Not that they were likely to do anything of the sort. She might have been the baby of the family, but it was a very large family, with many hands reaching for, and many mouths clamoring for, anything that happened to be desirable. Her brothers only considered another sister to be another nuisance. Her sisters already had enough of babysitting to regard the arrival of yet another child with resignation. Kaari had been destined to go through childhood wearing the hand-me-downs of four sisters, mended and re-dyed, turned and turned again, or cut down from much larger garments. Her toys were those her siblings had outgrown. She slept packed in the bed with all four of her older sisters, either too warm in the middle, or hanging on for dear life to her sliver of bed on the edge.
And yet, she had sailed through her childhood with no real difficulty. By nature sweet-tempered, by the gift of the gods a lovely child, the older she grew, the more everyone wanted her around and made a kind of pet out of her, even her siblings. If it was a lean season, people found ways of slipping her tidbits; if the season was bountiful, they still slipped her treats, but always the juiciest apple, the most succulent grape, the most perfect venison pasty. Older children took her with them on adventures or dressed her up like a kind of live doll; younger ones looked at her in awe. And no one thought twice about it.
Not until Kaari came of age and the same Wise Woman read her runes again, did she discover what that third one was. Because it turned up again.
Kaari could still see it, in her mind's eye, the little brown stone, flat, speckled with white, and the strange rune she could not read carved into it and filled with black paint. It had looked so harmless, and yet there was some feeling of portent about it, a heaviness in her chest, the sense that something was watching her.
“This rune,” the woman had said, stirring the stone with her finger. “This rune is Heart.”
Kaari and her parents had looked at her askance. None of them had ever heard of such a thing.
“You must have noticed how everyone loves Kaari,” the woman had continued.
Kaari's mother and father had nodded. Of course they had, because by then, even the most sour-tempered old curmudgeon smiled to see her. On the very rare occasions when she got into naughtiness, it was always something mild, usually because she was the unknowing accomplice of an older child, and was immediately sorry for the results. Her peers made her the center of their games, and if it was work that was afoot, they made sure it went along with such singing and chatter that it seemed half play.
“And you've noticed she's not spoiled by all this.” Again the old woman had stirred the rune. “That is the effect of Heart. It is a power that can bring people together. But it is a double-edged sword. It can cause quarrels, when everyone wants to be first in her eyes — and more quarrels will come in the future, when boys think about courting her in truth. The older she gets the more careful she will have to be. When everyone wants to love and be loved by a person with the Heart rune, that can spawn jealousy, envy, acrimony. As yet, it has not expressed itself too much in her life in that way. That will change before long. Trust me.”
They had sent Kaari away then, and spent long hours that night talking. It had given Kaari an uncomfortable feeling, knowing that they were talking about her — all because of this Heart rune. Surely she could give it up! Surely this was something that she could decide to have nothing to do with!
A ridiculous notion, of course. The runes were only the expression of what you already were. Gradually, over time, she had learned herself what all this meant. For as she grew older, those innocent little flirtations over frogs became something a great deal more serious. When husbands said with enthusiasm how pretty she was growing, wives began to be troubled. When mothers complimented her, their own daughters wondered, even as they walked arm in arm with her, why their own mothers didn't find them as sweet-natured or as pretty or as clever. Everyone wanted to be her best friend, but having someone as a best friend means that someone else must be second- best.
Then things got even more complicated.
It is a sad thing to have a boy fall in love with you when you do not love him in turn. It is worse when someone else is already in love with that boy, or wants to be. Brothers can fall out over such a things, and sisters take sides. Mothers and fathers wonder why you cannot see all the good qualities in their sons. Slowly, Kaari had learned how to tell these boys that she could not be theirs in such a way as to make their heartbreak less — for heartbreak there would be; there was no getting around it. Slowly, she had learned how to shape things so that she became the ally of other girls in love. She learned, too, how to turn away the less-innocent advances of older — and often married! — men.
It was sad for her, too, for she realized by then that she could never be sure if someone loved her for herself, or because of her runes. She had to look on even the most handsome of boys with skepticism when they protested their love. Oh, yes, the Heart rune was the expression of her nature, and she did give her affections generously, but —
She frowned a little at that memory, and brushed her hair, worn loosely, like all the village maidens, out of her eyes as she sighed with reminiscence. Even now, when she was betrothed, she had to forcefully discourage protests of love, and sometimes more than mere protests. In fact, she often said that it was only because Annukka was going to be her mother-in-law, and everyone in the village suspected that kind of sorcerous power Annukka could wield if she chose to, that someone hadn't tried something…unfortunate. No one, however, wished to spend even a few hours as a frog — or, much more likely, find himself dressing up in a gown and apron and doing all of Annukka's household chores until Annukka decided that the offense had been paid for.
Fortunately, at this time of day, all the young men were off working. They would not return from the fields, river and forest — or be released from the tasks of an apprentice — until dusk. So Kaari was unlikely to encounter any of the most susceptible.
It was a difficult dance; sometimes all but impossible. Impossible not to create some heartbreak, impossible not to invoke some resentment. And so very, very hard to remain friends with everyone involved.
And then things became even more complicated — if that was possible — once she was betrothed. Kaari had always been the confidant of her playmates, now she found herself being confessed to and asked advice of, the holder of secrets she sometimes did not want to know. Everyone liked her; everyone trusted her; everyone wanted to know her opinion. She had long ago learned to keep a firm grip on anything she was told, but that became even more imperative when she was told secrets that could harm. People trusted her. She felt impelled to be worthy of that trust. The village did not have a priest, nor a Shaman; one had to go to White Birch for that. Young Kaari often found herself standing in bewildered stead for those worthies.
As a result, Kaari, while appearing to be the most pampered, was probably the least selfish person in the entire village. She had to be. Keeping other people's feelings more or less intact entailed an enormous amount of sacrifice. She found herself giving up everything — from time spent on others that she could have used for herself, to giving cherished possessions to soothe an emotional wound. For every pretty bead necklace of polished seeds and carved pendants she kept, she gave away ten; for every length of trim she wove, she gave four. And not just to girls, or at least, not directly. There were not a few young men in the village who had mended a quarrel with a sweetheart with some former possession of Kaari's.
