by Lynne Jonell
“No, that’s okay,” Will said. “I’ve got lots of games at—at home.”
Nurth reached out and closed Will’s fingers over the cobnut. He pushed Will’s hand away and said something gently in his own language.
“Okay, thanks, I guess.” Will put the conker in his pocket and wondered how to get across his own, rather urgent, message. He jerked his chin toward the door. “I need to go out,” he said, hoping Nurth would get the idea.
The boy’s eyebrows pinched together in perplexity.
Will stood up, crossed his legs, and joggled from side to side. Then he pointed at the door again. “I—need—to—go—OUT.”
Nurth’s face split into a grin, and a bubbling laugh escaped him. He said something to one of the men, who unhooked the rope’s end from a beam and led Will outside.
It was bitter cold. The sun was a blear of red above a lowering rack of cloud; he must have been in the hut the whole day. Will did his business behind a bush and looked around him. Smoke rose from the hut on the small island Nan called a crannog, and as he watched, villagers began to gather at the shore and get into the log boats again.
Will’s guard spoke—and for the first time, the meaning of the words felt tantalizingly near. Maybe Time Hearing was going to work, after all!
The guard jerked at the rope. It chafed Will’s neck, and a sudden fury surged in his blood. It took all his self-control to unclench his fists.
He was tired of being treated like a dog on a leash. The minute he could speak the language of these people, he would demand to see Nan. She would arrange for them to be alone in a quiet place, and he would open a window. And once he got home, he would never, never use his Time Sight again.
The guard pushed him into one of the log boats. Will sat in the center, behind a man with a paddle, and looked about for Nan. The boat was shoved off, and he lurched backward; a thump and wobble told him that his guard had leaped in behind him. Paddles dipped, water droplets splashed on Will’s arm, the log boat rocked unsteadily, and Will hung on to the sides, shivering in spite of the pelt that covered his shoulders.
The boats clustered near the crannog as the paddlers kept them in position. The druid appeared in the doorway of the crannog hut with a lighted torch in hand; behind her came Nan, wearing a long, belted dress and a wreath of leaves in her hair. Her armband gleamed dully, and over her shoulders she wore a small cape of fur like the druid’s. She looked like some ancient princess, and she was carrying an armful of what looked like greasy cattails.
The druid walked to the island’s edge. One by one the boats came in close and Nan handed out the cattails. The villagers lit them from the druid’s torch and set them upright in hollow tubes at the front and back of each log boat. Then the druid stepped carefully into Will’s boat, sitting at the very front with her torch held high; Nan climbed in behind her. Only one paddler was between Will and Nan, a man with broad shoulders. Will leaned to one side to speak around him, but the paddles dipped again and the man’s elbow knocked into Will’s head as the log boat moved out into the loch.
The sun slipped behind the rack of clouds and the sky turned purple, like a bruise. The loch gleamed violet and indigo in the dim light, and stones rose wetly out of the water, smooth as dolphins’ backs. The torchlight gleamed and flickered on the wavelets made by dipping paddles as the boats swung into formation.
Will leaned to the side again. “Pssst! Nan!”
Suddenly something broke the surface of the loch. It was gray, like a stone, but it was oddly shaped, and it was moving.
The crowd gasped.
“Cray-tee!” cried the druid, high and thin.
“CRAY-TEE!” roared the crowd.
The light from the blazing cattails shone on the thing in the water. It was the head of some kind of water beast with an elongated snout. It seemed to be smiling. Then the waters closed over the head and the loch was as still as if nothing had happened.
Singing with joy, the paddlers skimmed the boats strongly down the loch toward the river. The sky was gray and the sun was hidden behind a bank of cloud, but the torches sent out a warmth Will could feel on his skin. They were going with the current this time, and moving quickly. He gave up trying to talk to Nan—the paddler’s elbows were too energetic—but when the boats grounded a mile or two downriver, he had his chance.
“Poun-ka,” said the druid, nodding at Will as she got out of the boat, and Will’s guard pushed him into line after Nan. The villagers beached their boats and took up torches as the druid headed for a path that led up a hill.
Nan hadn’t seemed to notice the rope around Will’s neck. He leaned forward as he walked behind her, and the rope pulled and rasped until the guard gave him a little slack.
“Your hair smells smoky,” Will said.
Nan half turned, still walking, and Will could see the faint small shadow of her dimple in the outline of her cheek. “She had me burning stuff in a little stone pot while she chanted and danced around. First a pinch of some dried-up old weed, then a little pile of grass, then some seeds and fluff. And I had to cut a bunch of reedmace—my penknife stays a lot sharper than her copper one, by the way—and melt this white slippery stuff and soak the reedmace heads in it. I think the white stuff was some kind of animal fat, because it smelled like pig. I must absolutely stink.”
“What’s reedmace?” Will glanced back to see villagers falling into line after them.
Nan pointed. “The druid set hers on fire.”
“Oh, a cattail.”
Nan’s dimple deepened. “They’re fuzzy enough to be cats’ tails, I suppose, but in Scotland they’re reedmace. Anyway, she lit one of them in the hut, and it lasted for hours.”
“Do you know what’s going on?” Will lengthened his stride a little. It felt good to stretch his legs. “I’ve been stuck in a dark hut this whole time, and they put this rope—”
But Nan was already answering. “I can’t understand the language yet, but it feels sort of close, you know? Anyway, I think they’re performing some sort of ceremony.”
Will refrained from saying that he could have figured out that much on his own. The air was colder than ever, and his legs were bare, but as long as he kept moving, he thought he might not freeze.
Nan said, “Did you see the water beast?”
“I saw something, but it was gone so fast.”
“I think it was the Pictish beast. You know, the one on Breet’s armband? My dad says people used to draw it all the time—you know, long-ago people. But he said it was probably imaginary.”
“That thing in the water was real enough,” Will said, “except I couldn’t see more than its head. I think you’re right, though—they used the same word for both.”
“I wonder if they worship it?” Nan said thoughtfully. “The cray-tee, I mean.”
The guard behind Will jerked slightly, and the rope pulled at Will’s throat. He pried his fingers between the rope collar and his skin, giving himself room to breathe. “I don’t care what they worship,” he said, coughing. “I just want to get out of here. Like, now.”
“Okay,” Nan said, “only I’m having fun being an assistant druid, or whatever they think I am. I’m going to write a terrific school report! We’re supposed to do an era in history, and I won’t have to look anything up at all.”
“Good for you,” Will said bitterly. “Just make sure you put in how they tied me up with a rope around my neck and choked me every so often.”
Nan swung around. She stared at Will’s neck, and her mouth went straight and hard.
“Go on, keep going, or they’ll be all over us,” Will hissed, pushing her.
Nan marched forward, her breath whistling through her nostrils. “I didn’t know,” she said at last.
“Never mind.”
“But we’ve got to get out of here!” Nan whispered.
“First chance we get.” Will rubbed his arms and flexed his hands. His toes were starting to go numb. In fact all his reactions seemed to be slo
w, for when a large shadow broke out of the woods, he stared at it, unable to make his feet move.
“Aurochs!” came the whisper behind him, and the rope’s end dropped limp at his feet. The line of villagers scattered in a silent flurry.
Frozen in place, Will took in the great slobbering jaw, the splayed front hooves, the wide horned head taller than a man. The creature snorted, tossing its head, and then wheeled as a wildly thrown spear hit a horn and glanced off. In a moment the swishing tail and rank smell were gone, and several spearmen slipped away from the line at a nod from the headman and ran swiftly after the lumbering creature.
The line had dispersed, and Will found himself next to Nan. “Seriously? Was that a giant cow?”
Nan’s giggle was a little shaky. “I think I read about them at school. They’re extinct now.… They’re called—”
“Let me guess. Aurochs.”
The line re-formed, and the villagers continued up the woodland path. It was darker under the trees, and the torches streamed flame and smoke. Now the chanting started up again, more joyous than ever. Will put a hand on Nan’s back and found that snatches of meaning were beginning to come clear, like voices on a radio turned to almost the right frequency.
He tapped Nan on her spine. “Can you understand them yet?”
“A little.” She turned her head, frowning in concentration. “They’re happy, I think. Food … they’re saying something about food, meat to eat … and of course they hope the hunters are going to catch the aurochs. And then there’s a bit I can’t understand, about giving something to some god, something to strengthen him. Some of the meat, maybe?”
“Makes sense to me,” said Will, who had heard pretty much the same thing. Listening, concentrating hard, he didn’t notice where they were going until all at once a cliff rose on his right and the trees opened overhead. At the base of the cliff, water brimmed among stones and mosses. They were at Saint David’s Well again.
The sky showed a thin slice of the sun now very low in the sky, peeking out from beneath the thick shelf of cloud. The people made a semicircle around the cup-marked stone, its newly chiseled cup showing white against the lichen.
“Light, quickly,” the druid said, and all at once, Will could understand every word.
“O Great Sun,” the druid chanted in a high, keening voice, “we have carved your image again on the sacred rock. Now we light the sacred fire.”
Will watched, fascinated, as a village woman took solid white fat from a beaker and pressed it into the small round depressions in the cup-marked stone. Then she pushed in bits of what looked like braided twine, so that one end was in the fat, and the other end trailed out along a carved line in the stone. Flaming reedmace was lowered and held until the wicks caught, and in a moment the cup-marked stone danced with flickering light; each cuplike depression a candle, each candle ablaze.
Now the sun’s lower rim was almost touching the horizon. It blazed out, red and baleful, like an angry eye. The crowd hummed three repeated notes, like a hive of swarming bees, growing louder and louder until Will felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. There was some kind of power here—he could feel it. Perhaps this was why he had almost felt dragged back to this time when he opened the window in a hurry. He had been too close to the cup-marked stone, a place where people had performed this ceremony for years uncounted.
“O Great Sun,” the druid chanted again, “we have lit the sacred fire. Now we offer the power of blood, to give you strength to rise higher.”
“Higher! Higher!” chanted the crowd, and suddenly the druid shrieked, her arms raised to the sun. “Poun-kaaaaa!”
“POUN-KA!” shouted the crowd, and Will’s guard thrust him forward, holding the rope tightly. Choking, Will tried to claw at the rope, but his hands were gripped and pulled behind his back. Someone grabbed his hair and forced his head back until his throat was exposed. Now the druid was pulling out her copper knife.
“Poun-ka,” the druid said again, and her eyes turned to Will, gleaming like polished stones.
Now, too late, Will understood. Poun-ka did not mean a slave. It meant a sacrifice.
13
ALMOST HOME
IT WAS STRANGE THE WAY time slowed down. Will could see everything clearly, more clearly than he had ever seen anything before. He had time to take in Nan’s face frozen in horror, and the strange mixture of guilt and relief on Nurth’s; he saw the hooded predatory eyes of the druid, and the thick, frowning brows of the headman, and the last rays of the sun on every frosted blade of grass and the rough hard edge of the cliff and the cup-marked stone with its flames rising. It was as if a whole hour went by between the drawing of one breath and another, and he felt his blood pumping hard through his veins and thrumming in his ears. There was time for everything—thoughts of Jamie, of his father, his mother—
And suddenly he was filled with an overwhelming revulsion for the violence he had met everywhere in time. The Stewarts killing and kidnapping; the Menzies fighting back. The Romans invading with sword and spear; the Picts driving their war chariots to battle. In this ancient time, killing children to sacrifice to a sun god—and in modern time, wars and savagery and his own mother taken hostage for reasons he did not understand.
Had it always been so, from the very beginning? Was it never going to end? He was so tired of it all that he felt it like a sickness inside him. And then, as the druid lifted her knife, time suddenly snapped back into its normal pace and he saw Nan react in swift fury, chopping her arm down hard so the copper blade spun out of the druid’s hand and stuck, point first, in the frosty ground.
Nan yanked off Breet’s armband and held it high above her head. “CRAY-TEE!” she shouted, waving it in the druid’s face. “NO poun-ka!” She fumbled in the pocket of her dress, yanked out her penknife, and sawed through the rope around Will’s neck.
The druid muttered something, and the headman gave a hand signal. Two strong-looking villagers took hold of Nurth at once; the boy looked suddenly sick with fear.
“Explain yourself,” said the druid sternly to Nan. “You came to us with power and strange metal, and cut through the rope that held our sacrifice.” (Here she glanced at Nurth.) “You told us that you had brought a new sacrifice instead, a better and stronger poun-ka for our sun ceremony.”
Nan’s mouth fell open. “That wasn’t what I meant at all!”
“Nevertheless, we must make the sacrifice to our Great Sun now. If you will not let us use your poun-ka, then we will use ours.”
Nan bit her lip as two men dragged the terrified Nurth forward. “But why do you need a sacrifice at all?” she pleaded.
The druid frowned. “Surely you know that the sun loses strength as the year grows colder. It drops lower and lower in the sky each day, until sun-stand, when it must somehow gain the strength to begin its climb back up once again. We offer a sacrifice of blood to give it strength.”
“Sun-stand?” Nan repeated blankly.
“The winter solstice, I bet,” Will whispered.
“Oh.” Nan twisted her hands together. “But why sacrifice a person? Can’t you use a bird, or a sheep, or maybe the aurochs?”
“We rarely see the aurochs anymore. It was a great good fortune that we came upon one today—a sign that the gods are smiling on our sacrifice. And we saw the cray-tee as well, so it is clear that luck is with us and we are doing right.”
“You are not doing right!” Nan cried. “You can’t just kill one of your people every winter!”
The druid looked distinctly annoyed, and her voice took on a frosty tone. “Most winters, we sacrifice an animal, and the sun is well pleased. But this has been a year of poor harvests and too much rain. The sun is weakened and needs extra strength. And this boy”—she nodded at Nurth, whose face had gone chalk-white—“has a damaged arm and can be spared.”
“But you can’t—”
“Enough talk!” shouted the druid, pointing to the sun. “The sacrifice must be made now, while the eye o
f the sun can still see it! So choose which poun-ka will die!”
Nan looked desperately at Will. “Can you open a window?” she whispered. “And bring him through with us?”
Will glanced at the sun. It was cut almost in half by the horizon now and going lower every moment. He might be able to open a time window before the sun set, but if he brought Nurth through, the druid would only grab someone else to kill; that old woman, perhaps, who had trouble keeping up, or that man with the swelling on his neck. Will’s mind was moving smooth and fast now, like a river in a narrow place between high cliffs. A hand still gripped his hair, and he jerked his head to free it.
Now what? Will’s heart pounded like a mallet against his ribs. If he was going to pull this off, he could not sound afraid. He had to act like someone with authority, someone whose ancestors had lived on this land, who had a right to speak. He whispered a one-word prayer in his mind—Help!—and took in a breath.
“Listen!” His voice wavered slightly, but at least it was loud. “The aurochs and the cray-tee are signs, but what they really mean is that next year’s harvests will be better”—he devoutly hoped this was true—“and that the sun doesn’t need any sacrifices. It’s going to come back every year, anyway!”
The druid looked suspicious. “I am usually the one who interprets the signs. How can we know this is true?”
Will shot another rapid look at the sun. “I’ll prove it by showing you an even greater sign. When you see Nan—er, the assistant druid—and me disappear right in front of you, you will know that means the sun is strong enough already without any sacrifices.”
The druid’s eyebrows twitched down. “A sacrifice would make sure, though.”
“No,” said Nan hurriedly. “Don’t sacrifice anyone, ever again, or the sun god will punish you! Terribly!”
“Are you,” said the headman, “messengers of the sun?”
