Touk’s house was two years in the building. Daily Erana told Maugie how the work went forward: how there were to be five rooms, two downstairs and three above; how the frame jointed together; how the floor was laid and the roof covered it. How Touk had great care over the smallest detail: how not only every board slotted like silk into its given place, but there were little carven grinning faces peering out from the corners of cupboards, and wooden leaves and vines that at first glance seemed no more than the shining grain of the exposed wood, coiling around the arches of doorways. Touk built two chimneys, but only one fireplace. The other chimney was so a bird might build its nest in it.
“You must come see it,” Erana said to her foster mother. “It is the grandest thing you ever imagined!” She could only say such things when Touk was not around, for Erana’s praise of his handiwork seemed to make him uncomfortable, and he blushed, which turned him an unbecoming shade of violet.
Maugie laughed. “I will come when it is finished, to sit by the first fire that is laid in the new fireplace.”
Touk often asked Erana how a thing should be done: the door here or there in a room, should the little face in this corner perhaps have its tongue sticking out for a change? Erana, early in the house building, began picking up the broken bits of trees that collected around Touk’s work, and borrowed a knife, and began to teach herself to whittle. In two years’ time she had grown clever enough at it that it was she who decorated the stairway, and made tall thin forest creatures of wood to stand upon each step and hold up the railing, which was itself a scaled snake with a benevolent look in his eye as he viewed the upper hallway, and a bird sitting on a nest in a curl of his tail instead of a newel post at the bottom of the staircase.
When Touk praised her work in turn, Erana flushed too, although her cheeks went pink instead of lavender; and she shook her head and said, “I admit I am pleased with it, but I could never have built the house. Where did you learn such craft?”
Touk scratched one furry shoulder with his nails, which curled clawlike over the tips of his fingers. “I practiced on my mother’s house. My father built it; but I’ve put so many patches on it, and I’ve stared at its beams so often, that wood looks and feels to me as familiar as water.”
Even mending seemed less horrible than usual, when the tears she stitched together were the honorable tears of house building. Maugie was never a very harsh taskmaster and, as the house fever grew, quietly excused Erana from her lessons on herb lore. Erana felt both relieved and guilty as she noticed, but when she tried halfheartedly to protest, Maugie said, “No, no, don’t worry about it. Time enough for such things when the house is finished.” Erana was vaguely surprised, for even after her foster mother had realized that her pupil had no gift for it, the lessons had continued, earnestly, patiently, and a trifle sorrowfully. But now Maugie seemed glad, even joyful, to excuse her. Perhaps she’s as relieved as I am, Erana thought, and took herself off to the riverbank again. She wished all the more that Maugie would come too, for she spent nearly all her days there, and it seemed unkind to leave her foster mother so much alone; but Maugie only smiled her oddly joyful smile, and hurried her on her way.
The day was chosen when the house was to be called complete; when Maugie would come to see the first fire laid—“And to congratulate the builder,” Erana said merrily. “You will drown him in congratulations when you see.”
“Builders,” said Touk. “And I doubt the drowning.”
Erana laughed. “Builder. And I don’t suppose you can be drowned. But I refuse to argue with you; your mother knows us well enough to know which of us to believe.”
Maugie smiled at them both.
Erana could barely contain her impatience to be gone as Maugie tucked the last items in the basket. This house feast would outdo all their previous attempts in that line, which was no small feat in itself; but Erana, for once in her life, was not particularly interested in food. Maugie gave them each their bundles to carry, picked up her basket, and looked around yet again for anything she might have forgotten. “We’ll close the windows first; it may rain,” she said meditatively; Erana made a strangled noise and dashed off to bang sashes shut.
But they were on their way at last. Maugie looked around with mild surprise at the world she had not seen for so long.
“Have you never been beyond your garden?” Erana said curiously. “Were you born in that house?”
“No. I grew up far away from here. My husband brought me to this place, and helped me plant the garden; he built the house.” Maugie looked sad, and Erana asked no more, though she had long wondered about Maugie’s husband and Touk’s father.
They emerged from the trees to the banks of Touk’s river pool. He had cut steps up the slope to his house, setting them among the trees that hid his house from the water’s edge, making a narrow twisting path of them, lined with flat rocks and edged with moss. Touk led the way.
The roof was steeply pitched, and two sharp gables struck out from it, with windows to light the second storey; the chimneys rose from each end of the house, and their mouths were shaped like wide-jawed dragons, their chins facing each other and their eyes rolling back toward the bird-houses hanging from the trees. And set all around the edges of the roof were narrow poles for more bird-houses, but Touk had not had time for these yet.
Touk smiled shyly at them. “It is magnificent,” said his mother, and Touk blushed a deep violet with pleasure.
“Next I will lay a path around the edge of the pool, so that my visitors need not pick their way through brambles and broken rock.” They turned back to look at the water, gleaming through the trees. Touk stood one step down, one hand on the young tree beside him, where he had retreated while he awaited his audience’s reaction; and Maugie stood near him. As they were, he was only a head taller than she, and Erana noticed for the first time, as the late afternoon sun shone in their faces, that there was a resemblance between them. Nothing in feature perhaps, except that their eyes were set slanting in their faces, but much in expression. The same little half-smiles curled the corners of both their mouths at the moment, though Maugie lacked Touk’s splendidly curved fangs.
“But I did not want to put off this day any longer, for today we can celebrate two things together.”
“A happy birthday, Erana,” said Maugie, and Erana blinked, startled.
“I had forgotten.”
“You are seventeen today,” Maugie said.
Erana repeated, “I had forgotten.” But when she met Touk’s turquoise eyes, suddenly the little smile left his face and some other emotion threatened to break through; but he dropped his eyes and turned his face away from her, and his hand trailed slowly down the bole of the tree. Erana was troubled and hurt, for he was her best friend, and she stared at his averted shoulder. Maugie looked from one to the other of them, and began to walk toward the house.
It was not as merry an occasion as it had been planned, for something was bothering Touk, and Erana hugged her hurt to herself and spoke only to Maugie. They had a silent, if vast, supper around the new-laid fire, sitting cross-legged on the floor, for Touk had not yet built any furniture. Maugie interrupted the silence occasionally to praise some detail she noticed, or ask some question about curtains or carpeting, which she had promised to provide. Her first gift to the new house already sat on the oak mantelpiece: a bowl of potpourri, which murmured through the sharper scents of the fire and the richer ones of the food.
Into a longer silence than most, Erana said abruptly, “This is a large house for only one man.”
The fire snapped and hissed; the empty room magnified the sound so that they were surrounded by fire. Touk said, “Troll. One troll.”
Erana said, “Your mother—”
“I am human, yes, but witch blood is not quite like other human blood,” said Maugie.
“And I am my father’s son anyway,” said Touk. He stretched one hand out to the fire, and spread his fingers; they were webbed. The firelight shone through
the delicate mesh of capillaries.
“Your father?”
“My father was a troll of the north, who—”
“Who came south for the love of a human witch-woman,” said Maugie gravely.
Erana again did not ask a question, but the silence asked it for her. “He died thirty years ago; Touk was only four. Men found him, and … he came home to the garden to die.” Maugie paused. “Trolls are not easily caught; but these men were poachers, and trolls are fond of birds. He lost his temper.”
Touk shivered, and the curling hair down his spine erected and then lay flat again; Erana thought she would not wish to see him lose his temper. She said slowly, “And yet you stayed here.”
“It is my home,” Maugie said simply; “it is the place I was happy, and, remembering, I am happy again.”
“And I have never longed for the sight of my own kind,” said Touk, never raising his eyes from the fire. “I might have gone north, I suppose, when I was grown; but I would miss my river, and the birds of the north are not my friends.”
Erana said, “My family?”
“You are a woodcutter’s daughter,” Maugie said, so quietly that Erana had to lean toward her to hear her over the fire’s echoes. “I … did him a favor, but he, he had … behaved ill; and I demanded a price. My foster daughter, dearer than daughter, it was a trick and I acknowledge it.…”
She felt Maugie’s head turn toward her, but Touk stared steadfastly at the hearth. “You always wanted a daughter,” Erana said, her words as quiet as Maugie’s had been, and her own eyes fixed on Maugie’s son, who swallowed uncomfortably. “You wish that I should marry your son. This house he has built is for his wife.”
Maugie put out a hand. “Erana, love, surely you—”
Touk said, “No, Mother, she has not guessed; has never guessed. I have seen that it has never touched her mind, for I would have seen if it had. And I would not be the one who forced her to think of it.” Still he looked at the flames, and now, at last, Erana understood why he had not met her eyes that afternoon.
She stood up, looked blindly around her. “I—I must think.”
Maugie said miserably, “Your family—they live in the village at the edge of the forest, south and east of here. He is the woodcutter; she bakes bread for the villagers. They have four daughters and four sons.…”
Erana found her way to the door, and left them.
Her feet took her back to the witch’s garden, the home she had known for her entire life. She had wondered, fleetingly, once she understood that Maugie was not her mother, who her blood kin might be; but the question had never troubled her, for she was happy, loving and loved. It was twilight by the time she reached the garden; numbly she went to the house and fetched a shawl and a kerchief, and into the kerchief she put food, and then went back into the garden and plucked a variety of useful herbs, ones she understood, and tied the kerchief around them all. She walked out of the garden, and set her feet on a trail that no one had used since a woodcutter had followed it for the last time seventeen years before.
She walked for many days. She did not pause in the small village south and east of the witch’s garden; she did not even turn her head when she passed a cottage with loaves of fresh bread on shelves behind the front windows, and the warm smell of the bread assailed her in the street. She passed through many other small villages, but she kept walking. She did not know what she sought, and so she kept walking. When she ran out of food, she did a little simple doctoring to earn more, and then walked on. It was strange to her to see faces that were not Maugie’s or Touk’s, for these were the only faces she had ever seen, save those of the forest beasts and birds; and she was amazed at how eagerly her simple herbcraft was desired by these strangers. She found some herbs to replace the ones she used in the fields and forests she passed, but the finest of them were in the garden she had left behind.
The villages grew larger, and became towns. Now she heard often of the king, and occasionally she saw a grand coach pass, and was told that only those of noble blood rode in such. Once or twice she saw the faces of those who rode within, but the faces looked no more nor less different from any of the other human faces she saw, although they wore more jewels.
Erana at last made her way to the capital city, but the city gates bore black banners. She wondered at this, and inquired of the gate guard, who told her that it was because the king’s only son lay sick. And because the guard was bored, he told the small shabby pedestrian that the king had issued a proclamation that whosoever cured the prince should have the king’s daughter in marriage, and half the kingdom.
“What is the prince’s illness?” Erana asked, clutching her kerchief.
The guard shrugged. “A fever; a wasting fever. It has run many days now, and they say he cannot last much longer. There is no flesh left on his bones, and often he is delirious.”
“Thank you,” said Erana, and passed through the gates. She chose the widest thoroughfare, and when she had come some distance along it, she asked a passerby where the king’s house lay; the woman stared at her, but answered her courteously.
The royal gate too was draped in black. Erana stood before it, hesitating. Her courage nearly failed her, and she turned to go, when a voice asked her business. She might still have not heeded it, but it was a low, growly, kind voice, and it reminded her of another voice dear to her; and so she turned toward it. A guard in a silver uniform and a tall hat smiled gently at her; he had young daughters at home, and he would not wish any of them to look so lost and worn and weary. “Do not be frightened. Have you missed your way?”
“N-no,” faltered Erana. “I—I am afraid I meant to come to the king’s house, but now I am not so sure.”
“What is it the king or his guard may do for you?” rumbled the guard.
Erana blushed. “You will think it very presumptuous, but—but I heard of the prince’s illness, and I have some … small … skill in healing.” Her nervous fingers pulled her kerchief open, and she held it out toward the guard. The scent of the herbs from the witch’s garden rose into his face and made him feel young and happy and wise.
He shook his head to clear it. “I think perhaps you have more than small skill,” he said, “and I have orders to let all healers in. Go.” He pointed the way, and Erana bundled her kerchief together again clumsily and followed his gesture.
The king’s house was no mere house, but a castle. Erana had never seen anything like it before, taller than trees, wider than rivers; the weight of its stones frightened her, and she did not like walking up the great steps and under the vast stone archway to the door and the liveried man who stood beside it, nor standing in their gloom as she spoke her errand. The liveried man received her with more graciousness and less kindness than the silver guard had done, and he led her without explanation to a grand chamber where many people stood and whispered among themselves like a forest before a storm. Erana felt the stone ceiling hanging over her, and the stone floor jarred her feet. At the far end of the chamber was a dais with a tall chair on it, and in the chair sat a man.
“Your majesty,” said Erana’s guide, and bowed low; and Erana bowed as he had done, for she understood that one makes obeisance to a king, but did not know that women were expected to curtsey. “This … girl … claims to know something of leechcraft.”
The whispering in the chamber suddenly stilled, and the air quivered with the silence, like the forest just before the first lash of rain. The king bent his heavy gaze upon his visitor, but when Erana looked back at him, his face was expressionless.
“What do you know of fevers?” said the king; his voice was as heavy as his gaze, and as gloomy as the stones of his castle, and Erana’s shoulders bowed a little beneath it.
“Only a little, your majesty,” she said, “but an herb I carry”—and she raised her kerchief—“does the work for me.”
“If the prince dies after he suffers your tending,” said the king in a tone as expressionless as his face, “you will
die with him.”
Erana stood still a moment, thinking, but her thoughts had been stiff and uncertain since the evening she had sat beside a first-laid fire in a new house, and the best they could do for her now was to say to her, “So?” Thus she answered: “Very well.”
The king raised one hand, and another man in livery stepped forward, his footsteps hollow in the thick silence. “Take her to where the prince lies, and see that she receives what she requires and … do not leave her alone with him.”
The man bowed, turned, and began to walk away; he had not once glanced at Erana. She hesitated, looking to the king for some sign; but he sat motionless, his gaze lifted from her and his face blank. Perhaps it is despair, she thought, almost hopefully: the despair of a father who sees his son dying. Then she turned to follow her new guide, who had halfway crossed the long hall while she stood wondering, and so she had to hasten after to catch him up. Over her soft footsteps she heard a low rustling laugh as the courtiers watched the country peasant run from their distinguished presence.
The guide never looked back. They came at last to a door at which he paused, and Erana paused panting behind him. He opened the door reluctantly. Still without looking around, he passed through it and stopped. Erana followed him, and went around him, to look into the room.
It was not a large room, but it was very high; and two tall windows let the sunlight in, and Erana blinked, for the corridors she had passed through had been grey, stone-shadowed. Against the wall opposite the windows was a bed, with a canopy, and curtains pulled back and tied to the four pillars at its four corners. A man sat beside the bed, three more sat a little distance from it, and a man lay in the bed. His hands lay over the coverlet, and the fingers twitched restlessly; his lips moved without sound, and his face on the pillow turned back and forth.
Erana’s guide said, “This is the latest … leech. She has seen the king, and he has given his leave.” The tone of his voice left no doubt of his view of this decision.
A Knot in the Grain and Other Stories Page 8
