Chapter 49
Chapter forty-nine
The Doe
Little whispers stirred him awake. Voices muttered conspiratorially followed by soft giggles.
Skyre felt a tug.
His eyelids pressed tight, then opened, squinting up at the smoky daylight trickling through the opening in the hide. Two ruddy faces popped into view. Sharply, he sat up, reaching for his blade, only to realize with great confusion that it was gone.
More giggles.
Beside him were two young girls, no more than seven summers.
They seemed intrigued by his awakening, but hardly disturbed as they continued to twist his hair into braids.
The raven strands were wound with twine and wildflowers.
He opened his mouth to curse or yell, but before he could muster himself, the door to the dwell pulled aside and the druid came through.
His flaxen strands were messy and free, his feet bare, and his muslin robes were worn.
He had a clay pot beneath his arm, but upon his hand remained the silver band with the white moonstone.
“I told you not to wake him,” the druid chided the girls.
“We were gentle, promise!”
“You’ve had your fun, now run along.”
They scrambled to their feet, out the door and down into the grove.
“You let them in?” Skyre asked, dumbfounded.
“Of course,” said the druid, kneeling aside the fire pit. “What is the harm in it?”
The king lifted his brows, flicking a floral braid. “I am still Vaich.”
“Mm.” The druid set the pot in front of him. “Fresh water from the spring.”
He sighed, reaching for the pot. “Is there no decorum amongst you people?” It was mostly a jest, even if the words were honest. He raised the pot to his lips and took a long drink. “Suppose there’ll be breakfast?”
“You know little of our lives.”
“Then it’s a no, eh?” Skyre took some of the water in his hands and washed clean the sweat that clung on his chest and shoulders.
Even without a fire, it was warm inside the dwell.
He thought to disentangle the mess of his hair, but considered the girls had worked too hard to soil their good effort.
“If it’s breakfast you’d like, you may catch it.” The druid’s voice hinted, and Skyre met his gaze.
“Aye?”
“Aye.”
“Well, alright then. No harm in it.” He rose to his feet, grabbed his things, and leveled a knowing look at the druid. “I’ll be needing my blade.”
“It shall be returned to you… in time. Until then…” He nodded towards a bow and quiver leaning against the hide.
Skyre laughed a sigh.
As he shifted his mantle into place, the druid asked, “Shall you sport full armor for the hares?”
Skyre paused on the clasp, then, with a shake of his head, pulled it loose again. “So you wish to play,” he muttered. “Alright. Have it your way.”
The wood was thick with morning mist. A thin sheen of dew coated the grass, gathering sunlight within. Skyre barely recognized it as the place he’d arrived the night before. Gone were the long shadows, the shifting ground. But the trees still watched him.
He tried to be noiseless, feeling the increasing need to go unnoticed. The crows cawed in the canopy, and beneath the brush, the unseen scurried from his footsteps.
The first time Rask had taken him into the forest to hunt, he’d said, “Go quietly, for all things listen for the reaper’s coming. Soft things need die quickly, and the strong ones—they fight.”
Skyre knew it hadn’t been a simple warning of the perilous differences between a buck and a boar. He was only a child then—it’d be years, still, before his first true hunt, but in that moment, he had determined which he would be.
They said a man chose his death by the way he lived his life.
And yet, they had promised him immortality.
And he’d believed it. But something had happened upon crossing into that place, as if his hand had pushed through a tangled veil, and on the other side, he could feel only cold.
The world grew thin there… and he with it.
The quiver jostled against his bare back. The bow was not unfamiliar to him, but had never been his weapon of choice. His fingers curled around its wooden body, studying the curve.
A whisper. A stirring. A pitter-patter amid the wind. He turned—not too sharply—his eyes tracing the distance. There, amongst the green, he saw her. A gorgeous young doe stood between the branches.
She was lithe, with a buxom hind, and sweet tawny fur tanned by spring. Her belly was thick, though not swollen, hinting at a recent birthing. She’d have good meat on her now.
With a silent hand, he nocked his bow, gazing down the arrow’s shaft. Her shape was strong, and her stance elegant. He thought, at first, she hadn’t seen him; blissfully unaware of death’s coming. But with an unhurried slip of her neck, that suspicion shattered.
She was not at all surprised to see him there and she did not shift her body to run. Rather, her black eyes met his and he saw that they were beautiful and deep.
He wondered about her, from where she had come, and where she might go had she not met him. Perhaps she’d come for the forage. Perhaps she was returning to her fawn. In any case, he had the power to keep her there forever, and slowly tugged upon his bowstring.
Still, she did not move.
Soft things need die quickly.
He could have done it. Could have pulled the wire taut. Could have loosed that arrow into her heart.
But in that moment, he held the decision in his hand and stayed only steady.
Slowly, she turned away and walked on. He neither moved to follow, nor let his arrow fly. He lowered the bow, watching her go, proud and lovely as she was.
And the strong ones… they fight.
Skyre returned to camp with a brace of rabbits and a ravenous appetite.
Everyone was up in the noontime and busy at work.
The women tanned and wove and the men whittled.
There was the sound of woodchopping and tinkering and the children giggling in the flower fields.
The aroma of herbs and spices wetted the air, fueling the hunger in his belly.
The camp had the feel of an ancient thing.
And yet, there was a sense of fleeting. In a month, all of this would be gone.
The druids there would move on, traveling forth to new fields.
A transient life, amidst olden roots. He had no understanding of such a place.
But it was calming. Not the ruckus he’d come to know at Rhyd-hal.
The druids made little noise, even when they spoke, oft doing so in silence.
It was captivating, the way they went about, like they had done so for hundreds of years.
He supposed they had. Everything there was familiar to them.
Everything but him.
“The hunt was generous.”
Startled, his eyes found the druid. He seemed to vanish and appear at will—or whenever was most convenient.
Skyre nodded, holding out the rabbits. “Not much, but reckon they’ll do for us.”
The druid watched him interestedly over his basket of laundered linens, the ghost of a smile on his lips. “Us?”
“You and I, of course.”
The druid nodded up the path. “You will take them to the giver. She’ll make good with them.”
Skyre frowned. “We’ve a fire of our own.”
The druid grinned and Skyre couldn’t help but to fix on it. “That is simply not how it is done.” He turned up the hill and Skyre followed.
“What do you mean nae? A man’s entitled to his own breakfast!”
The druid’s gentle laugh hung about him. “A man is entitled to nothing. We’ve taken up roost here. There is tribute to be paid.”
“I’ll give them coin, then,” said Skyre, falling in step at his shoulder.
“And what shall they do with it? Do you think we tend in your metal money?”
“Don’t you?”
“Perhaps to melt it down. It would make a fine spoon.”
“You jest.”
“Only a little.” The druid stopped atop the hill and settled his basket in the grass. One by one he pinned the linens upon the line.
“Those who live amongst the nach’durnathan do so because they are in need of community.
My ilk are nomadic by nature, but not all are designed for such paths.
The elder need tending, and the young, rearing.
And that responsibility falls on us all.
Any who take up home here are required to contribute, so that all may share in the offerings. ”
Skyre’s frown only deepened. “But if it’s tribute they wish…?”
“It is a shared life,” said the druid, “not borrowed, nor lent. It is paid in effort, not coin.” He nodded towards an old man at the kettle, patient as a woman ladled broth into his bowl. “It matters none to him how much gold lines your coffers. It would serve him better to be given porridge.”
“The frail ought to be in their beds.”
“Why ought they? Give him some easy work to do with his hands and keep busy his mind. He could needle a fine quilt, perhaps. And keep the bairns warm. No one here is useless, and neither is that which they give.”
He led the king’s eyes to the conies.
“Your cooks would shave its hide and throw its stomach on the fire. You’d stew the meat and feed its bones to the hounds. And in some ways, I suppose, it is well-consumed. But my kin do not send to waste any part of the beast. Hide, bone, blood… even its eyes and tongue might brew a potent potion.”
Skyre grimaced.
“Take your catch to the giver,” said the druid, “and you will be fed.”
And so, the king went oddly down the path towards a pavilion where hung strings of herbs, talismans and charms. He knew not their purposes, though the smell was pleasant, and as he drew near, he noticed bundles of fresh bread, soft and braided.
The woman—the giver, he supposed—seemed familiar. At least, her manner was recognizable and he didn’t have to question why. But Skyre could not speak their silent language, and so he held out the rabbits and said, “For your storehouse.”
He braced to be turned away, but instead, the woman hummed proudly and took them from his hand.
“A braw catch. Will make a fair stew for the celebrations tonight.” She hung them from the wooden rafters and then drew her eyes over him.
“A strong fellow you are. And there is much of you—the pines call you up from the ground. Some meat, then, and some bannocks for you.”
Skyre was jilted, not in anger, but surprise. The words felt so… ornery. He hadn’t known what he’d expected, but it wasn’t what he’d received.
“And, um…” His eyes trailed aside, following the druid in the distance.
Pale and small—even amongst his own kind—but he moved with an ease Skyre had not seen on him before.
They weren’t friends. They weren’t enemies—that might have at least been intimate.
Rather, they were strangers; wolves of foreign packs stepping within each other’s den.
No, that was far from the truth, for the druid had not been given even footing. He was forever on a stage, beset by a hundred swords, and he hadn’t emerged unscathed.
But he’d not been broken, and there, amongst the world he’d been torn from, for a moment, those cracks seemed nearly sealed.
“Yes?”
The Vaich blinked, coming back to attention. The woman watched him with knowing. A smile took her lips and she said, “For two, then?”
“Aye,” he whispered.
She nodded, retrieving another bannock from her bundle.
With his claim, he returned to the druid, finding him coming down from the laundry in the direction of their dwell. Skyre hurried up beside him, showing off his haul. “It’s a hearty meal!”
The druid nodded. “It is grand.”
They went inside, where the druid folded the clean garments and stoked the fire. Skyre laid out their breakfast on a cloth and brought the pot of spring water. He’d bring some to Saorla later on.
“It is not so bad, such a life. Did you live here before?”
“No,” said the druid with a shake of his head. “I’ve not lived anywhere for a great long time. Not since I was young and struck off on my own.”
Skyre considered that, his mouth full of bread. “I thought you kent these folks.”
“They’re as much strangers to me as they are you.” The druid reached over, breaking off a piece of crust from the king’s hand.
“So, you go from place to place… but you dinnae ken those you come to, and you dinnae ken who you’ve left? Maybe it is odd, after all,” said Skyre. “When did you strike out?”
“I was fourteen winters. A bit early, perhaps. But suppose I was impatient.”
“You, impatient?” Skyre smirked. “I dinnae believe it.”
“Believe what you like,” the druid said simply.
“And where did you go?”
“Nowhere. Anywhere. I wandered, and that was enough.”
“But you must have done something?”
“Not really. Sometimes I would come upon a village. They’d trade alms for work—prayers and such for their animals and crops.”
“I thought you didnae believe in that sort of thing?”
“It is not about whether I believe in it. But they did. So, I worked for my keep.”
Skyre tried to imagine the druid’s life before him. He felt more foolish and more villainous with each passing day, and perhaps he had only just begun to be punished for the crime.
He had come to accept there was no leashing that creature. One could come and bottle him up, and still, he’d seep out into the world to which he belonged.
“Then, how does it feel?” Skyre said more gently. “Coming back to this place.”
“It is… strange being here. And yet, the land has not forgotten me.”
Skyre chuckled. “Nothing could forget you.”
The air crackled. They shared a long, uncertain look.
What surrounded them then wasn’t prophecy, obligation or ritual.
There were no spears pointed in expectation, no overseeing gaze.
For maybe the first time, they faced each other in a moment which asked nothing of them; the world obscured by a fragile mask.
There was no authority in that tent, just the smoke and the dirt and their breathing bodies.
“Druid, I…” He wanted to bite his tongue as soon as he’d spoken, but the words lingered between them. “I want you to ken I’m—”
The rustle of the hide door silenced him and the Fíor entered.
“Ah, there you are,” said the old sage. “They’re digging the fire pits now. Would you mind very much giving the lads a hand? Good-bodied men are in short supply.”
“Of course,” said the druid, but Skyre stood first.
“That’s heavy work. I’ll go on his behalf.”
The Fíor appraised him, though what he determined, Skyre didn’t know. He nodded, simply, and went off again.
“I’ll see what is needed. Could be good for them to have a stallion like me,” said the king with a wolfish grin.
“Stallion?” The druid smiled, but quickly hid it away. “An ox maybe. Or an ass.”
Skyre laughed.