Dak had already left the gathering by then. First time since leaving Haven they’d been apart. Xander was gone, too. Nothing surprising about any of it. And yet. She sipped the brandy, listened to the talk around her, and tried to be content. Gratefully accepted a pallet of blankets in the common room for her bed. Curled up to sleep as Fisher banked the fire in the wood stove to embers.

One of the benefits of walking all day: she never had any trouble sleeping. Even now, simmering in some vague emotion between anger and abandonment, her tired body pulled her under.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////

Gray morning light came in through the skylight, waking Enid early. She felt fuzzy and unhappy—took a moment to remember why, and missed Dak’s warm self, who should have been snugged up beside her but wasn’t. She got up and dressed to escape the reminder.

Rustling in the kitchen drew her in, and she found Fisher starting water boiling for tea.

“Morning,” the woman said brightly. “Get a cup from the shelf there and I’ll pour you some.”

A shelf above the sink had a dozen or so mismatched earthenware mugs. Enid chose one. She kept looking at the door for Dak, who kept not arriving.

“Plans for the

day?” Fisher asked.

Enid shook her head, then belatedly thought she should maybe try to keep the conversation alive. Try not to feel quite so superfluous. “You? Anything special planned?” She winced, because the question sounded silly out loud. Sounded like a crutch.

If Fisher thought so, she didn’t react. “The boats won’t go out today because of the rain, so I’ll mostly be doing chores and repairs around here.”

“Can I help?” Enid asked, rather more desperately than she intended. “Anything you can teach me—I learn fast.”

Fisher considered her, seeming to take a moment to decide whether to classify her as “guest” or “temporary household member.” Or maybe “Dak’s current accessory,” which brought Enid back to being angry so she shoved the thought away. Enid didn’t really know which category she fit in, either. This would decide.

“Ever prep fish jerky?”

They’d need a way to preserve the fish they caught. Right. “No. Show me?”

“Drink up your tea and we’ll get started.”

Getting started involved preparing four big buckets of little silvery fish from yesterday’s catch that one of the other households had spent the night cleaning, filleting, and brining. Fisher brought out a set of racks, and Enid helped arrange thin strips of fish on the racks, careful not to let them touch.

At the back of the household, partway up the hill, sat a smokehouse, a small square shed that wasn’t big enough for much of anything else. Wood, scrap metal, and a chimney reaching up, pouring gray smoke. Fisher had already started a smoldering charcoal fire in the base. They had to deliver the racks they’d prepared to the smokehouse in a misting rain—they worked together, trotting up the hill with Fisher holding the racks while Enid held a light tarp over them, getting soaked herself. All the racks loaded into the shed. The fish would stay for a long time at a low temperature, drying out more than cooking, until the moisture burned away through strategic slats at the door. Enid took it all in.

“We’ll rotate the racks partway through, and the whole mess will be ready to seal up this afternoon.”

Back inside they dried off, changing shirts, hanging the wet ones by the stove to dry. After, Enid helped clean up the mess in the kitchen, and then gratefully accepted another cup of tea. She hadn’t realized how chilled she’d gotten until she held it in both hands; before, the work had kept her warm.

Fisher talked, and Enid asked questions to keep her talking, about the household, the town, their work.

Petula was an older household, on its third generation. A dozen banners were pinned up on the wall of the common room, including the new one, recently awarded. Some of them were old and faded, the next newest some eight years old. The kid it represented, the knitter Hild, ran around with a hyperactive amount of energy, harvesting herbs from the garden and digging weeds and talking about beehives, and then suddenly running out to Fintown proper on some mission or other. Petula had invited in new members over the years, as necessary. Fisher reminded her of some of the names and faces she’d forgotten the night before. Vinya made rope from hemp; Raul was a carpenter; Bin worked the scales at the docks, recording daily catches and quotas. The place had the same rhythms and energies that measured life at Plenty, but with different trappings, such as talk of how the sea looked and what storms brooded on the horizon, fish and seabirds and life on a rocky coast instead of hilly meadows.

The older woman finally made her feel welcome in her own right.

Fisher’s son Stev, represented by a banner on the wall some twenty years old, joined them that afternoon. He hadn’t been there for brandy the night before, Enid was pretty sure. He was short, stocky, with a shock of black hair and a small face in a seemingly large head—eyes set close together, wide lips. A near-constant smile. He moved carefully, as if he had to take an extra moment to be sure he had a good grip on a spoon, a chair, his own feet sometimes. He stirred the stew, delivered a pot full of kitchen waste to the compost pile in back, swept the floor after. If he’d been a child, Enid wouldn’t have taken a second look at him—he spoke like a child. But he wasn’t.

“Can I show Enid my rocks?” Stev earnestly asked Fisher.

“Ask her if she wants to see them.”

Stev looked at her, his eyes alight, and carefully asked, “Would you like to see my rocks?”

“He has a rock collection,” Fisher explained softly, nodding encouragingly.

“I’d love to see it,” Enid said, and Stev beamed.

He raced off and returned with a wooden crate filled with fist-sized rocks of every description, yellow sandstone and smooth beach rocks, granite sparkling with crystals and a dozen other earth-colored, unidentifiable samples. Stev had collected them all and told her exactly where each had come from—the beach north of town, the garden, the hill above the docks, and so on. A whole catalog of rocks ended up spread across the floor in the common room. Enid dutifully pointed to her favorites, and Stev arranged and rearranged them in categories of his own making. When it was time for dinner, Fisher asked him to clean up, and he did.

Tags: Carrie Vaughn The Bannerless Saga Science Fiction
Source: readsnovelonline.net