Two: Redolence

“I don’t know where she came from,” Jak insisted in a low voice. The stranger was curled in a chair by the fire in the gathering room, drinking a hot cup of kerum while the rest of the moundhold huddled in the kitchen trying not to be obvious about the fact that they were huddled in the kitchen. Their guest had offered up no other information about herself or her situation, content to drink the pungent liquid with an air of curious interest.

“She looks Deltan,” said Keiren, opening the kitchen door a crack to glance out.

“So what?” Jak pulled the door shut, eyes narrowed with irritation. This was obviously about Ahr. “Why must we have such mistrust for anyone from the Delta? Aren’t we all, originally?”

Peta, the mound matriarch, shrugged absently. “My nan came here from the Delta. Rem’s great-grandparents were northfolk.”

“We’ve no objection to Deltans,” Oldman Rem said gruffly, packing his pipe at the table. Jak couldn’t refrain from laughing out loud, and Rem frowned. “It’s not your friend’s race we object to, Jak, it’s his standoffishness. The mounds are a cooperative collective, not every man for himself. A man’s got to give something to get something, and he gives precious little.”

Jak sighed. “Can we just leave Ahr out of this for the moment? Besides, she speaks perfect Mole. She has to be from around here somewhere.”

“Then someone will be looking for her,” said Peta. “She must have suffered some trauma, hit her head perhaps.”

Keiran snorted. “Or perhaps she’s just daft.”

Peta ignored him. “She must stay the night, at any rate. It’s too cold to let her wander about on her own. We’ll try to help her find her people in the morning.”

Keiren’s scowl deepened. “How do we know she’s not going to kill us all in our sleep?”

“Oh, for soothsake, Key.” Mell, normally quiet, tossed a dishrag at her partner from her spot by the sink. Jak tried and failed to suppress a grin, earning a black look from Geffn, who’d said nothing since Ra’s arrival—not that silence from him was unusual these days when he and Jak were in the same room. But if looks could kill, the moundhold would have had one less name in it from the vitriol in that glance.

For once, unexpectedly, he had something to say. “What’s this really about, Jak? Went out and scrounged up new blood because you ran out of people in Haethfalt to fuck?” The room went silent, and Jak sucked in a sharp breath.

Peta put a hand on her son’s shoulder, but Geffn rebuffed the gesture and swept from the room, letting the kitchen door swing closed behind him with a bang.

Keiren tossed the damp dishrag back into the sink. “Congratulations, Jak.”

“What in sooth did I do?”

Keiren opened his mouth, apparently all too eager to enumerate Jak’s sins, but Mell grabbed her partner by the arm and steered him toward the door. “We’re going to bed.”

“See you all back here in the morning, then,” Keiren threw over his shoulder, not bothering to lower his voice when he added, “if our throats aren’t slit.”

Jak was left standing awkwardly before the couple that had become like second parents, though they were getting on in years; Geffn had been a late-in-life surprise after they’d lost their first son, Pim. Rem avoided Jak’s eyes, studiously lighting his pipe.

“Why don’t you find our guest something warm to wear before we sit down to dinner?” Peta suggested, smiling fondly. At least she hadn’t judged Jak for the disaster of the failed relationship with Geffn. “I had the distinct impression there wasn’t much beneath that cloak of hers.”

Jak looked toward the door. “I got that impression, too. Honestly, I hope Keiren’s right and she’s just daft. I’d hate to think what else would send a woman out onto the moor in this weather dressed like that.”

Ra followed Jak down the hallway with an amiable shrug at the suggestion that she might like to change clothes, relinquishing her empty kerum cup to Peta with a somewhat reluctant glance after it, as though she’d rather have more.

In the darkened bedroom, Jak fumbled to light the oil lamp, and nearly knocked it over when the flame came up with a sputter. “Holy fucking sooth.” The words were out before Jak could stop them.

Ra had slipped off the cloak and dropped it where she stood. There was nothing underneath. She gave Jak a quizzical look, completely unselfconscious, as though standing naked in snow boots were nothing out of the ordinary. If something untoward had happened to her, there was no sign of it. Not a single blemish or bruise marked the pristine flesh.

Jak closed the bedroom door and picked up the cloak to shove it back at her. “Look, just—hold on to this for a minute.”

Ra gathered the awkward garment in her arms beneath the white slopes of her breasts. “It’s warm down here.”

Jak tried to focus on the ridiculous boots, but it was impossible not to look as Ra came forward into the room to examine the sparse furnishings. She had the palest skin Jak had ever seen, paler still in contrast to the mane of ebony that hung past her hips—just shy of covering her backside while she bent toward the mirror over the dresser.

Jak swallowed and muttered, “It is now.”

The pale brow furrowed with some unidentifiable emotion. Ra looked at everything, even her own reflection, with a sort of wonder, as if for the first time. The black sapphire eyes met Jak’s in the mirror, and Jak meant to look away, but couldn’t seem to. A person could get lost in that liquid ink, like staring into a night sky dusted with the brilliance of stars and forgetting the earth. Like her unconscious poise, Ra’s gaze held no shame, only curiosity. The frankness of her appraisal made it feel as though Jak were the one who was naked.

Jak blushed, turning away to rummage through the wardrobe. “You really need to put some clothes on.” It was doubtful any of Jak’s pants would fit her tall frame, but maybe something with a drawstring waist would do for now. Jak tried to concentrate on anything but Ra’s unadorned skin.

“Skirt and sweater,” Ra murmured.

“I’m afraid I don’t have any of those.” Jak glanced up, holding a pair of painter’s pants, but Ra was somehow already dressed. The foreign fabric of a long, dark skirt and a cardinal-hued sweater hugged her form perfectly. This time Jak managed to not only knock the lamp over, but slammed a thumb in the wardrobe door as well.

Cursing, Jak righted the lamp before the oil spilled out. “How did you—?” The question fell unfinished. There was no answer Jak could accept.

Ra said nothing, her expression unreadable. Images of the dark gods of the Delta sprang to mind—gods who could conjure and kill at a word—but Jak shook the thoughts away. It was superstition and nonsense. The Meer had been nothing more than men. There were no such things as gods—or Hidden Folk, for that matter, even if wisdom dictated that the tradition of honoring the land as a living entity was better heeded than ignored. This was something else, something beyond Jak’s experience. Something completely and utterly devoid of rational explanation. There was nothing Jak hated more.

“I expect you must be tired from your travels.” Jak took time relighting the lamp. “We don’t get many visitors this time of year.”

“I’m not daft.”

With one hand still cupping the burning match, Jak studied Ra’s placid and slightly amused expression. “Sorry?”

“You were wondering before. I’m not. But I thank you for your hospitality…” Ra paused, at last taking in Jak’s appearance with an expression Jak had seen a hundred times before. “I’m sorry. Is it sir or madam?” Above Ra’s head, the hobnail glass of the windows circling the mound at ground level—Rem’s masterful touch that made their mound the most distinctive in Haethfalt—glittered in the lamplight.

The flame had burned down to Jak’s fingers. “As a matter of fact,” said Jak, shaking out the match, “I prefer neither.”

She studied her host as they returned through the sitting room of the souterrain dwelling. Better to puzzle over the identity of this peculiar person than to dwell upon her own. Between the broad lines of the shoulders and back, the indefinable curvature between waist and hip and the fine wrists beneath the brushed cotton shirt ending in long, slim fingers, there were no certain indicators of sex. The pale ashen hair, a vague color as if it hadn’t decided what to be, was tied back in a practical nub, and Jak walked with a brusque and steady gait.

Ra found herself wanting to touch the creamy skin, to step up behind Jak and stroke her hand down one strong arm to the delicate hip, and farther. She even reached a hand out before she’d realized it, only to snatch it back.

The strangers rose to greet her when she entered the dining alcove, making room on the bench.

The old woman smiled, blue eyes crinkling in a pleasant face. “Forgive our manners in not introducing ourselves before. We don’t often have company. I’m Peta, and this is my husband Rem, and our son Geffn.” Peta gave a nod toward the young man with the russet-brown hair beside her and then indicated the other couple. “And our moundmates Mell and Keiren.” The one named Geffn merely grunted his greeting, but the young woman smiled warmly and the man with the fair curls stood and held out his hand.

“Well met.” He paused with significance as if waiting for something. When she only stared, he reached forward and grasped her palm in a brief, firm shake. Pulling back a bit in surprise, Ra fell onto the bench unceremoniously when he let her go.

“Your clothes didn’t need drying after all,” he remarked. In light of the obvious discomfort her conjuring had given Jak, Ra gave him a noncommittal half nod. It seemed wisest to exercise discretion.

Peta offered her a peculiar object, a small vessel of hammered copper with a wooden handle on one side and a spout on the other. “Quite a chilly day for traveling, dear. Have you come far to visit the mounds?”

Ra took the vessel, not certain what to do with it. It was small enough to wrap her hand around, fingers curled through the handle, and her thumb beneath the spout.

“A ket’.” Jak eyed her, as though she were behaving oddly. “Keeps the wine warm.” Ra nodded, though Jak might as well have spoken gibberish. “You drink from the spout.”

She put it to her mouth, holding it as one might hold a horn. When she tipped it forward, warm liquid struck her tongue, buttery smooth and unexpectedly rich with spice.

The old woman studied her while she ladled out a bowl of simmered beans, and tried again. “You’re not from the settlements.”

Ra shook her head, taking a heel of bread from the basket Jak passed to her. The awkward silence as her hosts waited in vain for some illumination on her origins ceased to matter as she let the bread tumble between her teeth, sweet and sour, and a contradiction of textures. She chewed, savoring it, and her polite hosts let the matter drop.

Lingering at the table with Jak over a second ket’ while the others retired to the gathering room, Ra breathed in the scent wafting from the hot kettle like incense burning separately from the sweetness of the wine.

“I’ve been trying to work out your relation to the rest,” she said. “You’re Geffn’s…?”

“Mate?” Jak smiled. “I was. But I released Geffn and chose celibacy when I rejected the confines of gender.”

“And when you say ‘mate’?” Ra prodded.

The gray eyes were amused at her persistence. “In highland culture, a handfasting is between equal partners of a binding union. Gender is immaterial. It’s one of the reasons our culture exists, the freedom to choose our own destiny. That, and our ancestors’ refusal to pay homage to the city gods.”

Gods. The word made her uneasy. “But how can one reject gender? What does that mean?”

Jak’s face was guarded. “I don’t know if we have enough wine for this conversation.” When Ra waited, Jak emptied the wine ket’. “I don’t believe in it.” Jak set the kettle down. “It makes people behave like fools. Why should I be viewed differently based on arbitrary characteristics that have been assigned to me because of a pronoun?”

“But you have a sex.”

“I have a sex. But what does it have to do with anything? The only useful knowledge to be gained regarding another’s sex is whether procreation with that person is practical. I have no interest in procreation. There are people enough. So my sex is irrelevant to everyone but me.”

“And your lover,” said Ra.

Jak rose without comment and took the kettles to refill them. Ra watched through the doorway, wondering if she’d gone too far. The stoic face was difficult to read.

“When I was little,” said Jak from the kitchen, “I had a dream. Or a vision, perhaps. Maybe just an embellishment of memory.” Returning with the steaming kettles, Jak gave Ra an almost reluctant grin. “I read a lot as a child, and I suppose I had a fanciful imagination. One of my favorite stories was a folktale about a white-robed mage who lived in the forest and lured little children from their village with a hypnotic song.”

“Sounds dreadful,” Ra murmured, warm with the wine.

“Not at all. The mage, Caeophes, changed them from children into swallows, and they soared into the sky, free from their unkind parents. Caeophes left a trail of breadcrumbs for them, should they decide to go home, but in every case, the swallows picked the crumbs from the ground and flew away.”

Ra rested her elbow on the table with her chin in her hand, watching Jak’s eyes dance with the intoxication of the story. Tiny freckles were scattered beneath the liquid gray. Scattered on the cream complexion like Caeophes’s crumbs.

“What does that have to do with gender?”

“Nothing, really.” Jak laughed. “But Caeophes was never described with a pronoun. Just ‘the mage’. Just Caeophes. I remember asking my mother whether Caeophes was a man or a woman, and she said, ‘Caeophes is Caeophes. That’s what’s lovely about it.’”

Jak started to take a drink and then set the ket’ down. “I dreamt later of Caeophes, taking me into the forest on a white stallion, wearing a white, hooded robe and singing me songs. We slept under the stars, but villagers came and found me at dawn. Before they took me home, Caeophes held me tightly and whispered in my ear: Never let them see your sex.”

The candlelight was dancing on the copper kettles and Jak’s skin.

“And that was it? That’s why?”

“Not just that. It was the pure simplicity of Caeophes, the unencumbered mage’s existence. But I couldn’t forget what Caeophes said to me. It seemed very important. It seemed like words from the gods themselves. I thought for years the dream was real.”

Gods again. Ra finished her wine and peered beneath the lid, deliberating as she stared into the bottom of the warm vessel. Her head felt thick and her face was flushed. As Jak rose to clear the table, she stood, and the room tilted away from her. Jak caught her by the arm to steady her, and Ra stumbled against the soft cotton shirt. Jak’s eyes were as gray and brooding as snow clouds.