1. A Year and a Day #3
The stranger had departed before the men finished repairing the shearing tools and stacking fire-dry turves in the storage place.
Why had Lorcan not stayed the night? Perhaps the settlement lacked what he sought.
Or he had to be somewhere by the day between quarter-year and the day of first cold.
Tuathal kept his frustration fire banked.
Harvest came before all else. A man might regret not hearing new things, but he'd not die of it, were he careful.
Tuathal tucked the idea away. The grain lacked but a few days and harvest could begin.
The full of the moon, or so Kai thought, so long as it did not rain.
Eluvie finished her meal, then said, "The stranger.
Says fair-haired ones come down from the north, and from over the water to the west. They use small carts of two horses, some of wood and others of wicker.
Says they speak almost as us, but differently, and look like," she pointed to Tuathal. "Like that, but taller."
Tuathal ate and stayed silent. He carried his father's look but his mother's size, a good hand and a half shorter than his half-brother, and smaller in the shoulders.
Sun-bleached now, his hair would darken to red gold come winter, with dark blue eyes, or so he'd been told.
His hair he could see, when it grew long, as now.
His beard and mustache had the dark red of coals near the end of night.
Not like Eluvie and the others, dark of hair and tan of skin, with darker eyes—land-colored people.
"Did he say anything of the mist?" Kai asked.
"No, and I did not ask." She gave her son a hard look, warning against such talk near the house and fields.
She believed that speaking of something summoned it.
Tuathal had challenged her once, but not straight on, and had held his tongue since then.
Even the gods themselves would not persuade her otherwise.
Once she determined her mind, rocks changed into doves more easily than her way changed.
"The lolly is cut!"
Oh, he'd rarely been so happy to see the last heads of grain drop into the baskets. Tuathal stayed back, drank water from the bucket, and watched as Odia hefted her basket in triumph. Only straw remained, and that would be cut and bundled later.
A tired cheer rose from the rest of the workers.
They put the lids on their own baskets and followed Odia to the storage place, a few singing and clapping as they went.
He gathered the bucket and tools, and followed.
He'd sung and played the pace for them, and helped sharpen sickles, but the grain cared not for a stranger's touch.
Geese called from overhead, echoing the songs of thanks below.
The year drew near the end, and he too would leave, but not south.
That night the women who had not worked in the field, including Seelah, served fresh bread, cheese, fruit and nuts, and honey-sweetened cakes. They'd hunt a pig soon, and celebrate a harvest and thanks feast. Then he'd depart.
He'd grown restless, watching the skies, eager to leave.
He'd made himself set that aside, concentrated on his duties here.
Not much longer and he could go north, away from smoky, low earth houses and sour cheese and servants' work.
Not yet, but soon, very soon. They had to secure the harvest, make it safe from mice and other thieves, and bring the keeping cattle down from the hills now that the grain had been gathered in.
Already the women strung looms and began making ready for other winter work, not that spinning and weaving had a true season.
Only harvest and planting could push women's work aside, and that only in part.
They spun wool into thread and made cloth, he spun words into songs and made honor or shame. For Kai, nothing but honor.
Ten days later, as soft gray clouds rolled down from the north, Kai took his right hand, and Seelah's right hand, and unbound them. "The handfast is ended," the old man declared. "They joined with honor and part with honor, as all have seen."
Two dozen and more voices called agreement.
Then the feast resumed. Tuathal bowed to Seelah and sat with the unwed men, just as she walked to the edge of the group and joined the unwed women.
She'd not stay alone for long. That was good.
She had nimble fingers, skilled in the tasks of a woman, and kept a clean and prosperous house.
Any man who wed her would do very well, if he provided his proper share of work.
Tuathal accepted a cup of sour milk and drank, then pulled a bit of roast pig from the bone.
He wished her, and the child he'd sired, well.
Come the dawn, he rose and tended the fire, then went outside to the field and tended something else.
The air smelled of smoke from the settlement, and warm earth, and wildness.
The wind teased him, calling him, whispering of other lands and people, of tales he'd not heard and songs he'd not learned.
"I come," he told the wind. "Today I prepare, and on the morrow I come. "
As he walked past the sheep pasture, he stopped and watched them. The old ewe came closer, turned a little, and stared at him. She blinked, then moved closer still. "Baa?" she asked, voice grave.
"Yes. I go, back to my place," he told her. "My duty is done."
The sheep nodded, or did she? "Baaah." Another nod, and she returned to the flock.
She'd not been the same since the return from the pasture of the white-headed stream—more serious and thoughtful, as if she now carried wisdom.
Tuathal watched a little longer, then shook all over and returned to Kai's house.
He needed to finish mending one of the straps on the clarsach's case, and bundle his new vest. Shelter, food, leather, and a vest, that had been the agreement.
Bargain made, bargain kept, it was time to return to his proper place and people.