Chapter 20
‘Where were you?!’
As soon as I’m in the door, Rhea strides from the kitchen, shouting. The volume and the distress hit me like a slap.
‘I—’
‘How could you? Just leave like that and not come home?’
‘I am home—’
‘And staying out all night, leaving me all alone.’
‘Arlo—’
‘Disappearing with a man I don’t know. I waited all night. I didn’t sleep.’
‘Rhea—’
‘I wouldn’t have even known where to look for you, where to find your body, who to even ask—’
‘Rhea—’
‘How could you desert me like that?’ Her pitch has risen to a scream, hysteria brightly limning it.
Part of me realises she’s terrified, on my behalf, but mostly on hers.
A child sent forth from the only home she’s ever known, fleeing men who’ll harm her.
A child who became a murderer rather than a victim – and that’s a heavy burden, for women are taught to be victims first. A child who found a new home, yes, but will ever live beneath the uncertainty of discovery.
Her imagination has run wild with every awful possibility, and the worst one for such a child is abandonment.
And I should be better. I should be the adult about the whole situation – after all, I can see the tears in her eyes, hear the distress in her voice.
I should remind myself that she’s not an adult, not properly, after all.
But because I know she’s right, that I was selfish and inconsiderate – how difficult would it have been to tell her where I was going and with whom?
Faolan would have waited those thirty seconds – and because I know myself in the wrong after a night of such sweetness, my mood so good and so quickly taken from me, I lose my temper.
And I lunge at the girl standing in front of me.
And I make a noise that might come from an animal in pain.
And I have a hank of her golden curls twisted in my fingers for the shortest of moments before I’m lifted off my feet and flung across the sitting room, against the stone of the fireplace, ribs bruised by a strength no true man could muster even on a good day.
And all at once, there we are: Rhea crumpled by the door, me fetched up with the metal of the tongs and poker pressed hard against me, and Arlo the summer husband standing somewhere between the two of us, voiceless but able to make his feelings clearly felt.
* * *
When I visit Faolan in the days that come, I keep my clothes on when we mate so he can’t see the bruises, doesn’t ask difficult questions.
Our couplings are fast and fevered, hidden from prying eyes, though I’m more polite to him than I have been in years, and perhaps some note that I no longer avoid the smithy.
One day, however, the buttons on my shirt are torn in some over-enthusiastic movements, and he slips the fabric down and down before I realise.
He swears, asks, ‘Was this me? Did I do this? Too rough?’ and I must lie, tell him I fell, that I lost my footing and make myself sound like an unsteady old woman.
He’s so tender after that I want to pull his hair, bite him, to get a rise out of him, to make him stop treating me like porcelain.
Like a fragile thing. In the end I swear at him that if he doesn’t fuck me hard, I’ll never visit again. He does as bid.
* * *
‘Where are we going, Mehrab? It’s so cold.’
It’s three weeks after our fight. After Arlo’s attack on me.
Our words have been brief and stilted; I’ve given her instructions for the summer husband each day and not much else.
There have been no lessons and I’ve made my own meals as I have done while alone, left her to feed herself.
Anything she needs, she must ask for as I refuse to think in her favour.
And I’ve been waiting to see if she shows any sign of voluntarily doing what I told her she must all those months ago. She has not.
Autumn feels more like winter today and we’re both wrapped in jackets and scarves; warm caps would have been wise.
It’s not cold enough quite yet for the fur-lined coats or the fox-fur inserts in our boots, but it feels as if the weather turned bad immediately after harvest home.
Usually there are some more warm weeks at the start of autumn; not this year.
The sky is very grey, almost as if threatening snow so soon.
I want to be home before nightfall, but she’s moving slow and sluggish.
I wonder if she’s realised why. Yet this has to be done, no matter how uncomfortable or cold.
I made sure we both wore our talismans, that the sprigs of lavender and sage in our hems were refreshed, just in case.
‘Mehrab, why are we out here?’
‘We’re out here so you can see what happens when you don’t listen.’
We’re out here because this morning when I asked her outright to do what must be done, she refused.
‘Mehrab, I’m sorry about Arlo, truly I am.
He didn’t mean to hurt you. How many times must I apologise?
’ She’s not yet apologised to me for having screamed and yelled like a spoiled brat, though, and even now, my ribs still ache despite all the poultices and tisanes I’ve brewed.
Arlo, it should be noted, is not out here but locked in the barn, not heading towards a place I’ve avoided for so very long.
Arlo, who should not be in existence still.
‘I told you his purpose. I told you why. I told you what to do.’ I shake my head and forge on.
Not far now, even though I’ve not set foot in this part of the woods for almost seventeen years – I’d know the paths, the trees, anywhere.
For a moment I think I hear something, a familiar moan, and my heart rabbits along, a double thump with a shot of adrenaline that makes me feel sick. But it’s just the wind.
Just the wind.
The land is rising and I start to puff a little; my ribs protest the exertion. ‘I told you what would happen. Haven’t you noticed? How he’s slower?’
‘But it’s cold, we’re all slower.’
‘Haven’t you noticed, when he walks, how his feet adhere to the ground?’
She’s silent at that; she’s noticed.
‘That’s because he’s putting down roots. It always happens when they’re left too long. Why do you think I call them “summer husbands”? He’s well past his season, Rhea.’
‘But he’s barely beyond a youth!’
‘Time moves differently for one such as he. His life is… a gifted thing… a stolen thing… he’s not real in that way.’
‘But… I love him… he loves me…’
‘A voiceless husband is a tempting thing, isn’t it? No one to gainsay you, no one to give you orders. There are reasons, Rhea, why I’ve made most of them without speech.’
‘I wonder what he’d say, if he could…’
She’s prone to a child’s romantic imaginings.
I think I know what he’d say too; he’s not looked at me the same since the day we came to blows.
I know what he’d happily do to me but for the fact that Rhea forbade him from hurting me any more than he already had.
I know what I’d happily do to him, but he’s not my responsibility.
And if I take it out of her hands? She’ll only resent me more – it’s a matter of degree, it hardly matters now, but by the gods I will not clean up her mess!
We come to a wall of trees, old growth, very tall, almost impenetrable so closely they’ve grown together, but I find a break.
Before I slip between I stop, wait for Rhea to catch up.
The gap will be tight for her but there’s no choice, I’ll pull her through the eye of a needle if I must. ‘Let me show you…’
She struggles but manages to follow me, and we step into a clearing. There, in the middle, he stands.
‘This is what I did,’ I say, very quietly.
‘What? Where?’ Her tone is sharp, until she follows the direction of my finger to the thing that might have become a mighty oak, once, if I’d not interfered.
His face is rough, as rough as a first-time effort, ’prentice work.
But you can still see it in the trunk of the stunted thing he’s grown into: half-tree, half-man, perhaps ten feet tall, anchored to the earth by years and deep-delving roots.
I can still see, if I peer closely enough, the marks of my knives and chisels.
He’s not pretty, just as I told her so long ago; he’s only primitively human-looking to be frank, just as he was when first made.
But he was mine. And I loved him and he loved me in return.
He was a salve for a heart broken by Faolan.
And because I loved him – because I had so much love that had to go somewhere or become entirely hatred and I didn’t want that – I did a terrible thing.
‘I let him live… let him live beyond his time until I had to pry his feet from the floor of my cottage and put him in a wheelbarrow to push as far away as I could. This was the copse I’d taken him from; I’d liked the oaks, how tall they stood, how strong they looked, how dependable they seemed.
When I discarded him, I brought him back home, into the depths of the forest so that I might not see him, might not stumble upon him.
And in all those years I’ve never set foot here again.
You need to understand that I made him, and I didn’t give him his proper end. I left him there.’
I don’t go too close, and I speak low, bite back the sobs. His wooden lids are closed, perhaps open just a slit beneath the lashes I’d carved so carefully.
‘But—’
‘Hush,’ I say, holding up my palm. ‘Don’t wake him.’
I can’t bear if he sees me, knows me, if he moans my name, or even simply tries with that mouth surely grown stiff with age, with treeness.
‘I gave him a tongue – my first mistake – so that when I left, he called for me. I could hear it for the longest while even after I was finally beyond the range of his voice.’
Rhea approaches, tiptoeing across the sparse grass. Don’t touch him don’t touch him don’t touch him, I think but don’t say. Then she makes a decision, stops before she gets too close, retreats, coming to rest next to me. She puts a hand on her belly as if feeling queasy.
‘What are you going to do?’ she asks breathily.
‘What I should have done a long time ago.’ Setting an example is the only way to convince her to do what she needs to do. I slip the hatchet from my belt, heft it, wonder if I can actually do this—
—but I don’t get the chance to find out.
I’m hit from behind by what feels like a plank.
For the second time in three weeks I’m sent flying, along the dirt and grass; I feel the skin on my face graze, feel pebbles tear the canvas and flesh, feel blood blossom; I think I feel ribs crack this time, and I know at least one of the bones in my left forearm snaps.
I cry out, forgetting my fear of being heard for it shrinks beside my fear of dying.
Arlo has followed us. Somewhere in his sleepy tree-brain he decided Rhea wasn’t safe with me.
I imagine he’s broken from the barn, followed Rhea with that unerring instinct, determinedly moving while his feet try to set down roots.
I’d almost find it admirable, except for his expression, which is murderous to say the least. He moves faster, with less difficulty than recently, fired by rage.
I look past him, past my fate, and see Rhea’s face and the terrible truth there.
She might never admit it, but it’s clear: she told him to follow us.
Was she afraid of me too? Did she slip the bolt on the drying-room door?
The barn? Or could she simply not bear to be parted from him, even for a day?
Over my own whimpering I can hear two things: a sort of rhythmic grunt pushed from lips that no longer open properly, and Rhea screaming No, no, no!
But her summer husband doesn’t listen, merely continues to come at me; I can tell from the way he’s balancing, measuring his steps, that he’s going to kick me, wherever he can.
It will probably be enough to finish me.
I take a shallow breath, the only sort my agonised ribs will allow, begin to curl in on myself in a feeble hope of minimising the damage, but then there’s a third sound.
Unexpected but not necessarily unwelcome.
The whoosh of fire igniting, swallowing air like a greedy child.
Behind Arlo his mistress has a great handful of blue flames; she only hesitates a little before she throws it.
The summer husband goes up like a torch.
In the usual way of things, he’d be given a hemlock potion to make him sleep, then would be beheaded with a single axe blow and fed to the hearth on the first night of winter, serving his final purpose.
His body was to have been used throughout the season, for its composition means it burns long and very hot, saving on other materials. But this…
…this is witch-fire and it incinerates like no other; it is fast and consumes utterly.
When Arlo is no more than a pile of cinders, Rhea helps me up. Together we limp out into the wider wood where snow has begun to fall, just little eddies, back towards the cottage and away from the howls of my sin (by no means the greatest), the old summer husband.