by Jack
She thought of making camp and staved off stopping with Mellow’s words, but her knee was bad enough that she had begun to limp. She would bandage it when she stopped and she told herself that she was lucky to have been able to abandon the wretched contamination suit, for aside from being uncomfortably hot and difficult to manoeuver, it had stunk and she had stunk in it. Nevertheless she had bundled it up and tied it to the bottom of her pack with her sleeping roll, because Mama’s letter had not bidden her abandon it. She might very well come across another stretch of poisoned Blacklands before she reached the end of the dark road or maybe she would have need of it, in the city at the end of the Black road.
She stumbled again and this time her bad knee gave way under her. She fell half on the Black road and half on the soft hot sand. She had not the strength to lever herself up, but mindful of her mother’s warning to keep to the road, she rolled over onto her back until she lay wholly upon it. She was startled to see the moon riding above her. Was it true what Mama said of the moon, she wondered, half delirious with thirst and dehydration. The people of that lost time had been magicians and miracle workers by all accounts.
She tried to get up, but she had not the strength.
‘I promised,’ she said through gritted teeth. The words croaked out for her mouth was dry as a bone. She gave a shivering laugh and then lay back and slept until panic woke her and gave her strength and clarity for a moment. She levered herself over and reached for the sack containing her mothers’ bones, weeping with relief to find she had not spilled them out into the swallowing sand. Or would have wept if there had been any moisture in her to weep out. She lay her face against the sack of bones and wondered if someday the Seeker would walk upon the same road and find her bones clutching a sack of bones. What a mystery it would be. But the Seeker would fail in her quest if Hannah failed to bring her mother’s bones to lie with her father’s in his grave. She thought of the unread pages of the letter, but she did not take them out.
You can always go on longer than you think you can, Mellow coaxed.
Hannah closed her eyes and slept. Cassandra’s cat came and looked at her with his one bright yellow eye. ‘Get up, funaga, or you will die and be meat for the crows. Get up or the efari will come and if they take you, you will die a captive and the world will die with you.’
Hannah had woken with the clear memory of the honey pot she had pushed into the side of the pack. With trembling fingers, she found it miraculously unbroken, and she undid the lid and licked the sweetness and the wetness from her fingers. It was too sweet and not wet enough, but it strengthened her.
She sat up.
She must have slept for hours, for though it was dark and stars glittered overhead, the moon had set and she could see by the sword of light along the eastern horizon that it was nearing dawn. She stood somehow, using the goat staff to lever her up and ignored the pain shooting through her knee. All around her the undulating dunes had a greenish look, as if they were ripples underneath the water. It was then, as she stood swaying on her feet, that she saw the city. It was so far off that she could not have seen it save for the lights, and they would not have shown in the daytime or even when the moon was up.
The city at the end of the Black road.
Hannah’s heart trembled at the realisation that she was going to make it after all. Mama had been right. They had journeyed along the Black road together, and they would come to its end, together.
She sat down again and took out her mother’s letter in readiness for when the sun rose, so that she could read the last of it.
* * * *
Afterword
When you create a world, it can be so enticing and interesting and delicious a place to inhabit that you keep going back and back until no corner is unexplored, no map name unplumbed. This results in the sort of unfortunate series that goes on and on with no true end in sight. But a book or even a series is a journey, and so it ought to plot the same narrow course through an invented world as our lives do through this world. Having said that, I loved revisiting the world of Tehanu in The Other Wind; and in the exquisite collection of stories, Tales of Earthsea, Ursula Le Guin returned to that invented world. The foreword to that collection, explaining the enticements of a world to its creator, is profound and beautiful and wise, and reading Tales from Earthsea made me think how wonderful it would be to write another story set in the world of Obernewtyn. Not a story that was a continuation of Elspeth’s story, but a tale by a character who might catch only a glimpse of Elspeth and her time.
Then serendipity and morphic resonance conspired and Jack Dann wrote to ask if I would like to write a story set in a world I had invented for a collection he was putting together. Aside from uttering a resounding ‘yes please’, a dozen possibilities bubbled to the surface of my mind, for I had created lots of worlds and the idea of visiting many of them was appealing. For a time the creative cauldron was a seething mess. But when it, and I, cooled, I came back to my original idea.
So here is the story of a character who is almost completely invisible in the Obernewtyn Chronicles, unless you know where to look for her. Her story reveals a secret that readers of the Obernewtyn series cannot otherwise discover.
— Isobelle Carmody
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* * * *
Kim Wilkins was born in London but grew up at the seaside near Brisbane. She has degrees in literature and creative writing, and teaches at University of Queensland. Kim has published more than twenty books, in a variety of genres and for a variety of age groups, though her heart belongs to fantasy.
* * * *
Crown of Rowan:
A Tale of Thyrsland
Kim Wilkins
I was cruellest to him whom I loved the most.
— Laxdaela’s saga
I. Blotmonath
There are seven kings in Thyrsland. My father is one of them, and my husband is another. In my belly, perhaps, I carry a third.
It is blood month, and outside my bower window I hear fear-moaning cattle on their way to slaughter. Every night this week, I have smelled blood on the wind: faint but unmistakable, worming under the shutters. And I’ve turned my face to my pillow and held tight to avoid retching.
My sister’s hands are cool, pressed against my belly, sliding down hard towards the bone. Ash hasn’t seen me naked since we were children, when we shared the same bath before midsummer feasts. Her face is a mask of concentration: her eyebrows are drawn together, which makes her look cross. And yet Ash is never cross. She is as bonny as the sun.
She lifts off her hands and smiles, smooths my skirts down again. ‘You are definitely with child,’ she says, leaning in to hug me, her long dark hair becoming caught in my mouth. ‘Darling Rose, I’m so pleased for you.’
Even though I was expecting this answer, the world swings away from me a moment and I see myself from afar. Small and soft, a snail without a shell. Then I am back, and it is hotly true: a child grows within me, somebody who will one day think and speak and rule over Netelchester when my husband, Wengest, is gone.
But Wengest is not the child’s father.
Ash has turned away. The afternoon light through the narrow window catches the side of her face and she looks so very young. Too young to be away from home and studying; but she has gathered my fate, just as I gathered my older sister’s. Bluebell, as the first daughter, should have been married off to Wengest, to weave peace between Netelchester and Ælmesse. But she flatly refused; she threatened to cut out her guts if pressed. Father’s eyes could tell him that no husband would lament not having her. She is six feet tall, all long limbs and jutting bones. Her nose was smashed sideways in battle practice when she was eighteen, and each arm wears a sleeve of scars and tattoos. Which is to say, she is formed for war, and not for love.
So I was sent to Wengest, and Ash was sent to the Study Halls of Thriddastowe. She is learning to be a counsellor of the Common Faith. Part of her role is to tend to women in childbirth.
‘When will the babe come?’ I ask her, pulling myself up into a sitting position with my arms around my knees.
‘If you last bled in weed-month, then the babe will come in milk-month.’ She laughed. ‘It won’t just be the cows making milk, then.’
I think about my breasts, the faint blue veins that appeared on them eight weeks ago. I knew then, of course. I had counted back the days. Wengest was away, meeting with the king of Lyteldyke. He had been away a month and four days. He hadn’t been in my bed for nearly a fortnight before that.
I know that he has not subsequently noticed those tell-tale lines on my breasts. He prefers to couple in the dark, believing somehow that passion reduces us, strips us of our dignity. But Heath had noticed them. Out in the fields far from my husband’s hall: sunlight white and warm, caught under the ears of wheat as they shook in the breeze, dazzling in Heath’s pale gold hair, bathing my bare white skin ... He saw the veins, he traced them with his fingers, but he said nothing. I said nothing. The memory comes upon me fresh: my belly grows giddy, my heart pinches. Many say that love is a blessing; but to love a man one cannot have is surely a curse.
‘You will be here for milk-month?’ I ask Ash, aware now of my body’s vulnerability, of what childbirth can do to women. Our mother died delivering twins. ‘You will deliver the child?’
‘I will ask my elders at the study hall for permission to come.’
‘You are a king’s daughter,’ I say, ‘you can surely do as you please.’
‘My loyalty as a counsellor is not to any king. It is to the horse god, to the great mother. In their eyes, no family is more important than another.’ She reads the anxiety on my brow and she shifts to sit on the bed next to me. ‘I will do my very best, Rosie. But even if I can’t make it, you aren’t to worry. You will be perfectly well, and your baby will too. She’ll be bonny and strong, you’ll see.’
‘She? You think it is a girl?’
Ash smiles, but I see her eyes flicker like a person about to tell a lie. I know that expression; I wear it often. ‘There is no way to tell, no windows to the womb.’ She shakes her head gently. ‘With four sisters, it’s hard to imagine a baby boy. Forgive me. It might as well be a son as daughter.’
My daughter. I have never been fond of children, but this creature embedded in my body is not just any child. It is my child. And his.
‘Wengest will be pleased,’ Ash continues. ‘Will you tell him soon?’
I cannot answer. I am thinking, instead, of telling Heath what he surely already knows.
* * * *
The wide Wuldorea divides my husband’s kingdom from my father’s. The river snakes through Thyrsland from its mouth on the south-west coast, up towards the great lakes of western Netelchester, on the border with tiny Tweoning, a little kingdom that has seen much war. The Wuldorea is brown today, engorged with a week of rain. Heath owns twenty hides of land bordered by her banks; five miles downstream from Wengest’s hall and the rest of the town. When I stand at the western edge of his land, I can see Ælmesse, the kingdom of my birth. On a clear day, I sometimes imagine I can see the steep hill upon which my father’s hall is built, the gleaming ruins of the giants’ halls at Blicstowe — my home town, the most beautiful place on earth — though I know it is an illusion.
Heath’s fields are dark and smell of earth and rain. I make my way up the line of elms between fields to the thatched round-house where Heath lives. A crow sits on bare branches above me, watching. I don’t like to be watched; frost creeps over my skin. The crow clicks its beak against the branch, spreads its wings, and takes off into the white sky. Its wake shivers across the branch.
Inside, Heath is sitting by the fire. Smoke catches in my throat and stings my eyes. The hewn carcasse of a cow is hung from the rafters to smoke for the winter. The shutters are closed against the cold, so the room is dark as it will be until the sun comes back in summerfull-month. The weak light from the open door shows me Heath’s back and shoulders, his long gold hair. Then I close the door and only firelight illuminates us. He turns and smiles at my arrival, shifts over on the bench to make room for me. I slide into place and he catches me in his gaze.
Heath does not wear a beard, as most men in Thyrsland do. But it isn’t true that he can’t grow one. How many times have I heard that insult whispered? Even Wengest has said it to me. ‘My nephew must not be fully a man at twenty-five summers old and still no beard.’
I know Heath’s secret. He shaves it from his face with a warm knife every morning, because when it grows it is bright coppery red. Heath is part Ærfolc; he is the half-breed bastard son of Wengest’s wayward sister. The Ærfolc, who were driven deep into the north-west and across the sea a hundred years ago, are regarded by the people of Thyrsland with suspicion, hostility. Some of us, in the south of Lyteldyke, still use them as slaves. Their coppery hair and pale green eyes mark them. Heath, beardless, could barely be recognised as Ærfolc except if one is looking for the signs: threads of copper in his golden hair that are only visible in bright sunlight; an undercurrent of sea-green in his eyes.
‘I wasn’t expecting to see you today,’ he says, bringing rough fingers to my chin, running his thumb gently over my lower lip to coax a smile.
‘It’s so hot in here,’ I complain, unpinning and shrugging out of my cloak. It falls in a puddle behind me. Heath’s home is small. The only furniture is this bench and a straw mattress. We have made love many times upon that mattress; the straw ticking scratching our bare skins softly through the thick blankets. My husband’s hall is far grander than Heath’s home; my father’s is a hundred times the size. But I have known unutterable happiness in this warm room.
He sits and waits for me to say what I must say. Ever-patient Heath. The fire cracks and pops, the smoke catches my throat. Finally, I say, ‘I am with child. It is certainly yours.’
His face softens; I have no idea what he is thinking. ‘What have you told Wengest?’
‘Nothing.’
‘And you intend to keep the child?’ he says, almost fearfully.
‘I do,’ I say.
Heath rubs his chin, and I see he is hiding a smile. And now I am crying, because we made a child and he is glad, even though he knows he will never be recognised as the child’s father. An image skids into my mind — a small boy at Heath’s side, helping him load the sheaves on the cart, laughing in the autumn sunshine — and just as quickly I banish it. It will do me no good to harbour such fantasies and, in any case, Ash says the child will be a girl. And Ash knows these things even though she shouldn’t.
I press my body into his arms and weep warm tears against the rough fabric of his tunic. ‘What is to become of us?’ My voice is husky from smoke and from crying.
Heath kisses the trail of tears from my cheeks, and even in this dark moment the desire that arrows through me is bright and urgent.
He pushes me gently away so he can look at my face, and he opens his mouth and says, ‘Rose, we could ...’ But then he stops, and I am glad he has stopped, because I know he is going to say, we could run away: we could find my father’s family in the wilds of Bradsey, we could raise the child as our own and have six more and always be happy. But we both know that such a sunlit scene blinds the mind’s eye to darker truths. Ælmesse and Netelchester have been at war since the giants left Thyrsland, centuries ago. My father and Wengest’s father were the first kings to bring peace between the kingdoms; and all of it rested on the marriage promise my father made to Wengest. If Heath and I ran away to raise fat babies in the wilderness, the sure result of our indulgence would be war. Thousands would die; many of them would be children. I want to shout and shake my fists and proclaim how unfair it is that I should be in such a position, forced into marriage, the fate of kingdoms weighing on me. And then I remind myself — as I always must — of my sister Bluebell on the fields of battle with my father, stained in blood and slipping over the spilled intestines of her fallen friends. A king’s daughter knows duty. Bluebell would sacrifi
ce her life for Ælmesse; how selfish I am to complain about sacrificing my womb.
Heath stands, pulls me up next to him. Then he takes my hands and kneels, his hands around my hips. He kisses my belly, and I can feel the heat of his lips through the cloth. I close my eyes and turn my face upwards. The mingled smells of meat, smoke, and mud seem stuck in my throat. He rests his cheek against my body, and I turn my gaze to him, tangle my fingers in his hair. And then the first bolt of true panic comes.
In the firelight, I see the red glimmer in his hair. It is suddenly clear to me that should my child have the faintest trace of the Ærfolc colouring, we will be undone.
Her hair or her eyes may tell a tale that should remain untold.
* * * *
II. Motranecht
Wild snowy wind rattles the branches outside, battering the shutters, howling down the hill and plucking at the thatched houses of the village. Snow lies in uneven layers on the empty market square, on the roofs of barns where animals stand still and close together, on the bowerhouse and the blacksmith’s forge. But here in Wengest’s great hall, the freezing damp seems impossibly far away. The fire is huge and hot and bright, the smoke hangs thick in the air until it escapes, little by little, into the black cold outside. The occasional bold snowflake falls through the smoke-hole and melts in a hissing half-moment. All around me are the sounds of people shouting and laughing and drinking, the smell of damp clothes and roasting fat. It is the night we celebrate the great Mother, the deepest point of winter, the day when the sun rises the latest and sets the earliest.
