Madbond (33 page)

“Not bolt, like a roused stallion?”

“I give you my word, I will bide.” I looked across firelight at him with some annoyance, more wonder. “I cannot believe you do not long for them,” I said.

“How can I, since I have seen Tassida?”

I stared. “You are joking,” I said, though I knew better.

“No jest. I have never wanted to lie with any woman since I have known her. I think I shall never want any except her.”

The hopelessness of his love, and mine … I felt hollow, aching. “That's a drawback,” I muttered, “in any case except this.”

“It is,” he admitted, for his faithfulness was nothing to boast of, to a tribesman's way of thinking.

Silence for a while. He shifted his bed so that he lay back against a rounded boulder. Darkness hid our faces, a comforting darkness, letting us speak of secret things.

“Dan, I never told you. The nights we stayed with your tribe, a maiden of your people came to me. Karu, they called her.”

The flower of the Red Hart, she. Tall, straight, and fair, skin like a clear sunrise and her yellow braids hanging below her waist. She had gone to Kor, when to my knowledge she had never gone to any other! I sat up and stared at him.

“You should feel honored,” I said with more awe than jealousy.

“I felt greatly honored, and I told her so. But I had no heart to lie with her. And I told her that as well, and why.”

“But why!” I protested, astonished.

“I have just told you! I—”

“But how can you be so sure? It takes much searching to find a lifelove. Two come together and then, if the bond does not hold, they part to try again with others. How else is one to know but by trying?”

“I know my lifelove,” he declared.

“Kor—”

“Were you so willing to hurt and be hurt when Leotie left you?”

She who had taken my brother Tyee as pledgemate. Hurt, yes, it had hurt indeed, as did Kor's thrust. I winced, but before I could parry he cursed between his teeth and rolled over so that he lay facedown, his voice muffled in his blanket.

“Sorry, Dan. Truth is, I—Mahela's bowels, perhaps I am a coward. I think—I could not play this game you describe to me. I have always dreamed of—a special one.…”

“We all do,” I said softly, forgetting anger.

“And I have thought that once I have given myself to a woman I will be hers forever. I will not be able to help that.”

I could not gainsay him. Had I not often sensed something fated in him?

“The maidens of my own people—we were good comrades as children, but often now they seem to me as strange and cold as—as devourers. And less willing.” He sat up, shaking his head. “Bah! I am whimpering. Forget it.”

“No. Tell me,” I said, gazing at him across low flames. “I was starting to understand.”

His shoulders sagged, his face turned toward the ground. “Perhaps I am deceiving myself,” he muttered. “Perhaps the devourers have made me afraid.”

I knew by then, but I blurted it out anyway. “You have not—you've never—”

“I am yet a virgin, Dan.” He lifted his face and gifted me with one of his rare smiles, as if he felt suddenly lighthearted, telling me. “The fishy-flapping demons have given me my only bedding.”

“Damn them,” I breathed, growing angry with a wrath as sudden as his gladness. “Damn the demons, and damn the prick-me-dainty wenches who would not come to you! The birdwits, how could they have been so stupid! Damn it to Mahela, Kor, it's not your fault!”

He shrugged, abashed by my fervor but faintly smiling. “I think it is the pattern of my life,” he said.

“Skewed,” I grumbled, and did not know how truly I had spoken.

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Glossary

afterlings: followers, usually on foot.

afterwit: hindsight.

amaranth: a healing flower that disappeared when Sakeema was killed.

awk: leftward.

blackstone: obsidian.

brownsheen: copper-colored.

brume: dense, gray fog.

cachalot: sperm whale.

carrageen: a dark purplish seaweed.

chough: a small, insolent crow.

comity: innate courtesy.

cracking rail: a short-billed landrail of drab plumage, shy habits, and excruciating vocal abilities.

dreamwit: a visionary person, a mystic.

dryland: the opposite of ocean. Refers to any land above water, not necessarily arid.

dulse: an edible seaweed.

erne: a sea eagle.

eye of sky: the dispassionate gaze of the nameless god.

fire true: true enough to be sworn to by putting one's hand in fire.

fogwater: condensation.

fry: recently hatched salmon just emerging from the gravel, the length of the first joint of a man's index finger.

fulmar: a stiff-winged, gliding seabird.

gair fowl: the greak auk, a sort of northern penguin.

gannet: a large, white seabird.

glimmerstones: agates.

graymaw: a shark.

graysheen: silver-colored.

greendeep: ocean.

grilse: salmon returning from the sea to their native river; “summer salmon.”

gudgeon: a rather stupid-looking freshwater fish.

gutknot: navel.

highmountain: alpine (as, highmountain meadow).

indeeps: penetralia.

inwit: instinct.

jannock: unleavened oatmeal bread.

king: a tribal ruler of either sex.

kittiwake: a small, short-legged, gentle-faced gull.

lappet: a breechclout.

lovelocks: curling tendrils of hair.

merkin: a woman's pubic hair.

moonstuff: silver.

moon-mad: temporarily passionate or out of control, with emotions running high, as if influenced, like tides, by the phase of the moon.

nagsback: a shallow mountain pass.

noggin's worth: a little.

orichalc: a hard, golden bronze.

parr: young salmon still in the brown freshwater stage.

peal: salmon returning from the sea to their native river, turning from silver to red.

pickthank: a flatterer.

rampick: a tree whose top is dead or broken off by wind.

roughlands: the shadowlands.

scantling: a toddler, a very young specimen of whatever species.

scarrow: high, thin cloud.

scarrow-fog: a thin haze high in the sky that lets the sun show as a white spot.

scooning: skipping over the surface of water as a flat stone does when properly thrown.

shadowlands: the arid high plains beyond the mountains, the steppes or shortgrass prairie.

slowcome: a slow-witted person or one who is slow to act, sometimes with a sexual connotation.

smellfungus: a grumbler.

smolt: salmon in the final freshwater stage, turning from brown to silver.

smurr: drizzle.

snow mote: snowflake.

stone-boiled: cooked in liquid into which hot stones are dropped to heat it.

stoup's worth: a lot.

sunstuff: gold.

swordmaster: maker, namer, and wielder of his or her sword.

sylkies: undersea folk who can take the form of humans or seals.

thunder cones: volcanoes.

tongueshot: the distance a voice will carry.

troating: bleating, as of a deer in rut.

tumblestone: a rock washed smooth by the action of water.

wanhope: a person who continues to hope against all common sense.

whimbrel: a brown wading bird, related to dowitchers, godwits, curlews, willets, and snipe.

whurr: to burst from cover with a loud flapping of wings, as a partridge or a grouse.

witch wind: hot wind that blows down from the landward side of mountains.

About the Author

Nancy Springer is the award-winning author of more than fifty books, including the Enola Holmes and Rowan Hood series and a plethora of novels for all ages, spanning fantasy, mystery, magic realism, and more. She received the James Tiptree, Jr. Award for
Larque on the Wing
and the Edgar Award for her juvenile mysteries
Toughing It
and
Looking for Jamie Bridger
, and she has been nominated for numerous other honors. Springer currently lives in the Florida Panhandle, where she rescues feral cats and enjoys the vibrant wildlife of the wetlands.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1987 by Nancy Springer

Cover design by Drew Padrutt

ISBN: 978-1-4532-4848-5

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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New York, NY 10014

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