“Never did I think to see the Hallowed One at another’s mercy,” said Mother Orla, shuffling up beside her. She walked with a limp, supporting herself on a broken pole that had once served as the shaft for a halberd.
“Mother Orla! You startled me!”
“So I did. For you truly were not standing with yourself.” They had to step aside to make room for the four men and their heavy basket to cross the plank bridge that led over the ditch and into the village. Alain saw Adica, and he smiled. She was not quite sure how she responded, for at that moment Mother Orla pinched her hard on the forearm. “There, now, daughter!”
She had not been touched in so long—except when Alain had brushed tears from her cheeks to see if she were real that she yelped in surprise, and then was embarrassed that she had done so. But the men had already passed, hauling the big basket up to the council house where it would be divided up between the village families.
Mother Orla coughed. “A stranger who sleeps in a woman’s house without her promise and her binding is not the kind of adult a village can trust as one of its own.”
“I was hasty, Mother Orla. Do not think it his doing. I invited him into the house without waiting for the proper ceremony.”
“He did not enter,” retorted Mother Orla approvingly. “Or so I hear.”
“I hope you will advise me in this matter,” Adica murmured humbly. “I have no experience. You know how things went with Beor.”
“That was not a wise match.” Mother Orla spat, to free herself of any bad luck from mentioning such an ill-fated decision. “Nevertheless, it is done with. Beor will see that his jealousy has no place in this village.”
“So easily?”
“If he cannot stomach a new man in the village, then he can go to his Black Deer cousins, or marry Mother Nahumia’s daughter and move to Old Fort.”
“I believe it would be better to have a strong fighter like Beor stay here until—until the war is over, Mother Orla.”
“That may be. But we’ve no need of pride and anger tearing down our community in times like these. There will be no more spoken on this matter.”
“As you wish.” In a way, it was a relief to be spoken to as if from aunt to niece. It was hard to act as an elder all the time when she was really still young.
“Let the stranger sleep at the men’s house,” continued Mother Orla. “After all, would you want a man for husband who had so little self-respect that he didn’t expect courtship?”
Adica laughed, because the comment was so unexpected and so charged with a gratifying anticipation. At first she did not see Alain up by the council house, but she soon caught sight of him among the others because of the dogs who faithfully followed after him. A vision shivered through her, brief but dazzling: she saw, not Alain, but a phoenix, fiery and hot, shining beyond the ordinary with such intensity that she had to look away.
“Truly,” Mother Orla continued in the voice of one who has seen nothing unusual, “the Holy One chose wisely.”
II
MANY MEETINGS
1
AT night, the stars blazed with a brightness unlike that of any stars Liath had ever seen. They seemed alive, souls writhing and shifting, speaking in a language born out of fire rather than words. Sometimes she thought she could understand them, but then the sensation would fade. Sometimes she thought she could touch them, but the heavens rose as far above her here in this country as they ever had in the land of her birth.
So much lay beyond her grasp, especially her own past.
Right now, she lay on her back with her hands folded behind her head on a pallet made of leaves and grass. “Are the stars living souls?”
“The stars are fire.” The old sorcerer often sat late with her, silent or talkative depending on his mood. “If they have souls and consciousness, I do not know.”
“What of the creatures who brought me here?”
Here in the country of the Aoi, there was never a moon, but the stars shone with such brilliance that she could see him shake his head. “These spirits you speak of burn in the air with wings of flame and eyes as brilliant as knives. They move on the winds of aether, and now and again their gaze falls like the strike of lightning to the Earth below. There, it sears anything it touches, for they cannot comprehend the frailty of Earthly life.”
“If they aren’t the souls of stars, then what are they?”
“They are an elder race. Their bodies are not bodies as we know them but rather the conjoining of fire and wind. In their bodies it is as if the breath of the fiery Sun coalesces into mind and will.”