Hazel shook her head. “Not with words. But with flowers and harvests and the birth of a foal and my blood renewing the life in a stillborn calf. With every slice of pear I eat.”
I smiled at her, my turmoil unseen. “She does sparkle, doesn’t she? All of her.”
“She does,” Hazel said, looking at me curiously.
“Thank you for all of your guidance these past moons,” I said, eyes on my desk, vision blurring. “You have been so accommodating.”
Hazel went on to say many kind things about me.
I pretended to cover my face to blush, but I hid the terror rising in me. I was going to die and soon. I prayed in my mind. We have only just met, goddess. I have only just begun my service to you. Why take me now?
But she did not speak to me in return.
71. Melancholy
In bed that night, preoccupied by thoughts of death, I rested in the gathering dark, shivering. The nights were getting colder. Treated tarpaulins made of animal skins were fitted across the windows with hooks in the stone. Alric had begun doing this during the nights to keep some of the chill out. He had shown me how to attach them, but I could not quite get the knack. I worried they would blow out the window.
He came in with a jug of Ruskar wine and offered me some.
I sat up in bed and sipped at it.
“I stole it from the kitchens,” he said, eyes on me as he drank from his own cup.
“You stole it? I thought as residents of the keep we could ask for what we needed.”
“Yes, but Ruskar is claiming poor grapes and that their most recent vintage suffers. Remaining jugs are going quickly.”
“Then this is a delicacy,” I said, staring into the drink. “Thank you.” Please don’t try to talk to me, I thought. I needed to pick apart all that I had learned that day. “Tell me about your day,” I said.
He sensed I did not want to talk and for once, was the one who spoke more. He told me of what the next phase of the trials contained, physical feats that would weed out even those that had bested him.
“Each is a trial of the mind and the body,” he said as I handed him my empty cup.
“I’m sorry I cannot manage the skins,” I said, absentminded.
“It is no matter,” he said, confused, glancing at me. “I worry only at your chill if I have to be gone during cold weather.”
“Then you can leave them on the whole while you are gone,” I said, turning my back so he could undress for sleep. The thought that the windows being covered had not bothered me came into my mind and I wondered if it was because I slept next to him. This only further depressed me.
Once the candle was blown out and he had joined me in the bed, I thought he had finally sensed my need to be alone, but I was wrong.
He said, “You are quiet, Edith.”
Not knowing what to say, I said, “I am only melancholy. It may be my courses.”
There was a breath and then he said, “Tell me what I did wrong and I will right it.”
I turned my head towards his in the night, seeing nothing. “Whatever do you mean?”
“Have I done something? To make you melancholy?”
I smacked my tongue on the inside of my teeth. “Do not tell me you are one of those men who thinks everything is about him.”
“Do not tease me. Be truthful with me.”
And, because I had lied to him before, it was easy to say, “I speak truth, Alric. You have done nothing wrong. I am only melancholy.”
72. Flowers
