Prunes nodded agreement.
“You and I, friend,” said Gid, “are going to be rich.”
“Not if we don’t get you downwind,” said Prunes. He motioned for Gid to lead, and the two began to pick their way quietly downhill.
31
Hunger stood at the edge of the wood. The scent of the burning boy lay in the hollows and ravines here as thick as fog. He looked over a bend in a river. Beyond it lay a farmstead. That’s where the boy would be, waiting like a fat chicken in his coop.
He began to descend the bank to the water when a woman came out of the house carrying a lamp. He only saw her face for a moment in the light, but that and the gait of her walk, the angle of her shoulders, it all pulled a memory into his mind.
He knew her. He was sure of it…
Moments passed.
She went to the well, drew water, then returned to the house. Hunger stood in the shadows as still as a heron stalking frogs.
Then the name came as softly as dew: River.
Yes, that was her name. And with that name a number of strong memories rose in his mind. He followed them, and every one of them ended with this: she’d held his hand once and he had been unable to speak. Not because she was his lover, although she was lovely. No, it was not his desire for her that had stolen his words; it was gratitude. He remembered: one spring evening in a bower, blindfolded, waiting for River who had worked so hard to make the match, waiting in the moonlight with the lilacs in bloom, their fine scent perfuming the night. Waiting to hear the feet on the path, the rustling of skirts, and then River taking his hand and putting Rosemary’s warm, strong hand in it. River removing the blindfold so he could see Rosemary standing there before him, holding the flowered crown that meant she’d accepted his offer of marriage, looking at him with those laughing, moon-sparkled eyes.
Rosemary, the carpenter’s daughter, the face of the woman he’d remembered after eating the man who had been humming as he washed himself. The man who was called Larther. And now Hunger had a name to hang that sorrow upon.
The water ran below him; three deer came to drink and left.
River was the one he needed. Her brother, the burning son, was nothing. He wasn’t even part of the Order yet. But River, she was skilled at all sorts of weavings. She would know the workings of the collar. She would fix it. And he would bind the Mother. Bind her and destroy her.
River had been a beauty to him, then friend, and finally sister. She would not run away; she would see through his rough form. He was sure of it.
He took a step toward the water and something moved downwind of the house.
He peered closer. Two men crept along in the grass, their helmets and knives shining in the moonlight.
Whatever their intent, they would flush River like untrained dogs bark and flush quail from the brush. Except once River ran, you did not catch her.
Those two would have to go. Silently, but they would have to go. Hunger waited to see if there were more of them, and when he saw they came alone, he descended the riverbank and quietly entered the dark waters.
Prunes stood in the shadow of a tree. Across the yard, Gid peered between the cracks of a shutter on that side of the house just to make sure there were only five of them. Prunes scratched his neck, and when he looked back at Gid something monstrous and dark rose, it seemed, from the very earth.
It was bigger than a man. Shaggy. Then Prunes recognized it from the stories of the creature at Whitecliff.
He shouted a warning.
Gid turned, but it was too late.
The dark shape engulfed him. Only the silhouette of Gid’s lower half was visible in the moonlight.
Prunes watched in horror as Gid struggled, cried out, and then was silenced. The thing shook him out like a wife shakes a rug. It cast Gid’s body aside in a heap.
The creature raised its head and chuffed like a horse. Then it turned and looked straight at Prunes across the yard.
He’d fought in a number of battles, nearly lost his life a dozen times. But nothing had ever put fear into him like the gaze of that rough beast.
By all that was holy…
His bladder released. He dropped his knife and backed up in horror.
Sugar stood in the barn, filling a barrel with barley and oats for the horse. They had a long ride ahead and the animal would need rich food. Legs stood by her side.
“Did you hear that?” he asked.
Sugar hadn’t heard a thing, she was so lost in thought. Zu Hogan’s daughter sat at the table back in the house with Talen, making him open and close the doors in his being, whatever that meant, over and over again. For the last hour all River had done was sit there, holding Talen’s hand at the table, telling him to open and close, again and again, telling him that she had to be sure he could hold himself to himself.
In her mind, Sugar knew it was a great evil they practiced at the table. But in her heart she could not help but want to learn it as well, for when River had told her what her mother was, it had come, not as a shock, but a loss. Because she didn’t believe Mother was wicked.
“The story is never what you first hear,” Mother had always said. And she’d practiced that philosophy. When Sugar was a little girl and had been accused of stealing a village boy’s carved cherrywood horse, her mother had believed her denials. And later that day, when Sugar finally confessed and showed her mother the horse, her mother had not sent her away. She’d taken her in her arms and stroked her hair and kissed her forehead and said, “It’s a brave thing to admit to a lie. Foolish to lie in the first place. But brave to put the lie out in the sun for everyone to see.” She’d hugged her tight. “Your bravery is as fine as peas and fatty beef,” Mother had said. “Fat peas and fatty beef.” From that time forward “fat peas and fatty beef” had been their saying.
How many times had Mother seen through her mistakes to what was praiseworthy? Even when Da was teaching her to fight. She’d believed Sugar would find a young man in Koramtown and raise splendid children. And they’d talked about what they’d do together with Sugar’s future children, all the wonderful places she and Mother had visited with Legs in tow which they would visit with Sugar’s children. The crabbing bay, their waterfall in the woods, the patch of wild blueberries by the buttes. And Mother would come stay with her in Koramtown and join in the knitting hours and teach Sugar’s daughter how to knit just as she’d taught Sugar.
So much lost. For the first time since they left, Sugar could feel the emotion rising in her.
“There’s that sound again,” said Legs.
“What?”asked Sugar.
“A man,” said Legs.
The hairs on the back of Sugar’s neck stood up and she doused the lamp. She stood in the dark for a moment listening, then ran to a knothole in the side of the barn that gave a view of the yard. She put her eye to the hole and saw nothing at first. Then something large moved by the house.
She didn’t have her night vision yet, and thought, unaccountably, that it was the mule. But then the body of a man fell to the ground and a dark shadow walked out from the side of the house and into the moonlight.
The man was dead and broken, and the creature looked right at her, as if it could see her eye at the knothole. Fear ran up her spine. She drew back, grabbed Leg’s hand, and pulled him down. Surely it had seen her light earlier and heard her talking. It would know they were in the barn. Yet, she didn’t dare run, for then it would mark them.