Cian finally decided to explore my penchant in a straightforward approach as opposed to me reading the ‘The Remarkable Loaming of Our Goddess’ a second time looking for a connection. I was accompanying him and Hazel on more and more excursions outside Pikestully as they visited farms to settle land disputes, read soil, pray over properties, and once dissected a stillborn lamb to ascertain what had caused the death. I saw little evidence of magic, other than the self-writing slate in Cian’s office since my arrival in Tintar and I often wondered if they were not holding onto their mythology. The history of Tintar Cian had given me was intriguing because it read like a bedtime tale, stories of ancient people coming forth from caves to command oceans and mountains by merely spilling blood.
On one such excursion, he asked that I, using the whetted point end of the sagaris, lightly prick my right palm and bleed into the ground. We were at an apiary and the beekeeper, swathed in linens and carrying a smoking brazier, was concerned about the health of his bees. Hazel and another earth priest were inspecting dead bees on the ground and cutting open a section of honeycomb. Cian pulled me into an apple orchard bordering the apiary. After inflicting a stinging pain in my palm, I got to my knees, thinking of that day I had seen my husband do it at the Sibbereen horse farm. I asked Cian if I should pray and he told me I should but that The Farthest Four, while having many scriptures written about each, did not have prayers to memorize. This was not how I had grown up, having memorized countless passages written about and by Rodwin, as well as liturgies to recite in church services.
“What do I say?” I asked, feet tucked under my rear, grateful I had worn the Tintarian black dress and not my celadon as I knelt in dirt and grass. But the black cotton dress had sleeves down past the elbow and I was sweating and bees were everywhere on this property. I was irritable. My right palm stung and bled.
Cian, without his archpriest robe, in a simple tunic and brown breeches smiled at me. “Whatever you want to say to her. She is listening, Edie.”
I stared at the ground. I had never had any faith. I had tried, as a youth, to believe in Rodwin and almost had. But it had been to impress my parents and I was seen through, accused by them of a performative faith. This had resulted in weeping, arguments and ultimately, punishment. I had never been good enough for the church. And then I thought of that night in Nyossa, the night I had seen one stone stack itself on top of another. I had never let myself think on those glimpses or the dreams I had of tall pillars of stones or small stacks of pebbles. But I did now and my words came back to me.
I need help. I do not know where to go, and I do not know who to pray to anymore.
I turned to Cian and bashful, said, “May I be alone?”
“Of course. I do not know why I am standing here,” he said, shaking his head at himself and walked away towards the field of hives.
“Good afternoon,” I began, once he was farther away. I laughed a little to myself. “Where to begin. Well, I was raised to believe that you and your fellow deities were wicked. A part of me is terrified of this prayer. I fear the spirit of Rodwin will come from behind an apple tree and drag me to his hell. And—” here my voice quaked “I fear the box. I will always fear that box. I still cannot believe my own godsdamn husband put me in it. But you are not a punishing goddess. Or not deliberately. Life is hard enough and that is what the books I have read about you tell me. So, Mother, I do not know how to pray without first begging for forgiveness. How does one petition an ambivalent god? I just don’t know. I don’t know what I am doing at all.” My voice broke. I hated how prone to tears I was. I had always been an easy crier. I had learned how to swallow the lump in my throat and blink away the wetness in my eyes, but only in front of others. Alone, in Eccleston, I could cry reading poetry or if I heard music through my window. And here I was, yet again, alone in an orchard, bleeding into the ground, asking a deity I was not sure existed, what I should do. “I don’t know what I am doing at all,” I repeated. “I am married to a stranger. I myself am a stranger in a strange land. I am, honestly, quite sure that Cian is laboring under a miscalculation and I do not have magic, and that is somehow incredibly humiliating to me, which is absurd as I have never claimed to have magic. I do not even know if I believe in it. And, finally, lady, I find it cruel that I am to pray to a goddess whose very essence is maternal and is the alleged mother of all and I, a woman who cannot get with child. Is that not just the least bit cruel?”
Cian collected me an hour later.
My cheeks were still damp, and he did not say anything about it but put his hand on my arm to guide me back to the horses, and I thought him a compassionate man.
“I like your necklace,” he said, his eyes on the hollow of my neck.
I reached up to touch it. “Alric gave it to me.”
Cian nodded, an enigmatic look on his face.
At dinner, Mischa informed us of the continued frustrations the Tintarian armies were having with tracing the Perpatanian attack. Catrin told us about the snideness of some of the ladies of Modwenna’s women and we all commended her on her grace. River went on about all the different breeds of fish that existed in the Tintarian Sea while her lover contentedly ate one of the discussed fish. Quinn had seemed, to me, to have withdrawn into herself and when I had asked her later on if she was upset still, she had waved me away, thanking me and dismissing my inquiry. Having a desire for privacy for my Perpatanian life, I did not press her. Helena and Maureen had painted a dark green base layer in the throne room on which to paint rocks and waves and ominous shark fins. Helena said she was toying with painting the outlines of mermaids in a particularly glimmering, but watery blend of the malachite so that they would only be visible when sunlight hit those parts of the mural.
“Of course, it would only apply to the opposite side of the room,” she mused aloud.
I glanced at Mischa, also watching Helena.
We had, one morning when it was just the two of us in the baths, discussed how our friend fared after her rape in Nyossa. There was nothing we could do but be her friends, but it distressed us to know of the invisible injury she bore.
Now, she seemed preoccupied with her work. Her daughter had taken to Tintarian life quickly, as had Catrin, in the way that only the young can adapt and live in the moment.
52. Watchtower
That night, as I did every day we went to farm, I bathed in Gareth Pope’s private bathing room, so as not to offend the man with whom I shared a bed. I had just finished my courses that moon and had taken to storing strips, soap and linens for drying there. I gathered the used strips for disposal and added them to the waste in the privy next to the women’s baths. The sun was setting when I made my tired way up to our room. I knocked in the courtesy we had established, assuming there would be no answer as usual, but the door swung open and my husband stood inside the doorway.
“Edith,” he said. “Good evening.”
I stared at him in surprise, my left arm draped with my black cotton dress, the belt, apron and sagaris. I had changed into the celadon for the evening, planning on depositing the other items in the room and either seeking solace in a read on the turret’s top step or just sitting and listening to the relentless waves kissing the bluff rocks. I was tired and I felt like a failure that day, having had no magic in me that I could feel.
His eyes quickly glanced me over. Then he reached out and took the items draped over my left arm and took them inside. He reappeared in the doorway and shut the door behind him. “I told you, in my letter,” and here he paused and cleared his throat. “I told you about the watchtowers.”
Stupidly, I continued to stare.
He frowned. “I will let you go to bed. I can give you the room if you would like.”
I had not seen him in days, he having risen before me and retired after me. And then I remembered, I had woken up to the copper comb four days prior and had been hoping to thank him. I also remembered our pledge to think before speaking. And instead of saying that I was exhausted and wanted to be alone to read or stare out into the sea, I said, “Thank you for the comb, Alric. It is very pretty.”
He put his hands on his hips and nodded, still frowning.
I smiled. He was severe to a fault. I pondered whether he had ever smiled or laughed in his life. “You did not have to give me such a lavish present.”
He looked at a point past my shoulder. “You once asked me for a comb and I gave you a military issue scrap of tin. I did not know if Zinnia had provided you better.”
