It was hard to imagine spring in such a place, or anything other than snow. But here and there a patch of scabrous blue ice clung to the steep mountainside that reared above them, to show that thaws and running water were not unknown in the pass. The blue ice shimmered more brightly in the snow-paled sunlight than it should have. At last, they passed a chunk that was low enough for Ki to see plainly. The ice did not grow paler as they approached it, but bluer. Working within its depths she saw tiny, wriggling blue creatures.
“Ice maggots!� Vandien shouted over the wind as they passed narrowly under the shadow of the clinging ice. He shrugged casually as they passed, but to Ki they were new beings that both fascinated and repelled her. She did not realize the danger they presented until a great chunk of blue ice slid down the side of the mountain immediately behind them. It crashed on the path, sending rattling shards of ice bouncing off the back of the wagon. It obscured the way they had come with shattered chunks of blue ice. It would have smashed the wagon or killed the team, had they been in its path.
“Little squirmers chewed it loose,� Vandien observed without rancor. “This pass would be a safer one to travel were it not for the maggots and the rotten ice they make. Keep the team moving. There’s no sense in pausing, or even in looking up. If we saw a chunk coming down, there’s no place to get away from it.“
The wind was an everpresent shushing, a nosy cold creature that nudged its way into every opening garments might provide. Sometimes it shifted about to meet the wagon with a shout and smack of head wind. Vandien looked like a huddled pile of garments on the seat. “You could ride within the cuddy, you know!� Ki called to him. “There’s no reason we both have to endure this. I don’t need you to pick out the trail anymore.�
Vandien shook his head, making no words. Ki was secretly glad of his company in the icy wind, but wondered why he chose to remain there. When the sun was overhead, the winds seemed to decrease in volume. The snow still swirled about the horses’ hooves, but not as strongly. The trail, too, leveled out for a space and traveled horizontally across the mountain’s face, as if taking pity on the weary team. Ki halted the wagon to let them breathe. She blanketed them as they stood in their traces. The trail was wide enough for her to walk past the team, to stroke the frost from their muzzles and share an apple between them. They managed it awkwardly around their bits, jangling as they chewed. The wind buffeted her as she climbed back onto the wagon and to its shushing sound added a whistle. Ki wondered if it were building up again. She wanted to rest the team for a while, but feared to let them stand long if the icy wind was chilling them. She entered the cuddy, closing the door behind her.
Vandien had thrown his hood back from his face in the still cold inside the cuddy. His dark hair was tousled about his face, and the wind had burned his cheeks red above his beard. The contrast made his dark eyes seem brighter, almost shiny black. They sparked at her, and Ki returned his smile as she pushed her own hood back. There was a certain triumph to having come so far in such bitter weather. It was a heady feeling, having prevailed against the winds of the world.
Ki hooked down a dangling sausage, used her belt knife to cut chunks of it against the small wall table. It was so cold, the meat made her teeth ache. They ate together, feeling the wind rock the wagon gently on its axles, hearing the faint whistle it made as it swept past the cuddy.
Vandien rose abruptly, opened the cuddy door to the wind and then pointed to a speck in the sky. “I thought that was too pure a note to be wind song. There he is again! Hardly ever see a Harpy aloft in this kind of weather, but then, that’s a strange one. An outcast, did I tell you? Looks like he’s caught in the wind.�
Stomach quivering, Ki looked. He was so far away, she could not tell his colors; perhaps he was a brown, she told herself, or a deep purple. Or the ghost of a blue, whispered some sneering creature from a dark corner of her mind. The Harpy hovered, not overhead, but up the trail, and very high. His wings would dip, and he would circle high on the vicious winds to come again into position. His clear whistle cut the wind.
“Look how he fights that wind, Ki! Like he wants to stay over the trail. You’d think he’d realize that the wind against those cliffs is what’s throwing him around.�
Ki did not reply. She was listening to another voice in her head, to Haft or, standing dark and menacing in starlight, holding tight to her wrist: Cora will not be able to contain such a secret. You killed those Harpies. That’s a debt paid only with blood. Neither time nor distance will heal it. Harpies don’t give up on blood debts. Neither do the men who serve them.
Vandien glanced curiously over at Ki, wondering that she did not share his curiosity about the creature. Ki was crouched like a cat, looking out the door under Vandien’s arm. Her eyes were glued to the speck that circled and whistled.
“Ki!� She jumped at her name. “We had best be on our way again. There is only one shelter spot between here and the bare faces of the Sisters. If we make it tonight, we may pass the Sisters tomorrow. Two days past that and we should be coming down out of the pass. Wagon and all, just as you said.�
Ki turned haunted eyes on him. He would never know what courage it took for her to emerge from the cuddy, to bare herself to the sky and the death that hung there. She almost hoped the Harpy would try to dive on her, to be smashed by the winds against the cliff face. But he did not. He was too wise for that. He hung, rocking in the sky. His whistles grew louder and longer in the thin air. He cried his triumph to Ki.
Team unblanketed, Ki clambered woodenly back onto her wagon. She started her wagon rolling again. The grade was easier now; the snow and wind no longer had to be fought. The wind had suddenly switched to come from behind them. The team pulled with a will, undisturbed by the creature that whistled and cried over their heads. Had they not been foaled and grown to size in Harper’s Ford, where the shadows of Harpies swept over the pastures? Ki wished the snow would mantle her from those eyes, the wind rise and dash it from the sky. But the sky only cleared and the wind became a shushing constant. The creak of the wagon could not mask the whistling that was not wind.
She hunched her shoulders, pulled her hood higher about her face. For one terrible instant she felt her face pucker and redden, and a part of her wondered if she would bawl in loud cries for the way destiny had caught up with her. She sobbed in a breath of the frigid air, and it braced her. Beside her, Vandien said loudly, inanely, “Have you ever heard the lay of the hunter Sidris, and how she went to slay the black stag with scarlet antlers?�
Even as Ki turned bewildered eyes upon him, he opened his throat and began to sing. He had a mellow voice that wandered willfully beside the familiar tune. He sang loudly, if not well, and she did not mind his missed notes, nor the places where he hummed to cover the words he had forgotten. He drowned the Harpy’s whistle.
The song was a ballad, evidently of his own people, put to a Common tune. He began it with a long introduction of meaningless syllables, repeated at intervals through the song. The song was long and wrenchingly romantic as it told of the hunter who followed the mystic stag and died nobly in the slaying of it. Another time Ki would have mocked the sentimental words about the two futile deaths. Now she was caught up in them. When finally the song died away and Vandien subsided into a somewhat embarrassed silence truly, he did not have a voice for singing), Ki was surprised to find that the whistling of the Harpy had stopped.
She turned her eyes up to the sky. He was gone. But she knew that he could find her again whenever he wished. There would be no turnoffs from this trail, no friendly forest to hide in. For a moment she considered warning Vandien. Might not he share the fate ordained for her? And then it seemed to her that the Harpy was like the blue ice that twitched with maggots and sometimes overhung the wagon on the narrow trail. No use to look up and worry. If it was going to fal
l on you, it would. It would find you. As Rufus had found Ki that day. He had come to the apple tree in the afternoon, to find Ki still sitting there, considering the things she had done…
“Cora would see you,� he said stiffly. His eyes were deeply shadowed. Ki guessed that he had slept little. She rose with reluctance to follow him. This summoning boded no good for her. She trailed after him dispiritedly, ignoring the speculative looks she received from Lydia and Holland as she entered the common room. They passed down the narrow hallway.
Cora’s eyes were closed. There was more gray in her hair than Ki remembered. Last night had been no time for noticing such things. Now Ki found herself remembering that when she and Sven were joined she had thought Cora sturdy as a tree. Her old cheeks still held a pitiful trace of that bloom, but they were no longer high and firm but wrinkled like apples stored away all winter. The single small window in the room let in little of the afternoon sunlight, and less air. Ki felt stifled. In the closeness her head throbbed and the buzz in her ears seemed louder.
Lydia, who had followed them into the room, plumped and smoothed the feather-stuffed coverlet that lay over the old woman. She sent Rufus and Ki a warning look. Rufus shooed Ki from the room and shut the door gently behind them.
“She cried out for you, but that was a while ago. She seemed awake. But she drifts in and out. Her body already fails under the burden you put upon her last night. Inadvertently,� he added grudgingly as Ki knit her brows.
He beckoned again, and she followed him down the hall to another door. There were no windows in Rufus’s room. His bed was narrow, pushed into a corner of the room and covered with a single brown woven blanket. Ki glanced about the room in vain for any sign of Holland’s presence. There was no token of her, no garments of hers on the pegs, no weavings from her hands. So they couched separately.
Rufus went directly to a cluttered table in one corner. He drew up a small stool to it and sat, leaving Ki looking about the room, standing. For a moment his fingers played over some bits of paper and tally bars on the table. Then he turned his stool to face Ki again.
“I shall speak Cora’s mind for her. I know what she would say. You are thinking of leaving,� he accused her gravely. “Do not deny it. But I forbid you to do it, as head of the household you have sworn yourself to. Ki, I will not pretend to understand what went on last night. Lars has accepted the blame for it, and I am prepared to listen to one of his lengthy testimonials later. But it is you I must speak to about leaving. Enough shame hovers over us now. Will you make the disgrace complete? Yes, there were words, hard words, spoken against you last night. Lars seems to feel you are in danger. He does not seem to remember that the people here last night are your kinspeople. They may speak as they will to us, for they are family. Families make wild words within themselves. They mean nothing. But if Ki were to leave? Consider it. Consider it from their pain. You came and you hurt them and you left, with no indication of remorse. A harsh blow. And there are things left unsettled by Sven’s passing, things that your leaving would put in jeopardy. There is the land that was Sven’s, that would have been your children’s. You have a duty to it now.“
“My duty is to my wagon and my road and my freight,� Ki said quietly. “I acknowledge no other.�
Rufus sighed. He licked his lips and seemed to consider. When he spoke, it was as if he felt the words were too basic to need to be uttered. “My mother wanders in her mind, Ki. To be fair, I will tell you that it began months ago, long before your news or your singular performance last night. But this may have been the final unhinging. The family knew that last night. So, I take up the reins, as you might say. You speak of duties, Ki. Of all that sat at that table last night, there is not one whose well-being does not rest upon me. My brother Sven was happy to wed you and to rattle off down the road with you, to make his living as a common teamster. To let the lands committed to his trust lie fallow, when they should have been producing. Then I was the one who had to think of duty. I kept the sheep and the kine, I tilled and planted his fields for him, giving to each what they needed, asking of each what he could give. Farming the land and feeding the family—this is not a thing like the turning of a wagon wheel upon the road. Rather, it is like the juggling at fair time, when one man keeps the plates spinning on the table and the balls flying in the air at the same time. It is a constant watching, a touch here, a flip there, and never, never an unwary resting. Someone must treat with the Windsingers for fair weather, must make the trades with the Dene and Tcheria for that which we cannot produce ourselves. Fields must be tilled and planted, buildings repaired, cattle bred and slaughtered. That is what Sven left to Lars and me. Lars was too young to be more than a puppy at my heels. It has worn my mother out to carry it on, past the years when she should have been sitting before a tapestry, or rocking her youngest grandchild to sleep. It has driven Holland from my bed (yes, I saw your look) and made my sons but my apprentices. It has been heavy on me. I have not minded. But the time for it is past. You are a capable woman. Sven is gone, but Lars is here. This is an unseemly time to say this. But time is no longer waiting on my convenience. Heal the rift, Ki. Be one of us.“ Rufus paused, watching Ki gravely.
Ki fluttered her hands before her, indignation drowned in confusion and disbelief. She walked slowly to Rufus’s narrow bed, seated herself upon it. “You ask the impossible of me, Rufus. I don’t see what my staying here will solve. I cannot. I will not. I will not be hasty, or rude. I cannot even find anger at your assumption of authority. In truth, my temper has been drowned in grief. I am past anger such as that. I am tired of my own emotions. Since Sven passed I have been strung like the strings of a harp tree, and every breeze has played upon me. I have nothing left in me, of anger, or pride or gladness. So, I will simply tell you I can not. I can not drop my life strings and take up others, to weave a pattern not of my own choosing. Least of all will I live among people who despise me. Three days I will stay, for I do not wish to leave so sour. But that is all I can give.� Ki rose and walked to the door.
“And what of the lands?� Rufus demanded. Ki turned at the panic in his voice. “A full sixth of the lands rests in your hands. Many are watching how they will fall. I do not have the money,� Rufus gestured at his tally sticks, “to buy Sven’s land from you. For, if I give you the money the family has, what will we use to buy good winds and fair weather from the Windsingers? What is the sense of land with harsh winds blowing across it, drying it out, and whirling the top soil away? And what is the sense of fair weather if the land that basks in it is no longer ours to plow? You must see the dilemma!�
“I am no farmer. I make no claim to your lands. I have no use for more ground than will fit under my wagon.�
Rufus shook his head stubbornly. “It cannot be done that way. You cannot walk away from it. The land must be paid for. Such is our custom.�
“Damn your customs!� Ki cried wildly. “Look what they have done to me! Look what they have done to us all!�
“Without customs, we are nothing. Not a people.� Rufus and Ki both turned incredulous eyes to the door. Cora’s eyes were weary but alert. She leaned on the doorframe, catching her breath. Her pale lips smiled at Rufus’s look.
“I asked you to bring Ki to me. Not take her off and badger her until she gave way to your will.� Slowly Cora shuffled across the flagged floor to seat herself heavily on the foot of Rufus’s bed. Her breath came in harsh pants. No one spoke. Ki agonized over the effort she put into each inhalation.
“Boys never change, even when they are grown to be men.� Cora managed a brief smile. “I remember a time when I gave each of my sons a switch and sent them out to bring the chickens in. Sven rattled his along the ground, spooking the birds along. Lars waved his in the air, forgetting his task entirel
y. But Rufus used his to knock the tail feathers off two of my best cockerels.� She smiled again. “He bullies still.�
Rufus opened his mouth angrily. Cora fluttered a hand at him. “Hush! I am too weary to be arguing with you. I sent for Ki. She shall help me back to my room. This rock you call a bed offers me small comfort here.�
Abashed by her unexpected rescuer, Ki rose. Cora’s hand on her shoulder was the weight of a bird. Slowly Ki guided her down the hall, back to her bedroom. An imperial wave of Cora’s hand sent Holland scuttling from the room. Sighing heavily, the old woman seated herself upon the bed, then leaned back into her pillows.
The ensuing silence was difficult for Ki. Cora was occupied with breathing. Ki looked about the room at the heavy drapes and tapestries, at the bulky carved wooden furniture, and back at the heavy coverings Cora drew across her legs.
“You would be better outside, resting on a blanket over fresh hay, in a shady spot. The clean air would renew your strength.�
Cora smiled mirthlessly. “The scandal of such a sight would renew the tongues wagging. Then they would all be even more convinced that my mind had begun to wander. You needn’t look embarrassed, Ki. I know Rufus believes it is so. I spend too much time sitting silently, smiling to myself. And I take too much from the flocks and herds, so that I may visit the Harpies and pretend that I am not a sagging old woman. At least the inroads I make on the animals will cease for a time. He will be happy of that small good from the ill winds that swept us last night.“ Cora paused, and subtly changed the subject. �Last night revealed one thing to me, Ki. You’re a strong woman. Stronger than even I suspected. And I know how you sheltered Sven and the children. We have need of such strength here.“
Harpy's Flight Page 11