The air was thick with smells and sounds as Illya made his way to the central fires that night. Precious fat was rendered from the salmon skins and bubbled and popped as it ran into clay pots. The women who had been given the afternoon off from watering to prepare the feast filleted the fish efficiently and dropped the pieces into the fat to sizzle and spit.
Delicious odors wafted through the air. The villagers laughed with each other. They hummed as they worked. Men were drinking in a group near the fire, hooting with laughter as they played a game of chance. For a moment, it was as if all the tumult and worry of the past months had never happened.
No, it was better than that, Illya thought. Before the roots had gone, the villagers had existed in a state of willful ignorance and preoccupation with their day-to-day worries. If you could just gossip about your neighbors enough, or find the latest omen in the clouds, it could cover up the real problem: the one that was too terrifying to face.
Tonight, the ease was real. The people laughed with new freedom. No matter how much anyone disagreed with him, no one could deny that they had begun to feel hope.
“Hi.”
Illya turned around. Benja stood behind him, wearing an uncertain smile.
“Hey Benj,” Illya said, lighting up at the sight of his friend.
“Thanks for finding the fish,” Illya said.
“Just doing my job,” Benja replied, his voice resting ironically on the last word. His face darkened. Illya flinched. Of all people, he had thought that Benja would support him
now.
Benja must have seen his discomfort because he tried to smile. Illya had watched him smile all his life, but now his expression looked like it belonged to a stranger.
“I like to fish, so it’s alright for me,” Benja said; then he turned and walked away. Charlie walked past him with a hugely pregnant Leya and nodded to him.
Unsure how to feel, Illya got his fish then went to find a place to sit at the edge of the circle. Benja had gone to talk to the musicians, who were setting up in the center. Illya looked for his ma, wondering what it would look like to everyone if he sat with her. It had been a while since they had shared a meal.
Grenya was sitting with Aunt Ada and a group of women. They laughed and teased each other, making jokes.
“Be careful when you become a child-watcher, Deede, they say that children are contagious!” Aunt Ada said to a young girl who had just been hand-fasted. Deede blushed and said she wouldn’t mind that at all, and all the women laughed.
“When it came out of you, you would,” Grenya said.
Illya turned away. His sister Molly had joined the other young girls where they sat giggling and shooting glances across the circle at the boys. Illya looked back at her, surprised. When had she started looking at boys? Hadn’t it only been a few weeks ago that she had sat on the floor of their hut, wailing for dinner like a little?
True, he had not been paying attention lately, but had he really missed so much?
She was small for her age, he knew that. It was because she had never been well fed, but when he stopped to think about it, he realized she wasn’t a little anymore, not at all. He was seventeen now. That meant she had gone from twelve to thirteen.
There was an unexpected thickness in his throat, and he turned away to hide his face.
He went to sit by Conna and Aaro, thinking that he probably couldn’t keep living in his mother’s hut for much longer either, not if he was the Leader. As if he wasn’t already lonely enough.
“You alright?”
Illya looked up, startled out of his reverie. Conna was eating his fish and wasn’t paying attention. Aaro was watching him.
Illya shrugged.
“Of course,” he said. “This is all, great.”
Aaro didn’t say anything but watched him for a moment.
“Okay,” he said.
The music started, and Illya closed his eyes and tried to let himself be carried away. The bright fire shone through his closed eyelids. The music sang through the night air. A loud pop sounded from the fire as a rock exploded in the heat. A child squealed and ran to his mother, frightened by the noise. Illya opened his eyes and saw a shower of sparks shooting up from the fire to mingle with the stars twinkling across the dark sky.
The women who had prepared the fish were eating now, having served everyone else. They left the clay cooking pots to the side of the fires to stay warm. The fat in them would be used again and again to cook and preserve food. The musicians started to play.
Uncle Leo grabbed his wife and whirled her around. The light reflected off her graying red hair. She laughed out loud in his arms.
“That’s my girl!” He chuckled and spun her out, twirling her around and around until she spun back in and collapsed into his embrace, laughing. Many people were dancing now, spinning each other around. Illya thought he could take at least a little of the credit for their full bellies and a lot more of the credit for the new hope in the air.
Automatically, he looked for Sabelle. He hadn’t spoken to her since Impiri had hustled her away the other day. Impiri had said that she liked him, but that hadn’t made it any easier to go talk to her; somehow, it made it harder than ever. He searched through the gathered people but did not see her.
He saw Impiri though. She was sitting alone eating, not aware of him watching. For once, she was not scowling.
On an impulse, he got up.
“Good fish?” he asked as he approached her.
She didn’t answer but looked up at him, the familiar frown returning to her face. He sat down.
“There have been no curses,” he said.
“And you had to come over and say you told me so,” she said.
“It’s not that,” he said. “I was hoping… if you can see now how things could be you would change your mind. Tell me what you know about the old Planter.”
“Or what?” she asked.
“Or I guess you are going to spend a lot of time carrying water,” he said.
“Is that a threat?” she asked.
“It’s just the truth,” he said then paused.
“You have been treated the same as everybody else, you know. You didn’t have to be,” he said.
She looked at him for a while, her eyes flat.
Illya studied her, narrowing his eyes. Then she smiled, smug and self-satisfied.
“I can tell you what I know, and your plan will still fail. The truth is I don’t know much at all,” Impiri said, shrugging.
“You have to know something,” Illya said, raising his voice. “Why else would you let me think that you did?” People had noticed their conversation. They were starting to watch. Impiri took a bite of fish.
“I’ll show you, and you’ll be just as lost as ever.” She laughed: an unpleasant sound.
She finished her fish and got up, beckoning for him to follow.
They went to the stone house. Impiri opened the door to let him inside, spreading her hands in an ironic gesture of welcome.
“Are you going to take our house next?” she asked. “You already have the cellar and my husband. What about a nice big house to go along with it?”
“Of course not,” he said. Impiri raised her eyebrows, studying him.
“No, I don’t suppose you would. Sabelle wouldn’t like you for it, would she?” she said, laughing mirthlessly and stopping in the kitchen to light a candle from the banked coals in a wood cook stove.
“That’s not why—” he said and stopped. He could feel the heat of anger building in him, but he knew it could do no good to rise to Impiri’s baiting.
Illya had never been past the main rooms of the house. There was an entryway, a room with chairs, and then the kitchen. Beyond that were stairs, probably leading to the family’s sleeping places above. It was a fitting place for a Leader. He suspected that the house itself had done a lot to lend Elias’ Leadership legitimacy over the years. It was hard to look at it when you lived in a one-room hut and not believe that the people who lived there were somehow above you.