The Returning (6 page)

“Why,
you
.” Isla looked Minnet up and down. “I did not know you to be so hard-minded.”

They walked away on opposite sides of the road.

Isla Caross, she often had food for him, never moved him on. For all she worked for Fat Fenister, she was not like him, was kind, never greedy. Acton liked Isla Caross.

He became aware of another pain. He had waked thirsty; now he was hungry. They were so big in him that they were outpacing his grief. He left the post to wander downhill looking for Farrow's discarded apple core. He found it but could not, after all, touch it.

It was like a kind of magic, then, that a townswoman set a loaf of bread by him, stooping as she walked so that she never stopped. Acton swiveled around on his backside, then got up and stepped into the road.

“Thank you.” He watched her stop and turn and lift her hand, unsmiling. The bread he held on to, too dry in the mouth to eat it.

The drink too came to him.

Two pairs of feet halted toe to toe with his: one booted, one bare like his own. He did not look up higher than their knees but he knew who they were, for their shadows fell back along the road the way they had come and one, Boots, had an empty shadow-sleeve fluttering in the wind: Cam Attling. Barefeet was Ban Coverlast, for Cam and Ban went everywhere together: woods and tavern, poaching and drinking.

“I did hear,” said Ban. “We did.”

Acton thought,
Hear?

“Give it up.” Ban's tone was kind. “It is wrong, what Farmer did do, but it is done and this will not mend it.”

Cam said nothing, just stood at Ban's side. He wore his hair long, like a maid, like an Uplander, and it flapped with his shirtsleeve in the wind.

“No,” said Acton.

They stood a moment longer, Ban shuffling his feet a little. Then they walked on, first them, then their shadows passing him.

One came back, at a run.

“Catch!”

Acton jumped up. Cam's arm went back, and light arced from his hand as he threw something. Acton put both his hands up and caught it, bending his elbows to soften the force of the throw and the hardness of . . . a flask. Of silver, or some silvery metal, all notched and dented, and letters on it. Acton traced them with stinging fingers but did not know how to read them. He looked up, but Cam had gone and the road wound quiet and empty, a plume of dust sinking in the unmoving air.

It was cider in the flask. He drank it all off, then ate the loaf of bread. His stomach felt steadier, but in his head the scream still beat.

This second day crawled to its end and painted Corban's fine windows red again. Again, Acton planted himself at the head of the track and looked down on the house. It sat square in its green lawn, pumpkin vines tied into great leafy rounds bordering the path to the door, flowers growing against the walls.

Acton cupped his hands about his mouth and shouted at the full stretch of his voice: “Corban Farmer, I am waiting. Do you tell me you are sorry!” His voice chased its own echoes around the gully.

 

CORBAN'S MAN WOKE him again, spitting on the ground at Acton's feet.

Acton lurched upright. “Better he shot you, and Jinn alive!”

Like Corban had, his man just walked on, and never flinched or looked back.

It was Corban's man who milked the cows that morning. Corban had not put foot out of the house since noon the day before. His man kept stopping his work to turn and stare at Acton. Acton could see the pale circle of his face turned upward, still a moment, before dropping as he went back to work.

“Boy.” One of the village women crouched by him. “Boy.” She put her arm around him and rocked him. Acton went all stiff in the embrace. It was so long since anyone had hugged him that he had forgotten how.

“I know Jinn was all you did have, but this? Farmer is stern, but not cruel. And Jinn was at his stock.”

“No!” He pulled free. “Farmer hates me. He killed her to show me—that he is strong and I am not. But I am, and I do show
him
.”

Just then Minnet stopped by again. “My Finnlay says poor Corban does feel quite set on.” She had her say to the air, but then let her stare claw Acton.

“I daresay.” The woman took up her basket.

Minnet made a face at her back. “Fat old scrull.”

Finnlay Pacenot drew up, because Minnet was there. He kept the horses shying up, which made Minnet squeal and say, “Oh Finn.”
Oh Finn
. Minnet stepped up into the cart and they belted off, merry as Fair Day.

It seemed the whole village had business out of town today, for they all passed him, there and back again. All stopping to say “Eh.”
Eh.

“He's bitter, after his sons did die, that's what.”

“That was a good dog.”

“Pheuw! She's getting rank.”

Just on dusk, Ellaner Ankerton stopped by him. “You've been the day without bite or sup.”

“Been without longer than this, before now.”

“Aye. Your da was a brave man, but people do forget what they do owe and who they owe it to.”

Acton wasn't sure he knew what she meant.

“Here.” She thrust a satchel at him. “Don't tell Abenestor. You must not tell Abenestor.”

Abenestor was her husband. All of Kayforl knew him to be brute and dirty-tempered, and it was a beating Ellaner Ankerton risked for Acton's sake.

“I'd never.”

But she was already hurrying away. Acton opened the satchel: food, traveler's food—dried fruit, dried meat, waybread. He wondered how she had come by it, that she dared so much, why. It was strange, he thought, that more kindness had come to him with Jinn's death than had in all the time since Da's.

 

“YOU STILL HERE then.” Farrow's sudden appearance made Acton jump. “I think I'll just stay awhile and see.”

“See what?” It was Da Palfreyman. Acton inched around the post, stood up when he had it between him and the village Headman. Da Palfreyman had a hard hand. And his hard hand whipped out now, cuffed Farrow about the ears. “You
do
have a home to go to.”

Farrow bolted. A safe distance up the road he stopped. “Da Palfreyman fucks goats!” he yelled.

Da Palfreyman paid Farrow no heed. He nodded toward Corban Farmer's house. “Always did need to shout himself big, that one. Even when he was a child, Corban liked to impress.” He pointed to the spangle of the lamps through the glass, in competition with the last of the light. “Young Mansto, do you not think you have made your point?”

“When he gives me he's sorry, then I'll go.”

“Oof. I hope you know what you do stir up.” Da Palfreyman went as quietly as he had come.

The night grew very dark, cloud drawing heavy over stars and moon, the air heavy too, clammy. Acton sat and propped his shoulder against the post, knees curled to his chest. He sighed, stretched his legs out, folded them again; spread out flat on the ground, turned on his left side, his right. There were the villagers, taking his fight out of his own hands, making it theirs; and the Headman, whom he had disobeyed, and nothing good could come of that. There was Jinn, lying stinking in the grass at his back; Da, buried who-knew-where on some battlefield far to the north. He stared into the sky and knew sleep was as far away as either of them.

And woke. Lights filled the valley, and voices. He flung himself to his feet. There were torches in Corban Farmer's yard, weaving circles of light in the dark. The sound of breaking glass carried, and the voices that rose into shouting. The torches marched in a wavering line up the track. Acton's breath seemed stopped in his throat. He thought of ghosts, of Uplanders, and pressed himself against the post, cast about for somewhere to hide. But it was Farrow who halted before him, Farrow and his older brother Grove, and Grove's lot that hung around together.

“Told you we would break them windows,” said Farrow. He seemed pleased, glad. Acton thought,
Farrow never did that for Jinn, for me
.

 

THE FIRST LIGHT of day showed Corban Farmer walking about his yard. He kept bending down. Picking up glass, Acton realized, and felt a strange unease. Farmer paused and stared up at the ridge, at Acton. Anger crowded out any other feeling and, carried by it, Acton climbed atop the post and yelled, “You killed my dog, Corban Farmer!”

The man staggered, as if Acton's words had hit him bodily, then righted himself and walked out of sight behind the east wing of the farmhouse.

Master Attling was early on the road. Acton watched him pushing his handcart around the bend and up the slope the road made on its way south past Farmer's holding. His little girl, Pin, skipped and leaped around and about him. When she saw Acton she ran up to him, then stopped right before him and stared.

“You did sleep here, last night?” she asked.

“Aye.”

“Why?” she demanded to know.

Her da came up to them then. Acton found a smile for him but Master Attling only looked at him sadly.

“Pin, leave that.” For she was inspecting Jinn. “Do you come.” He set his daughter in the handcart and walked on, without a word for Acton. Acton felt his eyes burn, and was shamed, that he could cry for himself, but had not wept for Jinn.

When Da had not come back—when Cam Attling had ridden into the village with the spring, and they had all realized he was the only one coming home—Acton had gone to his house and had stayed curled on Da's bed until Isla Caross's mam had come and made him wash and eat and drink, and had set him to work in his own garden. All his, because Mam was dead with his birth, and Da was never coming back. And though he had lain there on that bed, feeling as if he were dying inside for wanting Da, he had not wept for him either.

The road was uncommonly quiet under the punishing beat of the sun. Acton chased the narrow band of shade thrown down by the post in a circle. He found himself looking north, to the little Uplander camp on the levels by the river: a tent, maybe two. He could even see people, tiny with distance, crouching by a fire: Uplanders, fleeing their own war. There was something about how they sat, still and stubborn. “They'll not move,” he said aloud.

But for Uplanders, Da would be alive. But for himself, Mam would be. His thoughts tied his mind in knots.

The sun pitched westward, and still no one came by. When steps did at last sound, Acton jumped nearly from his skin—it wasn't just a passerby, it was a great tramping of feet. He looked, then scudded around the post. The whole of Kayforl was marching up the road toward Corban Farmer's holding.

They crowded up behind and beside and before him. Their silence shouted at him.

Finally, voice big, one of the men said, “Send him on his way, with a beating to make him mind that he did get too big for his breeks.”

Finnlay Pacenot's aunt came right up to him. Her face was all red and tight. She slapped his face—
whap-whap
—left cheek, then right. “Look what you do bring us to, you and your selfish grieving. You good-for-naught. Corban is a good, respectable man . . .” She was panting. She was crying. Acton stared at her, both hands up to his burning face. “You do bring down your da's good name with you.”

Acton did not know he was going to push her until it was done. “Leave my da out of this!” He let his arms fall to his sides. She picked herself up, wiped her hands on her skirts, lifted her basket to her head, and stalked through the watching villagers.

“Turn in his grave he would, your da.”

Acton rounded on the man who'd spoken. “I'll get you for that, when I am big enough.”

“What would you have? That we do send this to the new Lord?” said Cam Attling.

The tight ring of people loosed a little. “We do settle things our own way, with our own,” the same man said.

Everyone and no one looked at Cam with his long, Uplander mess of hair, and the Uplander words that fell from his tongue at times. He smiled a little. “He is our Lord now.”

Finnlay swung his crop in Cam's face, so that it whined like the arrow that had killed Jinn. “So says a traitor!”

“Aye!” shouted someone, and someone else shoved Cam.

Acton screamed over them. “Who of you did I ask here? This is
mine
. You can all get
out
of it.”

For a moment everyone was silent.

“Ah.” It was Da Palfreyman. Something in his way of speaking spread a calm over Acton, over them all. “Like that, is it?” Bent and old as he was, he walked slowly, slowly around the inside of the circle, which gave a little, widening the space around Acton. “I think,” he said, “we do need to get Farmer up here.”

No one threw Da Palfreyman's words back at him. “You.” The Headman pointed at Farrow. “Fetch him up.”

Farrow ran down the drive, and back up. More slowly, Corban Farmer took the slope up to them, holding his hat and slapping it against his thigh with each step, and each step was solid and even. Acton scrambled to his feet and put the post between them.

“Boy,” said Corban. “Boy?” His face wore the same look as when he had killed Jinn; as when he had reeled under the blow of Acton's words. “Hunh.” He walked around the post to him. “Everyone knows you do not like to be in that house on your own. Come with me—we are both alone—we can learn one another, we can rub along. Surely?” He turned his hat around and around in his hands. “Made me think, you did, sitting up here day after day.”

Acton felt something happen in his head. It was the scream unraveling, and with it the lifting of a pressure, a weight. The easing of it had him bowing his head, rocking forward and back, crying into his cupped hands and all the village looking on.