by Annie Bellet
“I’m not sure,” Áine answered her. “If you’ll help me to sit, I can feel it out and see.” She leaned heavily on Hafwyn.
“Melita, fetch her one of Caron’s gown’s, she taller than I. And bring my bag of herbs from the garden workroom.” Hafwyn sat Áine on the bench again and helped her dry off with a soft white linen cloth.
“Thank you,” Áine said, flushing though she wasn’t sure why. Even in her haze of grief, she hadn’t missed the looks the women exchanged. She was so used to the questions and suspicions that she was grateful the woman was saving them for another time.
Then she remembered Emyr and her pearl tear. They’ll have plenty of questions, won’t they? And I’m not sure how to answer. She sighed. She’d deal with all that later.
Now, first her leg, and then. . .Áine took a shuddering breath and shoved the wave of sorrow away. Then she’d burn her mother and build the cairn to bury her properly. She wished that they’d thought to look for her pack, but she remembered it breaking in the flood and knew chances were faint that they’d have found it anyway.
Áine let her mind sink into her body. There was the pain of many scrapes and bruises, all of which she acknowledged and filed away. She felt her head, a dizzying throb under the weight of her drying hair. Then she moved to the pain in her leg.
It was two injuries, she realized. Her calf was bruised down to the bone, though thankfully the bone itself was unbroken if sore. Her ankle had been twisted somehow in the torrent and she felt fluid in the joint that was irritating and inflaming the rest. Nothing would heal that but a tight binding and a week or two off her leg.
She opened her eyes and looked up at Hafwyn. “Nothing’s broken, though the ankle is twisted and angry. I’ll need tight binding and I’m afraid I can’t travel for a week or two.”
“Of course not. You’re welcome here, wise one, as long as you wish to stay. Winter brings many ills and we’d be glad of your gifts.” Hafwyn smiled and her tone made it clear that she meant what she said fully.
Áine realized with a start that in her distraction she’d forgotten to make a show of prodding the injuries and had instead, to all appearances, just sat quietly for a few moments before pronouncing her diagnosis. She shook her head at her clumsiness. Tesn would chide her for her foolish trust.
The sucking hollow loss hit her like a fist as her heart jumped from her chest and into her throat again. Tesn won’t be chiding me for anything, not anymore. I’d commit a hundred careless acts to hear her voice again. Áine fiercely scrubbed at her eyes with her palms as Melita returned to the room.
The serving woman carried a soft woolen gown of deep blue with broad bands of red and yellow embroidery at the collar and down the sleeves. There were delicate bronze clasps at the cuffs and small bronze buttons decorating the front. It was beautiful and Áine sighed. She wasn’t supposed to wear dyed or decorated clothing. Wisewomen, Tesn had taught her, always travel with only what they need and give up the trappings of comfort for knowledge. This allowed them a freedom women rarely enjoyed and they trusted the Gods to provide and the world to yield up a few of her mysteries. The only color she’d worn her whole life was the red belt that denoted the wisewomen’s profession.
And where did that get us? Áine shivered. Tesn is dead and I’m alone. She looked up at Hafwyn. “Thank you,” she said again, hating her slow mind.
The women helped her dress. Melita had scraped the mud from her red belt and offered it to her as well. Áine hesitated and then pulled the familiar leather around her hips and looped the trailing end through the simple bronze ring.
“We’ve no gowns of undyed wool, Wise One, I’m sorry. We’ll make you one as soon as we’re able,” Melita said, licking her lips nervously and looking away from Áine’s startling green gaze.
“I might be able to salvage mine, though I fear I’ve lost all our gear in that flood.” She hesitated and dropped her eyes down to her lap. “My gear,” she said softly.
Caron entered the room and noted the silent tension among the three women. Hafwyn stood by the filthy bath watching their guest who stared down at her folded pale hands. Melita was also standing, looking lost for once instead of her normal capable bustling self.
“I’ve got bindings and an assortment of herbs, plus an ointment for cuts, if it’s needed,” she said, taking in the fair skin and fresh-blood color of Aine’s drying hair.
Áine nodded and set about binding her ankle up with Melita’s capable assistance. The older woman gave herself a shake and returned to some measure of her usual self once given a task.
Gethin, now too old to spend much time with the flocks, though still strong enough for work, as he’d point out many times a day if questioned, came in with Urien to remove the copper tub.
Hafwyn helped Áine out into the hall where Caron had returned to fixing the midday meal of a simple bone broth thickened with soaked barley and a handful of small onions from the holding’s garden.
It was late autumn. The flocks were already coming in from the moors and going to the small crofts that lay within the radius of a half-day’s ride from the holding. Within a week or so, those who would winter in Clun Cadair from the mostly seasonal fishing villages down near the sea would straggle home to their now boarded and dormant dwellings within the berm.
Áine sat gratefully beside the hearth at the long table and accepted a bowl of rich broth. She sipped at it though to her it had no taste. Hafwyn and Melita sat across from her and spooned their own meal silently.
To break the awkward silence and distract from her lack of appetite, Áine asked them questions. “The holding seems empty. I saw boarded houses on the way in.”
“Aye,” Hafwyn replied. “The farming folk mostly will stay out for the winter, though some come in to the holding. The trappers will come home, as will our fishermen and their families. In a fortnight’s time, perhaps less, Clun Cadair will be full enough.”
Áine nodded. They were a little different in the south, where farming was more common and the land more clearly divided. There were other things different here as well.
“Your son, his men, they do not carry swords. Do you not worry about attack? You are not so far from the sea and that great wood must harbor some who bear ill will.”
“We’ve good relations with Arfon and Eifon to the north and east. The current flows quickly past our coastline with few places to land. The northmen prefer easier and richer points to plunder. Our men are quick with a knife or a bow, though we’ve had no banditry since my husband’s time.” Hafwyn smiled. “We’re peaceful folk here.”
Áine was glad to hear it. She’d be traveling on her own, after all. Going where? she thought bitterly. Then she shook herself mentally and took a deep breath. Tesn did for decades before you came, did she not? Why should you be different and give up the life she’s taught you? She balled her hands into fists below the table and closed her eyes. The women cleared her half-eaten meal and wisely left her in silence beside the fire.
* * *
Although he wasn’t sure of his motivations, Emyr avoided the hall until the preparations for the wisewoman’s pyre and cairn were complete. He tapped the belt pouch from time to time as he considered the mysterious green-eyed girl and her pearl tears.
She’d seemed mortal and human enough in her pain and her injuries. Oh, he acknowledged that if he hadn’t seen the true fey up close, she might have disturbed him more with her strange tears. Perhaps she, too, was cursed. He shivered at the thought, both wishing it were true and wondering what he should do if so. A curse could be dangerous, and he didn’t wish to bring any harm to his people. But turning her away for something she could not help was hardly compassionate either. Emyr struggled with his thoughts and lost himself to the easy work of chopping wood and collecting stones.
Caron brought out a bolt of clean sunbleached linen in which to wrap the dead woman. Emyr folded Tesn’s arms and with Llew’s solemn help gently encased the woman from head to foot in the clean cloth. Emy
r scraped the mud from her bright red belt and coiled it carefully. He set it then on her chest and Llew helped him move her out into the courtyard and onto the waiting pyre.
It was late afternoon, the sun beginning to drop. Emyr knew from the tingle in his blood that sunset was coming quickly. He sighed and stepped into the hall.
His mother and Melita were keeping quiet vigil with their guest. Áine sat with her head bowed over her hands, which lay folded on the table. She wore one of Caron’s gowns, the sleeves a little short on her long pale arms. Her hair was loose and spilled forward in a soft cascade of burnished scarlet. The color was so very near the remembered color of Seren’s locks that he gasped and heard Idrys, who’d come in behind him, growl softly deep in his black furred throat.
At the sound Áine raised her head and the spell of memory was broken. Though her skin looked pale enough in the fire and lamplight, it was not iridescent with its own inner glow. Her face was striking, but not beautiful. Her nose was straight, and her lips full, almost petulant, even with the deep lines of sorrow marking her broad face. Her mouth was offset by a stubborn chin that bore a faint crooked scar. Her eyes were not swirling silver but instead that new leaf-green, which he remembered from earlier being marked with specks of gold like sunlight on leaves. Those eyes were now full of shadows and pain, too human in their reflective suffering.
Only her hair, straight and red as precious gems in the dancing light, only her hair was like the woman of the Fair Folk.
Emyr put his hand down to quiet Idrys and forced himself to smile and walk forward naturally. What care I if she’s some sort of halfblood? The stories say it’s possible. She’s a wisewoman and clearly human enough for grief and injury. She’s not Seren, that’s all that matters.
Idrys kept his distance, circling the group and watching as his brother told them that the pyre was set and ready. Hafwyn tactfully suggested they sit and keep vigil ‘til dark set in fully. Idrys heard Áine agree.
He sniffed the air, parsing her scent from the woodsmoke. She smelled of his mother’s soap, lavender and tea rose, and something else besides. She had a scent almost like spiced wine, sweet and strange at once under the other threads of smell. She smelled human enough, the metallic taint of blood from her scabbing scratches adding in yet another layer. He sighed and turned to head to his room. The tingling in his blood was growing stronger. Soon enough he’d meet her as a man and could take her measure then. His brother seemed to like her well enough, though his face, too, was troubled.
* * *
Áine hobbled outside with the help of Melita. Emyr and his tall black hound had disappeared into one of the rooms off the back of the hall. Hafwyn brought a bench out for her and sat beside her, keeping vigil as Urien and Llew lit torches around the square to stave off the deepening gloom.
Áine felt like wood or perhaps stone. Dead and heavy. She could feel her heartbeat and cursed it softly under her breath. When the tears came, silent and thick, she made sure each was caught in her lap or her sleeves.
She looked up finally, rubbing her palms into her sore and reddened eyes. It was full dark and a little group had assembled. Hafwyn noticed her looking around and whispered introductions as each approached.
“That’s Gethin there. He’s our master of flocks.” She nodded at the older man who stood a little distance from the pyre with his graying head bowed in respect. “And you already know Urien ap Daffyd and Llew ap Evadi,” Hafwyn said, naming the men.
Urien was the shorter, stockier man with the thick umber beard. Llew was slender and tall, and fairer, though still more tan than Áine, with gold hair and a clean shaven face. Áine had met Melita virch Badi and Caron wreic Llew now by name, and so Hafwyn did not point them out again.
A small family appeared out of the darkness. Hafwyn named them all for Áine as well. The oldest was Madoc ap Madog whom all called Moel, the Bald, for his smooth pate. He was as old as Tesn had been and walked with a slight limp.
His son was Adaf, an unassuming man of middle years with his dark hair just starting to thin and worn loose about the shoulders. His wife and two young children followed. She was called Maderun and looked at her feet more than ahead. She was younger than her husband by a good decade if Áine reckoned it properly.
Maderun’s daughters, Gwir, who was four, and Geneth, seven, clung to their mother’s skirt and stared alternately between the pyre with its white-wrapped burden and Áine. Another handful of men and women filtered in, all passed their middling years. Áine lost track of names as her eyes fixed on the pyre and memories floated in and out of her vision, sharp behind bleak eyes.
Finally Emyr emerged, having washed the mud from his skin and changed clothing. He walked out into the square and nodded to Áine. She leaned heavily on Hafwyn and rose to her feet.
“This is. . .” She choked on her heart and paused to breathe again. “This is Tesn. She was my mother and my teacher. I’ve traveled near the length and breadth of Cymru learning by her side.” She paused again as the tide of memories lifted her voice from her for a long moment. “She was the most generous, kind, loving, and patient woman ever to serve the people. I don’t. . .I don’t know what I’ll do without her.”
Áine crumpled then, falling against Hafwyn as a cry of pure anguish tore from her sore throat. She knew she should say the prayers to ease the passing of another. It’s what Tesn would have done. Damn her and damn what she’d have done. She can’t do it, can she? Áine stood there as Emyr walked forward to set the pyre aflame. She watched as the fire caught and consumed.
She turned to Hafwyn and asked for her small knife. The woman looked a question at her but did not ask it aloud and instead pulled the small blade from her belt.
Áine let go of her and limped toward the pyre. She gripped her hair in a tight fist and hacked into with the little knife. It came free in her hand, clean and soft and red as blood. Wisps of hair floated around her chin as she tossed the flowing handful onto the fire.
She stepped back and leaned against Hafwyn again. Hafwyn kept a tight arm around the taller woman’s shoulders until finally Áine turned her face away from the growing heat and bent to weep into the shoulder of a stranger.
Eleven
They gave Áine the extra room off the central hall that was reserved for guests. She fell almost immediately into an exhausted slumber. Melita and Hafwyn made sure that her fire was well banked with coals and then slipped from the room as their guest’s sobs died slowly into sleep.
“Poor thing,” Melita said to Hafwyn as they walked into the main hall.
“Aye,” Hafwyn said. “But the only thing that heals grief is time.”
“Which she’ll have in abundance here, I suppose.” Idrys leaned against the long table with his still booted feet resting on the stone of the hearth. Emyr was sprawled on the rushes with a raised head and alert eyes that shifted between his mother and his twin.
“I meant it when I said she was welcome here as long she’d like to stay,” Hafwyn said firmly.
Melita looked between the two and gracefully excused herself saying she was going to go check in and perhaps have supper with Llew and Caron if they’d no further need of her here. Idrys watched the older woman leave with a calm gaze and then turned back to his mother as she came to sit on the wide stone hearth.
“There’s cold meat and fresh bread, if you want supper,” Idrys offered.
“Nay, thanks love.” Hafwyn sighed heavily. Emyr sat up and put his head in her lap. She smiled down at her other son and stroked his silken ears. “Too much sorrow today for eating, I think.”
“Moel’s fit to raise a fuss, I think,” Idrys said.
“About Áine? Did he say somewhat to you?”
“He’s not spoken exactly, though he did ask me how long our guest might choose to reside here.”
“That’s the chief’s business and not his own, isn’t it?” Hafwyn tipped her head to the side and considered. “She’s not one of the Folk, I don’t think.”
“No.” Idrys’s mouth set in a line and he stared into the fire. “She’s not, or at least not entirely. Her eyes are all wrong, and her skin more milk than moonlight. But that hair…” He stopped and shook himself, then looked back at her. “She might be ill luck, her. And if that woman was the mother that birthed her, I’ll eat my horse, saddle and all.”
“There are many kinds of mother, Idrys.” Hafwyn reached out and laid her hand on his knee.
“Hush mother. Idrys is dead.” His look darkened as he returned his gaze to the flames.
Emyr gave a growl of protest and rammed his narrow head into Idrys’s thigh. His twin relented and abandoned a portion of his sad and bitter thoughts as he scratched his brother’s head in the same way that Emyr often scratched his during the day.
“We’ll see how it goes. Mayhap she’ll not care to stay past when her leg is healed up anyhow. And,” he raised a hand to forestall his mother’s next comment, “I’ll make sure she’s accorded everything a wisewoman should be and when she chooses to leave, we’ll outfit her.” Idrys looked down into his brother’s liquid brown eyes. “Satisfied, brother?”
Emyr licked his leg and wagged his tail. He appreciated how hard it was for Idrys to fill his shoes, to pretend that he was his twin while his own identity died away. Emyr was more natural as the chief. He liked to argue the finer points of cantref law and custom while sitting around with his men or riding out to help shore up a wall, till a field, or hunt down wayward flocks.
Idrys was confined to darkness, though he rode out at night often enough with only Emyr to accompany him. While he could drink with his friends, a thing Emyr envied, Idrys had little contact with the outer settlements other than the dealings that took place at suppers or in the feasting after dark on holidays.
Emyr knew too that Áine’s resemblance to the Fair Folk, faint enough though it was, would sting Idrys more as well. His twin still blamed himself for their fate and on very dark, very bad nights Idrys had a time or two confessed he still dreamed of the moon-pale Lady and her warm bower as only a man trapped in the deep of winter can yearn for a summer’s day in the light.