Chapter 8 #2
A hunter with ash on his boots speaks of grief.
He says he still sets a third plate each night for the son whose body fed the wolves last winter.
He says he eats the bread on that plate after, not because he is hungry but because the boy must not be hungry alone.
Lox bows his head. The ring brightens, a quiet pulse that seems to kneel with him.
The hunter’s shoulders drop. He wipes his face with the back of his wrist, and a child from the crowd crosses the space to take his hand without being told.
Marian’s fingers ache where they grip the sill. She can feel the ceremony stroking the inside of her skin like velvet.
‘Shame is a poor shepherd,’ Lox says after a while, his voice carrying to the highest platforms. ‘It drives flocks into thorns. Tonight, we open the gate and lead what we hid back into the field. You were not born to starve yourselves.’ He steps through the ring and the roots inch wider to meet his heels.
‘If the wanting is a danger to the village, we will name it and set it free.’
Magic creeps into the stitches of what they are saying and finishes the seam.
A voice breaks where no one expects it. Rían of Willowbend confesses he loves the smell of seed oil on a blacksmith’s skin and has for sixty years.
Some days he imagines what it would be like to have the smithy lather it over him.
The crowd murmurs with laughter and Marian’s mouth curves before she can stop it.
‘Truth is not a cage,’ Lox continues. ‘It is a door with a latch you can lift. Once unburdened, the body can remember pleasure without fear. Want without punishment. The hunger that nourishes rather than gnaws. If what you desire does no harm, let yourself name it tonight. There is room for it here.’
A woman with braids down to her hips steps forward, lays her palm against another woman’s throat, and breathes in like she has been holding that breath for months.
The skyborn on the highest spar unfasten their harnesses and let their wings fall from rigid readiness to ease.
A tailor with ink-stained fingers asks a baker if he may watch her knead, because the rhythm makes his hands want to sing.
None of it is lewd and yet all of it is intimate. Marian’s pulse stammers. Heat pools, humiliating in its clarity. She presses her knees together, angry at her own skin for answering this call. It is a public ritual, yet it feels like a hand sliding beneath her ribs and inching lower by the second.
Lox lowers his head. ‘What was said belongs to the roots now. They will keep it better than we can.’ He lifts a hand and a slow hush settles. ‘Return to your plain fare. Let emptiness be the bowl that makes room for tomorrow.’
The Elders step back in pairs. People begin to break apart, touching shoulders as they go, some wiping eyes, some smiling like a door inside them has been opened and is letting air through again. Music does not start. The silence after the telling is a kind of song by itself.
Marian pulls away from the window at last. Her legs tingle as the blood slowly returns, her feet stumbling over one another. She crosses to the bed and sits, unable to shake the feeling that something has shifted by a degree too small to measure and too large to ignore.
Outside, the murmurs drift back into common talk.
Someone laughs quietly. A bowl scrapes a table.
Marian lies back and stares at the curved ceiling, at the grain that runs like river maps through the wood.
Sleep does not come quickly. Their testimonies have taken up space in her, and space is louder than noise.
She closes her eyes and sees the ring of roots brightening and fading, breath drawn and let go, over and over, like a promise the forest keeps even when no one is listening.
And some deep, dark corner of her heart wonders if she too has something to confess.
* * *
A fretful knocking at her door before sunrise was the last thing Marian wanted.
She lies still at first, hoping the noise will fade, that whoever it is will grow tired and vanish back into the early dark. But the knock comes again, quick and insistent.
Marian rolls to her side, groaning softly into the blanket. The light in the chamber is dim, with the faintest grey spilling in through the window. Sleep had been shallow at best, riddled with fragments of ritual song, the memory of voices unspooling confessions until even her dreams felt crowded.
The knock comes again, sharper.
She swings her legs over the edge of the bed with a grunt.
Her face pinches in a wince as the floor bites cold through her bare soles.
Her borrowed tunic is rumpled, twisted from restless turning, but she cannot summon the strength to straighten it.
Every muscle is leaden as she shuffles toward the door.
‘Who is it?’ she croaks.
‘Allen,’ comes the muffled reply. ‘Do hurry up, will you? Minstrels and patience don’t mix.’
She scowls at the door. ‘Go away.’
A pause, then a low whistle. ‘I’ve braved the humid air to knock politely instead of barging in, and you’d leave me to roast?’
Marian sags against the frame. The thought of seeing him now stirs a bitterness she cannot name.
‘I brought you a present, Mare.’
‘F-f-for me?’ she yawns, suspicion folded into every syllable.
‘No, for the other obstinate girl I rescued in the woods. Yes, for you! Now open the door before I sweat through my tunic.’
Marian unlatches it and steps back, folding her arms tight across her chest. The minstrel slips inside with a gust of muggy air, carrying under one arm a swath of linen wrapped with twine, while he keeps the other arm behind his back. His grin is too wide for the hour.
‘First, your clothes, courtesy of Niamh.’ He tosses the bundle toward her bed, the fabric landing with a thud.
‘I’d hardly call garments a justifiable reason to darken my door before dawn.’
‘How about this instead?’ He pulls his other arm out from behind him.
‘What’s this?’
‘Proof I’m not entirely useless.’
Allen holds the bundle out to her, tenderly pulling its wrapping free to reveal a slim sketchpad bound in rough leather and a fistful of charcoal sticks enveloped in waxed paper.
Her fingers twitch despite herself. She longs to touch the pad, to test the grain of the paper, to smudge the charcoal across her skin until her fingertips bloom black. She locks her hands against her ribs instead, suspicious.
‘No enchantments. No tricks. On my honour as a bard,’ he says with a dramatic bow. ‘I swiped them off Niamh’s dressing table. Figured you might fancy scratching something other than my ears with that sharp tongue of yours.’
Marian blinks. The gift unsettles her. She reaches out before she can stop herself, brushing her fingers over the leather. The pad is sturdy, the paper coarse but thick, begging for lines to be carved into it. Her chest aches with wanting.
‘Does this mean Lox has granted me access to the libraries?’ she asks warily. ‘Will I be working on maps or copying fae folklore?’
Allen’s grin falters. He scratches the back of his neck, eyes darting anywhere but her face. ‘Ah. Not exactly.’ He exhales, lips twisting. ‘The antlered wonder wasn’t moved by your plea for artistic freedom.’
Her stomach knots. ‘Then why—?’
‘I thought,’ Allen cuts in, softer now, ‘if I brought you something that felt like yours, it might soften the sting of what you’ve been allotted.’
‘Which is . . .’
‘Laundress,’ Allen says with a wince. ‘You’ll scrub tunics and linens in the stream with the others. Mundane, thankless, a touch undignified, but far better than the alternative.’
Her throat burns. Even with valuable skills and a forest humming with enough magic to rewrite the world, Lox has reduced her contribution to ‘women’s work’. She snatches her hands back from the gift, lips pressed tight, the words bitter on her tongue.
‘Come now. It’s not so bad. If it weren’t for me, you’d be cleaning the latrines.
’ He lifts both hands in a half-shrug at the look Marian levels at him.
‘Onóra wanted you scrubbing pits till your hair turned grey. Cern thought muck might build character. I argued for something with a bit more dignity and Lox miraculously agreed. Yes, you’ll wash what needs washing, but when no one’s looking you might forage a few berries, maybe snatch a fish from the stream.
A woman who refuses to touch our food should at least have a way to feed herself. ’
She glares, cheeks hot. ‘You make it sound like charity.’
‘Then perhaps you should think before you spit on it.’
Marian flinches as if struck, the truth cutting deeper than the wound to her pride.
Her gaze falls back to the sketchpad. The leather cover is plain but sturdy.
She can almost hear the scratch of charcoal across a fresh page, the freedom of lines not drawn for her father or the Sheriff, but for herself.
Her fingers inch closer, traitorous in their wanting.
They brush over the leather tentatively.
‘Thank you,’ she finally answers, though the words feel as if they might break apart before they reach him.
Allen brightens, but he doesn’t gloat. His shoulders slump, the tension leaking from them between breaths. ‘Gratitude suits you, Mare. But don’t worry, I won’t ask you to make a habit of it.’