He turns to me. “What am I to call you?”
“Hobble,” I say, a tremor exhaled. A maiden who walks with a limp.
He juts his chin toward my father. “Your maiden?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll reside with your clan, then. Your prophetess.”
My mother quiets the hand reaching for her lips, returns it to her side. My father nods slowly, evenly. As Hunter takes up the horse’s reins, I notice the hard set of his face—irritation that Fox has chosen my father’s household over his, over that of Black Lake’s First Man.
“Come, Devout, Hobble,” my father beckons, and the crowd parts, clearing passage for my small family.
4.
DEVOUT
Devout was once a maiden of thirteen, wandering the woodland at the northern boundary of the clearing at Black Lake. She felt the sun reaching through her skin cape and her woolen dress as she walked, gaze sweeping the curled leaves, twigs, and fallen branches of the woodland floor. She bristled with anticipation. Now that she had begun to bleed, that very evening she would join the rest of the youths eligible to take mates in celebrating the Feast of Purification. Together they would mark the advent of a new season, and in doing so leave behind the cold, bitter season called Fallow and welcome the slow thaw of the season called Hope. At such a promising juncture, Black Lake’s boys offered trinkets to the maidens. With a polished stone or an opalescent shell, a boy made known his desire to take a particular maiden as his mate, and with that gift accepted and then a witnessed declaration, a maiden cast her lot.
Devout told herself not to be selfish, not to set her heart on holding in her cupped palms evidence of a boy’s yearning. It was her first Feast of Purification, and the possibility of a mate remained as unfathomable as the distant sea. Still, the idea of a trinket, of being singled out, of wide eyes and maidens gushing that she had drawn affection—all of it glinted like a lure before a fish.
She stooped to peer beneath a bush, looking for the bluish-purple petals of the sweet violet she had come into the woodland to collect. The flower held strong magic: A draft strained from a stew of its boiled flowers brought sleep to those who lay awake. A syrup of that draft mixed with honey soothed a sore throat. A poultice of the leaves relieved swellings and drew the redness from an eye. She touched her lips, then the earth. “Blessings of Mother Earth,” she said.
Mother Earth would come that night, and in Devout’s mind’s eye, she pictured her arrival, imagining it much like the mist rolling in from the bog. Mother Earth would glide into the clearing, permeate the clutch of roundhouses, and in doing so chase away vermin, disease, wickedness. The cleansing put the bog dwellers at ease. Though the Feast of Purification came at a time when the days were growing longer, still night ruled. After a day that was too short for the bog dwellers to have grown tired, they tossed amid tangles of woven blankets, furs, and skins, worry creeping into their minds. Would the stores of salted meat, hard cheese, and grain last? Was there enough fodder left for the sheep? Had slaughtering all but a single cock been a mistake? Were the ewes’ bellies hanging sufficiently low? Were their teats adequately plump? But with Mother Earth’s visit, the ewes would lamb well, perhaps even produce a set of twins. Their milk would come in. Stinging nettle leaves would unfurl, ready for the cauldron, while the stores still held enough oats to thicken the broth. The cough that had plagued a newborn for two moons would disappear. The bog dwellers would begin Hope—that season of birthing, sowing, and anticipation—free of worry and disease. Purified.
As she searched for sweet violet, Devout thought of the wild boar that a bog dweller called Young Hunter had slain. He had been so arrogant on his return to Black Lake, calling out for men to help haul the carcass, recounting how he had tracked the boar three days, but never once pausing his story to give Mother Earth the praise she was due. Even so, Devout salivated. This Fallow, like most every other, bellies had seldom been full.
In preparation for the evening, Devout and the other maidens would bathe and comb out their hair and leave it unbound to show their purity and youth, and clasp over their shoulders woolen dresses that smelled of the breeze rather than unwashed flesh. Then they would call at each roundhouse in the clearing, collecting offerings of honey and wheaten beer and bread still warm from the griddle. Last, they would stop at the largest of the roundhouses and find, above the firepit’s lapping flames, the expertly roasted boar. The girls would set aside part of their haul—an old custom, staunchly followed by the bog dwellers, and not only on so hallowed a night. Of all they reaped, they returned a third to Mother Earth, payment for taking what belonged to her. And then, fingers slick with grease, they would swallow pork and bread and wheaten beer until their bellies grew taut. Eventually the boys would come, rattle the barred door, and demand to be let in for the dancing and merrymaking that would last until daybreak.
She heard the snap of a branch behind her and whipped around to see a boy a year older than she was. “Young Smith?” she said.
Of course she knew him. Only three dozen of the bog dwellers were youths, and he was a tradesman, one of the high-ranking Smith clan—thirty-four strong, and easily the largest and most prosperous at Black Lake. He was the youngest of six brothers, born after a gap of six years, and the only brother not yet joined in union with a mate. His clan’s roundhouse, where they would celebrate that night, measured twice the breadth of any other. Inside, the low benches and sleeping pallets were heaped in skins and furs, and the shelves teemed with flagons and serving platters. His father—Old Smith—supplied the bulk of the accompaniments for the bog dwellers’ feasts. He fed and clothed a pair of orphan hands, an old woman without kin, and the family of a man crushed when an elm was felled. His wealth and generosity had established him as the uncontested First Man at Black Lake, and as such, he decided when the fields would be sowed and reaped, when the stores of grain and roots would be rationed, when an ox would be replaced or a ewe slaughtered and offered to the gods.
Young Smith was already the tallest among the brothers, and though his bulk had yet to catch his height, his broad shoulders foretold the strength that would one day assist him in his clan’s forge. There was talk, too, that his father entrusted him alone with the most delicate bits of ironwork, that he accompanied his father, more so than his brothers, as he inspected the fields or adjudicated the bog dwellers’ grievances. He was a boy much discussed among Black Lake’s maidens—his assured future, also his muscled shoulders and forearms, his pleasing face.
Devout took in his tentative mouth, his uncertain eyes, thick lashed as a doe’s. She could not claim friendship. She was a hand, and the hands and the tradesmen clans held themselves apart at Black Lake. Young Smith seldom spoke to her more than a few words called from the low-walled forge where he worked alongside his kin. Usually “fine day” or “the wheat looks promising,” though once she had wondered if he had said “the hearth is ablaze here, if you’re . . .” before his voice trailed away. She had given little thought to him as other than a blacksmith of burgeoning skill. He ranked far above her, beyond her reach—a circumstance that was perhaps unfair given her usefulness as apprentice healer at Black Lake. And there was her piety, too. She bit her lip as she sometimes did at those moments when she recognized herself as prideful. Mother Earth expected humility.