The Returning (12 page)

The lamp was lit and supper laid on the table. Da's heavy tread sounded on the porch, making Pin jump.

“Rot those Coverlasts.” Da was so angry he stamped into the house in his boots. “I should have seen him off the holding.”

“What do you do with that!” Mam was looking at the flax wraps, hanging in Da's hand, all crusty with dried egg. “That's all our eggs for market.”

“The Coverlasts! I gave one of the lads short shrift and this is his thanks, I do daresay. I found them all laid in the dirt. Pulled off and smashed, every one and all of them.”

“Pin's red as a radish,” said Hughar.

Mam turned a shocked look upon her. “Pin?”

“Pin?” Da's tone made Pin feel sick. “Tell me my Pin-little didn't do this.”

That was something that Pin could not do.

“Oh!” Mam sat down. “Why would you?”

Da took her out into the yard, cut a switch from the bare, hanging boughs of the willow, and switched her hands, one for each wrap of eggs she had broken.

In bed afterward, Pin lay with her throbbing palms turned up to the cool air. For all they stung, she didn't cry.

 

THE MORNINGS WERE still frosty, and the winds as wild, but they were beginning to swing around, bringing warmer gusts from the east and the north, and every day the sun showed its face. Pin was out in the yard early, running from the far fence to leap as high as she could and land
splash
in the puddles by the well, the fragile skin of ice that covered them shattering under her feet. There were more, and bigger, puddles filling the wheel ruts on the road. Pin bounced and splattered her way down the terraces, along the Highway.

A stone's throw from the road, the ground dipped to a line of trees, and running at the feet of them was the creek. The water-babble nagged at her. She pushed through the fringe of trees. The creek jumped and splashed, shouting, now that she was close to it. The water was clear, but with a brown tint to it, like weak tea. There were stones, patches of moss, trout. Pin looked and looked, but she could not see a merrow. Maybe they were shy, and would not let themselves be seen.

She closed her eyes tight, but she was not thinking of merrows now; she was thinking of Cam. Cam on that last night. Just as they had sat to supper without him, he had come laughing through the door, and it was not just shy she had been with Cam—she had been cross, and he had known it and now he was gone.

He'd made to swing Pin up, as he always did. But Pin had swatted at him and run away.

“What's this, then? My little Pin-sister being a stranger to me?”

“Do you blame her when you're never about?” Da had said.

“I'm about now.”

Pin had put her tongue out at him. “You do only come home to fight with Da.”

Gone, and it was her fault.

Pin wanted him home: wanted it like it was when he'd first returned from the war. She crouched there on the stony bank, rocking a little with the weight of her wish, and nothing at all happened. At length her eyes would not stay shut and her mind would not stay fixed.

“Puh.” She stood up. What was the creek but a puddle, a big puddle and no merrows in it. Pin jumped in, up to her knees in brown, icy water.

And heard a laugh.

“Aah!” Carefully, she looked through her fingers.

She saw feet first, bare and very brown; then the muddy hem of trousers, so bright a red it hurt the eyes; a jacket of the same color. A girl. Older than Pin, older even than the twins, dark as her own shadow. Silent as a shadow she had slipped from the trees, all in her strange red clothes, no pinny, no hat, no shoes. She crouched, and hooked the cuffs of her trousers over her toes.

Pin fled. She didn't stop for breath until she reached the road, hot and sweaty, but with cold wet feet and her skirt slapping damp hands about her calves.

“What do you do along the Highway, and on your own?”

For the second time that morning, Pin yelped with fright.

“Does your mam know?” said Master Keystone. “No, I thought not. Here. Do you get in.”

Pin had no choice. She climbed into his barrow, fitting herself around the blocks of stone, arms folded over her chest.

“Headed toward the Uplander camp, and none too happy to be herded up,” said Master Keystone to Mam.

There were many thank-yous exchanged, then Mam closed the door. Pin bent her head, waiting for a slap, of hands or words.

“You do look a bit peaked.” Mam sat her on Da's chair by the fire, put a rug over her. “I'll make you a dandelion tea, that'll restore you.” Mam always made dandelion tea when Pin was out of sorts, and she always said “That'll restore you.”

There was a bit more trouble when Da came in. “What were you thinking? The riffraff in that camp, ah!”

How to explain? Pin did not know, so she spread her hands. “I don't know.”

 

“I KNOW,” MAM SAID, a day or two later. She helped Pin to make a prayer paper, showing her how to fold it, and with each fold to seal her wish inside, by thinking hard of it.

“Set it on the water and it'll come to the sea,” said Mam. “Then your merrows will find it and grant your wish.”

Da was cross and stomped outside. “She's enough nonsense in her head, without you putting more there.”

Still, it was he who took her down to the river by Millman's Race and helped her cast the prayer paper on the water, holding her hand and helping her throw farther than she ever could have on her own.

“Don't you watch it,” he told her. “They might be shy, those sprites of yours.”

Pin hadn't watched her prayer paper, but the next day she came back and found it soggy and torn, wrapped about the reeds that edged the mouth of the mill race. “Rot.”

She hadn't got more than a few hundred paces down the road toward the sea when she heard wheels coming up behind her. It was Fenister's fine painted dray. Pin just stopped and waited for it to draw up beside her. Master Fenister looked down at her; then, face very stern, he pointed to the seat beside him. Pin climbed up.

“I've never been in a cart.”

“See,” said Master Fenister. “There's good even in bad things.”

It was not the sort of thing she'd expected Master Fenister to say.

“You fishing then?”

“No.”

“
No
, she says. What then?”

“I'm looking for merrows,” said Pin.

“And what are they?”

She told him.

“I made my own wish come true,” said Master Fenister. “No merrows at all. You try that.”

He dropped her short of the gate. “No need to worry your mam.”

Pin felt her mind knot around itself. Everyone hated Master Fenister, and so she did, but . . . “There's good even in bad things, like you do say. Everyone does say you're mean, and that's bad, but you did be good to me just now.” She beamed at him, pleased with her compliment.

Fat Fenister just looked at her, looked on up the road, then he shook his head. “Come up,” he called to the horse and rattled off, leaving a spray of mud behind him.

 

SPRING FIRST MONTH was always brought in by Da's parsnip wine. Da's cooking was different from Mam's. It was louder and more difficult (or so it seemed from Da's face) and much, much messier. Pin loved it, and could not understand why Mam was always grumpy after.

“Parsnip Wine Day,” said Da. To start with, he opened a bottle of last year's parsnip wine, and everyone had a small glass of it, even Pin. This year's brew would not be drunk until next winter.

Next, Da and Pin dug parsnips from the sheltered bed by the stable. This year, Pin was allowed to cut them. “Do not let your mam see,” said Da.

Allowed, that is, until she cut herself and bled all over them.

“Mm-mm.” Da wiped Pin's bleeding finger. “That will make it taste all the better.”

The parsnips were put in the pot with Da's secret ingredients, which he mixed with his back even to Pin. “Let me”—she pulled at his shirt—“do you let me see.” But he never would.

Then they cleaned up, knife and utensils piled all anyhow to one side, scraps in the pig bucket.

“Da?” said Pin. “What's the sea, then?”

“You've asked me this so often, Pin-little, that I think you do know the answer in your sleep.”

“Da!”

“Oh it's a big bit of water, farther across than from here to Dorn-Lannet.”

Pin was sure he must be shifting the truth to make things sound more exciting. The biggest bit of water she knew was the mill pond.

“And it's salt.”

“It's never.”

“Aye, well, I can't help it if you don't like the truth.” Da laughed.

“Da?”

“Another question? When will you run out of them?”

“Why is it the pig bucket, but we do not keep a pig?”

“Ah, that's one of life's little mysteries.”

Mam came in then and shooed them out. “Let me clean up!” She and Da dickered over the mess, who should stir the pot.

“Stir each other's pot,” said Hughar.

At the end of the morning, the whole house smelled deliciously of parsnip wine.

 

THE CREEK HAD been empty, no merrows had answered her; the river.
It does have to be the sea
, Pin thought. She turned and looked back up at the holding, the cot round on its hill, then she put her back to it and kept on. She was almost at Castle Cross; then she was through it, past it, and on the East Road.

Walking with Da was always fun, but walking alone was very different. There were people and carts, just as there were when she went to market with Da, but it was not a market day and the road was quieter. And there were the Uplanders. But they were so different, thought Pin, that it was like sharing the road with ghosts. They walked fast, on their long Uplander legs, and they did not walk with her, but before or behind her. She had her own patch of empty road that she dragged with her through the woods. The trees trapped a gloom in their branches, though they were bearing green nubs of leaves.

Pin walked. She walked, and walked, and walked. She stopped to rest. Stopped again. It was still, yet the scrub soughed, and she wondered at a branch swaying in an absence of wind. The road was empty now. Pin jumped up and started plodding on again.

Suddenly footsteps sounded behind her, right on her heels. Pin bolted, and was caught up and swung into the air.

“Be still!” And she was set upon her feet. Acton Mansto held her steady. Pin knew now what it meant to jump out of your skin: She had jumped right out of hers and back into it again, and it didn't fit quite right, was prickling all over.

“Running again?” said Acton.

“I do not run away!”

He only nodded. The nod became a toss of his head, indicating the road. “This will take you east and to the Port, not to Dorn-Lannet—that's up north.” He pointed.

“I do not go to Dorn-Lannet.”

Acton nodded again. Pin stepped around him, but he blocked her.

“Do you let me go, or I'll tell my da.”

“Oh.” He stood, arms akimbo, right in her path. “And I'll tell your da where I did find you. Heading to the sea?”

Pin stamped. “I do try, but everyone makes me go back home!”

“Why do you want to go? It's a long way, and it's not safe, especially not for a little maid.”

“You take me then.”

Acton shook his head,
no
.

“Puh!” She folded her arms and put her back to him.

“I do have a cat does that, you know; if I don't pat her or give her a little bittle of food, she sulks and turns her back, just like you do now.”

“I am not a cat, and I am going to the sea.” Pin shook her skirts straight and started to walk.

“Hoi,” Acton called behind her. “It does take more than a day to walk there.”

Pin started to run, but he was on her, catching her about the waist and lugging her over his shoulder like a sack of Da's rice. Pin screamed and punched and kicked and wriggled, but Acton just walked on, unbothered. When Pin was worn limp, so clogged from crying she could hardly breathe, he stopped and put her down. “Now will you see sense?”

Pin let him take her pick-a-back. After a while, he bade her walk. “You're a weight for such a small thing.” Acton held her hand and whistled, this bird call and that, made Pin guess them.

Night was come. The sky was black, and the road. They made Castle Cross at last: There was Kayforl, a spangle of yellow lamplight in the dark.

“Do you know which is home?” said Acton.

Pin pulled her hand free of his and stopped walking. Merrows! They were nothing more than words from Mam's mouth. Pin picked up stones, dirt, twigs, and hurled them.

Acton sat on his heels, waiting. “Silly maid.” He wiped her face with a corner of his shirt and made her blow her nose into her pinny. “What's all this, then?”

Pin told him. She told him of merrows, and Cam's going being her fault, and of Royed Keystone's grandmam's sister.

“I made my wish, but nothing happened. There are no wishes.”

“How do you know there aren't?”

Pin stared at him. Acton must have wished for his da back, and it didn't happen, yet he had a new da, Corban Farmer, and so in a strange way his wish, if he had made it, had come true.

“Come on, let's get you home.” Acton held out his hand again. Pin took it, and they started up the Ridge Road to the village, together.