They walked on in silence. Lars’s hard-soled boots thudded on the packed earth of the cart track. Ki’s own softly shod feet made no sound. With the sweat of her earlier work drying on her back and neck, Ki began to feel the chill of the fall day. The light wind that blew had an edge to it. The autumn restlessness she knew of old settled on her. It stirred her like it stirred the water birds, the migrating herd animals. She had an urge to be moving, to be leaving behind the too-familiar fields here, to be leaving the Harpy-studded sky. She was thirsty for a cool newness. Soon she would return to her roads, to her old routes, go through towns where the stable folk remembered her team and called her by name. But just as her heart lifted, a darkness seemed to brush across her eyes. A Harpy had flown across the sun. A deadening doubt fell on her. She tried to shake it off. Indecision.
She felt the sweat-caked dirt about her ankles. Her feet inside her shoes would be filthy. Dirt was under her nails, ground into her skin. The land had seized her, left its mark upon her. It would never let her go. She could not tell them no.
Lars slipped a hand lightly under her elbow. ‘Must you look so glad at my news?’ He gave her arm a shake. ‘Look out of your eyes, Ki! For too long you have worked alone. Your eyes look only inside you.’
Ki lifted herself away from his touch, gentling her action with a smile. ‘When this old man and his rite are through, you will all be healed of the harm I have done you. My own healing must come from another source, I fear.’
‘Perhaps we must find another man and another rite to heal you,’ Lars countered.
Ki smiled, but did not understand his jest. Lars seemed to search her face and eyes for an answer to some question. They walked on, but Lars went more slowly, and finally stopped altogether. When Ki turned to face him to ask what was wrong, the strange look on his face stopped her. His eyes told her that he was going to ask something of her, something very difficult. Ki steeled herself.
‘Will not you make the Rite with us, Ki? No one excludes you from us but yourself. The way you spoke just now, it is plain you have no thought for joining us in purification and atonement. Yet, all would welcome you.’
Ki shook her head slowly. Her eyes were hard. ‘I have done nothing to be purified of; I have sinned no sin to atone for.’
‘No, of course you haven’t. Don’t take my words to mean that. But, for you to go through it might make you feel more at ease here. Every day you go off to a task and work at it alone. It isn’t right.’
‘It’s what I’m used to,’ Ki broke in. She didn’t want Lars to speak any further. The truth rose up in her, burst from her lips with a strength she thought lost to her. ‘I don’t want to join you. Please, don’t look hurt. I would not hurt you any more than I have already. I have stayed on at Cora’s request, bound by my own word foolishly given. I have lived your ways and tried to make them my own. But they are not. I have pulled weeds and gathered crystals, salted fish, and tanned hides. I’ve put my team to pulling a cart of manure across a field and used them to drag logs for Haftor to make into lumber. I’ve done all you asked me to. But there is no joy in it for me. Every day my life meshes more closely with those of a dozen others about me. I must do one task, or another task cannot be started. I must haul the logs, or the lumber cannot be sawed to build the new grain shed. I do not like it, Lars. With my wagon, it rests on me. I can fail no one but myself.’
‘What about Sven?’ Lars asked bravely, bluntly. ‘You bound your life to Sven’s, and then to the children as they came. They depended on you.’
‘And they lie together in a common grave because that dependency was misplaced!’ Ki hissed fiercely. ‘Shall I let you lean on me, to fail you also?’
Lars faced her squarely. ‘No one asks you to let us lean on you. I invite you to enter our Rite, and to lean on me.’
Ki put her hands to her face, to push back from her eyes the loose hair that had pulled from her widow’s knots. Her hands smelled of dirt and punkers. Grit clung to her wet face when she wiped her hair back. Her words came cold and hard. ‘I can lean on no one. I cannot join your rite. I will not consort with Harpies, asking them to show me the faces of the ones they snatched bloodily away from me. Lars, you cannot ask that of me.’
She watched his face. His blue eyes were softer than the skies above him. A pulse beat warmly at the base of his throat. Ki watched it jumping. ‘I cannot ask it of you, Ki. You are right. But I would rather ask that of you than what Cora will ask. I am sickened with anger at what you may meet tonight. I am shamed by necessity. I fear I know what you will choose. I have not the heart to ask it of you. Let Cora do this to you. I have no heart for it. In truth, I am too fond.’
Lars walked away. Ki stared after him. When she followed, she took care not to catch up. Her heart was cold with trepidation. She was too heavy with her own pain to ask what pain she might have given him.
He was out of sight when she entered the common room. The room stirred painful memories for Ki. Here again was the long table pushed to the middle of the room, the empty benches waiting. A proud bowl of beaten silver cradled the year’s last water lilies in a shining pool. Ki smelled savory odors of meat cooling and heard the noisy bustle in the kitchen. There would be many at this table tonight. Ki passed hastily through the room, down the hall to her own room.
The room she slept in now was a smaller, simpler one. Cora had moved her into it, hoping to put Ki more at ease in the house. Ki had tried to arrange it to her own tastes. She was not satisfied with the results. Her few garments hung on pegs on the wall. The single small window was left open and bare of draperies to let in what light and air it could. A shagdeer rug on the floor, Ki’s own bedding on the narrow bedstead echoed the cuddy waiting in the shed to Cora. Ki did not see it so. She knew of no other way to arrange a room. A bare wooden stand beneath the window held a simple jug and bowl of blue earthenware. Lydia was pouring warm, scented water into the jug as Ki entered.
Ki started to scowl, then wiped it from her face. She would never become accustomed to it, never. To Lydia and Kurt fell the simple household tasks. They filled everyone’s water jugs, shook and aired all the family bedding, shared the washing of all garments. Ki reminded herself that her privacy had not been violated. Lydia was but doing her task, as Ki had done hers in the punker field.
‘Thank you. That smells lovely.’
‘I’ll leave the extra pitcher of water,’ Lydia replied, setting it down gently on the stand. ‘Cora said you might want extra water tonight, in honor of our guest. Oh, when I washed your brown shift, there was a seam coming undone. I mended it with black – the closest match I have for it right now. Will that be all right?’
‘Of course. Thank you. You needn’t have done it, Lydia. I don’t mind doing my own mending.’
‘I know. And I don’t mind harvesting my own punkers. But it all goes better if we do our own tasks. Be easy with it, Ki. A person would think she had shamed you by doing any small task for you.’ With a smile and shake of her head, Lydia hurried from the room. She would be busy tonight, preparing the house for a large group of people. Ki did not envy her.
When the door shut behind Lydia, Ki stripped off her garments, kicking free of her soft, low boots. She poured water into the basin, dipped a soft cloth in it. She began with her sweaty, dusty face and worked down her body past small, firm breasts that no longer served any useful function, over a flat, muscled belly that bore the rippling scars of two children’s passage. She had to change the water in the basin twice as it became brown with suspended dust. The grime on her feet had been worked into her skin by the pressure of her boots. Ki scrubbed them, soaked them a bit, and scrubbed them again before her feet emerged small and pink as a child’s.
The cool wind from the window had dried her body as she worked. Now she seated herself on the bed to unbind the complicated knots and weavings of her hair. Loosed, her brown mane fell nearly to the small of her back. She curried it thoroughly, listening to the soft ripping sound the brush made as it smoothed her hair and took the dust from it. When her hair finally swung smooth and shining, she bound it up swiftly again into widow’s knots.