by Jane Stain
But he didn’t let go of her hand.
“Nay, the Druids always were telling us to make more brochs down here in the center of the land. I do think they knew. After all, they have time travel, so they probably did know. And now that we have proof of that in you, perhaps the chieftains with listen to them. You must admit, this being an island, defending the shoreline makes sense, aye?”
She squeezed his hand in apology.
“Aye, it does make sense, and I can tell you with assurance that far more raiders are coming, from―”
He returned her hand squeeze, pulling her around to gently put his mouth over her lips for a moment.
“Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I want to think I can make my own future, understand?”
She was yearning to deepen their kiss even after he had pulled away.
“I do understand. Must never tell you the future. But sometimes I may not be able to help myself. I will try, all right?”
He put his arm around her then, hugging her close as they walked, just like he had when she first arrived. Good.
She didn’t want to risk her mouth saying anything else that might offend him, so she just looked around, drinking in the movements of his people, whom she did want to be her people. Unlike yesterday, they definitely were preparing to split apart and leave this place. All the children were herding animals now, as were many of the adults. They herded sheep and goats and cattle, enough to keep a thousand people fed. The children herded with sticks, and their dogs helped ― the oddest looking sheepdogs Jaelle had ever seen. In addition to children and herds of animals, there were adults pulling carts heaped full of bedding.
A man of about forty stopped in front of the two of them, wearing his woad determinedly, rather than joyfully. He nodded at Breth with respect, then turned a questioning look toward Jaelle.
This time, Breth didn’t move on.
“Etharnan, I want you to know this is Jaelle, my love.”
Whoa, his love! Had he really said that?
Etharnan held out his forearm. This was new. She looked at Breth to gauge his reaction.
He nodded the slightest toward Etharnan.
So she reached out her arm and they shook, much the same as business people shook hands in her time. But she noticed that while clutching sword arms, neither of them could reach their swords, not even with their left hands.
The fortyish Pict was speaking.
“I am honored to know she is your love, and I wish you much joy of each other.”
Breth bowed his head to the man.
“I thank you.”
And from then on, he introduced her in the same manner to everyone who stopped to talk.
Her heart swelled with hope, and yet she still didn’t dare allow him to ask her again if she would stay beyond today, so she plied him with questions of her own on what was usually a safe topic, asking him about his work.
“Can you tell me what the meeting of the chieftains was about?”
When he didn’t answer right away, she looked up at him, anxious that she might have committed a faux pas.
But his eyes held a faraway look that told her he was pensive about something other than her question, and when he saw her looking at him, he smiled at her reassuringly.
“Aye. A new chieftain has come up out of nowhere, swearing he will unite the clans whether we like it or not. He’s given us a week to join him, or he says he’ll take us by force. I say he and his ragtag crew are no better than the barbarians, and we should have nothing to do with him. But other chieftains are buying into the load of dung he has to sell.”
Ah, asking about work had been a good move. Breth was back to his normal enthusiasm. She encouraged it as best she could, showing interest in her face as she rushed to keep up with his suddenly longer strides.
“I take it this is something new, the idea of all the clans joining up?”
He gave her a little side hug, as if to claim her.
“Yes. And I was on the fence about it at first. However, Father made me see that the larger a clan gets, the fewer folk have a say in what the leader decides, until almost everyone is out of the leadership circle. He’s right, and I plan to stand by him and resist this Drest.”
Breth‘s parents came up from behind and joined them.
Jaelle felt her knees shake a tiny bit.
But Breth’s dad was charming, in an ancient-world kind of way.
“You don’t know how glad I am you came back to us, Jaelle. Breth here has been missing you something awful.”
Breth actually blushed a little! It was fun to see him treated as a younger man. This was a side of him she hadn’t seen before, and she was enjoying it.
He regained his composure soon enough and shook his head teasingly at his father.
“I imagine you’d miss Mother if she were gone for two moon cycles too, eh?”
Breth’s arm around Jaelle’s waist was more firm and snug, and his hand caressed her hip with a tenderness that she would never have guessed he possessed, fierce warrior that he was.
But when she turned to look at him, she saw a face conflicted. He was enjoying this repartee with his father, but it made him sad. Why?
Chapter 10
Amid all the people scurrying this way and that with preparations for the long trek ahead to the next broch, Jaelle was still headed to the sacred grove to get her woad on. She turned to Almba with a question in her eyes. Why did joking with his father make Breth sad?
But Jaelle found Breth’s mother staring at her accusingly, and with the hurt of betrayal. ‘How could you put our son through such misery?’ her look said. ‘You should know better, you inconsiderate woman.’
Jaelle couldn’t take the heat of that stare. She had to turn away, warrior or not. And then she wondered. She looked at the woman’s husband for reassurance as she spoke, and got it.
“Almba, in your younger days, were you a warrior too?”
At his encouraging nod, Jaelle snuck a look at his wife.
Aw, that had been a good question to ask. The older woman’s face softened considerably, and she threw her shoulders back and held her chin up in the warrior’s stance, proud and with a different kind of fierceness once again.
“Aye, of course I was. One of the best.”
She and her husband shared a look that said they were remembering years of fighting together, defending each other’s backs and consoling each other through losses. He caressed her face — which of course was unadorned with the woad, seeing as how they were both past the age of fighting.
From her warrior stance, Almba started to appraise Jaelle as a warrior ― and stopped short. Instead of the testiness that had been on her face before, the older and wiser version of the warrior acknowledged the younger and stronger version with grudging admiration.
This all took place in a few glances.
Breth’s mother gave Jaelle a grudging nod.
“Aye, I think you know I was. I daresay I wasn’t as good as you.”
Apparently, that was all the older woman was willing to give. As soon as she had said it, she turned away and walked on in front of them, more quickly than she needed to.
Her husband rushed on to join her, turning back with a warm apology on his face, a look that said, ‘Don’t worry, she likes you. She’ll come around. Just give it time.’
But when Jaelle turned to Breth for reassurance, he was still looking at his mother, and his unschooled face told a different story.
This brought back the memory of Jaelle’s last day living with her own parents.
Mom and Dad had been drinking as usual, and also as usual, you could hear their fight throughout the whole house, probably even out in the street. But the subject of their fight took a new turn this time.
“She’s a grown-up now. She can go live on her own and stop mooching off us.”
“She has a job, let’s just charge her rent. Keep her here until she gets married—”
“With that no-good boyfriend she has
? She’ll be here the rest of her life while he gallivants all over the world with that fair of his family’s—“
“Well if you want her gone, you go throw her out.”
But Jaelle wasn’t going to give them enough time to get around to that. She’d dealt with her drunken parents all her life, so she would show herself the door. She was 18 today, and she hadn’t gotten so much as a “Happy birthday.” And now this.
There were still three months of high school to get through, but her plans to move out had just been moved up.
As usual, her parents were holed up in their bedroom, where they thought their drinking was a secret. Ha.
It was really simple to stick a chair under their doorknob while she packed up all her things — which fit in one suitcase. Then she removed the chair and ran through the front door with her phone out, calling her friend Amber to see if her parents would let her stay over for a few months.
Blood might be thicker than water, but what use was that anyway? The tears streaming down her face were definitely water, and they felt far more real than any connection through her blood.
Jaelle gave Breth an appreciative glance — this time not because of the delicious splendor of his naked flesh displayed through the woad clay decorations. No, this time she appreciated his stalwart confidence.
Breth’s parents were tougher than most, being the chieftains of their entire clan. He was only the battle chieftain, under their thumbs most of the time. It had to chafe at him, yet he handled them with finesse.
Seeing her looking at him so, he turned more toward her as they walked to the Grove.
“I see you’re happy here.”
She pursed her lips to keep from smiling, but it didn’t quite work. Her grin burst out.
Why did he have to be so darned confident in himself? It was sexier than all the cologne and fancy clothes and fancy cars – heck, even all the money — modern men flashed around to impress women.
Since the smile had broken out anyway, she put on her own brand of self-confidence and turned it around on him.
“It appears you’re happy with me as well.”
For some reason, this brought out a look of extra determination on his face.
“I could be, if you stayed here.”
This again?
“I want to stay with you. I do. We’ve been over this. It’s too soon—”
He threw his arm around her waist as they walked, pulling her as close to him as he could without smudging the woad designs. It was close enough. She could feel her resolve weakening with even this much body contact.
He let out a deep warm chuckle. It sounded like he knew being close to him befuddled her a bit. As he spoke, he nuzzled different parts of her with his chin.
“Aye, we have been over this, and all of me wants you to stay, needs you to stay. It’s urgent that you stay.”
He stopped them in the pathway and gently put his hands on both of her upper arms, waiting for her to gaze up into his blue eyes.
When she did, she saw yearning…
The last eyes she had known to hold such desperate need were her own, the night John told her he was leaving, that after ten years with her, he had fallen in love with another woman.
Jaelle was cooking, something she only did once in a while. She lived on frozen meals most of the time, now that she was grown. When she was a child looking after her drunken parents, she’d had to feed herself more often than not, so she didn’t enjoy being in the kitchen.
Lifting up the can she had holding her grandma’s cookbook open, she peered at the recipe one more time. Half a cup of flour. She measured it out carefully the way she’d been taught in school, using a knife to level the excess off the top of the measuring cup back into the bag.
And then she stood there holding it.
What do I do with this?
Back to the cookbook.
Gradually add flour to the drippings in the pan while stirring until gravy forms.
The gravy just forms?
Going to the stove, she smelled the fat starting to burn.
Darn it.
She grabbed the pan handle. She meant to just scoot the pan off the heat, but there were pots in the way: her potatoes and her green beans and her pudding.
How did other women manage to do this all the time?
There was a loud knock on the door of the tiny apartment she’d given notice on a week ago.
She was still holding the pan of drippings when she opened the door and John came in, storm clouds in his eyes.
“Put that down. We need to talk. Let’s sit down at the table.”
Before she could answer, he was storming into the kitchen, nothing but disgust on his face for the mess she was making.
How dare he?
“I’m finally cooking, and all you can do is complain?”
His ‘Sorry’ was correct, but not sincere.
Seeing red and giving herself a minute to collect her thoughts, she set the pan on the table and turned the burners off.
But when she saw him sitting there, she remembered what she saw in such a fussy man. Although small, he was wiry. His compact body was in the best shape it possibly could be. Hours of swordplay every day will do that. And although he was upset with her, he still looked her in the eye with the respect she deserved, something most men didn’t think women needed.
And then she remembered how she must look and ducked behind the fridge to wipe the sweat off her forehead with a dish towel and use the toaster like a mirror while she brushed flour out of her hair.
When she approached the table, John didn’t stand up like a courtly man. No, he looked her in the eye and nodded the slightest at her approach. It was a subtle thing that non-fighters might not recognize.
She appreciated it and did the same, but the back of her mind was troubled. It was going to be an epic fight, eh? One worthy of the warrior’s acknowledgment?
Okay. I’m up to it. This time, I’m ready for your arguments.
And then as it was wont to do, her mouth spouted off her arguments before he even made his, losing any advantage having prepared them might have given her.
“It was you who wanted me to cook, you know. I’m just fine with frozen dinners. And where have you been? You were supposed to be here an hour ago.”
Her hands had found their way to her hips all on their own as well.
I look like a shrew. One of my only advantages over him is my looks. Smile, Jaelle.
When she looked up into his eyes though, she saw that it wasn’t working this time.
His look was hard.
“The wedding’s off, Jaelle. There’s still time to cancel the caterer, right? We have three weeks, and he said two. We’ll lose the money for the hall and the decorations, but there’s still time to cancel the honeymoon trip and time to tell everybody to cancel their plane tickets if we start right now. Come on, let’s get this done.”
Breth’s eyes were looking at hers the same way hers had looked at John’s that night.
Pleading.
Nearly begging her to stay.
Chapter 11
Plenty of people and a whole flock of goats passed in front of him on the path to the sacred grove without incident, but Breth was annoyed when his appeal to Jaelle was interrupted by Morna.
Approaching with two of the other clan chieftains, Brude and Leo, she swaggered up to Breth in the headstrong way of a leader who wasn’t a fighter: head held high and shoulders back, never breaking eye contact, no caution, no hesitation.
He had to hand it to her; she’d come a long way from the shy little girl she once was, hiding behind her brother all the time at clan gatherings. But what did she want right now? He turned to her and the chieftains impatiently, with a question in his eyes.
She didn't make him wait. With command in her voice, she used the power trick of speaking just to him, as though Jaelle were someplace far off, not standing right next to him.
"She doesn't need to go down to the sacred grove. The
druids brought her here, so she should be doing their work, not the work of a warrior. I've come to take her with me over to the supply carts, where she can be of help translating the names of the foreign goods the clans are willing to trade with us, seeing how she’s such a language wizard. Leo and Brude here agree with me and have come along to help me escort her over there."
For the land’s sake, Morna had gotten good at suggestion. If this were about anyone other than Jaelle, he might have agreed, just to encourage and reward Morna for developing this skill so well.
But no. If he had any hope of Jaelle staying, he needed to stand with her against all challengers.
Putting on his own air of command, Breth put his arm around Jaelle and stood firm, refusing to step up and meet Morna and her entourage. He felt Jaelle relax against him with relief, and he squeezed her gently with reassurance, though he couldn’t do too much or he would smear his woad and anger the druids.
And instead of addressing Morna, he looked up and addressed the men. Two could play this game of pretending someone wasn't there.
"Is it true you don’t think a warrior should be prepared, Brude? Leo? Deoord has already given her the woad on two occasions. She wore it well and did our clan proud defending against the invader Marcus and his minions. What would be the reason for denying her the pleasure of helping to defend us on our trip to Broch Seven?"
Visibly rattled by his speaking over her head, Morna glared at Breth with something that wasn't quite hatred — she couldn't afford to show him that, seeing as how she hoped he would be her husband. Her shoulders shook a bit and she stood there with her hands on her hips in order to look as big as she could, which wasn't very big at all. She was trying, though. Good for her.
Brude stepped forward around her, a wizened old planning chieftain now. The man had been formidable in Breth’s youth, fighting off his share of Gaels. He’d thrown a spear farther than anyone else and had taught Breth how to throw one the way he did.
He gave Breth the warrior’s nod.
"Not all the druids say she was sent to us by them, Breth. The people murmur that she's just another invader, a spy sent to us—"
