Chapter Eighteen
I spend the day helping Ma in any way I can: emptying fish traps, cleaning trout, preparing them in pickling jars, building
a pen in the common room for the nanny goat, mucking stalls.
Jaco Smyth stops by to inspect Blackwind’s and Apple’s shoes. Jaco is a tall, well-bearded man whose dark hair and skin betray
some Suratian heritage, though he considers himself a Grimsvolder through and through. He lost his wife in childbirth years
ago, and now his only son. “Glad to see you hale, Dama Bria,” he says softly, but otherwise he works in complete silence.
Titus spends hours chopping firewood. There are plenty of cured logs to choose from, and he wants Ma to have a steady supply
after we leave. Then he gives our mounts a thorough grooming. I try not to be obvious about watching Titus while I muck the
stalls.
Little Titus, on the other hand, makes no attempt to hide his fascination with the much older boy.
“How did you get so big?” little Titus asks.
“He ate his turnips,” Ovidia says. She and Salina are kneeling beside the nanny goat with a milking bucket. The nanny will be moved into the common room, nearer to the fire, once we have that goat pen in place. Ovidia and Ma hope to keep her milk coming all winter.
“Grown-ups always say things like that,” the boy says with an eyeroll. “I eat so many turnips, but I’m still little.”
From the next stall over, Titus says, “I’ll be honest. I hate turnips. I think I’m big because both my parents are big.”
Little Titus frowns. “My parents are . . . medium.”
“We Tituses are known for being smart,” Titus says. “And bighearted. Just like the first Titus who saved the world. That’s
what my heart mother always said.”
Little Titus nods thoughtfully. “I do have a big heart,” he says.
Ovidia smiles. “My sweet bighearted boy.”
“The biggest heart. It’s huge!” He makes a gesture near his chest that leaves no doubt as to his heart’s magnificence.
Big Titus goes back to tending Blackwind, but he has a soft smile on his face that gives me a glimpse of what he might be
like if he didn’t feel the weight of the Sunderland on his shoulders. He’s like an overfilled storage pot, leaking thoughts
and feelings no matter how tightly sealed.
He notices me looking at him, and I don’t turn away. Our gazes lock.
“Dama Angarsold, would you mind showing me to the pear orchard?” Ovidia says, pulling my gaze away from Titus. “Your ma said
there might be some late-season fruit we can preserve for winter.”
I could use a break from mucking stalls and not-staring at Titus. “How about I take the children off your hands for a while?”
I offer. “The three of us can grab some baskets and go pear picking.”
Ovidia gives me a relieved smile. “Actually, that would be wonderful. I’ll finish mucking if you do.”
Salina and Titus are shy with me at first, not speaking as we walk down the road along the creek, but their eyes widen when
I show them the swimming hole.
“Does the water go over my head?” Titus asks.
“Definitely.”
“Does it go over Lina’s head?”
“Yes.”
“That’s so deep! Does it go over . . . big Titus’s head?”
“I don’t think so. Does your family have a patron god?” I ask.
“Da follows Jeridan,” Titus says. “Me too. I’m going to be a hunter.”
“Then swear by Jeridan’s knife that you will only go into the creek if someone grown is watching.”
“We swear!” they say in unison.
The pear orchard stretches out on a sunny slope, protected from the worst of the chill western winds. The trees have been
picked over by Ma, but enough late-ripening fruit remains for the children to sample. With juice dripping down her chin, Salina
declares that pears are “almost as good as plums.”
Our baskets are less than half filled, but our bellies are bursting by the time Titus’s gaze snags on the granite monument.
“What’s that?” he asks.
“That marks the Three Corners,” I say. “Three countries meet at that very spot.”
It’s a triangular pillar jutting from cleared ground just downslope of the orchard, a handsbreadth taller than me.
Each side once showed the face of a god—Morvinrog on the Grimsvold side, Chelydrus for Suratia, Sathrynos for Iola—but wind and weather have polished the faces to unrecognizable swirls and lumps.
Da always thought he’d get the monument restored one day.
“The creek follows the border of Iola all the way to the west fork of the Iolandria River,” I tell them. Then I point toward
the hazy eastern horizon. “And those foothills and the desert beyond are the Surat Confederacy, which is what you crossed
to get here. But this right here is Grimsvold.”
They could not seem less interested, until I show them how to stand in all three countries at the same time, which we take
turns doing.
I don’t want to teach them the game Anja and I played for years, not at first. Sharing this memory, this silly Angarsold tradition,
might feel like giving her up for good. But when Salina and Titus start dancing around the monument, giggling and slapping
at each other’s hands, I know it’s the right thing to do. So I start chanting.
“Little Lady Bria,
Let me see your hands!
Here she goes,
There she goes,
Around the Sunderland.
Can you jump to Grimsvold? Show us that you can.
Little Lady Lina, join the caravan!
Little Lady Bria
Takes Lina round the world!
Suratia!
Iola!
Now they take a twirl.
Show us all your right foot. Did someone lose their boots?
It’s Little Lord Titus; he turned into a goose!
Little Lady Lina,
Your goose is getting loose.
Chase him left,
Chase him right!
Which country did he choose?”
The verses are endless, many nonsensical, but that doesn’t stop us from going faster and faster until we lose our footing
and tumble to the ground, giggling. As we get up and brush off dirt and pine needles, Titus announces in no uncertain terms
that next time, Salina will play the runaway goose.
I return two exhausted children to their mother. With my help, Ovidia gratefully takes them for a nap in the second guest
room. Calvus tiptoes in as they’re drifting off to sleep and stares down at them, his strong Corthan features softened with
love.
Da used to peek in on us as we slept, Anja and me. I back out of the guest room to let them have their privacy. Then I flee
to the creek and splash cold water on my suddenly hot eyes and cheeks.
At night we leave the guest rooms to the Corthan family while Titus, Ma, and I crowd into the dining room—Ma on the cot, Titus and me on the floor. We wake with the sun, but its brightness cannot cheer me or my mother. This is the day I leave her.
Ovidia is oblivious to our glum mood. She has been up for a while and has already repaired the shrine to Cerastes in the common
room.
“Just needed to have some soot cleaned off,” Ovidia says. “I wove a wreath of pine boughs for the base to disguise the nicks
in the wood. Rubbed it down with some linseed oil, which gave it a nice golden glow, don’t you think? It’s a lovely carving.
The dragon scales are so beautiful and detailed! I hope the goddess approves.”
“My husband made that,” Ma says softly. “When we first got married.”
“Well,” says Ovidia. “You have all winter to tell me about him.”
Ma’s smile is sad but genuine.
“I need to pack up our mounts,” Titus says, and he exits for the stable.
Ma takes my hand. Her grip is strong. “Bria. A word.”
She pulls me from the common room and out into the open, away from listening ears. I nearly trip on a pine cone. They’re everywhere,
because Anja and I haven’t been here to collect them for kindling.
When we’re near enough to the rushing creek that the air feels breezy and moist, she says, “I want you to think carefully
about what intimacy with Titus would mean.”
“Mother!”
“Don’t let yourself become pregnant until you’re ready for children.”
“It’s not like that between us.”
She gives me a look that could curdle milk. “You’re all grown up now, Bria. You must thoughtfully consider grown-up things.”
“He’s betrothed.”
“He’s in love with you.”
My heart falls into my toes. “No. He’s never . . . he’s always been a perfect gentleman, never given the slightest indication . . .”
I falter. Could it be true? And why does the possibility fill me with incandescent joy? It’s like my skin is overrun with
shooting stars, like I’m warm and alight for the first time in my life.
“We haven’t known each other that long,” I try again. “And there’s still so much he hasn’t . . . Wait, did he say something?
When you talked?”
“I will not discuss our private conversation,” she says.
I feel myself deflate. “Of course you won’t.” She’s guessing that he’s in love with me. Parents always think they know so much, but they never—
“Except to say that you should have seen his face when I gave him my blessing to take you away. It was like I gave him the
whole world.”
For once, I well and truly do not know what to say.
“Hear me, Bria. Please. I’m sending you off with a boy who sometimes looks at you like he’s starving and you’re a sweet Sunderday cake. It will put my heart at ease to hear that you will be thoughtful and responsible.”
I swallow hard. “I will be thoughtful and responsible.”
“Thank you.”
“Did it work? Is your heart at ease?”
“Not in the slightest. One other thing.” She pulls me into a monster hug and squeezes my breath from my body. “Return to me,
minja. I don’t want to lose you again.”
“If at all possible, I’ll be back. I swear it, Ma.”
She releases me, holds me at arm’s length, and says through tears, “We Angarsolds are not oath breakers.”
“We are not.”
A horse nickers, and I know it’s Apple even before I turn to find Titus approaching, leading both horses.
Gently, he says, “It’s time to go.”