Song of the Sea Spirit: An epic fantasy novel (The Mindstream Chronicles) (2 page)

Boden chuckled and blushed, looking more boyish than manly. “Yah. Like Eagle-boy.”

She would rather not marry at all than take a husband who chose her out of pity. “Don’t worry. I’ve made peace with not marrying. It’s like Oram said; no man wants a woman like me.”

Boden scowled. “That’s not true. Don’t listen to that nonsense, Jora. You’re good and kind, fun to be with, hard-working, and clever. And you have a way with children. Any man would be fortunate to have you as a wife.”

The fact that he hadn’t called her comely did not escape her notice, but his other kind compliments brought a smile to her face. “You’re sweet, but truly I’m at peace with it. But if you want my advice...”

He exhaled hard, his body seeming to deflate, and nodded.

“You should choose Micah. She’s wonderful with the little ones, and she has quite the pitters for you.”

One side of his mouth curved into a smile, reminding her of his father. A twinkle gleamed in his eye. “I noticed. But what about the Molnar girl? She’s of age now.”

Larke Molnar, widowed from her first husband and remarried to Jora’s father as his Third Wife, was one of the comeliest women in Kaild, but Larke’s eldest daughter Hanna was so beautiful, she inspired poetry and caused minor accidents. Since she’d turned sixteen a week earlier, Boden was the first man with the opportunity to choose Hanna as his First Wife, if she submitted. Jora would bet a new cloak that younger men whose Antenuptials were approaching prayed silently to Retar every night to save her for them.

“She’s beautiful beyond words,” Jora said, “but she’s conceited and snobbish. Who else can turn a conversation about the mechanics of well digging into praise for her beauty? Do you want a woman whose zealous concern for her own figure will permit you only one child, or a woman who’ll welcome you home from the war with open arms and open legs?”

Boden’s eyes flew wide, and his face turned nearly as red as the eastern sky. “Jora!”

“Let’s speak frankly. Micah would give you as many children as her body can manage. I can’t see Hanna doing the same.” Boden was all about duty and responsibility. Fighting and fathering sons to fuel the war effort was drilled into the head of every boy from the time he was old enough to understand his role in society. Girls were raised and trained to keep the cities running while the men fought to protect them. “The choice is yours, of course, but I suggest Micah.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You should go get dressed. The Antenuptial’s due to start soon. They’re probably wondering where you are.”

“I know,” he said, going to the door. “But I have a gift for you too, and I wanted to give it to you before I got caught up in the wedding and... what comes after.” He stepped outside for a moment and returned holding something behind his back.

Jora’s face warmed. “A gift? I’m not going anywhere.”

“No, but I am. This is a little something to remember me by.”

She thumped him playfully on the chest. “As if I would forget you.”

“Close your eyes and hold out your hands.”

“You needn’t give me a gift. I’ve done nothing—”

“Hush and do as I say or I’ll marry Hanna Molnar and give this gift to her instead.”

She closed her eyes, smiling with excitement, and held her hands out together, palms forming a cup. She’d never received a gift before. The townsfolk crafted, grew, raised, and gathered everything they needed, and so gifts were generally given only to men leaving for war or a woman marrying a man from another city. Boden laid something long and stiff across her hands, like a cane. She curled her fingers around it and felt several small, round holes drilled in a row along its length. It couldn’t be. She opened her eyes, certain she wasn’t holding... “A flute?”

“Do you like it?”

Mouth agape, she stared at it as she turned it in her hands, gently so as not to damage it. “God’s Challenger! How did you manage this?”

“I asked nicely. It helps when your aunt is the one who crafts the instruments.”

“And she made you a flute,” she said in a tone of wonderment. “Because you asked nicely?”

“All right, maybe I begged her and cried at her feet a little. And she made it for you, not for me. She made it because she knows how much you love its song.”

“Everyone knows how much I love its song. Boden, I don’t know what to say.” It was a thing of not only incredible beauty but... music! With this she could make
music,
though she’d need to play it on the beach at first, where no one would hear her mistakes.

“I hope you like it.”

She set it carefully on her workbench and threw her arms around him. “I love it so very much. Thank you. From the depths of my heart, thank you.” Tears blurred her vision, and she buried her face against his chest, trying to refrain from openly sobbing. Never would she have imagined receiving a gift such as this.

“Aren’t you two supposed to save that for after the wedding?” Nuri asked, entering the shop.

Jora and Boden stepped apart as if they’d been caught doing something they shouldn’t. “No, it’s not like that,” Jora said, wiping her eyes.

“Mmm hmm. I think it’s exactly like that.” Nuri went to her workbench and started laying out her tools, a dubious expression on her face. She was an older woman with three grandsons serving in the Legion and five great-grandchildren hoping to meet their fathers someday. Though Nuri wouldn’t admit her age, Jora guessed she was in her early to mid-sixties, but she wasn’t stooped over and half-blind like the master smith next door.

“I came to give her a gift,” Boden said.

“Yes, a flute. See?” Jora still couldn’t get over the fact that she had a flute.

Nuri’s eyes sparkled, and she smiled knowingly. “A promissory?”

“What’s a promissory?” Jora and Boden asked in unison.

“Dear girl.” Nuri clucked her tongue. “It’s not often done anymore, but if a boy wants to declare his interest in a girl who’s not submitting for his Antenuptial, he offers her a gift as a promise to marry her if she doesn’t take a husband by the time he returns from war. Such an extravagant gift must surely be a promissory.”

Boden blushed deep crimson and lowered his gaze to the floor.

“Boden?” Jora asked. “Is this... a promissory?”

“I didn’t intend it that way, but I wouldn’t object if you want to consider it so. If you’re not married by the time I return, I’ll take you as my Second Wife. I-If you wish it.”

His kindhearted offer touched her deeply, and she put her arms around him and hugged him tightly. “You’re such a dear.” Now she questioned his agreement with her decision not to submit. Had she disappointed him? Surely not. He’d brought the flute with him, had arranged for it to be made well before knowing whether she was going to submit. If she submitted, there would’ve been no reason to give her a gift aside from the reason he gave—a remembrance. Besides, he hadn’t known what a promissory was any more than she had. It was merely a gift to a dear friend. That was all.

She released him and patted his chest. “You’d better go. You’re to choose a wife soon. What a scandal it would be if you were late to your Antenuptial because you spent too much time in the company of other women.”

He grinned and wagged his eyebrows. “Creating a scandal just before leaving Kaild? That sounds like good sport to me.”

She reached to slap his butt, but he skittered out of reach, laughing as he jogged away. Jora leaned out the door. “Thank you again,” she called. “I’ll treasure it always.”

He turned and bowed to her while he walked backward toward the civic hall.

“It’s a promissory,” Nuri pronounced.

As Jora returned to her seat, she shook her head, refusing to believe it.

When Jora heard someone rattling around in the smithy next door, she set down her work and picked up the flute before wandering over to greet her friend. At one time, she’d considered an apprenticeship in blacksmithing, but only because that was the path Tearna chose. The two girls were born in the same month of the same year and had been close friends all their lives. They’d done everything together. It only made sense to her young mind that they would continue to work side by side in adulthood. Now Jora was glad Nuri had recruited her into leatherworking instead. Leather yielded in her hands, and with Tearna working next door, they often talked through the open windows. In effect, they were working side by side.

Tearna was opening the window shutters when Jora knocked on the door.

“Good morning,” Jora sang.

“Morning, dove. What’re you so cheerful about this early in the morning?” Tearna’s black hair was tied back into a simple bun and secured with a wooden stick. Jora could tell by the haphazard way it was wrapped that it would come loose before the day was done, and Tearna’s hands would be too dirty to fuss with it.

“Let me braid your hair. It’ll come undone by noon.”

Tearna grinned and pulled a stool over. “I was hoping you would offer. Your braids look pretty. Can you do mine like that?”

“Sure.” Jora pulled the flute from behind her back. “Look what Boden gave me.”

“Challenge the god!” Tearna said, her wide brown eyes set on the wooden instrument. “How did he manage to get a flute?”

“The crafter is his aunt. He said he begged her and she made it for me. Isn’t it gorgeous? I cannot wait to try it out.” In fact, she would make sure to find Boden’s aunt and thank her profusely before the Antenuptials began.

“Go on then. Play something.”

“Oh, no,” Jora said, setting the flute on a small table. “This is something I have to do in private. Sit, sit.”

Tearna looked at her flatly before sitting on the stool with her back to Jora. “I don’t expect you to be good. I just want to hear you play one note.”

Jora began to untie her friend’s hair. “I don’t know how to play one note. That’s why I have to do it in private—so I can figure it out before someone hears me be awful.”

Tearna laughed. “I’ll bet you’re naturally good at it.”

Jora wrinkled her nose at the back of Tearna’s head while she separated the hair into strands for braiding. “I’ve never even held a flute until this morning. I don’t know how to blow into it.”

“You’re too modest.”

Jora continued to braid Tearna’s hair while they talked about Boden’s upcoming Antenuptial and the preparations that were underway. When she was finished, she patted Tearna’s shoulders.

“Thank you. Are you doing Hanna’s hair for the ceremony?” Tearna asked, standing.

“She hasn’t asked me. I don’t know if she’s submitting.”

Tearna went out the back door and returned momentarily carrying a bulky burlap bag across her shoulder. “Have you told Boden you’re not?”

“Yah, we talked this morning and agreed that we like our friendship the way it is. Besides, I’m not fertile right now. If I submitted, I’d be disqualified anyway.”

“You tested yourself?” Tearna untied the bag and dumped its contents, charred wood, into the forge.

“No, but a girl gets a sense of her own cycle after so many times being disqualified.”

“So what are you going to do?”

Jora shrugged. What could she do besides become a latterly maid? Tearna and Briana, her two best friends, had both been chosen as First Wives. For years, they tried to reassure her that someone would choose her, too, that she wouldn’t have to suffer the humiliation of spending years as a latterly maid, hoping a returning soldier would propose before she was too old to bear children, but Jora knew better. That boy Oram had been right: no man would want a Mindstreamer for a wife.

She leaned against the doorframe and looked down the road toward the boys’ training center where Gunnar conferred with Boden outside, one hand on his son’s shoulder. He looked directly at her, his gray eyes seemingly darker and filled with something that made her insides flutter. Desire? Jora held Gunnar’s gaze long enough to communicate her interest, then let her eyes drop to the flute in her hands, a dream come true. If Gunnar proposed to her, then her other dream would be fulfilled. First a flute of her own and then the husband she wanted? She would owe Retar something truly special for granting her two dreams in one lifetime.

“You know,” Tearna said, “that’s a pretty extravagant gift for someone who’s not leaving. Are you sure he didn’t give you that flute as a bribe?”

“A bribe for what?” Jora asked with a laugh. She stroked the flute lovingly. Something this beautiful could never be a bribe.

“To convince you to submit for his Antenuptial?”

Jora shot her an annoyed look. “Retar smite you.”

Tearna chuckled. “I was jesting. Don’t be so sensitive.” She went out for another bag of charcoal. “Speaking of gifts, how’s Boden’s bag coming along?”

“Slowly. Maybe if I move my workbench in front of the shop’s door so no one can come in, I’ll be able to finish.” So many people interrupted her during the day to ask about their loved ones away at war that she barely managed to finish her regular work, let alone work on an extra project, and Nuri was adamant that she only work on the bag in the mornings and evenings. She’d stayed awake all night to work on it, and her eyelids were heavy and sticky.

“Maybe if you said ‘no’ now and then.”