Ki sat in the open freight bed of her wagon and wondered if things could get worse. Her clothing was plastered wet against her; that had become routine. Sigurd and Sigmund, dried and blanketed, nosed disgustedly at the coarse salty grasses sprouting up at the margin of the beach. Ki would have to lead them to better grazing and picket them after she built the fire and changed her wet clothes, if she could get up that much energy.
Last night she had told him her tale of Dresh and Rebeke. He had listened quietly. The events she related seemed unreal, even to Ki. The sheer physical effort of the past few days had drained her, making all yesterdays vague. Medie’s death loomed more monstrous and she regretted her part in it. Hardest of all was to speak of the debt she owed. Rebeke had saved her, maybe with no more thought given to Ki than to her horses, but saved her nonetheless. Ki had finished her tale with, ‘I hate a debt that can’t be settled.’
‘Don’t we all,’ Vandien had replied, staring into the flames, and she knew he was thinking of how Dresh had sent him to False Harbor. She had come to hate this place. The chill water over the sunken temple with its secrets baffled them both. And Vandien went about strangely abashed, ashamed to admit the hopes that had been dashed. It was a bad place that gnawed at old pains without devouring them.
Another tide had ebbed and risen. They were no closer to recovering Vandien’s skeel. Ki was privately wondering if they were still at the end of the line. Perhaps they had tangled it in the sunken crypt of the temple, and then scuttled off. Maybe she and Vandien had spent the last two days trying to pull the bottom of the temple up through its own stairwell. She was discouraged, her team was sulky and tired, and Vandien had found new depths to black humor.
She looked down the beach. Vandien stood staring out at the waves over the temple. The grey waves curled at his feet and slunk back to the sea. He’d have to move soon, or the sea would be creeping up his legs. In his hands he held a coil of rope whose end disappeared into the surf.
On the first low tide following Temple Ebb, they had been able to recover the end of the line Vandien had left looped around the fallen stone. Janie had provided sulky dory service to the temple and Vandien, against Ki’s advice, had himself dove down to cut the line free and fasten a fresh length of line to the cut end. There had been a second dive to go down and thread the fresh line through the temple door, for Vandien maintained that Ki’s team might be able to break the skeel free of their grip on the bottom, but could scarcely haul them over the jagged temple walls as well. Ki had traded dried fruit and sausages for three more lengths of rope. These sufficed to reach the shore and be fastened to her team.
The team had pulled from shore at high and low tides, and at the turn of the tide. She had taken the team out into the surf, approaching the temple at the low tide, and pulled from there. All to no avail. If the skeel were still at the end of that silvery piece of line, they were dug in firmly and likely to remain so for as long as their rutting instincts held.
‘Vandien!’
He turned at her call and plodded toward her, his shoulders bunched against the chill sea wind. He still wore the bulky wool garments of the fisherfolk. They hung on his narrow frame. His dark eyes were shadowed. He doled out loops of rope as he came, finishing by knotting the end firmly to the wagon tongue. ‘I’ll build the fire while you take your nags to grass and change your clothes,’ he offered as he came to lean against the wagon box.
But Ki did not rise to his use of the word ‘nags.’ ‘Vandien, let’s do one of two things. Let’s quit dragging at that rope and sit back and relax until the damn things finish copulating and come up for air. Or, and this I prefer, let’s cut the rope, hitch up, and leave. We’re low on coin, but we could trade hides or blankets or something to the T’cherian against the value of the lost team. We could even trade whatever we can for salt fish here, settle with the T’cherian on the way, and haul the fish inland until it becomes a rarity, and trade it then. I’ve some good contacts back in Greenwood. That’s only five days past Bitters.’
‘No,’ Vandien replied when she paused for breath. ‘I’ll haul those skeel out of there, one way or another, and get them back to Web Shell. Having made a tangle of everything else, let me at least splice the ends in smooth. He loaned me the team in good faith; I want to return them to him. Why don’t you go change into dry clothes while I take your nags to grass and build the fire?’
‘Maybe if I argue a bit longer, you’ll change my clothes for me, as well as give grass to my nags and build my fire.’
‘Maybe I will. To hell with the grass and the fire!’ Vandien suggested.
‘Braggart. You’re as tired as I am.’
‘More so. Is that Janie coming down the sands?’
Ki turned to follow Vandien’s nod. She saw a cloaked figure with a smaller one in tow. The little girl’s hair blew free of her cap, and she skipped merrily to match her sister’s longer stride. The wind blew snatches of her birdlike chatter to them.
‘Couldn’t be anyone else,’ Ki remarked. ‘The rest of the village has been too busy fishing since Ebb to bother with us.’ They watched silently as the two approached, Janie striding determinedly over the shifting pebbles and sand, her eyes steadily fixed on the wagon, while her little sister hopped along beside her, taking an interest in every shell and pebble they passed. Janie’s hair was trapped under her woolen cap. Her loose smock was belted tightly at her hips and her trousers were tucked securely into her boots. The child’s smock was longer and unbelted as was village custom. The hem of it was edged with a narrow band of blue. Her trousers had come out of her boot tops and flapped jauntily with each step. Just before they reached earshot, they stopped, and Janie stooped to say something to the child, who listened gravely.
‘Have good manners, don’t speak unless you’re spoken to, and don’t be a pest,’ Vandien guessed solemnly.
‘And wipe your nose!’ Ki added with a low laugh.
Janie trudged up to them. As soon as she let go of the child’s hand, the girl ran to the side of Ki’s wagon. She began tracing the brightly colored pictures on the high panelled cuddy. Janie sent her an exasperated look, and turned back to Ki and Vandien.
‘There’s an easy way to raise your team,’ she began without preamble. ‘I was in a foul temper when I took you out to the temple to get a line on them. I felt I owed you nothing, and that the sooner you gave up and left, the sooner the village would go back to normal. But I was wrong. I’ve heard how you told your tale of Temple Ebb. I don’t say thank you for that, but I appreciate what you tried to do. It’s also become obvious that you won’t give up and go away. I may as well help you raise the team.’
Janie ran out of words. Just as the silence became awkward, the child spoke. ‘I had some Romni tea once,’ she announced loudly, but to no one in particular. When she drew no response, she added, ‘I liked it very, very much.’
‘Sasha!’ Janie exclaimed in rebuke, but Vandien laughed aloud. Then he drew his brows down in a frown and turned to the child.
‘Have you never heard how the Romni give sleeping tea to little girls, and then steal them away in the night?’
‘Idiot!’ hissed Ki. ‘She’ll believe you.’ Turning to the child she explained, ‘The only little child I ever stole grew up to be that nasty-tongued man. So I gave up the practice. But if you’ll help me to gather sticks and twigs, and a bit or two of driftwood, I’ll show you how the Romni brew their tea on an open fire beside their wagons.’
As Ki stood up, the girl dashed down the beach to ferret out bits of twisted white driftwood. Ki threw Vandien a shrug and followed her. Vandien raised an inquiring eyebrow at Janie. He quickly lowered it when he realized she was staring in horrified fascination at what this made his scar do to his face.
‘Well. You know how to raise my team.’
‘The whole village knows. There’s even been a round of bets at the inn as to when you’d figure it out for yourselves.’
‘And for giving me the solution, no doubt the village will be pleased with you?’
‘Who cares? It matters little what I do, the village is always ill pleased with me.’
‘I see.’
‘I doubt if you do, nor does that matter. The point is this. To lift anything off the bottom, one does not battle the tides. One makes the tides do the work.’ Janie paused to give a small smile to Vandien’s incredulous look. ‘Can your team match muscles with the Moon herself? Make yourself a bundle of sturdy logs bound together with rope. You have plenty of rope. At the next low tide, take the raft out to the temple. At the lowest point of the tide, reef the line up straight, so there is no slack between your team and the logs.’
‘And then?’ Vandien prodded, for Janie thought she had finished explaining. She gave him an exasperated look.
‘Then wait for the high tide, of course. The waves lift the log raft, and either your team will rise, or the rope will break. But I know the line Srolan gave you. I think the team will rise. And once you’ve lifted them off the bottom, any child could tow the raft back to shore. They may hang up a bit on the temple walls, but you should be able to handle that.’
‘I should.’ Vandien squinted down the beach. Ki and Sasha were returning, each with a small load of wood. They were laughing, and Ki’s brown hair blew about her face.
‘Why don’t you both come with us, Janie?’
‘Just like that? You don’t even ask Ki, but just ask us along? And do you expect me to say, certainly, I’ll leave my dory and my cottage and come? How would we live?’
‘As the Romni do. Believing that the road will take care of you, as long as you don’t worry about it. The luck of the wheels. Ki is something of a heretic, you know, with her freighting and trading. The other Romni I’ve met trust to the luck of the wheels. It’s not a bad way to live, Janie. I think Sasha would like it …’
‘She probably would.’ Janie spoke quickly. ‘But that doesn’t mean it would be good for her. She’d lose all sense of who she is and where she comes from. She’d forget …’
‘I know she would. Maybe you could, too. Be Janie, instead of Duce’s granddaughter.’
Janie stiffened perceptibly. ‘I came out here to tell you how to lift your team and to offer my help. But if you’re …’
‘I’m not. How do we get logs?’
‘There’s always some snagged on Rocky Point. We’ll have to use my dory.’
‘Then let’s go get it. After I move these nags to better grasses.’
The moon had claimed the sky when they returned. Janie brought her dory up on the beach. As the keel of the double-ender scraped, Vandien sprang out into knee-deep water to pull it up on the beach. Janie followed to help him.
The silhouetted wagon had yellow edges. Ki had built her fire on the far side so the bulk of it blocked the breeze off the water. As Vandien and Janie rounded the end of the wagon, Vandien saw that Ki had gone to all efforts for Sasha. A traditional Romni camp had sprung up by the wagon. Sasha was enthroned on a fat pillow and snuggled in a quilt. A red headscarf with gaudy purple tassles confined her hair. Cushions had been placed about the fire as if Sasha hosted a dozen guests. In both her small hands she cupped a steaming mug. Vandien peeked into it as he passed and saw an extravagantly large piece of dried spiced fruit floating on top of the fragrant tea. Ki had changed clothes. She wore a traditional skirt and loose blouse, topped with an embroidered vest, and a belt interwoven with silver wire and tiny bells. Only Vandien could appreciate how deeply she had dug in the cuddy to come up with those clothes. She had let her hair go wild and long, and was even wearing the gaudy enamelled earrings he had bought for her on a long ago market day. Sasha would remember this night, not as the night they lifted the team, but as a night when she drank tea and broke bread in a real Romni camp. Ki was fully into the spirit of it. Many bracelets clattered on her wrist and interfered with her cooking.
‘Romni stew, I see.’ Vandien leaned over the cooking pot.
‘And Romni bread with Romni cheese,’ Ki rejoined, letting her green eyes glow with a mysticism that made Sasha’s eyes go wide.
‘And a not-Romni raft, tied with not-Romni knots, to four skeel at low tide,’ Janie added in a voice that broke the fragile spell. Ki looked at them askance.
‘After we built the raft, it seemed foolish to let another low tide go by. Before the night is out, the rising tide should lift the skeel clear of the temple floor, and then we drag them in.’
‘Up the staircase, and through the jumble of stones in the temple and then …’
‘Over the temple walls. It was hell’s own errand to rethread that rope in the dark. They will be dragged over the walls, not through the portal, raft and all.’
‘Well, that should make it simple,’ Ki rejoined skeptically.
‘I didn’t say it would be easy,’ Janie broke in. ‘Only that it would be possible. Your methods weren’t.’
‘I didn’t mean to belittle your help. Sasha and I saved food for you two, even if we did not wait for you before eating. The bowls are in that chest.’
‘No. Thank you. Feeding Sasha and entertaining her are more than I expected. I thank you for that, also. But we must be back home now, for morning comes early for fisherfolk, and for small girls who must help out at the inn.’
Sasha’s bright face fell, but she did not protest as she stood up and shed her bright scarf. ‘No, keep that,’ Ki told her quickly. Janie bid them thanks and good evening in a formal voice and made to lead Sasha off, but the child broke free of her grip, to tackle Ki with a hug, and then dart off after her older sister before Ki had even recovered her balance. They were gone in the surrounding darkness. Ki slowly began to fold up the quilt as Vandien served himself stew and a hard round of bread.
‘I could get used to having that one around,’ Ki said to no one in a very soft voice.
‘I already asked. Not a chance. Janie feels she will shirk a family responsibility if Sasha grows up free and happy and unshackled to the past.’
‘Um.’ Ki sank down on a cushion, the quilt pillowed in her lap. Vandien sat across the fire from her, eating. One hand held his bowl and one his spoon, while he balanced his bread expertly on one knee. Her brow creased as she tried to remember how he had looked the first time she had fed him at her fire. Skinnier, certainly. And more ragged than she had ever seen him since. His hair had been shaggily unkempt, brushing his shoulders. His face had bristled with whiskers. She knew those details, but could not bring that image to mind. For all she had seen then were his eyes, unsettlingly dark, and hungry. ‘Tea?’ she asked him now, and his dark eyes rose briefly to meet hers as he nodded. His eyes were still bottomless, she thought, but now she understood their hunger. Vandien devoured life, and was ever filled with it but never satiated. The tea streamed into the mug from the earthenware pot, as golden as the firelight and spiced to sweetness. The mug warmed the chill away and the fragrance filled her with memories of spring. She handed the mug to Vandien and refilled her own. ‘How long until high tide?’ she asked to fill the silence.
‘Not until dawn. But it will be high enough for us before that. Damn, Ki, I’ve learned more about tides and moon pull since I came here than I ever cared to know. I’ll be glad to leave the coast and forget it. Tides never flow when you need them. It will be high enough for us soon. Too soon for me to lie down and sleep, but too long for me to just sit here idly, for then I’d fall asleep and miss it.’
‘There’s the team to bring back,’ Ki suggested. ‘And harness to put on them. Pots and dishes to wash and pack. And the cuddy to be straightened up for the road. Because as soon as we have that team up, we’re going. I’m sick of the water and salt. Every bit of metal on the wagon is going green.’
‘As to leaving right away, fine. As for the rest of it, some day I shall learn not to tell you when I have idle time.’
‘If I ever have idle time, I’ll tell you about it,’ Ki offered. She fetched her harness from the wagon. With a rag and some oil she began to supple the leather and polish the sea tarnish from the metal. Vandien watched her, a wry smile twisting his lips. Then he rose to gather the dishes and spoons.
When Ki could see the flames of the fire moving in the harness buckle, she gave a nod of satisfaction and returned it to its peg. Vandien had resumed his seat by the fire. He stared into the flames, rubbing a slow finger up and down his scar. Ki watched him unsmiling until he became aware of her gaze and looked up. His hand dropped to his knees. When he smiled, it was his old grin. A cloud had lifted and Vandien had returned. Ki felt a flood of relief she could not help from showing.
‘It was silly, wasn’t it?’ Vandien concluded. ‘Now that I have finally thought it through and let go of the notion, I feel at peace. Strange, isn’t it? Until Srolan offered to lift my scar, I had never thought of it. As soon as she offered it, I wanted so badly for it to be possible that I willed it to be true. I was willing to make a fool of myself, and drag you into it, for the sake of a smooth face. Now when I come back to my senses and see what a fool I have been, I cannot believe the things I did. It’s like waking up sober and remembering all the witty words of the night before. They don’t even make sense.’ Vandien shook his head deprecatingly at the fire. ‘Accepting the scar as part of my face may be the only gain from this.’
‘Accept and grow, my father used to say,’ Ki agreed.
‘Accept and die, say the fishermen.’ Janie stepped into the circle of firelight. Ki and Vandien both started. The shushing waves had covered her footsteps on the soft sand and pebble of the beach. ‘Where’s Sasha?’ Ki asked, and the militant set of Janie’s face relaxed as she warmed her hands.
‘Asleep.’ Her face was soft with affection. ‘Nothing would do, except that she must heap up her bed with every blanket and cushion in the house. With her doll and a cup and two wooden spoons, she has gone to sleep in her Romni wagon. No doubt she’ll have a pleasanter night than we will.’
‘We?’ Vandien ventured.
‘I’ve brought my dory back. Rainlady is pulled up on the beach. I gave some thoughts to the stones standing in the temple and the snaggled walls. That rope will hang up somewhere. But if Ki can manage the team on shore, I can manage the dory while Vandien tries to unsnag the line. I’ve brought him a hook-pole.’
‘We’re grateful for your help.’
‘I’m grateful for the afternoon that was given to Sasha. She chattered of nothing else. She has never been treated so, as an honored guest and indulged as a child. Because of who she is, she doesn’t receive the toleration usually given to children. Her curiosity is deemed nosiness, and any lapse in manners is malicious, not naughty. So, for her to speak so brightly of her afternoon with Ki …’ Janie faltered for words. ‘I could wish I were a child again, and could have the old aches smoothed away with such an afternoon.’ She finished awkwardly. Her voice flinched as if she expected laughter. But Vandien was slicing a chunk of fruit into the steaming mug of tea that Ki had poured. Janie sank onto the fat cushion Vandien indicated and took the warm mug.
They spoke little after that, of unimportant things only. Janie sipped at her tea. Her eyes lost some of their wariness. She took off her wool cap and shook out her pale hair, bringing Vandien to remark, ‘With your hair loose on your shoulders and your eyes full of flames, you look like you belong by a Romni fire.’
‘An evening like this makes me think well of it,’ Janie replied with no trace of her usual sharpness. All was silence but for fire sounds, and the waves creeping up the beach. The sea breathed hoarsely as the waves rushed in, giving a pebble-rattling snore as the water retreated. Janie suddenly cleared her throat.
‘The tide is high enough,’ she announced in a businesslike voice, and began tucking her hair back under her cap. The moment was gone. Ki went for the team while Vandien meekly followed Janie to where her dory floated nearly free on the rising tide.