Hearthfire Read online

  “That’s all?”

  “The Journeying proves us worthy to join the village. It’s arduous but necessary.”

  Jenin broke eye contact, hys gaze focused on Lyah’s midsection. Not in the way Lyah hoped; there was no lasciviousness in Jenin’s face, only a quiet vulnerability that made the tingles of excitement in Lyah’s stomach turn sour.

  “Jenin?” Lyah placed her hand on Jenin’s chest, her fingers seeking out the solidity of Jenin’s flat planes and strong muscles that came from hys toil in the fields. For all sy came from the same womb as Dyava, Jenin could turn serious with the changing of the wind.

  “I have to tell you something,” sy said. Hys eyes darted to the skyline of the village, the low curved roofs of the roundhomes clustered at its center. A breeze ruffled Lyah’s hair, pulling long strands from her hasty plait that stuck to her lips.

  The sour nervousness in her stomach grew, like fermented plum juice gone past enjoyment. This was not what was supposed to happen on the eve of the Journeying. “Jenin,” she began, putting all the love she could into the speaking of hys name, only to have it die on her lips as she remembered that sy would only shortly bear it, that the name she’d come so accustomed to speaking in love would be eschewed for a new one. Now Jenin yl Tarwyn vy Haveranth—then who? Who would Jenin be in three moons’ time?

  Jenin scrambled to hys knees and took hold of Lyah’s shoulders, sensing her discomfort. “It’s not about us, fruit of my heart. It’s more than us. More than the Journeying.”

  Alarmed, Lyah felt her breath come faster into her chest, even as the breeze rose to become well and truly wind around them. “What is it?”

  “I can’t say yet.” That weight returned to hys gaze.

  “Then why say something now?” Lyah’s tongue felt dry like the clay that caked her mother’s worktable.

  Jenin’s hands tightened on her shoulders. “I ought to have kept quiet. I’ve not spoken of this to anyone, but I’ve learned things and—”

  The bell tolled in the village, one loud, reverberating note that spread out through the fields and hills around Haveranth. Sure enough, the sun had dipped below the horizon to the west, its rays following the Bemin to the sea where it bid farewell to the folk of Bemin’s Fan before sleeping in darkness for the night. To the east was Cantoranth, where only the slightest haze of smoke betrayed the presence of their neighbor-village. Strange that this cycle no one would join them from Bemin’s Fan or Cantoranth for the Journeying; no others came of age. There were whispers in town that fewer folk had been born in recent cycles, that two thousand cycles back the Journeying had brought as many as a score of young folk searching for their names. Now there were only four, all from Haveranth.

  For the first time a true vine of fear spread through Lyah’s core, writhing like a worm at the center of an apple. Someone called out from the village, and Jenin, whatever sy’d been about to say lost, rose to stand, pulling Lyah to her feet.

  “One day,” sy said. “One day, I’ll be able to explain to you. Don’t worry on it.”

  Lyah felt that spoiled pit in her stomach grow heavier and sourer. “Jenin,” she said.

  “Ahsh,” sy said, hushing her. “Remember one thing for me.”

  “Always.”

  “There is always the choice. As children, we choose the things we love and the village nurtures them. As youths we find ourselves and declare our appellation to our families, man or woman or hyrsin, declaring not just who we are but who we will become. As adults there will be the choice as well. I’ve made mine. Lu dyu, pah, artus lu suo dyosu suon.”

  Sy smiled as if to say sy could quote proverbs too, but it didn’t reach hys eyes.

  “I choose you,” Lyah said, her voice full of a vehemence she didn’t know she possessed.

  “And I will never be far from you,” said Jenin, kissing Lyah’s lips with softness like down. Sy left Lyah on the banks of the Bemin, the rushing of the water over its time-smoothed stones not full enough to make the proverb Jenin’d spoken less hollow.

  In darkness, birth. Light reveals all for good or ill.

  CARIN’S THOUGHTS as she watched the shadows lengthen arm in arm with Ryd had less to do with getting sat on and more to do with trepidation.

  By the time she removed her arm from Ryd’s—her own was now cramped at the elbow and sore to the shoulder—she gave serious thought to plunking right back down in the grass where their twin rump-marks had left double dents in the early spring growth.

  She bid Ryd a bountiful night and made her way home to her roundhome, though it wasn’t hers yet.

  The lamp was not yet lit, the shutters not yet open. This night was the last she would spend with her mother in their house. When she returned from her Journeying, she would be new-named and free to pursue her trade. Whatever that might be. Whoever she might be.

  Its rounded walls curved back from where she stood, inviting. She could picture the wide central room, its hearth and chimney painstakingly constructed from the Bemin’s smooth stones and mortar she’d mixed herself. Carin looked up at the domed roof, its clay shingles kiln-fired and glazed by her own hand.

  Her fingers closed around the door’s latch, the handwrought metal curving gracefully out from the polished wood that she herself had shone to its current warm gleam.

  The windows she had framed and set herself as well, the panes of round glass snug in their encircling bands of wood. Carin could still feel the strain of the wet maha as her fingers closed around it, warping the wood with its grain, molding it around the metal template, binding it with clamps so it would dry snug and tight.

  She had made this home with her hands. As much as Dyava had wanted to help, she had not let him, though she had acquiesced to him bringing her fresh pockets of curried goat in soft bread and dried berries in conu juice. Her home had needed to be hers alone. Now, though, she wished some mark of Dyava’s had worked its way into the building of it. Her fingers trailed away from the latch, the metal now warmed by her heat.

  Carin walked the path to her mother’s home, unable to help but notice that she already drew a dividing line to show that her ownership of that home had lapsed.

  It hasn’t yet, she thought fiercely. Try as she may, though, she could not bring herself to think that she was going home.

  She only hoped that when she returned from her Journeying, she’d think herself home in the house her hands had raised. Perhaps someday Dyava would make his home there with her. Perhaps.

  Grey smoke piped from her mother’s chimney, bringing with it the scent of herbs and spice. Two figures showed silhouetted through the window as Carin approached, and she knew without closer inspection that one would be Merin. The eve of a Journeying. It was seldom these days that four villagers were to make the trek in one season, and tonight Merin, the village soothsayer, would pay respects at each home.

  Carin felt a chill that spread from the metal latch on her mother’s door shoot through her hand to the top of her spine where it sent tendrils down her back and up her skull. Merin knew all their names.

  What if I can’t find mine? Every child asked that question at least once, and the adults always laughed. Every Journeyer found her name. There were no Nameless in the Hearthland, and there hadn’t been for cycles. Entire High Harvests had passed since the last, each five cycles apart.

  Every child asked that question, but not on the eve of the Journeying. Perhaps they all kept their asking only within the confines of their skulls.

  Carin pushed down on the latch and opened the door. A gust of warm, spice-scented air greeted her, and she closed the door behind her before turning to face her mother.

  “Favor find you,” Merin said first, her crackly voice reaching Carin’s ears from the direction of the hearth.

  Carin paused, doing her best to wipe any apprehension from her gaze. When she turned to face the soothsayer, she had made sure her eyes were relaxed and open, coaxed a small smile into tugging the corners of her mouth. “And you, Merin. May the p
lanting this Harmonix eve bear bounty for the good of Haveranth.”

  The old woman’s face folded into a knowing grin, as if Carin’s careful rearrangement of her own expression could not fool anyone.

  Carin’s mother was nowhere to be seen, but after a moment, she came bustling in from her bedchamber with a long parcel in her hand. She set it on the trestle table and turned to face her daughter.

  Rina ve Haveranth was built for her smith’s trade. Standing of a height with Carin, her broad shoulders drew her out to double Carin’s width. Where Carin’s muscles were lean and long, her mother’s were short and strong. She didn’t often show emotion, but when she looked over the trestle table at her near-grown daughter, Carin was almost sure she saw Rina’s eyes glimmer. She wore a furrow between her brow, and she didn’t look away from Carin’s face for several long moments. Finally, Carin forced herself to turn, embarrassed at her mother’s stare.

  At the hearth, Merin clunked a wooden spoon in the cook pot that burbled there. “If the two of you are done staring at each other like a couple cats, why don’t you set the table?”

  No one else could have gotten away without a skinning telling Rina ve Haveranth what to do in her own home, but Rina and Carin both took deep ceramic plates and heavy clear glass goblets from the open shelves on either side of the hearth and placed them dutifully on the table. Carin tried not to look at the long parcel. It took up nearly half of the sturdy wooden table, a table that had always been far too large for only Rina and Carin. As Carin laid the last spoon and fork next to a plate, her mother caught her arm.

  Rina said nothing for a moment, but her callused hands dug into the bare flesh of Carin’s forearm. When she pulled back, pale white impressions quickly faded from the bronze of Carin’s skin. Carin was so transfixed by the strength of her mother’s grasp that she almost missed the shining tear that escaped Rina’s right eye, captured quickly by Rina’s left hand and obliterated into the dark blue woolen folds of her tunic, to be remembered only by the blue-black smudge it left behind.

  “That’s a good child,” Rina said. Her voice gave away no clue of the tear, nor any acknowledgment that any such liquid had ever spilled from her eyes.

  Those were the final words spoken until the stew spilled from Merin’s ladle into the deep plates and Rina splashed deep blue iceberry wine into the goblets. It shone like twilight stone in the light from the hearth, and the colors it cast on the table turned purple-bright against the polished red cast of the wood. The glassworkers of Bemin’s Fan had come to Haveranth for the Night of Reflection and exchanged the goblets for Rina’s expertly forged knives and kitchenware. Merin hung the pot back over the hearth, her movements as sure as if she shared the home and wasn’t simply a guest.

  The older woman sat down first, looking expectantly at Carin and Rina until they joined her at the table. The stew steamed in Carin’s plate, the scent sweet and spicy. Dots of purple oil from the cave chilies speckled the creamy white surface, and Carin breathed in the humid warmth. She was a dismal cook. This might be the last home-cooked meal she got before the Reflection Vigil on the darkest night.

  She ran her hand along the edge of the table. Strong wood. Dense wood. The same maha she had used to frame the windows in her new roundhome. Tooled into the edge were runes of home and hearth. Carin would miss this table.

  “I’ve never known either of you to lack for words, Carin and Rina ve Haveranth. If one of you doesn’t start eating soon, I’ll switch out your tooth scrubs with mashed cave chili seeds.” Merin picked up her spoon and slurped a mouthful of the spicy-sweet conu broth. “Carin may have gotten her wits kissed out of her, but you, Rina, ought to be joyful on the eve of this Journeying.”

  Rina said nothing, only dipped her spoon into her soup herself.

  Carin hurriedly followed suit, plucking a chunk of white fish from the stew and popping it into her mouth. “Thank you for sharing your cooking with us, Merin.”

  Merin waved a hand. “Are you ready for tomorrow, child?” Oddly, her eyes were on Rina as she said it, though not even Merin could get away with calling Rina “child.”

  If there was anything Carin looked forward to without any accompanying anxiety, it was returning from the Journeying to never being called “child” again. She swallowed her bite and washed it down with a sip of wine.

  “Ready as one can expect,” Carin said.

  Merin’s eyes still held Rina’s, but she broke the look to give Carin a tight smile.

  Something seemed to pull the air in close and tight. Carin’s shoulders had drawn in with it, whatever it was, and she tried to relax. Her mother’s expression, still stamped between the eyes with her worry, was not the way a mother ought to look on the eve of the Journeying. Proud, nostalgic, fierce—but not troubled. The question rose again in Carin’s mind, bubbling to the top like water just about to boil.

  Rina reached over and picked up the long parcel and handed it to Carin.

  Confused by her mother’s action, Carin set down her spoon to take it.

  The parcel was long and bulky, wrapped in thin, rust-colored wool and secured with leather thongs in surprisingly intricate bows. Carin tugged on the thongs to untie the bows, almost sad to watch as the loops shriveled into kinked strands. The wool was good quality, and there was enough of it to make a cloak.

  Or perhaps it already was a cloak. Carin turned over one edge to reveal a hood and a lining of soft, cured leather. She sniffed at it—pimia oil. Very rare and expensive, but excellent for waterproofing. Carin looked up at her mother in shock. The cloak was a gift suitable for the High Harvest, not a Journeying. The High Harvest wouldn’t come for half a cycle yet; every Harvest Harmonix was special, but this one would be different. Only once every five cycles did the Harvest Moon share the sky with its satellite and the sun, the three orbs dancing across the sky as one. This would only be the third High Harvest Carin had ever seen. If she was getting such a gift now, what might her mother have in store for later?

  Her fingers had stilled on the oiled leather, and Rina’s barked command jerked her out of her thoughts.

  “Keep on,” Rina said, voice gruff.

  Carin pulled back the sides of the cloak. And again. There was something stiff beneath the folds of wool and leather. Her first glimpse was of a white, gleaming curve. She followed that curve as it bent beneath the leather, her hand chasing its smoothness. A gut string brushed her knuckle. She pulled back the final fold of wool and leather to reveal a glorious bow, a recurve crafted from fine white halm. Halm was a sacred tree, a powerful tree. Dense and strong and enduring, yet resilient. This bow could be a day old or a thousand thousands. Unable to speak, Carin ran her hands along the length of it.

  It was a gift out of legends. And it was hers.

  MERIN LEFT shortly after, saying nothing about the bow or the cloak, only bidding Carin and Rina a bountiful night. But to Carin, formulaic though the farewell was, something seemed to lurk beneath it, flickering between the old soothsayer and her mother. Something that deepened the crease between Rina’s eyes. Telling herself it was all in her mind, Carin watched Merin cross the pavilion that housed the village hearth-home and knock soundly on Ryd’s door. Jenin and Lyah tended the fire; Carin could see them in the central village hearth, their faces lit with flickering light, not paying Merin any heed as she walked by them. At high night, Clar el Novah would come to take over the tending of the fire—how she would do so all cycle was a mystery to Carin.

  Merin vanished into Ryd’s home, and Carin closed the door. All those undertaking the Journeying would play host to the village soothsayer that night. Rina took her leave only moments later, leaving Carin alone to wash up and wonder how her mother had come across such a gift. Both gifts. Even now, they sat in a sturdy chair across from where Carin washed the night’s dishes. The bow she’d laid across the chair’s arms, and the fire cast pale orange flickers across its length.

  Just before her mother had closed her bedchamber door, Rina had produced a leather
hip quiver full of halm arrows. The wood was dense enough that no heads were needed. Honed to a deadly point and barbed at the sides, each arrow could pierce flesh or rend bone. Carin felt a prickle of unease, compounded by these items coming into her possession. She had never heard of such splendor given to Journeyers. Not for the last time that night, she wondered what would come of her if she could not find her name.

  Her mind would not quiet, nor would her thoughts be calmed that night. Carin tidied the kitchen, polished the trestle table, and banked the fire for the evening, each domestic movement a shadow of her own future when the roundhome down the path would be hers. She shuttered the windows, as was proper for the home of Journeyers.

  When she finally retired to her bed, the woolen coverlets felt at once familiar and foreign. Tomorrow would dawn in only a few short hours. The rest of Haveranth would rise early; Carin had seen it before. They would rise before the sun and begin their work. Planting Harmonix, the day when the sun and moons danced equally through the turning of the earth. Night and day gave way to one another, and the planting for the cycle began. The Journeyers would set forth without fanfare, while those in the village plied their trades and skills to work the land just as every other day.

  If Merin was correct, the Discovery Moon would be well overhead as the sun rose, her sister beside her, always present, always circling.

  And Carin would leave Haveranth behind her to set off into the Mad Mountains to find her name.

  An insistent tapping at her window made Carin jump in her bed. She rose on warm feet that shied away from the cold of the wooden floor and unshuttered her window.

  Lyah leaned on the sill, an impudent smirk lighting her face. Carin threw the window open.

  “Get in before someone sees you,” she hissed.

  Lyah wore only her night robe and leather-soled woolen house clogs, and she leaped the sill with the practiced ease that came with having done the precisely same action at least once per turn for twelve cycles of the moons. She doffed her clogs and shuttered the window again herself, turning to face Carin. She was taller than Carin by a knuckle’s length. Her eyes were green-flecked gold, and her dark hair was a ratted mess, carelessly plaited over one shoulder. She smelled of spring and the river grasses that told Carin Lyah had spent her day by the banks of the Bemin as always, most likely with Jenin at her side. Woven over those scents was the smoke from the hearth-home fire. The dark gold in Lyah’s eyes was almost the precise color of her skin, which gave her an almost unnerving sense of cohesion about her. The rest of Lyah, however, assuaged any fears of being too together. Her hair was always only half done; her eyes held that glimmer that said mischief was only moments away. She seldom wore shoes, and she was the best fisher in Haveranth with a spear.