“Let me guess, you couldn’t reach any of them.”
“Not standing on the ground, no. He’d picked it clean, used a ladder too. There were a few clusters clinging to the top branches.”
Cormac was already smiling.
“He did not expect me to climb up there and fetch them.”
“Fool.”
“When I came back down, he had the gall to ask how many I’d gathered. Tried to snatch a few of them.”
“You didn’t do anything foolish, did you?”
“Course not. I reminded him he said I could take what I could reach and that the Sheedar don’t look kindly on men who break their word.”
Cormac looked at her sideways. “You persuaded him to make a blood oath for apples?”
“No, he didn’t even realise promising me apples wasn’t an oath, nor that the Sheedar therefore wouldn’t care if he broke it. He let me go.”
Cormac smiled. “Clever.”
She’d slipped into the house and left a couple by the boy’s pillow before returning home.
“I have something too.” He pulled a bundle out of his satchel.
“Kippers?” She raised an eyebrow. “We’re nowhere near the coast. How?”
“I have my ways.”
“Like the time you bought a puppy for Eoin and it turned out to be a wolf pup?”
“That was different,” he said, grinning.
“Seriously, where did they come from?”
“Traded with a fisherman, didn’t I.”
“That’s all I’m getting? After I told you about my adventures,” she said, giving him a nudge.
He only shrugged, evasive. Cormac never wasted lies on her. His silences often spoke more than his words. She could tell he wasn’t telling the whole truth, always could. She let it drop. If he were keeping it a secret, there must be a reason. He had probably stolen them, in which case she was better off not knowing.
They arrived at the village square, an open space ringed by cottages, the forge, and a scattering of stalls. It was quieter than it had ever been. Farmers no longer came to sell, and the fishermen, when they did appear, sold out within the hour and shuttered again. The square had once been the place for news and rumours, the heart of the community, where they had celebrated harvest festivals, winter solstices, and every season’s turning. But not this year.
The forge stood at the far side, a low stone building with its wide doors thrown open to let in air and light. Her father was inside, arguing with a customer. The tips of his fingers were darkened, the nails blackened by soot. His back stooped a little from long years bent over iron, but his arms still carried strength; the hammer swing was still sure. His face was weathered by ash, his eyes set with the stubbornness of a man who had provided too long with too little. He looked older than his years.
The argument grew sharper until he slammed his hammer down on the anvil. It rang through the square, drawing every eye. Aoife quickened her pace. The customer pushed past her, and she recognised Farmer Gowra. She greeted him, but he did not even look at her.
Her father stood fuming. He kicked at the empty hearth, sending ash spiralling upwards.
“Father,” Aoife said.
He turned. His hands were shaking with anger. He held one out to her, the grip tight enough to whiten his knuckles. He opened his palm to reveal a pile of coins, more than generous in the spring, before the crops failed. But now, all the gold in Eldross would not buy a loaf of bread.
“He promised food,” her father spat. “Food in payment, and he brings me this. I should have thrown it in his face. Let him shoe his own beast.”
“It’s better than nothing,” she murmured, though her throat tightened.
Her father glared into the forge’s dead fire, ash drifting in the air. She had hoped he might provide their evening meal. But there was no use in complaining. No one felt the weight of failure more sharply than her father. He did not need her to remind him of it.
