• Peigra's Blog:

Calton's Shadow

By: Peigra

The driving rain made it difficult to see, but after so many years of plodding the path, her feet knew the way instinctively.
With so many thick, ravaging snows that came up suddenly when the seasons changed and the barn filled with livestock to both farm and feed, and bandits always a threat, children learned very young where to hide, and exactly how many steps it was from hearth to barn and back again, and all the landmarks between.
The thick wool was not keeping much of the cold out, but the oiled leather was effective against the rain, coming against her back now. The horse would be grateful for shelter, any shelter, and soon, she would need to be thinking of the same, and warmth.
The door closed behind, and it was exactly fifteen steps to the door that slid back on the wood slats that had been grooved for easier sliding when the wood swelled in the winter. Five steps across the slate that marked where one was supposed to stamp their boots, keeping the mud and the dust out of the barn, and the door closed behind to keep the heat in.
Not even the horse knew where they were going, but, once, it might have. Their fields had been flowered with foals, yearlings, horses for harness, for riding, the long-winded gallopers that were used by the runners for spanning the bridge in front of Port Scion before storms blew over it and it was too treacherous to risk. Many horses and their riders had been blown off the bridge in thick, quick gales that stripped heat, clothing and life from many, and getting across it had been critical for both message and messenger. It required a horse with great endurance, and the horses in the fields had been such that.
In the quagmire of her mind, thick with muddy-water memories, she could see the mares, their sides wide with their coming foals, and those already born prancing in the fields, blowing great patches of new grass wide with their noses. The four stallions in their wide pens, to the north, with wide patches of pasture between them where hay was cut. The yearlings to be taken to sale, or already sold via private treaty, were between, their fates uncertain as no one ever knew how many would sell, but every day, there were always a handful, coming to see what ones would be taken to the annual sale, just after harvest, and what might catch the eye.
The long hedgerow that had been planted generations ago, to hide the fields from the road, had been a fascinating place to hide as children, able to climb high into the branches, and there had been severe punishments if one broke a branch and there was a hole exposed. Replanting was vigorous, and she could recall the frustration, the sighs, when replanting came, because all the children were involved, not just the one who had caused the hole. No horses had ever escaped via this means, but children needed to understand responsibility young.
Holes could be widened, and concealed, by bandits, and other farms had suffered losses. Bandits were everywhere, there was little to be done of them, save ridding the lands of them as they were found. In the City, as it was called in the farming lands of Freemarch, there was no king and country and war and court to cause death and strife and intrigue, but there were bandits, many of them, and most times after harvest, through the snows when they might be caught in a barn hiding, or just before planting, when supplies were dwindling and not often shared, even between farmers. In the City, there was Justice, but in the farmlands, there were rivers and roads where the bodies of bandits were given no trial and simply left out as witness for others to avoid the area. Soldiers were few and far between, and one bandit was too many to be allowed to live.
How long?
The question interrupted the thoughts of bandits and farm and the blackness was back again, without an answer. It was a question without an answer, because there was none to give, after all that had happened, and perhaps it was just as well that it had no firm answer. It would mean that some substance of the passage of time had occured and people would remember.
The bend in the road was ahead, and no one had ever been able to explain why there was a bend in the road, but there was, just a slight one, but enough to be noted. When the road had been laid out, someone had used stones, originally, to mark the boundaries of its edges, and perhaps it had washed out with the floods that happened during planting, maybe a farm had been there originally, perhaps one road was the right one and the other the secondary, now joined. Only the road knew, and its secrets were just that, mud and dust and wisdom that needed no deep thoughts to contemplate.
The road did not connect rightly, and it looked as two boards, not flush at their ends, one handing far to the left or right of the other, and the road had been left as such. The rock on either side ended and began in a different place with no reason. Someone once said that the ground had wanted the road such, but that was silly. The ground did not move, not as people and beasts did, it was always there, always firm and solid and waiting to be planted or harvested or silent beneath snow, waiting to come alive again.
To the left would be the hedgerow, to the right, past the thick tangle of low trees that spread their roots curved up in the air, and wide from their trunks, and created a wonderful maze for children to wriggle themselves through, right would be the river beyond the trees. She inhaled, trying to find its scent, the watery, mucky scent that would always alert someone to how high it was. The muckier it was, it was receeding, the lack of scent was that it was rising; it was something only one who lived near it would understand, and recognize.
The river smelled of death, and she frowned. New farmers sometimes neglected the Laws and threw corpses into the river, and their scent carried high if the bodies got tangled in those same tree roots. Not pleasant, and she wondered who the perpetrator was, and thought against going into the trees to see if it was someone she recognized.
How long?
She sighed, the rain beating her back, her cloak protecting some of the horse’s rump beneath her, and urged it forward from where she had paused without remembering doing so. To her left, there was a long, stone wall, and beyond that should have been the hedgerow, rising high enough for even the greatest jumping foal to avoid.
It lay in silence, and she followed it, the horse’s hooves plodding on the road with little mud and avoiding the puddles that were forming. The single cloud had followed them for some time and showed no signs of wanting to move faster on the winds and leave her be. Her saddlebags were in oiled leather as well, and their contents safe, and she would need them soon.
The road was not as well dotted with farmers willing to sell cheese and bread as they had been Before, and she was looked upon as a stranger. She was one of them, and despite her coin and her knowledge of the area, there had only been two who had welcomed her in and given her some respite from the weather. She had slept out in the open fields before; all farmers did during harvest if the weather allowed, with their horses tied to the backs of the wagons to slumber and ready to pull the wagons again when the sun rose, the women stoking the firepits and the kettles of thick broth to warm the gut.
Behind her, soaked as well, the other horse plodded, and she wondered at its irritation. To be escorted was enough of a target to any bandit, for two travelers, both with horses and thick, oiled cloaks, were rare enough to be seen these days. She wished she could have gone without her escort, but she had been told that it was necessary to explain what had happened. Not that she understood much of it herself, but if someone else wanted to make her understand, or attempt to, again, she was willing to allow it and let them take the matter to its head.
The hedgerow was slowly coming into bloom, frosted with the light green of the buds swelling with leaves, and she loved the scent of them when they broke through, only lasting a day if that. As children, they had all sat as still as children could, poking one another to be annoying, throwing pebbles, calling to one another, and listening for the popping noises of the buds, and the moment’s scent of newness and fresh greenery that would only last a breath and then it was gone on the wind. Adults thought they were silly, but there had been secret smiles on the faces of some of the adults, and they might have understood, but were too old now to have time for such things. There were fields to be planted, animals to be fed and counted and tended, repairs made to the barn, no, there was no time to sit beneath the hedgerow and wait for the leaves to unfurl, not as an adult.
To her left, along the stone wall, the hedgerow curved, and she finally left the road, turning her horse, who gave an uncertain snort in the rain at her decision, but followed the tug to the left on its head. The grass was slowly creeping up along the hedgerow, and the horse paused a moment, taking a great clump and snapping it in half, chewing greedily as it received another gentle tug and continued along the stone wall. She felt some guilt, as the grass did look inviting, but they had to reach their destination before the light faded.
One hundred steps from the road to the gates
She wondered what that was in horse steps, her gelding having four and she only having two, and cursed her own wandering mind. Was this part of this nightmare she was living, that her thoughts would not give her a coherency that it once had? Before, and Now, those two warred within her mind when she was awake, when she slept, and beat against the confines of her skull and neither made no sense with one another, there was no neutral ground to be had.
The gates came sooner than she expected, and she stopped in front of them. They were open, and had not yet been closed for the night, which was a benefit, and she stopped, staring at the great wooden pair that were a challenge for a child to close, but it was a nightly duty that two of them oversaw after the evening meal, child and adult, to check for bandits and secure the gates, and then the day was officially done.
The horse shook his head, his mane rain-sodden and she resisted putting her gloved hand down on it; it was no doubt dry beneath, and keeping his neck somewhat protected and warm. He would need grain and hay to get himself dry, and the barns, she hoped, would have some room for two spare horses for a night or two.
She was through the gates, a gentle prodding of her ankles into the gelding’s side, and she stopped, looking to the approaching pair. The meal was over, and she sighed, wondering what had been served, and if it was her favorite, with the roasted, spiced tubers that had been a treat, for the spices were not always easily coaxed out of the soil and some years there were none to be had. Her stomach rumbled and she pushed its urgencies aside; the pair coming were an adult and a child, and she wondered who it would be, keeping her horse still until they saw her.
The man, for it was a man, with his wide hat shadowed and lit in the light of the lantern he held up, and his small companion, both in oiled cloaks and the thick, oiled boots with the heavy insoles to keep feet warm and comfortable as best they could. They were a farmer’s specialty, and one treated them with kindness, for obtaining them was best through trade, and they were expensive to make, when the good quality ones could be found. Old Peric had been the last cobbler to make them, and none of his sons had shown the aptitude for such things, wanting to go off to the whispered nightmares of the City for fame and fortune and whatever it would bring them.
She stared at them, and they came closer, noting she had not moved her horse, but also that she was cloaked, it was raining, and she had a companion whose horse gave a whickering at the approaching pair. So much for a trained warhorse.
The lantern was blinding in the rain, oddly shimmering as the rain came down and coated its glass, and the man came up to her, the child ordered to stay behind. The child would run and sound the alarm if she was a bandit, though on two horses, there would not be far for that child to run, and if she was skilled with throwing knives, neither was to live long. The caution that the man approached was long instilled, and she felt a rising bubble of sadness at seeing it. She wanted to reach out quickly and embrace him, but she had to wait, and she had always detested waiting.
The lantern shone near her knee, and she looked down, beneath the hat that lifted. “Need summthin?”
“We’re here on Meridian business, farmer. We’ll speak it with the head of the farm alone,” her companion said, and she sighed. He was certainly striking the wrong impression with the lantern-wielding man, and she rolled her eyes beneath the heavy cowl. He must have been born in the City; he would not last long on the farms with that attitude.
She watched the lantern’s light turn to the other horse and rider, and the man spat at his feet, and she tried not to smirk. She knew that spit, knew that hawking noise before it, and felt her heart shattering beneath her cloak. She wanted to gather him up in her arms, crush him, hold him until the world itself stopped existing.
“Don’t get much fromma city this way,” he said neutrally, and she wanted to laugh. That accent, so thick, so faked, and she was giving her companion all the rope he needed to hang himself with.
“We’ve coin, and official scrolls,” he said, moving his cloak to display the leather-rimmed insignia of the Windrunners, whose clan held a tight grip on the running routes and were the sole ones to run messages in Freemarch, but even they were not immune to the horses from this farm, and their purchases were often extensive.
“Can’t eat coin,” the farmer said. “Scrolls we’d use inna privy, though,” he offered as an afterthought, and she bit her tongue. Picture it; an official scroll from General Catari herself, three of them in fact, and someone using them in the privy after a meal. “But we got room f’a runner n’friend,” he said, and turned, perhaps confused, perhaps surprised, as the horse on his left suddenly started moving towards the barns, and the guest ones, not the main ones for the stock.
She knew the way to the guest barns in her sleep, and on occasion, she had slept in them, buried in the prickly hay piles guarding horses for high-ranking guests. The doors were not open, but she knew how many steps in her sleep, and slid down onto the packed stones that let the rain slide off into small trenches, and out towards the river, to keep the mud down.
She slid down off the horse, and gave its side a pat. “Almost done,” she reassured it, and turned, finding the handgrip, recessed into the wood so the grip would not be lost, and pulled the door to the side, just enough that she could let them in, but to keep the heat within. She could see two lanterns down the row, hanging quietly and illuminating the curious beasts within, wondering who was come to disturb their sleep. She led the gelding through, and he immediately shook himself, but she was already wet, so it mattered little. He would be warm, and have food, and she looked down the row for an empty stall, holding his reins as she walked him and found an empty one on her left. She walked him in, and reached beneath the saddle for the belt and released the girth. She ran her hands along him as she moved around him, feeling his hindquarters, his sodden tail that was dripping, and came around the other side, pulling the saddle down and letting it fall to the hay. The gelding bent his head, sniffing at what he had been carrying for so long and she pushed his nose away gently, moving beneath his neck with the heavy bundle and set them on the thick, round log just outside the stall. It would dry there, and she left it there, taking the saddlebags and shaking them a bit.
There were two thick cloths hanging on a peg beneath the saddle’s seat, and she reached for them, but they were snatched from her hand by smaller ones, and a pair of bright eyes looked up at her. “I can dry him,” the child said, and she took a frightened step back. She knew those eyes, knew the dimple on the right side as he smiled up at her and the cowlick on the same side of his forehead that refused to allow him a good hair cutting.
She felt wrong, that she was using him, but he scampered into the stall to start wiping down the gelding’s legs, and she wanted to cry. How many times had they done it in the past? How many horses, how many guests had come and go, and now it was all gone, gone Before, and not Now. She turned from him before she said something, and took the saddlebags, looking down the row to another stall, and the farmer with her companion. Certainly her companion had not wanted to soil his hands doing menial work, no, because the farmer had passed the lantern and he was settling the saddle on the thick log. Lazy sod, even a runner would have taken the saddle off his own horse, but not this man.
The farmer looked up, and motioned to the saddle and bags, and took the lantern back. Guest though he might be, the rider was in charge of his own gear, and she watched the man’s frown, but anything could have been in those saddlebags, and a wise farmer waited to see how he would die or how much his guest knew, it was that simple.
Saddlebags gotten, her companion gave the farmer a nod, and they made their way towards her as she watched them, and noted the farmer’s limp, and closed her eyes for a moment. There was only one man with the limp, and she resisted the urge to throw her arms around him again, following as he motioned with the lantern. “See they both get dry,” he told the lad, who gave a nod, and she followed, so overcome by the scene that she wanted to stay in the barn and find an empty stall and weep. It was all happening too fast, too deeply, and she wanted to keep it slowly, but it was not to be.
The rain had not tapered off as they left the barn, and the farmer held the lantern up, guiding them along the stones, the little channels between them funneling water in great rivers away from the barns. Four, three, two, she counted to herself, counting the steps from the barn to the great slates that had been put in front of the door, and out of habit, she stamped her boots on them to remove any mud and debris.
The farmer eyed her oddly as she did, and her companion stamped his boots, but not as vigorously, not understanding why. The farmer said nothing, and the door opened, and the heat and the scents and noises assaulted her nose, her mind, her eyes.
To the right, there were the twin hearths, great stone-faced and mortared things that were always in some form of cooking, and the baking oven between them. The one on the right was presently hosting a kettle of what smelled to be soup, and she took a deep, lung-hurting breath, letting it out slowly. The smells from that hearth, she had tried to remember them, and now, here they were again, teasing her tongue, her nose, her lungs filled with them, and her gut began to rumble and she swallowed to try to hide her embarrassment.
Heads all around the great room turned as the farmer hung the lantern up on the metal hook, hanging from the wall and out a ways, so it would not catch the wooden walls. “Got guests,” he said, and everyone looked to the man who took his hood down, shaking out his hair and held up the saddlebag in his hands.
“I’ve official news for the farmer who owns these lands,” he said, his dark hair shining with dampness, and she wondered why he had taken his cowl down when they had been on the road. He was certainly not a horseman, she had discovered that at the start of their journey from Meridian, and he was not one for small talk apparently.
The faces, young, old and all between, all looked to one another, and then the farmer who had met them at the gates sat himself down in a chair at the long table, and motioned with his hand. “Sit, and we’ll hear what you’ve to say.”
“You’re the owner?”
“Da’s been gone three years now,” he said, and motioned to the elderly woman who came to stand just behind the chair and the seated farmer. “Ma’s been helping me with what needs doing and making it mine.”
The man was obviously not expecting this, and frowned. “There’s no Record of Kendrel’s death in Meridian.”
The farmer motioned to one of the children, and they ran off, and the silence was broken only by the snap of the wood that remained beneath the kettle, burning itself to ashes slowly, and soon to be banked so that there would be some heat in the morning for the oats to soak. The child returned with a small, iron box, and handed it to the farmer, who gave the child’s head a pat and set the box on the table.
From around his neck, he took the key that was hanging there, and opened the box, pulling out an official missal from Meridian, heavily creased from being made to fit within the locked box, and he set it, still folded, on the table. That the farmer had not opened it, and had thrown it down, was not missed, and the man took a breath and let it out. “You’re Berdel?”
“I am, but you knew that,” he said. “Testing me isn’t going to win you favors here, this isn’t Meridian.”
The man nodded. “Forgive, but I needed to ensure you were who you said you were.” She watched the man approach the table, and set his saddledbags down. Fool, not even opening the missal, and it could have been anything, stolen from a bandit, unofficial and still with his sire’s name, it could have been the deed to another farm for all he knew. He dug into one saddlebag, and pulled out the thick iron-lined scroll tube, and set it on the table between he and Berdel. “These come from Meridian, and are to be opened, read and replied to while I watch.”
Berdel looked up to his mother, who shrugged, and he reached across the table for the scroll tube. He opened the latch and upended the tube, the scrolls falling into his hand and he tossed the tube back on the table. It landed on the latch, and might have bent it, but there was no easy way to tell from the distance.
The scrolls were encrusted with sigils, and Berdel sighed, never one to be accustomed to magick, and uncomfortable with it, and gripped the scrolls, waiting for the magick to recognize him, and the skittering colors went silent, and the seals popped. The hiss of the expanding parchment echoed with the cracking wood, and Berdel opened the scrolls and read to himself, his mother reading over his shoulder.
As one, they looked, slowly, past the messenger, to the cloaked figure in the door, and Berdel stood with an odd, wounded expression on his face. His mother was moving, her knees not what they had been, but keeping near the fire kept most of the aches of the rain away. She reached the figure first, and stared, looking up and down, and found her fingers trembling.
Berdel reached them, and his hand struck out, tearing back the cowl of the cloak and the light shone on the ivory-gold hair that defied a true name or color, exposing it to the heat of the room. “You,” he breathed, shaking his head, and looking to the messenger.
“Peigra,” the old woman whispered, taking her head in her worn, soft hands and kissing it, and bringing it down against her creased one.
The cloak was sodden, cold and damp, and she was nearly a head above the woman now, but she bent down, allowing those soft, worn hand to enfold her in an embrace that had stretched across the Before to the Now, and soothed her terrors. No, nothing could soothe all of them, but for a moment, just a moment, she was nothing more than Peigra, and she felt Berdel’s hands on her shoulder, feeling that she was real, it was not a dream, and his arms were there also, his head against her hair.
Others came, the children squealing, and Berdel’s wife, Diel, came with a great, weeping cry, moving slowly as she was heavily pregnant now with another child, and caught them as well.
“I’m...I’m here,” she breathed, weeping, why was she weeping? Peigra had told herself she would not cry, nothing would make her cry, and yet, here she was, crying with the others holding her, the tiny fingers that were grabbing at her cloak, nearly choking her as the ties caught against her throat, and she was wetting old Purda’s hair with her tears. Berdel was crying also, and Diel was telling the children to go prepare two rooms for their guests, and pressing kisses against Peigra’s damp braids.
“No, you’re home,” Purda said, resting her forehead against her granddaughter’s. “You’re not just here, you’re home, Peigra.”
Peigra winced at that, and had nothing to do but loose fresh tears down her face at the woman’s kindness. How did one explain the Before? The Before that was this woman’s future? That Peigra knew everything that was coming in their lives, and knew that they would not survive what was coming? How did you explain to the Now without changing what was to come? Even Orphiel was obsessed with that matter, but had no explanation for it that would suffice, and survive. Just by being here, Peigra was changing all their lives, so who was to know what would happen now? Would everything that had been Before truly happen now, and could this be a new Now?
“You’re bones!” Diel, and with her usual grating voice, high and reedy, but well-meaning, and she took Peigra’s arm and beat Berdel’s hands away. “Girl needs feeding,” she said with a knowing voice, and caught the ties of Peigra’s cloak, sweeping it off her shoulders and onto the wall to drip itself dry. Purda took one arm, Diel the other, and Peigra found herself in the same chair Berdel had been seated in, and a bowl of soup before her with some of the last of the bread.
Her companion had taken a seat, quiet, and watching, and observing as best he could. His presence was required, to ensure that the transition happened, and that any explanations that were required could be done quickly, and in a means that could satisfy both sides. Sometimes, coming home was not a viable option, and families rejected those who came back, but not always. It took time to adjust to new things, and this was indeed new, and old, at the same time.
Within Meridian, with its great grinding machines and odd schematics, there were machines that could bring the dead back, or so it was rumored. No one quite knew how it had been done, not here, and perhaps not for some time. The secrets of the how were buried in the high tower that was forbidden to all but those odd ones who were being called Ascended, for they had returned from what the world was going to become, in a hope to change what was coming for the good of all.
Here, on the farm, Meridian was nothing, what happened there meant little, but for one night, for one magickal night, it, and its representative, had given Berdel and his Bloodline something in return for their constant demands for grain and horses and information on both. Tonight, it had given them back one of their own.
Peigra looked to all their faces, holding hands, touching faces, kissing heads that were not as grown as they had been the last time she had seen them, and she felt more tears, hoping that by her return to the Now, that some of their lives would be spared, some, all would be wonderful, but at least some, so that the Bloodline would continue, it would flourish, and the horses, the horses would always be tended, and come from this farm.
The soup was as she had remembered it, thick with tubers and one of the old ewes, and she chewed slowly, and the messenger from Meridian received a bowl and bread as well, and Berdel sat between them, wanting to know what had happened.
“She came through the portal, and we ensured she was adjusted before we got her outfitted and trained. She wanted to come when she was allowed, to see all of you.”
The voices were insistent, what ‘outfitted’ and ‘trained’ and ‘adjusted’ meant, and Peigra felt the pain growing, the pain that had no ending, no sleep stilled its niggling whispers, no meditation could silence it, nothing helped keep it at bay. It was a part of her, as her reflection in the mirror every morning, and there was only acceptance because there was little else to be done about it. It could not be willed away no matter how hard one tried, and as a mother soothes the moving child within her, hoping for rest, so it was treated, but it was not so kind to rest and allow solace and slumber.
She wondered how she sounded to them, was her voice different somehow, did they find it was higher, lower, more sorrowful than when they had last seen her? It had been some months since she had been home, Before that is, before everything had collapsed and the lands had burned, and Peigra herself had been through a trial that no one had ever imagined.
The littles, Caralin, Beorin and baby Sandin, no longer a baby but a raven-haired boy with a shining smile and his head pressed against her thigh. He had fallen asleep there as a baby, bundled and head capped with stubble and his elder sisters frowning at the squalling thing that he was, interrupting them from demands on their mother. There were other children as well, apprentices from other farms come to learn the trade of horseflesh and spend a year’s time in trade for room, board and lessons that Diel provided between training, breaking, selling, feeding, haying, cooking, and everything else she was burdened with. No one was slighted by Diel, and no one went through those gates hungry, ever.
Diel and Berdel had taken the old room that had belonged to Purda and her deceased husband, Mick, at the far end of the sprawling house. It took some time to settle the children, so excited about showing Peigra their latest baby brother, with his baby teeth lining his wide little smile that peeked out from his wrappings to keep him warm. And there were new puppies and kittens and Sandin so wanted to go out and show Peigra where he had watched the snake in its hole all last year and he had seen it again just that day, sunning itself.
The messenger watched it all with a distracted air, and gratefully took his bed, and the children were sent to theirs, and so many whispering faces to be settled, and Peigra kissed every one of them desperately, so afraid she would close her eyes and everything would be a lost memory again. It was strange, that in the Now, so many silly things were important, discarded dolls in the corners, little carved wooden toys lined along the walls, chalk drawings on the learning slates, it was all overwhelming, and Peigra took in every last look that she could. The messenger was still here, and only he knew what would happen.
Purga cuddled with her, embracing her constantly, holding her, kissing her cheek, sniffing her hair, and Berdel and Diel were generous as well, taking Peigra to their room to talk, away from the messenger, the children, from their apprentices and guests and everyone, into the one place on the farm that was verboten to anyone save the immediate Bloodline. Here, on the wide bed that the couple had, the four of them gathered on the quilts with cups of warm broth.
Diel was searching the quilts as they sat, frowning that she could not find something, and Purga kissed Peigra’s hair again. “We didn’t think we’d see you again, little bug,” she said, teasing Peigra as she called her by her nickname, and Peigra returned the kiss generously against her grandmother’s white braids.
Peigra’s own parents had died in her childhood, first her mam in childbirth that had taken she and Peigra’s only sibling, and then her sire, who had drowned himself in the river out of grief and left his only child in the care of his brother. Purga had been a second mother to Peigra, and Diel had come late in her life, but had taken her under wing to teach her little matters of the other places in Freemarch.
She had only been fifteen when she had been taken for the war, with her talent, and they had assured Diel and Berdel that Peigra would not come to harm, and in hindsight, they should have all known better.
Berdel sipped his broth, and watched the girl who had grown into a lovely young woman, not as tall as others in the Bloodline, but able to hold her own, with her unusual ivory-gold hair that defied a true color or name, but everyone had recognized Peigra from it. “Can you tell us what happened? That man isn’t going to barge in and interrupt us?”
Peigra rolled her eyes at that and chuckled. “Be lucky if he wakes at the sunrise. He’s from Meridian proper, and neither a horseman nor with a wit in his head. I think someone sent him with me to get him out of their hair for a while.”
They shared a laugh, and Purga tugged at Peigra’s cheek gently with a pinch. “That’s not what he asked, little bug.”
“I know, I know, Gamma,” she said, leaning her head against Purga’s. “So much happened, so much I remember, I don’t...don’t want to remember,” she said, frowning as she spoke and staring down into her cup.
Dearest Diel, with her dimpled face, those dimples that she had passed on to all seven of her children, trying to feed every last body who came through the gates. Berdel, who had taught the child Peigra how to wiggle her way out of a hold from behind, the one the bandits often used to try to immobilize victims, and how to shoot a bow to catch her own food on her own. Purda, who had been the one to soothe Peigra’s tears when she had been calling for her dead mother that first year, so lost and afraid and uncertain.
What did one say to their family after returning home, having left their security for a chance at something so great, so helpful that turned so wrong and ripped open everything that had ever been known? How did you explain a war that had not gone as expected, had become a war to begin with, and why the letters back home had become fewer and fewer out of necessity that no one was to have known where they were, and letters could be traced via the messengers. Was it right to contaminate their minds with her tainted memories of what had happened in the City, the real City at that time, Port Scion, before Meridian had grown up to the prominence it was now. Was it worth their curiosity, sating it with her nightmares?
“It was...scary,” she admitted, feeling Purga’s hand on her shoulders, Berdel’s face sympathetic, and Diel still searching the quilt for something that only she knew what it was. “It was fun, at first, being away from the farm, but then, then it all changed, Da,” she said to Berdel, and he gripped her hand across the bed, giving it a squeeze. “It was so fast, how it changed.”
“Change comes, whether we want it or not, bug,” he said to her. “But how are you alive’s what we want to know. We got a scroll, and someone came, with a bag of coin as restitution for your life. They said you’d died,” he said quietly, and Peigra closed her eyes.
“Are you one of them now,” Purga asked into the odd silence. Dear Purga, who had been mother and grandmother to Peigra, now sitting beside her, alive, so much alive and her scent and her quiet smile, Peigra wanted to lie, she wanted to say anything but what they wanted to know.
“They brought me back,” she admitted, staring into her cup of broth, her eyes lost in its steam. “And that’s the problem, Gamma, because I wasn’t supposed to come back. I was an accident,” she said, looking up to her grandmother, her eyes watering again. “Someone else was supposed to come back, but they made a mistake, and I’m...I’m alive again.”
Purga’s hand came over Peigra’s mouth, and she was grateful for the silence, resting her head against Purga’s. Her grandmother had always had a knack of knowing something deeper was wrong with Peigra, and had also known that, eventually, it would come out. “We’re grateful for that mistake, little bug, because you’re with us again. You’re here.”
Berdel was looking at her oddly, and she gave a faint smile as Diel laughed. “Found it!” She held up a section of the quilt, and motioned Peigra closer. “Here, here’s your birthing date, I found it! Right here, Peigra. I guess we’ll need to unstitch the death date, Purga,” she said, obviously having been too absorbed in her search she had not listened.
Draining her broth, letting it sear her throat, Peigra gave Purga’s braids another kiss, and blew one at Berdel and Diel. “I’m really tired,” she said, and gave a sigh as she slid off the bed. “Can we talk more tomorrow? Please?”
“Go to bed, little bug,” Purga said, and Peigra left the room, closing the door behind her as she went, for what it mattered, as the sleeping room was on the other side of the kitchen and hearths and their thickness prevented any noise carrying.
She was worried, the look in Berdel’s eyes, and she closed her eyes, knowing how many steps it was from their room to the other bedrooms. Twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, she counted, the litany familiar, and soothing as she walked, and reached the room that had been given to her.
The door was easily opened, and closed, and she noted she had a latch on it, and locked it to prevent the children from coming in and disturbing her. Diel would be birthing little Kern soon, and it would be good to have a baby around to cuddle, as babies were always good listeners and rarely told their tales to others, save if they were wet, and then everyone knew they had something to say, loudly.
Peigra stared at the cot, the pegs on the wall, the storage tubs carved out of wood for clothing, supplies, and someone had brought her cloak in, nearly dry now from the heat of the hearth, and she touched it. It was one of the special ones, from Port Scion, and the wool from there was long depleted, the sheep gone, and few remained on either side of the war now. It would take many generations for them to gain their numbers, if they were not exterminated out of sheer hunger.
She pulled at her tunic, the finely woven fabric of it not something she ever would have imagined herself in, homespun having been comfortable and easily repairable, and Peigra had learned young how to sew her own patches. The tunic she pulled over her head, careful not to catch it on her braids, and when it was off, she pulled her braids down, letting them flop around her knees, the tails a great toy for the cats, had they been in the room.
Her boots were also by the door, having discarded them before the children went to bed, also to dry with her cloak. They were not as muddy as she thought they would have been.
Her pants she started to unlace, going slowly, feeling the odd sensation of other hands on her skin as she did, and set them aside. She would need to wash them soon, after four, nearly five days on the roads out of Meridian, and she was in need of a bath as well. She took the cloak and put it on her, and took some of the soap from the basket near the door, unlatching the door, and crept down the hallway to the bathing room.
Settled on a spring, and kept against the hearths to keep the room warm and the water hot, the pipes went under the hearths and were always sending heated water into the wide pool that had been dug down to the spring’s origins. One could control the amount of heated water that came in with a sluiced door and a rope that lifted and lowered the door, and Peigra looked at the familiarity of it all.
Were the tears ever going to stop?
She locked the door behind her, and stared at the water, sitting down on the rock-lined edge, and letting her legs slip into the water first, then lowered herself in, holding her braids in her raised hands to keep them from getting wet. She hissed at her tired muscles and moved back to the side, flopping one braid there as she worked the weave of the other, and then switched.
People often commented on their color, and she was quick to note that her sire, from what she had been told, had been black-haired, and her mother had been dark-headed as well, so where she had come from, none knew, but she had been birthed and witnessed, so she was theirs. It was an easy identification, and had brought some jokes in Meridian that Peigra did not care to share with her family.
She took the soap to her arms, and dunked herself to clear the soap, opening the sluice to let the fouled water out and fresh in. The soap flakes that were left in an open basket near the pool were scented with flower oils, and she took a great handful to her hair, scrubbing deeply until her scalp ached and her head was pounding. She dunked herself again, clearing her hair of the soap, and raised the sluice again, new for old, and finally, feeling somewhat clean from the road, rested her head against the wall and sat herself on one of the sunken rocks that served as benches, set at different heights in the water.
She had known it would be difficult to come back, as she was one of the few with a living Bloodline still, and many had been envious of not only where she had come from, but that she had something to return to. Many had nothing, some had relatives on the other side, over the river, past the ruins of Port Scion, and the broken bridge. Peigra did not want to think of their sorrow, and yet, the odd look in Berdel’s eyes had frightened her.
She had come home, but the what that had come home was not the same as had left the farm years earlier. This was their present, but it was now Peigra’s past. She knew everything that was coming, all the darkness, the war, the fires and the death, it was all coming, unless there was a means to stop it somehow. It was a task that lesser mortals had attempted, and failed, and death or some other fate had been their reward for failure. Peigra was not certain which was the lesser evil there.
She began to doze, and pushed herself out of the water, taking a thick cloth to wipe herself down, and one of the many robes that hung on the wall by pegs, for anyone who wanted to keep themselves covered or warm. She blinked, staring at herself in the mirror that someone had propped up against the wall, and stared at the young woman who looked back at her.
She had aged so much when she had left the farm, so much in so little time, and had it all truly happened to her? She touched her face, the soft skin, unmarred by what was to come, by the Before and all its ravages, silken and youthful in the Now as it was, and her hair was full, not torn by constant braids and a runaway fire’s ravages. Her eyes were haunted, a deep cobalt-blue with violet that also defied a true color, and they were old, so old in her young face that she closed them, looking away.
Her body had been restored, young and attractive, beautiful, and she often got appraising looks as she walked by young men in Meridian who came to offer their services to the war. They of the Now knew nothing of the Before, of what was coming...it was their future, but it was Peigra’s past. Before, the future for all these people who slept and ate and loved their children, and what was coming, for it was coming, and had to be prevented.
Peigra ran her hands over herself, staring at herself in the mirror, at her young body that had not been through the terror of war, and wondered, again, why they had allowed her to live. That’s not Calton, had been the first words she had heard upon opening her eyes again, and it haunted her, that she had been brought back and someone else had not. Who had Calton been? She had wanted to search the Records for that name, but it would take some time to do so.
She was alive again, she was home, with her family, but that was the crux of it all. She had died, they were correct, but they had not known the whole truth. No, the truth would have shattered them to know, and she did not want to talk about it, not now. She turned from the mirror one last time, unlatching the door and belting the robe tightly, moving quietly back down the hallway to her room.
Locking the door behind her again, she went to the cot in the robe, smelling all the scents of home in it and never wanting to forget them again, and pulled the blankets over her. From somewhere in the darkness, she heard a mmmrrrrow and a thud on the bed, and for a moment she was on the ground again, sleeping, woken suddenly by rocks pelting her from raiders who had crept onto the sleeping warcamp.
The cat sniffed her, and rubbed its head against her wet hair, and she pulled it beneath the covers with her, opening the robe and settling it against her bare skin. It was alive, and had nothing to do with war or the memories or anything.
It began to purr.
Peigra closed her eyes, wondering, again, why she had come home, and afraid of what the next day would bring. Sleep, as always, was long in coming, for the memories of Before, they were strong ones, and often long to be banished before her mind would soothe.