Chapter 5
Lyra
“Lyra, make haste, girl! We’ve got to be on the roads before dawn,” my mother called from the main floor of our small, borrowed longhouse.
I tied off the fur mat I’d be tasked with carrying during the move. The leather strands hissed when I tugged with more strength than was needed. My mouth grew tight until the corner of my jaw ached. Why did we need to leave home in the first place?
I didn’t understand it. All my pap said a fortnight ago was our house would be joining a new clan near the Night Ledges.
I missed the knolls in Myrda and my insides had been twisted with worry since we crossed the borders of Dravenmoor. All I’d heard from Hans, a playmate since we’d been small, about Draven folk is they were unruly and despised anyone from any other kingdom.
We were not Draven, Mam was born of Myrda and Pap of Jorvandal. But not Draven. Now, we were meant to traipse through their kingdom all the way to the Night Ledges.
I huffed and sat back on my knees. Then what? We’d simply live in the wilds where Unfettered Folk roamed?
Pap had said little about the why and focused on the how, the where, the time. My bottom lip pouted again. Sometimes my folk forgot I’d reached my tenth season and I could know things without whimpering.
“Lyra!” my mother called again, more urgency in her tone.
With a heavy sigh, I tugged the rolled fur to the edge of the loft. Below, Mam peered up at me, hands on her hips. “We’re loading the cart, sweet. Let’s have your pack.”
She reached up her slender arms. I’d always thought my mother was the loveliest in any village. Bright eyes that gleamed like the sea at sunrise and long cornsilk hair she always kept neatly braided. Mam was a kind soul, but kept to herself. I couldn’t help but feel like her solitude was for me.
The silver scars in my eyes kept my parents worried. They tried to hide it, tried to keep it from me, but I could see the strain every time they thought someone held my gaze a little too long.
Even with Hans, they’d taught me to speak to him by looking away or keeping my hair placed over my brows, or by distracting gazes by speaking a great deal with my hands.
Tonight, the way she looked up at me, the same fear was written in her expression. The one she tried to hide.
“Here, Mam.” I forced a smile and tossed down the roll of fur.
When she caught the pack, Mam beamed at me. “I know this is difficult, sweet. But soon, it will make sense why we must leave.”
“Why not tell me now?”
Mam hesitated. “Just know there are folk who wish to use the gifts the gods gave to you. But your father and I, we want you to be free.”
“So, that’s why we’re going to the Unfettered?”
“That’s why.”
“But what if the Draven folk snatch us?”
Mam grinned again, softer than before. “You may not always think of the Dravens as the vicious ones soon enough.”
When she turned away to take the fur pack to the cart, I knew that would be the only explanation I’d receive.
With care, I made my way down the narrow ladder.
The small home was paid through three nights.
Enough for us to gather more dried fish and oats for the journey to the Ledges, no longer.
It wasn’t as warm as our farm back home.
It wasn’t as large, but the mattress in the loft had real moss and fur, not straw.
What did Unfettered Folk use for their beds?
Hans said they ate other folk. Maybe they used skin.
A shudder danced down my spine and I shook it away when my insides coiled all over again.
Gods, I hated how this fight was about me. Always. Craft was a curse, not a gift from the gods. I’d do anything not to have the craft of a melder in my blood.
The back door of the house clacked when the wood edge struck the wattle walls.
My father, tall and strong, stepped through, kicking damp soil from his boots on the stoop.
Horace Bien kept his hair cropped on the sides, his beard long and tidy.
He had a love for gold rings and thick bands wrapped around each of his fingers.
His grin widened at the sight of me. “Hello, litla.”
Pap always called me that, his little one. “Hello, Pap.”
“Been helping your mam?”
I nodded and hugged my arms around his middle. “She says we’re nearly ready.”
“Good.” My father bent and pressed a kiss to my brow. Drums, so distant the sound felt like a soft heartbeat in the soil, rose in the distance.
My father’s shoulders slumped. “They’ll be barring the town gates soon enough.”
Barring the gates? “Why?”
“Well, there’s a bit of trouble between the kingdoms. Nothing to fret over.
But it’s best if we get on the move sooner than dawn.
” He tapped my nose. “I’ll be helping your mam.
I need you to go tend to the goats and hogs.
It’s part of our pay to the owner to care for his pens.
Better hurry, looks to be a storm rising. ”
“We’re leaving tonight?”
“Those drums are too close for my liking, litla. We need to go.”
My lips parted. “We need to walk through the night? But Pap—”
“Lyra,” he interrupted with a gentle pat to my cheek. “You can sleep in the cart. But I don’t want to be dawdling much longer, understand, my girl?”
There was something to his tone, something urgent. I wanted to scream and kick and lash out that we left our home, that I was sorry, that I didn’t want to live with the Unfettered, and I was sorry for that too.
Perhaps they’d be better off letting the Dravens take me.
With a curt nod, I backed away. My father left me with a quick wink.
Alone in the house, I took in the small walls, the small inglenook Mam used to heat our simple meals. There was a chipped table in the center with long logs that served as seats. Totems made of bones, talons, and wolf teeth were arranged across the front stoop and every doorway.
Draven customs, or so Pap said.
I frowned at the space, imagining taking to the roads in the heavy night with a storm. Cold. Unknowns.
With a heavy sigh, I took up one of Mam’s wraps near the back door, slung it around my shoulders, and stepped outside to tend to the animals of the house.
Goats and hogs were arranged in neat pens. The owner had business near the Black Fjords and offered the space for a small bit of coin if we tended to the house and his creatures. I didn’t mind so much, I enjoyed the strangeness of goats.
I clicked my tongue and tossed a bit of feed into a wooden trough in the first pen. “Come on. Eat up. Storm’s comin’.”
A lazy sort of bleat followed, but the white goat and the smaller black one clomped across the pen to the trough.
Halfway through filling a pail of water for the hogs, branches snapped, grunts broke the quiet night, and something toppled into the yard from the side of the knoll.
“Damn the gods.” A small, breathy voice grunted out.
The heap moved.
By the frosted hell, it was a boy.