“Perhaps another Darkling Glory is coming,” Chemoise offered. The threat hung in the air like a cold fog.
Constance set the spatula beside the stove and began wiping her hands. She turned the subject, “So, where will we stay tonight?”
“I’ve been thinking we could use the winecellars,” Eber responded. “They’re old and dusty, but they go back quite far under the hill.” A dozen years ago the estate had had some large vineyards. But blight had killed the grapes. With the loss of both his crop and the plants, Eber hadn’t been able to afford to replant, so he’d leased his fields to sharecroppers.
“Those old tunnels?” his wife asked in surprise. “They’re infested with ferrin!”
The thought of the little ratlike creatures gave Chemoise a shiver.
“The ferrin won’t mind a bit of company for just one night,” Eber said. He nibbled his lip. “I’ve invited the sharecroppers to stay with us.”
“That’s half the village!” Constance said.
“I invited the other half, too,” Eber confessed. Constance opened her mouth in surprise as Eber set the bread and milk on the table and made a great show of sitting down, waiting for Constance to bring his breakfast. “There’s nowhere else for them to go!” he apologized. “Only a few folk have root cellars, and the nearest caves are miles from here. We’ll be safer together!”
“Well then,” Constance said with a tone of false cheer, putting the sausages on the table. “We’ll make a party of it.”
Chemoise and Constance hiked up to the wine cellars half a mile behind the hill. The air had a strange quality today. The sky was hazy, and yet seemed to be heavy and looming. The path in front of the cellars was choked with tall grass, shrubs, clinging vines, and wild daisies. A few pear trees were growing before the door. This late in the season only a few dry leaves still clung to the trees.
It took some hard work even to wrench the door open. The odor of mold permeated the old winery. The floors were thick with dust, and little trails showed where ferrin had walked. A pile of their dung moldered next to the door.
“Yech,” Aunt Constance said. “What a mess!”
The cellar had been dug far back into the hill so that the wine could age at an even temperature. Chemoise left the door open and waded through the dust, past some vines white from lack of sunlight, back into the dark storerooms. After twenty feet, the tunnel branched. To her right lay a little shop with hammers and benches where a cooper had made barrels. “Well,” Constance said. “The heavier hammers are still here, but it looks as if the ferrin stole all the lighter chisels and files.”
Straight ahead were rows and rows of old wine barrels. Winged termites crawled about on the nearest ones. Signs of ferrin were everywhere in the little trails on the floor. There were ferrin spears leaning against one barrel, and some ferrin had made a conkle—a fiendish image constructed of straw and twigs—and set it in a corner. Strange paintings, like scratch marks made with coal, surrounded the conkle. No one quite knew why the ferrin built them. Chemoise imagined that they hoped it would frighten away enemies.
She tapped the nearest wine barrel to see if it held anything. Inside, some sleeping ferrin awoke. They began snarling like badgers and whistling in alarm, then raced out the back of the barrel through a small hole.
Soon the whole wine cellar reverberated with such whistles, ferrin talk for “What? What?”
The calls seemed to echo from everywhere, and Chemoise spotted little holes dug into the walls behind the barrels. Fierce little ferrin warriors wearing scraps of stolen-cloth poked their heads out of the holes.
“What a mess!” Aunt Constance said, coming in behind. “We’ll never get it all cleaned up in time.”
“Would you like some help?” someone called. Chemoise turned. In the doorway stood a young man of perhaps eighteen years. He was tall and broad of shoulder, with blond hair that swept down his back and halfway covered his green eyes.
It had only been four days since Chemoise had come to Ableton. As of yet, she had met only half of the villagers. But she hadn’t been able to help noticing this young man plowing a field across the valley.
“Chemoise,” her aunt said. “This is Dearborn Hawks, our neighbor.”
“How do you do?” Chemoise asked.
“Fine, thank you,” Dearborn replied. He was staring at her, as if her aunt didn’t exist, as if he wanted to speak to Chemoise but couldn’t find the words. By now, he couldn’t help knowing all about her, at least the rumors that her uncle had spread. “Uh,” he offered lamely, “I, uh, I promised Eber that I’d come early, to help clean up.”
“Well then,” Aunt Constance said, “I’ll let you two get to it, while I go do some baking.”
There was a clumsy silence as her footsteps echoed out the door. Dearborn stood for a long minute. Chemoise knew what this was. She was going to have a babe in seven months, and her aunt and uncle were trying to find the lad a father.
“So,” Dearborn finally managed. “You’re new in the village?”
“You haven’t seen me before, have you?” Chemoise asked.
“I think I’d remember if I had,” Dearborn said, smiling appreciatively. “In fact I’m sure I’d remember. I, uh, I live across the valley, in the old manor.”
Chemoise had seen it, a dilapidated building that had been old two hundred years ago. The Hawks family was large, ten children at least, from what Chemoise could see. Dearborn had two brothers who were close to his age. “I’ve seen you,” she said. “You’re the oldest?”
“Aye,” Dearborn said. “And the best looking. And the hardest worker, and the cleverest, and funniest.”
“Ahah. That must give you a lot of comfort. Say something clever.”
The young man looked as if he wanted to bite his own tongue off for making a fool of himself. He looked up at the ceiling and said at last, “A true friend is one that will bear your burdens when you are down, and bear your secrets to the grave. And no lesser kind of friend is worthy of the name.”
It wasn’t exactly clever or funny. It was more sincere. “Are you implying that I have burdens that need to be borne, or secrets that need to be kept?”
“No,” he answered. “It was just a thought.”
Chemoise felt sorry for the cold welcome she’d given him. He knew that she carried a child, and had probably guessed the rest. Yet he’d come acting as if he’d elbowed his brothers aside to be the first to meet her. “Well then,” she said, “let’s see if you’re as industrious as you are clever.”
With that they pulled up their sleeves and went at it. Dearborn began rolling the old wine barrels from the back in order to make room for the party. Some barrels had ferrin families living in them, and as soon as he began to roll them out, the ferrin would whistle in terror and come bolting out of one hole or another, diving into the tunnels that they’d dug into the winery walls.
Others barrels were used by the ferrin for food storage—and thus held a bit of wheat stripped from the fields, or dried cherries, or rubbery turnips plundered from gardens. Two barrels had been used as graveyards, and were filled with old ferrin bones.
All of the barrels stank of musk.
They were halfway done pulling the barrels out when Aunt Constance brought some tea.
“I think we should burn these barrels,” Chemoise said. “The ferrin have peed all over them.”
But Aunt Constance would have none of it. “No, we’ll put them back tomorrow. The ferrin would starve without their food stores, and there are mothers living there, with wee babes to feed.” She looked pointedly at Chemoise’s stomach. Uncle Eber and Aunt Constance had only managed to have one daughter of their own, and she had died in childhood, so she was perhaps a bit tenderhearted when it came to children. “Ferrin don’t eat much, you know—a few cherries that fall from the trees, mice and rats and sparrow eggs, things like that. The rats down in the wine cellar were terrible until Eber brought some ferrin up from Castle Sylvarresta. Ferrin don’t like wine, you know. Now we always put a load of hay in the winery come fall, to help keep their nests warm through the winter.”