by Kim Wilkins
‘What is it?’ Rose asked.
Thrymm barked once then leapt off the bed and ran towards the door. Footsteps beyond the bedroom. Rose sat up, embarrassed that Yldra and her father might find her sleeping before supper was made.
But it wasn’t Yldra or her father. Standing at the door to the bedroom, his hands being savagely licked by Thrymm, was Heath.
For a horrible, too-bright moment she thought she was dreaming. But then he smiled and opened his arms and she was pressed against his chest, breathing the clean-earth scent of him. He was warm and hard and real. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve been camped in the woods since Bluebell told me to leave. I couldn’t go without saying goodbye. I saw horses leaving earlier today. Your father. He’s better?’
‘Yes, he is. They took horses? Do you have any idea where they were going?’
‘No.’
‘They can’t have got far. Father has been sick a long time and Yldra would have trouble staying horsed. She has a terrible limp.’
‘She had no limp.’
Rose pressed her lips together, curious.
‘I saw you returning to the house alone a little while ago,’ Heath continued. ‘I figured it might be my only chance to see you. Before I go.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘North. My father had relatives on the very northern coast of Thyrsland, in Bradsey. They don’t know me, but they may take me in for a while.’
‘They are Ærfolc?’
‘Yes. I know nothing about them.’ He rubbed his chin, a few days unshaven and already ginger. ‘I’ll be able to grow my beard at last.’ He smiled, but when he saw that she didn’t he dipped his head. ‘I’m sorry.’
The northern coast. Icy-cold seas, the ever-present danger of raiders, widespread poverty. ‘So we really aren’t to see each other ever again?’
‘Bluebell is right. For Rowan’s sake. For your own. And for mine.’
She dropped her head on his chest once again, heard his heart thudding. ‘How is it that love, so pure and so true, cannot be allowed to survive?’
He stroked her hair and her back. ‘I don’t know, Rose. All I know is that I will always love you. Through every cold day of winter and every long day of summer. I will always love you.’
She turned her face up to his and he kissed her, gently at first, then gathering in passion, his tongue and hers seeking each other out. Then he stood back, sent Thrymm from the room, and closed the door.
‘I don’t know when Yldra and Father are coming back,’ she said.
He smiled and reached up to drop the latch across the door. Then he moved towards her, his hands unpinning the brooches that held her dress together while his mouth remained pressed against hers. Her dress fell to the ground. She pulled off his tunic and they collapsed on the bed together, struggling half out of their clothes. Her shift was tangled around her waist, his trousers around his ankles. His mouth found her breasts, his hands squeezed her thighs, her fingers grasped his back. Desire made her deaf and blind. There was only the bright light and ringing music of passion. He was inside her, kissing her and kissing her, his body crushing her sweetly. Every sensation in her skin was amplified in her blood, echoing through her body and her breath. She clamped her legs around his hips and gave herself up as she had never given herself up before. When he came, she realised she was weeping silently. He kissed the tears from her face and held her while her blood pressure returned to normal and her knees grew solid once again. Afternoon light fell through the open shutter, making a square on the bed that fell on his skin and the blanket. She burned the image into her mind, in case it was the last time.
The very last time.
‘I have something to give you,’ she said, sitting up and searching the floor for her belt. She lifted it with a jangle and placed it on the bed between them, then unhooked the seeing-circle and handed it to him.
‘What is it?’
‘Every morning at dawn, you can see somebody you love in it. A witch gave it to me, but it doesn’t work for me any more. You can see that person sleeping.’ She never wanted to see the bed she’d shared with Rowan in Folcenham again. Not now it was empty.
‘What do I do?’
‘Say their name into the loop now, and that will enchant it and bind it to you.’
He put his lips against the loop and formed an ‘R’. But he didn’t say Rose.
‘Rowan,’ he said.
Intense, jealous sadness squeezed her around the ribs. ‘You will be able to see her. If she is ever unwell or sad or injured ...’
‘I will send you word,’ he said, but she wondered if he would. Or if he knew how much it would torture her to know her child needed her, but was nowhere to be found.
Thrymm was whining and pawing at the door.
‘I should go,’ he said, ‘before Æthlric returns.’
They dressed and let Thrymm in. The house was still quiet. Rose opened the door and peered out. No movement from the stable, with its burnt-out door. No movement on the road beyond. ‘You’ll need a horse and money,’ she said to him.
‘I don’t need anything. I’ll be fine.’
Rose shook her head. ‘You will take a horse, and I’ll give you what coin I have.’
Heath looked as though he might protest, then changed his mind and sighed. ‘I should be able to look after myself.’
‘You have provided me such joy and comfort, my love. Material things are the least I owe you.’
He nodded, and she fetched her purse to give to him. He collected the spare clothes that he’d left behind, and then they stood awkwardly together at the door.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said at last.
She opened her eyes. ‘Goodbye. And I love you.’
‘Yes.’ Then he was walking away, towards the stable. A few minutes later he emerged, mounted, and lifted his hand in a wave. Tears ran down her face and dripped from her chin. She shuddered as he disappeared out the front gate. A lumpen cold possessed her. She put her hands over her face and she could still smell him. ‘Goodbye,’ she said, kissing her own fingers as passionately as she had kissed him. ‘Goodbye.’
Thirty-three
Ash paid close attention to the prickling tingles of her premonition. She had not woken free of dread, as Unweder had suggested. Rather, she was sure that today was the day that Bluebell would die. Every second seemed heavy with it. The tension was soft, though persistent, in the morning, but by the middle of the day it clutched firmly and unreadable runes danced across her field of vision. Ash knew what she had to do, she just didn’t know when she had to do it. She barely listened to a word Unweder said to her that day, but he seemed to have decided to let her be preoccupied. As the sun passed full height and began the slow slide towards setting, the tension became acute, a hard sharp thing in her stomach.
She stood, began to pace.
‘What is it, Ash?’
‘I have to go.’
‘You have no illusions of riding to Bluebell’s rescue.’
‘To the woods,’ Ash said. ‘I have to go to the woods. I know what I have to do.’
Unweder nodded. ‘I won’t stop you.’
Ash left the house, trembling with fear. The danger was so close to her sister now, and she had no idea. No idea at all. She went out of the dead zone and down across the stream to the densest part of the wood, where she knew the elementals were thick in the trees and on the ground. She sat on a rock and focussed herself, closing her eyes and taking note of the movement around her. She had a little sprig of angelica that she’d pinned to her dress earlier in preparation, and now she crushed its oil onto her fingers and wiped it across her eyelids, and on her temples. She breathed. The elementals gathered at a distance, curious but wary.
‘Keep my body safe,’ she said, and felt their grudging compliance in the way they moved in closer, sitting around her ankles.
Ash put her hands on her temples, gathering her mind between her fingers. There it is.
There. She lifted her hands and pointed them south, towards Bluebell. She felt the pull and snap as her energy, her focus, her talent with elementals left her body as a bright ball of light and went rocketing through the woods. In her inner eye, she could see the trajectory it took as a dreamlike journey among magical beings. Tiny creatures with leaves for eyebrows, cracked rock for mouths, twigs for hands, stood to watch. And whenever the bright thing slowed, she would order an elemental to pick it up and propel it forwards again, south, the force of her mind too much for them to resist.
Finally, she began to feel Bluebell was close. But closer still was Wylm, her stepbrother. Ash knew immediately that he intended to kill Bluebell, but there was no mind left for her to worry or wonder. She dropped the bright ball just outside the dark house he hid in. Elementals in the area came cautiously close, and she pulled them closer and held them with her mind. She felt a great, gleaming pair of eyes watching her from across miles and mist. An echo of her dream of Becoming. She held back any fear, using her energy instead to hold the elementals close, despite the wave of formless exhaustion that threatened to pull her down to the undergrowth. Ash waited.
Bluebell arrived at Sabert’s farm as the afternoon shadows were starting to grow long. Her back ached from a long day in the saddle, but her blood felt electric as she dismounted outside his house. Everything seemed very quiet, but she told herself not to worry. There were many reasons a house might be quiet. She tried the door and found it swung open easily. Not locked.
There were many reasons a house might be unlocked.
‘Saba?’ she said as she entered. ‘Eni?’
The smell told her immediately Sabert wasn’t here, and that he had been gone a long time. A rotten piece of meat sat liquified on the bench, surrounded by chunks of mould-covered bread. She opened the little door to the bedroom, peering in at the bed where she and Sabert had so often taken their pleasure. Nobody there. No Sabert. No Eni. Just the smell of old piss.
So perhaps Wylm did have Eni. But where was Sabert? Bluebell started looking in cupboards and nooks, then outside the back door in barrels and troughs, realising that she was now searching for a body. Sabert’s greatest fear was to die and leave his boy unprotected, and now it seemed that had happened.
A whistling sound rushed past her ear and something thudded into the wooden wall beside her. Bluebell had her sword in her hand before she’d even glimpsed the knife sticking out of the wall, before she’d even turned to see who had thrown it.
It was Wylm. And he had Eni held tight against his body.
‘Eni!’ she called.
The boy looked around sightlessly, his mouth upside down with frightened sadness. This expression enraged her, even more than Wylm’s useless attempt on her life.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ she asked Wylm.
With his free hand Wylm drew a gleaming sword from its sheath, then held the cruel edge of it against Eni’s neck. ‘Drop the Widowsmith,’ he said, in a slow, measured voice that told Bluebell he was shitting himself and trying not to show it.
‘Prepare to die,’ she said.
He leaned gently into the blade, breaking the skin on Eni’s neck and releasing a thin trickle of blood. ‘Drop the Widowsmith,’ he said again.
She dropped it. She had a knife in her belt, another at her ankle. There would be a chance to kill him yet.
‘Let the child go.’
‘Is he important to you, Bluebell? Do you love him? I find it hard to believe that there’s a heart inside you.’
‘He’s the son of one of my friends,’ Bluebell said. ‘I won’t let you hurt him.’
‘Ah, your friend. He was the thick-necked farmer I killed.’
Her gut clenched. There was no time now for sorrow. ‘What do you want?’
‘I want you to fear me, Bluebell, for Hakon calls me the kyndrepa. This sword, forged with my own blood, was given to me by his randrman. Its name is Griðbani. Do you know what that means?’
She spread her hands as though nonchalant and exaggerated a shrug. ‘Limp dick?’
Wylm laughed bitterly. ‘I see I can’t threaten you. I’ll tell you this then: I want you to promise me that you won’t hurt my mother. Then Eni will be safe and so will you.’
Fuck. She should have known this would be his demand.
‘If I hear you’ve hurt her, I’ll kill this child,’ he said.
‘And when do I get Eni back?’
‘When my mother and I are safely back in Tweoning.’
She looked at Eni’s face; she thought about Sabert, about her long-dead friend, Edie. ‘Very well,’ she said.
Wylm started to back up, gestured with his head towards the door. She backed out and he followed her, half-dragging poor Eni. He pointed to a gap in the hedge that surrounded the garden. ‘Go. That way. Don’t look back.’
She spread her hands in front of her, smiling, and continued to walk backwards.
‘Turn around!’ he demanded.
‘Back off then.’
He shuffled away a few feet, pulled Eni roughly against him. ‘Turn around!’ he cried again, his veneer of calm beginning to crack. ‘I’ll kill him.’
Eni began to sob: big open-mouthed sobs. ‘Rabbit,’ he cried mournfully.
Bluebell’s heart started. She turned and ran for cover, intending to vault over the hedge. She felt movement behind her, was achingly aware of her unguarded back, her vulnerability, half-turned then stumbled at the hedge and landed hard on her stomach. Bright-hot disbelief flooded her. It was happening. She was down, unarmed. She flipped over in time to see Wylm standing over her with Hakon’s sword in his hand. She could see the strange rune markings on it glowing with preternatural pale fire, and she almost laughed at the idea that mighty Hakon might yet have his revenge on her via this slippery eel of a young man. No well-placed kick, no late-minute gathering of a knife from her ankle could help her now. He was too close and she was on her back. The moment was bright and heavy. Eni ran away towards the house, whole and unharmed. Motherless, fatherless. She looked up at Wylm again, her face twisting with anger. Her heart was beating so hard that it seemed the ground was shaking underneath her. She ripped open her tunic and said. ‘Through my heart. Make it quick.’
He smiled at the sight of her breast. ‘Ah, they aren’t made of iron after all,’ he said, raising the sword.
The ground shook again, and this time Bluebell knew it wasn’t her heart. The movement was enough to knock Wylm off-balance. He caught himself by plunging the sword into the ground beside him, shouting with a pain she didn’t understand. It gave Bluebell enough time to sit up, but not to get up. He had the trollblade in a bloody hand in front of him a moment later, but this time the hedge began to shake, the long tendrils of marjory vine that grew over it standing erect as though lightning had struck the ground. He could have killed her then. He had time and proximity, but the vine’s movement distracted him a half-moment more than it should have. A second later, the vine shot out and tangled around his ankles. He fell on his side, dropping the sword, breaking his fall with his arm, which twisted into a sick angle beside him. Bluebell had Griðbani in her hand in a second, standing above him. Their situations reversed exactly. Only Bluebell wouldn’t delay with fancy speeches and observations. She drew up her arm and plunged the blade deep, deep into his heart. He had time to gasp, then to say, ‘Have mercy on my mother.’
He had time to hear her say, ‘Fuck you.’
Then the steel stopped his heart beating and he convulsed and went still.
Bluebell released the grip and stood back. The troll runes were useless now, already fading to dull steel. ‘And fuck you, Hakon,’ she said, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. She stood a moment, catching her breath, breasts still bare in the sunshine. The vine had withdrawn back into the hedge, the ground was still. Bluebell closed her eyes. ‘I love you, Ash,’ she said, and she pulled her tunic back together and went inside to look for Eni, leaving Wylm’s body for the ravens to relish.
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nbsp; Ash had sat for so long, mind and body separated, that the insides of her eye sockets had gone icy cold. She held out long enough to hear Bluebell’s message of love, and then began to pull her light back towards her. Only her light was not so bright any more, and she was weary from holding it apart from her. She sought out elementals, who began to pass her along, away and away from that field near Blicstowe, her home town. I’ll always love you, sister, she said, though she wasn’t sure if her lips moved here in the woods, or if she said it only with her mind, all those miles away. She fluttered in and out of knowing, finding her light on the ground and having to ask again and again for the elementals to pick it up, pass it along, send it shooting north to Bradsey. The elementals cared nothing for her; they only did something if ordered. If she blacked out for a minute, she would find herself once again dull and unmoving. Exhaustion overwhelmed her. She felt her mind and body drawing back together. Slowly. Too slowly ...
She didn’t know how much time later she woke, on her blanket next to the fire in Unweder’s house. Her head and eyes ached as though every inch of the inside of them were bruised. She could barely find the energy to move her eyeballs to find Unweder. Luckily he wasn’t far away. Sitting on his stool at her side. When her eyes opened, he leaned forwards and put a cool hand on her forehead.
‘Close your eyes and stay very still,’ he said.
‘What happened?’ she mumbled.
‘You did dangerous magic.’
‘I saved Bluebell.’
‘You nearly lost yourself, though.’
Ash turned her memory over. ‘I sent my mind out.’
‘And you couldn’t get it back,’ he said. ‘I found you on the ground in the woods, breathing shallowly, but quite unable to respond. Lucky for you I’d seen such a thing before. I changed to bird form and flew around looking for your mind. A little glowing ball in the undergrowth just a mile south. I could have swallowed it whole but I didn’t. I brought it back for you.’
Ash would have nodded, but she couldn’t move her head. ‘Thank you,’ she said.