“—you so soon forgotten?”
Madoc hesitated midstep. His dam’s voice, stern and subdued, floated about the topmost terrace. A pause followed, then a low, halting response. Tokela.
Ai, and what had his cousin done now? Madoc crept back down to the hollow beneath the upper scaffolding, peering up through the wooden slats. He saw the soles of his dam’s boots, then the midcalf sway of her Forest-coloured kirtles revealing the bright turquoise head wrap limned against treetops and Sky. There was no sight of Tokela, only the familiar comfort of scent—evergreen, sweat grown sharper thisHoop, and a hint of River wrack. Tokela must be over against the cliff edge railing.
He’d even less fear of heights than most, had Tokela. Would lean out into Wind from the highest branches, enough to sent Madoc’s heart aflutter, but never once had Wind betrayed him.
“Tokela.” Inhya’s kirtles gave another sway. “Even during festival there is work to be done. First Running comes. Branches must be felled in preparation. Your uncle chose you and several others to accompany him.”
Madoc frowned. Choosing the right branches and taking them to the spawning streams, receptacles for the coming harvest of tasty roe, was a task given to oških. Tracing his own hennaed Clan Marks, he frowned harder. If Tokela was old enough for the felling, then he was old enough to have his Marks replaced with indigo, to take his next path. And that meant Tokela was old enough to leave the den he shared with Madoc and the other children and remove to where the males laired. Tokela would no longer be ahlóssa, but oških.
Madoc didn’t like this, not in the least.
“It is an honour.” Inhya sounded… uncertain? “Why should Sarinak not include you?”
Tokela didn’t answer.
“Perhaps it would help.”
“Help how?” Soft, proper and respectful to one’s elders. Yet. There was something… wayward underneath. Lately when Tokela spoke, his tone flirted with the boundaries of courtesy. As if he’d found a secret, one he would not tell.
“What happened is a sign, nothing more. You are too far past your changing time, that is all. Your heart longs for a place.”
What had happened? And… changing? Tokela wasn’t past any time. Tokela’d had the wyrh tree tattooed upon his ribs several summerings past, true, but even then he’d not gone to the oških dens like many did. Tokela hadn't so much as started to wrap his clout differently, though this past wintering had seen him grow taller, quieter, making Madoc fear the worst. But nothing had come of it, to Madoc’s relief.
Tokela wasn’t oških, not yet! All oških did was scuffle and preen, swagger and rut each other!
Sinking back against the stones, Madoc reached into his own memory. He himself had been possessed of three summerings when Tokela’s dam and sire had been taken by River. Tokela’d had ten. Now Madoc was twelve summerings, so Tokela possessed…
Madoc’s frown turned puzzled. Most took the path from ahlóssa to oških before they reached twenty summerings.
“Why should it matter?” Tokela answered, still soft. Still coiling, underground, with not-quite-resentment. “Why are you both so set upon—?”
“Why are you not? If you go to fell, then it’s seen that you're starting down a proper path.” More silence. “You know he won’t ask again.”
“Then we should both be content.”
“Content? Content cannot stop the talk, growing with every return of Brother Moon!”
Talk. What talk? Madoc cocked his head to better hear.
“You’ve been given an honour you will not refuse. A chance to prove…” Inhya’s voice trailed off.
“Prove what, my mother?”
Madoc winced. Tokela sounded more of frostKin than the affectionate brother-cousin Madoc knew.
“You misconstrue.” No less adept at frost, Inhya padded nigh silent across the terrace and came to a halt directly over Madoc’s hiding place. “I’ve every right to remove you to the oških den. Why I haven’t is yet another source of speculation. But I know that you’re not—”
“I know,” ai, still so soft, “what I’m not.”
A breath, held between then, saying nothing that Madoc could understand. Then another shiver of bells; Inhya padding closer towards Tokela.
“It remains that you are not yet oških. This is not your fault. But, now. This… this thing, this… image you’ve made.” It wavered into a silence laden with too many things to count.
Ai, that was it. Tokela had been caught sketching. Again.
If only their father could understand. Tokela’s lovely, lifelike sketches weren’t Shaping! Madoc knew what Shaping was—sorcery, evil, interference with the natural ways! Like the Moons-pale Chepiś giants, who had long ago Shaped parts of thisLand into unnatural Other.
“They let me sketch.” Tokela’s voice made unwilling escape.
“And you know why, Tokela. Your father came of midLands; he chose not to understand our mistrust of such things. Your dam…” Inhya’s voice quavered; through the slats Madoc saw her grasp the pouch at her hip with a rustle and clink of dangling shells. The touch seemed to give her strength. “Your dam was heedless of too many things.”
Again, Tokela fell silent.
“You broach dangerous paths, my son. This… thing that has shown itself to you”—another incomprehensible clutch at the pouch—“is a warning. You must cast aside anything that further threatens your place here, with your family.”
“Do you think I don’t…?” It strangled into silence. Footsteps, stumbling-quick, from the far cliff edge, and Tokela’s figure lurched into view between the wooden slats of the terrace, making for the stair.
Madoc angled back farther into hiding and held his breath.
“You are a’Naišwyrh!” Inhya’s voice snapped like a midLands herder’s whip.
Tokela halted as his boot touched the top step. He turned, slow, and Madoc could see his face at last. Above the faded Clan Marks livid against flushed cheeks, his eyes gleamed from the coppery black shadow of his forelock; through some oddling trick of Sun they seemed more high-polished silver than indigo-and-black.
Tokela closed those eyes, ducked his head, and said, “A’io, hearth-chieftain.”
So hoarse, so flat and resigned. Madoc hunched beneath the weight, miserable. It was the one thing he’d ever wanted and never received; to somehow be as deft
