Outpost (The Fylking Book 1) by F.T. McKinstry

Author:F.T. McKinstry [McKinstry, F.T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-11-01T05:00:00+00:00

12

AS BIG AS THE SKY

A week had passed since Yarrow took Melisande into her home perched above the Otter River near the village of Highloc. On the morning Melisande arrived, the Blackthorn witch was waiting in her doorway in an iron gray cloak, her white hair freed from its braids and a smile touching her lips. She asked no questions. She acted as if Melisande’s exile from Odr was as inevitable as winter’s fall.

One late afternoon, Melisande crunched over the frozen grass of the rolling fields above the river valley. The sun broke from a band of dark clouds and beamed across the field, glittering on the ice and snow. Yarrow expected her back by nightfall, as usual. The crone was quite adamant about that. She never said why.

Yarrow’s mule, which she called Thor, plodded by Melisande’s side. Strapped over his back were two baskets heaped with linens Melisande had purchased in Highloc from a weaver with long red hair and a lanky knock-kneed gait that made him look like a water bird. She sold Punch to purchase these and other supplies that Yarrow had scratched on a list. The witch owned a buck already, and neither she nor Melisande had means, aside from their animals and the skills that supported them. Melisande left the goat in the market with a heavy heart, the knit collar she made to protect him from wolves still around his neck.

Though she was widely known throughout Ason Tae, Melisande got no hostility from anyone here. Perhaps news of her connection to the storm had not reached this far, or perhaps folk hereabouts respected Yarrow and avoided tangling with anyone in her care. One way or another, Melisande was done with pattern sense. Upon her arrival to Yarrow’s place, she dropped her knitting bag in the corner next to the pantry and had not picked it up again.

Yarrow gently suggested that Melisande continue her trade. Winter was upon them and they had their own and their animals’ mouths to feed. The haymonger who lived above the river to the north owed Yarrow some favors, but not enough to feed Thor and the goats over the cold moons. Besides, the witch added, the heart does not like being kept in a bag in the corner. Melisande said nothing to that. Needles and wool had only broken her heart in the end. A ranger unraveled, a slipped stitch and countless rows of tears had brought her to her mother’s way of thinking. Some trades were best left alone. Her heart could stay in the bag for a while.

To ease Yarrow’s back and mind, Melisande kept the house clean, cooked meals and helped to strip, sort, cut, grind and blend leaves, flowers, bark and roots to store in the cabinet where the witch kept the supplies of her craft. When the crone went down into her rough earthen cellar and sang life into her spells before a stone altar, Melisande went outside to chop and stack wood, milk the goats, feed the chickens and geese and muck the barn.

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