“Meaning what? The way you were cautious in Ramfold? Constantly fiddling with the past, having no idea what the consequences might be?”
“Everything turned out fine.”
“As far as we know. So far.”
“That goes without saying. The Umbo that warned us of future danger always disappeared when we took his advice and did a different thing.”
“Yes,” said Ram Odin. “I’ll keep that in mind. Just promise me something—and not an idle promise, not an ‘agree so he’ll stop talking’ promise.”
“What’s the promise?”
“That you won’t go back into the past and change things without talking to me first. No, talking to me and listening to what I say.”
“I’ve never had to consult you on these things and I’ve done well enough.”
“Yes, you have,” said Ram Odin. “And I admire your self-restraint—that you’ve never used your ability to rule over other people, or for vengeance. Mostly it’s been to help you accomplish a good and honorable task. But promise me all the same.”
“Yes,” said Rigg. “I promise. It won’t hurt—I always have time to talk things through before I act.”
“Then play this out and see what you find,” said Ram Odin. “I’m curious, too.”
Rigg began right after breakfast the next morning. “Would it be wrong of me to meet Onishtu’s family?”
“You already have,” he was told.
“I mean . . . would they mind if I asked them about her?”
“Maybe they would and maybe they wouldn’t,” he was told.
“How can I find out?”
“Ask them about her and see what happens.”
So when the father was pointed out to him among the men bringing in the bees, Rigg waited till he finished with one of the hives and then took him aside. “I don’t mean to give offense,” said Rigg. “But I believe that people leave behind a kind of aura, a trace of the path they took through the world. Your daughter Onishtu sounds like a person who would leave a path of joy, and if I can see where she lived, perhaps I can gain some bit of grace for having met her, even across all these years.”
Couching it in religious terms did the trick. The father wasn’t satisfying idle curiosity, he was allowing his long-missing daughter to give a gift to—and perhaps be admired and remembered by—this young stranger, ugly as his face might be.
So after supper, Rigg and Ram Odin went to their house, to the second story. All the houses had two stories, so when the bottom floor was completely buried in snow, they could still get out of the house and tend to the animals and other tasks.
“This was her room,” said the father. “It’s full of grandchildren at the moment.”
“We kept it for her for a few years,” said the mother, “but we couldn’t afford to keep the room out of a hopeless hope, when there were people here with us who had need of it.” She sounded stern as she said it—as if she was rebuking herself for regretting the necessity.
Rigg found the girl’s path easily—it filled the place, during the years it had been her room. Rigg followed the most common routes—to the bed, to the window, to the small washstand, to the chest where clothes were kept. Now that he knew which path was hers, the facemask helped him see what she looked like. A gracious child, her hair long in gentle waves of ebony, her smile wide and welcoming. He saw her when she was alone, when she was with company. He saw how her path intertwined with others, and without leaving the room, traced her pattern of friendships.
“She had many friends,” said Rigg.
“Everyone loved her,” said her father.
“Don’t pretend to ‘feel’ what everybody already told you,” said the mother scornfully.
Rigg smiled at her. “I want nothing from you. She’s beautiful. I can feel that wide smile of hers shining in this room, that’s all. It’s what I came for. She’s gone, but some of her beauty remains, and I am taking joy in it. I’m sorry if you thought I meant to exploit your love for her. I don’t.” He turned to Ram Odin. “We’ve troubled this good family enough. Let’s be on our way to bed.”
At the door to her room, the father put a hand on Rigg’s chest and said, “I think your gift is real and you know where she went.”
“My gift is real,” said Rigg, “and I don’t know where she went.”
But even as he said it, he was finding out. Without even meaning to, he was tracing the youngest of her paths in the room. Sensing where it went. “It was lambing time when she went, wasn’t it?” he asked.
“It was.”
“And the snow was still far down the slopes, so the flocks were close by.”
“A din and a stink,” said the mother. “It was her favorite time of year. How could she leave during lambing?”
Rigg saw her follow a path she had taken many times before. It wound among the houses and went up through the ruins of a couple of collapsed houses. “Why are there so many abandoned houses here?” Rigg asked.
“Not abandoned,” said the father. “Never finished. Never had the second story or a roof.”
Ram Odin explained. “While you were working to earn our keep,” he said, “I was gossiping with the old men. It’s how folks marry here. A man builds a house for a particular woman. If she says yes, then they put on the second floor and thatch the roof together and they’re wed. But if she refuses him, then he can’t offer that shell of a house to another—it would be wrong. So the walls stand as a monument to false hopes.”
“Not false,” said the father. “The hopes were true, but the girl is free to say no.”
“It shames the fellow, though, doesn’t it?” asked Rigg.
“They say not,” said Ram Odin. “They say nobody knows who built what house, or who it was for.”
Rigg cocked his head a little. “I think maybe everyone pretends not to know.”
The father nodded ruefully. “We always know who’s building,” said the father. “But not always who he’s a-building for.”
Rigg nodded. “Did anyone build a house for Onishtu?”
“She was too young,” said the mother quickly.
“I would have torn down such a house with my bare hands,” said the father. “A girl her age, there should have been no house built for her.”
“A man usually won’t build a house unless he has a good idea the girl has her eye on him,” said the mother. “But what has any of this to do with our Onishtu?”
“I think she liked to wander among the empty roofless houses, that’s all,” said Rigg. “I think she dreamed of marrying.”
“As all girls do,” said the mother. “Will it be a good man and a happy house? Or a sad one, or an angry one.”
“We had a ewe once who always went within walls to lamb,” said the father. “At lambing time, you follow where the ewes have gone to bear. I think if she wandered among the houses, it was looking for that ewe.”
“I’d forgotten that crazy old sheep,” said the mother. “She was Onishtu’s favorite. And she being the oldest, she was fully able to help with lambing by herself. We thought that’s where she had gone that day, but we found the ewe, still full, and we never found Onishtu however much we searched.” She had tears down her cheeks now.
“I’m sorry to have made you cry,” said Rigg. “I wish now that I hadn’t troubled you.”
“Pay no heed to the crying,” said the father. “Tears come easy, no matter how many years go by. When you have a child of your own someday, if some girl is willing to see past your face, you’ll know what I’m saying. You lose a child, and the tears are always just inside your eyes waiting to spill. But it’s a joy to remember her, too, and we’re not ashamed to cry, nor any sadder for it.”
“I’m crying to think of how she loved that sheep and how she cared for the lambs. She had a loving touch with the sheep, but she hated the goats!”
And the two parents burst into laughter, perhaps remembering a particular event in Onishtu’s childhood.
“It’s late all the same,” said Ram Odin. “Glad we are that we’ve not brought you grief, but it’s time for us to leave you to your sleep, and go take ours. Rigg has a lot of work to do tomorrow, and I have another day of faith-talk ahead of me.”