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 sa
w 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.
CHAPTER TEN
Wild Beasts
We turned away from the riverside and entered the forest. To my confusion, Torun seemed quite content to remain in silence. He walked beside me without looking at me. Perhaps my bodily presence was sufficient to capture—refracted—the privacy and intimacy he missed with Bettina. He whistled in answer to the larks and flycatchers and nuthatches. Rattled by the memory of the scream, I tried to pay attention to what was around me. The trees were different from the towering giants of Fenlen Forest. As we ascended, the elms and beech trees with budding, spreading branches gave way to the whispering green needles of spruces and pines. Now we heard different birds—the song of chaffinches, the pok-pok-pok of a lazy woodpecker. These trees, these birds, sounded different…felt different from the forest across the river.
I grew uneasy.
I had spent long summer days without human company, wandering in Fenlen Forest, but I would come home to chatter with Ma or Mrs. Helder at dusk. Now I had been barely communicating for more than a week. Torun was the only soul I could hope would understand me.
The path was steep here, but nothing that would have stopped a person from tossing a few comments to their companion. Yet he was silent. I wondered about his whispered battle with Melina. He had seen Sida and he knew she meant something to me. So why wouldn’t he acknowledge me?
As the incline began to level off into a plateau, I thought of his silence another way. The conversation with Melina had forced him to remember that if he looked at me full on, rather than from the corner of his eye, he would not find Bettina looking back at him.
I gave a “chuh” of irritation at my own sentimentality. It quite ruined whatever spell he might have wished to cast from my presence, because he finally turned to me as we entered from the forest into the tall grass of the pasture.
“Yes?” he was almost smiling now.
I did not want to plunge him back into sadness and I had important business at hand.
“Is this where you saw Sida?”
“What is this word? Is it uksarv in Gersan? Is it one uksarv or many uksarv? For us, there is just one word.”
I shook my head. “Sida is my uksarv,” I explained. “She’s been…mine…and special since she was very little.”
I looked away, around at the field. It was larger than I expected, with just one tall, bare deciduous tree in the middle. The tall grass was empty. There was a small stream winding its way down the southeast edge that pooled for a little and meandered into the forest. All was quiet but for the rustle of wind kissing the grass and the tops of the trees and the occasional bright, sharp chirp of a meadow pipit.
“When did you see her?” M
y voice was quiet.
“The second day. When the sun was going down.”
“Why? Why would she show herself to you?”
He seemed to fold into himself.
I thought of the first unicorn I ever saw, of my deep misery. Of feeling lost and abandoned. Oh, I knew why a unicorn would be drawn to him, why Sida would be curious and interested. I looked down at his long hands, the strong knuckles and the pink joints of his fingers. I wanted to reach out and take his hand in my own. I wanted to break his loneliness.
I breathed in to make myself brave enough to reach for him, and the faint sound of in-taken air made him look up at me.
I wished I hadn’t seen the pain in his tense brow and bitten lower lip. I folded my arms and tucked my hands in my armpits.
Our little moment of something like friendship was gone. I might have asked him to name things for me in his language, so I could learn more of his words. We might have turned back and not seen a thing.
Instead, we stood there in silence.
And that was when we heard the first rush of fleet-footed animals on the move at the edge of the pasture farthest from us.
Unicorns are silent creatures, and I had never seen so many at once. An entire herd. There were fifteen at least. Far fewer than Torun’s sheep, but somehow the group seemed fuller. These creatures had a subtle golden dapple to them, like the colour of sunlight through fall leaves or old parchment held up to a candle. Their horns were dark at the base and curved slightly up, like the blade of a sabre. The sound of them on the move was like the sound of a hand smoothing velvet, like pouring water over pebbles.
I wasn’t near enough to see Sida among them, so I started to run towards them. Torun caught me around the waist with his long-fingered hands and drew me back behind a tree.
“Wait!”
His arms were narrow and muscular, but having touched me, he tried to keep space between us. I ducked under his arms and sprinted forward.
When I was three steps in, I stopped abruptly and was glad that Torun was frozen in his place behind me.
Sida was not among them. None of these uksarv were her particular quicksilver grey; none of them had her knobby knees or woolly coat. I shivered. These were all strangers to me.
The Changeling of Fenlen Forest Page 9
