Foxmask (77 page)

Creidhe was glad for them. But under this, there was something hard to bear, a wrenching reminder of the joy that could be had in the finding of a perfect partner, and the deathblow suffered when such a one was stolen away. She had tried, very hard, to shut herself off from feeling. She had tried to be a little as Margaret herself once was, calm, distant, moving through her days immune to pain or joy. This had not served Creidhe well. It took only a small thing, perhaps observing Sam and Brona as they shared a joke by the fire, or seeing the way her father held his newborn son in his arms, as if the babe were a treasure more valuable than all the gold in a dragon's hoard, or noticing Ash's work-scarred hand move to touch his wife's sleek auburn hair in a gesture of tenderness. These things brought Creidhe's pain alive so vividly she thought she would break apart, would shatter into brittle pieces, no longer able to bear the intensity of it.

A whole year. It was plain her family had expected her to be better by now, to have begun forgetting. But everything had seemed to make it worse, to make her remember. The birth of her small brother, Eirik: it had been a joyful occasion, for once Creidhe had reassured her mother about the Seal Tribe, in a general sort of way, the delivery had been accomplished calmly and easily. Eirik was a fair-haired infant of robust health and strapping build; plainly he took after his Wolfskin father. And Creidhe had thought of Keeper, who had taken such care of his small, frail kinsman; Keeper, robbed by Thorvald's quick blade of ever having a son or daughter of his own to love as he had loved Small One. She had clung, for a little, to the hope that she might be carrying his child when she came home, but it had not been so. A dark day, that had been, when her monthly bleeding came on time; so dark she had come close to spilling out the whole truth to Brona, just so she could speak Keeper's name aloud. But she had not; Brona was happy, and that had made Sam happy, and why would Creidhe spoil their well-deserved joy in any way? What had happened to her was not their fault. Besides, keeping the truth inside, secret, seemed necessary; the worst thing, now, would be to let her memories wither and fade. They were all she had left.

She sat on the steps, her bag beside her, and let the afternoon sun warm her. Soon she'd head for home; it was a good day for walking, and the solitary journeys from her family's longhouse to Margaret's and back again were somehow soothing. Under the wide sky, with the sea's hushed music in her ears and the sweep of the gentle hillside before her, she was able to remember how small she was in the great memories of the ancestors, how tiny and insignificant her pain in the long tale of her people's history. It did not provide solace, but it brought acceptance just a little closer. She had not reached it yet, for acceptance seemed to her the death of hope. And without hope, what was there to live for? She had thought, at first, that she had no hope at all, but it could not be so: if it did not exist, somewhere within her, why had she bothered to come home? Why not walk off a cliff, or take a knife to her wrists, and put an end to the hurt once and for all?

There had been reasons to go on, of course: to deliver her mother's child, to see Sam and Brona married, to avoid causing her family any more sorrow. But she knew that even without these things she would never have made an end of herself. Life was too precious to be treated with such contempt. It was for the ancestors to decide how long or short a mortal span would be, not for each man and woman. If she still lived, even with such grief, there was a purpose to it. And purpose was hope, in a way.

All the same, she had not followed her sister Eanna's suggestion, not
fully. She had taken the Journey out, looked at it, and put it away again. She had replenished her stock of colored wools, replaced needles she had lost, sharpened her little shears. But she had made not a single stitch. For this task, her hands seemed to have no will, her mind no pattern.

The sun was kind today; its warmth was easing her aching back, bringing life to her cramped hands. Little puffy clouds passed over; she could see their shadows skipping across hillside and drystone dike and rocky outcrop, then dancing away again. Light . . . shade . . . light . . . shade . . . A gull glided overhead, its voice high and harsh. A silent voice, fierce in its entreaty, spoke behind that call, chilling her blood.
Put him in your web, now, now!
Small One had believed it, and Keeper had believed it. It seemed possible even Eanna, a wise woman who surely should have known better, believed that Creidhe with her needle and wools had some power beyond the ordinary. Could she have saved him? Had she indeed needed only to set his image on the linen to determine whether he walked onward in his own journey or fell lifeless under Thorvald's sword? Creidhe shivered. She was no goddess, for all Keeper's sweet words. She was flesh and blood, ordinary, weak, helpless . . . and it was too late . . .

Cold logic spoke inside her: the voice of her sister, the priestess, or perhaps her own voice.
If it is too late, then surely to do it now can cause no harm. Why not try? Why not finish what you have begun? Then, at least, the effort of spinning and dyeing and setting aside these materials will not have been wasted. Take your work out again. Thread your needle. See if your hands will fashion one stitch, or two, or three. Not to go on with this is exactly the same as death. It means you're given up on life. Move your Journey onward. Keeper deserves no less
.

It was strange to find, after so long away from this most cherished of tasks, that her fingers obeyed her instantly, that the choice of color and starting point and pattern happened as it always had with the Journey, seemingly without any decision on her part; how her hands worked ever more quickly and her eyes scanned the blank expanse of linen ever more intently as the images that would fill it formed themselves whole and complete in her mind, ready for needle and wool to give them physical form. She sewed as the sun sank into the west, as the breeze got up and the ewes headed for shelter with their lambs at heel. She sewed as the sky cooled and darkened; she went on until she could barely tell sea-blue from weed-green, scarlet from rich purple. At some point Ash came out with a warm cloak and laid it around her shoulders; he had lit a lantern and put it on the steps nearby. A little later Margaret brought soup and bread and set them beside her. A man rode away
to the north, probably with a message to let Nessa and Eyvind know she'd be staying the night here. Apart from that they left her undisturbed. She was hardly aware of time, of place, of the cold or the darkness, only of the need to make this, a need now as fierce and pressing in her as Small One's silent entreaty that long-ago day when the two of them had waited in hiding as the hunt raged above them on the slopes of the Isle of Clouds.

She was lying curled up on the steps when Ash and Margaret went out to check again, some time after supper. Her cheek was pillowed on her hand; the other hand clutched the length of embroidered linen to her breast. Needles and threads were safely stowed; Creidhe was ever an orderly worker. Her breathing was calm; her long lashes were closed peacefully over the blue eyes. She was sleeping as soundly as a child.

While Ash carried Creidhe to the bed his wife had prepared, Margaret gathered up the Journey and the little bag and bore them indoors, out of the dew. This embroidery had long been Creidhe's most prized work, and her most secret. All the same, it was more than Margaret could manage not to look at it now. When Ash came back to the long room, she was standing by the table with the bright expanse of delicate color, of intricate, mysterious detail laid out before her in the warm glow of a lamp. Margaret was stock still, entranced.

“Look,” she said simply. “Just look.”

All was there: all of a life, and all of the unseen life of the heart, the sweet, the terrible, the strange visions of the spirit. Here was family, with its strength and its warmth, its joys and its losses. Beyond family, the images showed a more distant past in which two boys marked their flesh with a hunting knife and swore an oath in blood. The images moved on through time. They did not make a story. Sometimes they did not even show what could be judged real or possible, but always they made a picture of truth. Nobody, looking at this wondrous piece of work, could doubt that. Here was Creidhe herself, flying through the sky, her hands reaching out to touch the moon. Here Thorvald, alone. His small figure was made with great care, the red hair blown into wild streamers by the wind, the eyes shadow-dark, the expression forbidding. Their boat, the voyage, the images of steep, stark islands, lonely in a cold sea. One isle was shrouded in perpetual mist, encircled by birds. Then stranger things: eyes hidden in the bushes, a wall of screaming faces, hands in the water, guiding a little craft through wild seas.

Creidhe had left a blank space before she began again, as if there were a certain part of this tale unknown or undecided. On the right of this empty expanse of linen she had fashioned today's work. Here was a picture of such
joy and loveliness it put a lump in Margaret's throat to see it. A man and a woman flying, or floating, hand in hand; he dark, lean, fierce in appearance; she of rounded form, blue-eyed, with long hair dancing in a golden cloud around her dazzled features. They seemed to hang in air, the two of them, and about them was a cloud of small things, fine, beautiful things, as if Creidhe would show here all the wonders the world held, if only one would open one's eyes to them: birds of many kinds, and shining fish, and beetles with glowing carapaces. There was a creature like a dog, or a cat, or maybe a fox: Margaret remembered foxes from Rogaland, and this had that same look, bright-eyed and wary. Flowers and grains and grasses, creeping mosses and fronded ferns. Heart's-eye vibrant in its purple-pink, and celandine, and buttercups. Here, too, were works of man: a scrap of writing in neat black ink, though Creidhe herself could not write; a garment edged in that same heart's-eye shade; a pair of little boots, like a child's. Amidst the circling frieze of wonder, the two gazed at one another as if they were the only man and woman in all the world. It was only later, when the first shock of this stunning tapestry of life had passed, that the viewer noticed another figure there: at the bottom, cross-legged on a flat stone, a little ragged child, singing.

“We've all been terribly wrong,” Margaret whispered, her fingers moving to touch the bright hair of the joyous, soaring girl. “She did not find cruelty and abuse on that island, she found love.”

“Found it and lost it,” said Ash. “But what goes here?” He was looking at the blank part, the part Creidhe had chosen not to make.

“I have no idea,” Margaret said. “Either she does not know what happened, or is reluctant to set it down. He died, perhaps. Or sent her away, though that seems unlikely if she has made his image truly here. I suspect Eanna may know a little more, but the wise woman keeps her own counsel, she always has. Most certainly, Creidhe's sorrow is not for Thorvald; what love she felt for my son has been quite eclipsed by this. There is such power in these images. It is as if the gods spoke through her. I can understand why she held back from doing more; and why, once begun, she could not stop until she finished it.”

“I wonder,” mused Ash. “I wonder if it really is finished?”

After a year in the Lost Isles, Thorvald was learning caution. All the same, the boat was ready, a fair copy of the
Sea Dove
, and the fellows eager to put her to the test in open seas. There was no doubt they badly needed to establish some contact with realms farther afield, particularly with the Light Isles, now more often known by their Norse name of Orkneyjar, Isles of the Seal. They
needed wood for boat-building—he knew Eyvind had an agreement with the Jarl in Freyrsfjord for a supply—and good quality iron. They needed breeding stock to replenish what had been lost in the years of the hunt. They had not much to offer in return, but that would change in the future; Thorvald would make sure of it. Meanwhile, a voyage to those shores, just to open preliminary discussions, was desirable. Once there, it was best if Thorvald started the process by approaching those influential men he knew personally, such as Grim and Thord. And Eyvind. He was not looking forward to seeing Eyvind again, but that challenge must be faced some time, and the sooner the better, Niall told him. Eyvind would be angry, no doubt. But Creidhe had been home a long while, provided the
Sea Dove
had weathered the voyage, and her father would be reconciled, in part, to Thorvald's actions. Eyvind might be strong enough to take your head off with a single blow, but that didn't mean he was actually going to do it. The Wolfskin was a leader; furious he might be that his daughter had run away, but he would still be keen to listen. Creidhe was probably married with a child on the way, joked Ranulf, and would have forgotten Thorvald entirely. Thorvald did not respond to this. He had business with Creidhe as well as with her father, business that took up a great deal more of his thoughts than he wished.

They left in spring. After the crossing to the Northern Isles they sailed southward, and when the Light Isles came in sight they hugged the western coastline all the way to the sheltered bay of Hafnarvagr. There they left the
Swiftwing
at anchor and procured horses for the ride north to Thorvald's home. He made it plain to his companions that this journey was to be undertaken in a precise order: first his mother, so she would not hear of his arrival from others; then a message sent to Eyvind and Nessa, a formal message from himself as emissary from the Lost Isles, requesting talks on matters of trade and treaties. Then Creidhe, if her parents had not already wed her to some likely nobleman and sent her off to Caithness or all the way to Rogaland. Creidhe alone and in private. He'd have to beg that from Nessa.

It nagged at him, irritating as a burr next to the skin: the need for her, the memory of her, the knowledge that he had somehow failed her. The fact that she had not forgiven him: he had never asked her what it was that he had done that was so terrible it shattered their old friendship. He hoped time, and home, and the support of her family had changed her mind; that it would be the old Creidhe who stepped through the doorway of her parents' house, her arms open in welcome, her blue eyes alight for him. There was a girl in the Lost Isles, daughter of one of the leaders from the northern region, who had come to the last two councils with her father, lodging in Brightwater.
Thorvald had not exchanged more than a few words with her, but he had seen the way she watched him, coolly, gravely, as if assessing what he was made of. She had smooth dark hair and serene gray eyes, and nothing at all of the giggling, mock-shy demeanor other girls showed in his presence. He liked that. He liked her. But she was not Creidhe, and never could be.