A Play of Shadow (21 page)

“‘Forget her magic.’” Jenn stood and began to dress, seeming oblivious to the chill in the room. She shot him an unreadable look over her shoulder, her eyes purpled. “Me.”

He’d worried how to tell her. He should, Bannan thought ruefully, have remembered who she was and her astonishing courage. “Yes. They—I—forgot your very existence. Until I touched this,” again to the mark, “and then I remembered. Everything. It was the worst moment of my life,” he finished.

He could see only the side of her face, but did a smile round her cheek? “I must thank the moth, then.”

“How did you read what it wrote? I didn’t know you could.”

Inside her shirtwaist, Jenn muttered, “I can’t. It’s not—” the words came clearer as her head came through, “—as if I can read what they write in their journals.” She paused, her eyes meeting his. “But what’s on your neck? That’s clear to me.”

He’d freeze if he sat like this a moment longer. Bannan got up and pulled on his clothes, cold as they were. “You’ve another heritage, besides Rhothan and turn-born,” he suggested, shrugging on his shirt.

Jenn looked out the window. “Sei.” Ice-cold, that word, and full of foreboding.

Bannan went to her, wrapping his arms around her waist to draw her against him. “It’s not all you are.”

“Is it not?” Jenn said, stiff in his embrace. “You were there. Is not sei what fills me now? Am I more than its tears?”

He tightened his grip and pressed his face into her golden hair. “Ancestors Blessed. I wish just once you could see yourself as I see you, Jenn Nalynn. As all of us see you. You wouldn’t think such things.”

She turned to face him. “What I think,” Jenn told him, “is that we’re late for—”

His lips found hers.

Late, they’d most certainly be.

She’d been the one worried about being late, and they were, by the sounds from below. A coo and giggle from Loee. Zehr, walking in his boots. Gallie’s quiet question and his deeper answer.

Breakfast well underway, in all likelihood finished and tidied, while they lay abed. Bannan had drifted back to sleep in her arms, his face peaceful, and Jenn wouldn’t move or disturb him.

Selfish, that was, as much or more than kind.

To feel his strong length against her, from toe to shoulder, was to find her toes and shoulder. The bristle of his regrowing beard, smooth one way, rough the other, discovered both fingertips and the soft inner surface of her wrist. The scent of him filled her nose and throat, giving her lungs, while his warmth drove the beats of her heart.

The magic of the edge was stranger than she could have imagined. Beyond its reach, others forgot her.

Within it, she could forget herself.

It didn’t have to be so. The moth, or sei, had helped Bannan remember. Lying like this, with Bannan solid and real—yes, even his occasional snore and how her leg under his was numb and surely would be pins and needles soon— helped her be solid and real too.

For how long?

It didn’t matter.

She’d asked Mistress Sand. “Do turn-born grow old?”

“We weather,” that worthy had replied. “Like anything left outside for years. Slowly enough.”

“How slowly?” she’d questioned, this being alarmingly vague. Jenn was aware there were sorts of wood that crumbled after a winter and others, for Zehr had taught her, that would stay unchanged for lifetimes after those who’d built with them were bones.

But the turn-born wouldn’t say, or couldn’t. Jenn wasn’t terst, after all.

“We do grow weary,” Mistress Sand had said next, to no question or perhaps all of them. “Weary of each other. Of the unending debates over this expectation or that or none. Weary of remembering what we were.” She’d laughed then, and claimed Jenn should have no such difficulty, living as she did with family and others who were as real as could be and would keep her whole too.

Leading Jenn to wonder if this was why, more than Marrowdell’s mill or beer, the turn-born came every harvest: to be with people who remembered them, so they would not forget.

Instead of that, which came needlessly near doubt of friendship and kindness, she’d asked, “Do turn-born die?”

Jenn rested her cheek on Bannan’s chest, listening to the ceaseless thud-thump of his heart and steady sigh of his breath. She tried to make her breaths and her heartbeats match, but they didn’t, quite. She almost crossed her eyes watching how her breath moved like a playful breeze through the fine hairs near her nose and mouth, surely tickling.

They were late, after all.

There was a world with her, here in this small bed, a world as entrancing as any map could show or magic realm produce.

Turn-born, Mistress Sand had told her, did not die as other beings. Oh, they could take injury, while flesh, as readily as before. Heal from such harm, over time, or stay turn-born to avoid it. Until memory failed.

Die?

A turn-born was, she’d said bluntly, until a turn-born wasn’t. Their passing left no bones to bury, though that wasn’t terst custom, nor so much as a tidy pile of rock or sand or shattered glass to mark place and moment. Best, Mistress Sand had finished, to do as other turn-born and not dwell overmuch on the future.

So one day, Jenn thought as she lay with Bannan, a day she couldn’t predict, she would be . . .

. . . then not.

What did matter was to prepare those who loved her for the eventuality, as best she could. Though she most certainly hoped it was an eventuality far removed from now . . .

“We could wait for lunch,” Bannan murmured, eyes still closed, and rolled over to bring her close.

. . . for she quite liked now.

The breeze in Bannan’s ear nipped like frost. “Tell me again why I agreed to . . . this.”

The truthseer hid a grin as he adjusted the ox yoke around Scourge’s neck. It hadn’t been easy, coaxing the kruar from his vigil by the Treffs’, but he’d a trick or two. “Cheese.”

A red forked tongue slipped between lips that might have been those of a horse, but were not, collecting drool. The kruar hunted for himself; that didn’t mean he spurned the occasional tasty bribe. Though “this,” the man admitted, was pushing that limit.

But he’d no other way to hoist the heavy crate into the loft, not without spoiling his surprise for Jenn Nalynn. Marrowdell’s inhabitants were as curious as they were helpful and nothing stayed secret.

Though today was different. Davi hadn’t lingered after delivering Bannan’s belongings. The rest of the village, including Jenn, was busy with an inventory of supplies. Sennic and Riss would ensure all knew what must be rationed at once.

And what they must do without, until the world thawed again.

At least his gifts had proved more useful than he’d thought. The candies could be crushed to add sweetness to winter baking, the spices and tea shared between every household. The lamp oil was added to the village store; with care, it could last till the days grew longer again. Wool from the gloves would mend socks and mittens.

Loee adored her hat with bunny ears and Hettie promised to pass her baby’s booties on to Peggs’, once outgrown.

The books brought murmurs of real pleasure. Wainn would “read” them, in case the paper was needed for tinder. Of that, they would have had sufficient for the winter, but the Treffs’ fireplace roared, trying to warm Frann. No one argued with the need, though word was, unless Davi could move his forge stone into the house, other homes must make do with less.

Jenn’s gift? Bannan smiled to himself. No need to share or worry about anything but surprising the love of his life. He’d do it here, in his bedroom, a room he hoped would become hers as well, forever. There’d be kisses, surely, and—

A hoof stamped impatiently and the truthseer took the hint, moving with dispatch to fasten the hook in the rope net around the crate. “Gently now!”

That caution earned him a baleful eyeroll, but Scourge stepped into the harness with all the care he could ask, lifting the load with ease. The pulley hoist Bannan had affixed to the roof beam creaked as it took the strain. “Hold there!” he commanded.

“More cheese.”

“Ancestors Greedy and Gluttonous,” Bannan muttered under his breath, knowing full well the sharp-eared beast would hear. Louder, “Not a crumb if you let it drop!”

Amazing, how smug that long face could look.

Wasting no more time on Scourge, Bannan dashed into his house. He jumped to pull himself through the opening into the loft, ignoring the ladder, unsurprised to find the house toad waiting. The creatures had a vested interest in anything that entered a building under their protection. “Off my pillow,” he told it firmly. After a considering blink, it shifted to squat in the middle of his bed.

It’d have to do. Bannan hurried to the open window. The crate hung within reach, as planned. He took hold of the netting and pulled. The crate swung back and forth readily enough, but no matter how he strained and tugged, there was no tipping the awkward thing to fit it through the window.

Heart’s Blood. Tir—or any villager—would have known better. Only one thing for it. Bannan leaned out the window. “Scourge! Hold it there!”

“More cheese,” came the sly answer.

Easier to promise if the kruar would tolerate a cow on the farm, but no, Bannan had to trade with the Ropps. “All I have,” he promised recklessly. “I’ll be back.”

He dropped to the main floor, found what he needed, and climbed back up. With a grimace of regret, he lifted the ax over his shoulder and took aim at the windowsill.

“What’s this?” Wind rushed through the window, flapping Bannan’s shirt and tossing his hair in his eyes. “Can it be?”

Flinging aside the ax, Bannan threw himself at the window. Ancestors Beset and Bewildered, why now? The dragon had the worst timing. So long as—

“It is! A cart cow!”

—too late.

With a squeal of outrage, Scourge lunged, tossing off the yoke and the crate plummeted toward the ground. Netting burned through Bannan’s fingers as he made a futile grab. “Wisp!!” he cried.

The crate stopped, midair. An elegant nostril, traced by steam, appeared nearby and gave a sniff, then vanished again. “Curious.”

Scourge pawed the ground. “Come down!” the breeze snarled and snapped. “Come down so I can tear out your guts and feed them to nyphrit!!” He lifted his head and roared.

“Idiot Beast!!” Bannan shouted back. “Find your own cheese! As for you—” he stopped short, unable to glare at what he couldn’t see. He looked deeper and thought he glimpsed the silver edge of a wing against the early morning sky. Good enough. “As for you,” he said, glaring at the wing, “since you’ve cost me my help, you can take his place. I want that—carefully—put in here.”

The crate jiggled.

“CAREFULLY!”

The crate spun slowly. “It’s too big,” Wisp informed him. “It won’t fit.”

Ancestors Tried and Put Upon. The truthseer collected himself. There was no ordering such a powerful being. “Then all is truly lost,” he said and gave a theatrical sigh. Scourge, who knew him full well, snorted, but the crate paused. Bannan went on, “It was to be a surprise for Jenn Nalynn.”

One he’d not seen himself, yet. Pinning his hopes on Palma’s Great Gran—on an item brought here once before, which had seemed at the time a poignant coincidence, then stored in Endshere for a generation, he trusted somewhere dry, though who was to know?—might be the height of folly, but what choice had he? There’d been no more time to hunt a gift, nor coin for it, and it could be perfect.

Or not.

As for Lila? If there were answers in mail yet to be read, he’d no reason beyond his own impatience to hurry those who’d received them. There’d be no commerce outside Marrowdell once the snow began to fall and, as if to make his heart ache, a too-white cloud hung over the northern crag waiting to do just that. The world outside the valley would have to wait, as he would.

But this, Bannan thought with a longing look at the crate, might bring a bit of joy. Once he’d got his prize safely out of the dragon’s clutches. “A shame to disappoint her,” he finished, gesturing hopelessly at the window.

A little breeze tossed Bannan’s hair, then dashed hither-thither through the loft, as if looking for answers. The house toad’s eyes sank into its head as bedding fluttered around it, but refused to budge. “Why would Jenn want a box?” Wisp asked reasonably.