Fire Arrow

ELEVEN

Ardara

Brie gave a start, her hand going to the panner at her neck. The sorcerer had spoken in Eirrenian. Brie looked sideways at Hanna. The older woman shrugged.

"Come." Sago led them inside.

After the brightness of water and sun, the inside of the mote seemed dim, but a window of green glass provided some light. Brie had the sensation of being underwater: Green-hued light rippled on the surfaces of things. The walls of the mote were lined with shelves made of driftwood, and each shelf was jammed with flotsam cast up by the sea—shells of all shapes and sizes, feathery sprays of seaweed, frosted sea-glass, smooth sand-coins, brittle sea stars, and many other oddments.

Inside the mote were several seabirds. One tern settled onto Sago's shoulder and ate bread crumbs from his hand.

"Some sepoa?" asked the sorcerer, holding up an empty cup encrusted with bits of many shells.

"It's a kind of tea made of seaweed, sweetened with " honey and cinnamon," explained Hanna. "It's actually very good."

"Yes, please," Brie said.

They sat on cushions and drank the seaweed tea. Sago did not speak, but gazed steadily at Brie. She began to be uncomfortable under his scrutiny, and yet, as had been true with Yldir, she felt an odd Tightness about being here in this cluttered, dim mote. She sipped the sepoa tea thinking it tasted almost like ginger cake.

"Yldir is dead," said Hanna.

The bird on Sago's shoulder let out a cry, sounding almost human, and beat its powerful wings.

Sago's eyes were bright, staring out the dim green window. "The water went dark, almost black, as if a cloud had passed overhead. But there was no cloud. We knew it was Yldir." His eyes suddenly twinkled, and he said,

"There was an old man

And nothing he had,

And so this old man

Was said to be mad."

Hanna gave Brie a look, then asked Sago how the fishing was today. He did not reply, just hummed the melody to the rhyme under his breath with a benign smile.

When they had finished their tea, Sago took them to a bucket hidden in the shadows at the corner of the room.

"Sumog," he said, carrying the bucket closer to the window so they could see its contents more clearly.

Coiled in the wooden pail a dead snakelike sea creature lay. It looked greenish brown in the wavery light, and its staring eyes were large and bulging, rimmed with a delicate line of orange. There was evil in the blunt snout. Brie shivered.

"What is sumog?" she asked.

"Eats all the little fishies, heigh-ho," Sago sang.

"Sago," Hanna said sternly. "Is this true? Is that why the fish supply has been poor of late?"

Sago bobbed his head several times. "Oh, yes, and yes, and yes. This is only one, but there are many more. Out there." The seabird on his shoulder squawked.

"Do the fishermen know?"

"They don't believe."

"Why not?"

"Crafty, the sumog are. Kill at night. Swift and silent. Almost invisible." Sago carried the bucket back to the shadows.

"What can be done?"

"Kill the sumog. Hunt and kill them. But only old Sago believes in sumog." He grinned. "Enough of dark. I want the sun." He led them out onto the beach.

Brie breathed in the sea air. She looked out over the sun-sparkled sea. Again she felt Sago's eyes on her. She turned to him.

"You have come home," said Sago.

"What?"

He reached over and laid his thin fingers on her breastbone. "Here."

A petrel wheeled overhead, then dived low, its feet skimming the surface of the water.

As she and Hanna made their way back to town, Hanna said, "You will get used to Sago. He has his good days and bad. But," she added with a grin, "which of us does not?"

***

Hanna took Brie to an inn called the Speckled Trout for their evening meal. The inn was full and noisy, with a cluster of men around the ale barrels. A gow, Hanna called them, and she signaled to one, a large-boned young man with a thatch of gorse-colored hair. He was Lom, Farmer Garmon's son, and he joined them at their table. Lom was only a few years older than Brie, but he towered over her.

"So the Traveler has returned." He grinned. He had the same open, enveloping smile as his father.

Hanna lifted her glass of ale.

"And what book did you take to the havotty this season?" Lom asked.

"The tale of Gydwyn and Cessair."

"Ah, the jeweled wings and snow-white bear cub ... I look forward to hearing it during the dark months."

"How goes your boat?"

Lom's eyes lit up and he launched into a rapid description of which Brie understood almost nothing. Her eyes wandered, taking in the Ardarans as they drank and ate and talked. The innkeeper, a round-faced man with a sunken chin, was staring at Brie, a scowl thinning his lips. He looked away quickly when their eyes met.

"...in a day or two, if you'd like," Lom was saying, with a shy glance at Brie.

"Uh, I'm sorry..."

"Lorn has invited us to see his boat."

Brie politely said she would like that, then turned her attention to the mutton and potatoes the unfriendly innkeeper was placing in front of her.

"We've been to Sago," Hanna said to Lom.

The innkeeper overheard and let out a snicker. "Did he caper about and sing of fish that dance and talking birds?"

"No," replied Hanna, annoyed. "He spoke of something more serious."

"Oh, and what would that be? Ladybugs in petticoats?"

There were a few guffaws from a nearby table.

"Sumog," Hanna said loudly.

"You mean that phantom fish of his that's supposedly devouring all the fish between here and Mira?"

"I saw it," Hanna stated matter-of-factly.

Silence greeted her words. Most of the people at the inn were listening to the exchange.

"Was it bigger than a whitebelly, have large horns, and breathe fire at you?" the innkeeper persisted, his lips in a sneer.

"No. It was dead, in a wooden pail. But it had the stench of evil about it."

The innkeeper opened his mouth, but Hanna continued. "I would not underestimate the Sea Dyak sorcerer, were I you, innkeeper. He is not the half-wit he would have you believe. Now, I, for one, am ready to eat."

Shutting his mouth, the innkeeper moved away to a table of his cronies. They muttered back and forth, casting sidelong glances at Brie and Hanna.

Very early the next morning, Hanna went off with Farmer Garmon to discuss plans for beginning the harvest, and Brie, finding herself at loose ends, directed her steps toward the harbor.

Leaning against a stone wall, she gazed out at the bustle of activity. Many boats were already out, though some were still preparing for the day's fishing. Yldir had been right. There was so much of life around the sea: the constantly moving water; the birds wheeling and calling overhead; the fishing boats with the men aboard heaving, hauling, tightening, spooling, mending.

She felt outside it all. As if her soul were somehow back in the bog.

Watching, she stayed at the stone wall through the morning. Then she caught sight of a trim, whitewashed boat returning to harbor. It had a familiar look to it, as if she had seen it before somewhere. As it came closer she was able to make out the words Storm Petrel in black paint on the prow. Of course. Rilla had spoken of the Storm Petrel, Jacan's boat. She watched the craft with pleasure as the four men aboard, Jacan, Ferg, Lom, and another man Brie did not know, pulled the boat into the dock. Jacan caught sight of Brie and gave her a nod of recognition. Though she had no certainty of a welcome from them, Brie found herself walking down to the Storm Petrel. She had to see it up close.

Jacan's keen eyes watched her come. He must have read her face, for without being asked he invited her aboard. He introduced her to the fourth man on the boat, a spry older man named Henle, and she exchanged greetings with Lom, though she barely was aware of doing so, so caught up was she in her up close look at the Storm Petrel.

She drank it all in—the clean lines of the prow, the way the deck boards fit snugly together, the symmetry of the mast and yard, the finely proportioned hull. And all Brie could think of was that she must sail on this boat, out on the sea.

"It was a poor day for fishing," Jacan was saying. "We'll try again tomorrow. Perhaps you—" He stopped, almost as if he was surprised at himself. Ferg glanced over, also surprised.

"If you will have me, I would come with you tomorrow," Brie said loudly.

"Do you know anything of fishing?" asked Ferg.

"No."

"We leave at dawn, Biri," said Jacan. "You are welcome."

***

And so it was that Brie found herself on the Storm Petrel at dawn the following morning. As Jacan, Ferg, and Lom instructed her in the ways of a Dungalan fishing boat, she had an odd sense of familiarity. She learned quickly; in truth, it was almost not like learning at all, more like remembering. She got her sea legs at once. Both Jacan and Ferg were impressed with her adaptability and asked several times if she was sure she had never been on a fishing boat before.

Indeed, it felt as if she had done this all her life—scratchy hemp in her hand, bare feet on sun-warmed wooden slats, the wind in her face, the dancing blue of sea waves all around her.

Fara came along. At first the Dungalans were leery of the faol. And they gaped when the wolf-cat dived gracefully into the water, surfacing some distance ahead, her sleek wet head skimming the surface like some kind-of seal. Fara then dived down and reappeared with a flapping fish in her mouth.

Lom gave a hearty laugh.

"The creature is a better fisherman than I," said Jacan in amazement. They soon got used to the faol, who alternated between playing in the waves and basking on the foredeck.

The fishing turned out to be good that day, and Ferg called Brie and Fara good-luck charms. They went out on the Storm Petrel the next day and the next.

Brie found that as she grew increasingly at ease on board the boat, so grew her ease with the Dungalan language. And she quickly picked up the language of the sea asi well—the words for the parts of the boat, for the different kinds of fish they hauled in with their nets, and for the seabirds circling overhead. She learned of dowsing a sail (lowering it), and of craffing a net (mending it), and that a brusker was an energetic fisherman not easily deterred by bad weather. All of the fishermen on the Storm Petrel were bruskers, Ferg told Brie with great certainty.

As the days passed, Brie eagerly drank in everything they taught her. She learned to set the nets and to haul them in; to hoist the sail and make fast the ropes. She became familiar with the many knots used by sailors and how to splice, coil, and throw rope. She discovered that a good sailor knew his position on the water at all times, and that when the captain gave an order it must be repeated and obeyed at once. She began to understand the moods of the sea, from friendly and playful to dull and unresponsive to an outright and cruel indifference. Jacan introduced her to the cross-stave, an instrument of wood and iron used to navigate by measuring the altitude of the sun and stars. She pored over Jacan's charts, one in particular called the table of the airts, which showed the different names for the directions of the wind. She started to get a feel for reading the weather and what different cloud patterns portended; and she learned of the tides and how the moon cycle affected them.

After almost a week of going out on the Storm Petrel, Jacan invited Brie to join them in their evening meal. Hyslin greeted her kindly, though Brie saw the grief still in her face. That night Brie learned Hyslin was betrothed to a fisherman named Gwil, and would be wed the following spring. To celebrate the good catches of the past few days, Hyslin donated a bottle of homemade lemongrass-and-rose wine from the cache she had already begun to stockpile for her wedding feast. They ate a delicious meal of fresh fish, roasted red potatoes, and tender white corn. Hyslin politely filled a plate with fish and a bowl of sweet cream for Fara, who gave it a careful inspection then set to with regal pleasure.

When Brie returned to Farmer Garmon's barn that night, she found Hanna smoking her pipe and reading one of Lotte's books by oil lamp. The older woman gazed on Brie then smiled.

"What?" Brie asked, curious.

"You have come back," said Hanna.

"Of course," responded the girl with a puzzled look.

"No. From Bog Maglu. I was not sure you would." Hanna blew a smoke ring, then added, "One day perhaps you will tell me of the bog."

Brie curled up in the hay, drowsy, content, Fara nestled at her side.

"Harvest day is the next full moon," Hanna's voice came. Less than a fortnight away, Brie thought. Hard to imagine that the summer was almost over. Something nagged at her, something she ought to remember, but she was too tired and was soon asleep.

***

The fortnight passed quickly. There were good days of fishing and bad. On the bad days Brie learned how to weave and craff the nets.

She also visited Lom and helped him with his boat. She liked Lom, as Hanna had predicted. In him she found a willing audience for her newfound love of the sea. He listened to her indulgently, as one who has been through the same early throes of passion.

From Lom, Brie learned of designing and constructing a boat. Proudly he showed her a model he had whittled, the size of his open hand; he would talk on and on, childlike in his enthusiasm.

The boat was a living creature to Lom, a bairn to which he was slowly and surely giving birth. Indeed it had the anatomy of a person, Brie thought, with a backbone and ribs; the rigging was its muscles and the planking its skin. Lom had yet to name the boat, though there was no question as to its sex. All boats, he said, were female. Incongruously, though, there were few fisherwomen in Dungal, a tradition that a handful of the younger women were trying to change.

Then it was harvest day. Brie had been hearing much about Cynheafu, the day the harvesting was finished. Even the most industrious fishermen left their boats in the harbor to participate in the festivities. Hyslin had been busy baking the borrog, large, round, moon-shaped cakes, in honor of the moon's influence over crops and harvests, and on the days when the fishing was poor and they came back early, Brie would help Hyslin with the baking. They grew to be friends.

The night before Cynheafu, Hyslin gave Brie a bright yellow dress and told her she must wear it the next day. "No one is allowed to wear anything drab or dark on harvest day," she said, eyeing Brie's gray tunic and leggings meaningfully.

"But I will be helping with Farmer Garmon's harvest," objected Brie. "I cannot be wearing a dress."

"We all help with the harvest, and all the women wear dresses," responded Hyslin. "You will stick out like a pilchard in a basket of cod if you do not." So Brie took the dress, thinking to hide it under a bale of hay back at Farmer Garmon's barn, but Hanna caught sight of it and nodded her approval. She showed Brie the brightly covered vest and long skirt she herself planned to wear. "Lotte loaned them to me. 'Twould be an insult not to wear them," she said.

As she took her place alongside the other reapers in the field the next morning, Brie felt so irritable in her yellow dress that she didn't notice the admiring glances cast her way. The last time she had worn a dress was in Tir a Ceol, and that had been a simple white shift that fell straight to the floor. This dress was cinched at the waist, with flaring skirts made even wider by the red flannel petticoat Hyslin had insisted she wear. It was the custom, she assured Brie.

Brie quickly forgot about the dress as she worked. Harvesting went quickly with so many hands gathered. Farmer Garmon was a particularly popular farmer, known to be generous, and so had no shortage of able-bodied workers. Even the elders and children of Ardara participated, following behind and tying the harvested grain into sheaves. Everyone was indeed dressed in their most colorful clothing, and it was a splendid sight—bright bursts of color weaving in and out among the rows of barley and, later, in the fields of golden wheat.

The day went quickly and it wasn't long before the shout went up. "We've got the grainne!"

"The grainne, the grainne!" Other voices echoed and a knot of women rushed forward and busied themselves; Brie could not see with what. Finally they stepped aside, to cries of "the grainne maiden, the grainne maiden," revealing the last sheaf of wheat dressed in a white flowing gown, belted with a criosanna and colored ribbons.

The effigy was attached to a pole and the tallest and strongest of the reapers hoisted the grainne maiden high. Meanwhile, a gaily decorated wagon, pulled by horses with flowers and ribbons plaited through their manes, was filled to the top with sheaves of wheat. Then a procession formed, led by the men carrying the grainne maiden, followed by the decorated wagon, which was in turn followed by the brightly dressed harvesters.

The procession made its way into town and was met by many such processions. Then all the wagons and grainne maidens converged on a large grassy bluff overlooking the sea. The grainne maidens were set up along the bluff looking like a promenade of finely dressed, highborn ladies, their ribbons blowing in the sea wind. Tables were swiftly set up and almost as swiftly covered with food.

After all had gorged on the harvest bounty, the dancing began. It started with the drol, a traditional Dungalan dance in which a human chain is formed by linking hands and the dancers weave in and out in complicated patterns, never breaking the chain. It was led by Sago, the Sea Dyak sorcerer, his paper-thin legs following the ancient patterns easily and surely. Gradually, though, as more mead was consumed and twilight fell, the group of dancers split into pairs.

Contentedly munching on borrog, Brie had watched the drol, thrilled by the graceful, colorful patterns made by the dancers. Then Lom stood before her, flushed and smiling.

"Will you dance?" he asked.

Brie looked out at the whirling skirts and capering feet and felt a longing to join them. But she shook her head. She saw Lom soon after dancing with a tall, slender girl with coppery red hair.

Brie suddenly remembered herself as a child watching the Midsummer bonfires, wishing to dance. She strained to spot Lom in the diminishing light. Occasionally she caught a glimpse of the indigo shirt he wore. He was still with the red-haired girl. Brie found herself trying to remember if she had ever seen Collun dance. And then for some reason she thought of Aelwyn's words of Collun's comeliness. She flushed, irritated with Aelwyn, and with herself.

Jacan and Ferg came to sit with her. Jacan talked of the next day's fishing, but Ferg was distracted by a saucy girl named Beith, who took great delight in teasing him.

The dancers began to disperse; Jacan drifted off to talk with some fellow fishermen, and Ferg went running after Beith, who had stolen one of his shoes. Brie could no longer see Lom. A knot of fiddlers began to play a lilting ballad about Fionna, the queen.

Brie sat peacefully, gazing up at the three-quarter moon.

Lom suddenly appeared, saying, "I cannot stay on my feet a moment longer," and sank down beside her on the grass.

"You do not like to dance?" he asked.

"I have never danced."

He looked at her in surprise, but said nothing. Then he followed her gaze upward. "They say," Lom spoke, "that on harvest night a shower of beautiful flowers falls from the moon."

Brie smiled. "I can almost believe it will," she replied dreamily.

Suddenly Lom lifted his hand into the sky, and when he brought it down, he unclosed his fingers to reveal the delicate blossom of a sea pink in the palm of his hand. Brie laughed, and with a grin Lom reached over and carefully plaited the stem into Brie's yellow hair. Brie felt an odd stirring. She flushed again, unsmiling, and looked down at her hands.

Then Ferg ran up, his shoe restored, and Jacan returned with Hyslin, as well as Hanna. Jacan asked if Brie would be joining them on the Storm Petrel the next morning.

"Of course," she replied, standing.

Lom spotted his mother and father and went to join them, giving Brie a quick salute as he left.

As she walked along in the darkness with Hanna, Brie reached up to touch the pink flower plaited into her hair. She thought of Collun, sitting by the fire, drinking chicory with Kled, but his face wavered and she had trouble summoning it back again.

***

That night Brie dreamed of Collun. She was running toward him. He stood on a rise, his back to her, and although she was running very fast, with each step he seemed farther away instead of closer. She pushed herself until she was almost flying over the ground. Finally she reached him and put out her hand to touch him. But where her hand brushed against his skin, red appeared, dripping red, and she realized it was blood. She looked down at her own hands and they were covered with blood.

Brie woke. Shaking, she lit a candle. Closely she inspected her hands. They were clean; nonetheless she crossed to a bucket of water and scrubbed and scrubbed with honey lye soap until her skin was raw.