Sisters of the Fire

by Kim Wilkins

  He looked around desperately. The more time they wasted imprisoning him, calling for help from Folcenham, the further away Rowan was. He went to the window, but while it had been big enough to let a small girl through, he would never be able to get his shoulder and hips through the space.

  His eyes lit on his pack, by the side of the bed. He fell to his knees beside it, pulling out clothes and old tools. His handsaw, the one he used to cut through branches, was there in the bottom, as was his chisel. Skalmir climbed quickly up onto the trunk, applied the chisel to the frame of the shutter and pushed hard. Nails split away from wood. A gust of wind carried a blast of rain into his face. He pulled away the window frame and let it drop to the floor. Now with the handsaw he quickly and roughly widened the hole, pulling out pieces of wooden plank as quietly as he could and casting them on the blankets on the floor. As soon as the opening was wide enough, he grabbed his pack and dropped it out ahead of him, then let himself down quietly. He slipped in the mud, saw Rowan’s small footprints, and fear clutched his heart. Her tracks led to the road, where he could see two sets of adult footprints.

  At least she had gone with them willingly.

  Skalmir knew better than to go to the stables looking for a horse. He had to disappear, and quickly. He ran for it, his pack jangling on his back, as the rain hammered down. A stand of woodland lay on the other side of the road. He could make out prints, evidence of people walking … here Rowan’s little feet disappeared while the other set became deeper. Someone had carried her into the woodland. Up the hill – the bracken was crushed. Clear tracks among the oaks, through the leaf litter and towards a moss-furred stone dolmen then …

  They stopped. Skalmir had been hunting and tracking nearly his whole life. If he read these tracks properly, they told him that those who made them were exactly here, on this spot. He spun round, peering at the ground. Ran his hand over the table stone. His fingers came away dirty. There was nothing.

  It was as though they had vanished.

  Heath could now sit for a few hours every day. The coughs were still awful to Rose’s ears, but wracked him less often. Colour returned to his cheeks, even though neither fat nor muscle had yet returned to his bones. He was still ill: nobody could be in doubt if they looked at him. But he was not dying from it, wouldn’t die, Rose believed. Slowly and gently, her feelings for him rekindled day by day. Now he spoke and smiled and moved, she remembered him. His familiarity caught her and carried her. Lightness and air seemed to come to Yldra’s little hut in the middle of nowhere. Rose had the distinct feeling that a long period of darkness had come to an end; the same feeling she had seeing the first shoots of spring once the frosts had fled.

  One morning, a week since he had first spoken again, Rose was early to the main room to light the fire and start the steam for his lungs. Heath was awake already, sitting up but with his eyes closed.

  ‘I am here,’ she said softly, so he didn’t get surprised. Yldra said his heart would be weak for some time.

  ‘I heard you,’ he said, opening his eyes. ‘You are early this morning.’

  She came to sit next to his bedding, drawing her knees up under her chin. ‘I slept badly. In the end, it seemed easier to get up.’

  ‘Bad dreams?’

  ‘No, I … it’s going to sound mad. But I was cold all night. Cold in my heart.’

  He reached for her hand and took it in his, rubbing her palm with his thumb. ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘I realised that Rowan … I sometimes feel her with me at night, in bed. I don’t know how. But the last few nights, she hasn’t been there. I know it’s some trick of my imagination, but it made me sad nonetheless.’

  ‘Rose,’ he said, ‘it’s dawn. I can find her in the magic eye.’

  Rose caught her breath. ‘You still have it? And it still works?’

  Heath had a magic eye that a witch had enchanted so that once a day, at dawn, he could see their daughter upon waking. He nodded. ‘I see her often … beautiful …’

  Rose smiled. ‘Beautiful. Of course she is.’

  ‘I had it re-enchanted in Bradsey so it follows her. It’s in my bag … the one Cardew packed for me. If you like, I can look now and tell you what I see.’

  Rose was on her feet in a moment, reaching for the hide bag that Yldra had shoved beneath her work bench. She handed it to Heath, who rummaged for the little loop of gold and ice.

  ‘How is she?’ Rose said, as Heath breathed over it. ‘Is she sleeping?’

  But Heath wasn’t smiling. Something wasn’t right.

  ‘Heath?’

  He frowned. ‘Why is she sleeping on grass? Where is the bed I usually see? The little white dogs that are sometimes with her?’

  ‘Perhaps she is not at home,’ Rose said hopefully. ‘Visiting friends?’

  A sharp intake of breath.

  ‘Heath?’

  ‘She turned in her sleep. I see a …’

  ‘What do you see? Is she alive?’

  ‘Yes, but she has a tattoo. On her cheek.’

  Rose caught her breath. The idea of needles and ink so near to her daughter’s face made her skin flinch.

  ‘That’s the mark of Rathcruick,’ Heath said. ‘He’s one of the most powerful Ærfolc chieftans.’

  ‘What is she doing with him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Heath said, ‘but there are few people in the world I’d trust less than him.’

  Rose’s heart thumped hard, and she felt helplessly, desolately distant from her daughter.

  ‘Rose,’ Heath said urgently. ‘You can’t leave her with him. He has a black heart.’

  ‘But how am I supposed to find her, how will I –’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Heath said. ‘If she’s with Rathcruick, I know where she is.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘The Howling Wood,’ he said. ‘And you have to go after her.’

  A hundred scenarios played out in Skalmir’s head as he made his way north. Some of them were comforting: Bluebell had not yet left the house, she’d intercepted the woodlanders and had Rowan safely at home. Some were too awful to contemplate: when the Ærfolc chose to live a woodland life rather than a life among Thyrslanders, the rumours grew that they sacrificed children for blood rituals. Skalmir tried to cling to hope, even as he slept rough in the rain for one night, unable to walk another step. Fitfully, he slipped in and out of anxious dreams, cold and wet. When dawn came and the rain eased, he kept walking, arriving back at the Howling Wood many hours later, when all hope must surely be extinguished.

  ‘Bluebell?’ he called as he let himself into the house. But Bluebell wasn’t there, and she had made good on her word to take his dogs to town. Not another living heart beat in the house. ‘Rowan?’ he called anyway.

  No answer.

  Skalmir changed his clothes, leaving his wet ones in a heap on the floor by the cold hearth. He gathered an oilskin cloak, a flint and fire oil, his hunting knife and his bow and arrow. Wengest’s men would come looking for him and Rowan here and he had to get out and find her.

  No matter what the woodlanders said, nobody knew the Howling Wood better than him.

  The soft rolling hills of Thyrsland’s central downs characterised the small kingdom of Tweoning, the first kingdom to take the trimartyr faith. Once they’d been ruled by a queen. Bluebell still remembered her: she had visited Blicstowe when Bluebell was a child. Dystro had been a tall, full-bodied woman past her youth but not yet white haired, with a gaze like lightning and a laugh that shook the room. Dystro’s cousin, Tolan, a silver-tongued orator, had taken Maava’s faith and converted the most powerful thanes in the country with him. Dystro was put to the blade – famously, by taking off her head – and Tolan remained the king of Tweoning to this day.

  He and Bluebell didn’t always see eye to eye.

  She and her hearthband were stopped on top of a hill. The road wound down towards chapels with chiming bells, streets with jettied houses, the sound of horses and carts. Stretching
away on either side from the town were acres of the finest, richest farmland in Thyrsland. The sun was high and dazzling, the sky a blue arch that made her eyes ache. Streaky clouds up high were being driven by the wind.

  ‘The only thing this place is good for,’ she said to her hearthband, ‘is roast beef.’

  They all laughed behind her.

  ‘Come on, then,’ she said, urging her horse forwards. ‘And stay close about me. I quite like my head where it is. If anyone makes a move on it, slice off their hands.’

  More laughter, this time not so light-hearted.

  They wound down the hill towards the town, three abreast on the dry dirt road. Elm branches arched over the path, turning it into a tunnel of green. She could hear ground birds among the trees, and thought about Thrymm with a pang. How she would love to tear into the bracken and catch one. But it would be weeks before Thrymm recovered enough to run the long roads with Bluebell and Torr again, if ever – it depended on how the wound healed and scarred. Dogs of war were hard to train, priceless. Bluebell had hoped for four or five more good years with Thrymm.

  As they were ascending another hill towards Tolen’s hall, Gytha called from the back of the band, ‘My lord! Wait!’

  Bluebell reined Torr and turned. Gytha had stopped outside a lofty wooden gate between high hedges.

  ‘What is it? Sighere, go and see.’

  Sighere dismounted and hurried down to Gytha. They conversed a moment, inaudible, then Sighere returned.

  ‘The insignia on the gate,’ he said. ‘We missed it.’

  ‘Whose is it?’

  ‘It’s Gudrun’s. King Æthlric’s …’ he felt about for the right words, and settled on, ‘last wife.’

  So Bluebell had found the bitch. She turned Torr around and her band cleared the way. Soon, she was standing outside that gate and she knew – she knew – that her father had given Gudrun this land, these well-kept hedges, this impressive gate. Gudrun had lost her first husband, a wealthy merchant, and had means of her own, but not for this kind of estate. Gudrun’s goal had always been to turn Father against Bluebell, and in the process she had nearly killed him, sent Willow out of her wits, and forced her own son Wylm to take up arms against Bluebell. The thought that Gudrun had not just got away with what she’d done to Æthlric, let alone been rewarded by him, made Bluebell’s guts squirm.

  ‘Well, then,’ she said. ‘Maybe I will call on her. She is just as likely to have seen my sister Willow, more likely to have remembered her if she did. Somebody get that gate open.’

  Sighere tried the gate, but said it was barred. Gytha offered to climb over and, at Bluebell’s word, she shinnied up a tree and onto the hedge, picked her way over it carefully to the gate, which she scaled while the rest of the hearthband clapped and cheered her on. She disappeared from view, then moments later the gate swung slowly inwards.

  ‘My lord,’ she said to Bluebell with an exaggerated bow.

  Bluebell laughed. ‘I am much obliged by your hospitality,’ she said. ‘Follow.’

  Bluebell was aware that the thundering horses had probably already alerted Gudrun and her guardsmen, that the woman was probably even now peering through shutters and wondering if Bluebell had finally come to settle an old score. She tried not to relish Gudrun’s fear too much. She ordered her hearthband to remain mounted in the garden outside the house, but climbed down from Torr herself and handed Sighere his reins.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ she said.

  ‘As you wish, my lord.’

  Bluebell approached the front door. Dogs were already barking. A tall man opened the door, his shoulders squared against her. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I need to see Gudrun. King Æthlric has sent me.’ It wasn’t entirely untrue. Æthlric had certainly expressed a desire to have all his daughters home, and Gudrun might know what cold chapel Willow was skulking in.

  The guardsman opened his mouth to order her away, but then Gudrun appeared behind his shoulder. She seemed very small and frail beside him, her little face pale.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked. Her eyes went past Bluebell to the armed retinue, and she visibly quaked.

  ‘Æthlric is looking for Willow. Willow has become a trimartyr and we had hoped to find her in Tweoning. Have you seen her or heard of her?’

  Gudrun shook her head. ‘I haven’t seen any of you since –’

  ‘I ask not for myself, but for my father,’ Bluebell said again. ‘A man who was at one time your husband.’ She paused, let the blow sink in. ‘If you know of Willow’s whereabouts, you owe it to him and all of Ælmesse to tell me. It won’t go well for you if you know something and keep it from us.’

  ‘I know nothing. I wish you would go away.’ She began to sob, and the guardsman looked at her and offered her a kind word.

  This game wasn’t fun any more.

  ‘If you see her,’ Bluebell said, taking a step back, ‘let Æthlric know. He will be grateful.’

  A small child appeared at Gudrun’s side. A boy with curly pale hair and huge round eyes. He looked up at Bluebell in awe. Something didn’t look quite right about him, but Bluebell couldn’t put a finger on it. She crouched, her light mail ringing.

  ‘Hello, young sir,’ she said.

  ‘Avaarni, this is Bluebell,’ Gudrun managed.

  ‘Maava be with you,’ the child said. He had no eyelashes. Not a single one.

  ‘And may the mighty Horse God be with you, little one,’ Bluebell answered, standing again and stretching her back.

  ‘Go inside now, Avaarni,’ Gudrun said, pushing the boy away, but he stayed, gazing up at Bluebell with his round, lashless eyes, transfixed.

  ‘I will leave you be,’ Bluebell said, wondering whose the boy was. Gudrun was far too old to be his mother. ‘I go now to King Tolen’s hall to ask him the same questions. We are determined to find her.’

  ‘Good luck,’ Gudrun said. Then, ‘Give my best to Æthlric.’

  Bluebell bit back the dark joke that leapt onto her tongue. ‘I might,’ she said instead, and returned to Torr. The door closed behind her, but the guardsman now stood outside watching, making sure she left. Did he really think he would be any defence against Bluebell and her entire hearthband?

  ‘Back to the road,’ she told them. ‘Nothing for us here.’

  ‘Did that scratch an itch?’ Sighere asked her in a low voice as they passed once again through the gates.

  ‘That’s an itch that will need an amputation,’ she joked grimly. ‘Tomorrow, home to Blicstowe.’

  Cramped up in a kitchen cupboard with the mould and rat droppings, her knees under her chin, Willow cursed her sister for causing this loss of dignity. Also, for the fear, the gut-churning, vein-burning fear that soon the cupboard door would open and Bluebell would be standing there outlined by fire as she always was in Willow’s imagination, the Widowmaker raised for the kill.

  But then, in the dark, she told herself that Maava would love her specially now, for look how she was prepared to suffer for Him. And the angels roared in her head then, because this wasn’t suffering. This wasn’t being burned alive with her babies as the good widow Liava had been, leaving only their bones to form the triangle that now showed the path to the wayfarers of the world. Willow put her hands over her ears and tried not to whimper as their deafening shouts clanged through her skull. You are weak! You are a coward! You are a cringing disappointment to Maava! She crushed her teeth against each other and hated herself so violently that she was sure it would make her bones bleed.

  Quick footsteps, then the door opened. Gudrun and Avaarni stood there.

  ‘She’s gone,’ Gudrun said softly.

  ‘Mama, why are you in the cupboard?’ Avaarni asked.

  Willow tumbled out, gasping for air. A pot hung on a chain over the fire, and it smelled like boiling animal flesh. She grasped Avaarni around the shoulders. ‘Now you have met her. That is your aunt, and you must never trust her, for her soul is doomed.’

  ‘I know,’ Avaarni
said, outraged. ‘She blessed me with the Horse God.’

  Willow burned with indignation. She would have to scrub the child with the wire brush tonight, make sure she was cleansed of the insult.

  Willow looked up at Gudrun. ‘What did she want?’

  Gudrun trembled, pale in the low firelight. ‘You,’ she said simply. ‘They are riding even now to the king’s hall to ask everyone if they’ve seen you.’ Gudrun’s hands covered Avaarni’s ears. ‘Willow, she says she’s determined to find you. It’s not safe for you in Tweoning any more. You must leave.’

  ‘But where will I …?’ The question hadn’t left her lips before the angels supplied the answer: The Ice-Heart. What better way to show her courage, her worthiness, her willingness to do whatever was necessary to carry Maava’s name into dark places?

  Willow began to stride towards the door.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Gudrun asked.

  ‘I need to speak to Hakon.’

  Willow slipped out of the house, across the garden, and climbed the low hedge that separated the main building of Bramble Court from the outhouses. The neat buildings where Penda and Othilaf and the serving girls lived caught the sun at their windows; even the stable looked bright and well-kept. Hakon’s was at the back, nearest the forest, engulfed in the shadows of crooked oaks, the wood stained black with mould.

  Willow lifted her hand and knocked, calling out, ‘It’s me. It’s urgent.’

  ‘Come in,’ he said, and she opened the door.

  She had never been inside before. He lived roughly. Skins on the floor for a bed, a hearth made of stones of different sizes that she presumed he’d collected from the woods. A faint rotting smell under the smoke. He sat on the bench that ran the length of the room, cutting bread and layering it with cheese. The shutter on the forest side of the room was open, and let in the sound of wind moving in branches. Willow shivered, even though it wasn’t cold.