Bitter Moon Saga

by Amy Lane

  A part of her wanted to be out there with her friends and her lover and his family, but then she heard Bethen’s needles click again, and she was drawn irresistibly back to the magic with the sticks and the string.

  “Do you tell Goddess stories, Trieste?” Bethen asked, giving the fine lavender yarn in her hand a little tug. Bethen’s graying red hair had escaped its band, and it hung in little ringlets in the humidity, and her pleasant, freckled face was set serenely. Only her brown, twinkling, lively eyes betrayed she had anything in mind.

  “I’ve heard Torrant and Aldam tell them,” she responded, staring unabashedly now that Bethen had seemingly changed the subject.

  “Well,” Bethen began, peering at Trieste’s rapt expression. “When Triane was young, she was sent from the brothers to learn how to be a lady, did you know that?”

  “Mmm-nnn,” Trieste said negatively, watching one stitch become the next, and the next one become the one after.

  “Just like you, she was sent from Auntie Star to Auntie Star—she had seven in all, and each had something to teach her. One taught her to read, which Triane liked very much, but then the first Auntie Star said, ‘I will teach you to embroider, and it will be your duty to embroider for Oueant and Dueant, because you are the woman,’ and Triane didn’t like this very much at all. Her fingers became as stiff as her lip and her jaw, and her thread snarled, and the colors knotted together, and soon her embroidery looked like a child’s watercolor where all the colors run to brown. The first Auntie Star got angry and huffed Triane off to the next Auntie, who taught Triane how to cook. Triane liked cooking very much, but when the same Auntie Star said, ‘You will learn how to sew, because you are the woman and it is your duty to sew,’ Triane’s back grew ramrod straight, and her brows drew in, and her shirts grew extra arms and flounces where no man should have flounces and a side of shirt where no one, god or human, has ever had a side of body before. And this Auntie got impatient too and shipped her off to the next, and the next one taught her how to sing, which she enjoyed very much, but then she brought out a loom and said, ‘You will weave fine blankets, because you are the girl, and it is your duty to keep your men warm,’ and…. Do you want to guess?” Bethen cast wicked eyes at Trieste, who laughed back.

  “And her wrists were suddenly limp and moving in several hundred different ways, and before she was done with the weaving loom she had managed to weave in her dress, her hair, and the tail of an unfortunate cat.”

  Yarri spit laughter hard enough to have to put down her knitting and hold her hand up to her mouth. “Did you really?” she asked, gasping, and Trieste found her first real smile for the girl blossoming on her face.

  “My hair and my dress, yes—the cat barely escaped.”

  Yarri laughed some more, and then Bethen picked up the narrative thread as easily as she picked up her next stitch. “And so it went,” she continued. “From Auntie Star to Auntie Star. One taught her to paint but failed to teach her crochet. One taught her figures but failed to teach her to tat, and so on until the seventh Auntie Star. Now by this time, poor Triane was over and done with the routine. She was tired of learning beautiful things only to be told the things that should be beautiful were her duty. She was very grumpy with this Auntie Star. ‘So, what duty are you going to try to teach me now?’ she asked. ‘I warn you, I’m awful at everything. I’m a spiteful, disobedient girl, and Oueant and Dueant will never love me.’

  “Now, this seventh Auntie was very wise, and she just nodded her head and tended to her knitting and said, ‘I don’t want to teach you anything, my darling. Just sit at my knee while I make this cloak, and we will talk of all your days, and all the things you can do to make Honor and Compassion happy.’

  “Triane was very surprised at this—in fact, she was so surprised her legs went right out from under her, and she found herself sitting at her Auntie’s feet and pouring out the sadness of having fingers that were stiff and wrists that were floppy and brows that were drawn so tight against her head they hurt. And Auntie Star the seventh stroked her night-and-sea-dark hair and continued to knit. Eventually Triane looked up and asked….”

  “What are you knitting?” Trieste supplied to Bethen’s nod.

  “Well, I am knitting a lace shawl for someone who will look spectacular in lavender.” Bethen twinkled at them, spreading the lavender fabric to show them.

  “So not for me!” Yarri rolled her eyes.

  “But Auntie Star was knitting the most brilliant silver-gold cloak,” Bethen continued, “and she looked at Triane and said ‘I am making you a gift, dear heart. Anyone who has tried so very hard as you have to make other people happy—you deserve to be loved.’

  “And Triane began to cry, because she hadn’t been trying very hard to make other people happy at all, but the cloak was so very pretty. It was perfect for her prettiest time, in the early summer and late spring, when her face is golden-silver on the sea. And she tried on the cloak, and it was lovely, and when her Auntie Seventh Star wasn’t looking, she picked up the needles and, after watching her Auntie for so very long, she found that when she wanted to cast on, her fingers found a way. When she wanted to knit, her wrists stayed right where they should be. And when she needed to purl, her brows relaxed after a couple of successful tries. The next day, Auntie Seventh Star came to her. ‘No no, dear, knitting is from front to back—that’s right,’ and said, ‘What are you knitting, my darling?’ And Triane said….” Bethen, who had moved closer to Trieste as she talked so she could show her what to do with needles and yarn, looked at her new pupil to finish the story.

  “And she said, ‘I am making a bag for my lovely Auntie Seventh Star, so she doesn’t have to put her needles in one pocket and her yarn in another when she goes to the swimming hole to teach silly young women how to knit.’”

  Bethen smiled from ear to ear. “Darling, that would be a wonderful project—we can find the yarn for you when we get back to the house. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to go swim with all the young people now?”

  “In a minute,” Trieste murmured, looking down at her hands. “After one more stitch.”

  Yarri stood and stretched. “Well, I’m going to swim. I’m tired of sweat running down my armpits.” She bent and kissed Bethen on the cheek. “That was one of your best, Auntie Beth.”

  As Yarri left, Trieste looked to where she’d sat knitting and the dark-blue tube she’d been working on that was now decorated with bright orange-yellow gold as well. “What is she knitting?” she asked curiously.

  “Fingerless mittens,” Bethen said serenely. “She heard they’re all the rage in courts this year.”

  “Really?” Trieste gave Bethen back her work gratefully—it was lace fine, and she thought maybe stouter yarn would be easier to work with. “What’s that it says across the back?”

  Bethen laughed. “If I’m not mistaken, it says ‘Trieste.’ Now go swim, my dear. I’ll be with you all in a moment.”

  Beltane and Beyond

  OTHAM DIDN’T celebrate Samhain or Beltane the way Eiran did—if at all—but Trieste had heard of the Beltane celebrations. She was excited to be a part of them, from the ribbon pole to the dancing. She had even asked Torrant coyly about the wilding and was dismayed by the sober look that crossed his face.

  “How about just a quiet moment under the stars, pretty Trieste?” he’d asked seriously, and she’d flushed because he called her pretty. He did it a lot. She could not find it in herself to believe him. He’d told her once, in the breathless quiet after making love in the dark, that the love of her life would be the man who made her believe he meant it when he said she was beautiful. She wasn’t sure it was possible to love anyone more than she loved him, but that thought was best unspoken between them.

  “No wilding?” She had been curious—it seemed from the moment she’d learned about the custom, it had been tailor-made to satisfy the needs of young people, high on the excitement of young bodies and any emotion falling near the realm of love.

&n
bsp; Torrant’s eyes had gone distant, and his cheeks had flushed hot. “The snowcat isn’t that fond of wilding, Trieste,” he said at last with some reluctance. “He seems to think he’s being stalked.”

  Trieste’s mouth opened wide, but she had nothing else to say on the matter. Torrant, though, had lightened the moment with, “However, I hope Aylan gets wild with half the staff at the inn. If anybody deserves to run wild, it’s Aylan.”

  He was right: Aylan had been driving himself hard at the warehouse, until more than once, Lane had taken him aside and told him he would give more forced days off if he didn’t take it easy.

  “He’s trying to earn his keep,” she told him without thinking, and at the cock of his head and the slant of his brows, she had flushed. “Yes. Yes, I told him. He was making himself crazy thinking that this was the last time he’d get to see you and Aldam and ‘decent people.’ If you weren’t going to put him out of his misery, I couldn’t stand it!”

  He shook his head and rolled his eyes and kissed her soundly, and the matter had ended.

  Truly ended. She had been expecting him to lose his temper—her father or mother certainly would have—but apparently blowing a secret was not a capital offense in the mental book of Torrant Shadow. In fact, as she had watched him play with his family for the first week of summer, Trieste realized nothing seemed to be.

  At school, she had accused him of trying to be two different people. Among his family she realized that both people were, in fact, Torrant. Torrant was the fun big brother who ran races with Cwyn and swung Starry up in his arms until she squealed for more. He was the helpful mentor to the studious Roes, the “who played winner” between Aldam and Stanny, and the child she suspected Lane and Bethen watched the closest, the more so because he was so able at being there for everybody else.

  Torrant would defend these people with his life, and life experience had taught him it would come to that. Something in his laughter, in his tenderness, in his joy, something in the way he held himself when he was walking alongside the family, engaged in their raucous, joyous conversations, seemed to sing, seemed to scream that the snowcat was there for the express purpose of not letting any harm come to them.

  It was never so apparent, like the head of a mace in a velvet cover, as when he was walking hand in hand with Yarri.

  And unlike Trieste, who shied away from that steel, Yarri matched him, sinew for sinew.

  But today, Trieste thought, dressed in her prettiest silk, with flowers Roes and Bethen had braided in her hair and a new handmade lace shawl in the loveliest lavender fluttering around her arms in the late spring breeze, today it didn’t matter, because today was Beltane, and today she was Torrant’s girl.

  The green of the river was so bright with spring and sunshine that it sparkled like a dream of emeralds. The girls in their whirling dresses were just as beautiful, and everybody had ribbons or flowers or even feathers in their hair, making them look like exotic, preening birds, and Trieste was flattered to be one of them.

  “Be careful, Spots,” Aylan said casually, breaking into her thoughts. “You’re a bit exotic for all of the town birds. You don’t want to make them feel plain.”

  Trieste snorted and rolled her eyes, and Aylan swung Starry—who was so constantly at his side when he wasn’t working that she was almost an accessory, like a duffel bag or a scrip or a woman’s purse—up on his shoulders before she could even ask.

  “Uh-oh, pretty Trieste,” Torrant said with a warm smile crinkling his upper lip. “Watch out—Aylan just paid you a compliment.”

  “He must want something,” she replied primly, mostly to hear Aylan laugh. She found she liked the earnest, sober young man Aylan was for the Moons. She was impressed with the exquisite care he took of little Starry and her baffling, fathomless attraction to him—watching him work hard to do right by these “decent people,” as he’d called them, made Trieste realize more than ever how deeply the core of decency inside Aylan had been hidden until Torrant arrived.

  “Oh, but I do!” Aylan was laughing now. “I want”—he jiggled Starry on his shoulder, making her squeal—“I want to put pretty ladies on a big swing and pull it so far back that when we let it fly, their feet touch the stars!”

  “What about me?” Cwyn demanded imperiously from Aylan’s other side. Cwyn didn’t have Starry’s infatuation for their new friend, but he had made himself a secondary fixture at Aylan’s side because, Torrant suspected, he saw a lot of himself in Aylan.

  “Oh, you I’ll let fly off. You’ll get lost in the sky!” Aylan grinned, and Cwyn grinned back, all dimples and brown eyes.

  “Wonderful—I’ll have a bird’s-eye view of the wilding from up there!” he crowed, and from behind them, they could all hear Lane and Bethen groan.

  “Come here, you little terror!” Bethen called. “We have to discuss some ground rules before we get there. I will not have a repeat of last year, do you hear me!”

  “Oh, Mama,” Cwyn moaned, and Lane and Bethen both said “Now!” in unison, and Cwyn disappeared from Aylan’s side.

  “What could he possibly have done?” Aylan asked Torrant, and Torrant shrugged.

  “I had my own problems last year,” he said truthfully. “You’ll have to ask Cwyn.”

  Aylan eyed the little recreant, who was obviously lying amiably to both his parents about how he would not get into any trouble at all—oh no, not he, no—and shook his head. “I’d rather not know,” he decided. “Now, don’t we have a shift at the swings?”

  “Are we first?” Torrant hated being late. “Oh no! Yarri, will you show Trieste where we put our stuff and—”

  “No, Torrant—I’m going to take her to the mud hole and ditch her on Beltane!” Yarri said with some asperity. “Go on. You two just make sure you keep your promise about our feet touching the sky!” And with that, she shooed them both to their stations at the giant swing.

  Trieste laughed as she watched them run off. Stanny and Aldam were already there, because all four young men had wanted to work the same shift so they could enjoy the fair together. “Don’t we want to go to the swing first?” she asked Yarri as they went to the family table and began unloading armloads of blankets, cold meats, and salads.

  “No,” said Roes decisively, arranging things just so at the table.

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” said Yarri, throwing a bright blue cloth over the things they didn’t want the flies to get to, “if we wait just a little while longer, they’ll get hot while they work.”

  Trieste blinked. “That’s a good thing?”

  “It is when they take their good shirts off so they don’t get them all sweaty!” Roes explained, and Trieste had to agree. Besides, she thought happily, looking at the booths of activities and tables with different foods, at the rides and the vendors lined around for the fair, she was pretty sure they’d find something to do.

  It was as wonderful as she’d thought it would be. There was music everywhere, and dancing in the center square by the ribbon pole. She watched four couples handfast in the space of five minutes, and when she turned to the two young men behind her to see if they approved, they were kissing passionately the way happy couples did at weddings, and she realized they must. Torrant had told her the vendors were a new event since his first fair, and she was as enchanted as any of the townsfolk. She, Roes, and Yarri bought ribbons at one vendor, and glass vials filled with scent at another, and special wool just for Bethen at a third. Then the three of them put their money together for a set of puppets for Cwyn and Starry and were given such enthusiastic thanks that they had no choice but to sit for a puppet show. When it was over, they clasped hands with the children and hurried to the swing, where Torrant, Aldam, Aylan, and Stanny had all, as Roes promised, doffed their good shirts and were hauling the swing back with plenty of goodwill and muscled skin oiled in sweat. As Trieste settled herself primly in her seat and breathlessly held hands with Roes on one side and Cwyn on the other, she couldn’t help but watch Tor
rant and Aylan heft the swing back, lost in admiration at the play and ripple of their young, strong bodies, tan and beautiful in the sun.

  And back they pushed, and back, until the swing was poised as far as it would go at the crest of the hill, and only their shoes and gravity gave them any indication of how high they would fly when the boys let—

  Trieste’s shriek was sound, healthy, and full of laughter, and again as they went backward, and again as they went forward and again until she was sorry to see that the giant swing had played itself out and there was no more pitching forward as high as high. She and the others laughed and babbled, and Yarri in particular took delight in the fact that Trieste squealed more than Starry, but Trieste didn’t care. It had been terrifying, exhilarating, and beautiful, and it had made her feel brave, happy, and free.

  Torrant sang that night, his voice shining sweetly under the throbbing stars, and when he was done, Trieste seized his hand and pulled him into the dark. She rushed and hurried for a moment, grabbing at his trousers and thrusting her hands under his shirt just to feel the softness of his skin and his gasp in the night.

  He slowed her down by seizing her hands and kissing them, and then seizing her mouth with his, and the sound he made in the back of his throat was hungry and rewarded for the sweetness of her taste. In a moment, he had her back against a tree, and his hands were running up her legs, from the ticklish skin of her ankles to the tender skin of her thighs and, with a few swipes of cloth and the delicious feeling of his hands on her bottom, parting her, readying her….