His face remained blank, his gaze unknowing at my greeting. He straightened his back, coming out of his dream. “I am fine, My Baduri.”
Why wouldn’t he meet my gaze? Hadn’t it been yesterday we’d laid by the river as close as two people could be? Father frowned in my direction but then turned with a swirl of his cloak and went to organise some priests clustered and waiting for instruction.
“Tristram,” I ran a gentle hand along his forearm, but he pulled his skin out from under my touch. “Please talk to me. What have you and father spoken about? What are we going to do?”
His lips settled into a firm line, his eyelids dropping into slits. “We shall bury my father and then I will be named leader. It’s the will of the priest.”
My heart hammered. Tristram wasn’t the man who was supposed to lead us. This was a terrible mistake. He was the man who was meant to maintain our status quo, to keep us happy in our miserable winter months, to care about us all.
A leader had to be too ruthless. A leader had to lead without thought.
“Tristram, I’m worried for you.”
His top lip lifted, and he huffed a breath through his nose. “You think I’m not the man to lead us?”
My mouth fell open. “No.” I stuttered though, and his black filled gaze burned. “I think you are every man, but my father, he is distracted at the moment. I don’t know if he can guide you.”
“And will you? Guide me if I need it?”
I bowed my head. This was no longer my Tristram in front of me. He was my leader. “If you request it, My Lord.”
My words hurt, they caught in my throat and made me wince.
“I do. I suggest you finish your training, Baduri. We will have a long fight against these invaders.”
“Fight?” My hands reached for him but froze mid-air. “The foreigners will tear us apart. They want our land and resources. No invader has ever come to these shores in peace.”
“And you know this because you are fluent in our lore and histories?” He raised a fair eyebrow, his dark eyes sweeping across my face; no warmth I would expect in a curve of his lips.
“Yes.” My mind freed itself, spinning and stretching, filling itself with a visual picture. As if I’d written the past myself, the image came to me. “The red-haired warriors came from over the sea, their chariots spinning in the earth, taking all the land they could, stealing our women and livestock.”
Tristram’s face dropped. “You hate histories.”
He wasn’t wrong. In fact, he was incredibly right.
The image inside my mind, grew and expanded until it was all I could see. “They stayed, became our neighbours, accepted our ways.” I thought of Ebrehered of the neighbouring clan. His hair a pale copper, wild and tangled, his skin covered in smatterings of darkened dots. Then I saw a swirl of red, splashes of vibrant colour, glimmering with gold as bright as the sun, sweeping across our drab and dour land.
I’d never met Ebrehered before. I didn’t know from where his people had come. But I knew now without any doubt his ancestors had landed on our shores, dressed in deer skins, and explored our wild terrain. It was a baduri, like myself, who had tamed the wild men and made them put down the roots of their settlement.
My eyes flew open and my shaking fingers fell against my lips before I could say anything else.
Turning on my heel I launched myself to run into the forest.
“Baduri, you must stay within the settlement.” Tristram’s hot hand curled around my arm with an easy grip.
“Remove your hands from my arm.” I glared at the stranger before me. How dare he call me his priestess. How dare he speak to me in that way, when I’d always been so much more to him.
Furious, I launched my hands against his chest, pushing him back. “Stay away from me, Tristram.” Gathering the skirts of my cotton dress in my shaking hands I prepared to run.
“Mae, wait.”
I hesitated, his voice darting through my stomach like an arrow attached to finely spun string. The gem against my throat heated and pulsed. When I turned, his face was torn, his fair eyebrows knotted together, his lower lips drawn between his teeth. “You will come to the burial with me, Mae?”
I could sense the annoyance in the question. Before yesterday I would never have not gone with him.
I dropped a curtsey and his frown deepened. “As you wish, My Lord.”
And then I ran, far away from Tristram, far away from our devastated people. But the images of the past, the stories I hadn’t yet learned, stayed in my head no matter how fast I ran.
It was Heather who found me with my toes dipped into the clear cool run of the river. It wasn’t the same as the day before. I wished I could erase time, wished that yesterday had never taken place, that I hadn’t turned eighteen. Same as I wished Alen hadn’t marched out to meet the invaders without waiting and pausing for thought first. Out of all the things I wished for, being able to remember Tristram’s hardened gaze was the one I wanted to change the most. He was twenty—we’d spent uneasy years living in peace with our neighbours, the rhythm of our lives settling into a comfortable ebb. He shouldn’t be the man who led us to our end. He deserved more.
“What are you thinking?” Heather settled beside me, her bracelets clacking. She frowned at the water as it swirled around my toes.
I turned to her, shielding my face from a beam of sunlight slanting through the boughs of a young oak. “I was wishing the water could wash everything away: every hurt, every tear, every argument.”
Heather smiled and patted my hand.
