The Wind-Witch

by Susan Dexter

  Druyan seized the chance to dye the accumulation of winter-spun wool, working the craft in around cheesemaking and the last of the soapmaking. She held back no skeins—there were dyestuffs she could not gather at that time of the year, but there was the wool from the spring shearing still to be dealt with. She colored her yam with the skins of onions, the shells of black walnuts, the first green coltsfoot leaves, and the last of the wintered-over beets. By the time she had finished with all the possible colors, ’twas time for a first cutting of salt-grass hay.

  In an ordinary river-bottom field, they’d have cut and left the stems to dry and cure in the sun—but that was not to be thought of in a marsh soaked twice daily by the tide. The hay would have molded, or been clotted with salt, or turned to peat like the natural edges of the marsh. Instead, they cut wain-loads and hauled them back to a hilly pasture that caught a good breeze and whatever sun there was, and hoped for a few dry days in a string. Druyan did what she could to ensure a lack of rainfall, but she would not risk whistling up a breeze.

  She had not tasked him ftuther about the bowl.

  She had not taken it away with her, either. She had abandoned it on the dark earth, hard by the feathery tops of the new carrots. If he left it there, the rain would till it to the brim, till its surface was a perilous mirror for his unwary eye to fall upon while he was at his chores.

  It belonged in the kitchen, probably. But Kellis dared not step foot therein—Enna was having a bad spell with her joints and never left the shelter of the room for any sure length of time. Her knees were hurting her nearly as badly as her hands, she could not walk far, and her temper was exactly what one would imagine it to be under those circumstances.

  He could put the bowl in the barn. And Kellis did, but he could not put it from his mind. He hoped a hen would choose it for a nest. There was one that prowled the barn, obviously broody, plainly not trusting the daily raided nestboxes the lady provided for her fowl. Her fluffed feathers would hide all of the bowl from him, from his sight. He would be able to forget.

  Days, that goal was possible. His work took him far from the barn and the bowl, and the regular movements of his arms and legs could lure him into a sort of trance, when Kellis thought of nothing but the ground underfoot and the air about him; he could be mindless as a beast.

  They cut hay in the marsh. Kellis dared not be mindless about that—he was required to wield a scythe with a wicked crescent blade of which he had a morbid fear—or a healthy respect, depending on one’s point of view. Fortunately, the scythe’s snathe was wood, and long, which meant he was able to keep the cold iron at some distance from his shivering flesh while he worked. But reaping required constant tense vigilance if some disaster was not to overtake him. Kellis could not carry the tool to the marsh, over his shoulder with the iron crescent pointing down his back as Dalkin did. Nor dared he hone the dulled blade on the bit of sarsen stone Dalkin had for that purpose. He had to ask the boy to tend the tool for him, to carry it and sharpen it.

  And then, if he narrowed his attention down until his head ached and his shoulders twitched, Kellis could cut hay without slicing his own legs out from under him.

  In a broader field, he would have been so slow as to be useless. But the marsh was his friend, its twisty channels and narrow ribbons of grass rewarding rather than punishing the care he took in cutting. Had he embraced the scythe like a brother, he could have cut the salt grass no differently, no more swiftly.

  Come night he should have slept like the dead, worn out by strain and exercise. But Kellis lay nightlong in the dark cave of the barn, listening to the horses breathing and sighing and nibbling at their fodder, wide awake. And in the blackness there was one spot of greater darkness yet, and an empty space at the center of that darkness, a cup to catch and hold all the overflowing misery in his heart.

  He shut his eyes. It didn’t matter—he wasn’t seeing the bowl with them. That was why the farthest corner of the barn was not half far enough away for it. That was why covering the bowl with hay did no good. Probably smashing the fragile crockery would be no use, either, though he had not yet tried that last resort, since there was no retreating from it if it proved faulty.

  You were quick enough to look into the water for those murdering savages, his dark thoughts accused him.

  The answers didnt matter, he responded, flinching. All I had to do was tell them what they wanted to hear And hope I was right enough for my own sake. Never for theirs.

  As a plan, it had been stupid, and it hadn’t worked for long—but he’d done it, without a qualm, without this agonizing. Means to an end, using the Eral to ferry him over the sea, that broadest barrier on his quest for the city where wizard-folk gathered, where he might find a place.

  Night after night he felt the bowl’s presence, like a bad tooth that would not hurt him unless he bit upon it, but would not leave him in peace, either. What sleep he did find was tainted by dreams of uncomfortable intensity, worse than any that the iron-sickness had ever given him.

  If he looked into the bowl—even once—there was no going back from it. If he asked to see, he would see. See, and be once more cursed with the conundrum of sifting truth from deception, today from tomorrow, with always the chance that it might as easily have been yesterday. He couldn’t do it. He knew too well what the responsibilities were and that he was not equal to them. His clan had died to prove that to him.

  Better, anyway, that he not tell the Lady Druyan what she wanted. She had shown him kindness, she had more than likely saved his life—mixed blessing though that deed was. He did not think he would fairly repay her by giving her a cause to ride that wonderful, terrifying horse of hers into danger. He was right to refuse her, if only for her own good.

  Her good—or his cowardice?

  The straw stuffing his pallet felt like so many bundled sticks. Kellis arose, unable to bear it longer. morning must come, sooner or later, whether he slept or not. Time always passed, however distorted his sense of it. The nights were shrinking as the sun rode higher into summer. He leaned wearily against the wall that separated his stall from the next.

  Warm air brushed his cheek, startling him. The boards creaked as Valadan rubbed his shoulder against them, perhaps soothing an itch. He blew another breath in Kellis’ direction, through the narrow gap betwixt the boards.

  “Am I keeping you awake?”

  There was a snort for an answer. Horses dozed much, but did not sleep deeply nightlong. They preferred to spend the hours attending to their hay.

  “What would you do?”

  Kellis had heard the lady speaking to this horse as if he were a human soul, able to make her answer. He knew the stallion had speed beyond that of any mortal steed—had it not hopelessly outdistanced him when he tried to follow their shared mistress to Falkerry? And in the dark, Kellis could see the stars glowing, the uncanny constellations that filled Valadan’s eyes. But the horse did not speak to him, the horse who was not afraid to be entirely whatever he was.

  It was Dalkin’s task to turn the hay over with a wooden fork, so it would dry evenly. The final stage was to spread the fodder on the barn floor for a while, before ultimate storage in the mow above. There was a contraption of rope and pulleys and a platform for lifting the fully cured hay up to the loft—good work for a rainy morning.

  The pulleys were squealing like pigs at slaughtertime as Druyan ventured into the barn in quest of the overclever hen who’d made a nest in the henhouse but had steadfastly refused to lay in it—Druyan knew she had a true nest somewhere, and suspected an overlooked corner of the barn. Or else the fresh, inviting hay. Either way, the hen was destined to lose her clandestine brood.

  Kellis lowered the platform carefully, then came down the ladder to load it once more. Druyan inquired whether he’d seen a hen.

  “I didn’t. She gave herself away when she pecked my ankle—I had almost stepped in the nest.” Kellis indicated the general direction with an inclination of his head. “There’s just the one
egg, Lady, and she seems most determined not to give it up.”

  Druyan sighed. “I suppose she might as well hatch it out. Do you think we’re finished with this cutting?”

  Kellis glanced roofward, cocked his head to listen. The pattering of drops was less steady than it had been an hour before. “There’s more I might get to, just the other side of the main channel.” They only cut from the upper edges of the marsh—go too far in and the wagon would mire hopelessly. “Worth cutting if we get another dry week for the curing.”

  Druyan took stock of her weather charms, a review to help her decide whether she could entice a few days of rainlessness out of the sky. A breath of wind would break up the clouds. . .

  Or invite a storm, like the last wind she’d whistled up, destruction and inconvenience because she’d played with powers she didn’t in the least understand. Not a risk she should take, just for a bit more hay. Still, the wind had been shifting on its own, doing exactly what she would have asked it to do. . .

  “Start cutting in the morning, even if it’s wet—we’re due some clear weather,” she said, and went off to see about it.

  Druyan was half through a charm for fair skies when she sensed she was no longer alone. The far side of the orchard had seemed private enough—the cows and their calves paid her no heed—but Druyan felt eyes at her back and turned to see Kellis standing by one of the gnarled apple trunks. She arose, leaving behind on the ground a little blue bowl. She had just poured water from it, wiped it carefully dry with a linen cloth, then breathed upon the grass gently, to simulate drying that, as well. It was too soon to tell whether the tiny mummery would have the desired effect on the greater stage of Splaine Garth, but she thought the sky was lightening.

  “Is this how your people witch weather?” she asked Kellis, curious about her homespun technique. If there was a surer way to obtain her ends. . .

  Kellis shrugged. The day’s-end light filled his eyes, making them shine silver as his hair. “Hard to say. We’re mostly concerned with having the rains come on time, so the pastures don’t burn up. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone trying to stop rainfall.”

  “I can’t stop it, either,” Druyan admitted. “Just hold it off for a bit, or chivvy it on its way. Steer it around us. Not much. Of course, the weather’s generally a bit drier this time of year. That helps.”

  “You don’t want much more magic than that, Lady. It’s no use, and a lot of trouble.” His tone, like his expression, was bleak.

  “You mean not to be able to touch iron?”

  Kellis didn’t answer. His eyes were empty, his thoughts and meaning impossible to guess.

  “They say my grandmother Kessallia was a great witch,” Druyan mused. “No one could keep anything at all from her. Every secret, hidden thing was open to her. But she didn’t pass the witchblood on—they say she examined every child, every grandchild, and never found a trace. It must have been bred out of us.” To her lady mother’s relief, probably. But Druyan’s own regret shaded her voice.

  “Or she was looking too soon.” Kellis’ attention came back, if it had ever been absent. “You can’t judge witchblood in a baby—they’re too busy with everything else, walking, talking. Teething. The power crops out later, when childhood’s being left behind.”

  An old man points a finger at you, picks you out of a crowd, and nothing’s ever right after that—only you don’t know it, he thought. Aloud, he tried to reassure her.

  “If it’s weak, and you pay it no heed, that power might even damp off, like a seed that sprouts but doesn’t grow. Or it might curse every part of your life.” Because maybe she shouldn’t regret her lack as she seemed to.

  Druyan blinked at the sudden shift in the wind. “Then perhaps I’m glad I don’t have it,” she said.

  “If we get fair weather tomorrow, will it be an accident, then?” Kellis raised a brow at her. “There are plenty of weather charms, because no one can escape wanting weather that favors what he’s doing. Most of them don’t work. Yours do.”

  “It’s a good thing,” Druyan answered tartly, looking at the brown cow and her calf, grazing nearby. “We need a deal of hay out of this summer—that’s a fine heifer there, and if I keep her to milk, we’ll be making cheese enough to take to market in a couple of years. But if I can’t feed her, I’ll have to salt her down or sell her. The moors don’t offer pasture enough for the horses and the cattle. Easier some ways when the year’s calves are all bullocks.”

  “You could pasture year-round on that marsh,” Kellis said, born of a herding people and knowing good pasture just by the feel of it under his boots.

  “The winter storms take too much of a toll. When there’s a storm tide, we don’t dare let even the sheep into the marsh.”

  Kellis nodded, pulling a stem of hay out of his sleeve. “I see your point. I’m supposed to be telling you that Enna has your supper ready.”

  Druyan bent to gather up the bowl. There was a little breeze teasing at the ends of her yellow-red hair, where it was slipping free of its braid. Aloft, the winds would be greater yet. The clouds would break up, and they’d delight in clear weather for perhaps as much as a week. The hay would be made—and she’d probably manage to add another milking cow to the herd. The coursers who had gone with Travic’s men were eating elsewhere. . .

  The bowl in her hands brought another bowl to mind she hadn’t seen it since she abandoned it in the garden next to a row of carrots, but it had often been in her thoughts.

  When he slept, Kellis dreamed of his homeland, the purple grassland of Vossli. At first all he saw were wind ripples that brushed the land’s surface into waves like the sea’s. And his heart lifted with a ridiculous joy, that all his troubles had been no more than a night of evil dreams, that his home was still there when he opened his eyes to the dawn.

  But as he gazed with his wolf-eyes, he saw the black smoke, and the acrid tang of buming tingled in his nostrils. It was no natural fire—there had been no lightning storm to kindle a blaze of renewal. And there were the tall shapes of men behind the flames.

  In an instant more, the charred land was being ripped open by iron-bladed plows. Kellis sobbed low in his throat, feeling the land’s pain as if the rent flesh had been his own. Crushed by the weight of the stone houses that sprang forth behind the new-plowed lands, the lines of stone walls that divided one bit from another, like unweaned pups tom from their mother’s belly. Flinching from the tread of the strange feet that tracked the dust where once purple-tipped grasses had grown. . .

  Kellis opened his eyes to the darkness. His cheeks were wet, and his throat ached as if it held fire-coals. There was no stench of burning, except in his heart.

  But I have driven a plow, he thought. It was hard work, but not a calamity Not a desecration. . .

  Not for Esdragon, no. The invading Eral had made Vossli cease to exist in a generation. They could not wreak that upon Esdragon simply by farming—but they could do worse. And they would.

  Unless they were stopped.

  “I can’t stop them,” Kellis whimpered. “My clan is gone from every memory save mine—”

  A snort came from the adjoining stall.

  “I can’t—” Kellis insisted. And glanced with a shudder toward the corner where the hidden bowl lay.

  More salt hay was spread on the pasture, and Dalkin was set to making sure the sheep and the coneys left it alone. Druyan oversaw the planting of the ttunips, the onions, and the leeks, a whole new patch of carrots in a sandy spot discovered accidentally. In the hedgerows, roses and blackberries and raspberries were shedding their white petals and begimiing to set fruit on their long canes.

  The sun lifted his shining face over the moors a heartbeat earlier every day and tarried a moment or two longer each evening before dipping into the water of the marsh. Druyan started Kellis digging peat—it was none too early to think of winter’s fuel, as they had thought of the fodder. The turves needed a considerable drying time at the edge of the marsh, ere they coul
d be carted in to stack and store—ready to supplement precious wood in the winter tires.

  Kellis fed the stock and then went straight off to his digging unless she instructed him beforehand to tend to some other chore. So Druyan was startled, while she sat coaxing milk from the brown cow with her big, gentle but not a gentlewoman’s hands, to see him appear at the cowshed door. The calf bawled at him, wanting to be loosed so it could go to its mother.

  “You can keep digging,” Druyan said, pressing her head lightly against the cow’s soft flank, inhaling her warm animal scent. “You’ll be long gone before any of that peat goes on the fire, but we’ll bless your name, every fire we sit by, come winter.”

  “Lady—”

  “What?” More milk swished into the pail, in time with her moving hands.

  “This is . . . good sailing weather.”

  “We don’t have a boat, Kellis. I suppose we could float the peat up the river if we made a raft, but the wagon works as well. If we pick dry weather—”

  “The wind’s from the sea.”

  “It always is, this season.” She tugged gently, easing out the last of the milk. “The sunfall winds. Every tree on the Darlith coast will tell you that—they all lean inland.” The cow lowed softly, and her calf, tethered so it would not impede the milking, answered her with another bawl. Druyan stood, set the pail safely out of the cow’s way, and made ready to drive her to her day’s grazing. Not the orchard again, she thought. That grass was thin, lush enough but easy to overgraze.