Sign of the Dove

by Susan Fletcher

  Lyf closed her eyes and sank down again into the cool darkness, away from the voices.

  That smell again! Familiar, somehow. And something else, something niggling at the edges of her mind. Something poking at her sides.

  She opened her eyes and saw them, the draclings, thronging about her. They shoved their noses against her, snorted out smoke.

  Lyf tried to sit up, but the movement sent a stab of pain through her head, made it feel heavy and wobbly and dizzy. She lay back down, and now Owyn was there with the drac-lings above her, blotting out some of the stars. He was saying something. “Auntie Lyf,” he was saying. “Wake up,Auntie Lyf.” His eyes were red; he had been crying. And now she heard another voice, a woman’s voice, a voice she did not know.

  “She’s with us again,” the voice said. “’Twas the moon-phase incantation brought her back—or mayhap the smelling bitters.”

  Smelling bitters. That was the stench.

  Owyn moved away, and a sudden wave of uneasiness engulfed Lyf. Something fearsome. Something she must remember. She forced herself to focus, to come up out of the deep place where she had been and fix her attention on this other place, this place with Owyn and the draclings.

  There was a small, thatched roof above her head—it still was spinning—and yet the sun and moon and stars shivered below it. How could that be? But no—they were not truly the sun and moon and stars, Lyf saw now, but only baubles made of tin and crystal, dangling by threads from the rafters, sending little patchy rainbows trembling across the walls.

  And now the draclings were clambering up onto her stomach, sitting on her chest. The one called Smoak had the hiccups. The one called Skorch huffed a cloud of smoke into her face. Lyf sat up, coughing, and the draclings tumbled to the floor.

  She saw them then, the others, standing a little way back: a dark-haired boy of about her own age, and a woman most strange—pale-skinned with purplish, hennaed hair loose and wild down to her waist.

  The fear came surging back. Lyf looked frantically round for some way to hide the draclings, but it was too late. They were plain to view; there was no hiding them.

  The woman was talking. Something about friends. Something about the draclings.

  A strange lightness about her neck. Lyf felt for the egg. Gone.

  “It looked cumbrous. I put it there,” the woman said, pointing to where the bulging egg sack nestled in a heap of straw on the floor. Her fingers were long and bony, with nails stained as purple as her hair. A jumble of silvery hoops and chains jangled on her arm. Lyf tried to read her face—a long, lean, windburned face with dark-brown, penetrating eyes. A face no longer youthful, but not yet old.

  She couldn’t read it. Lyf looked away and scanned the room, which seemed to have stopped spinning at last. A hut it was, where fantastical objects bided side by side with ordinary ones. Among the dangling ornaments hung strings of half-waxed candlewicks and a side of mutton blackening in the smoke from the hearth. Sunlight streamed in through the shutters and smokehole, illuminating a three-legged iron kettle over the fire. Something bubbled within; it smelled burnt. There were two rickety stools and, on the far wall from the egg sack, a straw pallet. Open books were strewn about a trestle table and surrounded by all manner of candlesticks—wood and clay and iron. Drying on a rack near the fire were two tattered lengths of wool and one of linen. Lyf looked quickly down at the kirtle she wore. Not her own. Hers must be on the rack along with her shift and the cloak Kaeldra had lent her.

  The draclings came crowding round again, sniffing her, nudging at her hands, begging to be scratched. Absently she stroked them, scratched their heads and necks and chins. Kindle climbed up onto her shoulders. Owyn snuggled in beside her.

  “How are you faring?” the woman asked. “You were somewhere far away.”

  “The marsh,” Lyf said, her voice rusty from not having spoken. She recalled the marsh now—and the leeches. Her head still ached as if someone had beat a gong inside it and the reverberations wouldn’t stop.

  “Aye, we’re all in a marsh, lass, in a manner of speaking. But you, you were in another place entire. In the soul of a bird, I’m guessing, from what the lad’s been saying. I didn’t think I could bring you back.”

  The heron. Lyf remembered now. She had gone with the heron to find a way out of the marsh. But, “What is this place?” she demanded. “Who are you?”

  The woman chuckled. “You are faring better now—that’s plain to see. The humors are in their proper balance, and the planets are harmonious. Anyway,” she added, “you’ve slept it off.”

  The woman motioned toward the table. Her bracelets tinkled on her wrist. “Come, lass. I’ll get you some stew.”

  Stew. All at once, Lyf felt famished. She rose shakily to her feet; her legs were weak as twigs. The woman plucked Kindle from Lyf’s shoulders, then pushed aside the clutter of books and candlesticks to clear a place at the table. She ladled out a bowl of greeny-brown stew and set it down before Lyf. It was the worst-tasting stew she had ever eaten— bitter and burnt and strange. Lyf wondered if it were tainted. But she was farmished, and the stew, once down, felt warm and satisfying.

  The draclings thrummed and rubbed against Lyf’s legs. They must have been fed, and recently, or they would have been plaguing her with their bungries.

  And yet Lyf still did not know who this woman was, nor why she was helping them. Nor if she were truly helping, or only preparing to betray them.

  “I am called Lunedweth,” the woman replied, seeming to guess her thoughts. “And this here lad is my own dear cousin’s son, Spens. He found you in the marsh.”

  Spens smiled and ducked his head. He was lean and tanned, with smokey-gray eyes at once curious and shy. Lyf liked the look of him.

  As Lyf ate, Lunedweth, aided by Owyn and Spens, related all that had passed while she was entranced within the bird. Spens had been on his way to Lunedweth, whom he stayed with from time to time, helping with odd chores. His parents had died; he lived with his uncle and aunt in the village of Merdoc. Spens had heard crying in the marsh and had followed the sound until he came upon Owyn and Lyf and the draclings. He had heard tell of draclings, so he was not so astounded as he might have been, though, “I was afeared,” he admitted. Somehow, he had lifted Lyf into his boat, and Owyn after, and had taken them to Lunedweth.

  Lyf was chagrined to think how this boy had lifted her bodily into his boat. But, “What of the draclings?” she asked. “How did they come here?”

  “They wouldn’t let you out of their sight,” Spens said. “I thought they would flame at me, just touching you, just coming near you. But the lad spoke to them, and they didn’t harm me. They snorted out smoke, though, and lashed their tails. And they followed close behind you all the while.”

  “First they flew away,” Owyn said. “They were chasing after that bird. But I called them, and back they came. After the bird was gone.”

  “They were chasing … the heron?” Lyf asked.

  “Aye. They were following where you went.”

  Lyf looked at him, wondering. How did you know they were chasing the heron? she almost asked. For it had been dark; the heron would soon have vanished. And how much did Owyn know about bird kenning? She had never spoken to him of it, other than to say she was going to do it. But … Lyf believed what he said. There was some kind of…knowing… that passed between Owyn and the draclings. How had he put it? It sparkles, he had said.

  “You were in deep—so you were,” Lunedweth said. “I couldn’t tell if I might fetch you back. A heron was it, you said?”

  Lyf hesitated, then nodded.

  “And done this before, have you?”

  How much should she tell? Lyf didn’t know.

  “I needed to … to find our way out of the marsh,” she said at last.

  “How many times?” Lundeweth demanded. “How many times have you done this?”

  Lyf shrugged.

  “Once only? Twice?”

  There had been two other times
of going down deep: That once when she was little, and then when the message dove came. Lyf nodded, grudgingly.

  “This was your third time?”

  Lyf looked away. Lunedweth wasn’t her mama. She had no business chiding her.

  “Small wonder I had such a tribulation pulling you out!” Lunedweth exploded. “The third time! Don’t you know that when you go way deep down within the soul of a thing, you might never come back? Few enough folk there have been who ever could do it, and we know of them only from the old tales. There was the one trapped within a swan, never to return. She stayed alive—but barely—until the swan met its death. Then she died too. And that was but her second time kenning. And she was a powerful sorceress! They’ll put me in the books for fetching you out—so they will!

  “But, lass!” Lunedweths face grew grave. “It’ll suck the spirit from you, this kenning. It takes you deeper each time you go, until you forget who you are, where you come from … what you are. Only the hardiest souls, grown strong by the bearing of great sacrifice, can hope to cling to a knowing of themselves. And you’ve lived far too little of life for that. And you look far too soft, if you’ll pardon me saying.

  “And once this life’s forgot, there’s no return. Even with me to bring you out. Do you understand me, lass? You would be gone!”

  Lyf nodded, frightened. She had never—quite—believed in the danger of bird kenning. She had touched their minds so often. But she recalled how she had felt this time when she had awakened. As if she had come up from a great depth. The dizziness, the feeling that she had been drained of life. Much worse than the time before. She still felt weak from it, and muzzy. If Lunedweth hadn’t brought her out …

  She would not think of that. Still, she knew this: She would never ken with a bird again!

  But this Lunedweth … Might she be one of the dove sign? Lyf looked about the hut, searching for something in the shape of a dove. She scanned the walls, the doors, the candlesticks, the hanging ornaments, Lunedweth’s clutter of tinkling bracelets. There were all manner of circles and stars, crescents and crosses—but not a dove among them. Not one. True, Lyf hadn’t seen the lintel. Though not all of the dove sign carved their lintels. She daren’t ask about the dove sign—that was too perilous. But… A test. She needed a test.

  “Did you feed the draclings brine rats?” she asked.

  “Brine rats?” Lunedweth looked perplexed. Out of the corner of her eye, Lyf saw Spens give a start.

  “The draclings aren’t hungry anymore,” Lyf said. “Did you feed them brine rats?”

  “No, I fed them a batch of dried toads I keep about me for spells. Every last one they ate! A year’s worth of spell toads—gone in a trice! But brine rats …What are brine rats, pray tell? They’re not good for removing warts and corns, now, are they?”

  “Corns? No. Or … I don’t think so.” Lyf stopped, confused. “Well, then why are you doing this? Helping us? Feeding us?”

  Now Lunedweth looked perplexed. “Why? Because you were needin’ it, lass.”

  Lyf took a chance. “But the Krags are looking for us, you know. If they found you protecting us, you’d suffer for it.”

  Lunedweth laughed. “So threaten me something new! Why do you think I live out here on this cursed crannog? I once worked a spell on a Kragish lord to remove a corn from his toe. Alas, his humors were not in harmony and the cycles were out of kilter. In short, his toe fell off. He harried me out of town, and I’ve not laid eyes on another cogging Krag ever since.”

  “But …” Lyf, desperate, tried again. “Did they find your doves?”

  “Doves? What are you prating of, lass? Doves! Brine rats! Are you wildered in your wits?”

  She truly did not understand, Lyf saw. “It’s only … I’m looking for someone … of the dove sign.”

  “The dove sign!” Lunedweth turned to Spens, who had suddenly found a candlestick that needed polishing. “Do you know her meaning, Spens?”

  “No,” he mumbled, scrubbing hard, not looking up.

  Lunedweth stared at him for a time, then leveled her gaze at Lyf. “I’ll tell you this, lass—I’ll tell you true. I’m no friend to the Krags, and I’d be pleased to do anything to be thwartin’ their plans. But that’s not the reason I’m feedin’ and shel-terin’ the lot of you. You were needin’ help, so I gave it. It’s that simple. If you can’t understand that, then I pity you—so I do.”

  Harper’s Tale

  Why do some folk shut their doors upon the misery of their neighbors, while other folk open them wide?

  ’Tis a matter the sages have long debated, my lords and ladies. Yet the puzzle remains.

  Kaeldra grew ill upon the river, and yet no one they met along the way, seeing the green in her eyes, would tend to her.

  These were not evil folk, my ladies. They were only more fearful for the distant dangers to themselves than for the certain dangers to others.

  Can you fault them for that?

  Can you say in truth that you have never acted so?

  What’s that you say? Get on with the tale?

  Very well, my lord (though a draught of brew would surely soothe my poor, parched throat).

  On with the tale: With many a rousing adventure, Kaeldra and her friends made their way downriver to a fisherman in the village of Merdoc.

  There, my lord. Is that on with it enough?

  CHAPTER 15

  The hatching

  Late that day there came a change in the weather. Wind gusts rattled fitfully at the shutters; the shafts of filtered sunlight suddenly paled, and then vanished altogether.

  Lunedweth lighted an ancient oil lamp, which smoked and guttered in the invisible eddies that slipped in through shutters and doors.

  The hut remained dark as a cave.

  Lyf washed her face and neck and arms in a bucket of water, then drew on her dry shift and kirtle. Owyn’s garments were dry as well, and his throat-ill had not returned.

  Spens went outside with Lunedweth to stake down his boat, then they herded the goat within. The draclings rushed at it, spitting out sparks; the goat bleated and lowered its head. But Spens spoke softly to the goat, and Lunedweth gave up a barrelful of dried newts to distract the draclings. They abided in an uneasy peace.

  Not trusting the draclings with the chickens, Lunedweth did not take the birds inside, but tied down their coop without.

  While the draclings drowsed and Owyn drummed with a spoon on a tin cup that Lunedweth had lent him, Lyf ventured out too, glancing up at the lintel as she went.

  No dove. She had known it would not be there, but she couldn’t help looking.

  Wind whipped her hair about her face and churned in the rushes, turning their silvery undersides out, patterning the marsh with shifting whorls and ripples for as far as Lyf could see. She surveyed for the first time the crannog on which the hut sat. It was a crude heap of slaggy stone, encrusted with a veneer of soil too thin for even the meanest of gardens. The folk before the road builders, Lunedweth had explained, had built many such islands—for what purpose no one knew. “Though I’ll wager,” she said, “their purpose and mine are the same: the earth energies are strong here. There’s a flux in the streams of power. Anyway,” she added, “few enemies care to traverse a marsh.”

  Soon Lyf would have to traverse it again, go searching for this cave to the north where the land met the sea. But not today. She was yet too weak from the kenning, and the sky was too ominous. To the west it was a strange, greeny color, nearly overrun with skudding clouds.

  Lunedweth came to stand beside her. “The last time I saw the sky that color, there was a whirlwind that sucked the water out of the marsh and set it down in another place,” she said.

  “And your hut … yet stood?” Lyf asked.

  “The better part of it.”

  Inside, Lunedweth piled up a heap of straw for Lyf and Owyn to sleep on and handed them each a sheepskin. They retired early; the draclings soon gathered about them. Lyf was spent. She felt all of the stren
gth drain out of her and seep down through the floor. And yet she slept but fitfully, half-awakened from time to time by the wind racketing at the shutters and whuffling in the thatch.

  Sometime later she came full awake. There was a pelting of rain on thatch—hard rain—and a gusting of wind. The suns and moons and stars chimed gently above, and the pages of books rustled. One of the shutters had come loose and now banged against the wall.

  But that wasn’t what had wakened her. She knew that wasn’t it.

  In the light of the glowing embers, Lyf made out the shapes of Owyn and the draclings slumbering round her. She searched for Lunedweth and Spens, and found them asleep in their separate corners. But there was something, something else....

  And then she heard it—another sound. It was a soft thumping that seemed to come from within the cottage.

  Lyf scanned the dark room—the dangling stars, the candlesticks, the opened books, the kettle.

  There. Again. Down low. Lyf turned to look where the sound had come from, but saw only the egg sack on the floor by the wall. As she watched, the sack moved, clunked softly against the wall.

  It was the egg.

  A shiver jolted up Lyf’s spine, tingled at the base of her scalp.

  It was batching.

  What should she do?

  Lyf pushed back the sheepskin, tiptoed through the mass of sleeping draclings, and knelt down on the floor. She drew back the carrier, touched the egg. It was warm—much warmer than before. The humming was loud now—very loud.

  Agitation. She could feel an agitation. She could feel a consciousness. Lyf picked up the egg, drew it into her lap. The humming coursed all through her, throbbed down through her bones to her fingertips, to her toetips.

  The egg lurched in her hands. She held it gently, firmly, until she was sure that it had stopped. Then she moved her hands all around its surface. She felt the smoothness of the egg, the tiny grooves, and there … a crack.