by CJ Arroway
As their boat passed one of the settlements, Evie remembered its small logwood houses from one of the few times she came with her father when he was buying and selling in Wyrra. They had stopped here to take a meal with a kind-faced old fur trader her father knew, and Evie now remembered his smell – animal oils, maple sap, wood smoke and dog. He and her father had talked of some trouble in Wyrra, of a man who had been pulled from the docks, and she had to stay with the trader’s family for two nights while her father went on. They rowed close by the small quay and she wondered if he still lived there, though he would be very old now. A group of children were trailing crayfish lines into the river and they waved as the boat went by. Evie waved back and smiled and Luda shouted a greeting that made the children laugh. One of the boys ran for a short stretch along the bank, keeping up with them until the river’s edge turned into bushes and trees.
The final mile or so before the junction was still and calm, with the push of the river falling almost to a standstill. But Evie remembered its illusion and her father’s warning – in the last minute it drops again and picks up speed. Its flow pushes you towards and, if you are careless, over the weir.
You must know the moment to turn and find the calm channel that takes you out into the wider part of the main river. Even then you need to be aware, as a strong tide in the bigger river can snatch at your boat; tearing the front in one direction as the smaller river pushes your rear in the other.
You hear the weir long before you see it, a distant rush that turns to a roar as your boat begins to be pulled faster by its flow. It is unnerving even for experienced boatmen, and Evie tried to remember her father’s words and his reassurance that its sound was worse than its fury.
‘Hang on!’ Evie called, raising her voice as the roar of the weir grew louder. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks. My dad said look for the path – there’s a part of the river that’s much more still than the rest. Here – look, now – turn, turn, turn!’
Evie hurled her order above the sound of the rushing water and they both dug their oars in together, pulling at the river like they were trying to hold back a skittish horse. Wood pushing against water. Arms fighting the force of the current. A heave and the boat swung sharply out of the flow; the grip of the weir suddenly broke and the boat found the still of the middle channel. The pull of the water relaxed as they now moved on quickly, smoothly, through slow water to where the river mouth opened onto the wide waters of the estuary.
‘See that wasn’t too–’
The front of the boat hit the fast flow of water from the larger river, swinging it wildly round and rocking it over so that it almost stood on its side.
Luda felt the lurch of the boat and braced himself. Instinctively he had thrown his weight against the direction of flow and clung on as the boat suddenly tipped then righted itself. In a second Evie was there and then she was gone.
Luda looked frantically for a sign of her in the water, but the rush of the tide was tearing up the surface into jagged peaks; opaque, impenetrable onyx green. The oars were gone too and the boat was spinning on the flow towards the nearside riverbank. There was no time for hesitation. The rear of the boat span within an arm’s stretch of the overhanging bank and Luda stood up. The boat tipped and in that moment he leapt and grabbed with both hands at the thick, wet tangle of grass and reed and hauled himself, panting, onto the safety of solid earth.
He watched as the flow of the smaller river pushed the upturned boat further and further out into the wide, angry reach of the estuary, and felt his hope disappear with it.
Then he saw Evie. At the point where the boat had spun away from him the water churned in a maelstrom, tossing around the flotsam of the river – tree trunks and branches, the cork floats of fishing nets and rafts of matted vegetation. Evie was clinging to one of the large tree limbs as it battered and spun her against the surrounding debris.
‘Hang on, I’m coming’, Luda shouted over the rush of water. He pulled at the long, sinewy whip of a willow branch, tearing it from the tree. Anchoring his foot to a root exposed by the eroded bank, Luda stretched out the branch as Evie – still holding onto her makeshift raft with one arm – grabbed for the willow.
Her tree raft caught a heavy stump and span back on itself, pulling Evie further away and for a moment her grip slipped and she dropped back down, gulping a mouthful of river water. She grabbed again with her free arm and pulled herself back up, spitting and coughing. The raft turned again and Evie snatched wildly at Luda’s outstretched lifeline.
She held the branch tightly in one hand and as Luda pulled she let go of her raft with the other, and in an instant had both hands firmly on the willow branch as Luda hauled her in.
‘I thought you were gone,’ Luda said, as he helped her pull herself into the soft mud and reeds that lined the river bank. ‘I really thought you were gone.’ She said nothing, and for a while they both lay there, silent and exhausted.
‘I saw him,’ Evie said quietly.
‘Huh? Saw who?’ Luda turned his head to see Evie staring blankly upwards.
‘My dad. I saw him in the water.’
Luda sat up. ‘Saw him? What do you mean?’
‘I saw him. I heard him. He was calling my name. He was scared but he was thinking of me. He was thinking of what would happen to me.’ Evie’s face was still wet from the river but there was no mistaking the sudden welling of tears.
‘But he–’ Luda began.
‘This is where he died. I felt it. I was scared in the water and then I wasn’t afraid. I mean – it wasn’t my fear any more, it was his. He didn’t want me to be alone. He was dying, but he was thinking about me. I felt it, Luda.’ The tears now ran faster and Luda reached out a hand to her shoulder. ‘I felt him die, my dad – I felt him die. I felt everything.’
Evie buried her face into Luda’s chest. He held her as she sobbed, and he kept holding as grief and exhaustion pulled her into the relief of sleep.
The Curse
Sleep was fitful. The warm day had turned to cloud and drizzle by night, and dark dreams had pulled Evie out of sleep and refused to let her back in.
She thought of her father. It had been seven years now, she thought, since she had heard that voice. Yet it felt as familiar as it had the last time; when he had told her to be good while he was away, that he would bring her something back from Wyrra, and to be sure to listen to her mother.
She always listened to her mother, she had told him, and that much was true. Since his death, she thought often that perhaps he should have told her mother to listen too.
Every Daw knows the small magic lies in them somewhere, and sometimes it will show itself in a few – but everyone hopes it won’t be in their child. If it was, then the child would be taught to hide it. This was not a rule, it was not written, it was just a certainty. Everyone knew that some of the children would be cursed, yet no one’s child ever was. At least not until the men came from Wyrra with their dark cloaks and counter-curses, and then everyone knew all along that child was a bad one.
It was Eisl who taught Evie to hide – though in the end she had not learned her lesson well enough. Her mother never asked that of her, she thought. She did something else instead. She denied her.
Before the bird it had been easy. Before the bird the world made sense. Memories are stories we tell ourselves to explain who we are, Evie knew that. But they were children’s stories then, with happy endings, and the bird took those away.
Before she could say all the colours or spell her name, Evie would sit under the table while her mother worked; picking at bits and pieces to test them with her mouth – scraps of food, or thread from her mother’s sowing, hard pieces and soft, pieces that tasted of grass and pieces that crumbled in her mouth so she had to paw out the earthy musk with her wet hands.
The mice would test them too – cautiously at first, but Evie had let them know she meant no harm, and soon they would come, in twos and threes, and sit with her there. They knew when sh
e found something good, she knew when they wanted some of it. And this was just how life was, this was just the story of Evie, sitting under tables and sharing with mice.
She learned to draw. With charred wood from the fire on white stone at first, and then with the air and the grass. Just a child’s drawings – a rough black circle on stone that was Mummy, a wave of wind in the rye grass that was Dad.
‘That looks just like me!’ she remembered her mother saying, holding her and kissing her, telling her her dark swirls of charcoal were beautiful.
‘Don’t show that to Mummy, she gets the hay fever from grass,’ she remembered her father saying. ‘And she just likes pictures she can hold.’
The mice left when Eisl brought home Betshilda – a scrappy grey-and-tan terrier that he used for flushing out rabbits. Betshilda was a closed book, but she would come with them when they went out hunting in the woods and Evie would shiver when she felt the rabbits’ fear.
You find out your story is wrong by drips and drops. Before the flood, before you see it was written in sand and it is all washed away.
The little boy - what was his name now? Awic, that was it. He’d been so scared and cried to his mother when Evie told him of the voices. That’s when he stopped coming to see her, that’s when his mother stopped going with Jennet to the woods to gather berries.
And a year later Awic left the village on a cart, and Jennet cried for the first time.
She knew she’d done something wrong, but not what it was. Awic knew the rules, it seemed, Eisl knew the rules, the others knew the rules; but no one had shown her where they were written.
‘Mummy – is it my fault?’ she’d asked, when her mother’s tears had dried. ‘Is it because of me?’ How could it not be? That’s when it had changed.
‘No darling, it’s not your fault. Some people are just cursed. It’s not their fault either.’ And she thought her mother meant Awic.
The bird came the next spring. She’d seen it a few times before. In the winter the finches would gather together in little bobbing flocks, pecking at the teasels and aster seeds and huddling together for warmth. In the spring they would spread out from their groups and search for another to build a nest with. The bright green-yellow birds would sing their chichichichichit and the dull brown would flit about looking for grasses, twigs, moss and web to make their nest.
She’d been at the window, the little brown bird, and Evie could tell she was nervous. But she wanted something. What was it? Jennet had been brushing Evie’s hair that morning and the matted strands were balled up on the teasel end. They looked soft, they looked warm, they looked protective – this is what she wanted.
‘Come and take it, I won’t hurt you.’
The bird didn’t feel safe.
‘I am a safe thing. I will put it here for you. You can take it.’
It was still uncertain.
‘You know that it is.’
The bird came, and took it, and felt safe. Soon it would come for food too – some of the grain Evie would take from the store when Jennet wasn’t looking, or scraps of rind when she had it.
For a few weeks she came, cautiously at first and then with growing confidence, particularly when she had new mouths to feed. The bird was a mother, Evie was a child – you can’t speak to birds, not in the way people mean it; you just understand each other. But that was the easiest thing for anyone to understand.
Evie saw the trick on the morning of the day her mother killed the bird. The finch had hesitated a moment in landing and the air from her wings had pushed the grains across the table so that they formed two neat spirals.
‘Look at that, birdy. That is so pretty. Let’s try it again.’
Jennit could see Evie was excited as soon as she walked in the door. She got back from the river late in the afternoon and was carrying a small pile of clothes that had dried on bushes in the early summer sun, so that she had to push the door closed with her foot.
‘When you are a bit older you can help me with this, little Star. What is it?’
Evie was jumping up and down and pulling at her mother’s apron, a bright, wide grin across her dusty face.
‘What have you been up to? Is that flour on your face and hands? You cheeky little mouse – don’t get it on the clean clothes.’
Jennet bent down to kiss her daughter’s hair, then carefully put the clothes down on the bare rope of the bed. ‘Give me a minute to put these away, darling, and you can tell me what you’ve been doing.’
‘Mummy, you’ll be so excited!’
‘What – more excited than you? I’m not sure that’s possible, my head will explode.’
Evie glanced at her, to the table, to the window and back again as Jennet remade the bed and put away the rest of the linen in a small chest. Her mother saw the remains of barley husks on the floor around the table and frowned at Evie, who kept her excited grin firmly in place.
‘I’m going to sweep up that mess before the mice get in,’ she said, ‘then you can show me what treat you’ve got me.’
She fetched the rough broom from the corner and began to sweep around and under the table, but Evie could hold back no longer.
‘No mummy, you have to see. You have to!’
Jennet smiled. ‘Alright then. Is this going to be messy?’
‘A little! But you’ll be happy.’
Jennet laughed. Then the bird came in. It hesitated a moment as it saw Jennet, then flurried down to the table, opening its wings to land and shake.
Evie smiled and pulled at her mother’s sleeve. ‘Look you see – I tell it to make the breeze and then I move the grains and look, it’s your–’
The broom came down and up in one movement, and where Evie had made her picture there was now a broken pile of grains, of feathers; of fractured wings matted with blood and red and brown and black.
‘You’ve killed her! Mummy, you’ve killed her!’
Jennet’s tears rolled down her face as she fell to her knees and grabbed at Evie, pulling her in so tight she couldn’t breath. Evie kicked out, trying to force her frail strength against the desperate grip of her mother.
‘I hate you, I hate you, I hate you! You’re a murderer. We were making it for you and you killed her!’
‘I can’t… you can’t. This isn’t who you are, Evie. It just isn’t. You think it is, but you’re wrong. It’s not you, it’s not you. Not you! Please, not you!’
Evie had a curse. She could feel what others felt and she could make them feel everything she felt, every emotion she held. She cursed her mother with it, and then she threw away her story.
And now the men had taken her mother, and for all she knew she might be just as dead as the bird. But she had to find her, because she had never lifted the curse.
The Bear
Orlend knew patience. He’d seen the men of his father’s court, full of ale, banging their fists on the table of the Earl’s Hall and pulling their hair, telling of the destruction they would wreak and the gold they would take. He had seen them board the boats singing of heroes and victory.
And he’d seen their widows weeping over their funeral pyres and heard the poets sing of how they had rushed fearless to their death in the pursuit of glory, while knowing the fools had died gurgling on their own blood while some half-trained Myrian farmers hacked their brains out with bill hooks.
Bravery was nothing without patience. Worse than nothing, it was weakness. Orlend would put any of his youngest, greenest fighters in single combat against the greatest warrior of The People, but his father’s army had barely kept a foothold in Myria, that dirt-poor kingdom of scrubland and sheep they were now camped in.
Bravery is rushing to battle, eager to be the first to wet your axe with blood. Patience is the courage to wait, to hold your position until your enemies – those who stand in front of you with a spear and those who stand behind you with a knife – grow impatient. You wait, and they charge right to where you were putting them all the time they were goading you for
your inaction.
Patience had seen him do what no other leader had managed in a thousand years – to pull together the troublesome, squabbling tribes of Fraxia into an army worthy of their individual courage.
After his father’s death he had been patient in convincing his older brother to be the hero who brought the troublesome river tribes to heel, and then patient in choosing the right time to kill him in order to win their support for his rule. He’d been patient in building alliances – using gold with the strong, and fear with the weak. And now all the tribes paid tribute and, like The People, they now too had a king. And soon he would sit on that ancient throne too. It just required patience.
And so he was patient as he sat listening to the squalling and shouting around him in the tent, as the tribal heads argued over who would lead the attack on the Riverhead Fort, when and how that attack would take place, and how they would share the spoils when The Home fell.
‘Enough,’ he said calmly, when the time was right, and the squabbling was silenced. He had no need to shout or bang his fist. His voice, even without being raised, resonated with strength and power.
His men called him The Great Bear, and not just for the beast’s head and skin that he wore in battle. Standing now to address the quarrelsome leaders, his full height and the breadth of his deep chest would be enough to cow any of them – even without the authority of his mace, gripped in a hand that looked powerful enough to crush a man’s head, helmet and all.
‘Enough,’ he said, rubbing one eye in mild irritation. ‘You are like fleas arguing over which direction the dog should go. Be careful he doesn’t shake you all off.
‘We will not go to the fort until, and unless, I know we are ready. These aren’t the Myrians we are facing – they won’t run if you grin at them, Ardhul.’ He turned to a toothless and scarred old warrior sat at the back of the table. The men laughed and the air of nervous tension relaxed a little.