Tamlyn by James Moloney

Author:James Moloney
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-10-15T16:00:00+00:00

13

Departure

‘Silvermay! Silvermay, I have a job for you.’

I stifled a groan from deep in my throat. Birdie had been working me like a slave since I’d returned to Haywode. I swear I heard those words cawed by the birds overhead; they even echoed in my dreams.

‘I’m here,’ I called from the drying shed, where she’d sent me to stack turnips so the air could flow between them. Somehow I resisted the urge to add, What do you want this time?

We met halfway between the shed and the house, me with a face like thunder, I’m sure, and my mother carrying a basket.

‘Your father sent Piet to collect firewood in the forest. He won’t get any lunch unless someone takes him some, so here …’ She plonked the basket into my arms. ‘Wait while he eats, and if there are any mushrooms about bring them back in the basket. A few would be better than none.’

This wasn’t a job, it was a treat; and if joining Tamlyn for lunch wasn’t enough, I could hang around pretending to pick mushrooms, and as long as I brought back a few it wouldn’t look like I’d been slacking. I nearly kissed her, but that would have given the game away.

Tamlyn and I needed to talk. When we were sitting side by side on a fallen trunk, I told him straight out what was on my mind.

‘You scared me yesterday at the forge, when Ryall and I were having a perfectly innocent hug. We were only celebrating his mechanical arm, after all the work we’d put into it.’

‘Yes, I know that’s all it was.’

‘Then why did you look ready to kill us both? You mean more to me than a hundred Ryalls, but that doesn’t mean I can’t give a friend a hug when something wonderful happens.’

‘It was seeing your arms around him, Silvermay. It didn’t matter what the truth was, something flared in me, something I couldn’t keep down the way I used to. It’s been difficult these last few days.’

‘Since Miston came with the news.’

‘Yes,’ he murmured unhappily.

And why shouldn’t he be unhappy when the news was of his mother’s death? But that wasn’t what he was talking about and I knew it.

‘It’s the Wyrdborn in you.’

‘Yes,’ he said again, although this time without misery.

I didn’t miss the difference and shuddered. ‘It’s become stronger in you since you heard about … about what happened in Vonne.’

‘No, Silvermay, the Wyrdborn in me stays the same, neither stronger nor weaker. What has changed is my will to fight it.’

‘I want to help you,’ I said, placing my hand on his arm. ‘I can help you, like your mother did, and part of that is letting me share your grief about her death. That’s the commonfolk way, the way you have to learn.’

We hadn’t been so close since the night in the stable when he’d decorated my hair with stalks of straw. He had welcomed our intimacy then, his body warm and soft to my touch. It was the same flesh that I touched now, my hand on his forearm, yet he seemed so hard, unyielding.

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