She made it back to her house just as the water came to a boil. She set about having her breakfast, following her morning routine which included starting some bread dough each morning for baking later in the day.
The Solstice holiday properly started at sunset but there was much to do on the shortest day of the year. They’d light a fire at sunset and hold a vigil until dawn. The new year would start at sunrise and, by tradition, everybody would be one year older. It was a time of introspection as the old year came to a close and a time for new beginnings with the new year just begun. Tanyth thought the inn was beginning rather auspiciously with the first fire being the Solstice vigil, even if she wasn’t terribly thrilled about being another year older. “Better than the alternative.” It was a grumble but a good natured one.
As she finished kneading the bread dough for the first proof, she thought about the year, especially the past few weeks. She felt–in a certain sense–that she’d awakened from a long slumber. Since leaving Roger twenty-odd winters before, she’d been moving from place to place, teacher to teacher, and learning her craft. She’d thought herself, in many ways, fulfilled and if there were parts of her life lacking, the richness of new knowledge, new people, new places seemed a fair trade for the things she had missed.
She finished forming the dough into a ball and put it in a wooden bowl with a square of towel over it to protect it from drying out. She placed it near the hearth to be warm enough to rise, but not so near that she needed to worry about it cooking–or the bowl burning.
She pulled another stick out of the woodbox and added it to the fire and watched it start to smolder, then slowly catch and begin burning. She thought of the raven. She hadn’t shared any visions since looking for Frank in the snow. She wasn’t sure how or why or if it were just that she’d not been upset or desperate enough since then. The memory of the nightmare following was enough to make her heart beat a little faster and she looked at her hand, wiggling the fingers unconsciously to make sure they were not feathers.
She grumbled when she realized what she was doing. “Mother have mercy.” With the grumble she reminded herself of the oddnesses that had come with her various prayers since coming to the village and something inside her quailed. The last one, asking the blessing on the inn had left her weak and trembling. Still, that was the day that Frank had come to fill her woodbox and stayed for dinner, and breakfast. For a moment, she basked in the inner glow that he gave her, even when he wasn’t there.
The log in the fireplace snapped and tossed a spark out onto the hearth. She brushed it back into the ashes with the toe of her boot and started thinking about the future. Tomorrow she’d be a year older. The winter would come and after that, the spring. Gertie Pinecrest would also be a year older and Tanyth had a pang of anxiety over the idea that the woman she hoped would be her last teacher might cross over before she could get there.
And what about Frank? His place was here with the village. The village needed him and he’d not be welcome at Mother Pinecrest’s. Even if he would want to go with her, he could not. She looked around the cozy house and wondered if her plan to find Gertie Pinecrest was really meant to be. She toyed with the idea of giving up on it. It might be nice to stay with Frank, to help with the village.
She sighed and shook herself. “You’ve work to do, Old Woman. Move.”
She’d found a supply of small tins with tight fitting lids in Mother Alderton’s shelves. She found several on the shelves with liniments and unguents already in them–most with additions for various inflammations and abrasions. With the coldest part of winter coming, she decided to make pots of lip balm. The children would need it and she knew she’d need some herself.
Over the course of several days she’d distilled enough mint and lavender oil to use for her balms which only left mixing the oil and wax to the correct consistency and adding the oils before pouring into the tins. She floated a small pot in a large kettle of boiling water and put in a block of beeswax for the base. As it melted she added a measure of almond oil and mixed it until it took on a smooth consistency. With the pot of balm base made, she poured half of it into a crock and mixed in the lavender oil quickly before pouring the concoction into half of the small tins. She poured her supply of fresh mint oil into the other pot and repeated the process. As it cooled, the oil kept the wax from becoming hard again, and added a bit of flavor and scent. The ointment, when coated on the lips with a fingertip, kept the cold, dry air of winter from drying and cracking them. She smiled at her morning’s handiwork and transferred the small tins to the mantle board to cool and set slowly while she punched down her bread and got the loaves ready to bake in the afternoon.
The morning raced by and she paused in her work to have a bit of soup for lunch and to stir her pot of beans. Part of the evening’s vigil would include a feast and she made a large pot of beans which she’d place to bake at sunset so they’d have a hot meal at midnight. She knew Sadie and Amber were planning breads as well, and Thomas would be spit roasting various game choices through the night. Everybody would bring something to contribute to the feast. While the new inn might be lacking walls, this would still be the first party in it and the whole town planned to turn out for the Solstice vigil.
By midafternoon, Tanyth looked around and found that she was ready for the evening. Her small loaves of bread had baked and she grimaced at how horrible they looked. Whenever she watched Sadie and Amber sling bread dough around and create the perfect, globular boules, it made her small, misshapen lumps seen somehow inadequate. It tasted good enough. Frank said he liked it and she found the sourdough starter that she used had a mildly piquant flavor, but they just looked wrong to her and she couldn’t figure out what she was doing wrong. She made a mental note to get Sadie to help her after the Solstice and perhaps she’d be able to see the problem.
She pulled a largish stick from the woodbox and banked the fire around it before kicking off her boots and crawling into her bed. It would be a long night and prudence dictated a short nap would not be amiss. As the blankets warmed from her body, she slipped over the edge and into sleep.
She sat in the top of the spruce and watched the preparations below. She crooned softly to herself, her belly full of rabbit that the man had left unguarded. The roof below her covered much of the ground that had once been open but still left her able to see what occurred in the village. With the short days and long nights and the weather getting colder, she husbanded her strength and stayed close to the tree. There was often food for the taking around these people and she didn’t need to spend a lot of time and effort to find it. She puffed up her feathers and closed her eyes against the afternoon sun.
Tanyth roused a bit, surprised at the raven dream. It was the first she’d had in weeks, but the day was not close to done and she had time to sleep. Feeling decadent, she rolled over and pulled the warm blankets up higher on her shoulders and wondered idly where Frank was before falling back into the delicious darkness of sleep.
The cawing awakened her and even through her half closed eyes, she knew the afternoon was waning fast. As she struggled through the grogginess she realized that the back door of her house stood open and Frank was lowering himself into the house, bent almost double to avoid the low lintel. She closed her eyes and stretched languorously, wondering if they had time before the festivities started.
“What a nice surprise.” Her voice was low but the house was small and she was sure he would be able to hear the invitation in her tone.
He straightened and turned, rushing to her in one smooth movement. She blinked struggling against the nightmare that she could not wake up from even as the snarling face of Josh the Cosh peered down at her and his fist took her back into unconsciousness.
Chapter 38
Familiar Hurts
Her face hurt. She’d known this hurt many times before but she thought she’d left it behind with her husband. She didn’t need to touch her face to feel the bruising with her fingers. She knew it like an
old friend. It was just as well. She couldn’t seem to move her arms.
She blinked the one eye that would open. The other was either swollen shut or the lid was stuck together. She couldn’t tell. Under her chin she saw the familiar woolen blanket from her bed. But she wasn’t in her bed. She was propped against a wall, rolled in the blankets and wrapped with a long piece of rope around the outside. She smelled horse, and a pungent privy smell. A fire flickered somewhere just out of her sight and she tried to muster the strength to turn her head and look.
“Witch.”
The word came from the darkness and she remembered the face, the snarl, the name. “Josh.” Her words were blocked. Her mouth had trouble speaking around swollen lips and a wad of cloth. Her tongue rasped across the weave of the fabric.
“You. Ruined. Me.” The words were low, harsh. Each one discrete. Each one freighted with meaning that she heard but didn’t understand.
Her eyes flickered, her brain rattling in her her head from the beating and she slowly regained her senses. Each new awareness triggered another stab of pain. She grunted around the gag.
“You ruined me.” He loomed out of the darkness to stand in front of her.
She could smell him then. He smelled bad. Not dirty. Bad. Not the smell of a man who hadn’t bathed in weeks, although that reached her even through the blood clots in her nose. Vaguely rotten. The smell caught her throat, a smell that made her glad for the clots in her nose. She turned her head but he stepped closer.
“You ruined me. You killed my friends.” He knelt awkwardly in front of her. “And now you’re going to pay for that.”
She knew she should be afraid, but her battered body knew the pain, knew it as something that might pass. Eventually. Knew the pain made her forget something important. She tried to find it.
He slugged her and she fell forward, feeling something dig into the side of her thigh as she fell.
“You ruined me. And now, I’m going to ruin you.”
Her mind cleared enough to remember that he’d surprised her in her bedroll, and she realized that he had just rolled her in the covers and taken her. Her stomach and ribs felt very much like she’d been slung over somebody’s shoulder and carried.
He grabbed her shoulder and slammed her back against the wall, rattling her head against the earth behind her.
The shift in weight dug the stick into her thigh again. A stray detached thought flashed through her rattled brain. Trussed like a Solstice goose, battered, being held prisoner by a man getting ready to kill her, and she focused on the fact that a stick chafed the outside of her thigh raw. The incongruity of it nearly made her laugh through the blood soaked gag.
She saw the blow coming, but couldn’t dodge in time. It bounced her off the wall back down into the well of unconsciousness. As the darkness filled her again she said a prayer to the All-Mother for delivering her from the stick.
Shouting woke her and she shifted her weight on the limb. The men were making noises. Not noises. The same noise. Over and over. Different voices in different areas of the village. The sun was down and the moon was up so the village was washed in silver light. She could see them moving about, calling.
They were clustered around the house with rabbits. Would there be a rabbit tonight? There was something wrong. Something she needed to do. Her belly was still full and the sky was cold but she pushed off from the limb and her dark wings caught the breeze as she soared toward the house with rabbits and over the ridgepole.
Meat. It wasn’t there now, but it had been. Something reeking had been there but was gone. That smell, she needed to follow it, find it. There would be food there. There would be... something. The wind caught the scent and she lost it, but she was patient and flew on silent wing, quartering the sky and sailing over the wide path where men rode, back and forth until she called in frustration. It was gone.
A large pine on the edge of her territory offered shelter from the cold and she took roost near the trunk and let the thick needles and thicker wood protect her from the wind. She fluffed up her feathers and tucked down as best she could. There was meat here. Somewhere. In daylight maybe she could find it.
Tanyth woke. The raven was out there, somewhere, but where? She turned her head and the room spun but settled again. The dim light glowed from a fire that burned somewhere to her left. The cold, wet ground soaked through the blanket under her. She didn’t see Josh in the dim, shadowed light. She tried to get her one good eye to focus but it was too difficult to make out anything in the dark. She gave up and let her eye close and her head sag forward. Sleep took her but the dreams and the pain kept waking her. Through it all, every shift in weight dug the stick into her leg.
Eventually the long night ended. “Figgers it’s the longest night of the year.” She grumbled but the gag in her mouth turned it into incomprehensible gargle. The movement and noise brought him out of the shadows.
“What’s that, witch? You best not be casting more of your spells or you’ll find out real fast.” He still hid in the shadows but the gray light of morning seeped in in places. Pale morning light filtered from above in small patches, overwhelming the ruddy glow from the coals. Or perhaps the fire had gone out. She couldn’t tell.
He reached out with three filthy fingers and plucked the wad of cloth from her mouth, leaving her gasping for breath.
“Longest night of the year.” Her voice croaked awkwardly from the stickiness in her mouth and the swelling in her lips. She didn’t think she’d be able to drink even if he offered.
“Oh, if you think that night was long, witch, you just wait until tonight. Oh, yes. Just wait.” He loomed out of the shadows then, his eyes glittering oddly, and he stuffed the wad back into her mouth, practically gagging her with it as he stuffed it deep. “You ruined me. And I’m going to ruin you. See if I don’t.” His eyes dodged back and forth looking at things she didn’t see. As he crouched there in the shadows, the pale morning light showed her that he was totally mad. Enough of her wit returned to make her very afraid.
She heard a raven caw three times–a territorial warning–but she couldn’t tell what direction, or even how far away. She hoped Thomas would be able to pick up the track.
A familiar pounding sound came from outside. It carried the jingle of harness with it and she recognized the sound of one of the King’s Own messengers galloping along the Pike. The muffled sounds came from some distance, but that she heard it at all told her the road ran near her cave.
Somewhere close a horse wickered and Josh’s head snapped at the sound. He half crawled, half walked around her, and disappeared. She felt rather than heard the stamp of a horse’s hoof. She thought she heard a low voice but when she held her breath to listen it was gone.
Her shifting in the night had loosened the bindings a little and she shifted again, trying to get some circulation back in her hips. The stick dug into her leg again and she couldn’t imagine what in the world he’d managed to bind up with her. She slithered her arms down from where they were crossed above her chest which released some of the pressure on her lungs and she was able to get a breath, even around the obstructions in her mouth and nose. She worked her hand down to her thigh to push the stick away.
She shifted her weight back and forth again to get some more room in the tightly wound blanket. As she did her hand finally found the object that had been digging into her. Her fingers wrapped around the hilt of her belt knife.
He would be back soon. The gray light of dawn brightened and it looked for all the world like she lay in a very low ceilinged cave. There was something odd about it but she couldn’t quite place it. It would come to her. She released the hilt of her knife, repositioning it so that it lay more comfortably along her leg and left her fingers resting on the cross guard. She just needed to rest and to think. The damp cold of the ground was beginning to leach away her body heat as it soaked the blankets under her. She closed her eye and offered a silent prayer. “Guardian of the North, Bone of the Earth, loan me your s
trength that I may survive.” Exhaustion and cold conspired to push her back down into the darkness.
She crooned to the morning from her hiding place in the tall pine. The meat smell had not come back but she watched the man with the bow. He killed rabbits and grouse and sometimes left the entrails where she could find them. Maybe he’d find a rabbit. Maybe she could find the meat smell. She had seen him moving out of the house with rabbits. He came out the back door and watched the ground and entered the forest which interested her. He was on the trail of something. Perhaps it was the meat. The track turned and he went out into the wide path and stood there in the middle of the packed surface. He looked up and down the path and she sidled sideways along the limb to watch him around the tree. Perhaps there would be grouse.
No, she needed to find something. The woman with the food would feed her, but where was she?
The man in the path turned away from the village and walked quickly along, she watched his head turning back and forth, back and forth as he searched for something. She needed to find something, too. The sun was coming up and maybe the meat smell would come back.
She dropped off the limb and sailed quietly through the forest fetching up on limbs now and again to see if he’d kill a rabbit. The apple tree was here and she stopped to peck at some of the half frozen apples on the ground. Food, but not as good as meat. She could hear the man walking away along the path. She ate a few more apples but needed water.
Her strong legs pushed her into the air and three heavy beats of her wing gave her speed enough to glide between the tree trunks. She gained a bit of altitude and came to the large fallen tree that had the tasty rose hips. She scented man and she flared away. His horse flickered an ear as she passed over and stamped his heavy hoof. She fetched up on a branch and looked. A horse meant grain sometimes and grain was tasty.
She eyed the horse but didn’t see the man. She smelled him and he smelled like meat but she couldn’t see him. His scent rode the morning air but try as she might she couldn’t see him. That made her uneasy. A man she couldn’t see was not a good thing. She launched again and winged to the pond for water.