The Worthing Saga (58 page)

He called to his sons, and told them to go in. Slowly they walked across the field to the house. As they did, the rain began to fall faster, the drops heavier, and water began to stand in the field in thin puddles. The falling drops splashed, large splashes that spread for live feet. The sound of the rain changed from pattering to a roar, and the forest seemed to recede fifty yards as it dimmed through the curtain of rain.

Elijah was soaked to the skin and his hair hung matted around his face, water dripping from every strand. His hands hurt as the great drops struck. He laughed.

It was hard but in spite of the wind and the wet thatch Elijah clambered off the roof, off the shed, and onto the ground. The dust had turned to thick mud, and it sucked at his feet as he walked. He stopped when he got well out into the field, and there he looked up into the clouds, the raindrops bruising his face as they fell hard and fast, and he cried out silently for the rain to come like knives to kill the Forest of Waters. The rain became a single thing, falling again and again hard as an axe on the wood. Leaves were ripped from the trees, and Elijah was knocked to the ground where he stood. The rain beat him, the mud sucked on him, and the heavy drops knocked him unconscious as he demanded that the rain go on.

The hands touched his face gently, but still quick stabs of pain followed every motion. He tried to open his eyes, and found they were already open and he was looking up into the eyes of his wife. Her hair was matted with sweat. She looked worried, and he remembered what had last passed between them. I'm sorry, he thought, but she didn't hear. So he opened his mouth and said, “Alana.”

She answered with fingers on his lips. And she pursed her mouth and said, “Shh.” He fell asleep.

He awoke again lying on his straw-stuffed bed in a corner of the house. Food was cooking in the kitchen, A stew, maybe the same one he had started. Sun was streaking the room as it came through cracks in the east wall. Morning. But yesterday—was it yesterday?—there had been no such cracks there.

His body was stiff and sore, but he was able to rise from the bed. He was naked when he cast off the blanket. He fumbled for his clothes. It hurt him to put them on. Still tying the front of his shirt, he walked stiffly into the kitchen.

His wife and sons sat in front of the fire, slurping stew out of wooden bowls. They watched him silently. Finally he nodded, and his wife dished some up for him. He stood and ate a little, then set down the half-full bowl and went outside. Eyes but no people followed him.

Worthing Farm was a sea of mud, with huge standing puddles everywhere. The trees at the edge were still dripping, and the thatched roof was sagging under the weight of the water it had absorbed. Not a single stalk of grain was standing. There was no sign that any of it had ever been there. Nothing but thick black mud.

There was nothing left to save on Worthing Farm. It was too late in the year to plow and plant again. He reached down and plunged his hand up to the forearm into the soft mud. Groping in it he found a stem or two, and pulled out his hand with a great sucking noise. He looked closely at the broken stalks in his fingers. Absentmindedly he broke the dead plants into pieces.

He got up. The house had been soaked, and the wood was shrinking quickly in the sun. The walls and the door would have to be replaced. Winter would kill them unless the house was tight. There was plenty of time to repair the house—if he didn't have to hunt for food. Plenty of time to hunt for food if he didn't have to repair the house. Not time enough to do both.

If they stayed, they would die. If they left, they would live but the curse would fall on Elijah. Somehow, looking at the ruin of his farm Elijah no longer feared anything the curse might bring. Death, perhaps. And he wondered why he should fear even that.

He walked back into the house, where his family was through eating. They looked up, their eyes following him as he emptied the cupboards in the kitchen into the large sacks that a few months ago had held grain. John and Worin got up and began to help. Alana put her face into her hands.

Elijah left the boys to load the, sacks and went outside to the north shed, where a small wheeled cart was loaded with wood and bronze farm tools. He emptied the tools out of it, flinging them far across the field, and when the cart was empty he pulled it to the door. He went inside. When he came out his arms were full of two rolled-up straw beds. The next load was a stack of blankets. Then he brought out the sacks and the bundles of clothing and soon the cart was full. He took several ropes and tied the load on the cart.

Then he went in to Alana and took her by the hand. She looked at the ground as he led her out of the house. He still held her hand as he stepped into the cart harness and slowly began to pull the cart across the sea of mud.

In a few minutes the cart was bogged down. The boys got behind the wheels and pushed. They sank up to their hips in mud, but the cart moved. It became a game to the boys, sloshing through the slime and shoving the cart out of every mudhole it stuck in. They laughed as Elijah pulled silently. They laughed as they entered the forest and the ground firmed. They were still laughing as Worthing Farm dropped away out of sight behind them and they were surrounded by trees and thin pillars of sunlight streaming through the leaves.

They did not stop until the forest opened up again to a wide track with deep wheel ruts. Here the trees did not close above the top of the trail, and as they continued west and a little south the sun was directly in their eyes.

The sun was just setting in red light as they heard the sound of hammering and sawing up ahead. Human voices soon reached them, the great shouts of men working.

“Faster, dammit, you'll' break your backs.”

Elijah recognized the voice of his brother, Big Peter, and I just then the forest cleared away for many acres and in the middle of the huge clearing stood the inn.

It was all made of new wood, and it rose three stories high off a heavy foundation of piles sunk into the earth. At the south end of the inn stood a tower rising another twenty feet or so off the top floor. It had windows all around it, and it stood higher than the highest of the trees. The roof of it had recently burned, and men standing in the tower were straining to pull up a load of wood from the ground. They held long ropes, and on the ground a giant of a man with flaming red hair bellowed up at them, “Pull it up! I've lifted heavier loads myself!” And to prove it he bent and lifted the stack of lumber alone. The men on the tower gave a great heave and the wood moved higher up, out of Big Peter's reach, and he shouted up, “That's the way, boys! Pull!”

Elijah, Alana, Worin, and John stood at the edge of the forest road. They had never seen such a building in their lives, and they didn't believe that it could stand. Yet the tall tower didn't even sway as the lumber slowly crept skyward at the end of the ropes. Suddenly a boy about eight years old with light blond hair pulled away from the crowd by the building and walked curiously toward the family at the edge of the clearing.

“Who are you!” he called out in a high, piping voice. Elijah and Alana didn't, answer, but when the boy came close enough Worin spoke up. “I'm Worin. This is John.”

The eight-year-old thrust out his hand and said, “I'm Little Peter. This is my father's inn.”

Elijah only looked at him. The boy was attractive, looked like Elijah's brother. But his eyes were blue. Like Elijah's. Like Grannam's. He had the gift, and Elijah looked at the boy with hatred.

Then Big Peter took his eyes off his work and noticed them.

“Well come!” he cried, striding toward them on huge legs. “You're early but there's room for you at the inn, if you don't mind sleeping on the— Elijah!” He was already going fast, but when he recognized his brother he broke into a run. In a moment he arrived and embraced his passive brother and threw John and Worin into the air and caught them, laughing and saying, “Well come, I'm glad to see you, here's my inn, do you like it? Borrowed the money in Hux and the workmen in Linkeree and in a year I'll be a very rich man!”

Big Peter asked no questions and so Elijah said nothing as they walked to the inn, Big Peter pulling the cart with one arm and conversing as if it were no burden. “Trade goes down river from Hux to Linkeree, and overland from Linkeree to Hux. Here we get them both. The road passes by here, and up that trail there I've builded a landing on the river where even the biggest riverboat can pull in and moor for the night. There are twenty and three rooms and a huge kitchen and a common room that cries out for ale and drinkers and loud songs, and more room to store food than you've ever seen. It's gone up so quick I swear that Jason and all the Ice People are pulling with us. By Jason, Elijah, it's good to have you here! This drought has wiped out many a farmer in the forest, and I promise you that both Hux and Linkeree are buying food from the Heaven Plain, there's not a kernel of corn or a bushel of wheat in the whole Forest of Waters. But we broke the drought yesterday, didn't we by damn, near flooded away everything that wasn't already nailed into the inn, but there we are, the rain put out the fire when the lightning struck and we didn't even lose a whole day's work!”

They arrived at the front of the inn where two men were nailing in place a large sign with the words
Worthing Inn
painted on it in black. Elijah stopped cold, looking at the sign.

“What does it say?” he said, for the first part of the sign was the same as what was printed on the stone at the southwest corner of Worthing Farm.

“Worthing Inn,” Big Peter answered proudly. “Oh, I know, Elijah, you don't like that. The farm is Worthing, it always will be, I know that. But I thought to keep the memory alive. And if the farm is ruined now you can go back there, you can look at that stone, you can keep track of how the world runs from there, but this— this is where the name of Worthing will be kept alive. We'll have a town here, soon enough; How's that? Worthing Town, where before there was just a single farm, lost out in the middle of the Forest of Waters. Don't pout, Elijah. Come in and have supper with us. Have you met my son Peter?”

The boy, who was running around them with Worin and John, stopped and smiled, his blue eyes flashing. “I said well come before you, Papa.”

“Good,” his father answered, tousling his hair. “And you'll say it to many a traveler before the season's through.”

They went inside to supper, Elijah hiding his grief and his fury behind a mask of indifference— while Alana's silence masked nothing at all. She did not eat though she sat at the table, and when all of them went to bed, Alana did not undress, but lay instead on the floor on the other side of the room from the bed where Elijah lay, and slept little until the sun was near to coming.

Then she finally drifted off to sleep, and when she woke the men were already hard at work outside, and the cries were human and warm and Alana realized that she had been lonely for the last ten years, since she had left her home to live with quiet Elijah with the strange blue eyes. She had been lonely and now there were voices of other people but it was too late. The loneliness was in her blood and she knew that the cure was beyond any amount of cheer these strangers might give her. She belonged to Elijah, who was not in his bed. She got up to find him elsewhere in the house. Big Peter was not inside, but Little Peter and her two sons were stuffing breakfast down themselves in the kitchen.

“Where's your mama?” Alana asked.

“Dead, mum,” Little Peter answered calmly, stuffing more bread into his mouth.

“Do you know where Papa went?” Alana asked her sons. They shook their heads and ate more cheese. She went outside and found Big Peter lashing thatches on the roof of a stable near the inn.

“Have you seen my husband?” she asked the innkeeper.

“Not a sign. Is he up? Did you sleep well? You're the first guests of my inn, you know. Just for that, it's free!” His laugh was a great booming one, and Alana smiled before she went off to look for..Elijah.

He was nowhere in the inn, nowhere in the clearing, and he had taken nothing with him. Big Peter refused to send anyone looking for him.

“And why? Goodwife Alana, you know how he loved Worthing Farm. He damn near killed me when I decided to leave, except that I'm twice his size, and even so I barely escaped with my life. He loves that farm, now how quick do you think hell be set to settle down here? Let him be. He'll be back when the hurt's worked out of him, a little.”

So saying, he went back to building the stalls for the horses of thirty guests, wondering loudly whether the stable was too small.

Little Peter offered to go looking for Elijah, but Alana said no, he was too small. He grinned, and took off running outside.

As the sun came up Elijah awoke to find himself lying on soft ground under a tree. Only the sun in the east gave him an idea of direction, and he couldn't remember which way he had come from in the night. Only that Worthing Farm was east, and the sun was east, and groggily he got to his feet and started walking.

The forest made no paths for him, and as he pried his way through thorns and low branches he remembered his escape as a child, when Grannam had caught him. Only this time he was fleeing toward Worthing Farm, not away from it.

The sun was high when he stumbled out of the forest and into what had been the field of Worthing Farm. It was drier now than when he had left it the day before, and only a few places were still black with mud. Large cracks were opening in the sun-dried soil, and a thin film of dirt was forming on top of the solid floor. Nothing was green from one edge of the clearing to the other. A bird flew past Elijah's face.

Elijah walked along the edge of the clearing until he reached the northwest corner, then turned right and walked to the northeast, then right again to the southeast corner, and then right again until he stopped in front of the speaking stone.

The rain had washed it clean. Elijah recognized the word that Big Peter had put on the front of his inn. Worthing. He could not read the rest of the sign, and the words would have made little sense to anyone else in the world, for the language had changed since the time of the writer. The stone said,