Dark Heart

by Tina Daniell

  “Go away, Caramon,” she murmured sullenly.

  Poke, poke.

  Slowly she faced the obnoxious intrusion, still more than half asleep, her eyes bleary.

  Oh. Her eyes opened with mild surprise as she made out the diminutive form of, not Caramon, but Raistlin. Thin and pale, an oval face framed by wisps of light brown hair, the four-year-old was standing at the edge of the bed. He was smiling mysteriously. Smiling was out of the ordinary for Raistlin, an unusually preoccupied little boy.

  “I woke up early …” he began reedily.

  “Uh-huh.” By now Kitiara was unfortunately wide-eyed and knew she was not going to be able to steal any more sleep. She propped herself up on one elbow and regarded her odd little brother, whom she loved enough, yet would just as soon strangle breathless some days—no, most days—particularly right now.

  A glance downstairs told her that his more high-spirited brother, Caramon, was still fast asleep, lying on his back, his toes pointed in the air, snoring lightly. The twins had small beds alongside each other, but Caramon was usually sprawled at an angle over both of them. Kit knew Caramon had been up late the night before, practicing, under Gilon’s tutelage, how to whittle. He was applying his newfound expertise to creating his first wooden dagger.

  As was his wont, Raistlin had gone to bed shortly after supper, and Kitiara must have fallen asleep in front of the smoldering fire. Good, reliable Gilon would have lifted her up the ladder and into bed.

  Kitiara sighed. How early was it anyway?

  Poke, poke.

  “Will you stop that, Raist?”

  He still had that vague smile. What was he so smiley about today?

  “I was saying,” he said unnecessarily, now that he had renewed her attention, “a bird was talking to me.…”

  Kitiara lifted one eyebrow suspiciously. The story did not seem very likely—but with Raistlin, you never could be sure. The child had a peculiarity about him, a singularity. Since he didn’t talk much to other children, he might as well talk to birds. But did birds talk back to him? What birds were there anyway, this time of year, in Solace?

  “What kind of bird?” she asked in exasperation.

  “Brown bird,” replied Raistlin, shrugging as if this was unimportant information. “Wings got white tips,” he said, almost as an afterthought. “Just passing through on its way somewhere else.”

  “Well. What did the brown bird say?” persisted Kitiara, beginning to roll into a sitting position.

  “Said it was going to be an extra-special day.”

  “Oh,” she said, unimpressed. “Extra-special good, or extra-special bad?”

  “Hmm,” Raist said thoughtfully. “Probably good. He sounded happy.” His older sister began to pull on her boots. “Of course with brown birds,” he added authoritatively, “you never know. They think every day’s special. It doesn’t take much to convince them.”

  “Optimists,” Kit said drily.

  “Uh-huh,” Raist agreed.

  She stopped and gave him an appraising look. His expression was certainly ingenuous, almost angelic. Well, Raistlin was the imaginative twin.

  She yawned as she grabbed a tunic and pulled it over her head. Caramon—he was the predictable one. If he saw a brown bird, he wouldn’t try to talk to it; he’d try to catch it with a net or whack it with a stone. Listen for the rowdy mischief, there was Caramon.

  Weary to the bone after almost five years of trailing after the twins, of taking care of them and worrying about them, of teaching them as best she could—of being their mother, practically—Kitiara felt as if she could sleep for an entire month. Her body ached and her mind often felt dulled. She hated the thought of what she would feel like after five more years of such duty.

  Her mother had never really recovered from the trauma of the twins’ birth. Nothing seemed to be actually wrong with Rosamun, not physically at least, but she was more often in her bed than out of it. For five years she had eaten little and had wasted away to gauntness. Her pale blond hair had turned a ghostly white. In Rosamun’s shrunken face, her gray eyes were immense, spooky, and pegged beyond the horizon. Beyond this world.

  For a short time after the twins were born, Yarly had tended to Rosamun. But Yarly was even less skilled and less accommodating than her sister, Minna. It wasn’t long before she was counted a nuisance even in Gilon’s eyes. They still owed the two midwife sisters a pile of money, and not a week went by that Minna didn’t stop by to mention it. Good-hearted Gilon was paying the debt a little at a time.

  Yarly had been unable to do much to alleviate Rosamun’s mysterious malady, in any case. So for a long time now, the family had made do with the resources of the local healer, a fat, well-intentioned man with appalling horsebreath, name of Bigardus.

  Bigardus had known Rosamun for many years and seemed to have a genuine fondness for her. A simple—Kit would be tempted to say simple-minded—healer, he had none of Minna’s airs or “never-fail” pretensions. He admitted he did not have the slightest idea what was wrong with Rosamun, and he did not boast about cures. But he kept the Majere family stocked with various pouches and vials of exotic medicines that were arranged on a small stand next to Rosamun’s bed. They seemed to ease her recurring pains. Bigardus came periodically now, to check on Rosamun or to observe one of her spells. Kit liked him. She could almost say she looked forward to his jolly visits.

  Rosamun would drift in and out of a half-sleep for months at a stretch. At times, she seemed almost serene, watching everything so quietly with her big eyes that one almost forgot she was nearby. Sometimes she would surprise everyone by suddenly sitting up in bed and calling the twins to her to hear a story. This usually marked the start of one of those rare periods during which Rosamun appeared almost normal. She might get up to bake her special sunflower seed muffins that Caramon and Raistlin loved. Sometimes she even ventured out to go shopping, or for a walk in the woods, as long as Gilon was by her side.

  During these normal-seeming periods, Rosamun devoted most of her precious energy to the twins and Gilon. Rarely—Kitiara felt certain she could count the times on one hand—did Rosamun make any effort to spend time with her daughter. It was as if she were uncertain how to act toward this self-sufficient girl who most of the time functioned as the surrogate mother of the household. At first Kit had been hurt by what she took to be her mother’s indifference, but no longer.

  Rosamun’s interludes of normalcy would disintegrate without warning. Kitiara or Gilon or one of the boys would find her crumpled on the floor and endeavor to help her into bed. Then, for brief minutes or weeks on end, Rosamun went into one of her spells, suffering agonizing and horrifying visions that mystified everyone.

  In fact, only Bigardus called them “visions.” What they consisted of, what her mother actually envisioned, Kit could hardly guess. The spells came upon her without warning. All of a sudden Rosamun’s face would twist and contort, her arms would begin to flail. She might even leap out of bed with astonishing energy and roam about the room, knocking down furniture and breaking objects in a strange fury. The words that poured from her mouth were jumbled, without meaning. Warnings screamed at Gregor, at the twins, at Kitiara herself. Nonsense warnings.

  Once, in her befuddlement, Rosamun had seen Kitiara brandishing her wooden sword and mistaken her daughter for the girl’s father. She had bolted upright, stretched out her hands, and cried out in pathetic joy, “Gregor, you have come back to me!”

  Kitiara scoffed to herself in thinking it over. Gregor had been gone without any word for six winters.

  If Rosamun grew too agitated, they might have to tie her down to the bed. And when her mother came out of one of her spells—after hours, days or weeks—she would have no recollection of what had transpired. She would lay back on her pillow, drained of all spirit and vigor, her white hair soaked with sweat and plastered around her face. After one of these spells, Kitiara had learned from experience, her mother became even more useless and even more irrelevant t
o the daily life of the family.

  Kitiara had taught herself everything—how to cook, how to sew and mend, how to watch and instruct the boys. Aside from cooking, she may not have done these things well, but, by the gods, she did them. And Kitiara was proud of what she had done, proud of surviving, even while she despised the homemaking skills she had learned.

  Kit remembered, long ago, feeling something like love for her mother. It must have been love. What else could it have been? But nowadays she felt nothing but pity for her. Pity and growing distance.

  “A bird!” exclaimed Kitiara, startled back to the present moment. She looked again at Raistlin, who was peering at her from atop the ladder, as if trying to discern her thoughts. She reached over and cuffed him affectionately on the ear. “You were talking to a bird! That means …”

  She lunged past him and hurtled down to the ground floor. Crossing the room, Kit threw one of the shutters open. Sunshine streamed through the window.

  Spring! Sunshine, blue sky, fragrant air—and yes, birds, birds everywhere.

  “Spring!” She leaned contentedly on the narrow sill.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” said Raistlin earnestly, following her. “What do you think I was talking about?”

  She gazed out the window. The snow, there in patches only the afternoon before, was practically all gone. The ground was wet, and buds and blossoms were peeking out. There was a brightness and color all around. From a ways off, she could hear music and laughter, the augury of a celebration. Then she remembered this was the first morning of the annual Red Moon Fair.

  Eagerly, she stooped to lace up her boots and leggings. Gilon, she noted, was already gone, out chopping wood no doubt. Every morning her stepfather rose at dawn and went out to do his work accompanied by the faithful Amber. Gilon was solitary and secretive about his woodcutting, like a fisherman guarding his favorite trawling spots. Kitiara had never been asked to come with him, though she was thankful for that. Alone among the siblings, husky little Caramon had been invited to tag along once. When he came back from the day of chopping wood, he didn’t say much. “Lot of work,” he confided to Kit and Raistlin. “Boring.”

  Swiftly, Kitiara crossed the room, followed by Raistlin. She peered through the homespun drape Gilon had hung across the doorway of the small area that served as his and Rosamun’s private space. Her mother was still sleeping, Kitiara saw with an apprehensive glance. Good. Let her sleep. She motioned Raist to be quiet.

  She crept to where Caramon was still blithely snoring. Raist followed her, as he always did. Caramon didn’t even stir at their approach. That little imp could sleep through a rock slide, Kitiara thought.

  She got a good grip on his pillow and leaned over to position herself close to his ear. As Kit yanked the pillow out from under her little brother, she gave a wild shout, “Surrounded by enemies!”

  Caramon’s eyes flew open as his head thunked down on the headboard. The next instant, he sprang off the bed into a boyish fighting stance. His dazed look turned to a sheepish one when he saw Kitiara sprawled on the floor, clutching her sides and trying to muffle her laughter. As for Raistlin, a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

  “Aw,” said Caramon, “I was in the middle of a dream.”

  “Maybe you dream too much,” said Raist blandly.

  Caramon shot him an offended glance.

  “First day of spring!” announced Kitiara. “The fair is on.” She had already scrambled to her feet and was heading toward the door, Raistlin in tow.

  “What about Mother? Shouldn’t we wait for Father?” asked Caramon plaintively.

  But Kit and Raist were already out the door, and Caramon, pulling on his clothes, had to hurry if he wanted to catch up.

  By midmorning the sun was hot in the sky, and all memory of winter had been banished. For someone stuck in Solace through the cold months, not to mention those stuck there for their whole lives, this first festival of spring was the happiest time of the year. It was a day when the proverbial small-town door opened and the whole rest of the world seemed to step in and gaudily introduce itself.

  The town’s activity had moved completely from the elevated walkways between the vallenwoods to the spaces below, where the town square and smithy lay. Townspeople milled around the green, hailing friends and forming groups that set off for the Northfields on the outskirts of town where the Red Moon Fair set up. Kitiara and her two brothers scouted out the square before joining those headed for the fairgrounds.

  When the dense vallenwoods ended and the Red Moon Fair began, Kit and the boys stopped for a moment to drink it all in—the sights and sounds and strangers.

  Merchants who spent their entire lives journeying from fair to festival in Ansalon had set up tents with bright pennants. Booths offered dry goods and tapestries, glass vessels and ornaments, quills and precious spices, bulk commodities, medicinal herbs, copperware and shoes, linen and garments—anything and everything. Notaries stood ready with wax and parchment to seal contracts; groups of music-makers spun through the press of people; there were shows by stunt animals and rope dancers. Everywhere were crowds.

  It was a veritable honeycomb of humanity, and some who were decidedly not human. Among the long lines of travelers who had arrived for the occasion were many kender and some elves, dwarves who kept to themselves mostly, and even a lone, haughty minotaur, hulking and sullen, who, wherever he chose to stroll, was given a wide berth among the people.

  Caramon had stopped to gaze enviously at some metal wares. He listened to the craftsman extol the virtues of his handiwork as he hawked the items to several listeners. Safely below the man’s line of vision, Caramon reached up to finger the elaborate buckles and spurs.

  Kitiara and Raistlin waited patiently for him, some paces off. Kitiara was feeling a little hungry by now, and in vain she searched her pockets for some coins. Skeptically, she looked up at a booth with a sign that offered fried gull or hare, and a green drink that mixed chopped dittany, rue, tansy, mint, and gillyflowers. No coins. No matter. Her chin was in the air, and she was breathing in deep draughts of the smells of cooking all around.

  Her attention was drawn to a group of men in motley regalia, standing on the fringes of the grounds. A saddle fell off one of their horses, and a member of the group, a thick, muscled fellow, swatted the head of his squire. But the swat was a good-natured one, and the other men laughed boisterously as the squire hastened to set things right. The men paid no attention to the hurly-burly of the fair. They were on their way to more important adventures.

  For a moment Kit wondered if she might approach them and ask about her father, whether they had heard news of Gregor Uth Matar or actually met him on their travels. They looked like rogues who had been around. But she reacted too slowly, and they were already on their way, still yelling and laughing to one another, before she got up the nerve.

  Immersed as she was in everything that was going on around her, Kitiara at first did not hear the noises and raucous gaiety coming from the gaggle of youths directly behind her. But now she became aware of some of the comments.

  “If it isn’t little Miss Woodcutter!”

  “Kind of the motherly type!”

  “Not much in the beauty department, that’s for sure!”

  She turned slowly to observe a pack of boys and girls, her own age and older. A few of them she recognized, elbowing and jostling each other, from school days, though she hadn’t seen them in a while. With household chores and caring for the twins, Kitiara had found little time for school. In fact, she had little enough time to herself, barely enough to daydream for a few moments or practice her beloved swordplay. This last winter, she told Gilon she would not go to school any longer. Her stepfather knew better than to object when Kit told him something with her hands placed on her hips like that and her mouth set in a thin line.

  One of the boys, the beefy one with the pink face swimming in brown freckles, she knew well from past encounters—a bullying lad name
d Bronk Wister. Bronk was a born troublemaker, the son of a tanner whom Gilon sometimes bartered with. Bronk’s father always smiled gently at Kit, but the son had gotten it into his mind that he was superior to her. He liked to taunt her with slurs about Gilon and Rosamun and the twins. To get back at him, Kit called him Speckleface, for the obvious reason.

  “If it isn’t Speckleface,” she responded, placing her hands on her hips in characteristic fashion. At her side, little Raistlin watched the persecutors warily.

  “Chop any good trees today?” Bronk’s sneering laugh was harsh and dissonant, like a braying donkey.

  “Break any mirrors with your ugly face lately?” she retorted.

  The crowd of young people jeered. They were spoiling for amusement and didn’t care who the butt of the joke might be. Bronk stepped forward, a contemptuous look on his face, and pushed up his sleeves. “I’ve been meaning to teach you a lesson. What you need is a good pasting. Same as any boy.”

  Raistlin glanced nervously over his shoulder, but couldn’t spot Caramon. Instinctively he took a step back, out of the line of fire. At the same time, by impulse, Kitiara stepped in front of him, shielding her little brother.

  Kitiara’s smile was a cunning one. Whipping Speckleface in front of his dumb friends would just about make her morning perfect. Win or lose, she had no doubt that the fight would be worthwhile.

  The boys and girls cheered encouragingly as Bronk shuffled forward, his fists circling like small shields in front of his eyes. Kit planted her feet and awaited his attack.

  Suddenly Kit felt a bump from behind, and as she lost balance she was shoved aside. A new protagonist had gallantly substituted himself for her.

  “Leave my sister alone!” shouted Caramon, his not-quite-five-year-old fists threatening fancifully. Clutched in one of them was a stout branch at least as long as Caramon was tall. Her little brother barely reached Kitiara’s chest, but he had some girth—and pluck—for his age. His brown eyes, half-hidden by unruly golden brown hair that tumbled over his brow, flashed angrily.