Isobel

by Chloe Garner

  “Boat.”

  “Yes, boat. We all live very close to the…” she hesitated, substituting, “sea because there’s no land that isn’t close to the sea. The land feels very… young, compared to here. Here the forests are very old.”

  There was a shift of satisfaction that she had noticed. She registered this and went on.

  “Greece is green like your spring all year long. We have more sheep than people,” she said, and Isobel made an affirmative noise. However sarcastically it had been intended, it was the most encouragement Andie had gotten from her. “The land is rockier than here, and so we… struggle to grow…” she made a motion with her fingers to indicate a long, thin blade.

  “Rye,” Laukas said.

  “Yes, rye,” she said. “We grow wheat, but it is very hard. We grow many fruits.”

  “The land’s hard enough everywhere,” Laukas said. “What fruits?”

  Here she was at a complete loss. She picked up an apple from a basket and held it up, and he said the name. There were pears as well. After that, the resemblance between her native fruits and the ones sitting on the table failed her. She looked at Isobel.

  “Lemons? Limes? Oranges? Pomegranates? Figs?”

  Isobel shook her head.

  “They won’t have ever seen any of those.”

  Andie shrugged.

  “That seems very sad to me,” she said. Isobel turned away.

  “It is the way of things.”

  The three men were still watching her, and she tried to think of other interesting things that she could tell them.

  “The people are very cheerful. We dance. Do you dance, here?”

  “Spring is the dancing season,” Isobel said. It struck Andie that she’d never seen Isobel dance. In all those months, the woman had never joined in any of the festivities.

  “Do you dance?” she asked. Isobel frowned and Laukas laughed.

  “Only when cats marry fieldmice,” he said. “You’ll have to show us your dances. And she isn’t telling you the whole truth. We dance when there’s music. There’s just never music here, and we have celebrated our harvest here for…” he looked at his father.

  “Many years,” the man said. Andie wished she had a better grasp of the inflections of the language, to determine whether it was discretion or true secret-keeping. Laukas showed no sign of chastisement, so she guessed if it were a secret, it wasn’t a dear one.

  “I haven’t been outside of the…” she looked up at the ceiling.

  Galinda had taught her a number of words for house, but she was not clear on what this was.

  “Castle,” Laukas supplied. “Anything with stone walls and this many floors is a castle.”

  “I haven’t been outside the castle, other than to go riding,” she said. “What should I see?”

  She hoped she’d chosen the right form of ‘look at’. No one cringed, but it may have been out of politeness.

  “You should come down to the shores. Someone can take you out on a boat and show you what our ocean is like. Maybe you can hunt,” a word Andie didn’t know.

  She looked at Isobel, but the woman didn’t help. Rafa cleared his throat.

  “Amber,” he said. “It washes up on the shores here.”

  “I’ve seen amber,” Andie said. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Our prize gem, gift of the sea goddess,” Laukas said. Aistin was watching her with sharp eyes. She addressed him.

  “Is it very valuable, here?”

  “We use it ceremonially,” he said. “It’s sacred to us, but…”

  “We put it in little girls’ hair,” a man down the table answered. There was a shuffle as the table agreed with soft humor.

  Andie’s mind finally pulled apart the sounds in the word.

  “Burning stone,” she said, separating them carefully. “Why burning stone?”

  “They burn,” a woman said, pulling one out of her hair along with the wooden pin she was using to hold her hair up. The five other hair pins held up the design without shifting, and she looked at Aistin. He nodded, and she put the stone over a candle. The table watched, silent, for some time as the stone glowed orange over the flame, and Andie became convinced they were toying with her, when the stone began to flicker with flame along it surface. The woman turned it, and the flame turned with the stone. Andie put her hand over her mouth.

  “We burn them and use the ash in healing,” Aistin said. The priests maintain a supply of amber ash at the,” she guessed the last word was temple.

  “I would love to see that,” she said. “Are women allowed?”

  “At the goddess’ temple?” he asked, looking confused. He managed to look critical at the same time.

  “Do you only have goddesses?” she asked. He shook his head.

  “Has no one explained it to you?”

  “They do have their own gods, where she comes from,” Rafa said. “And you know we aren’t adherents, here.”

  Aistin sighed.

  “It doesn’t mean you should keep it from her.”

  “She is welcome to come to your temple and be educated,” Isobel said. Andie pressed her lips together in humor and Laukas winked at her.

  The conversation moved on without her again. She was exhausted from the effort, and she missed much of the rest of it, just enjoying her food. Laukas tried to re-engage her a few times, and she made an effort to be polite, but she didn’t have the energy to try again. Elbing seemed happy enough to ignore her, not maliciously, but in the way of a future king who overlooks unimportant things, but she caught Aistin looking at her several more times.

  In the end, the staff sent everyone out through a burning archway that extended far out into the yard. Andie gathered this was tradition, and when Galinda encouraged her, she ran the length of it with the guests. It was too big to be dangerous in her straight-cut dress, but the heat of it on her skin was still exciting.

  “We’ve made it through the sun’s season,” a woman said to her at the far end, “and we’re escaping before it collapses behind us.”

  “Will they put it out?” Andie asked.

  “No. They will let it burn to ash. Like the leaves falling in the forest.”

  Andie wasn’t sure how those were related, but she smiled anyway. Galinda waved her back, and she prepared to run back through, when someone caught her hand.

  “I’m sorry,” Aistin said, then paused. “I’m not very good at this.”

  “At what?” she asked. He used his hand to motion to the crowd.

  “This. Will you come to the temple and talk to me?”

  She nodded.

  “If Isobel says I can go.”

  He nodded, his eyes earnest and taut, then let her go. Her heart fluttered and Galinda gave her a conspiratorial look as she ran back through the passage into the house. They waited until the guests were out of sight, and then Galinda took her back up to her room.

  “You did well,” the girl said as Andie looked out the window toward the forest. “Do you want me to light a fire for you?”

  “Please,” Andie said. It would be nice to drive the chill out of the room. She understood that the harvest celebration triggered the recognition of the cooling seasons, and while she would probably have the only fire in the house, once the one in the main room went out, it was now acceptable for her to have one.

  She stood, lost in her thoughts, at the window for a few minutes, and when she turned back, Galinda was gone. She rubbed her arms and went to stand in front of the fire for a moment, then, with a fierce determination that had left her many years ago, she left her room and walked the length of the floor and down the stairs to Isobel’s chambers. She knocked.

  “Enter,” Isobel called. Andie opened the door and closed it behind her, leaning against it. She looked around.

  “Where’s Rafa?” she asked. Isobel was out of her dress from the party and in a much lighter gown for sleeping. There was no fire.

  “Out,” the woman answered. She brushed her hair without tur
ning. A thought flew into Andie’s head and out her mouth before she had even considered it.

  “Is he Cupid?” she asked with a grin. “We have a story about Cupid marrying a woman and leaving her in his magnificent castle in the mountains…”

  “He isn’t cupid,” Isobel cut in sharply. “Why are you here?”

  The verbal slap shocked Andie out of inaction.

  “That’s what I’m here to ask you,” she said. Isobel turned, her hair coiling around her torso. The cold look nearly knocked the momentum out of her, but Andie plunged on. “You sent for me. And you’ve wanted nothing to do with me since I got here. What is it that you want from me, exactly?”

  There was a flicker of something across the woman’s mouth.

  “That, for one,” she said. Andie sighed with exasperation.

  “What does that mean?”

  A smile crept across Isobel’s face.

  “Why did you come?” she asked. “I told Rafa you wouldn’t.”

  Andie shrugged, a bitter little motion in one shoulder.

  “I wasn’t ready to be auctioned off to the highest bidder for my father,” she said. She’d never thought of it like that before, but it was the truth. The realization just made her angrier.

  “So you came here to… put it off for a few months?”

  “I came here to have done something,” she said. “Most of the girls I know… most of the people I know will never be more than ten miles from home. They’ll never know anyone but the people who happened to be born in that little circle.”

  Isobel resumed brushing her hair.

  “You are your mother’s daughter, after all,” she said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “The desire to see what’s over there,” Isobel said. “Without any interest in taking it. How do you think Saul came to find us, in the first place?”

  The thought of the man made Andie smile. Isobel glanced in time to see it.

  “You liked him, I presume,” she said. Andie nodded.

  “Yes.”

  “And you wanted to beg him to take you with him when he left?”

  Andie sucked on her lower lip.

  “Yes.”

  Isobel nodded.

  “I won’t make you wed, if you choose not to. And you are welcome in my home, but you aren’t a prisoner here. You may leave as you choose.” She put down her brush and looked hard at Andie. “Your life is your own.”

  Andie looked around and found a stool to sit on, moving it to the wall to lean back against it.

  “What would you do?”

  “Be born a man,” Isobel said. “Barring that…” she drew a breath and held it for a moment, then sighed and spoke in Greek. “I don’t know. All I know is what I have done, and that’s not material here.”

  Hearing the familiar language nearly brought Andie to tears.

  “It feels like there’s so much world that I don’t even know what I should want to do,” she said. “And I’ve wasted months, just sitting here, waiting for the next thing to happen.”

  Isobel nodded.

  “Roam, child. If you see anyone you don’t know, flee. Your little mare will outrun most any horse in the region. See what there is. Talk to people who work the land and the sea. Visit Laukas. His offer was sincere. I know him well.”

  Andie hesitated, but she had no better confidante.

  “Aistin asked me to come visit him,” she said.

  “Aistin?” Isobel asked, surprised. Andie looked away, embarrassed. Isobel laughed.

  “Well, that’s a surprise,” Isobel said. “Aistin. I thought your tastes would run to Laukas or Elbing before you’d ever see Aistin.”

  “Why?” Andie asked. “He’s very intelligent.”

  “Because no one sees him,” Isobel said. “And Laukas is such a bright spirit.”

  Andie shrugged.

  “I’d like to go see him,” she said. “Can you tell me how to find the temple?”

  “Temple?” Isobel asked. She took a moment, eyes searching, then she laughed. “Oh, yes. Temple.” She used the Samb word. “Ride into town and ask them to put you on the temple path. You’ll find it.”

  “You don’t object to me going?” Andie asked. Isobel gave her a curious look.

  “Your life is your own, child. Do what pleases you.”

  And just like that, they were friends again. They went walking in the mornings and riding in the evenings, and the days grew shorter and the leaves turned from green to fiery gold and fell in deep piles onto the forest floor. The forests went from somber and moody to gold-bedecked palaces of light. Andie rode to the sea on her own and walked Valerie over the stony shore. The mare’s soft feet weren’t suited to the surface, but Andie was unwilling to tie her and leave her anywhere. She had nothing more valuable.

  The sound of the ocean was a relief to her, and her years of beach combing as a child re-emerged, now, as she picked through stones and seaweed and shells, coming home with satchels full of unique pieces she’d found. In four days, she found two amber stones, and she showed these to Isobel.

  “Why don’t they sell them?’ she asked, rolling the sea-worn stones over each other in her palm. In the glorious light, they glowed like they were enchanted.

  “What do you mean?” Isobel asked. “To who?”

  “Saul.”

  There was a look of dawning realization as Isobel looked at her, and then a slow smile.

  “How long were you with him?” Isobel asked, speaking in Greek now, as was their habit.

  “A little more than two months,” Andie said.

  “Didn’t take you long to turn into an economic mercenary, did it?” Isobel asked.

  “Is it wrong?” Andie asked.

  “No,” Isobel said. “Just not something they would think of, here. They trade little things, here. Fish. Bread. Cloth. They treasure their baubles, and then complain about the expense to buy more in the next breath. Never would it occur to them to sell.”

  “Why not?” Andie asked, splitting the amber into two palms. It was warm against her skin.

  Isobel laughed.

  “Who am I to discern the mystery of how another being thinks,” she said. “Perhaps they just need more Phoenician influence.”

  “I’m going to sell them to Saul,” Andie said, then paused, switching the stones between hands. “But not these two.”

  Isobel tipped her head back and laughed. It was magical.

  “Of course not those two. And maybe not the next one. We’ll see how that goes.”

  They rode in silence for a while, the horses’ feet swishing through the leaves.

  “Have you been to see him yet?” Isobel asked.

  “Who?” Andie asked, knowing full well who Isobel was talking about.

  “Aistin,” she said.

  “No.”

  “Do it,” Isobel said. “Do it today. Before the weather turns.”

  Andie opened her mouth to argue, and Isobel held up a hand.

  “No arguments from you. Every day you set out toward town, and every day you come back and didn’t go. He invited you, and now you’re being rude. Plus, I want to see if anyone can actually form a fondness for that boy.”

  Andie looked away, trying not to blush.

  They rode on.

  The people in the village pointed her to a path cut through the trees outside of the village. The collection of homes and businesses sat nestled in a hillside where the river plain met the old forest, and there was a clear dirt path to follow. Andie was astonished that they managed to keep it clear of leaves.

  The fall day was crisp, and Andie wished that the Sambians had a cultural tradition of wearing more layers of clothes, because she was cold in the breeze. She kept her arms low and against her body, trying to keep the exposed skin warm. Other than that, though, the day was lovely. The early afternoon sun came down straight through the exposed trees and glinted off of the dew-damp leaves. Galinda had gotten wind of the fact that Andie was going visiting, and had insisted
on styling her hair with amber stones and hair sticks. It wasn’t like the braids she had worn for festive occasions back home, but it was enough to make her feel special. The girl had gone so far as to dye the skin of her cheeks faintly pink with berry juice, but Andie knew her cheeks pinked quickly in the cold, anyway, and doubted it would make any difference.

  The soft wind picked up leaves and tossed them across the path, where they cartwheeled before Valerie’s feet and piled up on the downwind side of the path again. The cold was rough on her lungs, but it was sweet and refreshing in its way, and Andie found herself enjoying it.

  She was eager to see the temple. So little of the buildings the Sambians built were out of grand materials; when wood was so easy to get, they tended not to use anything else. She loved Isobel’s home for its towering dignity, but she longed for something with more grace, something that these elegant people would build in the name of a goddess.

  She rode for maybe thirty minutes and the path expanded into a large clearing around the feet of the great trees. Parts of it were paved with stone, and others were simple packed dirt. A large space in the middle was covered in sand. Valerie’s head went up and she whickered a greeting to unseen horses. There was an answer, and someone in a long, dark cloak appeared.

  “May I take your horse?” he asked, pushing his hood back. Andie dismounted and stood at Valerie’s head, looking around.

  “Where is the temple?” she asked.

  He spread his arms, evident confusion on his face. She spotted a small building at the end of the clearing and squinted at it. Surely not.

  “Is Aistin here?” she asked.

  “Of course,” the man said, reaching for Valerie’s reins. Andie hesitated, then handed them over. He took them gently, face showing clear confusion, then led the horse away slowly. He pointed toward the structure, and Andie breezed across the clearing. It was disappointing, and she was angry.

  The king’s son, the priest, was tasked with tending that little shack? And he had staff to do it? She’d never seen something more pretentious.

  Aistin appeared in the doorway and she brushed past him.

  “This is it?” she asked. Two additional men in dark blue cloaks were working with leather at a small table, and they stood and quickly left.