Foxmask

  It was a little awkward sitting up; Creidhe held the blankets around herself, hoping he would do something about the clothes as soon as possible. It was one thing to know that he had touched her, washed her, cleaned her during the sickness; it was quite another to be exposed and vulnerable now that she was herself again. He had a store of his own old things, maybe. She tried to imagine herself clad as he was, in garments sewn over with feathers, but could not quite see it. It occurred to her that there were many questions to be asked, important questions, and that she had no idea at all where to start.

  “Safe,” she echoed. “But it’s not safe here, is it? What about the hunt?”

  His eyes met hers, level and steady over the low flames of the fire. “I am Keeper,” he said again. “You will be protected. I swear this by stone and star, by wind and wing. They will not come near you.”

  His words, his tone sent a chill through her, like a memory of something dark and old. She did not doubt for a moment that this strange creature spoke the truth.

  “Keeper?” she queried cautiously. “This is your name?”

  He nodded gravely, then took up the knife again; he was fashioning a binding around the handle, an elaborate woven pattern of cord.

  “Have you another name?” she asked him. “The one your mother and father gave you?”

  There was no response to this.

  “My name is Creidhe,” she offered. “I am from a far place, it’s called the Light Isles. I came here because . . .” She was not quite sure how to finish this, not quite sure how much he would understand.

  “You flee Asgrim?” There was an edge to his voice now, a danger in it; his care of her, Creidhe thought, had probably been far outside his usual pattern of living. There was the mark of a warrior about him, a kind of warrior who exists principally in tales and dreams. Perhaps she had indeed been drowned in the Fool’s Tide, and all of this was some vision from the other side of shadow.

  “You flee the Unspoken?” he added.

  “Both,” Creidhe said after a moment. “I was—traded. They were taking me away. That was when I tipped the boat over and escaped.”

  He waited a little before he spoke again; his hands were busy, weaving the cord over, under, looping here, twisting there. “You carried your web to my island,” he said.

  Creidhe nodded, feeling an odd constriction in her throat. “I don’t show it to people,” she told him. “Nobody’s ever seen more than a small part of it before. It is—secret, private.”

  He said nothing; his hands continued their steady work, deft, fluid. Behind him in the corner she could see a small, dark shadow and two bright eyes.

  “I think—I think maybe I was dreaming,” Creidhe said. “I thought I heard you telling the story, my story. But how could you have known? How could you recognize my mother, my father?”

  He looked up then and smiled, and it seemed to her a message came with that smile, something nascent, sweet, profoundly dangerous. “It is all there in the web,” Keeper said. “I knew why you had come: to be safe.”

  Creidhe wished then for her mother, or for her sister, Eanna. Only a wise woman had the skills to understand this, and she herself was no more than an ordinary girl with a clever hand for needle and loom and a few strange ideas in her head. There was nothing she could say. The more questions she asked, the more there seemed to be waiting for answers.

  “Clothes,” Keeper said, rising to his feet and setting his handiwork aside. “Ready for you, Creidhe.” His voice was hesitant, trying out her name; he glanced at her sideways, shyly, as if he were not quite sure whether he might address her thus.

  “Thank you,” she said, and managed a smile in return. It was not a very good one; she was still weak, her head felt strange, and she was acutely aware of her nakedness under the coarse blanket she held clutched around her body. All the same, her smile made him blush scarlet like a bashful boy. Muttering something she did not catch, he turned his back and strode out of the small hut.

  She waited. Under the low stone shelf by the doorway something crouched, watching her. She sensed rather than saw it now, for as Keeper had left the hut, it had withdrawn deeper, farther in, fearful if the man was not present. Creidhe wondered what kind of creatures lived on the Isle of Clouds besides puffins, gannets, seals. She wondered how long it would be before the rest of the tribe showed itself, and what role Keeper played within their number. He seemed neither follower nor leader, but very much himself. Perhaps he stood entirely apart. She should ask him about the tribe again, and about the hunt. She should ask him about Foxmask. She did not want to ask. She did not want to contemplate the future, for it seemed to her that, between them, the Long Knife people and the Unspoken had cut her path to shreds before her feet. She had come to the Lost Isles to stand by Thorvald, her best friend, whom she loved. She had thought to support him in his quest and see him safe home again when it was done. Indeed, it was she who had found his answer for him, an answer she could not give him, for here she was, washed up on the farthest of shores alone, hunted by tribes on both sides of this long feud, cut off from her friends, helpless to aid them and, it appeared, quite unable to go back. In addition, she was weak as an infant; in Keeper’s absence, she tried to rise to her feet and felt her legs collapse under her.

  Yet there was a strange sense of calm over her, a certainty that she had done the right thing. As a little waft of breeze came in the door and whispered through the fire, it came to Creidhe that she was alive and safe and that, ridiculously, she was more content than she had been for a single moment since she left the shore of Hrossey. She imagined Nessa back home by the hearth, casting on a handful of dried weed and searching for answers in the flames. She saw Eanna in the lonely hillside dwelling of the wise women, standing before her own small fire with arms outstretched and eyes shut, the better to use the eye of the spirit. Could they see her, her mother, her sister? Perhaps if she concentrated very hard, if she fixed her mind fully on them, they might catch a little of her presence. Creidhe closed her eyes, rocking in place, humming under her breath. Some things have no boundaries.

  When she came to herself once more, a little dazed, for it had been longer than she intended, she saw that Keeper had come and gone quite silently without her knowing it. He had left a pile of folded cloth for her, placed with care on the flat stones by the fire pit. That first evening he had unpacked her colors; she had seen how he set them out to dry in a sequence of light to dark, day to night. Her own order for them might have seemed random, blood-red nudging midnight, periwinkle blue edging up to sun yellow, yet within that apparent chaos she had her own pattern: she knew just which went where. Now, when she checked, she found the skeins of wool back in their holder, each in the precise spot where she was accustomed to storing it.

  There was no sign of Keeper now. Even the little presence in the shadows was gone. She unfolded what he had left for her, expecting some kind of tunic and breeches, a cape of old skins, perhaps boots if she was lucky. The first touch told her she was wrong. For a moment, as her fingers encountered the soft woolen weave, a shiver passed through her; it was not so long since the women of Brightwater had made her a gift of a fine gown. A robe of sacrifice, that had been. This was simpler, plainer, but, in its way, as beautifully made. There were no feathers. A man’s long shirt had been cut shorter in the hem and sleeves, and neatly finished; the fabric was old but still good, a faded blue, and the new stitches were done in a darker shade, more akin to the hue of sea under autumn cloud. The thread, she was certain, came from her own supply; this color had been difficult to achieve. The work was remarkably fine. There was a long skirt, cunningly pieced together from several different garments, she thought, with a corded tie for the waist. Another shirt had been altered to form an undergarment of sorts, a sleeveless shift with borders in another thread. She had named this color heart’s-eye, after a flower that bloomed in spring on the clifftops near her home in Hrossey. A deep, bright hue it was, somewhere between red and purple, a shade that
shouted its gladness in the green and dun and stone gray of the fields.

  He might be back soon, and his strange small shadow after him. A little wobbly on her legs, Creidhe scrambled into shift, skirt and overshirt. There was a belt, a wide strip of wool in gray and blue, and she tied this around her waist. It was odd: odd enough to set a shiver through her again. When the women of Brightwater had made her put on the green-embroidered gown, the one that marked her as a valuable trade item, it had been loose here, tight there, as one might expect with a garment made for another. These things fit her perfectly. The sleeves came exactly to the wrist, the skirt flowed neatly to the ankles, the belt tied perfectly with just enough left over for the fringed edging to hang down a little below the knot. Creidhe’s scalp prickled. She tried to imagine Thorvald dealing with such a situation: saw, immediately, her friend scowling with irritation and throwing her the nearest garment he could find. Here, put this on, he’d snap, then turn his back and get on with something more worthy of his time.

  She ran her fingers over the neat, colored stitching at the wrist of the shirt. Most young men she knew wouldn’t even know how to thread a needle. Fishermen did, of course, but that was not the same. It was clear this had taken time and thought, care and imagination. She thought of those eyes: deepest green, mysterious, unfathomable; those hands, long-fingered, dexterous, dangerous . . . The Journey had yielded up secrets to him almost unasked. Why was Keeper here? It seemed to Creidhe that he was Other; that he stood outside what she knew of the Isle of Clouds—the fierce tribe, the hunt, Foxmask, the long, bitter dispute. Her mother had a gown, an old one, tucked away deep in a corner of a carven chest. It was a garment whose folds held all the hues of the sea, a shimmering swathe of dark enchantment and ancient power. It had only been worn once, on a night when Nessa worked deep magic to save her people and the man she loved. The gown had been a gift: a gift from the Seal Tribe. For their aid in a time of utmost need, Nessa had paid a terrible price.

  Creidhe wrapped her arms around herself, moving to sit on the rocks by the fire pit. This soft covering of wool, these carefully prepared garments, lovely in their very plainness, these gifts were surely not perilous as Nessa’s fine robe had been. These little stitches, made so delicately with threads from her own supply, seemed to offer protection rather than threat. Besides, to be quite practical about it, she had nothing else to wear, and it was a lot better than feathers.

  She stirred the fire. The peaty fuel Keeper used burned with little smoke, keeping this small space dry and warm. She looked outside, venturing to circle the neat dwelling, trying to work out where exactly on the island it was. A narrow, barely perceptible track led down across glass-clad slopes toward the west. Eastward the land rose sharply to cloud-blanketed crags; a chill wind swept down from them, setting the grasses shivering. On the north side of the hut there was a sudden, alarming drop to the sea; many birds circled there. One would need to be careful not to wander at night. Like the Isle of Storms, this place offered scant shelter; it seemed at the mercy of storm and gale, and Creidhe could see nothing growing above knee height. For man and beast, rocky outcrops might allow cover, sudden gullies furnish hiding places. Standing by the doorway, Creidhe could see right down to the tiny cove where the boat had come in.

  By all the ancestors, she hoped this muzzy head would clear soon, so she could start making herself useful. Keeper’s seemed an existence both solitary and difficult. She had already taken up a great deal of his time, time that would have been better spent on—on fishing, or hunting, or whatever else he did. She picked up the blankets and folded them, tidied things as best she could. Even that small effort left her back aching, her legs weary. She could have begun to cook supper, but that was to disturb the pattern of things. Cooking was later; she had observed that despite her illness. Still, there was one task that was all her own: the Journey. Though her hands were shaky after the fever, the linen and wools called to her, eager for the new fashioning, the picking up of the strands. She rolled it out, rainbow colors on gray stone, a flashing brightness in the small space of the hut. She glanced from the complex interweaving of her pattern to the single, stark line of color that threaded its way around her new clothing, at neckline, at sleeve, at hem. She did not want to acknowledge the truth to herself, but there it was, plainly visible. Brother Niall had noticed the escape hatches in her work, the places that allowed the pain and joy of what she depicted to spill out and dissipate before their power built to a dangerous level. But here on the island, something else had happened. The Journey had broken its boundaries and was no longer contained. Now other hands were helping to move it forward.

  Creidhe threaded a needle, selected soft gray, darkest green. She tried to show what she had seen, there in the corner: the same small creature that had slept on her pallet, and had fled the moment it knew she was awake. The little face was difficult. Sometimes it seemed one thing, sometimes another; now like a shaggy small hound, now more like some hunting animal, one of those from her father’s tales, a weasel, a fox, a cat, for the muzzle was pointed, the ears large, the eyes quite feral. Yet at times it had a form not quite like any of these things, but nebulous, as if what it showed the world were only a hint or suggestion of what lay behind. When she was well enough to venture out farther, Creidhe thought, perhaps she would find whole flocks or tribes of such animals on the island. Maybe it was only her own weakness that made its shape so hard to distinguish. Keeper she could see clearly, but she would not put him in the Journey. To do so seemed in some way dangerous.

  She plied her needle steadily, forgetting time and place as one does when deep in such work. What she made, in the end, was less depiction than suggestion, less image than idea: the eyes, the delicate muzzle, the shadows and timidity, the utter strangeness. She thought it conveyed, at least, the difficulty of actually seeing such a creature as it really was, with its concealment and its changing. When she had finished that part, she made the Isle of Clouds again, very small this time, encompassed in a pair of circling arms, hands curved inward to keep the precious burden safe. Outside that protective wall the storm raged, lightning-bright, blood-crimson; beyond the barrier, the Fool’s Tide washed mercilessly over all those who dared approach. Within the cradling arms the island remained: apart, alone, inviolable.

  He came back with fish, up from the western end of the island where great waves pounded the base of a bird-thronged holm. Beyond its cliffs and rock stacks there was empty ocean to the edge of the world. Creidhe was still sewing, bringing the creeping, twining border along to the place where she had made the wondrous, mysterious things. She made no attempt to fold her work over. It felt strange to leave it in view, as if she were letting Keeper look right inside her to a place nobody else had ever seen, not even Thorvald. Her mouth twitched in amusement. Keeper had certainly seen a great deal more of her outward self than Thorvald ever had; there really had been no choice in the matter. It was just as well he seemed to be painfully shy as well as dauntingly capable.

  “Why do you smile?” He had gutted and scaled his catch down by the shore; now he was cleaning it further, and spreading out pieces of seaweed to wrap it in, ready for the fire.

  “Nothing, really.” Not something she could tell him, certainly. “I was just thinking how strange it is to be here, the two of us alone. Last summer I was at home with my parents, my sisters, my friends. I could not have dreamed the ancestors would have led me here.”

  “Not two of us,” he corrected her gravely. “Three.”

  “You mean the—?” Creidhe glanced across the fire; the doglike creature now sat by his master, eyes intent on the juicy, pale fish.

  “My brother, yes.”

  Creidhe swallowed. Keeper was undeniably somewhat unusual, as one might expect of a man who chose to dwell in such a remote place. She had not, until now, considered that he might be somewhat lacking in his wits. “Your brother?” she choked.

  “Not really my brother,” he said, “but I think of him as that. We are ki
n.”

  Her mind did another twist, another loop, tried to put this into some acceptable shape. Was he a priestly man of sorts, and this his companion creature? She knew of that. Back home, the wise woman, Rona, who had been Nessa’s teacher and then Eanna’s, had possessed a strange affinity with dogs. Creidhe chose a safe question to ask. “Has he a name?”

  “Small One.”

  She thought about this a little. “The same kind of name as Keeper,” she commented.

  Across the flames, he regarded her soberly. “Our chosen names,” he agreed. “We have no need for those others give us. This is our island, our safe place.”

  She must tread delicately here. “I take some pride in my own name,” she said, “and in my mother’s and father’s. Creidhe is the name they chose for me. I might also call myself Daughter of Nessa, and Daughter of Eyvind, and feel joy in that, knowing I bear their courage and goodness in me. That does not make me any less myself.”

  Keeper fell silent, his long fingers rolling the fish into a parcel, skewering it with what seemed to be sharpened bone.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, thinking perhaps she had upset him. “I don’t want to pry. I am a little anxious, that’s all. I don’t really know who you are, or—or Small One, and I was told there is a very dangerous tribe on this island; the women at Brightwater said many men die each year, fighting here. I think it’s possible that if Asgrim’s warriors don’t find Foxmask, they may find me. They had planned to offer me as some kind of substitute, so they didn’t have to hunt this summer. I don’t know if you are familiar with the story—?”

  “I know the story.” His tone was grave, calm. “It is true, many men die at hunt time. But you will be safe. I have promised.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I have promised. You should not be afraid.”

  “Yes, I know,” she said after a moment. “And I don’t doubt that you mean it. Still, I am—troubled. I came to these islands with two friends, two young men. Asgrim took them both away. The Ruler lied to me about several things. He may have been lying when he told me my friends were merely helping to repair storm damage in the settlements in return for the wood they needed to fix our boat. I’m afraid he may try to involve them in the hunt. And while I may be safe under your protection, Thorvald and Sam are not.”