Foxfire

GRIANE GRIMLY STABBED her needle through the doeskin patch on Callie’s mantle. “It’ll be all right, Mam.” Callie’s anxious smile belied his words. “Rigat blows up fast, but he’s always sorry later. In a few days, everyone will have forgotten what happened.”

She looked up as pale light flooded the hut, but it was only Hircha, a withy basket over her arm. Those cool blue eyes assessed her, but all she said was, “Callie, can you take Conn’s supper to him?”

Thank the gods the lambing would be over soon. Then Callie could return to his studies with Nemek and spend his evenings at home instead of shivering on the moors. With Ennit still recovering from the Freshening cough, the responsibility of minding the flock rested with Callie and Conn. Young Lorthan was still too inexperienced to be much help.

Callie gingerly plucked one off the baking stone and tossed it back and forth between his fingers to cool it. “Remember that first batch Faelia made?” he asked with a grin.

“And Darak’s tooth doesn’t bother him at all now,” Hircha replied in the same sweet tone. “Unless he drinks something cold. Or chews on that side. Or—”

Laughing, Callie hurled the nutcake at Hircha, who batted it away. Griane’s hand darted out to snag it. Every autumn, the young folk ventured south to scavenge nuts and berries, and to cut tree limbs for crafting weapons. For them, it was a pleasant change—very pleasant, judging from the crop of babies born the following summer. But it was their mothers who had the chore of grinding the acorns and pine nuts into flour; she wasn’t about to lose a single cake in the bracken strewn on the dirt floor.

A stern glance made Callie lower a second nutcake. “Wrap them up,” she told him. “Unless you want to bring crumbs to poor Conn. And don’t forget the heather tea.”

From autumn to spring, she kept a stone bowl simmering on the peat. The other brew she mixed once a sennight for Darak. Tonight, with the addition of the baking stone and the large pot containing the stew, the fire pit was so crowded it was a wonder anything was hot.

The momentary cheer vanished. Callie silently wrapped the nutcakes in nettle-cloth. Hircha shoved the pebble stopper into the flask of tea. Griane snatched up the discarded dipper to ladle Darak’s warmed wine into a cup.

The bracken crackled as Darak sat beside the fire pit. From long experience, she watched his hands, which rested quietly on his thighs. Perhaps they would have a pleasant meal, after all.

She handed him the tonic of quickthorn berries and broom blossoms, then drew back with a startled exclamation. “Your fingers are freezing.”

Quelling the urge to do just the opposite, Griane lowered her head over her mending. Faelia’s departure had aged him. Sometimes Griane had resented their closeness, but now that her daughter was gone, she missed her energy and fire, even—occasionally—her sharp tongue.

If only Temet had agreed to remain in the village. But of course, he would never give up his cause. His passionate defense of the rebellion had drawn Faelia to him, despite the fact that he was closer to her father’s age than hers. Or perhaps, given Faelia’s devotion to Darak, Temet’s age only enhanced his allure.

Griane’s bone needle fell still. She eyed the bunches of wildflowers hanging from the heather thatch, wondering if they had more to do with Faelia’s inability to conceive than the gods. In her head, she heard Mother Netal’s voice, tunelessly chanting the rhyme: “Yarrow, tansy, ground-runner—three. Call the moon flow painlessly. Lacha, Gheala. Water and moon. Pluck the child from out the womb.”

Her strangled moan silenced the murmur of conversation. Muttering something about her clumsiness, she sucked the drop of blood from her thumb. With trembling fingers, she knotted the deer gut and cut the dangling thread of sinew. Then she handed the mantle to Callie, avoiding Hircha’s gaze. In matters of healing, Griane always welcomed her assistant’s keen perception and attentiveness; in matters of the heart, those same qualities were unnerving.

Hircha followed Callie out of the hut. Even after all these years, she favored her right leg. Xevhan had maimed her as surely as Morgath had maimed Darak. During their first moons of exile, Griane had feared that she was too scarred by her ordeals to make a new life with them. She had told her that no one could wipe out the past, only acknowledge it—for better or worse—and move on. She hadn’t known then what long shadows the past could throw or how frightening the consequences could be.

Griane heard Callie greet his brothers with his usual affection, then lower his voice, probably to warn Rigat about what he might expect inside. Hircha’s greeting was cooler, but it was hard to tell much from that; she was always self-possessed. Keirith’s reply was so stiff that Griane sighed.

Keirith held up the deerskin to allow Rigat to duck inside. As always, Rigat’s gaze went first to her. She gave him an encouraging smile and received a halfhearted one in return. It fled as he faced Darak.

“I fetched water for every hut. As I was told.” Water sloshed in the skins as he held them up. “And I ask your forgiveness for disturbing the peace of the village.”

Silently, Rigat picked his way around the fire pit and dropped the skins beside her. She touched his ankle, so vulnerable and white against the ruddy hide of his breeches. Again, their eyes met. Her heart clenched into a tight fist at the misery on his face. She reached for his hand, but he was already walking back to Darak.

When Darak simply nodded again, Rigat reached for his leather belt. Impatiently, he yanked it from his waist and held it out.

Rigat was the only one of the children Darak had ever whipped. Darak had warned him more than once that he must never leave the valley alone, but that morning, he had wandered off again. When he finally returned, breathless with the excitement of having climbed one of The Twins, Darak ordered him out of the hut.

Four years ago now. It had been spring then, too. She could still recall the faint but discordant honking of geese between the rhythmic slap of leather on flesh. Ten blows, and she had flinched at each, her breath hissing in and out with her son’s. Rigat was pale when they returned, but Darak had seemed more shaken.

Rigat finally broke the tense silence. “I don’t mind. Well, I do,” he added, wincing. “But I’d rather eat supper standing up than have you angry with me.”

She caught her breath as Darak pushed himself to his feet and held out his hand. Swallowing hard, Rigat gave him the belt. Darak caressed the leather, but his eyes were on Rigat, who watched the slow movement of Darak’s thumb as if mesmerized.

Abruptly, Darak thrust the belt at Rigat. “It won’t make me feel better. And it won’t have any effect on you. So we might as well save my arm and your arse.”

For once, Rigat’s hands were clumsy. It took several attempts before he managed to knot the belt around his waist.

Darak was turning away when Rigat flung himself forward. His arms went around Darak’s waist, fingers clenching the doeskin.

Darak’s eyes closed. Slowly, his hands came up. He hugged Rigat so hard Griane could hear the breath wheeze out of him. And then Darak pulled free and backed away.

For a moment, Rigat stood there, arms still outstretched, face still shining from his father’s rare display of affection. Then the smile faded and his arms fell to his sides.

Rigat kept up a desperate stream of chatter during supper about where the blackcocks were displaying this season, the number of geese he’d seen flying north, the plan to build terraces—anything to avoid talking about what had happened with Seg.

After the meal was finished, he poured cold water into their bowls, dropped hot pebbles from the fire pit into each one, and vigorously scoured them with the heather brush, all the while plying Keirith with endless questions about fishing. Keirith—Maker bless him—tried to lighten the mood by telling stories of his first awkward attempts to spear a fish. Darak just hunched over his pile of flints, grimly chipping away at them with his hammerstone.

Seeing him squinting in the feeble light, Griane threw a handful of gorse twigs on the fire. A brief smile curved his mouth, but it faded as he studied Rigat.

Conscious of Darak’s stare, Rigat’s voice ran down. It was Keirith who turned the conversation to Rigat’s upcoming vision quest, Keirith who relived the dawn his adder had come to him. And Keirith who finally drew Darak into the conversation by asking him to tell the tale of his vision quest.

Darak’s voice took on the dreamy cadence of the Memory-Keeper as he described the cold night the she-wolf howled his name. Rigat listened as intently as if it were the first time he’d heard the story.

Keirith saved Darak from answering. “You’ll make us all proud. But you heard Fa. It’s late. And you’ll need to be up before dawn if you’re going hunting.”

As Keirith guided him firmly to the pallet they shared with Callie, Griane banked the fire, softly singing the old chant as she heaped ashes over the glowing peat bricks.

Sleep, my babe,
Safe and warm as the peat.
Wind, do not chill us.
Rain, do not dampen us.
Night dwellers, do not seek us.
Sleep, my babe,
Safe until dawn.

Her voice mingled with the soft slide of leather as clothing was shed, the louder rustle of bedstraw as her family crawled onto their pallets. She rose to find Darak propped up on one elbow, watching her. It had been years since she’d sung the night prayer.

She removed her shoes and skirt, but left her tunic on for added protection against the chill that seeped in through the chinks in the wall. She slid under the wolfskins, grateful for Darak’s warmth. Except in the dead of winter, he always slept naked, heedless of the cold—as if a small fire smoldered inside him.

The rabbitskins spread over the bedstraw were soft against her bare legs, a startling contrast to the wiry hairs of Darak’s thigh. Although he lay perfectly still, his leg was rigid with tension. She groped for his hand and squeezed it, thumb tracing the seamed scars on the stumps of the two fingers Morgath had severed.

After a moment, his hand moved in hers so he could massage her swollen knuckles. The joint-ill had grown more troubling this winter. Willow bark tea helped relieve the pain and swelling, but she always hoarded her precious supply for those with fevers.

Her body provided a daily reminder that she was growing old, but her mind—and her heart—simply refused to accept it. When she was fourteen, she’d looked at the life stretching ahead of her and known what it would hold. Marriage. Children. Healer to her tribe. She had expected age to bring wisdom and peace as well, but those continued to elude her.

The movement of Darak’s thumb slowed as he drifted into sleep. Griane remained awake, staring into the darkness. Her prayer might banish the creatures of the night—the wolves and wildcats of this world, the restless spirits of the other—but the fears that dwelled in memory were harder to rout. Better to face them boldly than wait for them to pounce.

She summoned the sharp tang of tansy, the minty aroma of ground-runner, the dry, faintly bitter scent of yarrow. The heat in the hut as she crouched beside Mother Netal. The prickle of sweat on her forehead as she stared down at the neat piles of herbs. Two pairs of hands—one blotched with the brown spots of age, the other with freckles. Two identical frowns of concentration.

“You want three small handfuls of ground-runner,” Mother Netal had instructed. “Two of yarrow and tansy. Double the amounts if you’re using fresh herbs. Speak the words twenty-seven times while the brew steeps.”

“Three times three times three. It’s a powerful medicine you’re brewing, and it needs a powerful charm to contain it. And you must walk in a circle while you say it. Against the sun. This is a spell for banishing, after all.”

It was years before she had cause to test Mother Netal’s recipe—the morning after her return from the Summerlands with Fellgair.

Unwilling to dwell on the memory of the painful cramping, Griane chose to recall the autumn that followed when she realized she was pregnant. The prospect of giving birth with only Hircha to help worried her, but joy outweighed the fear, for she knew the child was Darak’s, conceived the night he had returned with Keirith. They’d had no time—or energy—for lovemaking during the long journey.

Darak’s voice, too casual. Darak’s eyes, carefully averted. Not questioning that she was pregnant, but seeking reassurance that he was the father.

That was the only time since he’d learned of her bargain with Fellgair that he ventured close to the forbidden topic of whether she had lain with the Trickster.

Neither of them was disturbed when Rigat arrived half a moon early; given their harsh living conditions, they were simply grateful that she hadn’t lost the babe. The labor was brief and far easier than any of the others. Hircha had little to do other than catch the babe as he slid between her legs, tie off the cord, and cut it. At midday, Griane presented Darak with his son.

Did he hesitate before taking Rigat in his arms or was it the events that came later that made her think so now? He peered down at the babe, as if searching for some feature that resembled his, but Rigat looked like all her other children: red-faced and squalling, damp hair plastered against his skull, blue eyes screwed shut as he protested his arrival.

She named him for the child she had lost so many years earlier. He, too, had been born before his time. Although the laws of the tribe prohibited a couple from naming a child for a moon after its birth, it had comforted her to name him in her heart. Just as it comforted her to bestow that secret name upon her newborn son.

The doubts came later. Although Rigat was a fretful infant, he was never sick. As a child, he never broke a bone. Even ordinary cuts and scrapes healed quickly. And then there was the wordless communion they seemed to share, his gift of knowing what she thought and felt. At first, she had imagined it proof of their special bond. From the moment she knew she was carrying him, she had sworn she would never make the mistakes with him that she had made with the other children. She would never hurt him as she had Keirith. She would be the perfect mother.

But there were other things: his sensitivity to birds and beasts; the sudden tantrums and the easy charm; the morning he “pushed” Faelia without ever touching her; the afternoon Darak discovered him by the stream, sitting in a pile of fallen leaves, laughing as they swirled around him in a wild dance while those on the trees hung motionless.

She conjured every memory and faced it. The memories of what happened after each incident were harder to face: the silent exchange of looks with Darak, her fierce struggle to find explanations. It was her imagination. It was guilt. Rigat was different. Rigat was special. If Keirith possessed power, why shouldn’t he?

The fear pounced, and she stifled a moan. She had taken every precaution a woman could, but what human precautions could defeat the power of a god?

The bracken crunched softly. She felt more than saw the shadowy figure creeping toward her. Careful not to disturb Darak, she rolled over.

Rigat crouched beside her. One hand sought hers, lacing their fingers together in a strong, warm grip. The fingertips of the other brushed her face, feather-light. His thumb traced the bone of her cheek, the curve of her nose, then moved lower to circle her chin.

How many times had she played this game with him when he was a babe? A hundred? A thousand? Delighting in the incredible softness of his skin, his hiccuping gurgle of pleasure. And when he was older, repeating the name for each part she touched, laughing with him as he mastered the words.

Hot moisture burned her eyes. She squeezed them shut, but one tear oozed down her cheek. Rigat brushed it away. She heard a soft, wet noise and shuddered when she realized he was sucking the tear from his thumb.

She rolled onto her back as he slid in beside her. His cheek rested against her breast, his arm curved around her waist. She breathed in the mingled scents of peat smoke and tanned leather, the sharper tang of male sweat, and the faintest hint of a sweet fragrance she prayed was not honeysuckle.

Her arms tightened around him, feeling the strong bones and the tight cords of muscle. Nearly a man, now, but still—always—her little boy.

If only she could preserve this moment forever: the warmth of their bodies, the comfort of their hands—one scarred by life and veined with age, the other smooth and taut and covered with downy hairs. A moment of perfect peace, perfect balance, in which she could hold them both, possess them both, love them both equally. But beyond this safe cocoon, the fear lurked like the night dwellers she had sought to banish with her prayer—the fear that one day, she would have to choose between them just as the Trickster had forced her to choose between Keirith and Darak.