She wandered through the wood, finding a couple of puffballs, which she picked, and quite a few stinkhorns, which she avoided with wrinkled nose. She saw no sign of Ealstan. She wondered if he was out hunting mushrooms at all. For all she knew, he could have been back in Gromheort or out searching in a different direction. It wasn’t as if she could make him step out from behind a tree by wishing.
No sooner had that thought crossed her mind than Ealstan stepped out from behind a tree--not the one she’d been looking at, but a tree nonetheless. Her eyes widened. Had she turned into a mage after all?
If Ealstan had been conjured up, he didn’t realize it. “Vanai!” he exclaimed, a grin stretching itself across his face. Instead of using Forthwegian, he went on in his slow, careful Kaunian: “I had hoped I would see you here. I am very glad to see you here. And look--I remembered your basket.” He held it up.
Vanai laughed. She did that so seldom these days, each time stood out as an occasion. “I remembered yours, too,” she said, and showed it to him.
“Now my family can wonder at me if I bring back my own basket, as they did when I brought back yours last year,” Ealstan said with a chuckle. But the good humor quickly slipped from his face. “I am
“They did,” Vanai answered, “but my grandfather and I were not among them.” She remembered how close they’d come to being chosen. “For his sake, I’m glad; he couldn’t have done the work.” She’d seen he couldn’t do it. That made her think of Spinello again, and then wish she hadn’t.
“In Gromheort, they did not seem to care,” Ealstan said. “They scooped up young and old, men and women, till they had enough to satisfy them. Then they herded them into caravan cars and sent them west with only the clothes on their backs. How can they hope to get any proper work from anyone like that?”
“I don’t know,” Vanai answered in a small voice. “I’ve asked myself the same question, but I just don’t know.”
“I think they are lying about what they want. I think they are doing something. ...” Ealstan shook his head. “I do not know what. Something they do not want to talk about. Something that cannot be good.”
He kept on using Kaunian. Because it was not his birthspeech, he paused every now and then to search for a word or an ending. To Vanai, that deliberation made him sound more impressive, not less. And he sounded more impressive still because he obviously did care about what happened to the Kaunians in Gromheort and Oyngestun.
Vanai wasn’t used to sympathy from Forthwegians. Vanai, lately, wasn’t used to sympathy from anybody, though her own people were less harsh to her now than when Spinello had been visiting Brivibas rather than her. Tears stung her eyes. She looked away so Ealstan wouldn’t see. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“For what?” he said--she’d startled him into Forthwegian.
How was she supposed to answer that? “For worrying about my folk when you don’t have to,” she said at last. “Most people these days have all they can do to worry about themselves.”
“If I do not worry about anyone else, who will worry about me?” Ealstan said, returning to Kaunian.
“When you speak my language, you sound like a philosopher,” Vanai said; she meant his delivery as much as what he said. Whatever she meant, she made him laugh. She laughed, too, but persisted: “No, you truly do.” To emphasize the point, she reached out with her free hand and took his.
Only after she’d done it did she realize she’d astonished herself. Since Spinello began taking advantage of her, she hadn’t wanted anyone male, even her grandfather, to touch her. And now she’d touched Ealstan of her own accord.
His hand closed on hers. That was almost enough to make her pull away--almost, but not quite. Even if she didn’t finish the motion, though she must have begun it, for he let go at once, saying, “You must have enough things to worry about without putting a Forthwegian you scarcely know on the list.”
Vanai stared at him. They were much of a height, as was often true of Kaunian women and Forthwegian men. Slowly, she said, “You care what I think.” By the way she said it, she might have been announcing some astonishing discovery in magecraft.
He heard her surprise. “Well, of course I do,” he said, surprised in turn.
Plainly, he meant it. Having been used and scorned and condescended to so much, Vanai hardly knew what to make of caring.
