by Martin Davey
To think she had been so near to her mother. The distance had seemed infinitely vaster when they had lived under the same roof. But then in the years since she had fled Yerotan, the distance she had felt had seemed to lessen, almost as though as time passed she was pulling on a rope, pulling her mother closer, every day that passed, her mother, her understanding of her mother, becoming clearer. There had been a time when she thought that there would be as much likelihood of walking on the moon as beginning to understand her mother. Now the flippant cruelties, the emotional distance were things she could, if not forgive, then understand. Things she could see in herself.
Would she have changed as Ysora herself had changed? Twenty years since Ysora had last seen her and still she thought of her in the same way, as though her own absence would prevent her mother ageing at all, keeping her outside the boundaries of time like the Keepers themselves. In her dreams, in her thoughts, Kara Siran was always the same tall angular woman with wiry black hair only just starting to be brushed with grey, her arms long and thin with bony elbows and wrists, the nose hooked and large below eyes the blue of a cold lake. Her mother always favoured the long skirts that reached her ankles and made her hips look bony and her feet large. The same skirts Ysora had favoured when she reached a certain age. Just one of the similarities that Ysora had begun to notice as she got older. Now she had become almost resigned to them, though ever since she had looked in a mirror and her heart had skipped a beat of recognition, she had refused to wear her hair in a bun. It made her neck look long and her shoulders wide like her mother’s.
Her heart ached with nostalgia as she began to see things she had long since forgotten, now recalled from the depths of memory like the familiar refrain of a lullaby. A sparkling blue stream crossed by four stepping stones that she had played on with Sora Nubell, a distant red-roofed barn where she had taken her first lover--a quietly spoken boy with brown arms and a white chest whose name escaped her; and there a crooked tree with the split branch that she had once tied a rope to that burned her hands every time she swung on it.
In her night-time fantasies, curled around her bruises in a sodden bed, she had imagined returning to Yerotan to a familiar face at every turn, the sound of her name being called from every window, the whole village amazed and delighted that she had returned home after all these years.
Reality, as so often seemed to be the case for Ysora, proved very different to fantasy. She walked unnoticed through the fields of bitterfall, close enough to Yerotan to smell the manure, the cooking, the baking, the human shit, the goats, the pigs and the sheep. A heady mix which could be smelled in any village in the world. But overriding it all as always was the pungent aroma of the bitterfall fields spread about the village like a rippling dried blood-coloured bed sheet. The smell of the bitterfall flowers was thick and spicy, a smell that caught in the back of the throat, a smell that had haunted her dreams and her waking hours as she wept and wasted by the Sea.
She trailed the flat of each hand across the heads of the bitterfall, each flower bowed as though receiving news of the death of a loved one. Soon her palms were stained red with powder from the mourning blossoms. She paused, looked at each hand in turn, rubbing her fingers through the thick red, the sun hot on her back, the breeze warm on her face, the bitterfall nodding against her legs.
The powder looked like blood. She brushed it off as best she could and strode on to the village, the too-short skirt she had stolen from the washing line a few miles back felt odd as it swished against her calves, her breasts claustrophobic as they were squashed against her ribs by the yellow blouse taken from the same line. She brushed her hands together again. So much blood in her life since she had left Yerotan. Most of it her own, enough that she had wondered her body could hold so much as she was beaten night after night.
Only in the past day or two had she stopped looking over her shoulder fearing to see the men in the red coats pursuing her with vengeance in their eyes and swords in their hands. “The Clerk wants the woman,” one of them had shouted. Even now the thought made her cold down to her toes, made her stomach skip. The Clerk wanted her? For what crime?
“Godie!” She called. The great hound paused in his hopping through the bitterfall to look around for her, his ears flapping, his teeth white and his tongue long. “Godie! Come here!” she called again, for no reason other than the comfort of his presence. The moment Godie had woken her, whimpering and licking her neck as she shivered and moaned under a dark-leafed hedge, she had regretted running. How could she escape the will of a Clerk? They were the agents of the gods and the reach of the gods was infinite. How could she, a woman of no discernible talents hope to deny their will? And why would she want to? She had done nothing wrong, had nothing to hide—the Clerk, the gods, would see that. But still she had run, shivering and muddied and soaking, not to Katrinamal and Clerk Lovelin, but away from the Sea, away from Katrinamal, and to the one place she had known comfort and welcome and happiness in some part at least. To her childhood home of Yerotan.
To a place she had scorned and thought small and stupid and backward so many years ago. Can a place be small and stupid and backward? Ysora cringed to think how confident she had been then, how sure of her place in the world. She would one day meet a man deserving of her, strong and capable as she herself was and together they would make their place in the world of the Keepers.
And now here she was returning to Yerotan, not as some superior being looking down on the dull farmers and the ignorant villagers as she always thought she would, but as a woman aged before her time, bowed under the cruel weight of her years. And dreaming. Not Dreaming of the Keepers as she should, but dreaming of distant lands ruled by inscrutable gods worshipped by dark-eyed people with skin that shone white in the sun. Dreams that she knew in her heart of hearts had set the men in the red coats after her. Even as she scrabbled and slipped through the mud, staggered across fields of green peppered with yellow flowers, the compulsion that had begun with Rhodry’s death still took hold of her. Made her stomach revolt in her belly, become twisted and tight, a clenching ball of coldness, made her fingers ache and grasp, made the sweat drip from her forehead and sting her blinking eyes until she relented and pulled the branches from the trees, scooped the mud from the earth and fashioned rough images of the visions from her dreams.
The tools had been crude, her fingers shaking with the morning cold, with splinters piercing her skin, thorns scratching her knuckles. And then once she had finished, she had buried the results in holes dug with her nails lest the men in the red coats or any other agents of the Keepers still followed, best not to leave images of false gods and temples in her wake.
She looked at her fingers now, speckled with cuts and bitterfall powder until she didn’t know which was blood and which was powder. They were her mother’s fingers, the nails too large and thick, the knuckles too wide and bony. “Here, Godie. Here.” She patted her hip, pungent fumes of bitterfall assaulting her nose. “Stay close, dog.” Godie sneezed and did as he was told, his fur stained in red blotches from the flowers.
Already there were families out in the fields gathering the heads of the bitterfall into wicker baskets carried in the crooks of their arms. Perhaps four families; a couple of the women had foregone the expense of a basket and were using a hand to hold out their skirts and throwing bitterfall into the resulting sling.
Ysora didn’t recognize any of them. Silly to think the whole village would have spent the last twenty years or more doing nothing but awaiting her return. But at least one familiar face was to be expected, surely? Before she had left she had known, or felt as though she had known, every person in Yerotan. One of the reasons she had begun to look on the village with such scorn. One of the reasons she had missed the place so much since she left.
More than one picker had chosen the moment of Ysora’s passing to stand straight, make a show of stretching and arching their backs, turning this way and that, and all the time watching her.
Y
sora ignored them all and carried on to Yerotan. The closer she got the more she felt aware of her ill-fitting clothes, felt the eyes of the men linger on her body.
No! She tried to banish the thought. Not all men were like Rhodry and Gerard, lascivious and grasping and lustful, surely? She tried to lower her skirts, loosen her blouse as she hurried through the bitterfall fields, each step seeming to dissolve another layer of her fantasy like warm water on ice. There had been a time when even a stranger wandering through the bitterfall fields would be welcomed with shouts of greeting and perhaps even a cold mug of lemonade. At the very least they would have been confronted by a Guardian or two questioning their intent. Not so this time, Ysora was greeted only by dark, watchful eyes.
The dog had loped off through the bitterfall, bounding about like some oversized rabbit. “Godie, close I said! Stay close.” Strange that she was finally at the home of her fantasy and still she craved the comfort of Rhodry’s pet hound.
Ysora felt empty, a dark shell that her fantasies, the dreams that she had treasured as she laid on a cold kitchen floor, broken and bruised, were nothing more than that, fantasises and dreams. No more real than the tales of knights and dragons and beautiful princesses and charming princes that her father had told her as he rocked her to sleep. Would it have been better to never return, to have kept her treasured memories and dreams whole and unsullied?
“Close, Godie, close.” The dog was eager to be off, his tongue pink and dripping saliva and his breath steaming in the morning air. Where else could a woman return if not to her own home? Where else was there to go?
She finally stepped from the fields of bitterfall and onto the grassy slopes that surrounded Yerotan. The village seemed bigger than she remembered. The air was thick with the cries of confined animals; sheep, pigs, chickens and goats, some tethered to ropes, some scratching about in pens, some idle in their barns. Villagers all hurried about among the animals, most of them farmers, some tradesmen, shopkeepers, and others still. The work was the same, the clothes were the same as she remembered. Only the faces were different. Into the heart of the village now and she hadn’t recognized a single face. Something was wrong. She even briefly wondered if she had come to the right village at all.
But could any other place make her heart ache like this as she wondered the streets? Even here in the village itself, with horse shit lining the streets, the occasional pile being scooped into barrows by brown-armed farmers, the smell of bitterfall was thick in the air. The walk to her mother’s house was a quick one. Though Yerotan wasn’t a large village by any means, the winding paths and roads still made it seem larger than it really was. She walked the roads in the manner of a woman in a dream, everything was the same, the same weeping willow next to the inn, its branches overhanging the outside tables, the same thatched cottages lining the roads. And yet not a face was familiar. As a child, as a young woman, she had sickened at the sight of the same faces day after day after day. Now she would give anything for the sight of a familiar face.
One more corner to her old home. Every step was like unfolding a familiar picture, memories long forgotten returning as though they had never left at all. Houses, barns, stalls, flowerbeds were all as she remembered. She knew that if she looked up now, over the barn where a horse watched her with bored eyes, its ears twitching, that she would be able to see the thatched roof of her mother’s house. She kept her eyes firmly down, dry mud and dirt scattering from her shoes and ankles with every step.
Only now, as she turned the final corner, saw the familiar row of cottages, saw the village green where she had danced on so many Days of Thanks, awkward and lanky in her white dress, did she truly realize that her fantasy was just that. Fantasy. Yerotan, the place that had haunted her dreams all these years, was no longer her home. The buildings were the same, the smells were the same; but without the people she had once scorned, without any recognizable faces strolling the streets or working the fields or calling her name from an open window, it really wasn’t the same place at all. It felt like passing an old friend in the street who looked at her with no recognition as she passed.
No, her only home now, if she had one at all, was on a windswept cliff and had doors that rattled in the wind and a kitchen floor stained in her own blood. A home she had been chased out of by angry men in red coats. The Clerk wants the woman!
“Are you lost, miss? Can I help you?”
Ysora blinked at the man for a moment. How long had it been since somebody actually spoke to her? Seven days, and that had been Gerard with his breeches around his ankles and his freakishly strong hands pawing at her. Ysora blinked again, tried to smile, though no doubt it looked more like a grimace. “No, no. I’m fine thank you.” She was only dimly aware that she had started scratching Godie’s ear, pulling the dog’s head to rest against her hip.
The man was tall, even taller than she was, with collar length dark hair and a nose that was fine and straight over a narrow beard. Younger than she was, perhaps yet to see his thirtieth summer. He glanced at Godie nervously. Ysora vaguely wondered if he was aware how charming he looked when he did that. “Well,” he looked back at her, his dark eyes bright, “So long as you’re sure. I just noticed you’ve been standing here without moving for some time.”
Ysora only stared at him. He had a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead. He had a quirk of a smile that she might once have found attractive.
“That’s er...” his dark eyes fell back to Godie. “That’s quite a dog you have there...here boy,” he reached a hand out to Godie, the back of his hand up and his fingers tucked carefully out of the way. The fist shot back quickly as Godie growled softly, distant thunder rolling across the Sea. The man laughed nervously trying to hide his embarrassment. “Never was much of an animal person, ever since I got attacked by a sheep in farmer Retol’s field when I was a boy.”
“You should never hold out a fist to a strange dog like that, hold out a palm like this,” Ysora held out her hand, palm upwards, fingers outstretched, “show him you’re not threatening.” She saw the man looking at her outstretched hand with the same quirky smile, a flash of white teeth. She followed his eyes to her own hand, stained red with bitterfall, scratched and scarred from thorny branches, knuckles knobbly, fingers too long. She snapped her hand closed like a bloodied mousetrap and pulled her arm away back to Godie. Two farmers, hands and necks and arms burned brown from the sun walked lazily past them, their steps more hurried once they saw Godie watching them. Of course, Ysora didn’t recognize either one of them. “Well, it was nice to meet you but I really must--”
“Hurry on?” The man interrupted her, his smile widening ever so slightly. “Yes, it did look like you were in a hurry.”
Ysora eyed him, her grip tightening on Godie’s ear. Was the man mocking her? “Yes. Yes, I am.” She moved to step past him.
“Yes. Of course.” He stepped to one side, held out an arm for her to pass. “I do hope your stay in Yerotan will be a lengthy one, miss. I’m sure we’ll be seeing much of each other if it is. You could teach me some more about animal relations.”
Ysora stopped in mid-step. The man’s eyebrows were raised, his smile innocent. “Yes. Yes, I’m sure.” She hurried on, her back stiff and her steps awkward. Every instinct urging her to look back over her shoulder, but she fought against it. She knew he would be watching her with that same smile fixed on his face.
One good thing about the strange man; at least he had got her feet moving again, made her place one foot in front of the other down the road she had been born and raised on. An insignificant road with five insignificant houses and an insignificant barn on it housing three listless horses. She could see her house now. Her house? She hadn’t been here for twenty years and still she thought of it as her house? She felt a strange tightening in her throat, a lightness in her heart.
Her mother would be there in that house, under that thatched roof, perhaps she was even now looking out of those dark windows, her eyes passing over the tall, gangl
y woman with the wild dark hair. Ysora smoothed her hair, already seeing her mother’s disapproving frown even before the woman had answered her door. What of her clothes? She had almost forgotten the ill-fitting skirts and blouse. No matter how much she pulled at them, they would never look any better or come anywhere close to fitting. They would have to do. As would the smell.
Sweat prickled her skin, cold and uncomfortable. One final run of her hands over her hair, her arms and her skirts. Not the way she thought she would look when she returned to her mother, but she would have to do. She faced the house like a woman about to leap from the cliffs at the edge of the world, her heart quailing in her breast, deep breaths to try and calm herself. The house looked smaller than she remembered, she could tell from where she stood that she would have to stoop to step through the worn oaken door. She remembered her mother having to do the same thing, a curiously masculine act that made Ysora fear her even more.
And that was the word, Ysora realized, that had made her so slow to come back to Yerotan. Fear. Even when she wandered the cliffs of the Sea, even when Rhodry beat her, even when she was left alone, her husband dead and burned, that fear of her mother had made her so reluctant to come here. Even as she had dreamed of her home, dreamed of the welcome she would receive here, her mother remained some shadowy figure hovering on the fringes of the fantasy. Ysora had always fancied that, once she left home, once she became a woman grown, that fear would dissipate, vanish in a puff of smoke like dry grass over a flame. She thought once she left the provincial restrictions of Yerotan she would fear nothing. Only to find that life beyond the bitterfall fields held brutes who drank and smelled of fish and had fists that cut and bruised, smiling devouts who lusted and panted, men in red coats who hunted her in the name of the Clerk. Fear was something she thought she could outgrow, but once in the outside world, the back of her mother’s hand or the sharpness of her mother’s tongue seemed a small thing.
