Month: September 2017

The crowd has already begun to gather by the time I reach the market place. Everything is sold here, everything can be bought. Melons, meat, corn, gold, silver, jewelry. Slaves. I look away when I pass their pens, because the sight still turns my stomach. It wasn’t so long ago that I was up on a block like that, chained up with the rest.

I have no desire to be put back again.

I lead my little donkey into the crowd, find a place in a far corner from the slave market, and spread my rug. My wares are all brought from the east, purchased from caravans that bring them in from Egypt, the Middle East, Jerusalem, Morocco. Everywhere. My little donkey carries everything, and I pat his nose and give him his grain before I set out the wares.

The finest silks, pearls from the east, bronze lamps, copper pots. All of it purchased with my own coins. I look at each of them proudly before I set them on the rug. Slaves don’t sell things like these. Merchants do. And I am a merchant, in my own small way. No one has to know how I came to be one, or where I started out. Slaves in great houses can’t earn money, not the way I can.

No one has to know that I still have men on my tail. They won’t find me anyway. It’s been too long, and I’ve come too far. They will never find me now.

I’m making tea when they arrive. They knock on my door, although anywhere else they would have kicked it in. “It’s a routine search,” they tell me. “Only a formality.”

I let them in. What else am I supposed to do? Even I can’t make them go away, although their master thinks so highly of my talents, my crystal ball, my visions of the future. They tramp through my house in their big boots, search every floor, every room, every closet. Their uniforms are black. Black, but for the red lining their coats and cuffs. Like blood on their hands, on their chests.

I smile at them when they come into the kitchen. “I was making tea. Would you like some?”

They’re embarrassed. No one comes here. They’re usually not allowed, and I know they don’t want to be caught here, even if they were ordered to come. I’m a witch, a diviner, and much as they like my talents, they’re still afraid of me. Of the men who come to consult me.

I could never be a traitor.

They sit down at my table, and I pour hot water into the teapot. My hands don’t shake. The older of the two, a man with black tattoos on his throat and a death’s head on his cap, is sitting right above my cellar, although I doubt he knows it. His black boots rest on the notch in the floor where the handle is.

The people below don’t make a sound. They might have been dead already, for all the noise they’re making. I bless them under my breath. Even the Black Ghost’s little witch would be executed for what they’re carrying in their pockets.

But they won’t be found. We’ve done this before, so many times, and our luck has never failed us. I pour two cups, smile at the men. “Sugar?”

My breath hangs like a cloud in the still air when I step outside. The grass is frozen now, and the needles of the pines are white with hoarfrost. I missed these days during the summer. Our home is beautiful enough during the warm seasons, when the grass is green and the creeks are high. But I think ice suits it better. Ice and wind and snow. It fits our people better, somehow.

The sheep are already gathered when I go down to their pens. They huddle together for warmth, the air soft and hazy and smelling of wet wool and manure. I like that smell. It reminds me of my father, of our home before life became so dangerous, so unpredictable. The sheep don’t feel it, of course. As long as we bring them out to pasture in the morning, they are content.

The crates of ammunition in the back of their pens don’t bother them at all. They bother me. But no one listens to me.

“They’re winter supplies,” my father tells me. “That’s what you tell anyone that asks. That’s all they need to know.”

I drill it into my head. Winter supplies. Blankets and warm clothing, food and grain and flour. Dried meats. Not bullets. Not gunpowder.

We can’t be shot for blankets.

The birds are flying south now. When I go for walks in the morning with my dog, their nests are empty and the trees where they used to sit and sing their songs are bare.

I can’t really blame them.

It’s the wood sprites that chase them out, really. They don’t like the cold or the snow, but only I think they would stay if the little sprites didn’t chase them from their nests, scatter red paint over the leaves, and pick the branches bare.

They really are very naughty.

My dog likes to bark at them. I hush him when he does, because the sprites like to come and tie knots in his fur when he’s too mean to them. It isn’t nice at all, but whoever heard of a wood sprite that was nice?

I tell my neighbors about them, but they only laugh and roll their eyes. Crazy old Mary, they say. What will she think of next? Their children laugh at me, and none of them come to my house when I invite them for cookies and apple cider in the fall. They don’t like the stories I tell about the wood sprites, or the little ghosts I catch in my pumpkin patch, or the faeries I find in my garden in the spring. They don’t like me. They think I’m odd.

But I like being odd. I like my faeries, and I like the wood sprites too, although they’re terribly mischievous. I like being able to see things other people aren’t sure of, or know aren’t there. I write stories about them, although I don’t tell people the stories are true, and my books are scattered through every library and bookstore in the country.

But they still won’t come for cookies. I’ll have to feed them to the wood sprites. Maybe then they’ll leave my magpies alone.

Everyone else is asleep. The captain confined us to our quarters the moment we stepped on his ship, as if our ragged, bloodstained clothes and battle-scarred weapons threatened him. The others complied easily enough, they don’t mind being confined for a few days or a week. Most of them have done nothing but sleep and eat, and are happy for it.

But I can’t eat. And the nightmares always wake me up when I try to close my eyes.

I’m seated in the bow, nestled just behind the figurehead, and I can see the lights of the coast winking in the distance, through the darkness. None of the sailors have found me yet, and maybe they won’t. I won’t stay out long. Just long enough to let the seaspray and the sight of home settle my racing heart.

But right now, I can still see them when I close my eyes. Faces of men, dead and dying. Men I knew and men I didn’t. Bloodstained fields, the smoke of the cannons. The smell of gunpowder. The screams of horses and men, the shouting of generals and captains. It all comes back. I can’t breathe below decks anymore.

I want to be home.

Home. I want to see the cliffs in the morning, see my father in the fields plowing with his oxen, and the dogs taking the sheep out to pasture with old Jim striding behind them in his big boots. I want to hear the geese cackling in the farmyard, and smell the fresh milk the girls are taking into the house to strain.

I want to be home, not here, not on this ship any longer, not at war. I close my eyes, steadying my breathing.

Tomorrow. We’ll be home tomorrow. I can wait that long.

At midnight, the clock in the hall chimes twelve times. I listen to it, waiting until the last echo has faded, and then I get up and fold my blanket. And wait for the children.

They come in twos and threes, padding up to my rooms in the attic like little ghosts, dressed in their white nightshirts, their little gowns. The girls sit on my bed, and the boys gather around on the floor, their knees hugged to their chests. I braid the girls’ hair, and we talk. About everything. About life and love, about people, about the future. The headmistress doesn’t like them to come to my rooms. She’s always hated me: the old caretaker who has been around longer than she has. Longer even then her predecessor. She tells the children that I’m a witch, and that I’ll strike them dead if they ever come up to my rooms.

Some of them believe her.

Most don’t.

They come at midnight, because that’s when she’s sure to be asleep, and because that’s when the moon is shining through my skylight and they can see the stars through the clear glass. I tell them that sometimes the moon lets down a ladder for children like them. Children without homes, without parents. If they catch the ladder at just the right time, they can climb it and live on the moon and play with the faeries every night, instead of going to bed without supper.

They don’t always believe me, of course. And it isn’t really true. But it’s something for them to hope for, something to dream about.

They have so little else.

The mountains rise above us, black against the blue skies, against the white clouds driven on by the keening wind. I can see the eagles above them, floating in the breeze, black specks among all that blue, all that white. We’re following them. Following the eagles.

We have nothing else to do.

The paths we’ve been walking are so stony that my shoes fell apart weeks ago. They dropped off my feet, and I left them where they were. The soles were gone, anyway, and most of the rest. They weren’t worth anything, not after how long I’ve been walking in them.

My mother’s feet are bleeding. She never says anything, but I can see they hurt her. She had shoes too, when we left our village. They’re gone now, like mine. Everything we own is strapped to our backs, and we’ve left bits and pieces on the trail behind us when they got too heavy. An old idol. My sister’s doll. A cooking pan that was too large. Someone will come along behind us and pick them up. Another refugee family, or some of the traders that pass this way. Sometimes mule trains climb through these mountains, heading for the border on the other side.

I wish we had a mule to ride.

The eagles scream, their sharp shrieks loud in the thin air. It’s a good sound. They’re getting closer. Their nests are in the cliffs above the pass, where we need to be. So we follow them. Hoping they’ll guide us places even a map can’t find.

We take them out at dawn, when the sky in the east is red and the birds are starting to sing. I climb onto our bull and pull my sister up beside me. It’s her first time herding, her first time coming into the fields and pastures with me, and her little arms wind around my waist and hold me as tight as if she thinks Molo will shake us off and run away. He won’t. He knows we’re going to feed, and he knows I’ll chase him with my switch if he tries to run away. He’s done this many times.

So have I.

The cows follow us when we start out onto the dusty road. Their calves run at their sides, kicking up their heels, playing with each other. They have more energy than the slow, lazy cows or Molo, who is so grumpy and sleepy. He likes to sleep in the mud all day, eating only when the clouds cover the sun or dusk begins to fall. He is fat and old and lazy, but I remember when he was just a little calf like all the rest, and kicked up his heels the same way they do now. I’ve herded our families water buffaloes for many years, and I remember when each and every one was born. They all liked to run and play.

The calves will settle down soon. They’ll become old and slow and fat, just like the rest. I like them to run and play best, but I have to chase them sometimes, too, so it’s better that they grow, like I have. And like Molo has.