“I made something for you,” he said now. He held out his hand, and she saw a packet of folded leather about the size of a walnut.
A blacksmith, a tradesman such as he, was offering a gift to a hand on this particular day? She took the packet.
She unfolded the leather and into the bowl of her palm slipped a gleaming silver amulet strung through with a loop of gut. She drew a finger over the raised detail of the arms of the Mother Earth’s cross at the amulet’s center. She touched the outer ring. How had he accomplished the detail—swirled tendrils as delicate and intricate as a fern, a spider’s web, a damselfly’s gossamer wings? Not in nature, not in all the clearing, woodland, or bog had she seen the handiwork surpassed. Never had she conceived that other than Mother Earth was capable of such beauty. Though it was small, the amulet weighed mightily on her palm. “Young Smith,” she whispered and raised her lit face to his. “It’s magnificent.”
He held her gaze and heat rose through her.
She put her fingers to her lips and then to the earth, that familiar gesture, giving herself time. He had followed her to the woodland to give the amulet to her. But why not wait until the feast? Was he wary of how the gift might be received? Could so regarded a tradesman be as unsure of himself as that? She teetered on the edge of telling him that she had never imagined such perfection, and truthfully, the amulet did bring grace to mind, otherworldliness. But then it occurred to her that perhaps he was ashamed of his fondness for a hand and could not bear the thought of an audience. But if that was so, why give her the amulet at all? Why not give it to Reddish—who was the prize of the Hunter clan, the tradesmen clan that ranked second only to the Smiths at Black Lake. Reddish, who had milky skin and hair that glinted sunshine as spellbinding as fire. Reddish, who possessed a full belly and a doting father, an endless ability to attract the favor of the gods. Reddish, who last Feast of Purification was given a comb carved from ash and etched with prettily arched ferns by one of the Carpenter brothers. She had returned the comb and made a habit of lingering at Young Smith’s forge, her neck arched in laughter, her throat exposed.
Devout closed her fingers over the gleaming bit of silver. She deserved the cross more than Reddish. Reddish did not care about the magic of Mother Earth’s roots and leaves and blooms. More than once, Devout had watched as Reddish stooped in tribute, her fingertips not quite grazing the earth at her feet, no look of reverence on her face.
Devout brought the fist clutching the amulet to her lips. With that gesture, Young Smith grew bold and said, “I thought you could wear it tonight while you collect for the feast.”
She held the amulet against the hollow at the base of her neck.
“Let me show you,” he said.
The loop of gut was doubled in such a way that by sliding the knots, it could be expanded to twice its size. He slipped the loop over her head and adjusted the knots so that the amulet hung at her throat.
She imagined going from roundhouse to roundhouse as she collected for the evening’s feast, the amulet in plain view on her neck. At each door, eyes would fall to the gleaming silver, and then a little smile would show what the matriarch handing over a clay flagon of wheaten beer had figured out. Devout—a hand—had drawn the attentions of Young Smith. He had recognized her piety, her skill, her place as apprentice healer and chosen her above any other maiden at Black Lake.
As Devout and Young Smith intruded on the woodland’s quiet with idle talk—the feast, the boar Young Hunter had speared, the late-night merriment to come—she felt moisture collect at her hairline. This, when in his absence, she had pulled her skin cape tighter against the woodland’s chill. When he wiped his brow, she saw that it glistened, no different from her own, and her heart fluttered. Oh, but he was humble as stone. And handsome, too—warm eyed, full lipped, broad shouldered—this boy she had never dared consider, this boy who had singled her out.
Eventually he said, “I should go,” but his feet remained rooted.
“It’ll be my first Feast of Purification.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Your second,” she said and thought herself daft. Boys attended the feast from the age of thirteen, and girls only after they began to bleed with the new moon.
He nodded, and her eyes fell to the woodland floor.
“Tonight, then?” he said.
She forced herself to look up, but his warm eyes were on her and her gaze flitted to beyond his shoulder. “Tonight,” she said and lifted a hand to touch his arm, but too late. He had turned away.
When she could no longer make out his retreating back, she again put her fingertips to her lips and then the woodland floor. Before she had fully straightened, she heard the song of a bullfinch—a string of quick chirps broken by a longer, lower one. It was Arc—a boy, just her age, whom she had sowed and reaped alongside since childhood—calling to her. Should she answer, repeating the song, as was their custom? She shook debris from the lower edge of her dress. No, not with Young Smith’s amulet hanging on her neck. But Arc, who took in the world around him, would follow her trail of disturbed underbrush and stones, and in no time, he would approach laughing, holding out a thread from her dress, a lump of dried mud fallen from her shoe, and so she worked the knots, loosening the amulet. She lifted it over her head and slipped it into the pocket of her cape. Then she answered his call, though what she really wanted was solitude, time to ponder Young Smith, his gift.
Arc appeared before Devout, wrists extending well past the rim of his skin cape and his toes poking from the scraps of hide laced around his feet. He plucked a twig from her hair and said, “I have a gift for you.” A teasing smile came to his mouth. “Guess what it is.”
She lifted a shoulder.
“It isn’t something I can give you at the feast,” he said.
Despite the amulet settled in her pocket and a looming sense that keeping it hidden there was somehow deceitful, she smiled. She liked this game. She liked Arc, too, his lankiness; his flaxen hair; his quiet voice and pale, watchful eyes. She liked that he meant to give her a gift—nothing too precious, for, same as she, he was a hand. “Not a stone, then. Not a shell.”
“It’s something begun before Fallow.”
She again lifted a shoulder.
“It’s something you want,” he said.
What was it she wanted? A fertile Hope? A quiet moment to consider the amulet that weighed in her pocket? To sort through all that had just taken place with Young Smith?
“You’ve kept to the edges of the woodland,” he said. “I like knowing my gift is something you’ve been looking for today.”
“Sweet violets!” she exclaimed.
“Come.”
He led her across a dell of dormant ferns, up a wooded embankment, and along the high, bald ridge of red gritstone and thin soil called Edge. Here the wind blew in gusts, but they traveled at a brisk pace. Growing warm, Devout pushed her cape behind her shoulders so that it hung at her back.