The Wild Dead (The Bannerless Saga 2)

Serenity’s banner, when it came, came quietly—almost anticlimactically. No fanfare, no grand announcement. In fact, Enid had been mostly drunk at the time.

Haven’s committee met in conjunction with the big midsummer market, and the whole town turned the event into a party, with music and booze and folk traveling in from households twenty miles around. People ate too much and didn’t even feel bad about it.

Olive was dancing in a crowd to a fiddle and drums, Sam and Berol were off finding food, and Enid was on the ground, on a blanket, back propped against a tree. She’d lost track of how much cider she’d drunk. People kept refilling her mug, and she kept not stopping them. Things had gotten loud, and rather than try to find out what was taking Sam so long, she stayed put so he could find her.

When one of the town’s teenagers stumbled to the ground next to her and tugged on her sleeve, she thought there must be a mistake. She couldn’t make out the words.

“I’m saying you’ve got to come, Enid, committee wants to see you!” the kid said breathlessly.

“Now?”

“Yes, now!”

“But I haven’t done anything wrong,” she mumbled back, and he rolled his eyes at her.

So she’d clung to the bark of the tree and managed to haul herself to her feet. Left her mug nestled in the roots, not really trusting that it would still be there when she got back. But she didn’t think it would be entirely proper to appear before the committee with a mug of booze in hand.

Buzzed, not paying attention, she still managed to arrive directly at the committee house. The way there was so familiar, after all. Could be a dozen reasons the committee wanted to see her in the middle of a big meeting like this. Probably it was investigator business. Someone had a question about an old case, or maybe a new one had come up.

Enid still wasn’t entirely sensible when she stood blinking at the three committee members across the desk, and they smiled happily back at her like she should be pleased.

Finally, she realized they were holding out a square of green-and-red cloth. She might have wished to be less tipsy at such a profound moment. Then again, maybe it was for the best that she wasn’t able to speak.

“Congratulations, Enid. It’s well deserved; Serenity house does good work,” said Otto, the committee chair, a medic who’d run Haven’s clinic for a decade now. He was normally serious, but now he positively grinned, and Enid just gaped at him—and she never gaped. She always knew exactly what to say.

“You might go tell the rest of your house now, hmm?” came the gentle suggestion from Clare, the town’s gray-haired matriarch.

“Yes. Thanks, thank you,” Enid finally stammered. She might have bowed a few times on her way out; she couldn’t really remember.

And then she stood in the clearing in front of the clinic for a long time, staring at the cloth in her hands, rubbing it between her fingers. The texture was rough, tightly woven with a kind of rustic handspun yarn. Of course they wouldn’t use good soft fiber on something that wouldn’t be worn. The tactile reality of the cloth fascinated her. The green was dark, like the forest. The red was like bricks.

Word got out. Someone spotted her there with the banner, staring at it as if under some kind of spell, and there was shouting, and Olive, Berol, and Sam managed to find her soon enough, and all of them together began screaming and laughing. Enid clutched the cloth while they hugged her, and all four of them clung to one another, beaming, while happily accepting congratulations from everyone else at the market festival.

They’d had no hint that they were about to receive a banner. Something like that ought to come with some kind of warning, a chance to prepare, Enid thought later. She had the vague thought that she hadn’t handled the announcement very wel

l. When she said this out loud, Sam laughed at her, insisting that there was no way she could prepare for everything.

Back at home an hour or so later, the four of them kept drinking. A celebration, just for them, with a bottle of brandy Berol coaxed out of someone back at the market. They collapsed in front of their fireplace, which was unlit in the middle of summer, but still served as the cottage’s focal point.

Sam took a swig straight from the bottle, handed it to Enid, who took a long drink, and then passed it to Olive. “We have to get as much drinking in as we can now, since Olive won’t be drinking for a while,” Enid said, her usual cheerfulness turned brilliant.

“What?” Olive blinked back at her, startled, gripping the neck of the bottle.

“If you’re going to be pregnant, you shouldn’t drink. Not like this, at least,” Enid said happily.

“She’s right,” Berol said, taking the bottle from Olive in turn. “You have to take care of yourself.”

“But . . . we haven’t talked about it. I assumed . . . I mean . . . I thought we would talk about it, that we’d decide if Enid or I would be the one . . .”

“You want it, though, right?” Enid said. “You really want to be a mom, yeah?”

And Olive started crying, right there, hand over her mouth and eyes squinched up. Berol set the bottle aside and folded her in his arms, chuckling quietly while comforting her. Drunk, Sam buried his face in Enid’s lap to hide his laughter, and Enid kissed his shoulder out of sheer good feeling.

“You mean you all just decided, without even talking . . .” Olive sputtered, when she was able to catch her breath.

“It just seems obvious,” Enid said.

Olive seemed to need a moment, a few breaths to steady herself, but finally she smiled and reached for Enid’s hand, which Enid grasped tight. “Okay,” Olive said. “But Enid pins the banner to the wall.”