He tilted his head, studying her for a moment. “That depends.”
“On what?”
His short huff of laughter made her stiffen. “Your eyelashes.”
She blinked. “What?”
He nodded. “Everyone has a tell. Your eyelashes are yours. Any time you lie or hide something, your eyelashes flutter as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. They’ve done so since you were a child.”
Disaris sputtered. “They do not!” Suddenly her eyelashes felt heavier than iron fans on her eyelids. “You’re imagining things.”
“I’m not. Why do you think you could never lie to me? Every time you tried it, I thought you’d fly away.” His ghost of a smile slid away as quickly as it appeared. “It wasn’t what you told Golius that made them flutter. I’m sure every word you uttered was the truth…a truth if it were told by one of the lim-folk. It’s what you didn’t say that brought the hummingbirds out.” He leaned toward her, so close that she could see the prisms of light in his irises and the way his own white eyelashes fanned shadows under his eyes. “What are you hiding, Disa?”
In the summerof her fifteenth year, Disaris received three gifts from Bron: one which she could hold in her hand, the other two in her memory.
Most of the villagers of Panrin spent their days in the wheat fields. Harvest season had begun two weeks earlier, when the daylight hours stretched long, and dawn seemed to arrive before night had barely taken hold of the world. Disaris no longer felt the pain and stiffness of sore muscles from crouching to cut winter wheat with her sickle. The combination of early mornings and oppressive heat made even the bees and wasps somnolent, and she yawned numerous times as she cut and stacked the stalks into bundles to be sheaved and later threshed on the threshing floor.
It was hard, boring work, and she sorely missed the summers when Bron had worked beside her, soaked in sweat while shielded from the sun in cloak, hood, and gloves. Several people cut wheat around her, but she still felt solitary in her task, missing her best friend and wondering—as she did a thousandtimes a day—how he fared at the garrison at Burnpool. He wouldn’t be here for the fall planting either, a depressing thought that made her sigh as she swung the sickle in mindless rhythm.
“Disa! DISA!”
Nazlen bellowing her name from nearby startled her out of her melancholy so that she cut the cluster of stalks she held too long and nearly sliced her skirt. Several of the other villagers straightened and gawked along with Disaris as Nazlen burst through a wall of wheat stalks and into the clearing the harvesters had made in the field.
“Oh my gods, Disa, what are you doing?”
Disaris shrugged, raising her sickle in one hand and a cut wheat stalk in the other. “Not doing my hair, obviously. Why are you out here?” Her friend, the oldest of eight children, with a mother made invalid a few years earlier, normally acted as child-minder for her younger siblings and didn’t work the fields. An awful thought made Disaris drop the stalk and grab Nazlen’s arm. “What’s wrong? Did something happen to one of the littles? Your mother?”
Nazlen shook her head, and her features lit with a wide grin. “You should be minding that mop of yours. Yeoman Kasark’s come home from delivering a load of barley to the mill. He met Bron at the Drunken Cabbage when he stopped for a pint.”
With that announcement, the world stopped for Disaris, along with her heart. “What?”
Nazlen grabbed her wrist. “Bron told him he expected to be at his mother’s house this afternoon,” she said over her shoulder, as she dragged Disaris behind her back toward the path she’d forged through the field.
Disaris planted her heels, even as everything inside her urged her to sprint back to Panrin. “Wait. Are you certain that’s what Yeoman Kasark said?”
Nazlen rolled her eyes. “He’s the one who sent me to you. Said you’d want to know.” She pulled on Disaris a second time. “Come on. I asked Dame Hova to keep an eye on the hell-brood. I need to get back before they try to drown her in the well.” Her nose wrinkled as she inspected Disaris. “And you need a bath.”
Almost lightheaded with euphoria, Disaris sent her friend on her way, promising to follow shortly. She discovered a pair of villagers who’d harvested beside her gathering up her bundles. One shooed her away. “We heard,” she said, exchanging a smirk with her companion. “Go. We’ll tie your bundles. Tell Bron we said hello.”
That euphoria gave Disaris’s feet wings as she raced home. Bron was coming home! Bron was coming home! The chant in her head might have been a scream of unadulterated joy had she given voice to it. She didn’t bother unlatching the short gate at the front of her house, clearing it with one leap to race up the walkway where her mother stood at the threshold, waiting.
“Amman!” Disaris skidded to a stop in front of Gheza. “Where’s the honeysuckle soap? Bron will be at his amman’s house this afternoon.”
Gheza chortled and motioned her inside. “I see Nazlen found you. Get in the kitchen. I’ve a sheet laid down and a kettle heating. You’ve only time to bathe from the wash basin. We’ll do your hair by the well.”
Disaris had never scrubbed so fast in her life. She didn’t complain when Gheza dumped a bucket of freezing well water on her head to rinse her hair clean as she stood in a sheltered spot of the garden, wrapped in a wet sheet for modesty. In short order, she was bathed, dressed and seated in front of the small fire her mother had built in the kitchen while her five-year old sister Luda did her best to scalp her with a comb.
“I think that’s enough helping for now, Luda,” she said as she gently pried the comb from the little girl’s hand.
Luda stuck out her lower lip. “But I’m not finished!”
Gheza stopped a burgeoning tantrum from erupting. “Your sister is in a hurry, Luda. If you want, you can comb out my braid tonight.” She flinched a little and gave Disaris a long-suffering look.
Disaris mouthed a thank you before retreating to the bedroom she shared with Luda. The larger chest at the foot of the bed held her clothes, and she rummaged through the neatly folded garments, uncertain what to wear. Nothing too fancy, not that she really owned any true finery, but she didn’t want Bron to think she’d dressed up just for him. He’d tease her about it. Still, she wanted to wear something pretty, something that didn’t make her look childish or plain.
The thought brought her up short, and her cheeks suddenly fevered. She covered them with her hands, grateful no one was in the room to witness her blush. When had she developed such thoughts about her appearance and how she might look to Bron?
He’d known her since she was six, joined her in catching frogs, slathered slug slime on her, indulged her in numerous mud fights, challenged her over who would be brave enough to eat a grasshopper (he won that one), and protected her from mockery when her first menses made their appearance in the most embarrassing way. She’d taught him to fish. He’d taught her to swim, an event that altered their lives in ways neither could have fathomed. Why was she so concerned now whether or not Bron would think her pretty in a dress?
