CHAPTER NINE

Overgrowth

I went to bed, but I did not fall fully asleep. I drifted in and out of dreams that smelled like an autumn wind. When everyone else was asleep, I crept out into the main room in my shift and jacket. If I did not want Melina to know I was sneaking out, I had to keep my other clothing clean.

The moon was bright above the hedges. When I crept down the ladder, I found that while the hot sun dried the mud, the night air cooled it, made it moist. Around the yard, the sheep slept in huddled white lumps. The lambs and ewes were in their pen; Torun would be dozing there with Maro and Dan.

I wouldn’t go far, I promised myself as I took a few steps forward. I just wanted to see the sky when I was not penned in by trees.

Beyond the hedge, the stretch of the heavens took my breath away. The stars lay thick and luminous against the dark. On the first nights I had been here, the clouds had blocked the sky. To go out would have been dangerous, especially in the shadows of the forest trees. But in the open, I could see the faint glow of the river, the silhouette of the forest, the tilt of the mountain on my right…and…there.

A shape that seemed to hold her own dim light, long legged, but still short bodied.

“Sida?”

She was a good distance from me, but if I stepped carefully and swiftly…

“Sida!”

She whickered, danced closer to me. Only a bit farther…

I tripped on a branch and fell face first into the dewy grass. As I picked myself up onto my hands and knees, I felt her hot breath in my hair. I knelt and looked up at the greyish blur that was her face. “I missed you,” I said, touching her downy cheek. She snuffled at me while I stood and ran my hands down her neck and shoulder. My hand caught a groove, and my fingers felt hot and damp. Sida stepped quickly sideways. I had touched a deep scratch or a cut.

“Who’s done this to you?” I said, though she could not answer. Staying outside alone now seemed stupid, unwise.

I thought of the safety of the hedge, where the sheep slept. I slipped my arm under her neck and entwined my fingers in her short mane.

“Come on, girl, let’s get you somewhere safe.” I stepped forward and gave the gentlest tug.

Sida whinnied and pulled back violently. I tripped backwards and fell hard on my seat.

I stood up and started running after her, but she swiftly disappeared into the dark of the forest. Only a fool would go there at night, without anything to light the path. I was left with a handful of short hairs from her mane, tinged with blood from her cut. I wiped my hands on the grass and rolled the hairs together into a wad, pocketing them.

Somehow, perhaps, they would lead me to her again.

With tears in my eyes, I made my way back to the hedge.

In the closer dark of home territory, I saw a small burst of sparks. Someone had stirred the fire outside the lambing pen. The flame flared up, and the red glow lit up the face of the person blowing it to life.

“Torun!” I said, walking forward carefully, eagerly. He would understand.

There was a thud, of someone falling backwards in surprise.

“Ki-yen?” he whispered hoarsely. Who’s there? Of course, with his face to the fire, he would be blind to the sight of me coming through the dark.

“Torun, it’s me!”

The fire flared higher now, and the light caught my hands and warmed my face as I climbed over the fence and into the lambing pen. In the flickering light, I could see Maro and Dan curled up like snails in their shells, fast asleep in the far corner of the shed.

“What…what are you doing outside? Now?” Torun’s eyes were overshadowed by his brow and his mouth was strained. His tension was like that of a horse sensing a coming storm.

I paused, leaned my back against the rails of the fence. I had wanted to tell him about seeing Sida, but my sheer relief, my hope, my disappointment and my worry all paled against his fear. This was the second time he had called to me, thinking I was Bettina. Had he seen her on other dark nights like this? I shivered.

“I’m sorry…can I come a little closer to the fire?”

He looked at me a moment, exhaled in a slow, contemplative manner. He wasn’t sure about me, I saw, but he still shifted a little to the right and extended his left arm as a gesture for me to come nearer. He then set his arm down to prop himself up more surely.

“I wanted to look around at night,” I said as I came over. “And then I saw you…” When I sat, I had intended to leave some space between us, but the shadows were tricky and I landed snug against him, thigh to thigh. His shoulder touched the right edge of my back. I looked over to apologize and found our noses almost touching. I was so close I could tell he had been chewing spruce resin after the evening meal.

We fit together, and in the dark, this frightened us both. I slid away.

“I think I saw…ah, um…outside, by the river,” I managed.

“You were outside?” Torun repeated, his voice hoarse.

“I…” I balked at telling the truth about Sida. It wasn’t the right time. Torun was already scared, and if I told him I was with a unicorn, it might confirm his suspicions about me. “It’s not fair,” I burst out. “This is not fair! I am not supposed to be here! It’s all wrong!” I had told a sort of truth, but in saying it aloud, I thought I might still sound suspicious.

Torun gave an odd, tense smile. “Do you miss home?” he asked.

It seemed an obvious question, but I did not know how to answer it. I wanted to be with Ma, before Julian’s and Victor’s last visit. “I wish I could go back,” I said.

“Even with your father living here?”

“Pa?” The surprised tone of my voice was louder than I had wanted. I swallowed. “He left us. After seeing him again, I wonder why Melina would want him.”

“Your father, Melina, they have a business as well as a family. No wool, your father starves. No selling…well, we cannot live on mutton alone. He is kind to the children. And Sarai, she is one he respects.”

This was the most I had heard in my own language for what felt like years. He seemed to have thought the words many times. I realized that Torun did not trust Pa. I was surprised by a rush of fellow feeling.

“And you?”

Torun said nothing.

“Then why do you stay around? Why can’t you sell the wool?”

“Who would watch the sheep? When I went to trade…” He paused. Bettina had tended the flock, Pa had said. “They are my blood. They have no one in the family who cares as much. I am here for them, for her.”

For her. I shivered. “You’re trapped?”

“No.” His answer was firm. “I am not. It is my choice.” He chewed on his thoughts a little. “We were going to marry. It was our plan. Go away to a new village. Start a home. And then Melina and the children could come and join us. Or the children.”

“Whose plan was it?”

“Bettina. She saw early how the world worked. She was…” He tapped his temple with a finger. “She was keen.”

“Couldn’t you do it now?”

He shook his head. “I’m not close enough blood to have Sarai come and live with me. She’s almost old enough to be married. People would talk.”

“I like Bettina,” I decided. Bettina had thought things through, I realized.

“I like Bettina also. She was my friend.”

What happened to her? I wanted to ask. But after Pa’s evasions, I felt reluctant to pry. I knew both too much and too little.

As we gazed out at the night, I silently wondered whether she would like me. “Am I like her?”

He laughed, a rich, full sound. “No. Yes. You look like her. You are not so gentle.”

“That’s not fair,” I said indignantly. “Telka likes me!”

“You are gentle to those you think deserve it. Bettina was kind to all.”

“Hmph.” I thought kindness was overrated, except with unicorns.

He gave me a small push on the shoulder. “Don’t be sad. Being too gentle is hard on the soul. It was hard for Bettina. It is good for me that you are not like her.”

I put my hand down into the straw and I accidentally set it on his.

Torun leapt up.

I took my hand away and set it in my lap and held it with the other, as if to stop it from escaping and accidentally reaching for Torun again.

We stared at each other, neither one of us trusting one another or ourselves.

One of the boys stirred in the corner, and in some horror of being seen, I stood up fast and ran off towards the house, this time slipping between the rails of the pen, a less elegant, but swifter retreat.

Torun did not call after me.

I climbed up to the house in the tree and undressed clumsily before climbing into bed.

In the close darkness of the bed, I sniffed back tears. I had spooked Sida and now I had done the same—or worse—to Torun. I understood neither of them and I confused myself, too. A small hand patted me over my right eye and cheek.

“Chuuu,” Telka murmured sleepily.

But Telka’s sympathy would not put things right. It would not help me find Sida. For Sida, I needed Torun. I would have to make things right.

The next morning, I woke up early and climbed down the ladder with a pail of cold, stewed mutton sausage, fermented cabbage and onion.

The boys were splitting wood and Torun was in his shed. There was a small fire going outside the lambing pen, and orange embers glowed in a pit where he kept a cauldron of water hot. Beside the cauldron, there was a dish of sludgy soap and a bucket for washing his hands. Three new lambs waggled their tails as they drank milk from their mothers’ teats. There was a faint, pink blush on their white fleece. Torun had scrubbed blood from under his fingernails during the night. I shuddered.

I would hand him his food and leave. No. I would hand him his food and apologize. And then I would ask about Sida. What was the word for unicorn? I struggled and failed to find the right sounds. Perhaps I should just leave after I gave Torun the food. I felt my heart beating faster as I approached the lambing shed. I needed to escape the house. No. I did know my words. I had been practising them.

When he stood up and came towards me, I felt my tongue grow thick, shy, stupid. Torun looked at my tense face and sent the boys upstairs to start breakfast for the others.

He took the pail from my hands and nodded his thanks.

How could we speak after what had happened the night before?

I lost my nerve and I was half over the fence when one of the ewes lay down and began to pant heavily. For a moment, my foot stayed planted on the railing. I would stay. As I lowered myself back into the enclosure, her hooves raked at the soft earth as her legs twitched with each breath. Astounded, I watched as a transparent, gelid membrane emerged from under her tail.

“Ah,” Torun said with satisfaction. “I have been waiting for this one.” We waited together as the membrane swelled. Inside, distorted from the fluid, the hooves and then nose and then eyes and ears of a lamb appeared. The ewe heaved and slowly, slowly, the lamb inched further from her body.

“Shouldn’t you help her?” My voice was shrill.

Torun shook his head and as the lamb’s shoulders emerged, the rest of the body slithered out. The ewe stood up, and as she bit through the membrane and nuzzled her lamb, her sides began to heave again. The ewe kept attending her lamb as another pair of thin legs and small head coated in a yellow-white membrane slid from her. She turned around, barely surprised, and began to chew through the second membrane to allow the other lamb to breathe. She began licking its tiny wet face and stick-like hooves.

Satisfied, Torun nodded. “Shall we eat?”

“Bleugh!” I could not even imagine chewing mutton sausage. Meat squeezed though a membrane…hot and damp like a fresh-born lamb.

“Bleugh?” Torun asked as we walked to the shelter. “What is bleugh? It does not sound like you are congratulating her.”

Congratulations were the last thing on my mind. Birth was horrific—the mother’s strained breath and the phlegmy, gelatinous sac that covered the lambs made me clench my teeth with the effort not to gag. “I was just surprised.”

“You have never seen one of your animals give birth?” Torun asked.

“No! Well…” I had never seen anything give birth. Ma always chased me away when our nanny goat dropped her kids and the Helders’ housecat hid herself away when she had kittens. “Our animals are more…private.”

“But they still do it,” he said with a half-smile, the benign echo of Sarai’s sneers.

I told myself that it was impossible to imagine a doe-unicorn wheezing and rolling her eyes in exertion. But even as I thought it was impossible, I thought of Sida and the winsome ugliness of her first fawnhood. She was not unlike the lambs, perhaps.

I glanced over at Torun and found that he was watching me with his dark eyes. My face grew warm. He knew something of what I thought; he knew what I was feeling and though he smiled, he did not laugh. As we ate, I turned my attention to the lambs, whose spindly legs were spread in squat, bowlegged attempts to stand.

Although the first spoonfuls had been difficult to swallow, I regained my appetite and my determination. “Torun, I am sorry for yesterday. I scared you.”

“I was not scared,” he said lightly.

I let that pass. “I was hoping that I could help you herd.”

“You?” His tone was not accusatory. “I could have Maro or Dan.”

“I told my father that I herd at home.” I ate more to avoid catching his eye.

“I know. Maro said.” He glanced up at the house in the tree. Inside, Melina was laughing and she was joined by another light voice. Sarai, I realized with surprise. “You are a great help to them,” he began slowly.

“I am not!”

“Not with weaving,” he said with a quirk of his lips. “With other things. It is good for Telka…”

I could not let him say no. “I could help you practise Gersan. Please. I’m also terrible at carding wool. And spinning. And weaving.” I gestured to my new belt. “This, this, took me days. Melina made me stay up late yesterday to finish it.”

“That is because you did not wear a belt when you met me on the hill.” He pursed his mouth and the tips of his ears flushed. He ran a hand quickly over his own belt, which was undyed wool with blocky black birds. “Melina did not like that. A person without a belt is…is…a person with no clothes.”

“Having no belt is not like being naked!”

The corners of his eyes lifted as he smiled at my outrage, and then he looked down again. The sudden shyness made me aware that however I had been dressed yesterday, on the first night we met I had seen Torun in naked anguish, confusion, distress. I felt a strange rush of tenderness and I fought to find the words to express myself.

“I am a decent girl.” That’s what Mrs. Helder had always said about me and what Ma had wanted to make me, though it sounded stodgy.

He shrugged, his smile fading. “Now you are, but…decent…girls do not herd sheep with strangers.” He did not look at me as he scraped the spoon along the bottom of the pail.

It was time for the truth, then.

“I don’t need to herd sheep, Torun…I need to go out to find my…my…” I found the word and started again. “Last night, I wasn’t trying to run away. I saw my uksarv. But she ran away from me.” Admitting Sida’s rejection out loud made it so much worse.

“It is difficult to herd at night.”

“I need to find her, and you saw her, so…I need your help. She’s lost.”

He tossed the spoon at the pail. It skimmed the rim and clattered to the bottom. “I know. But the forest is…it is big. Dark, too.”

“I can’t stay inside all the time. We can tell Melina I was tracking an animal…a horse…from my herd when you found me, and I think it is nearby.” That was at least close to the truth.

“If you want to go so much…” He was silent for a moment and looked up again at the house nestled in the trees. “They do not own you, you know. I say it is good for you to stay, but you could just walk away.”

“You saw her. I want you to show me where.” That made sense and he couldn’t deny it.

“You might not see a thing.”

That was not a no. Which meant he was saying yes.

“Promise me, Torun?”

I felt rather than saw him glance at my face. But when I turned to look, he was watching the flock intently. The seconds stretched out. What had I said wrong?

“Go, go,” Torun’s voice was weary. “I will think and then come to talk with Melina.” He squinted as one of the newborn lambs’ legs gave way underneath it. “I promise.”

I went upstairs. Melina and Sarai faced the fire, stirring the porridge. Maro, and Dan were stacking up the day’s worth of firewood. Telka, sitting at the table, stared as I went straight to the bed and pulled my pack from underneath my spot on the bed.

Telka asked where I was going. “Kurre,” I said. Out there. I crouched over my pack. Maro looked indignantly at his mother. If anyone was supposed to be with the sheep, it was him and Dan. It was their job. Dan let his brother speak for both of them. He didn’t seem to mind being inside.

As Melina served the porridge, Sarai watched me warily. I unpacked. I wouldn’t need my oil sheet or blanket, so I slid them back under the bed. The children stared at me. Melina pretended not to see. I took out my waterskin. I was nearly ready.

Torun came in just as I was going to the water barrel.

He leaned against the doorframe and murmured something to Melina, soft enough that the children could not hear. She strode over to him immediately and tugged the collar of his vest. That was her signal for him to follow her out to the portico. She closed the door behind him. This is what their conversation sounded like from our places at the table:

“…………………………………………..”

“………Torun!……………”

That is to say, they spoke in whispers, only becoming audible in their moments of greatest frustration. As I was beginning to recognize snatches of everyday conversation, it seemed that Melina now wanted neither me nor the children to understand.

Finally, Melina burst out with, “………ni Bettina, Torun!”

A moment later, the door slammed open. The sun fringed Torun with light but made his core a dense shadow.

“Come on,” he said. “We go now.” He said something more to Maro and Dan in a brisk voice. Maro looked surprised and proud, Dan merely pleased. Responsibility over the flock, I supposed.

Melina continued to talk at Torun in a low voice while I gathered my things. I slung my pack over my shoulder, ready to go.

As I passed her, Melina grabbed me by the shoulders, holding my arms tight. Her face was chalky white.

“I’ll be back,” I said, “before the sun goes down.”

Torun translated, flinging up his hands with exasperation. Then, to me, he said, “Come.”

The pressure of her fingers eased. She stepped away and ducked her head down.

“Come,” Torun repeated.

We walked out of the tidy perimeter of home without a word. We did not speak as we began the ascent beside the swollen river, breathing in the smell of meltwater and the muddy, tangled banks.

I looked around, scouring the landscape for a trace of Sida. It seemed all so ordinary. Trees, trees, rocks, leaves in the yellow-green of new growth, almost gold, red.

Red?

I stopped and looked across the river and up at the escarpment. There was a row of trees with leaves of fiery autumn orange and scarlet. I hadn’t noticed that before…I felt a cool breeze on my cheek

Someone screamed, across the river. A girl. And then the sound of hooves. I stepped forward to see.

I blinked and when I opened my eyes again, I could not find the line of autumn trees again amongst the burgeoning green. And here, down by the river, the air was absolutely still. I would have felt the wind stir from a dragonfly’s wings.

“Did you hear that?” I asked. “Did you see?”

“See what?” Torun said. He followed my pointing finger across the river.

“There…I heard something. And there were autumn trees…”

He frowned. “Where?”

But I could not show him. Had I imagined it? I squinted, trying to find a trace of colour or sound.

After a moment, Torun walked on. “Come. Your uksarv is not there.”

I ran after him.