The rain had stopped but the sky remained clouded, and the flooded, empty land was no less unsettling in the light of day.The discomfort of sodden boots and socks still rankled me, though at least our clothes were dry and the floodwaters low enough not to soak our hems when we took turns walking.The men had returned to their robes, and I wore a gifted, wrapped winter dress from the innwife, with a short cloak and a fur hat that I very much appreciated.
There was a warm wind from the south, stirring more mist from the snow and ice.We took turns riding the horses, and I bore perpetual goosebumps on my skin, wondering if, just then, Mereish soldiers were crossing the river or Inis Hae stalked the Other, waiting for our lights to appear.
Once, we passed a sleigh, stuck in the mud-thick snow and stripped of all valuables.Another time we saw people at a distance, but they avoided us as readily as we avoided them.One hamlet we passed had managed to evade most of the flooding but was watched over by a line of hard-looking men and women, while the next contained little more than a scattering of forgotten chickens and the body of a horse with a visibly broken leg, its slit throat yawning and its wounds crusted with pinkish ice.
I leaned forward to stroke the neck of my mount and forced myself to focus on the road ahead.
As dusk came on we neared another small settlement, sprung up close to a smooth length of shoreline.Only half-flooded but wholly abandoned, we agreed it was as good a place as any to take a few hours’ much needed rest, though we dared not linger for the whole night.
“We should divide to search for provisions,” I said as we tied the horses in the shelter of a lean-to and appraised the house we had selected.It was a small, croft-like affair of wood and stone with white-painted sides and Mereish psalms depicted beneath its thick, sheltering thatch eaves.Its yard was scattered with icy puddles but otherwise unspoiled.Whoever had lived here evidently anticipated higher waters to come or had chosen to follow their neighbors inland for other reasons.
The men agreed, and before long Samuel and I split off in one direction, Charles and Benedict in another.We combed the eerie streets as dusk thickened and the mist turned towards a fog, creeping in on the still-warm southern breeze.Everywhere, eaves dripped and floodwater clutched at our boots and the hems of our garments.
“If this weather keeps up, we may see grass before we reach Ostchen,” I commented, turning my face to the wind and relishing its gentleness.I knew it would not last—these first thaws of spring rarely did—but I would take any encouragement I could find.“Grass and endless mud.”
Samuel made his way towards a closed door, the water lapping a foot up its sturdy façade.“I never thought I would look forward to mud.”
“Our feet may even rot off more slowly,” I pointed out brightly, earning a true, crooked grin as he shouldered open the door and we entered the interior.The expression transformed him, lifting away days of exhaustion and strain, and reminding me of simpler, easier days—days in Hesten markets, or in the warmth of his cabin, reading and mending and passing the hours in familiar mundanities.
Days separated only by the distance propriety and his corruption forced between us.
I watched him move through the shadows, the long lines of him, the reach of one broad hand to push open a shutter and allow in a vestige of thin light.
An ache awoke in my chest that had nothing to do with fatigue.
Tane, evidently deciding it was time for a distraction, manifested across my skin.Illumination flooded the house, revealing that the bottom floor was a living space and storeroom, with stairs to a second story.Eager to be out of the water, I made for the stairs as Samuel sloshed behind me.
The upper floor consisted of two cramped sleeping chambers, both with large beds.One obviously belonged to children, scattered with abandoned toys, its window left carelessly open.The other belonged to the parents of this eerie home, inhabited by a wardrobe with sparse clothing, an empty clothes press, and sun-stain marks on the floor where chests had once sat at the foot of the bed.No linens remained on the mattress, and the wardrobe had been ransacked, but there remained enough for me to rifle through.
Samuel moved to the window as I threw a collection of worn, stained and unmended clothes onto the lumpy straw-and-canvas mattress.
“I can see why these were left behind,” I muttered, thumbing a hole the size of my fist in the bottom of a sock.“And that whoever lived here disliked mending.”
Samuel didn’t reply.He was staring out the window, up at the sky, and I realized there was light on his face—not firelight, not Tane’s light.Moonlight.
I drew up next to him, the unfortunate sock still in one hand.The sky had begun to clear.There in its dark embrace I saw a sickle moon perched amid wisps of thin cloud.And beyond it, another moon.And another.
Four moons, all at nearly the same degree of darkness and light.All sickles.All within days of one another, in their turning.
“How am I seeing this?”I whispered, speaking to Tane and Samuel at once.“Those are the Other’s moons.”
Samuel shook his head.He had drawn closer to me, his chest brushing my shoulder.“I… I have no answers.”
“The division between worlds is at its thinnest during the Black Tides.”Tane’s subdued voice came from my lips.“That is what we are seeing.”
Unsettled, I inched back into Samuel, resting partially against his chest.He wrapped his arms around me, and together we watched the moons until the clouds covered them again, and darkness retook the settlement.
We spoke little as we finished scouring the house, filling a crate with provisions.Samuel carried it to the next house, then the next, and then we made our way back to the cottage we had selected for our shelter.
I glanced at the horses nibbling at buckets of grain.Inside the house, a fire burned in the hearth and there were numerous new crates and bags scattered about.Charles and Benedict had apparently been and gone, for there was no sign of them now.
Sam stopped.I turned to see him slowly setting his own crate on a table, then he closed the door at our backs.
“Should we go find…” My voice faded as he took the bundle from my arms, set it aside and reached for my hands.He took them, his skin cool and rough.
“What you said, at the inn, about making you feel unwanted.I cannot forget it.Mary, that is the last thing I want you to feel.”He gave me each word clearly and gently.There was a rawness to him, perhaps something awoken by the sight of the moons in the sky and the reality of the changes taking place around us.But there was more—a steadiness, a decisiveness, and a need.
“I am going to kiss you now,” he said.“Are you opposed?”
