Frost Child

by Gillian Philip

  Crows were smart and crows were watchful. Crows, principally, were not a danger to anyone they met, unless you counted the dead. I was relieved; the bird would take her mind off water horses. I told myself that had been a temporary infatuation, much like her fondness for me. And that would pass, too.

  Leonora was not convinced.

  She lay across my body, head close against mine, languid with the aftermath of love as I drew an idle line down her spine with one finger. Appearance, as always with Leonora, was deceptive: her mind was in constant fascinated motion, picking at puzzles, decoding other minds, weaving intricate political schemes. I lifted her hair and kissed the prominent tendon on her neck, and she murmured happily.

  ‘The queen was well?’ It was a formal question in a strikingly informal situation; I knew Kate was always well.

  Leonora gave a low laugh. ‘She’d like to be better. Still playing with that risible idea of hers.’

  ‘Getting rid of her name?’ I shivered. Raidseach. Kate’s true name unnerved me, the very sound of it, but it was better than the alternative.

  ‘Indeed. She won’t do it. She knows the consequence. The idea’s a plaything, that’s all. Her trouble is, she’s bored.’ Leonora propped herself up on one elbow and kissed my forehead. ‘She was pleased about Crickspleen.’

  ‘Mm.’ That seemed long ago now.

  Leonora traced her finger down my ribs, and I felt her take a light breath. ‘You should send Lilith to her.’

  Shadows played on the ceiling as the flames in the fireplace flickered and jumped. I watched them, thinking.

  ‘Why?’ I asked at last.

  Leonora kissed me. ‘Because she’s tremendously strong and tremendously vulnerable. Kate would know how to manage her. She’d be safe there, and so would everyone else.’

  ‘You don’t like her.’

  She smiled. ‘What makes you think that? I barely know the child.’

  I grinned up at her. ‘You’ve been home nearly a full day, Rochoill. You know her well enough.’

  Leonora made a motion that might have been a shrug. ‘She’s hard to See. But yes, I’ve Seen her well enough to know she ought to be with Kate.’

  Absently I stroked her hair. ‘She does flirt with kelpies,’ I said.

  Leonora gave a dry laugh. ‘That’s not all she flirts with.’

  ‘Leonora, she’s eleven years old.’

  ‘And daily growing, as they say.’

  ‘Is that why you want her to leave?’

  ‘Now, now.’ She nipped my ear quite hard. ‘I’m only thinking of what’s best for her.’

  ‘All the same.’ I rolled over and put my finger between her teeth to stop her biting me again, and she looked amused. ‘I’ll give her a chance. She’s happy here.’

  ‘As you wish. And on your own head be it.’

  *

  And so Lilith became an unspoken gamble between me and Leonora, albeit a good-tempered one. Surprisingly, Leonora didn’t seem to mind the kelpie business, and I grew a little suspicious that she was encouraging Lilith’s interest – or perhaps not discouraging it – so that I’d be proved wrong in the end.

  ‘I’ve seen the creature,’ she told me as we rode along the beach one evening. The water’s surface was beaten silver under a yellow sky, satiny-calm and deceptive. ‘It’s no more than a colt.’

  ‘Aye, and daily growing.’ I threw her own words back at her, and she laughed.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, Griogair. It wouldn’t be the first time a witch has tamed a kelpie.’

  ‘You’ve never been tempted.’

  She shrugged. ‘I’ve no interest in them, but then I don’t need a warhorse. I’m surprised you’ve never fancied taming one. Just because it hasn’t been done in centuries—’

  ‘They’re trouble,’ I said flatly.

  ‘So are you, my dear.’ She reached out a hand to take mine, kissed it, then let her horse spring forward into a gallop, sending spray flying from the small shoreline waves. For a moment I reined in my own horse, dazzled to watch them, the low winter sun glittering in the spindrift, Leonora’s tawny hair and the mare’s white mane bannering in the wind of their own speed.

  She glanced back over her shoulder. ~ Do keep up, Fitheach, my love.

  I laughed, and took the challenge.

  Five

  The crow Lilith had tamed was a clever thing, nimble and cunning, and she’d grown impossibly fond of it. It was a true familiar: she never went anywhere without it, whether perched on her shoulder or hopping at her feet or ducking and diving in the air above her. The pouch she wore at her waist was now exclusively devoted to its favourite treats, so that the girl always smelt faintly of dead pigeon.

  All the same, she hadn’t forgotten her first ambition, as I discovered when Niall and I were out on the machair one frosty morning, debating whether to bring the cattle back inside the dun. Despite the crystal blue of the sky, a new onslaught of winter lay heavy on the horizon, and hardy though the beasts were, the wolfpacks had grown more desperate as the months wore on. I hated to imagine having to kill a wolf, and I’d deserve the bad luck such a deed would bring me.

  We’d walked up to the top of the dunes to study the dark menacing cloud that lay on the far line between ocean and sky, but the oncoming weather was suddenly secondary.

  ‘Gods above and gods below,’ said Niall, and drew the sword off his back.

  I’d got my breath back, so I murmured, ‘Put it away. You’ll look a bit damn silly if you’re more scared of it than she is.’

  Lilith sat on one of her favourite rocks, wrapped in a goatskin cloak, looking utterly contented as she fed scraps of pigeon to the crow and the kelpie. The crow took them greedily straight from her hand; the kelpie seemed more skittish, but it strained its head curiously towards her, flaring its nostrils and pawing the sand, snatching a shred of bloody pigeon-meat from her just as the crow reached for it. The bird’s indignant caw and Lilith’s laughter drifted to us on the breeze.

  Cautiously I walked along to the rocks and clambered down, Niall at my heels, his sword sheathed, his fingers still twitching for it. Leonora had been right: it was barely more than a first-year colt, nothing like fully-grown. That didn’t mean it didn’t have a deadly look. As it caught sight of us it jerked up its head, and bared its teeth, a tendril of pigeon-flesh caught on one lower fang. Its black eye fixed on us and it flattened its ears, screaming a baby-stallion warning.

  Lilith turned her head and smiled at us, giving a little wave. ‘Isn’t he beautiful?’

  ‘Very,’ I murmured, because he was. Niall said nothing at all, just stared at the creature.

  ‘Oh, don’t be scared of him,’ she said. ‘He’s only a foal really. He won’t come out of the sea yet. I’m just getting to know him. I haven’t even made a bridle.’

  ‘You can’t bring that into the dun,’ Niall managed to say.

  ‘Of course not. Not yet.’ She jerked her head at the opposite end of the beach and said contemptuously, ‘That’s what Ramasg’s scared of, too.’

  I followed her gesture. Sure enough, a shadow darted behind the rocks, too late: a shadow with straggly black hair. I frowned.

  ‘Has he been bothering you again?’

  ‘A bit. But I can handle him.’ She flicked her fingers dismissively, and the kelpie colt snuffled eagerly at them. The crow must have been jealous, because it hopped onto Lilith’s arm and glared at the creature.

  I could barely take my eyes off it myself. It was a lovely thing, its coat pale grey enough to be nearly white, its still-damp mane and tail tangled with weed. As I watched, its demonic eyes seemed to soften, a green light kindling in their depths, and it nickered to me, tossing its head. I smiled.

  ‘Griogair!’

  Niall had lunged for my arm, but Lilith had already taken my hand and gently removed it from the kelpie’s neck, where I did not remember putting it. My fingers slipped free of the writhing fronds of its mane, and it whickered with disappointment as I blinked myself bac
k to full consciousness.

  ‘You sneaky little bastard!’ I exploded.

  Lilith laughed. ‘It’s only doing what comes naturally. You could soon tame it.’

  Strange, but she was right. I couldn’t resent the thing, any more than I could resent a wolf for wanting to eat. And for its sheer beauty and grace, you could forgive it anything. I knew that was its trick, but I suddenly didn’t care.

  ‘You could ride one,’ added Lilith, gazing at me with worshipful eyes. ‘I could bring you one, and you could bond with it. A warhorse. For you.’

  I shook myself. The intensity of her adoration was as scalp-scratchingly unnerving as the kelpie’s flirting. ‘Maybe later,’ I said gruffly. ‘Give me a century or two to get used to the idea.

  ‘You’d be mad,’ growled Niall, earning a frown of dislike from Lilith.

  ‘Anyway, Niall’s right for now,’ I added. ‘Don’t bring it near the dun.’

  ‘Of course not. None of them could deal with it.’ There was a proud gleam in her eyes. ‘I’ve got Dornadair to keep me company, anyway.’ She puckered her lips, which the crow nudged with its beak as if kissing her.

  I laughed and shook my head.

  ‘Don’t be late back,’ I said. ‘There’s snow on the way.’

  Six

  I was more aware of Ramasg after seeing him spying on Lilith down on the shore. There was still something I disliked about the boy, something I distrusted, and if anything he seemed to have grown worse: more underhand, more vicious. I saw him spit in her food when her back was turned; I saw him spill slops deliberately on her cloak, or drop something suddenly to trip her.

  She was right, though; she could handle him now. If she ever retaliated I didn’t know about it, but I don’t think she did. Or rather, she retaliated in the most wounding way possible, which was to pretend Ramasg did not exist. He was so clearly jealous of her, as well as afraid and contemptuous, that her complete failure to see him must have been like a fishhook in his gullet. Nor did it help his prestige even among his own friends, which duly plummeted, especially since Lilith was always careful to acknowledge them, to smile shyly and nod at them as they passed her in the courtyard. She’d be a clever politician when she was older.

  And as she said, she had the crow Dornadair. It might go off hunting alone now and then, but mostly they were together, out on the moor or down on the rocks. When she called it, with a strange guttural cry, it would come to her; she would spend hours with her undersized bow and arrow, hunting pigeons and grouse for it simply because it disliked the taste of seabird. It had even reached an amicable coexistence with the kelpie-colt, which surfaced and trotted out of the waves for Lilith almost on command now.

  ‘You’ve got to admit,’ I told Leonora smugly, ‘she’s happy here.’

  ‘I do admit it, freely.’ And Leonora gave me the smile that told me: Just wait.

  Lilith was contented, then, and she had never been the kind of child to shriek or throw tantrums or even to laugh too loud. Her easy, low-pitched happiness lasted the whole of that late spring as the air grew mild and the flowers crept in a wild rash of colour across the machair, and the grass began to smell once more of warmth and summer instead of frost and death.

  That was why, when she came running to me in the Great Hall, I waved Niall aside and opened my arms to her, shocked by her demented grief. That was why I knew immediately that her despair was real, and heart-shredding, and terribly, violently dangerous.

  *

  Dornadair, she gasped through her tears, was gone. He had not responded to her call; she could not locate his disordered, playful mind with her own. He had been gone for three hours; twice as long as they had ever been apart before.

  Dornadair, she said, was dead.

  The clann members near to us shook their heads and sympathised in their matter-of-fact way, and Leonora became surprisingly sad and quiet, kissing the girl’s face and begging her not to worry till the worst was known. Even Niall tried to console Lilith, stroking her hair and shushing her, but she would not be shushed, and I knew she would not be consoled till the bird was found.

  There were three hours of daylight left to us, and we had no choice. Niall sighed and made for the stables to ready our horses while I squeezed the girl’s shoulders and promised to find Dornadair. I doubted very much that we’d find him alive; I trusted Lilith to know that. But still we had to ride out, and it didn’t matter how much I cajoled and warned; she had to come with us.

  Lilith rode at my back, clasping my waist like a drowning child, her breath coming in short gasps. There was no point in speed; we simply had to cover the moor at a walk, searching the uneven ground and the heather knolls till our eyes ached. None of us, tellingly, looked to the sky.

  As the shadows lengthened I began to despair of finding the bird, and the thought of dragging Lilith back to the dun without it was more than I could face. Niall, thirty yards away, gestured to a high outcrop of stone that breached the moor like the fin of a basking shark, and headed his horse towards its sloping flank; Lilith and I took the further and more gentle rise.

  The sun, too brilliant to look at, was sunk halfway beneath the horizon when Lilith gave a cry that made my blood cold.

  I hoped it was Dornadair; I hoped it wasn’t. But as my horse picked its way across the smooth rocks towards the untidy mess of limp black feathers, it was obvious what lay there. Lilith slipped from my horse’s back before I had even reined it in, and was running across the plateau towards the crow’s corpse.

  Niall rode across at my shout, and dismounted to hold my horse’s reins; I made myself go to Lilith’s side and crouch down. I didn’t dare touch the sleek black feathers, twitching and blustering in the wind, but she reached out and gathered up the crow’s pathetic remains, hugging him against her as if she could warm life back into his bones. But even her hot tears dripping into his feathers couldn’t do that.

  I squeezed her shoulder, and got to my feet, finding it difficult to take a breath through the pity in my throat. I was about to speak to her again when I noticed the other, smaller dead thing, a slab of rock and a small crevice away.

  I went over to it, and lifted it by one wing. The carcass was ripped open at the breastbone, but otherwise barely touched.

  Besides, even when it’s stripped to the bone, I know what a pigeon looks like.

  Seven

  Leonora sniffed, wrinkling her nose in distaste. ‘Poison, certainly. Quite a lot of it.’ She laid the pigeon down on the bench. ‘At least it must have been relatively quick.’

  If that was meant to calm me, it had the opposite effect. ‘I’ll kill the little bastard,’ I snarled.

  ‘You think it was Ramasg? You ought to be sure, Griogair.’

  ‘I’m more than sure. Fionnaghal says a pigeon was stolen from the kitchens, and the other children say it was Ramasg who took it. I didn’t even have to threaten them. Lilith isn’t the only one who’s upset.’

  Niall poked gloomily at the pigeon’s gizzard. ‘I never thought he’d go so far.’

  ‘If I’d ever thought it myself, I’d have strung him up by the balls. Too late now. We should have known.’

  ‘Offer Lilith a whipping. When you catch up with him.’

  ‘I doubt she’ll settle for that. Did you see the state of her?’

  ‘And it’s if you catch up with him,’ added Leonora. ‘Has anyone seen the boy?’

  Niall shook his head. ‘Lying low. The first smart thing he’s done in a year, not that it’ll help him. He has to come back to the dun sooner or later.’

  Leonora slipped an arm round my waist and hugged me. ‘It wasn’t your fault, Fitheach. And grief-stricken as she is, she’ll find another familiar.’

  ‘True,’ said Niall. ‘It’s terrible, but it isn’t like losing a bound lover.’

  He spoke very lightly – more lightly than he would have done if he’d actually bound himself to Lann by that point – but I think he was wrong, anyway. Perhaps Lilith wasn’t joined to Dornadair
at the soul, but she was not quite twelve years old and she loved him more than I think she’d loved anything in her brief life. That wasn’t a bond you could dismiss; and love came hard to Lilith under any circumstance.

  All the same, after a few days she had recovered her composure enough to return to the life of the dun – quietly, and making eye contact with no-one, but she was there among the clann, and her eyes were dry. Her quick recovery surprised and pleased me, though her underlying grief remained tangibly raw. I had the feeling some of the clann children wanted to sympathise with her, to apologise for Ramasg, but one flinty stare and they’d back swiftly off. So much for my hopes, so high in the early spring, for her full integration into clann life.

  Ramasg was still skulking. At least, I thought, the last of the harsh winter had been driven off by what promised to be a fine summer. He wouldn’t freeze out there – though in my harsher moments I thought he fully deserved to – and he was as familiar with caves and shelter stones as any clann child would be after fourteen years running wild on the moor. Besides, Lilith was already back to her habit of roaming – more mournfully now that she had no companion – and I had no doubt that if she saw so much as Ramasg’s broken fingernail in a rockface, she’d tell me.

  He’d been gone a week when my uneasiness grew too great to ignore. He might not freeze, and he might not starve, and wolves wouldn’t touch him, but he was just stupid enough to get stuck in a cave or run into a wandering rogue Lammyr. My rage still burned hot in my chest, but I was afraid that with time it might subside to an ember and that I wouldn’t have the heart for any punishment he’d deserve.

  And the blunt fact is, I was worried.

  I chose a warm bright morning to go out looking for him, the kind of morning no-one could resist. On a day like this, anyone in his right mind would long for home and for happiness; anyone would swallow his fear and his pride and bow to the inevitable, get the worst of his homecoming over with. Or at least, he would be tempted to. If I could meet him halfway, drawn from whatever cave he was hiding in by the smell of new wildflowers and the glittering sea, I could bring him home to face us all. The world never looks so bad on such a day.