Crossing Over (33 page)

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Authors: Anna Kendall

BOOK: Crossing Over
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On the third day, at dawn, I sat up, stiff in my limbs. The fire burned brightly. Beside it the old man sat on a rug of fur. He said simply, “You go now.”
“Yes.” I could barely get out the syllable, so great was my hatred.
“Thank you,
hisaf
.”
I swore an oath I had learned from Lord Solek, in the language I knew that the old man could not understand. Even in that, I was a coward. Was he going to try to stop me from going?
He was not. He watched as I gathered up the latest offering of bread, took the water bag, shook out my fur-lined cloak and hung it over my arm.
He said, “So it is with a
hisaf
. So it was with your father.”
I whirled around so fast my boot heels tore the sod. “What do you know of my father?”
“Nothing. But he be
hisaf
. Or you could not be.”
My aunt Jo had never spoken of my father. For this inhuman monster to do so was obscene. I raised my arm, but some part of my mind whispered,
If you kill him, they may not let you go. And it looks now as if they will.
I stalked off, and no one tried to stop me. No one stopped me. I was a
hisaf
, and apparently a law unto myself.
Hah!
I trudged to the border, and over it, and through a day’s walk north until in late afternoon I came again to the cabin in the hollow by the waterfall, where Cecilia waited in the country of the Dead.
And Maggie in the country of the living, furious as only Maggie could be.
 
 
“You’re still here,” I said stupidly.
“Where should I go?” She straightened from her task, digging spring flunter roots in a patch of sunshine, and glared at me. Jee’s cabin lay beyond, looking deserted except for a thin rope of smoke coiling up against the sky. Maggie looked thinner, dirtier, but somehow less a boy in her trousers and tunic. It was her hair; it had begun to grow back in springy fair curls around her face. That face changed as she looked at me, from fury to something like fear.
“Roger?”
“Did they take you in here, then? Are you well treated?”
“Yes. Roger—what happened?”
I could only shake my head. My legs gave way suddenly and I sat abruptly on the ground. Instantly Maggie knelt beside me. “Oh—are you hurt? Wounded again? Sick?”
Wounded in my soul, sick at my heart. I could not say so. Maggie’s hand on my forehead was gritty with dirt, cool of skin. She said, “You have no fever.”
“No.”
A long silence. Then she said, in her kind-Maggie voice, “Tell me what happened. Did you . . . did you find Cecilia?”
I heard how hard it was for her to ask that, but I had no compassion to spare for Maggie. Nor could I bring myself to tell her what had happened. I said only (and that hard enough to say), “Cecilia is dead.”
“Oh!”
She was too honest to say she was sorry, and again we sat in prolonged silence. I forced myself to go on. “She was from . . . from Soulvine Moor originally—or her kin were, or something. She returned there and they killed her.”
Maggie put her arms around me. I let her, but there was no comfort in her embrace. There would be no comfort for me ever again.
She seemed to know that I had said all I would say, or could. She began to talk in a low, soothing voice of earthly things, and slowly I felt her matter-of-fact voice pull me back to this world and ground me here. Did she know what she was doing? It didn’t matter; the effect was the same.
“The family here took me in, yes, but as a servant rather than a guest. I help gather food, care for the babies, cook, and—I was going to say ‘clean’ but there is no cleaning here. Still, there’s more food than you might imagine, since Tob is a good hunter. Yesterday he brought home two rabbits, and today he hunts again, hoping for a deer. Of course, in The Queendom it’s illegal to shoot deer while they are in fawn, but here the law does not exist. They don’t say much, any of them, and they work me much harder than is right, but I can’t say they are unkind. Jee is the best of them, a curious little boy, and he will ask me questions if no one else is around. He has learned to play the willow whistle you made him, and wonderfully well. If you are hungry right now, Roger, I can bring you some of the rabbit I made today. It’s flavored with wild onion and there’s not much in it except rabbit and flunter, but it’s hearty. There’s no ale, but the water is clean and cold.”
“Thank you. Rabbit would be good.”
She brought it from the cabin, and Jee came back with her. He squatted on his haunches and stared at me from wary eyes. The willow whistle hung on a strip of cloth around his neck. Some sort of paste covered the fungus on his foot—Maggie’s doing, perhaps.
Jee said, “Ye went into Soulvine, despite. And saw.”
“Get him away!” I screamed. “Get him away from me!”
“Jee, go into the house. Now!”
The child obeyed her, although sulkily. All at once I didn’t want Maggie talking to him again. I didn’t want her learning what Jee meant, didn’t want her knowing what had happened to Cecilia. Let her know only that Cecilia was dead. I couldn’t bear her knowing the rest.
“We’re going, Maggie. Now.”
“Going? Where?”
“Back to The Queendom. Or . . . or somewhere. Come.” I stood, unsteady but determined, and took her hand. She must not talk to Jee, not even a word. Suddenly that seemed the most important thing in the world. In this world.
Maggie said, “I must get my cloak and the water bag.”
“Leave it. The weather’s warming. You can share my cloak.”
Pleasure flushed her face pink, but Maggie was Maggie. “No, I should have mine. I’ll just be a moment.”
“No! I’ll get it!” I stalked off.
The hut was dim and reeking; too many unwashed bodies had dwelt here too long. The woman sat on a rough-hewn chair, her gown open to give a baby the breast. Two smaller children played in a corner with some sticks and pebbles. Jee sat moodily poking the fire; he did not look at me as I snatched Maggie’s cloak and our water bag from a hook on the wall. The cloak, too, smelled bad, and I doubted that she had been the one sleeping in it. No one spoke. I took the cloak back to Maggie, who stood uncertainly, flunter roots in her hand.
“Leave those,” I said. “I have some coins left.” And Maggie, too, must have the two silvers I had left her.
But it was not in Maggie’s nature to leave behind anything useful, and she tucked the flunter roots into her cloak. We started back toward the cabin, and then down the rough track that seemed to be the Unclaimed Land’s only road. Under the pine trees by the little waterfall, I halted.
“Roger—why, you’re trembling!” Maggie said.
Cecilia was here. I couldn’t sense her, but she was here, in the country of the Dead that lay invisible all around us. A deep shudder ran through me. This time, however, when I felt Maggie’s hand on me, I shook it off.
“I’m all right, Maggie. Just weak. We’ll go another few miles and make camp, off the trail. Can you sleep without a fire tonight?”
“Of course,” she said. “I have my cloak.”
Maggie was never one to let pass a chance to be right.
We walked until dusk, then found a hidden thicket to stay the night. There was nothing to eat; the flunter roots could not be boiled without a fire. Stomachs alive with hunger, we rolled early into our cloaks. When I heard Maggie breathe deep and even, I crept from our thicket and made my way back up the track to the pine grove by the waterfall. There was a waxing moon and the stars shone bright in a clear sky.
In the deep shadows under the pines, I cut my arm with my little knife, and crossed over.
Cecilia sat where I had left her, gazing serenely at the same half-withered flower, oblivious of the ground shaking under her, the lightning flashing above, the stinging wind. I took her in my arms. “Cecilia, my love.”
She neither resisted nor responded. A faint smile curved her rosy lips, but it was not for me. It was for whatever unknowable thoughts—if they were thoughts at all—lit the minds of the Dead. I sat there, holding my lost love, for too long. Then I stood, pulled her up with me, and began to walk.
Wherever I went in the land of the living, Cecilia must be led along the same route in the country of the Dead. That was the only way I could be sure of not losing her. I had to keep her with me, separated from me by only the dirt-and-grave-clogged passageway between my two worlds. I had to do that. I
had
to.
I’m not sure I was quite sane.
We walked for long hours through the hills and around the steep ravines of the country of the Dead, over the shaking ground and under the stormy sky. I left her in a place I would be sure to recognize even in this trackless place where countryside stretched and distorted; it was on a hilltop, beside a swift-running mountain stream. There were other Dead there, men and women dressed in strange clothing, in stranger armor, a whole crowd of motionless Dead. Once, much must have happened in the counterpart of the hilltop, on the other side. All of the Dead sat or stood or lay peacefully, and there would be no difficulty in recognizing them when I returned.
I crossed back. Then I plodded uphill, short of breath, weak with hunger, and fell asleep beside Maggie just as the sky began to lighten into dawn.
 
“Roger.
Roger
. We should be going.”
I could not move. “Sleep,” I muttered. “More sleep.”
“You can’t,” Maggie’s voice said. I hated that voice. “Someone might come after me. Or after you. We have to go.”
“Can’t.”
“What’s wrong? Are you sick?”
“Tired.”
She said nothing. I opened one eye to her bleak face, and it was that bleakness that gave me strength to sit, to stand. I had brought Maggie into this. I had to get her out.
None of that was true. Maggie had brought herself into this, and I had been willing enough to abandon her to go onto Soulvine Moor, looking for Cecilia. Yet it was also true that I now felt responsible for her. Or was it? I didn’t know what was true anymore. I stumbled forward.
I don’t know how I kept going that morning, on no food and almost no sleep. But there came a moment when I could go no farther. The strength built up in the two days of eating outside the Soulviners’ round ceremony chamber—all that strength was already gone. I sat down on the track, and I could not move.
“Roger?” Maggie said.
“I . . . can’t.”
“It’s all right. Lean on me. Just a little farther, there you go, just get off the track into these trees . . . See, we’re almost there. ...” Encouraging, cajoling, patting me with her free hand, Maggie got me into a little copse and laid me onto the weedy ground. All morning it had been clouding, and now a light drizzle began to fall. I was glad of the rain; it hid my tears. I was at the very end of my strength and wits, the latter never much to start with. Exhausted in body and spirit, I fell asleep.
And when I woke in the evening, the rain had stopped. There was a fire. Food cooked over it. The goatskin bag swelled with water. And there was Jee, blowing softly on the whistle I had made for him.
 
 
“He brought the food,” Maggie said before I could say anything, “and the ropes for snares, to catch small game. He told me it was all right to make a fire because Tob has not yet returned from his long hunt.”
“Jee can’t come with us.”
“He says he won’t go back.”
“Maggie . . . consider all the ...
no
.”
Jee stared at us both, expressionless, the whistle held halfway to his lips. He cupped his other hand protectively over it.
Maggie said, all in a low rush, “I lied before, Roger. I didn’t want you to know. His father beats Jee. He beats Jee’s mother, too, and he would have beaten me except that he hoped I would lie with him. He stole the two silvers you left me. I was only going to wait for you another day because that’s how long I thought I could hold him off, and then I was going to go and take Jee with me. He’s too good for that life.” Before I could answer, she raced on. “He says he won’t go back. He says he’ll follow us. He says he’ll do that even if you beat him, too. He says ...”

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