The stew contained root vegetables and hunks of wild elken. They served flat bread with a dusting of spices followed by a sweet mead that washed everything down.
By the time supper was finished, I felt dazed, warm, and full.
I tried to help the women clear the dishes and wash out the soup caldron, but they shooed me away in a language I didn’t understand. Finding Oliver propped against sacks of potatoes near the fire, I slid down next to him and smiled at the flames so different from the ones we encountered yesterday.
“I have never tasted mead this sweet before,” Oliver declared loudly.
I grinned at his wild eyes and ruddy cheeks. “Did you have your fill of it?”
He held up a wineskin, sloshing some of the honey colored liquid onto his lap. “Never!”
Reaching for the skin, I laughed when he held it out of reach with his long arms. “Woman,” he slurred. “You may be royalty, but that does not give you the right to my mead.”
“Oliver!” I abandoned my quest for his drink in order to make sure we were out of hearing distance from anyone else.
We weren’t. Clusters of people, both Tenovian and Cavolian hovered around us, but nobody seemed to notice his blatant slip up.
He didn’t either. He tipped his head back and guzzled more mead, only pausing to hiccup.
“You’re drunk,” I accused him.
His head lolled to the side. “I’m not,” he argued. “I’m… I’m taking a break.”
I understood him even though his words came out sounding like Imatakeabrrreaka.
“From what?”
The wineskin slipped from his fingers and landed at his side, tipped up just right so not to spill. If his head hadn’t plopped on his arm and his body drooped nearly sideways, I would have thought he’d done it on purpose. “From worrying about you.”
Had he been worrying about me?
Music began behind me and the strange sound drew my attention away from my drunken friend.
Cavolian men stood near each other, bathed in the glow of the fire. Each held a different kind of wooden instrument; the plucking sent melancholy spiraling through the balmy night.
The air still smelled of burning embers and the spices from dinner. Laughter drifted around me, telling the story of survival and life and of Tenovians who weren’t crushed beneath the weight of tragedy.
I wondered at the strangeness of the night. I had lived in silence for the last eight years. And now, in the span of a few weeks, I was bombarded with voices and laughter and now music.
My heart swelled; my mind spun with every new sensation; my memory bloomed with old ones.
Those that didn’t play began to take women in their arms and dance around the fire. Soon the Tenovians joined in as well, laughing and swaying to music like none I’d heard before.
Gradually the music picked up tempo. Soon clapping and shouts of joy joined the song.
Leaving my satchel and Shiksa next to Oliver, but well within sight, I stood and moved to the edges of the crowd. I felt more like an outsider than I had the entire time we’d been riding with the rebel army. Even the rebels found single women to swing around and hold close.
The Cavolian women danced with a sly grace. Their shapely figures seemed designed for the music. Tenovian women were built sturdier and taller than the Cavolia, but they seemed to pick up the style of dance easily.
I watched in awe as the two cultures mingled together in a wild way. The music grew heavier, the mead flowed faster, and I waited for someone to bay at the moon.
“Fascinating, isn’t it?”
My hand flew to my heart. I turned to Arrick. “Yes,” I agreed.
He held out a hand to me. “We should probably join.”
There was a lift to his lips, subtle and captivating. It reminded me of the music. I wanted to lean in and trace it with my finger.
His warm hand closed around mine and tugged me forward. I resisted too late. We were already swept up in the dancing before I could remember to decline.
“I-I don’t know how,” I confessed.
His hand tightened over mine and his other arm wrapped around my waist, nearly lifting me off the ground. “I don’t believe you.”
My fingers curled into his tunic, “It’s true!” He spun me around, my toes brushing the soft earth. “I’ve been locked away in a monastery! I don’t know the first thing about dancing!”
Arrick smiled down at me, hypnotizing me once more with his blue eyes. He set me back down on my feet and moved more carefully, allowing me to follow his confident lead. “I disagree.” His arm tightened around my waist and I held on more firmly to his tunic, afraid that he would twirl me again. “You do happen to know the first thing about dancing.”
I found myself smiling back at him. “And that is?”
“To trust your partner.”
“Ah.” I shook my head, amused by the way his ego seemed to spread wings and take flight.
He stepped from side to side, showing me the basics with patience I hadn’t expected. I wasn’t a terrible student, but I was embarrassingly out of practice. Even as a child, I hadn’t been my parents’ pride and joy in a ballroom. That had been my sister, Katrinka.
Eventually, I learned the necessities of the dance and let Arrick handle the complicated steps. We laughed our way around the fire, enjoying the way the music danced with us and the stars sparkled overhead.
After a while, the music slowed and with it our steps. Arrick pulled me against his chest so that we were almost indecent. He held me there, daring me to pull away.
Another flash of memory or maybe recognition buzzed through me. There was something about Arrick, something that had been niggling through me since the moment I saw his face fully for the first time. The way
