‘Ouf’ Mam set herself back on two legs again. ‘Tea,’ she said.
The tea was steeped and poured into the big clay flask. Mam sliced apple and Pin posted the slivers through the flask’s narrow neck.
‘Can you manage it?’
Pin thought she could.
When she got down to the terraces – without a drop spilt – she found Farrow Gorlance was there with his brother, big Grove. On the road a steady stream of carts and people grew, strange people, Uplanders. Da watched, his hand crooked over his eyes to keep the sun off.
‘The Uplander Lord did uproot whole villages, I do hear,’ said Grove Gorlance. ‘Even of his own kind.’
Da was always first to get the tea. A clod tripped Pin as she handed him the flask.
Da stopped talking to catch the flask before she dropped it. ‘Watch your step, my maid.’
Farrow was making faces at her. It hadn’t been a clod of soil, it had been Farrow Gorlance’s fat, dirty foot. Edord came up at Pin’s side, which stopped Farrow’s sniggering.
‘Next you know, we’ll be driven from our own homes, and they said the war was over.’ Grove Gorlance held to the flask, did not swig and pass it on as would be polite.
‘We’re lucky, for the war did not come this far south. This is mostly soldiers, displaced now the fighting is done, and families.’ Da took the flask from Grove and held it for Pin so she could have her share. ‘They do have them all following in carts.’
‘Displaced!’ Grove clipped the back of his brother’s head so hard that Farrow was knocked, stumbling, forward. ‘Get on, you. We do have work to do.’
‘Work,’ said Da, when the Gorlances were gone. ‘Wouldn’t know work if it walked up to him and introduced itself, that one.’
‘What’s displaced, Da?’
‘Lost their homes, and their land.’
‘How?’ It still didn’t make sense to Pin. ‘When they are Uplanders?’
‘That Uplander Lord, who does sit now in Dorn-Lannet, well, he wasn’t happy with the land he’d been born to, so he took more. Took from his own people, you do see, before he even started taking from us. More and more, moving ever south. Some of those people, I do imagine, Pin-little, would have died; some would have stayed; and the rest, they moved, looking for a new place to live. It takes a long time to walk across country, longer with a war slowing you. Now the fighting’s stopped, they’re coming, and we’re seeing them. Think of a stone thrown into a pond,’ said Da. ‘It’s thrown and done, but the ripples do take longer to spread and flatten. That’s what this is, the ripples.’
Talk about the war was a little dull, unless it was Cam. ‘You do like the tea, Da?’
‘Wet enough, that’s for certain.’
‘I made it.’
‘Ah. Best tea I ever did drink.’
When the sun was tilted towards the horizon, Pin was sent to tell Da to come in to his supper. She walked backwards to watch her shadow, monstrously long, and backwards-walking in step with her. She stopped at the top of the terraces, put her head back and yelled, ‘Da-a-a.’
Far away, his voice answered. The terraces stepped down to the Highway. If she were a giant Pin, she would only need one step on each terrace, and she could reach the sea quicker than walking to the village. The woods spread around the feet of the hillock, stood thicker along the road. The webs of branches that lifted to the sky filtered the thin evening sun, and under them was a sort of forest-dusk.
This was a haunted wood. People told stories about it: how long, long ago, when times were hard, the old and the sickly had been taken into it, right up Hollen Hill, and left there to die. Royed Keystone had been riding his mare down from Innay-on-the-Pass one dark night when a small girl had appeared at his stirrup, looking up at him, and crying, he said, like her heart was broke. Royed had kicked his horse into a gallop, but swiftly though the mare ran, the small girl kept pace by his stirrup. He had hurled into the village with his hair all on end and face yellow with fear. It was his daughter’s face he’d seen on the girl. Now his daughter was living, hale and strong, in the village, but Royed’s grandmam’s sister had been taken up Hollen Hill to die.
Beyond the forest, Pin knew, was the sea; and the merrows, they lived in the sea. But, to get there, Pin would have to pass through the woods. For a moment the wind in the branches made the same sound as Mam’s hand on her ear. She stood looking down on the crowns of the trees, blown into crests and troughs by the wind. Though she was safe on Da’s holding, Pin’s skin went cold. She turned and ran back along the earthwalls to the cottage.
Cam did not come home that evening, not before Pin must go to bed; nor was he there the morning following. The cot had that quiet about it, still, that it had taken on when Mam rocked Pin to sleep two days earlier. Even Hughar and Edord were doing what they were bid, more like strangers than her brothers, thought Pin.
Da took Pin down to the terraces with him, lugging a great bag of seed potatoes for early planting.
‘Wishes, is it?’ He took the potatoes from her, half a dozen at a time, set them and pressed earth up to them, quick as anything. Pin’s hands kept emptying and she had to be quick to have the next lot ready. ‘What do you have to wish for? Nothing!’
Pin thought she could wish for quite a lot of things. She told him all the ones she could think of, handing him seed potatoes until the bag was empty.
‘Ah?’ he said. ‘Huh. I’m wishing you’ll be back with a fresh lot for sowing before I’ve time to think about it.’
Between them, Da and Pin planted the lower terrace right to the fence. The fence followed the Highway, which followed the creek. Pin could see it glinting, below the Highway and through the trees. Merrows so filled her mind that she forgot she was afraid of the forest. Maybe they lived in the river, maybe she could catch one, and what did they look like anyway?
‘Well, my maid, what is it you’re thinking on now?’
‘Nothing,’ said Pin, and she scrambled to the top of the earthwall, the better to see the creek.
The sun stuck in the middle of the sky, thin and giving little warmth.
Da straightened. ‘The twins can mulch these now.’
‘Are there merrows in it, Da, do you think?’
‘The stream? Plenty trout in it, I do know. Who’s that?’
Coming down from the direction of the cot was a boy.
‘It’s Ban Coverlast.’
He was watching them, but he looked away when Pin watched him back.
‘He’s half wild himself,’ said Da. ‘That’s what comes of living right in the forest like they do. And what does he want, eh?’
Da waved at Ban, waved him down. Pin saw Ban look left, look right, then come down as far as the levee, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He had the same weighed-down look about him that Mam and Da did.
‘He’s gone,’ Da shouted, leaning on his fork. ‘Did take off, and where or when or what-all, he didn’t say.’ He turned his head and spat.
‘Gone?’ said Pin. Really gone? She started to weep, and ran to Da.
‘Soft-witted, that lot,’ Da said when Ban had gone.
‘Has Cam left us again, Da?’
‘Oh, ho, what are these tears for?’ Da picked her up. ‘He’ll walk in tomorrow like nothing ever happened, you see if he doesn’t.’
Pin found that she did not believe him.
‘Do you run up and see if your mam has work for you.’
She trudged uphill to the cot. The yard was empty. Pin tugged at one of the egg-wraps. Tomorrow they would be taken to the market and sold. Suddenly she swung her whole weight off a string of eggs. She was glad he was gone, Cam, horrible horse-brother, who had been meant to hang them with her and had chosen instead to drink at the tavern with Ban Coverlast. The string broke, dropping her plump on the ground, and breaking all five eggs. Pin stood up, dusted her seat, and broke the next string. And the next and the next, until all of them lay smashed in the dirt. Then she went, very good and quiet, to help Mam all
afternoon.
The lamp was lit and supper laid on the table. Da’s heavy tread sounded on the porch, making Pin jump.
‘Rot those Coverlasts.’ Da was so angry he stamped into the house in his boots. ‘I should have seen him off the holding.’
‘What do you do with that!’ Mam was looking at the flax wraps, hanging in Da’s hand, all crusty with dried egg. ‘That’s all our eggs for market.’
‘The Coverlasts! I gave one of the lads short shrift and this is his thanks, I do dare say. I found them all laid in the dirt. Pulled off and smashed, every one and all of them.’
‘Pin’s red as a radish,’ said Hughar.
Mam turned a shocked look upon her. ‘Pin?’
‘Pin?’ Da’s tone made Pin feel sick. ‘Tell me my Pin-little didn’t do this.’
That was something that Pin could not do.
‘Oh!’ Mam sat down. ‘Why would you?’
Da took her out into the yard, cut a switch from the bare, hanging boughs of the willow, and switched her hands, one for each wrap of eggs she had broken.
In bed afterwards, Pin lay with her throbbing palms turned up to the cool air. For all they stung, she didn’t cry.
The mornings were still frosty, and the winds as wild, but they were beginning to swing around, bringing warmer gusts from the east and the north, and every day the sun showed its face. Pin was out in the yard early, running from the far fence to leap as high as she could and land splash in the puddles by the well, the fragile skin of ice that covered them shattering under her feet. There were more, and bigger, puddles filling the wheel ruts on the road. Pin bounced and splattered her way down the terraces, along the Highway.
A stone’s throw from the road, the ground dipped to a line of trees, and running at the feet of them was the creek. The water-babble nagged at her. She pushed through the fringe of trees. The creek jumped and splashed, shouting, now that she was close to it. The water was clear, but with a brown tint to it, like weak tea. There were stones, patches of moss, trout. Pin looked and looked, but she could not see a merrow. Maybe they were shy, and would not let themselves be seen.
She closed her eyes tight, but she was not thinking of merrows now; she was thinking of Cam. Cam on that last night. Just as they had sat to supper without him, he had come laughing through the door, and it was not just shy she had been with Cam – she had been cross, and he had known it and now he was gone.
He’d made to swing Pin up, as he always did. But Pin had swatted at him and run away.
‘What’s this, then? My little Pin-sister being a stranger to me?’
‘Do you blame her when you’re never about?’ Da had said.
‘I’m about now.’
Pin had put her tongue out at him. ‘You do only come home to fight with Da.’
Gone, and it was her fault.
Pin wanted him home: wanted it like it was when he’d first returned from the war. She crouched there on the stony bank, rocking a little with the weight of her wish, and nothing at all happened. At length her eyes would not stay shut and her mind would not stay fixed.
‘Puh.’ She stood up. What was the creek but a puddle, a big puddle and no merrows in it. Pin jumped in, up to her knees in brown, icy water.
And heard a laugh.
‘Aah!’ Carefully, she looked through her fingers.
She saw feet first, bare and very brown; then the muddy hem of trousers, so bright a red it hurt the eyes; a jacket of the same colour. A girl. Older than Pin, older even than the twins, dark as her own shadow. Silent as a shadow she had slipped from the trees, all in her strange red clothes, no pinny, no hat, no shoes. She crouched, and hooked the cuffs of her trousers over her toes.
Pin fled. She didn’t stop for breath until she reached the road, hot and sweaty, but with cold wet feet and her skirt slapping damp hands about her calves.
‘What do you do along the Highway, and on your own?’
For the second time that morning, Pin yelped with fright.
‘Does your mam know?’ said Master Keystone. ‘No, I thought not. Here. Do you get in.’
Pin had no choice. She climbed into his barrow, fitting herself around the blocks of stone, arms folded over her chest.
‘Headed towards the Uplander camp, and none too happy to be herded up,’ said Master Keystone to Mam.
There were many thank-yous exchanged, then Mam closed the door. Pin bent her head, waiting for a slap, of hands or words.
‘You do look a bit peaked.’ Mam sat her on Da’s chair by the fire, put a rug over her. ‘I’ll make you a dandelion tea, that’ll restore you.’ Mam always made dandelion tea when Pin was out of sorts, and she always said, ‘That’ll restore you.’
There was a bit more trouble when Da came in. ‘What were you thinking? The riffraff in that camp, ah!’
How to explain? Pin did not know, so she spread her hands. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I know,’ Mam said, a day or two later. She helped Pin to make a prayer paper, showing her how to fold it, and with each fold to seal her wish inside, by thinking hard of it.
‘Set it on the water and it’ll come to the sea,’ said Mam. ‘Then your merrows will find it and grant your wish.’
Da was cross and stomped outside. ‘She’s enough nonsense in her head, without you putting more there.’
Still, it was he who took her down to the river by Millman’s Race and helped her cast the prayer paper on the water, holding her hand and helping her throw further than she ever could have on her own.
‘Don’t you watch it,’ he told her. ‘They might be shy, those sprites of yours.’
Pin hadn’t watched her prayer paper, but the next day she came back and found it soggy and torn, wrapped about the reeds that edged the mouth of the mill race. ‘Rot.’
She hadn’t got more than a few hundred paces down the road towards the sea when she heard wheels coming up behind her. It was Fenister’s fine painted dray. Pin just stopped and waited for it to draw up beside her. Master Fenister looked down at her; then, face very stern, he pointed to the seat beside him. Pin climbed up.
‘I’ve never been in a cart.’
‘See,’ said Master Fenister. ‘There’s good even in bad things.’
It was not the sort ofthing she’d expected Master Fenister to say.
‘You fishing then?’
‘No.’
‘No, she says. What then?’
‘I’m looking for merrows,’ said Pin.
‘And what are they?’
She told him.
‘I made my own wish come true,’ said Master Fenister. ‘No merrows at all. You try that.’
He dropped her short of the gate. ‘No need to worry your mam.’
Pin felt her mind knot around itself. Everyone hated Master Fenister, and so she did, but . . . ‘There’s good even in bad things, like you do say. Everyone does say you’re mean, and that’s bad, but you did be good to me just now.’ She beamed at him, pleased with her compliment.
Fat Fenister just looked at her, looked on up the road, then he shook his head. ‘Come up,’ he called to the horse and rattled off, leaving a spray of mud behind him.
Spring First Month was always brought in by Da’s parsnip wine. Da’s cooking was different from Mam’s. It was louder and more difficult (or so it seemed from Da’s face) and much, much messier. Pin loved it, and could not understand why Mam was always grumpy after.
‘Parsnip Wine Day’ said Da. To start with, he opened a bottle of last year’s parsnip wine, and everyone had a small glass of it, even Pin. This year’s brew would not be drunk until next winter.
Next, Da and Pin dug parsnips from the sheltered bed by the stable. This year, Pin was allowed to cut them. ‘Do not let your mam see,’ said Da.
Allowed, that is, until she cut herself and bled all over them.
‘Mm-mm.’ Da wiped Pin’s bleeding finger. ‘That will make it taste all the better.’
The parsnips were put in the pot with Da’s secret ingredien
ts, that he mixed with his back even to Pin. ‘Let me’ – she pulling at his shirt – ‘do you let me see.’ But he never would.
Then they cleaned up, knife and utensils piled all anyhow to one side, scraps in the pig bucket.
‘Da?’ said Pin. ‘What’s the sea, then?’
‘You’ve asked me this so often, Pin-little, that I think you do know the answer in your sleep.’
‘Da!’
‘Oh it’s a big bit of water, further across than from here to Dorn-Lannet.’
Pin was sure he must be shifting the truth to make things sound more exciting. The biggest bit of water she knew was the mill pond.
‘And it’s salt.’
‘It’s never.’
‘Aye, well, I can’t help it if you don’t like the truth.’ Da laughed.
‘Da?’
‘Another question? When will you run out of them?’
‘Why is it the pig bucket, but we do not keep a pig?’
‘Ah, that’s one of life’s little mysteries.’
Mam came in then and shooed them out. ‘Let me clean up!’ She and Da dickered over the mess, who should stir the pot.
‘Stir each other’s pot,’ said Hughar.
At the end of the morning, the whole house smelt deliciously of parsnip wine.
The creek had been empty, no merrows had answered her; the river. It does have to be the sea, Pin thought. She turned and looked back up at the holding, the cot round on its hill, then she put her back to it and kept on. She was almost at Castle Cross; then she was through it, past it and on the East Road.
Walking with Da was always fun, but walking alone was very different. There were people and carts, just as there were when she went to market with Da, but it was not a market day and the road was quieter. And there were the Uplanders. But they were so different, thought Pin, that it was like sharing the road with ghosts. They walked fast, on their long Uplander legs, and they did not walk with her, but before or behind her. She had her own patch of empty road that she dragged with her through the woods. The trees trapped a gloom in their branches, though they were bearing green nubs of leaves.
Bloodflower Page 8