Skin (16 page)

‘I will be back soon,' I said, retying my cloak.

‘Be sure that you are, sister,' called Bebin after me. ‘I will find stories for your
absences no longer.'

Even as I hurried down to the fringes, I knew what I would find when I got there.
I pushed my way through the knot of people gathered outside the tent I had visited
that morning.

Inside the cramped space, Cookmother was bent over a figure lying on linen wraps
on the ground. An evil smell poured from her. Though her face was swollen and badly
blemished, I saw it was Heka.

Cookmother gasped with relief at my arrival. ‘Quickly, Ailia, help me! There is infection
in the blisters and my compresses will not clear them.' Bundles of herbs lay strewn
around her and she was wringing hot water from bloodied linen strips. ‘Nothing relieves
her—'

‘She is cursed!' cried a voice from the crowd around us. ‘Skinsores are the mark
of the lie-teller. A blemish for each lie told.'

‘Confess your lies, if you've told them, dirt-dweller,' said Cookmother to Heka.
‘It may be all that saves you.'

But Heka was beyond hearing or speaking. Her eyelids flickered with a roll of fever.

‘May I sit with her alone?' I asked.

‘Do what you can.' Cookmother hauled herself to standing. ‘My cures are spent.'

Heka's skin was ashen. Her face, throat and arms were covered in rosy eruptions,
their white centres weeping with pus. Heat poured from her and she moaned with pain.

Had I done this? These were violent sores and had come quicker than any flesh-law
would allow. If this was my curse, it had manifested more swiftly than even a journeyman's
geas.

Heka groaned as a boil broke at her temple.

If I had in any way crafted this horror, I could not allow it to continue. I leaned
close to her. ‘Heka—'

Her eyes sprang open at my voice and filled with a wild hope. ‘Lift the geas,' she
whispered.

‘Who killed the forest's child?' I murmured into her blistered ear.

Her breath laboured through her swollen throat. ‘It was I.'

I swallowed. ‘For what reason?'

‘So you would know what I have known.' Her words were unfathomable.

‘What have you known?' I stared at her, but she spoke no more. The fever was robbing
her breath. I could not allow her to burn a moment longer or she would surely break
her ties with this world. ‘It is lifted.'

Straightaway the redness began to pale. I pressed her brow and felt it cool.

‘Thank you,' she whimpered.

‘Ailia?' called Cookmother from the entrance.

‘Come!' I cried. ‘Your herbs have prevailed. She becomes well.'

‘What? By Mothers, you are right.' Cookmother bustled in and stood beside me, smiling.

We gathered up the bandages and took them to the well. I was silent as we washed
them, struggling to fathom the power of my geas. At my wish, Heka had been sickened
and healed. The truth of it shocked me, but I could not deny it. Was it something
in the forest—the
fish, the pool—that had bestowed me this strength? I burned to
ask Cookmother, but how could I confess that I had entered the forest? That I had
transgressed her gravest foreboding?

The afternoon brought heatwork in the making of cheese. It called for our largest
iron cookpot, four women to lift it and hours of patience for stirring the milk.

We worked tirelessly, seasoning the curd with droplets of sweat. Bebin and Ianna
chattered without pause and Cah broke in with her usual barbs, but I remained quiet,
my thoughts spiralling, until at day's end, in need of giving them voice, I asked
Bebin to walk with me.

We stood on an upturned bucket to mount the earthen ledge circling the hilltop behind
the first wall. Walking north along the ledge, we reached a place where several spiked
beams had rotted and tumbled into the ditch below. Here we sat with our legs dangling,
staring out to the eastern horizon, watching the nightfall.

There could surely be no colours like those of a Summer dusk, the bruised pinks,
mauves and greys falling like gauze on the vivid green flatlands. A wane moon was
ascending and we could hear the distant natter of day's end drifting from the town.

Bebin looked up at the emerging stars. ‘The bull's head is almost mid-sky. Tomorrow
will favour unions.' Although she had only the first degree of training, she was
gifted in star-reading and I loved to hear her speak of it.

‘Then it is a shame your traveller is not returned,' I teased.

‘Nor yours.' She glanced at me. ‘Where are your thoughts, Ailia? Have they followed
Ruther to Rome?'

‘No,' I laughed. ‘I've barely thought of him.'

‘So what has quieted you today?'

I scratched a small welt that had risen on my hand, then looked down in alarm as
it bled. Did my skin now begin to betray my lies?
It was time to speak before my
flesh confessed what I did not. I inhaled and told her that I had stepped into the
Oldforest. I told her of the fish, the drop in the water, Heka's mark on the fawn
and the command of life I had shown that day. The only thing I did not speak of was
Taliesin.

She listened, round-eyed. When I was finished, she was grave. ‘You must not go back
in. I warn you with all my heart. The Oldforest is dangerous to those without training.
I know only little, but I have heard of such drops as the pool you found—' She paused,
her face taut with worry.

‘What are they?' I urged.

‘They are holes in our hardworld.'

‘But where do they lead?'

Bebin shook her head. ‘That is journeywomen's knowledge. But I do know that they
are tears in the truth of things and if you fall through them you are unprotected.'

‘Why does it draw me? This fish? This place?'

Again she shrugged. ‘Perhaps they sense easy prey. You are untaught and pure-hearted.'

As she spoke I was ashamed of my ignorance, my easy surrender to the enchantment
of the fish.

‘These are powerful places, only for people with knowledge. Stay clear, I beg you,
sister. Cookmother will insist on the same.'

I grabbed her arm. ‘Don't tell Cookmother,' I pleaded. ‘Promise you will speak nothing
of this to her.'

Bebin nodded. ‘As you wish,' she agreed. ‘But it is not well to hold secrets from
those who would protect you.'

‘Just this one,' I said. ‘There will be no cause for further secrets to be kept.'

‘Only if you promise me something also,' she said.

‘Ay—what is it?'

‘That you won't go in again to the forest—not one time hence.'

‘I promise,' I said.

We both looked out over the lowlands. A breeze carried the scent of willow blossom
up from the river.

Even as I promised, I knew that I must go in just one last time. Taliesin was caught
there, hidden from me. I would find him. I would bring him out of the forest's darkness
and into the light.

There was news of a rider as we returned, and all through the township, people spilled
from their doorways, bearing torches, gathering to share the news.

The rider had come from the Artrebates, a powerful tribe that shared our northeastern
border. King Caradog had overthrown their tribeking and taken control of their tribelands.

Caradog was building an army.

Rome would not like it.

Rome would stop it.

It was right at our doorstep.

The skinsong is within us.

It is the cord that leads us back to the Mothers.

T
HE
NIGHT
SKY
was paling to a bloody dawn when I reached the hazel-ringed pool the
next morning. I had crept from the kitchen in darkness. Neha had led me, untorched,
along the river, but I had walked through the forest alone, with only the faintest
first light and the water's soft gurgle to guide me.

A figure stood by the pool's edge, dark against the white mist.

With a surge of relief I ran to him. ‘Where were you yesterday?' I murmured into
his chest. ‘Why did you not come?'

His face was troubled. ‘I am not a dog to be summoned at will.'

‘Of course, but I…I heard your voice—' I faltered, dismayed at his sharpness. ‘We
must leave here, Taliesin, both of us. It is dangerous for me to be in this place,
and already I am fraught with changes—'

‘What changes?' He frowned.

‘There is no time to tell you now, will you come?'

‘Tell me what is altered in you,' he insisted.

I groaned, and hurriedly told him of Heka, the fawn, the skinsores.

He looked at me. ‘You set a geas then called it back. What is the strangeness in
it?'

‘It is not the art of a kitchen girl!'

He snorted. ‘Your gifts are plain enough. Is that the whole of it?'

‘No. There is more. I have been too easily enchanted. Never should I enter this forest,
but I was led by a river fish against my will.'

‘And yet you come again today,' he said.

‘Only to find you!' I cried. ‘We have always met outside the forest. Never within.
We must return to that place, Taliesin, or find a new one, far from the Oldforest.'

‘I cannot leave here,' he said.

‘But that is madness. Why not?'

He turned away. ‘We made an agreement—no questions.'

‘No!' My frustration erupted. ‘I cannot honour this agreement. I am kept in an unending
fog with you. You draw me here, where I am entirely forbidden, and now you say you
cannot leave. Look at me!' I commanded.

He turned back, his eyes bright with anger.

‘Who are you, Taliesin? What do you want of me?'

‘Nothing!' he shouted. ‘I ask nothing of you—I never have. Leave, if what I offer
is not enough.'

‘How dare you make such a challenge to me. Does it mean so little whether I stay
or go?'

He strode a few paces upriver and stood with his back to me.

‘You retreat to a hole like an animal,' I spat. ‘Why will you not stand where you
can be seen? Do you so fear the light?'

‘It is not that I fear it,' he said, his voice low, ‘I know it is not there.'

‘Of course it is there,' I scoffed. ‘There is always light.' I walked
to his side.
‘You wrap yourself in a blanket of mystery while I shiver alone outside. It is selfish.
Cruel.'

He laughed, coldly.

‘By the Mothers, what is funny in it?'

‘It is not the first time I have worn those words.'

‘So now you claim them?' I cried. ‘I seek you against the gravest of warnings, yet
you do not choose to return the effort.'

‘There is no choice in it.'

‘There is always a choice.'

He turned to me, his face twisted. ‘Do you not think this is hard for me also, Ailia?
It is harder than you could know.'

His words caught in my chest. Suddenly he was softer than a pup and I could not kick
him again. ‘I am weary of these questions without answer,' I said quietly. ‘If you
wish to see me you will leave the Oldforest. I cannot come here again.'

His eyes closed then opened slowly. ‘As you wish.'

I stared at him in despair. Then, beneath the indifference that masked him, I saw
such anguish in his dark eyes that I could do nothing but pull him toward me, cradling
his head as it dropped on my shoulder. ‘What strange and magical creature are you?'
I murmured into his hair. ‘I did not mean it. I will not stop coming, I cannot. But
there is one thing that you must tell me at the very least. One question that cannot
be left unanswered…'

He lifted his head and met my gaze.

‘Is it love that we have in the chasm between us?' I whispered. ‘Tell me. This alone
I need to know.'

He did not speak.

My hands dropped from his shoulders and fell to my sides. I waited but still he did
not answer.

He did not love me. This was the truth he had found so hard to share.

We stood like this, each staring at the ground, as I reeled with the pain of it.
At least now it was known.

Finally he took my hand and led me through the mist to a boulder by the river's edge,
where we sat down. The flow was quiet in the dawn, and shafts of salmon-coloured
light spun off the water's surface. A hazel branch dropped one red berry and we watched
it drift downward.

In the breaking day, Taliesin began to sing. His voice was piercingly tender. But
as soon as I heard it my belly flooded with dread. I braced my palms against the
cold rock.

He was singing me his skinsong.

Human kin, hear my skinsong,

The song of my mother,

The song that has made me born.

I heard its first cycle in silence. I was not expected to sing here, only to listen.
His song told of a childhood lost to the rivers and forests, a lonely life, a father
unknown, and a mother's betrayal. Its sadness shifted the fluids of my heart.