* * *
—
Arc trudged the length of a fresh furrow, hoisting his mattock, bringing it down on the larger clods of earth. As Devout followed, she thrust her hoe over and over, severing the smaller clods left in his wake. She watched the height to which he lifted the mattock, the force with which it met the earth, and it seemed to her that he did more than his share, that by his hard labor he intended to spare her what toil he could. “I’m stronger than you think,” she said.
“I have little else to give,” he said and went back to breaking up the clods.
A small ripple of what felt like hopefulness rose in her chest. She did not wish him heartache, but perhaps he missed her the way she missed him. Since the Feast of Purification, there had been no long, easy walks, no bullfinch call to answer. Like everyone else, he had heard about Young Smith’s amulet.
The sun beat down, and Arc removed his tunic. She took in his chest glistening with sweat, the line of golden curls on his belly that disappeared beneath the cord holding his breeches in place. A strange ache came to her loins. She wanted to touch the ridge of muscle that ran the length of his forearm, arising close to his elbow, tapering as it approached his wrist. She put her eyes back on her hoe, breathed in and out. Was such an ache best heeded? Or better ignored? How she dreaded either boy prodding, asking if she might announce her intention to join with him in union when she felt as unsettled as a hive of bees. Surely the bog dwellers waited for Devout to hold herself tall and say, “I declare my intention to receive Young Smith as my mate.” Any one of them would think her—a hand—a fool to let one day slip into the next without securing Old Smith’s treasured son as her mate. Arc offered kindness, familiarity, gifts of sweet violets, that pleasant ache; but when she thought carefully, clearheadedly, all she knew with certainty was that once it would have been enough.
But then came Young Smith’s attention, and now her growing confidence that he did not loathe her for making an offering of his gift as she had claimed. In the moons since, he seemed to watch for her to appear in the clearing so that he might smile and take up his hammer, perhaps too vigorously. Sometimes he fell in line beside her as she came in from the fields. He said he hoped preparing the fields was less grueling with the sun so strong in the sky and, another time, that he had woken to the rain and been thankful it meant a day of rest for the hands.
One day, he asked quite plainly if she would follow him. He said he had something he wanted to show her in the old mine. Quiet tunnels and caverns riddled the base of Edge, a maze hacked from the red gritstone by those seeking the copper ore long since hauled away. She had seldom been to the mine, which was meandering and black as night and forbidden by her mother. He carried two rushlights, as though she had emboldened him those other times they had spoken, as though he had not considered that she might refuse him. Even so, she hesitated. Might he mean to ask her about the declaration she had not made? Might he mean to push? But then, how was she ever to know her mind if she dodged Young Smith’s every advance?
“It’s safe,” he said. “I know the mines better than just about anyone. I’ve gone looking for ore there for years.”
Anxious that he had interpreted her hesitation as fear, she quickly said, “Show me your mine, Young Smith.”
The sun was low in the sky, the light gentle, the shadows muted, softer than at midday. The world glowed rosy, warm, and his beauty was golden, like late wheat in a gentle breeze. She held still in that pleasing sunlight a moment. She let him look, let him take in her pale, open face; the small depression at the base of her chin. She knew her hair gleamed like polished bronze and held a pretty curve when she untucked it from behind her ear. It was her eyes—blue as a jaybird’s back—that most often drew comment. Her mother had once said it was a shame, the way those eyes held the bog dwellers transfixed, unaware of the straight nose and dainty chin contributing to her beauty.
They walked side by side in the woodland, him slowing at those places where the path narrowed so that she might step ahead. They stayed quiet amid the birdsong and rustling leaves. And then, once the quiet gaped awkward, he asked about a yellow flower blooming alongside the path.
“Lesser celandine,” she said. “A salve made from its leaves heals abscesses.”
They continued like that, with him questioning and her reciting bits of what she knew. At one point, he stopped and shook his head. “It’s incredible,” he said, “what you know.”
“It’s Mother Earth who deserves the praise.”
Eventually they came to the soaring gritstone wall of Edge and the yawning mouth of the entryway to the old mine. He struck his flint with practiced hands. Tinder smoldered, caught as he blew. He tipped a rushlight into the flame and handed it to Devout.
“You’ll hear from me next time I need a fire lit,” she said.
He smiled, touched his rushlight to hers, setting it aflame. “Hope so.”
In that moment, she liked the idea that she would call him to her roundhouse to set tinder ablaze, or better yet that they would sit in some secluded place gazing into the fire he had lit.
He led her along a snaking passageway, taking this fork and then that. She could no more untangle their route than see into the impenetrable blackness beyond the halo of their lights, yet she felt not a flicker of distress. With Young Smith at her side, she felt light. She thought of dandelion seeds drifting upward, tethered by the smallest threads to fans of narrow wings.
Young Smith swept his rushlight over a large swath of gritstone wall that blazed orange, golden, and red. “Come,” he said. He led her a few paces farther and then knelt before the wall. She joined him, and he held his rushlight in a way that showed a simple etching scraped into the gritstone.
“Do you remember?” he asked.
The etching showed three stick figures inside a circle. Devout shook her head. “I don’t.”
“One Harvest Feast—you would have been five—we came here.”
“Oh?”
“A pack of boys snuck away. Of the girls, only you and Reddish followed us.”
Something flickered in her mind—boys whooping in a black tunnel, herself amid the pack, her heart pounding, joyful, the guiding halo of light. “I remember,” she said, filling with the pleasure, the glory of that old day.
“We drew this,” he said.
She looked again at the etching, the chalky, ginger lines scraped into the gritstone. Did she remember a sharp rock? A knife, some tool for etching gripped in her fist? Perhaps, perhaps. Another flicker—her five-year-old self squatted at this very spot. She recalled the first thin lines, then the repetition that had made them thick.
“You drew the people,” he said. “The three of them.”
“And you drew the circle.”