To play host to the farin is to warm the wolf at your hearth.
—Elythian proverb
The gods are punishing us.”
Ryfenn’s voice was stretched taut. She swept the floor with quick, hard strokes.
Through the hearth smoke Kaeldra watched, warming her hands at the fire.
“The gods had nothing to do with it,” Granmyr said. She dug a lump of clay from her bowl, wedged it, slapped it onto her claywheel. Her right foot, shod in its heavy boot, kicked the spinner. Whirling, the clay sprang up, a smooth, grooved dome beneath her hands.
“Don’t say such things,” Ryfenn hissed. “We will pay. We are paying now.”
Paying for what? Kaeldra wondered. Heat seeped into her cold-numbed body: her toes, the fronts of her legs, her face.
Granmyr touched two fingers to the center of the dome, saying nothing. The dome hollowed out and was suddenly a bowl, with tall, sloping sides growing up out of it.
Daylight had huddled near the mountaintops when Kaeldra went out to care for the sheep after the storm. She had followed the shape of the land to their shelter places, near the rocks. But the sheep had not sought shelter. They were scattered across the graze. When they saw Kaeldra, they bleated stupidly and did not move.
All morning, as the mist bleached the sky to the color of washed wool, she had roamed the graze. There were strange, glazed whorls and ridges in the snow, as if it had melted, churned, then frozen again.
And seven sheep were dead. More than they had ever lost to wolves in a single night.
Kaeldra turned to warm her back at the fire, trying to shut out the images of the dead sheep: four trampled, two crushed by falling rocks, one dead of fright. Her body ached from the effort of gathering together the live ones, of hauling the dead ones on a sled to be skinned and butchered at home.
“It’s more than I can bear,” Ryfenn said. “All alone here, with no one to help me, and no Bryam . . .” Ryfenn’s voice got whiny and her eyes watered up as they always did when she mentioned her dead husband, Granmyr’s son.
“You have Kaeldra,” Granmyr said.
Ryfenn flicked her eyes toward Kaeldra, then away.
“Ryfenn,” Kaeldra said. “I’ll help. What should I do?”
Ryfenn did not look at her. Her broom swished hard against the floor. Kaeldra, watching, felt a small, hollow place open up below her ribs.
“Go to the loft and look to Lyf. She’s not feeling well,” Granmyr said.
Kaeldra hesitated. There was a question she had been turning over in her mind. She had waited, thinking someone else would ask it, but no one had. “Granmyr,” she began at last, “what were the cries? The cries I heard last night in the storm?”
Ryfenn looked up sharply. “What cries? There were no cries.” She turned to Granmyr. “She heard cries! I told you, she’s—”
“To the loft, child,” Granmyr said. She kicked the spinner. The clay bowl whirled.
Stung, Kaeldra climbed the ladder, up past the broken rung to the loft. It’s not fair, she thought. Not fair of Ryfenn not to like me. She never likes me, even when I help. And I do help. I help a lot.
Lyf lay curled in the straw, her face soft and slack in sleep. Lyf was not feeling well, Granmyr had said. Kaeldra sat down, brushed back Lyf’s hair from her forehead. It felt warm, too warm, and damp.
She wouldn’t ask that Ryfenn love her, not the way she loved Lyf and Mirym—they were her birth-daughters, after all. They were easy to love. But if only Ryfenn would like her, or at least appreciate the things she did. If once she would say thank you.
Below, the steady hum of Granmyr’s claywheel stopped. It was strange to hear it here in the cottage. But the storm had pulled down Granmyr’s clayhouse, and there was nowhere else to put it. Kaeldra heard a scraping sound, then the thud of the pot being set on a plank to dry.
“. . . ever since you took her in, when that mother of hers died,” Kaeldra heard Ryfenn say.
“Shh,” Granmyr said.
Her boot thunked against the spinner, and Ryfenn’s voice, low and insistent, continued, masked by the noise of the wheel. Kaeldra rolled onto her stomach, cleared the straw from the boards and pressed her ear against a crack.
“You cannot deny she is strange,” Ryfenn was saying. “Just look at her. So tall, already taller than any of our women and most of our men. And her hair. No Elythian has hair that color. No Elythian’s hair crinkles like hers. And her eyes—they are green.”
“So?”
“She is farin! Of the Krags! She doesn’t belong here—we are paying the price. Just look at all that has happened since she came. The drought and the stillbirths and my poor Bryam—”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Granmyr said. “Kaeldra had nothing to do with Bryam’s death, or anything else.”
“. . . and now that storm. Seven sheep! There’s something evil up there in the mountains, and Kaeldra knew. She was already dressed. And the cries she spoke of, what of that?” Ryfenn’s voice cracked, came out high and harsh. “She’s communing with it.”
“Shush, Ryfenn! Stop it.”
Granmyr’s boot thunked hard against the spinner. Kaeldra lay paralyzed. Something was breaking apart inside her. Ryfenn thought that she—that Kaeldra—had made the bad things happen.
Granmyr’s voice came again, so low Kaeldra could barely hear. “Kaeldra was not the only one. I sensed it, too, but could not place it; could not hear the cries.”
“Sensed what?” Ryfenn hissed. “Mother, what is it?”
The wheel sounds diminished, as if Granmyr had forgotten to kick the spinner. When she spoke, her voice was soft and distant, as if she had forgotten Ryfenn, too, and spoke only to herself. “Nearly sixty years it’s been, and now—”
“What? What is it?”
The door banged open. The house hens fluttered and clucked.
“A wizard!” It was Mirym. “There’s a wizard in the mountains!”
Kaeldra scrambled down the ladder. Mirym’s cheeks were flushed pink; her breath came in short gasps.
“Wynn says he’s from Kragrom,” Mirym said. “Their armies couldn’t push through the mountains so they sent their most powerful wizard instead, the Lord High Magician of all of Kragrom.”
Granmyr snorted. She kicked at the spinner, and the wheel began to move.
“I knew it,” Ryfenn moaned. “What will he do to us?”
“Wynn says he’s going to visit us with storms for seven nights and seven days,” Mirym said cheerfully. “That’s what he did to the Ulians. He destroyed all their crops and livestock, and they had to surrender.”
Ryfenn moaned again.
“Don’t worry, Mother. The men are mustering a war party for the glory of Elythia.”
“A war party!” Ryfenn wailed. “That’s how my Bryam died!” Ryfenn began to weep.
“Glory,” Granmyr muttered. “Always running off to get themselves killed.”
“They’re leaving at first light tomorrow. Wynn is wearing my amulet!”
“Your what?” Ryfenn stopped crying. “You’re too young to grant your amulet!”
“Mother! Wynn is going to war! I may never see him again. Anyway, all the other girls are doing it. Ellyr granted hers to Styfan, and Rymig granted hers to Yo-land. Everyone over twelve years old has granted her amulet toda—” Mirym looked guiltily at Kaeldra, then at the floor.
Kaeldra felt the warmth rising in her face. Mirym had granted her amulet! And so had all the other girls, everyone over twelve, Mirym said, except—Kaeldra swallowed hard.
Farin. Ryfenn had called her farin, and it was true. Even her name sounded Kragish. She was not of the Elythians; she was different; she did not belong.
For as long as she could remember, she had tried to be like the others. She had watched how they did things, always following, always moving a half beat behind so as to get it right: the turn of hand, the tilt of head, the lift of voice. She wove her gown in the Elythian way, dyed it in the pale pastels they wore, and cut it long, so as not to look so tall.
Kaeldra wore her hair in the Elythian way, too, in a plait down her back, past her waist. It was thick and soft, but much too light; it twisted and coiled like a hank of sheep fleece. She combed it and smoothed it, but the coils would not unbend. Why couldn’t her hair be like the Elythian girls’ hair, sleek and black as a raven’s wing?
Except in dreams, when unfamiliar voices drifted in and out of her ken, Kaeldra could not remember what it was like to be anything but Elythian. She had been told that she came here from Kragrom with her mother when she was five. Her mother had died; Granmyr took her in. And through the years Kaeldra had convinced herself that the things she could not change—her height, her hair, her eyes—did not matter.
She had been wrong, of course. They did matter. Because of pairing, they mattered.
It was a year ago, when Mirym was eleven, that Kaeldra had known. Mirym was pouring brew at the fair, and Wynn had looked at her in a new way. No one had ever looked at Kaeldra that way. And she had been fifteen.
Boys liked Mirym. They liked little, lithe girls, with lilting laughs like Mirym’s. And, much as Kaeldra told herself she was just an early grower, it was clear that she could never be little or lithe. She towered over the boys; they avoided her. She felt awkward, overgrown.
And now Ryfenn was thinking—communing with it, she had said. And Kaeldra had felt something last night, even before the sheep. She had heard the cries. What if she were communing with an evil thing, a wizard? What if there were something inside her she couldn’t control, like when she kept growing and growing and couldn’t stop—
“Kaeldra!” Granmyr said.
Startled, Kaeldra turned.
“Get the red clay.”
Kaeldra lugged the stout clay-crock to Granmyr, who pulled a cutting thread beneath the base of the gray bowl she’d just finished and set it on a plank to dry. Seldom did she work the red clay, although she favored it, for the trip to get it took three days.
Granmyr reached into the crock and began wedging a hunk of clay. “Time it is,” she said softly, “to see if I am right.” Looking up at Ryfenn and Mirym, she added, “You need tell no one of this. Though I doubt that they would credit it. Not yet.”
The old woman sat still for a long moment, her hands resting in her lap. Then she nudged the spinner with her unbooted foot, and the wheel began to circle—not in its usual direction, but the other way. Slowly it moved, and then faster, faster than Kaeldra had ever seen it go, until the wheel and the clay blurred in the smoky room. Granmyr closed her eyes and put her hands upon the clay. It came suddenly to life, grew, collapsed in on itself, and gave birth to new shapes.
Kaeldra moved near, watched the clay form and collapse and re-form like some living thing. Once, she thought she saw Myrrathog, a mountain to the east; but it melted and merged before she could be sure.
An egg grew up out of the clay, grew until it engulfed the wheel. It turned hard and smooth as a stream-polished stone.
The egg shattered. Sharp creatures jumped up out of it, tumbled, writhed, coiled.
Kaeldra heard Ryfenn’s gasp of indrawn breath.
“A birthing,” Granmyr whispered.
She opened her eyes, and the wheel began to slow. The creatures sank down into the egg, and then it was only a lump of clay again, soft and red-brown and ordinary. Granmyr laid her hands in her lap, and the wheel slowly slackened and stopped.
“Wha-what was that?” Ryfenn’s voice was hoarse, as if it were the first time she had spoken that day.
“The Ancient Ones,” Granmyr said.
She kicked the spinner with her booted foot, and it began to turn in the opposite direction. A smooth, grooved dome rose beneath her hands. She touched two fingers to the top and the dome hollowed out, became a bowl, an ordinary bowl.
“The Ancient Ones?” Ryfenn breathed. “You can’t mean—but they’ve been gone these many years.”
Granmyr stopped the wheel, stretched the cutting thread between her hands and pulled it beneath the bowl base. She set the bowl to dry with the others on the plank, then looked up at Ryfenn.
“I do mean it,” Granmyr said. “The Ancient Ones. Dragons.”