Wolf’s Brother. Megan Lindholm
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Название: Wolf’s Brother
Автор: Megan Lindholm
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9780007397747
isbn:
“No.” The question puzzled Tillu. “I became a healer because it was what the women of my family knew and did. Just as my father tended animals and crops.” She sighed softly. “I never, as a child, imagined I would live so often alone.”
“Then take a man.” Kari’s voice was as careless as if Tillu had spoken of fashioning a new garment for herself. “Heckram would have you, if you let him.”
“Heckram…” Tillu hesitated. “I know so little of him, Kari. And I wonder so many things…”
“He is a good hunter,” Kari told her, as if that were all of a man’s worth. “And a generous man. Even with Elsa, for whom he felt only friendship. When she asked his protection, he gave it to her, and the gifts of joining as well.”
Tillu was silent, staring at her, praying she would go on. Kari smiled slowly. “I hear many things, when folk come to gossip with the herdlord and his wife. And Elsa, too, was not shy of speaking to me. She was as close to a friend as I have ever had…and we shared at least one thing. We both wished to be rid of Joboam.”
Kari rose slowly and began to drift after the moving line of reindeer and folk. Her voice was soft, and Tillu hurried behind her, almost ashamed to be so anxious to hear her words.
“Some have said that Heckram only took Elsa to wife because Joboam wanted her. It is not secret that those two hate one another. So many have said in the herdlord’s tent, saying it was a shame Elsa was given to one who loved her with friendship but not with passion. Some say Joboam would have cared more for her, kept her within and safe…”
“And what do you say?” Tillu prodded gently.
Kari turned bottomless eyes back to her, stared through her as the girl continued walking. “I say that Elsa knew more happiness in her short months with Heckram than Joboam would have given her in a lifetime. Heckram showed no lack of concern. Elsa but went to the spring at night, to draw water, such as any herdswoman might do. It is not Heckram’s shame that she was not safe there. Whatever attacked and killed her within her own talvsit is the shame of all the herdfolk!”
Her words were suddenly fierce. She rounded on Tillu, madness in her eyes, coming so close to her as she spoke that her breath was hot on Tillu’s face. “It is not right that any herdfolk should fear to walk by night. The world, both day and night, is given to all of us. Why should one exist who can say, ‘Beware, Elsa, the night is death’?”
“No. It isn’t right.” Tillu put calming hands on Kari’s shoulders. The girl steadied under her touch. The wild shaking passed. “What did you see?” Tillu asked gently, sure of her suspicion.
“I?” Kari gave a shaky laugh. “I saw nothing. I was within that night, inside my father’s tent. But Owl saw, and he knows, and what he knows, I know.” She pulled suddenly free of Tillu’s hands. “Take Heckram, Tillu. You could heal him, could purge him of the worm that gnaws at his soul. He looks to you to save him.”
It was Tillu’s turn to pull back. She shied from the idea, throwing out words to turn Kari’s mind from the thought. “And you, Kari? Have you never seen how Lasse looks at you?”
“Lasse?” Kari’s voice set suddenly, her face going hard. “Lasse is a child. He has no idea what he wants, but I do. And soon I will tell him. He wants a girl who plays yet in front of her mother’s tent, a pretty little thing with wide eyes and easy laughter. A girl who will come to him like a calf sipping clear water for the first time, with wonder and surprise at the goodness of it. That is what he wants…what he deserves…” Her voice had gone softer and softer as she spoke. Now she suddenly lifted her head. “Foolish talk! We had best hurry, Tillu, if we are to exchange our full baskets for empty ones.” She turned suddenly and began to hurry up the line.
THE DAYS FELL into a pattern both restful and enervating. Tillu awoke with interest to each dawn, and lay down at night in weary peace. Animals and folk left the lakeside and its brushy banks and emerged onto the wide flats of the tundra. She and Kari gathered herbs and roots by day, and Kari learned the uses for each. Then came the sweet evenings when the folk halted and campfires were kindled and sleeping skins spread on the ground. Heckram’s shelter was never far away. Kerlew migrated in happy circles from the fire Carp shared with Heckram to the one Kari shared with his mother.
Yet she saw less of her son than ever before in their lives. She felt her guilt as an uneasiness, a sense of a task uncompleted. Hidden from herself was the relief she felt at being freed from his constant presence. Tillu began to live a separate life of her own. If Kerlew felt neglected or missed her, he did not show it. The boy was more confident than she had ever seen him. But for his dragging speech, and the strange topics he chose, he might have been a normal boy. His circle of tolerant adults was larger than it had ever been, and his status as Carp’s apprentice gained him a small measure of acceptance by the other children. They did not play with him, but they did not taunt or beat him either. Another boy might have felt his isolation as loneliness. Kerlew only felt relief. He moved through the camp without fear of thrown stones and blows. He seemed unaware of the children who ceased their noisy games to watch his passage with widened eyes.
There was an interlude Tillu was to long remember. She was returning from one of the tundra’s myriad ponds with water for the evening’s cooking. Carp must have been napping somewhere, for she spotted Kerlew alone, atop one of the worn gray boulders that dotted the tundra. He was stretched out on his back on the hard warm surface. Over his face his slack wristed hand held a ranunculus. He was twirling it by its stem, watching the bright petals spiral. His lips smiled foolishly and from his throat came a sound like the happy grunting of a suckling babe.
A few strides away three boys crouched behind a screen of brush and watched him. The grins on their mocking faces were hard and sharp as knives. Their giggling was muffled behind dirty brown hands. Two years ago, Tillu thought to herself, I would have rushed forward, jerked Kerlew to his feet and scolded him. I would have chased the other boys off to their mothers. She blinked her eyes, wondering what had changed, her boy or the way she regarded him. She walked on, water spilling in bright drops from the clay-and-moss-calked wooden buckets she carried.
In the evenings folk came to Tillu, for a salve for a blistered heel or a rub for a wrenched knee. Her healings were seldom more complicated than that. The herdfolk were a stout and healthy people, given to little worry about minor ailments. The runny noses of the bright-eyed children were ignored, as accepted as their ruddy wind-chafed cheeks and the bumps and scratches from their tumbling play. The work did not tire Tillu; she took pleasure in the chance to better know the folk she had joined. Of Capiam she saw nothing. He seemed content to trust her to perform her own tasks, or perhaps he was too busy to be bothered with her. Several times Joboam brought meat to her, the portion allotted to Tillu by the herdlord. He spoke little but the few words he said sounded both superior and threatening. The tension Tillu felt in his presence did not abate; it was like a slowly swelling abscess that must eventually be lanced or burst of its own pressure.
At those times she took comfort from Heckram’s nearness. Whenever Joboam came to Kari’s fire, Heckram, too, appeared. His errand was always an innocent one; to borrow some grease for a harness strap, or to ask the loan of a larger cook pot. He did not confront Joboam, but his very presence seemed to restrain the other man. But as soon as Joboam left, Heckram did also. He smiled at her, he was courteous, СКАЧАТЬ