A window seemed to open in Ki’s mind. Her heart smote her for her thoughtlessness, for putting the privacy of her grief before a man’s life. She moved swiftly, allowing herself no time for memories or regrets. She climbed stiffly up the wheel. The cuddy door moved stiffly in its tracks. She sought in the darkness. There was his smell again, and the familiar feel of garments washed and mended by her hands a thousand times. She turned off her memories, ignored the voice that whispered betrayal.
Vandien was tamping down snow into the kettle, taking no more care with his fingers than if they had been lifeless sticks. His hands were white in the firelight. The veins showed blue, sinew and bones outlined.
“Stand up,� Ki ordered him gruffly.
He rocked slowly to his feet with motions that could have bespoken mere stiffness and fatigue, or been pure insolence. Perhaps both, Ki thought. She shook the folds of the heavy cloak out, pushed the shawl from his shoulders and settled the cloak around him. Hastily she bared her own fingers to lace and tighten the leather ties that his own stiff fingers could never manage. The cloak was hopelessly too big. When she jerked the hood up about his face, it fell far over his eyes. She bunched it about his face as best she could. Vandien stood strangely docile under her ministrations. She could feel his violent shivering, hear the chatter of his teeth. The heavy mittens were of wolf hide, lined with sheepskin. She pulled them up over his lifeless hands. They went nearly to his elbows.
“Somewhere in the wagon there would be his sheepskin leggings,� Ki remembered aloud as she looked down at Vandien’s thin leather ones.
“I walked frozen all day, while you had these in the wagon?“ Vandien’s voice was indignant and bewildered.
Ki nodded slowly and raised her eyes to his. The mittens, the heavy cloak, the pale face of a stranger within them. Dark eyes looked out of Sven’s hood, flecks of anger glowing in them. The shock of the wrongness seized her, and she turned away from it. She tried to remember how Sven had looked in them. Larger, yes, but what else? The image wavered in her mind, would not come.
She spun away from Vandien to face the dark and cold. But Sven was not there either. She crouched, hunkering her body down, making herself small and separate from all things. She huddled, searching her mind for a clear image. But they all seemed blurred by time. She rummaged for emotions, for love and grief. She found only anger. Sven would have remembered the firewood. Sven would have asked ahead about safe stopping places. He should be here to do those things. But he wasn’t, and she couldn’t even see his face. She hunched forward, shivering with a cold not of snow. A heavy fur mitten was resting on her shoulder.
“Come, get up. You’ll freeze there, and it won’t change a thing. The water for tea will be hot soon… Ki.�
He did not ask for explanations. He did not try to help her rise or comfort her. She heard the squeak of his boots against the dry snow as he returned to the fire. Ki rose slowly, feeling as if her guts were dropping back into place inside her. Her mouth was full of bitterness. She went to the cuddy, lit the small candle briefly to take out the dried meat and withered roots for stew, to search coldly in the back of Sven’s cupboard for his winter leggings.
Vandien had brewed the tea. He pushed a steaming mug of it into her hands, taking her burdens from her. He cut the meat and roots into smaller chunks than Ki did. He felt her eyes on him and made a show of returning the small knife to the dish chest. He grinned at her as he did it, a fey grin by firelight. Ki could not return it. She sipped her tea and felt the warmth slide into her body like sanity into her mind. She did not watch Vandien as he donned the leggings, but busied herself with stirring the soup. They ate hastily as soon as the meat had softened, sucking noisily at the burning liquid and scalding their tongues.
The broth burned the bitter taste from Ki’s mouth. Her shivering calmed. She felt the heat of the fire begin to seep through her boots to her feet. Vandien stacked the rest of his firewood and spread the shawl over it, making a place to sit. Ki moved to his invitation, sinking onto the lumpy seat gratefully. She could look at Vandien only as long as she looked at his face and not his garments. He sat quietly beside her, at a comfortable but companionable distance. She found he was watching her quietly. The weariness in his eyes shamed her. She moved uneasily, going to the cuddy and returning with coarse, hard bread. She broke it into a chunk for him and one for herself. She watched the struggling fire, chewing the hard bread slowly. Damn the man! What did he want of her, watching her with those martyred eyes?
“The Sisters,� Vandien began softly.
“Ah! You promised me tales tonight. I had nearly forgotten.� Ki’s tone was falsely light, bantering. He did not rise to it.
“Beauty is seldom kind.� Vandien spoke it like a lesson learned. “And the greater the beauty is, the more unkind it may be. You have seen the awesome beauty of the Sisters. It is a beauty beyond any race’s creating. Such a thing can only be natural. And yet they are remarkably regular, perfect in their symmetry. Hard they are, impossible to chip or mar, if any could find a desire to do so. They rise beside the trail that goes through the pass. In clear weather, in summer time, they are high above the path, so that a man on horseback may not touch them, even standing in the saddle. But in winter the snow rises, and with it the trail. When the trail is high, you may walk on top of the crusted snow and touch their beauty. But legend has it that they do not like to be touched by any other than themselves.�
Vandien’s eyes were masked and far away, as if walking the pass in memory. He stared into the fire, and Ki saw the outline of his face. He had pushed the hood back from it while he ate. He had a strong profile. Were he clean and shaven, and not so thin, he would not have been an ugly man. He turned his eyes from the fire to Ki, and they came alive, seeming to hold the fire he had gazed into. He seemed puzzled at her stare. He gave a slight shrug and continued.
“I have never touched the Sisters. I have heard men brag of such a reaching, but they were not men I desired to imitate. The kiss the Sisters share is only for each other. And I think they are a jealous pair. For, in winter, the pass is not safe.
There is no sign of violence, no evidence of a battle or treachery. But wagons and Humans and beasts are found crushed within the pass, beneath the shadow of the Sisters’ kiss. One crosses the pass in springtime, only to find the poor crushed bodies as if ground by a mortar and pestle. The deeper the snow is, the greater the chance of mishap. The snow has not lain this deep within the pass in many a year…“
“Avalanche,� murmured Ki sleepily. The drone of Vandien’s dreaming voice had lulled her to the edge of sleep. “Poor folk, crushed under chunks of ice and snow, to lie revealed when the snows melt. Ugly. But at least they all die together.�
“Snow never clings to the Sisters’ faces, nor to the steep rise above them. Year after year, that wall of the pass is as bare as a knife blade. No snow settles on the Sisters. The cliffs stand bare there, year after year, while their burden of snow settles in the trail beneath the Sisters. And the trail there can be treacherous with ruts and troughs from the snow serpents passing. Human and Dene are not the only ones to use this pass. We shall have a pretty time with it.�
“At least they die together.� Ki was seeing the fire as if it were at the end of a long, black hallway. The image stirred vague, unsettling memories. The air inside her nose was cold, but she herself was toasty warm. Warm feet, warm belly, warm face, warm fingers, warmth coasting lazily through her. Vandien’s chin had nodded onto his chest, the floppy hood falling half across his face. Strange face, all dark eyes and bones. Strange man…
The sap in one of the logs bubbled, then exploded with a loud pop. Ki jerked her head upright. “Vandien! Wake up! Fools we are to doze before a dying fire in this weather. To bed now, and travel in the morning.�
�€�
Vandien straightened himself slowly, rubbing and pulling at his face. He moved to the fire, stacking on two more logs close over its dying flame to feed the embers during the night. “We’ll load the rest of the wood and take it with us. Tomorrow.�
“Tomorrow,� agreed Ki. She rose stiffly and moved about the camp, stowing gear with a tidiness born of long habit.
The door to the cuddy complained as Ki jerked it along its groove. Inside, all was still and cold. She let her eyes become accustomed to the dark. A faint, ruddy glow from the fire came in through the small window. It was enough. On the straw-stuffed mattress was the shagdeer hide cover. She had given the other blankets to the horses. Ki leaned out the cuddy door. Vandien was crouched by the fire, arranging it to his satisfaction. His face was pinched with the cold and his days of privation. The labors of the last few hours had told on him cruelly, much more so than on Ki, who came to the snows fresh from warmer lands. She studied him for a silent moment, knowing he could see nothing of her face or eyes as she peered at him from the dark cuddy.
“Vandien!� He looked up at her, and she motioned to him to come. She moved back into the cuddy and shook out the shagdeer cover over the whole platform. She felt the creak and give of the wagon as he climbed up on the seat. She looked up to find him peering inquiringly in the door.
“Wipe your feet before you come in,� she cautioned him. “The cuddy is tight and will hold most of our warmth. We don’t want snow melting in here.�
He hesitated awkwardly. He came down into the cuddy as cautiously as if he expected the floor to give way beneath him. He slammed his head against the ceiling, then crouched to clear it. He stood still, silently looking about. The man and the children had left their marks on the cuddy, and Ki had taken pains not to erase them. His face changed subtly as his eyes took in Lars’s puppet, a tiny pair of soft leather shoes that dangled from a peg. He moved back slowly toward the cuddy door.
“I shall be fine sleeping under the wagon. I’d have the fire.�
“Don’t be a fool. Once you went to sleep there you would never wake up, to check the fire or anything else. Shake out the cloak and leggings and hang them on those pegs.�
She did not watch to see if he obeyed her. She dusted the snow out of her outer clothing and hung them up. She moved around him to slide the cuddy door shut. Vandien eyed her as she cut off his retreat. The fading light from the fire made a tiny square on the ceiling of the cuddy. And still Vandien stood awkwardly in the center of the cramped cuddy.
“We may be crowded sharing the platform, but the body heat will be worth it.� Actually, as Ki well knew, the platform could hold two very comfortably. She waited for Vandien to make one of his acid comments. But he did not.
“I could sleep on the floor here,� he offered. “If I rolled up in the cloak, I would be fine.�
Ki moved past him without a word to climb up on the platform and crawl under the shagdeer cover. She settled, feeling the cold mattress close about her body. It was colder than she had expected. “You’d better bring both cloaks with you,� she said imperturbably. “We’ll need them to be comfortable.�
She watched him in the dark as he took both cloaks off the pegs. He shook them out and let them settle over Ki and the shagdeer cover. Moving gingerly, he edged himself up onto the bed and eased under the hides. He ended by lying on his back so he faced slightly away from her. The round of his shoulder was but half a hand-span from her own. The platform had not been designed for privacy. Ki could feel the heat of him seep across that small space to touch her familiarly. She was both repelled and unwillingly warmed by it. She heard the small sounds of his settling: the crack of knee joints, a clearing of throat, the crackling of the straw as he snuggled his body into it. His breathing steadied in the silence. She listened to it in the dark, holding herself still and silent.
“Sleep well.� His voice startled her, coming from so close beside her and so unexpectedly. She jumped, and then tried to pretend that she had been settling herself.
“We’ll make an early start.� She was unwilling to let his remark hang in the silence.
“Yes.� Ki lay staring up in the darkness as Vandien watched the wall of the cuddy. Each was unwilling to be the first one to sleep. Ki could hear faintly the crackling of the fire outside the wagon. One of the horses stamped and shifted. The bed began to warm her. Almost warm enough to sleep comfortably. She let her legs stretch and relax. The dark pressed on her eyes. She closed them to shut it out.
She only realized she had slept when she opened her eyes sometime later to darkness. She was not certain what had awakened her. She remained motionless, listening to the stillness, searching for some sound that might have disturbed her. As long as she lay still, she was warm. She knew that to shift might open some small crack in her covering, let the cold air seep in to touch her.
Gradually, Vandien came into her awareness. In sleep they had shifted, gravitating toward each other’s warmth. Vandien had rolled over to face her, his body curling toward her. His head had lolled forward, to rest heavily against her shoulder. It was the tickling of his dark, dense curls against her face that had brought her to wakefulness. She smelled his smells, the acridness of his sweat and the fernsweetness of his hair, like crushed herbs—so different from her own man’s soft blondness and smell of leather and oil. But the leaning weight of Vandien against her brought him into reality for her, made Vandien a whole person, not one of those shadows with which she had consorted for so long. He pressed against her solidly, breaking into the sealed world she had defended. The world twisted about her, and Vandien, sleeping here beside her, breathing so slowly, was the reality—and Sven became the shadowy being beckoning to her from some other world. Her mind struggled with the tangling images.
In rebellion, she shut her eyes, closed out Vandien’s nearness. Sven was hers. She would not forget Sven and her children. She would never let them go. She groped for their images in her mind, but it was Lars she summoned up. Lars, brother to Sven, looking up at Ki where she perched in the limbs of the twisted old apple tree…
“I thought I might find you here,� Lars said.
“Please go away,� Ki pleaded softly.
Last night’s ritual had drained her. When she had awakened at last, it had been late in the day. She had dressed in her own dusty garments, feeling angry and displaced. Here was no quiet privacy of washing herself in a stream, of making her solitary cup of tea and facing the day. Here she must dress in dirty clothing and face a room full of people before she could even cleanse herself. Her head ached abominably and her ears still hummed.
Armed with her anger, she had entered the common room. It was empty. Cora’s wooden table, cleared of all traces of last night’s appalling feast, was in its usual place against the wall. The fireplace stood cold and empty. Last night might never have happened.
Ki had been free to go to her wagon and change into her clean brown shift. She had checked her team only to find them grazing contentedly in the pasture. She had crossed the pasture and walked through a narrow belt of trees, to the apple trees and meadow that fronted on the road. She had been sitting in the tree, careful to keep her mind as empty as the road she watched. Now here was Lars, to bring it all up again.
“I can’t just go away, Ki. I wish I could. It’s time some of it was said, anyway.�
“Some of what?� Ki asked angrily. “I don’t even understand what happened last night, but somehow everyone holds me responsible for it. Maybe you should start there, by explaining that to me.�
“Maybe I should,� Lars conceded wearily. He stood, arms folded, as Ki dropped down from the tree. A little selfconsciously, he seated himself on the grass. Ki reluctantly joined him.
<
br /> “Last night was not your fault. In a sense, none of it was your fault. You are not one of us—I do not mean that unkindly. But you were not raised in our ways, and you have never chosen to learn them. The Rite of Loosening—did Sven never speak of it to you?�
Ki shook her head. “We had our minds upon living, not dying. It was obscene for Sven to die. Obscene!�
Lars nodded. “It was. And you showed that obscenity to us, in every detail.�
“And what should I have showed you?� Ki asked bitterly. “You harped on me about sharing my sorrow. Having tasted the cup, do you turn your face from it?�
“You do not understand.� Lars pressed the heels of his hands to his temples, then forced his hands to fold themselves and rest quietly in his lap. “A woman raised in our ways would have shown us her man and her children racing away on the horse. She would have shown us, as you did, their wild beauty as they went, hair streaming, voices trailing laughter behind them as they galloped up the hill. Then she would have told us that they never came back from their ride. This is our custom in the case of a violent death; not to reveal it in all its hideousness. And she would have saved for us a cup to end on—a healing, loosening cup. With the last cup she would have given us, as a gift, a memory of them she cherished. A moment, perhaps, of a child seen sleeping by firelight. When my father died, the gift my mother gave us was an image of him as a young man, muscles bared as he raised the first roof beams of our home. It is a gift I cherish still, the glimpse of my father as I would otherwise never have seen him. Thus, it is called the Rite of Loosening, Ki. We let them go. We set our dead free, and in place of mourning we offer to our friends a quiet moment of our happiness with the one who is gone.“
Lars fell silent. Ki cast her eyes about, abashed. She spoke huskily. “I suppose that could make it a very beautiful thing, this Rite of yours. But it was never explained to me. All you told me was that I must share his death with you. Do you wonder that I waited so long before I came to you? I will be honest. But for my oath to Sven at our agreement, I would have let my road take me past here.�
Harpy's Flight Page 9
