Wild Magic (58 page)

The floor began to tremble beneath her tensed muscles. Her breath came short and sharp. Heat welled up inside her. And then a voice echoed in her head. ‘I need your eyes, Katla Aransen,’ it said. ‘Take strength from me.’

She had no idea whether the voice came from inside her own head or from without, but she felt a great wave of energy invade her body, through the layers of her clothing, through the peelings scattered on the floor beneath her, through the stone flagstones, and from far far down inside the molten guts of the earth, as if every natural element she was in contact with were joining forces to instil in her their particular vigour: linen and flax and carrot and rushes and granite and crystal and boiling magma.

There was a sudden lightness, a cry; a thud. She opened her eyes, sat up, abruptly unburdened.

Kitten Soronsen was twenty feet away from her in a crumpled heap at the foot of one of the central wooden pillars which supported the hall’s roof. She was breathing erratically, for Katla could see the rapid rise and fall of her embroidered tunic, but other than that she was not moving. The room had gone very quiet. She stared around.

‘Katla Aransen!’

The voice broke the spell. Everyone started talking at once.

The Mistress of Rockfall advanced upon her daughter. Bera Rolfsen was a diminutive woman, but her temper was well known from Black Isle to the Old Man of Westfall. The onlookers moved nervously out of her path. Two of them – Tian Jensen and Fat Breta Arnasen – ran to Kitten’s side and sat her up against the pillar. She had a dark bruise already spreading across one cheek and her right eye was swollen shut, Katla could not help but be satisfied to note.

Then there was nothing in her line of sight except Bera’s flushed and raging face. A swift hand descended with a crack and sharp pain flowered across Katla’s cheek. Her hand went instinctively up to the site of the blow. It was years since her mother had struck her so, not since she had inadvertently ruined the silk dress Aran had brought back for his wife from the Allfair one summer, which Bera had hung on the washing line to shake out the wrinkles. Katla had at the time been deeply engrossed in devising a new technique for crossing from one sea-stack to another, by looping one end of a rope around the top of the first and making fast the other end to the second, tightening off the slipknots with a bowline to keep the rope tight; then sliding down it with her feet up and her ankles crossed over the cord, hand over hand. It had seemed sensible to practise the concept in the backyard, seven feet off the ground, rather than out at the Old Man, towering a good two hundred. The washing line was robust and new – a fine, strong length of narwhal skin, chewed into softness and stretched between the posts with utmost care. But she hadn’t taken into account the fact that the post which supported the far end of the line had been out in the weather these past three winters. The support had cracked apart with an ear-splitting snap, depositing Katla, line and dress in a horrible tangled heap in the mud. She’d borne the black eye her mother had given her on that occasion with a certain resignation: she knew she had deserved punishment, and a quick smack in the eye seemed immeasurably preferable to being confined to the hall for weeks on end, as was her mother’s usual practice when chastising her offspring.

Bera stood back, hands on her hips. ‘Katla, I am ashamed of you: you are no better than a hoyden, a troll.’ Bright scarlet spots in her cheeks attested to the depth of her anger. Her gazed raked the hall, moved from one downcast face to the next, settling for a moment on Marin’s blood-covered hands and apron, then on Gramma Rolfsen, but the old woman pretended to be engaged in cleaning something from her shoe and would not meet her eye. Her expression showed her absolute contempt. ‘Look at you. You are all no better than a rabble of farmyard cats with no tom to keep you in order, spitting and hissing and tearing out each other’s fur.’

Indeed, Katla noted, there appeared to be a handful of blonde hair caught up in the disarray of carrot peelings and rushes, a few inches away from a hank of dark red hair. She didn’t remember dragging at Kitten’s hair, but there was a certain degree of gratification to be had from the thought that she had inflicted some small damage on those perfect tresses.

Bera returned her furious attention to her daughter. ‘And you are the worst of them all. I ask you to spend your morning completing one simple task—’ She scanned the mess at her feet, where carrots lay scattered among their shed skins, ripped-out hair, trampled reeds and spilled food, then bent and, quick as a striking snake, retrieved one of the peeled vegetables and held it up in front of Katla. ‘See this?’

The carrot was somewhat the worse for wear, but even so it was obvious even to the incurious that the peeling it had suffered had been partial to say the least. Little strips of browner flesh showed dark against the pale orange stem. Katla gazed at it unrepentantly. She shrugged: her blood was up and she was sick and tired of Rockfall, of her mother, and particularly of these grim and stupid chores.

‘So what?’ she heard herself say, as rudely as the hoyden Bera accused her of being. ‘The dirt will come off in the boil; and anyway, whoever heard of anyone dying of eating a little carrot skin?’

It was clearly not a view her mother shared. Bera’s skin flushed a darker red; her eyes sparked a dangerous blue.

‘You cannot cook, you cannot sew, you cannot spin, or weave or mend or be entrusted with the simplest of tasks. And you look – what was it, Magla, you so graphically suggested?’

The big woman stared fixedly at her feet and said not a word.

‘Like “a mangy, fox-haired bitch”. Wasn’t that the phrase?’

The atmosphere was distinctly uncomfortable. Katla could not help but grin at Magla’s embarrassment; was still grinning when her mother turned back to her, her face livid where the older woman had struck her. She watched her mother’s gaze rise to take in the welts her fingers had left on her daughter’s cheek, but if she regretted the blow she had struck, her remorse was by no means apparent.

‘Indeed. Mangy – well, certainly ill-kempt; fox-haired, well you can blame your mother for your colouring, at least; but that is where all resemblance between the two of us ends, Katla Aransen. You seem inherently incapable of shouldering your fair share of the daily tasks, of taking the least little bit of pride in what you do or how you appear – no, that you won’t do, can’t be bothered to do, out of sheer pigheadedness and the strange belief that you are in some way different to the rest of us, with our sagging breasts and soft bellies and our families to raise and care for. What makes you so special, Katla, that you expect us all to run around after you, providing you with food and clothing and shelter? You may be able to hammer out a decent sword and beat the lads at their own games, but somewhere along the path from sweet infancy to standing insolently before me now with your lip curled and a gleam in your eye, you went wrong, my girl. The trolls must have taken you, Katla Aransen, for you are no daughter of mine, I swear. I am ashamed of you, ashamed to the core of my heart. And not just for provoking fights or for this—’

The carrot struck Katla’s arm and bounced off onto the flagstones.

‘If you thought I did not know about you and that . . . that creature Tam Fox, you’d be wrong.’

Bera had hit her full stride now: she was beyond caring what anyone thought, was beyond noticing that every woman in the hall was quivering with the effort to receive and absorb every word she spoke, ready to relay the information to friends and relatives the length and breadth of the Westman Isles just as soon as they had the chance.

‘Ma!’ Katla was appalled. ‘Say no more!’ Shock made her thoughts slow and stupid. How on Elda could her mother have known? Tam Fox was dead and drowned and she had told no one— Memory returned, a thorn in the gut. ‘Gramma, how could you?’ She rounded on her grandmother in fury and watched the old woman grimace.

‘I’m so sorry, my dear, she caught me out.’ Hesta Rolfsen shrugged apologetically. ‘You know how sly your mother can be when she suspects something. And how determined.’

Katla watched a glance pass between them and saw how her mother’s expression contained both triumph and shame, and how her grandmother’s eyes flashed and her chin lifted in challenge.

‘What man would have you now, after you’ve slept with a man like that?’ Bera went on in disgust.

Katla’s indignation boiled over in a great volcanic gush. ‘A man like what?’ she shrieked.

‘Bera . . .’ Gramma Rolfsen warned.

But mother and daughter were in this too similar: neither would back down now: words would be spoken which could never be forgiven or taken back.

‘One of the Old Ones,’ Bera hissed, and around the room women murmured and made the sign against evil. ‘A very devil.’

Katla frowned. A devil? One of the Old Ones? Tam Fox was no seither: he had had two perfectly good eyes and was as human as any man she’d known. Wasn’t he? Something made her shiver, a sudden superstitious chill.

‘You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,’ Hesta said softly. She touched her fingers to the woven charm of corn and cat fur that hung from the chain around her neck. It invoked Feya, Sur’s kind sister, goddess of grain and good fortune.

‘Dead? That one? I’ll believe it when I see his mouldering bones and festering flesh washed up on Whale Strand!’ Bera snorted. ‘He may have taken my own firstborn down into the waters as a gift to Sur, but I doubt very much he gave up his own soul to the Storm Lord!’

‘You can’t blame Tam Fox for what happened to Halli! I was there, not you: I saw what happened. A sea-monster, risen from the deep—’

‘So you say.’ Her mother’s face was vicious with pain. ‘Ships and sea-monsters and islands full of gold – you’re as bad as any man, seduced away by tales for the simple-minded, abandoning your own for some pathetic adventure far from home and leaving everyone else to get on with doing all the work and making a life for what’s left of your family.’

Something about this seemed unfair, but Katla was too angry to step back and view her mother’s misery with any cool detachment. Instead, she balled her fists and shouted. ‘It’s all your fault anyway! Halli wouldn’t have died if it hadn’t been for you. It was you who drove Father away in the first place, with all your whining and nagging and idiotic, bloody chores. At least he dreamed of something different, something exciting, something . . . amazing. It’s so boring here, with your pathetic attempts to shore up your silly little life – mending pigpens and patching aprons and knowing how to peel a fucking carrot properly – as if it mattered, as if any of it matters! And all these simpering ninnies and their sad plans to trap and marry men and start the whole grim round all over again – I can’t stand it here! Da would have gone mad if he stayed, just as I’m going mad in his stead. I don’t want you, or anyone, making my life – I’m going to make my own life, and it won’t be confined to somewhere as small and safe and stupid as Rockfall. Yes, I’d have sailed with Da if Fent hadn’t stopped me! And how can you blame him for sailing north? You drove him away, cast him out – he told me! Uncle Margan is helping you divorce him and overseeing the settlement!’

Bera’s hands flew to her mouth and her eyes went dark with shock. Betrayed, bewildered, embattled, she stared around the chamber. The crowd of women gazed back at her, sharp-faced with curiosity. This was more entertainment than they had had in years; better by far even than the Winterfest and the mummers.

Gramma Rolfsen regarded her granddaughter miserably. ‘Oh, Katla, how could you hurt your mother so?’

But Katla rounded on her. ‘And you’re no better!’ she stormed. ‘You probably conspired with her to drive him away.’

Hesta’s mouth fell open, but Katla had turned her attention to the other women. They regarded her warily, as avid as a horde of rats, hungry to snatch any more tiny bones of scandal to gnaw upon. If they’d suddenly sprouted whiskers and fur she’d not have been surprised.

‘What are you looking at?’ she cried. ‘You’re all the same: a load of small-minded, bigoted, hidebound fools. You’ll never do anything for yourselves, never leave the islands, never take a single risk or do anything out of the ordinary. You’ll marry some dull man and spawn a dozen dull children and die fat and tired and lumpen in your own stinking beds. Well, I want none of it and none of you!’

They stared at her in silence; then Kitten Sorensen started to laugh. Katla glared at her furiously, but all this served to do was to set the rest of them off as well, and it was with the sound of their derision, as shrill as the braying of a herd of donkeys, ringing in her ears that Katla Aransen left the steading at Rockfall for the last time.

She ran until she could run no more. She did not even know where she was going until she found herself down on the barnacle-covered rocks at the foot of the Hound’s Tooth with the sea lapping away on the platform down below. Above her, the great granite spike reared up, hundreds of feet tall, glowing an improbable rosy gold in the afternoon sun. There were still flowers in bloom on the seaward ledges despite the lateness of the year: she could see their pale heads nodding in the breeze – sea-pinks and campions, the lavender-blues of scabious and vetch; and amongst them all the bright yellow rosettes of lichen she had only ever seen here in the Westman Isles. Suddenly, her fingers burned. Her palms itched. It was as if the rock were calling to her. Carefully, she slung the shortbow she had snatched up on her way out of the hall over her back and tucked its lower horn into her belt to stop it slipping. She tightened the knot which held her arrows in place, then slung the quiver across the opposite side and adjusted the leather strap until it was snug beneath her breast. Then, throwing her head back, she surveyed the extent of the cliff and the sunlight fell warm on her upturned cheeks. A gull slid past overhead, its shadow falling cold across her for a brief instant, then she stepped up onto the first ledge, inserted a fist into the cool depths of a ragged crack and laughed out loud as a dozen tiny springtails popped out of the crevice onto her arm and away into the rocks below.