by Sonia Lyris
Pas was trying to stand now, making a small, frustrated sound. He sat back heavily onto Amarta’s lap, frowning, staring across the lamplit room at his mother. Amarta wrapped her arms around him, burying her nose in his neck instead of looking at her sister.
As the peat in the stove smoldered and spat, sending an acrid smell into the room, Dirina pulled a dress over her pale underclothes.
“We need more fuel for the fire,” Dirina said flatly.
That was so; they did not even have enough to get through the night. By morning it would be wretchedly, bitingly cold.
“The tavern again,” Amarta said, half-question, half-accusation.
“I’ll be back soon.”
It was nearly the same conversation every night. But when Dirina came back she brought food and fuel, sometimes a few nals. Though as winter held stubbornly to the land, the nals chits became worth less and less, and the peat ran out faster and faster.
Maybe it wasn’t so bad, what her sister did at the tavern. Maybe it was one of those things that seemed worse than it was because Amarta was too young to understand. And just because Dirina’s hair was tangled when she came back, and she stank of men until morning when they could heat water to clean themselves, that didn’t mean that she didn’t like it. Did it?
Amarta didn’t really want to know.
“Why don’t they bring me questions any more, Diri?”
Dirina’s fingers were on the door handle. She paused. “I don’t know.”
Amarta didn’t quite believe that. “Because it’s so cold, maybe.”
“That must be it.”
The winter had been far colder than anyone expected. Even the king’s red-and-black clad soldiers had gone, given up their search for the missing tax collector, a short man with a husky voice who had come during harvest, taken taxes, and left, apparently failing to return to the capital with his collectings. The soldiers seemed ready to stay until they had questioned everyone in the village over and over.
Then the snow had begun to fall in earnest. When it was four feet deep, the soldiers had left. The spring, now that it was here, did not seem that much different from the winter.
“When the weather warms . . .” Dirina said, hand still paused on the door.
“Please don’t go.”
Her sister’s eyes widened in alarm. Amarta felt a sudden, sick guilt. “No,” she said quickly. “I don’t see anything. I just . . .”
Her sister’s mouth twitched into a weak, fearful smile that settled the guilt deep in Amarta’s stomach.
“Do they talk about me?”
“Who?”
“At the tavern. What do they say about me?”
“Nothing. They talk about the tax collector and how the king’s soldiers drank all the best wine. How Grandmother Malwa laughs too loud in the night and returns to the wrong house when she comes back from the toilet.”
But Amarta had seen the villagers scowl at her and had heard the whispers: “Magic, that’s what.”
The poor harvest. The wretched cold that would not break. They blamed it on her.
But it was no kind of magic, what she did. Only a way of looking at things and people.
Not magic. Magic brought destruction. Everyone knew that.
Dirina sighed, walked over, stroked Amarta’s head. “When the cold breaks, and the ice melts, people will warm to us. You’ll see, Ama.”
Amarta nodded, though she didn’t believe it.
Then Dirina left, pulling the door tight behind.
So cold. Amarta put one of the final pieces of peat into the stove.
The three of them had gone to winter festival, stood warming by the huge fire in the central square, listening to the music. While she looked around for a friendly face, Amarta recalled the saying that, in winter, no one could afford to be stingy, because who knew when you yourself might need something in the dead-cold times? But everyone kept distant from them; they had not been born here, so perhaps they did not matter.
It was hard to imagine that spring festival would be any different.
She remembered the last village, the forgiveness rite at spring festival, with the run up the cliff, flat stones in hand—as many as you needed—each one scratched or char-marked with the first letter of the name of those who had wronged you the previous year. Then, all at once, together, everyone would hurl their rocks as far as they would fly, so that they could go into the new year free of grudges and wrongs, all forgiven.
She had laughed with delight, looking around at the others, eager to see who might now be her friend again, but no one had returned a smile.
There had been no friends then. There would be none now. At this spring festival there would be no welcome, let alone forgiveness for the outsider who knew too much.
It was so very unjust—she had only answered the questions they had asked. How could they resent her for that? Surely, once they understood how little she really knew about them, they would forgive. At spring festival this year, she resolved, she would tell them everything. She imagined the moment, how she would stand up and speak up, and she would say—
The light of the fire went very bright.
There would be no spring festival this year, not for her.
A vivid image cut through her imaginings like a howl etched across the night’s deep quiet.
The hunter stood in the shadows, face wrapped against the chill, eyes dark, watching her, waiting for her to come near.
Only once before had vision come on her this way, unbidden and overwhelming, and that was the morning her parents had died.
Tangled in a blanket, nearly smothered, unable to move, she fought and struggled to cry out. A thick wad of blanket went into her mouth, tight, impossible to push away, her cries no more than muffled grunts.
Amarta launched to her feet, heart pounding, and pulled on her cloak. She bundled the sleeping Pas. He whined about being woken, then about being wrapped too much, hands pushing at the blankets. She said something, forgotten the moment it left her mouth, and he stopped, perhaps sensing the urgency of her tone. She held him tight and was out the door.
A breezy, frozen night faced her, a three-quarter moon shining half around a cloud, making the drifts of snow glow white. The air bit her face with cold, snuck under her cloak, crawling around her neck.
A small sound in the dark. An animal in the brush. A mole, or a rabbit. Surely too small to be a man, but she froze anyway.
Suddenly she was unsure. Should she go back inside and wait for Dirina? Must she rush? Even if the vision was true, this could hardly happen so soon, not with the ground frozen and deep in snow. No one would travel in this.
But the last time she had waited to act, her parents had died. She had foreseen it clearly, and still her parents had died.
She pushed herself to a fast walk, trading silence for speed with every crunching footfall.
Someone was coming. She could feel it. Every shadow seemed a threat.
When she reached the tavern, she pushed open the heavy door and stepped inside, shudderingly grateful to be out of the bitter chill.
The small room was lit with lamps and smelled warmly of people, the yeasty smell of ale, the spice of woodsmoke. Every scent told her that all was well with the world.
For a moment she simply stood there, relishing the warmth, inhaling the scent of food, listening to the reassuring sounds of conversation.
“I’m not paying more,” an old man was saying, “I’ll tell you that. Not to make up for the collector’s theft.”
“Oh, you’ll pay,” a woman near him said, slapping the back of one hand with the palm of the other, a gesture that said hard currency, not trade or favors. “Get fixed with that. If they give you a choice between pay and your fingers, you’ll find a way.”
“Shit will sprout wings and fly.”
“Brave words for a man with all his fingers.”
The man loudly exhaled. “We don’t earn more, they just take more. It’s not right.”
&nbs
p; “If the king knew . . .” said a young man.
“Maybe you should go tell him, boy,” the woman said.
“I could do. Would he listen, do you think, if I went—”
A laugh. “No. He wants your coin, boy, not your—”
The room fell silent as Amarta was finally noticed. In moments the only sound was the hissing of the central fire pit. Some who turned their heads to look at her she recognized from their shack, as those whose futures she had foreseen when the weather was better.
From their looks she could see that they remembered her, too.
“I don’t—” she began. Know anything about you, she ached to say. So many people, so many possible futures, things that might never even come to pass—how could anyone expect her to remember it all?
Or maybe they thought she was foreseeing now, as she stood here with her feet and fingers aching from the cold, Pas whimpering in her arms.
“What do you want, girl?” asked the unsmiling innkeeper, walking to stand in front of her.
“Dirina.”
“Upstairs,” he said. “Busy. Go home.”
“I need her.”
“Not now, you don’t. Go home.”
Behind her someone opened the door and stepped inside, bringing in gusts of cold air. Sudden terror made Amarta pull away from the figure, clutching Pas tighter, but it was only the village healer, an old woman, not the monster from her vision.
The woman’s lined face twisted downward. “What’s she doing here?”
“Just leaving,” the innkeeper said, a hand on Amarta’s shoulder. “Come on now, girl, people got to eat and you don’t belong.”
Then Amarta was outside in the chill again, the door shut tight behind her. Pas inhaled the frigid air, a deep, deep inhale, and then gave a shrill wail into the night.
Amarta wanted to cry, too. She rocked him instead, face near his, murmuring. He quieted, staring up at her with a petulant expression.
A mistake to come here. She would return to the shack, where, if her visions were to be believed, she would not live much longer. When Dirina came home, she would tell her what she had seen and they would figure out what to do together. Surely there would be at least that much time.
She thought of her mother.
There might not be.
Before she could reconsider, she pushed open the door again and stepped inside. Pas had stopped crying, but once inside he began again and everyone turned to glower at them both.
Amarta trembled.
“Hey, now,” the innkeeper said sharply, moving forward, his hands out. “You can’t—”
“Dirina,” Amarta pleaded.
“Can’t come in here, I said, girl. Now—”
“Dirina,” Amarta cried out defiantly, raising her voice over Pas’s howl.
“Out,” he shouted, grabbing her by the shoulders, hard enough to hurt, turning her and propelling her toward the half-open door. She leaned back against him, resisting.
“Dirina!” she yelled as loud as she could.
And then she was again out in the night, the door shut, the bolt slamming down.
Pas was wailing in earnest now. She turned away from the inn, stumbling back down the path to the shack, tears of frustration and shame blurring her vision.
If the villagers hadn’t liked her before, they would like her less now. A false hope in any case, that they might ever. But what if she had ruined Dirina’s work as well? What would they do for food and heat?
Maybe there was no changing the future for yourself. She’d foreseen her parents’ death but had not been able to prevent it. Maybe that was how it worked.
Or, she realized suddenly, she could leave by herself. Tonight. Go off into the mountain roads alone. Surely the villagers would accept Dirina and Pas if Amarta were gone.
She wondered at what would find her first. Cougars. Wolves. The cold.
The shadow hunter.
But then, if she died, perhaps she could see her mother in the Beyond. Tell her she was sorry. Maybe her mother would throw a stone for her over whatever cliffs the afterlife might have.
She wiped her nose as she walked, clutching Pas to her chest as he cried softly. So intent was she on the snow-crusted path in front of her, on swallowing her tears, that only when Dirina was right by her side did she hear her sister call her name.
Chapter Six
They took one last look around the shack.
“I’m sorry, Diri.”
With a bleak expression, Dirina shook her head as if to reject the apology. “I only wish we could take the chair and table,” she said softly. “We should have burned them for heat.” Her sister adjusted the straps that kept Pas tied to her chest, nuzzled him briefly, picked up her heavy sack, slung it over her shoulder.
At least they didn’t have much to carry.
Always leaving. Always because of her.
As they stepped outside into the frozen night, Dirina shut the door behind them. The heavy, dull sound of wood on wood echoed in Amarta’s mind, and with a light brush of foresight, she knew they would never be here again.
At least she didn’t have to worry about spring festival in this village.
Dirina was watching her, her expression a faint echo of the look the villagers sometimes gave her. Amarta felt a chill that had nothing to do with the night.
She followed Dirina past outlying houses and farms, now shut tight. Envy filled Amarta for their safe, cozy, warm houses.
As they left the village behind, snow crunching underfoot, the mountain road before them was free of footprints. No one traveled this road in winter. It was folly. She hoped her sister knew what she was doing.
But she was the one who had set them on this path.
High, thin clouds caught moonlight, casting barely enough light to show them the road as it led under tall trees and darker shadows. Pines and cedar and high maples cut black shapes against the night sky.
The thought of burning their chairs seemed so sensible now that she wondered why they hadn’t done it before. They could die out here from the cold itself, never mind the eyes in the shadows that she might have only imagined. What if this were a terrible mistake?
“We go to the river, Diri?” she asked softly.
“Did you not say we must cross the Sennant?”
“That’s what I saw,” she said apologetically.
“Then we’ll cross and go to a village a bit beyond. When the weather improves, we’ll find a way downriver.”
Somewhere new that no one had heard of them yet. Heard of her.
“Whatever is after us, maybe it only wants me.”
“No.”
“All I’m saying is that I could go to the river without you, cross and be safe, and you and Pas could go back to Botaros . . .”
“No.”
“I just think that maybe—”
“Amarta.” A sharp rebuke. “Whatever is coming, it isn’t getting you. We won’t let it.”
Amarta sobbed a little then, but quietly so that Dirina would not hear. She wiped her face with her sleeve, leaving her even colder.
The last time they had crossed the Sennant, they walked a high bridge connecting two cliffs below which the river crashed and boomed, a terror of white foam that still gave her nightmares.
“How will we cross?”
“A raft on an overhead rope with a pulley. At the end of the road. Or so I’m told,” Dirina added softly.
“I’m cold.”
“I know.”
Her mind numb, she marched behind Dirina, trying to step in her sister’s footprints. “And tired.”
“We should find a way-house between us and the river.”
A place to be out of the cold. It sounded marvelous.
As they fled yet another home. How many had they left now? Three? Four? And how many more?
Whispers mumbled behind her heavy eyes, a swirling, muddy confusion trying to answer the question she had, in foolish exhaustion, begun to ask.
Taste and te
xture in her mouth, chewy and sweet, nuts and fruit and spices she had never tasted before.
Blue eyes above a wide smile. A warm hand squeezing her own.
Possibilities only. Nothing certain. She pushed it away angrily. A glimpse here or there, a tantalizing hint of warmth when she was so cold, of food when she was so hungry. No use. No use at all.
Distracted, she misstepped, caught herself. Dirina gave her a worried glance, then turned back to trudge forward, head bowed over Pas in her arms.
Amarta chastised herself. She must focus on the uneven ground in front of her. A poor step, a twisted ankle—she was already costing them so much.
“Ama,” Dirina said after a time. “Do you think we could rest a bit?”
Amarta stopped, confused for a moment as to why her sister was asking her.
Because she was supposed to know. The one thing she could do to help them.
She let her sister’s question sit in her mind like a lump of fat in a hot skillet. Atop some bread, perhaps, with a fried apple, or even some scraps of meat.
With effort she turned her thoughts back to the question. Was the shadow hunter close? Did they have time? A crawling sensation on her skin intensified. Warning or simply that she was freezing, she could not quite tell. “A few minutes, I think,” she whispered.
So they sat, backs against a large, towering fir.
Moments later Amarta woke, heart pounding, dread propelling her to her feet and then forward along the path. Dirina silently gathered Pas and followed.
By the time the sky began at last to pale toward dawn, Amarta’s legs felt leaden, and her eyes kept trying to close as she shuffled forward. With daylight, heavy clouds gathered across the sky and snow began to fall. At first it was a light sprinkling and then fat, wet flakes, the gray-green of snow-crusted pines the only color in a world gone white.
When Dirina stopped, Amarta plowed into her, and they caught each other, Pas objecting wordlessly between them. Dirina pulled her under a bough of thick cedar that provided a bit of shelter. They sat and ate a few bites of hard bread in oil, nearly frozen. Amarta looked back at the path.