The Moorchild (18 page)

“It can’t hex us once we’re rid of it!” yelled Helsa, though she was backing up too.

“Aye, rid of it! . . . rid of it! . . . rid of it!” came the panicky echoes.

Suddenly Yanno’s deep roar cut across the gabble.

“Enough!” he bellowed. His voice was shaking. “I’ve had enough, I have!” He took a rough step forward, pushing his way, towering over the lot of them and looking broad as his own house. “Begone from my dooryard, all of ye, with your
screechin’ and your hayforks! Ye’ve proved what ye set out to prove, now clear off!”

Guin the miller stood his ground. “Ye know well that’s not the end of it, blacksmith. There’s sommat must be done!”

“Not by you and your nidderin’, brayin’ mob!”

“You’d have us leave it t’luck, would y’? Well, I say it’s time to make our own luck! I say—”

“Ye’ll leave it to me and mine!”
Yanno roared.

There was a moment of silent struggle, the two men face-to-face. Then the rearmost edges of the crowd began to melt away; hands flickered across chests, shawls were pulled over heads, a few figures sidled up the darkening street.

Guin spoke again, his voice portentous as a rumbling of thunder. “See to it, then. Ye’ve got till tomorrow’s sundown.
Then we’ll be back
—to do what Christian men must do.”

With a last expressionless glance toward Saaski, he headed up the street toward the mill. Silently the huddled villagers edged apart. In ones and twos, turning their eyes away from the rooftop only at the last minute, they went their ways. Only when the final faint thump of a closing door sounded through the dusk did Saaski draw a shuddering long breath, revert with a rush to her usual shape and color, and look down at Yanno and Anwara.

No need to tell them now.

They were still standing in the dooryard gazing up at her. Anwara’s thin face looked carven, her cheekbones fragile, her expression one Saaski had no trouble recognizing. Anwara, too, was sinking down, down, into long-denied knowledge from which the fog had been mercilessly cleared.

Yanno—Yanno was
weeping.
He was looking straight at
her, his eyes glittering with tears and his broad, rough-hewn face twisting grotesquely. Abruptly he moved close under the fringe of thatch and held up his arms to her.

“Come down,” he said in a strange, thick voice. “Slide down, little one. I’ll catch you.”

Saaski tried to obey. But it was hard to unclench her fingers from the pinnacle, painfully hard to unwrap her arms from it and make the rest of her body move. Slowly, stiffly, she hitched the bagpipes’ strap up on her shoulder and eased feet-first down the slope of the roof into Yanno’s waiting arms. He cradled her against him, bagpipes and all, and carried her into the house.

The room was thick with shadows, hovering and dancing away from the light of the hearth fire.

“Wife. A rushlight,” he told Anwara.

She had followed them in to stand, still carven and wordless, just inside the door. Like a sleepwalker she moved to the cupboard, found a tallow-dipped rush and its holder, bent to the hearth, and straightened to set the flickering light on the table.

“Food, now,” said Yanno.

Anwara turned back, swung the pot off the fire and reached for the bowls and wooden spoons.

Lowering Saaski to her stool beside the table, Yanno freed her from the bagpipes, and himself tucked them into the truckle bed, then sat down heavily beside her. She watched him, feeling muddled and weary, gingerly exploring the raw spots where the iron things had touched her and the salt had stung. His eyes were still wet; his jaw like a rock.

“I was on me way to tell you,” she ventured. “Didn’t
know, meself, till an hour ago. Never meant to hoax you. Never meant to—be ’changed. ’Twasn’t my doing.”

Yanno made as if to speak, but his lips trembled; he ended by nodding hard.

After a moment she gathered herself to ask what she must know. “Da’?” She swallowed painfully. “Da’, what do they mean to do with me, tomorrow sundown?”

At the hearth, Anwara’s hands stilled on the porridge dipper. Yanno tried twice, then blurted in a hoarse, rough voice, “God help us all, little one! That’s Midsummer’s Eve! They mean to throw you in t’Hillfire!”

It was somehow no surprise, though it made her skin crawl with shuddering. She stole a quick look at Anwara, found her clinging to the chimney shelf as if it were all that kept her standing.

“I’ll never let ’em do it,” Yanno told her. His voice shook but his eyes stared straight into hers. “Never. Never. Ye’ll hide up under the thatch there, where you found me Da’s bagpipes, and I’ll be down here. They won’t get past me, my hand on th’ cross they won’t. I won’t let ’em take you.”

Saaski gazed back at him, memorizing him, wanting never to forget. Was this
love?
Likely pity. But it eased the pain of
hate.

“Nay, Da’. They’d throw a brand onto the thatch and burn me out. You, too. I know a better place to hide.”

“Where, then? I’m feared they’ll find you.”

“Won’t get a chance. They dassn’t come out in the dark hours, you know that. Afore daybreak I’ll be off. When they come for me, say I’m gone. It’ll be the truth.” Again
Saaski glanced at Anwara, who had started shakily for the table with a porridge bowl in each hand. “I promise not to come back,” Saaski added softly.

Anwara set the bowls down with a clatter. “Ye’ll go to that moor, that’s where ye’ll go, I know it!” she burst out. “Y’
would
do it, y’always would, I couldn’t stop you, I couldn’t—
keep
you. . . . ”

“Now, wife,” muttered Yanno as she broke off. “ ’Twasn’t meant to be, that’s all. Can’t help what she was borned.” His big hands knotted around each other. “Wicked. Wicked it is,” he whispered, as if to himself. “Never harmed nobody, not a-purpose. So quick and handy with the bees. . . . ”

Anwara, empty-eyed again, said nothing. She set bread and the buttermilk jug on the table, then winced as her gaze fixed on the raw spots on Saaski’s arms. She turned and went out of the house, returning after a moment carrying Saaski’s cloak and a handful of fresh plantain leaves, which she rubbed gently but thoroughly on all the places that hurt. The relief was immediate.

“Ehhhh, thankee, Mumma,” breathed Saaski.

Anwara nodded, ran a hesitant hand over Saaski’s tumbled hair, then tossed the plantain aside and dropped onto her stool. But she did not look at her food or at Saaski either, only into space—or into herself.

At that moment Saaski knew what gift Anwara wanted. And she saw the way—the risky but only way—to get it.

“Eat, little one,” said Yanno.

Saaski ate because Yanno said to, then, after the first
mouthful, because she seemed to grow hungrier with every bite. Weariness eased and energy seeped back. She felt much stronger when she had eaten all she could hold, and drained her mug. It began to seem possible to get through the rest of the night.

She slept a few hours, came wide awake before moon-up and crept quietly from her cot as she had done so many nights in the past, struggled into her dress and apron, took her muddied cloak. Making her way to the hearth partly by the glow of banked embers, partly by feel, she groped for the bowl where Anwara always saved leftover bread for the hens, but it was empty. She touched her way across the shelf to the water bucket to get a drink, and encountered an unexpected sort of bundle. Her fingers soon identified her own lumpy shawl, knitted of the yarn she had been such a blunderhead at spinning. Inside it were two of yesterday’s flat loaves and a chunk of hard cheese, the woolen stockings that she wore in winter under her clogs, and her wooden spoon that Yanno had whittled for her when she was first old enough to hold it.

She looked across the dark room to the corner where Anwara and Yanno lay in their cupboard bed. All was still and silent. Unnaturally so—not a single soft snore, no whispery crackling of the straw tick as Anwara, always restless, turned over. Not even the sound of breathing came from that corner. They were not sleeping, likely had not slept at all. But their wordless fare-th’-wells had been said.

Better so, she thought.

She put on the cloak, picked up her bundle, then felt her way back to her cot and pulled out the truckle bed. She stood a moment, biting her lip. It felt like thieving—and from Da’, too. But it couldn’t be helped. She disentangled the bagpipes from their coverlet, silently eased the strap over her shoulder, and as silently left the house.

Outdoors, she had always been able to see as well at night as by day. For an instant she hesitated, glancing down the dark street toward Old Bess’s cottage, before turning bleakly away. There had been no fare-th’-well at all there, to comfort the parting. That couldn’t be helped either. But she might—just might—see Old Bess once more.

A waning moon, thin edged, rose as she climbed the familiar path beside the apple orchard. By the time she reached the wasteland it was sailing clear of the moor’s shoulder, outlining the dark, sinister shape of the great pile of rowan wood waiting there. Saaski hurried past with crawling skin, circling as far away from it as she could manage. A moment later she scrambled over the crumbling stone wall and was on the moor.

She felt safer there but walked on, steadily at first but
with ever-dwindling purpose. This was as far—almost—as she had planned. What came next?

She halted beside an outcropping at the top of a rise, and stood a moment scanning the half-cleared sky, the moon and stars winking in and out among the moving tatters of cloud, the dark moor with its darker shadows. By their look, and the feel of the chill, damp air, which smelled of rocks and heather, she judged it was still two hours and more till dawn. She dropped her bundle, eased the bagpipes onto a rock and sat down beside them.

Tam. No use waking him at this hour; last night’s ugly tale would keep. Should she tell him what she meant to do? Or do it first and tell him afterwards—if there was an afterwards? Could she do it at all? She knew only that she meant to try.

But how to find out more of what she might need urgently to know? Her memories were scraps and fragments. Tinkwa would likely tell her more fancy than fact; he’d think it a good prank to hoax her. There was no one else to ask.

Aye, there was one other, she thought bitterly. Or might have been, once, that Pawel, or maybe Harel . . .

He was lovely—so handsome!

Ah. And he was among us here for quite a space, was he not, m’dear?

He was, Prince . . .

As always, the light, silvery voice in her memory broke off, just there.

Pawel, or maybe Harel
 . . . Suddenly, unexpectedly, the voice
went on.
Fergil! That was his name, I think. Yes, Fergil . . .

Saaski sat motionless on her rock, staring into the night.
Five-and-fifty years older, once he stepped Outside
 . . . But
not
dead and gone at all. Fergil, the strange old fisherman, the old lackbrain, the old noddikins.
In the Mound, it was. She coaxed me into the Mound.
All his meandering, rattlehead talk was true.

Now that she had his image in her mind—the lonely, stooped figure, the stubbly face and mistrustful eyes, the nervous caution—Saaski no longer cared to pay him out, or make him any sorrier than he already was.

But she didn’t mind making him help.

She slid off the rock, gathered bagpipes and bundle, and headed downhill toward Moor Water and the dunes.

*   *   *

He was there; his dog—a whitish shape touched with the glimmering moonlight—lay stretched across his doorstep. Saaski made no sound treading the sandy path toward the hut, but the dog woke, scrambled to its feet with nose and ears extended, found her at once, and barked.

“Eh, then, get on with it—tell ’im I’m here,” she told the dog, and stood waiting, halfway along the path, in plain sight. When the door creaked, and Fergil’s hulking, rumple-haired figure appeared in the opening, she said loudly. “It’s me and I need us to talk. Make your dog leave me be.”

For an instant he went rigid. Then, as Saaski told herself, it was a fair wonder how fast he could move. He was inside, with the door closing, before she could draw breath.

“Wait! I’m no bogey! Y’
know
that!”

The door halted, leaving a crack. Through it, Fergil’s rusty, quavering voice said, “Go away. I want nothin’ to do with the likes of you.”

“A mite too late for that! Best to hear me out.”

The crack was narrowing. “Nay, I’ll not! Why should I?”

“ ’Cause you’re my da’!” shrieked Saaski.

Alarmed, the dog began to bark again. But the crack stayed motionless, then at last slowly widened enough to show a glimpse of Fergil’s shadowy hulk. The dog glanced up at him, whined, gave another indecisive bark or two, and fell silent.

Saaski said, “Wager you suspicioned it yourself—the day you heard me pipin’ those tunes—and got a look at me. Well, now I
know
it. It’s your doin’ I’m here at all. And I need help, so let me in.”

The shadow in the doorway seemed to droop even more. Then the door slowly swung wide. Fergil stepped out, mumbled something to his dog, and watched her walk past him into the room.

It was half the size of Yanno and Anwara’s, twice as untidy. So much she could see at once by the low flickering of the hearth fire. When he kindled a stub of candle, the details jumped at her: a frayed bed made of coiled straw-rope with his old cloak tumbled on it; a crusted pot and wooden trencher; water bucket on a sagging bench, a stool, a mug, a row of capped clay jugs—likely muxta—against one wall, a tangle of nets and fish traps along another; a strong smell of fish, wet dog, unwashed old man, and melting mutton tallow.

Brawny lad . . . hair like a horse’s mane . . .

He was lovely! So handsome!

She turned to face him and found him studying her, his eyes dark and moody but unalarmed. “Y’look like ’er,” he muttered. “Not so comely as her—nay, not by half. But y’look like Folk. She, now, she was a rare beauty.” His face softened, then went hard again. “Tricked me, she did. Gulled me proper.”