‘Did you see her? Did you find Ari?’ she asks.
Sadly, I shake my head. ‘No.’
‘What’s that mean? Did something go wrong?’
‘It means there’s no trace of her in the forest. She’s not here, which means she’s not alive.’
‘What if she’s outside the forest?’
Again, I shake my head. ‘It takes a month to get from where the village lies to the nearest outskirts. That’s on horseback. The girl’s been gone three days, four now. If she were alive, I’d have found her. But there’s no trace, no pulse, no thread of life or breath, and scrying doesn’t work for dead things – leastways not my version of it – so I can’t even tell her parents where they might find her body.’
6
‘But why can’t I go with you?’
I think Rhea would stamp her foot if I were not currently tracing around it on a piece of scrap leather. I click my tongue, and she obediently puts the right foot next to the outline and I draw again. Holding up the leather, I admire my handiwork.
‘Because it’s too soon, even out here – someone will still be looking for you, somewhere. The Visiting Sisters have done their very best to cover your tracks, but you can’t ever let your guard down.’ I don’t tell her that constant vigilance is wearing and wearying because she’ll feel it soon enough. ‘Anselm and Gida have seen you. That’s sufficient. I’ve told them you’re my cousin’s child – the easiest lie is that of a big family, and the tale I’ve woven for myself is that of a woman with a large and scattered family. People get used to hearing of this relative and that, and they generally don’t pay much attention. It’s a long while since I’ve had a fosterling, many weren’t ever seen in the village – but you’ll stand out in memory. Give it a month, let’s see if anyone comes sniffing around, before I introduce you to anyone else.’ I roll my eyes. ‘Before the next young man decides he’d like a piece of you.’
She huffs but doesn’t contradict me. ‘What am I to do all day without you?’
‘It’ll be five hours at most.’ I laugh. ‘And you will spend three of those hours stirring the trough.’
‘The shit bath!’
‘Yes, the shit bath. Three hours. Constant stirring, slow and steady, ensuring you dig to the bottom to get the sediment to rise. Wear a mask – the lavender oil is best for covering the smell.’ I rise, my knees protesting. ‘Then make yourself some lunch, eat it in the sun – Mr Tib will come slinking around, I’ve no doubt – and when you’re done, come inside. The dough in the blue bowl should be risen – knead it well, then put it into a greased pan and bake it for twenty-five minutes. Let it cool on the windowsill. Then…’ I wave a hand vaguely, ‘…read a book, draw something, darn socks, fix the rip in my trews, nap, whatever you want except for wandering the forest or going into the village. There are books to read and learn from. Don’t leave this holding. Not without me. Not until you know the place better. I’ll be very cross if I have to go looking for you or drag your carcass back for burial after you’ve gaily got yourself killed.’
‘Yes, Mehrab,’ she grumbles.
I stretch, bending backwards, palms against my lower back; the spine gives a satisfying crack and everything feels a little looser, a little more comfortable. I roll up the outline of her feet and stuff it into the satchel, along with pouches of ground herbs, some small vials of liquified things, and a list of items I’ll need to barter for or buy. ‘I’ll be home well before nightfall.’
‘What if you aren’t? What if you don’t come back?’
‘Then I’m dead.’ I speak before I think and it’s only herstricken expression that makes me pause. The child’s had her life entirely uprooted, her mind is directed towards unexpected catastrophes, and they’re all she’s looking for now. This may also explain her intense desire to find Ari, a child she’s never met – most of us, I think, will reach for the illogic ofif I save another, I can save myself. ‘I’m sorry, Rhea. I didn’t mean to be unkind, merely flippant. I will return – but if I don’t then this cottage is yours. Stay here. It’s safe, or as safe as anywhere can be for the likes of us.’
And I find myself hugging her as if she’s my child to comfort.
I’m the one who breaks away first, grabbing up the satchel and hooking it over my head so it lies flat against my back. ‘Don’t forget: three hours of stirring shit.’
***
Birdsong and sunlight are my companions on the walk. Those and the chant of the river running beside this stretch of the path. The spring breeze is cool and rattles the branches. On my own again I begin to feel more myself, relaxing into my old shape. Two and a half days of companionship is taking its toll – not Rhea’s fault, nor even Fenna’s. Mine. I’ve become so used to my own company that even the knowledge of another in my space is grating. It won’t last, I’ll grow accustomed to it, or I won’t. Those who preceded her – Melda, Aythe, Gele, Lisabeth, Uriela – were younger, children really, while she’s almost eighteen. They were disinclined to question, fearful enough to listen and learn. Not all children listen, of course, and I think about Ari – did she stray from the path?
In the general way of things, children go missing, no matter how vigilant parents might be. Children have gotten lost forcenturies. The village however, as I recall, has been safe, or seemed so. Yrse I’m sure said the same thing. Of course, some have died of illnesses, of accidents occasioned by idiocy or misfortune, some of punishments too enthusiastically administered – but none have wandered from Berhta’s Forge and never come home, not in the twenty years I’ve lived in its environs.
When a child disappears, it might be animal predation. It might be a killer hiding in plain sight of neighbours and friends. It might be someone seeking a slave, a child-wife, child-husband, someone on whom to vent frustrations. None of their reasons are ever good. Sometimes for revenge or merely a meal. Sometimes an old god roams, looking for a treat, for a new lease on life; yet mostly they stay hidden in the darkest hollows.
But yes, in the general way of things children go missing… elsewhere.
There’s the tale of the village of Iserthal, once a prosperous place, now a ruin no longer even noted on any but the most ancient of maps. Its children were taken but not by a god, or not a proper one. A plague maiden, who swam up through the frozen lake in winter and stole them all away. There’s a whisper, though, that two were spared but of them there’s no trace…
There’s the legend of a giant swan that floated down the River Bale close by Angharad’s Ruin and coaxed three children onto its back and promptly floated off again. Not a trace of either the trio or swan was ever found.
The story of a witch who built a cottage of sugar to lure children inside so she might thereby be furnished with her dinner. They say her own offspring had been lost in one ofthe devastating famines that swept the land, when bands of men who filed their teeth to points roamed and plucked tender children from their homes. It never made sense to me that the witch would do what had been done to her, but then grief is an unpredictable thing.
The recountings of the old days of the battle abbeys, when archbishops and mother superiors both would “recruit” children found running in the streets without a parent, sometimes simply standing in their own gardens, all taken off to be trained in the church militant.
And the story of a man who came in the guise of a friend at the dinner table and in the cold hours stole away the offspring of a great lineage. It’s never been simply the children of the poor and undefended; great houses and castles, grand families and the rich and powerful have also had their future purloined and never recovered. Perhaps a small sad pile of bones found here and there, perhaps a memento, a trophy returned and left on a doorstep to be found in the morning and break a heart. Or a flayed skin hanging from a tree, a dream-catcher woven of a child’s hair and hung in a window A scrap of woollen fabric draped on a bush…
