by Jaine Fenn
Damaru, sitting on his bed and toying with the last of the stew, watched her as she put her sodden boots by the fire to dry. ‘Will you watch over him?’ she asked, pointing to the stranger in her bed. Damaru looked at the stranger, at her, then back at the stranger. She took that as assent.
She strapped on her clogs and clumped up the hill to the moot-hall.
The chieftain sat in his high-backed chair in front of the hearth. He was wrapped in his fur cloak. From the noises coming from the curtained alcoves around the edge of the hall she knew his household was already awake. As usual, Gwellys would eavesdrop on her son’s business, and whatever was said here would be round the village by noon.
As she moved to stand in front of him Arthen said, ‘Arlin’s youngest has the flux again. She told my mother that she saw you and Damaru carrying something into your hut when they were coming back from the earth-closets. Did she see true?’
Kerin was exhausted, and now she was irritated. She decided to keep the existence of the rich cloth to herself. ‘She did. We found a man at the mere. He is sick.’
‘Who is he?’
‘I do not know. He is sick, as I said, and if I do not tend him, he may not live long enough to awaken and tell us his tale.’
‘Sick, or injured?’
Kerin looked around at the sound of the voice to see Fychan, Arthen’s younger son, lift the curtain and walk across the hall. This was all she needed. Arthen frowned at the intrusion, but Fychan appeared not to notice. He continued, ‘Father, if he is injured, it could have been reivers, back this way. Or maybe this sais is a reiver.’
Kerin looked back at Arthen and said firmly, ‘He has no injury. He is sick.’ She could not resist adding, ‘You are welcome to come and see for yourself.’
Fychan scowled, the expression pulling at his scar. Kerin suspected he would sooner put out his other eye than cross her threshold.
‘No,’ said Arthen, as much to curb his son, Kerin suspected, as in reply to her. ‘Go. Tend your patient. Tell us what he has to say for himself when he wakes.’
Kerin nodded to Arthen and left the moot-hall.
CHAPTER TWO
Why are you doing this to me? Please, let me go - I want to go back to the darkness. I’m safe there, I can forget.
Patterns of melody catch and beguile, and the web of sound won’t let go. It is something other than pain, something worth reaching for—
As she headed home across the square, Kerin heard the sound of a harp drifting up the slope. Skyfools had a natural affinity with music; Damaru had picked out a tune on his father’s harp before he could walk and had often retreated into music when things confused or frustrated him. But since Neithion’s death he had rarely played; when he did, it was usually slow, melancholy airs. This was different: wild music, conjuring music, cascades of notes chasing each other through the pre-dawn light. It was music fit to wake the dead.
She ran back down to the hut.
Inside, the single rush-light illuminated Damaru as he sat at the foot of her bed, his harp between his legs, his face twisted into an ecstasy of concentration. He continued to play as she stepped over his outstretched legs and bent to examine her patient.
The man’s breath came hard and fast, like the panting of a dog, and his skin was burning hot. Kerin returned to the herbs she’d left strewn over the table, searching for a combination to bring down the fever and drive off the chill inside.
When the music slowed, Kerin looked up from her pestle. Damaru’s expression had become pained, and he was biting his lip. She went over and knelt beside him. Damaru’s lack of interest in music since his father’s death had left his hands soft, and now blood was welling from the edges of his nails and smearing the harp strings.
Kerin felt tears spring to her eyes: her crazy, unearthly son, with no regard for himself. Whatever happened with this stranger would not change the fact that the drove would be leaving soon, and Damaru was now of age, and he would be leaving with it. She had begged Arthen to let her go too, just to have those last few weeks with her boy, but he had refused her.
She blinked to clear her eyes and murmured Damaru’s name, repeating it over and over to get his attention. Finally he focused on her, though he kept playing. ‘Damaru, stop now,’ she said, but he ignored her.
When she tried again, he muttered, ‘I want to keep him here.’
Kerin said gently, ‘Damaru, I am making medicine to keep him here.’
Damaru shook his head, though he looked uncertain and the music faltered for a moment. Then he said, ‘You only heal his body. His mind is broken too.’
Kerin was not sure what Damaru meant, so she said, ‘Damaru, a mind can only grow well in a healthy body.’ That had been one of Neithion’s sayings - he had said it a lot when Damaru was younger, and he did everything he could to ensure his only surviving child’s bodily health, hoping that one day his mind would develop as it should. That was back when they had believed him merely simple, not touched by the sky.
Hearing his father’s words repeated must have got through to him, for Damaru stopped playing. Kerin lifted the harp from his lap and went back to the table as Damaru closed his eyes and rested his head against the end of the bed.
She selected herbs for fevers and chills, and counted out five of the precious berries her husband had bought on his final drove. His best friend, Huw, had passed them on to her, telling her the trader had charged a high price for them, for, he had claimed, they would cure anything from toothache to the falling fire. Huw’s tone implied he thought Neithion had been duped, but with Neithion’s death still a raw wound, Kerin had snapped at him for this harsh judgment. She had regretted her temper at once - Huw was a good man, one of the few who had never criticised Neithion for marrying her . . .
She had not used the berries till now. No one in the village had deserved this last precious gift from her dead husband. When she crushed them they smelled sweet, more like food than medicine. While the mixture steeped, she took the remaining warm water and cleaned the man’s head and chest. His skin felt sticky, even after she had got the mud off. It reminded her of Damaru after he had got at the honey-pot and smeared himself with the stuff when he was just a little lad.
She put the stranger’s age at around the same as hers, perhaps a little younger. He had a handsome face, though there was an indefinable otherness about him. As she had thought, his skin was unmarked by scars or rashes, and when she examined his hands she saw no calluses, and the nails were clean and even. Where had this man come from, to have the skin of a child and the hands of an invalid?
She wondered if he too were sky-touched, and from a richer village, where he was honoured and given the best of everything. No, he was surely too old to be a skyfool: he would have gone to the Beloved by now. So maybe he was a noble from the lowlands. Neithion had told her how men down there had other men to tend their animals, grow their food, even to build their homes and bargain for their luxuries.
She found herself wanting to stroke the milky-white skin and soak up its fire. Seeing this exotic stranger in her bed was awakening feelings she had long suppressed - feelings she must continue to suppress . . . She turned away and went back to the table to fetch her bowl.
When she returned, she piled blankets under his head, then dipped a clean linen square into the bowl and wrung out the cloth over his lips. The liquid dribbled down his face and onto the bedclothes. She tried again, and this time his lips parted and he swallowed a little. She repeated the exercise until the bowl was empty.
Kerin knew she was nowhere near as good as Neithion had been; she feared the stranger’s illness would be beyond her meagre skill. Neithion had been so talented a healer that people had come from other villages to seek his help. He had trained her in the healing arts to indulge her, not because he had ever expected she would need to take on his role.
She returned the bowl to the table, then bent to shake her son awake. He blinked up at her. She held his hands up so he could see them. ‘Your
fingers are cut, Damaru. I am going to clean and bind them. It will sting a little.’
He nodded dumbly, still half-asleep, and bore her ministrations quietly. After she had finished she helped him to his bed.
She would have liked to sleep herself, but she needed to watch over her patient. She had not been able to do anything to save Neithion - she had not even been with him when he died. She composed a prayer to the Mother of Mercy, the first true prayer she had spoken for some days other than those small mutterings offered during the rituals of daily life. If the Skymothers willed it, and if it was in her power to do so, she would save this stranger.
The rush-light over the bed burned out as full daylight seeped in under the door. When she opened it, she found the night’s storm had left them a fine day. She should take her loom outside to finish the final panel of her new skirt. And she was due to take her turn grinding oats this afternoon. Neither of these mattered as much as tending her patient.
She turned back inside. The man’s fever was rising; she needed to get as much fluid as possible into him. She made a weaker infusion and set it to warm, then tidied away her herbs and put the last of the peat on the fire. When the drink was ready, she managed to get him to take a little more.
Once he had settled into an uneasy sleep she scraped the mud from her boots, then picked up her distaff and spun for a while, using the soft wool taken from the cattle’s long belly-hair. Then she gave the stranger some more of the infusion, and drank the last of it herself. Damaru was snoring peacefully, but he would wake soon, and be thirsty. She needed more water, and fuel, and a trip to the earth-closets was in order too.
She might as well go out and get everything she needed for the rest of the day. If she could bring herself to make her apologies to Gwellys for not helping at the quern now she might just save herself a tongue-lashing later.
Free of the suffocating darkness, drawn by the memory of the music, he drifted slowly back towards consciousness.
He remembered: he had a mission, a purpose. Or he had, once. It had been taken from him. Taken, and replaced by—
Deep, dark eyes.
He recalled a violation so deep it had no name.
Silently, in the confines of his head, he screamed.
On such a fine day many of the women were washing clothes down at the stream. Kerin, having answered her most urgent need, nodded a greeting to the women at work downstream as she filled her water-jug. Arlin called back, ‘Is it true I saw you carrying a naked man, and that he now sleeps in your bed?’ Her remark had the others tittering.
Kerin weighed her answer carefully. Arlin was always friendly to Kerin’s face, but she was also one of Gwellys’s cronies. She would prefer to let her family suffer rather than seek out Kerin’s skill as a healer.
More than once Kerin had responded thoughtlessly to Arlin’s apparently easygoing comments, only to have her words turned against her by others. ‘Your eyes did not deceive you,’ replied Kerin carefully, ‘though I pray he will soon be well enough to seek a more suitable place to lay his head.’
She decided to drop off the full water-jug and check on her patient before going to fetch fuel and see Gwellys. She had closed her door when she left, to discourage curious eyes; it was open now, and from inside she heard a low moan. She hurried in and saw the reason for the open door at once: Damaru had gone out. For a moment she felt that guilty anger she knew so well. Why could the Mothers not have given her a normal child, one who gave as well as took, who would understand what needed to be done, and perhaps even help do it - one who would just remember to close the wretched door behind him sometimes, for Heaven’s sake? But the anger blew out, as usual: with a normal boy she would never have known the wonder of loving one touched by the sky.
The stranger was shuddering, and thrashing about. His head lolled from side to side as he cried out: broken pleas for mercy or help, and once what sounded like a name, though not one she knew.
Damaru had implied that something had damaged the man’s mind, which could be why he was now raving. If the damage was not physical, Arthen might send for a priest. Perhaps she should pray again, and maybe burn some incense, though she had thought to use what little she had to see Damaru safely on his way.
She leaned over the bed and started murmuring calming nonsense, as she did to Damaru when the nightmares took him. The stranger continued to toss and moan, as though pleading with unseen enemies. Damaru had said music helped, and she began to sing, though her voice was weak, another cause of shame in the village. Even so, she thought he strained to hear her. Still singing, she crossed the hut and filled a bowl from the water-jug, but when she tried to get him to drink, he turned his head. One hand flailed up to push the bowl away. Without thinking, Kerin caught the hand in hers. His fingers grasped hard. Her song faltered, but she did not pull away. When his hand fell back she kept hold of it. His touch was soft and hot, and reminded her of a child’s: innocent, desperate, totally dependent on a parent. She drank the water herself and put the bowl down, keeping hold of his hand. Then she started to sing again, her eyes fixed on his face as though she could save him by will alone.
She went through every tune she knew - lullabies, hymns, story-songs, even the cheeky ditties the boys sang at star-season - and her voice grew hoarse, but if she stopped singing, she risked losing him.
Evening was approaching. The fire was down to embers. If it went out, she would have to go and ask for flame from the moot-hall.
It was dark by the time Damaru returned. She wondered whether she might persuade him to fetch some peat, knowing the thought futile even as it formed. But he could help in another way. She broke off from singing and said, ‘Damaru, play. Play the harp for him again, please.’
He did not obey at once but came over and stared at the man, his expression hard to read. Kerin might have called it sympathy, had she thought her son capable of such an emotion. Then he got his harp down, sat on the floor and launched straight into a twirling, urgent air.
In the dim light she saw the stranger’s face change as it had when he first caught her hand. His movements became less frantic, his cries quieter. Kerin wished she could see him better, and, when the pressure on her hand eased for a moment, she pulled free. She stretched as she stood, then got an old basket down from the shelves and flung it onto the smouldering hearth.
She bent down to blow into the fire. For a moment she thought she had sacrificed the basket in vain. Then a flame caught. She sat back and looked over at her patient. He had raised his hand, reaching out to her.
She returned to his side and grasped his hand again. When she spared a glance for Damaru the flaring light from the fire revealed fresh stains on the harp strings. She almost told him to stop playing, then changed her mind. Fingers would heal; the stranger’s mind might not.
She stroked the man’s face. Lack of food and sleep was making her light-headed, and for a moment she thought it was her husband who was lying ill in their bed.
After a while Damaru’s playing slowed, then stopped. He put the harp down and staggered over to the water-jug, cupping his hands to drink straight from it.
Her patient frowned in his delirium, then whimpered. Kerin shushed him and put a hand on his cheek. Her touch appeared to soothe him. She had planned to sleep on the floor, but after a moment’s hesitation, she climbed onto the bed with him. Damaru crawled into his own bed.
Kerin lay down beside the man, stroking his head. He shifted against her until they touched, he inside the covers, she on top. She felt a strange mixture of emotions: guilt at such intimacy in her marriage bed, relief that the worst was past, and a less-than-healthy excitement.
But mainly, she felt exhausted.
CHAPTER THREE
Bad smell: acrid and harsh. Constriction. He was under a heavy, stiff covering. Weight pressed against his side. He was trapped. Have to get free! But—
He could hear something: a regular rasping sound. Breathing? Someone was breathing, very close by.
&n
bsp; He forced his eyes open, gummy lids tearing apart. The momentary pain snapped him into full consciousness. But even with eyes open, he couldn’t see. Was he blind too?
Not blind. Just in darkness. He lay somewhere dark and smelly and he couldn’t move. Oh, shit. This is bad.
The thing pressing against him moved. He froze, his pulse thundering in his ears. The way it changed position - it was alive.
He was lying next to somebody. This is really bad.
He heard a ‘mmmppfhh’ noise beside his ear. His body felt too heavy to move but he managed to turn his head, and got a waft of foul breath. A vague shape resolved into a head. Right next to his.
He struggled harder and the rough cover slid off. His head pounded with the effort and his throat felt so dry that even breathing hurt.
The shape - person - twitched, gasped, then rolled away. The gasp sounded feminine. He edged backwards, flinching when his bare back came up against a cold, damp wall. The woman sat up, becoming a silhouette. She looked down at him.
‘Hhhssh, sssshhh. Everything is all right.’ Her voice was hoarse and oddly accented. He had no idea who she was.
‘Wh—’ he started breathlessly, disconcerted at the sound of his own voice. He tried again. ‘Wh—What are you doing?’
‘Tis all right,’ she repeated, getting off the bed. ‘Lie still.’
‘Who—Who are you? Do I know you?’
‘No, you do not—’
‘Then what the fuck am I doing in bed with you? Where am I?’
‘Please, you have been ill, you need to stay calm.’
‘Ill? What do you mean?’ He heard someone else moving. A shadowy shape loomed behind the woman. ‘Who’s that?’ he squeaked.
‘My son. You woke him.’ She turned and spoke to the unidentifiable figure. ‘Tis all right, Damaru. Go back to bed.’
