Sistersong by Lucy Holland

Author:Lucy Holland [Holland, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781529039061
Google: nMwDEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B08LDNZLC8
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2021-03-31T23:00:00+00:00

It’s quiet without Os around. Quiet in the sense of . . . there being an absent presence is the only way of describing it. And Os has such a large presence. Not being able to talk like the rest of us doesn’t change that. Truthfully, the only other person who’s sad to see Os go is Arlyn. ‘I’m used to him sitting here,’ he admits to me, after Os has ridden his bay mare away. ‘He’s comfortable to have around – you know what I mean?’

I nod. I know what he means.

Arlyn’s silent a while. I am too. There’s an empty space in me, which I hadn’t known Os filled. I’d only befriended him to spite Riva, after all.

‘Do you think . . .?’ Arlyn stops.

‘What?’ I say, staring morosely into the fire. Despite everything, sometimes I wish Tristan and Os had never come here at all.

‘Riva.’ Her name sounds like it hurts him. ‘Do you think she loves him? I mean – truly?’

I look up. There’s colour in Arlyn’s face, and misery, and the picture is abruptly complete. I always wondered why I couldn’t charm the smith’s apprentice. ‘You love Riva.’

Arlyn starts pounding on a shapeless mass of metal. ‘It’s that obvious?’

The truth is like a surge of seawater. Is everyone in this place obsessed with Riva? What has she done to merit any of it? She’s boring and dour and reads too much. She has that awful limp. Her laugh is too piercing. She natters on about the old ways, but hasn’t the courage to refuse Gildas and his stupid church outright.

Wings thrash in my chest. I don’t know why, but I need to get out. I’ll go and see Os; his languid gestures always calm me. But then I remember Os is gone, perhaps for weeks, perhaps forever. I have nowhere to go.

I burst from the smithy with a nameless cry, part anger, part hurt. And I listen as my cry is taken up, hallooed over the wooden rooftops, leaping from throat to throat until enough sense comes back to me to wonder why. There are other sounds now: the pounding and shuffling of many feet; the creak of gates. I break into a run.

Someone catches my arm as I hare into the lower terrace, jerking me to a halt. ‘What’s going on?’

I’m affronted until I realize it isn’t some stable boy hanging onto me, but Keyne. I blink up at her. When did she grow so tall? There’s a thin sweat on her brow as if she’s been running too. ‘I was about to find out,’ I say peevishly.

‘Let’s go then.’ Before I can think of a suitable response, she’s pulling me along in her wake like so much flotsam. Her grip on my arm is almost painful and I find myself remembering Beltane – and Myrdhin’s words. He is who he is. The world cannot change that and neither can you.

He is who he is.

I look sidelong at Keyne. What is the difference between a girl in boy’s clothes and a boy in boy’s clothes? Huge, I realize, for Keyne.

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