The Humming of Numbers

by Joni Sensel

  “You know,” he told Lana, opening his eyes, “you might be right about five. I hope so.” He regarded her.

  She did not smirk or speak, merely returned his gaze. Those blue eyes tickled him. He squirmed.

  “Do you hear them, too?” he asked softly. “The numbers, I mean?” He felt naked before her.

  She only smiled and reached for his hand.

  Aidan stiffened, wary but entranced. He did not pull away. They’d traveled hand in hand for much of their flight, but this contact felt different. It felt secret. Afraid to know that secret, Aidan averted his gaze. He pondered the courage and responsibility, the stubbornness and hot temper and occasional dullness of five-ish folk he had known, and he refused to think about linked fingers at all.

  XI

  The land beneath them began rising, and they veered into a gully that Aidan recognized. They had circled around north of the abbey and now passed not far from the local beekeeper’s cottage. Aidan began planning the shortest route back toward the abbey, mapping a course in his head. Though he craned his neck looking, no gaps in the greenery gave him more than a glimpse toward it, nor any hint of what may have transpired there.

  As a breeze drifted past, Aidan froze. Lana stumbled, brought up short by their linked hands.

  “What is it?” she whimpered, crowding close to clutch him. “Did you hear something?” She fumbled with her hazel rod.

  Aidan breathed deeply, all senses flaring. He couldn’t hear the humming of any number low enough to come from a person, but he didn’t trust that. His instincts had stopped him, not his mind, and he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps another troop of skulking raiders was just a little too distant to hear. For that matter, perhaps Norsemen had no numbers. He had refused even to listen during the passing of the previous band. Now he regretted that cowardly impulse.

  As he scoured the undergrowth for motion, Aidan resisted the urge to flee for cover. If some enemy lurked, the hare’s trick of remaining frozen and silent might serve them better now.

  “I don’t feel any danger close by,” Lana whispered, lowering her divining stick.

  A dab of red drew Aidan’s eye. He realized what had set off his internal alarm. Some of the tension left his limbs, and he drew his hand loose from hers.

  “I smell blood,” he said softly, “which means there must be a lot. Stay here.” He stepped carefully forward to investigate.

  Ignoring his instruction, she crept along at his heels. They slipped between trees and shortly Aidan could follow his eyes instead of his nose. Something bleeding had passed through the woods, leaving splatters of darkening red on leaves and the earth. The number and size of the stains made him wonder how far the one bleeding could possibly have gotten.

  They soon reached the clearing around the beekeeper’s house. Thick-bodied bees crisscrossed the meadow, their drone filling the air. Their hollow logs and straw hives sat in clusters among the clover, apparently undisturbed. After long, silent study, Aidan decided the house offered no threat.

  “Let’s go,” Lana urged, looking over both of her shoulders. “Nobody’s here.”

  “I told you to stay back there,” he countered. “I shouldn’t be long. There still may be someone alive here who needs help.”

  He slipped across the yard. Once he rounded a corner of the house, the source of the scent lay in plain sight. A horse sprawled on the ground, the soil churned into red mud by the animal’s death throes and great gushes of blood. Its wounds leaked yet, but enough time had passed that ravens had begun showing interest. Neither the sight nor the cloying tang in Aidan’s nose was much different from what he knew from slaughtering cattle, but the greater violence and disarray turned his stomach.

  Hoof prints and more blood trailed away from the trampled earth and back the direction he had come. Glad to turn away from the carcass, Aidan visually traced that path to the trees where Lana fidgeted. She gestured anxiously when she saw him look back. Signaling for her to wait yet, he turned and explored a bit farther.

  The gate to the animal pen stood wide open. The livestock it should have confined had escaped or been taken as spoils. The beekeeper was not to be found, either. He may have fled on the second, wounded horse, but he’d more likely been captured, perhaps by the same raiders who had come back down the hill with a prisoner in tow. Either way, the man had not gone without a fight. A dead Viking lay near the door to the cottage.

  Drawn, Aidan crept near enough to peer into the enemy’s face. With a choked cry, he leapt back. The attacker was not dead yet after all. An almost inaudible humming rose from him.

  Keeping well beyond the reach of any sudden movement, Aidan stared. The fallen Viking neither twitched nor opened his eyes. Although mortally wounded, he had not yet been claimed by the fatal blow—a hunting javelin plunged through the barrel of his chest.

  Aidan let the man’s weak sound of three fill his ears. So Norsemen, too, had numbers. Troubled that this dread enemy’s near-corpse hummed of the same number as several of his childhood friends, Aidan wondered if the man had shared their quick humor and staunch loyalty. He rather hoped the Vikings’ numbers, as well as their mouths, spoke a different language. Unfortunately for his peace of mind, the men he knew who hummed of three were quick on their feet, not easily frightened, good with weapons, and enthusiastic hunters. At least one had rustled cattle from distant rivals, and all of Aidan’s three-ish friends might have made passable raiders.

  The squawk of a feasting bird split the air. Startled, Aidan glanced around. The Norsemen might come back for this fallen comrade before they departed.

  “What took so long? What were you doing?” hissed Lana, when he hurried back to her.

  “Trying to figure out what happened.”

  “Was anyone inside the cottage?”

  Aidan gripped her arm and drew her away through the trees back the way they had come. She took his silence as a negative answer.

  As the beekeeper’s house receded behind foliage and shadows, Aidan regretted not taking the javelin or checking for any food there to scavenge. He’d become distracted by the dying Viking, and that lapse filled him with shame. Briefly he considered returning. It would be best, he decided, to hide Lana and then go to learn if the abbey, or anywhere else, was safe yet. He hoped neither of them would need a weapon.

  “Which way to your hiding spot?” he asked, realizing that he’d taken the lead. “If it is near here, it might not be very safe. They may return.”

  “This way,” she said, adjusting their course. “And ’tis not so close as that. But tell me, Aidan, what did you see back there?”

  “A dead horse and an almost-dead raider,” he said.

  “Almost?” Her voice slanted up to nervous heights.

  “’Tis all right,” he assured her. “He’ll be dead soon enough. I could only tell that he wasn’t because I could still hear his humming.”

  “Like a heartbeat?” Lana asked, surprised.

  “A little, I suppose,” he said, “if you could play different heartbeats like different notes on a pipe.”

  They hurried onward, their distance from the bloody yard growing. Hearing a nearby trickling of water, Lana said, “I’m thirsty. Could we get a drink?”

  He agreed and they ducked under branches and parted brush until they reached the small stream. Lana sank onto her knees with a sigh to scoop water with her hands. Once Aidan also had quenched his thirst, she remained on the ground. He crouched down beside her.

  “Tired?” he asked.

  She rolled her head in an awkward no, not wanting to admit it but not lying very well. He wondered how she’d managed to fool any pilgrims.

  “I can hear that you are,” he said gently. “You need not be ashamed. We can rest here a minute.”

  “Mostly I’m frightened,” she sighed. “But that’s making me feel worn-out.”

  Aidan felt similarly, but as he hunkered near her, he tried to keep his eyes on the forest around them, alert to the rustling and life there.

&
nbsp; “Do your ears get tired?” Lana asked.

  Confused, Aidan blinked. At first he thought she meant listening for danger. Then he realized she was still poking into his sense of the numbers.

  He shrugged. “Some numbers are more pleasant than others. But usually they all meld together into a sound like the rush of the river. I ignore it a lot of the time.”

  She caressed her hazel rod between her hands.

  “When I’m crafting a wood charm, I can feel the energy of the wood in my hands—a vibration, almost. Do you think it might be the same thing?”

  Aidan drew a long breath, fighting a swell of annoyance. He had already explained more about the numbers to her than he had ever consciously laid out for himself. He managed to keep his voice soft as he replied, “You keep asking me questions I don’t know the answers to, Lana.”

  “I’m sorry. I just want to understand.”

  Her eleven filled the silence between them, hushed and sunken in her fatigue. Aidan could nonetheless hear within it a note of burning curiosity that defined her. Raising his eyes, he saw that she still awaited an answer, and with more than curiosity in her face. There was some barter going on here under the surface, a trade he did not understand. As that recognition flared within him, it kindled both apprehension and thrill. He found he wanted to bargain with her, blind though it felt.

  Nibbling at his fingers, he let his gaze course the stream bank, looking for something that might help him satisfy her.

  “Close your eyes for a moment,” he told Lana, “and hold out your hands.”

  A fleeting distrust crossed her face, but she set her hazel rod in her lap and lifted her hands.

  He turned her hands palms up and cupped them together. When he glanced higher to check that her eyelids had closed, a small paralysis gripped him. He crouched there, unable to let go of her hands, while his eyes mapped her lashes, the sturdy strokes of her brows, and the delicate veins in her eyelids. He couldn’t remember ever having looked so closely at someone who was not looking back, and he liked it. Then the curve of her cheek shaded more pink than it had been a moment before and her eyes began to twitch under their lids. Alarmed by a similar flutter in his chest, Aidan released her hands and stood up.

  “Just stay like that for a moment,” he said. “I’m only stepping away to pick something up.”

  Aidan scooped a handful of waterworn pebbles from the shallows of the stream. He dropped two into Lana’s outstretched hands.

  “Without looking, how many rocks in your hands?”

  She curled her palms to feel. “Two.”

  He slipped in a few more. “And now?”

  Her next reply took a bit longer and wasn’t as sure. “Seven?”

  He dumped the rest he had gathered into her hands.

  “Now?”

  A gentle snort escaped her. “I would have to hold them against me and pluck them from one hand to the other to count.”

  “My numbers are rather like that,” Aidan said.

  She opened her eyes. “That is feeling, not hearing. You said you heard them.”

  Aidan battled exasperation. “I do, Lana! But that’s as close as I can explain. What I hear is a sound, but I feel the number inside it. Like … you can hear someone hollering from a distance, but you have to be closer to make out the words. And if it is a high number, I need time and concentration to get it.”

  Lana must have heard the frustration in his voice. She deposited the pebbles on the ground. “Thank you for trying so hard to explain it,” she murmured, without looking up.

  Ashamed of his impatience with her, Aidan said, “I’ve never really talked about it before.” He meant to help excuse his ineptness, but once his words lay in the air, they seemed to say more about loneliness.

  Lana’s eyes found his and lingered, her gaze disconcerting without conversation to help interpret it. The color of deep water, those eyes pulled at him. Aidan found himself wanting to respond by telling her more things he’d never told anyone else.

  “We should go,” he said softly instead, realizing how long they’d been motionless and astray from their purpose. “It is not safe to stay here in the open and talk as if nothing has happened.”

  Still silent, she nodded. He helped her to her feet.

  Aidan gestured at the hazel rod, which Lana had been careful not to forget. “Do you want to try that again?” he asked. “Just in case?”

  A surprised look lit her face. She agreed. Once she had satisfied herself that no danger loomed imminently, they started walking again.

  Shortly Lana said, “Can I ask one more question, Aidan?”

  Caught for an instant between anger and laughter, he opted for the latter and nodded.

  “You told me before you had never heard a person with a number as high as mine.” Her brow creased in anxiety. “Do you think there might be something wrong with me?”

  “No,” he reassured her, but her question recalled the odd hum of one that he heard from Rory, and how that number did not seem to fit his young friend. Wondering if she had a point, he cast for memories that might provide clues. A grin broke through his sober thoughts.

  “Although I will tell you,” he added, “that before I met you, I think I only heard eleven from cats.”

  “Oh! I don’t know if I like that or not!”

  “I doubt it means too much. You just have the same kind of … lazy mystery.”

  “Lazy?” Affronted, she reached to slap at his arm.

  “And fierce claws!” he added, laughing. “And intense curiosity and eerie eyes and graceful movements and—” Feeling himself stumbling into dangerous territory, he shifted focus quickly. “I don’t know if the number comes from the traits or the traits come from the number. I have just learned to match them up over the years.”

  “Fine,” she said, in a mock huff. “I can be aloof like a cat, too.”

  While she pretended to sulk, Aidan pondered, intrigued by the puzzle Lana had raised.

  “I have wondered why people hum of the lowest numbers,” he admitted. “I think it might be because people are closer to God. And everything else in the world, everything with numbers higher than ten, is more connected to … well, everything else. So their numbers multiply with each other somehow.”

  “So eleven is farther from God than everyone else?” Her voice, trembling, revealed that she was trying hard not to be hurt.

  Aidan took a deep breath, searching for the right thing to say.

  “No,” he replied quietly. “I didn’t mean that. And I am only guessing; I surely don’t know. But I don’t think your eleven is bad, Lana. I think you’re just a little more connected to the rest of the world.”

  He peeked sidelong at her, loath to see insult or annoyance on her face. She kept her gaze firmly fixed on the forest floor.

  He bit his lip, then added, “I like hearing eleven.”

  Her eyes flashed to him, but for only an instant. Sorry he’d said more than was needed, Aidan tucked his hands into the opposite sleeves and bowed his head. He saw a new value in the monks’ rule of silence.

  They each traveled in their own thoughts until Lana alerted him to the end of their journey at last.

  XII

  Lana led Aidan to a grove of old trees on a steep side of the hill. When he saw a large snag that had rotted away at the base, leaving a hollow, he pointed.

  “Is that where you mean to hide?” The foxhole was large enough and sheltered from weather, but anyone walking past would see them curled inside.

  “No. That makes my place better, because nobody would look farther than that.” She ducked past the snag and picked her way to another nearby giant. Battered by lightning or wind some years ago, the tree had uprooted and fallen. The cluster of broken roots at its base now arched high over their heads, splayed and curled like the legs of a spider. Rowan and ivy had taken root in mossy crevices between the uplifted roots, and saplings piggybacked all along the half-rotten trunk.

  “Flying rowan, that’s call
ed, since it does not take root in the earth,” Lana said, pointing to the green rowan sprays over their heads. “If I wanted to make a flying switch, so I could fly back home without fear of the raiders, that is what I would use.”

  Aidan looked from the rowan to Lana, resisting the impulse to sidle away from her.

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m teasing, for goodness’ sake. If anyone can really fly by riding a branch, I haven’t learned how.”

  Aware that rowan was nonetheless sometimes called witch-wood, he asked, “Is that what you were trying to sell to the pilgrims?” When the abbot had asked where her false relics had come from, she had said that a tree sprite had shown her where to find them. Now, Aidan could almost believe it.

  His question dispelled her playful smile. “That wood is nothing I know, Aidan. That’s why I wanted it back. I was only trying to sell it because I was hungry.”

  Her words filled him with sympathy and frustration. He hated feeling so powerless, and he had never suffered it with such impatience as he did in her presence. He resolved to mend that discomfort with action as soon as he could.

  She led him nearer the upthrust wall of roots. A hawthorn shrub crowded the arch between two splayed roots and the trunk.

  Hawthorn, hagthorn, bush of May,

  Unlock your thorns for us today.

  After reciting those lines, Lana reached to the hawthorn and drew aside a spiked branch. A passage lay behind it where the downed tree’s enormous roots humped up from the ground, holding the fallen trunk in the air and leaving an arched hollow beneath them. Clotted dirt and more roots formed a back wall deeper inside. From outside the hawthorn, the tree cave was invisible from every direction.

  “Duck down,” she said. “And mind the thorns. It doesn’t know you.” She slipped under the cruel branch and disappeared into the dead tree’s huge root ball.

  The hawthorn sprang back into place. Aidan tried to brush it out of the way and promptly stuck himself.

  “Ouch.”

  The branches shivered and parted. Lana’s face and hand appeared.