The Unfinished Song (Book 5): Wing (32 page)

In the evening, they spread the potatoes on a layer
of straw on the ground, and when they returned just before sunrise
the next morning, the tubers were frozen into hard lumps. They left
them that way for several nights in a row, sheltering them from the
sun during daylight hours under the hutches.

On the days they did not spend at the alpine field,
Farla “helped” her mother weave at the loom. Whatever color thread
Essi asked for, Farla sabotaged it. Essi had no idea the threads on
the loom were not exactly as she planned them. Dindi did all of
Farla’s other chores: she tended the hearth, soaked, diced and
mashed frozen black potatoes, hard as rocks—
chunyo
made in
the previous year—crushed spice for the soup, gutted wild guinea
pigs for roasting, washed the dirty fleece rugs, and darned holes
in the blankets.

If my mother could see me now, she’d be
amazed
. Dindi smiled to herself. She had not let herself think
of her mother in a long time. It hurt too much. What she would have
given to be home in the big, subterranean kitchen in Lost Swan
clanhold, cooking goat cheese
pishas
with her mother, her
aunts and her cousins.

On the fourth day, Farla took Dindi back up to the
potato field. This was when the hardest work began. They had to
stomp on the potatoes with their feet, to squeeze out any remaining
moisture. Then all the potatoes, several baskets worth, had to be
carried down the mountain in a rucksack—this was Dindi’s chore, of
course. Down the hill, back at the hut, Farla and Dindi spent the
rest of the day peeling the potatoes. Eventually, Farla explained
they would be dumped into a large ceramic jar of water to soak for
seven days, and then set out on a mat to dry for seven days more.
After all that, the frozen potatoes would be near indestructible,
and last for moons, even years.

As they squatted together on a mat, peeling the
nasty black potatoes, they could hear Essi inside the cabin,
bumping and cursing. “Farla! Farla, you useless insect! Help me
find my stick!”

“It’s next to your loom, you blind fool!” Farla
shouted back without turning her head.

More thumps and cusses from inside. Finally, Essi
appeared in the doorway. “Get in here and help me, Farla or I’ll
beat you to death as I should have the day you were born
hexed!”

“You see how it is! You see how she treats me like a
slave!” said Farla, gesturing at the blind woman. “No doubt you
thought I
was
her slave!
The Blind Woman’s Dwarf!
That’s what they call me! As if I were filth—like
you
. I,
who am her own blood and bone! But what they don’t tell you is that
she herself
hexed me, my dear blind mother, so that I would
never grow beyond the height of a child, and never be able to leave
her. How could she survive without her eyes?”

“Don’t listen to her crazy lies,” scoffed the old
woman. “I was not always blind.
She
is the one who hexed me,
my deformed spawn, my wretched rat pup, so that I would never leave
her. She isn’t allowed to own a loom of her own, half-sized roach
that she is, so she needs me to weave for her. If it were not for
what we earned bartering my blankets, we would starve!”

Farla rolled her eyes.

Essi hurled more insults at her daughter until the
old woman began to wheeze and complain of dizziness. Farla shoved
the potatoes aside, helped her mother to drink some water, and
disappeared with her inside. Snoring followed shortly. Farla
returned outside to peel potatoes.

“Why do you do it, Farla?” Dindi asked softly.

“Put up with the old sow? Who knows? One day I may
kill her and myself and put us both out of our misery.”

“Why do you not give her the colors she asks for?
Why do you make her weavings ugly?”

Farla scowled. “She thinks she supports us with her
fine blankets. In truth, the rest of the clan only pretends to
accept them, out of pity. Then they burn the foul things. If I were
not cursed, I would be married now, and supporting
her
, not
the other way around. I will never be allowed to be a woman, or to
marry, but I won’t live off my mother’s weaving. Let it be
ugly!”

“Why don’t you weave yourself? Don’t you know
how?”

Farla jerked to her feet. She always moved
spastically, as if she had to dodge invisible blows just to cross a
yard. Dindi didn’t know what the woman was about until Farla darted
inside the hut and returned with her arms full of blanket. She
spread this in front of Dindi.

Unlike the motley grayish things her blind mother
wove, the blanket was pure white with an array of orange and black
spiders against a lattice of slender blue webs. The craftsmanship
was masterful.

“I learned as a child, before it was clear I would
never grow, you see?” For the first time, Farla did not scowl. A
trace of pride, under a pink blush, touched her cheeks. She held
something precious and she knew it. “
I
made this. I am a
daughter of Spider Lady as much as any woman in this clan. They
can’t deny that, no matter how much they would like to.”

“Farla!” Dindi stroked the soft wool. “This is
exquisite! Why can’t you show them this and claim your
birthright?”

“A girl must stand taller than her loom to become a
woman. Otherwise, it is taboo for her to own the loom, and taboo to
weave.”

“But isn’t that just a formality? Anyone can see you
are a woman, not a child.”

“What’s taboo is taboo.”

“But the taboo is ridiculous.”

“Fa, and I suppose you’d just go ahead and break any
taboo that didn’t suit you!” scoffed Farla.

You have no idea
. Dindi could tell she
wouldn’t make any headway with Farla in that direction.
Besides,
I’m not the greatest example to follow. Look what happened to
me
.

“Fa, this is stupid!” Farla said. “What can someone
like you understand about someone like me? You’re tall and
beautiful and you’ve never had to work hard for anything in your
life. Even now that you’re supposedly a slave, your master dotes on
you like an ewe with her first lamb.

“Tell no one about my blanket, or I’ll take old
Essi’s stick and beat you skinless! Finish the potatoes and put
them in the water jar to soak, as I told you!”

Farla folded her blanket carefully and disappeared
with it back into the hut.

Winter bleak soothed Umbral more than summer lush.
The cold, empty mountains demanded nothing from him. They only
dared him to survive. They did not tempt him to leach their bounty,
absorb their light and color into his darkness. He could walk and
stalk them without guilt. Any beast that prowled the winter slopes
was like to be as hungry and mean as he, and he would slay it
without hesitation. He had a bow to take down prey, and a stone ax
to fell firewood. He would let the terrain decide what was best to
take home. He did cross paths with a mangy yet fierce cougar, but
the killer took one look at him and fled without a fight.

He would have welcomed a fight. Better by far than
the fight prowling inside his own head.

Just keep walking
, whispered the voice.
Just leave. Say you never found her. Say she escaped. Warn her
never to go to the Labyrinth. Then leave forever and don’t look
back. Let her go
.

Shut up, Kavio
. Umbral aimed his bow at a
branch dropping snow, but there was nothing real to shoot.
Shut
up, shut up, shut up
.

I will kill you before I let you kill her
,
warned Kavio.

You’re nothing but a shard, a shade, a memory.
You can’t kill anyone. You can’t
save
anyone. You’re dead,
you damn fool
.

Death won’t stop me
.
I love her too
much
.

Shut up, shut up, shut up!

Umbral punched the nearest tree until he bloodied
his fist. Surprisingly, that helped.

But it wasn’t enough to stop the thread inside him,
Kavio’s memory, which was growing stronger every day.

You want a fight, Kavio? Fine. You’re on. I
killed you once, I can kill you again
.

Umbral went to the river. The Ice Snake, they called
it. It flowed directly from Orangehorn Mountain, from the same
headwaters that fed the tribehold, but all through the winter
months the surface turned glossy and hard. The ice was solid as
earth in places, but thin in others. Umbral found a weak point and
pounded it with the butt of his hunting bow until it shattered.

He stripped off his clothes and dived into the
freezing water.

Doing my job for me, Umbral?
laughed
Kavio.

Umbral ducked his head under the water. He
experimented with the gills that had appeared for him before, and
found he could breathe the water, though it hurt like stabbing
daggers. Cold slowed time. Everything glittered more clearly, a
transparent universe undulated in slow motion, and he could discern
what normally flashed by too fast to see, threads of thought, of
heart, of action and reaction, of motion and emotion, the vast
tangle intertwining, interweaving, always changing, the very
threads of life itself. Nothing was apart from this tapestry, not
even the shadow a Deathsworn cast. He could see into his own
colorless aura, the threads he knew and the ones which were alien
to him: Kavio. These he grasped, in the fist of his mind.

He squeezed.

Terrible pain rippled through him, but he knew it
was not his own. A scream bubbled in the ice water, but he knew it
was not his scream. A death banged on his heart, but he knew it was
not his death. It was working. Kavio was dying. The last memory of
his would soon be extirpated from Umbral’s aura.

A tendril of shadow coiled around his ankle.

Nice try, Kavio, but that won’t…

Fool! FOOL! It’s not me!

It wasn’t.

Something
else
grabbed Umbral by the foot and
yanked him under. Maybe his struggle with Kavio had awakened it, or
maybe it had hidden there, molting in the cold deep, growing
slowly, waiting patiently. Umbral had disturbed it sooner than it
was ready, but it was strong, terribly strong, even so.

Tentacles of dark wrapped tightly around his legs
and thighs, and more tried to envelope his upper body. If he let it
pin his arms to his chest, he would be doomed. A tentacle snapped
toward his neck, to noose him. He was naked, without weapons, and
had only his bare hands to beat it back.

Feed me! I can fight it! I can save us!
shouted Kavio in his mind. The voice was much weaker, even
shouting, than it had been before, because of Umbral’s starving and
strangling it, but the thread of Kavio was still there, still
fighting to return.

No! Damn you! I don’t need you! I don’t want
you!

You
do
need me! And I need you
.
Stop fighting me, work
with
me! Or the Thing will
win!

Three more inky tentacles slapped Umbral around in
the water like a washed rag. Every sound was eerily distorted by
the water.

Kavio was right. The last time Umbral had
encountered the wild Deathsworn magic, Dindi had helped him fight
it. He had drawn on her power. Now he was on his own. Unless he
trusted the memory of a man he’d murdered.

Help me, then!
He unleashed his hold on
Kavio’s thread, even fed it power.

The transformation amazed him. His body no longer
felt like a weight. It was a perfect blade, twisting and slashing
the water as if it were as clear as air. He was now floating he was
flying. He ripped the shadow t
e
ntacles to
impotent bits, and then, when the chaff was thrashed and threshed,
destroyed the seed of darkness with the Curse.

Umbral burst out of the water in a full leap,
somersaulted in the air, and landed in a crouch on the ground.
Though stark naked, he no longer felt the cold. Every wire in his
being was coiled taunt and tight, a weapon in perfect tune.

It exhilarated him.

This is how it can be
, whispered Kavio.
If
we work together
.

Fine.

Umbral could feel Kavio’s exaltation.

I still have to kill her
, Umbral added.

The inward harmony ended. Kavio lashed out, trying
to take over, and Umbral closed the mind fist around the thread
again, throttling it.

I don’t need you to
give
me your
power
, Umbral told Kavio.
I can take it by force. That’s
what I should have done all along
.

As you tried to take Dindi’s power by force?
sneered Kavio.
Look how well that worked. She’s been keeping the
real Visions of the corncob secret from you all along, and you were
too blind to see it
…

Umbral stood up abruptly.
What are you talking
about?

But for once the voice of Kavio fell silent.

After Dindi finished the potatoes, she still had not
heard from Farla again. Dindi entered the log cabin to check on
her.

Essi was snoring in her corner between the loom and
the hearth. Farla was sitting in the middle of the room, ripping
the threads out of a blanket.

“Farla, don’t destroy your blanket!” Dindi
exclaimed.

She pulled it from Farla’s hands, but it was not
Farla’s blanket. It was the Aelfae tapestry from the hobgoblin
lodge. Farla had torn threads out to destroy the pattern.

Farla snickered unpleasantly. “Your blanket has some
holes.”

“What have you done?”

“I didn’t make the holes, I was only trying to mend
them.”

It was a bald lie. Dindi had seen Farla ripping the
threads with her own eyes, but Farla wagged a finger, quick to
hedge her lie with a wall of preemptive counter-accusations.

“You
probably tore the holes in it yourself,
you good-for-nothing roach! When your master finds out, how he will
beat you!”