Hearts Blood - Juliet Marillier

In my mind I wrote Anluan a letter along the lines of the sample I had made for him on my first day at Whistling Tor. I love you. I’m proud of what you’re doing. But you’ve hurt me. I don’t understand. That would be honest. Or I could write, In less than a turning of the moon it will be time to gather heart’s blood. But I will not be here. Goodbye, Anluan. We both lost the wager.

I had not expected to get away without some challenges. First was the ghost child, who never slept. She had lain quite still watching my preparations, but when I finally judged the light was good enough and made for the door, my bag over my shoulder, my writing box under my arm, she was suddenly there by my side, clinging to my skirt, shadowy eyes turned on me.

“I come with you.”

Fianchu woke at the tiny sound, lifting his head.

“Hush,” I whispered. “You must stay here; you can’t come with me.”

“I come!” Louder this time. The dog, still slow from sleep, began to get up.

I put down the box, took off the bag, dipped my hand down inside. I pulled out Róise. “I have to go away for a while,” I murmured, crouching beside the little girl.“I need you to stay here and look after her. Can you do that for me?”The deception was cruel, but I could see no other way.

The ghost child took the doll in her arms, cradling her. She said nothing more, but the question was written on her face: When are you coming back?

“I might be gone a long time,” I said. “I know you’ll do a good job with Róise. She needs someone to love her, just like all of us. Goodbye, little one.”

Fianchu was on his feet now, ears pricked, stance alert.Very possibly, he understood enough to go bounding off and wake his master the moment I went out the door.

“Fianchu,” I said, making sure I had his full attention. “Guard her.” I pointed to the ghost girl. “Stay here and guard her!”

Fianchu sat. His little eyes, fixed on me, were entirely knowing. But he was a dog and it was his job to obey.

“Good boy. Stay here until the sun’s up.You too,” I told the girl. “He will look after you.”

I crept out the door, along the gallery, down the steps. Shades of gray inhabited the garden; eyes watched me from under the dark trees. Across the courtyard, a lamp still burned in Anluan’s quarters. The mad woman inside me stirred—go to him, run to him, now, now—but I quashed her pleas. I walked down the path, out the gap in the fortress wall, into the forest.

Nobody came after me. I pictured the ghost child in the bedchamber, the doll pressed to her skinny chest. I imagined I could see in her eyes the pain of yet another betrayal, another abandonment.

My thoughts showed me Anluan, alone in his quarters, staring empty-eyed at the wall, or seated on his bed with his head in his hands, long fingers threaded through his fiery locks. Foolish imaginings. More likely he was working out how to form an army from wayward specters, untrained villagers and reluctant neighbors. Perhaps, now that he had dealt with me, he had put me right out of his mind.

My foot hit a stone. My hands tightened on the writing box. I teetered a moment, then regained my balance. It was not yet light; the woods were full of shifting shadows. As I went on down the track, I felt a tug on my left arm; a tweak at my right shoulder. A whisper in my ear: Wrong, all wrong . . . Poor silly girl, what were you thinking? And on the other side: Wretched Caitrin, sorrowful girl . . . Who wants you? Where can you go? Where can you be safe now?

A pox on the wretched creatures, whatever they were. I would leave. I would find somewhere to go. I did not belong at Whistling Tor. I should never have let myself see it as home. A fool. A cursed fool of a woman.

Oh yes, a cursed fool . . .You cannot stay here.You cannot go home. He’s there, the one who turns you into a helpless child. Poor lonely Caitrin. Nowhere to go, no one to love you . . .

I swatted at the unseen presence by my right ear. The other spoke by my left.

Come this way, down this little winding path . . .

Come with us! Follow us . . .You will be safe forever . . .

Invisible hands clutched onto my skirt and my cloak. They gripped my bag, tugging backwards, almost toppling me. I opened my mouth to cry out a protest, then shut it again. Make a noise and I’d alert Rioghan or one of the others to my solitary departure. Box wedged under my arm, I managed to form the shape of a cross with my fingers.“Kyrie eleison; Christe eleison,” I muttered.

There was a momentary slackening of the uncanny grip; then it tightened again. So much for the efficacy of a Christian prayer. I forced down a powerful urge to scream.

A violent push. I fell.The writing box crashed to the path. Something was hauling on my bag again, trying to rip it from my back. “Stop it,” I whispered, struggling to draw air into my lungs. “Leave me alone . . .”

“Leave her alone!”

The voice was Gearróg’s, and it was Gearróg’s hands that lifted me to a sitting position, then retrieved the box and set it safely down by me. For a while, all I did was try to breathe. The insidious whispers had ceased; I sensed the two of us were alone.

Gearróg squatted down beside me, his plain features creased with worry. From time to time he reached out to pat me awkwardly on the shoulder, but he seemed reluctant to do more.

“Thank you,” I gasped eventually. “You saved me again. Gearróg, I’m going away. Will you walk to the foot of the hill with me? I need you to keep me safe.”

“Me?”

There was a lot in that little word: I hurt you. Aren’t you afraid of me? I failed at my job, and Anluan was angry. I betrayed your trust.

“Please.”

He helped me up, his big hands gentle. I gave him the bag to carry; I took the writing box.We walked down the path together.

“Why would you go away, my lady?” Gearróg asked after a while. He held his voice to a murmur, and his tone was diffident.

“He said I had to leave. Anluan.” Despite my best efforts, my voice shook. “He doesn’t want me.” It hurt to speak this bleak truth aloud.

Gearróg kept walking, steady and quiet at my side.We had gone some distance before he spoke again. “That can’t be right,” he said.

“It is right. He told me, just now.”

A lengthier silence, full of things unspoken.

“He’d be sending you away to keep you safe.”

“No.Well, that’s probably part of it. But he meant forever.”

“Then he’s less of a man than we all thought.” Gearróg’s tone was blunt. “Only a fool gives up his one treasure.”

Tears stung my eyes. I could not let him go down this road. I must be strong. “Where did you go, Gearróg?” I asked. “Rioghan held a meeting. All the men of the host were there, or so it seemed. But Cathaír said he couldn’t find you.”

He held his silence to him like a shield.We walked on.

“You can’t fight the frenzy on your own,” I said after a time. “But perhaps all of you together will find the strength to hold firm against it. Rioghan has ideas about that; he’s clever where these things are concerned. I expect Cathaír and the others will have their own techniques for mastering it. Gearróg, I want you to go back up there and face them. I heard that Anluan spoke harsh words to you earlier. He was upset.Troubled.The fire awoke dark memories for him. I hope you will understand why he was angry with you, even though you had just saved my life.”

“I did a bad thing.”

“You hurt me by accident. I was simply in the way. That wasn’t you flailing around, it was something else using you. Promise me you’ll go back up and join the others, Gearróg.Anluan needs you.You have a special strength in you.You proved it by saving me even when the frenzy was on you.You’ve just proved it again by making those creatures go away. I can’t imagine how you did that.”

“They haven’t gone far.” The words were dismissive, but warmth was creeping back into his voice. “My lady, you’re the one Lord Anluan needs most. And what about us? You changed everything. What’s going to happen if you go away? How can you not come back?”

My eyes were brimming. I bowed my head; I did not want him to see how badly this was hurting me. “I said something terrible to Anluan. Something so cruel and hurtful that it shames me to think of it. Something so bad that he’s never going to want me back. And he . . .” There was no describing how I had felt when I had thought, for just an instant, that Anluan might strike me. Now, I recalled that when sudden anger seized him he would often clench his left hand into a fist in that way. I’d seen him use it to break the mirror. I’d never seen him hit anyone.

“Gearróg, the little girl will need friends once I’m gone,” I said. “She trusts you.”

We were at the boundary. It still lacked some time until dawn, but I could see the shadowy outline of the settlement through the deceptive light, a huddle of dark shapes, the line of the makeshift defensive wall, the flickering points of torches set around the perimeter.Tomas and the others kept them burning all night, fearful of the host.

“Promise me,” I said as the sky lightened towards the true rising of the sun. A bird gave a summons, an upward call of two notes: Come forth! Come forth!

Gearróg held his silence.

“I must go now,” I said.“I don’t want to see any of them from up there; I wouldn’t be able to bear it.Will you promise, Gearróg?”

“Say you’ll come back. Later, when this is all over. Say you’ll come.”

“I can’t. Not if he says no.” I must move on, I must run now, before the sun rose and they found me missing. I must flee before I lost the will for it.

“You say, go up and face the others. But you’re running away.”

I lifted my chin and squared my shoulders. “I have to go and find my sister. I have to face up to my own others, people who wronged me. And afterwards . . .”

“You’ll come back to Whistling Tor?”

Naked hope trembled in Gearróg’s voice. It shone in his eyes and transformed his features, forbidding a refusal.

“If Anluan truly wanted me, if he needed me, nothing in the world would keep me away,” I said, and as the words left my lips I heard a great sigh, not from my companion, but from a dozen, fifty, a hundred ghostly voices out in the forest.The host was watching.The folk of the Tor knew I would not be there in the library tomorrow seeking out answers for them. They knew I would not be working through the grimoires in a quest to end their suffering. I had let them down. I had broken my promise.Yet I sensed that they understood; that the words I had just spoken were enough for now. “Be strong, Gearróg.Watch over him for me.” I looked out under the trees, unable to see the others, but acknowledging their presence. “Be strong. Help him.”

“Farewell, my lady.You have my promise.” Gearróg placed a fist over his heart. He had halted right on the border of the hill, between the guardian trees.

“Farewell, Gearróg.” I turned my back, and as the sky brightened I walked steadily downhill and away.

As if to mock me, the day I left Whistling Tor the weather turned fair, with sunny skies and gentle breezes. It was enough to make me wonder if this was a different world, in which summer had followed its natural course through all the time of my stay in Anluan’s fortress, while mist, rain and bitter cold had clung steadfastly to the Tor.

I held fast to the decision I had made as I packed to leave, that I would not give in to the helplessness that had befallen me after my father’s death. If I had learned anything over the strange summer at Whistling Tor, it was that I must not become the lost soul of last winter again. Never mind that the man I loved had sent me away forever. Never mind that I had been forced to break the deepest promise I had ever made, and abandon my friends in their time of greatest trial. If Anluan didn’t want me, he didn’t want me. It was as simple as that. I would grit my teeth, summon my courage and get on with what must be done.

I did not go to Whiteshore. I did not even go to the settlement at the foot of Whistling Tor. I walked the other way, up to that crossroads where I’d been unceremoniously dumped on a day of mist and shadows. There was no point in waiting for a cart to happen by. I set my feet forwards, making lists of colors in my head to keep out thoughts of Anluan.

It was so early in the morning, nobody was astir. Birds chorused in the woods by the cart track, and somewhere down under the elders I could hear the voices of frogs. Everything seemed swept clean, open to light, full of promise. It felt wrong. Part of me wanted to protest that such a lovely day ill fitted the catastrophe facing the folk of Whistling Tor. Another part of me whispered, You never belonged here, Caitrin. Forget these folk. Forget Anluan. If he loved you, he would never have done this.

For half the morning I walked without seeing a soul. I grew thirsty and stopped to drink from a stream a little way off the track. I grew hungry. My precipitate departure had left me ill equipped to travel far without help. Memories of my flight to the west returned. I suppressed them, making myself move on. My feet were hurting; Emer’s boots were not such a perfect fit after all. The day grew warmer. I took off my shawl and stuffed it into my bag.

A rumbling, squeaking sound and the thump of hooves sent me down under the bushes to the side, wary of carters traveling alone. A pair of stocky horses came into view, pulling a well-kept cart laden with bundles. A man and a woman sat on the bench seat; she had a child on her knee.

I stepped out and waved a hand. A little later I was perched on a sack of grain in the back, on my way eastward. I imagined the mist-clad slopes of the Tor behind me, slowly diminishing until they could no longer be distinguished from the ordinary landscape of fields and woodland. As the cart moved further and further to the east, I did not once look back.

It made a difference having funds. I spent two nights in a village inn, with my own chamber and a lock on the door. I got directions and arranged lifts. I read a letter for a local trader in return for a place on a conveyance that was going all the way to Stony Ford, a settlement about three days’ travel north of Market Cross. Father and I had executed commissions for the chieftain there, and I was fairly sure Shea and his fellow musicians would be known in that house.

My fellow passengers on this somewhat larger and grander cart must have thought me dour and uncommunicative. They could not know the whirl of thoughts that filled my mind every moment of the day, those I fought to banish and those I tried to concentrate on, in particular how to track down Maraid and Shea without going too near Market Cross. If Stony Ford did not provide any clues I must try other places Shea had mentioned when telling us of his traveling life, but those were few and far between. I thought I could recall a town called Hideaway or Holdaway, where the band had regularly played to entertain people at a big weekly market. Lean enough pickings, Shea had said with good humor, but if they stayed on for the evening’s dancing there would generally be a few extra coins tossed their way.