by Katy Moran
“Red, don’t!” Helith was saying.
“What?” Lark sat up, letting her bare feet dangle off the branch. “Ow! I’ve just been stung!”
Essa looked down. Red was leaning against the crab-apple tree, arm raised to throw another stone.
“Oh, do you stop, Red! We’ll all be stung to bits!” cried Helith. Red made to throw the stone at her instead and, squealing like piglets, Helith and Freo jumped to their feet, and ran to the other end of the orchard.
“Cole, stop him!” shouted Lark.
Cole shrugged. “Leave it, Red,” he said. “There’ll be a fuss if you raise up all the bees.”
“You like that half-breed sitting up there with your sister, then?” Red said, and threw another stone.
The buzzing grew louder, and Essa said, “I might be a half-breed, but at least I’m not a fool.” A flash of white-hot anger shot through him – he wanted to leap down from the tree and drive his fist into Red’s sneering face. But he could not move: it was as if he were no longer in his own body, but part of the bee-folk: scores of them all thinking with the same mind so that really they were one creature.
Go for him.
The bee-folk rose up in a cloud. They hung there for a moment, a dark smear against the summer sky. No one spoke. Then, as if obeying a command, the bees drifted towards Red. He got up and started running, but the bees only followed him, as if he was on fire and they were the smoke. Helith and Freo went after him, shrieking with laughter. Lark climbed down from the tree and followed them.
Did I do that? Essa thought, heart hammering, and then told himself not to be daft. It was Red’s fault, throwing stones at a bees’ nest.
Cole turned to Essa. “Now you’ve done it,” he said. “Come on, we’d better go after them. I don’t want my sister getting in a fight with Red.”
“But I didn’t do anything!”
“You don’t normally lie, I know that,” Cole said.
“I didn’t!”
But Cole was already sprinting towards the yard, so Essa went after him, flooded with a strange, hot panic.
They found some of the older ones slouching against the weaving-shed wall, flushed with the day’s work out in the fields, sharing a cup of cider. A couple of the girls had spindles and were idly twiddling grey wool into threads. Most of them did not even deign to look up at Essa and Cole.
“If you’re looking for my brother, he went into the smithy, chased by a gaggle of screaming girls and scores of bees,” said Starling, smiling. She was merry and kind, and Essa often found it hard to believe she was Red’s sister. Starling was pregnant. They said the baby would come before midsummer but it hadn’t yet. She leant back into the arms of Ariulf, who had put the child in her, and he rested both hands on the rounded lump of her belly.
“What did you do to the bees?” Ariulf took a swig of cider and passed the cup to one of the others. He was fifteen summers old and bright-faced, and he wore the ring of the Wolf Folk on his finger. Essa longed to be like him.
“Nothing,” Essa said.
“You know what bees are like, Uncle.” Cole grabbed Essa’s arm, hissing, “Come on!”
Inside the smithy, they found Red climbing up the woodpile after Helith and Freo, who were now weeping and laughing at the same time, and Lark swiping at his legs, yelling, “Leave them alone, it’s not their fault you made yourself look like a chicken-head!”
Essa slammed the door behind them and, kicking Lark away, Red came barrelling across the smithy towards him.
“You half-bred elvish dog-son!” Red shouted, shoving Essa to the floor. “You think you’re so sly, don’t you, but I saw what you did!”
Breathless with the fall, Essa grabbed his legs and brought him crashing down, but Red just rolled over and drove his fist hard into Essa’s face so that the wet-iron taste of blood burst in his mouth.
“Let that teach you, half-breed,” said Red, scrabbling to his feet.
Essa sprang up and shoved him so hard that Red went sprawling, missing the forge-fire by a finger’s width. Suddenly, all went quiet. Why was Red smiling? Someone grabbed the back of Essa’s tunic and yanked him around.
It was Ariulf. “What do you think you are doing?” he shouted. He turned to the others. “Get outside – this is the smithy, it’s not for you to tear about in.” They fled and Ariulf shook Essa’s shoulder. “If you must fight with Red, do you stay away from the forge-fire. Go and find him and make your peace. There’s times I wonder if you even want to fit in here, Essa.”
Essa glared up at him, hissing, “Why should I fit in? My father’s going to come soon and take me away.”
Ariulf shook his head. “You’d do better to forget all about your father,” he said, and the sudden kindness in his voice made Essa even more angry and miserable, because he knew Ariulf really meant it.
He left, letting the big door swing shut behind him, and Essa sat down on the ground, heavy with sorrow. Tasik, he thought, when are you coming back? Only a few short months after Cai had left him here with the Wixna, word had come from the east that there was a new Wolf King – Seobert the Christian – and Essa had been sure that Cai would come riding back on Melyor, play his lyre one night in the hall of the Wixna and rise early the next morning, saying, Come, little cub, it is time we were away. But three years later, he had still not come.
Essa would never be one of the Wixna. How would it feel to be like Ariulf, wearing a gold ring for Hild and the Wolf Folk, sitting around the fire with the men and women, belonging? Maybe soon it would be Cole and Red’s turn to get gold rings from Hild, leaving Essa behind as a boy when they turned into men. What would he do then?
Essa felt that a wild, leaping fire burned within him and he longed to ride tearing across the marshes to dampen its touch. The barn, the weaving-hall and the smithy crowded in on him, always the same. Nothing ever changed here. Everyone got older and that was all. One of the girls would have a baby, or someone would die, like Red, Helith and Starling’s mother had done that winter, with a great swelling throbbing on her neck. But the Wixna were happy to live and die in their fortress with the sky sweeping above, and the rich dark fields, and the marshes glittering all around.
Essa was not like them; he would never be like them.
Tasik, he thought. Where are you?
He was trapped here, as though he were rolled up in a sheepskin, stuffed into some forgotten corner of the barn, and no matter how loud he shouted to be let free, no one would come.
I could leave this place. Essa pushed the thought away. What would he do, out in the wide wilderness by himself, away from the brightness of the hall? And what if Cai came back, and he was not here?
He would just have to wait. There was no other choice.
Two days later. A killing in Wixna-land
ESSA lay on his belly in the grass, the sun warm on his bare back as he watched Lark run down the meadow with her bow bouncing against her shoulders.
He had been forbidden to go on the horse-hunt.
Cole and Red had ridden out that morning alongside Ariulf, and they would come back laden with boastful stories and glory while Essa stayed behind with the women and children.
“Is it because of what happened with the bees?” Essa had asked Hild the night before. “I told you it wasn’t my fault!”
Hild had sighed, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, but really, my honey, you’re too young to go riding out in the marshes, and I’ve a misgiving about it.” She shivered, pulling the cloak tighter around her shoulders, even though it was a warm evening. “You don’t mind it, do you, dear heart?”
“No!” Essa said. “But I know it’ll take them twice as long without me, that’s all. They’ll be sorry you didn’t let me.” And he stalked off across the yard to the stables. Essa had spent the first nine years of his life in the saddle, and he often felt more at home out here with the horse-folk than he did in the hall. The horses sensed his coming, and they all stepped forwards in their stalls so they could nose his face
with their soft, warm muzzles. Moving from one to another, he blew down his nose into their nostrils, just as Cai had taught him long ago, and he felt their warm breath on his face.
Tomorrow you’ll have a gallop in the marsh-lands, he thought, and a new herd-leader will come from there to put foals in you. And the mares tossed their heads, and put back their ears as if they’d heard what he had been thinking.
Kept behind in the village, Essa was meant to be in the yard, throwing his spear at a sack of hay hanging outside the smithy. Hild would not even let him go beyond the village walls to pull up weeds in the barley field. Lark should have been in the weaving-shed – everyone’s clothes seemed to have worn through at once, and there was only a scrap of linen left in the great lavender-scented wooden kist in the hall. Usually the Wixna girls practised spear-throwing and swordplay with the boys, but not when there were clothes to be made.
A woman can die with a spear in her belly just as easily as a man, Hild would say. So there’s no reason you girls should not know how to defend yourselves.
But the sky was wide and blue; it was the wrong sort of day for throwing spears at sacks, and it was the wrong sort of day for being shut inside with the women and the looms. So, when Hild was in the orchard feeding the pigs and talking to the bees, Essa whistled for his dog, Fenrir, and ran with Lark out of the village gate.
It was good being out here, with Fenrir lying by his side, guarding the two ducks Essa had shot, but he could not shake an uneasy sense that something out of the ordinary was going to happen. The feeling had been with him all day. Did he feel guilty for disobeying Hild, he asked himself. No – in a way, it was her fault he’d sneaked out of the village. Had she let him go with the men, he would not have needed to disobey anyone. There would be trouble when he got back, but that was hardly out of the ordinary.
So what was the cause of this unease, this creeping feeling that spread across his shoulders and down his spine, chilling his skin, even under the midday sun? What did it remind him of?
It’s like being watched, he thought. It’s like when you think you’re alone, and suddenly you feel it in the back of your neck – and when you look up, someone’s watching you.
He told himself not to be daft; there was no one in the meadow but him and Lark. He watched as she reached the far end of the meadow, white-blonde hair flying out behind her as she ran. When she got to the coppice, she stopped and turned around, pacing out thirty long steps. Lark was a good archer – even Ariulf grudgingly admitted she was better than him – but it was a long shot.
The jay had no idea what was coming, perched in the green shade of the beech leaves. Beside him, Essa felt Fenrir tense, her hard body quivering with excitement. He dug his fingers into the thick, brindled fur under her ears, watching Lark fit an arrow to her bow.
Calm, girl, calm. He could feel Fenrir’s need to run, to chase, she had seen the girl with the flying claw that plucked birds from the sky; she knew there would soon be a trail to follow. The jay’s blue tail feathers flashed, jewel-like, and it darted from its perch, wings spread, rising, rising. Essa closed his eyes, and for a breath he was the jay, or the jay was him, and he saw the dry meadow dropping far below. He felt the thrill as wings spread, catching a warm shelf of air that rose and rose.
It was as if his spirit had somehow slipped the ties holding it close to his body and, wandering, had briefly occupied the jay.
Essa saw what the jay saw: the meadow a golden-green blur far below, the sheep and cattle grazing Long Acre, the marshes spreading out to the east. He saw the mere, a flat shining coin of water. Then the coppice, and something else: a dark crouching shape, down beneath the feathery green canopy of beech leaves. It was a man, and he was hiding.
A stranger.
In a breath, Essa was back in his own body, rigid with fear.
What just happened? he thought. It’s just like with the bees. Suddenly, Cai was at the front of his mind again, his black eyes mocking but full of knowledge, and Essa wished he was there to explain.
At that moment, Essa heard Lark suck in a breath, the soft twang of the bowstring relaxing, her arrow hissing through the air. Fenrir let out a whine, hungry for the chase. Essa watched the arrow shoot up, a slender claw, dark against the blue sky, and then it was gone, out of sight. The jay banked and wheeled back towards the coppice, seeking shelter amongst the trees. Lark’s arrow struck, plucking the bird from its sky-path. For a moment, Essa felt a flash of darkness, of nothing, and he knew what it was like to be a jay, free under the sky, and then dead.
Lark was running back towards the trees.
The dark figure crouching among the beeches sprang into Essa’s mind and, in that instant, he knew that his spirit really had left his body, flown with the jay, and shown him a stranger hiding in the coppice. “No!” Essa yelled. “Lark, come back!” With Fenrir at his side, he broke into a sprint, still shouting at Lark to stop. But she did not seem to hear, and in a moment, she had melted away into the trees.
Fenrir was howling now, sensing a chase, and Essa crashed through the whip-thin beech saplings, hardly feeling it when they lashed his skin. “Lark!” he shouted. “I think there’s someone—”
Then, there she was, running towards him, screaming, “Essa, there’s a—”
And someone grabbed him from behind, squeezing the breath from his throat. Choking, wild with fright, Essa looked down – he could see a man’s arm around his neck, thickly muscled, grained with coarse brown hairs, freckled by the sun. He heard Fenrir barking frenziedly, and wished there was something he could do to ease her fear.
Essa snatched the dagger from his belt and plunged it backwards, hard into the soft belly of the man holding him. There was a gasping, bubbling noise, and Essa’s sight darkened as the man’s grip tightened around his neck. He could still hear Lark screaming, and wanted to tell her to run but could not breathe. He felt a hand grab his, hot and slippery with blood, trying to wrest the knife from his grasp. Without thinking, Essa tightened his grip on the handle and plunged the knife backwards again. This time, he was dragged over as the man stumbled and fell, and Essa landed on his body.
Shouting out in horror, Essa scrambled up, whipping around. Lark grabbed him, sobbing, and they stared down at the man on the floor. His tunic was dark and wet with blood. Essa dropped to his knees, saying, “Who are you? Who are you?”
“It’s in tha face.” The man gasped, coughing up dark blood. “Anyone can see—”
And then he died.
“Run!” Essa grabbed Lark’s arm, hauling her to her feet. Her brown legs were splashed with blood, her linen tunic creased and smeared.
They tore out of the coppice and back across the meadow, hand in hand.
The gate had been shut and bolted again, and they had to bang on it with their fists, yelling to be let in. It was Starling who came, dropping her spindle as they rushed past her. At first, she didn’t even seem to notice anything amiss, saying, “Where have you been? Hild and your ma are spitting fire, Lark!” But then she looked at him, and saw them both covered in blood, and her eyes were full of suspicion.
Lark threw herself into Starling’s arms, and Starling stared at Essa, her dark freckles standing out vividly as the colour drained from her cheeks. “What have you done?” she cried. “What did you do to her?”
“It wasn’t him, it wasn’t!” Lark sobbed but, burning under Starling’s accusation, Essa ran for the stables, hardly knowing where he was going, just wishing more than anything that the last three years could be peeled away, and he would find his father waiting for him there with Melyor.
Essa sat alone in the stable, shivering. His neck ached where the strangler’s fingers had pressed, trying to squeeze the life out of him.
He was taboo.
He stared at the circle Onela White-beard had drawn around him on the dusty ground with the end of his stick. Essa knew that if he stepped outside it, even for a moment, the dead man would find him. He was not even allowed to see Fenrir, lest the spir
it wreak mischief with her.
He was alone with the ghost, and he sensed its cold presence all around him. He could not stop shaking.
He flinched when he heard soft footsteps behind him, in the weed-tangled patch between the back of the stable and the foot of the village wall. Someone was coming by stealth. Was it the spirit, he wondered. Did spirits leave footsteps?
There was a loose board in the back wall of the stable where one of the horse-folk had kicked through the planks when she had colic. Essa could hear something scrabbling at it, their breath coming in panicky starts. Not a spirit then. Spirits did not panic. Not a spirit, but Lark.
“Sssh,” she said, pushing the board up and easing herself through the space as if she were a cat. She was wearing a clean tunic, and her eyes were red with spent tears. She crept quietly across the floor until she sat right by him in the circle, her arms around his shoulders, her hair warm against his face.
“Get out,” Essa said, trying not to look at her. “His spirit will find you if you’re near me.”
“I’m not afraid of the spirit,” she answered, and Essa knew she was lying.
“Who was he?” Lark whispered.
Essa shrugged, heavy with misery. “I don’t know.”
“Everyone’s saying he must have been a Mercian scout seeing where we run the cattle,” Lark said. “But he knew your face—” She broke off, staring at Essa as though she had never seen him before. “Essa—”
“Listen, swear you won’t tell anyone what he said.” Hild was careful enough of him as it was. If she heard about this, he’d not be let out alone again. The thought of being trapped within the village walls scared Essa more than the chance there was someone else out there wanting to take his life.
He knows me. But how? Essa was certain he’d never laid eyes on the man before. It’s in tha face, he’d said. Essa pictured the blurry reflection he had seen on the surface of the mere when the wind was quiet, and there were no ripples. What had the man seen there? Sin? Did that man think Essa had done something so terrible that it showed in his face, and meant he had to die? Essa had almost forgotten about sin: they never spoke of it in the village, and their gods, the Aesir, were just as prone to lying, killing and theft as ordinary men and women. But Essa felt sure that he had sinned now.
