Fire Arrow

THIRTEEN

The Wedding Dance

Brie rose and took a step toward Sago, thinking to push him aside so she could get to the sail, but she stopped and stared. Some kind of light was coming from the Sea Dyak sorcerer, a golden glow from under his skin. His face, his hands, even his stalklike legs, were lit with a fiery radiance, burning brighter than a hundred lanterns. Then he gestured with a golden hand toward the sumog.

Brie turned her gaze on the writhing, undulating mass under the boat. There must have been fifty or more sumog in the water. She could feel the evil pulsing from them.

Turning to look back at Sago, she had to shield her eyes, for bursts of light began to appear on the surface of the water all around the boat, like tongues of flame. As she watched, transfixed, the movements of the sumog began to slow. The bright shafts of light were widening and thrusting down under the water, spreading like some kind of undersea wildfire. The sumog had gone still, and as the light lapped over them, they too began to glow, the brown serpentine bodies becoming suffused with light.

Brie was just about to avert her eyes when, with a flash, one sumog near her burst into pinpoints of light, and then there was nothing left except tiny phosphorescent specks floating in the water.

Hypnotized by the sight, Brie watched as one by one the sumog exploded, like so many iridescent soap bubbles. Then the sumog were gone, and the water around the boat sparkled with thousands of tiny motes of light.

Brie wheeled around to look at Sago, suddenly, irrationally afraid he, too, was going to burst. But the light was already fading from his body, and he gave her a smile.

Then he crossed to her. His arm was glowing only faintly as he took her injured hand. Wiping the blood off her hand with 3 cloth, he looked closely at the jagged cut across the backs of her fingers. Abruptly he lifted them to his mouth and sucked. Brie winced.

Then he spat into the twinkling water. For a moment he looked almost otherworldly, his pale face still radiant, with the red of Brie's blood around his lips. At last he wiped his mouth with the cloth.

"There is poison in the sumog tongue. I got most of it, but you may be sick for a day or two."

Brie stared at him in a daze. Then she sagged onto the bench, suddenly exhausted. Sago raised the sail and, as he took the tiller, Brie's eyelids closed. She slept all the way back to Ardara.

For the next few days, Brie was feverish and her head ached. When she tried to stand, everything had an annoying tendency to spin, so she stayed close to her pallet. Lom brought her books of Dungalan lore, which she read until her head pounded, then she slept again. When Sago had left her at the door of Jacan's hut that night, he had asked Brie not to tell the villagers of the sumog hunting expedition. "Life is more peaceful for an old Sea Dyak sorcerer if the people come only for fishing advice." So Brie told Lom and Jacan she must have caught a chill.

Sago did not visit during her sickness, but Lom reported that mysterious flickering lights had been spotted out on the water each night, and Brie knew what occupied the sorcerer.

When the sumog sickness had mostly passed, she went to see Sago at his mote. She found him a little paler than usual, but otherwise unchanged. He sang her a nonsense song about taten-pisc and custard, showed off a highly prized parrot fish he had caught that day, and said offhandedly that the fishing should be better now in Ardara. And it was.

The Ardarans credited their good fortune to a change in the current and wind direction. Later, when Brie heard the innkeeper and his cronies deride Sago as a useless, witless old man, she wanted to tell them of the radiant sorcerer who had turned a monstrosity into innumerable, beautiful specks of light.

But she did not.

***

The days grew shorter until the sun was winking below the horizon only a few hours after the midday meal. Brie was unused to the shortness of winter days in the north, and the perpetual darkness began to weigh on her like a full basket of dead fish, except that there were no full baskets; there was little fishing at all. During the dark months, Dungalans turned to storytelling and music to pass the time, and Brie could now see why Travelers were so highly valued.

When no Traveler came to Ardara, homegrown storytellers presided over the long nights, along with fiddlers and singers. There was also dancing, though Brie continued to demur when asked. At first she told herself she was weak from the sumog poison; for a long time after the sumog hunt, just the thought of moving in any direction resembling a circle made her head spin. But after the sickness had finally worn off, Brie still remained on the side of the room, watching. It became a standing joke between Brie and Lom; he swore that by spring he would have her up and twirling on a dance floor. And she swore, equally adamant, that he would not.

Although Brie had become part of the weave of life in Ardara, she was yet held at a distance by many of the townspeople. She was most comfortable with the fishermen, who had come to respect and accept her.

Brie wasn't quite sure how it happened but word had gotten around of her skill with bow and arrow. And one day a young village boy named Dil appeared at the door to her hut and shyly asked if she would teach him. He was a slight fellow, though tall for his age, with a head of unruly coppery yellow hair.

Though it was a windy day with the threat of rain, Brie took Dil to a sandy bay north of the harbor and immediately began his lessons. They started by fashioning a bow out of a piece of driftwood. Then Brie loaned him an arrow and a piece of bowstring, saying that arrow-and string-making would be part of their next lesson. Dil nodded eagerly.

As she guided his hands and directed him how to aim the arrow, Brie remembered herself long ago with her father. "Open your stance, Brie. Back straight, head upright. I said up, not down!" And "What are you trying to do, strangle the bow?! Don't grip so hard, relax your fingers."

At the end of the lesson Dil's eyes shone, and Brie found herself promising to meet him again the next day.

That night there was a gathering at Farmer Garmon's barn to hear the tales of the latest Traveler who had come to the village. The Traveler had an unpleasant face, long with a small oval of a mouth and red lips, which he licked often. But his stories were captivating, if a little frightening. Several of the children had to be taken, crying, from the barn by their mothers.

After readying herself for sleep that night, Brie took out the fire arrow. She had begun doing this in the past week, at the end of the day. At first she told herself it was because the arrow really ought to have a daily cleaning and polishing, but she was coming to believe that, for some reason, the arrow wanted her to hold it in her hands. At any rate she found it comforting, in a peculiar way, to feel the arrow humming under her fingers. After a while it was almost as if she needed to touch it. As the wyll Aelwyn needed her cup of cyffroi in the morning, Brie needed to feel the arrow humming against her skin before she went to sleep. And as this became a nightly ritual, she noticed that her dreaming changed, became more vivid, more acute.

Brie had not dreamed of Collun since that night when she had realized it was too late to cross the Blue Stacks, but several days before the winter solstice she did. It was a brief, terrifying dream; Cuillean's dun was deserted, and the soldier Renin lay dead in the forecourt. Brie woke, shaking and wild-eyed. She had been right; Collun did need her. Once again she tried to think of some way to get to Eirren. The sea was her first thought, as before, but she knew now, firsthand, that the winter sea was as dangerous to navigate as the Blue Stacks, if not more so. She felt useless, frustrated, and promised herself that she would begin her journey back to Eirren, to Collun, the day after Hyslin's wedding.

The next day, as Brie helped Lom on his boat, she was preoccupied and accidentally splintered a trunnel while hammering it into place. Then she broke off the handle of Lom's broadax and, later, hammered her thumb instead of a nail. She let out a howl of pain, and Lom wound his handkerchief around her thumb, muttering that she was more hindrance than help to him today. "If I am to finish by Hyslin's wedding day I can't be losing precious time carving new trunnels and mending tools."

"I'm sorry," Brie said, contrite. "I'll do better."

"Perhaps you would do better to take the rest of the day off."

"It's the darkness. It wears on me."

"Aye. But after winter solstice the days will start to get longer. And before you know it, it will be spring and time for Hyslin's binding ceremony."

Brie looked unconvinced.

"And if I don't finish this boat in time, I won't be able to dance you across her deck," he teased. "So get off with you. Take a walk or go help Hyslin."

As Brie made her way to Jacan's house, Fara loping along at her side, she thought of the promise she had made herself that morning.

***

Winter solstice was a time for celebration in Dungal. Spring was still distant, but the solstice marked the turning of the sun and the lengthening of the days.

Three Travelers had arrived in Ardara for the sun-return festivities; Hanna was one, as was the severe-looking man with the red lips and an elderly man with a crystalline voice and a pure white beard.

Brie was glad to see Hanna. They spent a peaceful afternoon walking the coastline with Fara and the two dogs, who frisked together like old friends.

That evening they gathered, along with most of the townspeople, in Farmer Garmon's large barn. There the storyspinning, dancing, eating, and singing would continue until dawn on this, the longest night of the year. At sundown the families arrived, each bringing with them the greatest delicacy left from their rapidly dwindling stores. They ate at long tables amid much chatter and high spirits, and afterward the tables were moved away and everyone settled onto blankets or hay to listen to the storytellers.

During a break between stories, Brie and Lom got into a friendly quarrel about Lom's boat.

"Truth is, you wouldn't know a hawsepiece from a deck beam if it wasn't for me," Lom said with a rather superior air.

"Oh, and who was it measured the sternpost three inches too short?"

They continued to trade jibes, then finally dissolved into laughter at the absurdity of the quarrel. As Brie laughed, she happened to glance over at Lom's mother, Lotte. The innkeeper of the Speckled Trout was speaking softly in her ear. Lotte's eyes grew uncertain and darted to Lorn and Brie. Brie averted her own gaze just in time. When she looked back at Lotte, the innkeeper had moved away and the older woman was clutching her husband's arm, talking urgently. Farmer Garmon listened, then shook his head with a quick definite motion and returned to the chocolate tart he was eating. But Brie could see the uncertainty still in Lotte's face.

***

Several days later, on a dark, cool afternoon, Brie and Lom were working together on the hewing of the mast, a fine fir Lom had carefully selected for its clear, straight grain.

Abruptly Brie turned to Lom and asked him if he knew of any gossip that the innkeeper might be spreading. Lom frowned and his nose twitched slightly as though at a bad smell.

"It doesn't bear repeating," he replied tersely, hewing downward with the rasel, using long sure strokes.

"Tell me," Brie said.

"The innkeeper is a sour old miser."

"Tell me, Lom."

Lom set the rasel down and brushed wood shavings from his arms. "He has been calling you a leannan-shee."

"What is that?"

"'Tis an evil creature, female always, who attaches itself to a man and sucks the life out of him."

Brie was so astonished she nearly laughed, but because of the anger in Lom's face she did not.

"And is it your life I am supposed to be doing this to?" she asked.

He nodded, a hint of color in his cheeks. "And the boy Dil, who you're giving the bow lessons to, and some of the lads in the village as well, ever since you wore that yellow dress on harvest day..." He trailed off.

Brie had forgotten about the uncomfortable yellow dress. "Well, I am a busy little leannan-whatever it is, aren't I?"

Lom's face relaxed into a smile.

"You don't think I am, do you, Lom?" Brie demanded.

He laughed. "No proper leannan-shee would go around stinking of fish and arguing with a fellow about how to lay a keel."

"I do not stink!" Brie rejoined, laughing along with him. "And even you have to admit that keel was the slightest bit off center..."

***

The days and weeks following the winter solstice were hard ones. Spring was still a long way off, and there was little to break the desolation of dwindling food supplies, howling wind, and bitter cold. Other than working on Lom's boat and continuing Dil's bow lessons, the only thing that provided Brie a diversion was preparations for Hyslin's wedding ceremony. Brie learned that there was almost always a marriage ceremony at the end of winter as a way to celebrate the end of the dark season.

Hyslin had taught Brie how to use a weaving loom, and Brie was working on a piece of cloth. She had not decided what it would be when she was done, but she enjoyed the weaving of it. Hyslin, with her deft, experienced fingers, was making a luminous, pearl-colored cloth for her wedding cyrtel, the traditional flowing gown used for the binding ceremony.

For weeks the Storm Petrel did not leave the harbor. And constant driving rain or, more often, sleet meant no boatbuilding or archery lessons. Brie could hardly contain her restlessness. When she was not weaving or preparing food, she took long walks on coastal paths, occasionally pausing to stare up at the Blue Stacks, willing the snow to melt.

She began to experience a growing sense of unease, of something left undone. Every night as she lay in her pallet, after stowing the fire arrow safely in her quiver, she would go over the day's activities in her mind, few as they were. She tried to think of something she might have overlooked—mending a tear in one of Jacan's nets, some ingredient she might have left out of the lemongrass-and-rose wine she was helping Hyslin make, a missed thread in the cloth she was weaving—but she always came up blank.

Her dreams grew more vivid. She began to have the nightmare of the yellow bird again—the rapacious beak, the large, suffocating wings, the pulsing black sky. She dreaded going to her pallet at night and stayed up reading until she could keep her eyes open no longer.

There were other dreams as well, but two in particular that kept repeating. In the first she was approaching a lake, very still and gleaming like a mirror. From the center of the lake rose a bell tower. Coming toward her was a goat-man, dragging something behind him. When he drew close, she could see that the goat-man was dragging Collun, his head bloodied and raw. Then Collun's face blurred and changed, and became the face of Brie's father, streaked with blood and still contorted from his death struggle.

In the second dream she was watching the fire arrow flying through the sky, away from her. But where her eyes should have been, there were flames. The pain was terrible, a white-hot burning into her skull. She would awaken with a scream, hands clawing at her eyes, and later, when she looked in the mirror, there were scratches on her face from her fingernails.

She asked Jacan if she could sleep on the Storm Petrel; he told her she was daft and refused outright. So she, slept with the windows of her little hut wide open, and that seemed to help, though more often than not she woke shivering, her blankets drenched with rain and, occasionally, snow.

***

Slowly the storms began to be less savage; the boats could go out more often and for longer periods of time. Brie rejoiced in the return to work, though was still troubled by the occasional dream of bird or bell tower. Lom's boat suddenly stopped looking like a skeleton as it neared completion. Brie was there when Lom, Jacan, and Ferg hoisted the mast into place.

"She's yar," said Jacan tersely, squinting up, and Brie thought Lom looked like one of Hyslin's roosters, preening, a wide foolish grin splitting his face. She told him so, and he let out a great laugh and got her to admit his boat was one of the finest she'd seen.

"Not that I've seen all that many," she said, getting in the last word.

The day Lom's boat was taken down to the water, Brie was late getting up. She'd had the bell tower dream during the night and hadn't fallen into a sound sleep until the early hours of the morning.

She grabbed an oatcake and hurried to the shore. From a distance she could see a knot of men gathered around Lom's boat. There were woven garlands of sea grass and seaweed draped around the prow, and the men were bending their shoulders to her newly painted sides. Brie paused, holding very still. The boat slid into the water, and it was as if life had been breathed into her as she bobbed and dipped on the sea waves.

Lom jumped on board and quickly turned the boat into the wind. The sail filled, and Brie grinned as she watched the ketch skim over the water.

Lom caught sight of Brie making her way down the path to the harbor and waved. She waved back.

Lom had been very secretive about what he would name the boat, holding off until the last minute to paint the name on the prow. Brie strained to see. There it was: Hela. The name of Lom's favorite star cluster. Brie's cheeks reddened slightly as she remembered their conversation on the deep water.

Lom soon brought the boat in, and all had a turn sailing her.

***

The signs of spring were everywhere; in the cuckoo's repeating refrain, and in the fragile blue silla blossoms that pushed through the muddy soil. Even on the water, Brie could see the difference, from the larger flocks of vocal seabirds to the somehow friendlier hues and rhythms of the water itself.

Then it was the day of Hyslin and Gwil's binding ceremony. It dawned clear and bright, and the smells of grasses and newly sprouted spring flowers were carried on the breeze.

The finished cyrtel had been delivered the night before by the seamstress in the village who did the fine embroidery on the bodice and sleeves. That morning Brie helped Hyslin put it on. It was a wonder of a gown, all light and glowing, and with her rose-petal cheeks and sparkling sea blue eyes, Hyslin was radiant.

Brie wore a dress made of the cloth she had woven during the dark season. It was a soft glowing green, and though she was all too aware of the places where her hand had been less than deft, she was pleased. She also wore a pair of featherlight slippers that Hyslin had helped her fashion; they were made of cowhide and dyed green to match the dress. Before braiding her hair, Brie went to show Hyslin.

"Why, Biri, you are more beautiful than Fionna herself," Hyslin said earnestly.

"Fionna?! Your happiness must be affecting your eyesight," responded Brie with a laugh. "In truth, it is you who dims the sun's light today."

Hyslin laughed with her, catching Brie's hand in hers. "There is something I wish to ask of you, Biri."

"Yes?"

"During the binding ceremony, there is an arrow, a ceremonial arrow, which is sent aloft. It was to have been done by a friend of Father's, but he's not keen on the job because of a bout of sickness he's recovering from. I was wondering if you would do it."

"Of course. I would be honored."

"I have a necklace that would go well with your dress," Hyslin said. "That is, if you wanted something a bit, uh, prettier than..." She trailed off, blushing a little.

Brie's hand went to her panner. "You mean you don't think a leather thong is quite right for the occasion?" she asked with a wry smile. "You know, Rilla made it for me. Have I ever showed it to you?"

Hyslin shook her head and her eyes seemed to mist.

"I miss Rilla," she said. Blinking back her tears, Hyslin leaned forward to peer at the panner. "'Tis an arrow," she said thoughtfully. "Perhaps it is the arrow of binding."

Brie looked incredulous.

"No, it is possible," Hyslin said. "Rilla used to see things. Father would always say she might turn out to be a wyll one day, but then Ladran came and..." Hyslin trailed off, her eyes again bright.

"I'm sorry," Brie said awkwardly, wishing she had never brought the panner to Hyslin's attention.

"No, I'm fine. In truth, I am glad to be thinking of Rilla on my binding day." Hyslin smiled. She quickly pinned a gillyflower behind each of Brie's ears and told her to leave her hair as it was; in Dungal, she said, unmarried maidens wore their hair loose on wedding days.

The food and drink had been conveyed in many trips to the Storm Petrel over the past few days. The night before, the children of the village had gathered cannyll-pryf, or candle flies, which came to Ardara when the weather began to warm. They captured them in clay pots with loosely woven linen tied over the top. These pots had been carefully stowed in the hold of each fishing boat.

By the time the sun was directly overhead, the fishing fleet of Ardara, with most of the village aboard, had arrayed itself in a wide circle in the center of the bay. Their sails were furled, and each boat had sent ribboned nosegays of crocus, bluebells, and silla up the mast. The boats were lashed very closely together, and the anchors were lowered. From her place on the starboard side of the Storm Petrel, Brie could see Lom's boat bobbing on the water several boats down, with Lom and his parents and several others on board.

Sago stood by the mast of Jacan's boat. He looked more ethereal than ever in his ceremonial singing robe, a long white garment decorated with sparkling, beaded pictures of fish, dolphins, and whales that glittered in the midday sun.

Earlier that morning, as they had set bottles of wine into the hold of the Storm Petrel, Jacan had muttered to Brie that he hoped the Sea Dyak sorcerer would not forget what he was about and break into one of his nonsense songs instead of the song of binding. But when the time came, Sago gently and clearly led the couple through the words of union. And he sang the song of binding, the cwl cano, with great solemnity.

The sorcerer's voice filled the bay—an astonishing, bursting sound from such a frail source, thought Brie—accompanied by the sound of waves slapping against the boats' hulls.

Brie watched the serious, radiant faces of the two young people as Sago wove their fingers together to form the symbolic rhwyd, or fishing net. This lacing of hands, Ferg whispered to Brie, would ensure bounty and joy in the years to come.

When the song finally died on Sago's lips, a pair of fiddlers standing on the stern of the Storm Petrel began to play a lively air, and Gwil joyfully gathered Hyslin in his arms. He danced her across the deck of the Storm Petrel and back again. Hyslin's eyes were as bright as the sunlight glittering on the waves. Musicians on the other boats took up the melody, and the fisherfolk began stamping their feet and clapping their hands in rhythm with the dancing couple.

Suddenly Gwil danced Hyslin to the starboard side of the Storm Petrel and, twirling her feet up into the air, he tossed his bride across the water to the next boat in the circle. She was deftly caught by the sturdy bearded fisherman whose boat it was, and he in turn danced Hyslin across the deck of his fishing boat. After their brief dance, the bearded fisherman tossed Hyslin to the next boat in the circle. And on and on, until Hyslin had danced on each boat and come full circle to the Storm Petrel.

Ferg told Brie this, too, was an old custom, and that it bestowed good fortune to have a newly married woman dance on the deck of your fishing boat. He made Brie laugh by telling her a story about one year when a bride, whose girth was twice that of her husband's, had wound up in the sea when one fisherman had bobbled the toss from deck to deck. It was said that that particular fisherman had a very poor yield of fish that year.

By the time Hyslin had completed the circle her legs were wobbly, but her smile was no less radiant, and she returned to Gwil's arms for more dancing.

Thereupon all commenced to dance, and before she had time to figure out how he'd gotten from his boat to the Storm Petrel, Brie found Lom at her side. Without a word he swept her into his arms and they were dancing.