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The lesser from the greater,
The greater from the lesser.
Let there be no meeting
And no bloodshed.”
Fighting the rocking ship, she lurched toward the stern. The ship plunged down a high swell and she fell hard against the sternpost. Alain caught her with his good hand before she fell overboard. Hanging there, she watched the distant ship heave to and change direction. Had they spotted them?
Quickly, she fastened the Queen’s Broom to the sternpost and, with the sting of the burning thistle still in her nostrils, sang the spell again.
As they watched, it became apparent that the other ship had not seen them. It came no closer and in time vanished over the horizon.
Shoreline rose in the distance, more green than brown. They hit the first line of surf just as the ropes went slack and the merfolk rolled away, letting the swells carry them toward shore. The sea creatures lolled in the waves, watching. One bold merchild swam so close that Adica saw the tiny mouths snapping at the ends of its hair, like eels. Beady eyes studied the ship with greedy anticipation just before the merchild dove under the boat. Its back jostled the hull, rocking them enough that Two Fingers had to grab at the sternpost to keep from being thrown over the side. Abruptly, the merfolk swarmed menacingly around the boat, only to retreat as the waves dissolved into breakers.
With the breaking waves throwing spray over them, Alain made to jump out of the ship and guide them in, but Two Fingers grabbed his good arm.
“Stay!” Laoina was quick to translate. “Beware the water. The merfolk have sharp teeth and do not wish us any kindness.”
“True enough.”
The merfolk stayed beyond the breakers, but one coursed in, in their wake, rolled, and spun away again, letting the outgoing waves drag it off the shore. When the ship finally scraped bottom, Alain leaped off, followed by the rest, and they dragged the boat up onto the shore, out of reach of the tide. The dogs yelped and bounded around, chasing their own tails, barking and racing.
Two Fingers waded out to his knees in the waves, facing the sea. The waters hissed and ebbed around his legs. He raised both hands. “Thank you, sisters and brothers. You, also, have done your share, if unwillingly. I return to you this bone that once belonged to your queen.”
He flung the bone flute high and long. It disappeared into the waters. A swarm of bodies churned the sea where it had fallen. As suddenly, all trace of the merfolk vanished. The sea sighed in along the beach, and the morning sun drenched the sand with gold. The only sound was the water and the bubbling song of a curlew.
Far out, movement flickered. A single gray tail flicked into sight, slapped down. Then, nothing. The merfolk had gone.
“So.” Laoina turned to take in the view. The beach itself, more pebbles than sand, stretched eastward out of sight, bounded on the west by a low headland evergreen with scrub and trees grown distorted under the constant pressure of wind. Hills rose up behind them, pockmarked with shallow caves. “Let’s find shelter and something fresh to eat.”
Two Fingers waded back to shore. They dragged the boat up the beach and sheltered it in a cave, blocking the entrance with driftwood, and stowing a cache of weapons, too many for them to carry. A trail led past shellfish beds, populated by a flock of annoyed oyster catchers, who protested, kleeping, as the four humans raided the rich tidal pools. Out of the wind, they found a hollow that showed signs of previous habitation: a fire pit, a lean-to woven out of branches, a pile of discarded flint shavings and broken tools. Shell mounds rose at intervals along the path. After collecting driftwood, Adica struck a fire.
They rested here, rinsing the salt out of their clothing and hair in a nearby stream.
Adica pulled Alain aside into the shelter of a copse of low trees. She was greedy for him. It was a curse to want someone so badly that you would make demands on him even when he was injured, but his sweetness was a healing nectar. He kissed her eagerly—he always did, like someone who has been denied water for too long.
It was a little awkward, with him favoring his one arm, but wasn’t it true that lovemaking was exactly the thing to take one’s mind off pain and anxiety? So it had proved for her.
She dozed a little, after. Walking the looms made her so tired. Fighting the constant urge to worry and be afraid and angry at fate made her so tired. Live now, each moment, each kiss.
She woke to Laoina’s call. The dogs swarmed over them, licking Alain’s face, sniffing at his swollen hand. He laughed and shoved them away. For the first time, he could close his bitten hand halfway, and that made him kiss her so passionately that finally Laoina had to come and, with a laugh and a gentle prod of her spear, remind them that it was time to move on.
Their clothes had dried, stretched along a fallen log to catch the sunlight. It was a hot day, quickly felt as they walked.
They hiked a trail obviously used for part of the year, grown over but distinct, a pleasant path with heights and falls. The landscape of oak wood and pine opened frequently into bright clearings. Ivy twined up the oaks and the shrub layer grew in some places as tall as she was. The dogs often ran off to lose themselves in the leaves. She would hear them barking and rattling branches, never losing track of Alain but often out of his sight. Madder grew across the path, and butcher’s broom spread in dense shrubs. It was very different than the forest she was most familiar with.
That night they sheltered in another campsite, made pleasant by the addition of several lean-tos, branches bowed and covered with thatch to provide shelter. The clouds had blown off, and the night was unusually warm and balmy, not one for hiding in a shelter.
“This is a winter camp,” explained Two Fingers as he and Adica made note of the position of the stars. The Hare leaped higher here in the south.
“Look at the Sisters and the Bull,” she said, as Laoina translated. “Can it be true that summer is here? We left my village at the spring equinox.”
Yet what could she do? That was the curse of the looms, that they ate one’s life like a hungry wolf eating you up in bites. All she could do was live in the day given her. It would have to be enough.
In the morning Laoina skinned and roasted three rabbits that had been trapped overnight in snares while Adica spread a poultice of bramble leaves and comfrey on Alain’s hand to draw out the swelling. When they had done, they set the campsite in order, buried their leavings, and set out. Laoina hung the scraped rabbit skins over her back so that she seemed to be wearing withered wings as she walked. She knew these lands well enough to comment on familiar landmarks. She had sojourned here for many seasons when she had come to learn the language of Horn’s people, and she knew the names and uses of many of the plants, and recognized birdsong. Not even Two Fingers had her knowledge of the land. He had, so he said, lived with Horn’s people when he was a boy, to study with her—Horn had been a woman already when he was a boy—but he had been so taken up with the arts of the ancient ones and the caverns in which the secrets of her ancestors lay concealed that he had often gone for days without seeing the light of the sun.
“To the place of caves I will take you now, to see if there is truth to the words of the Walking One from whom you heard this grievous news.”
