Redwing

by Holly Bennett

  Well, he wouldn’t be making much money with that, especially with his haughty manner. He didn’t even acknowledge the few coppers that people tossed in his fiddle case but just stared into space as he played. Rowan had no qualms about setting up in his own corner with some real music.

  He was halfway across the square when a new sound stopped him. It pricked up the hair on the back on his neck and brought the gooseflesh out on his arms.

  Eyes wide, every ounce of his attention claimed, he turned back to the blond stranger.

  He had never heard such music. Jigs and reels and shuffles—toe-tapping, foot-stomping dance music—those he knew. And the slow airs—beautiful, keening melodies for love won and lost, laments and longings—he knew those as well. But he had never heard a fiddle sob and wail like this.

  The fiddle swooped up and held a long, tremulous note. And then, with a rhythmic sway like a woman’s hips rolling, it prowled down the minor scale and landed with a wild discord that was heartbreak and rage all at once. It was as though the mute pain that lay trapped in Rowan’s chest had at last been given a voice, and for a moment he was horrified to find himself giving way to tears.

  He pulled himself back into the music—gods above, it was mesmerizing. The tall blond musician was transformed in Rowan’s eyes, the hostility and bad manners forgotten. Rowan listened, motionless, through two long compositions, until his ear began to understand the unfamiliar sound.

  The crowd, he noticed, did not share his reaction. Their faces were startled or bemused, not transported. No one was rushing to fill the fiddle case. An idea—an idea that quickly grew as compelling as the music—came to him.

  Rowan hurried to the caravan and pulled out the skin drum. No time to check the tension—it would have to do. Grabbing the stool, he scurried back around the edge of the square, approaching the stranger from behind. Intent on his strange music, he didn’t notice Rowan until the smiles and pointing fingers of the passersby drew his attention.

  Rowan expected—and got—an indignant glare, but he just nodded and smiled and motioned to the other boy to continue. “Perhaps we can make a little more coin together,” he suggested. “You aren’t doing so well on your own.”

  It was like watching the ruff on a rooster rise and then smooth as the truth of Rowan’s words hit home. With a quick, surly nod, the fiddler returned to his playing. A few bars later, once he was sure of the rhythm, Rowan joined in.

  FOUR

  Rowan had wondered what he would do if his new partner refused to share their earnings, but the blond stranger divided up the coins scrupulously, waving away Rowan’s suggestion that he first take out those he had earned alone.

  “You were right. I did better this way.” He passed Rowan a handful of coins and curtly offered his name along with them. “I am Aydin.”

  “Rowan.”

  Aydin acknowledged the introduction with a nod and a smile that verged on a sneer.

  “Something funny about my name?” Aydin’s manners grated on Rowan as badly as his jigs.

  But the tall boy was shaking his head, waving his hand back and forth to smooth over Rowan’s annoyance.

  “No, no. I just find it odd—how you people name things after other things.”

  “What’s so odd about that?” Rowan had been named for a tree said in olden times to dance when a master musician played. It was a favored name in musical families, and Rowan had always been proud to bear it.

  “It’s not a proper name, is it? It’s something else’s name! Even your country—Prosper. It’s not a name, it’s just some childish wish that if you call a place a certain thing, then it will be so.”

  Irritated and strangely tongue-tied—how do you even argue whether a name is a name?—Rowan was about to retreat into surly silence when something Aydin had said wakened his curiosity, dormant these long lonely months.

  “Wait a minute. You said Prosper was my country. So where are you from?”

  Rowan had not noticed any particular accent in Aydin’s speech, but other observations were falling into place—his clothing, the golden tone to his skin that made him look like he’d just spent a summer outdoors. He was not especially surprised, then, at the reply.

  “I am Tarzine.” The tall boy grinned, looked conspiratorially up and down the square, and bent close to Rowan, his white-blond hair falling forward and screening his face. “Don’t tell anyone.”

  CURIOSITY AND LONELINESS made Rowan reluctant to part company, even with someone as abrasive as Aydin. And so he found himself suggesting that they pool their money and buy some food at the market for a shared dinner in the caravan.

  “So you live here?” asked Aydin as Rowan struggled with the rusty padlock at the door. The tone of cool disdain made Rowan regret his invitation.

  “I do now.” Rowan suppressed the urge to boast about how spacious and comfortable his family’s lodgings at Five Oaks, the estate of the Earl of East Brockwood, had been. In truth, that seemed a lifetime ago, or maybe only a wistful dream. He pushed open the door and turned to the older boy. “You don’t have to come in if it’s beneath you.”

  Aydin paid no mind to Rowan’s sharp reply. He stepped in, glanced up and down the length of the caravan and nodded slowly. “It’s better lodgings than I’ve had lately,” he said and flashed Rowan another of those disarming grins. “Last night I gave the scullery maid at the inn a copper to sneak me into the root cellar.”

  Rowan didn’t know what to make of the man. He sneered at everything, and then just when you were ready to plug him upside the head, you’d get that grin, as if it was all just a friendly joke. Not knowing what to say, he said nothing and instead busied himself with the stove and pots.

  Aydin had not been impressed with Rowan’s frugal market purchases of lentils, barley and onions, insisting on adding a hefty chunk of bacon, but he did not stint in the eating of it. Between Aydin and his huge dog, a stew that would have fed Rowan’s entire family and a couple of guests besides was soon reduced to an empty dog-licked pot. Blessedly, all that intense eating meant that Rowan was spared the inevitable questions until after.

  “We’ll have life stories over tea,” Aydin announced, rummaging in his pack and producing a crumpled, much-folded parchment envelope. “There’s a little left here.”

  “So let’s start with the caravan.” Aydin’s eyes again swept the length of the covered wagon, resting for a moment on the black stain on the floorboards. The sun was going down, but it was comfortable enough at the tiny table beside the stove, which Rowan had resolved to leave in its metal housing in the galley from now on. The evening was calm, and the dog, splayed out on the floor, didn’t mind serving as a footwarmer.

  “It’s not much of a house. Still, it’s not often you see a boy of—what, twelve years?”

  “Sixteen,” growled Rowan, adding one to his true count.

  “—in sole possession of a caravan, not to mention the mules and several valuable instruments. So I’m guessing this is your family’s—yes?”

  Rowan forced his mouth around the next words. “It was my family’s. They died early in the winter.”

  “Ah.” Aydin nodded, as though he had expected as much. He didn’t fall over himself to gush out his sympathy, and for that Rowan was grateful. “An accident?”

  Of course the nosy bugger wouldn’t leave it alone. Rowan sighed. Aydin did not backtrack (I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry…) but merely waited.

  “They died of the plague. It cropped up in the castle where my parents were the resident musicians, and we didn’t get out in time.”

  Now he had Aydin’s full attention, the ice-blue eyes round and probing.

  “And you didn’t get it?”

  “I did get it.” Rowan’s voice was flat, striving—and failing—to say the words without conjuring the memory. “I just didn’t die.”

  HE HAD BEEN TRYING TO BURY his father, Cashel, when he realized that he was sick himself. It was impossible work—Cashel had taken them far away from Five O
aks and down a rutted, overgrown trail leading deep into the woods so that they wouldn’t spread the disease if they were overcome. Now, with nothing but an ax and a manure shovel, Rowan was trying to hack his way into the stubborn webbing of half-frozen root and rock that protected the soil.

  It took no time at all to realize he would fail, and this somehow seemed a worse blow than the horror that had come before: his father, so terribly absent, the gray, ravaged face hardly recognizable in its utter blankness; his mother and sister tossing and moaning in their bunks, witless with fever. Ettie’s cries cut like a shrill knife in his ears. The stench of disease bloated the air of the cramped caravan. There was nothing he could do about any of it, except this one thing: to see the dead decently buried. And even that it seemed, was too much to ask. He would have to leave his father out here in the open, prey to the elements and scavengers.

  With a howl of rage, grief and fear, Rowan fell on the earth with his ax, raining down a flurry of blows that hacked a shallow V into the earth before the blade hit a rock and nearly bucked out of his hands. He was sweating and shivering with exertion and emotion, his face running with snot and tears. He bent from the waist, sucking air that seemed suddenly too thin. A bolt of pain stabbed in his head, a wave of black dizziness in its wake. And as he slowly lowered the ax to the ground, he felt it—a pain in his armpit where the skin rubbed together, a tender, sore swelling that he realized had been bothering him even when he was wrapping his father in his blankets and dragging him out the door. Rowan tottered over to the caravan and lowered himself onto the step. His head pounded, as though the ax had attacked his skull rather than the earth. Reluctantly, knowing already what he would find, he worked his hand under his tunic and up to the sleeve.

  The lump was a hot, hard, poisoned egg under his skin. His heart lurched with fear as his fingers probed. Slowly, he lifted the hem of his tunic and gazed down at his exposed skin. There they were, the hateful “plague kisses”: blotchy purple circles blooming over his belly.

  So that was it. They would all die—his mother and Ettie, and finally Rowan himself, gasping out his last breath in the company of corpses. Their hurried flight had been pointless. Rowan wondered, without really caring, how many lay ill at the castle and whether it was spreading beyond its walls. It was the earl’s eldest son, Lapis, recently returned from a trading voyage, who had brought the disease in. They had all played at his homecoming feast, but Rowan’s father had been asked to attend the young lord again the next evening, to help him set to music some scraps of poetry he had written at sea. The night had been cut short—to Cashel’s relief—when Lapis said a headache was making it impossible to concentrate. By dawn the young man lay in the grip of fever, the buboes swelling in his armpit and groin, and Rowan’s father had somehow got the news and was packing madly before the rest of them awoke. But it was already too late.

  Rowan rested his head in his hands and tried to think. There were things he should do while he still could. Untether the mules, so they would have a hope of surviving until some passerby found himself a free team. Fill the water bucket. It was weird how calm he felt, now that they were all in the same boat. The barely suppressed panic that had twisted his guts for days was gone. It seemed easier to die himself than to watch helplessly while the others suffered.

  By the time he climbed back into the caravan with the fresh water, his legs trembled at the effort, and the press of his arm, weighted with the full bucket, was a torment against his swelling armpit. He poured water into the drinking pitcher and urged a few swallows into Ettie. The heat poured off her, and she mewled in pain as he lifted up her sweaty head. The glands in her neck—like stones bulging from her skin—had discolored to a dark, angry purple. But she drank thirstily. Then he dipped a towel into the bucket, wrung it out and dabbed it over her face.

  Rowan did the same for his mother, Hazel, and that was all he could manage. Unhooking his bunk, he pulled it down on its hinge and climbed in. The pain in his head washed over him in waves, an onrushing tide. “Just let me sleep,” he muttered. “Dear Somos, kindest god, just let me sleep a little before the worst of it.”

  Rowan tried to tell himself that he didn’t remember much after that—but he remembered enough. He remembered the harsh, bloody cough that began tearing itself from his mother’s chest and the terrifying red spray that she tried, at first, to contain in her blanket. He saw then how her fingers were turning black with the inner bleeding. Later she was too weak even to wipe the foamy bright dribble from her cheeks, her eyes and temples mottled with bruises. Soon after that, the fever took him so fiercely, he was aware of nothing but his own throbbing head and quaking chills.

  And he remembered the searing pain when the swollen bubo under his arm burst. His own scream woke him, and he had thought he must be dying, not noticing at first that the pain was already seeping away with the putrid fluid staining his nightshirt. The stench was awful, but to Rowan’s relief, he was able to shrug out of the shirt and wad it up for a bandage. He sat like that, dazed from his long, dark dreams, and it gradually came to him that he felt better. Trembly with weakness, dizzy, headachy—but better. Stretching out his arm, he managed to grasp his water mug and take a careful sip. Gods, it was good. Greedily he sucked down the rest, then fell back into his bed and into a true sleep.

  He put off getting out of bed for as long as he could, unable to face what he knew waited for him. The silence had already smothered any hope.

  Ettie lay pale but composed, as though she had laid herself out before dying. She looks so small, thought Rowan—even smaller than in life. My sister. He touched a blond braid, then her cheek. But it wasn’t her—not anymore. Ettie’s cheeks had been warm, dimpled, never still like this under your hand. And then he was sobbing, his head pressed into the edge of her bunk, the enormity of loss crushing his heart.

  But his mother’s body waited. She had not gone quietly to the deadlands. Bloodstained and livid with bruises, she looked as though her final battle had been against bludgeon and knife.

  There was no part of her he could bear to touch. Mumbling out a prayer for her safe passage, Rowan untucked her bedsheets and wrapped first one side, then the other over his mother’s body.

  By the time he had dragged first his mother’s, then his sister’s, wrapped bodies out of the caravan and laid them beside his father on the frozen ground, Rowan was near to collapse. Slow and shaky as an old man, he made his way back to his bunk. His ragged, helpless weeping seemed like it would never stop, until at last his exhausted body took over and merciful sleep carried him away.

  THE SILENCE STRETCHED OUT as Rowan stared into the red innards of the stove, trapped in his memories.

  Aydin’s next question pulled him back.

  “So I guess that girl is your sister then?”

  Rowan tried to make sense of the question. He looked around the walls of the caravan, looking for a picture he knew did not exist. Aydin sipped his tea and waited calmly, his pale eyes unblinking.

  Finally Rowan gave up. “What are you talking about? What girl?”

  “The girl who hovers about you.” Aydin shrugged, unconcerned. “Perhaps you do not see her.” He gave one of his superior smiles. “It would not surprise me.”

  Rowan’s reaction was so violent and confused, he couldn’t speak: Rage at Aydin’s callousness, to toy with him so. Grief like a black ocean for the little girl who had tagged at his heels. And beneath it all whispered a superstitious, hair-prickling dread, as his traitor mind babbled, But what if…

  “What’s wrong with you?” The words burst out of him like a curse. “Why would you say a thing like that? Can you not even respect the dead?”

  Aydin took a sip of tea as though nothing had been said. The smile—a smile Rowan was very close to wiping from his face, dog or no dog—did not falter. And when Rowan sputtered into silence, Aydin put his tea down, sat back in his chair and looked him straight in the eye.

  “She’s small, about up to your chest. She has fair hai
r—not as light as mine, but blond—in two long plaits. She has a round face, round cheeks.”

  That means nothing, thought Rowan, though shivery chills were crawling up and down his spine. Lots of girls have braids. He’s bluffing.

  “She wears a purple gemstone at her neck.”

  Ettie. Sweet gods of earth and air, it was Ettie. Rowan had won that lump of amethyst for her at a fair, and she had loved it so much that their father had paid to have a silversmith fix it to a small loop so she could string it around her neck. She had worn that stone for the last three years. She had died wearing it.

  FIVE

  Rowan’s mind seethed with questions he didn’t seem to be able to ask, foremost among them, Is she here now? He gazed down the dark length of the caravan, fighting the shivers crawling up his spine, trying to compose himself enough to say something that didn’t sound absurd. He couldn’t.

  “You seem astonished,” Aydin remarked.

  “Of course I’m astonished! What else would I be?” Rowan heard the husky crack in his voice and for once didn’t care.

  Aydin shrugged, a languid ripple quite unlike the gesture Rowan thought of as “a shrug.”

  “You’ve never heard of a ghost? Your language has the word—there must be a concept to match.”

  Of course he had heard of ghosts. But ghosts weren’t here—they were denizens of the deadlands. Only in rare dreams did Somos open a connection to allow the dead and the living to make contact.

  But how did he know that? Rowan hadn’t had an especially religious upbringing. His parents had maintained a shrine to Heska, god of music, in their home at Five Oaks—a shrine, he thought with a stab of uneasy guilt, he should set up himself in the caravan—and on their summer travels they would make a small offering to the local deity when occasion demanded. But as far as the theology of death and the afterlife went, Rowan’s “knowledge” was based largely on the ritual words uttered at the handful of funeral rites he had played at.