“Before dinner?”
“Yes. You looked deep in conversation.”
“He is taking me to a farm tomorrow. It is a last effort to identify my penchant.”
I felt him turn on his side to face me. “Edith, tomorrow is a day of rest.”
I rolled onto my back and looked at him, only bits of his outline visible in the nearly starless dark. “What am I to say to my archpriest? I am trying to be a good new believer.”
“I do not like it. He works you too hard.”
“Says a man who never rests.”
He leaned a little towards me. “Are we still thinking before we speak and you show me actual concern or do you just want to be a difficult woman tonight?”
His reproach both rankled me and sparked something in my belly. I sighed. “My courses are due and I am in a poor mood. I thank you for caring.”
It took him another moment to reply. “All the more reason he should not tax you so. Does a woman not need to rest during that part of a moon?”
Please do not be kind to me, I thought. “I need to know if I have magic,” I replied. “I have, in a way, unexpectedly fallen in love with Mother Earth. I like worshipping her and praying to her. She makes sense to me. In a way no other faith has. I need to know if I can serve her even more. And if I cannot, I can set aside that wish and serve her as a scribe.” I spoke in a rush and ended my words with an exhale, feeling foolish.
He was silent for a long while. Then he said, “Yes, I understand what you speak of. I never had any draw to Father Fire like my brothers and father. Earth makes sense to me as well. It did to my mother. My father claimed my mother had the smallest bit of earth magic because she could always calm a horse. I think she just liked horses.”
“Your father told me she was difficult but compassionate,” I said without thinking.
“He is correct. She was,” he replied, something tender in his tone. “I will go with you tomorrow. When do you leave?”
“To the farm?”
“Yes. We can ride Maggie. It is easier on you than guiding a horse yourself. I do not want you to wear yourself out before you even try your hand at magic.”
I could think of no way to counter this argument and my traitorous body thrilled at the idea of riding Maggie with him, whether I sat in front or behind.
Part IV. Goddess
58. Girl
After breakfast the next morning, as we met Cian by the stables, without his robes, dressed much like my husband but in browns, he showed the slightest irritation at seeing Alric but masked it before I think Alric noticed. Alric spoke to a stable boy about Maggie as I greeted Cian good morning and said, “My husband worries about my spending my energy. May he accompany us?”
Cian agreed, solicitously and then began to chat with my husband as we made our way down to the city, Cian on his usual white mount and Alric and I on Maggie. Alric had again chosen to sit behind me on her and I let myself relax against him.
The two men spoke about some lord overtaxing his sharecroppers. Alric, having heard the king’s chamber session’s outcome via Jeremanthy, agreed with Cian that while it was a local issue, it could lead to a countrywide trend and Hinnom had been right to intervene. I thought that while Hinnom was most definitely insane, he had a certain talent for kingship. They may be savages in many ways, but I was impressed by the way Tintar was ruled.
When we reached the farm in question, fields of melons, chard, cabbage and squash spread out before us behind wooden fences. We dismounted, tied up the horses and met with a rather suspicious farmer and his adult son who led us to a field plowed but without a crop. It was bordered by a small pear orchard that looked as if it fed their family and was not grown to sell. We stood in the orchard. I was close to Alric who, as he often did, had his hands on his hips, standing just behind me. The smell of the orchard was heady, decadent. The pears had mostly been picked and the white blossoms were decaying and floating down from the branches as they died. For a moment, the knowledge of his closeness and the essence of the fruit and flowers in my nose aroused me. I imagined laying down with him in the grass beneath our feet and letting him lazily fuck me, my hair loose and spread out beneath my head, pale petals dancing around our nakedness. Would he say my name, the name only he called me?Edith.
I hated when men blamed women’s behavior on their courses, but I put a fisted hand to my mouth and bit down on the forefinger knuckle of my right hand, trying to shake off the ripe pinkness rising over my breasts and neck. It must be my courses, my blood going hot knowing it would be bled soon. I was going mad. I needed to visit Gareth’s bath tonight and in privacy, pleasure myself and rid my body of this urge.
“Edie,” Cian began, after speaking with the two farmers. “Could you walk to the center and pray? Bleed, of course.”
I undid the leather covering of the axe’s pointed end to free it to swipe my palm on it. I had sat it across the saddle in front of me as I did not want it to jab Alric in the leg. It hung now, back along my right thigh. Without looking at any of them, I stepped out from under one of the pear trees and chose one of the hollows of the plowed field in the center and walked farther and farther towards the middle. I had worn my Tintarian black cotton dress. I liked the celadon so much that I had asked Cian to tell me in advance of when we went to farms so I could wear the black dress which absorbed the work we did much better.
I sank onto my knees, resting my rear end on my heels. I pricked my right palm on the sagaris, the pain now ritual for me, the cuts only delivering drops. I pressed both palms into the dirt at my knees.
“Good day, goddess,” I began. “I have decided to continue to be truthful in my prayers to you. I do like you, but I am frustrated. I would like to know, if you don’t mind, today. If I have no magic, I will serve you in scribing. If I do, please, please tell me. This one-sided game with you is tiring.”
Nothing happened.
I sighed and continued. “Alright, here is my hope. I am asking you for some kind of certainty. My parents were never happy with me. I married the first pretty boy to compliment me and he happened to be of noble blood. Then I could not give him an heir and that made our life a misery. I ran away. Then I made a happy life for myself and that life, after ten winters, was taken from me by invading Tintarians and one of them is now my husband. And as he was made to marry me, we are no love match. But I, in my endless capacity for stupidity have now decided that I admire him, respect him, even like him and that I want him to swive me. In that nearby pear orchard, in fact. But he does not see me the same way. Do you see what I mean when I say certainty? Please, goddess, give me something to hold onto.”
