Tam took off his own neck cloth. “Good idea,” he said. “Best not break the pretties. They’re worth more unbroken.” He wrapped the fragments of the rock, and put them in his shirt. Then he started off, leading the way this time. Ker did not see the next egg-shaped rock until Tam bent over, halfway across the gravelly ford of the creek, and picked it up. He showed it to Ker—this one was greenish-gray, streaked with darker green—before tucking it into his shirt with a grin. “If this’n has pretties too, I’m set for a long time. It’s easy to trade pretties for ’most anything at the Graywood Fair. I’ll pick up the other one tomorrow or the next day.”
No more worries about who might’ve dropped it, Ker noticed. He followed Tam into the village, turning aside to his mother’s house as Tam went straight on to his own. He lifted the hearthstone that guarded their treasures, and laid the pretty beside the armlet of bronze, the bronze pendant with a flower design, the string of glass beads he would give Tam’s daughter the day they were wed, and eight silver bits that would, at his mother’s death, be his inheritance and pay his cottage fee.
Then he went to sit in the village square, holding the staff of his approaching marriage, and endured until nightfall the taunts and teasing of those who tested a bridegroom’s will and temper. It was hard not to respond when Dran’s daughter kissed him full on the lips, or Roder’s son told everyone about the time he had eaten a woods pear so fast he’d bitten a grub in two without noticing it, then thrown up. But this was the way of it. Lin had spent her time sitting in the square and now it was his turn; as he had sat on the judicar’s bench and watched her, so now she sat on the same bench and watched him for any sign of impatience, bad temper, or unfaithfulness.
When full dark had come, and no one more bothered him, he went home and slept as usual until—in the darkest hours of night—he woke with a start, staring about him, bathed in cold sweat. Fragments of a dream swirled through his mind and vanished. Lin’s face. Flame. Darkness. A great roaring that was almost music.
His ears hummed with the noise, as if someone had smacked him in the head with a rock. He tried to lie quietly, breathe slowly, return to sleep, but the humming itched at his ears and quieted only slowly. At last he slept.
In the morning he remembered waking, but nothing of the dream except that it was unpleasant. Today he would again spend the hours until homefaring with Tam, and then sit in the village square in the evening. He rose, fanned the embers of the fire into flame, then fetched water to boil. Lin’s mother, Ila, a guest in this house these five days, opened an eye and watched him, as his mother had guested with Tam for the days of Lin’s testing and watched Lin. Ker measured grain into the pot, adding a pinch of salt from the salt-crock, then he left while the others rose. Tam was just coming out of his house.
“Guardians bless your rising,” Ker said.
Tam grunted. “Guardians should bless my sleep instead. The water boils?”
“It boils,” Ker said.
“Good. I’m hungry.” Tam walked to Ker’s mother’s house, twitching his shoulders as if they hurt. Ker stood beside the door of Tam’s house and waited, stomach growling, until Lin’s little sister brought him a bowl of gruel and a small round of bread, lumpy and hard, the girl’s own baking. Lin’s would be better than this, he knew.
He ate it standing by the door, and the girl came to take away his bowl. He walked over to his mother’s house, and waited until Tam came out, belching, his face red from the heat of the fire.
“Well, now, to work,” Tam said. Today they would join the other men ditching a field near the creek, draining it. All morning Ker hacked at the soggy soil with a blackwood spade, careful not to strain it to the breaking point. Old Ganner, who’d died before Midwinter, had carved the black-wood spade years back, and traded it to Ker’s father for a tanned sheepskin. Ker knew himself lucky to have it. Tam and the other men watched him as much as they worked themselves. No one liked ditching; it was hot, hard, heavy work that drew the back into tight knots, but the blackwood spade cut through the roots better than one of oak or ash.
Shortly after the noon break, Tam beckoned to Ker. Ker scraped the muck off the spade with the side of his foot and went to Tam’s side. “Stay here, lad, and keep working. I’m going to check the cow pastures for us both,” Tam said.
Ker’s head throbbed. He knew what Tam would do. He would try to find that other egg-shaped stone, and break it open for more pretties. His heart sank, stonelike, and he found no words.
“You have the shoulders for digging,” Tam said. “It’s young man’s work.” He grinned and clapped Ker on the shoulder, then turned away.
Ker stabbed the ditch with the spade, more in worry than anger, and the spade groaned. Sorry, he thought to the wood, and stroked the handle. He looked closely at the shaft, but the grain had not split. Blackwood, best wood, supple and strong… blackwood made good bows as well as digging tools. Tam came back in late afternoon, his hands empty and his face drawn into a knot like Ker’s shoulders.
“You didn’t sleep much last night,” he said to Ker.
How had he known? “I had a bad dream,” Ker said.
“You followed a dream out through the dark?” Tam asked.
Ker shook his head, confused. “I didn’t go out,” he said.
“It was gone,” Tam said, not naming it. Ker knew what he meant.
“I did not take it,” Ker said.
Tam shrugged. “Someone did. Rocks don’t walk by themselves.”
“Maybe the one who dropped it,” Ker said.
“Maybe. No matter. I have the other for pretties.” His sideways glance at Ker accused, though he said nothing more.
They went back to the village then, and Ker spent another evening in the square, with Lin on the bench watching him and the young people standing around making jokes. Old Keth, Bari’s mother, came and reminded everyone of the time he had spoiled a pot she was making, bumping her at her work. Lin’s little sister reported that he had slurped his gruel that very morning, gobbling like a wild pig of the forest. He bore it patiently, as Lin had borne it when his mother told that Lin had made a tangle in the weaving.
That night he dreamed again: fire, smoke, Lin’s face, noise. Again he woke struggling against that fear, and again his ears hummed for a time before he could sleep again. In the morning he knew he had had the same dream again, but still remembered nothing of it. That frightened him: To repeat a dream meant something, but he could not interpret a dream he could not remember.
That day he finished the ditch before it was time to sit in the square, and decided to cool off in the creek. Tam was talking to the older men in the shade of the trees. Ker waved, mimed splashing, and walked off to the creek. Upstream from the ford the creek had scooped out a bowl waist deep at this time of year.
Under the trees the sun no longer bit his shoulders, but the air lay still and hot. His feet followed the path as his mind cast itself ahead into the cool water. The scent of damp and fresh growth filled his nose, promising comfort. He came to the ford, where the water scarcely wet the top of his foot, and turned aside to the pool, stripping off his shirt and trews to hang them on the bushes to one side.
He eased into the water, murmuring the thanks appropriate to the merin of the creek, and splashed it over his head and shoulders. Something tickled his heart foot, then the other. Slowly he sank down in the water, crouching, until only his head was out. He had always loved the way the water’s skin looked, seen from just above it like this. Its surface would have looked flat from above, but now, in the wavering reflection of the trees overhead, he could see its true shape, the grain of its flow. On his back, the current’s gentle push, and between his legs the water flowing away downstream, past the village lands, beyond into lands unknown.