Chapter Six
He was almost as cold as the rocks he sat on when the dew settled around him in the early dawn. The sky turned from black to gray and mist slid over the mound and creek in glutinous layers. Narrow vapor trails four or five feet in length shot through the mist with quiet hissing sounds. Michael was too chilled to care.
He twisted his stiff neck around and noticed the logs no longer stood around the boulders. Sometime during the night, they had fallen into jumbles of neatly cut beams and boards. The bark of each log lay scrolled next to its partitioned innards.
Michael wasn’t encouraged. Like a lizard, he waited for the sun to come up and warm his blood. He hadn’t resolved anything during the night—the hours had been spent in a cold stupor—but his conviction of inadequacy had solidified.
The sun appeared in the east, a distant red arc topping a hill beyond the main branch of the river. Without thinking, Michael uncurled his arms and legs and stood on the rock to catch the first rays of warmth. His bones cracked and his legs almost collapsed under him, but he staggered and kept his balance. Dew had soaked his clothes.
The hut was quiet and dark, likewise the village. In a few minutes, however, just when he thought he might be catching some warmth from the new day, he heard activity from the Halftown houses. Curls of smoke began to rise from their stone and mud-brick chimneys.
He heard a woman singing. At first, he was too intent on just getting warm to pay much attention, but as the voice grew near, he angled his head and saw a young Breed female fording the stream on the flat rocks, barefoot. She wore cloth pants hemmed at the knees and a vest laced shut with string. Her hair was raven black—uncharacteristic, he thought—but her face bore the unmistakable mark of the Sidhe, long with prominent cheeks and a narrow, straight nose. She carried four buckets covered with cloth caps, two in each hand. She glanced at Michael on her way to the Crane Women’s hut.
“Hoy,” she greeted.
“Hello,” Michael returned. She stopped before the door, which opened a crack. A long-fingered hand stretched out and took two buckets, withdrew, then emerged to take two more. The door closed and the woman reversed her course. She paused, cocked her head at Michael, then started toward him.
“Oh, God,” he said under his breath. He was just warm enough to shiver and he badly needed to piss. He didn’t want to talk to anyone, much less a Breed woman.
“You’re human,” she said, stopping about six paces from the boulders. “Yet they gave you wood.”
He nodded, arms still unfolded to catch the warmth.
“You’re an English speaker,” she continued. “And you come from the Isomage’s house. That’s all they say about you in Halftown.”
He nodded again, glanced away, swallowed. Beneath all the cold and misery churned a steady current of shyness. The Breed woman’s voice was disarmingly beautiful. He would have to get used to Sidhe and Breed voices.
“It will be warm soon,” she said, walking toward the stream. “If you have time today, come to the village and I’ll give you a card for milk and cheese. Everybody needs to eat. Just ask for Eleuth.”
“I will,” he said, his voice cracking. When she had crossed the creek, he clambered down from the rock, walked some distance away, and hunkered to hide while he urinated. He felt like some animal, barely domesticated. A pet of the Breeds.
The door to the Crane Women’s hut opened and Spart emerged carrying a roll of cloth. She stared at him balefully, unfurled the cloth and flapped it. An exaltation of tiny birds flew from its folds and circled the house, then headed north. Without explanation, Spart returned to the house and closed the door behind.
Massaging blood back into his legs, Michael looked doubtfully at the piles of lumber. He picked up the sheets of bark and discovered that they could be peeled into light, strong strips with a ropy toughness. He thought about how to put a hut together and shook his head. He’d need tools—nails, certainly, and a knife and saw.
Even as he speculated halfheartedly, he asked himself what the hell good it was, building a house where he didn’t belong. He had reached the point during the cold night of knowing beyond doubt this was no nightmare; he felt sober and scared and severely chastened. Never again would he go looking for adventure. Adventure was misery and degradation and terror; it wasn’t worth the weird beauty.
“You have a long way to go.”
Nare stood behind him. Her large eyes stared at him critically, large, like an owl’s but darting from point to point on his body. She had undone her long red-gray hair and it fanned over her shoulders and down her back in an unbraided radiance, spreading to its widest point behind her knees. “Now that you have the grace of wood, what are you going to do with it?”
“I need tools.”
“I don’t think so. Are you aware what the grace of wood means?”
He thought for a moment. “Humans don’t get much.”
“Humans get scrap. Not even Breeds can get wood all the time. The finest wood is reserved for the Sidhe. Like as not they have ancestors in it.”
“I don’t understand,” Michael said.
“The Sidhe are immortal, but if they die in battle or through some other faulting, the Arborals press them into trees. They dwell there a while, then request oblivion. Arborals do their work, and we have wood.”
“I heard a voice last night.”
Nare nodded. Bending over, she picked up a plank and held it out to Michael. One long forefinger pressed against the edge and a notch fell out. “Feel and press. Riddle how it all goes together. Wood was shaped into a house by the Sidhe that dwelled within. Just puzzle it. Maza.”
“Today?” Michael asked.
“Today is all the time you have.” Nare headed for the creek and dove in like an otter. He didn’t see her come up.
For the next few hours, trying to ignore his hunger, Michael took each board and beam and pressed, poked and rubbed the surfaces until he found the removable pieces. At first he took the small pieces and tossed them aside, but thought better of it and gathered them into a small pile.
It became obvious that he could fit some of the pieces into holes in the planks, and use them to slide into notches in the beams. It reminded him of a wooden puzzle he had at home, only much more complex. When the sun was high, he had managed to assemble two planks and one beam, with no idea where to go from there. He didn’t even know what shape the house would be.
Spart, the Crane Woman with tattoos all over and the melodious voice, came to him from the hut and offered a wooden bowl filled with cold gruel, a piece of fruit and a puddle of thin milk. He ate it without complaint. She watched, one long arm twitching, and removed the bowl from his hands when he was done.
“When you have finished the house, you will go into the village and announce yourself at the market. They will allow for your food. Also, while you’re here, you can carry messages for us, and otherwise make yourself useful.” She glanced at the pile of wood. “If you haven’t puzzled it by dawn tomorrow, it’s not your wood any more.”
He stared at her tattoos. She didn’t seem to mind, but she bent down and tapped the wood meaningfully. He set to work again and she walked back toward the house.
“Is it safe to drink the water?” he called after her.
“I wouldn’t know,” she said.
By evening, with all his ingenuity he had succeeded in figuring out that the house would be square, about two yards on each side, without a roof or floor. He would apparently have to gather grass or something for the roof, and that discouraged him. He was ravenous, but no more food was brought out.
Maybe they’ll feed me when I’m done, he thought. If I ever get done.
He discovered the bark could be used for lashings. As the sun and sky went through the same twilight phenomena of the day before, Michael kicked a beam with one foot and held his hand out in front of him. “It’s impossible.”
But...
He knelt and picked out a square, thick beam whose use he hadn’t discovered. He pressed along the grain and it fell apart in neat, almost paper-thin shingles. Then the plan seemed to come together in his mind. He assembled planks and beams, slipped tenon into mortise, lashed the wood with strips of bark, and took five long, thin curved pieces to make the framework of the roof. When darkness was complete, he had almost finished putting on the shingles. He had one string of bark and two pieces of pressed-out wood left, yet the house seemed complete.
Spart stood outside when he emerged through the low door. She looked at the string in his hand and shook her head in pity. “Fera antros,” she said. “If you had built it right, you wouldn’t have any pieces left over.”
For a moment, he was afraid she might have him dismantle the hut and start all over again, but she pulled a bowl from behind her back and passed it to him. His meal this time: vegetable paste and a thick, doughy slice of dark bread. Spart squatted beside him as he sat on a rock and ate.
“There are many languages among the Sidhe,” Spart said. “Some are very ancient, some more recent. Nearly all the Sidhe speak Cascar. It would be an advantage to learn as much Cascar as you can—and you need all the advantages you can get.”
“Some speak English,” Michael said.
“Most speak it because it is in your mind. In-speaking. And English was spoken in the last lands many of us inhabited on Earth, English and other tongues—Irish, Welsh, French, German. We also speak Earth languages you wouldn’t be familiar with, all old, most dead. Languages come easy to the Sidhe. But no human tongue can replace Cascar.”
Not being hungry made Michael bolder. “How old are you?”
“There are no years here,” Spart said. “Seasons come and go at the whim of Adonna. How old are you?”
“Sixteen,” Michael said.
She stood and took his empty bowl. “Tonight, in the dark, one of us will test you. You will not be able to fend us off, but how you react will shape the way we teach you. Sleep or not, as you will.”