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“Weave them tighter,” Alesoun says, coming over. She shows me how to do it, again.
I watch closely but despite the fact that it looks easy, hands-on practice has proven that it’s far from it. All I can do is keep trying. She helps more, guiding my hands and correcting the work as I go. I lose track of time as we continue and soon enough there is at least the beginnings of a nice basket.
“Wow,” I say, a sense of pride tingling as I look at my basket.
“Ach, nae too bad,” Alesoun says. “You’ll make a fine wife, some day. Give yourself a few years at my knee and I’ll teach ya the things you should already know.”
Backhanded or not, I accept her compliment. She’s the only person here who knows I’m not from this time, but she’s right. If I grew up in this time, I’d probably know all these skills. I’ve seen little girls no more than five or six learning to do these chores in the village. I’d have been doing the same.
“What about you?” I ask, curiosity getting the best of me. We haven’t talked much about her life here outside the obvious.
“What about me?”
“Don’t you want a husband? Kids?”
Her face darkens but she doesn’t look away.
“Tha was never going to be my life,” she says, breaking eye contact and picking up the basket she is weaving.
It’s clear she’s done with the conversation but I’m not. I want to know. She’s been so nice to me, and I don’t understand the way they treat her.
“Why not?” I ask, almost pleading with her to trust me.
She stops bending the reed and stares at the partial basket. She hunches her shoulders as her cheeks flush. She shrugs and shakes her head before at last meeting my gaze.
“Because I’m touched. Like you.” She makes the sign of the cross and her eyes dart up to heaven. “No matter how much a man might like the looks of ya, it do nae matter when it comes to matters of the soul.”
“I don’t get it. What does this, touch as you call it, have to do with anything? How is it a matter of the soul? You have skills in healing. That should be a good thing.”
“Ach, lass. You know nothing.”
The resounding truth in her words slices into my chest and twists painfully.
“You’re right,” I say, a massive weight dropping onto my shoulders.
It’s soul crushing how little I know. I don’t know how I got here or why I’m here. Don’t know who the stranger on the moor was and how he seems to know me. I don’t know how I’m going to get home. I don’t even know why my stomach flutters and my heart palpitates every time Duncan looks at me. Is it love? Some biochemical reaction in the primal part of my brain deciding he’s a good mate because of pheromones or his physicality.
“Ach, don’t let it weight you.” Alesoun places a friendly hand on my shoulder and pats my back. “You’re young. You have a lot of life to live, to learn. You’ll figure it out.”
“Right.” I shrug. “It doesn’t feel like I will. What about you? Have you ever been in love?”
“Aye,” she says, working her weaving.
“You have?” I ask. “Wow. Tell me, how do you know?”
A slow smile spreads over her face as she chuckles.
“You might as well ask how the sun rises in the morn. Or why the grass is green. Some things, lass, they just are. Love is, you know.”
“That sounds nice and poetic, but it doesn’t answer the question. How? How do you know it’s love? Not—I don’t know what you would call it—puppy love?”
“Ya feel it,” she says. “In your heart, in your chest. In the way your guts twist up when you’re with him and twist even more when you’re nae.”
“How do you know it’s not just…” I trail off, unsure how to say what I’m thinking in a way that won’t offend her. “How do you know it’s not urges?”
Alesoun laughs, her full bellied almost guffaw. Tears fill her eyes because she’s laughing so hard.
“Ya don’t,” she says. “But ain’t nothing wrong with doing with your body what the Good Lord intended.”
