Restore what? How?
Above the hearthstone now, a blue flame danced where no fire had been laid. Behind it, the banked embers of last night’s fire sighed and collapsed with a soft puff of ash; the air chilled again, and the blue flame brightened. Ker could not take his eyes from it. Within it, a tiny shape he could not quite see clearly twisted and turned.
“Put it back together. Every piece. Make whole, make well. Else—” A blast of fear shook him, shattering his concentration, implying every disaster that could come to him and his family, his whole village.
Then it vanished, leaving only a blurry afterimage against the dark, and Ker lay back on his pallet, sweating and shivering, until the first dawnlight crept through the windows. He put the water on and started the porridge as usual. He would have to talk to Tam about this, and he had no idea how to say what he must say.
Tam came out looking even grumpier than the day before. “Guardians bless your rising,” Ker said.
“Guardians should bless my sleep,” Tam said, as he had before. That was not the ritual greeting. Was he also having bad dreams?
“Honored one,” Ker began, then stopped as Tam rounded on him.
“Don’t you start!” he said. “You’re not my son-in-law yet.” He strode off to Ker’s mother’s house before Ker could say anything more.
When Lin’s little sister came out with his bowl of lumpy gruel and piece of bread, she shook her head at him. “Da’s angry with you,” she said. “What did you do wrong?”
“I don’t know,” Ker said. Did Tam still think he had taken that other rock from the brambleberry patch? The only wrong he knew of was keeping the pretty, but Tam had given it to him.
“Yes, you do,” Lin’s sister said, staring at him wide-eyed. “You have a liar’s look. I’ll tell Linnie.”
That was all he needed now, for Lin to believe him untrue. If she didn’t already, if her father had not convinced her.
“I do not know why your father is angry with me,” he said. “That is the truth.”
She shifted from foot to foot, staring at him. “It sounds true, but something is wrong. Da isn’t sleeping well—we’re all tossing and turning and when I asked him what was wrong, he said it was you. You are a thief, he said.”
“A thief! Me?” That accusation bit like an ax blade. “I am no thief. I have taken nothing—” He almost said: It was your father, but stopped himself in time.
“That sounds true,” she said. Now her face changed, crumpling into misery. “But Da—my Dad—he tells the truth.”
Sometimes, Ker thought. Not always. He would not tell the child, though; a child’s trust in a parent was too precious to risk.
“You must have done something wrong,” the child persisted. “Or he wouldn’t be angry with you.”
“I will ask him,” Ker said. “I will find out and make it right.”
“Truly?”
“Truly. You will see.”
“Lin is crying,” the child said, then ducked back inside.
Ker took a long breath of morning air flavored with cooking smells, and struggled to finish his gruel and bread. It would be discourteous, an insult to Lin’s entire family, if he did not finish the food. It lay in his belly like a stone. When he was done, he walked back to his own house and waited for Tam to emerge.
“We have to talk,” Tam said when he came out. His eyes looked red as well as his face. His hard hand on Ker’s arm felt hot as a cooking pot.
“Yes,” Ker said. “We do.” He didn’t resist as Tam pushed him away from the house, toward the woods and then into them. Before Tam could say anything, Ker spoke. “It’s wrong.”
“What?”
“That… thing. That rock. With the pretties. It’s wrong. You have to put it back together, fix it, put it back.”
Tam snorted. “So you can just happen to find it and take it for yourself? Not likely, my lad. That’s just the sort of sneaky lie I’d expect from someone like you.”
“I had a dream,” Ker said, ignoring the insult. “Three nights in a row, and last night I woke and heard voices, and saw a flame on the hearthstone…”
“You didn’t bank the fire right, and it burned through. You’re lazy as well as a liar, Ker. I’ve done my best by you, but you needed a father years ago to teach you right from wrong…”
The unfairness of this stopped Ker’s tongue in his mouth. Tam went on. “It has to stop, Ker. I didn’t say anything because I thought, it’s not his fault, he’s just a boy, he’ll learn. But after that day on the trail… you sneaking back to find more…”
“I wasn’t,” Ker said. He could hear the tension in his own voice.
“Lying to me about your shirt… did you think I couldn’t tell you were lying? Rockfolk tore it, you said, when there were no rockfolk to be seen. You had something in that shirt, something heavy, and when you heard me coming you threw it into deep water. I say it was the other rock. You found something, saw something…” Tam’s voice carried complete conviction; he had convinced himself that it was all Ker’s fault.
“I was hot,” Ker said. He thought, but didn’t say, that he’d been working a lot harder than Tam out in the sun. “I went to cool off in the creek. I saw the rockfolk and then they were gone. That’s all.” Even to himself that sounded sullen and secretive; he saw again in his mind the rockfolk in their leather, their great axes, their sudden disappearance.
“Last year I might’ve believed that, Ker. This year… this year I think you want my daughter and my pretties as well. Maybe my life.”
“Your—Tam, what are you talking about?”
“Sitting outside my house putting a curse on my sleep, and then claiming you have bad dreams—”
“I didn’t—”
“Whispering mean things, putting ugly pictures in my head. That’s not what I want in a son-in-law, a witchy man, an ill-wisher, a doomsayer. I’m taking back my daughter’s troth, and I want that pretty I gave you before I knew about you.”
“But I didn’t do what you think,” Ker said. “It’s the pretties—they send the bad dreams, I’m sure of it. That’s why we need to put it back together, so it will stop doing that, so the village will be safe. That’s what it told me.”
“Pretty rocks don’t give bad dreams,” Tam said. “They don’t talk in the night, or make a man see his children flayed and burning… bad things. Ill-wishers do that. You can’t fool me, Ker, trying to blame all that on a rock. My Ila woke in the night and saw you sitting up by the window—easy enough for you to slide in and out, with your pallet right there.” He made a chopping motion with his hand. “No daughter of mine will marry a man who sends evil dreams. Now—for the last time—give me that pretty I gave you, and understand the troth is broken. You have today to make your peace with your mother, for this evening I will tell the Elders why the troth is broken. It would be best for you if you were gone by then.”
“Gone—?” Ker stared.
“Wake up, boy. Whatever dream of power you had is over. We will not tolerate an ill-wisher in this vill, not while I’m an Elder. If I were not a kind man, forbearing, I would kill you where you stand.”
“But I didn’t—”
“Enough. Come now, and return to me that which is mine.” Tam’s hot, hard hand closed again on Ker’s arm, and dragged him back toward the village and his house. Ker stumbled along, his mind in a whirl of confusion.
The other men had gone out to the fields already, but two children and their mother stared as Tam strode along. Ker kept up now, but Tam still held his arm as if he might try to escape. At Ker’s mother’s house, he heard his mother inside chanting the baking rhyme.