Seasons Between Us

by Alan Dean Foster

  “Mind your own work,” Magda says, swatting Albert’s arm with her staff. “Us old maids are working our share, least as good as you.”

  Albert gives Magda an exaggerated bow. “No disrespect meant, wind-keeper. Just thinking this one’s likely claiming a place meant for someone younger and with more need. Many people have plenty of mouths to feed at home and would like their share of the silver.”

  Kata has heard that same grumbling at her back all year after Abel took her on, and though she would not give up her spot for anything, it still rankles. “I have a right to earn my keep same as you,” Kata says, holding back the sharper words prickling on her tongue.

  “And if that troubles you,” Magda cuts in, “you can pick that bone with me.”

  She flourishes her wind-keeper staff in the air with a mock-scowl, and everyone laughs, even Kata. After all these years, it’s an unexpected boon to have someone take her side.

  “Leastways you won’t really curse a storm down on us like Kata’s mam,” someone mutters, and Kata’s face flushes hot.

  “Everyone here has earned their place,” Abel says, taking his turn at the buttermilk, and the crowd hushes. “Kata has been a trusty labourer and waterfinder for many years. She asked for a place, same as all of you, and she’s working for nowt more than two barrels of tar. Anyone else want to take that deal, rather than waiting for your share of the sales at Rivermouth come autumn, you’re welcome to it.”

  “Two barrels?” Albert looks as incredulous as he sounds. “What’s an old maid need two barrels of tar for?”

  Kata does not answer and when the others go back to work, she lingers in the shade a while.

  Magda is helping with the wood and has left her staff in the grass. Like Mother’s staff it’s carved with wind-runes, its grip worn smooth by handling, but while Mother’s staff was studded with bits of obsidian and crystal, Magda’s is adorned with beads and shells strung on leather straps and set with bits of turquoise.

  Kata thinks of Mother’s staff, of the heavy thump it made on the wooden floorboards whenever Mother wanted something—food, drink, or someone to take a lashing. How many times did Kata make herself small and quiet to stay out of the reach of that staff? How often did she take the brunt of Mother’s rage, no matter who had raised her ire? Often enough that most people in the village now look at her with scorn or pity, if they look at her at all.

  If Mother’s shade is clinging to anything, it is that staff.

  “It’s nowt but wood,” Abel told her when they carted Mother off for her wet burial, glancing at the staff beside the hearth. But he would not touch it either.

  Nowt but wood.

  Kata looks at the wood piled neatly in the pit, breathes in the sticky-sharp smell of sun-warmed pine. Not even Abel knows she tucked Mother’s staff in beneath the first layers of wood in the pit yesterday morning. The staff was cold and heavy in her hands, before she put it down and covered it up with pine. Soon, the pit will be set alight, and every stick of wood will burn, slow and steady, resin and lumber turning into smoke and tar beneath the ground. Then, Kata will be free.

  That’s why Mother’s shade has come, because she knows it too.

  That night, asleep in the workers’ hut by the pit, Kata dreams of Mother.

  It’s not a nightmare, not at first, but a memory. Kata was a small child the one and only time Mother took her to the coast outside Rivermouth. Mother borrowed a sailing skiff and they sailed out beyond the grey granite shores of the inlet.

  In all her life before or since, Kata never saw Mother stir such gentle winds, a thin smile curled on her lips as she told Kata how to handle the sail and ropes. Later, Kata sat in the prow, one hand trailing in the water, staring through the silky-blue sheen of that rippled surface, pretending they were never going back, that everything would be different now, that they would keep sailing until the world around them changed, until she and Mother changed as well.

  Kata touched the sea, and the sea touched her. It was perhaps the first time she felt the stirring of water-sensing in herself. Closing her eyes, she imagined the entire Inner Sea, its currents and eddies and tides, like a sheer net strung with pearls, rippling beneath her, tugging at her fingers.

  Eventually the dream, like the memory, darkens like a bruise.

  Mother saw a trading ship, headed for the harbour, crimson sails furled, oars striking the water, its dragon prow gleaming in the light. Mother’s face turned hard as she reached for her staff. Kata cowered, gripping the railing while Mother shook her staff and called a wind that ripped apart their small sail and crashed the skiff onto the stony shore, the gusts rocking the ship as it passed.

  When Kata wakes, she stares into the dusky indigo of the summer night, waiting for Mother’s shade to come, to hook its wet fingers through her ribs, to pin her in place, to tell her she can’t leave, that all her plans and purposes are futile. She waits until dawn breaks, but nothing stirs in the meadow but the moonlight.

  They light the tar-pit the next day. Abel sets the wood alight, after covering the pit carefully with dirt and peat and white moss, Magda standing by to calm the winds if needed.

  “Two to four days for burning all the wood to tar, but it’ll need constant watching,” Abel tells them, sounding stern. He will watch the smoke, regulating the fire by opening and closing holes in the top, making sure enough air comes in to ensure it burns slow and steady. Too little wind, and the fire will go out before all the wood has burned. Too much and the pit might burn to ashes and coal without giving any tar at all.

  The barrels are made ready in the space below the slope where the tar will come pouring out of a hollowed log.

  “You’ve done good work,” Abel says, “but it’s not done yet.”

  Kata is sitting by herself in the shade when Magda offers her a swig of lingonberry drink from a jug, and suddenly the years between them don’t seem so long. They talk. Mostly, it’s Magda talking, about where she’s been, about the places she’s seen, how she got the scar on her cheek in a bar-brawl with a raider. How she’s crisscrossed the Inner Sea more times than she can count.

  “I’m not cut out for ship life,” Magda muses, looking up through the birch leaves at the sky. “I miss the green, the earth, small winds through the woods. These days, I travel the coast, helping wherever people pay me.”

  “You ever travel the Outer Sea?”

  Magda shakes her head.

  “No. I turned back at the Narrow Gates. Too much water. Too much wind.” She gives Kata a shrewd look. “You were always talking of the Outer Sea. Is that where you’re going? With your two barrels of tar?”

  “If I can.” Kata gives her a careful look. “No law against an old maid travelling the seas, is there?”

  “I should hope not. Plenty of old maids travelling lands and seas.”

  They sit in silence for a while. Again, Magda speaks first.

  “How was it, with your Mother, before the end? Everyone here tries hard not to talk about her.”

  Kata shrugs. “You know what she was like. She birthed me and raised me and never forgave me for either, and then she got sick and took ten years to die.”

  “Do you miss her, hard as she was?”

  Kata has no answer. If she could find the words, she would tell Magda how she missed Mother more when she was alive, when Kata hoped she still might change, than now when she’s dead and sunk into the ground.

  Magda plays with the beads and shells on her staff, making them jingle. “Thought you might be married by now. Children. All that.”

  Kata braids a blade of grass into a ring, slips it on a finger. “Attur asked me, once. But I sent him away and then he left, just like you. No one has been fool enough to ask since.”

  Kata thinks of Mother’s fury when Attur stood on the steps of the cottage, the way she struck the window pane with
her staff, shattering the dearly bought glass.

  Magda shakes her head. “Attur was always more trouble than he was worth. You’re not pining for him still?”

  Kata laughs at that. “No, I’m done pining.” She takes another swig from the jug. “I saw him at the harbour in Rivermouth the year before Mother died. He captains a ship of his own now. He’s done well for himself. Away from the village. Away from me.”

  She thinks of Attur, thinks more of his ship: its gleaming prow and broad, tarred hull, the sea glinting like grey glass behind it.

  “You could have left, too, Kata. Long ago.”

  “No, I couldn’t. Not then.”

  “Yes, you could.” Magda looks down at the grass beneath the birch roots, picks up the ring Kata dropped. “You could have come with me.”

  Kata wants to say something, but what is there to say after all this time? “I can’t undo any of it. Whether I wish it or no. I never had much of a purpose in my life. I’ve only muddled through, and these last few years even the muddling got harder. But if I don’t leave now . . .” I’ll rot as surely as Mother rots beneath the bog, she thinks, but does not say.

  “Then go. The Outer Sea is still there.”

  “A place on a ship is not easy to come by for an old penniless maid, at least not one without wind-craft.”

  “Plenty of people in the world would pay good money for a skilled waterfinder.”

  “Not at sea. And water-finding is not grand like wind-keeping. No staff to wield. It’s good for nothing but chores and well-digging.”

  It makes Kata wince to hear Mother’s words spilling from her own mouth, but Magda only chuckles.

  “Things don’t have to be grand to be worth doing. Living is grand enough, most days. And the staff, well, it’s just a stick of wood. I mean, for your waterfinding, do you use a dowsing rod?”

  Kata nods.

  “Can you do without it?”

  Kata thinks of the feeling of water, the tickle of it at the edge of her senses wherever she goes, the liquid threads of it, aquiver in her mind even now. “Yes. But people expect the rod, so . . .”

  “Same with the staff. No one takes a wind-keeper seriously without one.” Magda gives her a mischievous look. “You want to feel some wind-craft?”

  “That’s not how it works. No one can touch both water and wind.”

  “You’d be surprised. I’ve learned a few things since I’ve been away.” Magda puts her hand on top of Kata’s, its warmth heavy and reassuring. “It’s like reaching for water, I’ve heard, but . . . different. Try it.”

  Kata sighs, but closes her eyes and takes a breath, as if she were dowsing, and there, quivering through Magda’s hand, she feels it. Something swirling at the edges of her mind, like breath, like mist and light and gossamer. She gasps and lets go.

  Magda smiles.

  “Something I learned at sea. That any craft is stronger if two or more work together, no matter what kind of craft they have. Met a man once who told me all craft is one and the same, water, wind, runes . . . it’s all connected like weft and warp. That we can all strengthen each other. Granted, he was trying to bed me at the time, but there might be something to it.”

  Kata leans back in the grass, thinking of Mother, glowering at the world through the cottage window, wrapped up in her loneliness and darkness.

  You can’t leave. The burning spike of the words are still inside her, the threat of rage and storm behind them. Kata wants to reach for Magda’s hand again, but Magda is already on her feet, talking to Abel. He is watching the smoke from the pit, studying the wispy clouds, and Kata tenses when she sees worry marring his face.

  “What of the wind?” he asks Magda, voice low and cautious.

  “It’s stirring,” Magda nods. “But the storm’s further inland, not headed our way yet.”

  “Not supposed to be storming at all, this time of year.” Abel glances at Kata, and she thinks about Mother’s shade, looming in the woods. “Well, you let me know soon as you feel it shift.”

  “A storm?” Kata asks.

  Magda gives her a crooked smile. “Don’t worry, you’ll get your tar. What do you need those barrels for?”

  Kata hesitates. She wishes she could explain to Magda how these two barrels of tar have become her purpose these last few years; how working toward this moment has been the only flame lighting her way as the world went dark around her.

  “It’s for a trade,” she says finally. “Two barrels of tar to take an old maid to the Outer Sea.”

  (past)

  “Greetings, Kata. How’s your mother?”

  Kata looked up at Attur where he sat, astride the railing of his ship, his long black hair pulled back in braids, a beard on his chin that made his face look like a stranger’s. She hadn’t expected to find him at Rivermouth. All she’d wanted at the harbour was to catch a glimpse of the sea while she waited for Mother to be done at the healer’s hut, but there he was, large as life.

  Attur had been a friend and more, before he left to go on the ships ten years before. She’d heard he captained his own knarr now, trading along the shores of the Outer Sea, and here it was, its dragon-headed prow glistening gold and green.

  How’s your mother?

  After ten years, that was the first thing he thought to ask her. What he meant was, is she still alive?

  “Mother’s sick. She’s dying.”

  “She’s been dying for a long time.”

  Kata winced. She thought of Mother at the healer’s hut, waiting for whatever tincture he would give her this time. Half a day’s ride from Vale, rattling around in a merchant’s cart, had done nothing to improve Mother’s mood or pain. In years past, Mother had searched out every healer up and down the coast, demanding they rid her of the thing growing in her gut. Lately, Kata suspected, all she wanted was something to numb the pain.

  She breathed in the smell of brine and tar and looked across the inlet, listening to the gulls screeching above the ships anchored at the docks or pulled up on the pebbly beaches.

  “When do you sail?” she asked, looking back at Attur and at his crew, all of them hard at work, securing cargo, stowing supplies, mending sails, and tarring boards.

  “Tomorrow, with the tide if the ship’s ready. We’re already a week late leaving, for want of tar for the sails and hull. Every year tar’s harder to come by, and every year it costs us more. You should tell your uncle Abel to build a bigger pit at Vale.”

  “Would you take me with you if I asked?”

  Kata had not meant to speak the words, but they could not be unsaid. She thought of Mother and shivered at her own guilt.

  “I have a full crew,” Attur answered, looking away. “And you’ve got no useful skills with sails or wind.”

  “I’d work hard,” Kata said. “I’d learn whatever trade was needed. I’m a water-finder, I could . . .”

  “We need no water-finders at sea.” Attur climbed down from the knarr’s railing, wiping the tar from his hands with a rag. When he spoke again, his tone was softer. “I wonder that you haven’t left before. I wonder why you did not take the chance when it was offered.”

  “You know why. Mother . . .”

  “And that is why you won’t go now. What would you bring me, Kata? What storms would Ragna call down on your head and my ship if you came aboard?”

  Kata went cold at the way the crew looked at her now, even those who had pretended not to be listening before. “You’re afraid of her.”

  “Aren’t you?” Attur asked. “They still talk about her up and down the coast. Ragna Firewind they call her. People at home, in Vale, they never spread the full tale. Maybe they never knew it, but anyone sailing the seas, they know.”

  “It was a long time ago,” Kata says.

  “So it was. But people still reme
mber her. Your Mother might have been the most powerful wind-keeper to walk this world in living memory, and she did her bit in the old wars down south, even sunk a fleet, some say.” He peers at Kata. “Did she ever tell you the true reason why she never went back to sea?”

  “She had a child,” Kata answers, barely able to look at him, thinking of Mother hurling that in her face, how Kata had wrecked her life by simply being born. A sailor rat’s daughter. “So she did. But she could’ve left you or brought you on board. Some wind-keepers do. Truth is, one day, Ragna didn’t get the pay she thought she was owed from a captain, so she burned his ship. Set it alight and spun a wind to fan the flames. Twenty ships burned to cinder. Afterward, no one could prove it was her, but everyone knew, and no ship would take her. No one dared lay a finger on her, mind you, but they would not have her on board either. She went home to Vale knowing she’d never sail again. So, I ask again, Kata. What would you bring me, except ill winds?”

  Kata felt the breeze blow through her, cold and bitter. She imagined every gust at her back to be Mother’s doing. Useless, Mother’s voice whispered in her ear. Hopeless.

  Kata looked at the sea, then down at the tar staining Attur’s hands.

  “If I brought you a barrel of tar next year, Attur, would you take me then? Would that be useful enough?”

  Attur laughed.

  “That would be useful, but you’d have to bring me two at least to earn a place.”

  He was jesting, Kata knew, but she was not. Two barrels of tar were worth more money than she’d had to herself in her entire life, but here and now she needed a purpose, even one as small as this, to keep her from walking into the sea until she could walk no more.

  “You give me your word?” she asked. “If I come here, in another year with two barrels of the best pine-tar out of Vale, will you take me on board?”

  “Kata. . . . Whether I give my word or not, whether you bring two barrels or none, do you really think your Mother would let you leave?”