Chapter 35 #2
Several days after King Arik was disappointed by my unenthusiastic attempt at casting, Fell and I had planned a little evening.
Ourselves and Dania would visit Rowan and then find one of many outdoor hearths in Aalt where rowers from The Tornado might be drinking, as Fell wanted to spend the evening with his friends.
I was more than happy to curl up in his arms near a fire and drift almost to sleep as he laughed and chatted, as the deepness of his voice buzzed against my cheek.
Recently, I had been either napping or wishing I was napping, and this gave me a sort of sleepy agreeableness that was rather unlike me.
If I could sleep somewhere—especially if I could sleep on Fell’s shoulder or chest while I was there—I would go.
If the sky was pale blue and glistening with the first hint of stars—as it was that night—so much the better.
When we arrived at Faller’s home, greeted by the scent of baking clay and copper, we came around back to the yard where he had been keeping Rowan on nice days because “sun is good for everyone, even grumpy sotern like this.”
Rowan already had a guest.
There was a woman—hair white as the moon—crouched near the entrance to the yard, her arms crossed atop her knees as she watched Rowan.
He was in the same place I’d seen him before, leaning against one of the woodshed posts, though he wasn’t tied up as last time.
Faller had realized Rowan wouldn’t run away.
I had forbidden him from running, but even if I hadn’t, I expect he wouldn’t have abandoned me.
He still thought us trapped among enemies.
“We should leave him be, I think,” Fell said with a mischievous grin.
“Certainly not,” I said. I could tell even from the distance Rowan was bothered by how the stranger watched him—he was sitting too rigid.
I approached, stepping around the woman at the fence’s opening.
“Hello,” she said sweetly as I passed.
“Hello,” I said, throwing a look that said what do we think of this oddity? in Dania’s direction.
When I reached Rowan, I crouched and nodded a little toward his visitor. “Who’s she?”
“I have no idea,” Rowan said, keeping his voice low. He sounded tired. Unenthusiastic. His eyes flicked to her and then back at me. “She’s come four times now.”
“Maiden?” Fell called out to her as he sat down next to Rowan, offering a skin of mead which Rowan—as per his usual moodiness—did not accept.
“Ha!” she called back.
“You will come and drink?” Fell lifted the mead skin.
The woman stood and approached—her feet were bare and dirty, and her legs slender, marked in Northern tattoos. She was obnoxiously pretty.
“I will come, but I will not drink,” she said. “I am herb-fasting for the time being.”
“Ah, what herbs?” Fell could speak to anyone about anything. Normally, I adored that about him, but this woman… I wanted him not to see her.
“Nettle,” she said, taking a seat between Dania and myself, tucking her legs into her chest.
“Nettle?” Fell laughed. “You are a witch, then?”
“Not a witch,” she smiled. “I am a… friend to the plants, with many scars to prove it.” She held up her hands, and they were indeed covered in scratches, presumably from harvesting thorned herbs.
“My friend says you have come to visit him more than once?” I said, my eyes darting back to poor Rowan, who was unable to understand anything that was being said.
He looked to be holding his breath, perhaps a little scared by the strange woman who’d been watching him and was now sitting across from him.
“Yes!” She smiled. Perfect white teeth. “I was mushroom-fasting before the nettle. They told me to visit him.”
“Who did?” I said.
She smiled again. “The mushrooms.”
I turned to Rowan, my teeth clenched in judge-filled disdain. “She says mushrooms told her to come see you.”
He snorted. “So, she is mad then?”
“Not mad,” Dania said. “You surely had them near the Arched Cliffs. The red caps with white spots… I can’t remember what we called them in Islish—”
“Oh,” Rowan said, his face looking like he might laugh for a moment before he steeled himself. “She ate them by accident?”
“Probably on purpose,” Dania said.
“They’re not good for her,” Rowan said. “Someone should tell her.”
Someone should tell her to leave us alone, I thought.
“The soter thinks red caps are bad for your health,” Dania translated, much more quickly than I could have.
“Perhaps he is right, but I expect they will be good for his health.” The woman laughed. “I brought him bread and berries. Can you ask why he did not eat them? Does he not like bread or berries?”
When Rowan heard my choppy translation, his brow twitched. “She seemed… I don’t know… like she was planning something. I was skeptical. I thought maybe she was a trick from my captor.”
“She says she was planning. She planned for you to have a nice evening.”
The more I watched Rowan, the more certain I was that his discomfort came not from the woman herself, but from how beautiful she was… I expect he thought her something of a temptress. Temptresses were discussed often by the orderlies who taught people about prescription.
“Does he have a name?” the woman asked.
I was about to tell her something standoffish, but Dania spoke first. “He is Rowan; it is in our language a type of tree… in Norsern you call this type rejan.”
“Ah! Rejan! Ro-wan! It is nice to know your name. I am Fara. I am your skael.”
Fell laughed. “Bold as the winter sea—”
“I still do not understand this,” I said. “Skael.”
Not a single person had given me the same explanation of it.
Dania had said her skael was Hald and Layf—so I’d thought it was something to do with love.
But Jorn had said skael was everything that happened, especially the bad things.
Arik had said skael was what lazy people blamed their misery on.
Fell had said it was his place beside me…
Fara blinked as she stared at me. “It is everything the gods have chosen for you—or everything you have chosen for yourself before life, depending on what you believe about that. It is the parts of your life that are set, the things you are good at without trying, the habits your parents have buried in the soil of your mind, all that you cannot change, no matter what you try… You understand me now, I see. I will stop talking.” And then she laughed wildly for longer than felt sane.
“This evening is all our skaels. Shall we break Rowan free and run through the city? This man here—” she pointed at Fell “—Can have another drink. I will have my nettle. You—” she pointed at me.
“You, I can make something special for… your heart is growing strong, but it is like there are healers on it, sucking the strength—”
“Healers?” I said.
“Leeches,” Dania said. “It is the same word for both here.”
My stomach formed a knot.
Fara nodded. “They both suck things out, no? This tea I am thinking of, it will feel like mead but lighter because you feel swollen and heavy… and you—” She smiled at Dania. “I will give a bubbling drink for deeper soil.”
“I like this idea,” Fell said. “Fara is in charge for the evening. Quick, someone distract Faller so we can take Rowan with us.”
“We must ask,” I said. “I would not want Rowan suffering some kind of trouble because of us.”
Dania was already up and knocking on the door.
“No! Let us not ask,” Fara said, patting the grass angrily. “I do not accept that we need ask. I do not believe in sotern.”
“Ah! We are true friends then,” Fell said, lifting his mead to knock drinks with her, but of course, she had no drink. She did lift a little bottle that was tied around her neck though, and pressed it to his mead skin.
Still, Dania asked, and Faller rubbed his face—looking exhausted. He sighed. “Do whatever you like. But please, can everyone have the same number of limbs at the end of the night that they have right now?”
“Ah!” Fara shouted over my shoulder to Faller. “Having a slave is tiring you, is it?”
Faller sighed again. “Fara… for all that is sacred, he is not a slave, but yes, I am fucking tired.”
“You know soternship was developed by King Einar? After the slaves burnt down four cities, and he wanted to end slavery to save his skin, but the slaveholders would not hear of it? It is a way to have slaves without having them…”
“Ah,” Fell grinned his awful grin. “You are lighting my heart on fire, Fara.” And when I glared at him for this, he shrugged. “What? She speaks the truth. She is Fara Truth-speaker!”
And so began a strange evening. First, Fara took us to a place where an Islish man baked pies just like from back home, and I did enjoy the pie but I pretended I didn’t, because she had brought us there.
She then took us through the back door to someone’s home to collect herbs so she could make a separate drink for each of us, revealing that she knew I was vaneurigk, and that Dania was attempting to become so.
And if Fell’s comment about her setting his heart on fire wasn’t enough to make me despise her, Fara knowing a secret Dania hadn’t yet told me, would have done it.
“Is she going to be with us all evening?” I said, sipping the tea she made that was perfectly sweet, only adding to my irritation.
“You are jealous.” Fell smirked. “I have not yet seen this part of you. It is… most enjoyable.”
“I am not jealous,” I said. “I was only hoping for a simple evening…”
“You are the most jealous person in the land, and it makes sense—”
I nearly threw my tea to the ground in rage. “It makes sense?”
“Yes, you are what she cannot be. She is what you cannot be. She is jumpy and…” He waved his hands around. “She feels like the sun. You are steady, mysterious; you feel like the moon.”
I could have found it flattering. Instead, I chose to battle him with my words. “You think she is like the sun?”