The Seasons of Salt

Chapter Four

The morning was too bright. Cerissa scrunched up her eyes against it. Her hair still smelt like riverweed and her fingers still ached with the cold. She’d been allowed to sleep in Ma’s room last night as a special treat because her bedchamber was still so messy from all the animals and anyway, she was too scared to go back in it. And Sylas had been allowed to come in bed with them too and then Jonnah had been feeling left out, so all four of them squashed into Ma’s big bed like they did when they were little and scrunched up together in a tangle of limbs and damp hair. Ma had hummed them little lullabies in the darkness and had pressed soft kisses to each of their heads and it had been warm and safe and dark at last. Cerissa had been the first to fall to sleep again. She did not have any dreams. 

She’d been the last to wake up too. The big bed was empty now. The blankets felt heavy and hot, as if she was buried under river-rocks, but it would not let her sleep again. There was no good in it. She’d have to get up.

Her chamber was almost back to normal by the time she padded barefoot over to it. She peeked her head around the door, as if expecting to see all the animals and the storm clouds raging in it still, but there was only the maids scrubbing at the floor and Pippy rummaging through the dress-chest.

“There you are, mite! Wondered when you’d be waking.” Her voice was too bright. She looked up from the chest, her thin, pinched face was redder than usual today and her eyes were red too. Cerissa looked harder at those red eyes, as if she might see a Starfire Isle demon lurking in them. But if there was demon in it, it was a friendly one at least. Showing off Pippy’s rabbit teeth in a smile and not a snarl. Pippy brandished a blue and white dress at her.

“Come on, child. Come here and get dressed, and then you can have breakfast.”

Cerissa did not like the blue and white dress. It had a dagged hem and long dagged sleeves and she was not allowed to play in't because it was her best dress and she would ruin it. She scowled at Pippy as Pippy wrestled her into it, but Pippy was pretending not to notice.

“There! Quite the lady now, little one. Go and show your Ma how nicely you can eat in’t.” 

Cerissa scowled harder, stuffed her feet into some leather shoes and lifted the edge of her skirts to stop herself from tripping down the long stairs.

They had grand stairs, everyone said so. Lady’s stairs, Da said. Proper castle stairs ought to be spirals, but Beaversbane had never been taken, not in all the long years that the Dowses had lived here. It did not need spirals. It had a grand and sweeping plunge out, down and around, right into the entrance hall and across into the great hall. Grand for making entrances and for showing off your daughters when they get marriageable, Da said, but she knew he was only teasing. She was going to stay here with Da and with Sylas and keep house with Ma. She’d told him so and he’d laughed, but he did not say no.

Jonnah, Sylas, Ma and Great-Grandma were already in the Great Hall when she got there but most other folks had gone by now. They were eating late today. Jonnah rose when she arrived, but Sylas did not. He was sitting on the bench and staring down at his food. Da would have clipped the back of his head for that, but Da was far away on the campsites, and he would not know.

The thought made her hot and squirmy inside and she did not like it, so she just plonked herself down upon the bench next to Ma, who dolloped some porridge into Cerissa’s bowl. Cerissa washed her hands in the river-bowl beside her plate and muttered the blessings under her breath. She always liked the river-bowls, made of swirling hammered copper, hemmed round with swooping, curving waves. Far prettier than their eating bowls – but then eating bowls were not holy items so they did not need to be pretty.

Ma put another dollop of porridge in her bowl, and Cerissa stared at it, feeling her mouth start to pout and grimace.

She was feeling cross and fidgety. Fractious. That was what Da called it, and it seemed right enough today. She mouthed the word under her breath. Fractious. It was a fractious kind of day.

“Stop muttering under your breath, child.”

Cerissa shot a look sideways at her mother. Ma was feeling fractious too, clearly. She looked pale and tight, like her plaits were drawn back too sharp.

“And do not just stare at me either. Sit up nicely, eat your breakfast. You are a big girl. Seven years old! You ought to know better than this by now. Do you want people thinking we raised you with no manners?”

Very fractious. Cerissa squirmed uncomfortably on the bench, her feet shuffling and squiggling on the rushed floor beneath. The bowl stared at her. She stared back.

“You know I do not like porridge.” A mutinous mutter rewarded with a glare.

“You eat what you’re given, Cerissa Dowse. There are plenty of children who’d be grateful for it.”

“Send it them, then. I’m not hungry.”

“Do not be ridiculous. I will not ask you again.” She had a glower on her, and Cerissa was too tired to test it. She put the spoon in her mouth. The sludge was thick. It’d gone lumpy and cold now– just the worst kind of porridge. She swished it around her mouth with her tongue, as if that might make it better, but it did not. Sylas would normally be pulling faces at her from across the table, his own tongue thick and white-laden, but today he just stirred at his bowl. His eyes down at the sludge, like he could see in the future in’t.

“Cerissa. Swallow. I have lost track of how many times I have asked you to eat like a lady and not like a cow, chewing the cud.”

Cerissa glanced over at Sylas again. He’d be mooing by now, normally. He did a good moo, Sylas. He was good at all kinds of impressions. People too. He could do one of Da that sent her rolling round on the floor, kicking her feet up in the air until Ma threatened to lock her in the garret unless she calmed down.

“Cerissa!”

Cerissa swallowed. She took up another spoonful, tilting it this way and that on the bowl to tip as much of the porridge off as possible before scraping it into her mouth.

“Fae’s Breath, child! Fine! Have it your way! Go hungry! I have never known anyone more spoilt than you!” Ma had leapt to her feet, her face ruddy with anger. She snatched Cerissa’s bowl and hurled it across the room until it smashed against the fire-hearth, dripping porridge everywhere. The noise in the hall dipped slightly as folks stared, and then grew much louder than before as if pretending they had not noticed the outburst. Cerissa stared at her for a moment and then burst loudly into tears. Ma never swore. Ma never threw things! She was shaking with anger, her whole body stiff and tight and shivery and Cerissa thought Ma might go and throw her in the Dowsitch river again just for the fury of it.

“Go to your room and stay there until you can learn to think of other people!” The echo of it roared around the high halls and Cerissa gladly fled, Sylas hot on her heels. She pelted through the empty halls blurry-eyed and blinded and did not stop running until the door to her bedchambers thudded closed behind her. She whirled around to find she’d shut both her and Sylas in together. He wrapped her in his pudgy arms protectively and she let herself wail into his shoulder for a while. When he got bored, he let her go again and she sniffed herself back under control, wiping those hot, angry little tears away with a sharp jerk of her thumb.

“You should go. We’ll both be in trouble.”

But he just grinned.

“I’m always in trouble anyway. Won’t bother me none.” And that was the truth of it, more or less.

He went and threw himself down on her bed, bouncing it undone, the neat, tight folds of the blankets scrunching with every spring, until it barely looked like it had been made at all.

“Are you scared, Sy?” She asked, going and sitting next to him.

“No.” His voice was scathing and sharp. “Nowt scares me.”

“I am, a bit,” she confessed. “It was frightening, last night.”

She looked around the empty room. It seemed so much bigger than usual. Only a c***k across that thick, expensive glass lingered, where the bird had crashed into it. The only sign that something had happened last night.

Sy shivered.

“I do not think we’re supposed to talk on’t.”

He tucked his knees up under his chin, and wrapped his arms around them tightly, until he looked much smaller than usual. Distantly, Cerissa remembered that after all, he was the youngest one. She sighed and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pressing a big-sister kiss on his cheek.

“It was just the storm, Ma said.”

“Ma was telling lies.”

“Sylas McGomery Dowse!”

“It’s true.”

“You’ll get in right trouble if you’re heard.”

“You’re such a baby sometimes, Cissa,” he said scornfully, pushing her arms off of him with hard, abrupt little jerks.

“I’m not!” She leapt to her feet, her arms straight down by her side, tight and taut, her hands balling into little fists. He joined her, standing opposite her, like a reflection in a dark and clouded mirror, an identical scowl on his face, his lips scrunched up small in anger and fear, like the blankets on the bed.

There was a timid knock at the door. It rang hesitantly through the stubborn, panting silence. Sylas strode over to it and threw it open, to reveal Jonnah standing there, his hands awkward by his side, as if he did not know what to do with them.

“Well?”

“Go away, Sy. I wanted to talk to Cerissa.”

“She doesn't want to talk to you.”

Jonnah scowled. He pushed Sy out the way and came in, closing the door behind him. He slouched against it, not sure what to do next. The silence spread between them until the morning sounds outside sounded all too loud, too ordinary in the waiting.

“Ma’s worried, you know,” he said at last. “You shouldn't go worrying her any more than she is.”

Sylas stood between his brother and his twin, his face still a glower, his hands still clenched into hard, angry little fists – but his anger was rolling over Jonnah now, not Cerissa, and she was glad of it. She hated arguing with Sy.

“You're not Da. You don't get to come in here telling us what we do and do not need to do.”

 Storm-clouds crossed Jonnah’s face, and he shrugged a bit, sullen and fierce.

“I’m the eldest. I’m who he left in charge when he went.”

“He left Gerinson in charge.”

“I’m the heir to Beaversbane. I'll be the Large Lord of Bridgenford when Da dies.”

“Don't say that! He’s not going to die!”

“I didn't mean now.”

“Then don't say it. The Fae’ll hear. You’ll curse him. You want him to die, just so you can rule it over us all the more.”

Jonnah’s hands clenched by his side and for a moment Cerissa thought he would hit Sylas, but then he just released them with a slow breath.

“We’re all worried,” he said tightly. “We’re all saying more than we mean, I reckon.” He shouldered past Sylas roughly, and went to perch on the bed, the weight of him scrunching those covers even more. He looked at Cerissa, and obediently she went to sit beside him.

“Don't be aggravating Ma,” he told her.

“I wasn't trying to.”

“No. Well, try not to, maybe.” He gave her a tight grin. It didn't fit on his face, really. He was trying to be Da, she realised. Not just the head of the house, not just the heir to Beaversbane, or the future Large Lord of Bridgenford. He was trying to smooth things over with a gruff honesty and a wry joke, the way Da always knew how to. But Jonnah was not Da. He was serious always. This was not right for him. She sniffed a little, nuzzling her head down into her hands and felt Jonnah’s own hand resting uneasily on the top of her head.

“Do you know what happened last night?” His voice was careful. Cerissa lifted her head. She looked at Sylas, who took a couple of steps forwards reluctantly. He sat on the floor by her feet, his hands resting on his knees like he did at the hearth when Da was home – and she wondered if he even realised he’d done it. She slipped off of the bed to sit beside him, and they both stared up at Jonnah waiting awkwardly above them as if he might tell them a story. That’d be grand, if the whole of the night had been nowt but a story after all, made to amuse them.

Jonnah’s hand rested at the back of his neck, itching through the base of his Dowse-hair, dusty blonde and shaggy, like a hunting dog. 

“You…you know what they say about Dowses, do you not? How we became the Large Lords of Bridgenford and that?”

Cerissa looked at Sylas, and found him looking back at her. They both turned to Jonnah again, who huffed out a breath, his cheeks blown out wide like a puff-face fish.

“Well, you know about the Fae, right?”

“Of course we do. We do the fire-jumps and the sacrifices in the fae-forest and things. We went to the bonfires last solstice.” Sylas’ voice was proud and haughty. It had been the first year they had been allowed to go.

“Yeah, right. Well, the Fae are special to Bridgenford, right? They don't go just anywhere. They protect our lands for us and they help us to protect it for them. And they say, you know, in exchange for helping the Fae to take care of Bridgenford…” Jonnah waved his hands around in the air, trying to summon the words by magic. His fingers, thick and long, sword-hands not archer’s, Da said, plucked at invisible strings, but no music came out. He just shrugged.

“There’s magic in it,” he said at last. “That’s all you need to know. There’s magic in it and it frightens Ma. She does not know how to protect you and it makes her…”

“Fractious.” Cerissa said sagely. Jonnah huffed out a little laugh.

“Aye. Maybe. Especially with Da gone.”

“But he is coming back.”

Jonnah did not say anything for a long while. Then he shrugged.

“I hope so,” he said. “I want to think so.”

That was the best bit about Jonnah, Cerissa thought. He never lied to you, even when mayhap he ought to. Ma, now, she’d tell you what she thought you ought to hear – but though Jonnah might not always tell you everything, he’d always tell you the truth if he told you owt.  She put her hand on his knee and he smiled a little ruefully down at her.

He crept a hand into his pocket and pulled out a chunk of bread. It had butter on it. It must have made the inside of his pocket all slimy.

“Don't tell Ma,” he said, handing it over to her. She grinned and broke it in half, giving the larger bit to Sylas because loyalty deserved its reward, Da said. He took it as his due, chewing it without comment.

“Are we in trouble?” She asked around the bread.

“Ma'll forget soon enough. It’s not like you’ve never forgotten your manners before, is it, minnow?”  

“With the magic and the Fae.”

Jonnah hesitated. “I…don't know. I don't think you’re in trouble with Fae, exactly, but they might bring trouble for you.”

Cerissa looked at Sylas. He shook his head hard, still angry with Jonnah despite the bread-offering. He never liked her taking Jonnah’s side against his. It was not right, he always said. What’s a big brother, to a twin? Cerissa bit her lip.

“I felt something last night,” she whispered. Sylas growled in irritation, looking away from her. Jonnah creased his brow.

“What kind of something?”

“I do not know. Sy thought it was a sound. It felt like…ripples...inside?"  That wasn't right, but she couldn't describe it better. “Did you feel owt like that?”

“No. But then I was asleep. Mayhap I just missed it.”

But Cerissa had been asleep too. It had woken her up. It would have woken Jonnah too, if he had had it. She rubbed a hand across her chest as if she could still feel it there in her.

Sylas got to his feet abruptly. There were bread-crumbs lingering on his shirt-front, clinging just above the fish embroidered on his jerkin, and it looked like he was feeding them. “Come on, Cissa. Come with me.”

“Cerissa is supposed to stay here.”

“Only ‘til she thinks of other people. Ma did not say how long that was. Come on, Cis.”

Cerissa stood. She took the hand he held out to her whilst Jonnah frowned after them.

“Don't be getting her in more trouble now. I just told you Ma is anxious.”

“Aye, well mayhap we wanted to see it for ourselves. I’ve got a secret for you, Cis. Just for you.” He glowered at Jonnah.

Cerissa went with him and Jonnah followed, even though Sylas tried to push him away. They crept up to the servants’ floor, up in the attics and the cobwebs, where the storerooms were and where the beams ran high. It was quiet and dusty and at the edge of the corridors, hemmed in by the arches and beams of the ceiling, was a gap between the walls. Sylas edged between it, and curiously, Cerissa did too. There was more gap there, wedged down between the inner wooden walls and the outer brick ones, narrow and thin. He led them down it sideways, and Cerissa thought distantly of that story Da told sometimes, about that Fae from the forests who dressed up as a mortal man more beautiful than any other living man, who lured folks away with naught but the sound of his voice. That could be Sy one day. He had that kind of charm that always made folks follow him even when they knew they should not. He was not all that beautiful though, whatever Ma said.

Sy knelt  and jerked a thumb towards a hole. It was uneven there, where the walls of the upper rooms met with the floor underneath, the wood stopping before it reached the stone. She squatted down uneasily had glanced within it.

It was a nothing-space. Not a corridor, or a cupboard. Not a rafter to shimmy along, just a nothing between the ceiling of the floor beneath and the floor beams above, running along the length of the house.

“That must have been where the original walls stood, when it was a warrior castle and not a home,” Jonnah breathed thoughtfully. He was ten and he read books. By choice. Even when he’d finished his lessons for the day.

“Come on.” Sylas grinned wickedly. A breath of cold air gusted through the nothing-space towards them, stale, frigid, forgotten. Cerissa shivered. But Sylas had already slid himself forwards on his stomach and crawled through the gap, being eaten by the shadows beneath.

“I do not think we ought to, Cerissa.” Jonnah was trying to sound firm and serious now, but she got down on her hands and knees to crawl after Sy. She heard a huff of irritation and a soft thump as Jonnah followed them.

It was tight in the nothing-space. The top of the ceiling kept scraping her head and spiders kept crawling towards her. They skittered over her hands and legs as she crawled, instead of scuttling away into the shadows like they ought to. The cobwebs caught in her hair, veiling her like a fine lady.

Sylas half-turned ahead of her, his grin candle-like in the gloom. Her skirts were crushed and creased by the squeeze, and the dagging caught on stray splinters and shards.

“I do not want to get buried out here in the nothing, Sy.”

“You will not. I promise.”

“You’d better be right, Sylas Dowse.” A growl behind them, Jonnah elbowing his way up puffing. Sy grinned even brighter. He loved tempting Jonnah to trouble and he hardly ever succeeded.

They crawled along on their hands and knees, their backs scraping painfully against the upper wood planks, inching their way forwards. Sylas was always skinny, but Jonnah was a bulky lad. He grunted and huffed his way forwards.

“I do not know as we should be doing this. I feel like this is just the sort of thing that’s going to make Ma madder.”

“You don’t do it then, if you do not want to. Nobody wanted you here anyway.”

Cerissa did not say owt. She’d got cobwebs all over her dress, and normally she’d not mind any, but Ma was certain-sure going to thrash her for it today. This dress was a nightmare anyway. Blue and white. Dowse colours. The colours of pride. But not practical much. Staining colours. Hard to hide. She’d have to bury it in the bottom of the clothes’ chest and hope it was not found until Ma was in a better mood.

They all paused as they heard voices drifting upwards, angry and raw. Ma. Sylas nodded forwards and they inched a bit more towards a c***k of light that slipped up towards the dusty rafter spaces. Jonnah gaped in angry disbelief as he realised what it was.

“You’ve been spying on Da?” He hissed. “You’ve been looking into his solar and listening into his talks and stuff?”

“I would not have to, if he told us things.”

“He tells us what he wants us to know.”

“Well, maybe we need to know more than he wants us to.”

“Hush, both of you. Ma will hear you and then we’ll all be thrashed.”

The boys fell into a sullen silence and all three of them strained their ears to hear what Ma was yelling, locked in the solar she never usually went into – aye, even Jonnah with the high and mighty morals.

“I’ll not distract him now, Polric. When the war is won, I will tell him all.”

“He deserves to know, Sendre.” That was Gerinson, grim and dour.

“You are well trusted in this household, Polric Gerinson, but do not presume to tell me how to raise my children or treat my husband.”

There was a bitter, angry breath, and Cerissa felt the heat of it, even up here in the nothing-space.

“Oh, aye. I’ll remember my place right enough, Large Lady Dowse,” Gerinson spat at last. “But it will not change owt, will it? The Fae will have their blood.”

“I thought more of you. Your grandmother has been getting in your head. You are no child to believe in the Calling.”

“I believe the things I see with my own two eyes.”

“Then you are more foolish than I credited you for. That’s just fae-stories. You’ve let yourself be frightened by a storm like a child still in their long clothes.”

 “Aye? And what sort of storm sends all the beasts of Bridgenford crooning round those children? Eh? I believe it, Sendre. And our Brynn will believe it too.”

“They’re just children. They’re just-”

Cerissa sent a sharp look over at Sylas as Ma put her head down on Da’s shiny wooden desk and wept bitterly. Ma but never cried. It left Cerissa feeling strange and uneasy.

“Let’s go,” she whispered, as a mouse crept closer over the boards towards them. “I do not like it here anymore.”

But Sy grabbed her hand and held her fast. The light from the room beneath was playing across his face in lines of sharp shadows and warm radiance, making his Dowse-hair look almost golden, like the sunlight.

He nodded down to the room beneath and Cerissa saw Gerinson approaching Ma slowly, awkwardly. He placed a hand on her shaking shoulder. Cerissa could see his bald spot from here, there in the midst of his thinning blonde hair, grey shot now.

Ma took in a deep, gulping breath, wiping her eyes fiercely. She glowered at Gerinson and sniffed as she stood, rearranging her skirts about her.

“My daughter is going to grow to be a fine lady,” she said coldly. “She will marry the son of some Large Lord from another county, and she will leave this wretched fae-cursed county forever. She will forget she ever even heard of the Fae. And she will never – never – be prey to their capricious whims again. I will swear it upon my own life, Polric.”

Gerinson snorted out a little laugh. “You’d have to swear it in a Fae-Forest to make it binding,” he reminded her. “Which sort of defeats the purpose, do you not think, if you’re trying to avoid their attention?”

Ma just glowered at him even fiercer and Cerissa personally thought Gerinson was taking his life in his hands.

“And Sylas? Even if you married him off to another Large Lord’s daughter, he’d still live in Bridgenford. How do you hope to save him?”

“I sometimes think he is beyond saving. I sometimes think the Fae sent me those twins to punish us, Polric,” she said, glaring at him. He took his hand from her shoulder carefully. Cerissa felt Sylas flinching beside her, his breath sharp and angry in the dark. Next to her, Jonnah was watching them both with a pity which stung.

“You do not really believe that, Sen,” Gerinson said quietly.

 She blew out another breath.

“It does not matter what I believe. All I know is that you are utterly forbidden from writing to Brynn. Am I understood?”

“Aye, Lady Sendre.”

“Good. Go and see to the stables, will you? There was some damage done by the madness of the horses last night and it needs to be mended as soon as possible. I would not-” her voice quavered slightly, but she forced some strength into it as she continued, “I would not have Brynn return to a house in disarray.”

She swept out of the door to the solar without looking behind. Gerinson stared after her wordlessly for a few moments before following her out of the door, and far above their heads, the three children could only stare at each other in helpless silence.