Acton sat on the gatepost up on the ridge and gazed at the sun’s splintering against the panes. He sat here often and watched Corban Farmer and his man about their work, watched the farm itself, trim and tidy and thriving.
Jinn was high on her haunches, edging down the track, muzzle pointed to the bottom, to the sheep pasture.
‘No, Jinn.’
Jinn whined and lay down, nose on her paws.
‘Aye, good. Good, Jinn.’ Which brought her back to him, tail wagging.
Then.
Acton thought he was fainting, for the air pressed suddenly against his ear and there was a black flashing at the edge of his sight. He fell off the gatepost, forearms flung up against the pressure in his ears. Jinn yelped and dropped on her side.
‘Jinn?’ Acton waited for her to get up, got up himself, walked a step, then ran to her.
The arrow stuck straight up from Jinn’s chest; the grey feathers of the fletching danced just a little with the movement of the air.
‘Jinn?’
‘Hold, boy, hold.’ Someone jerked his arm so that he was spun half about, almost off his feet. He hung in that grip and stared.
‘I did warn you.’ Corban Farmer let go, and leaned on his bow. ‘I’d not have that dog at my stock.’
There was a scream starting in him but his voice only came out shrill and shaking: ‘She, uhn, never!’
‘I did tell you, and more often than once.’ Neither Farmer’s voice, nor his face, gave any hint of what he was feeling. The bow flexed as he put more weight on it, shoved his instep against the tip, and slipped the loop of the bowstring free. He wound the string into a hank, lifted the bow to his shoulder. ‘It’s done now.’ And he walked off.
‘Killer!’
Did the even tread falter? Acton wasn’t sure. Corban Farmer did not stop, did not turn. Bending, Acton scraped up two fistfuls of gravel from the track, hurled them at the man’s back.
‘KILLER!’
The spraying dirt hit the road with a sound like rain.
Acton touched Jinn’s coat. The body looked like Jinn, but it was empty of her. He looked and looked at her, but he still did not know how to put it straight in his mind. Under his fingertips, the body felt wrong. Acton snatched his hand back. Dropping to his knees, he was sick on the road.
Corban Farmer spent the morning with his flock. Acton hovered: about the gatepost, about Jinn. He watched Corban Farmer and his man as they walked back and forth and round and about. Under the noises of the day, of sheep and breeze and tree and traffic, the whine of the arrow kept playing itself over in his ears, and his eyes saw Jinn fall, Jinn fall, Jinn fall.
Townsfolk happened by, only in their ones and twos for today was not a market day. Corban Farmer’s holding was on the Ridge Road that ran through the village, and people came and went: to Isych in the south, or perhaps passing through Kayforl on their way north to Dorn-Lannet.
‘Eh, boy. If Farmer does see you here . . .’
‘Seems he already has. Do you look at this.’
This was Jinn.
‘Eh, boy.’
‘That’s hard cruel, that is.’ They stood there steadying the baskets on their heads.
‘Corban did talk of it. He did tell the boy fair . . .’
Acton sat at the foot of the gatepost and listened to them walk on, talk on. There was a scream building in his head, but with nowhere to sound. Acton thought it would burst his skull.
Corban Farmer strode from the paddock at noontime – back to his dogs, and his man that helped with the milking and mucking and all; back to his house and its sun-snaring windows. Acton made to go, but there was Jinn. There was Jinn, and there was nothing to be done. He paced back and forth along the strip of ridge that ran alongside the farm.
‘Ehhh.’ Farrow Gorlance stood atop the ridge. ‘What is this?’
Acton rounded on him. ‘Leave her be.’
‘I’d not lay a finger to her.’ Farrow was eating an apple. Around his mouth, where the juice ran, his face was clean. The rest was streaked and patched and dark with dirt. ‘He does think he is Lord here, does he, shooting of other people’s animals?’ He pulled at the sling stuck through his belt. ‘I could smash them fancy windows of his.’
‘Does that bring her back?’
‘It does show him.’
Acton shook his head.
‘Aye, well.’ Farrow cast the apple core as far as he could down the hill that sloped green to the green lawn about the farmhouse. ‘Why’d you not do your puking in his garden?’
In the red light of the last of the day, the to-and-fro of people stopped. Nothing moved in all of the valley. Acton’s mind ached with thinking of Jinn.
‘You still here?’
Acton started and whirled around. It was Corban’s man. Acton swore at him.
‘Get!’ said Corban’s man. ‘Gutter-gobbed stray. Go on!’
‘When he gives me he’s sorry, then I’ll go.’
‘You’ll get is what you’ll do.’
Acton held to the gatepost and said nothing.
‘You did not welk like this when your da passed on.’
‘You do not know what I did then.’
Corban’s man scuffed him with his shit-clagged shoe and walked around him to the road.
The sun finished its fall earthwards, dragging night after it. The lamps were gold in Corban Farmer’s glass windows. Acton slid down until he sat, his arms about the gatepost. He had thought the scream too big in him to let him sleep, but despite it his head drooped against the wooden post, his eyes closed.
He woke once, thirsty. His mouth was too dry to swallow, his tongue, throat. He realised he had neither drunk nor eaten since the morning. He dreamed of water – the cool well-water from the yard at home; the cool running water of the stream – a cool, tall jug of it, flavoured with mint leaves.
(‘Your mam, she did make water like this.’ Da, dropping the sprig of mint into the crock. ‘There was nothing like it on a hot day, a haying day’)
He woke again to the ghost-light of the false dawn, and a shump-shump of footsteps in the thick dust of the road. Corban’s man turned in at the gate, little spurts of dust fountaining up at each step. Though he did not look at Acton as he walked past, as if Acton were not there, he went first to the farmhouse, not to the byre. He stood on the stoop, pointing up the drive at him. Acton pointed right back.
All morning Acton played ghost up on the ridge. If Corban walked north towards his barn and sheds, then so did Acton move north along the ridge; when Corban walked south to his sheep pastures, then south walked Acton, like a living, remote shadow. Corban went in, early and sudden, to his noon meal.
Acton returned to the post, hitched himself up onto it. He turned away from Jinn, a pale hump in the grass. From here all of Kayforl spread, the town along the ridge to the north and the little hillocks of the holdings cupped in the valley, the woods spreading away to the east. That one, that small and shaggy one there, that was home. The Highway to Dorn-Lannet, that Da had taken, ran past its gate; past the tiny Uplander camp down on the river flats.
Acton thought he should go home – that he would and bury Jinn. But home was empty: Mam was only a name, dead; Da was dead; and now Jinn ran only in his mind. He held the scream inside him.
Isla Caross paused with her friend Minnet at the head of the drive. ‘Poor boy. He did love that dog.’
‘Isla Caross, I did never!’ Minnet canted back from the waist and stuck her hands on her hips; her sweetheart was a distant cousin to Corban Farmer. ‘This, pah!’ Her fingers flicked at Acton. ‘And over a litter-runt that did ought to have stayed drowned.’
Acton stopped pretending not to be there. ‘Jinn was no runt.’
‘Why, you.’ Isla looked Minnet up and down. ‘I did not know you to be so hard-minded.’
They walked away on opposite sides of the road.
Isla Caross, she often had food for him, never moved him on. For all she worked for Fat Fenister, she was not like hi
m, was kind, never greedy. Acton liked Isla Caross.
He became aware of another pain. He had waked thirsty; now he was hungry. They were so big in him that they were outpacing his grief. He left the post to wander downhill looking for Farrow’s discarded apple core. He found it but could not, after all, touch it.
It was like a kind of magic, then, that a townswoman set a loaf of bread by him, stooping as she walked so that she never stopped. Acton swivelled around on his backside, then got up and stepped into the road.
‘Thank you.’ He watched her stop and turn and lift her hand, unsmiling. The bread he held on to, too dry in the mouth to eat it.
The drink, too, came to him.
Two pairs of feet halted toe to toe with his: one booted, one bare like his own. He did not look up higher than their knees but he knew who they were, for their shadows fell back along the road the way they had come and one, Boots, had an empty shadow-sleeve fluttering in the wind: Cam Attling. Barefeet was Ban Coverlast, for Cam and Ban went everywhere together: woods and tavern, poaching and drinking.
‘I did hear,’ said Cam. ‘We did.’
Acton thought, Hear?
‘Give it up.’ Ban’s tone was kind. ‘It is wrong, what Farmer did do, but it is done and this will not mend it.’
Cam said nothing, just stood at Ban’s side. He wore his hair long, like a maid, like an Uplander, and it flapped with his shirtsleeve in the wind.
‘No,’ said Acton.
They stood a moment longer, Ban shuffling his feet a little. Then they walked on, first them, then their shadows passing him.
One came back, at a run.
‘Catch!’
Acton jumped up. Cam’s arm went back, and light arced from his hand as he threw something. Acton put both his hands up and caught it, bending his elbows to soften the force of the throw and the hardness of . . . a flask. With letters on it. Acton traced them with stinging fingers but did not know how to read them. He looked up, but Cam had gone and the road wound quiet and empty, a plume of dust sinking in the unmoving air.
It was cider in the flask. He drank it all off, then ate the loaf of bread. His stomach felt steadier, but in his head the scream still beat.
This second day crawled to its end and painted Corban’s fine windows red again. Again, Acton planted himself at the head of the track and looked down on the house. It sat square in its green lawn, pumpkin vines tied into great leafy rounds bordering the path to the door, flowers growing against the walls.
Acton cupped his hands about his mouth and shouted at the full stretch of his voice: ‘Corban Farmer, I am waiting. Do you tell me you are sorry!’ His voice chased its own echoes around the gully.
Corban’s man woke him again, spitting on the ground at Acton’s feet.
Acton lurched upright. ‘Better he shot you, and Jinn alive!’
Like Corban had, his man just walked on, and never flinched or looked back.
It was Corban’s man who milked the cows, that morning. Corban had not put foot out of the house since noon the day before. His man kept stopping his work to turn and stare at Acton. Acton could see the pale circle of his face turned upwards, still a moment, before dropping as he went back to work.
‘Boy.’ One of the village women crouched by him. ‘Boy.’ She put her arm around him and rocked him. Acton went all stiff in the embrace. It was so long since anyone had hugged him that he had forgotten how
‘I know Jinn was all you did have, but this? Farmer is stern, but not cruel. And Jinn was at his stock.’
‘No!’ He pulled free. ‘Farmer hates me. He killed her to show me – that he is strong and I am not. But I am, and I do show him.’
Just then Minnet stopped by again. ‘My Finnlay says poor Corban does feel quite set on.’ She had her say to the air, but then let her stare claw Acton.
‘I dare say.’ The woman took up her basket.
Minnet made a face at her back. ‘Fat old scrull.’
Finnlay Pacenot drew up, because Minnet was there. He kept the horses shying up, which made Minnet squeal and say, ‘Oh Finn.’ Oh Finn. Minnet stepped up into the cart and they belted off, merry as Fair Day.
It seemed the whole village had business out of town today, for they all passed him, there and back again. All stopping to say, ‘Eh.’ Eh.
‘He’s bitter, after his sons did die, that’s what.’
‘That was a good dog.’
‘Pheuw! She’s getting high.’
Just on dusk, Ellaner Ankerton stopped by him. ‘You’ve been the day without bite or sup.’
‘Been without longer than this, before now.’
Aye. Your da was a brave man, but people do forget what they do owe and who they owe it to.’
Acton wasn’t sure he knew what she meant.
‘Here.’ She thrust a satchel at him. ‘Don’t tell Abenestor. You must not tell Abenestor.’
Abenestor was her husband. Al of Kayforl knew him to be brute and dirty-tempered, and it was a beating Ellaner Ankerton risked for Acton’s sake.
‘I’d never.’
But she was already hurrying away. Acton opened the satchel: food, traveller’s food – dried fruit, dried meat, waybread. He wondered how she had come by it, that she dared so much, why. It was strange, he thought, that more kindness had come to him with Jinn’s death than had in all the time since Da’s.
‘You still here then.’ Farrow’s sudden appearance made Acton jump. ‘I think I’ll just stay awhile and see.’
‘See what?’ It was Da Palfreyman. Acton inched around the post, stood up when he had it between him and the village Headman. Da Palfreyman had a hard hand. And his hard hand whipped out now, cuffed Farrow about the ears. ‘You do have a home to go to.’
Farrow bolted. A safe distance up the road he stopped. ‘Da Palfreyman fucks goats!’ he yelled.
Da Palfreyman paid Farrow no heed. He nodded towards Corban Farmer’s house. Always did need to shout himself big, that one. Even when he was a child, Corban liked to impress.’ He pointed to the spangle of the lamps through the glass, in competition with the last of the light. ‘Young Mansto, do you not think you have made your point?’
‘When he gives me he’s sorry, then I’ll go.’
‘Oof. I hope you know what you do stir up.’ Da Palfreyman went as quietly as he had come.
The night grew very dark, cloud drawing heavy over stars and moon, the air heavy too, clammy. Acton sat and propped his shoulder against the post, knees curled to his chest. He sighed, stretched his legs out, folded them again; spread out flat on the ground, turned on his left side, his right. There were the villagers, taking his fight out of his own hands, making it theirs; and the Headman, whom he had disobeyed, and nothing good could come ofthat. There was Jinn, lying stinking in the grass at his back; Da, buried who-knew-where on some battlefield far to the north. He stared into the sky and knew sleep was as far away as either of them.
And woke. Lights filled the valley, and voices. He flung himself to his feet. There were torches in Corban Farmer’s yard, weaving circles of light in the dark. The sound of breaking glass carried, and the voices that rose into shouting. The torches marched in a wavering line up the track. Acton’s breath seemed stopped in his throat. He thought of ghosts, of Uplanders, and pressed himself against the post, cast about for somewhere to hide. But it was Farrow who halted before him, Farrow and his older brother Grove, and Grove’s lot that hung around together.
‘Told you we would break them windows,’ said Farrow He seemed pleased, glad. Acton thought, Farrow never did that for Jinn, for me.
The first light of day showed Corban Farmer walking about his yard. He kept bending down. Picking up glass, Acton realised, and felt a strange unease. Farmer paused and stared up at the ridge, at Acton. Anger crowded out any other feeling and, carried by it, Acton climbed atop the post and yelled, ‘You killed my dog, Corban Farmer!’
The man staggered, as if Acton’s words had hit him bodily, then righted himself and walked out of sig
ht behind the east wing of the farmhouse.
Master Attling was early on the road. Acton watched him pushing his handcart around the bend and up the slope the road made on its way south past Farmer’s holding. His little girl, Pin, skipped and leapt around and about him. When she saw Acton she ran up to him, then stopped right before him and stared.
‘You did sleep here, last night?’ she asked.
‘Aye.’
‘Why?’ she demanded to know
Her da came up to them then. Acton found a smile for him but Master Attling only looked at him, sadly.
‘Pin, leave that.’ For she was inspecting Jinn. ‘Do you come.’ He set his daughter in the handcart and walked on, without a word for Acton. Acton felt his eyes burn, and was shamed, that he could cry for himself, but had not wept for Jinn.
When Da had not come back – when Cam Attling had ridden into the village with the spring, and they had all realised he was the only one coming home – Acton had gone to his house and had stayed curled on Da’s bed until Isla Caross’s mam had come and made him wash and eat and drink, and had set him to work in his own garden. All his, because Mam was dead with his birth, and Da was never coming back. And though he had lain there on that bed, feeling as if he were dying inside for wanting Da, he had not wept for him, either.
The road was uncommonly quiet under the punishing beat of the sun. Acton chased the narrow band of shade thrown down by the post in a circle. He found himself looking north, to the little Uplander camp on the levels by the river: a tent, maybe two. He could even see people, tiny with distance, crouching by a fire: Uplanders, fleeing their own war. There was something about how they sat, still and stubborn. ‘They’ll not move,’ he said aloud.
But for Uplanders, Da would be alive. But for himself, Mam would be. His thoughts tied his mind in knots.
The sun pitched westward, and still no one came by. When steps did at last sound, Acton jumped nearly from his skin – it wasn’t just a passerby, it was a great tramping of feet. He looked, then scudded around the post. The whole of Kayforl was marching up the road towards Corban Farmer’s holding.
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