It was a rag . . . but she had nothing else to wear.
“You smell clean,” she said.
“I cannot abide the smell of my skin or perspiration in my robes or mud or filth if it clings to my shoes,” Hod said. “Those smells . . . blind me . . . to the scents around me. So I am always clean. It is for my own safety. We will have to find you something else to wear.”
He sounded as if he meant for her to stay, and something eased in Ghisla’s chest.
“Did your family till the earth and plant seeds?” he asked.
“Yes. Why?”
“You smell like the earth too.”
“That is where I want to be.”
“In the earth?”
“Yes. That is where my family is.”
“You are not funny today,” he sighed.
“I do not mean to be funny ever. There is nothing to laugh about.”
“Are you sure you are a child? You sound like an old woman. You don’t speak like a child . . . not any child I’ve ever heard. And you don’t sing like one. Maybe you are really an old woman. An old witch, wearing the skin of a child to trick me.” He frowned, but his voice was light with teasing. “Did Arwin send you? Is this one of his tests?”
“How am I testing you?”
“You have given me pictures . . . and now I want to do nothing else but see. My ears are dull, my nose too. It is like I am deep in the cave, all alone.” He was not teasing anymore.
“I will not sing to you again,” she promised.
“But I want you to,” he whispered, the sound so mournful that tears pricked the backs of her eyes. She had thought her tears were all used up.
“Mayhaps it was too much at once. Too many songs,” she said.
“Mayhaps.”
“The songs have made you sad,” she said. “They make me sad too.”
“No. They do not make me sad. They make me . . . aware. They make me want to see.”
“Did you not want to see before?”
“I did not miss what I never had. Now I know what I do not have.”
“It is like having a family . . . and having them ripped away. I think it would be easier if I had never known them either.”
“What were their names?”
“My mother was Astrid. My father was Wilhem. Morgana was my sister. She was the oldest. Abner and Gilbraig were my brothers.”
“Were they older than you too?”
“I am—I was—the youngest. Abner was a man . . . Father always treated him like a man. Gilly was your age. But he was smaller than you are.”
“Your people grow slowly,” he said, remembering what she’d told him.
“Yes.” And now her people did not grow at all.
“Gilly?” he pressed when she grew quiet. “Is Gilly . . . Gilbraig?”
“I could not call him Gilbraig. It did not fit. I called him Gilly, and he called me Ghissy.”
“It is a sign of affection to alter the name like that?” he asked.
“Yes. I suppose it is.”
“Then . . . will you call me Hody?”
“Hody?”
“Yes. To show . . . affection.”
“It is still a terrible name.”
“It is just a name,” he said, repeating the sentiment of the day before. “It means little.” But it clearly meant something to him.
“All right, Hody.”
3
RUNES
“I have a pair of hose that rise too high on my legs, and a tunic that pulls across my back. They are well worn, and I do not know if they will fit. But I’ve a length of rope to keep the trousers up if they don’t, and they are clean.”
She took the items from his outstretched hand. When she did, he stood by, waiting for her to try them on.
“Go,” she insisted.
“I cannot see you,” he reminded, impatient. “I wait only to hear if they will do.”
“It feels like you can.”
“I can’t,” he insisted, frowning. “Do you think I lie?”
She sighed heavily, relenting, and tugged off the long shift that wasn’t much more than a tattered sack with a hole for her head. She tossed it toward him, intending for it to hit him in the face. He’d complained enough about the smell; she thought it would be humorous. Instead, he snatched it from the air and tossed it on the fire, easily, effortlessly.
She gaped and growled, rushing to cover herself with his old tunic.
“What?” he asked.
“How did you do that if you cannot see me?”
“I heard you.”
She huffed, struggling to pull on the hose that were too long and the blouse that slid off her skinny shoulders. She folded the neckline in on itself and rolled the legs of the hose, cinching both at her waist with the bit of rope that Hod offered.
“Can you hear that they don’t fit?” she marveled.
“I can hear you making adjustments.”
“If you have a bit of thread and a needle, I can fix the hem and alter the neckline, though you’ve thrown my shift in the fire, so I have nothing else to wear while I do so.”
“I cannot see you,” he insisted again, a note of irritation in his voice. It made her smile to irk him.
“Yes . . . but what if Arwin returns and I am unclothed?”
He stilled, as though he’d forgotten all about Arwin. He cocked his head, turning his face toward the entrance.
“He has been gone longer than usual. Mayhaps there is something wrong.”
Ghisla didn’t know what to say, and so said nothing. For several seconds, Hod was frozen, listening, and then his shoulders relaxed.
“He is not near. The forest sounds different when he enters it.”
“How does it sound?”
“The birds get quiet. The creatures in the trees and in the brush hear him . . . and I hear them. It is not sound as much as it is a cessation of certain sounds. The silence precedes him, and, if the breeze is right, I catch his scent when he is still a good distance away. He has never returned without me knowing he comes.”
That evening when Ghisla sang for Hod, she flinched at his grip, revealing the soreness of her arms. Horrified that he’d hurt her, he tried to keep his hands in his lap as she sang, but the connection wasn’t as immediate, and the images weren’t as infused with color.
“My ears are overjoyed . . . My heart too, but it is like the night of the storm. I can hear you—your voice found me over miles of stormy sea—but I cannot see your songs. Not clearly. What fills my thoughts are more my own imaginings . . . a communion with your words and sounds, but not your . . . pictures.”
She’d held both of his hands after that, and he made her promise to tell him if he was hurting her. When she sang she watched Hod’s face, entranced by the emotions that danced there. He didn’t keep his eyes closed—he had no need. His eyes didn’t see; his mind did, as though she poured her own images into his thoughts with her songs.
He had his favorite songs, the songs of her people, the songs where the lyrics painted pictures, but he also enjoyed exploring.
“Sing me the one about the toad . . . the way your brother sang it. I was not holding your hand when you sang it the first time . . . and I was too distracted by the fact that you gave a toad my name.” He smiled, letting her know she was forgiven.