by Kim Wilkins
Ash nodded and rose. Most of her studies now were given over to working in the community, mostly in the town of Thriddastowe but often enough in the countryside. She preferred the town. She preferred to be around people and movement, and her dearest hope was that — at the end of her studies — she could return home to Blicstowe and be near family and friends. Her post was yet to be decided, though. A wise and fearsome counsel of crookbacked men and women would make that judgement on her final day as a scholar, based on her history here.
She and Myrren each took a cloak from by the door, the grey-green cloak that signalled their profession, and headed out into the drizzly morning.
Somewhere behind the clouds the sun was rising, and blue burned through on the western arch of the sky. The study hall and its buildings lay on the outer edge of the town. They picked their way through muddy paths past the butcher and the cobbler, the alehouse and the smith. The town smelled of damp, of sea-salt, of coal smoke and fermenting flowers. Layers of smells; sweet, muddled evidence of people and their lives.
Myrren led her to the front door of a little boarding house with cracked wooden boards that were chinked with moss. She let herself in and Ash stood for a moment behind her, eyes adjusting to the dark. Myrren closed the door quietly, but a bleary-eyed woman with her hair tied tightly in a scarf bustled out.
‘Can you be no quieter?’ the woman said.
‘I thought I was being quiet,’ Myrren answered, drawing herself up very erect. ‘I’m here to look in on Ingrid and the little one.’
The woman indicated the corridor. ‘You know where she is. She coughed all night. I barely slept a wink.’
Myrren thanked her and moved down the corridor. Ash smiled at the woman, but received no smile in return. She and Myrren entered a miserable room with a draughty shutter, a choking fire and threadbare rugs. In a bed on the floor lay a young woman wracked with coughing, and a little boy about three years old. Ash couldn’t help but compare the child to her niece, Rowan, who was plump-armed and tall, with shining dark eyes and rosy cheeks. This little boy was pale and small, a bird fallen too soon from the nest.
While Myrren knelt to tend to Ingrid, Ash stood back to watch. The itching started low in her stomach. She never knew why this ability was called the sight, for she always experienced it viscerally, not visually. It shuddered through her body, knowledge seeping into her mind like seawater seeps into a sinking boat: always faster than one fears. Myrren’s words became muffled behind a sussuration of whispering voices, none of them clear enough to hear properly. But in an instant Ash knew with absolute clarity the sick woman’s Becoming — she would die by the end of the week. Worse, the child would catch her sickness if he stayed with her until nightfall this day. Then he would die, too.
As quick as the feeling came, it withdrew. The real world was clear and present again, but her body ached from calves to neck, as though she had held herself tense for hours. Myrren was giving Ingrid one of her remedies — Myrren was the acknowledged expert in herbal medicine — and reassuring her she would be up and about in a day.
‘Do you not think,’ Ash blurted, ‘that the child should go somewhere else while his mother recuperates?’
Ingrid looked at her with anxious eyes.
Myrren frowned, her face still in profile to Ash, not meeting her gaze. ‘There’s no need, Ash.’
‘But the illness —’
‘No need, Ash,’ Myrren said forcefully, but quietly. She smiled at Ingrid and then the child. ‘You two are better off together.’
‘I don’t want my boy to get sick,’ Ingrid said. ‘I can send for my sister. We’ve not spoken for many months but she would come if it was urgent.’ Her words were punctuated by wheezes.
Myrren turned to glare at Ash. Ash forced a cheerful smile, even though her blood was thundering in her heart. ‘If Myrren says all will be well, then all will be well,’ she said tightly.
As they returned to the study hall, Myrren admonished her in a soft voice: mothers and children belong together, the woman would recover quicker with her child to remind her of her responsibilities, and a separation at this stage would make her miserable and prolong the sickness. Ash heard, but didn’t listen. She had long since realised no elderly counsellor — especially Myrren — would tolerate hearing about her premonitions. At best they would dismiss her; at worst their jealousies and fear would see her packed off to some dungheap remote community to learn humility. Ash went to her bower, waited ten minutes, then returned directly to Ingrid’s house.
This time, the child was playing on the floor among the mouldy rushes, pretending to make soup in a cracked pot.
Ingrid blinked at Ash from the bed, fear making her pupils shrink. ‘You came back.’ Her skin was white and clammy.
Ash sat on the edge of the wooden bedframe and put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. Her heart sped. ‘You are sicker than Myrren thinks.’
‘I know,’ the woman said. ‘I can feel it. A darkness ... here.’ She pressed her hands into the triangle between her lower ribs, causing a long coughing fit. Tears welled in her eyes. ‘I’m going to die, aren’t I? I could see you standing there and you knew.’
Ash turned her gaze to the little boy. He hummed a tune to himself.
Ingrid caught the direction of her gaze and began to sob.
‘Is there somebody who can come for him?’ Ash said.
‘How am I to let him go?’
‘By telling yourself that, in him, you live still. And in his children, and in their children.’ Ash measured her tone calmly even though her own heart was clenching. ‘We all die, Ingrid. We are here but a brief bright moment then thrust out again into the darkness. To leave our trace in the light is the best thing we can do.’ Just as she had been told to say. The sentiment that was supposed to bring so much comfort, but which Ash found no comfort in herself. Perhaps when she was older she would feel it, really feel it, but now, she was as terrified to die as a cow in a slaughter pen.
Ingrid nodded, catching her breath. ‘My sister Gyrda lives outside town, behind the mill. Could you send for her?’
‘I’ll go to her myself.’ Ash rose. ‘You must never tell anyone I came to you. And nor must she.’
Ingrid shook her head. Her body trembled and hunched, struggling with terror and sorrow. ‘Can I cuddle my boy until she comes?’
‘Of course. Of course.’
She hesitated, then said, ‘When will I die?’
Ash looked at her. The day after tomorrow, as the sun disappears behind the town. But she said, ‘I don’t know.’
The little boy had scrambled onto the bed and Ingrid reached for him with shuddering arms. ‘A lifetime of kisses,’ she said to him, her voice breaking.
Ash couldn’t watch. She turned away and headed outside.
That evening she took comfort in the company of her friends, although she couldn’t confess to any of them what she had done. Alice and Pansy, with whom she had started her studies four years ago, drank with her in the dining hall and cheered her with stories and comical impressions of their teachers. She flirted subtly with Conrad, one of the first-years. He was sweet on her, she knew, though she still wasn’t sure she returned the feeling. The clatter and clamour of movement and voices both revived and soothed her, driving away her sadness, her fear of the dream, her growing apprehension that something dark crept behind her. Something uncontrollably expanding in every moment; a sentient, elastic thing not to be contained between her two small hands.
Rainy dawn broke two more times with Ash happily dreamless. On the third day, she woke early to silence: no rain. She plaited her hair and pulled on her cloak to walk down to the cliff’s edge and see the sun rise.
The sky was pale and high, the morning cold, but not cruelly so. On the horizon, blue-grey clouds gathered, veiling the sun as it rose from behind the ocean. Ash followed the pebbled path up to the cliffs, then walked a little further north where she knew of an outcrop of flat granite, perfect for sitting and watching the daw
n.
The rush and draw of the sea always made her feel settled. As a child, she had spent a month recuperating from illness at a family friend’s house on the southern coast of Ælmesse. Every day she had spent hours sitting on the grass near the cliff’s edge, watching the sea move, until it grew so cold she was called inside urgently. She had no doubt the sea’s rhythm healed her. Thyrsland was a large island, separated by icy straits from a sprawling continent where traders and second sons hunted their fortunes. It was a foolish person who did not come to love and respect the sea. The wind picked up, the gulls screeched overhead. Ash closed her eyes and breathed the raw scent of the morning.
Light broke over the clouds, and pressed gold on her eyelids. She opened her eyes to see the first orange-gold bow of the sun. A sharp shred of the dream flashed into her mind: a cliff, an orange light, fire and claws. She shook herself, put her hands on the rock to feel the earth and keep herself on it.
‘Hello there!’ A distant voice, calling.
Ash turned. Conrad was trudging up the path towards her, his hands in the pockets of his brown tunic, his shoulders hunched against the cold morning air. She was glad to see him, to have ordinary things to fill her mind. Her panicked heart slowed and she rose and came down the path to greet him.
‘Good morning,’ she said with a smile.
He nodded once, but didn’t smile in return, making her cautious. The wind tangled in his soft, brown curls. ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ he said.
‘A fine clear morning.’ She gestured to the rising sun. ‘I couldn’t stay in bed and let it go unwitnessed.’
He glanced over his shoulder towards the study hall, as though he feared they were being watched.
‘What is it?’ she said.
He smiled weakly. ‘I overhead Myrren talking to some of the elder seers this morning when I was lighting the fires. About you.’
A coil of guilt in her stomach. ‘I see.’
He wouldn’t meet her gaze, squinted his dark eyes against the sun. ‘They say a woman in town died yesterday afternoon. Her little boy was nowhere to be found. They eventually located him at his aunt’s house. The aunt said you had arranged for him to be there, that you had seen his mother’s death, and his, too, if he wasn’t moved.’
Ash swallowed hard. ‘Yes.’ Why had Ingrid’s sister gone back on her promise not to speak of it? She had probably crumbled the moment Myrren set her grey gaze on her. Old age was to be feared, and Ash was too young to frighten anyone into silence. ‘Did they sound angry?’
He hesitated. Then said, ‘I couldn’t read their voices. Angry, perhaps. Myrren certainly was. But the seers sounded ... puzzled.’ He shrugged. ‘Worried.’
‘For me, or for themselves?’
‘Impossible to tell.’
Ash chewed her lip, glancing away to the sea.
‘Ash,’ he said slowly, ‘I’ve been taught one can’t be a seer until ... well, you’re only a year older than me. You saw her Becoming?’
She considered him in the golden light. The desire in his eyes was gone, squeezed out by fear. ‘Thank you for the warning,’ she said.
He waited a moment, to see if she would say anything else.
‘I need to think,’ she said kindly. ‘I’ll see you back at the study hall.’
Conrad nodded, his dark eyes careful not to hold hers too long. She watched him retreat then turned her attention to the sea once again, to the orange sun low on the horizon. Here it was, her chance to tell them what was happening to her. The dream, the constant interference of the sight, the hollow fear that inhabited her as her power intensified. Only her sisters and Byrta knew of her ability, and none of them guessed at how fast and wild it grew. Perhaps the elder seers might even help her.
The sea roared. The sun was bright on her cheeks.
And then a voice was in her head.
Ash.
Just one word: her name. But with it a cascade of sensations. Bluebell, lying on grass by a stream. Her sister’s body ached, but not from battle. Inside her heart beat a bruising dread.
Father was dying.
The sensations lifted off Ash, leaving only the fresh morning air on her skin. ‘Oh,’ she gasped, and her voice sounded loud in her ears. How could she not know Father was dying? Was the carefully undreamt dream about Father’s imminent death? Or had her attempts to suppress the dream also suppressed any but the most immediate and close tremblings of the sight? It had taken Bluebell’s direct address to break through.
What to do? She had to get home. But how was she to explain to Myrren why she had to leave? Myrren knew no messenger had come for Ash. She couldn’t wait for one to come: it might take days and Bluebell needed her now. And she certainly couldn’t admit she had received a vision as easily as other people took a breath. No scrying pool, no deep rumination, no sacred fire: a sudden and certain overlaying of Bluebell’s mind with her own.
Ash was overwhelmed with tender feelings towards her sister — her favourite sister, if the truth be told. Ash loved her father, of course, but nobody loved him as Bluebell did.
Another option waited, unconsidered. Ash turned her mind to it warily. She could simply run. Put off indefinitely facing Myrren over the incident with Ingrid and her son. Her father was dying: her father was the king of Ælmesse, the largest and most powerful kingdom in Thyrsland. And when he was dead ... well, what would they say? They could not caution her if she was grieving. A counsellor’s first law was that compassion comes before all else. And when Bluebell was queen, perhaps Ash could beg her not to have to go back ...
Already her feet were moving. Home to her father’s hall.
Three
Rose held Rowan’s little hand and was led around the garden.
‘This one?’ the child said.
‘Crocus.’
‘This one?’
‘That’s a bluebell.’
Rowan nodded solemnly. ‘Like Bluebell.’
‘Yes, like your aunt.’
‘It doesn’t look like her.’
‘No,’ Rose laughed, ‘it doesn’t.’ Rose turned to see if Wengest was still watching. He was, a lazy smile on his face. He sat on a carved chair he’d had a servant bring out onto the grass. His legs were spread out in front of him and Rose could see clearly how indolence was making his body change. His torso had softened; it strained against his richly-sewn tunic.
Rowan pointed to the next flower.
‘Daisy.’
‘Clever girl,’ Wengest said. ‘Come here for a kiss.’
Rowan turned and ran towards him, flinging herself on top of him so hard it nearly knocked him out of his chair. He laughed and turned her upside down roughly, while she squealed happily. Her skirt pooled around her middle, revealing two plump white thighs.
The garden behind the chapel had become Rowan’s favourite place since spring stretched awake, and Rose brought her here every afternoon if it was fine. It was unusual for Wengest to join them, though not unwelcome. Rose lay back on the grass beside them, stroking the cool blades with the back of her hand. The mingled soft scents of flowers and damp earth evoked layers of memory and anticipation. Spring had its power.
Wengest wrestled with Rowan. The child should have been born a boy: she was all wild energy, hot as the midsummer sun, and as strong and wilful as a little goat. She broke from him and bared her teeth and claws. ‘I’m a dragon!’ she shrieked.
‘There are no dragons in Thyrsland any more. They died out with the giants,’ Wengest said, giving Rose a cautionary nod. Her own father’s standard bore a three-toed dragon. Family lore held that Rose’s great-great-grandfather had slain the last dragon in Thyrsland and that her father’s hall had been built upon the bones, and that was why Ælmesse was the most powerful kingdom in Thyrsland. Wengest preferred Rowan to learn about the kings of Netelchester.
‘No! I found a dragon bone in the garden,’ Rowan declared.
Wengest looked at Rose, who shrugged. ‘I think it was a sheep bone.’
‘It’s a dragon bone. And I am a dragon!’
Wengest scooped her up again, tickling her violently. A clatter at the chapel gate caught their attention. One of the gatehouse guards stood there.
‘Speak, fellow,’ Wengest said, righting Rowan and putting her on her feet.
‘Again!’ Rowan shouted.
‘My lord, your nephew has arrived.’
Every drop of Rose’s blood lit up.
‘Heath is here?’ Wengest smiled. ‘Where have you put him?’
His words were a thousand miles away. Rose’s ears rang faintly. Her breath moved roughly in and out of her body; she had never been so aware of it. I am alive, after all.
‘In the hall, my lord.’ The guard dipped his head towards Rose. ‘He has news from your sister, my lady.’
Bluebell had sent Heath to Folcenham? That was a surprise: her sister had kept them apart for three years. Perhaps Bluebell thought time and distance would cool her love for Heath. They had not. Some days she had tried not to love him but, inevitably, the ordinary misery of her life forced her imagination back to thoughts of him.
Wengest propelled her gently towards the bowerhouse. ‘Go, Rose. Take Rowan to her nurse. I’ll meet you in the hall.’
‘Can I not come, Papa?’ Rowan asked.
‘Can she not meet Heath?’ Rose echoed, somehow managing to keep her voice steady.
‘You know I don’t like to do business with the child around,’ Wengest said, with a dismissive gesture. ‘If he stays long enough to eat, Rowan can meet him then.’
Rose scooped Rowan up — the girl grew so heavy — and hurried out the chapel gate. Heath was here. Music in her veins.
Rose found the nurse in the spinning room, and left Rowan there playing with threads on the floor. Her heart sped and she dashed into her bower to tidy her long, dark hair in the bronze mirror. She stopped a second, steadying herself on the bed pole. Breathe in, breathe out. It wouldn’t do for Wengest to see her with such a high colour in her cheeks, to see the frantic desire behind her eyes. She had never stopped hoping Heath would come back. That she would be able to look on his face again and feel his touch on her skin. But she had carefully hidden those feelings. She mustn’t let them slip out from under cover now.