by Sarah Zettel
Ingrid suddenly found it very hard to breathe.
“It was not a feeling to which he could give voice, nor even allow himself to think much about. So he buried it deeply, and things went on as they had always been.
“Then, the emperor and empress negotiated a marriage treaty for their daughter with the prince of a southern empire with which they sought alliance. Medeoan was distraught, but only because it was another thread binding her to the truth she disliked so. She had long known her marriage would be arranged to benefit Isavalta.
“The prince, Kacha, was brought to Isavalta so that he might learn its languages and customs before they married. He was handsome enough and he set himself to wooing his bride-to-be with great care and attention. They were both scions of powerful houses, both caught up in the political necessities of their realms. As such, they had much in common.
“At first, Avanasy was pleased to see friendship, and then love growing between them. He was sad at the loss of his special relationship with Medeoan, but he cheered himself with the thought that the one she must marry truly loved her.
“Then, he found, or thought he found, evidence that the prince was a spy, and a traitor. Kacha was being used by his father to conquer sovereign Isavalta, and possibly lead it into war. But when he tried to present his evidence to Medeoan, he found himself contradicted by the words and actions of the prince himself. Medeoan grew so angry with him for making accusations which in the end he could not prove, she ordered him banished from the boundaries of Isavalta.”
Avan grew quiet then, remembering. Ingrid didn’t know what to say. She herself could scarcely remember how to breathe. She had thought the ghost the end of the strangeness in her life, now she found it was only the beginning.
“Was he, Prince Kacha, betraying the princess?”
Avan tilted his head back so he could stare at the branches and the sky overhead. “I don’t know.”
“And the sorcerer, this Avanasy, what did he do?”
“Cursed himself for a fool,” said Avan flatly. “And realized that he was further gone with his impossible sentiment than he had realized. Had he been thinking clearly, he would have gone straight to the emperor with what he knew, and the emperor could have ordered the prince watched over by all the court sorcerers. But he did not do this.” A single muscle twitched in Avan’s cheek. “Instead he tried to prove himself the better man to the princess, and so brought about his own ruin.”
Ingrid opened her mouth, and closed it again. What on earth could she have possibly said?
“When Avanasy was certain he could not convince Medeoan to reverse the order of banishment, when he saw her finally married to Prince Kacha, he left,” Avan went on. “Left Isavalta, and ultimately, left the world of his birth, because he could not stand to watch what he feared might be coming, and because he could not bear to face his foolishness and disgrace. He became a fisherman on an island in the middle of a lake a world away from anything that he knew.” Avan lifted his gaze, and for the first time since he had begun his incredible story, he looked directly at Ingrid. “He never thought to speak of any of these matters again to another living soul, but he fell in love, this time with a gracious woman whom he could court with honesty and a fully open heart, and he wished the lady to know the truth before he declared as much.”
Suddenly, Ingrid found she could not sit still. She rose to her feet and retreated a few steps. She might have run farther if she had not felt a tree right at her back. It was too much for her to take in, and yet she did not know which overwhelmed her more, Avan’s story, or his confession that he did love her.
Then, she saw how he watched her, and how his face fell at her expression of bewilderment. Ingrid shook herself. She owed him better than this. She straightened her spine.
“Thank you for telling me,” she said. “Thank you for trusting me.”
“You believe me, then?”
She nodded. “Without the ghost and all that happened then, I might not. But having seen what I have, I cannot choose but to believe.”
“There are not many who would do so.” Avan stood. “And the rest?”
And the rest? Ingrid looked at him. She remembered how she first saw him clearly in the firelight. She remembered how generously he had helped her and Grace. She remembered all the bright weeks of his patience, his humor, and his company. She felt again the ache and the anticipation that she knew lying alone in the darkness. And the rest?
“I think I loved you the moment I first saw you beside the fire. I just was not free to say so until now.”
Ingrid felt that with those words the whole world must change. Perhaps it did. Avan stood where he was, as if paralyzed by the sound of her voice. Then he took a step forward, one step, two steps, three steps until he stood right in front of her. He reached out one of his long, graceful hands and brushed it gently over her hair. Now it was Ingrid who found herself paralyzed. She felt as if she would never move again, unless he said that she should.
“I want to marry you, Ingrid,” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion. “I want to build a house, a proper house, and bring you to it. I want to work with you and for you to build a good life. I want to sit beside the fire with you and sing and tell stories. I want to lie down beside you at night and wake up beside you in the morning. No,” he said as she opened her mouth and he held his fingertips just before her lips, not quite touching. “There are two more things you need to know before you answer me.
“You know that I am a sorcerer. In the world into which I was born, magic is not merely a skill one can learn. It is tied to one’s nature. There is a great deal of argument as to why that should be so, and what it means. What is known is that there are two consequences that come with the gift. The first is that the getting of children is very difficult for a sorcerer. The second is that we live very long lives, sometimes four or five times the length of other men. I do not know if these things remain true on this shore of the Land of Death and Spirit, but you deserve to know of them.” He stood back from her. “If you need some time, or if you wish to turn away, I understand.”
Ingrid stayed where she was, trying to think. Life, life could end tomorrow or go on for a hundred years for either of them. There were a thousand accidents that could put an end to a person, and she had seen many of them one time or another in her life. Happiness in life was a matter of chance. The children … not to have children would be hard. Then again, that also was a matter of chance. There were women who brought four, five, six babies into the world and lost them all one by one. There were women who died trying to give birth to even one. It was all in God’s hands, as was everything else. Had anything Avan told her really changed that?
But if Avan had told to the truth, she should repay him in kind.
Ingrid drew in a breath heavy with the scent of pine resin and all the heat of summer. “My father also came from a long ways off,” she said. “From a place called Bavaria, as you may have heard. He traveled to Chicago and ended up working in the slaughterhouses. There, he met my mother, who was very beautiful, very young, and the daughter of a good family. They didn’t approve of him. He was very poor, he was German, they were Irish.” She hung her head. “That much I know for certain. The rest of this is only guesswork, letters, and gossip.
“My mother got in the family way without having married my father. Believing love would see them through, they ran away from her parent’s anger and came up here to Bayfield, where no one knew them, and where no one was counting the days until she gave birth. I believe they worked hard at their lives, but something failed in the end. Maybe it happened when they began to have daughters, and they were afraid that those daughters might make the same mistakes that they had.” She shook her head. “What I am trying to say is that I have no family who will speak to me, except for the ones you’ve met. I have no breeding or fortune, and I am in all likelihood a bastard.” She squared her shoulders and met his gaze. Let him see her, let him look long and hard at her — rumpled, be
rry-stained, her hands coarsened by hard work, her clothes much mended, and her skin brown from the sun. “Can a man who has loved a princess settle for what he sees in front of him?”
But Avan only shook his head. “If I were to marry you, I would not be settling,” he said, and his voice was as grave, as honest as it had been during the entire course of his narrative. “I would be reaching so high that I might grasp the stars themselves. I have seen your bravery, your honesty, your love, your joy. It is nothing but the purest selfishness that makes me wish to bind all that you are to my side.”
Ingrid found she had no words. She could only cross the distance between them, stand on her toes and kiss him. He stiffened at her touch, startled, but in the next moment wrapped his strong arms around her, answering her kiss, her love, with his own.
When at last they pulled away from each other, Avan looked her up and down as if he had never seen so wonderful and precious a thing before. “I don’t know what the customs are here,” he said shyly, softly touching her hair, her cheek, her shoulder. “I don’t know what is expected of me now. Should I make some gift …?”
“You will have to speak to my father. He should give his consent.”
“And if he withholds it?”
Ingrid shrugged a little. “I am of age, I’m free to marry who I wish. But, it will be easier on us both if he consents.” She smiled. “As for a gift, it is traditional that you give me a ring.”
He nodded with extreme seriousness. “A ring. I will remember that.” He raised her right hand to his lips and kissed it gently. “And I shall come to the house to speak with your father tonight. Now,” he added reluctantly, straightening up, “I think I had best return you to your sister.”
“Yes.” Then, she paused, an odd thought striking her. “I don’t … I … what should I call you?”
He appeared to consider her question gravely, but she saw the merry light in his blue eyes. “In front of others, I think perhaps you should call me Avan, as that’s how they know me. When we are alone, you may call me Avanasy, if you choose.”
“I’d like that. You’ll have to teach me to pronounce the rest later.”
“Gladly. Come now.” He shouldered his scythe easily. “Your berries are spoiling in the sun, and your little sister is beginning to despair of your reputation.”
“Ha!” laughed Ingrid sharply. “Despair is not what Grace is beginning to do, I’ll wager you.”
But he was right otherwise, and Ingrid let him begin to walk her back. They made their way through the scrub and thickets silently, side by side, content for the moment just to be together. There would be time enough for everything else later.
When Grace saw them, she just grinned impishly and raised her brows. Ingrid made a show of cuffing her sister across the head, but Avan, Avanasy, did not even smile. He just gave them both a strange, formal bow, with one leg extended and both hands crossed over his breast. Then, he reclaimed his scythe and strolled easily away into the woods.
Ingrid stared after him, unable to take her eyes off the smooth motion of his body.
“Has something happened, Ingrid?” inquired Grace mildly.
“Not something,” answered Ingrid. “Everything.”
“Ingrid!” Grace shrieked, and leapt forward, hugging Ingrid so hard they both toppled over into the underbrush, barely missing the baskets of blackberries.
“Get off me, you idiot!” cried Ingrid, shoving her sister backward and making a great show of reordering her clothes and hair. “A little dignity would only improve your character, miss.”
Grace just laughed at her and plucked a leaf from her hair. “I knew he would ask you. I knew it. When’s it to be?”
“Would you keep your voice down!” snapped Ingrid, looking around. But little Thad and their sisters seemed to be out of earshot, and none of the neighbors had moved in. “No one knows yet. He’s got to talk to Papa. He’ll come by tonight.”
“Perfect,” declared Grace. For the look of the thing she began to pluck berries from the nearest bush, tossing them down into the basket without concern for whether they were crushed or not. “You can be married in the fall, and then we can all move to Bayfield for the winter and …”
“ ‘We?’ ” Now it was Ingrid’s turn to arch her brows.
“Of course,” said Grace blithely, popping a couple of berries into her mouth. “You can’t set up housekeeping all on your own, you know. You’re going to need my help.”
Ingrid turned her attention to the blackberry canes, carefully moving aside thorny green branches to hide her surprise, and her irritation. “Mama is going to need help as well, you know.”
“And I know you won’t leave me in that house,” said Grace with the blithe assurance that was so much a part of her. “With Papa and Leo breathing down my neck all the time, and no Ingrid to stand up for me? It’s unthinkable.”
Ingrid pulled a last few warm, sticky berries from the bush she worked and dropped them into the basket. The warm delight that had come to her when she accepted Avan’s proposal had fled, replaced by an unfamiliar frustration with her younger sister. Did Grace only see Ingrid’s happiness in terms of how it would help her?
“We’ll talk about this later,” said Ingrid, hefting her basket so she could move further into the thicket.
“Oh, Ingrid …” began Grace, but she did not finish her sentence, for at that moment, a man’s horrible scream cut through the forest.
At once, Ingrid dropped her basket and hiked up her skirts to run for the trail and the direction from which the sound had come.
“Thad!” she shouted as she sprinted past her little brother. “Get the girls home! Now!”
“Yes, Ingrid!” he called behind her, but she did not look to see that he obeyed. Ahead in the woods, the man cried out again and sobbed in his pain.
On the edge of the true woods, a cluster of people had gathered, their backs bent, their voices raised into an incomprehensible gabble. As Ingrid came crashing forward to join the crowd, crabbed Vale Anderson turned and saw her, and pulled his wife aside, opening a small lane for Ingrid. Others turned and saw her, and they also drew away.
Her heart in her mouth, and her blood suddenly singing in her ears, Ingrid moved forward through the crowd of faces that she had known since birth but suddenly could not see.
In front of her, Leo lay on the ground, his face gone ashen and knotted and straining in pain. Papa squatted by Leo’s outstretched leg, his hands red with blood. A scythe lay on the ground nearby. More blood stained its blade.
Ingrid took in all this in a single heartbeat. In the next, she was on her knees by Leo, cradling his head in her apron and putting a stick between his teeth for him to bite down on. Papa had a knife out and was cutting through Leo’s boot and trousers. Each movement brought a fresh cry of pain from her brother’s throat.
“What on earth …” Grace’s voice, then Grace herself pushed through the crowd. Ingrid looked up at her mutely, and then followed her gaze down to their brother’s injured leg.
It was bad. The gash was just above his ankle, and went clear to the gray-white bone. Blood poured out like it could never be stopped.
“Mary Mother of God!” cried Grace, and she went whiter even than Leo. She stuffed her fist in her mouth to stifle what might have been a scream or a sob, and, to Ingrid’s shock, turned and fled.
Leo groaned again and his head pressed hard against her apron. Ingrid grabbed his shoulders to hold him steady. Papa did not look up. He used the cloth cut from the trousers to tie off Leo’s leg below the knee. The red flood slowed a little and Leo moaned against the biting stick.
Ingrid glanced around at her anxious neighbors, but the only face she could see clearly now was Avan’s. She looked at him, a silent plea in her eyes. He understood at once, but only shook his head. There was nothing he could do.
No. There was something. “Avan!” she cried. “Get to Bayfield. Fetch the doctor!”
“At once,” said Avan, and he vanished fro
m her sight.
Papa glanced at her sharply, but did not contradict, or even glower. “I need a hand here,” was all he said. “We need to get him home.”
Four men surged forward to help lift her brother between them. One of them was Everett Lederle. Of course it was. In her shock and confusion, Ingrid found time to think, Oh, Everett, I am sorry …
The men tried to be gentle, but they had to hurry and they all knew it. The bleeding had slowed, but it had to be stopped, and soon. Each jolt of their footsteps ripped a fresh cry from Leo. Ingrid was selfishly glad to be able to run ahead fast enough that she outpaced the sound of her brother’s screams, up the track to their house.
She half-expected Grace to have preceded her, but Mama was alone in the kitchen wielding a huge ladle and presiding over the steaming kettles on the stove when Ingrid burst in.
“Jesus and Mary, what’s happened?” she cried as she saw Ingrid.
Ingrid, gasping for breath and pressing the heel of her hand against her side, told Mama. Mama shrieked and threw up her hands. The ladle fell to the floor with a clang and a clatter. Mama just ran from the room to throw open the front door.
“Ingrid! Get a basin of hot water, and we’ll need all the clean sheets!”
“Yes, Mama!”
Ingrid moved as swiftly as she was able through the clouds of blackberry steam, but she suddenly felt unbelievably clumsy. Her hands shook as she poured boiling water from one of the iron kettles into an ancient and chipped shaving basin. Thad appeared in the kitchen, peering around the door.
“Take this up to Mama,” said Ingrid, shoving the basin into her little brother’s hands. Where’s Grace? she wondered desperately at the same time. Her two littlest sisters peeked around the door. “Girls, you stay in the yard, understand me?”
They vanished. Thad trotted out into the hallway, splashing little puddles of water as he moved. Ingrid ignored that. Instead, she hurried into the front room and threw open the cedar chest, one of the family’s truly fine possessions. She scooped out an armful of fragrant, snow-white sheets, just as the men bearing Leo between them poured through the door.