Authors: Nathan Lowell
On the new moon that marked the end of the month of the Axe, the work of sawing boards came to an end. William calculated the impressive stack of planks would be enough for their immediate needs. There were still posts and beams that needed shaping but that would be done with the logs that William had felled earlier in the fall. In the meantime, one more task remained before they could begin construction on the inn proper.
The village was up early in the cold, breath puffing in the chill light of predawn. Frank, Jakey, and William took the empty lorry wagon and headed south to the town of Hendrix Crossing. While they were gone, most of the villagers went up to the hay loft in the barn and began moving the old hay out of the way. Some of it went to chink cracks. Some was tied in bundles and the bundles laid out along the foundations of the more exposed houses. More was spread as mulch over those root crops that were still in the ground. In the end, they cleared the hay loft and opened a large door in the top of the barn to let the cold air blow through to air the place out.
Tanyth watched the preparation with some trepidation, even as she tended the fire in the workroom with Megan. “What if there’s not enough?”
Megan shrugged. “It’s a chance for everyone, isn’t it, mum? But the people down in Hendrix have never let us down yet. It was a good year for hay. Not too wet, not too dry. We pay good gold for the feed for our beasts and they have the best fields around.”
“The idea of buying feed just seems odd.” She sighed. “What do they feed their animals?”
Megan grinned. “The same as we do. They just have more fields, we have more woods. That first year we traded wood for hay, but when we stopped cutting the trees, we offered them cash instead. They took it, gladly. Good coin is hard to come by out here, and not everything can be bartered for.”
Tanyth blinked at Megan. “I thought William said we had no coin out here. We kept all the money in town?”
“He did. Frank brought it back with him from town. Just enough to pay the hay factor in Hendrix.” She shrugged. “And maybe a few extra. It’s how we’ve done it these last few winters and it seems to work out.”
“I suppose you do what works.”
She nodded and took a pot of tea and some mugs out to the workers.
Three days later the lorry wagon was back, piled high with hay held down and protected from the weather by a broad swatch of canvas. It took almost half a day to unload the hay and get it all up into the barn’s loft, even with everybody helping.
Amber invited Tanyth to dinner that night–a festive meal with Frank, Thomas, Sadie, William and all the children. Thomas had taken several fat geese earlier in the week and most of them were being spit roasted in various of the houses in the village. Amber and Sadie had spent the day cooking together and had built a feast of roasted vegetables, bread, and spitted goose.
As they settled in for their meal, Amber turned to Frank. “Are you ready to go again?”
He shook his head with a chuckle. “No, but I guess I better be, eh?” He sighed and worked his shoulders. “At least driving six horses isn’t as hard as pulling a saw.”
William groaned sympathetically. “That’s true, and tomorrow I’ve got to get the foundation holes dug before the ground freezes.”
Thomas looked up from a trencher of goose. “You took a chance waitin’ this long, didn’t ya?”
William shook his head. “Not really. It doesn’t usually freeze until Hunter’s Moon.” He shrugged. “And besides we needed to get the boards cut so we’ll be able to tack the whole thing in place.”
“True.” Thomas turned to Frank. “You think the placement is right now?”
“Of the inn?” Frank asked.
Thomas bobbed his head once.
“Yeah, I do. Buildin’ it up around the pump, we won’t be draggin’ buckets of water to the inn. Maybe we can put in a horse trough.”
William snapped his fingers. “I knew there was something I was forgetting.”
They all looked at him.
“We need to put an extension on the barn so that we can stable more horses.”
Sadie looked down the table at William. “Why not just put some stalls in the workroom?”
Amber looked shocked. “Where will we work?”
Sadie grinned. “At the inn. I have a feeling we’ll be spending a lot of time there and it’ll be a lot bigger than the workroom is now.”
Amber seemed startled by the idea but frowned in concentration as she considered it. “Of course.”
William smiled at Sadie. “That’s a good idea. I should have thought of that.”
Amber patted his arm. “That’s ok, dear. We keep you around for your looks and your strong back, not your keen mind.” She gathered Sadie and Tanyth in with her eyes. “We’ll do the heavy thinkin’. You boys just do the heavy liftin’.”
They all laughed and William raised his mug in toast. “To my friends with good looks and strong backs, and the lovely women who let us stay around.”
Everybody laughed and clinked mugs.
They filled up on the rich meat and hot bread. Eventually the little ones crawled off to their corner to huddle in a pile under the covers, leaving the adults to graze among the leftovers. As the conversation started flagging, Tanyth turned to William. “Did the sawing help or hurt your shoulder?”
He grinned and put a hand to his wounded shoulder. “The first day it hurt a lot. The second day, the rest of me hurt so much I didn’t notice. By the fourth day, I was getting’ used to it again.” He jerked his head at Frank. “There’s the man who was sore.”
Frank hung his head. “I got a bit overextended, but I worked through it.”
Tanyth shook her head. “I should have thought. Mother Alderton left some liniments that would have helped sore muscles.”
Sadie giggled. “You shoulda said somethin’, Frank. I bet Mother Fairport woulda been happy to rub your sore shoulders for you.” She winked at Tanyth and Amber laughed.
Tanyth blushed and she thought Frank did, too, but she was too embarrassed to look.
Thomas changed the subject. “How we fixed for firewood, William? You haven’t had a chance to cut any for a while.”
Out of respect for Mother Fairport he tried to follow Thomas’s lead. “We’ve enough for the time bein’, I think. When we get the inn going so we can leave Ethan overseein’ the build, I’ll be able to go out again. There’s still a month’s supply in the barn and I think all the huts have full woodboxes.”
Sadie mumbled something about Mother Fairport’s woodbox needing fillin’ that didn’t carry all the way to the head of the table but had Amber choking on her tea and left Thomas and William looking confused. Frank, for his part, just sighed and muttered. “Kids.”
Tanyth braved a glance in his direction and thought she saw a small smile on his face, but he kept it hidden behind his teacup until the general jocularity petered out.
As the laughter faded, the party broke up and Tanyth returned to her hut while Frank headed for the barn to check on the horses. Thomas and Sadie were walking arm in arm toward their house and Sadie was talking earnestly to Thomas. She couldn’t hear the conversation, only the tone. About half way home, she heard Thomas bark a single laugh before it was loudly shushed and she groaned. “Now everybody is gonna know about my woodbox.”
She sighed and let herself into the house, latching the door closed against the cold. She debated stirring the fire up, but decided to leave it banked until the morning, and changed quickly into a night shift before crawling into her bed roll. It was desperately cold and she shivered for a few moments before her body heat began to drive out the chill. She rolled over onto her belt knife and gasped at the feel of the hard metal pressing into her side. She reached down and slipped it to a more comfortable position. She felt a little silly keeping up her habit of the road, but she shrugged it off and within a few minutes her body heat created a pocket of warmth between the heavy layers of covers on top and the sweet grass ticking and woolen cot liner beneath her. She forgot about the knife and drifted off to sleep.
At day break she heard the wagon leaving the village on the next run to get hay.
Chapter 35
First snow
The first snow of the season fell on the morning of the Hunter’s Moon. Tanyth heard the difference when she woke. There was something in the air, a quiet that didn’t match the other mornings. The gray sky with drifting flakes kept the sun from brightening the day and her hut was unnaturally dark.
She shivered as she crawled out of her bed roll and her left knee shot a twinge up her leg. Cold always made it worse and changes in the weather added sand to the ointment. She’d taken to sleeping in her socks and slipped from bed to boot without touching the floor. Her night shift–a warm flannel gown that Amber and Sadie had made for her–fell around her ankles as she stood. It helped keep the warmth close to her body, but she still slipped on a shawl before poking up the fire and adding a few sticks of wood.
When she opened the door to head for the privy, a clump of snow clung to the wood long enough to get dragged into the cottage before falling off on the step with a plump splat that sent snow flakes everywhere. Looking out, she could see that it wasn’t that much snow, but it was still coming down. She thought at once of Frank. He was due back later in the day with the blue stone footings for the inn, but he’d be waking in a camp and having to deal with snow. She didn’t envy him.
She hung by her hearth, waiting for the sound of horses. She kept worrying about his being out there on the road in the snow alone. It bothered her beyond reason. She tried several times to distract herself by working on some tinctures of rosemary that she planned for Solstice gifts but couldn’t focus on the process. She gave it up after a time, afraid that she’d make a mistake and burn the oils she was trying to extract.
By midmorning she was certain that something had happened and that she needed to do something. Her agitation made her skin feel hot and she stepped back from the fire in confusion. The room had suddenly gotten much hotter. Hot as summer. Except the room was still the same. The small fire wasn’t throwing that much heat. Her eyes widened as she realized that she was having a hot flash–her own body was causing the heat. She’d been with Mother Gilroy some ten winters back and helped the poor woman through what she called her winter of heat.
She calmed herself. Or tried to. She breathed deliberately in, held it for a moment, and then blew it out. The room wasn’t quite cold enough to see her breath, but it felt good on the fevered skin of her face and hands. She loosened her collar and flapped her shift a bit to pump some air around under her clothing. Then she thought of Frank, again. Possibly lying dead beside the road, crushed by a shifting stone in the lorry, or pinned under it, unable to get free slowly freezing to death out there in the snow.
“All-Mother, help me.” It was less prayer than disgusted grumble. She knew her mind was going full bore but she wasn’t thinking clearly at all.
She crossed to her bed, kicked off her boots, and crawled back into the bedroll. The flash was subsiding. The room was cold, and she needed to get a handle on her emotions before she did something stupid like haring down the Pike in search of a man who’d undoubtedly be driving along, huddled in his driving cloak and sipping a hot mug of tea while singing a bawdy song.
The idea of Frank singing a bawdy song made her giggle, but the warmth of her bedroll reached into her and soothed her jangled spirit. She took a deep breath of the cool air, then snuggled down into the woolen blankets and was surprised to find sleep waiting for her, ready to pounce. “All-Mother, help me.” More sigh than prayer, she wasn’t sure she’d actually said it before the wave of darkness washed over.
The snow floated down outside the tent of boughs. She
crooned a bit as she roused and noted that the storm had not
yet blown itself out. She puffed up her feathers a bit but was
unable to get really warm. Winter was a hard season. With a
loud caw, she launched herself off the limb and into the falling
snow.
She snapped at a few of the flakes as she soared through them,
banking sharply and winging across the village. The ground was
blurry in the dim light and soft blanket of new fallen snow but
she watched carefully for the small animals that might give
up their lives to keep hers going. At the gap in the trees, she
turned and followed man’s wide path. The exercise warmed
cold muscles, but the snow obscured her vision and she found
herself sailing only a few feet above the road, down in the
gap between the trees and scanning for food. Looking for …
something.
She heard it before she saw it. The jingle sound and a muffled
rumble of hoof and wheel gave her warning enough to swoop
sideways and avoid the wagon that loomed out of the curtain of
snow. She cawed in alarm and circled once eying the man propped up
on the seat and the horses plodding along through the snow.
The man turned to look at her, the snow coating the brim of
his hat and dusting across his shoulders. She dodged away
through the trees. The attention of men was something to be
avoided.
With a shock she realized that she’d left her own territory and
turned herself toward home. It wouldn’t do to be caught here. She
knew the pair who raised their young in this patch and they guarded
it fiercely. The call she’d made might have alerted them so she kept
silent and concentrated on moving quickly through the forest until
she’d returned to her own turf.
She celebrated her return by cawing loudly three times to warn off
anybody who may have thought she’d left and then she remembered
the house where there were sometimes fat rabbits. She cawed once
more and picked up her pace. Perhaps there’d be another rabbit
today.
Tanyth felt exuberant as she broke through the surface of sleep. She crawled groggily out of her nest. It would be awhile yet, but she felt much better knowing he was safe and on his way back. She scurried to the hearth and tossed a couple more sticks onto the fire. Today she would stay home and not visit Amber or Sadie as was her wont. Solstice was coming and she needed to think of what she could make for her friends. She fanned the coals with her wing and blew on it. Her lips wouldn’t blow, there was no pucker, no give. Just the long horny bill and she realized she was still raven, or partly raven, or–