by Amy Lane
Of course, there was not a sudden migration from Wrinkle Creek—Junie had been an anomaly among the women—but there was a sudden upsurge in beatings, followed by an ominous quiet.
“I just stopped taking it,” said one mousy little thing as Aldam set her broken arm. “I told him, ‘You’ll hit me if I’m good, you’ll hit me if I’m bad, and you won’t tell me which is which. I’m over you. You can hit me now and get it over with, but if you touch my babies, I’ll beat you in the head with a forge iron while you sleep.’”
Aldam stopped bandaging her wrist in sudden shock, his guileless eyes large and blue in surprise.
The woman laughed humorlessly through a swollen mouth. “No, I haven’t done it yet. But after he gave me this last one, he woke up in the morning hugging a forge iron on my side of the bed. He hasn’t touched me since and has barely spoken to the children. We’re all just enjoying the rest.”
“Why don’t you leave?” Aldam asked. It was the same question they asked all the beaten women in Wrinkle Creek, and the answer they got was always a variation on the same theme.
“Where else would I go?” she asked wearily.
“Wherever Junie went,” Aldam replied, finishing with her bandage. “Junie wasn’t stronger or braver than you are. She just made the choice to leave.”
“Mmmm,” said the woman, whose name was, of all things, Daffodil. “But why should I have to? This here’s my home. Why can’t the menfolk just learn not to be bastards? I’m not so young that I don’t remember the Goddess. I’m not so young that I don’t remember joy. I just have to remember to fight for it, that’s all.”
Torrant walked in then. He’d been tending another patient in what had been their old bedroom. The two new bedrooms were complete now, and he and Aldam had a comfortable breathing’s worth of space, as well as a decent, stocked surgery in addition to the kitchen table. It was a good place to stop for the winter, although the two of them were still planning improvements for the place in the spring.
“That’s a strong, brave thing to think,” he agreed, washing his hands. He’d been moved by the quiet announcement of bravery. She was right; the women had grown up here. They outnumbered the men. It mattered when they decided not to be broken in their own homes.
“Just remember, it’s harder to think strong and brave with a broken jaw or a cracked skull,” Aldam added seriously, and Torrant grimaced.
“Aylan was right, brother,” he said quietly. “Eiran can’t hold all the world. If we cannot change the attitudes here, stop Clough’s poison from spreading, our home will be an island of sanity in the midst of chaos. We need to make the world we live in here the world we want to live in.”
Aldam finished wrapping Daffodil’s wrist, and he met the surprisingly fierce eyes of his patient. “He’s right,” she said stoutly, and Aldam nodded, knowing he didn’t look nearly as frightened as he felt.
“He’s often right,” Aldam replied mildly. “Is there anything else I need to look at?”
“No—you ’bout got it all. You fellas are real nice and all, but I hope you don’t take this the wrong way if I tell you I hope I don’t see you for a while.” Daffodil stood up stiffly and stretched her bruises. Torrant turned his sudden grin on her, making her gasp and hum in her throat, both at the same time.
“Sweetest, I take that exactly in the spirit with which you meant it. You take care of yourself—make sure you never forget the Goddess, and make sure you teach your children joy.”
“I’ll do that, Healer. I’ll do that.” The woman’s starting smile, which made her surprisingly pretty, suddenly faded. “Healer….” Her gaze darted from Aldam to Torrant, as though she were trying to decide which one she trusted the most. But both of them were young, both of them were male, and, probably the deciding factor, both of them sported the white streak of the Goddess at their temple and over their brow. “Healers,” she tried again, “I’ve got five children, and a husband who needs a forge iron in his bed to keep from beating them senseless. I-I’m tired. I can’t deny him rights to my bed, but… but I don’t want another one to fend off from him. I need to tend the babies I got….” Her voice trailed off, and Aldam and Torrant met eyes. They had offered—Goddess knew they had offered. But this was the first woman with the courage to ask.
“We’ve got the herbs in the surgery,” Torrant said quietly. “We grow them out back. You brew up some tea, every day except during your monthlies, and you don’t have to worry about another baby.”
Daffodil broke into a smile, and a sudden vision of a young woman who had known the Goddess and remembered joy swam in front of their eyes. “Thank you much. Uhm, Healer, I’ve got me a little sister—Pansy—she’s been using sheep gut, but them things tend to break, and sooner or later she’s going to find herself a boy who won’t put it on his thing….”
“Like I said, we have plenty. You just make sure she drinks it every day or it’s not always reliable, right?” In this moment, in this simple request, Torrant found himself hoping. He had done murder, and, according to the priests who had visited every so many weeks, he healed with abomination and spoke blasphemy. Even with Aldam for company, it was a lonely road to walk, mostly because when it took him down the street of the three bars and one general store that passed for the Wrinkle Creek township, it left them the only ones on his side of it. But maybe, if this little, mousy woman remembered joy, remembered honor and compassion, and found her strength, maybe it was worth it.
Priest of the False Twin Moons
IN FACT, the two young men found they weren’t so alone on their side of the street anymore. Women like Daffodil started saying hello to them, telling their friends the two healers were not bad fellas, and that they, at least, knew how to treat a body with kindness. And word of things like Choa’s displaced kneecap and Mackel’s crooked wrist spread too, much to Torrant’s discomfort.
“Healers shouldn’t hurt people,” he muttered to Aldam the third time he heard a woman threaten her husband with “the healer’s wrath” if he so much as grabbed her arm. They were in the tiny township, crossing in the traffic slush toward the general store near the well. That was where the women gathered to wash clothes in the summer when the Wrinkle River ran turbid and brown, or to swap stories in the winter in every kind of weather but the deepest snow. Torrant often wondered if the men ever listened at all to the women talk. One trip through that washing square, and he knew which single man beat women in bed, which married man all women stayed away from, and which women learned fancy tricks in bed in order to blackmail their lovers into treating them well.
“Healers defend their patients,” Aldam replied mildly, and Torrant looked at him sharply. “You kept their wives from being beaten. I’d say you defended them.”
Torrant’s sudden grin stopped every heart at the washing square, but he was too busy blushing and trying to avoid the women’s attention to notice. “Aldam, the world spins better with you in it,” he said as they ventured into the dankness of the store. Torrant looked around at the lean, starveling offerings on the shelves and wondered what Lane could do with a store in this location. The least he could do, Torrant thought while watching spiders scuttle into dark corners over sacks of meal almost certainly weighted with rocks, would be to cut a window and add a pane so people could see what they were getting.
Of course, in Lane’s stores, people weren’t getting rocks in their meal, worms in their meat, or weevil holes in their calico.
Graene, the owner’s wife, was behind the counter today, which was why they had chosen to visit. Her husband Ulin was the force behind the rock-weighted grain, and behind Graene’s frequent black eyes. Today, however, Graene’s muted face was clear, and her smile as it lighted on the two foreign healers was shy but sincere.
“Don’t eat the grain,” she said softly, peering around her shoulder through a curtain of blonde hair as though she couldn’t help but look for her husband.
“Don’t worry, we won’t,” Torrant told her with an answering sm
ile. (He had learned to keep his smiles soft and small around these women—for some reason they all stopped talking when he smiled too big.) The truth was that Lane, reading between the lines from the last letters Aylan had brought home, had sent Aylan with a wagonload of grain, cured meats, canned fruits, and—much to their delight—honey and butter to stay them through the winter. Aylan had left with an empty wagon and more secrets in his heart and eyes than Torrant could bear, riding back to Clough and back to danger again.
“We were looking for some of your cloth for bandages and fine thread, that’s all,” he told Graene now, pushing those worries aside. The previous healers (two students who had spent one year at Wrinkle River and had fled as soon as humanly possible) had never managed to make any friends there, and had left Torrant and Aldam with almost as many supplies as they’d brought with them on their first day.
After the last month, supplies were running low.
Torrant knew the cloth at the store was both thin and weevil eaten—after a good washing, it would make perfect bandages, and the pretty flowers and designs printed on most of the bolts would appeal to the women and children as well. Before he’d left, Aylan had pressed a bag of coins upon a grimacing Torrant.
“What in the name of star’s dark are we supposed to do with this?” he’d asked, surprised.
Aylan had smiled grimly. “Clough is spreading its missionaries all over—the way you and Aldam talk and defend the Goddess, you’re going to need it for bribes to keep your skin whole.”
Torrant had almost laughed, but something about Aylan’s haunted expression had stopped him. “I haven’t heard of any priests actually living here,” he said reassuringly. And Aldam replied, “That’s because nobody told you about him.”
“There’s one here to stay?” Torrant was surprised. Aldam didn’t like dealing with the beaten women and their violent husbands. Torrant, as the more politic and more fluent tongued of the two of them, was the more likely to garner gossip.
“They like you—and certain things make your eyes turn color and your jaw clench. They just don’t like to see you look like that, so they tell me instead. He’s been living with families in the town since right before Choa went missing.”
Torrant was at a loss, and he looked at Aylan feeling almost betrayed. “Well, I guess we do have to worry about priests after all!”
Aylan patted his shoulder with a look of such worry and sadness that Torrant had given his friend a gruff embrace. “And you have no time to worry about us and foolish priests. You take care, brother. You keep worrying about us, but every time you ride down that road, all my fears are for you. You’re dear to us, you know—the moons wouldn’t circle right without you.”
To Torrant’s surprise, Aylan deepened the embrace, and Torrant felt a brief tremble against him. “It makes it worth it to me to keep us safe, just knowing that,” he said as he backed away, wiping a suspicious hand across his eyes. “I’ll be back for Solstice. I won’t have time to make it to Eiran, if that’s fine with you?”
Torrant grinned, and Aylan had made a playful grab toward his chest to still the pattering of his heart. “That’s the best news I’ve heard since we arrived here,” Torrant said happily, and Aylan clucked to the horses on that note. He’d told Torrant that bringing Junie and the children to Eiran had been a delay he hadn’t counted on, but that Lane had told him not to worry. “Lane’s exact words were, ‘Tell that boy not to fret about our plans. His up and being noble is worth the delay,’” Aylan had told Torrant gravely, and Torrant had rolled his eyes and shook his head in return.
But today that visit came in handy for more than just shoring up the boys’ homesickness. Today, Torrant had some of the coins from that visit in his pocket, and he was planning to make Graene’s day as well as stock his surgery. They were so used to seeing the women in Wrinkle Creek sad and beaten that making one of them smile was enough to bring both young men to town.
“Graene, darling, I’m here to give you something to do in your spare time this winter. See, Aldam and I need three of your four bolts of cloth for bandages, and we figured you could spend your winter planning what to buy to replace them.” Torrant winked at the young woman, and she gasped in excitement.
“Really—you’re here to buy most all of it?” Her smile was anxious, as though she were used to being lied to, but Aldam had already gone and picked out two bolts full of flowers and polka dots, and one bolt with brown and blue stripes for the little boys who fell out of trees, as well as for the ones who stepped between their mothers or sisters and the men who had fathered them.
“Yes,” Aldam answered simply, and Torrant looked at the price posted on the bolt, doubled it, and offered the coins to Graene.
“Will this do?” he asked, and Graene nodded mutely; then the delight on her face vanished in a wash of fear.
Aldam and Torrant looked at each other sideways and wondered which of the men had walked in behind them. Torrant felt a thin stream of tobacco juice hit the back of his leg, and figured it to be Mackel. He was quite comfortable kicking out behind him without looking, aiming for the man’s ankle and sweeping sideways. He allowed himself a brief expression of smug satisfaction at the clatter of noise behind him before turning to the gnarled, whip-strong man and saying solicitously, “Oh my—I’m sorry, did I trip you? So sorry…. Oh dear… you seem to have knocked over the grain. Here, Graene—here’s the money to take care of that. You do whatever you want with that sack. I know there are some families at the Creek who’ll be having an awfully thin year.”
Graene nodded in relief and accepted Torrant’s other coins, and then, with wide eyes, she accepted two coins of silver pressed discreetly into her hands by Aldam. Silver was easier to hide, and Torrant hoped Graene would use the money for herself. Although the bolts of cloth they’d purchased were languishing on the shelves, it was no secret the dresses Graene wore were reworked versions of the cloth that had been moth eaten over four years ago, when Ulin had been courting her.
Mackel spit again, aiming up for Torrant and only managing to get the brown stream of spittle to fall in a neat line down his own shirt. “Playing like you’re high and mighty, you Whore’s faggot? I see you making like the Whore’s bitch, buying dresses for some women so’s you can get your pickle wet….”
Torrant laughed easily and leaned against Graene’s counter, with most of his back toward his enemy. He was learning from experience that it was always easier to laugh if you knew your opponent couldn’t best you, and inside that easy laugh was the nagging box of trouble that would be the men of the Creek fighting back. “Naw, Mackel—I was just making a dress for Solstice—thought you’d want to spruce up real pretty and dance with me.”
The little man was so appalled he scrambled to his feet and scuttled backward like a spider. “Don’t get me involved in your Whore’s rites!” he screamed, a very real fear spitting brown from his thin lips. “I don’t want to go to no dark…. That priest said he’ll send me to the gods-blighted dark. You bastard, you take that back….”
Torrant and Aldam looked at each other sideways, trying not to let their alarm show.
“Has the priest been staying with you, Mackel?” Torrant kept his voice casual, as though the man weren’t scraping himself up from a puddle of cowardice on the floor, and as though he hadn’t just threatened the two of them with death.
“Take it back!” Mackel was almost in tears, and Torrant turned toward him, finding a true healer’s gentleness in his face and his shoulders. He bent and offered a hand, knowing it was likely to be spat upon but doing it anyway.
“Mackel—I’ve got plenty of girls missing me at my home who would be more than happy to dance the Solstice with me.” He thought longingly of Yarri, followed by Roes and Bethen and even Starry, who would rather dance with Aylan but would always spin him a turn when he asked pretty and promised to play her “her music” at the end of the night. “I was joking, sir. We’re using the cloth for bandages.”
He nodded and w
aved his fingers in a nonthreatening way until Mackel, seemingly mesmerized by his soft voice, reached out a hand and allowed Torrant to hoist him up. Mackel backed away almost as soon as he was on his feet and glared as though Torrant had touched him without his consent, but he nodded with near civility. Torrant nodded back.
“Where is the priest staying now?” he asked softly, and Mackel nodded again, almost weeping with his fear.
“He’s in Choa’s old place. There’s a whack of men there, fixin’ the place up for him like he’s royalty.” Mackel’s voice dropped again, and the note of a child not picked for games crept in. “I’m too weak to work,” he muttered, and Torrant grimaced. He’d done some of that, although Mackel’s bandy legs didn’t hold much weight either.
Torrant kept his voice gentle, still unnerved by this sudden show of humanity—of vulnerability—from a man he could have sworn possessed neither quality. “Then we’ll go, Mackel. We won’t get anyone in trouble with the priest. Graene won’t be telling him where she got her gold, I won’t be telling him any jokes about Solstice dresses, and the only darkness you need fear is the darkness in your own heart, right?”
A sudden, profound sorrow crossed Mackel’s face, and Torrant realized with a chill that in spite of his best intentions, his quiet willingness to calm this twisted soul had inadvertently triggered his gift. In this moment, at least, this violent, cowardly man whose only source of pride seemed to be how badly he could beat his woman was suddenly cursed with insight to his own soul. It didn’t look comfortable at all, but Torrant couldn’t undo what harm the truth had wrought.
