Seasons Between Us

by Alan Dean Foster

  Firya lifted the heavy swath of her daughter’s hair in her hands, then let it spill back, like a Herrow draper showing off his finest wares. “How short then, for a girl reaching womanhood?” she asked. The shining mass, straight and dark, reached to Narene’s waist, more silken by far than Firya’s dull crop. “Do you think you’ll cling to the earth, if I take it all?”

  “Don’t,” Narene said quickly, then turned with a smile. “How much did you ask Grandmama to take?”

  “Oh, your grandmama wouldn’t listen to me,” Firya said. She touched her own hair, the nut-brown strewn with silver strands. Narene had never known her grandmama, and so Lerene’s memory was sweeter, and still more bitter. Narene’s heart loved where Firya’s could only rankle.

  But then, Narene’s love lighted as easily as a butterfly on rich vetch. Firya ran her brushes through her daughter’s hair until it sparked. She’d woken Narene with a palm curved to her forehead and a whispered word, at dawn. They’d bathed together in the stream beyond the flax fields, far from Iden’s eyes. While her hair was still wet, Firya plaited her hopes for Narene, her own lost daughter-dreams, into a strong braid tied with a ribbon of grey silk.

  “For your future,” she said. “Are there any young men you want to beguile? A Herrow man, a trader maybe? A sailor from beyond the straits?”

  Narene laughed and shook her head.

  “Don’t move about so, child.”

  “I’m not a child!”

  “No,” Firya said. Narene was a starling in autumn, ready for her journey south. Each new beat of her wings wrenched Firya’s breath. The boys were married and grown, but Firya had never had more than their obedience, their good-natured fondness; for this one, this last, Firya had always had her heart. “Indeed.” She stroked a few wisps from Narene’s forehead. “You’ll have the dryads dancing for your desires.”

  Narene held the scissors up with both hands and opened the jaws. She’d polished the rust from the old blades, but the iron handles were black with years. Even if Lerene had shaved Firya to the skin, Firya would never have grown light enough to fly.

  “I want . . . hearthfires and sheep in the fold. I want . . .” Here she giggled again, more girl than woman. “I want Alun Blacksmith.”

  “What?” Firya dropped Narene’s braid. “That stupid boy?” She remembered Lerene’s cold disbelief after she’d shared her own childish hopes. They had none of them come true, anyway.

  “Mother, you’re ruining it.” Narene twisted around to frown at her. “Here.”

  “Oh, little one . . .” Firya took the scissors and set the blades to the top of the plait. Too low would leave Narene no room for joy, and Firya loved her daughter’s dauntless joy. Too high would make her capricious, but Narene was already so steady, brimful of earnest trust. Firya chose a length, then moved her hand a fraction higher, and made the cut. Narene’s shoulders rounded under the sound, then she squealed and leapt off her stool.

  “Where’s the plate, Mother?” She danced about, tossing her head like a filly.

  “Here,” Firya said, holding up the circle of bright bronze. “Here, and let me finish.” Narene settled long enough to let Firya snip an even fringe around her lovely face. The dryads could never resist her. “There,” she said. “You’re ready for the groves.”

  “Oh, Mother. I’ll find the dryads where I look for them.”

  Firya’s heart squeezed against her smile. Narene would never tame a dryad with such artless hope. “Wishes aren’t scattered like seeds, where any woman walks . . .”

  “I want to go and show Magun.” She whipped her hair back and forth to sting her cheeks. “She’s got a month yet.”

  A woman, and yet such a child. Narene needed all her strength to cling to the ground. “You’re a mist who wants to be a cloud,” Firya said. She’d meant to speak tenderly, but taut anxiety filled her voice.

  Narene admired herself in the bronze plate, then handed it back to Firya. “I’ll be back for the milking. I promise.”

  “Surely you do. Will you get supper on for your father?” Jonnah would rather taste a silent pipe by the grate than hear Firya’s talk.

  Narene sighed. “Yes, Mother.”

  “Thank you, then.” Firya cupped Narene’s chin. Her eyes were dark as good ale, and her cheekbones had a saucy tilt. Yes, with her new-cut hair tickling her chin, Narene could draw better men than Alun Blacksmith—if she went looking, instead of waiting to be found. “You could have such magic, love. I’ve never been prouder.”

  Narene reached up to kiss Firya’s cheek. “It’s the best day in all the world.” She skipped down the cart path to Iden, one hand stealing up to touch the curling ends of her hair. Before she reached the first turn, she was singing.

  Firya rubbed her thumb over the strands of hair from Narene’s forgotten braid. Narene had always lived in Jonnah’s wide stone farmhouse, always run wild with four brothers to mind her. Firya gathered up the stool and scissors, returning them to the undercroft. Narene was so used to plenty that she hadn’t even thought to ask for her own womanhood braid.

  Firya laid a hand on the worn cushion of the rocking chair in the chimney corner. She should have Jan break the chair for kindling, the wood was so old and dry.

  As long as supper was on the table, she wouldn’t be missed.

  Sun glared down on the hills as Firya left the woods. Her skirts thrashed around her thighs, slowing her. Sweat pooled under her empty breasts. She’d once leapt up the hills as easily as the young goats she could see playing on the crags far above. But her tides had been slowing this past year. The slope steepened each time she brought her paltry offerings to bury. The way was open now, but in deep winter? In next year’s empty spring?

  Narene could have fluttered to the height in an hour. A whispered wind might pluck her from the earth. Better for Firya to struggle, rather than turn Narene loose where she did not know the way.

  Firya’s legs burned when she came to the grove, panting. The evergreen branches arched above her, the splay of needles hiding the sky. “Kirel,” she gasped, but no answer came.

  Firya touched the nearest tree. Its trunk split in long seams, rough as an old woman’s face. Firya leaned against the trunk and pressed her cheek to the hoary bark. Witches’ hair drooped from the branches and caressed her shoulders.

  The tiny spring was no more than a trickle in the heat. Moss clung to the rocks around its edges, a gentle pad to rest her hands against. Firya dipped her lips to its crystal water. Winter rain cooled her throat.

  When she lifted her head, Kirel lounged in front of her. Her feet were bare beneath skirts of ripe hay. “Firya, the impatient.”

  Firya eased herself back on her ankles. She kept her eyes on the spring, rather than meet Kirel’s glacier eyes. “That girl,” she said, playing out honesty like a line. “She’s such a stay-at-home.”

  Kirel let one shapely foot trail in the spring. “Oh?”

  “She wasn’t born in a scrubwoman’s cot. She can read and factor and sing like a lady, and she’d rather spend every spare moment spinning. And Alun . . .”

  Kirel’s smile curled. “She wants the blacksmith’s boy?”

  “Alun is worse than Jonnah was at his age,” Firya said. With each offering, her stoppered mouth had loosened with Kirel. This once she let every word she held back from Iden’s ears come pouring out. “I gave her every freedom and she wants to chain herself to a rock.” Firya slipped Narene’s braid from her pocket and stroked the tip. A worm for her hook.

  Kirel picked a single strand from her skirt and twined it around her fingers in a cat’s cradle. She offered it across the spring to Firya. “Who will be good enough for your daughter to love?”

  Firya lay the loosened plait on the moss between them. “I wanted so much when I was her age.” She pinched the grey strands of Kirel’s cat’s cradle betwe
en thumb and forefinger. The touch of Kirel’s yarn was deliciously cold under the heavy sun. Firya turned her hands under Kirel’s, and she held a snowstorm in her cupped palms. “She’ll want it someday. Something more than Iden town.”

  Kirel’s fingers brushed across hers like frost. She looped the cradle easily. “And when Narene comes home from her adventures, from ships and cities, will you be satisfied at last?”

  “She follows that boy wherever he goes.” Firya frowned over the criss-crossing yarn. She’d come to barter for Narene’s dreams, but her daughter deserved so much more. “She hangs about his father’s forge like every silly Iden girl.”

  “Were you never a silly Iden girl?”

  “No.”

  “Not for Jonnah?”

  “I made the best of my gifts.” With a deft twist, Firya took the cradle. She offered her hands, bound in Kirel’s foggy threads.

  Instead of taking the cradle, Kirel touched a sprig of heather clinging to a rock above the pool. The tiny pink flowers crinkled beneath a memory of ice. “I could turn Narene’s heart from Alun.”

  A hedgerow dryad couldn’t offer better. “She’d leave Iden, then? And safely?”

  “Oh, yes.” Kirel’s yarn tightened about her fingers.

  Her eyes on the cradle wrapping her hands, Firya spoke slowly. “You promised me freedom once.” There was green sea to the north, white cities across the straits, and golden lands softening to the south, and Firya had seen none of it. “But I’ve been no further from Iden than your grove.”

  Kirel pinched the yarn between slender fingers, and turned the cradle.

  She chose wrong. The cradle fell into knots, leaving Firya’s hands wrapped in yarn so cold it burned.

  Firya reached for Narene’s braid but her hands wouldn’t close around it. Dead white patches spread across her knuckles. “Kirel, I can’t. It’s—it’s not mine to wish.” Fumbling with fingers trussed into claws, Firya finally managed to tuck the plait beneath her skirts. Cold locked her jaw but she pushed until her silence broke. “Narene will come when she’s ready.”

  Kirel’s eyes were pale as a reflection of clouds, but she shrugged as if Firya had interrupted their game for her own pique. “Ah, Firya. Bring me sweet milk from your babe’s lips, the blood of your body, or your own daughter’s unwanted braid; but do not waste my time.” The threads loosened into mist and drifted away.

  Firya’s hands were her own, brown and wrinkled as fallen leaves.

  4.

  Firya hefted the churn, heavy with cream, to her hip. She settled her stool behind the barn, where the last of the morning’s shade would cool her. The new butter was nearly finished when she heard footsteps creaking the barn’s old planks.

  “Old Mannon wanted to pay a silver penny less, as I’m an apprentice still, but Da’ said, show me one flaw, and I’ll charge nothing at all.”

  Alun’s voice, strutting and smug. Firya dropped her dasher. Narene must have seen the empty kitchen and assumed she was up in the groves. Firya strode around to the barn door, prepared to send Alun yapping back to Iden town, but stopped when she saw the two of them. Narene leaned against the gelding’s stall, holding up a handful of oats to his eager lips. Alun stood in front of her, hands tucked in his wide leather belt. Motes of hay dust swam in the sun seeping into the barn through the old chinking, limning the two of them gold as larches.

  “Were you worried, Alun?” Narene asked. She stroked the horse’s velvet nose. “He might have found something wrong with it.”

  “’Course not.” Alun threw back his shoulders. “He couldn’t find a thing. If he had, Da’ would’ve taken it out of my hide.”

  Firya snorted. How could Narene think a young rooster was worth her heart?

  The gelding tossed his head, seeking more oats, and Narene laughed. No longer a girl’s laugh, but low and inviting. She kept her eyelashes low, her lips curved.

  “Narene . . .” Alun reached out and caught her fingers between his rough hands. “It’s been three months, hasn’t it?”

  Narene turned slightly, her skirts flaring around her ankles. “Nearly.”

  Alun shifted like a plough-ox chewing cud. “What I mean is, you’re a good lass. My Da’ wouldn’t mind another woman’s hands around the place . . .”

  Even Jonnah had more words, and better, all those years ago. Firya had heard enough of such clumsy love-making. Narene would stand there all day besotted if Firya didn’t intervene. She thrust the door open. “Narene.”

  Narene started and took her hands back from Alun. “Yes, Mother.”

  “Have you forgotten your chores? And your poor father, starving in the fields without his dinner?” Firya stared at Alun, and he met her eyes directly. Impudent snip. Narene ducked her head and sidled past Firya to the farmhouse.

  After too long, the boy touched his forelock. “I’ll be going, then, ma’am.”

  Firya watched him until he was well on his way. How easily a boy could trap a girl, with no more than promises and a ready smile.

  Narene stormed from the kitchen carrying Jonnah’s dinner basket. She crossed to Firya, looking ready to stomp her foot like a watchful ewe. “You were hateful to Alun.”

  “Narene, he’s a lump of dirt. You’re a flying bird.” If only Narene knew what price her womanhood braid could command in the groves. She so badly needed a dryad’s guidance. “You’re going to hurt so, someday, if you tie yourself to him.”

  “I love him.” Narene shook her head. “You’re the only one who’s tied, when you’re so certain that you’re free.”

  Rain drummed on the blacksmith’s roof and seeped through the window-shutters. The kitchen was filled to bursting with every relative and neighbour who thought they’d earned a taste of the betrothal toasts. Firya sat tight against Alun’s old grandmama at one elbow and Jonnah’s wide-spread satisfaction at the other. “Thanks be, Thom,” Jonnah said as Alun’s father mulled his ale with a hot poker. “It’s good to have Narene settled at last.”

  Thom passed along the steaming ale and shoved the hissing poker back in the hearth. “And all it took was a season’s silver!”

  Jonnah laughed, too loudly. Well, Thom had been eager in the bargaining. And Jonnah had already paid four good bride prices. Maybe he deserved to gloat over the silver clinking in his purse.

  Firya shook away Thom’s offer of another mug. At the head of the wide trestle table, Narene tucked her hair back, as though it had fallen into her eyes by all innocence. She’d never been so shameless as a child. Beside her, Alun leaned down to whisper some crudeness in her ear, and she blushed. Had Firya cut her hair too high after all?

  “Aye, but Alun has her promise now,” Jonnah said. “It’d take a dryad’s wish to free her.”

  Thom shared a smile with his wife, Lizal. “Narene, you wouldn’t witch our Alun, would you?”

  Jonnah grinned. “Mayhap she already has!”

  Firya pressed her lips together. Despite the fire crackling in the grate and the mulled ale in front of her, she couldn’t rub warmth into her fingers. The men’s boastful jokes proved they knew nothing of magic.

  “Better for Narene to wish for children.” Thom raised his mug to Narene.

  “Healthy children,” Lizal amended, with a hasty look over her shoulder. She at least had the sense the dryads had given her.

  The guests raised their drinks with a glad murmur. Alun took the deepest swallow. His cheerful face was pink with ale. “Best we ask Firya for wishes,” he said. “Narene needn’t seek the groves, not when she’s half-dryad already.”

  Anger filled Firya’s stomach with sour milk. No wonder Narene held so close to Iden with Alun feeding her such poison. Her spurned braid still lay tucked at the back of her bureau drawer.

  Jonnah’s hand fell on her knee and squeezed. His quiet warning galled worse than Alun’s
ignorance. “Narene knows well enough where to lay her wishes,” Firya said sweetly. Keeping a rein on her fool beloved, for one.

  Jonnah heaved to his feet. “The night’s growing dark,” he said. “We’ve a ways home, and the rain’s coming. Firya?”

  Firya bared her teeth in a flat smile. “Our thanks for your hospitality. Narene’s chosen the best of Iden town.” Grass-snake words, hissing but harmless.

  Jonnah wrapped her in her wool cloak, and they stepped out into the wet street. Laughter lifted in their wake.

  “He’ll make her hate the dryads, going on as he does,” she griped, with no hope of Jonnah hearing her. Firya would warrant Lizal and Thom expected Narene’s bride price to pay for itself in the good fortune she’d bring them. Firya’s reputation had loosened their lockbox.

  Jonnah shrugged. “Narene’s a good girl, and she knows her mind.” He tramped across to the saddlery where they’d left the cart. When he returned, leading the gelding, his breath wreathed his head like pipe-smoke. “It’s not Alun will make Narene neglect the groves,” he said at last.

  Moonlight glimmered through the clouds. Firya turned her face up into the cold damp. Rain slid down her bare neck and under her collar. No, Alun wouldn’t forbid Narene the groves. No one wanted to offend a dryad. But even if Narene struggled to the heights, she’d be choosing Alun’s ridicule, his resentment. Firya knew those choices well enough.

  Jonnah cupped her elbow, and she climbed to the cart bench. After lighting the lanterns, he joined her, slumped from his years in the fields. “It’s just life, is all, Firya. The dryads are for young girls’ dreaming. Not for women years married, with a home and all.”

  “A home I worked for.” Firya hated the sound of Lerene in her voice, the waspish anger, but it broke through despite herself. “One I sacrificed for.”

  Jonnah turned to study her—whatever he could see in the gloom. He’d never seen much, less when it suited him not to. “You’re hurting her, being like this. Nor just her.”

  When she didn’t answer, Jonnah flicked the reins and the horse set off. The wheels sucked free of the mud. Back to the freedom of the farm and the bounded fields. The freedom of every day the same, unending, for years.