‘Ki.’ Vandien was shaking with earnestness and cold. He held his arms tight to his sides. Ki wondered if he was resisting the cold or an urge to slap her. ‘I ask you one more time …’
‘The wagon goes through,’ Ki cut in harshly. She saw his eyes widen, watched his facial muscles tighten. She pulled hard on the horse blankets, suddenly furious with him. She raised her flaring eyes to his just as his clenched fist fell from the sky. The blue lightning hit her. From far away, she heard Vandien’s fading voice: ‘What becomes of a sentinel when the need to guard is gone? What happens to a watchdog when the family moves away but leaves it chained in its kennel? Some would die of loneliness, and some would break their bonds and go their own ways. But one that knew only its watching, one that came of a line bred for eons to guard, one whose only consciousness was of the need to protect the gate – one such as that might remain, might go on guarding for centuries, long after the folk it guarded had passed into other times. Such a one might stay on. Or such a two.’
Vandien’s voice faded to a far-off apologetic murmur. Deep waters closed over Ki. She sank. The deep warm waters, full of familiar horrors, swirled about her. She knew these ugly memories well; it was like a grisly homecoming. Ki glided. She had dreamed these dreams before. She knew it. In some other time and place she had been trapped here. But now she knew how to escape. She only had to open her eyes. Just open her eyes. But her head hurt, and she was dizzy, and it seemed to Ki that her eyes were already open. She fell deeper into blackness, into timeless dark. And in the darkness she found her closed eyes, and at last wrenched them open …
Ki awoke to blackness. It was not yet time to rise. The rest of the house slept still. She lay quiet in her bed, staring with relief at the small patch of stars her open window framed. She shifted on her damp bedding and reluctantly explored the dreams that had sent her into such a sweat. They were senseless fragments now, dreams of terror and guilt. Nils had been watching her. She could not see him, but she had felt his eyes, felt his hands trying to force her back. She had thrown him off and run away from him, past black-flapping curtains. She ran down a long, dark corridor that led through a series of doors, slamming the doors behind her as she ran. Then she passed through the last door and slammed it, and she was suddenly again at the foot of the Harpies’ cliff.
Once again she climbed the cliff, though Cora clung tightly to her legs, weeping and begging her not to do so. Ki kicked her loose, to watch her bounce and break down the rock face. Ki laughed aloud at the sight and her laugh was a Harpy’s whistle. She reached the aerie, saw again the fire, the bursting eggs. But from the eggs flowed, not unborn Harpies, but Sven and Rissa and Lars, in curled miniature form, wet with blood and fluids. Ki was too horrified to touch the cold, wet little bodies. They squirmed in the liquids and shell fragments and expired before her with small, gasping cries. Ki had killed them all. The mother Harpy appeared, to sit on a ledge above Ki and weep, in Ki’s voice, for their passing. Ki tried to cry out that she was sorry, so sorry, but from her throat came only the whistling laughter. And through it all she heard Nils’s footsteps and heavy breathing as he searched for her in the dark passageway. He did not find her. When Ki had felt him getting closer, when she had heard him opening the final door, she awakened herself. In her awakening she took a sorry little triumph.
Ki rose from her bed, drawing on clothes haphazardly, scuffing her bare feet into her worn boots. A fierceness burned inside her. A premonition weighted her, refused to be denied. The old man was danger, mortal danger to Ki. The sooner she was away from him, the better. She moved about the room, gathering her clothes and small possessions. She dumped them on the rumpled bed, bundled them together. Haftor was right. She had to go now. Not knowing what drove her, unable to find a basis for her presentiment of danger, she made her preparations.
She slipped down the darkened hallway. She passed the ceremonial bedroom where she had slept the night of the Rite. From within came the querulous sounds of the old man mumbling in his sleep. Ki bared her teeth to his sounds in the darkness. She gained the common room and left it, shutting the heavy door softly behind her.
The barn was in darkness. Ki barked her shins on something made of wood, stumbled, and went on. In the dark she climbed her wagon, entered the cuddy. She found the nub of a candle beside her tinder box on its shelf. She dumped her bundle on the sleeping platform to strike her light. With movements that were both frantic and deliberate, she began to set her cuddy to rights. She moved dust, shook blankets out, opened drawers and crocks and bins to see what supplies were still good. There were no weevils in her meal, but her tea herbs were dried to flavorless crumbs. Ki discarded them. There was no meat nor dried roots, no salt fish, no honey, no lard, no cheese … Ki’s heart quailed as she mentally listed what she had not. Her head began to ache, her ears to hum. With an almost physical wrench, she shook off her fears and indecision. She was going. She would manage, somehow.
The cuddy seen to as best she could, Ki moved on. The harness had stiffened from the months of disuse. Ki oiled it heavily. Another dollop of grease for each wheel. A check of pins and axles. A fierce joy welled up in Ki at how swiftly she completed each well-remembered chore. She tried to frame words in her mind to make a farewell to Cora. Her affection for the old woman had not dimmed; but Ki could no longer condone her revival of the Harpy customs. She hoped that Cora would understand, and that Haftor would be as good as his word about supplying her with fresh provisions.
The grayness of dawn was beginning to turn to blue autumn skies when Ki returned to the house. She had checked her team. They were fatter than usual, rested by months that had not demanded daily work of them. But they had come to Ki willingly enough, seeming as anxious as she to resume their life on the road.
Rufus stepped from the doorway as Ki approached, blocking her from entering. She regarded him coolly as he stared at her. His eyes flitted over her insultingly. He glanced back the way she had come as if expecting to see someone leaving.
‘Your hair is pulling free of your widow’s knots,’ he observed snidely.
Ki touched it self-consciously. ‘I had given no thought to it this morning.’ She stepped forward to enter the house, but Rufus did not step aside.
‘Perhaps Ki herself also pulls free of her widowhood,’ he said insinuatingly. ‘I had heard the Romni were brief about their mourning.’
‘So they might appear,’ Ki replied, choosing the pronoun deliberately. ‘There is no set time to the period of mourning. They know that grief is not measured in days.’
Rufus belched thoughtfully. ‘They are strangely lacking in many rites, are they not? No fixed length of time for mourning, no courtship ceremonies, no rites to precede a man and woman coupling …’
Ki interrupted, eyes narrowed. ‘Your folk have no mourning period at all, except for your Rite of Loosening.’
‘By it, there is no death, and therefore no need for mourning,’ Rufus replied evenly. ‘Usually.’ He twisted the word into Ki like a knife blade. He stepped aside then, to thump down the porch and across the yard. Ki looked after him. She was possessed of a mighty anger toward him. But she had no time to satisfy it. Her sensation of danger squeezed her.
She went to her emptied room to smooth and re-knot the hair Rufus had so pointedly commented on. She frowned to herself as she pulled it tight. So Rufus thought she had spent her night with Haftor. From chilling politeness he had advanced to familiar contempt. Ki shrugged. Let him think whatever he wanted. She would soon be free of it all. She refused to dwell on it. Mentally she composed herself, stiffening her spirit for her battle with Cora. She expected it to be nothing less. As her resolve deepened, her spirits rose. She would make her break cleanly and honorably. Cora, she suspected, would prefer it so also.
Ki began to hear the familiar stirrings of the household through the walls. Only now were they rousing. Rufus had been the early riser. Others slept late, past the sun’s rising. Ki took a final deep breath and headed for the common room.
Cora was sitting alone at the table, a steaming mug before her. Ki watched her sip at the gruellike grain soup in the mug. It stirred no appetite in