And she thought she hummed at how lovely that sounded, but she was already sleeping, so perhaps that was just a part of the dream after all.
“Pen and Grim,” she managed to mumble out in agreement.
Another hum, this time lower, and maybe it came from him.
“Aye,” he affirmed. “Just so.”
Sixteen
The days were growing colder, but Grimult found he could not feel it.
Not today.
They had abandoned flight a few minutes before. A part of him insisted on the speed of it, the whizzing flurry of a final burst, of startling all who waited there with the suddenness of his arrival.
But another part insisted that they walk.
That she see the land, that she experience the whole of it.
The first time she saw his home.
He had begun to doubt that he would ever see it again, with all the trials that had stretched out before them. The pursuit of a treaty had taken even longer, but he could not begrudge it. Not when it was a blessed alternative to the war he had prepared himself for.
Even now, he could conjure the fury that had overtaken him when his wife had called down to the tribe below.
He squeezed her a little more tightly to his side, and she glanced up at him, smiling softly.
She appeared freer than she had since...
Since she had first walked away from the sages’ keep, head held high and haste in her steps.
A weight had been lifted, one of responsibility. Some inherited, some chosen.
The sages had never given indication of their verdict. Most of them kept a cool manner toward their wayward charges, but with the clans nestled so closely about them, they dared not give outright censure.
Grimult knew it would be many months before he felt safe allowing Penryn out of his sights. Longer still when he would part with a blade at his side, ready to defend them against any attack.
His heart quickened when he saw the familiar fencepost, carved with two crossing feathers and an arrow between by Grimult’s own hand. It had been clumsily done, and he had asked his father if they might exchange it later once he’d grown better with a blade, but his father refused, claiming it a waste of a perfectly good piece of timber.
Looking at it now, Grimult suspected there was more sentiment than his father had first related, as it leaned sharply leftward.
Much of the fencing itself would need mending, and he felt the weight of it, guilt that he had once thought long buried.
He had offered Penryn a return to her family first. She deserved as much time with them as she wished, and they too needed the daughter and sister they had missed.
“I told Mama I would go back,” she reminded him, and he thought that answer enough. Her hand was tight around his, and he waited for the apology that was sure to follow. The quiet promise that he would see his family too. Someday.
“And we will,” she continued. “But you promised me home.” He stared at her, and she raised a hand and touched his cheek lightly. “When this was done, we said. We would get to go home.”
Something in him, a fear he had not dared name, loosened.
He had not expected to find her family. Not so soon. After a search, perhaps, with probing enquiries once they were settled and ready to receive answer. But when he had seen her settled with them before the kitchen fire, sleeping so soundly nestled between her parents...
He realised he had been waiting for her to ask him to accompany her there to live. To make his living on the sea, in a home he did not have.
And leave a farm that he loved so dearly, with his father to tend it all, even in his aging years.
He had no words to express his relief, so instead he pulled her close and breathed short, tight breaths against her hair until he had some form of mastery over himself again.
“Thank you,” he breathed out at last, and when he pulled back, he found there was a glisten of tears in her eyes that he had not meant to induce.
“We will visit my family of course,” she continued, a catch in her throat that meant if she was not careful, she would cry all the more. “But I should like a home I can exit on my own, I think.” There was a blush present on her cheeks, and before he could think better of it, he leaned down and kissed her full on the mouth.
She blinked widely for a moment, and he was pleased that she seemed to have forgotten her previous upset, staring up at him with what he could only call longing.
One that echoed his own, long denied from their lack of privacy.
He was ashamed to admit that he had thought little of that—how stunted and trapped she might feel if she had agreed to live in her ancestral home. While he would deny her nothing and would never begrudge the use of his wings, seeing even a taste of the dark and confined space of the sages’ keep made him recognise her desire for freedom.
To know that she could move about in the open air simply because she wished to do so. That she required no one’s permission, did not have to beg or cajole in order to be granted a freedom so basic to any other.
“A home of your own,” he promised her. “Where you can walk outside whenever it please you.”
And he had sealed that promise with another kiss, simply because he could.
He touched the fencepost that marked the beginning of his family’s land. Even now he could hear the animals on a farther knoll, speaking to one another in raucous bellows and answering bleats.
Penryn reached out and skimmed her fingers across the mark before looking to the field beyond. “Do we go in?” she asked, looking excited at the prospect, her neck already craning so she might catch sight of one of the herd.
Grimult clicked his tongue and shook his head. “Only if you have an offering of food to give them,” he warned, keeping instead so they would walk along the line of fencing.
He would prioritise the mending, he decided. Perhaps even as early as this afternoon if his mother did not insist on keeping him hostage in the kitchen, plying them both with all the food she could manage to prepare.
“If I do not, will they eat me instead?” Penryn asked, so entirely in earnest that a bark of laughter came from him, short and full, and he found himself putting an arm about her shoulder as they walked, just as easily and surely as if she was his sweetheart from down the neighbouring hill.
Not the Lightkeep that had negotiated treaties and put her people before all else.
Just his wife.
Who thought she might be eaten by his herd if she did not offer proper tribute.
She briefly looked offended at his outburst, before she softened, and leaned more fully against his arm. “You do not laugh enough,” she declared. He could say much the same about her. He looked forward to learning more of her, to see her no longer forced into a model of perfect sombre reserve. When she could smile and laugh if the feeling took her, without care for who might be there to witness it.
When they had a home of their own.
“You needn’t fear them,” Grimult assured her. “They might be a bit cross if you do not have a special treat, but the harm would be to your clothing rather than your person.” His mother had to mend many of his garments before he learned how to properly manage the creatures, as they liked to nibble and pull on anything within reach.
He could picture their dwelling here. Far enough away that they might have their privacy from curious sisters who liked to pry simply because they could. But close enough that he could tend to the daily chores and ease some of his father’s burdens.
Ones he had carried far too long.
Alone.
Perhaps not fully. Perhaps the Aarden had rallied about him, mindful of the son he had lost too soon, uncertain of how long it would be before his return.
It was a debt that Grimult felt most acutely, one he had not even dared confess to Penryn. She would tell him that he had paid it in full, that he had seen to the safety of them all, whether or not they realised the extent of it.
Maybe that was true.
Homes to be built and expanded when fledglings grew and needed rooms of their own.
Shelters for the animals that continued to grow in population.
New dwellings for freshly wedded couples.
Not stilted, as was the custom when homes were made inland and away from the rocky cliffs. But on the ground, so his wife could walk outside whenever she wished. A way down could be made, he supposed. With strips of wood within easy foothold so she could climb with relative ease.
He tried to imagine it, most especially when she was heavy and rounded with child, and quickly dismissed the notion.
A house on the ground. Where there would be no trial for her to live as she wished, to do as she pleased.
Where there was sun and fresh breezes, and a welcome fire to warm her at night.
And a bed large enough for the both of them.
“What has you so pleased?” Penryn asked, peering at him rather than seeking out first sight of his herd.
He pulled her close and leaned down to press a kiss to the top of her head. “I am planning our home,” he confessed. “Like the cottage, I should think. Since it served us so well.” He eyed her carefully. He did not wish to see her hurt, did not want to remind her of painful moments of her past. He did not ease his hand across her shoulder blades, although the urge was frequently there when he wanted to give comfort to old wounds, to soothe the scars she bore with all the affection she had so long been denied.
Penryn blinked, evidently not expecting such a suggestion.
She bit her lip, as was her wont when she was uncertain, and gave him a sceptical glance. “That would not be fair to you,” she hedged. “You should live as your people do, and I can manage well enough if we...”
He stopped walking and took her face between his palms, the better to hear and be understood. “I do not want you to manage in your own home. It is not burden to me to have my dwelling on the ground, but it would be for you should the plan be reversed.” She did not flinch, but there was a sadness there all the same. Perhaps it would always come when she remembered what she could not have. Or perhaps it would ease with time. When she saw how good their life could be.
Would be.
With enough effort.
And a few modifications.
Others might scoff. Might whisper that only beasts slept on the ground, and to lower oneself was a debasement.
But the strangeness of it would fade, with time.
Their gratitude might even come when they realised all Penryn had sacrificed for their sakes.
There had been no hiding the histories. Not when the tribe had told of their tale and Penryn had faithfully translated their rendering for all to hear. The sage had been less than pleased, threatening her with all sorts of curses and punishments before Rezen had silenced him with a wallop to the back of his head with the flat of his palm, and a promise of more if he did not allow Penryn to speak freely.
They had nearly come to further blows, but the sage had grown silent.
Sullen, to Grimult’s mind, but he had kept silent on the matter.
Some might choose not to believe it. To carry on as if there were no wingless people within the borders of the forbidden lands.
Some might acknowledge it and care even less, for it mattered little to their daily lives.
To the initiates...
Grimult had spoken to them privately. They would stand ready, would not forget their training, and be ready to be called upon if necessary in the future. Boundaries were always tested, treaties perfected through time and possibly, through bloodshed.
And while Grimult was proud of the truce that had been concocted between their two peoples, he would not pretend that all would go smoothly forever.
And they would be ready, if they were needed.
He still held his wife steady, and her eyes had slipped closed, evidently expecting that his pronouncement of their future dwelling should be sealed with a kiss.
And he was hardly in a position to deny her.
He lingered longer than he had dared in many days, allowing his hand to slip into the soft hair at the nape of her neck, already working to escape the confines of the long plait behind her.
And would have perhaps tarried even longer, except the bellows of the herd were suddenly closer, and it was Penryn that slipped away, her excitement almost palpable.
There, on the top of the knoll. Their hair was already growing longer in preparation for the cold seasons, shaggy as it curled in places, leaving long locks about their stomachs, their horned heads raised as they peered cautiously down toward the newcomers.
He had not let himself miss them. Not really. His family, yes, when the feelings welled he did not deny them. But the farm, the animals he cared for... he pushed thoughts of them aside and did not dwell there. His duty had taken him away. Doubtlessly there were many he had not even met, not when so many seasons had passed and many births had come and gone.
But still, almost as on instinct, a hand raised toward his mouth, and he gave a trilling call.
And more heads appeared over the knoll.
And when he gave another, they moved downward, bellowing all the while.
As if greeting an old friend they had almost forgotten.
And would be furious when he had no food to offer in apology.
His clan did not have calls to one another. Whistles or lilting cries to indicate storms of schools of fish hidden in the depths below.
But they did speak to their herds, and the herd remembered.
And some fear he had not dared name finally loosened as he saw them trotting toward him.
To them.
“Oh!” Penryn gasped as they came close to the fence’s edge, large heads butting over the top to be patted, lips fluttering about his extended hand. “They are so big!”
He supposed they were. None reached his shoulder even with their heads extended upright, but he supposed compared to his wife’s diminutive frame, they would seem like giants.
They nudged and butted, and looked wholly offended that the fence separated them.
And he found that he was smiling.
And perhaps it was not only Penryn who would find greater freedom here. When already he felt an ease settle through his bones, a rightness that he had not experienced in quite some time.
He gave a sharp whistle, and they followed as he continued up the path, keeping hold of Penryn’s waist as she peered around him for a better look at the herd. They would be friends, yet. She would come to understand their charms when she was not quite so intimidated by their size.
She might even enjoy the work of tending them, the bonds that came through daily care and attention.
He shook his head, thinking of the horror that so many might feel, if any saw their esteemed Lightkeep set on a milking stool and a bucket in front of her, a warm teat in her hand.
“Who is messing with my herd?” a gruff voice called, and Grimult looked upward, the sun catching at his eye line and making it difficult to make out the figure.
But the voice he knew well, even if it had been far too long since he had heard it last.
“You mean my herd,” Grimult called back, the argument an old one. He had claimed them during his fledgling years, declaring them to be the very best friends, and therefore they were most assuredly his.
His father would always reach out and ruffle his hair, and tell him aye, that the lot were his, in affection if not in true ownership.
Grimult hadn’t cared. Not when he felt full of pride and accomplishment for one so young to be in charge of so many.
Looking back, Grimult knew it was not the truth. That his father was there to oversee every action, to halt any missteps before either son or beast was hurt. He was there to wake a sleeping Grimult wh
en boyhood tiredness urged him to sleep late and allow his chores to wait just another hour.
And his father was here now, approaching with a burst of speed that hardly slowed before suddenly arms and wings were wrapped tightly about him, Grimult barely having time to release his wife and step away from her before the assault began.
Something in him itched to draw a blade, his heart already pounding with the urge to run, to fight, to do anything necessary to extricate himself from the sudden contact.
But his instructors had taught him better than that.
Had taught him to breathe, to think, to not allow instinct to rule his actions.
And so he found himself returning the embrace, of breathing in the scent of sweet hay and earth and home.
And his throat was strangely tight.
“My son,” his father murmured, leaning back and giving Grimult’s person a proper perusal. “My son,” he said again.
Words failed him. He did not know where to begin, and so he stood there lamely, feeling strangely lost.
And hated it.
This was his home, and this was his father, and neither time nor distance changed that.
It was harder to forget his willingness for violence. Even now, he could easily recall the guard cloaked in red that had stood between their escape.
He had threatened to cut him down if it came to it, and have meant it.
He had been prepared to wage war with the tribe, if it meant seeing the clans safe.
Grimult swallowed, pushing such thoughts away. There was a weight to such realities that wore heavy on him.
Perhaps what troubled him most was that he felt no accompanying. No regret for the choices he had made. Not when the alternatives were so detestable.
Penryn was safe. And he had the skills now to keep her so, even as the sages groaned as their powers were trimmed, their purpose altered. Only time would truly show what they would become, when the anger and disbelief rippled through the clans with knowledge they did quite know how to reconcile.
The Lightkeep Page 33
