Michelle West - Winter Death

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2024-12-22 0 0 112.13KB 41 页 5.9玖币
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Winter Death
by Michelle West
Kayla was born in the harsh winter of life in the mining town of Riverend. Her
father had been born there, and her mother had come from the flats of Valdemar's
most fertile lands. An outsider, she had learned to face the winter with the same
respect, and the same dread, that the rest of the villagers showed. She had come to
be accepted by the villagers in the same way, slowly and grudgingly at first, but
with a healthy respect that in the end outlasted all of their earlier superstitious fear
of the different.
Margaret Merton, called Magda for reasons that Kayla never quite understood,
was different. She could walk into a room and it would grow warmer; she could
smile, and her smile would spread like fire; her joy could dim the sharpest and
bitterest of winter joy could dim the sharpest and bitterest of tempers, when cabin
fever ran high. How could they not learn to love her?
Even in her absence, that memory remained, and when her daughter showed
some of the same strange life, she was loved for it. More, for the fact that she was
born to the village.
The Heralds came through the village of Riverend in the spring, when the snows
had receded and the passes, in the steep roads and treacherous flats of the
mountains, were opened. Heralds seldom stopped in the village, although they rode
through it from time to time.
When they did, Kayla took the little ones from the hold and made her way down
to the village center to watch them ride through. She would bundle them one at a
time in the sweaters and shawls that kept the bite of spring air at bay, and gently
remind them of foreign things—manners, behavior, the language children should
use in the presence of their elders.
She would remind them of the purpose of Heralds, and promise them a story or
two if they behaved themselves, and then she would pick up the children whose
toddling led them to cracks in the dirt, sprigs of new green, sodden puddles—in
fact, anything that caught their eye from the moment the hold's great doors were
opened—and hurry them along; in that way, she managed to keep them from
missing the Heralds altogether.
This spring was the same, but it was also different; every gesture was muted, and
if she smiled at all, it was so slight an expression that the children could be
forgiven for missing it. It had been a harsh winter.
A terrible winter.
And the winter had taken the joy out of Kayla so completely the villagers
mourned its passing and wondered if it was buried with those who had passed
away in the cold.
On this spring day, the Heralds stopped as the children gathered in as orderly a
group as children could who had been cooped up all winter.
There were two, a man and the woman who rode astride the Companions that set
them apart from any other riders in the kingdom of Valdemar.
"Well met," the woman said, nudging her Companion forward at a slow walk.
Kayla heard the whisper that started at one end of the small group and traveled to
the other. She almost smiled.
Almost.
Mitchell and Evan began to shove each other out of the way in an attempt to be at
the front of the group. Kayla set Tess down and separated them, grabbing an elbow
in either hand. She didn't need to speak; her expression said everything.
Bells caught light and made of sound a musical cacophony, which was not in fact
dissimilar to the sound it evoked from the children, whose quarrels fell away in the
wake of shared wonder.
Well, almost all of the quarrels at any rate; there was still some scuffling for
position, with its attendant shoving and hissed accusation. Given everything, this
was almost angelic behavior; it wouldn't be good enough for the old aunts, but it
was good enough for Kayla. Two years ago, she would have asked for more—and
gotten it, too—but two years ago, behavior had seemed so much more important
than it was now.
These children were the children of winter, and the winter was harsh; she knew
that if half of them lived to be eight, the village would count itself lucky; if half of
those lived to be fifteen, it would count itself more than that.
The Herald, an older woman with broad hips and an easy smile, watched the
children from the safe distance of her Companion's back; her Companion, on the
other hand, had no difficulty wandering among the many outstretched—and
upstretched—hands. The second Companion seemed to have a more obvious sense
of personal dignity—or at least a healthy caution when it came to children; it was
hard to say which. Her rider was a handful of years older than Kayla, if at all, but
his face was smooth and unblemished by either time or war, and he seemed both
grave and dignified in a way that reminded her of her dead. Riverend was a harsh,
Northern town; the dead were many.
"Youngling," the older Herald barked, her voice loud but not unfriendly.
Mitchell leaped up about six feet, straining to look much older than his handful of
years. "Yes, ma'am!"
The young man who rode at her side laughed. "Ma'am, is it?" His glance belied
the gravity of his expression; Kayla liked the sound of his voice.
"Obviously I don't look as young as I'd like to think I do. Ah well, time is cruel."
Her smile showed no disappointment at that cruelty as she looked down at
Mitchell. "You know the people of the village by name?"
He nodded.
"Good. I'm wondering where Kayla Grayson lives." Mitchell lifted a hand and
pointed toward the large hold.
"Will she be down at the mines, or up at the hold?" He frowned. "Neither."
Kayla said nothing.
But she felt it: a change in the older woman's mood and intent; there were
currents in it now that were deeper than they should have been. She snuck a glance
at the man, and listened carefully. There, too, she felt a determination that was out
of place. It put her on her guard.
"Why are you looking for Kayla?" she asked.
"We've heard a bit about her, and we—well, I at least—thought it would be nice
to meet her on our way through Riverend. We don't often get much call to travel
this way."
"What have you heard?"
"Well, for one, that she's Magda Merton's daughter, the last of four, and the one
most like her mother."
Kayla hesitated a moment, and hid that hesitation in the action of lifting a child to
the wide, wide nostrils of a very patient Companion. She had the grace to wince
and pull back when the child's first act was to attempt to shove his whole hand up
the left one.
"That's true," she said at last. "At least, that she's the last of her daughters. You'll
have to judge for yourself how much alike they actually are." She straightened her
shoulders, shifting her burden again with an ease that spoke of practice. "Because
I'm guessing you knew my mother."
The Herald's expression shifted; it didn't matter. Kayla already knew what the
woman was feeling. Surprise. Concern. Hope. "So you're Kayla."
"And you?"
"Anne," the woman replied. She reached out with a hand, and after only a slight
hesitation, Kayla shifted the boy to one hip, freeing one of hers. She shook the
Herald's hand and then turned to face the quieter young man. "If you want to join
us, there's food, but I'll warn you, it's spare; we can offer you news, or trade, or
water—but we barter for most of our food, and only Widow Davis has stores
enough to entertain important guests."
The Heralds exchanged a look, and then the young man smiled. "We're well
provisioned. We'd be happy to offer food for our discussion or news."
"He means—and is too polite to say it—gossip."
But Kayla felt the twinge of guilt that hid beneath the surface of those cheerful
words, and her eyes fell to the saddlebags that his Companion bore without
complaint. It occurred to her that the Companions and their Heralds seldom carried
much food with them, for the villages who fed and housed them were reimbursed
for their troubles, and at a rate that made it especially appealing for the poorer
towns.
But when the man dismounted and unstrapped the bags from the side of his
Companion, she knew, she just knew that they had been brought solely to be
offered to Riverend. And she didn't like it, although she couldn't say why.
"Your pardon," he said, dipping his head slightly, "for my manners. My name is
Carris."
"And her name?" She asked, staring at his Companion.
The Herald smiled. "Her name is Arana. She is a queen among Companions. And
knows it," he added ruefully.
Kayla nodded quietly and turned away. "The hold is dark, even at this time of
day; there is only one room with good windows. Shall I send for the mayor?"
"No. No, that isn't necessary. It's really an informal visit." Anne frowned. "And
yes, I did know your mother. She was a very, very stubborn woman."
"You know that she died."
Anne nodded, and there was a very real weariness in the movement. "Aye, I
know it." But she added no more. Instead, she turned to her Companion and began
to unstrap her saddlebags as well. They were equally heavy.
"I won't lie to you, Kayla," Anne said, as she took a seat while Kayla set to
boiling water for the tea and herbal infusions that the Southerners often found too
thin or too bitter. "I did not know your mother well. This has been my circuit for a
number of years, and although we're often sent out on different routes, we become
familiar with the villages along the King's roads.
"Your mother wasn't the mayor, but she was the center of Riverend. I never met a
woman with a cannier sense of the dangers of living in such an isolated place—and
I grew up a few towns off the Holderkin, so I'm aware of just how dangerous those
fringes can be.”
"But your mother had a great love for your father, and for the lands that produced
him. And she had a gift, as well, a...clear understanding of people." She hesitated,
and Kayla felt it again, that low current beneath the words that seemed to move in
a different direction from their surface. "A clearer understanding than perhaps most
of us have." She waited.
Carris said nothing, but he did clear his throat.
"We've brought a few things that the village will find useful," he said at last,
looking to just one side of her face, as if his dark and graceful gaze had become
suddenly awkward. "Magda often asked for aid for the rough times, and—and—
she made it clear what was needed. There are medical herbs and unguents here,
there are potions as well; there are bandages and cleansing herbs, as well as honest
tea. There's salted, dried meat in the second bag; a lot of it, which might help. The
harvest in the mainland has been...poor this year. There's also some money in the
last bag."
"You shouldn't be telling me this," Kayla said quietly. "You should talk to
Widow Davis; she's the mayor hereabouts, or what passes for one. She'll know
what to do, and she'll be very grateful to you both."
They exchanged another glance.
"Well, then, maybe you'd better call for the Widow Davis after all."
Kayla smiled politely. "If you think she isn't already on her way, you don't know
Riverend all that well."
But Kayla knew something was wrong.
The Widow Davis did, indeed, arrive; she scattered the children with a sharp
inquiry about the current state of their chores, and an even sharper glance at the
children who had the temerity to tell her they wanted to stay with the Companions,
and then eyed the saddlebags the Heralds carried with an obvious, and deep,
suspicion.
"Kayla, go mind the children. If you can't teach them to heed their duties, no one
can. I'll deal with the strangers."
Kayla felt her jaw go slack, but she hid the surprise that had caused it as she
nodded to the widow and retreated. These were Heralds, not medicants, and she
had never heard the Widow Davis be rude to a Herald before. She was glad that the
children had been sent back to their work.
She did not see the Heralds leave, but when she had time to glance outside again,
they were gone, the white of their uniforms, and the white of Companion coats,
little glimpses into the heart of winter, a hint of the future.
And when she at last tucked in for bed, she fought sleep with a kind of dread that
she hadn't felt since she had slept in the arms of her own mother, at a time of life so
far removed it seemed centuries must have passed. The nightmares had been strong
then; they were strong now.
Many of the village children dreamed. They found a place in her lap when they
wished to make sense of all the things that occurred only after they closed their
eyes, and she had spent years listening, with both wonder and envy, to the
hundreds of broken stories that occupied their dreamscapes.
Not so her own.
She had two dreams.
There was a black dream and a white dream, set against the mountain's winter.
As a child, the black dreams were frightening, bewildering; she would wake from
sleep to search for her mother; it never took long. Her mother would come,
precious candle burning, and sit by the side of her bed.
"What did you dream of, Kayla?"
"The dragon."
She had never seen a dragon; the stories that the old wives told described them as
terrible, ancient beasts who had long since vanished from the face of the free lands.
Books in the hold were so rare they were seldom seen, and books with pictures
tipped in were rarer still.
But there was something in the shape of shadow that reminded her of those
pictures.
"What was he doing?"
"Crying."
"Ah. Try not to listen too carefully, Kayla. Dragon tears are a terrible thing."
"I think...he's lonely."
Her mother's smile was shallow, even by candlelight. "Dragons are lonely; they
sit on their cold, cold gold, their hard jewels, and they never come out to play."
"He would," she would tell her mother, "if he could find us."
"I think it best that he never find us, Kayla. Riverend is no place for such a
creature."
The white dreams were different.
The snows were clearer and cleaner, and the pines that guarded the pass stretched
beyond them to cut moonlight and hide it. But the light was strong enough to see
by, and she always saw the same thing: the white horse.
He was the color of snow, of light on snow. And in the hold, in this place just one
edge of rock and mountain, where spring came and went so quickly and summer's
stretch was measured in weeks, snow was the color of death. Even as a child, she
had understood that.
He did not speak to her until her father died.
"You can talk?"
:Yes. A little. It is difficult now. But... I heard your voice, little one. I heard your
singing.:
"Singing?"
:Aye, song, a dirge, I think, to break the heart for its softness. I heard you sing
years ago, and your song was so light and so joyful, I waned all of my compatriots
to stand, to listen, to feel. There was such love in that song. And in this one. In this
one, too.:
She knew what he spoke of, and said nothing, but looked down at the back of her
hands. They were child's hands; smooth and unblemished by calluses and dirt.
Because it was a dream, she did not ask him how he had come to hear her heart's
song.
:If I asked you to come with me, what would you do?:
And because she understood something of the nature of dreaming, she allowed
herself to be honest. "If you had asked me as a child, I would have tendered a
child's answer. But I have children now, and they need me greatly, and you are not
a creature to be confined to a place like Riverend."
He had met her eyes with eyes, she thought, that saw whole lives as if they were
the course rivers ran, beginning to end, and he might map them out, might remark
on where the rapids lay, and where the oceans, at last, waited, for the movements
of rivers to cease. And he said, :Tonight then, dear heart, I will not ask.:
But she knew that the time was coming when he would, and she was afraid of it.
Because Riverend was her home, and she wanted to leave.
He came to her often in her dreams after that, and she spoke with him, he with
her. But his was not the only dream which changed.
For one night, huddled alone in the cold, she dreamed the black dream, and it was
different: The dragon took flight. It searched; it searched for her. She could hear it
roar when it opened its lips, and its voice was a song of death and desire.
And when it sang, she heard over voices as well, thin and terrible, the wailing of
children, of grown men reduced to that earlier state, of women whose losses were
so profound that silence—even the silence of the grave— seemed to offer mercy.
They were lost, these voices; she knew it. They were lost to the devourer, the
shadow, the dragon.
And if she were not careful, if she were not silent as mouse, and hidden in the
darkness of a hold's small room, it would find her, it would consume her, and it
would add her voice to its song.
She woke, sweating, her voice raw; the walls of the hold were solid, but she
could hear footsteps in the halls beyond her room. They paused a moment outside
her door, but no one knocked; no one entered. Her mother was gone.
After that, she dreamed of the darkness often. It grew stronger and stronger, and
she, weaker.
On the morning of the worst of these dreams, the Heralds had come with their
ominous gifts, and she had left them with Widow Davis.
Tonight, the darkness had not yet fallen across the field of her vision. He was
waiting for her, cold beauty.
She felt the howl of winter wind through passes closed by snow and storm;
memory of spring and summer faded until only the cold remained, essential and
eternal. The ice glittered from the heights of the mountains' peaks; caught light in a
skirt around the fringes of the evergreens that stretched a hundred feet in height to
the edge of her vision.
The snow did not swallow him; is weight did not bear him down, down through
the thin crust of snow. Silent, he waited for her.
As he always waited.
But it was different, tonight, and she knew it.
She said, "You cannot carry an Oathbreaker."
He met her gaze and held it, but she heard no voice, and she found the absence
unsettling, for in dreams like these, she had spoken to him for much of her life.
"Did you send the Heralds? Did they bring gifts that were meant to take my
place?"
He offered no reply.
And she was afraid. Her arms were cold; the day was fading. Night in the
mountains was bright, if not brighter, by moonlight, but the colors—winter colors,
to be sure—were leached from the landscape until only shades of gray remained
beneath the black and white of sky and star.
"This is no dream," she said quietly, the question a shadow across the words.
He nodded.
She did not know what to feel; the winter had settled deep within her.
In the morning, he came. He came after breakfast had been prepared, but before
the miners had gathered in the hold; the sun cut crisp, long shadows against the
sparse growth.
The children carried word of his presence from one end of the village to the
other, but they came in numbers to where Kayla cleaned the heavy ceramics that
held the morning porridge. Kayla quietly washed and dried her hands, while
smaller hands tugged at her apron's hem and strings.
"There's a Companion in Riverend!" Tess said, her dark eyes wide and round.
"I know," Kayla told her softly, bending and gathering her in shaking arms.
"It's got no Herald!" Evan added. "lt's got no rider!"
"I know," Kayla replied. She straightened.
"Everyone wants to see it. Do you think it's come searching?"
"Aye, little, I think it's come searching."
"For who?" Tess asked, insistent, and unaware of the stillness of Kayla's
expression. "Do you think he'll take Evan away?"
Evan was her older brother, by about four years. "Not yet."
"Too bad."
She laughed. "I'm sure Evan thinks so, too."
"But do you think he's lost his Herald? Do you think he needs help? Do you
think—"
"I think," she said, "that he'll have died of old age before I can see him if I answer
all your questions first."
"Just one more?"
"One more."
"Do you think he'll let me ride?"
"No, little, I think you'll fall off his back, and Companions aren't in the business
of visiting villages just to injure the dearest of their people." She kissed the girl's
forehead, just as she would have once kissed the forehead of her youngest.
Tess wrapped her arms around Kayla's neck. "But what do you think he wants?"
"I think," she said quietly, "that we'll find out soon. Now hush."
Widow Davis was there, in the clearing by river's side. The river itself, cold and
loud, was a thin one, but it was clear and the water, fresh. She looked up when
Kayla approached, her eyes narrowed and wrinkled by exposure to wind, to cold,
and yes, to the scant sun. "Well, then," she said, "You've heard."
"I've...heard."
"Your mother told me," the widow said, turning back to her bucket.
"Told you?"
"To be careful of the Companions."
"They're not evil, Widow Davis."
"No, I'm certain of it. All of our stories say so, and they've come to the aid of the
village at least three times in my living memory." She was silent a moment. "But
this will be the first time they take more than they offer."
"Widow Davis—"
The old woman's look stopped her flat. "Come on, then. You're here, and we
might as well have it out." She offered Kayla an arm; Kayla shifted Tess to one
side and took it.
Together they crossed the uneven ground that led from stream to the shadows
cast by the tall, white Companion, caparisoned in livery of blue and sliver, belled
so his movements might evoke a sense of music, a sense of play. But his eyes were
dark, and large as the palms of a child's hand, and he did not blink when he turned
his massive head toward the two women Children dogged their steps, crossed their
shadows, whispered eagerly and quickly amongst themselves. Not even the dour
expression of the Widow Davis could silence them completely.
The widow's hand tightened; Kayla's arm began to tingle. She did not, however,
ask the old woman to let go.
"He's here for you, girl," the woman said, pulling her arm free
摘要：

WinterDeathbyMichelleWestKaylawasbornintheharshwinteroflifeintheminingtownofRiverend.Herfatherhadbeenbornthere,andhermotherhadcomefromtheflatsofValdemar'smostfertilelands.Anoutsider,shehadlearnedtofacethewinterwiththesamerespect,andthesamedread,thattherestofthevillagersshowed.Shehadcometobeacceptedb...

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