My clothes were torn, my bare feet bleeding when I found them in the dark inky night air. I fell to the ground and placed my hands on the stone containing the bones. A deep crack split the air, a yawning high-keening cry.
I smiled. The stones had what they wanted. Me.
15
Strange that the place I hid from my father was within his circle of stones. He’d look for me in the forest or by the water, and I needed the air to breathe that being around him made impossible.
Since he’d discovered the golden magic I contained, he’d been nothing but the attentive father I’d missed over the last years.
I wanted to please him. But his new rules were hard to obey.
No time with Tristram.
No open magic in front of the other villagers.
Instead, endless hours of practice behind the closed door of our house.
My back rubbed against the smooth stone, cool and comforting. It was as though it provided an anchor to a nameless quantity I needed.
“Mae!” I groaned as my name was called yet again. Placing my hands on the earth scattered with crisp and curling leaves, I felt for who it was. It was a trick I still couldn’t fully understand, but the earth could tell me the identity of someone approaching quicker than my ears.
Deacon.
I stood and brushed at my woollen dress. With winter fast approaching, all the villagers with the means were using their warmer clothes. It counterbalanced for the chill our lack of food left on our bodies.
Deacon grinned as he stepped through the clearing of trees and held his hands above his head, palms towards me. “I come in peace.”
I didn’t know what he spoke of, but Deacon always made me smile. “Have you done something wrong to need to declare peace?”
He stepped closer and I cast an enquiring look over his face. He seemed tired. While his lips were quirked in his easy smile, the skin around his eyes was pinched and thin. “You seem to have fallen into a foul mood with Tristram. I wasn’t sure if you extended your new animosity to his friends as well.”
My stomach plummeted at the mention of Tristram’s name. It was the one rule of my father's I couldn’t withstand. Tristram had given up casting hurt glances my way five days before, and now he only looked at me with scorn and disregard when I stood with Father as my parent gave him priestly advice. It hurt.
“You are my friend too, are you not?” I tried hard to wipe the despondency off my face. No one knew what I was going through apart from Father.
“Of course.” Deacon nodded, and I smiled.
“How can I help?”
He shifted a little from one side to another. “I remembered what you did with Agnese’s baby when she had such difficulty birthing the bairn.”
I flushed. “I did little. It is Heather who knows such things.” I peered at him closer. “What’s wrong, Deacon?”
His skin paled to a chalky white and he coughed uneasily. “Arethia has not had her woman’s curse for three cycles of the moon.” His cheeks flamed with dots of vivid pink and he shifted from foot to foot. “But today she starts to bleed. She wants you, she thinks you can help.”
I cringed. “Deacon, the bairn won’t stay in place if it doesn’t want to.” It was a wretched thing to have to say. The whole settlement knew their private anguish at being married so long with no child to show of it.
“Please, Mae.”
I shook my head. “Call on Heather, she knows more.”
“No one has seen Heather for weeks, she comes and goes as she likes.”
I frowned. I also hadn’t seen the Kneel Woman, not since we spoke by the river. “Deacon—”
“And if your chief demanded it?” I was pleased to see his face cringe with shame as he pulled his final trick.
I sighed. “If my chief demands then I shall come. Tristram could have come to get me himself if he so wished; if he wasn’t running around with a wounded pride like a spoilt child. Come, let’s go.”
We turned back for the settlement and I held my head high as we walked through the villagers to Deacon's hut. I knew people were whispering about me since Father had all but hidden me from view. I figured they all thought I was being punished for not completing my studies. What they didn’t know was I had completed my studies—overnight. I knew everything now my Father knew, and more.
I pushed through the doorway, stepping into the dim smoky light of Deacon’s home. “Arethia,” I called softly, stepping further into the room.
“She’s in there.” Deacon pointed behind a curtain but backed away, his hand still holding onto the door at the entrance.
“Go.” I nodded to the freedom of outside, he’d be happier out there.
He turned and slipped out the door, pulling it closed behind him and leaving me in a deep gloom. Arethia groaned behind the curtain and swallowing a deep swallow of air I stepped through. Fetid air caught the back of my throat and I blinked a few times to accustom my sight. Arethia writhed on the bed coverings. They were dark and damp with her sweat, and her hair stuck to her forehead, her face creased in pain.
“Oh, Arethia, come.” I bent over the poor girl, her clammy skin pressing into the palm of my hand. I smoothed over her forehead. “The pain will pass, I promise.”
Her wild eyes found mine. “Don’t let me lose it, My Baduri. Please, My Lady, Deacon will be so torn.”
“It’s just nature, Arethia. You can’t stop nature, no matter how much we may wish.”
“Call on the gods, give them anything to make them help me.”
I smiled gently. “I don’t think it works like that.”
She groaned again, lifting her hips off the mattress. I kept one hand on her
