Authors: Julie E. Czerneda
“If you buy powdered bone,” Jenn objected, carefully not looking at her alarmed sister, “how can you be sure it’s really the thigh? Or your ancestor’s?”
“How—you—I—” Peggs sputtered.
“And not a cow’s?” Wainn added cheerfully.
“Just so,” the beekeeper approved. “Such are the arguments when a wishing fails. It wasn’t the right bone. The words weren’t said properly.”
Her sister looked about to explode. “There’ll be no magic or wishing about our wedding!”
Kydd chuckled. “Of course not, Dearest Heart. I wouldn’t,” he assured her, with a bow, “even if I could.”
Mollified, Peggs gave a brisk nod. “Good.”
“What do you mean, ‘if you could?’” Jenn asked.
“Wishings aren’t magic,” Kydd said calmly. “At best, they’re childish folly; at worst, elaborate hoaxes to take advantage of the gullible.” He gave Jenn another too bright, too interested look. “Magic’s what I found here.”
“But—” A bee landed on Jenn’s nose and she froze midprotest.
Other bees found Peggs more interesting, landing on her hair and arms. She held quite still, barely moving her lips to ask, “Might we continue this elsewhere?”
“At once. My apologies,” the beekeeper said, easing a bee from Peggs’ cheek with a finger and plucking another from her hair. “See how sweet you are?” he added softly, then louder, “Give us a moment to tidy up. We are almost out of light anyway, aren’t we, Wainn?”
Wainn replaced the lid, making the bees happier and less interested in people, sweet or otherwise. The sisters helped gather the brushes and other beekeeping supplies while the Uhthoffs locked the buckets of comb in their larder, that sweetness being too tempting to leave in the open.
Kydd went into the home he shared with his brother and nephew, returning with a blanket, pitcher, and mugs. The blanket he and Wainn spread on a grassy spot beneath the nearest apple tree. The pitcher turned out to be filled with cooled tea, sweetened with honey, and Kydd poured as the sisters made themselves comfortable. Wainn stretched out on the grass, chin on his crossed arms, eyes closed. A moth lit on his shoulder. Jenn squinted, but saw neither satchel nor boots.
Kydd gave a cup to Peggs, fingers lingering, then passed one to Jenn. He settled, eyes lively with curiosity. “So you did magic.”
She tried not to wince.
“Jenn Nalynn doesn’t do magic,” Wainn disagreed, which made her feel better. Then he added, “She is.” Which didn’t, especially when Kydd pursed his lips thoughtfully and raised his eyebrows.
“I am not,” Jenn protested. She didn’t want to be magic. Well, it might be fine and wonderful if she could see marvels like Bannan, or do the sort of miraculous things that filled stories, but not this. Not curses and horrid dreams and feeling ill for no reason every day. “I’m ordinary,” she said desperately. “The most ordinary person in Marrowdell.” She rubbed her arms, finding the air grown chill though the day had been summer-warm. Tonight they’d need an extra blanket. Which was ordinary. She would, she decided, pay greater attention to what was.
“Wainn meant no harm. Please don’t be upset, Jenn,” urged Kydd, sounding a bit upset himself.
“Too late for that,” Peggs disagreed. She took Jenn’s hand and squeezed it gently. “My dear brave sister. She’s already suffering, Kydd. We must help her.”
Jenn felt warmer at once. Who wouldn’t, with such a champion?
“It’s more than the wishing,” Peggs explained, eyes flashing with determination. “Something’s happening. Go on, Jenn. Tell them.”
Where to even start? Wainn kept his eyes closed, appearing almost asleep. The moth tidied its wings while bees, not the least sleepy, droned by their heads.
The beekeeper gave an encouraging nod.
Once you dip your toe, take the plunge, Aunt Sybb would say, no matter how chill the water. Jenn gulped tea and began, “It started when I went up on the Spine . . .”
No one interrupted, not even a bee, though Kydd started a little when she spoke of dragons, and Wainn smiled when she spoke of Wen and the toads.
“. . . the Great Turn, if it is the eclipse, is almost here. When anything is possible, whatever that may mean,” she finished.
“The end of the curse,” her sister stated firmly. “And whatever’s making you sick. That, too.” As if she’d settle for nothing less.
Kydd, perhaps well aware of his future bride’s indomitable nature, went a little pale. “I see.” His forehead furrowed. “Perhaps we should go to my brother. He knows more about eclipses and the stars than—”
“Master Dusom?” Peggs said faintly.
“Just Dusom, Dearest Heart. He’s to be your brother soon,” the beekeeper reminded her.
He wasn’t yet, that look on Peggs’ face meant, but all she said was, “We came to you.”
“And I want to help.” Kydd frowned in thought. “Jenn. This voice you heard. What can you tell me about who spoke?”
Terrifying might be true, but not, she understood, what he was after. “Old,” she ventured. “Very old. And not—” she stopped.
“Not what?”
“Not like us,” Jenn said faintly. “Not—a person.”
Wainn opened his eyes and offered a finger to the moth. It stepped confidently atop a knuckle, wings fluttering. “I hear too,” said the younger Uhthoff, eye-to-eye with the tiny creature. “Wen hears the best.”
“Hears what?” asked Peggs. “Who?”
He gazed at them in mild surprise. “Marrowdell.” The moth opened its wings and flew up and away. They all watched it disappear among the leaves.
Jenn sighed to herself. No doubt Wainn had a unique view of the world, as did Wen. If only it was easier to understand.
“I don’t understand,” Peggs echoed unwittingly. “How can a place speak?”
“Nothing would surprise me here,” Kydd assured her, giving his nephew a fond look. Then he took a deep breath and leaned forward, an unfamiliar grimness to his face. “It’s my turn to share a secret, dear ladies. One I meant to tell you long before now,” this to Peggs.
“You left a wife in Avyo?” she teased, though Jenn noticed her sister’s fingers had tightened around her cup. “Two?”
“No.” He actually blushed. “Nothing like that. I—”
Peggs lifted one shapely eyebrow. “You don’t like pie.”
“I love pie,” the hapless beekeeper protested. “I—”
“You—”
Jenn poked her sister’s leg with a toe. Peggs feared what Kydd might say, for good reason. Marrowdell’s secrets hadn’t proved comfortable to learn, or safe. “Whatever it is,” she promised gently, “we’ll understand. Won’t we, Peggs?”
Her sister gave the tiniest nod, her eyes troubled.
Kydd, to his credit, looked relieved. “I’ve not lied to you, ever,” he said firmly. “You’ve already guessed I was a student, in part, of magic and wishings. Oh, I knew they weren’t real. I knew so much on the road north.” A rueful shrug. “And so very little, as it turned out.
“Imagine my feelings when we arrived in Marrowdell. I knew there was no such thing as magic and here was an endless fountain, waiting to be needed. Homes ready to live in. Grain that planted and tended itself. Magic, real magic, springing up everywhere I looked. Magic that had nothing to do with my books or understanding. Ancestors Witness, there were even magical toads!”
Wainn smiled.
“Because the Ancestors provided for us,” Peggs countered, an unfamiliar edge to her voice. “That’s what your brother teaches. That’s why we gather to give the Midwinter Beholding. No one’s ever called it magic.”
“Not even Aunt Sybb,” Jenn added, their aunt’s distrust of Marrowdell’s eccentricities being well known.
“No,” Kydd agreed heavily. “And that’s what you need to know about me, Dearest Heart.” He shook his head. “I came here, my family shattered, Wainn injured and unconscious, and didn’t see the lovely haven everyone else did. How could I? I knew better,” this with a pained twist to his lips. “If magic was real, then so were the old stories about it. Stories that told me Marrowdell was a baited trap, that such gifts must have a terrible price.
“I insisted we leave, at once, but no one took me seriously. Everyone was exhausted and heartsore. They told me to be grateful. That the Ancestors were kind and generous and I should be properly Beholden.
“How could I be? I was terrified. When nightmares drove the other families away, I claimed they were warnings. When Wainn remained unconscious, I blamed Marrowdell, not his injuries. By the first harvest,” a grimace, “I’d made myself such a nuisance, the village voted to tell Dusom to shut me up or send me away.”
There was fire in Peggs’ eyes. “No Nalynn would do that!”
“No Nalynn did.” Kydd smiled slightly. “But most of the rest. I didn’t blame them. I’d no evidence, no proof. Life was hard enough; they couldn’t accept what made it easier might be tainted. Of course I couldn’t abandon my family, so I pretended to recant, to be content, all the while ranting in private to my poor, patient brother.”
He’d been like Riss, Jenn thought. Unhappy, but bound to stay. Worse, since he’d been afraid too.
Kydd continued, “Then, one night, I translated an Ansnan history text that described a terrible cataclysm in the north. It claimed priests wishing a path to the stars had brought down their wrath. Only a few escaped to flee south. They were named the star-touched, for though they were clearly mad, they were said to possess real magic.
“Magic. The north. And a cataclysm. I concluded it must have taken place here, in Marrowdell,” he told them, eyes bright with remembered triumph. “The hills bear scars of the right age. I found what I believed were ruins.”
Ruins Bannan had seen. Amazed, Jenn barely kept still.
“I had proof at last, that this place was too dangerous for us. I presented it to Duson and argued there could be another disaster at any time. He agreed with me, for once. Then,” the beekeeper’s eyes softened, “my brother asked me two questions. If we dared move Wainn, where could we go? And, if we died here, by magic or winter, what better place for our bones than with Larell’s and Ponicce’s?
“The answer to both was nowhere else. We were stuck here, trap or not, and from then on I stifled my fears. I waited and watched, expecting disaster.”
“How dreadful!” Peggs took Kydd’s hand in both of hers. “But—you don’t feel that way now. How did you—what changed your mind?”
“The tinkers arrived. They . . .” he paused, his gaze seeming to turn inward, his mouth working without sound.
As if the words twisted away from him. “What did they do?” Jenn asked uneasily. “Kydd?”
His face cleared. “They were happy to see us,” the beekeeper replied, which might have been the answer he’d first tried to give, or not. “They explained Marrowdell had been made by those who cared about the welfare of the lost or exiled, to be a new home for those with peace in their hearts. Best of all, Master Riverstone was able to heal Wainn.”
The youngest Uhthoff rolled over to gaze up into the apple tree. “So I could tell you, Uncle. That Marrowdell was a good place and safe and we should stay.”
Kydd reached out his free hand to tussle his nephew’s hair. “The first words from your mouth.” He ducked his head for a moment, as if overcome, then lifted it, his eyes suspiciously bright. “Marrowdell gave you back to us. I’d been wrong to fear its magic. Since then,” a shy smile, “I’ve been entranced.”
Wainn, speaking out. Wen, refusing to. “Because Marrowdell is magic,” Jenn said, eyeing the apple trees, sky, and ground suspiciously. But they remained ordinary.
Like Kydd, Bannan had seen Marrowdell’s magic right away. Well, she’d lived here her whole life and hadn’t, which surely proved she wasn’t magic at all. Greatly relieved, she picked up her tea.
“Well, then,” Peggs said, so firmly Jenn paused, cup at her lips, to give her sister a worried look. “How do we make it stop bothering Jenn?” As if “it” was lumpy flour or mud on the floor.
Wainn frowned. “She should stop bothering Marrowdell.”
Kydd frowned. “That’s hardly—”
“It’s Jenn Nalynn’s fault,” the younger Uhthoff insisted, uncharacteristically stern.
“It isn’t!” her sister protested.
“He’s right.” Jenn put the cup down, her hand unsteady. Wen had said she’d put the village in danger. That she’d tried to go where she shouldn’t. “The wishing worked because I did it. Because of—” she couldn’t say the word, “—something about me.”
“Yes, Jenn,” Kydd agreed, his voice gentle. “I believe so.”
“And that horrid pebble,” Jenn said miserably. “It’s my fault too.”
“I see no other answer,” he agreed, his voice gentle. “After all Marrowdell’s done for us, I can’t believe it suddenly means you harm. The pebble—or what it represents—must have something to do with your—” Peggs nudged him, “—special nature.”
“You mean magic.” She sighed. They were wearing her down with their belief, preposterous as it seemed. “I try to find something safer to wish for,’” she admitted. “Every night I try. But it’s getting harder.”
Her sister stroked her hair. “Sunset’s the worst.”
“Sunset.” The beekeeper’s gaze sharpened. “When the toads hide.”
“Toads?” Peggs repeated blankly, so like Aunt Sybb Jenn would have laughed, but couldn’t. The toads had come to her rescue, but they hadn’t been happy with her. Not at all.
“Marrowdell’s sunset is important,” Kydd said. “The toads aren’t the only ones who avoid it.”
Wainn yawned. “Because sunset shows what’s real.”
“If you’re lucky,” his uncle qualified. “And they let you see them. At first, I couldn’t, unless Wainn was with me. Even now, I rarely catch more than a glimpse. They’re careful.”
“Who are?” Peggs’ eyes widened.
“We aren’t alone,” Jenn explained. “Bannan told me. In his letters.” Which was no reason to blush, but she felt her cheeks grow warm anyway. “He says sunset’s when he can see all manner of wonderful creatures.” She’d tried to look for them herself, only to be disappointed. Lately she’d felt too ill to bother. Maybe she should hide at sunset too. At least then no one would see her discomfort.
“He sees the truth,” Kydd nodded, unaware of the troubled turn of her thoughts. “Marrowdell is home to a host of other settlers, Dear Hearts, small and secretive. Some stay near us, as if we give them purpose. I believe—I hope—we have one as well, whatever it may be, that lets us earn Marrowdell’s gifts.”