Witch of the Lake

Chapter 3-2

“How can I marry her, Tata?” he asked, shaking his head. “She’s a child.”

“She had her first blood years ago. It’s time. You’ve known this day would come since you were a boy.”

This day had just been two meaningless words throughout his life. He’d had no vision of a future with Roksana. What he had known was Roksana’s little giggles at catching frogs together, her mewling cries when she’d dropped a fresh honeycomb from her hands, her bumbling attempts at hitting a scarecrow with his practice sword. And she was as much family to him as any blood of his blood. He could never see her as anything other than a sister, and marriage would twist everything irrevocably.

“Give me one more year,” Kaspian said. “Henryk might come home.” It was more of a wish than a likelihood, but he said it anyway. He ran his fingers through his hair and paced away from Tata.

“Henryk isn’t coming back, and you know it. You are my heir, and when I die, it is up to you to protect our village.”

Sickles slid through stalks of rye, each falling with a gentle thump before being gathered up by a reaper into a bundle.

“I don’t need a wife to do that.”

Just a few weeks ago, this place had been a rustling expanse of gold. And now it had all been cut, bundled, and counted. Except for one last bit. What made it special other than growing at the corner of the field, last to be harvested?

The reapers drew closer, the ceremony almost complete. If only Henryk hadn’t left to serve Perun. If only Tata were less rigid. If only he weren’t dying.

“Walls cost coin to build, as do swords and shields to smith, and you cannot feed a militia with your paintings. Lord Granat grows stronger every day.” Tata jabbed his bony finger into his chest. “Our family has farmed these lands since time immemorial. You, my son, are duty bound to protect it. And Roksana’s dowry will ensure that.”

The harvest’s last ears of golden rye swayed in the wind, their spikelets heavy and ripe. Sickle raised high above his head, Julian hacked down the final stalks. They crashed onto the ground.

“You’re marrying her the day after tomorrow, and I won’t hear another word about it,” Tata said.

Julian brought Tata the final bundle of rye, presenting it to him with an easy smile.

Kaspian grasped handfuls of fresh straw and tossed them aside. It was a fruitless search. The painting of the lake was gone.

Head slumped to his chest, he balled his hands into fists on his thighs. After escorting Tata back to the castle, he’d doubled back and come searching for it. The stalls had been recently mucked, and the entire barn smelled of new hay. There were always grooms coming in and out of the barn, so one of them must have found it.

Perhaps it was for the best. With Tata’s condition worsening, more and more had fallen on him, and as time wore on, he’d only be buried deeper. Once he succeeded Tata, there wouldn’t be time for painting anyway, so trying to perfect it would be an exercise in futility.

It had been selfish to venture into the forest this morning. All it had done was make Tata upset and exacerbate his illness. Why bother trying to capture a feeling with paint, when once Tata passed, there would be no more chances for such frivolity? Lord Granat hovered like a crow over carrion, waiting for the slightest show of weakness to sweep away the region of Rubin. And instead of strong, capable Henryk, the people had… him. It would take every drop of determination he had just to even try making up that deficit.

A man cleared his throat. “Looking for something?”

Stefan leaned against the doorway to the barn, sinewy arms crossed over his chest, with the dying light of day silhouetting him. Stefan liked to play pranks. Perhaps he had found it and hid it, trying to get a rise out of him.

“Did you find it? Where is it?”

“What would the lordling of Rubin have left in my barn?” Stefan teased, with a wry look in his bay-brown eyes. He strolled past Kaspian and lifted a bale of alfalfa onto his shoulder as he’d done thousands of times before. There was no tell-tale smirk on his face.

“Nothing. Forget it,” Kaspian said. He couldn’t tell Stefan about the painting when he’d only poke fun at him for losing it.

Horses stuck their heads out of their stalls, craning their necks in anticipation of their evening meal.

“I take it the ceremony didn’t go well?” Stefan tossed a flake of alfalfa into a stall.

Kaspian sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “I tried talking to my father again about not wanting to marry Roksana.”

Stefan whistled long and low. “I’m sure that went well.”

Demon, a black gelding, nudged into Kaspian’s shoulder, nipping at his ear. He shoved the horse back, but he should have known better than to stand next to Demon.

“Want to trade places with me?” Kaspian asked, only half-heartedly joking.

Stefan dropped the final flake into Demon’s stall, and the horse disappeared along with it. Stefan clapped the hay dust off his hands. “As much as I’d like to see you muck stalls, I think Albert would gut me with his butcher knife if I dared so much as touch a golden strand on Roksana’s head.”

Kaspian heaved another deep sigh.

Stefan slapped him on the shoulder. “There’s worse things in life than having to marry a comely young bride, my friend.”

He slid out of Stefan’s grip. It was worse hearing it from him. Stefan never understood how he chafed at his bindings. Only Henryk knew what it was like, but he’d been brave enough to escape this life. To forge his own path.

Kaspian grimaced. If only he had been courageous enough to do the same…

“If you’re just going to mope about your wedding, go do it somewhere else. I have big plans for tomorrow, and none of them will happen unless I finish all my work.” Stefan nudged him playfully in the shoulder before picking up two buckets brimming with water.

Big plans? Stefan had been disappearing from time to time since the rest of him had grown into his big shoulders and even bigger mouth, and no doubt there was a starry-eyed girl involved in these so-called big plans.

“Let me help.” Kaspian reached for a bucket’s handle.

“And risk your father’s ire? I think not.” Stefan hefted the two buckets with ease and carried them to a trough.

It was just delaying the inevitable. He could try to understand the people he was expected to someday rule over, but as soon as Tata would learn of this, there’d be no more of it. Tata’s presence hovered over every bit of these lands, and his second-choice heir was lacking in every way. Either he’d learn to be a competent lord before it would be too late, or he’d have to escape the fate of being an incompetent one, abandon his family, escape the borders of the Wolski lands, find respite in the wood...

It was reckless daydreaming. He’d never run away. If he didn’t become lord of Rubin after Tata, then the title and this region would likely go to Lord Granat, a cruel man who ruled with an iron fist, driving his people nearly to starvation with his brutality.

As lacking as he was now, he could at least do everything in his power to protect his people from that fate.

There was no point in lingering any longer. Tata would notice his absence soon. And Stefan was—begrudgingly—right: if he muddied his clothes carrying buckets of water, Mama would cluck her tongue and lecture him on the behavior befitting the future lord of Rubin. And Stefan would get his thousandth scolding. It was time to go home.

The dying sun cast the fields in an orange glow. His long shadow loomed before him as he crossed the yard back to the castle. Geese honked as a boy herded them into a pen. The blacksmith’s iron clanged. Roasting meat from the kitchen perfumed the air. The entire household was busy, and with good reason—the reapers, after all their hard work, would have large appetites. The servants busy preparing for tomorrow’s feast greeted him with a smile and quick hellos as he passed. There was a wreath to be made, food to be cooked, and wood to be chopped for the bonfire.

The oaken steps leading up to the castle creaked beneath his weight, and his hand rested on the cold latch. A cacophony of voices seeped out between the gap in the door, and with a fortifying breath, he entered the hall. The reapers had gathered to drink at the long tables, mingling with the off-duty guards. They’d earned a rest after all the hard work they’d done.

A serving girl filled their tankards with beer and shared flirty banter with them. A part of him longed to join them, to pretend things were as they had been before Henryk had left. Back then, his life had been full of potential, the luxury of being a second son unbound by ruling.

At the head of the table, Julian raised a tankard in a toast, and Kaspian slipped through the doorway to the corridor. Across from the main hall, the door to Tata’s study was blessedly closed, but he could hear the rattling cough from within. He hurried past and toward the back stairs.

He nearly collided with a young serving woman carrying a tray of twaróg cheese and rye bread. The bread tipped off, and he lurched forward to catch it before it could hit the floor.

“You could have let it fall,” she said, a charming blush across her cheeks. “It would mean I’d be lucky in love.” Before Henryk had left, that endearing flush had always been of greater interest to him, but in recent times, even the diversion of a pretty girl had lost its luster.

But there had been something earlier today, something he hadn’t expected. Those enchanting violet eyes had been—

“Kaspian, come here a moment, dear,” Mama’s lilting voice called from inside the solarium.

Dropping the bread back on the tray, he left the serving woman with a parting smile to join Mama.

She sat before her loom, squinting in the last rays of sunlight coming from the long narrow windows that spanned the entire wall. Mama’s faithful shadow, Iskra, lay stretched out at her feet. The massive pile of white fluff was hardly distinguishable as a dog.

A maidservant glided behind her, lighting sconces against the darkening day.

Mama held out her hand to him and beckoned him closer. As he neared, Iskra cracked open one eye. As always, she was protective of her mistress. Whenever Mama left on diplomatic missions around the region, Iskra always accompanied her. There was hardly a time the two were apart.

When he’d been a boy, Iskra had seemed a mountain of a dog. Now her head just reached his waist. For that matter, when had Mama’s hands gotten so small? As a child, he’d marveled at how soft her hands were and how they’d encased him in comfort and warmth. It had been a long time since she’d held his hand like this, but now it was his hand that dwarfed hers.

She tilted her head as she examined the tapestry. “What do you think?”

Mama had been working on it since last winter, and it was nearly complete. The loom was two heads taller than he, awash with amber, gold, and red. Men and women worked the fields, surrounded by bundles of golden rye; others danced along the borders in crimson dresses and coats, all centering around a blond couple crowned in wreaths, with clasped hands taking their marriage vows. An idyllic image, and perfectly woven.