A Turn of Light

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Most likely, Wyll had caused a fuss last night. She hoped not, but he was capable of it. Or Scourge could have dumped her bags—and the men’s breakfast. Like Wyll, the not-horse had a temper.

  Whatever it was, she’d put it right.

  As if she’d said it aloud, Wainn, on her other side, tilted his head to watch sunbeams and smiled peacefully.

  They reached the farm in short order. Jenn looked longingly toward her path and Night’s Edge, but the little house was where she was supposed to go. Having had her small adventure, she firmly intended to behave.

  As for her adventure, the less said about that the better. Nothing would be gained from stirring trouble in life’s pot. The best thing about Aunt Sybb’s sayings, Jenn decided cheerfully, was how easy it was to choose ones that made her feel better.

  Little wonder, then, that she cried out in surprise as a breeze, fever hot, swirled around her legs, then rushed upward to give her hair a painful pull. “I told you never to go there!”

  Wyll leaned on a corner of the house, not content to wait until she was close enough to have a proper conversation.

  Eyes smarting, Jenn shouted, “I’ll go where I want!”

  “And cause no end of grief doing it,” Tir snapped, nearer and doubtless believing she’d spoken to him. “You do know they went near mad with worry, don’t you? First the road, now this.”

  Jenn stopped in her tracks to stare at him as Wainn, with a blithe, “I’ll find tea,” continued toward the house.

  “I was fine,” she protested.

  “Heart’s Blood! So it was a game, was it? To see who’d rush to your rescue?” She shrank from the disdain in his voice. “Suppose you’re sorry it was me.” Tir turned and spat. “Fool girl.”

  He strode off toward the garden leaving her standing, open-mouthed, in the midst of the yard. The torn and trampled yard. What had happened here?

  A shadow detached from the row of trees. Scourge. As he approached, he flung his head high, nostrils flared till she could see red inside. Lather had dried on his chest and legs, but the breeze nipping her ear was frost cold. “Is he right? Were you trying to lure my truthseer into the Wound?”

  “I don’t know what you mean—”

  “Jenn!” Bannan, who’d been sitting on the side of his well, rose and came toward her.

  Finally. Someone glad to see her. Jenn’s smile died. Why was he covered in leaves and dirt? And why the haggard look on his face? “I took a walk,” she said in a faint voice. “That’s all.”

  A whirl of hot fetid wind. “And what will be the consequences?” Oh, Wyll was in a mood.

  “Are you all right?” from Bannan.

  Suddenly, she wasn’t sure. They were so upset, all of them. Not at her—she knew better. As if they’d been mortally afraid, for her. Why?

  Because she hadn’t been safe, Jenn thought unsteadily, remembering the white pebble and dark path. Not safe at all.

  A fretful wind stirred grass and twisted leaves.

  “Jenn.”

  She started, eyes wide.

  Bannan gentled his tone. “What did you see?”

  She shivered and rubbed her arms. There had to be another storm coming, the way the air took chill like this despite the sun. “Nothing. Nothing I wanted to.” She couldn’t hide her disappointment from him any more than she could hide the truth. “I thought I could see beyond Marrowdell from there, but all I saw were more hills. Hills, the stones, and a meadow. It wasn’t nice, like ours.” Like ours should be, she thought with despair. “It’s not a good place,” she whispered and wind howled through the treetops.

  “Dearest Heart.” The breeze wrapped around her and tried to warm her, but could not. “Peace. You’re safe now. Trust me, when next I warn you.”

  Bannan’s warm, apple butter eyes held hers. “It’s all right, Jenn,” he said soothingly, as if she was truly frightened, which she wasn’t, just confused. She didn’t dare be frightened. “You’re here now. Thank you for sending breakfast. Are you hungry?”

  Jenn shivered again. “No—no, I’m not. I—I would like a cup of tea, please.”

  “Nothing easier,” he promised, and took her hand to lead her to a seat on the fallen branch.

  There was tea, strong and hot. No milk for it, or honey, but the metal cup Bannan provided gave an interestingly unfamiliar taste. The cup had a hinged handle that would fold to save space in a pack; Jenn thought it a very clever and soldierly item. Under other circumstances, she would have been curious. Had it seen battles? Was it old or simply battered? Did it come with a spoon?

  Instead, she stifled her questions and sat drinking tea on the branch. With no porch, nor yet chairs or bench to put on one, they’d used the branch in turns yesterday as a handy place to rest; it was pleasant here, now that the chill wind had died down, and shaded by the large old tree. Though from here, with a lift of her eyes, she’d be looking at the long slope of the Spine; Jenn kept her gaze on her tea in its interesting cup.

  Everyone else’s gaze was on her, as if she was about to sprout horns or feathers or babble poetry in Naalish. She tried not to fidget.

  Not so Scourge. “Will you please stop?” she begged again. He huffed at her and pawed the turf again with a hoof, sending dirt and bits of vegetation flying everywhere behind him. Wyll’s eyes hadn’t lost their silver fire, but at least he wasn’t digging messy holes. Bannan, on the other hand, had a worrisome lack of expression on his face whenever Jenn stole a look at him. “I’m sorry I didn’t come straight here.”

  “I’m sorry you trusted the bloody beast with our breakfast,” Tir grumbled. He’d retrieved the saddlebags from the summerberry brambles and bore abundant scratches for his effort.

  Though he shouldn’t blame her for those. He could have asked Wyll.

  Wyll leaned where the branch’s jagged end turned up toward the tree from whence it came. Ripped away by a winter storm, perhaps. The snows affected the old trees, too, and brought limbs crashing down. Or lightning might have done it, though Jenn hadn’t noticed any scorching. Wyll leaned because his body didn’t favor sitting or standing straight. He leaned because of what she’d done.

  And now he was angry with her too. Angry and disappointed.

  She hadn’t promised not to take the path; she’d said they’d talk about it later and done what she wanted. Having lost similar arguments with her father and aunt—most spectacularly when she hadn’t promised her father not to skate until the ice was as thick as he’d wanted and wound up almost drowned beneath the ice—she knew better than to try.

  A tiny sigh escaped her lips.

  Wainn, who might have taken her side, stood quietly at a good distance from Scourge, his face shaded by the wide brim of his hat and a Treff-made cup in his hand.

  Bannan stood as well, and Tir, the two lined up against her. She might have been at home—and a child—being scolded by her father and aunt. Jenn quenched a stir of rebellion; she’d put herself in danger, however strange, and might not have found her way home without Wainn.

  Repressing a shudder, she lifted her eyes to look toward Night’s Edge. “Have you fixed our meadow yet?” she asked hopefully.

  “I cannot.”

  Wyll said it with such finality Jenn’s heart thudded in her chest. She’d apologized, hadn’t she? She’d come back safely—wasn’t that the point? He couldn’t mean to punish her—not like this. Her father’d only made her wait until after the Midwinter Beholding to skate with the rest.

  “Of course you can,” she replied lightly, though her lips wanted to tremble. “You must. Night’s Edge is our special place—our home! You can’t possibly leave it like—like that. Come. We’ll go now and you can fix it.”

  The silver fled his eyes. His face went sickly white. “Dearest Heart—”

  With a rude snort, Scourge pawed loose another spray of dirt and ruined leaves. Wyll’s eyes flickered, and a quick little breeze snatched the debris and whirled it into a thin dense column, a column that bent to slap the not-hors
e smartly on the rump. He shied with an aggrieved whistle, hooves barely missing Bannan’s feet.

  “Wyll can’t fix it.” Wainn had a knack for being forgotten. Having startled them into noticing him again, he lifted his cup toward Night’s Edge. “This was your fault, Jenn Nalynn, not his.”

  Her fault Wyll wasn’t whole. That’s what he meant.

  “Something went wrong with the wishing,” Jenn admitted with all the dignity she possessed. “Everything went wrong,” she added miserably and couldn’t help but sniffle.

  Bannan went to a knee before her. “Not everything,” he protested gallantly and pressed a handkerchief into her free hand. It was creamy linen, monogrammed with the prettiest “L” she’d ever seen, complete with trailing ivy and a little rosebud. She clutched what had to be a treasured keepsake and held back her tears for fear of soiling it.

  “Not everything,” the truthseer repeated, this time in a determined tone. He glanced over his shoulder at Wyll. “Tell her the truth,” he ordered, with a snap that straightened Tir’s shoulders, “or I will.”

  “T-Tell me what?”

  “Tell you, Dearest Heart,” whispered the little breeze in her ear, contrite and soft, “that you are not to blame. Your wishing shaped me as man; it did not make me thus.”

  “I don’t understand,” Jenn said slowly, looking at Wyll.

  “Dearest Heart. Good Heart.” He tugged his useless arm from its resting place inside his jerkin and let it fall against his twisted side, then spoke for all to hear. “This, you didn’t do.”

  “But you said I did. You knew I believed it. All this time, I believed I’d—” The air grew heavy and tasted of lightning on her tongue. Jenn surged to her feet, Bannan rising to back out of her way. “How could you!”

  “How could you?” Wainn said. He was at her side. When had he moved? He took the cup from her hand as if worried she’d spill her tea. “This is Marrowdell’s guardian,” the youngest Uhthoff went on in his careful, unhurried voice. “The penitent and punished.” Tears glistened in his earnest eyes. “He didn’t deserve to be wished into a husband, Jenn Nalynn. You should have asked first.”

  Wyll stared at Wainn. “What can you know of me? How?”

  “I’m a good listener,” Wainn explained, which Jenn knew to be true, though she hadn’t realized he might listen to more than Wen. “You dream of guilt and grief. You live by duty and honor. You love without hope.” A sudden, small smile. “Yet you play.”

  Jenn pressed her clenched hands, and Bannan’s handkerchief, over her mouth. She didn’t know what would come out first and she daren’t—she mustn’t—make things worse. Yes, she was angry at Wyll for letting her believe she’d maimed him, but she was furious—or was she hurt?—because she hadn’t known and had never known and they’d been friends, special friends, for all her life and she should have.

  Thinking it through, she wasn’t angry at all, but very very sorry. Tears smarted in her eyes. Had he lived like this all his life? Or . . . She lowered her hands slowly. “Wyll. What hap—?”

  The breeze roared in her ear. “ITCHY!!!” Scourge twisted his big head around and began to chew loudly at the skin on his back. “ITCHY!”

  Sticky brown hair began to drift through the air. Tir cursed, Wainn sneezed, and Bannan shrugged. “The fall shed. Sorry.”

  Jenn looked at Bannan. Had he heard Scourge? Could he?

  It didn’t seem so, when next he said, “We’re going to use wood from the wagon to rebuild the porch. I say we grab a quick breakfast—”

  “ITCHY!!!!” With a furious stamp, more chewing and more drifting hair. Jenn winced.

  “Stop that!” Bannan looked annoyed. “Go on. The kit’s in the barn,” he told the not-horse, who gave a desperate neigh and trotted in that direction, only to stop and glance back with a pleading look that would have impressed Wainn’s old pony.

  Jenn didn’t have an appetite anyway. “I’ll look after him,” she said, careful not to look at Wyll, and went after Scourge.

  Anything to be away, where she could breathe. Away from them all, or most. Most especially from Wyll. For a heartbeat, Jenn gazed longingly at the Tinkers Road and thought of running home to Peggs.

  Aunt Sybb wouldn’t approve. Might have beens and if onlys don’t mend socks, she’d say. A woman faces life’s trials.

  Jenn straightened her shoulders and headed for the barn instead.

  If Marrowdell reflected Jenn Nalynn’s most powerful feelings, Bannan Larmensu was relieved by the pleasant blue of the sky. With her safe arrival at the farm, warmth had returned to the air. He might have imagined those chill moments when the world seemed on the brink of . . . something.

  He hadn’t. She’d not told the truth, not all of it, about what had happened to her on the Spine. Something she’d remembered frightened her, and Marrowdell had shivered once more in answer. Ancestors Blessed and Beloved, that he’d been able to distract her with tea, or they’d have needed coats.

  Wainn might have had some answers, to that and more, but after his astonishing insights concerning the dragon, he’d put down his cup and hers, and left without another word. Tir had collected those cups with a glower that warned away any conversation and stomped into the house, presumably to make breakfast, most likely his own.

  As for Wyll . . .

  Young Uhthoff had named him the penitent and punished. Wyll having admitted being cruelly maimed by his own, Bannan’s urge to pity died stillborn. What did he know of dragons and their justice? Wyll might be guilty. As for him being transformed by Jenn’s wish? That, from what he could see, was more an impediment to his hopes than penalty to the dragon, who appeared to manage quite well. Maybe better than a man turned dragon, if such were possible.

  Duty. Honor. Bannan knew what those meant to him. What were they to Wyll?

  The grief he’d seen for himself, felt still. That terrible grief. What had Wyll lost, besides wings?

  The truthseer took a deep breath and shook his head. The dragon had stared after Jenn Nalynn like a man lost in the dark would look to a solitary distant light. That he was her guardian, Bannan could believe. That there was more than duty to his faithfulness?

  He wasn’t blind.

  But was that duty to Jenn’s benefit? There was a thought to draw gooseflesh from skin despite the warmth.

  He’d ask—he’d dare that much—but Wyll had gone too, lurching through the farmyard to the path to Night’s Edge, disappearing beyond the tall grass. Though he’d claimed he couldn’t repair the damage, maybe he went to try. She’d asked, after all.

  And now the focus of so much turmoil was in his barn, grooming his—Bannan shrugged and smiled to himself. Grooming Scourge, who’d never been his, and whose interruption had been suspiciously compassionate.

  Making his choice, for better or worse, Bannan followed Jenn Nalynn.

  “I wish you’d stop complaining,” Jenn complained.

  “I’ll stop,” the breeze informed her, a red glint in the beast’s night-dark eye, “when you leave me to suffer in peace!”

  The eye was well over her head, as was most of where Scourge itched, which didn’t help. Nor did the fact that the lightest touch of the big fancy brush she’d found in the bag hanging from a hook—Bannan’s kit—made his skin shiver madly, releasing choking clouds of stiff little brown hairs. She was coated in them already and she’d only just started. Jenn raised the brush, more than ready to toss it away.

  A shadow crossed her feet. Bannan appeared in the stall door and smiled. “Need some help?”

  “Oh, no. We’re fine.” To prove it, Jenn drew the brush as gently as she could along Scourge’s side.

  “ARGH!!! TICKLES!” the breeze scolded unhappily. Skin shuddered until Scourge’s entire body shook, sending up another cloud. Hair twinkled in the beams of midmorning sunlight slanting through the barn, and drifted out the open stall window to the farmyard.

  Jenn sneezed and spat, wiping at her mouth, then snuck a look at Bannan.

  He wa
sn’t laughing. That was good. Although there was a suspicious twinkle in his eyes. Jenn narrowed hers. “What am I doing wrong?”

  The breeze flipped hair into her face. “Everything.”

  She frowned at Scourge. “I didn’t ask you.”

  The truthseer stepped inside the stall. “You can hear him,” he declared with wonder, eyes wide.

  “When he wants me to,” Jenn admitted. “He talks to you, too?” She had her answer in his involuntary glance at Scourge, who’d backed his hindquarters into the far corner of the wide stall to stand and huff as in terror of being touched with the brush again. “It’s rude,” she scolded the creature, “not to include everyone present in a conversation.” Though Master Dusom hadn’t breezes in mind when he’d chastised her and Roche for passing notes in his class, using his stern tone was most satisfying.

  “ITCHY!” Forceful and aggrieved.

  She and Bannan both winced, then he grinned. “Oh, yes. I hear Scourge. Here.”

  “Here?” she repeated. “Couldn’t you where you came from?”

  Scourge stamped one foot. “I couldn’t speak there,” admitted the breeze.

  At the implication life outside Marrowdell might be lacking, Jenn tilted her head and frowned. “Why not?”

  Bannan looked interested. “I’ve wondered the same.”

  “I didn’t belong,” the breeze said testily. “Beyond the edge is only you and yours. I smothered.”

  “‘Edge?’”

  But the breeze became sullen, and Scourge flattened his ears.

  “Let me have that.” Bannan took the offending brush, then rummaged in his kit for a toothed band of metal, secured to a wooden handle. “The scraper’s best once he’s this bad.” Scourge made a rude noise, but stepped up with an eager shake of his head. Bannan handed her the tool, showing her how to hold it, then laid his hand on the top of Scourge’s neck. “Start here, at the poll, and work down with his coat. Press as hard as you can. Trust me, his hide’s tough as ox’s.”