She backed up, slowly, one foot at a time, trying not to be noticed, letting others come in and throw their own dirt on her mother. A few adults hugged her as she went. She stiffened, their touches feeling more like fire than help. The children and teenagers ignored her, which was better than usual.
As she finally got behind everybody and could turn and walk away, the first strains of a funeral song began to fill the air. The song seemed to be for her as well as for her mom. After all, she had to leave. No one would want her here.
At their house, Shay stopped outside and gazed at the dark windows. Shay wasn’t smart enough to manage all the things her mom did. She could have been her mom’s helper until her mom died, years from now. But there was nobody else in town who would be patient with her.
She didn’t go in.
She pulled the kitchen knife she’d hidden from the woodpile and tucked it in her belt, the blade long enough she felt it with the top of her thigh. The water jugs swung easily over her head, but when she shouldered her pack, she had to work to get the whole assemblage adjusted. The water pouches hung on a leather strap sized for her mom, and Shay had to tie a knot in them.
At fourteen, Shay was nearly her mom’s height, but she was all bones while her mom was soft. Had been soft. She couldn’t remember what she’d thrown into the old pack, but surely it had been the right things. She’d been filling packs for her mom since she was seven, and for the last two years she’d even been allowed to go along when the farm or homestead a call for healing came from was close enough for the trip to be safe. Surely even this new empty person she had become knew what to do.
Shay turned away from Little’s Town. She didn’t look back, couldn’t bear to look back. No one would notice her missing until after the funeral or even, with luck, after the funeral feast. By then it would be dark.
Little’s Town sprawled across a meadow, surrounded by more meadow and low hills in three directions. Cold, harvested hayfields alternated with sheep pens, full now since the sheep wintered near town. They were quiet today, huddled together for warmth, heads down as they tried to find fodder in between feedings. Shay went in the fourth direction. Up. The same way her mom had gone, toward a homestead on the top of the cliff that looked down on the town from the north. She wound up a forested path that wasn’t straight up but rather a series of nasty switchbacks with a few good breaks of flat trail. They’d found her mom on one of those trails.
Cold wind drove at her back, helping her up.
The sounds of the town faded, replaced by birdsong and the rill of water running thinly down cold stream-beds, just fast enough that only the very edges froze. Her thighs started to hurt, but she drove them up and up anyway. If she could do this climb in summer, she could do it now.
Her mom would have liked to meet the women from Haven, especially the one in green. The Healer. Healers came through about once a year, sometimes more often, sometimes less. Her mom and the Healers would usually take tea together and talk, maybe sit by the fire if it was winter. Too bad there was no fire here. Shay was getting cold.
Shay never talked to the Healers, or anyone from Haven. By definition they were the best Valdemar had to offer, and Shay had nothing to offer them. She was always scared she would say the wrong thing. But there had been no tea this time. Her mom had been off getting killed by bandits, and the women had been gone before anyone knew that. No reason to call a Healer for the dead.
She stopped at the first flat place, looking for signs of struggle. She spotted a few broken twigs by the side of the path and the footprints of the townsmen who had gone looking for her mother, both going up and coming back. Here and there, the mark of a horse’s hoof going toward town.
The fresh human tracks kept going, so Shay took a long drink of water and followed them. She should eat, she knew she should eat, but she couldn’t remember if she’d brought food. She didn’t want to stop long enough to dip into her pack.
Night had started lying cold along the trail when she stopped at the next flat place. The signs she’d been looking for were here, even bigger than she’d expected. Bushes lay flat. Footprints went every which way. It seemed tainted by people and hurt. She found a few spots of what looked like black liquid on sticks and rocks. Her mother’s blood. Cold now, gone back to the forest already.
She’d overheard one of the men say her mom hadn’t been given a chance to fight, but had been killed from behind, and quick. There was nothing for bandits except a pack full of herbs and bandages. They should have left her alive and asked her to help them heal their hurts. It would have been better for them, and her mother would be alive.
Shay’s pack did yield food: Bread that had been fresh the day before lay squished in the bottom on the pack beside five apples. Shay ate the bread and one of the apples. She should have taken more. Her mom would have patiently helped her lay out what she needed, but no one would talk her through plans any more, help her survive in a world that demanded more ideas than it had given to Shay.
She felt sure it wasn’t smart to stay here, where she could see her mother’s blood and the tracks and everything, but it couldn’t be smart to keep walking either. Shay looked around for a place to build a bed, careful not to step on any healing plants and careful not to step into anything with thorns, settling for a flat place made soft with old pine needles. She pulled down blue-pine branches thick with cold needles until she had enough to make an even softer spot to lie on, and then twice as many more branches to put over her and hold in some of her body heat.
She did all of this slowly and steadily, careful to focus on her task.
She climbed carefully in as the dark took the last of the light away, and she lay still under the boughs, her knife right in front of her in case any night animals came sniffing around. She tucked her pack under her head so nothing could steal it. Tomorrow she’d have to keep going as fast as she could manage and still be steady. More snow could come before winter was over.
She was going to need something to do. She had tried to help the innkeeper clear dishes, but he had yelled at when she was too slow for him. He’d told her no when she asked to work in the stable, mumbling something about not wanting the horses let out. Her mom had refused to let her try to herd sheep with the other children after they threw rocks at her one day. She knew all of her mom’s herbs, and how to count them, and how to hold a crying child while a bandage went on a knee or a splint on an ankle. Maybe she could pick plants for people and trade them for food. She wondered how far the next town was down the track. Too far for common visiting in winter. She wasn’t too dumb to know that much.
It took a long time to fall asleep, and then she didn’t stay that way very well. Branches poked her, and the cold found its way through her blanket of needles and poked her in the ankle, and her fingers grew so cold she finally fell asleep with them tucked up between thighs.
She woke up in time to see the last stars fade. After an apple and some water, she stood and looked at the place her mom had died. For just a moment, the idea of going back down to town seemed better than going up, but there was nothing left in town that loved her except a few of the animals.
After two candlemarks spent trekking uphill, Shay came to the top of the ridge. If she went right, she’d end up at the homestead, but she didn’t know very much about it. Just that Mr. Crestwell, who owned it, didn’t pay enough for the long trek up. At least that was what her mom had said. So she didn’t turn that way. The path kept going straight along a ridge for a long while, thinner now since it wasn’t used as much as the one between Mr. Chrestwell’s homestead and Little’s Town. She surprised a few deer and a wild pig, but they were all afraid of her, and she was afraid of the pig. She dug roots for lunch, using a hard stick and a rock just as her mom had taught her. She ate an apple, but she was still hungry. Well, there were two more apples, and she could make it the rest of the day on those.
The trail wound back down the far side of the ridge for a while, almost as steep as the path up ha
d been. Shay was careful where she put her feet, so it took a long time to get down. Slow and steady, her mom always told her. Take care of yourself, and don’t worry about what other people think. Besides, there was no one but the birds to care if she was slow and a little clumsy out here.
Clouds bunched above her, but they didn’t rain or snow. She stopped a few times to look at animal tracks. The horses of course. Deer and something bigger with cloven hooves. Not many, though, and mostly not completely fresh. But animals had passed over this path many times since the last time humans had walked it; the only boot tracks she saw were old ones with hard edges that had been frozen by earlier snowfalls and not yet crumbled by other steps on the path.
She refilled her water jugs from a tiny waterfall at the bottom of the hill. The water was colder than the water in the insulated jugs, and when she took a few sips, it made her cold inside.
The cold jolted her. Her right foot slipped on a wet rock as she stood up, and she fell down hard, knees and feet in the cold water. She pushed herself too quickly out of the water and fell in again, this time twisting her ankle.
Now she stopped, even though one foot was still in the water and the other hurt. Slow and steady. She needed to be slow and steady. She couldn’t put weight on the foot, and her shoes were wet, and her teeth clattered against each other. So she crawled on her sore knees and her cold hands, the pack making it harder, the water jugs trailing behind her.
Shay sat on the path gasping and shivering and cold for so long that the sun fell behind the tall trees that lined both river and path. She knew better than to stay on the path. That’s where the animals were, and her mom had told her they came to blood. This was also the path the bandits who killed her mother had come down on. She hadn’t really thought about that. She’d only thought about not being in the town by herself, without her mother to stop the other children from taunting her. If bandits came, she didn’t have anything worth stealing except for the kitchen knife, but she was a girl, and her mom had warned her about strange men.
When she stopped thinking so hard and decided to move, her body felt stiff. She crawled to the side of the trail until she found a grouping of young pines that would shelter her from the sky. After she stopped, Shay reached her fingers down to feel her ankle. It had grown bigger. While it didn’t hurt much to touch it, if she touched it hard enough to move her foot, pain shot up her calf.
She was a village healer’s daughter, and she knew to stay still.
It would be light enough to see for a few candlemarks. Everything was winter-cold and winter-bare except for the evergreen trees. Maybe it was better to live on the apples. She pulled down the few branches she could reach, apologizing to the small trees that would probably need them. She got enough to cover her legs and feet, and then she couldn’t reach any more. Shay dug her knife out of her backpack, being as careful as she could. She felt a little better with the shaft in her fist. She watched the water, letting it mesmerize her into a cold, shivery nap where she dreamed of horses and dogs and of her mother tucking her in at night.
Something in her dreaming must have caused her to move her foot. Pain woke her up to cold. Snow had started to fall, the flakes a bit golden in the late afternoon air. She felt stuck in place, cold and hurt and alone and empty.
She was hungry, but she didn’t want to move enough to dig out an apple.
A horse whinnied.
Shay stiffened and stilled.
Voices. Women’s voices. One of them saying, “The snow will hide tracks.”
The other responding. “We need to stop for the night soon.”
The first woman said, “I’d rather keep going.” Then silence fell except for the soft sounds of the horses hooves in the slight blanket of snow that had fallen while Shay dozed.
Shay shivered. Were they looking for her? On horseback? Most bandits were men. She held her breath and waited to see who rode up on her.
The figures of horses emerged from the snow on the path between her and the stream. Snow spangled their saddles and stuck to their manes and tails. Their riders were the two women who had gone through town, the Healer and the Bard. She recognized them even though they were closely bundled against the cold, bits of red hair escaping from woven hats.
Maybe she was still asleep and dreaming. She clutched the knife hilt tighter, or at least she tried. Her hand was stuck curled tightly around the wood. “Hello?” she rasped, her voice slight.
The first horse was past her, the second right across. They hadn’t heard her! She wasn’t directly on the path, and they’d have to look her way. She took a deep breath and tried to let go of the knife, croaking a disappointed sound when her bare, cold fingers still refused to move.
The woman turned and the horse stopped, and the next thing Shay knew, a cloak was thrown across her shoulders, and a face was close to her, saying her name, “Shay? Shay, is that you? Are you Shay?”
Then she was lying on a blanket by a fire, the warmth and light both slowly seeping into her. Night had finished falling, so all that seemed to exist was the fire and the women and blanket around her. The Healer held a cup and poured a bit of something warm between Shay’s cracked lips. The Bard sang to the fire, something soft and meant to help babies sleep. It was a song Shay had known once, because her mother used to sing it to her. She fell back asleep.
When Shay opened her eyes again, the fire was just as high, but the quality of darkness had turned toward the gray of dawn, although it was still dark enough that the fire lit the falling snowflakes so they looked briefly like sparks. She was lying on her back with her foot on a log, a saddle blanket under her head that smelled like clean horse sweat and snow, and a heavy cloak over her. The Healer was sitting and staring at the fire, and no one was singing except the storm itself, soft and thick and windless, the snow falling in a whisper and sometimes sizzling a tiny bit when it hit a coal just right.
Shay tried to say something, but what came out was more like a squeak.
The Healer turned toward her. “I’m Dionne. I’m glad we found you.”
Shay managed a “M-me t-too.”
“Are you still cold?”
“Only a little”
Dionne reached for a cup that sat on a little bank of coals away from the hottest part of the fire and held it up. “Will you drink some more tea?”
Shay tried to sit up, and then Dionne was beside her lifting her up and whispering. “Rhi?”
“Mmhhmmmm . . . .not morning yet.” The protest emerged muffled from a pile of blankets.
“She’s awake,” Dionne said as she lifted the cup so Shay could drink.
“Mmmmmhhhhh. It’s snowing. Leave me alone.” But the blankets moved, and the woman sat up and smiled at Shay. “Hello. I think we just found you in time.”
“Tha . . . thank you.” Shay said, and took another sip of the bitter tea ,which seemed to warm her blood so her whole body got a little warmer. She took two more sips before she asked, “Why did you come?”
The Bard answered. “You needed to be found.” She pulled on boots that had been left close enough to the fire to be warm. “Master Johaness sent us after you.”
The innkeeper? “He doesn’t like me.”
Dionne took the cup for her and set it back on the coals, letting Shay lie back down all the way. “He sure seemed worried when he caught up to us on that great big beast of his.”
The idea of the innkeeper riding after her refused to sit in her head. “Why didn’t he come himself?” At least her words were coming out better.
“Maybe he thought you needed Healing.” Dionne said.
“Or a song,” the other woman answered.
She hadn’t been close enough to see how much the women looked alike. “Are you twins?”
“The twin with no manners is my sister, Rhiannon.” Dionne said it gently, almost teasing. “And now that you can talk, your ankle is swollen. Is there anything else wrong?”
Shay shook her head.
Dionne bent down ov
er Shay’s foot and took the swollen ankle in both of her hands. At first nothing happened, then it felt a little warmer, and then it felt a lot warmer. When Dionne took her hands away she cocked her head and asked, “Is that better?”
Shay could move her ankle. “Much better. Thank you.”
“Can you sit up?” Dionne asked.
For answer, Shay sat up and held her hands out to the fire. “Are you going to take me home?”
The two women exchanged glances full of meaning Shay couldn’t read. “Do you want to go there?”
“No.”
They answered with silence for a bit. Then the Bard, Rhiannon, said, “I heard your mom died. I’m sorry.”
Shay swallowed. “Me, too.”
“What did you plan to do?” Dionne asked, her voice gentle.
So they must have talked to people in town, knew she didn’t have any family. It sounded as though no one had been willing to take care of her. That stung.
She threw a stick into the fire, marveling again that her ankle didn’t hurt when she shifted her weight. She watched the stick burn, thinking. Slow and steady. “Do you need someone to help you?” she asked. “I don’t have a horse.”
“Where were you going?” Dionne asked.
Shay kept her head down. “I don’t know.”
“Do you have family anywhere?”
Shay felt like Dionne’s questions punched her. Adults did this a lot. Avoided answering her questions by asking questions of their own. The small hope that they had really been looking for her felt even smaller now. They’d been doing their jobs. Saving people stupid enough to get into trouble. The thought made Shay laugh, the unfamiliar taste of bitterness burning the back of her throat. She was used to avoiding people, used to being laughed at and yelled at, but since so much of what people teased her about was true, she deserved those things. They seemed fair. But she had wanted these smart women on the beautiful horses to want her.
At least they didn’t ask her again when she didn’t answer, but just let her sit and watch the flames.
Under the Vale and Other Tales of Valdemar Page 13