Seasons Between Us Read online

  “My pardon.” Jonnah watched her with eyes warm as honey. He tucked Firya under his arm like a motherless lamb and turned her toward the barn.

  His easy swagger wasn’t the charm he thought it was. Firya stretched her elbows against his clinch. “I’m going to Herrow,” she said.

  “What, tonight?” Jonnah’s voice rang with laughter. “I go every summer for the wool fair. It’s nothing to rush for.”

  Firya yanked free and trudged toward the barn. “No farther?” she scoffed. A boy could disappear down the road and expect to find work. A boy never noticed that a woman couldn’t. But Firya’s sacrifice had been accepted. The dryad’s gift would appear to her and the way would open.

  Jonnah lunged after her and wrapped her in the engulfing shelter of his arm. His fingers stroked again through her close crop.

  Firya shivered, more with heat than with winter. Since she’d become a woman she’d seen men’s eyes on her bare nape. Jonnah’s touch sparked a sudden breathless impatience.

  “You could sign as a sailor. They’d take you for those shoulders alone,” she said. She sounded as peevish as Lerene.

  “If no witch lays a wish on me first,” Jonnah said with a grin.

  Firya stilled under his teasing. Why was Jonnah so warm, and so happy to have found her? Lerene always told her not to take truck with mindless men who ignored the dryads on their very doorsteps. Was Jonnah needling because he didn’t trust in women’s magic, or was it a sign she might capture his heart with a wish? He was the first person she’d seen after leaving the hills.

  Jonnah nudged Firya’s scarf open, running a thumb down to her throat. “You’re warm enough, aren’t you?”

  Churlishly, Firya let him crowd her away from the barn door. The dryad hadn’t promised travel, precisely. Travel suggested homecoming, like a bellwether worried back into the fold. Back to her mother’s skirts? Then what would she have proved? But freedom, now. Firya tipped her head forward, letting her hair fall into her eyes, and peeked at Jonnah. His family owned more fields than her father ever had. Jonnah was tall already. Firya liked the bulk of him, the strong press of his chest against hers. Slowly she let her body melt before him, a seedling turning to the sun.

  Jonnah leaned close and murmured, “I like your hair.”

  Behind him, a line of firs made a windbreak for the barn. How many shorn field-girls had Jonnah chivied back here? But a dryad’s gift shouldn’t be refused, lest she disdain Firya’s future sacrifices. The bride price Jonnah could bring to Lerene would put pause to her complaints. Firya would live in a well-chinked farmhouse, not a dark cot. Food in the larder, silver in a strongbox? And she had only to claim her gift.

  One fir-branch nearly touched the wall, hiding them from sight. Perhaps in the shelter, the tree had imagined a touch of thaw. A single bud, brown with spring sap, capped the tip of the branch. Firya reached out to touch it, and the sticky, papery cover fell away. Bright green needles unfurled under the brush of her thumb.

  Firya laughed, and her breath mingling with Jonnah’s was warm.

  2.

  “When did you last have your woman’s blood?”

  Lerene’s voice had lost nothing of its sharp whine in the years since Firya’s marriage. She huddled under a wool wrap with a quilt across her knees, though sunlight poured through the open shutters and the wide-propped kitchen door.

  Firya sifted flour over the oak counter before turning the dough out of its bowl. Once the panbread was in the oven, there were the soaking sheets to wrangle and pin up in the snapping wind. Firya leaned forward to begin the kneading. Her back twinged sharply just above her hips.

  “I haven’t seen you washing your rags lately.” Lerene fretted over Firya’s courses just as her plump hands worried the threads from the square of patchwork in her lap. “You bore six children—”

  “Four,” Firya muttered. The thick smell of yeast knotted her stomach. Push, turn, fold—the morning’s laundry had left Firya’s knuckles swollen and red.

  “You’ve a fine farmhouse, girl, so don’t let the dryads think you’ve forgotten them.”

  Push, turn, fold. The boys’ ticks needed changing from down to linen, the bulky quilts to be tucked away with sachets of camphor. “I didn’t wish for a farmhouse.”

  Lerene’s scrubwoman’s hunch deepened as she pushed the rocking chair into impatient motion. “Happiness can’t be paid in full.”

  Firya’s bride price had been more than Lerene might have hoped for, but hardly a dryad’s silver fountain. When she came to live with them, Lerene took up the chimney corner like a land-holder’s lady. She watched Firya keep house and carelessly wondered why Jonnah couldn’t hire a girl to soap the leathers and sand the floors. A trip to the groves, an offering accepted . . . Firya had proved her magic, and Lerene’s price had only steepened.

  “You needn’t look to me for help,” Lerene persisted. “I have nothing left to sacrifice but these thin bones—”

  “And obviously the dryads don’t want them.” Firya bit her words short, too late. Lerene’s sour mouth crimped into wrinkles.

  “I’m sorry.” The words felt heavy in Firya’s mouth. When had Lerene’s skin thinned to dry parchment? Firya could hear a wet draw in her mother’s breath, like a baby’s croupy cry.

  There was a shout from the stable and the creak of Jonnah’s wagon, and then the boys flooded through the door. Bellen tramped in first and leaned down to kiss her cheek. He smelled of sweaty horse and sweatier boy. Before she could stop him, he’d snatched a handful of apples from the barrel.

  Jan plowed into Firya’s sore hip, sticky fingers snatching a bite of dough. “Da’ has a lamb,” he said. His mouth was a smear of currant jam.

  “One of the ewes had twins,” Raff said, catching an apple from Bellen and rummaging through the breadbox for crusts. “She wouldn’t take the second. She was butting the poor mite. A black one.”

  “She’s mine!” Cade shouted over Raff. “Mother, we still have the leather bottle, don’t we?”

  Bellen poked his head into the cupboard. “Is there cheese left?”

  There was, and Firya had intended it for her own lunch. “There’s an empty firebox,” she said.

  Bellen grinned, as tall as his father and rangier. “Da’ had us out at daybreak. I’ll chop a cord by dinner.” He held up his find, the corner of cheese wrapped in loose linen. “Raff will draw the water.”

  “It’s Cade’s turn.”

  “Cade has a lamb.”

  “I’ll pick eggs,” Jan said. “May we have eggs with dinner, Mother?”

  “All right.” Jonnah appeared at the door, with the bleating lamb draped around his shoulders. Those shoulders, still. He was thicker at the waist and his beard held piebald patches of tawny-grey, but he was strong as a mountain. “Let your mother bake the bread before you stuff your faces.”

  Jan popped the dough in his mouth like a chaw of spruce gum. “Can I sail from Herrow?” He grabbed at her arm and started swinging it. “I’m big enough.”

  Firya stared sharply at Jonnah. “Who’s sailing from Herrow?”

  Jonnah hoisted the lamb down into Cade’s arms. The tiny thing kicked and struggled, while Cade crooned to it. One errant hoof caught Raff on the shoulder. Bellen yanked him back before he could cuff his brother for the insult. Jonnah settled at the scarred table with the bootjack and laughed.

  Firya rapped the bread bowl down on the counter. “Jonnah.”

  “Ah, Jan.” Jonnah ruffled Jan’s hair. “My secret’s out.” He held out his hand to Firya. “I’ve the contract for wool to Herrow, and across the straits.”

  “There’s pox in Herrow,” Lerene muttered darkly. “Spring ships carry pox.”

  “The boys have had the cowpox, what’s a few more pits?” Jonnah said. “But I don’t plan to take them—or stay in any rough
inn.” He grinned at Firya. “I think I’ll take my lady travelling.”

  He looked as young as Bellen, behind his beard. Eager. Yet Lerene’s worry was more than fair. Firya’s father and brothers had been taken in a spring pox. “And who’s to run the farm?” she asked.

  “I can do it!” Bellen’s voice cracked sharp on the first word and he flushed red, but his eyes sparkled with eagerness.

  “He’ll do a fine job,” Jonnah agreed. He tucked his toes into house shoes and nudged his mud-caked boots under the table. “Your mother can watch Jan.”

  A year ago Jan had fallen twenty feet out of a poplar and broken his arm. Lerene didn’t notice his screeches until Jan came to her sniffling with his arm in plaster. Then she’d taken time to tell Firya she’d been too rough on the child in setting the break. She’d hardly grown more mindful since.

  The boys started up their clamour, shouting how they’d get their chores done, and mind their grandmama, and help Bellen with the lambing. Jonnah held out his hand again—his wide, rough hand could still make her shiver—expecting her to seal a bargain she’d never bartered. Firya’s arms were flour to the elbows and the bread was no closer to the oven. “Bellen—” she said.

  To Bellen’s credit, he must have seen his adventure on the line. “Let’s find a warming box for the lamb,” he said, and herded his brothers out to the barn. The shrieks and the wrestling and the boasts went with them, for a dearly bought moment.

  Firya left her loaves to the flies and climbed up the loft ladder. Jonnah followed her and settled on their feather mattress with a grunt. “I suppose after twenty years of begging, I’m to hear for the first time that you never once wanted to go to Herrow?”

  He’d wanted his surprise to please her. She knew. He wanted it to be his own gift, not her will worked through him by a wish. Little did he know how badly she wanted the same.

  He hadn’t noticed yet, but the nights were warming. Soon she and Jonnah would sleep skin to skin, sweat slipping between them. By then there’d be no hiding from him. “Why this year?”

  “The boys were young. Next year Bellen will be begging me cash money for a bride price, watch if he doesn’t. This is our time.”

  “Every year I asked, when you had wool to sell.” Firya’s hair needed cutting. She could feel damp tendrils clinging to her nape. There was no pretending to be a girl at her age. “Haven’t you seen my mother?”

  “It’d be a strange day I saw the chimney seat empty for once.”

  Firya hid clenched fists beneath her skirts. Burying her soiled rags in the woods had seemed little enough to curry the dryad’s favour, at first. If she gave up on her wish, then little would be left of Jonnah’s love. If love it ever was. “She’s ill,” Firya said. “Her lungs sound like a swamp.”

  Her drab tiredness left Jonnah little to fight. “The boys can take care of her.”

  Which was it—Lerene to take care of the boys, or they of her? “She’s right about the pox. In spring—”

  “You won’t catch the pox,” Jonnah said. “You act like you never had the pus under your skin like any babe.”

  “Nellis visited a friend with the pox and gave birth to a deaf baby.”

  At last, Jonnah’s gaze darted to her hand, splayed across her abdomen. Firya watched his tight mouth, his set shoulders. “You haven’t kindled in years.”

  “I know.” All these years, and this once, this once he asked. Firya cupped his face. His beard was soft against her palm. She played out her refusal sweetly, to sting him. “I can’t go. My mother’s sick.”

  “It’s just the change,” Jonnah insisted.

  He must think she was a dried up husk already, discarded by the dryads. “So my mother would have it.”

  “And you said nothing.” Jonnah stood up, big enough to loom under the low ceiling. “Well, I have to go. The contract’s signed. I’ll take Bellen—he’ll enjoy the trip.”

  His words were a sharper slap than she’d braced for. A small, spiteful smile curled the corner of Firya’s lips. How quick he was to pull the promised treat from her grasp. “I might lose the baby.”

  Jonnah stopped at the top of the loft ladder, heavyset, sombre. “You’ve lost others,” he said. “It seems you’ve all the luck your dryad sees fit to give.”

  In some surly years, new shoots crept in under winter’s bristles, a slow and hidden greening. The year Jonnah took Bellen to Herrow, to the boy’s delight, the budding followed the rain in a great rush, and the flax fields rippled with blue flowers.

  The turn in Firya’s pregnancy arrived with the season. The sluggish heaviness in her stomach disappeared. She felt like a draft horse unchained from the plough.

  In due course, Jonnah’s hired hands arrived to drive the sheep to the higher pastures. Firya sent Raff and Cade with them. Jan tagged behind on the old mare who’d taught his brothers to ride. Firya wrapped a sandwich of roast lamb in cheesecloth, tied a leather water bottle to her belt, and set off for the forest’s edge.

  After a steady hour, the dogwood-choked path left the woods, becoming a grassy track drawn golden by the sun. Firya shed her shawl and breathed deep of the thin air. A thrum of breath and heartbeat filled her ears.

  “Your daughter will never fulfill your hopes for her,” said a voice at her side.

  Firya’s toes gripped the rock through her sheepskin boots. “No,” she said. She’d grown stronger at refusing the dryad’s first offer, but defiance still hindered her breath. A daughter, after all this time?

  The woman whispered into view at the corner of her vision. Over the years, Firya had stolen sight of her in sidelong glances and still pools. She was lovely, bronze-haired and green-eyed. Her skin was deep burnished brown; her skirts and her cloak were grey. Her name she’d given with Firya’s second sacrifice, blood of her body. Kirel.

  Firya had once been nearly as comely, before Lerene accepted Jonnah’s bride price. Before he’d set her to breeding sons. And after all her wrenching pain, all four of them were Jonnah’s boys clean through. When they were babes, Jonnah would chuck them under the chin and let them pull his beard, or tumble with them like sheepdog pups. They were only real to him once they could ride after him to the fields. Yet they took to him like goslings after a goose. “No more children,” she insisted. “What of the freedom you promised me?”

  Only the wind, whistling down from the crags, answered her. Firya turned back to her climb. The path mounted to a dip between high hill tops, and then Firya was among the groves. Needles carpeted the mountain rock, bright oranges and softer browns woven into the rich warm earth. Firya settled on a root reaching over a tiny spring-fed pool. “Kirel,” she said, and Kirel was there.

  The dryad gathered rising mist from the pool and wove it into grey yarn on her fingers. “Jonnah cares for his own appetites, his own adventures,” she said with a moue of scorn.

  How she sounded like Lerene. Firya shrugged her shawl open. “He had to go,” she said. The farm’s profits depended on the spring wool fairs.

  Kirel lifted her hands and considered her scarf of grey wool. Its length grew from her hands like thunderheads in summer, then disappeared on a breeze. “You’ll work yourself thin forgiving him,” she said. “He left you with the boys, a baby coming, your mother in her illness.”

  Jonnah must have seen Lerene’s blue lips before he went. Dropsy thickened her legs until the flesh overflowed her thin feet. But he’d left to cross the straits with a jaunty wave. Firya’s eyes heated with tears. “Kirel . . . is my mother dying?”

  “Ah, little one.” Kirel shifted without moving, and pressed Firya’s shoulders, encouraging her to lay her head down. Her lap was cool as clean sheets rescued from the line in the moments before a bursting rain.

  “I think she might be drowning,” Firya murmured. Wishes lasted as long as a woman’s strength. Lerene must once have promised
too much. Now the mark of Firya’s grip printed Lerene’s soft arm long after she’d helped her from the privy.

  “Your mother never had a biddable daughter, did she?” Kirel’s cool fingers carded through Firya’s fresh-trimmed hair. “You deserve better.”

  Grasshoppers trilled beyond the grove. Firya never should have left Lerene. The boys would be back from the pastures, clattering about the kitchen, disturbing their grandmama’s rest. She needed to return.

  “You walked too far with the child,” Kirel said. She spread her cloak woven of cool air over Firya’s shoulders.

  A tremble in her belly made Firya draw a dizzy breath. She could feel a tickle inside like a young trout flashing silver in the stream. “She’s quick,” she murmured, and her tears flowed harder. A girl child, soft as a kitten. Obedient to Firya’s wishes. But oh, how she hated the tear and pull of bearing, the endless need of a suckling babe.

  “Let me ease her way,” Kirel said.

  Would Jonnah look the other way if Firya lost the babe? Women did, at her age. But— “I can’t.” Even if the loss was an ordinary sorrow, Jonnah would neither believe her nor forgive her. He didn’t hope for a daughter, or even another son. He believed Firya would spite him for his ill-timed gift.

  “The air’s thin here,” Kirel asked. “Let me take your burden.”

  No. “I’ve brought no offering,” Firya said, and wept. There was too much debt between them. She’d keep the babe, to stem Jonnah’s contempt, and to hold fast to the gifts Kirel had already given.

  “Your promise holds true.” Kirel’s voice whispered beneath the hissing wind. Her skirts were soft as spring moss, warm as dark earth.

  Firya closed her eyes and leaned into the lap of the mountain.

  When she woke, her fingers curled loosely around a ripe fir cone, freshly fallen from the summer tree.

  3.