Skin (22 page)

We must not cling to our joy nor despair of our suffering.

I
OPENED
MY
eyes to Bebin's face watching me as I slept.

‘Tidings,' she whispered.

The morning was full of birdsong, yet the kitchen was still. ‘Why have none risen?'
I murmured.

‘Do we not always lie late after festival?'

‘Festival?' I asked, too drowsy to think.

Bebin frowned. ‘Solstice, you goose. Are you still dreaming?'

‘Of course,' I nodded, masking the jolt as it all returned to me. Though they had
long since cooled in my memory, the solstice embers would still be warm on Sister
Hill.

I rose to tend the fire. It was bewildering to be reunited with my worksisters when
I had not seen them for many months, and yet to know that, by their reckoning, there
had been no absence at all.

Cookmother did not protest it when I brought her goat's milk to sip in her bed, but
nor did she thank me, and I knew I was not forgiven.

I joined Bebin at the fire as she prepared the breakfast. ‘Tell me of the feast.'
I urged. ‘I'm sorry I did not help—'

She waved my apology away. ‘It was lively,' she said, tipping meal into the cookpot.
‘Fibor drank half a barrel and was asleep by highsun. And—' she glanced at me. ‘There
was news from Gaul.'

‘Well or bad?'

‘Mixed.' She stirred the porridge. ‘The best of it is that there has been mutiny
among the Roman forces.'

‘The mighty Romans?'

‘Yes!' she laughed. ‘Plautius commanded the legions to board the ships but they refused,
too frightened.'

‘Of what?' I scoffed.

Bebin shrugged. ‘Of us. Of Albion.' She scooped some water from a bucket beside the
fire and poured it into the pot. ‘They think this place is the edge of the world.'

I smiled. ‘An army of field mice.'

We giggled together over the bubbling porridge. It felt good to laugh.

‘What was the worst of the news?' I said, quieting.

‘The numbers.' Her face grew still. ‘The rider said that forty thousand soldiers,
and as many horses, are gathered on the shores of Bononia. Two thousand ships wait
in the tides, laden with grain and weapons.' She looked up from the pot.

Such numbers were beyond my imagining.

‘If they do find their courage,' she said, ‘then how will we defeat them?'

When I walked to the well after breakfast, Cah stood there, laughing with the strangemaid,
Heka. The sight of them stopped me in my path. I had rarely ever seen Cah so at ease,
so lost in her laughter. At the sound of my footsteps, they turned, and their smiles
dropped away.

By late morning the sword had rubbed my thigh skin to an angry rawness. Desperate
to ease it, I released the leather binding while the kitchen was empty for a moment,
and buried the sword deep in my bedskins, where Neha proceeded to snuffle for it
beneath the blankets.

‘This will not do,' I murmured, pulling Neha off to fish it back out again. Glancing
over my shoulder, I pushed aside Cookmother's rosewood chest, which covered the
opening to the storepit below. Little was held there now and it was rare that Cookmother
bade us enter it.

I dropped down on the wobbling stepladder into the chill of the dark chamber. It
was barely tall enough for me to stand. In the light that seeped through the opening
above, I could just make out a few grain pots, some old metal tools, and a mound
of straw that would once have been bed to winter's smoked carcasses. I wrapped the
sword in my leine and stashed it beneath the straw.

Cah entered the kitchen just as I was pushing the chest back over the opening. ‘What
are you doing?' She watched me from the doorway, clutching an armful of wood.

‘Looking for a pot lid Cookmother has lost,' I murmured.

‘Find it?' Her mind was sharp as flint. She walked to the woodpile. ‘You are holding
secrets—do not think I will protect them. You are favoured enough as it is.'

I crouched beside her as she stacked the logs. ‘Why do you offer your friendship
to Heka?'

Cah shrugged. ‘She helps me with my tasks for nothing more than a cup of ale. And
I like her. She has no one—no suck-mother to protect her—and yet she survives. She
does not look down on me.'

I nodded, ignoring the jibe. ‘Do you know what has brought her here?'

‘No,' she said. ‘She doesn't speak of it. She is a spirit that wanders. She follows
pleasure and takes it heartily.' Cah stacked the last log and got to her feet. ‘She
did ask of you often when first she came. Though thankfully her interest seems to
have waned.'

‘She has cruelty in her nature, Cah,' I said, as she walked toward the doorway.

She turned briefly. ‘Perhaps that is her strength.'

I sighed. ‘Perhaps.'

I had greater concerns at this moment than Heka.

I was grinding wheat with Bebin after highsun when the doorbell sounded. We jumped
to our feet as Llwyd entered.

‘Be at peace,' he said, waving away our reverence. ‘I come to speak to Ailia.'

Cookmother hurried my worksisters out of the roundhouse then busied herself at the
cookpot.

‘Might I be alone with her, Cookwoman?' Llwyd sat at the fire.

Cookmother eyed him, then ladled a large bowlful of porridge and set it with a clatter
on the bench beside him. ‘Of course.'

‘Thank you, Cookwoman. Your graces are, as ever, enchanting,' he said with a faint
smile as she trundled toward the door. He turned to me as I sat beside him. ‘How
do you fare, Ailia?'

‘I…am well,' I faltered. Did he see change in me?

‘I would speak of the warning in yesterday's fire.'

The memory, softened by the Mothers, was now knife-sharp here. ‘Yes,' I said.

‘It would seem that the Mothers have marked you,' he said slowly, ‘to be woven, somehow,
into the fate of this tribe. But I cannot understand the omen because you are without
skin. You will never journey or even train.' He shrugged. ‘I can make no sense of
their intentions.'

He had opened a crack I could not let close. Before I could stop myself, I had reached
for his hand and grasped it firm.

It was cold and bony and returned my hold.

My voice trembled. ‘Journeyman Llwyd, honoured Elder, will you teach me?'

His grip tightened.

‘I think there is knowledge in me.'

He nodded. ‘I see it. And the fire saw it too. But without skin, you cannot be taught.
You must learn within the fabric of your skin. This is what the Mothers require.'

They themselves have already taught me
, I wanted to wail. But I was afraid to confess
the warped shape my journey had made. If I wanted to go back to them I had to find
a sanctioned way.

‘And even more so because of the seer's prediction that blood will run,' he continued,
‘we must show the most loving observance of the skin laws.' He frowned. ‘Or they
will not protect us.'

‘From what?' I breathed, daring to ask what I had never been taught. ‘What is the
danger?'

He winced, as if struggling to resolve what should be spoken. ‘It is not just our
souls that are wrapped in skin,' he began. ‘The hardworld itself is held in its layers.
It is spirit skin that separates the realms and holds us intact. And if it is ruptured
or torn, then the wound can infect and spread. Knowledge is the blood that sustains
this skin, Ailia. Only knowledge holds the hardworld in place. If knowledge is breached,
it will bring chaos and damage upon us all.'

My stomach lurched. I had made such a breach with my untrained journey. I knew I
must never repeat it, and yet I could not go back to
the darkness of life before
I began to learn. I had to convince Llwyd to teach me. ‘I am without skin, that is
so, but Llwyd, there are other truths that mark me for learning.'

He frowned. ‘Go on.'

You asked me once if I saw an animal,' I said, my thoughts racing. ‘I did—a fish.
A salmon attended me.'

He raised his chin. ‘What else?'

‘A geas,' I spilled, ‘that I set and healed. It carried the weight of death.'

His breath caught. ‘Is there anything else?'

The sword lay in the chamber beneath us. With a word I could tell him that I had
walked with the Mothers and my learning was greater than he knew. But my unlawful
journey had already wrinkled the seasons, and I was terrified to confess it. I shook
my head.

‘Upon these truths alone, you cannot be trained,' he said, ‘but if there was more
evidence of your knowledge,' he urged, ‘then perhaps, Mothers willing, the Isle would
take you.'

‘The Glass Isle?' I whispered. ‘Could it be so?'

‘I have never known a skinless woman to be trained, but if the knowledge gift was
strong enough, then teachers of the Isle may want to shape it…' He gripped my fingers
until they ached. ‘Show me more, Ailia, and I will call Sulis.'

I nodded, blood pounding in my head. Llwyd saw knowledge in me. There would be more.
I would find a way to show him.

‘But please—' his voice wavered, ‘—you must not go near the sacred places, especially
the Oldforest, when you are untrained. You could bring great injury to the tribes.'

I stared at the bone talismans that hung from his belt and hoped he could not see
my chest thumping beneath my dress.

He looked at me, reading me. ‘
Have
you, Ailia?
Have
you breached the forest's edge?'

‘Most certainly not,' cried Cookmother, bustling back. She must have heard every
word. ‘I've not let her slip from my view since—'

‘Since what?' said Llwyd.

She stood at the hearth, her arms folded across her chest. I knew she was thinking
of my first sighting of the Mothers.

‘Since…the early harvest,' she stammered. ‘There's nothing in it, Llwyd. She's a
kitchen girl, nothing more. She's of no more consequence to the fate of this tribe
than the mice in the kitchen.' She picked up her ladle and churned the porridge,
flicking scalding droplets onto my forearm.

‘Which can be of great consequence, as you know, if they get into the grain pits,'
said Llwyd. ‘It is not my way to command your honesty, but it is your conscience
upon which it will rest if you are wrong.'

‘Do you say that I lie, wiseman?' Cookmother snapped.

‘No. But we both know that you have cause to.'

A burning silence flared between them and for a moment I was forgotten.

Cookmother stirred the pot as though it was a hide needing beating and Llwyd stared,
unmoving, at the fire.

My eyes darted from one to the other, unable to fathom this tension between them.

Finally, Llwyd turned back to me. ‘The Oldforest?' he repeated.

I looked up at Cookmother. Her rigid jaw revealed a fear I had never seen before.
My thoughts raced. Cookmother knew that I had walked the forest and yet she was determined
it should not be revealed. It was difficult to lie to Llwyd, but it was Cookmother
in whom I trusted. I shook my head.

Llwyd sighed and the lines scored in his cheeks seemed to deepen. ‘I hope it is so,'
he said.

I shifted on the bench, my thigh still smarting from where the sword had been bound.

Llwyd stood to leave. ‘Do not breach the forest's edge, Ailia. Do not weaken what
protects us.'

I nodded, vowing in my heart that I would not defy him. I would not risk harm to
the souls of the tribespeople. I prayed that it was not too late.

When Llwyd had left, Cookmother stood before me, her cheeks flushed with anger. ‘I
repeat what I have told you,' she said. ‘If you step once more into the forest you
will not sleep in this kitchen again. You will not be my work daughter.'

I nodded, stunned by her threat.