Across the Face of the World (2 page)

Underneath the protective mantle a boy sheltered, shaking with the cold. Occasional drops fell from the branches above him, finding the back of his neck with unerring accuracy. It was not supposed to turn out like this, he thought angrily. Cold and wet and miserable, he pressed himself back against the bony trunk. Why had he ever thought to ask her here? What foolish idea had taken hold of him? The others would be laughing at him, he knew it, and the thought of their taunting smiles bit into him more than the icy wind, more than the knowledge that she was not coming, that she had never intended to come.

The wind drove another squall of rain across the common. A gust idly flicked a cold, wet arm under the shelter of the big tree and stung the boy's eyes with the ends of his blond hair.

Invisible fingers snapped at a golden leaf, which gave up its struggle and fell swirling to the ground. The youth shuffled forward and peered at the brown dead thing. Why couldn't it be left alone? It was dead anyway; why bother with it further? His eyes glazed over and he sank back against the oak tree. He wasn't leaving, wasn't moving until she came, even if she never came, even if they found him wet and cold and maybe dead.

It would pay them all back.

The sharp north wind seemed to be bringing in darkness as well as rain. Noises of doors closing and bolts being drawn filtered across the common. House lamps stretched pale fingers towards the oak tree, pointing accusingly at the shivering figure beneath it. From somewhere behind him came the shrill voice of a woman scolding a barking dog. Above the tired village the wind rolled the clouds away, exposing the steel-grey sky, darkening towards night. The hoy hugged himself and moved from foot to foot to ward off the cold, while he stared up at the stars. Everybody would know by now that she wasn't coming to meet him. She was probably telling them in her low, quiet voice. They would all be watching the oak tree from their windows, talking, laughing, pointing. He could imagine it! Druin's blockish scorn, laced with obscenities, Hermesa's trilling mockery, Lonie's smirk, and Stella's eloquent silence.

Stella! She was as unreachable as the merrily twinkling stars.

The wind died and for a few still seconds the boy could hear a familiar voice calling his name.

Then a blast of frigid air from the north carried the voice away. Sighing, he eased himself away from the rough trunk and, with a reluctant stoop, began to shuffle across the rain-soaked turf towards the figure of his brother holding a guttering lantern.

'She didn't come, then.'

'I don't want to talk about it.' The boy's voice was laced with embarrassment and shame.

'Just because she didn't come doesn't mean she hates you.'

'I said I didn't want to talk about it!'

His brother ignored the waspish tone. 'She would have met you, hut she's afraid of the other girls, of what they would say.'

'She would never have come. She thinks I'm weak, a spring twig in a snowstorm, they all do.

Well, I don't care.' He glared across the room at his older brother. 'She'll tell them all that I asked her to go walking down by the lake. They won't say anything to me, but they'll all be talking about it, especially Druin. You know how he never leaves me alone. Asking Stella to go walking is the most stupid thing I have ever done.'

A frown flickered across his brother's face. He shifted slightly in his bed.

'Stella doesn't think you are weak, Leith. She's just fearful of all the talk. It will take her some time to overcome her fear.'

'And in the meantime?'

'In the meantime, be patient with her. Stella keeps herself to herself. She doesn't give anything away easily. Not only that, she's under enormous pressure at the moment. You'll need to be patient if you wish her to trust you with her companionship.'

Good old Hal. Never criticising him, never telling him to forget about her, never telling him to grow up like his mother always said. Leith sighed. Be patient? By then it would be too late, someone else was bound to have claimed her. What was the use? She was destined for someone else, so why should he get upset? There would always be someone else older, stronger; he would always be second, always the baby, never taken seriously .. .

'Why should I have to wait? By the time she notices me, I'll be too old or someone like Druin will have beaten me to it. She's just not interested, and she never will be interested. I'm too young and I'm not clever enough for her.' He turned his head away from Hal.

'Not clever enough? Leith, everyone else here is in your shade. For the sake of the Most High, don't listen to their nonsense. You are clever, you are intelligent; you just take your time because you're afraid of making a mistake. There's nothing wrong with that.'

'I don't know...' Leith liked to hear Hal saying things like this. He lay there a moment, wondering how he could get his brother to say it again, but Hal spoke first.

'Did you stay under the tree all afternoon?'

'Yes. Clever, aren't I?'

Hal said nothing.

'I asked her to meet me there at two o'clock, so I waited a while and then came home. What was for dinner?'

'A roast, to mark the first day of winter. Here,' said Hal, stretching awkwardly down and feeling beside the bed with his good hand, 'I saved you some.' He handed a cloth-covered plate to Leith.

'Why did Mother have to be so angry? She knew I would be all right. She never worries about you, even when you stay out all night.'

Hal pursed his lips, but remained silent. Leith knew his words were unfair. Hal had never needed any looking after, not even as a young child. Early one morning, nearly seventeen years ago now, Leith's parents had found an infant boy playing happily in an ice-rimmed puddle on the outskirts of the village, a child who couldn't tell them where he came from or where his parents were. A toddler of perhaps two winters, no more; sorely twisted and deformed down his right side, obviously unwanted, discarded, abandoned. The young couple picked up the dirt-laden waif and took him home, where he soon became the child they had longed for, the boy they had needed, the son that kept them together. From that time on, it seemed the petty jealousies and trivial arguments that had dark¬ened the house of Mahnum and Indrett were no longer important, and a year later the barren woman bore a child of her own.

From the day Hal had been found, it was apparent that he was an unusual child. Though he had a crippled arm and leg, he was constantly on the move, never retreating to some sanctuary of self-pity, but always on his feet, playing, visiting, walking in the woods. A faery child, an elfin child, a child unlike others born and raised in the stern, harsh northlands. He did what he wished and went where he willed, unfettered by the restrictions placed on the other children, who were bound to the village by ties of work in the summer and of safety in the winter. Hal the cripple was always welcome in the thatched-roof houses of the village, and a sort of mutual unspoken consent saw him allowed to amble unchecked across the fenced-off farmlands of the Vale, asking permission of no one. Yet though he spent many hours alone, he was in no way deceitful or uncaring of his adopted mother's feelings. He seemed so vulnerable, yet he lacked nothing, had no need that cried out to be met. It was fortunate for his parents that in Hal's character there was little room for self-pity, making it all the more easy to give him love unselfishly, untainted with the need to be loved in return. Leith, their own child, had been so different, crying inces¬santly as a baby, self-centred and demanding as a toddler; and for a while his parents thought that there must have been something wrong with him.

Finally they realised that Leith was a normal boy, and there was something indefinably right about Hal.

They had all been very lucky, Leith knew. So very lucky. Only he didn't feel lucky.

'I didn't know that the north wind would come today,' Leith said stubbornly. 'I wouldn't have stayed out there if I had known.'

Again his older brother said nothing. Feeling angry, hurt, and guilty about the irrational resentment that always seized him when he tried to talk things over with Hal, Leith turned away and drew the bedclothes over his head. His cold food fell to the floor.

'Good night, Leith,' came the earnest voice of his brother.

Leith had an uncomfortable night. His body felt hot and cold all at once and his legs and back ached. For most of the night he lay unmoving, waiting for morning to come, trying to think of the snows ahead, of the exploring he would do, of Midwinter's Day and the Play that would be performed. Of anything but Stella. Of anything but the achingly embarrassing thing he had done. Oh, Most High, why did I do it? Please, let me go to sleep and wake up to find that it never happened. Finally, as dawn approached, he slid exhausted into a fitful doze.

That morning Hal awoke to find his brother tossing feverishly. He dressed as quickly as he could and made his way quietly into the kitchen. His mother made to greet him, but Hal cut her short.

'Leith isn't well. A touch of Icewind fever, I think.'

'Oh,' she sighed. 'What on earth was that boy doing yesterday? He knows what the autumn wind can do.'

'He wouldn't give up waiting for Stella. Do we have any winter-green leaves in the cupboard?'

'No, and you're not going out to get any today. It snowed most of the night. We do have birch bark, but it's a little old. Here, you look after the drop-scones while I go out and see what I can find in the wood.'

'You should be able to find a few near the big fir that fell last spring.' Hal knelt down beside the hearth on his crooked right knee and picked up some kindling wood for the cooking fire.

'One light snowfall shouldn't have buried them.'

His mother put on a fur-lined oilskin coat, leather boots and woollen gloves. She smiled at Hal as she pulled the hood over her shining black hair. 'Every year someone in the village catches Icewind fever, and every year they come to you for help. At least this patient doesn't have far to come.'

She opened the stout wooden door and looked out at the morning. Clear, crisp and bracing, it waited to wrap its chilling arms around her in that familiar embrace. The woman turned and looked with affection at her elder son. 'The old enemy is here early this year,' she said ruefully, then stepped out into the cold air and shut the door behind her.

When she returned she found Leith lying blanketed and shiv¬ering in front of a banked fire, sipping a thick broth. Hal had more of the soup simmering on the fire, and the aroma thickened the air in the small wooden house. The crippled youth busied himself with more scones on the skillet, but left them when his mother came through the door, slapping and stamping with the cold.

'Did you find many good leaves?' Hal asked over his shoulder as he put more water on to boil.

'Enough. There aren't many about. Will you need much of a supply this winter?'

'Yes; but there's no point in collecting it all just yet. This could be a long winter, and it will be better in the ground for now than drying in the cupboard. Coming, Leith,' he called, and poured more soup into a bowl.

'I'll take it to him.'

The small but strong woman kicked off her boots and padded quietly across the warm rugs covering the polished wooden floor. Her son stirred and reached out a weak arm as she knelt down and offered him the steaming bowl, shaking her head at him. 'Men!' she jibed good-naturedly, hiding her concern at the sight of his too-bright eyes and fevered brow. 'They're so tough. A bit of a cold and they think they're dying.'

'It's not just the Icewind fever.' Hal spoke quietly to his mother, out of earshot of the patient.

'He was hurt yesterday. He feels let down. Mostly, though, he misses his father.'

'Don't we all.' The woman turned away.

'I don't think he wants to get well. Someone needs to spend time with him, but he doesn't want to wait around for a crip¬pled brother all the time. His friends always seem to be doing something else now, chasing girls, spending their afternoons down by the lake, diving from the rock, hiding in the woods, you know the places they go. Leith feels he's not welcome, so he's been playing with some of the younger boys. He gets teased a lot because of it. And when he asked Stella to go out to the lake . . .'

'Pell and Herza's daughter?'

Hal nodded. 'She's the popular one at the moment. All the boys want to be seen with her. They ridiculed Leith when they heard that he had asked her out, and they'll ridicule him even more because she didn't show up.'

'How old is she?'

'Fifteen, sixteen, something like that. Sixteen, 1 think.'

Indrett sighed. Why did adolescents make things so compli¬cated? How did these fortunate ones contrive to make themselves so unhappy? She remembered her own teenage years. . .

'Leith's been out of sorts since his father left,' Hal said. He pursed his lips thoughtfully and turned back to the skillet.

His mother sat down on her favourite high-backed chair, head in hands. Leith is not the only one, she thought. How much longer? If ever?

The next few days dawned crisp and clear, with bright mild after¬noons. No one in the village was the least bit fooled by their great enemy: he always tempted them with false hope, as if he thought he could convince them that spring was just around the corner. Even though his ruse was obvious, there were those who wished that they could trust the good weather that was offered in the balmy days of autumn.

The world of the North March of Firanes was ruled by the weather. Near the coast, cold northerlies and warmer southerlies fought all winter, and when snow fell it fell heavily but melted quickly. The inhabitants of coastal towns like Loulea and Vapnatak lived in an in-between world of soft white snow and sodden slush. Further inland, up on the Fells where the southerlies did not pene¬trate, only four months separated last spring and first autumn snow.

Though the snow fell inland no more heavily than on the coast, the bitter cold prevented it from melting, and so it steadily accu¬mulated until the spring thaw. The people of northern Firanes could be distinguished by the winters they endured: the few hardy and fierce inlanders holding the 'softer', less adventurous coasters in contempt. Winter controlled much of the lives of all northern Firanese people, wherever they lived, but the northerners had come to understand him. So when five days of fine weather were followed by a bitter north wind and an overnight blanket of white embracing the village, no one in the village was surprised.