Red Mantle Read online

  “A school,” Mother said dubiously. “What would you do there?”

  “Teach the children to read and write, first and foremost. Then counting, and a little history about the nearby provinces.”

  “What good would that do?” Mother gave me a bemused look and spun her spindle with increased momentum. “There is nothing to read here, and as soon as the children are old enough they help on the farm, just as you did when you were little. And nobody leaves the village except maybe to marry someone from a neighboring village.”

  I tried to think of a response that would not offend Mother, who could neither read nor write. But when I looked into her loving eyes, I could think of nothing to say.

  “I think it’s a fine idea,” said Father. “I’ve always known there was something special about you, ever since you were little and you’d make up all those long stories for Akios.”

  Mother stiffened at Father’s words. I glanced at her and saw a furrow form between her brows and her lips close into a hard line. It was an expression I do not remember from my childhood.

  Náraes stood up and lifted Dúlan into her arms. “I have to go and start cooking. Jannarl will be home soon for his midday meal.”

  “I want to see the mule,” said Maressa decisively.

  “You can see her on the way out. Come now.”

  Náraes held out her hand, and Maressa slid down from the bench and followed her to the door, where Father helped them put on their cardigans and caps.

  Once they were gone, Father and Akios got dressed and went out into the rain to continue their work. I helped Mother to clear the table, filled a kettle with water from the large tub by the door and sat down to wait for it to boil. Mother put more wood on the fire and wiped her hands on her apron.

  My family has changed. Father’s beard has turned gray, Akios has become a young man, and Náraes has gone through the greatest change of all: from girlhood to womanhood and motherhood. Yet Mother looks the same as always. Thick, brown hair. Warm, kind eyes. Chapped hands. A tight braid wrapped around her head, and a striped apron tied over her home-woven skirt with the traditional Rovasian pattern of embroidered flowers along the hem. She is thinner than before, and a little more solemn. I remember a mother who laughed heartily and often.

  Until Anner died.

  “How long your hair’s grown! It reminds me of my mother’s, so thick,” said Mother, stroking my head. “You speak differently too.”

  “They speak another tongue on Menos,” I replied. “My mouth is not quite used to our language yet.”

  “Was it hard to learn?”

  I cast my mind back to the experience of arriving on Menos and understanding nothing. I longed for home so much I thought I would die. My only solace was you, Ennike Rose, and your kindness. Have I ever thanked you for that? I thank you now. I do not know whether I would have survived if you had not taken care of me, if you had not taught me the language, sweetly and patiently, if you had not held me at night when I soaked my pillow with tears.

  “Yes,” I whispered. “It was very difficult.”

  Mother stood quietly awhile with her hands pressed against her heart. She reached out a hand as though to touch me, but then pulled it back.

  “I’ll run and fetch a comb,” said Mother, and disappeared into her bedroom. She returned with a well-worn comb that I recognized from my childhood.

  “I have lost a lot of hair to that comb in Náraes’s hands,” I said with a frown.

  Mother smiled and placed one hand on my shoulder. “Now now, turn around.”

  She started on my tangled mound of hair. I shut my eyes and enjoyed the feeling of my mother’s hands in my hair, the smoke from the hearth in my nostrils and the lingering taste of rowanberry and honey on my tongue.

  “You weren’t here for your hair-braiding ceremony,” said Mother thoughtfully. “You were too little before you went away. And now you’re far too old.”

  “My moon blood flows now.”

  “Yes, of course it does, you’re seventeen after all.”

  Mother can count. Most people here can, to count the animals in the evenings and the eggs in the baskets and the sheaves in the fields. But few can count above twenty.

  The braiding ceremony is performed when a girl receives her first moon blood. On the fourth day they comb and braid her hair and then she wears it bound forevermore, as a sign that she has become a woman. I do not want to braid my hair. We never do on Menos, and I choose not to here either. I decided to change the subject.

  “Tell me a story, Mother.”

  “Me?” Mother scoffed. “You’re the one with stories to tell.”

  “A ballad, then. Any one you like.”

  Mother was quiet for a moment. She had reached my neck, and the comb was scraping my skin and making me wince. She started to sing.

  A great strong silky paw

  Honey paw all alone

  Up in the sky so black

  Sought a stronger groom . . .

  It was almost like a dream: to hear my own mother’s voice; to feel her loving hands in my hair; to hear her sing to me, like she always used to when I was little. There is no ballad that Mother does not know. It was a while before I could steady my voice enough to speak.

  “Have you been to Murik to visit Auntie lately, Mother?”

  “No. We haven’t been there in a long time. You know how much there is to do here on the farm, and whenever I’ve got time to spare, Náraes needs help with the children. The roads have been so bad this spring, and we had a lot of snow this winter. We don’t have a horse anymore, you see, so we can’t ride the sleigh like we used to. The roads aren’t as safe as they were either. But we’ve had word from Kárun Eiminsson that they’re alive and well in Murik. Do you remember Kárun? He’s a woodcutter and hunter and lives in a little hut near Jóla, so he gets about more than the villagers.”

  I shook my head. I remember no one called Kárun. There is so much I have forgotten.

  “Have you no animals to tend to?”

  “No. Not anymore. We had to slaughter them all last winter to avoid famine. It was a hunger winter.”

  “But . . . Did you not buy a pig after that? Just before I left.”

  Mother’s combing hand paused. “We’ve had more than one hunger winter, Maresi. Three years ago the drought claimed even the rye. We were forced to borrow seed and food from the new nádor to survive.”

  “We have a new nádor?”

  “Yes. After the second famine, the Sovereign of Urundien decided to replace the old nádor. We don’t know why—they never tell us anything.” I noticed that she lowered her voice as she spoke of the nádor, as if someone might overhear. “Maybe because nobody could pay their taxes after all the famine. The new nádor’s not like the others. The last one mainly kept to his castle and left us in peace, save for when the taxes were due. But this one now . . .” She hushed her voice, as if the very walls were listening. “We’re all in debt to him.”

  I turned around so abruptly that the comb tore at my hair.

  “How large are Father’s debts?”

  “Large. But don’t you worry yourself about them.” She leaned forward and squeezed my shoulders. “We’re so glad to have you home again, Maresi. Let’s not speak of hardships on your first day home.” She leaned back and lifted a strand of my hair, which was now smooth and tangle-free. “I see no harm in skipping the ceremony and simply braiding your hair now. Got to be done sometime. Would you like one braid or two?”

  I turned around and gently took my hair out of her hand. “I no longer bind my hair. It is not done on Menos.”

  She regarded me for a moment. She dropped her hand to her side.

  “The water’s boiling. Do you want to wash or dry?”

  We spoke no more of it, but I can see that my refusal to bind my hair worries Mother. Or else it irks her, like an itching mosquito bite.

  Now it is time for me to curl up in bed.

  Yours,

  Dearest Jai,

/>   I have been home for a handful of days now. I am not yet sure what to make of it. I am tired—please forgive me if I come across as bad-tempered.

  I spent the first day helping Mother around the house, and kept mainly indoors. I was tired and feeling fragile. I wanted to avoid people’s prying eyes. Instead I asked Mother about everybody else in the village. She said only that everything was the same.

  “What would change here?” she said. But she is wrong. Nothing has changed in her eyes. To me, after leaving and returning, much is different.

  My friend Sannarl, whom I used to play with almost every day, died shortly after I left Rovas. Her father was a woodcutter, and their family lived in a little cabin outside the village with no farmland. When the hunger winter came, after an early frost had claimed most of the rye and heavy rain washed away the remainder, there was no longer anyone to sell them food. By autumn the whole family had taken to the road to beg. Only the mother and Sannarl’s younger sister returned. My father’s mother also died the year after I left, weakened by hunger and age.

  I miss Grandmother. I remember her soft, wrinkled cheeks and the gentleness of her voice when she spoke to her grandchildren.

  Babies have been born in my absence, here and in the neighboring village. The village itself is the same. The buildings are where they have always been. They have not changed since my father was a boy. Jannarl’s father has built an extra room for Jannarl and Náraes and their children, but for the most part the houses look the same as they always have, though perhaps a little shabbier. There are fewer animals than I remember from my childhood, but more than there were when I fled the famine. My playmates have grown up and their parents have grown old, but life continues just as before: with hard toil from daybreak to nightfall.

  On the evening of the second day, after we had eaten, Mother cleared the porridge pot from the table and told me it was time I thought about visiting the neighbors.

  “So they know our daughter is well and truly home.”

  I understood that this was important to her. She had sheltered me from curious visitors so that I might rest, but now she wanted to show me off to the village as an honor on our home.

  “I cannot go empty-handed,” I said, and Mother and Father nodded. Everyday visits do not require gifts, but this was no everyday visit. Rovasians always exchange small gifts to mark special occasions.

  “You can go tomorrow,” said Mother. “That’ll give you time to prepare.”

  Later that evening I unpacked the salt I had bought in Valleria, and the red woolen fabric our Mother Abbess had smuggled into my bag before I left. I cut out four pieces and sewed them into small pouches. Then I embroidered some simple shapes on them, the first that came to mind: a rose, an apple, a shell. I used black and white yarn from Mother’s stash. I can picture you raising your eyebrows in surprise, thinking, “But Maresi is useless at sewing.” Well, embroidery is in fact a time-honored Rovasian tradition, and my mother and Náraes taught me the techniques from a very young age. I filled the pouches with salt, which is an expensive commodity here. All salt trade has to go via Urundien, and all the mines in Urundien and its vassal states are owned by the monarch. The Kyri River (which flows to the east of our village, and alongside the city of Kandfall, the seat of the nádor’s castle) is commonly known as the salt river, because it is used to transport the salt from the mountain mines all the way to Irindibul.

  The following day I was ready to set out with my pouches. I went to visit the neighboring farm first. It felt like the least intimidating option. I knocked and stepped inside without waiting for an answer, as is the custom here. Máros was the first to bid me welcome, making the sign we would use as a greeting when we were children. He lost his hearing after a bad fever as a boy, but we never let this get in the way of our games.

  Their house had not changed but for the new door that led into the new room where my sister now lives with her family. The earthen floor was firmly trodden and covered in crisp straw, a fire burned in the hearth, and there was a long hearthside table laid with a gaily embroidered tablecloth. Jannarl’s mother Feira was well-known for her skill with a needle.

  “Well now, here she comes, our special guest,” said Feira, rising from her seat by the hearth, where she had been spinning. She looked just as I remembered her: gray hair tightly braided and pinned up around her crown, a linen blouse and brown-striped skirt covered with an embroidered apron. Around her wrists and ankles she wore brightly colored woven bands twisted together in the old Rovasian style. She was as thin as ever, and as slow to smile. “Father, fetch the horn.”

  Maressa came running from the newly built little room where she lives with her parents and little sister, closely followed by Jannarl and Náraes. Dúlan had been sitting on her grandfather Haiman’s knee, but Haiman stood up, put her down on the floor and went to fetch the drinking horn from where it hung on the wall. Then he lifted down the jug of moonshine from a shelf, filled the horn and limped over to me. Haiman has limped ever since I have known him. His leg was injured in an accident involving a harrow when Jannarl was a boy.

  I drank from the horn, feeling very ceremonious. This was a new experience for me. Father has offered the horn to our guests many times, but I had never been the honored guest invited to drink first. The horn was then passed around, and even Maressa was allowed a sniff of the contents. She wrinkled her nose. “Blurgh!”

  I offered the red pouch of salt to Feira who accepted it stolidly, but Náraes’s eyes grew wide. Feira gingerly placed the pouch next to the jug of moonshine.

  It was oddly formal sitting at the neighbors’ table and talking about the spring sowing and the past winter. I noticed Feira looking at my unbound hair, but she said nothing. Máros’s gaze did not leave my face for a single moment, and I wished I could tell him everything about my journey and my time on Menos. But when I made an attempt to signal “island” to him with my hands, it became clear that our shared symbols fell short. How could I describe land surrounded by water to a person who has never seen anything beyond our village and the nearby forest? The farthest he has been from home is the offering grove and burial grove in the hidden valley. He knows trees and fields, but we do not share the vocabulary to describe the ocean.

  After a while I thanked them politely and continued to White Farm, so called because the doorframe is carved from real silverwood from the burial grove. Nobody would ever lift an ax or knife to one of the rare white trees of the burial ground, for fear that it would bring bad luck to their home and family for generations. But sometimes skilled carvers pick up storm-fallen branches and carve knife shafts or candleholders or other smaller objects from the ever-white, stone-smooth wood. I have never seen a doorframe made from silverwood other than the one at White Farm.

  The moment I knocked, Marget opened the door and threw her arms around me.

  “Maresi!” she cried in my ear. “Maresi!”

  I held my old friend at arm’s length and looked at her. I am a head taller than she is now. Her eyes shone as she looked at me, just as Ennike’s always do. She has a broad, determined chin, large nose and dark eyebrows.

  “Mother told me you were home again, but I didn’t quite believe it,” she said, inspecting me as closely as I was inspecting her. “You haven’t braided your hair?” she said in wonder, fingering a brown strand. “And what a cloak you have!”

  For a moment I felt embarrassed about wearing it. It is so costly and fine, so unlike anything the folk of Rovas are used to seeing.

  “Let the girl in,” came an old woman’s voice from inside the house, and Marget led me inside. And there, seated around their red-painted table as if they had been expecting me, the whole family was gathered: Marget’s little sister Lenna (who is younger than Akios), their mother Seressa, and grandmother Kild. Only the father Ádon was missing.

  “Father’s out tending to the animals,” Marget explained before I could even ask. “We’ve a cow and a pig,” she continued proudly.

  “Bo
ught with borrowed money,” muttered Kild, but nobody seemed to pay attention to the old woman’s words.

  The woman of the house raised a horn of moonshine to me, and once again I drank and passed the horn around before presenting my gift.

  “Goodness me!” exclaimed Seressa. “You’ve clearly done well for yourself out in the big wide world. We thought we’d never see you again, Maresi, so we did.”

  Lenna set the drinking horn aside, sat back down and returned to her handicraft. “Else we didn’t think you’d return with virtue and honor intact. That’s what Grandmother said anyway.” She looked at me innocently. “Do you, Maresi? Have your honor intact?”

  She did not know what she was asking, but the elder women did, and I caught Seressa looking me up and down. Marget hushed her sister angrily, but I looked her straight in the eye.

  “Yes I do, Lenna. According to your definition and mine.”

  I sat down at the table and looked at the other women. They each had something in their hands: Lenna was engaged in some simple needlework, Marget was working on a beautiful embroidery and Seressa was spinning. Only Kild’s eyesight was too poor to manage crafts. It felt strange to sit there as a guest, taskless, while everyone else was working.

  “So I said to her, I said, your eggs aren’t worth that much,” Seressa continued the conversation I must have interrupted with my arrival. “I gave her a bit of cheese, and told her that would have to do!”

  Kild nodded. “She’s always been one for high prices. It’s just her nature, but she’s no stranger to a bit of haggling.”

  “Maresi, what did you wear in that abbey of yours?” asked Marget.

  “Certainly not what you would call beautiful clothes,” I said slowly. “We dressed simply. Trousers, a linen shirt and a headscarf. White scarves for the novices and blue for the sisters.”