Yes, these things were gossiped about. Of course they were. It seemed strange that the old tech cleaved so strongly to the one bloodline. It happened again the year I was tested. There were three of us testing together that year, but only one of us, Haijon Vennastin, was found to be synced. The cutter knew him as soon as he picked it up, and shone bright silver in his hand.
Yet the testing happened in the Count and Seal in front of everyone, so how could there be any cheating or lying about it? And Rampart Remember told us these things moved in big, slow circles: that others had lived long in Rampart Hold the way the Vennastins did now.
However that might be, the Vennastins were our Ramparts. To anyone else, the Hold’s great doors were shut. But I purposed to open them and walk inside. Haijon Vennastin would bring me in when he realised he loved me and could not be happy without me.
Does this sound cold? Perhaps I was cold, in some sort. My father’s trials with my mother had made me mistrustful of love as a base to build on. I thought it best to have some care for my own self. Perhaps, too, it was because of a wound I took when I was a child that left me with a maimed right hand. Many simple tasks became that much harder for me, so I saw no shame in seeking out an easier way.
But there was one other thing besides that led me towards Rampart Hold. I’ve said I was a storyteller. Stories have a shape and tend towards an end: and so they lived, in great peace and plenty, until the end of their days. When I thought of my own future, I thought of it in that way, as needing to have a shape and to come out in a proper place.
But judge me how you like. You will see, at any rate, how it came out for me. Though we chop and bend and turn it as much as ever we can, life is no tale of princes and fairies.
Haijon Vennastin was my own age, and went Waiting the same year I did. He was fair of face, and had a good and cheerful nature, which could not be said of his cousin Mardew, Rampart Knife. Haijon was my good friend besides. There was no feigning in that, and no cunning. We were always together as children – the two of us and one other, that was Koli of the sawmill. Jemiu’s Koli. Koli Woodsmith.
Koli went to the bad in the end, and was made faceless for a terrible crime, which I’ll speak of in its place. But he did not seem the kind who would turn that way. He was ever gentle, even when gentleness was not what was called for. I tumbled him one time when chance threw us together, and I remember it fondly in spite of all that came after. But I would not ever have thought of marrying him. There was too much of yielding in him, and too little of strength. I don’t see any virtue in the one without the other.
In any case, my mind was already made up. It was Haijon Vennastin I wanted and I set about to win him. I had good success, by any reckoning. Haijon came to love me very quickly, led by the love I showed him and the time I spent with him. I worked so well, in truth, that he came to think our being together was his idea. That he was creeping up on me by slow degrees, and me all unsuspecting.
That was not altogether false neither. For though I started out on my plan with a kind of fixed purpose that some would see as selfish, it was hard to be with Haijon and not be drawn to him. It was his smiling that crept inside my favour, not kisses or caresses or any of that Summer-dance nonsense. I had never seen a smile like Haijon Vennastin’s smile. He was born to happiness and plenty, living in Rampart Hold with Rampart Fire as his mother, but when he smiled there was always something of surprise in it, as if he couldn’t believe his own good fortune. The first time he turned that smile on me, I was shaken in my purpose. The second time, I argued with myself. The third, I surrendered a point. It was no harm to love him, as long as I didn’t make a god out of him. I would never be like my father, tending another’s selfishness and sickness while my own life fell in pieces.
My father, by this time, was sick himself. Some poison from the tanning vats had found a lodging in his chest, making every breath a torment. The colour leached out of his cheeks, and his body fell in on itself like a house with a broken ridge piece. I nursed him through his last days as best I could. I tried to keep the tannery working too, which was a hard labour, even though many people did their best to help. Haijon and Koli did most of all, coming in every day to clean and cook and sit by Molo while I stole an hour or two of sleep. Jemiu, Koli’s mother, also came by very often and was of great use in the tannery. She said mixing dyes was very like mixing the poisons she used at the mill to turn green wood into safe wood. There were many days when she came at dawn, did a full day’s work at the vats and then went home to do another one at the mill.
With Koli and Haijon both so much in my company, and each other’s, Koli could see full well that Haijon was paying court to me. I believe he was cast down by it, building more on our one time together than I ever meant him to. I was sad for him, but I could not look aside from my purpose. There were many other women in Mythen Rood, young and old alike, who had eyes for Rampart Fire’s yellow-haired son. Eyes and other things, if he strayed their way.
But he did not. Soon enough, Haijon came to me and asked me to marry him, laying out his heart to me as if its contents were a great secret. I made show of pondering my answer for a heartbeat or two, but I was careful not to stretch that part of the show out too long. I said yes. Yes, Haijon. I’ll be your wife and the mother of your children.
And so they lived, in great peace and plenty…
Ah, but that’s not where we are. The end’s a long way off yet, and I make you no promises.
My father was now very close to death. He was mostly asleep inside, even when his eyes were open. I whispered the news to him all the same. I told him not to worry about me, for I would be safe and well after he was gone. That would surely have given him comfort if he understood it, and I thought I saw a softness come into his face when he heard. But you can be led into believing a thing just by wanting it too much. I would not swear it.
You might think there would be envy and strong dislike from those others I spoke of when it came to be known that Haijon and me were to be married. There was but little, and by that you should know that Mythen Rood was a good place, for all the hardness and danger and uncertainty. We were not many in my village, and we were not strong – not compared to Sowby, or Half-Ax – but that only made us stand by each other all the more. Perhaps that was why we loved the Ramparts, even though so many had suspicions about their long run of luck at the testing. When Catrin, Rampart Fire, put the firethrower on her shoulder and spoke, she was the voice of all of us.
She used that voice to welcome me after my father died. I don’t believe I came as any kind of a surprise to her. She knew every woman in the village that was young enough to throw a smile, a wink or her whole self at Haijon. I believe she had given thought to all of them, and lined them up in her head in some kind of an order. I was at the right end of that line, and had her approval.
So when Molo’s death was spoken on the gather-ground, our pair-pledge was announced right after. Haijon took my hand in front of everyone, and a cheer went up. He gave me that smile again, and I saw again what a dangerous thing it was.
Oh, you are a lovely man, I thought. But I will watch myself for signs of loving you too much. And it may be I will come to hurt you, at some time still to come. But it’s better that way around than the other.
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