mothers’ barras hadn’t proved much good against the power of the river. But still, she began to wonder what had happened to her mother’s barra.
Had it been in their family a long time? Could Lurgan have told Estra as much, and made her feel that it should really have come down to her, his eldest daughter, because Befind had abandoned her birthright and should never have taken it away?
Aunty Grizzel, for once, seemed to think this was perfectly probable “Poor child, nobody likes her. She simply wants to feel special in some way. She will grow out of it, I expect.”
“Did Mother’s barra belong to Granny as well? Would I have had it?”
“I dare say it did — and possibly a whole string of grannies before that. It would have come down to you, in due course; certainly not to Estra, anyway — things like that would go down female relatives, and her mother was a complete stranger. Besides, it sounds as though she had also thrown away whatever birthright it was she
But it was her mother’s death, not her mother’s mislaid barra, that most concerned Niav. However, month followed month, and year followed year, with Artin showing not the slightest sign of reappearing at the river’s mouth. There could be no chance of Niav (even if she had managed to approach him at all) questioning him successfully about her parents’ tragedy. Artin seemed to be the most elusive of men — if he was just a man.
However, for all the other people who awaited him in the valley, the legend of what Artin was and the things he’d said and done seemed to simplify and became easier to understand — mainly because Uncle Lurgan was so assiduous in keeping his interpretation of Artin’s teachings alive in people’s minds.
“You know,” Aunty Grizzel observed, “there are times when I doubt that Artin would recognize a word of what he is supposed to have said at all.”
As for Artin’s boy, by now everyone loved Fearn for himself as much as for the memory of whose son he was. He was found to be astonishingly creative even by local standards and determined to try his hand at mastering any skill that the people on the western bank would let him learn — besides what Lurgan tried to teach him over on the eastern side.
The bees liked him too and he helped to take over the care of the hives — as might be expected of someone who has been used to the mysteries of smoke and magic — and the honey yield prospered.
He missed his own family, of course, but he did not seem unduly surprised that he had been left behind. He could wait. He had seemed a silent boy, but Grizzel and Niav gradually came to appreciate that it was more the case of him knowing how to be silent in many different tongues.
His mother had not come from the same homeland as his father, and they had lived in another place entirely — and then there was the mixture of languages that the sailors spoke which was almost a language in itself. That was why understanding the people of the river-mouth had presented no problem to him at all. He could cope with Kyle’s insipid attempts at bullying him and Estra’s flurries of melodrama, and he really appeared to like Canya just as much as Niav did — he particularly seemed to delight in music just as they did.
Once he had been shown how to cut a set of pipes from his mother’s alder, and saw the sap run as red as blood, he told Niav that he felt that Orchil was still alive, waiting for Artin too, and smiling down on him as he played.
Niav and Canya would sit enthralled, watching the dappled sunlight fall across Fearn’s bare brown back — clearly marked with his father’s white protective wings — as he sat, poised on the great rock that his father and uncles had placed beneath the shadow of the alder branches before they left. It seemed so magical a place that the girls were sometimes too in awe to sing.
Occasionally the visitors to the river-mouth included Artin’s kin. They always made a point of giving small gifts to many of the children, not only Fearn.
Once, Niav was smilingly given a lovely greenstone bead, on a soft white leather thong, that looked almost as special as Uncle Lurgan’s quested axe. But when Niav ran home with it to show Aunty Grizzel, she looked quite bemused. “That’s a very valuable thing to give a little girl — mind you, don’t flash it about when there are traders around.”
“But why give it to me?”
“Don’t forget your mum and dad saved Artin’s life — maybe it’s time it was remembered.” She went off to look for Artin’s brother and came back very quiet.
However, if Fearn begged him (or whichever other brother sailed in to the river-mouth) for news of his father, they would only smile and say that he was an amazingly busy man these days.
Every time they came, Niav felt that she would like to sail away with them and search for him too. Every girl would. How tragic it had been, everyone said, that such a beautiful man should have been reduced to limping his way around like that.
“Oh, it doesn’t notice when he is lying down,” Aunty Grizzel scoffed. “That’s the way they wish they could have seen him; besides, time passes and he won’t be looking quite so beautiful now.”
Niav would try not to be put out by such sacrilegious observations. Aunty Grizzel was endearingly eager to shock, and Niav was determined to try and seem grown-up enough to be treated as her assistant and not just her niece. She tried to show an educated interest in Artin’s injuries, and remarked how wonderful it was that he was able to give so much time and careful advice to people, when he must, surely, be in such acute pain. Had Aunty Grizzel any notion of what drug he might be taking to manage it?
“The same thing that gives him all his visions, I should imagine!” was all that Aunt Grizzel would reply — why couldn’t she try to be serious sometimes?
But that was the trouble — she was. Aunt Grizzel always saw right through her, however hard she tried. The memory of Artin represented her masculine ideal, in spite of all her mixed suspicions about him otherwise. Even though she knew that most young girls of her age were already expected to be looking around, no one else that she met, even visiting young traders, ever seemed to come up to his standard. Her aunt was tolerant and did not pressure her, but she was obviously starting to get concerned about Niav’s future happiness.
“You will become a broken-hearted wise-woman like me, if you don’t watch your step, child,” she chided her, not unkindly. “There are six lads at least that I can think of who are trying to run after you. Don’t you notice? Don’t you care? Do you want to spend your best years with a sarcastic bitch like me?”
“Oh, I’m quite fond of you really,” smiled Niav, unmoved. “And, besides, Fearn can be fun to be with too.”
She loved being with Fearn — something about the way their minds seemed to set one another’s off, always something to make, something to do; why give that up to be with the spotty youths of her own age?
One day, not long after a visitation of a couple of uncles, Fearn was sitting pensively on his rock. “You know,” he said, “I think that, this time, my uncles were trying to tell me that maybe I’m old enough to look under my rock.”
“Why, what’s under your rock?” said an astonished Niav; it was a vast thing and had taken both of his uncles and his father to get it set in place there, she remembered.
“Oh, he buried something for me underneath, to dig out when I was older. It needn’t be difficult. There are ways of moving big rocks that would simply stun you. People round here probably know, but they don’t seem to feel the need to do it. I doubt if there will be many future changes, either, with your uncle Lurgan smothering any new idea that tries to raise its head.
“Where we lived when I was little, they hefted rocks all over the place when they were feeling religious — it was quite exciting. Still, there is a lot to be said for the way you have things here. You let the children make themselves useful, beachcombing.
“Where we were, they’d have had me down a mine at the first opportunity — Orchil insisted on taking me away at the first mention of it; I prefer sunshine — so did she. But I can remember the amazing things they used to do and my uncles explained to me how they could be done. Maybe we should give it a go.”
“
“Look, it took the three of them ages, they were sweating away all night to shift it by brute force. Wouldn’t a couple of kids managing to do it — using my brain and organizational skills — prove my manhood?”
“Prove your bloody-mindedness possibly — I don’t know; it isn’t exactly my problem.”
