Skin (36 page)

I
SLIPPED
INTO
Steise's doorway just before dawn, poorly slept, churning with worry
for Cookmother. I washed and dressed, then Steise walked with me to the edge of the
hutgroup.

‘You have done well,' she said. ‘You can hold strong change.'

I nodded miserably. I had not done well. I had delayed my return to the one who had
given me all. ‘How shall I get back?'

‘This way.' She pointed toward the western horizon. The hills and valley were bleak
in the struggling light. ‘There is a track.'

‘But that is the opposite direction from which I came,' I said. ‘I must return to
the temple and travel by boat…'

‘Go.' She waved me on.

I strode down the hillside and followed the track into forest, staying faithful to
Steise's direction, though this was no Isle country
that I recognised and I drew
no closer to the temple. As I neared the forest edge, I sensed the same thickening
of the air that I had met in the gully. I laboured to gain enough breath, but, despite
the discomfort, I did not need my sword to cut my passage. The realms were aligned
and I could move through.

The trees receded and I was in open grassland. It took a few deep gulps of this new
air before I realised I was staring at the fields of Summer. The Mothers had sent
me directly home. I wanted to weep with gratitude, but I began to run. As each foot
hit the ground, I prayed. Let it not be too late. Frost crunched on the mud as I
ran up the entranceway of Caer Cad. It was deep winter, as it was with the Mothers.
I could be thankful, at least, that the seasons had not been turned by my journey.

The cold had driven people indoors and the streets of Cad were empty. I knew I should
go directly to the Great House to announce my return but I stopped, breathless, at
the kitchen door. The willow wreath had not been placed. She lived. I rang the bell
then pushed straight through.

The kitchen was greatly altered. I scarcely recognised it. The clutter of cook tools
and piles of baskets were neatened. Heka and Cah sat at the fire.

‘Where is she?' I cried. ‘Where are her things?' Then I saw Cookmother lying in darkness,
Ianna crouched beside her.

‘Ailia!' Ianna looked up, her face wretched.

‘Are you returned from the Isle already?' asked Cah without greeting.

‘Not yet.' I tugged off my cloak. ‘I've come to tend Cookmother.'

‘You are too late,' said Heka. ‘She died not yet an hour ago. We have not even placed
the willow.'

An hour! I ran toward her. Perhaps she had fallen into a half-death. Perhaps her
spirit was still within reach.

I knelt down beside her, stroking strands of hair away from her forehead. The folds
of her skin fell smooth as she lay and her face looked as gentle as a babe's. I put
my arms around her. She was nothing but bones. Her bedsores leaked a wicked smell
and I winced as I held her. She had been poorly tended.

The girls murmured behind me.

‘Go away!' I shouted. ‘Let me be alone with her.'

As they shuffled outside, I turned back to my suckling mother. ‘Tidings, Cookmother,'
I whispered. I watched her closed eyes, her chest, for a shadow of movement. ‘I am
here.'

Did her cold fingers clutch back as I squeezed them? Quickly, I built a drying fire
with spruce and birch brush, washed and dressed her sores in flax, and laid her on
fresh straw. I warmed stones in the fire and placed them on her chest to draw out
the wetness, then I boiled ivy and coltsfoot and dribbled drops down her throat from
a bronze pipette. This I did for many hours, while Ianna, Heka and Cah kept their
distance. Finally I sat still beside her.

A rough tongue greeted my hands as I rested them in my lap.

‘Neha.' I rubbed her thick winter coat and kissed her head.

I waited a long time for Cookmother to awaken. But when Neha barked at the silence,
I knew she had seen what I could not: the spirit's flight.

I walked out into the cold night and looked up at the clouds that emptied the sky
of stars. A horn call sounded from the shrine. It was midwinter. The very night that
she had found me.

How could I not have come?

Ianna emerged behind me. ‘Ailia,' she said. ‘Oh, Ailia.' She leaned against me and
I held her, dry-eyed, while she wept.

I deserved no comfort.

We took elder tea by the fire before hanging the willow to announce the death. There
would be little sleep that night.

‘How soon did she worsen after I left?' I asked, cradling my tea.

‘She grew well after you left,' said Ianna. ‘It was not until the following summer
that she caught damp sickness again. Then it worsened with the cold.'

I stared at her. ‘But I left only last autumn—how long, by your reckoning, have I
been gone?'

‘I thought
you
had the knowledge gifts,' scoffed Heka.

‘You left the autumn before last,' said Ianna. ‘Grief has confused you.'

I nodded and sipped my tea. I was wrong. There had been a distortion. But this time,
seasons had been lost, not gained. A second solstice horn call tore my thoughts from
the figuring of it. By turns of the hardworld I was sixteen summers.

‘Are there not solstice fires this night?' I asked.

‘The legion is too close now,' said Cah. ‘Since last Beltane, Fraid has ceased the
fires.'

Ianna helped me weave the wreath while Heka and Cah took the news to the Tribequeen.

‘Did she know much pain?' I asked. ‘Who made her medicines?'

‘I did,' said Ianna. ‘Mostly hogroot and verbane.'

I withheld a frown. These were poor treatments for fever.

‘She was maddened with heat by the end,' Ianna continued. ‘But there was one thing
she said, over and over, when death was close.'

I looked up. ‘What was it?'

Ianna faltered, suddenly hesitant.

‘Tell me,' I urged.

‘
My boy
,' she answered. ‘Over and over.
My boy.
'

All through the night, tribespeople came and went, offering their blessings to Cookmother
on her journey to Caer Sidi.

Fraid arrived first with Llwyd by her side. Bebin was called from her marriage house,
swollen with child. Too stricken to speak much beyond greetings, I embraced them
all and told them only brief news of my time on the Isle.

Heka and Cah served thick stew and warm honey beer. Amid the crying and keening for
Cookmother's death in this world was laughter and celebration for her birth in another.
All who came left a small trinket—a silver statue, a carving or a small bone comb—for
her to take to Caer Sidi. By the end of the night there was a pile of gifts two hands
high beside her.

When the visitors were gone and the girls had fallen to sleep, Fraid and Llwyd sat
with me, taking a last drink. At Fraid's temples were thin streaks of silver that
were not there when I left Cad. ‘Who will wake her?' she asked.

‘I will,' I said. ‘I will wake her for seven days.'

‘A long wake,' said Fraid. Seven days was the wake of a high warrior or a low king,
not of a cookwoman.

‘She is deserving of it.' I had not been here to prolong her life. I was determined
to care for her in death.

Fraid looked to Llwyd, who nodded his head. ‘Seven days,' she said.

Draining their cups, they rose to leave.

‘Journeyman—' I touched his cloak. ‘Can you stay?'

Fraid departed and he sat back beside me. He waited, but I could not find my words.

‘She was well loved,' he said at last. ‘But by none more than you.'

‘And yet I did not come.'

‘You were her greatest comfort,' said Llwyd. ‘You were her renewal.'

I shook my head then looked to him. ‘Ianna said she spoke of something as she died.'
I paused. ‘She asked of “her boy”.'

Llwyd flinched.

‘Was it just the fever?' I whispered. ‘Do you know of what she spoke?'

He ladled some more warm ale into our cups. ‘She has told you, I expect, that once
she was a journeywoman? That she walked with the Mothers?'

‘Yes,' I nodded. ‘And that they kept something she treasured. She said nothing more.'

Llwyd sipped his ale and stared at the flames. ‘It was a child,' he said. ‘A boy.
This is what was lost to the Mothers. This is whom she called.'

For a long time we did not speak, only the fire's crackle breaking the silence.

‘How long ago?' I asked.

‘She was not long returned when you were found,' he said.

‘So the…boy—?'

‘The boy—the man, if he lives—would be nineteen summers. Twenty, perhaps.'

A shiver ran through me. ‘I see.'

When Llwyd had gone, I walked to Cookmother, lifted her coverings and climbed in
beside her. She was cool and unyielding, but I curled up around her familiar shape.
‘I have found him,' I whispered, my lips at her cheek. ‘And he is beautiful. He is
the most beautiful soul I will ever know.'

The night was icy and I pulled a heavy skin over us both.

‘I will bring him back,' I promised, cradling her. ‘I will give him the love that
you could not.'

For the last time, I slept beside her.

After a few short hours, Bebin returned, and she, Ianna and I washed the body with
rosewater. I mixed a resin paste with salt, honey and
sawdust, infusing it with herbs
to help her safe passage. For several hours I pressed the mixture over her skin,
into her creases, her mouth and nose and all the entranceways of her body. We wrapped
her first in an inner shroud, then a woollen outer shroud, filling the folds of the
cloth with resins and powders so she would be sealed from rot while she was waked.

The girls prepared me food and water.

Then I sat for seven sets of the sun. I sat at her head, giving thanks for her. I
honoured her strength and her suffering. I thought of the times I had been vexed
by her and how I would have given my fingers to be vexed so again. I thought of how
I did not come. How I had chosen to spend her final hours with my lover. How my lover
was her son.

When I became tired, I lay on the floor beside her and slept. I was clinging to her
spirit. I had not released her.

She started to bloat and her frothing insides soaked into the shroud. I stomached
the smell gladly in her honour. But by the last day, none other than I could be in
the house without retching. She had to be buried.

It took several men to lift her out of the kitchen and onto the bier. We covered
her with birch brushes and began the long walk through the northern gate, down the
hillpath and through empty fields, to the part of the river Nain that protected our
dead. The whole township followed. Llwyd was waiting at the head of a freshly dug
shallow pit.

Her gifts and provisions were laid in first. I placed a comb, a nail file, a joint
of pork, a bladder of mead, a drinking horn, a summer cloak and her favourite games
and brooches. I had left her plant oils in the kitchen for my own gift. Tribespeople
clapped their hands vigorously up and down the length of her, banishing bad spirits
and
summoning good, before her body was lowered into the grave.

Llwyd dedicated her soul to the Mothers and sang her Amra, the lamentation that spoke
of her greatness in this life. He sang her true name, Ceridwen. The crowd sang back
when they concurred with his praise, then branches and sticks were cast down upon
her. She would be left uncovered by earth, so that air spirits and ravens might relieve
her of flesh, and her soul could journey, weightless, to the Otherworld.

Many wailed and howled as the branches were dropped in. I remained silent. My cheeks
dry.

I could not cry for her until I had brought back her son.

‘Can I sleep by your hearth this night?' I asked as I walked back with Bebin. ‘I
do not know if I can abide the kitchen without her.'