The Winter Boy

by Sally Wiener Grotta

  As he trekked back to his Allesha’s home, he replayed the day in his mind, still finding no answers. But one way or another, he was determined to find out what was going on.

  Dov spied Tayar from his bedroom window when she finally returned home in the late afternoon. Though she still carried that heavy satchel, her back was straighter than before. She wore boots, but not the ones he had given Le’a. He rushed through the greeting room, flinging open the door to the vestibule just as she was reaching up to hang her coat on a hook. “Tayar! Are you okay?”

  “Hello, Dov.” Her smile was bright, and her eyes crinkled, but for some reason, it didn’t feel right to him. Almost as though her expression was artfully pasted over, like a mask.

  Tayar brushed a lock of his hair off his brow, then embraced him with her full body pressing against his. But she stepped away too quickly, with no appearance of being touched by any of it. She bent to pick up the satchel.

  “Here, let me carry that for you,” he said as he reached for its leather strap.

  She yanked it out of his grasp. “No, it’s really not as heavy as it looks.” Shouldering the bundle, she stepped past him into the greeting room. “What smells so good?”

  “I made some soup. I had to do something. You were gone a long time.”

  “Why don’t I drop this off in my room and meet you in the kitchen? I’m famished.”

  “You should be.” Dov struggled to not sound irritable. “You’ve been gone all day.”

  “I’m sorry you were worried, but I’m home now.” Tayar stroked his arm, then walked toward her bedroom.

  How could she act as if nothing happened? What’s she hiding? Shaking his head, Dov went into the kitchen to wait for Tayar, determined that she wouldn’t sidestep him again.

  Tayar took some slow, steadying breaths and adjusted her smile before walking into the kitchen. But she couldn’t stop her heart from beating loudly in her chest.

  Dov stood at the stove, ladling vegetable soup from the pot into a bowl. On the table was a small pile of overstuffed chicken sandwiches and a fruit salad. He certainly had been busy while she was gone. She strolled up to him, leaned against his back and wrapped her arms around his waist as he filled the second bowl with the steaming soup. Giving him a bear hug, she breathed in the fragrance of the boy and kissed the back of his neck. Then she settled at the table.

  He brought the bowls over and sat down opposite her. After placing some bits of a sandwich into their offering saucer, she tasted the soup, allowing the heat to fill her, while playing the flavors and textures over her tongue. “Mmm, it’s as good as it smells.”

  Tayar could feel his eyes on her, worried and aware of her every nuance. Why did I have to teach him to read me so well? It’s going to be difficult to redirect his attention tonight.

  “What’s wrong, Tayar?” Dov asked, his voice soft with concern. “Why did you run out of the house like that?”

  “I had some things I needed to take care of.”

  “At the western mountain?”

  “What?”

  “That’s where Le’a was headed when she went looking for you. What’s over there that I’m not allowed to see?”

  “Nothing that you won’t have access to once you’re an Alleman. It’s our library.”

  “So why is it off-limits to me now?”

  “Every place in this Valley, other than our two houses, is forbidden to you right now. You’re in Season, and there are rules.”

  Dov glared at her. She could almost see the old problem boy reasserting himself.

  “Why were you so upset, Tayar?”

  She considered denying it, but realized it was too late for that. “I learned something that surprised me. It’s over now.”

  “Is it? Then why are you hiding?”

  “I’m not aware of hiding anything.”

  “But you’re not telling me anything, either.”

  “I don’t have anything to tell you, just questions I’m trying to answer.”

  “About me? And why Le’a went running to the library?”

  “Please, Dov. It’s been an exhausting day. I need to relax, take a long bath and then enjoy a pleasant evening with you. Why don’t you find something to read to me tonight while I rest?”

  Tayar watched him struggle between his need for answers and concern for her well-being. Putting down her sandwich, she placed her hand on his. “Dov, I just need some quiet time on my own and then with you. Please.”

  He met her gaze. “Of course.” Only then did he begin to eat.

  Tayar finished the soup and sandwich, and got up to leave the room. Bending down to kiss him, she said, “Thank you, Dov, for being so caring. Coming home to you was wonderful.”

  He returned the kiss gently, with no demands or expectations.

  Chapter 57

  Caith was organizing the baked goods when Kiv came to the storehouse for supplies.

  “Good afternoon, Caith,” Kiv said cordially.

  “Hello!” Caith responded in the same friendly manner. “You’ve come at the right time; Beatrice just left some of her nut pies. You must have one.” Caith took two pies from the shelf. “In fact, I was about to enjoy a piece. Please join me.”

  In her room, Caith removed a pile of books from the old leather armchair to give her guest a place to sit. Then she settled into her desk chair and cut two generous portions of the pie. She gave Kiv the larger slice, and they ate their first bites in respectful silence for the craft of the baker.

  “To what do I owe this honor, Caith?” Kiv gestured at the room, one she had seldom visited.

  Caith put her plate on the desk and folded her hands on her lap. “I’ve wanted to talk to you for some time about your comments in Council. I want to understand your ideas, to learn how you’ve come to the conclusions you have.”

  Kiv pressed her fork into the last crumbs of pie, licked the fork, then put her plate down — all the while carefully studying Caith. “You’ve been talking to Peren.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Actually, I haven’t seen her all Season. She’s buried herself in the library.”

  “Exactly. She hides away inside that mountain and thinks she knows what the real world is like.”

  “Tell me how you see it, please.” Caith reclined back into her chair, affecting a listening pose.

  “Our Allemen are being butchered. Our villages are endangered. Our Peace is at risk, falling apart because Peren and her intimates would rather close their eyes than act. We’re attacked from without and deteriorating from within.”

  “Isn’t that an exaggeration?”

  “If anything, I’m understating things. The Mwertik are out to destroy us. If our survival requires that we destroy them first, then we must do it quickly, with whatever it takes. The longer we wait, the more powerful they become, and the weaker we will be.”

  “But if there were another way,” Caith asked. “Perhaps, if one Mwertik could be turned. If we could find one of their tribe who hasn’t yet been taught to hate us.”

  “You’re talking about that foundling.”

  Caith’s heart skipped a beat, but she kept a tight grip on her emotions. “Who?” she asked, showing only her curiosity.

  “The boy Mistral and his cohorts found last summer after the Mwertik raid.”

  Caith didn’t allow herself to sigh in relief. “Oh, him,” she said. “I didn’t think he was a Mwertik.”

  “I don’t believe he is.”

  “If he were?”

  “He would be dead.”

  “A child?”

  “Don’t be so shocked. It’s nothing less than they do to our people. Age doesn’t stop them; it won’t stop me. And many more agree with me than don’t. I’ve been out there, beyond our mountains, talked with our people. They want to know why we haven’t acted.”

  “What do you tell them, Kiv?”

  “That we will. Soon.”

  “But you can’t speak for the Council.”

  “All it would ta
ke, Caith, is you distributing the weapons we’ve accumulated over the years. Open up the armory. Better yet, dig up the hidden vaults from the Before Times!”

  “Kiv, you know better than to believe in legends. We have no such ancient technologies buried under this floor, or anywhere in our Valley.”

  “When I can prove what I believe, no one will stand in my way.”

  Caith desperately needed to defuse the moment. “Kiv, I’ve looked. All these years, I’ve searched.” She shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “Then release the advanced rapid-fire guns you’ve got locked away,” Kiv commanded.

  “Too many of our villages haven’t yet reached that level of proficiency and discipline.”

  “Only because we haven’t given it to them. Don’t they have a right to defend themselves?”

  “And if I don’t release the guns?”

  “You’re old, Caith. There’s not much you can do about it.”

  “I’m not so old that I don’t care what will happen after my death.”

  “Don’t you want there to be a Valley after you’re gone? Do you want this to be the last generation to live with the prosperity and safety of our Peace? That’s what I would fight to preserve.”

  “But what if it could be preserved without violence?”

  “The only response to unreasonable violence is to counter it with greater, more effective violence.”

  “Can you entertain the possibility there may be another answer?”

  “The time will come when you’ll all see how right I am.” Kiv stood quickly, jolting the side table.

  Caith reached out toward Kiv. “Please sit. We still have so much to discuss. I need to understand.”

  “I’m tired of all the talk.” Kiv spun on her heels, reached back to grab the uncut pie, and left.

  Caith fell into her chair, breathless and terrified.

  Chapter 58

  Ever since Peren/Savah had given Jared and Mistral’s journals to Tayar/Rishana, she devoured them every spare moment. She read them when she retreated to her rooms after breakfast. She read when she used the toilet. After sex, when the boy collapsed into a deep, satisfied sleep, she returned to her bedroom and read. The more she read, the greater her compulsion to return to those pages, to hear Jared’s voice in her mind’s ear, to understand Mistral, to know the truth of her own life and that of her Winter Boy.

  When Rishana heard the tapping on her bathroom window, she was in her bedroom lost in one of Jared’s journals, taking advantage of the privacy the boy’s visits to Le’a/Dara afforded her. She walked into the bathroom and looked out, but saw no one. The morning’s snowfall had blanketed the yard once more, but now, the afternoon sun shone crystalline on the footprints that led from under her window to the barn. Wondering who had signaled her in such an unusual manner, she threw on her coat and boots and went outside.

  “Caith!” Rishana was astounded to find the spry old caretaker in her barn, sitting on a bale of hay, pushing one of the goats away repeatedly.

  “Hello, Rishana.” Caith’s wide smile wrinkled her dark crosshatched face even more. “How do I get rid of this pest?”

  “She just wants her head scratched.” Rishana sat down next to Caith and patted the ground. The goat responded by turning its attention to her. “What brought you here, Caith, in this weather?”

  “Kiv was at the storehouse today.”

  “What happened? What did she say?”

  “That’s the thing, Rishana. Much of what she said sounds quite reasonable. It’s how she says it that isn’t.”

  “Please start at the beginning.”

  “I’m not sure where the beginning is. When did her hate become so poisonous?” Caith’s eyes seemed to focus on something in the past.

  “Dara claims Kiv was always like this,” Rishana said. “Taking only easy boys and bending them to her will, instead of paring them down to their essential selves.”

  Caith shrugged. “Dara considers any Allesha who doesn’t take on problem boys to be below her standards. Still, she is right that Kiv always needed to prevail over everyone else.”

  “You said her words were reasonable. In what way?”

  “In that we do need to prepare ourselves to fight the Mwertik. It’s not as simple as Kiv would have it. Still, if we have no alternative, what else can we do? And if we fight, dare we do less than be prepared to fight effectively and decisively?”

  “What of my Winter Boy?”

  “Yes, he may yet be the key. But he’s only one person, and he’d be walking into a possible death trap to try to convince people who won’t even recognize him as anything other than an interfering stranger, an unwanted interloper. Why would they listen to him?” Caith paused, then asked, “Have you read The Northern Border? It’s one of Alleen’s stories.”

  “My Winter Boy read it to me only a little while ago.” Rishana cringed inwardly at the memory of how that one story had suddenly and unexpectedly brought on the Conflagration Stage.

  “The Mukane could not be diverted from war, not even by the son of their headman.”

  “But the seed of hope that they planted…”

  “Took generations to take hold. Too late for the child in the story and her entire family. Too late for so many who were killed.” Caith shook her head sadly.

  “So you no longer hope?”

  “There’s always hope. We have your Winter Boy. Still, we must be prepared should he fail.”

  “How?”

  “By preparing for war while striving to avoid it.”

  “But once we start down that path, won’t it be difficult to stop? Does training for war make it inevitable?”

  “That, too, we must guard against. As I said, it’s much more complex than Kiv would have. Perhaps even more than Peren, Dara and the others realize.”

  “So, you’re saying Kiv could be dangerous, but she could be right.”

  “For your First Boy, the danger is very real, whether Kiv is right or wrong.”

  Rishana stood and brushed the hay from her clothes. “I can’t say I’m pleased to hear this, but I’m grateful to you for coming and telling me. You’ve given me quite a bit to ponder.”

  Caith reached out her hand, and Rishana gently pulled her up onto her feet. “You’re welcome, child. Of course, you now know what you must do.”

  “Yes. Prepare him the best I can. And protect him.”

  “Your protection won’t reach as far as he must go.” Caith embraced Rishana, then held her at arm’s length, to study her face once more.

  “What, Caith? What do you see?”

  “You, my child. I was drinking in the sight of you.” Caith’s voice was even, as always, with a lilt, but something about it made Rishana shiver with fear.

  “Caith, is Kiv a danger to you, now that you’ve talked with her? You know the old saying about awakening a wildcat when you could have walked quietly around her.”

  “Yes, Kiv is now awake to me. That’s fine, as long as she isn’t aware of your Winter Boy, and who, or what he is.”

  “But Kiv has met him.”

  Caith pulled at Rishana’s sleeve, almost as though she were about to lose balance and grasped at the closest anchor. “Your Winter Boy? How? When?”

  “He had a temper tantrum and wandered off where he shouldn’t have been. She found him near the Communal Hall and escorted him back here.”

  “What did she say to him? Did he tell her anything important? Did she seem aware of anything out of the ordinary?”

  “I didn’t see her with him, Caith. But even if I had, how could I have judged when I knew nothing about any of this?”.

  “So, either Kiv has guessed that he might be Mwertik, and she isn’t as hellbent she implied, or she isn’t yet aware of the boy’s role in Peren’s plans.”

  “But the wildcat is awake to him, too. How much might Kiv deduce of the truth, now that she has met him? After all, Dara is my mentor and Peren my husband’s Allesha. Would it be too much of a leap of logic for her to re
cognize that he’s part of their plans?”

  “I must divert her attention from him. Give her something else to chew on.” Caith smiled mischievously. “She wants my guns, the rapid-fire ones we never let out, not even to our Allemen. Let’s see how hard she’ll fight to get them.”

  “Oh, Caith, please be careful.”

  “You know me, child. I’m always careful, as long as it doesn’t interfere with my fun.”

  Caith embraced Rishana once more, then bundled up and left the barn. Following her outside, Rishana watched as the old caretaker defiantly left the well-groomed paths to trudge through thigh-high snow, flapping her arms to keep her balance, obviously enjoying herself. Rishana had no doubt that Caith was again performing for her sake. To reassure and, yes, tease — denying the power of age to impede her. How Rishana’s heart ached for that tiny wonderful woman, the oldest Allesha and most youthful soul, dauntless, yet so fragile.

  Chapter 59

  The more the young Allesha read the journals, the more agitated she became. Not that it wasn’t wonderful to read Jared’s words and once again hear the sound of his voice in her mind. Reading his reactions and perceptions about the people they had known, remembering the shape of their days and the pattern of their life, made her feel as though she had returned home to him, to who they were together. But what an innocent she had been, thinking they’d shared everything, believing they’d been a team who never kept anything of importance from each other. Now she knew otherwise, and it hurt to recognize that a part of him had always been held back from her.

  For that, she blamed Savah.

  But Rishana/Tayar didn’t have time to focus on recriminations. Two-thirds of the Season had passed, and Dov still didn’t know the truth. Nor was he ready for it.