He causes quite a stir in the Lirosi camp. He doesn’t
mind. It’s a relief to be where he wants to be, where he has wanted to be since
he fell in love with Norra. The children delight him. Their joy in his arrival
is balm to the hurt of leaving his brother alone to bury his wife. The funeral
won’t be held until a suitable lie can be fabricated that explains the lady’s
untimely death. In the meantime, rumours begin to spread. Magic figures
prominently, though the magician’s name is specific to the rumour. Many still
believe Derrick is the dark sorcerer. It lends a certain romance to his
character, and as he is still a handsome man, volunteers to become his second
wife will be many in number. Blais wishes him well. He even sympathizes when he
thinks further about it. Derrick has no natural charm and is uneasy among
women. Choosing that second wife will take some time—more, perhaps, than the
patience of the willing candidates will allow.
Contrary to Roanne’s initial fear, Da is disinclined
to put Blais on display as a novelty and charge folk a fee to view him, but his
presence in the camp attracts unwelcome attention. Though the Lirosi are a
transient people, they often spend a season in one place. This group planned to
winter on Lord Derrick’s land, but too many locals remember the lord’s little
brother and are eager to see for themselves the changes wrought on him by dark
magic. Roanne wonders why Da won’t take coin for their curiosity. Instead, he
makes noise about moving on. His daughter understands, but her newfound
affection for Kev makes it painful to think of leaving the manor.
Blais willingly helps around the camp, being capable
with his hands and having an exceptionally strong back. Da treats his lame leg
and Joel keeps his coat burnished to a tawny gloss. Roanne brings him fruit and
bread, and has sewn a soft wool vest for him to wear. The children make a game
of hiding him from what Joel snidely calls “the freak seekers”, but their
efforts disrupt too much of the camp’s routine and the men finally decide to
pull up stakes. Roanne takes the news bravely, but Blais hears her sobbing when
he stands outside her tent that night.
“I should be the one to go,” he tells Da.
The gruff response signals agreement, except that
Blais leaving will break all the children’s hearts. Leaving Kev will only break
Roanne’s. Da appears to care less for his daughter’s happiness than his son’s,
though he insists that he is caring for his daughter by parting her from the
manor boy’s influence before he can ruin her.
“As I ruined Norra?” Blais asks at last.
Da simply stares at him from flat black eyes. “You
go,” he growls.
Mam has remained strangely removed during the
manhorse’s stay. She has tolerated him at best, but in truth she has been
awaiting her moment. Blais will not steal away in the night; he will bid the
children farewell before he leaves. A man of honour, Mam observes. He
continually proves his worth, in fact; she has been so impressed that she is
now prepared to share with him the single secret she has kept from her husband
in all the years they have been married.
She brings Blais his breakfast the next morning. He
beds with the other animals, being unable to fit inside a sleeping tent, and
the children have brought him so many blankets and shirts and cloaks that he is
frequently too warm in his grassy den. For the first time, Mam offers him a
genuinely warm smile. “Today you leave us,” she says.
“I have stayed too long,” he replies, slightly wounded
at the pleasure she is taking in his departure. He has seen her watching him
with the children; not only hers, but the others in the camp, the little ones
she minds for their mothers, and she has seen the joy in their faces when he
plays with them. He realizes that he had hoped she might be moved in his
favour, though it’s clear he cannot remain with them whether or not she changes
her view.
She asks the same question he has been asking himself.
“Where will you go?”
He has no answer for her, either. His reply is
honestly vague. His confident manner is false and she knows it. “Thank you for
your kindness,” he says. “I’ve brought pain and uncertainty to your family, yet
you have sheltered and fed me. If there was anything I could do to repay you, I
would do it a thousand times and still be owing.”
Mam listens with her head cocked, smiling faintly.
“Have you not wondered why the tainted arrow did not kill you as Lady Alarice
intended?”
Her frankness gives him pause. Mouth half-full, he
repeats his belief that the children saved him. Mam’s proud smile widens, but
Blais sees that he has been mistaken. “Is that not so?” he asks, mystified.
She circles him slowly, studying him with the
discerning eye of an artist. She possesses the same innate love of horses as
the rest of her tribe and she admits, running a thoughtful hand over his flank,
that he is a particularly beautiful creature. “Made with love, I think, rather
than spite.”
He looks over his shoulder at her. “What are you
saying?”
She pulls her hand back to her side. “Will you walk
with me?”
“Of course.”
They set off in the cool, misty morning. She walks
with purpose, her feet barely whispering over the grass. Light-footed, like her
son and her daughter. Beyond the fringe of the camp, she stops to request that
he carry her on his back. “It’s not so far on four legs,” she says.
Blais stands firm while she mounts up. “Where?”
“You’ll see,” she replies. She weighs more than her
children but sits very lightly; he barely feels her hands and heels. She aligns
herself with his torso and asks him to gallop. He obliges.
The ride makes further talk impossible. He is built
for speed and loves to run as he had loved to ride. Mam perches like a feather
on his back and the thought crosses his mind that she, not her husband, has
taught her children to ride. Like Joel, she guides him with her thoughts as
much as her hands, turning him from the trees and urging him up the hill. He
gallops up the grade, trying to recall if he has ever come this way. He surely
must have done; he knows his brother’s territory from corner to corner, but
this graceful slope with the flowering meadow at its crest is unfamiliar to
him.
“Whoa,” she says, and he slows his pace to let them
both breathe. He splashes through a stream and emerges in a thicket on the
other side. The ground is soft with leaves and fallen needles, neither of which
bother Mam when she slips from his back to resume her place at his side. She
keeps a hand on his back as she walks. Blais squares his manshoulders and
flicks his tail with pride. Winning Mam has been a struggle, but it appears that
she has finally accepted his sincerity.
“The arrow struck a counter spell that weakened its
taint,” she says, continuing the conversation as if it has not paused. “If the
magic that made you had been the same as that which poisoned the arrow, you
would have died as you fled. Do you really think that a witch who dislikes
horses would use her power to make you more beautiful than you were as a man? I
believe that she was jealous. I believe that she wanted you for herself, but it
was not she who made you what you are. Only love could do that.”
“Love?” he echoes. “Love would do this?”
“You do not know our people as well as you pretend.”
They come to a grove where the trees and vines
conspire to hide a twisted little cottage from unwitting eyes. At first Blais does
not see it. Mam chides him again. “Look with your heart,” she tells him. “Look
with love and you will see.”
A door opens behind the web of moss. He spies the
movement before he spies the door itself, and is deterred from bolting by a
shapely figure with straw-coloured hair stepping through the screen.
He tries twice to get her name past his throat and
when he finally succeeds, it emerges as a dry croak. “Norra?”
“Blais!” She runs to him, embraces and kisses him
while he stands unable to do more than question his senses. Her smile is the
same bright smile he has seen on her younger, darker sister. The same smile as
her mother’s, the same smile that captured his heart at the summer dance. Her
eyes reflect a myriad of emotion, but love reigns supreme. The love Mam has
mentioned, the love that gave him four legs and a tail. Her voice is breathy
with relief. “You remember! I feared you might not; there was no way of knowing
…”
He is more shaken than is comfortable. “I remember
only that I loved you.”
Uncertainty weakens her smile. “ ‘Loved’,” she
murmurs. She heaves a sigh exquisite with remorse, her soft brown eyes seeking
her mother. Mam encourages her with a nod, and she makes herself face the
manhorse once more. “I see why your feelings have changed.”
“They haven’t,” he swiftly assures her. “I just … I
thought you were dead.”
Her smile timidly ventures back. “Not dead. Banished.”
Blais is confounded. “From the manor?”
“From everywhere. When you disappeared, Lord Derrick
dismissed me so I went home, but I couldn’t stay there either. Da disapproved
of everything I had done. He sent me back to the manor. I didn’t go, of course.
Lady Alarice would have tried to kill me for stealing you.”
“You didn’t steal me. I was never hers.”
Norra glances with meaning at his front hooves.
“Altering, then.”
“Why did you do it?” he asks, plaintively. “I could
have managed Alarice.”
“I knew what she was,” Norra answers. “Not only was
she a weaver of dark magic, she was cruel enough to kill me by slaying you. I
had to save you, my love.”
“She tried to slay him anyway,” Mam says. She tells
Norra of the tainted arrow and the children’s discovery of the wounded creature
in the wood. She talks of her part in tending him, of Kev’s reluctant
assistance and Joel’s discovery of the dark magic. She also tells of Da’s
grudging acceptance that Blais may be the rarest of rarities: a marauder with
honour.
Blais watches her as she talks. If what she says is no
proof, it’s clear in the tone of her voice and the angle of her brows that she
has known everything from the beginning. “You helped to change me,” he guesses.
“You’re a sorceress as well.”
“I have the gift of sight,” Mam corrects him. “I saw
that Lady Alarice’s spite was destined to destroy her. It would take time, so I
hid Norra away and promised to bring you here when it was safe.”
Norra sounds anxious. “Lady Alarice has perished,
hasn’t she?”
“She has,” Mam replies. She pauses, her lips thinning
as she ponders a confession. “I might have brought the manhorse sooner, but I
had to be sure of him, as well. He is, after all, the marauding lord’s
brother.”
Norra regards Blais with gentle dark eyes. “He is
nothing like his brother.”
“You did try to tell your father,” Mam admits with
grim amusement.
Blais remembers Roanne and Joel. “The children; do
they know their sister is alive?”
“They will.” Mam pats his shoulder and moves to
embrace her daughter. The two whisper together, then the woman prepares to take
her leave. Norra is reluctant to release Mam’s hands because it means releasing
Blais, for he insists he must go back to bid the children farewell.
“You’ll return?” Norra asks him.
His promise is in his eyes, but he speaks the words
anyway. “As fast as four legs can carry me.”
To be continued …
copyright 2013 Ruth R Greig
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