All afternoon, and through supper, and all night she’d waited to hear the familiar tread, waited for him to come back from his wanderings and ask for a place on Jiondor’s common-room floor. They’d even put out bedding for him. Jiondor’s little sons had helped them. But he’d never come. They’d slipped out during the night—all the dogs were sleeping with Caille—and fetched the lumber for their new stall and put it by Jiondor’s. When they crept back in, there was no dark head on the pillow, no body curled up in the blankets. Just Jiondor, arms crossed, tapping his foot. Demanding the whole story from them.
Pelufer fell asleep while they were explaining what they’d decided, but Elora must have kept talking, and Jiondor must have listened. First thing in the morning they were up and banging planks together, helping the other traders and being helped in return. Kara came and played with Caille while they worked, so Dabrena and Adaon could go off on some digging expedition, and when they came back they were so excited and terrified that they had to go straight to the alderfolk with some proposal, so Kara got to stay with Caille. Pelufer thought they should probably take Elora, but Adaon wasn’t half bad at talking people round to things, so she supposed they’d do all right. But if the codices they were worried about were anything like workings, they were going to have a job of it. Good thing that black runner had gone off to fetch some friends of hers. They would need them, with Mireille around.
On the other hand, they had Kazhe. She would defend whatever they’d found under Woodhill. She was the most dangerous, intimidating person Pelufer had ever met. A thrill went through her just looking at Kazhe, like the thrill she’d felt when she first held Risalyn’s longblade. And her shine was a dark blood red. When the whole hill [458] business was sorted, their training could start. She’d do that for half a day and work the stall the other half She wouldn’t even be tied down to the stall, not if things went according to plan. She’d be moving around Gir Doegre all the time, and Elora couldn’t complain, because it would be on business. If things went according to plan.
“All you need are seats, and you’ll be all set, so.” Jiondor was admiring their handiwork. “How about stepping behind there and giving it a go? Custom’s starting to pick up.”
Pelufer looked at Elora, who nodded and called for Caille. “There’s something we have to do first,” Pelufer said, looking across the low traders’ wedge toward the river and Lowhill.
“I understand,” said Jiondor. “Will you want company?”
“No, thank you,” Elora replied. “It has to be just us.”
With Caille between them, they cut hand in hand down Vanity Short, past the scents and creams and hairbrushes, and crossed Bronze Long with care. Between the Swallow and the Chimney Swift there had been a footbridge over the river, but the storm had washed it out, so they went back down Bronze Long to the maurbridge, and made their way from there into the shambles that was Lowhill.
Their cottage, toward the center, was wrecked.
The cottage to one side of it had slanted over in the storm, and the tin roof had gone clear through the common room at an angle. Wind and water had done the rest. The people who had lived there must have picked through their salvageable belongings yesterday; they were nowhere to be seen. The whole hill was quiet, with most folk tending first to their shops and stalls, no one preparing meals at this hour, no one emptying drip-pit tarps or turning middens. And there had been illness here, while they were gone. Lowhill had never been as rife with haunts as Highhill or the Kneeside, but Pelufer felt them now, like the shreds and tatters of a boneman, gossamer lives and names and thoughts passing through her. The fog had lifted, but for Pelufer there would always be a mist clinging to this town, fogs curling in the cracks and corners. It was all right. There were only two voices she was listening for now—and so intently that the others couldn’t overwhelm her.
She touched the wreck of their childhood home. Gone, now, like Mamma’s workshop. All the structures of the past demolished, collapsed. They had only themselves to live in now.
“Do you hear them?” Elora said, watching her carefully. When they’d gone to Jiondor’s house last night, where his pledge had died of the bilechoke—his sons’ mother, though Beronwy was their mother now—she’d gotten a nosebleed. That’s how powerful it was between Jiondor and the woman’s haunt. But afterward Jiondor looked two [459] stone lighter, and Beronwy had gentle tears in her eyes, and the little boys couldn’t stop talking about how they’d spoken to their other mother. And the mother’s haunt was gone. She’d been able to say goodbye, and it freed her. That was worth a nonned poxy nosebleeds.
“One of them,” Pelufer said.
She heard her father.
He was calling their mother’s name.
“Mamma?” Pelufer said, putting her other hand on the wreckage. “Mamma? It’s Pelufer, and Elora. And this is Caille. The baby. Look how grown up she is, Mamma!”
Caille found some other child’s broken toy in the rubble inside what had been the front doorway. She handed it to Elora. A spinner, made of oak. Elora fit the pieces back together. The seams flared copper, and sealed. “We’ll find them and give it back,” she said, returning the mended toy to Caille’s care.
A man, headed for the river with a basket of muddy clothes, had caught sight of Elora’s working. “What was that?” he said, veering closer. “What did you just do?”
This was it. A scary moment. Half a lifetime of keeping the secret ...
Elora squared her shoulders and said, “A mending. There’s more where that came from. Go to the stall between sweets and pies on Hunger Long when you’ve done your wash, if you’re interested.” She swallowed, clutched Pelufer’s wrist, and said, “Tell your friends!” Then she turned back quick, covering her mouth, her eyes bulging.
Pelufer swayed, feeling a swell of trader pride that did not come from her. “Good girl,” she said. The wreckage blurred. She felt she was looking into some other place—some invisible place beyond what was in front of her, or inside it. “Good trader girl,” she said, and then reached out to grab Caille and pull her into a rough hug.
“It’s him,” Elora said, going pale, as Caille squirmed free.
Pelufer nodded. “He’s not saying much. He’s proud of you. Never miss a chance to show your wares. That’s his girl. But ...” It was fading. For a moment he had noticed them, like a fish nosing to the surface of the river, but then he submerged again, and all Pelufer could hear was him calling Prendra’s name. “He wants Mamma.” The world came back into focus. “Where’s Mamma, Elora?”
“Tell her we met Lornhollow. Tell her he misses her. He did what she asked him. He made us strong. Caille saved the world.”
“Not by myself,” Caille said, examining the craving in a chunk of plastered wall.
“And we helped. And she eats enough for six, and she’s beautiful [460] and strong and healthy. Tell her that, Pel. Tell her good things so she’ll come.”
Pelufer shook her head so hard her hair fluffed. “I can’t ... She’s not ... She’s not here, Elora!”
Elora blew out a hard breath. “The bonefolk don’t passage the spirits. She’s somewhere. Why would she leave Padda by himself?”
“He’s still calling her. He’s been calling her for a long time, I think. “ The father she had felt in the spirit wood had been protective and strong and even stern with her. But she had been in trouble then, or so she thought. That got his attention. It took that much to wake him from the long dry dreamy loneliness of waiting for Mamma.
“He doesn’t want to be here,” she said. “We’re not here anymore, no one he loves is here. But he doesn’t know where he’d find her otherwise. She’s not at her workshop. Her workshop’s gone. Oh, Elora, where is Mamma?”
“In the stall? Would you feel it if she were?”
The wood for their stall had come, originally, from what was their mother’s workshop on Heelhill, the shed they’d lived in after they traded this cottage away because Pelufer couldn’t stand the feel
of her father’s haunt—the absence of her mother’s haunt. Her mother had never haunted this place. Her mother had never haunted the workshop.
“He left us to be with her, and he couldn’t find her.” She had never felt such a profound sadness. It hurt, deep in her heart, like a real physical pain. Ripping away from Elora, she whirled around on the devastated Lowhill slope and cried, “Mamma! Where are you?”
Elora hissed—she’d have every keeper in town running to save the poor lost child—but Pelufer didn’t care. Let them come. Maybe that would get Mamma’s attention. Why didn’t she come? Why wasn’t she here? How could she have left their father all alone? She wasn’t with Lornhollow, she wasn’t in the bonefolk’s realm, she wasn’t in the spirit wood or the planks of their stall and she wasn’t home, she wasn’t here—
I’m here, love.
“What?” Pelufer whispered.
I’m here. I’ve always been here.
Elora said, “What is it?”
Pelufer held a hand up and closed her eyes. Haunts’ voices came from places. Haunts haunted things. They had location. But she couldn’t tell where this one was.
Here, love. Look in. Look quick! I have to go now.
Pelufer sank to her knees.
The voice was corning from inside her.
[461] Elora rushed over and said a lot of things about how they shouldn’t have come here and of course it was too much and they’d go back to Jiondor and Nolfi now and start their new lives.
Pelufer said, “I found her. She’s here.” And put her fist on her chest.
“She’s haunting you?”
“She ... It ...” Pelufer listened, and said, “You and Caille have so much of her. You look like her, Elora, you have all her goodness, Caille has all her love. ... It was a way to ... know me ... and be with us, because she loves us, because she left us so early and ... But ...” She rubbed her hands over her face, and then felt a grin come on, a grin that wasn’t her own but was exactly like her grin, and it was Mamma’s grin, Mamma’s mischief, all this time she’d thought that her thieving and rule-breaking came from her father’s side, but it was Elora’s shoulds-and-shouldn’ts that came from Padda, and it was Mamma who had lurked in the spirit wood and fallen in love with a boneman, it was Mamma who broke all the rules by making him promise to give her strength to her children, it was Mamma who did everything you weren’t supposed to do and drove poor straitlaced Jenaille to distraction. It was Mamma who broke all the rules, and she couldn’t resist that in Pelufer, and so she’d hidden inside there all this time, to be with them, all three of them. Because you haunted the place you most wanted to be. Because you haunted the things you most loved.
“She has to go,” Pelufer said. “She misses Padda. Nimorin. Padda. I ... She didn’t know he was waiting, calling. Now she knows. She’s ... sad, and happy, so happy she can’t ... I can’t ...” She made herself focus on her sisters. “We’re getting to be big girls now. We’re big brave girls and we can take care of ourselves, and she misses Padda so much. She’s going now. She’s ...”
Don’t go! her heart cried, at the same time that she felt a wondrous flood of joy wash through her, and then wash back, from the cottage, from Padda.
He’d called for so long, and now Prendra had come.
What happened then was beyond Pelufer’s ability to comprehend. It was so instantaneous and complex and deep that it made her realize that no matter how she might think of herself, she was still only nine-and-two, and not even nearly a grownup yet.
But she understood the last bit. She understood the feeling of air being sucked out of a room, like when you yanked the front door open and you heard the loose shutters on the windows bang inward.
“She’s gone,” she said. “They’re gone.”
[462] Elora looked stricken. “They can’t go! We didn’t get to tell them we love them!”
“They knew. They knew, Elora. They knew everything.”
“But ...” Elora couldn’t put into words all the things she had expected, and wanted, from this.
“They’re not like us now,” Pelufer said, getting up on shaky legs. She felt blood running down into her mouth. Elora groaned and pulled out a cloth, tipping her head back, sopping at her nose. “They love us, but they know we’re all right,” she said, muffled through the cloth, the way the names used to be when she hid behind her kerchief to keep people from hearing them. She let her head down when her neck started to hurt, and pressed the cloth up tight to hold the blood in. “She was with us through all of it, Elora. She saw Caille grow up. She saw your workings. She saw what Caille did. She was proud. Padda wasn’t worried about us, but he was there when it counted, and now they’re together, that’s what they wanted, and they’ve gone. They’ll find us if they need to.” She looked down at Caille, who had been picking around the edges of the cottage the whole time. Caille knew she was loved. She knew it so deep inside that she didn’t need to talk to haunts or hear last words or worry whether people knew all the good things she had done.
We did that, Pelufer thought. We made her like that. And Mamma and Padda know it. And they’re proud.
Someday, she would find a way to explain that to Elora.
And find out what it was Elora’s heart had wanted from their parents’ haunts, and tell her that she already had it, and always had, and always would.
Mireille was standing behind their stall when they got back.
Her face was red and her eyes were shiny, and Pelufer had the perverse thought that Mireille had a shine, too, and hers was for getting other people into trouble.
“Don’t you have a stall of your own to tend?” Pelufer said, knowing full well what Mireille would say.
“I used to! I expanded it and all, but the storm blew it down and before I could rebuild someone walked off with my lumber.”
“From what I heard, you didn’t lift a finger yesterday to start rebuilding,” Pelufer said.
That scored with the traders around them, who didn’t think much of laziness. Mireille said, “I could hardly do it by myself. And now I can hardly do it at all, can I, with all my lumber hammered here into your new stall!”
[463] Caille had run around behind Jiondor’s to see what Kara was doing and show her the mended toy. Elora was wilting under the stares of the other traders. Mireille’s accusation was serious. Pelufer only grinned. “Why don’t you go fetch Alderman Denuorin and make your claims to him?” she said.
With a toss of her head, Mireille went off to do exactly that. “Plaguing the alderfolk beats a day’s honest work,” Pelufer said to the other traders, and went to stand behind her new trading board, as though she didn’t notice how they humphed down into themselves.
“You’re playing with tin sheets and no gloves on,” Jiondor said quietly.
“Healings and mendings!” Pelufer cried out into the long, her voice weaving into the cries of stewmongers and soupmongers, rootmongers and juicemongers. “Feed the spirit and talk to haunts!”
Now she was getting stares, all right. She raised her voice, cutting through the murmurs, startling the gawpers back a pace, and cried their trades again. No one came forward. At first no one had any idea what she was talking about. That was all right. It would take time.
Mireille took hardly any time. She blamed her rude way back through the gathering crowd practically hauling the alderman behind her. Anifa would have none of her, and the other alderfolk were too busy to entertain yet another of Mireille’s tantrums. But Denuorin was a kind man who could never say no.
“That’s my lumber,” Mireille said. “See there, the cuts where the tin used to sit? That was the extension on my stall, and no sooner was it blown down than Prendra’s lot swooped in to have it off me. I want it back, and I want my stall repaired for my trouble.”
“That could have been anyone’s tin seated in those cuts,” Denuorin said. “How do we know for certain this was your stall?”
“Where else did the planks go? They’re not on my pitch. Ask them
where they got the lumber for this new stall.”
Denuorin asked.
“From Mireille’s pitch,” Pelufer said promptly, and enjoyed the gasps and consternation. They had a nice batch of gawpers now.
Mireille threw her arms out—You see? I told you!—then crossed them over her chest and waited on Denuorin.
“And where did you get the lumber, Mireille?” Denuorin asked. “Might it have been someone else’s before it was yours?”
“From a scrapmonger,” she said, frowning. “I have no idea where he got it!”
“Which scrapmonger was that? Olio? Elidorlin?”
Her eyes narrowed. “It wasn’t one of ours. A passing trader.”
“That’s very interesting.” Denuorin pulled half a shattered plank [464] from a carrybag slung over his shoulder, and held it up beside their stall. The gray weathering was almost identical; the pocks and holes from mites and borers were the same. “Now, this piece comes from Heelhill, where Prendra n’Anondry, these girls’ mother, had her copperworks. Jenaille and Prendra were never on very good terms, were they?”
“My mother had nothing to say to them.”
What a liar! Pelufer thought, but she kept her mouth shut. For now.
“After their father died and they traded their cottage away,” Denuorin said, “these girls lived in that shop. That shop was knocked down by someone with a hammer, shortly before they went away up Gir Nuorin. Elora took me for a walk up Heelhill yesterday afternoon, so. We had a look round. Someone had taken most of the lumber, but a few scraps were left, tossed into the bushes by the storm. We retrieved this one.”
He waited. Mireille waited him out, giving him nothing.
Denuorin sighed. “While they were away up Gir Nuorin, you expanded your stall, Mireille. Which scrapmonger did you say you got the lumber from?”
Mireille only hesitated for a moment, but to Pelufer that moment was priceless. “A thieving one who knocks workshops down, apparently,” she spat.
“I’d say you were sadly taken,” Denuorin said. “You might be more careful who you trade with in future. Stick to Gir Doegrans, where you can. Trade local and you’ll never go wrong.”
The Binder's Road (The Sequel to 'Illumination') Page 58