—THE BOOK OF BRIN
Persephone knew everyone on the dahl, making strangers stand out, and the girl at the gate was stranger than most. Small, young, and slender, the visitor was boyish with short unevenly hacked hair. Persephone couldn’t tell if the sun had darkened her face or if it was merely dirty, but it was decorated with elaborate tattoos: delicate curling thorns that swirled along cheeks, bracketing her eyes and mouth. The designs lent her a mysterious quality. Framing her face, they provided an expression both permanently quizzical and intensely serious. She wore a dirty cape of ruddy wool, a leather-and-fur vest, a skirt of cured hide, and an odd belt. Persephone wasn’t certain, but she thought the belt was made of animals’ teeth. Curled up at the girl’s side lay a white wolf. Its keen blue eyes darted, watching the movements of everyone who walked toward them. Few did.
The newcomer stood outside the dahl’s gate next to Cobb, who’d come down from his perch on the wall and held his spear as menacingly as he could, which was to say not at all. The man’s usual job was feeding the pigs and keeping them out of the communal garden, a task previously held by eight-year-old Thea Wedon and one at which Cobb often failed. Most men took turns keeping watch on the wall above the gate. That morning it was Cobb, and, as with the pigs, he was having trouble.
“We have a visitor, ma’am,” Cobb told her, pointing at the girl with his spear. He nodded toward the ram’s horn tethered around his neck and grinned as if blowing it had been an achievement worthy of praise. Persephone had to admit he’d done a better job watching the gate than the pigs. “She says she’s a mystic and wants to speak to the chieftain.”
The girl couldn’t be much more than twelve, and although she did look like she’d spent most of her life in the wilderness, she was too young to be a mystic.
“I’m Persephone, Lady of the Lodge.” She waited for any sign of understanding. When none came, she added, “I’m Chieftain Reglan’s wife. My husband is away on a hunt, but you can talk to me.”
The girl nodded but said nothing more. She stood there, biting her lower lip and shifting her sight with every dropped hoe, shout, or hammer fall.
On closer inspection, Persephone decided the girl was more malnourished than thin, and filthy didn’t begin to describe her. Pine needles and leaves littered her hair, and dirt caked her legs. She had bruises on her arms, scrapes on her knees, and it was dirt rather than the sun’s tan on her face.
“May I help you?”
“What’s he hunting?” the girl asked.
“Excuse me?”
“The chieftain.”
Persephone hesitated. She’d been doing well that day by not letting herself think too much, banishing the horrible event to a dark corner that she’d revisit only once her husband returned. But the question had shone a bright light, and Persephone struggled to maintain her composure.
“None of your business.” Cobb came alive, taking a genuinely menacing step forward. The threat wasn’t in the spear, which at that moment hung slack and forgotten at his side, but rather in his voice, which was heartfelt and angry.
“A bear,” Persephone said. She took a breath and straightened her back. “A terrible bear called The Brown.”
The girl nodded with a frown.
“You know it?” Persephone asked.
“Oh, yes, Grin the Brown is famous in the forest, ma’am. And not well liked.”
“Grin the Brown?”
“That’s what we call her on account of how she sneers at everyone and everything. I’ve even seen her sneer at the sun, and who doesn’t like the sun?”
“That bear killed my son,” Persephone said, the words coming out more easily than she’d expected. This was the first time she’d said them, and somehow she thought they would refuse to pass her lips.
“Killed Minna’s family, too,” the girl said, looking at the wolf. “Found her in the Crescent, just like Tura found me. I took Minna in, clearly we’re sisters, and you can’t turn away family. Tura thought so, too.”
“You know Tura?”
“She raised me.”
All at once the tooth belt, the facial markings, and even the weathered ash staff made sense. Persephone remembered Tura’s bony hands holding just such a staff. “So Tura sent you to us?”
The girl shook her head. “Tura is dead. I set fire to her myself.”
“You did what?”
“Was her wish, ma’am. Didn’t like the idea of worms. I think she wanted to fly. Who wouldn’t?”
Persephone stared at the girl for a moment, then said, “I see,” even though she didn’t. Persephone had no clue what any of that meant, then realized it didn’t matter.
“What’s your name?”
“Suri,” the girl said.
“Okay, Suri.” Persephone looked at the wolf. “I’d like to invite you in, but we have chickens and pigs inside the dahl, so—Minna, is it?—can’t come in.”
“Minna won’t hurt them,” Suri said, sounding insulted and a dash angry. Tattoo tendrils around her eyes curled tight.
“Wolves eat chickens and pigs.”
The girl smirked and folded her arms roughly over her chest. “They eat people, too, but you don’t see her gnawing on your leg, do you?”
Persephone looked at the wolf, which lay curled up, innocent as a shepherd’s dog. “Does seem pretty tame. What do you think, Cobb?”
The ineffective pig wrangler turned mediocre gate guard shrugged.
“All right, but keep an eye on her. If she attacks anything, there’s a good chance someone will put a spear through her.”
Persephone led the way inside the gate.
As she did, Suri whispered, “Not a very welcoming place is it, Minna? Wonder how they’d like it if we put a spear in their sides when they come to the forest and hunt our animals.”
Spring was dragging its feet, leaving a colorless world of matted grass, leafless trees, and gray skies, but the people of Dahl Rhen weren’t waiting. Everyone was more than tired of the long winter, and with the first mild day of the year, the inhabitants of the dahl were out working. The Killian boys, wellsprings of pent-up energy even in midsummer, were up on the sagging cone-shaped roof of their family’s home. They were tying in new sheaves of thatch to replace the ones winter had ripped away. Bergin the Brewer was splitting wood and feeding the fire under boiling vats of sap he’d gathered. Others were prepping the communal garden, which at that time of year was nothing more than a miserable patch of bare mud where last autumn’s stubble remained like sun-bleached bones.
Cobb returned to his perch on the wall, and Persephone led Suri up the gravel path to the large lodge in the center of the dahl. The almost forgotten song of birds was back, and Persephone spotted yellow and blue wildflowers on the sunny side of the well. Winter was over, according to the stars, birds, and flowers, but snow remained in the shady places. Persephone pulled her mourning shawl tight. Spring was being selective that year. It hadn’t come for everyone.
Persephone paused in the open common before the lodge’s steps and bowed to the stone statue of the goddess Mari. Suri watched with curious interest, then followed. The big doors to the lodge stood open, casting sunshine into the Hall of Reglan, which had been a smoky wooden cave since autumn. Illuminated by firelight in the dark of winter, the twelve pillars holding up the roof always appeared golden, but in harsh sunlight they were revealed as old and weathered. The bright light exposed more reality than just the pillars: discarded shoes, a cloak hanging from the antlers of a deer’s head, and a ram’s-horn goblet in the corner where Oswald had thrown it at Sackett months before. The raised wooden floor surrounding the smoldering fire pit was coated with dirt and ash. Sunlight had a way of showing the realities that shadows born of firelight hid.