Slowly at first he moved to help her, thinking ahead to what they would need if they were cast out. Food, clothes, cooking things, tools. Everything he touched brought memories of the one who had made it, and stabbed his heart with the possibility of loss. It must not happen. He must find the words to say, words to convince the others that he was right about the danger. He tried not to let himself think about Lin, about never seeing her again.
When the men came in from work that evening, Ker stood outside his house with his mother. Tam glared at him, even redder of face than in the morning. “I told you—” he began, but Ker interrupted.
“I ask the village Elders to meet,” Ker said, as loudly as Tam. “Tam has a grievance against me, and I have my own words to say, a warning to give.”
The other men looked at each other. For the first time Ker wondered if Tam had said anything to them during the day’s work. How had he explained Ker’s absence?
“After you sit your time?” Beryan asked, glancing at Tam. He was senior of the men in that group.
“No,” Ker and Tam said together.
“I am not sitting my time,” Ker said. “I abide the meeting.”
“Not for long,” Tam said, and strode away to his own house. The other men looked at Ker. He felt the force of their stares, but said nothing.
“At starshine, then,” Beryan said. “Lady’s grace on you, until.” He turned away and the others followed.
Ker’s mother set out a supper that Ker saw included most of the perishables in the larder. He tried to eat, but the food sat uneasily in his stomach. Outside the day waned, and he knew word of something unusual would have spread. He and his mother came out into the dusk and looked up, waiting until the first star appeared.
The oldest men and women in the village had gathered around the well, holding candles; others, he knew from murmurs and shufflings in the dark, hung back in the houses or between them. No one spoke to him. As Ker and his mother walked toward them, the Elders drew back into two wings on either side of the well.
“Guardians bless the hour,” Granna Keth said. Her voice quavered.
“Guardians bless the air that gives breath,” Granna Sofi said.
“Guardians bless the earth that gives grain,” Othrin said. He was eldest of the men.
“Guardians bless the water that gives life,” Ker’s mother said.
“Guardians bless the fire that gives light,” Ker said.
“Lady’s grace,” they all said together.
Then Othrin said, “Tam says he has a grievance against you, Ker, and you have acknowledged such a grievance. As he is elder, he will speak first.”
Tam began at once in a voice thick with anger. His version of events now included a long-festering suspicion that Ker had asked permission to court Lin only because he sought to rob her father… that Ker had always intended to go back and steal the special rocks, that Ker had learned sorcery while wandering in the woods and used it to harm anyone he disliked. A fatherless boy, Tam said, despite the care he and every other man had given him… such boys might easily find a way to learn evil things.
Ker could feel, as if it were a chill wind, the suspicion of the others as Tam blamed him for one mishap after another. Yes, he had been in the field that spring when Malo stepped on a rake, but no one then had blamed him. Malo had left his own rake tines-up and forgotten where he laid it. Yes, he had been at the well when two scuffling boys slipped and one cut his chin on the well-curbing, but their mother had scolded them, not Ker. Now she eyed Ker askance.
By the time his turn came to speak, he felt smothered under the weight of their dislike, their anger. Had they always disliked him? He was no longer sure.
He did his best to tell his own story, straight from first seeing the stones to the uneasy dreams, and his conviction that it was wrong to keep the stones, that they must be returned to their real owner.
“Wrong! Yes, wrong to have an ill-wisher—” Tam burst out. Othrin put out a hand.
“Let the lad say his say,” he said.
Ker said it again, trying to make them understand, but Tam’s obvious anger and certainty drew their attention.
“Liar!” Tam said finally. “I was there. I saw no rockfolk at the ford. The first rock I found was gone, and only you knew where it was.”
“They were there,” Ker said. “Two of them, this high.” His hands sketched their size. “They had my shirt; one of them sniffed at it and poked it and it tore. It is all true, what I told you then. I do not know how they disappeared—how would I know the ways of rockfolk?—but they did. You must believe me—you must put the rocks back, all the pieces together, or something bad will happen.”
“Bad things will happen to a vill with a liar and an ill-wisher in it,” Tam said. “A man who lies about one thing lies about all.” Ker saw heads nodding. “A rock is a rock—look—” He showed the unbroken rock to the elders, who leaned closer; several touched it. A drop of hot wax fell on the rock, and Ker flinched. Tam went on. “It is easy for him to say that bad dreams woke him, but I tell you that he did not sleep because he was putting bad dreams into my sleep. Ill-wishing. There is the bad thing.”
A low mutter of agreement, heads moving from side to side. At the back of the group several women turned their backs on his mother. His heart went cold.
“I did not…” he began, but Othrin held up his hand.
“It is not right that a young man not yet wed should tell the Elders what to do,” he said. “You make threats as if you were a forest lord or city king, but you are a boy we knew from birth. Even if the rockfolk come here, I have no doubt Tam will restore to them their property, if indeed it is their property. They would have no complaint against us. As for the rock, it looks like a rock to me. It is shaped like an egg, but what of that? You all but accuse Tam of stealing and lying, when he is your elder and would have taken you into his family. It is not right.” He looked around the circle of Elders, and they all nodded.
“Go out, Ker, and do not return. You are not of us any longer.” He glanced again at the others, who nodded again. “And your mother as well. Like mother, like son; like son, like mother. Take her with you, liar and ill-wisher.” He turned his back. The others turned their backs, until Ker faced a dark wall of backs. Only Tam still faced him, his red face almost glowing in the dark.
“Drive them out now!” Tam said. “They will ill-wish us all—”
“Not by night,” Othrin said without turning around. “We are not people who would turn a widow and orphan out to face the perils of night, no matter what they did. But be gone by the time the sun’s light strikes the well-cover, Ker. After that, it shall be as Tam wishes.”
Ker and his mother walked back to their house in silence and darkness; the others had all gone inside and barred doors against them.
“Well,” said his mother when they were inside, with their own door barred. She did not light a candle; Ker remembered that their few candles were in the packs already. “We must sleep, and rise early.” Her voice was calm, empty of all emotion.
“Mother—” he began.
She put up her hand. “No. I do not want to talk. I want to remember my life here, before it ends forever.”
That night Ker had no frightening dreams, but woke in the dark before dawn to hear his mother sobbing softly. “I’m sorry,” he said into the darkness.
“It is not your fault,” she said. “Not entirely. I could wish you had not lied even in so small a thing as leaving out one reason for an action. But if you are awake, let us go. I have heard the first bird in the woods, and I want to be long gone by daybreak.”