Boots Chapter 14
As Boots had listened to Luthi’s story, the light from the rising sun had pierced through the trees and was now cresting the tops. He could tell by the how the rays arrowed sharply across the garden and fields that it was going to be another hot day. He debated how to best make sure his mother would be comfortable between the time he left and when Jayna might stop in – how many blankets she may need, how much water, where to leave the chamber pot. She was asleep when he left, and he did not wake her. She still was not lucid, going in and out of dreams and fevers just as she went in and out of coughing fits, rarely saying more than his name. Everything else was sleep.
Donning his lightest clothing and a hat, Boots set off with his cart of tools. The sky was an intense, cloudless blue, and he was glad he had packed extra water in anticipation of the heat. He had also thought to find the bag of shark’s teeth in the yard where he had thrown it. Surrounded by the warmth of the sun and the green smells of his mother’s garden, the fear of the nightmare fizzled away. There was a moment, though, an echo of that deep voice that made his hand hesitate; but he grasped the bag out of defiance and put it in the cart in case he ran into Colin.
Despite the heat, and his restless sleep, he was relieved to feel the usual strength in his arms and legs as he worked. He was less thrilled at the state of the fields. But he was hopeful and continued to try and salvage as much as possible. He also checked for blight and was relieved to find no new cases in either field.
Boots toiled away, but it was earlier than usual when he found himself beginning to tire. Apparently, he was not as recovered as he had thought. He was down to his last few gulps of water too, and he worried for his mother, so he made the decision to pack up. No time to visit Colin’s house again, but as Boots walked along the path from the fields he kept looking around, half expecting to spot his friend in the distance. But Colin did not appear.
Boots wondered which day he might have time to see his friend, maybe a day Jayna could stay a little longer, but the planning proved unnecessary. Off the winding path that led to his cottage, Boots spotted a familiar figure.
Colin was sitting on a long, flat rock that rested in a large field tangled with long grasses, low shrubs and fragrant herbs. Beyond the field was the marshy pond Meranin brought the geese to. Boots and Colin used to play here when they were younger while Meranin gathered herbs in the surrounding fields. They used to pretend the rock was a tall mountain, or a ship, or an island in a sea of green.
The memories were sudden and sharp as Boots set down his cart and approached: the rough surface under his bare feet, the scent of sun-warmed stone and long grasses, Colin’s laughter as he tumbled off the side of the rock, Boots reaching out with a long stick to rescue him from the imaginary waters, his mother’s wide brimmed hat in the distance peering back at them.
The present left a shadow on the memory. Instead of his young, thin arms reaching off the rock to rescue Colin from an imagined danger, he thought of pulling Colin from the cool waters of the river in the muffled darkness, his skin clammy with fear and sweat, a haunting song sending shivers through him. He remembered Colin whispering “get away, get away” through clenched teeth while Alec tried to run back to the river.
Boots carefully tried to hide the worry from his face as he crossed the field. Colin glanced up at Boots’ approach with a weak smile, then went back to what he was doing, which was picking long blades of grass and splitting them along the middle with his thumb. Boots settled himself on a corner of the stone and pulled up some blades of his own and set about twining them together.
“Were you waiting for me?” Boots asked.
“Yeah. Figured you would come this way eventually,” Colin said, fiddling with the grasses.
“How do you feel?” Boots asked, after a bit.
Colin shrugged. “Fine, I guess; like I was almost kidnapped by goblin ladies. Had they not been so skinny, maybe I wouldn’t have minded so much.”
Boots gave a little laugh and Colin smiled crookedly.
“Did…were you…was it bad?” Boots finally asked.
Colin took in a shaky breath, but his hands stayed steady as he finished twisting up a blade of grass and bent to pluck another from the ground. He kept his eyes on what he was doing as he spoke; Boots could tell he was trying hard to keep his voice level.
“It was a little like being drunk I guess, like I couldn’t really tell everything that was happening. They said – Burig and that tall lady – they said it was the song that does it, sort of like hypnotizes you. So, I was afraid but not really. And when they pulled me into the water I –” he stopped, and his hands were still.
Boots thought of bumping along the forest floor in a daze, the nikka hauling him along by his ankles, afraid but somehow not, like he was watching himself in a nightmare.
“Was it like you sort of wanted to go with them?” he asked in a careful tone. “Like when you know you’re dreaming but can’t tell yourself to wake up?”
“Yeah, a little like that,” Colin said, but in a way that maybe meant it wasn’t quite like that at all. He wound some grass around his fingers and pulled it tight, then unwound it again.
“Hey, did you hold on to the teeth?” Colin asked, changing the subject and his tone.
“I did,” Boots said, brightening up. “I have them in the cart, just in case I saw you. Just wait.”
Boots hurried over to the cart and pulled out the bag of teeth. When he brought them over, he was relieved to see Colin’s eyes light with genuine anticipation as he took the bag. Colin reached in and took one out to inspect it, a happy smile on his face.
“Maybe I’ll put one on a necklace. And when Balert asks about it I’ll tell him I carved it out of bone and watch it drive him crazy wondering if I’m lying or not.”
Boots laughed at such a convoluted, but effective, plan to annoy Balert to no end. Colin’s smile was impish. “They took the shark away, you know. He’ll never get his hands on any piece of it now.”
Then the smile slipped and a change came over Colin. It was so slight that Boots wondered if he had imagined it. But there was something about the set of his features, a sadness around the edges and a shadow in his eyes that Boots had never seen on his friend’s face before.
“Did Burig take the whole shark away?” Boots asked. He was trying to remember if he had overheard anything about it from Jayna or Burig; but everything was still a wash of sweaty terror and confusion.
Colin studied the tooth, turning it over in his fingers.
“No, I don’t think it was him, or who he was with,” Colin said, in a cautious voice that made Boots consider who would have taken the shark. He realized that it may not have been a “who” but a “what”.
“Was it the -” Boots could not quite say it.
“The nikka?” Colin supplied the word as if it cost him something and Boots regretted not saying it himself. “That’s what they said, at least that’s what I thought I overheard.”
Colin dropped the tooth in the bag and went back to absently twiddling with a long piece of grass, effectively avoiding Boots’ scrutiny.
“What happened to you after, after Burig took you away? I tried to stay with you but he said I might get in the way. I’m sorry I didn’t,” Boots said.
Colin waved away the concern. “I barely knew what was happening. Bridda was there, and Burig, but another woman was there, her name was Chandra.”
“I think she’s from the Cloisters,” Boots said, suddenly.
“I know!” Colin added, the gleam of excitement returning to his face. “At least I was certain I overheard that. I guess I must have been asking about you, but she didn’t know what I meant, and she kept saying ‘your boots are fine, they’ll be dry in the morning’.”
This got a laugh and Colin continued with what he could remember. “She and Burig were talking about the shark and the fish and the flood. They were saying how ‘he’s taken more than ever, this time’ and talking about shortages of fish and how much the waves off the ocean destroyed.”
Boots let all this sink in. “Bridda had said something about that, about the wave coming all the way from the coast. It seems impossible.”
“I know. How big would that be?” Colin wondered. “I can’t even imagine.”
Both friends took a moment to think about the large wave bearing down on them in Holding River and tried to picture it large enough to wipe out an entire village. They couldn’t, not really.
“Who was the ‘he’ they were talking about?” Boots asked. “Do they think something other than the weather caused this? Like the -” Boots hesitated then pushed the word out “- like the nikka did it? Aren’t they sort of ladies, like ‘she’ and not ‘he’? Did the ‘he’ send the nikka?”
“Maybe something like that,” Colin said. And his tone told Boots they were thinking the same thing but were not prepared to say it. Someone else, Boots thought, as in not a regular person.
“Remember how my mother, Luthi and Jayna were going on making all those charms and stuff?” Boots said, quietly, as if what he was suggesting should be a secret. “Around the shark? And I was telling you about protection and that sort of thing. But there was nothing hurt to cure, like the way you would for healing. It wasn’t medicine they were doing there. It was more like…like it could be magic, maybe.”
Colin blew out a breath of air at the word “magic”, as if it had loosened something he was trying to hold on to. His reaction prompted Boots to finish his thoughts. “And Chandra, and what she was doing. That was like magic too, right?” Boots added. “Not like an herb packet to bury in the fields, or a simple rhyme to help the bread rise or even a charm for a safe birth. It was something more than any of that.”
Colin nodded. “It wasn’t anything I could understand. Even when I was there, she sort of healed me, but it wasn’t like anything your mother or Jayna would have done. It was strange, like from the inside out. Like…it was very strange.” He finished, looking down at his feet.
There was quiet then, but it was abuzz with unspoken thoughts. The words wizard and magic seemed to want to speak themselves into the air between them.
Just that morning, Boots had shared a morning blessing with Luthi. The idea of gods, and luck, and fairies and charms and potions were woven into the fabric of their lives in Holding. But it was woven in like embroidery on a family heirloom, something treasured, but also something worn and familiar, something you only stopped to marvel at when you had a moment to think about it.
This new idea of magic was something strange and foreign, like the blight that crept into the fields. It brought sharks, and floods and creeping things from the river. If the idea of magic in Holding was like an embroidered cloth, this new idea of magic was like the underside of that same cloth – where you saw the crisscross of wrong colours, the knots and the snarls of thread. Boots thought about what Bridda had said, about protecting people by keeping the truth from them. About the truth he had been keeping so far. How big of a truth would someone be willing to hide?
Because if Burig and Bridda had asked Boots and Colin to lie about the nikka to protect everyone else in Holding, what further lies did they tell to protect Boots and Colin?
He tried to imagine being a villager in Holding who had passed a regular night with no knowledge of the nikka. How many unseen and unknowable threats would you want to have heaped on you in the morning? How would you feel if someone told you those threats were magical?
“It’s a little bit like your mum’s map, isn’t it?” Colin said, suddenly. “Like you can look at everything, and think you understand it, but it’s nothing like being there.”
Boots looked at Colin quizzically as he continued to explain.
“Your mum was telling us about the kings, and the lords, and the…the wizard that might have been. We know what all these people are, but we don’t really know them, we don’t understand all the little bits and details about how and why they do things. Like, anyone can look at where Holding is on a map, but they don’t live here.” He shook his head. “Maybe that’s not what I mean.”
“No, it makes sense,” Boots said, understanding his friend. “Like Bridda and Burig have a better map than the rest of us, and have been to more of the places, they have a lot more of it filled in with all kinds of details. So, they just know more, I guess.”
“Yeah,” Colin said. Then he yawned, causing Boots to do the same.
“I’m so tired,” Colin declared through the yawn, “I haven’t slept right since that night. I keep -” he stopped himself, “- I just keep waking up.”
“I haven’t had a full night’s sleep either,” Boots said. “I keep topping off the brew for my mom.”
Colin eyed the sun as it tipped westward. “What brew for your mom?” he asked.
“Oh, just to help with her head. In this weather, it aches a bit,” Boots said, quickly, then changed the subject. “Did they say anything else, Chandra and Burig?”
Colin sort of frowned, thinking through what he had heard.
“A lot of what they talked about was the -” Colin stumbled on the word.
“The nikka?” Boots said, this time.
“Yeah, them. Making sure they were gone and dealt with however that was supposed to happen.”
Boots had a sudden image of Burig’s sword stabbing through the nikka’s open mouth as it lunged forward. He was not ready to think about that, or even really talk about it, and shook the thought away as he listened.
“There was some…sometimes I think people were arguing or maybe everything just sounded sharp because I was in a fog. But it was mostly about if the area was safe. Chandra kept insisting that they got what they came for and wouldn’t be back.”
Boots let this thought settle. He was still trying to wrap his mind around a massive wave sweeping a shark through his village, only to then see nightmare fables come to life and try to drag him back to the river. At least, he thought, if the nikka were after the shark and they took it, they really wouldn’t have a reason to come back. A thought occurred to him, then, and he went pale.
“Oh gods, the teeth,” he said, reaching out to clutch the bag.
“No, no, it’s alright, I think,” Colin said, giving Boots’ arm a nudge. “Bridda knew what we were up to, remember when she was looking at where we were hiding and led Albo and my dad away? She guessed what we had done, and she thought to ask about it.”
“Are you sure?” Boots asked, “because I’m ready to throw that bag in the river and never look back if we need to. I kind of threw it out of the house last night. I didn’t feel safe with it around.”
They looked at each other, then at the bag.
“She was pretty certain, that Chandra woman. Insisting that it was safe and those things gone from the river. It was more like Burig kept asking her to be certain and she kept reassuring him that it was fine. I guess we could give the teeth to Bridda?” Colin suggested, sounding less confident about keeping the bag.
“Or we could just bury them, right here,” Boots said, anxious to solve the problem right away. “And then ask Bridda about it when we see her.”
When we see her, Boots thought, and realized he was not exactly looking forward to that moment. Bridda had been correct, Boots did not like being asked to lie, especially by someone he considered to be good. He felt it made him dishonest, and that made them dishonest as well.
Colin agreed and Boots grabbed a shovel from his cart and started digging a hole close to the base of the stone. As Boots dug, he looked over at Colin, who was back to contemplating the grass.
“Burig and Bridda, did they ask you not to tell anyone about it? To keep the nikka a secret?” Boots asked.
Colin half smiled. “You sound so guilty and you aren’t even really lying about it yet.” He grabbed at a few more tall blades of grass and pulled them out of the ground.
“But are you going to?” Boots asked.
Colin twined the long grasses around his finger then dropped the snarl on the ground and scuffed it with his toe while he answered. “It makes sense, I guess. They said there’s no more danger and I want to believe them. Also, it’s not really a story I want to tell. I mean, getting kidnapped by skinny spirits in soaking nightgowns? And having you as my rescuer?”
“Well, it was more Bridda.”
“Not better,” Colin said. “But I don’t really want to be talking about it, reminded of it. Maybe that’s selfish, though, to keep it to myself. Maybe people need to hear it?”
Boots dropped the bag in the hole and started covering it up. It gave him time to order his thoughts.
He understood Colin’s uncertainties, since they were the same as his own. But he had been thinking over Bridda’s words and had begun to see the logic of her explanation, even if he was not sure he trusted it. So, he had decided that Colin’s opinion mattered more, and he was prepared to do what Colin felt most comfortable with. He took a breath and ventured his own version of what Bridda had said to him.
“I know what you mean, about telling or not telling. I keep thinking that everyone should know too. But I’ve been thinking a bit on what Bridda told me. She said something about not giving people things to be afraid of if they don’t have to, that it can cause problems that we don’t need. I’ve…I’ve been thinking about it. And maybe it’s like a few summers ago when we told Shase and Jono that there was a goblin in the woodshed. Remember, for the next few weeks you had to do all his chores with him because he was too afraid to go anywhere near it alone?”
Colin gave a small smile at the memory. “Never mind the chores, I had to sit beside him until he fell asleep every night, and he’d bolt up every time the tiniest sound was made.”
“That too,” Boots said. “He was afraid, he didn’t sleep, you didn’t sleep, and the chores didn’t get done properly, or you had twice the work to do.”
“And my mother found out and I was last in line for meals a good five days.” Colin added as the memories came back.
“Yeah, and Jove had some of the same problems with his brother, Jono. And remember we didn’t want to tell him it was us that made up the story and caused all the problems? I think he half guessed it, but we felt pretty silly about it. All that extra trouble because Shase and Jono were afraid of something that wasn’t even really there.”
Colin thought this over, then spoke Boots’ own doubts at him. “But the nikka actually were there, we didn’t make anything up this time.”
“That’s the big difference,” Boots agreed. “And I keep thinking, what if there had been a real goblin, but we got rid of it before your brother ever knew about it?”
“Could we be certain there would never be a goblin in the woodshed ever again? Would it be safe if we never warned him?” Colin asked, finishing Boots thoughts again.
The two friends thought in silence. Boots pressed down the dirt that now covered the shark’s teeth and Colin grasped a fresh handful of long grasses.
It wasn’t as though consequences had never been part of their lives before, it was just that they had previously faced consequences that were predictable and bearable. Being last in line for dinner or helping Bessie clean her cold stores was inconvenient – but it was hardly disastrous – and they had always faced their punishments the way they had earned them, together, and with a little bit of humour. Recently, though, they were learning about the kind of consequences that could not fully be shared, or borne, or resolved in an afternoon of semi-contrite chores.
Deciding whether or not to tell the rest of the village about the nikka was a decision with, as Boots saw it, pretty clear consequences. He put the thoughts he had been mulling over into words. Hoping that by giving them shape, and sharing them with Colin, they could be seen more clearly.
“If we tell them, and nothing happens, then it will look like we are worrying everyone for nothing. If we tell them and something happens, then there is a chance people could be prepared. If we don’t tell them, and nothing happens, life goes on as it always has, everyone is happy.” He finished with what was, in his opinion, the worst scenario. “If we don’t tell them and something bad does happen, then they will be unprepared and we will feel terrible about anything that goes wrong. It just seems like if we make the wrong decision, it could have a bad outcome, don’t you think?” Boots finished.
Colin riffled the tops of the long grass while Boots spoke, slowly bending them with his palm and letting them spring back. He did this a few more times after Boots stopped speaking.
Then he said, “I went back to the river.”
His voice sounded different; Boots kept listening in stunned silence.
“I stood – I stood in the exact spot you found me in. I, I went into the water there up to my ankles.”
Even though Boots already knew that Colin was not going to get swept away by the nikka, he still felt a tingle of apprehension along the back of his neck when he pictured Colin standing there, the cold water lapping at his feet, the ghost of a thin hand reaching for his ankles.
“I was scared.” Colin continued in that strange voice that was sort of far off, he was still running his hand over the tops of the grass. “I was terrified, but only of the memory. The water itself felt…exactly the same. It was just Holding River; and the place I was in was just the same as ever. All of it, the trees, the smell, the sounds, it felt exactly the same. Unchanged and untouched. Except for me.” His hand stopped. “I was the only thing that was different.”
Boots felt something fit in place inside of him, like a heavy stone rolled into a hollow, as he realized he understood perfectly what Colin meant. He had just never thought about it long enough to define it.
Boots thought of how he had felt after losing his fingers, outcast and separated from everyone else. Sure, he felt ashamed and embarrassed about what had happened, but there was something more than that. It was knowing that no one else he encountered had experienced what he had, and they would never know who he had become because of it.
What happened to Colin was known only to a few, there was no public shame. He probably did not feel, as Boots often did, that he in some way deserved what had happened to him. But maybe that did not matter, maybe who knew and what you deserved were not important, maybe feeling different was the only thing that mattered.
Even though his trauma and Colin’s were not the same, it seemed the end result was. Boots knew what it was to wake up and feel as though you no longer fit the shape of your life. He had been trying to pretend that he did, but he was aware that the edges were starting to chafe.
Boots looked over at Colin and thought of him ankle deep in the river, the terror of that night playing through his mind. It seemed either very stupid or very brave – most likely a little of both. He wondered if he and Colin would always feel that way about Holding River; every summer swim and early morning fishing trip weighed down with doubt, a little jump of fear when the water rippled, or the wind blew just so over the reeds.
Was that something they wanted everyone in the village to feel too?
“So, when you went there,” Boots asked. “You thought it seemed safe, it felt safe? Enough to trust it?”
Colin’s face was creased with a kind of worried uncertainty. “I think so. I don’t know if you remember that feeling, just before the ground seemed to shake, you just knew something was going wrong.”
Boots remembered the feeling, his arm hairs on end, the strange texture of the air, he felt his skin break out in prickles responding to the memory.
“I remember,” he said, quietly.
“Well, that feeling wasn’t there, not at all. It was gone. It just didn’t feel like anything bad was going to happen. If you, if you want to go to the river later and see for yourself and let me know?” Colin said, trailing off with a question before continuing with his justification. “And it isn’t just me. Burig and Bridda and Chandra, they all said it was safe too. And I really don’t think Burig would risk – would want to leave this place in danger. It’s kind of his job, after all,” Colin finished, his eyes cutting to Boots.
“I think I could do that, go to the river,” Boots said, although he really did not want to. But if Colin could do it then so could he. “And I won’t say anything, if that’s what you want to do,” Boots said. “But if you change your mind, then I’ll tell the story with you. Just let me know.”
“Thanks.” Colin said. And by the way he said it, Boots thought it somehow made his friend feel better.
They sat on the rock and watched the passage of a dragonfly as it landed on the bobbing heads of wildflowers amidst the green grass. The field simmered with heat and the buzzing and chirruping of insects. Boots’ thoughts were crowded by everything Colin had said, but he was also thinking about his mother and how he should be getting back. He did not see any reason to tell Colin about his mother’s illness at the moment, although in any other circumstances he would have, but why add to his friend’s worries?
More secrets for someone else’s peace of mind, Boots thought.
“Well, I should be going. Some things to check on.” Boots said, trying to sound casual, but the emotions of the day were there in his voice.
Distracted by his own thoughts, Colin just gave Boots’ shoulder a squeeze and a shove before saying goodbye.
Boots left and headed up the path. He kept flashing between the images of that chaotic night of confusing terror and Colin standing in the river’s edge in the peaceful light of day. The face of the nikka, its tongueless mouth gaping wide reared into his memory followed by Colin’s shocked face as he was pulled into the grass to be dragged into the river.
The thought made Boots feel sick for a moment, and he looked back, as if to be sure Colin was still there. And he was. Sitting on the rock, so still but somehow careful. He watched his friend take a swig from a waterskin and stare off into the distance, as if he was seeing something much further away than anyone else could understand.
Boots trudged up the path to his cottage, and the walk home that usually cleared his mind had only muddled things further. With nothing to distract him from his thoughts, he had time to add all the different details to his worries and wonders. The nikka and what they were after, the shark’s teeth and if they were in danger for taking them; and once he had plumbed the depths of those worries, he could no longer hide what he was burying deepest: magic and the formless shadow of some unknowable threat looming over it all.
Wizard. Sorcerer. His mind whispered at him as he plodded along, trying to outpace the idea of it.
It was not until he opened the door to his cottage and looked over at a most welcome sight that all his troubled thoughts fled. The curtain for his mother’s bed had been pulled aside. Jayna was still there and was sitting at her bedside. had pulled the curtain back and was sitting at her bedside. Meranin was propped-up with pillows and blankets, looking worn out, but her eyes looked his way and saw him when he came through the door.
“Mother, you look almost awake,” he said, making his way over to the bed.
He gave Jayna a hopeful, questioning look that was met with an encouraging smile. He felt a tingle of relief.
“Boots,” Meranin managed to rasp out with a tired smile.
Her voice was very hoarse, barely a whisper. The covers moved as she tried to lift her arm, he reached out and took her hand. Jayna brought over a stool and he sat down.
“She’s been awake for a bit. I was just giving her a bit of a fill-in on the happenings around here. About how that Burig fellow was here and gone again, seems to have taken that shark with him.”
Boots felt a guilty jump at the mention of the disappeared shark corpse. He noticed his mother frown at the mention of the captain.
“Oh, is that what happened?” Boots asked, vaguely. “Oh yeah, Colin mentioned something about it. Just now. When I saw him. Because his dad was there, at the river with them. All of them. Burig.”
Boots felt that Jayna may have been giving him a rather level look, but he could have imagined it. He wondered if Jayna knew something more than just the village gossip, if the charms she worked near the shark gave her any inkling as to what had broken through them.
“How is she doing?” he asked. “Is she improving? Is the phlegm cleared up?”
“Not entirely,” Jayna replied. “Sorry to say there will still be some of that. And although she is lucid now, she still has a low fever, and you can see she is already tiring. It’ll be another few days before we see real improvements, I’m afraid.”
Indeed, Meranin’s eyes, which had been drifting open and shut while they spoke, were now closed. Her hand had gone limp in his and he tucked her arm back into the bed.
“That’s alright. As long as she isn’t getting worse,” Boots said.
“No, certainly not worse,” Jayna agreed.
“I don’t suppose she said anything about where she had gone?” Boots asked.
“No, she did not. But her voice is still weak from coughing and illness. Maybe when she is feeling better, she will share her story with us.” Jayna said, with a smile that knew how unlikely this was. Boots responded with a similar smile and stood up from his stool.
“I went through the garden and picked and sorted a few things, I hope you don’t mind. Some of it I’m going to bring back with me to prepare so nothing goes to waste.” Jayna said.
Boots looked over at the table and saw several baskets and pots in the house had been filled with various things from the garden. There were also a few sacks and some bunches of herbs that Jayna was rolling up in a cloth.
“I’ll sort through it all with Meranin when she’s better. I’ll probably take some jars for storage too; I don’t have enough at my place.”
“Of course,” Boots said. “I can’t thank you enough, not just for your medicine, but for coming to stay. I don’t know how I would manage without -”
And Boots stopped, because he had suddenly teared up, and if he kept talking, he might start to bawl outright.
Embarrassed, he made a gesture and a sort of grumble and went outside to start unloading his cart. He was relieved that Jayna did not immediately follow him out the door. By the time she bustled outside with two full baskets he was able to look at her and smile without feeling that it looked like a wince.
“It’s fine Boots,” she said, her voice full of kindness and understanding. “You do a lot. And you have recently been through a lot. The flood, and your mother being sick, and trying to keep both fields going…sometimes we just get overwhelmed.”
He nodded, but the tears still threatened. She pulled him in for a quick hug and a pat on the back. “Not only am I the healer here, I am also Meranin’s friend. And, in case you have forgotten, the person that rescued you and Colin that time you somehow managed to tie yourselves to a tree and couldn’t get free. You can’t be feeling brave all the time, I know it.”
Boots gulped up a laugh. “We were trying to gain Wodan’s knowledge,” he said, referring to the story of how Wodan tied himself to the world tree.
“Well, I guess we’re lucky neither of you realized that Wodan used a noose,” Jayna said, stepping away and picking up her baskets again. “I’ll come by tomorrow, in the afternoon again. Go and eat something, Boots. You are handling everything so well, keep yourself strong.”
Boots thanked her again and waved. He watched her make her way along the path with her baskets and felt very fortunate to count her as a friend.
Not long after Jayna left his mother started coughing. The coughs wracked her body, it seemed worse than it had the other night, and he fought a kernel of panic that something was wrong. But then he heard the phlegm come loose, and she was coughing up more black goo which he caught in a scrap.
She took a deep, shuddering breath and seemed to settle. He peeked in the cloth, making sure there was no blood, before tossing it into the fire as Jayna had instructed. For the first time he wondered what a “significant amount” of blood would be and wished he had asked Jayna while hoping he would not have to find out. Then he gave his mother something to drink and laid a fresh compress across her neck and chest.
There were a few more coughs, but they were drier, and evidence that things were settling. He stayed at her side, giving her more water when she would take it, until she fell asleep.
As he looked at her face, he thought back to the moment he had stood in the doorway of the cottage, facing the night, waiting for the pale, slender form of the nikka to come lurching through the darkness. Instead, he had found his mother, exhausted and ill, clinging to the fence. He broke out in a cold sweat.
The events of the past few days spun through his head in a blur. He sat down hard on the floor and tried to take some deep breaths. Spots rolled in from the edges of his vision and threatened to overtake his sight with rushing water, pale limbs and sharp shark’s teeth. He looked up at the mantle through his wobbling sights to where the bag of shark’s teeth had previously sat. Glad that he had taken them out of the house and buried them by the rock.
With the shark’s teeth gone he saw only the carved, wooden horse toy from his youth. He focused on the horse, took some breaths and thought about what advice his mother would give.
Breathe. Feel what you are feeling. Focus on something else.
He turned and looked over at his mother, his eyes fell on Meranin’s worn pack that he had left at the foot of the bed instead of hanging it on a peg on the wall. The reason for that was because that strange, dark grey shard was still in it. He did not know what it was, but he felt it should be nearby in case she awoke looking for it. He wondered, belatedly, if he should have shown it to Jayna.
Standing up he tucked the pillows around his mother to make her more comfortable, a slight tremor in his hands as he did so. His eyes fell on his scarred right hand as it drew the curtain around her bed and he had a sudden flash of memory – being in the field, horse’s hooves pounding through the earth, the sharp explosion of pain. A twinge of hurt echoed up his arm and he pulled it back from the curtain.
Boots had the distinct feeling that each day was a wall he built, damning up his emotions and worries with bricks of work and duties. When he was busy, he had less time to think. To think about the nikka, the shark, his mother’s illness and – a new worry, just today – the strange hollowness in Colin’s eyes. But when he came home to the house, silent except for his mother’s raspy breathing, all those thoughts crowded back into his head.
His mind was abuzz, he could barely think and only think. So, he did the one thing that had always brought him a sense of calm, that narrowed his mind to a point, gave him one focus and left the rest of his thoughts behind.
He dragged out the target and fetched his bow and arrows, and as he did so he found himself revisiting thoughts of change and sameness. What he told Luthi was true, even though he knew he could never shoot a bow the way he did before, it was still something he wanted, needed, enjoyed. Even though it reminded him of what he had lost, he still had not lost the connection to the familiar routines it brought to his life. He thought of what his mother had said, about fate. How every life was speeding to the same ocean, it was just a matter of what currents you rode.
Maybe, he thought, you were a fish in those currents, or a little boat. And as you sped along you collected things both wanted and unwanted – connections to people, skills, memories, habits, fears, loves, pains, losses, and gains – collecting like stubborn barnacles along the hull, or pretty shells gathered and scattered in the prow, or like weeds tangled in the oars. And those things you collected stayed with you, as you jumped from one current to the next, one stream to the next. You gained things, he thought, and maybe sometimes you lost them if they shook free when you changed course, or you tipped them overboard. Maybe sometimes they left a little something behind.
He thought of Colin standing in the river, changed and the same.
And then the target was before him and his bow was in his hands. And he thought of nothing more but the pull and release of the string, and the whistling of the arrow through the air.