Skin (11 page)

He was not there.

‘Taliesin?' I called, answered only by a mocking silence. I sat on the bank with
the afternoon yawning around me, feeling stupid for thinking he would come. Finally
I picked up my basket, whistled Neha to my heel, and began to walk away.

‘Ailia!'

He stood dripping on the bank, sunlight splintering off his wet shoulders.

I walked back and stood before him. He was even finer today with his hair in damp
tendrils around his face, water beading on the ridges of his cheeks. Again he wore
nothing but a pair of rough trousers, roped at the waist, and the carved bone whistle
at his hip. ‘Would you not have waited?' he asked.

‘I have waited long enough,' I said.

‘Be gone then, if you wish to stay no longer.'

I snorted. ‘I will check your wound at least.'

‘At least.' He presented his lip.

‘What is this?' I traced my fingers over his mouth. There was nothing left of yesterday's
cut. Just a thin silver scar. ‘It's perfectly healed,' I said in awe. ‘How can it
be?'

‘You tended it. Did you not think your own herbcraft was potent?'

‘Well, yes, but—' I faltered, hoping his swift healing would not bring our meeting
to an end.

He flopped onto the grass.

‘How did…why were you in the water?' I asked, sitting beside him.

‘I had to cross the river.' He stroked Neha's ear; she in turn licked the water from
his hand. ‘Sweet-tempered dog.'

I laughed. ‘Not normally.'

‘She senses a truly noble spirit,' he teased. It was the first time I had seen him
smile.

A silence fell between us. He picked up a pebble and cast it into the river. The
plop
echoed in the quietness. ‘What payment is required for your treatment?'

‘I expect no payment.'

‘Why not? Is it of no value?'

‘Yes, but…' Again, I was tripped by his question.

‘I accept no service without payment.' He sprang to his feet, strode to the forest
and slipped out of sight between the trees. Who was he that his lawsong permitted
him to walk in the Oldforest? Moments passed and I feared he might have gone again.
But then I heard rustling and he reappeared with a long stick of birch.

‘This one is perfect!' He squatted on one knee, drawing a small blade from his belt,
and tapered the stick to a point. When he was satisfied it was sharp, he walked to
the edge of the water and stepped into the shallows.

He stood motionless, his spear poised. He was delicate, far less of a warrior than
Ruther, but there was something older, darker, in his spirit that gave him another
strength.

He drew back his arm. ‘Hah!' he shouted as the spear shot forward. He splashed, stumbling,
then turned to me, grinning as he raised his stick with a fat silver salmon thrashing
at its tip. I laughed, delighted at his skill. Pulling the fish from the spear, he
stilled it with his blade on the grass. When it had ceased twitching, he carried
it to me and laid it at my feet. As he leaned forward, I caught the grain and honey
scent of his hair.

‘Beautiful,' I said.

He looked up. ‘Shall we feast?'

Our gaze held and I could not look away. There was something so knowing and yet needful
in his earth-brown eyes, and I was so unexpectedly pierced by him that, for no reason
I could fathom, I found I was crying.

‘Why do you weep? Would you have preferred a minnow?'

I shook my head, laughing through my tears.

It did not take him long to shape a small fire pit, fill it with branches, and fashion
a firedog from three green sticks. With river reed he plaited a rope and tied the
fish to the sticks by its mouth. ‘Can you make a flame?' he asked.

‘Not well,' I admitted. Unskinned, I was not permitted to craft fire. Only to tend
it.

He frowned. ‘Watch then.' He gathered a handful of tinder and bade me hold it. ‘Blow
gently,' he said while he sparked it with fire flint from his pouch.

It began to smoke in my palms as I blew.

‘Not bad,' he said and I hoarded his compliment like a jewel.

As the fish began to sizzle, a blister bubbled in the skin of its flank.

Taliesin leaned forward and burst it, then held his thumb to my lips. ‘You must have
the first taste.'

Tentatively, I took his thumb in my mouth, sucking the shreds of fish skin and juice
from its tip. We shared the dense red flesh straight from the bone, sweet and smoky,
and washed it down with river water that we drank straight from the flow.

It was only when we were sitting on the bank, legs outstretched and bellies full,
Neha gnawing the bones beside us, that I realised what he had eaten. ‘The salmon!
Are you not forbidden to eat it?'

He glanced at me. ‘Has plantcraft claimed all your knowledge?'

I looked away, fighting a wave of shame.

‘I can eat it beyond my skin home. To strengthen my skin.'

‘Perhaps if you told me your skin home—' I stiffened, ‘—I'd be less ignorant of that
at least.'

‘Beyond your travels, I am sure.' He shifted as he sat.

‘But where?' I pressed. Why had he cause to hide this?

His face clouded with irritation. ‘Does my skin home determine your opinion of me?'

‘Of course not.'

‘Then why do you pursue knowledge of no consequence?'

I was silent, caught again by his prickly logic.

He laughed softly. ‘What would you say if I told you that I do nothing but swim up
the river and down again, resting a moment here
or there. Taking my food where I
can find it. Harming no one.'

‘I would say that you mock me. And if not that, then you do not earn your place in
your tribe. Though there is something sweet in the freedom of it.'

He nodded. ‘Well answered.'

And I felt ripe with pride that I had pleased him.

He fondled the bone whistle around his hips, carved with symbols I did not understand.
I fought the urge to ask of them, and then it dawned upon me that I was with someone
who believed I had skin, someone who did not know that I was forbidden to learn.
‘Tell me what the patterns mean.'

‘These?' he said, lifting the whistle.

I nodded.

‘Close your eyes.' He picked up my hand and rubbed my fingers over the nubs of bone.
‘These are the marks of my ancestors.'

My eyes opened. ‘What does it feel like,' I asked quietly. ‘Your skin?' My heart
was thumping.

He frowned. ‘As yours—'

‘But I mean yours,' I said quickly. ‘Tell me how it feels to possess the salmon's
skin.'

The afternoon was very still. No breeze or bird cry broke the silence that had fallen
around us. When he answered, I knew from the music in his voice that he spoke from
his core. ‘The salmon is my story.' He gave a light, desolate laugh. ‘It is the mirror
of what little is perfect in me.'

I yearned to assure him there was much that was perfect in him. But I was beginning
to see the bruises beneath the pride he held like a shield before him. ‘Tell me more,'
I whispered.

‘What should I say?' He shrugged. ‘We all understand our totem.'

‘Is it not something different for each of us?'

His eyebrows lifted. ‘Perhaps. For me it is survival. The salmon
song will always
exist. My body dies, but my skin never will.'

I nodded, choked with the truth of it. I was bound to nothing that would endure.

‘Would you like to hear a story?' he asked.

‘Yes.'

He gouged ruts in the ground with a twig as he spoke. ‘In the time of the Singing
there were shapes in the water. No eyes, no fins, no soul. They could not swim. They
just drifted in the river. One night a Mother of fire threw a burning log into the
water and the sparks ignited the shapes and turned them into red salmon that darted
around.

‘The Mothers of sky were angry that the Mother of fire had made something so beautiful,
and said that they would cast them away to the four corners of the oceans. But before
they did this, the fire Mother put a little of the soil from the riverbank into the
salmons' noses, so they would never forget the smell of their birthplace. They would
swim until they found the smell that matched the one they carried within them. And
even if the journey killed them, they would die at home.' Taliesin looked up. ‘I
should not have told you this.'

‘Why did you tell it?'

‘Because you asked of my skin. And my stories are my skin. As are yours.' He drew
his knees to his chest. ‘If I fail this life, my skin stories will take me to another.'

‘You will not fail this life—'

‘How would you know?'

I reached out to touch his forearm wrapped around his legs. His muscles were as taut
as wood, but his skin was softer than a horse's muzzle.

He smiled, before pulling his arm away.

We sat together until evening coloured the western sky. I learned nothing of his
tribe or history, only of his favourite season (late summer) and companion dogs (hut-reared
wolves), his love of prey birds and dislike of combat arts. But the lightness of
his words could not mask the sharpness with which he watched the world and the tenderness
with which he met it. He could not be of low birth; he was learned.

I stood, calling Neha to my side, terrified that I would not see him again. He was
so tall that I had to tilt my head to find his eyes. ‘Thank you,' I said. ‘Payment
has been well made. Yesterday's dab of honey for today's fish and stories.'

‘A fair exchange,' he agreed. ‘There is no further business that binds us.'

‘No,' I said. ‘None at all.'

‘I shall meet you here tomorrow then?'

‘Yes,' I said with too much relief. ‘I will see you then.'

As I walked home through pastures and wheat fields doused in amber light, Taliesin's
words swirled around me. I knew what he said was true: for those held in skin, this
life—this fleshform—was just a fragment in a river that was ever-flowing. Totems
did not die, nor did the souls who had joined with them.

But for those like me, death
was
the end. A casting back to the void. For most of
the skinless this was too much to bear, it was why they relinquished their days to
the comforts of beer at the fringe fires. A life without ritual. A life unlived.

Now, more than ever, I knew that this would not be my way. I whistled for Neha, who
had bounded into a field in pursuit of a hare. I was going to search for my skin
until the last breath flowed from my body.

‘There you are!' Cookmother said, as I slipped into the kitchen. ‘Take these to the
council.' She pressed a jug of beer into each of my hands, too distracted by preparing
meat for the councillors to question the lateness of my return.

I walked straight back out into the dusk. Tribal council met on the third night of
the wane, or whenever Fraid required it. Most often in the Great House, but if the
evening was mild, like tonight, they would gather directly under the stars that would
guide them.

I wove between them, filling the horns of the twelve tribespeople who formed our
council: Fraid at the strong place, Llwyd to her left. Fibor and Etaina, Ruther's
father, Orgilos, and seven others.

‘Your son has disturbed us, Orgilos.' Fibor's voice still carried some of Beltane's
heat.

‘He speaks not for me nor I for him,' said Orgilos.

Fibor drank. ‘It is said that the apple does not fall wide of the tree.'

‘Sometimes pigs eat the apples and shit in the fields,' Orgilos responded.

Etaina threw back her head and laughed. ‘My sister's daughter is also newly returned
from fosterage,' she said. ‘Ruther is but one of many who begin to proclaim the light
of Rome. In the eastern tribes, there are many minded as he is minded.'

‘And what of their loyalty, wife?' Fibor raised his cup as I refilled it.

‘Dissolving in grape wine and olive oil,' said Fraid. ‘We are protected by distance.
And the strong minds of the western kings.'

‘We are protected by skin,' said Llwyd, and the council's silence acknowledged it.

I stood behind Fraid, outside the circle. The eastern horizon was deep-water blue
with one lively star rising to its surface.

‘You call us to determine if we should prepare for war, sister,' said Fibor to Fraid.
‘We are fools if we do not. We know the Romans
lust for these tribelands.' He looked
around the circle, eyes blazing, ‘They will come. If we are not prepared, then they
will fuck us like a dog!'

Fraid turned away.

‘Perhaps we should strengthen the earthworks around the hill,' agreed Orgilos. ‘As
a precaution.'

‘At the very least!' cried Fibor. ‘And replenish our stones and renew the chalk—'