Windswept (The Mapweaver Chronicles Book 1)

by Kaitlin Bellamy

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  There was snow in the air. Fox could smell it when he awoke, and it tickled his senses as he went about his business in the village. All morning, he felt it drawing nearer. And by midafternoon, he knew it would be his last day in Doff. He had to get home before the storms began.

  “Just one more night,” he told Topper. “And I’ll have to be off first thing in the morning.” When Topper’s face fell, Fox said quickly, “But I’ll be back! I promise!” He laid a hand on the younger boy’s shoulder and looked him square in the eyes. “You and your village have been good to me. Like a second home. And traders always return home.”

  This made Topper smile. “We’ll at least have a proper send-off then! Tonight, we celebrate!”

  And he meant it. When they entered the public house for dinner late that evening, the stone cavern echoed with cheers and whoops. Fox felt himself blush, and grinned to hide his embarrassment and joy. And then he was pulled to a table near the center of the room, and surrounded by many of the fire merchants he had come to call friends. There was a stout young girl about Topper’s age, who was already working down in the mines. She had a wonderful gift for finding exactly which veins of firestone and lymnstone would produce the most ore. And there was Kaldora’s younger brother, Topper’s adopted uncle, who was called Wick. A handful of candlemakers whose names were all very similar, and Fox could never quite keep them straight. But he thought the boys were called Malla, Dalla, Dari and Denn. Either way, he found he got along with them splendidly.

  Dinner was a raucous affair, with everyone talking and laughing and raising their dishes in toasts. An entire roasted goat was slid out on a board right in front of Fox, and he was asked to cut the first piece. Renewed cheers shook the stone walls when he did, and then Wick jumped to his feet and started the music.

  Music was very different here in Doff. Fox had heard little pieces of song and instruments every so often in passing, but never quite like this. There were great hollowed stones with skins stretched across them, making for fascinatingly strange drums that echoed like thunder. Everything was done in rhythmic beats, from wild and savage dancing tunes to somber, even pounding. Now, Wick began to clap his hands in an even rhythm, and two of the men produced the stone drums and began to beat along with him. As they did, Wick started to sing.

  Heart, heart

  Heart of the stone

  That woman of mine

  Who left me alone

  Heart, heart

  Heart dark and cold

  I hope you survive on your own!

  After a few verses, even Fox was able to join in on the chorus. And he did, with a great gusto that was rewarded by many a cheer and clap on the shoulder from the people at his table. All night this went on, until finally the last song of the evening was sung. A slow, steady song of farewell. And then the crowd began to clear, to head back to work or to their beds. Out into the glowing stone night they went, and Fox looked out on Doff with a certain pang of sorrow. He’d grown so quickly attached to such a little place, it would be difficult to leave it behind. It would most likely be spring before he could visit again.

  His packs were full of candles and firestone totems and blue lymnstone. His head was full of songs and wondrous memories. And with the dawn next morning, Fox was gone. He would just beat the first snowfall home, but he wasn’t worried. His first trip on his own had gone better than he had ever imagined. And for the first time since the caravan departed, Fox felt like a man.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The feeling was short-lived. He ambled back through his kitchen door in Thicca Valley just after dawn, and Mother’s reaction to his absence made him feel very much like a little boy again. She vacillated between holding him tight and crying that she’d been so worried, and raging at him with a face of sheer fury, calling him things he’d only heard her call Father when she made him sleep in his trapping cabin.

  The note Fox had left explaining the reasons for his disappearance and telling her not to worry did not seem to have had much of an effect. In fact, when Fox mentioned it in an attempt to defend himself, Mother produced it, crumpled and worried-over, from her apron pocket and brandished it in his face.

  “And suppose I’d never seen you again?” she shouted. “Suppose you’d died in a snowstorm or been tracked down by the Desolata, and all I had to remember you by was this?”

  When Fox opened his mouth to protest, she sent him upstairs. He was sentenced to isolation in his cubby, to be lifted when Mother saw fit. And so, feeling chastised and too guilty to refuse, Fox dragged his things behind him, all the way upstairs where he crawled up into his room and sat cross-legged, unpacking. He could hear Mother angrily cleaning downstairs; scrubbing more roughly than normal, putting things aside with heavy thuds and half-formed curses.

  Fox spent all morning tucked in his cubby, arranging the goods he had so proudly traded for in their own little nooks and crannies. Then he pulled his writing supplies from his trunk, sprawled out on his stomach, and flopped his journal open to an empty page. He began to scribble away furiously about everything he remembered from Doff. Trying to capture in words what it had looked like, and felt like. He was pleased to discover not only how much he could remember in perfect detail, but also that the new pen he’d received from Bartrum Bookmonger had such a fine tip, he could cram rather a lot of words onto one page. And then a thought came to him as he wrote.

  He blew on the page to help the last few words dry. Then he turned the page and, careful not to use the back of the still slightly wet sheet, he began to draw. At first, it was just a rough sketch of Doff, as it might be seen by the eborills soaring overhead, and slightly to the north. But the more he worked, the clearer it became. He began to etch in tiny details with the tip of his pen. Not mere blocks and X’s like the map he’d seen of the merchant’s highway, but roofs of certain buildings and the exact shape of the rock gardens. He even drew shadowy smudges that looked like eborills, soaring over the whole mountain.

  Morning wore into afternoon as he worked, and the skies outside the window grew darker as heavy snow clouds rolled into the valley. Still, Fox continued to draw, trying to perfect every inch of the village, all that he could remember. Not from straight on, not flattened from above like the maps he saw in his book of the gods, but at an angle. Taking in every shape and every road. The last piece was the stone pillar that marked the village entrance, with its primitive build and “Doff” carved roughly into it.

  Then, smiling to himself, Fox pulled from his pocket Topper’s special gift to him: a pouch of fine lymnstone powder. Scooping a handful from the pouch and holding it over the wet map, Fox began to sprinkle it across the page until every inch of ink was covered. Then he lifted the book to his lips and blew carefully, so that the excess powder drifted away, leaving only that which was stuck to the ink. And then Fox smiled and retreated farther into his cubby, to the darkest corner. He propped the book up on his knees and watched the map of Doff begin to glow.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Snow was falling thickly outside when Mother finally released him from his punishment, just in time for a late dinner. She seemed to have calmed down quite a bit since his arrival that morning, and now she started asking questions about where he’d been. They sat on the wide stones around the fire pit, and as Fox told story after story of his time in Doff, Mother began to smile.

  “Your father used to talk just like that when I met him,” she said reminiscently. “He’d go on and on about the places and the people. Bored me to death at times, but in the beginning that’s what I fell in love with. His passion.”

  Fox stirred his soup absently. “You miss him when he’s gone,” he said.

  “I miss him even when he’s here,” said Mother, her face turned to the window, watching the snow. “I listen to him tell his stories, and I miss the part of him that’s still off on the road, because I can never go there with him.” And then her smile fell somewhat, and she looked back at Fox. “I can’t protect him, o
ut there. I can’t ...” Her voice trailed off. She clasped her hands tighter around her bowl, and Fox noticed they were shaking.

  “Mother?” he asked. And again when she didn’t answer, “Mum?”

  “You said he was going to die,” she said finally. “You said he was going to die, and then you disappeared. You went off and did this wonderful thing, where you were on your own. You made choices and survived, and you were a man, not a boy. And that was his reason for making you stay, he told me.” She began to speak more quickly now, as though she’d been planning all day what to say and she was in a hurry to get it out. “He told me your visions or feelings might have just been a tantrum. That he would be careful, that you had no way of knowing. But you haven’t acted like a boy. I hear you talking like a young man ... and I know you are your father’s son.”

  She took a long, shaking breath, tears shimmering in her lashes, but she set her jaw stubbornly and refused to let them fall. She looked Fox straight in the eyes and said, calmly and directly, “Is he already dead?”

  “No,” said Fox at once. Mother’s question had taken him by surprise, but he knew the answer with an impossibly steady certainty. “I would know. I would have felt it.” When Mother did not look consoled, Fox reached across the space between them and clasped her hands, squeezing them tightly. “Don’t you think I have been listening, feeling with all my strength, every day? For now, they are all safe.”

  “For now,” said Mother dejectedly. “But you know they might not be.”

  For a moment they sat in silence. And then, Mother looked up at him with pleading in her eyes, and Fox answered her unasked question with a heavy heart. “I did consider following them. But what good would it have done? If Father didn’t believe me then, there’s no reason he would believe me now. And the Tessoc Pass will already be sealed tight for the winter.”

  “So all we can do is wait?” asked Mother. And when Fox nodded, Mother pulled her hands from his grip. She turned her full attention back to her meal, scraping the bottom of her bowl clean with a crust of bread. Then she said firmly, “You’ll tell me when it happens.”

  It was not a request, it was a demand. And Fox, lost for words and lacking anything more helpful to say, answered with a simple “Yes.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The Shavid were getting closer. Fox could feel it. He woke up many mornings with the smell of painted wagons fresh on his nose, and he could often hear little pieces of their songs dancing about like snow flurries on the wind. He began to reach out to them, as he had with the goats and sometimes Lai during his lessons with Bartrum Bookmonger. He let his words and thoughts float on the breezes like leaves on a river, hoping they would find the Shavid. Hoping they would find Radda.

  He’d said “soon.” When the Shavid left so many months ago, Fox had wanted to go with them. And Neil had known his thoughts, and said “Radda says it’s not time. He says soon, but not now.”

  I’m ready, he kept thinking. Come back and find me, I’m ready now.

  But he wasn’t granted much time to dwell on the approaching Shavid. He soon discovered that Mother wasn’t the only person upset with him for his abrupt disappearance.

  “At least you left her a note!” Lai shrieked at him on the morning after his return. She’d found him up on the cabin rooftop, where he was busy repairing cracks in the thin but sturdy stone shingles. She’d climbed up right beside him and, without so much as a cursory “hello,” had started screaming. “I didn’t even get that! No goodbye, no warning? How could you?”

  “Look,” said Fox in exasperation, “if you’re going to keep yelling, at least give me a hand with this?” He nudged the bucket of thick caulking paste with his toe, and Lai glared at him. Finally, with a grudging snort, she plucked an extra brush from the goo and began to help with the repairs. They worked in silence for a time, until finally Lai seemed to calm down enough to carry on a simple conversation.

  “How was it?” she asked. “Wherever you went?”

  “Amazing,” said Fox reminiscently. He smeared a great glop of paste onto the foot or so of tiles in front of him, using a thick-bristled brush to smooth it out and scrape it into place. As it oozed between shingles and filled cracks in the stone, Fox continued. “I was a real trader. Out on my own, and master of myself! But it was even more than that. The people up there...” He scooped another hearty mess of paste from the bucket and let it splatter onto the tiles with a wet shhhhlop. “I think, sometimes, they have it even worse than we do. It’s all stone and mountainside, but they’ve made something so beautiful. Father always used to tell me that I never knew how big the world was, but I don’t think I truly understood him until recently.” Fox stopped and sat back on his rump, letting the paste dry. “Even from village to village, it’s like a whole other culture. How can anyone ever see it all?”

  “The Shavid do,” said Lai.

  Fox looked out past the valley, across the plains where the Shavid had once disappeared. Did they truly see it all? Could they really travel so wide and far, and see all there was to see in one lifetime? “Maybe so,” he said out loud, to both Lai and himself. “But the most I’ll ever get to see is the Merchant’s Highway.”

  He didn’t dare tell her his true thoughts. How much he longed to go with them, and how every day he hoped they’d ride over the horizon and take him on their grand adventures. It was a wish that was confusing as well as wonderful. After all, he had a home. And a life laid out before him, as a successful trapper and trader. It was in his blood, and he was cursed good at it too. As he breathed in the smells of the valley, he felt that familiar comfort of home. This was where he belonged ... wasn’t it?

  Meanwhile, the winter routine had settled upon Thicca Valley. True winter, the Deep Winter, was still more than two months away, but snowfall greeted the Thiccans almost every morning, though it cleared by the sun’s highest point. Farmers were hard at work pulling in the last of the harvest, and the riverbanks were teeming with nets and lines as the valley folk caught their last fish of the season.

  Soon, Deep Winter would freeze both ground and river solid, and snow would envelop the land. It was then that the cold and dark would drive the Thiccans to gather at the Five Sides for companionship and entertainment. But for now, each and every soul was hard at work, from long before dawn each morning until the hearthfires burned low every night. Home gardens were gleaned for every scrap of edible growth. Wild mushrooms were gathered, and end-of-season berries pressed into jams and preserves. The valley echoed with the sounds of firewood being chopped and cabins being repaired before the winter blizzards did irreparable damage.

  Fox woke long before the sun each morning and built up the kitchen fire. By the time Mother awoke and started her day, the cabin was warm and breakfast was heating on the flat hearthstones. But Fox would already be out in the forest, checking his traps. He brought in fat beavers and plump rabbits, and set up a hearty trade at the Five Sides every few days. The many widows trying to survive their first winters without their husbands were exceptionally grateful for Fox and his fresh game. They paid him in everything from candles and sacks of potatoes to promises of firstborn goat calves in the spring. It wasn’t long before Fox had a thick stack of parchment scraps scribbled over with lists and who owed him what, and notes of whom he still needed to collect from. He made himself a mental note to buy a proper ledger.

  Days grew shorter, and the working light dwindled into but a few brief hours in the afternoon. The farmlands froze over, imprisoning any crops left unharvested in the earth. A fine mist of smoke and frozen breath hung over the valley like a cloud, and there was an ever-present, lingering scent of woodsmoke. As the sun hid its face for good, a silence settled over everything. Even the trees and the animals grew hushed, and the very mountains seemed to be holding their breath.

  And then, the snows came.

  Deep Winter crashed down on the valley. A bitter and deathly cold wind rattled every doorframe, shrieked at every window, and bit viciously at expos
ed skin. Blizzards shook every foundation, and the mountains groaned under the weight of the snow and ice. It was always dark, with even midday no brighter than a moonlit evening. Ice and hailstones pelted the rooftops, thundering like a thousand tiny drums. It was as if a hundred great white bears had taken over the valley, roaring across the skies and tearing at every building with their claws of ice.

  But while the rest of the valley cozied up in their homes, keeping warm and waiting for the storms to calm enough to let them outside, Fox was in agony. The angry gale brought with it such a hailstorm of smells and sounds and visions that he couldn’t get a moment’s peace. Shivers racked his body, and smells came and went so quickly that it made him dizzy. Within two days he was physically ill. He lay curled in a ball by the kitchen fire, wrapped in heavy furs and incapable of eating.

  During the Deep Winter, he and Mother always slept by the fire pit. It conserved firewood and contained all the heat in one room. They only ventured upstairs if they needed something, and even then they made it a quick trip, eager to get back to the warmth and light of the kitchen. It was a comfortable enough place to stay, with all the furs and blankets stripped from their beds and piled up around the edge of the fire. But now, Fox couldn’t imagine being comfortable anywhere. Not here, nor in his bed, nor in the thawing warmth of summer.

  The fifth day of the storm found him sitting huddled on his makeshift bed, a blanket of patched rabbit pelts wrapped around him like a cloak, with only his face visible. He stared determinedly into the fire, willing himself to focus on the dance of light and shadow and not on the thousands of new images battling for space in his mind. Mother was still asleep, exhausted from her own winter tradition of stitching every hole, real or imagined, in every scrap of clothing in the house. Fox could just see her silhouette through the flames, twice as large as it ordinarily should be, what with all the extra blankets. He pulled his own fur quilt tighter around him, as if that might help ward off the intense shivers constantly flooding him. But he knew they weren’t from cold. They were the sounds and smells, his Blessing. And, in the heart of the storm, his curse.