The Returning (11 page)

Pin fled up to her room then, crying until she could not breathe and Mam had to put her to bed.

“Hear that singing?” Mam rocked her. Pin heard Mam's heartbeat, and the sea-noise her own ears made, blocked as they were by Mam's breast and Mam's hand. Not a thing else. The house was quiet.

“That's the merrows, the water people. Catch one, it'll give you a wish.”

Pin sat up. “Hughar says there's no such thing.”

“Ssh.” Mam soothed her back down. “There is so. But if you want to hold one, your wish must come from the heart.”

“IF YOU'RE DONE, IT'S cold enough still to want that door closed,” said Mam the next morning.

Da sighed and pushed the door shut. He walked to the fireplace and leaned on the mantel, tapping his fingers against the wood. Mam had only to say “Gavrin!” and he stopped the tapping, sat for a moment at the bench, then was back to the door again, looking outside.

“I did say it and shouldn't have,” he said finally.

“Well don't you.” Mam went
slam, slam
with the teacups.

“But he's not what he was, before he did run off to that rotted war.”

Mam said not a word now, whanged the breakfast dishes onto the tray.

“Come come—”

“Pah!” said Mam. “Not what he was! The two of you, pah!”

She shoved the tray clattering across the table and stood glaring at Da, hands on her hips. Da looked away.

“And you, my maid.” Mam turned her anger on Pin. “Have you got the eggs in yet?”

Da sighed at Pin. “Your mam does want us out from underfoot.” He stood up, put on coat and scarf and hat. “I'll go chase Cam out of the tavern.” He held out his hand to Pin. “And I'll walk you as far as the henhouse.”

Every morning it was her task to collect the eggs, then to let the chickens out to scratch in the orchard. “Cam did say he would help me get them ready for market.”

Da led Pin outside. “It looks like you'll have to do that yourself.”

Pin put the egg-wrap on the stoop on her way back.

“You did wash those eggs, my maid?” Mam called from inside, though she could not see Pin.

“Yes, Mam.”

“And wrap them?”

The first market of the year was in two days' time, and Cam had promised to help her wrap the eggs. Strands of flax had to be knotted into little baskets, each holding five eggs, suspended one beneath the next so that they did not touch, and these packages hung from the eaves for safekeeping until market day. Though she waited about the house until Mam sent her outside to play, Cam did not come.

Pin stepped off the stoop and headed across the yard to the seedbeds. They each had their own. Edord had sown his early, against Da's advice, and was watching it as if that would help the seeds sprout.

“That does teach you to listen better to your da.” Hughar tapped Edord on the rump, trying to topple him.

When he saw Pin, Hughar left Edord alone and showed her some slugs he had found under a stone. She screamed, screamed louder still when he slipped some down her pinny. Pin ran to Da, who sent her up to Mam. And that's when Pin discovered that Mam had wrapped the eggs herself, having given up waiting for Cam.

“CARP, CARP, CARP,” Mam said later to Pin. “I do wish they'd leave each other be.” Mam was on all fours—all threes actually, because one hand was free to scrub the stoop. Pin crouched so she had one arm free to do nothing. She hated scrubbing. She liked to carry the pallets, or dig or carry seeds for Da, but she hated scrubbing.

The sun crawled out from behind the clouds, leaving a short skirt of shade about the house. Pin stared at its white circle, then down at the valley, the sun's shape black now and laid atop everything her eyes looked at.

“Ouf.” Mam set herself back on two legs again. “Tea,” she said. “Or your da'll be at his morning break before it's made.” The tea was steeped and poured into the big clay flask. Mam sliced apple and Pin posted the slivers through the flask's narrow neck.

“Can you manage it?”

Pin thought she could.

When she got down to the terraces—without a drop spilled—she found Farrow Gorlance was there with his brother, big Grove. On the road a steady stream of carts and people grew, strange people, Uplanders. Da watched, his hand crooked over his eyes to keep the sun off.

“The Uplander Lord did uproot whole villages, I do hear,” said Grove Gorlance. “Even of his own kind.”

Da was always first to get the tea. A clod tripped Pin as she handed him the flask.

Da stopped talking to catch the flask before she dropped it. “Watch your step, my maid.”

Farrow was making faces at her. It hadn't been a clod of soil, it had been Farrow Gorlance's fat, dirty foot. Edord came up at Pin's side, which stopped Farrow's sniggering.

“Next you know, we'll be driven from our own homes, and they said the war was over.” Grove Gorlance held to the flask, did not swig and pass it on as would be polite.

“We're lucky, for the war did not come this far south. This is mostly soldiers, displaced now the fighting is done, and families.” Da took the flask from Grove and held it for Pin so she could have her share. “They do have them all following in carts.”

“Displaced!” Grove clipped the back of his brother's head so hard that Farrow was knocked, stumbling, forward. “Get on, you. We do have work to do.”

“Work,” said Da, when the Gorlances were gone. “Wouldn't know work if it walked up to him and introduced itself, that one.”

“What's
displaced
, Da?”

“Lost their homes, and their land.”

“How?” It still didn't make sense to Pin. “When they are Uplanders?”

“That Uplander Lord, who does sit now in Dorn-Lannet, well, he wasn't happy with the land he'd been born to, so he took more. Took from his own people, you do see, before he even started taking from us. More and more, moving ever south. Some of those people, I do imagine, Pin-little, would have died; some would have stayed; and the rest, they moved, looking for a new place to live. It takes a long time to walk across country, longer with a war slowing you. Now the fighting's stopped, they're coming, and we're seeing them. Think of a stone thrown into a pond,” said Da. “It's thrown and done, but the ripples do take longer to spread and flatten. That's what this is, the ripples.”

Talk about the war was a little dull, unless it was Cam. “You do like the tea, Da?”

“Wet enough, that's for certain.”

“I made it.”

“Ah. Best tea I ever did drink.”

 

WHEN THE SUN was tilted toward the horizon, Pin was sent to tell Da to come in to his supper. She walked backward to watch her shadow, monstrously long, and backward-walking in step with her. She stopped at the top of the terraces, put her head back, and yelled, “Da-a-a.”

Far away, his voice answered. The terraces stepped down to the Highway. If she were a giant Pin, she would only need one step on each terrace, and she could reach the sea quicker than walking to the village. The woods spread around the feet of the hillock, stood thicker along the road. The webs of branches that lifted to the sky filtered the thin evening sun, and under them was a sort of forest-dusk.

This was a haunted wood. People told stories about it: how long, long ago, when times were hard, the old and the sickly had been taken into it, right up Hollen Hill, and left there to die. Royed Keystone had been riding his mare down from Innay-on-the-Pass one dark night when a small girl had appeared at his stirrup, looking up at him, and crying, he said, like her heart was broke. Royed had kicked his horse into a gallop, but swiftly though the mare ran, the small girl kept pace by his stirrup. He had hurled into the village with his hair all on end and face yellow with fear. It was his daughter's face he'd seen on the girl. Now, his daughter was living, hale and strong, in the village, but Royed's grandmam's sister had been taken up Hollen Hill to die.

Beyond the forest, Pin knew, was the sea; and the merrows, they lived in the sea. But, to get there, Pin would have to pass through the woods. For a moment the wind in the branches made the same sound as Mam's hand on her ear. She stood looking down on the crowns of the trees, blown into crests and troughs by the wind. Though she was safe on Da's holding, Pin's skin went cold. She turned and ran back along the earthwalls to the cottage.

Cam did not come home that evening, not before Pin had to go to bed; nor was he there the morning following. The cot had that quiet about it, still, that it had taken on when Mam rocked Pin to sleep two days earlier. Even Hughar and Edord were doing what they were bid, more like strangers than her brothers, thought Pin.

Da took Pin down to the terraces with him, lugging a great bag of seed potatoes for early planting.

“Wishes, is it?” He took the potatoes from her, half a dozen at a time, set them and pressed earth up to them, quick as anything. Pin's hands kept emptying and she had to be quick to have the next lot ready. “What do you have to wish for? Nothing!”

Pin thought she could wish for quite a lot of things. She told him all the ones she could think of, handing him seed potatoes until the bag was empty.

“Ah?” he said. “Huh. I'm wishing you'll be back with a fresh lot for sowing before I've time to think about it.”

Between them, Da and Pin planted the lower terrace right to the fence, which followed the Highway, which followed the creek. Pin could see it glinting, below the Highway and through the trees. Merrows so filled her mind that she forgot she was afraid of the forest. Maybe they lived in the river, maybe she could catch one, and what did they look like anyway?

“Well, my maid, what is it you're thinking on now?”

“Nothing,” said Pin, and she scrambled to the top of the earthwall, the better to see the creek.

The sun stuck in the middle of the sky, thin and giving little warmth.

Da straightened. “The twins can mulch these now.”

“Are there merrows in it, Da, do you think?”

“The stream? Plenty trout in it, I do know. Who's that?”

Coming down from the direction of the cot was a boy.

“It's Ban Coverlast.”

He was watching them, but he looked away when Pin watched him back.

“He's half wild himself,” said Da. “That's what comes of living right in the forest like they do. And what does he want, eh?”

Da waved at Ban, waved him down. Pin saw Ban look left, look right, then come down as far as the levee, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He had the same weigheddown look about him that Mam and Da did.

“He's gone,” Da shouted, leaning on his fork. “Did take off, and where or when or what-all, he didn't say.” He turned his head and spat.

“Gone?” said Pin.
Really gone?
She started to weep, and ran to Da.

“Soft-witted, that lot,” Da said when Ban had gone.

“Has Cam left us again, Da?”

“Oh, ho, what are these tears for?” Da picked her up. “He'll walk in tomorrow like nothing ever happened, you see if he doesn't.”

Pin found that she did not believe him.

“Do you run up and see if your mam has work for you.”

She trudged uphill to the cot. The yard was empty. Pin tugged at one of the egg-wraps. Tomorrow they would be taken to the market and sold. Suddenly she swung her whole weight off a string of eggs. She was glad he was gone, Cam, horrible horse-brother, who had been meant to hang them with her and had chosen instead to drink at the tavern with Ban Coverlast. The string broke, dropping her plump on the ground, and breaking all five eggs. Pin stood up, dusted her seat, and broke the next string. And the next and the next, until all of them lay smashed in the dirt. Then she went, very good and quiet, to help Mam all afternoon.