Shadow
Page 13
“What do you have there?” I asked.
Without hesitation, he pulled out the contents and showed me. Four rocks, of different colors, shapes, sizes. “I picked out one for each of my family.” He put his small finger on a dark gray rock with sharp edges. “This is Rowe’s.”
“Yes,” I said, “I can see that would be his. Which one is yours?”
“Not one for me. But for my mother and father. And my grandmother, who died,” he said, pointing out a smooth pink one. Ingen reached down for it, but he drew back, not letting her take it.
A family of stones, kept together by this small boy. Who would I carry in my pocket? Piers? Could I claim that right now?
“They are lovely rocks,” I said. “A treasure, for certain.”
“A treasure,” repeated Ingen.
Roe ran off to chase a croaking frog on the bank. His twin joined in and dove for it, but the frog made a slippery escape from Rowe’s hand.
These redheaded brothers looked nothing like my pale, gray-eyed friend, my little ghost. But they were boys, and so reminded me of him.
Ingen laughed at them, while running her fingers down her long braid.
“Why do you not cut that piece of your hair?” I asked her. “Is it the way of the women of the mountains?”
She looked at me. “Of some.”
“I’ve seen another wear her hair that way.”
“Maren.”
The shock took my words.
“A gentle woman,” Ingen said.
“I’m sorry…Ingen, but I must tell you that—”
“I know she is dead.”
How could she? I studied her, trying to figure her out. “How did you know Maren?”
She leaned in to me. “Only priestesses wear their hair this way.”
“And…what do priestesses do?”
“I will tell you when you believe,” she said.
“Convince me.”
“I see the look in your eyes.” She smiled. “You are like Sir Kenway. Neither of you has faith yet.” Her face was radiant. “But you will, Shadow.”
Discomfort squelched my curiosity.
She leaped up and ran after the boys: one moment a thoughtful girl, the next a playful child. I envied her, and the twins. I had not been a child in a long time, since the day I was locked in the queen’s trunk.
But as I watched them, my heart lifted, suddenly light and unburdened, as if all my cares were dropping away.
I sat on damp needles under an old cypress tree. Thick gnarled roots crawled along the dirt. I lay in between two huge ones, propping up my arms. The Earth held me in its palm, the roots like fingers wrapping around me. I closed my eyes and listened to the plunk, plunk of the boys’ stones hitting the water. Something tight inside me was releasing.
A light sweet tickle brushed my nose and cheek. A leaf? A blade of grass? I laughed and pushed the hand away. My eyes flew open. It was not mischievous Rowe, but Sir Kenway who dangled a yellow wildflower over my face. I smiled but felt shy as he lay down beside me amongst the roots.
“You like it here,” he said, telling, not asking me. “In the village.”
Roe had slipped off his shoes and stuck his feet in the water, getting his hose wet. He looked back at me with bright eyes. His brother tried to push him in, but Roe fought back. He was stronger than he looked. A laughing Ingen grabbed Rowe’s shirt, trying to pull him off his brother. Rowe jerked away from her and went after his twin again.
“Yes,” I said, watching the boys tussle in the dirt, but much more aware of Sir Kenway’s presence. He held his left arm stiffly to his side. Tayte had ripped his sleeve to accommodate the bandage. “You’re different here, too.”
“How so?” he asked.
“Less distant.” I looked away. “To those you don’t consider your equals. Like Stillman and his family. You’re not so…severe.” I smiled.
He shrugged. “They’re good to us. Perhaps it’s because of our rank…I mean, my rank, and the duty they feel they owe me.”
I sat up, exasperated. “Perhaps they are just kind people.”
“Perhaps,” he agreed.
He pulled a metal flask from his boot and took a long drink. He offered it to me. I sipped the cold water.
I did not love her as you think I did. That is what he had said. Had I misread his feelings all along? Had he only been protecting her for his father’s sake?
Ingen gave out a shout and I watched her run with the boys. “I wanted to talk to you about Ingen,” I said.
“She is a mystery.”
“She said she was some sort of connection to Erce. Do you remember?”
“I remember,” he said. “The village has no strategic importance. No riches are there.” He shook his head. “I wish there’d been more time for Eldred and I to talk.”
“What if Erce isn’t a village?”
He hesitated, watching me. “What is it then?”
I shrugged. “Tayte said that Erce is the mother of us all.”
“What?”
“The villagers believe she is a goddess, I think.”
He laughed. “You don’t believe in that Northern religion? I know you, Shadow. You don’t believe in what you cannot see.”
I shrugged again.
He chuckled a little more.
“Enough of your mocking, sir,” I said, giving him a small smile.
He studied me for a moment. “Does that hurt?” He reached over to me and placed his fingers on the tender spot on my cheek. “That giant gave you quite the blow.”
I tried to speak, but at his touch could only stare.
He froze, his eyes on mine. We were both quiet. His hand lingered, then moved slowly across my cheek. Such a touch, such a gentle touch. I was afraid to drop my eyes, or speak, or do anything. I couldn’t bear it if he took his hand away.
How could this light caress be so deeply felt?
I was aware of a hushed silence. The twins and Ingen stood in a row, staring at us.
Kenway looked their way and then back at me. His eyes smiled briefly before we broke apart. He stood, and I took the hand he offered me. When I was on my feet, I felt his fingers caress my palm as his hand slowly left mine. A tingle of pleasure rippled through me. I could not help but smile.
Rowe was at Kenway’s side, jumping from foot to foot. “Are you really a knight?”
“Father wouldn’t like you to ask that,” Roe said. “Isn’t that right, my lady?”
I realized he was waiting for me to answer. “What? I don’t know.”
“Why are you looking at Sir Kenway like that?” Roe asked me.
Kenway glanced quickly my way. He looked pleased; his smile tentative and sweet.
“Well, Father’s not here,” said Rowe with a scowl for his brother. Red splotches appeared on his face. I noticed the shy look he gave Ingen.
“If you are a knight,” he asked Kenway quickly, “why don’t you have a sword?”
“It is curious,” I said.
Kenway looked at me askance, but I saw his lips flirt into a smile. “I have a dagger,” he said, pulling one out of his belt.
Rowe stepped forward. “I saw that.” He trailed Kenway out from under the long branches of the cypress. I thrust my bare feet into my shoes and stuffed my wet hose into my dress pocket. Roe, Ingen, and I followed.
Sir Kenway held out the steel blade.
Rowe ran a careful finger along its length. “Ah, sir. The blacksmith did fine work.” Ingen reached over and touched it as well. Roe hung back.
“You know something about blacksmithing?” Kenway asked the boy.
“Yes, sir. Well, no. Our smith, Godwine, is gone.” Rowe glanced at me. “Piers’s father. But I like fire. And I like weapons. I’d be a knight, but I’m not allowed because I’m just a peasant.”
“That is the way of things,” said Kenway.
“It’s a stupid way!”
Roe shook his head. “You can’t say that. He’s a knight.”
“I can
say it,” Rowe said, glancing at Ingen again. “I just did say it.”
“No—”
“Boys, would you like to hold the dagger?”
They stopped arguing. “I would, Sir Kenway,” said Rowe, a new respect in his voice.
Sir Kenway presented him the dagger as if it were a great treasure. If that was all a knight had left, then I suppose it was a treasure.
With both hands, Rowe oh-so-carefully took the weapon. He gripped the jeweled handle and gave a short jab into the air. He looked back at Kenway, who nodded at him. That was all Rowe needed. He began to thrust the weapon up and down, left and right, turning and twisting as if he were fighting a real opponent. Ingen smiled at him, which made him puff up with pride.
He jumped up on a thick root, balancing, then pushed the dagger forward. But he lost his footing and stumbled forward and the blade spilled out of his hand.
Roe laughed, pointing at his brother in the dirt. I smiled at the shy boy, glad to see his seriousness gone for the moment.
Rowe turned a violent red. He came at his brother, smacking him hard on the arm.
“Ow!” yelled out Roe. But he looked at me with twinkling eyes.
Rowe picked up the dagger, brushing the dirt off. “I’m sorry about your knife, sir.”
Sir Kenway took it from him. “No harm.”
“Perhaps I’ll be a knight someday, sir,” said Rowe with a child’s hope in his voice.
Sir Kenway hesitated.
And I worried what he would say.
“You certainly have the spirit of a knight,” he said finally. “If the day comes, it would be an honor to be at your side during battle.”
Rowe beamed.
The boys ran down to the water, pushing and shoving one another. Soon Rowe fell in, making a show of it, with flailing arms and legs. Ingen clapped her hands. She grabbed Roe’s arm and began to pull him toward the river. Laughing, he twisted from her grip. But Rowe climbed up the bank and dragged his younger twin in.
Kenway returned his dagger to its sheath. “You are smiling at me.”
“I’m not.”
“Do you think I cannot be kind to peasants?”
“It is a surprise when you are.”
He laughed a little. “You judge me too harshly.”
“On the contrary, my thoughts are kind toward you. At the moment.”
“Your mood could change?”
“Not my mood,” I said. “Your attitude.”
“Do you not know how to do anything but argue?”
“I’m giving you a compliment!”
He laughed again. “Ah, this is the way you compliment.”
Rowe and Roe came up beside us, soaked from head to toe, shivering. They pushed into me, twirling me around, getting me wet, too. Sir Kenway and Ingen stood off to the side, watching.
Rowe jerked my sleeve. “Come with me. I’ll show you something.”
I had little choice as he yanked me along. Once on the outskirts of the village, we didn’t take the main road, but walked around the perimeter. We cut down a narrow, overgrown path. The deserted huts were like tombstones in a little-visited graveyard, sad reminders of what once was a living, thriving town.
“No, Rowe,” said his brother, stopping on the path. “Don’t you take her there! I don’t want to go.”
“Go back home then!”
“She’s still in there,” whispered Roe, his eyes wide.
“Are you always afraid?” asked Rowe.
Roe didn’t answer. Ingen shook her head.
“Get out of here, then!” yelled Rowe.
Roe ran back toward home, his little heels kicking up dust.
“Come back!” I shouted, but he didn’t stop. I whirled around. “You shouldn’t taunt your brother.”
Rowe’s eyes glinted under his wet hair hanging down. My lips twitched into a smile.
We arrived at a small hut, with a low thatched roof that buzzed with wasps. A worn stone seat rested on one side of the door, piled-up firewood on the other. Cobwebs covered the wood. Sadness seeped out of the dark gray walls. I fell back a step. Ingen touched the door, looking back at me.
“You asked about him,” said Rowe. “You want to see his house, don’t you?”
Piers’s home.
I pushed hard against the door and the sorrow. The cottage was dark, and smelled of rotting straw. Its two square windows were covered. A trestle table stood in the center of the room, broken plates upon it and a chest beside it for a sitting bench.
Rowe hovered outside the door.
“Has no one been here?” I asked.
“Not since his mother.” He edged closer to the threshold, but didn’t cross it.
Sir Kenway pulled back the skins, letting in more light, revealing not much else. A lone candlestick on the hard-packed earth floor. Pallets and blankets tossed in the corner. A weaving loom, still filled with yarn. Ingen ran her fingers along the wool.
“The villagers won’t use any of her things. Some say she was a witch like Kendra, that she should’ve been thrown out of the village like Kendra was. She could tell your future just by looking at you. Well, at least, sometimes, she could. Once Piers’s father was taken, she started talking to ghosts, right here in this cottage.”
“Ghosts,” said Kenway.
I knelt down over the pallet where they slept.
“She did,” Rowe insisted. “I myself heard her talk to Piers’s father all the time. I stood by that window there”—he jerked his head—“and it was Godwine this and Godwine that. Piers came at me then, throwing stones at me.” He scowled. “He was always angry.”
No, no, not the Piers I knew.
I picked up the blanket. A pain shot through my hand and traveled to my heart. My eyes welled over with the hot tears of a child. He was so lonely. But there was something more I could not bear: These feelings were inside of me, like an ache in my own heart, as if they were my feelings. But I felt as fragile as a child. I dropped the blanket as if it had burned me.
Kenway was at my side. “Are you crying, Shadow? What’s wrong?”
“Piers,” I whispered. My mouth felt dry, as if I had not drunk for days, and my body began to tremble.
Ingen picked up Piers’s blanket and put it to her cheek.
Kenway took me by the elbow and pulled me away. The farther we moved away from Piers’s hut, the easier I breathed, but I could not stop shivering. We returned to the river.
“Are you ill?” he asked, placing his palm upon my face. “You are not feverish.”
“I cannot tell you,” I whispered. It was like someone else had moved inside my soul, living with me now, causing me to doubt myself in ways I never knew before.
“You keep something from me,” he said, rubbing his hands up and down my arms. “Let me help you.”
I couldn’t tell him this. It was all too strange. Was I going mad? I’d had little sympathy for the queen’s dark visions. Was this what she had felt? Was I being punished for my hard heart?
And so I didn’t answer, and he stopped questioning me. The trembling finally ceased and we walked back to the hut in silence.
That evening, we joined the villagers out in the open square. Out came a toothless man with a fiddle and a boy with a flute. They stood on the crumbling steps of the tavern and played while old women and young boys danced in the dust.
It was last summer that the old mayor had died and was buried in the cemetery. And though he had been beloved, he had not allowed music and dancing. The old villagers were now teaching their young the songs their bodies and voices remembered.
There was one dance that I’d never seen, not once in the queen’s court. The couples formed a circle, the women with ribbons of scarlet and green streaming from their hands and hair. Into the middle they moved as one, skipping in and out again, in time with the lively music. In the center, each woman twirled, so beautifully, the streamers over her head, wrapping around her body.
Rowe danced with his mother, swinging her in circles
and sending her wild hair flying. Stillman clapped his hands, while Roe waited for his turn with his mother. Ingen danced alone, apart from the crowd, turning in circles.
Sir Kenway bowed before me. “Will you dance?”
I looked at him in surprise. He would dance with me?
“But you’re hurt,” I said.
He held out his hand. “Then we’ll move slower than the others.”
“I don’t know how.” I’d watched him and the queen many times, but I had never done it myself.
“This one is new to me, too, but we’ll learn it together,” he said, pulling me off the stump. A girl in a tattered skirt shyly handed me a ribbon.
Sir Kenway’s hand clasped mine, only releasing it when I twirled alone. I looked up, growing dizzy with spinning and watching the ribbons flying.
This was joy, laughter bubbling up from the heart, like a spring flowing out of the earth. I felt it each time Kenway brought me close, our eyes locking and our bodies together for just a moment, before he pushed me out again. Even when I’d spin alone, I would catch his look, again and again, his eyes following me. I saw a hunger there, a need. I knew it because I felt it when I looked at him.
Was this what it meant to love another?
As the sun sank, we danced by the light of the torches and the moon. The notes of the music drifted up, up into the sky, turning into bright stars. I soared up, too, no longer Shadow, no longer in my own body, but dancing among the new constellations we created that night.
On the way back to the cottage, I tossed my ribbon to Erce.
I lay on the bed of straw, listening. A cricket sang the fiddle’s tune in my ear, Stillman’s cow lowed in rhythm, and an owl hooted from a nearby tree. I could hear Kenway in his silence and knew that he and I were the only ones awake.
I sensed him there listening to me listening to him.
Something had changed between us.
Chapter Twenty-Four
As the sun rose over the trees, we said our farewells. The boys wrapped their arms around my waist and squeezed. Their affection made me blush, but I didn’t push them away. I felt a small ache in my heart. I didn’t like that part of saying good-bye.
Ingen was on her horse, prancing back and forth, impatient. Roe gave her a shy wave. Rowe raised his palm, then dropped it quickly. He looked sad to see her leave.