by Robin Hobb
Had Soldier’s Boy heard the echoes of my thoughts? He met Likari’s gaze. “Do you wish to go with me? Or to return to the village with your mother?”
He drew himself up. “I am your feeder. You have said I will go with you. So I shall.”
“Very well.” Soldier’s Boy sent a final glance after Olikea. The sun shone on her skin. She was as unconcerned as a lioness as she strode down the trail toward the villages. As he watched, she entered the shelter of the trees and was lost to sight.
“What do you mean to do?”
“I intend to hunt. You will help me. And I intend to eat. A lot. Then when I have grown as fat as I can in four days, we shall quick-walk to the Trading Place. And there I shall trade.”
He cocked his head at me. “What will you trade?”
“I’m not entirely sure yet. What is considered valuable?”
He furrowed his brow. His eyes were very serious as he pondered my question. “Tobacco. Tobacco is always good. And furs. Pretty things. Things that are good to eat. Knives.”
“I think I should have asked your mother before she left.”
“Probably. Why do you call Olikea my mother so much?”
“Well. It is what she is, isn’t it?”
“I suppose. But it sounds odd to me.” He glanced about and said anxiously, “We should go beneath the trees. I start to burn.”
“I feel it, too, especially in my markings.” All my skin had become more sensitive to light, but my new specks were noticeably sore, even from this brief exposure to sunlight. Soldier’s Boy began to walk slowly down the path that Olikea had taken and Likari fell into step beside me. His small dark head bobbed as he walked. “How is Olikea usually named to you?”
“Olikea.”
“You do not call her ‘Mother’ ever?”
This seemed to puzzle him. “A ‘mother’ is what she is, not who she is,” he said after a time.
“I see,” Soldier’s Boy replied and I thought I did.
The wind rose, sweeping down on us. He looked back the way we had come. High above the cavern from which we had emerged the peaks already boasted snow. He felt a pang of guilt. “You must be cold. I should have sent you with Olikea.”
“Winter is coming. It’s right to be cold in winter. The wind will be less keen once we are in the shelter of the trees.”
“Then let’s hurry,” Soldier’s Boy suggested, for the keenness of the wind stung his bare skin almost as much as the light had. Likari might be philosophical about being cold because it was winter, but he saw no reason to be cold if he didn’t have to be.
Even when we reached the shelter of the trees, he was cold, and I was suddenly skeptical about Soldier’s Boy’s decision. He had nothing from his previous life save his blanket. The boy carried a small amount of gear: a water skin, the fire-making supplies, and a knife and a few other basics in his pouch. But he himself was nearly as resourceless as a child newly born to the world. I thought how they had abandoned my worn clothing and suddenly mourned those meager possessions as if they were squandered treasure. Cold and hunger pressed us, extending their claws even into my awareness. What was he thinking? Why hadn’t he followed Olikea to her house? We could have been warm and fed by now. Likari seemed to share none of my doubts but toiled along at Soldier’s Boy’s heels, patient as a dog.
This was a different sort of forest from the one on the other side of the mountains. It was greener and lusher. Most of the trees were needled evergreens, and ferns were thick in the mossy shade. I was suddenly grateful for the dimness they provided. Huckleberry bushes mocked me with their past-season greenery. The forest here smelled different, wetter and greener, than the woods on the far side of the mountains. The signs of human habitation were plainer here. The path we followed was well trodden and at intervals lesser paths separated themselves like tributaries branching out of a river. Fat gray squirrels seemed plentiful. One stopped halfway up a tree trunk to scold us, jerking his tail at us and angrily denouncing our presence in his forest. If we’d had my sling, we’d have had squirrel stew very shortly. Perhaps some trickle of that thought reached Soldier’s Boy, for he hesitated and almost I thought his hand went to a pocket that wasn’t there. Then he shook his head and walked on. He had something else on his mind. But what could be more pressing than a need for food? I knew he was hungry. It ate at him as it had once eaten at me. But whatever was driving him now had sharper teeth. I tried to sense what it was, but felt that he shielded it from me.
We had walked for perhaps an hour when Soldier’s Boy halted and stood, staring about himself like a hound trying to pick up a lost scent. There was no pathway, but after staring around and noting several of the larger trees, he gave a sharp nod to himself and left the trail we had been following. Likari glanced at the worn trail that led toward his home village, gave a small sigh, and followed him.
Soldier’s Boy did not move with certainty. He paused often, and once we backtracked and then went on in a slightly different direction. When we came to a lively stream that crossed our path, he smiled. They both stooped to drink the icy water.
Likari wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Where are we going?”
I was surprised when Soldier’s Boy answered him. “To Lisana’s old house. It’s hard for me to find the way; much has changed since she actually walked these hills. Saplings have become mighty trees. The old paths have been devoured by the moss and ferns, and new ones have been trodden. It is confusing to me.”
“The old Great One, Lisana? She is a tree now?”
“But she wasn’t always a tree. Many years ago, she lived close by here. She told me about her house here. She spoke to me, very strongly, in my earliest dream visions. And later, she was my mentor and instructor.” And lover, he might have added, but he did not.
“Do you think her lodge will still be there, after all these years?”
“Probably not. But we shall see.”
I ventured closer to Soldier’s Boy’s thoughts and aligned myself with him. I could not tell if he was aware of me or not. I tried to be very still and unobtrusive. I felt like a small boy trying to peer over his father’s shoulder while he was writing a letter.
He had Lisana’s memories and consulted them like a map. The path to her home had wound past a rise, and then between two immense trees. Only one of them was still standing. The other was an empty stump, like a rotted-out tooth sticking out of the forest floor. Soldier’s Boy walked between them and then paused, thinking. Uphill, he decided, because he remembered that she had enjoyed a good view of the valley.
She had stopped living in the village when she became a Great One. Too many unfulfilled dreams resided there. The man she had loved had not wished to be the feeder of the Great One, to live always in the shadow of her power. She had no desire to see his children scamper past her door each day. She had never truly taken a feeder. There had been villagers who served her, and all her kin-clan had been proud to have produced a Great One. She lacked for nothing; they saw to that. Food, jewelry, furs to sleep under, music to lull her to sleep, perfumes to stimulate her thoughts—she had but to express a wish for something and it was provided to her. In return, she served her people well and faithfully.
She lacked for nothing. Nothing except the simple life that she had once believed she would have. Nothing except a man who had turned away from her when power touched and then filled her.
A tremendous sympathy for her flooded and filled me. I had thought we were so different, but peering through Soldier’s Boy’s mind and sharing her memories, I suddenly found many places where our experiences touched.
Her home had been stoutly built of cedar logs. The roofs of such houses were sharply peaked and the eaves reached almost to the ground. Roofed with logs and thatched with moss, it had been, and as the years passed, ferns and mushrooms had grown on the roof and sprouted from the moss chinking. She had encouraged the growth. Her house was alive, an incarnation of the forest from which she drew her power. It ha
d been fitting.
He passed it twice. I saw it before he did. I tugged, stamped, and poked at his awareness until he finally turned back. He was looking for her house as she remembered it, roomy yet snug, and with a well-trodden path leading up to it. It was long gone. I recognized the overgrown green mound as what remained of it.
In this rainy forest region, the folk built houses of cedar for a good reason. In favorable conditions, cedar doesn’t rot. In adverse conditions, it rots very slowly. Lisana’s house had been well built, of thick logs sealed with boiled pitch. Even so, time and the elements had had their way. Years ago, the front wall had boasted two window openings and a door. Trailing vines had overgrown them in a curtain of roots and tendrils, and eventually, moss had filled in the gaps. Soldier’s Boy found the door by touch, thrusting against the greened walls until he reached a place that gave to his push.
Likari watched him in silence as he thrust his arm in elbow deep and then tore away at the wall of foliage. It was not easy work: the roots were tough and woody, and the moss was thick, but eventually he had torn out a hole big enough to look through. He peered into darkness that smelled of damp and rich rot. Likari, near naked, had begun to shiver.
“Build a fire for us while I do this,” Soldier’s Boy suggested. Likari gave a relieved nod and ran off to collect twigs and dry debris.
Soldier’s Boy cleared the doorway and ventured inside. He blinked, letting his eyes adjust. The walls and roof had held, but the forest had still invaded. Cascades of pale roots had penetrated and actually strengthened the walls. More groping white roots dangled from the ceiling. The earth floor was damp underfoot. He could make out vague shapes that had been her possessions. There, against the wall, that would have been a chest of cedar-wood and that collapsed huddle of moss and mildew was where her bed had been. He found one of the windows and began to clear it to let more light in. The central hearth of careful dry-stone work had survived, but the smoke hole above it was blocked. The afternoon was advancing. He looked out of the low door. Likari had kindled a small fire and was perched on the rolled blanket beside it.
“Come in here! You see that? Climb up there and open it up for us. Once that’s done, we can bring the fire inside. We’ll be a little more comfortable tonight.”
The boy peered into the darkened lodge. He wrinkled his nose in distaste for the damp smell and the busy beetles and pale roots that dangled down from the ceiling. “Could not you just speak to the forest and bid it give us shelter for the night?”
It was presumptuous but Soldier’s Boy chose not to take offense. “I could. But that would use magic. And I need to build my magic, not spend it. So, tonight, we will stay in here.”
I sensed that he had other reasons, and most of them were that his beloved had once lived here. He looked around a chamber that a Gernian would have considered a root cellar and saw a cozy home, lit by a warm hearth and filled with the comforts that befitted a Great One. His secondhand recollections startled me. He recalled copper cooking pots and green glass bowls, hair combs of ivory and silver pins for her hair. Yet his memories of her wealth were tinged with sadness. Perhaps only he knew how lonely she had been. Did he think that somehow he could retroactively amend that by residing here?
While Likari tugged and pulled diligently at the shrubs, roots, and moss blocking the smoke hole, Soldier’s Boy moved purposefully about the room. She had had no heir to inherit her wealth, not even a favorite feeder to claim three cherished possessions. So, as was their custom when dealing with folk who were full of magic, her home had become taboo once she had died. Magic had a price and left a residue, the Speck believed. This chamber remained as it was the day she last left it. Lisana had died on the far side of the mountains. She had known she was dying, and had stayed behind to be near the tree she had chosen. Her youngest brother and three of her feeders had stayed with her, loyal to the end, to prop her failing body against the tree and guard it until the tree could send its seeking roots tendriling into her body to absorb both the nutrients of her corpse and all that remained of her person.
These things he knew almost as clearly as if they had happened to him. These were the memories Lisana had given him. And so he went to where a shelf had been, and groped on the floor amid the wreckage of the long-ago rotted plank. From its debris, he lifted a soapstone lamp. He went outside and scrubbed it with fallen needles beneath a cedar tree. He would get oil for it when he went to the Trading Place. He held it in his hands, feeling it warm beneath his touch. She had liked to sit outside in the mild evenings of early autumn with its soft glow lighting the night.
He looked up at the sky through the lacy fronds of the cedar trees. The light was going fast. If they were going to eat tonight, he had to hunt now. He clenched his teeth. Now that he had found the house, he didn’t want to leave it. He longed to lovingly restore it to what it had been, to see the log walls lit by dancing firelight, to recline on the bed where she had slept, to drink from the cups she had used. He ached for her with a depth of feeling that bordered on obsession. He was sick with his loneliness and love, and I pitied him.
Yet for all that, he disciplined himself, as my father had taught him when he was the same boy I was. He looked up to young Likari, who was still dispiritedly dragging roots and moss and vines out of the smoke hole. “Do you still have my sling?”
Likari grinned. “I saved it for you.” He fumbled in a pouch at his belt and then tossed down the flap of leather with the long thongs wrapped around it. Soldier’s Boy caught it neatly. He turned to leave.
“Do you wish me to hunt for you?”
Soldier’s Boy was almost startled. He hadn’t even considered it. He made a quick decision. “No. Thank you: finish clearing the smoke hole. Then clean the hearth inside and bring the fire into the house. Gather some firewood for the night. I’ll see what I can get for us to eat.”
The boy stood in a half crouch over the chimney, staring at him. He made no reply. Soldier’s Boy turned and walked away from the house reluctantly. He didn’t want the boy to tidy the hearth. He wanted to do it himself, to be sure that every stone was put back as it had been when Lisana lived there. He hadn’t gone a dozen strides when the boy called after him, “Great One, this is a bad-luck place! Please! Don’t leave me here alone!”
Soldier’s Boy halted and turned, surprised. “Why is it a bad-luck place?”
“A Great One lived here, and now she is gone. We should not be here. To come here uninvited is the worst sort of luck. It does not matter that she has been gone for a long time. The bad luck is still here.” His voice quavered on the last words. He pinched his mouth shut to keep his lip from trembling.
Soldier’s Boy stood still, listening to chill wind in hemlock and cedar needles. Then he said, “I was invited. And you are my feeder. It isn’t bad luck for me to be here, or for you.”
The boy didn’t reply. I looked at him through Soldier’s Boy’s eyes and thought how young he really was. Soldier’s Boy didn’t give it another thought. The light was going fast now. This time of day animals would be on the move, but it would not last long. I might pity Likari, left alone with his fears, but Soldier’s Boy simply assumed he would cope with them.
His hunting luck was good. I could feel him draw on my skill and experience with the sling when he used it. It felt odd, almost as if he were bleeding me for sustenance. At the same time, he could not open that link and take from me without leaving his own thoughts vulnerable to my spying. I caught a glimpse of his plan. He would stay here, in Lisana’s house, and eat all he could for four days before making a quick-walk to the Trading Place. He hoped he could regain enough of his weight to be impressive to the folk gathered there. There was something else, too, something he guarded more closely. I could not see it, but knew he anticipated it with excitement but also with a strange regret.
This was a different forest he moved through, as different as the forest on the other side of the mountain had been from my prairie home. That was a revelation to me. I
had thought that all forests would be, well, forests. To discover that they differed as much as one city does from another was almost shocking. On this side of the mountains, evergreens predominated, cedar and spruce for the most part. Their fallen needles carpeted the earth and I tasted their resinous scent with every breath. I passed anthills that were waist high; at first glance they seemed to be merely heaps of rust-brown needles. Ferns were also plentiful, and mushrooms in astonishing variety. He recognized some as energizing for his magic and picked and ate them. Soldier’s Boy recognized them from Lisana’s memories. My reluctance to trust such a secondhand memory swayed him not at all from eating every last one of them. And when he had finished, the subtle humming of the magic in my blood rose. He walked on with a satisfied smile. He liked being able to take care of himself, I realized.
The first hare he saw escaped him because he had foolishly not thought to gather stones for ammunition before he set out. He sought out a stream, and again I felt him pilfering my memories to select stones of the right size and heft for the sling. I resented that. He had his own secrets that he kept from me. Why should I share the skills I’d worked so hard to perfect? I clenched my mind shut to him.
He paused a few moments by the stream to drink, and then to make several practice shots with the sling. He was not very good at first. He selected a tree trunk as his target. The first stone went wide, the second grazed the bark, and the third did not leave the sling at all but fell at his feet. I felt his frustration, and felt, too, the hunger that gnawed at him. He needed what I knew.
