The Ferryman - Book 1

Chapter 94:

Eyespots

Everyone slept in the next morning. Moth tried valiantly to get up at sunrise but all courage left her when she started to sit up – she slept for another two hours.

Losi, on her pillow, nestled down against her neck.

When she finally stirred, half-awake, Heikka slipped into the tent to help her get ready. Though Heikka shared a room with her, her cot in the corner, Moth rarely ever saw her sleeping.

“Quite a night, wasn’t it?” Moth yawned, as Heikka pinned up her braids.

Heikka nodded. She looked at Moth’s reflection in the mirror. “People know what happened last night – just so you’re aware.”

Moth searched Heikka’s face. “What do you mean?”

“When you lovaled,” said Heikka. “They heard it.”

Moth grimaced. “I worried they would– must’ve scared some people awake. And the poor babies must’ve been so upset.”

Heikka jutted pins into Moth’s braids, and then carefully set the horned crown on her head. “Everyone heard it. Everyone woke up. Even those on the other side of the camp – jolted them out of a dead sleep.”

Moth had not thought her voice would carry that far in so muffled a forest.

“They want to know what you did, and I’m not sure what to tell them,” Heikka whispered. Moth felt her hands shake.

Moth turned around in her seat, and Heikka averted her gaze. Moth said, “I only did a cattle call! They all know what that is.”

“Milady, it was more than that. They said they woke up because they saw Lord Correb in their dreams, calling them. With a voice like…like a river. They were so afraid they didn’t leave their tents. Grandma said she’d never heard anything like it – not since Lord Correb disappeared.”

Moth could not understand. She opened her mouth but had no answer for Heikka, her head was buzzing trying to parse out what happened last night.

What did Balwin make me do? She thought, suddenly angry.

“I don’t have an answer,” Moth said at last to Heikka. “Tell them I was only lovaling. Tell them I’m sorry I woke them up – but nothing is the matter, no one is in danger.”

Heikka nodded but looked doubtful.

*

Only three horses stood ready for the trip. One for Korho, Moth, and Rodin.

“Ticky’s still gone getting my horse – he says he’s on her trail,” said Rodin. “I’m borrowing Cobbler from Feldar.”

Moth glanced at Korho. “Is Feldar still not coming?”

“I’m leaving Feldar and his pet sentry to make sure Win behaves,” said Korho, yawning enormously. “Let’s go. Oh, the birds coming too?”

Losi, sitting on Moth’s shoulder, squawked at Korho. Korho nodded, pretending to understand.

They rode out from the camp and towards the burial spot, which they had now travelled back and forth over enough for Moth to recognize the trees they passed.

Rodin, completely unaffected by his harrowing few days, chatted merrily as they went. “This trail was cut eight-hundred years ago, you know! But these

offshoots are much newer, now that the Fjer’s have been expanding into the north-west. Most stay close to the river for the driving, but with those new colossal wagons they’re able to go further out.”

“Those monstrosities are the size of houses,” muttered Korho. “I suppose it’s the new way of things.”

“Only for Maxa. They cost a fortune, and they’re hard to control even with a team of horses, I’m surprised he hasn’t lost a gelding under the wheel. Can transport a hell of a lot of pine.”

Korho snorted. “I don’t like that it’s all going to the cities. This is a sneeze away from violating the co dalmede.”

“It’s on the verge,” agreed Rodin, pensively. Then he turned in his saddle and grinned at Moth, “And how are you, little sister?”

“I’m tired, but doing alright.”

“How were the marches?” Rodin asked eagerly. “You met Lord Correb, right?”

Korho stiffened, turning his head to listen.

Moth wordlessly moved her mouth and then sputtered, “I…yes I met him. I married him.”

“I always heard he’s tall, is he tall?”

Moth struggled to follow Rodin. “He’s massive.”

“That’s our ferrier!” he exclaimed, looking over at Korho who nodded admiringly. “Strong, right? With wings?”

“Yes.”

“Ah hell I want to meet him – is he ever going to come back to Hiren?”

“He’s…sick right now. He can’t leave the marches until he’s whole again.”

“When will that be?” Rodin asked, worried.

Moth fiddled with the reins. “I-I don’t know. The sunstones will help, though – the fog affects him.”

Rodin whistled, amazed. “Well, I’m glad to help. So did you walk up to him and declare you were his wife, or did he already know? Is that the ring he gave you?”

Moth had no words to answer Rodin, so she twitched out her hand so he could see her ring.

He winced. “A bit wobbly, isn’t it? Awful pretty stone, though. What ring did you give him?”

“Nothing.”

“Hm.” Roding fiddled admiringly with the ring that Priscilla gave him. “Strange. Well, I guess there’s time before you go back – you’re going back there, right? After the burials?”

“…Yes.”

“Well time enough to get one for him. Maybe you could make it, Korho, jewelry smith that you are.”

Korho heaved a sigh and said, “Rodin you have two dozen mouths and not one is connected to your brain.”

Rodin roared with laughter. “God, to be told that by a Copekivi!”

“How’d you not get one bit of your ma’s good sense.”

“She spent all her sense to buy me.”

Now Korho was laughing. “You stupid bastard I’m glad you’re here. There’s our trail, get out the sunstones.”

With a flick, the bag of sunstones was in Rodin’s hand, and he jiggled it. “All ready. Call them what you will, but Rupert’s crew cut this trail real nice, real quick.”

They reached the end of the trail, to the sudden drop of the burial pit, and dismounted from their horses.

“Any need for speeches?” asked Korho, stifling another yawn.

Moth shook her head.

Rodin pulled out ten sunstones and handed them to Moth, looked around, and froze. He looked serious, for once.

“Been some helra spilled here, lately?” he asked, scratching his beard.

“Yes!” exclaimed Moth, amazed. “How did you know? We cleansed it with spring water.”

“Damn.” He jumped off his horse. “If enough helra spills at the base of a tree, it, uh, changes the tree. Aspens change the quickest.”

“Alters them how?” Moth asked, looking at the aspen, not seeing anything remarkably different.

The aspen looked back.

Where the usual eye-like markings of the bark would be, several small, primitive eyes began to bulge out from the bark, watery and sorrowful, oozing with tearful sap.

Moth screamed.

She stumbled backwards into Aggo and twisted her face away, overwhelmed with repulsion. Losi squawked and jumped from her shoulder.

Rodin twirled his ax. “Don’t worry, Mere, I’ll have it down in a second. Got to burn it when it gets eyespotted. Korho can you move the horses back?”

Korho watched the moist eyes that – with great effort – swiveled to look at him. Unable to look away, he said weakly, “What? Ah, yes.”

Carefully, he led Moth and the horses away as Rodin took his gleaming ax, stepped back to survey the tree, and then set to felling it, with effortless, powerful swings.

The eyes winced with pain and shock.

The three trees that were affected by the helra crashed to the ground with a spray of woodchips.

Korho joined Rodin to chop the trees to pieces. Within minutes there was a pile of blinking lumber by the side of the road.

Moth could barely lift her head. The nausea was cold in her stomach. She knew it – she knew they were the brown eyes of the boy in the pit. Correb had told her memories were stored in helra.

She covered her face and cried for him.

Korho and Rodin, uncertain what to do or say, silently hauled off the wood to burn it safely in an open clearing. The smell of the smoke drifted down, down the trail.

Moth wiped her eyes. Losi flew down to her, settling on her shoulder, and she pet the magpie until courage crept back up in her – as it always did after a cleansing cry.

Moth stood up and walked to the edge of the pit, looking from Losi to Aggo.

“You can be my witnesses,” she told them.

She reached out her hand and looked at the heavy, domineering pinelands, that seemed to suck the air out the earth. She said, out loud, to the heaviness in the forest: “Here is the first burial. I don’t know what you are, but we’re going to cut you in half with these sunstones. You will not be able to stop us.”

And one by one she dropped the sunstones into the pit.

As she did, she heard – far off in the deep of the forest, behind collapsed and hidden pathways – a gasp. The hair on her neck and arms stood up, but she set her face, unwilling to show fear. She waited, but didn’t hear anything else – she couldn’t be sure she’d heard anything at all.

Moth grabbed a shovel from Aggo’s saddle and began to bury the sunstones with dirt.

Behind her, Korho and Rodin returned and saw her – with terse nods they began to bury as well. Between the three of them, the ten-foot hole was filled that day, and the first sunstones were successfully planted on Maxa’s property in Pineland.