by Chloe Garner
She remembered so little of her father, but she remembered his laugh, and how he had loved Gwen. He’d had big, rugged hands, always dark with soot and dirt that had seemed embedded in the skin.
She wished he was there, to see her become a woman.
She wanted to ask Gwen what would happen. So much uncertainty, so many things that were going to change. But she knew that the question had no answer. Not now. So she kept it quiet.
“Ma,” she said. Gwen waited.
“Yes, child?” she asked finally.
“It’s been good,” Allie said, unable to find the powerful words that might have said what she actually meant.
“Yes, it has,” Gwen agreed, eyes smiling an awareness of how inadequate the language was. She sat back on her horse after a moment and smiled broadly. “I hear grandchildren are better, anyway.”
Allie gasped.
“Ma.”
“I’m just saying, child. None of this keeping up with them, making sure they keep out of trouble. Maybe even help them get into some trouble of their own. Been looking forward to them since you were wee. Why else would anyone have children?”
Allie laughed.
“I am not ready to be someone’s ma.”
“No. No one ever is, though. You’ll do great.”
Allie smiled to herself as the horses trudged through the snow, tucking her hands deeper into her cloak.
“I trust the fairy spirit who visited us last year will be too busy to return?” Gwen said.
“I expect she will be,” Allie answered.
“Good,” Gwen said. “I expect she’d shock everyone with her short hair, this year. Might cause some religious awakenings among the folk that best be left un-awoken.”
Allie bit her lip and nodded.
“Yes. I guess she’ll have to celebrate her midwinter with her own kin, this year.”
“Wise, that one.”
They rode silently for a while, and Allie sighed.
“Everything is going to change.”
“It is, my darling.”
Allie nodded.
They rode.
The meal was as great as any year, but there was a sense on the camp this year of crampedness and squeezedness. Families were there who were clearly still grieving, and there were holes in leadership structures that young men were doing their best to fill. There were the signs of injuries healed and injuries mending. Drude disappeared into the hillfort once they got there, but clearly everyone had been waiting to see just how bad it was.
Consensus: it was bad.
Drest was as cheerful as in any year, but it felt forced, to Allie. Faked. She sat with Aedan, his mother, Kenna, Gwen, and Isobel, and after a simple, friendly, superficial conversation between the matrons, they ate in silence as the revelries around them grew in volume. The stories around them grew in competing enthusiasm as men told friends and family, and each other, of their conquests and their kills. Eventually, Kenna excused herself to go find some of the girls, and Gwen went to sit with her shepherd friend. Isobel and Aedan’s mother had disappeared, at some point, and Allie and Aedan found themselves alone.
“They’re all plotting,” he muttered, glancing at her as he hunched over his plate. “Bastards.”
“How do you know?” Allie asked. Aedan glanced at her moodily.
“Bret asked if I’d support his da,” he said.
“He what?” Allie asked. “That’s insurrection.”
Aedan shook his head.
“It’s succession,” he corrected. “No one is planning to replace Drest. They’re planning to follow him, if something happened.”
“Is Drest safe?” Allie asked. Aedan shrugged and shook his head at the same time.
“They’re honorable men, most of them, but power does strange things to a man.”
Allie looked around. The differences were subtle, and they hardly felt menacing.
“Aedan… Maybe it isn’t that bad.”
“They’ve marked Drude for dead,” he said. “My best friend. My kin. While he still lives, they’re plotting like he doesn’t matter.”
Allie nodded, settling back down into her seat.
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault,” he said, rolling his stone cup along its bottom edge and contemplating the dregs of mead there. “Not your life. Maybe it shouldn’t be.”
“What?” she asked, alarmed. He didn’t look at her.
“I’m sorry, lass. I hate seeing Drude like he is. Puts me in a dark mind. He’s giving up.”
“I know,” Allie said. She saw it, too. The gentle-spirited man was still there, but the boisterous, playful, strong man that he would have become was shriveling on the vine.
“His hands are getting soft,” Aedan said. It surprised Allie to hear him say it. It was the worst, lowest insult for a fighting or a working man.
“What do you expect him to do?” Allie challenged. Aedan looked tired when he turned to face her, swinging one leg over the bench and locking his eyes to hers.
“There are a lot of things that are going to happen today, lass. Good things and bad things. Some of them dangerous. I won’t ask you to go with me, if you don’t want to.”
“Where are you going?” Allie asked. It felt like a stupid question even as she asked it, but the words were out and gone before she found better ones.
“I’m picking my own path for the future,” he said. “Not hiding behind someone else’s arm.”
“So am I,” she said. This drew a smile from him.
“So you are,” he said. He rested his hand on her knee for a moment, the heat reaching her skin even through her layers of clothing, then he stood.
“I have things I need to do,” he said. “I’ll see you later tonight.”
She watched him go, then turned back to the boards, leaning over her elbows and listening to bits of conversation around her.
She could have gone to sit with Gwen. She could have gone looking for Kenna. She could have gone to seek the company of any of the girls from that summer who were in Drest’s realm. She didn’t have to be alone.
But it was how she preferred it.
She was watching the sun set.
Kenna had disappeared up the hill an hour ago with her mother, and Brietta had lingered with Allie for another three quarters of an hour until her own mother had come to fetch her. The three of them hadn’t had much to say to each other. Allie had sat by herself for a long time, but in the end, it was natural for them to end up together. Brietta had been smiling and fidgety, nervous. Kenna had watched the people around her with a strange keenness. It was the most still Allie had ever seen her. The rest of the Caledd had given them space, leaving them to themselves. The three of them sitting together had drawn enough attention that Allie had finally noticed the whispering.
Their hair.
It marked them.
And by this point, everyone knew what they had spent the summer doing.
Well.
That wasn’t entirely true.
Everyone knew that they had spent the summer doing something. There appeared to be a lot of stories around concerning exactly what that had been.
“Obviously, it wasn’t braiding each other’s hair,” Kenna had muttered at one point when someone had said something off-color in a loud, drunk conversation. Brietta had looked embarrassed.
“Is everything okay?” Allie had asked. Kenna had given her a quiet, dark look.
“I’m going to belt him in the mouth if he says that again,” she’d answered.
A different year.
And now the sun was setting. The druids would be here, soon. Allie found Gwen coming, looking for her, but she didn’t turn her head until her mother was next to her.
“It’s time, girlie.”
Allie nodded and stood.
“How do you feel?” Gwen asked as they walked.
“I thought I’d be more excited,” Allie admitted.
“Probably would have, another year,” Gwen told her. �
�Nothing wrong with seeing your future as it comes.”
Allie looked at her mother with warmth. The older woman’s calming demeanor soothed her, as it always had, and she followed to the small camp where one of Rafa’s men was tending a fire to keep the horses and the tents from freezing. They had set up a special, much taller tent this year for Gwen and Allie, where Gwen helped Allie change into the heavy white linen dress. Allie took her boots off and let Gwen wrap her feet in strips of the same white cloth. It would be cold, but Allie had the feeling that she wouldn’t notice. Her heart was racing.
“I can’t do your hair,” Gwen said, standing in front of her with a placid expression. Allie felt guilty. It was a big part of the tradition. Gwen smiled and dug into a pile of skins.
“The other mothers and I decided that our wayward daughters deserved something, though.”
She produced a pot of pale blue paste and with her fingertips, began applying it to Allie’s face in careful, arcing shapes. Allie had watched her mother paint bowls and skins before. It was a skill she’d never managed to master, herself, but she felt in the pattern of the shapes the familiar marks that claimed her as her father’s daughter. It was their clan-mark.
She blinked fast, trying to keep tears from spilling down her face and Gwen gave her an understanding little smirk.
“None of that, now,” she said.
As Allie heard Drest hail Tavish, Gwen finished.
“Go, now,” her mother murmured. “It’s time.”
Allie nodded, gathering her skirts to feel the flow of them, then exiting the tent and making her way down the hillside to where the druids were standing in their group behind Tavish and the Caledd stood behind their king. Drest knelt and Tavish put his hands on Drest’s head. Allie couldn’t yet hear the sound of his words, but she walked closer, trying to get to where she needed to be for the ceremony that would start in moments.
And then there was a disturbance in the reverential quiet. Someone was struggling against a group of men who were trying to hold him back.
“Tavish!” Aedan called, stepping into the clearing. Tavish’s head turned and tipped back slightly, giving Aedan a small acknowledgment.
“Tavish,” Aedan said again, throwing off the final arm that held him and approaching the druid and the king. “You have heard what has happened to the king’s son.”
Allie had stopped dead, staring. It seemed like the rest of the world had, too. Tavish nodded.
“I have. A great loss to the clans.”
Aedan licked his lips and stood taller.
“I’m here to declare myself his champion. Anyone who wants to lay claim to his right of succession has to kill me for it.”
It hadn’t seemed possible, but the hush deepened. Drest’s head snapped toward Aedan with a hawkish fixation. Tavish seemed to think for a long time. There was whispering.
“Where is your young king?” Tavish finally asked.
“Drude, don’t leave me out here,” Aedan said. A large man at the edge of the crowd tossed back a heavy hood and stepped forward. Allie would know that hesitating gait anywhere.
“Do you accept him as your champion?” Tavish asked.
“Fool won’t take no for an answer,” Drude muttered. The corners of Tavish’s mouth turned up.
“So it often is, with the passionate,” he answered. He looked at Aedan again, his eyes darting once at Drest, who hadn’t yet moved. “Very well,” Tavish finally said. “So you say, so it is.”
Drest slowly stood, and the four of them stood motionless for a minute, then Tavish waved at them with the back of his hand.
“We have other things to do, this night.”
Allie had to run to catch the rest of the girls as they made their way through a reluctant crowd. There was too much confusion for the spectators to form a regular column for them to walk through, so they made their way as they could. Kenna clasped Allie’s hand for a moment.
“Did you know?” Allie asked. Kenna shook her head quickly at her, eyes gleaming. Allie couldn’t help but grin back at the wild blue patterns on the girl’s face and the impish expression in her eyes. Kenna squeezed her hand again and was gone, taking her place in the circle.
And then, in a blink, Allie was standing with a druid, a woman with frizzy red hair and eyes that told her that she knew an awful lot about Allie and was pleased to be here, weaving mistletoe through her sparse hair. Looking around the circle, there were five of them, faces branded and hair chopped short, becoming women. Allie didn’t know any of the other girls, but those four, those were her sisters.
The druids’ work was done, and the young men came to make their requests. Aedan was the first in line.
Suddenly, Allie couldn’t feel her arms, save her palms, which tingled with an uncomfortable pressure. She thought her knees might give way. With Tavish’s nod, Aedan approached her.
“If you say no, I’ll understand,” he said, taking her hands. “But I asked myself what you would have done, and…”
“You’re amazing,” she whispered.
“It’s a big risk,” he answered, looking down at her hands in his own. “Some of the clans may decide it’s worth it to try.”
She shook her head.
“They won’t.”
His head snapped up to look her in the eye and she shrugged. She felt the side of her mouth tug.
“Where you go, I will go, and where you fight, I will fight. And we will be so fearsome, no one will bear arms against us.”
“This one, huh?” Tavish asked. Allie jumped. Neither of them had seen him come to stand next to them. He gave them a sage nod. “You suit each other.”
Allie stared at him. He gave her the tiniest of grins.
“I’m supposed to ask if you approve,” he said. “And then give you my blessing.”
She continued to stare. He appeared to be trying not to laugh.
“May your families celebrate your union, and God help your enemies.”
He put his hands over theirs and then - Allie felt her mouth drop open - winked at her.
“I like your hair.”
She looked back at Aedan. Had that really just happened? He gave her a bewildered look, but pulled her hands against his ribs.
Oh, yeah. That happened, too.
There were more boys, more quiet moments as Tavish blessed the pairings - Allie wondered if he was as outrageous with everyone else, privately, as he had been with herself and Aedan - and then the girls split to allow the new women to leave the circle first.
With a shock, Allie realized that Brietta was arm-in-arm with one of the boys from Rafa’s school. She checked over her shoulder at Kenna, motioning to Brietta with her eyes, and Kenna covered her mouth with her hand, not entirely hiding her grin, then shook her head. Kenna had known. Likely, everyone had known except Allie.
“Who is he?” she whispered to Aedan, indicating the boy.
“Lyall?” Aedan answered. “You know him.”
She shook her head.
“Is he… good?”
Aedan looked back again.
“She’s your friend,” he said. She nodded and he kissed the top of her head.
“She chose well,” he said. “His family has power, but you’d never know it from him. He’ll take good care of her.”
Allie glanced back once more at Brietta’s beaming smile, then sighed and laid her head against Aedan’s shoulder.
At the edge of the circle, Gwen stood with Aedan’s mother. Aedan’s mother was a dark-haired woman with beautiful, sad features. Even with happiness in her eyes and a bright smile for Allie, she wore the losses in her life much more visibly than Gwen did. Kenna came zipping in from out of nowhere and slid under her mother’s arm.
“You’re going to be a handful,” the woman said to Allie.
“No worse than me, ma,” Kenna said. She smiled at Kenna, then turned back to Allie, the expression never dimming.
“I always told my boy when he was bad, as a warning, that one day he would end up
with a wife who matched him. I couldn’t have been more right.”
Allie ducked her head, then the woman hugged her.
“Call me Ilysa,” the woman said softly in her ear. “Welcome.”
Allie hugged her back, surprised at how much the warmth of the response had meant to her.
“Thank you,” she answered. “I’m Allie.”
Ilysa nodded, brushing her eye with a finger.
“They never stop talking about you.”
Kenna was hopping up and down.
“We have to go talk to the girls,” she said.
“What?” Allie asked. Kenna nodded enthusiastically.
“We promised.”
“When did I do that?” Allie asked.
“Well, okay, I promised, but it counts for you, too,” she said. Allie glanced at Aedan, who shrugged.
“I know there’s no sense arguing with her,” he said. “I’ll find you later.”
Allie let Kenna drag her up the hill, looking back with bemusement as Brietta and the other girls followed. There was a cluster of short-haired girls just inside the gate of the hillfort, and the explosion of words shocked Allie, even though she should have been used to it, by now.
“That’s Aedan, my brother,” Kenna was saying, as a small group clustered around Brietta, asking questions.
“When did you meet him?” one of the girls asked Allie. Allie was confused for long enough that Kenna stepped in to answer for her.
“She knows all of the boys,” she said. Allie was surprised for a moment until she realized that, yes, that would have been odd for any of the other girls. Kenna only knew them all because of her relationship with Drest.
“What’s he like?” the girl asked.
“He’s nice,” Allie said.
“He’s crazy in love with her,” Kenna said.
There was a quiet set of squeals and then more questions directed at Allie and answered by Kenna. Allie was appreciative. She didn’t know how to answer any of them - they were altogether too personal - but Kenna managed to do so without ever actually saying anything. As the evening dark deepened, men came to light torches along the hillfort walls, and Allie could hear the crackle of the great bonfires on the front plain as the drummers began to tentatively talk to each other. She found herself leaning against the wall, listening passively to the girls as they talked - clearly they had missed each other - and wishing she were down in the anonymous crowds with Aedan.