Besh smiled. "All right then. My thanks."
He took the torch and climbed the stairs to the house. He almost raised his hand to knock, just out of habit. Instead, laughing at himself, but also wiping a sweaty palm on the leg of his trousers, he pushed the door open.
The inside of the house looked just as it had earlier that day. Of course. But somehow the darkened corners and the shifting yellow glow of the torch made the mess Lici had left seem even more menacing than it had in the light of morning. Shadows lurked along the walls. Light reflected oddly off windows and kitchen pans. He almost backed out of the house-better to leave this until morning.
But again the daybook called to him. He made a point of leaving the door ajar and started toward the back room. Before he was halfway across the house, a small gust of wind made the door slam. Abruptly his heart was racing, like a horse that bolts at a sudden flash of lightning.
"Damn," he muttered, taking a breath.
He continued to the back room and quickly found the journal in that same crate below Lici's sack of coins. He lifted it out and carried it back into the main room. After setting the torch in a pot, he brushed bark cuttings off a chair, sat down, and began to leaf through the volume.
There was much he wanted to look for in the book-information about his parents, about a flood he remembered from his childhood, about the deliberations of the Council of Elders during Sylpa's tenure as eldest. But he remained uncomfortable with what he was doing, and so resolved to look only for information about Lici.
He thumbed through to the middle of the book, and began to scan the pages for any mention of the orphaned girl who came to Kirayde so unexpectedly. Besh knew his letters well enough, but he was not nearly as learned as some, and at first he had some difficulty reading Sylpa's hand. But after some time, he found what he sought.
".. She can barely speak of the tragedy," Sylpa wrote. "Nor does she cry anymore. She merely stares silently, her expression utterly blank, only the twisting of her pale hands revealing something of the workings of her mind."
Besh turned back a page, and then another, searching for the date of the first entry that mentioned Lici. When he found it, the hairs on his neck and arms stood on end. "Thunder Moon, twelfth day of the waxing, 1147."
It wasn't just that Sylpa had written this sixty-four years ago. That he had expected. But the day: the twelfth of the Thunder Moon's waxing. That day in this year had to have been around the time Lici disappeared from the village. He'd seen her earlier in that turn, but he couldn't remember seeing her since the full of both moons. Was it possible that she vanished sixty-four years to the day after arriving in Kirayde? If so, was it mere coincidence? Looking around the house, seeing the filth she had left behind, he found it hard to imagine that Lici could track the days so closely.
And yet somehow he knew that she had. For all her odd behavior, which bordered even on madness, Lici was not one to let an anniversary of such significance go unnoticed. If she left Kirayde on the same day she arrived here, she did so with purpose. But what purpose? What might this mean?
He heard a noise outside, like the scuffing of a shoe on wood, and for just an instant he wondered if Lici had returned. But after staring at the door for several moments, waiting for it to open, his expression, no doubt, like that of a child caught stealing a sweet before mealtime, he realized that it was just Ojan shifting his position on the stairs. Turning his attention back to the book, Besh began to read again, starting this time from the beginning of the entry.
Thunder Moon, twelfth day of the waxing, 1147.
It seems the last of the storms has passed. We've had no rain now for three days, and the wash begins to recede from the top of its banks. The flooding was worst at the north end of the village, but even there the damage is only slight. We've been fortunate.
But already, the gods have found a new way to test us. Near midday, a girl wandered into our village from the south. She looks to be eight or nine years old, perhaps ten. She has long limbs and is tall for a girl of that age, but her face still has the delicacy of a young child. In truth, though, it hard to set her age with any certainty, for she looks a mess and has yet to speak a word to anyone.
Upon her arrival, her clothes were in tatters, her hair was tangled and matted with burrs, leaves, and all manner of filth, and her body and face had not been washed, it seemed, in half a turn, perhaps more. She is painfully thin. Her ribs show plainly through her skin and her arms and legs look like mere sticks. Well fed and healthy, she would look lank. As it is she appears on the edge of starvation. Her cheeks are sunken, her eyes look overlarge in her pinched face.
Yet, for all this, one need only glance at her to see that she is a beautiful girl, a fact confirmed for us after a few of the women managed to get her bathed down at the river. Her hair is raven black and her eyes are brilliant green. Her skin is brown, and though the sunburn on her face tells me that she has been wandering in the wilderness for some time, I believe that the darkness of her skin comes naturally to her If I had to guess, I'd say that she, too, is Mettai.
For now, however, her appearance and even her ancestry are secondary. Some tragedy has befallen the child. I'm certain of it, and others among the elders agree. She doesn't cry. As far as we know, she's mute. She bears no sign of injury or abuse, save the scrapes and bruises one might expect a child so young to acquire while venturing alone in the wild. But there is something in her eyes, in the way she flinches away from any direct gaze. This girl has wraiths hovering at her shoulder.
The one thing she does do is eat, and it gladdens my heart to see it. Trenna started her on some thin broth, thinking it might take the girl some time to work up to more substantial fare. But she made quick work of the first bowl and then a second. We gave her bread then, and she devoured that as might a wolf We dare not give her anything more difficult than a bit of fowl, but for now that seems to content her Broth, bread, and fowl. At least we can sleep tonight knowing that we have done well by the girl, even if the rest of the world has not.
Trenna has offered to take the girl in, but with her three, and Branz away trading with the Fal'Borna, she has her hands full. She will sleep here tonight, and with time maybe she can communicate enough to help us find her way home.
Thunder Moon, thirteenth day of the waxing, 1147.
The girl slept late, as I suspected she would. I can only imagine how terrified she must have been at night in the wild, taking refuge in what shelter she could find, braving the storms that have just recently passed through the highlands. It makes me shudder just to think of it. No doubt it's been an age since last she had a decent night's sleep.
Needless to say, I did nothing to disturb her slumber. I lit a fire outside and took my breakfast in the cool morning air It's something I should do more often. How strange that this child should come into our lives, and in this very small way force me out of habits I didn't even know I'd acquired. How long has it been since I did something-anything-different? Too long, by the feel of it. I'm too young to have grown so set in my ways. It makes me wonder if the gods have some other purpose in sending this girl to Kirayde, aside from the obvious, of course: that of healing whatever wounds lurk in the mind of this poor creature.
She awoke a bit before midday and called out. I didn't recognize a word in her cry, but it was the first sound she had made since her arrival, and even as I hurried into the house, I took it as a sign of some progress. She was sitting up in her bed, looking around, as if she had no memory of how she had gotten there. Upon seeing me, however, she must have recalled some of yesterday's events, because she immediately calmed down, and actually favored me with a smile. It lasted just a moment, but again, it gave me some hope.