“When he’s cooled off, let’s go to the waterfall,” I said, and so when Branty had been established in a stall in the stable with a bit of hay and a handful of oats, Gry and I set off up the glen. A mile or so up the mill creek the two feeders came together in a dark, narrow cleft, and leapt down from boulder to boulder to a deep pool. Cool, ceaseless wind from the falling water kept the wild azalea and black willow bushes nodding. Among them a little bird that sang a three-note song was always hidden, and an ouzel nested by the lower pool. As soon as we got there we went wading, and then ducked under the falls, and climbed the rocks, and swam and scrambled and shouted, and finally clambered up to a high, broad ledge that jutted into the sunlight. There we stretched out to get dry. It was a day of early spring, not very warm, and the water had been icy, but we were like otters, never really feeling the cold.
We had no name for that ledge, but it had been our talking place for years now.
For a while we lay and panted and soaked up the sunlight. But I was full of what I had to say, and soon enough began to say it. “Brantor Ogge Drum called on us yesterday,” I informed Gry.
“I saw him once,” she said. “When Mother took me on a hunt there. He looks like he’d swallowed a barrel.”
“He’s a powerful man,” I said stuffily. I wanted her to recognise Ogge’s grandeur, so that she would give me due credit for sacrificing my chance to become his son-in-law. But after all, I hadn’t yet told her about that. Now that it was time to tell her, I found it difficult.
We lay on our bellies on the warm, smooth rock, like two skinny lizards. Our heads were close together so that we could speak quietly, as Gry liked to do. She was not secretive, and could yell like a wildcat, but she liked talk to be soft.
“He invited us to Drummant in May.”
No response.
“He said he wanted me to meet his granddaughter. She’s a Caspro through her mother.” I heard the echo of my father’s voice in mine.
Gry made an indistinct sound and said nothing for a long time. Her eyes were shut. Her damp hair was tangled over the side of her face that I could see; the other side was pillowed on the rock. I thought she was going to sleep.
“Are you going to?” she murmured.
“Meet his granddaughter? Of course.”
“Be betrothed” she said, still with her eyes shut.
“No!” I said, indignant but uncertain.
“Are you sure?”
After a pause I said, “Yes,” with less indignation, but no more certainty
“Mother wants to betroth me,” Gry said. She turned her head so that she was looking straight before her, with her chin resting on the stone.
“To Annren Barre of Cordemant,” I said, pleased with myself for knowing this. It did not please Gry. She hated to know that anyone talked about her. She wanted to live invisibly, like the bird in the black willows. She said nothing at all, and I felt foolish. I said by way of apology, “My father and your father have talked about it.” Still she said nothing. She had asked me, why shouldn’t I ask her? But it was hard to. Finally I forced myself. “Are you going to?”
“I don’t know,” she muttered through closed teeth, her chin on the stone, her gaze straight ahead.
A fine reward, I thought, for my saying no so staunchly to her question. I was ready to give up Drum’s granddaughter for Gry, but Gry wasn’t willing to give up this Annren Barre for me? That hurt me sorely. I broke out, “I always thought—” Then I stopped.
“So did I,” Gry murmured. And after a while, so softly her words were almost lost in the noise of the falls, “I told Mother I wouldn’t be betrothed till I was fifteen. To anybody. Father agreed. She’s angry.”
She suddenly turned over onto her back and lay gazing up into the sky. I did the same. Our hands were close, lying on the rock, but did not touch.
“When you’re fifteen,” I said.
“When we’re fifteen,” she said.
That was all we said for a long time.
I lay in the sun and felt happiness like the sunlight shining through me, like the strength of the rock under me.
“Call the bird,” I murmured.
She whistled three notes, and from the nodding thickets below us came the sweet, prompt reply. After a minute the bird called again, but Gry did not answer.
She could have called the bird to her hand, to perch on her finger, but she did not. When she began to come into her full power, last year, we used to play all kinds of games with her gift. She would have me wait in a clearing in the woods, not knowing what I was to see, watching with the hunter’s strained alertness, till all at once, always startling me, a doe and her fawns would be standing at the edge of the clearing. Or I’d smell fox and look all about till I saw the fox sitting in the grass not six feet from me, demure as a house cat, his tail curled elegantly round his paws. Once I smelled some rank odor that made the hair stand up on my head and arms, and saw a brown bear come across the clearing, heavy-footed, soft-footed, without a glance at me, and vanish into the forest. Gry would slip into the clearing presently, smiling shyly— “Did you like that?” In the case of the bear, I admitted that I thought one was enough. She said only, “He lives on the west spur of Mount Airn. He followed the Spate down here, fishing.”
She could call a hawk down off the wind, or bring the trout of the waterfall pool up to leap in air. She could guide a swarm of bees wherever the beekeeper wanted them. Once, in a mischievous mood, she kept a cloud of gnats pursuing a shepherd all across the bog-lands below Red Cairn. Hidden up in the cairn, watching the poor fellow’s swats and starts and windmilling arms and mad rushes to escape, we snorted and wept with heartless laughter.
But we had been children then.
Now, as we lay side by side gazing up at the bright sky and the sprays of restless leaves that nodded across it, the warm rock under us and the warm sun on us, through my peaceful happiness crept the thought that I had come with more than one thing to tell Gry. We had spoken of betrothals. But neither I nor she had said anything about my coming into my power.
That was more than half a month ago now. I had not seen Gry in all that time, first because I had been going out with my father and Alloc to mend the sheep fences, and then because we had had to wait at home for Ogge’s visit. If Ogge had heard about the adder, surely Gry had. Yet she had said nothing. And I had said nothing.
She was waiting for me to speak, I thought. And then I thought maybe she was waiting for me to show my power. To display it, as she had done so simply and easily, whistling to the bird. But I can’t, I thought, all the warmth draining out of me, my peacefulness lost. I can’t do it. At once I got angry, demanding, Why do I have to do it? Why do I have to kill something, ruin it, destroy it? Why is that my gift? I won’t, I won’t do it!— But all you have to do is untie a knot, a colder voice said in me. Have Gry tie a hard knot in a bit of ribbon, and then undo it with a glance. Anyone with the gift can do that. Alloc can do that— And the angry voice repeated, I won’t, I don’t want to, I won’t!