‘Are you ready to join them when next they pass by? Abandon your shoes?’ I grin.
She looks at the boots by the door, their soft leather now scuffed with wear. The pretty blue pair she arrived in lie in the clothing chest in her room, beside the blue silk dress wrapped in tissue with sprigs of lavender in its folds. ‘I don’t think I’m ever going to be a barefoot girl with horns. Too hard to do my hair.’
‘I suspect hairstyles aren’t the prime concern of women who walk away from everything, Rhea.’ I shrug. ‘Never say never, my girl. You can’t know what life will give or take and how much of you it’ll take with it.’
‘Is that why you left your home far across the sea, Mehrab? What did life take from you? And how much of you did it take with it?’ she asks quietly, gently.
I rise. ‘Goodnight, Rhea. Sleep well.’
19
‘Mehrab? Mehrab. Someone’s here.’ Rhea’s peering out the window, careful to not tweak the curtains aside but simply looking through the lace as I showed her.
‘What?’ No one should be wandering – everyone should be preparing for tonight.
I’m exhausted. We’re all exhausted; even Arlo seems to slump on the seat Rhea’s set him at after our final harvest day. Summer’s last day, our last harvest, and soon the cold will begin nipping at our heels. This morning, I hitched Rosie to the cart (such indignity!) and hauled the sacks of wheat to the village, left them with Sanne for her attention over the next week, scheduled in with everyone else’s harvest. And instead of returning Rosie to her owner as I surely promised, I turned the cart right around and came home because I couldn’t bear the thought of answering questions as to why I would not attend the harvest-messe.
So, I bathed and scrubbed every skerrick of sweat and dirt from my skin, from under my nails, washed my hair, rubbed the roughness from my feet, slathered lavender cream onmyself to put some moisture back in, then went to sleep for long luxurious hours and left Rhea to her own devices. Late in the afternoon, I woke and slipped on a pretty dress which sits in the back of the wardrobe most of the year and went down to begin preparing our own little feast. Harvest homes, these last years, have been spent just myself and the summer husband of the moment, a sweet night because it’s one of their last, though they don’t know it.
This evening on the village green all of Berhta’s Forge will be gathering for their harvest-messe, eating and drinking and toasting each other, giving wishes and blessings to be safely brought through to spring, burning the finest first fruits and vegetables and selected meats, gifted back to the earth in gratitude, in fervent hopes of warding off any ill will from the old gods.
Harvest home, a signal for those born here that they belong – they participate in the life of Berhta’s Forge, till its earth, grow its food, husband its livestock. They can rely on the protection of the community. The one and only time I attended, my first year here, I watched the dancing, the flirting, the feasting, and for the first time in a very long while I felt lonely. Where I’d come from, after the high sorceress found me, took me in, I had belonged. She’d given me a place, and Igrewthere until, almost twenty-five years to that very day, the very night, I had to flee, enemies at the gates, the city burning, and my final act as hercreature…
‘Mehrab, it’s a handsome someone.’ Her gloating tone annoys me.
‘Confine your lechery to men of wood, child,’ I snap, thenstep outside, shutting the door firmly behind me, and take long strides to where my visitor waits by the barn.
‘Good evening, Mehrab.’ The blacksmith, dressed in fine green linen trews and a shirt white enough to almost glow in the dusk, is mounted on a tall ebony stallion, so comfortable-looking it’s as if he’s grown there. Behind him, an even larger horse, a young bay feather-foot, tethered to the rail of the enclosure where Rosie is nuzzling him as if checking his bona fides. And… and Faolan appears to have red flowers woven through his beard. ‘You’re a vision.’
‘And you’re a long way from home this eve, Faolan.’
He nods gravely. ‘Drawn to this den of iniquity by a vile crime. A horse thief resides here. I saw her this very day drive her cart to the mill, then depart the long way around so she did not pass by the smithy.’
I resist grinning. ‘Could hardly have got a cart home without a horse to pull it, blacksmith.’
‘Aye, that’s true. True.’ He grins. ‘Still, a thief.’
Which isn’t the first time such an accusation’s been flung at me, but I don’t react because for all my other sins, that’s not one of mine. I nod towards the bay. ‘Hard to give her up, that Rosie-girl. But I note you’ve brought a friend?’
‘This is Eadig, out of the Beck Stables’ finest mare.’
‘He is very handsome.’
‘And well-trained. Biddable.’
‘Expensive, no doubt.’
‘Very.’
‘Faolan…’
‘I’m willing to negotiate.’ He raises his eyebrows.
‘Gods forfend, I’ll get my purse.’
‘Ah, don’t be so obdurate, old woman! The horse is yours! Both the horses are yours – Rosie would have run home first chance she got if she didn’t like you.’ He holds out a hand. ‘Only come with me to the harvest-messe, it’s all I ask, so small a thing.’
I look at his enormous hand, at its calluses and scars, think of how it feels to be held and lifted and caressed; then quietly I reply, ‘Not afraid of your wife’s unhappy ghost, Faolan?’
