THAT NIGHT TWO years back it all changed, we were down the road apiece before I spoke up. “Sure you don’t want to go on back?” I asked her.
Zel shook her head. “Never no more,” she said, so quiet-like I could hardly hear. “Never no more in that place.”
Well, we’d been Traveling together long enough for me to know when to keep my mouth tight closed, so I just hoisted the pack higher on my back and fell in step beside her.
It were a fine night, at least, and no suffering to be walking the roads under the new moon. I wished I could sing, but there were still three months to go then till my year was up. They say if a boy sings within a year of his voice breaking, it’s gone for good. I wouldn’t risk it, not for nothing. It’s hard enough being without a voice for a whole twelvemonth — I couldn’t keep me in my right mind if I lost my music for good and all. So we just walked.
After a few leagues, Zel stirred herself. “There’s a good stopping place near the stream in the withy hollow,” she said. “We’ll lie there.”
It were always Zel who decided where we stopped, where we went. When I were littler, I used to stravage her about it, but I know better now. ’Tisn’t a thing in the world can push Zel from the path she’s chosen. Earthquake wouldn’t do it, nor death, neither, I reckon. Truth to tell, it were just being the little brer what made me tickle her about it anyway. I didn’t know enough to make any choices. Now, I know more than she did then, and that’s enough to know she chooses better’n me, most times.
Maybe not this time, though.
Maybe this time she were turning her back on a good thing, and maybe it were for me.
See, there were this man in the last town, in Gardea, and he were head over ears taken with Zel. Hanging around the tavern every night, digging in his purse for silver, clapping hard after we finished juggling and tumbling. Oh, he were smitten, hovering like a honey wasp over fallen fruit. Aegir, his name was. A cobbler.
Well, she’s never one to turn a good-looking man away, not our Zel. So she went off with him one night, two, then three, but always came back before morning, grinning like a cat.
On the fourth night she came raging in, kicked the straw into a heap and threw herself down onto it loud enough that I knew she wanted to talk. We didn’t have a lantern — not many tavern keepers let us have a lantern in the stable, for fear of fire — but my eyes were dark-ready, and I could see she was fuming.
“He wants to marry me!” she said, fierce and low, like it were an insult, like our own parents wasn’t good and married before they had us.
“I said to him, ‘You don’t know me,’ and he laughs. He laughs and says, ‘Sure I know you, lass, inside and out.’ Thinks he’s so clever!”
“So what’d you say?”
“I didn’t say. I just got on up and walked right out of there.”
She settled down to sleep as though she’d finished even thinking about it, but I couldn’t. I could see that cobbler, not understanding, lying bewildered in the dark somewhere.
Next night he were there, waiting for her after the act. But she pushed on past him like he were thin air, and we grabbed our packs and took the road, with him following like a duckling after its mam, shaking his head and trying to get her to speak with him. Zel kept her mouth tied up and her eyes down until he dropped back, still bewildered.
Myself, I think if he hadn’t said he knew her, she mighta stayed. She don’t like being known, our Zel. She don’t like strangers knowing her business, she don’t like family, even, knowing what she’s thinking. Much less a cobbler from a tavern. She mighta stayed a bit, if he hadn’t said that.
Not for long, ’cause she’s a Traveler; or maybe she thinks she has to be one, because of me. There were no room in that cobbler’s life for a brer who can’t earn his keep ’cept by juggling in the taverns.
She knows I couldn’t live in a town year round. It were hard enough the winter before, living with Mam and Da because I caught a killing fever, and couldn’t take the road. I couldn’t survive a spring indoors. But I think she were walking so hard away from that place ’cause some part of her wanted to stay, wanted that cobbler and that nice featherbed instead of straw in the stable with me. I thought, maybe some day that part’ll be stronger than the part that wants to take the Road with me.
When we got to the stream near the withy hollow, there was Travelers already there. But it were near moonset, and we was tired, so Zel just went on down and said the Travelers’ greeting, “Fire and water.”
There was three of them, a mam and two brers, twin men fully grown. They had a fire going well, and they was roasting turnips and hedgehogs.
They nodded at Zel, and then at me. “Fire and water and a roof in the rain,” the mam said, very polite. “Share our fire.” Which were nice of her, for, say what you will, there are Travelers on the Road I wouldn’t sleep easy near, let alone opening the fire circle to.
Zel looked sideways at her and at me, but we sat down and spread out our food: waybread and dried apples and ewe’s cheese. We all shared and ate merrily enough, then Zel got out her little balls and juggled a time or two, for thanks.
They were tinkers, they told us. The mam was Aldith, and the twins were Ber and Eldwin. They were like as the two wings of the one bird, both dark-haired and dark-eyed, but the one, Eldwin, was a tad more heavyset and looked after Ber, passing him food like Zel did for me. The mam, too, fussed over him some, though he seemed hearty enough, and laughed a lot.
We sat, staring at the fire, like you do after a long day and a hard walk. It were peaceful, for a time. Then a cold shiver passed right through me and I looked up. It were quiet, suddenly. The mam and Eldwin was watching Ber, holding their breaths.
Ber shook his head, his eyes gone blank and wide in the firelight. I felt behind me for a heavy bit of wood, for I’ve seen men’s eyes go like that in a baresark fury, but he didn’t move. The fire dipped down to embers, like something was eating the light.
Eldwin said, “Oh, protect us from demons.” The mam just moaned a little and rocked to and fro. Zel was tense beside me, ready to run or fight. Then Ber spoke.
“This fire circle,” he said, “is closed to murderers.” His voice were quiet and pleasant, like you’d say ’morning to a friend. Like he didn’t know what he were saying. “There is a murderer here,” he said. Next to me, Zel had her hand on her boot knife, easing it out of the sheath.
“A kin murderer,” Ber said, or maybe it wasn’t Ber, ’cause he were foaming a bit at the corners of his mouth, and the mam were rocking hard and stuffing her shawl in her mouth to stop herself from screaming.
“Why didst thou kill thy mam?” Ber asked Zel. She’d let go the knife and were staring at him like he were the entrance to the cold hells itself. I had no breath in my body, and my heart pounding were like a wind in my ears.
“Why didst thou kill thy mam?” the thing inside Ber asked again, its eyes fixed on Zel. She were sweating and shivering, both, as she resisted that voice.
“Why didst thou kill thy mam?” it asked, and no living being coulda denied it an answer.
“She was going to kill Flax!” Zel shouted suddenly. “She had the pillow over his face, smothering the life out of him. It was her or him.” She quieted. “Her or me,” she said. “Her or both of us.”
“This fire circle,” it whispered, “is closed to murderers.”
Then it left Ber, as swift as it came, and the warmth came back to the night air and the fire sprang up high again. Ber closed his eyes and fell sideways. Eldwin leapt to catch him. They laid him down on the grass and poured water into his mouth and patted his cheeks until he stirred.
The mam looked at Zel and me, sitting frozen in our places.
“Wind at your back,” she said. The Travelers’ farewell. So we took our packs and we walked out of the hollow and onto the cold road without another word.
We walked along in silence.
“It were true, Flax,” she said finally. “It were her or us.”
“Because of me,” I said. “Because you wouldn’t leave me.”
“She were mad on silver, you know that. Having us both to stay all winter, it were too much for her. Eating them out of house and home, she said we was.”
“Because I were sick,” I said. “If I’da been well we coulda taken the Road.”
“That’s so.”
There’s nothing on Earth or under it can sway Zel once she’s made a choice. She made up her mind a long, long time ago that I were hers to look after, hers to guard. This were no different.
But I’m not the little brer I were. Already I’m taller than her.
Walking down that road, all I could think on was, sometime or other, my choice and Zel’s choice would go different ways.
And what then?