“I can’t go in now,” Ker muttered. Men did not intrude when women were singing the dough up from the trough. Tam must know that. Tam merely grunted, glaring into the distance, and kept his hold on Ker’s arm. Ker sneaked a glance at him. Tam’s face, his ears, his neck, were all as red as if he’d worked all day in the hot sun. Was he fevered, was that the source of his wrong thinking?
When Ker’s mother finished the chant, Tam cleared his throat loudly and called to her. “We men must enter.”
“Come, then,” she said. Tam gave Ker a shove, pushing him through the doorway first.
“What is it?” she asked. She covered the dough with a cloth, and wiped her hands.
“Get the pretty,” Tam said to Ker, then turned to his mother. “I have broken the troth, Rahel,” he said. “My daughter shall not marry your son.”
“Why—what is it? What’s wrong? Ker—?”
“It gives me pain to say this,” Tam said, putting his fist over his heart. “Your son is an ill-wisher.”
“No!” His mother gave him one frantic look, then turned back to Tam, her hands twisting in her skirt. “No, you’re wrong. Not Ker. He’s always been a sweet boy—”
“He lies,” Tam said loudly. “He lied to me. He tried to steal. And he sneaks out at night to lay a curse on my sleep and give me bad dreams.”
“I don’t believe it,” she said. “Not Ker.”
“Three nights I’ve had of broken sleep, and voices whispering, and in the morning he is there to wish me well, with a look on his face that would curdle milk.”
“Ker…?” Again she looked at Ker, her face pale in the dimness.
“Get the pretty, damn you!” Tam roared. He seemed to fill the room.
Ker scrabbled at the stone and pried it up. The pretty looked smaller, dusty, in the room’s dimmer light. He picked it up in bare fingers, and nearly dropped it again—it was so heavy and so very cold. He held it to the light for a moment; in the cloudy center he could almost see something, some tiny writhing shape. Did it really move, or did he imagine it?
“Give it to me,” Tam said. Before Ker could comply, Tam grabbed his hand and forced the fingers open. Tam’s breath whooshed in, and back out on “Ahhhhh…” He took it and put it in his pocket.
“What is that?” asked his mother. “That thing—a rock?”
“Some rocks have pretties inside,” Tam said. “They bring a good price at the fair, pretties do. I found such a rock when your son was with me. I broke it open, and gave him one of the pretties inside, because he was to be my son-in-law, and in token of the care I had for him. That was before I knew about him.”
“I can’t believe what you say,” his mother said.
“It doesn’t matter what you believe,” Tam said. “I will tell the Elders tonight why the troth is broken. I told him, make peace with your family and then leave before that meeting. For I will not have an ill-wisher in this vill.”
“But—surely Ker may tell his story…”
“If he is that foolish, he may. But who would believe a liar and a thief, someone who has put a curse on the sleep of my household? The Elders respect me.”
“Ker, did you lie to Tam? About anything? At any time?” The look in her eyes expected no but though he had lied to Tam he could not lie to his mother.
“When he gave me the pretty, I did not want to touch it,” Ker said. “I was afraid of bad luck. So that is one reason I wrapped it in my neck cloth, and I did not tell him that reason.”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it,” Tam said. “I found you in the creek ford, hunting for more—”
“I was not,” Ker said.
“Spinning that yarn about rockfolk,” Tam said. “As if I couldn’t see with my own eyes that you were alone, scrabbling in the rocks of the ford. No rockfolk upcreek or down, uptrail or down. Did they fly up into the air like birds?”
Ker’s mother looked at him as if he should have the answer. “I don’t know,” he said to her; he knew Tam would not believe him. “They just—weren’t there, after I heard Tam coming.”
“Not a skilled liar,” Tam said. “If you think to make your way as a storyteller, Ker, you must do better than that. But never mind—a self-confessed liar, a thief, an ill-wisher—I am going now, and you may tell your mother whatever ice-stories you wish before nightfall. They will melt by day, as all such do.” He strode out of the house, and the heat of the day went with him.
“Ker, I don’t understand,” his mother said. In her face he saw lines he had never noticed before. “You know that lies are wrong…”
He could not bear it that she would think he was what Tam had said. “Please,” he said. “I did not lie. Let me tell you about it.”
She did not quite shrug, leaning on her work table. Ker told her all about that day—only a few days ago, it was. Finding the first stone, and the second and third, Tam’s actions and his own feeling of dread, his unwillingness to touch the pretty. His nightmares, his awareness of Tam’s unfounded suspicions, and finally—last night—his realization that someone—something—demanded that the broken rock be fitted together again, mended, and then restored to its former location. Tam’s anger this morning, and his accusations, his refusal to believe the rock and its pretties were dangerous.
“It is like a tale out of legend,” she said when he had fallen silent. “Strange rocks and frightening dreams and dwarves that say nothing but disappear when someone else comes. Tam is respected, as he said, a father and Elder, a man with knowledge beyond our fields. You are scarce old enough to wed, and you have admitted lying to him about your reason for not touching the pretty.”
“It wasn’t a lie,” Ker said. “I just didn’t tell him all. And I didn’t steal anything, or curse his sleep. The rock did that.”
“It was a kind of lie,” his mother said. “Not telling the whole truth, and now see what comes of it. He can say truly that you were not always true. As for the rest, I believe you.” She sighed, wiped her hands on her apron, and shook her head. “But will anyone else?”
His heart sank. “Surely they will. They have known me from my birth. They know I tell the truth. They know you. And even if they do not believe me—must I really go? Leave the village?”
“I think you must, Ker. Tam will not give you—nor any of us—peace until you’re gone.” She seemed calmly sure of this.
“They know me,” Ker said again. It seemed impossible that this might make no difference. “Why do you think they will think I’m lying?”
“They know Tam better, or think they do.” His mother picked up a hand-broom and swept the hearth where the ashes had spilled out onto it.
“I have to talk to them myself. It isn’t fair…”
“Fairness is for the gods, Ker. We are not gods, to know for certain what is and is not fair.”
“But if Tam doesn’t put the rock back together, something bad will happen. Not just to him, to Lin and maybe the whole village. They should be warned.” He was sure of it now, sure that his dream was right, that Tam was wrong about more than his own conduct.
His mother sighed. “It’s you should be warned, Ker. You have never seen a shunning; you don’t know… if you talk to them and they side with Tam we will both be shunned away.”
“And if I don’t, and the village burns or the rockfolk come in anger? Will that not be my fault if I have not warned them?”
She sighed again, shaking her head. “It is the cleft stick, and we are fairly in the trap. For you are my son; what they judge you to be, they will judge I have made you. I tell you, Ker, it is never easy for a vill to choose a young man’s story over that of a wise Elder. And it is a hard thing to be thrust out into the world alone at my age.”
As he watched, she began to set in piles all their belongings, and Ker realized she meant to leave… for the smaller pile would fit in the packbasket his father had used to carry fleeces to market or in the basket she herself used to carry sticks or berries or nuts home from the wood.