Rising From the Ashes: The Chronicles of Caymin (11 page)

Ash looked back and forth between them, not understanding. Enat laid a hand on her shoulder and led her from the meetinghouse. Cíana, Daina and Diarmit were waiting. Off to one side, Gai sat by himself.

Enat nodded. “Go to them.”

Ash trotted over. “I do not have to leave.”

“Oh, good,” Cíana said, taking Ash’s hand. “I was so afraid for you.”

“I’ve never seen Ivar so angry,” Diarmit said, his eyes wide.

Ash glanced toward Gai. “He will be disappointed.”

“You are wrong.” Daina got to her feet and went to where he sat. “Come and join us. We should celebrate. Ash is not going to be dismissed.”

Gai glanced in Ash’s direction. “I don’t –”

“Stop pretending you don’t care what happens,” Cíana said impatiently. “We want you to join us.”

“She doesn’t.”

They looked over and it was clear from Ash’s expression that Gai was right.

“Stop it, both of you!” Cíana stomped her foot. “We’re all here to learn together. We can help one another if you two would stop picking at each other. Now come join us.”

Gai obediently followed her back over to where Ash sat with Diarmit and Daina.

Diarmit, lowering his voice, said, “Did you see how far she threw Ivar?”

For a tense moment, everyone was silent, then they all burst out laughing.

“How did you do it?” Daina asked.

“I do not know,” Ash replied.

“Have you ever done that before?” Gai was looking at her with an expression Ash had never seen on his face before. She shook her head.

“Only one time did I do something like it, when Cuán was attacked by wolves and I healed him.”

“What?” Cíana and the others gaped. “Tell us.”

Ash told the story of that awful night. “That was what led Enat to me. I do not know how I did it. And I did not mean to hurt Ivar.”

Diarmit snorted. “Hurt his arse more than anything.”

“And his pride,” Cíana said seriously. “That, he will hold against you.”

“It was like watching a badger,” Gai said. “You were snarling and hissing at him. I thought you were going to bite him, and then… you –” He gestured with his hand. “And he went flying. It was brilliant.”

Ash swelled with his praise as the others retold what they had seen and asked Ash to tell the story of the wolf attack again. Not until later, as she was making her way back to the cottage, did it occur to her that Gai’s one and only compliment had come after she used her power in a way that could have injured someone, even if she hadn’t meant to.

Ash and Diarmit crawled along, reaching under bushes and thickets for eggs. Chickens roamed freely about the village, sometimes roosting in the small shelter built for them, but just as often laying their eggs under any handy bush. Hens clucked at them, surrounded by dozens of young chicks as they flapped in the dust.

Once every moon, two of the elders journeyed outside the forest to trade salves and potions and metalwork for provisions such as meat and cheese and salt and wool, things they could not produce for themselves in the forest.

“We do not keep cattle or goats or sheep,” Ivar had told the younger apprentices. “There is not enough grassy land here in the forest for them to graze, and we don’t have time to milk and make butter and cheese, but there is a clearing large enough to plant crops.”

As the weather warmed and spring turned to summer, it was time to plant. Cabbage had been another delight that Ash had discovered since coming to live with Enat. She had occasionally nibbled on stolen cabbages from the villagers when she was living with the badgers, but she had never eaten it cooked.

After the eggs were gathered for the morning, all the young ones followed Neela to the clearing, ringed by apple trees, their branches still bursting with white blossoms. Bags of seeds waited to be placed in the furrows they were soon digging. Once Neela was satisfied with their work, she left them to it.

The older apprentices came by to watch.

“You could help us,” Cíana said.

“We did this before you came,” said Ronan as Fergus leaned an elbow on his shoulder.

Una sat with Niall and Méav as they watched. “Niall and I did it the last few springs, before we moved up. You’ll do the same with the ones who come after you.”

“Do it right or do it again, wee ones,” said Méav. The others chuckled and gave one another knowing glances.

Ash set to work, pulling a metal hook fastened to a long stick through the dirt to dig a furrow. Daina came behind her, placing seeds at regular intervals and then covering the furrow with her foot.

The older five soon got bored with poking fun at them and wandered off, leaving the younger ones to their work. They spread out around the clearing, everyone hard at work.

Almost everyone,
Ash thought as she watched Gai standing off to one side, leaning on his digging stick.

“This is servants’ work,” he said.

Cíana straightened. “That’s what you say every time you don’t want to do something. I’ll tell you again what I told you before; we’re not your servants. I didn’t hear you complain about having turnips and beans to eat during the winter. So if you expect to eat again this winter, get to work.”

Diarmit sniggered, his chubby face red and sweaty from the effort of digging.

“I do not mind,” Ash said. “Badgers and squirrels and other animals gather food all the time to store through the cold.”

“Well,” Gai said, stepping forward. “If we must do this, at least we could use magic to get it done more quickly.”

He waved his hand and seeds flew down the row, plopping into the openings in the soil. With another wave of his hand, the soil shifted to cover them.

Ash stood upright, her own back aching from being bent over. She wished she could do that, but she had not yet mastered the art of moving things through the air. No one else had been able to do this like Gai could.

He strode over to the others. “I can do the same for you, and then we can go do something more fun than this.”

The others straightened, looking at one another, no one willing to reply.

“All right,” Diarmit said at last. “I can’t do that yet, so I’m willing.”

Gai walked to each of them, waving his hand similarly, dropping seeds into the ground and covering them with soil. When he was done, they trooped together into the forest to a stream where they spent the rest of the day wading and splashing in the water. They overturned stones, looking for small crayfish and tadpoles, catching them and letting them go.

The sun was on its downward path when they returned to the village, laughing and talking. As one, they stopped when they saw Ivar and Neela waiting for them. Ash saw the older five sitting back by the meetinghouse, grinning and nudging one another.

“You finished your work quickly,” Neela said.

Gai’s pale cheeks colored with bright patches of scarlet as he jutted his chin out. “We used magic. Why should we toil like –” He glanced toward Cíana. “Like oxen when magic gets the work done so much faster.”

Ivar stepped forward, his brows drawn together. “And did your magic plant all the cabbage seeds far enough apart? Did it plant the bean and carrot seeds at the proper depth? Because if it didn’t, the plants will wither in the soil and we’ll all go hungry this winter.”

Gai opened his mouth to retort, but Ivar silenced him with a gesture.

“Your excuses are meaningless.”

Neela laid a calming hand on Ivar’s arm. “Magic is a wonderful thing, and it will serve you well in many tasks in your life, but there are some things that must be done by the sweat of your brow. If magic were the answer, do you not think we would have done it that way without your help?”

All of them hung their heads, staring at the ground. Even Gai looked somewhat abashed.

“To thank you for your work, we had planned on taking you all on the morrow to a special place in the forest, a waterfall such as you have never seen. But now we can’t,” Neela said.

“Tomorrow,” said Ivar, “you will all go back to the clearing. You will dig up everything and replant it properly so that it has time to grow.”

His gaze challenged Gai to argue, but Gai only nodded and turned away.

Neela and Ivar left them.

Daina rounded on Gai. “You told us it would do no harm to use magic.”

“Don’t blame Gai,” Cíana told her. “He didn’t force us. We were all eager to get done quickly. We’re all to blame.”

Gai looked at the older ones resentfully. “You could have told us.”

Ronan cocked his head. “It seems to me we did. It’s not our fault if you’re too dense to listen.”

“Don’t rub it in,” said Niall. “We did the same thing.”

Fergus laughed. “That’s why it’s so funny. We all try it. They know we will.”

“And now, we get to do it all again,” Diarmit said with a sigh. “Let’s eat. We’ll need the energy for tomorrow.”

“I am going to eat with Enat,” Ash said. “I will meet you at the clearing tomorrow.”

She suspected Enat would have heard about what happened, so she was not surprised when Enat greeted her by saying, “I trust you had an educational day?”

Ash snorted. “A lesson I will not forget.”

Enat smiled. “A good lesson, then.”

CHAPTER 7

Claiming Her Name

W
e should go this way.”

“No, it’s this way.”

The planting was done – “and properly,” Neela had said with a nod of approval after the younger apprentices replanted all the crops. She had sent them out into the forest to find a selection of plants and roots for her. She had given each group a list written out on a small piece of parchment. Ash was working with Cíana and Diarmit, while Gai was with Daina somewhere else in the forest.

“This is not a contest,” Neela had warned, but Ash saw the gleam in Gai’s eye and knew he did not see it so. Ever since the planting, Gai seemed to have felt the need to prove himself.

The things on Neela’s lists were for the celebration of Bealtaine that night. Like Imbolc, when Enat had first sought Ash, this celebration was something all the other humans knew well, while Ash knew nothing of it.

“It marks the start of summer,” Diarmit said as they walked through the forest. “In our village, we had a huge bonfire and all the cattle and sheep were decorated with wreaths of flowers and led around it.”

“Why?” Ash tried to picture this strange custom.

“To bless them and keep them healthy.”

Cíana nodded. “And all the fires in all the houses are doused and then relit from the Bealtaine fire.”

She pointed to a clump of tiny purple flowers and led them over.

“Let’s pick these. Comfrey is on the list. Be sure to get the roots.”

Ash dropped to her knees and dug. She placed the flowers in a woven bag Diarmit carried over his shoulders.

On and on they walked, collecting the things on Neela’s list. They crossed a stream, Diarmit and Cíana stepping on stones to stay out of the water, while Ash splashed through.

“Don’t your feet hurt?” Diarmit looked down at Ash’s bare feet.

“No. I have never worn shoes.”

“Not even in winter?”

Ash giggled. “Badgers don’t wear shoes.”

Diarmit grinned. “You could have made little shoes for them.”

They all laughed as they pictured this.

“I wish we could meet your clan,” Cíana said.

Ash sobered. It had now been more than three cycles of the moon since she had left them. “I do, as well.”

“What’s left for us to find?” Diarmit asked, rubbing his stomach. “I could eat a whole cow.”

Cíana consulted her list. “We need only mushrooms.”

They stopped abruptly at the sound of something large moving through the forest. Ash held her breath as an enormous antler appeared around a stand of trees, an antler so broad she could have lain upon it with room to spare, the prongs as big around as her good leg. The three of them looked up into the eyes of an elk, the largest four-leg Ash had ever seen. She had seen other deer and elk, but none like this. His shoulder stood higher than she could reach, and his hooves were as big as her head. He saw them and stopped, sniffing the air, his black nose quivering.

“Greetings.”
Ash stepped forward and inclined her head.

The elk inclined his as well.
“Greetings, small one. I am Ríordán.”