Wildege
Kelim Station
They finished packing the wagon just before Ribbon-rise. Vyr went back to the domi to start the meal, leaving Kel to tighten the tarp and check the balance one more time. It was an old wagon; the spin-lifts tended to get cranky with an unbalanced load, and walking into Visalee to barter for a repair wasn’t in Kel’s plans.
So, one more check, a tug on the ropes, and back to the domi for dinner.
Kel paused at the center of the clearing to look up past the highest branches of the highest trees, into the bowl of a sky flushed with dancing colors. She could feel the Ribbons at the core of her, and raised her arms as if she were a tree herself, reaching for the sky, drinking in the ambient. Kel danced—six steps—then another six, before she remembered Vyr, the domi, and the promise of supper waiting.
Maybe she’d come out later, she thought, after the meal, when Vyr was asleep. Come out and dance for true.
Maybe she’d do that.
Sure.
* * *
“So,” Kel said, after they’d tasted the dinner—which was wonderful as always; Vyr had a Talent for cooking. That was Kel’s opinion. Vyr said there was no such thing as a Talent for cooking, as if that settled anything. You might as well say that there was no such thing as having a Talent for wood.
“So,” Kel said again, and waited until Vyr looked up, green eyes like glass in a wary brown face. “You’ll be coming with me.”
She put it like it was a certainty, having learned that asking was a certain loser, while assumption sometimes took the trick.
But not this time.
“No,” Vyr said, his voice brittle, “I’ll overload the wagon.”
“Won’t,” Kel said. “I left off one of the burled slabs. You don’t weigh near, so there’ll be room for extra food.”
“Take the burl,” Vyr said. “I’ll stay here.”
Normal times, that would be the end of it, Vyr not having a particularly changeable nature, and Kel not wanting a fight. Tomorrow, though, that was something a little out of the way. Midsummer Market at Visalee, which Kel had certainly been to, on no set schedule, for trade or supplies. But this was the first time she was going on purpose to one particular Market, and for the whole week, too.
Kel was inclined to wonder at herself, now she was on the edge of leaving, but, there. Nimbel had Seen it, as many as six Wild wagons at Midsummer Market, and the Seeing had moved him to take the unprecedented step of visiting his neighbors to share it.
“Something dark riding the Ribbons,” is what he’d said, sitting at Kel’s kitchen table, and having a sip of cider. “Whatever it is, it ain’t gonna miss us, no matter how deep we go into the trees. Best we find what the village-bound know.” He’d finished the cider and thumped the mug to the table, giving Kel a look that was equal parts dread and glee.
“Aside all that, Midsummer Market’s a party bar none.”
Nimbel’s Sight, so far as Kel knew, was as erratic as any Seer’s. But this was the first time in all the years she could remember that he’d cared to leave his station, and travel the not-inconsiderable distances to tell his neighbors what he’d Seen.
It wouldn’t be the first time trouble had ridden the Ribbons, Kel knew; and it wouldn’t be the last, trouble being the natural condition of humankind. She’d found herself agreeing to go, and besides—she hadn’t been to a proper party in too, too long.
So, Kel’s reasoning went now, if Nimbel could leave his station, to share his Seeing, the least she could do in the here-and-now was to try one more time with Vyr, though she didn’t expect his answer to change.
And, unless an increase of irritation counted for change, she wasn’t wrong.
“I said I’ll stay here,” Vyr snapped. “Leave it alone, Kelim.”
Her whole name. Well, that was never good. Kel dug back into her dinner.
“Good meal tonight,” she murmured, by way of a peace-gift.
In the normal way of things, Vyr would answer that hunger was a better spice than anything he could put into dinner, and they’d be back on their usual footing.
Only this time, Vyr didn’t answer—at all.
Kel looked up. He had pushed the plate aside, with half the meal uneaten, and was staring down at the wooden table inset with river pebbles Kel had made long ago, when she’d just been feeling out her Gift. His shoulders were tight and his pattern…crumpled, like it was a sheet of paper he had balled up in his fist.
“You all right?” Kel asked. She reached across the table, and touched his hand where it was curled on the tabletop. “Vyr?”
He swallowed, and raised his head. He smiled, faintly, but with good intent, and put his other hand over hers.
“I’m fine,” he said.
And that was a lie. Kel Knew it.