered, noticing tall thistles growing from the edge of the moat. The flower heads nodded and bowed in the evening breeze reminding her of old men.
As if Yaron read her thoughts, he said, ‘Have you ever noticed that things seem different at night?’
She nodded.
‘Under sunlight,’ he said, ‘you might look out and see leaves, bark, branches and trunks. Your eyes know they are looking at a stand of trees. But at dusk, when you look out of the same window all you see is a wall of shadows under the hills. So, is it a stand of trees or is it a wall of shadows?’
‘It’s both,’ Lita said. And she felt a stirring of excitement because it seemed that he saw what she did: that there were layers and layers and layers, and you could never be sure that you had seen all the way to the core of a thing.
Yaron smiled and then reached into his pocket. ‘I want to give you something,’ he said, drawing out her locket on its chain. ‘I believe it’s yours. The Jims found it.’
‘How did you know?’ she asked, as he held it out to her.
‘It was in the bottom of the pit where they first found you.’ He smiled. ‘There is more to you than meets the eye, Lita. That locket of yours is no tinker’s trinket.’ He undid the clasp. ‘May I?’
Lita lifted the hair at her nape. His fingers gently brushed against her skin as he fumbled to relatch the chain. She could not breathe, and she dared not look into his eyes. What would he do if he suspected her secret, she wondered.
‘Your MaKiki was not a common trader, was she? I mean, she traded books and she could read, and was well educated too is my guess, going by the way you speak and your own mastery of the book.’
‘She was different,’ Lita agreed, feeling only the slightest relief that his curiosity was directed towards MaKiki.
‘What was she before she was a tinker?’
‘She wouldn’t say,’ Lita replied. ‘Only that she lived amongst murderers and thieves.’
‘Then they must have been high class thieves,’ Yaron said.
Lita shrugged her shoulders and stared at the floorboards; her nervous eyes followed the crack in a board all the way to the door.
‘I’m sorry Lita, I don’t mean to pry. It’s just that your life was so different to my own. I bet you’ve seen things I could never imagine.’
He was silent for a moment and it took all h
er will to lift her eyes. When they met his, she saw that he was not trying to trick her into sudden admissions. His eyes were warm and accepting. Lita could not prize her tongue from the roof of her mouth, could not tell him the full truth of her past, even though it seemed he had sympathy for the Beasts. MaKiki’s lessons of fear were too well embedded.
Night Mare
A weary restlessness stole over Yaron. He longed for the feel of the wind in his hair, the call of the nightbirds as they swept the fields and a sky filled with the light of the moon. The season was changing, and his night rides would soon need to cease. Earlier that day, as he stood on the parapet, he’d noted that the almond trees now lay as bare and wrinkled as old men’s arms. In the low-lying vales, the grass had been grizzled by frost and the air almost carried the brittle snap of ice crystals.
The Keep was quiet, for most folk had retired to their quarters. Madea had played to him some hours before, and Lita was too busy with mending to read to him that evening. His back ached from bending over his books. Besides, he was tired of words. Words, words, words. They were at best only a shadow of the world and its magnificence. And still he had no acknowledgement from Captain Wright. He wondered whether his book had even reached the man and yet, in a way, Yaron’s feeling of urgency had lessened. The Downs was far from the ports and the mines. It was easy to forget about the Beasts for entire days.
He peeled back the edge of the curtain, lifted the latch on the window and braced himself as cold air slapped his face. On the horizon the moon hung swollen and round.
He gathered his riding crop and his cape and stole down to the stable, thinking he would saddle up and ride as far as the ridges. His uncle would be home tomorrow, and Yaron dreaded to hear what news he might bring. He did not want to marry, but his uncle had been right about the Keep’s predicament. The ledgers, which Yaron had poured over since his uncle departed, showed a steady decline in their seed stores over the past ten years. With the drought last year, followed by a summer so wet it caused the grain to rot before it could be harvested, they had lost much of their reserve. If things did not turn around in the next season or two, it was possible their folk would need to forage for all their food.