“Well, you could if you wanted; besides, Estra’s poor mother, Seyth, was a wise-woman — where she came from.”
“But Artin’s not like that. And Uncle Lurgan almost worships at his feet …”
“Yes, nauseating, I know. But in the early days, everyone over there thought he was the spawn of Evil — couldn’t ship him over to this side quick enough, forget hospitality! Your Uncle Lurgan decided that the nursing might be better done by your mother and father and me rather than him and Aunty Helygen — a delightfully backhanded bit of recognition.”
Niav knew she had a lot to learn about the feud there had been between Uncle Lurgan and her father Diarma — even after he was dead. Things she had a right to know. But what a story! There must have been something in it, because Artin still walked with a limp to this day. And her parents really had nursed Artin the Smith — amazing!
But how strange, too, that story of the black dog. She knew there were tales of living black were-beasts — but more like cats than dogs — out there on the northern headland, but certainly not the east cliff. Imagine that though — Artin lying there in their hut, possibly even where Aunty Grizzel slept now.
Artin had hair the colour of honey and eyes the shade of new-dug peat. His smile was like dark sunlight and when he spoke to you, they said, he made a special moment for you all your own — a special place in time where you would understand, and know the way to go. But Niav herself had only seen him from afar.
“Artin took a long time to recover from the knee injury. Your father designed the first of those famous decorated wooden leg guards Artin always wears — we padded it out with moss to protect the shattered knee.
“He insisted on giving your mum and dad something for their kindness, though of course as healers we made a point of never asking for payment. So we were the first family that Artin showed how to tame bees, since we were fellow magical practitioners, so to speak.
“I think it started to restore your mum’s good name; Shamanistic integrity, as it were, after eloping with a smelly weaver-dyer — from the west bank, like your dad — who had unsuitable ambitions of being a wise man and healer, too.”
It was difficult for Niav to take in exactly what this must have meant, such a long time ago, when Artin was only an injured boy and not almost a demi-god. These days Uncle Lurgan seemed to see himself, somehow, as Artin’s representative when he was not there (which was most of the time). She couldn’t understand why Aunty Grizzel found the whole thing so ridiculous.
“What else can one do?” Aunty Grizzel smiled. “Yes, times do change, Artin had lost everything, but wanted to show his gratitude. He persuaded your mum to let him join me in learning how to make jet beads. He was a stranger and it is meant to be a secret but they let him. That’s Artin for you. We would sit polishing them for hours on those flat shards of sandstone. You know what it’s like, all the dust and oil getting up your fingernails. He was very good at it.”
It was around this time too, apparently, that Artin had made the decorated sandstone plaque that was kept propped high up on the weaving-hut wall, tucked in among all the rugs and shawls that hung there for traders to haggle and bargain for. It showed the mountains and his home valley far away across the world. These days quite a lot of people, both local and visitors who had reached the river mouth by sea — and sometimes even overland — looked on it as a sacred object, and offered Aunty Grizzel the most amazing trade goods for it, but she simply laughed and said it should stay where he had left it.
“It was just a way of him practising decoration before we let him loose on the jet,” she told Niav. “But it’s a nice design — I’ve used it for I don’t know how many rugs since then.
“But he wanted to return to his own family — poor boy. He had at least six brothers and as many sisters and he was the youngest of the lot, so he missed them terribly. He had a mysterious young wife, too, called Orchil. She was somewhere else, he said, and she was in danger. He was desperate to get to her.
“Everyone, on both banks, rallied round and helped him build a new boat — to his design of wood, of course; not a skin coracle like we were used to, or even a dug-out tree trunk like the people from the north — poor Estra’s mother included — will insist on travelling in.
“We were not at all impressed with her and her boat. While our little community was graced with her presence, she tried hard to convince us that it was much the superior water-craft — and look where it got her, poor woman.
“Do you know the very first thing that you do when you are making one of those dug-outs? You wouldn’t believe it,” Aunty Grizzel scoffed. “You bore a big hole in the bottom to the thickness that you think your boat should be. Then you start hollowing the whole thing out from the top — it takes forever — and when you finally reach the original hole you made, you know it’s finished.”
“But won’t it sink if it has a hole right through it?”
“Exactly. However, you bung the hole up. But when you need to beach the boat, where we, of course, would be able to turn our coracles over to dry, a dug-out is too heavy — that is when you pull out the bung to drain it.
“So, you can imagine that no one round here had any intention of trying their hand at one of those, but they did their best to help Artin to make the sort of craft that he was used to. They are obviously excellent boats, you have no idea of the distances they voyage or the weather they battle through. You never know if the strangers are lying, of course, but I don’t think they often are — they all say much the same things.
“Anyway,
But when it had finally been tested, Niav knew that that had been a tragedy. Father and Mother she had been told, were out in the boat with Artin, and everyone was watching from the river’s edge (with only young Aunty Grizzel minding new baby Niav back at home) and the boat had gone down at the river-mouth; only Artin’s decorated knee protector that her dad, Diarma, had made had been washed in on the sands.
What happened after that? Niav was unsure. She now felt she might have been told a pack of lies. Little details started to add up. Memories of hearing people mention that it was when Artin came back about three years later, with a new boat, a new band of brothers, a new knee-guard and a welter of new magical ideas, that many people had started to feel that maybe Artin really must be some sort of miracle-worker or even a god.
Niav couldn’t help feeling, from spending so much time with
So what had it been? Time and time again, through all the years that Niav could remember, he had come whirling in, always on the brink of a storm; Artin the Smith — smoke and magic, golden metal and golden honey. They said he gave so much and had taken so very little in return, but now she wasn’t sure.
Suddenly the skies opened and Niav dashed headlong down the ridge to tell the world.
“And how many did he have with him this time?” Aunty Grizzel was trying her best not to sound interested, as the rain pelted down on the turf of the roof and filled the drip-gully to overflowing.
“I think there were at least four of them, maybe five. One may have been a woman. I’m not sure. The light wasn’t good.”
“Five, that’s handy, five eggs. You could give those eggs as a guest-greeting.”
“I am sure those eggs are not bad,” said Niav firmly.
“Then that’s all right, isn’t it? Anyway, they are beautifully packed.”
Artin the Smith and his companions anchored their boat at the deep part by the eastern shore where the boys used to jump in from the rocks at sunset if no strangers were visiting. Next day the new arrivals were rowed over to the settlement on the opposing shore in a shoal of coracles reverently manned by a respectful escort of eastbankers — so that Artin could set up his furnace for the duration among the smells and grime of his fellow artisans on the western bank as he always did.
Artin smiled when Niav, standing at the gate of their compound, handed him the basket of eggs. It was the closest she had ever been to him. He passed it back on to one of his brothers directly behind him, who was collecting up all the gifts from the people of the west bank as they made their progress, and putting them into a hamper.
