Page 52 of Circle of Days

Forest animals came out of hiding and ran past her: a pair of roe deer, a fox family with cubs, a dozen hares. Countless smaller creatures scurried between her feet: voles, dormice, squirrels, and hedgehogs.

The other farmers were getting ahead of her, because she was encumbered with Olin and could not run so fast. Then one came back to help her.

It was Duff. He took Olin from her so that she could move faster.

She saw that he held the baby securely, pressing the little body to his chest, with one hand under Olin’s bottom and the other behind his head.

Together they stumbled and dodged through the vegetation.

The heat on Pia’s back eased and she knew she was getting farther away from the advancing flames. Duff might have saved her life.

He angled southwest, heading for the river, and she followed.

They ran just ahead of the flames. Suddenly Pia felt an agonizing pain on the top of her head and realized that her hair had caught fire.

She screamed. At that moment they burst out of the wood onto the riverbank.

Duff put an arm around her and the three of them fell into the water.

Pia’s head went under and the agony on her head changed to soreness. She surfaced and looked for Olin.

Duff was swimming on his back, holding Olin in front of him so the child could breathe, heading across the river.

Pia could have wept with relief, except that she did not have the energy to cry.

She was not much of a swimmer but she could doggy-paddle a short distance, and they both made it to the other side.

The vegetation was low scrub. No sparks flew here from the fire: the wind was in the wrong direction for that. All the same, Pia and Duff moved away from the river as far as the start of the hill before they sat down, exhausted.

Pia took Olin from Duff. She removed his lambskin, now sodden, and rubbed him dry with leaves from a bush. It was only when he fell silent that she realized he had been crying ever since she started running.

She slipped her shoulders out of her tunic, held Olin to her bare chest, and let him suckle. The heat of her body and the warm milk soothed him.

She looked across the river. West Wood was ablaze. She could feel the heat even from here. The fire was rapidly moving west, driven by the east wind. Surely, she thought, it wasn’t possible that the entire wood should be consumed? Then where would Bez and his tribe live?

She looked at Duff. “You came back for me,” she said to him. “No one else helped me, but you ran back into the fire.”

“I saw that you couldn’t run fast enough, carrying the little one,” he said. “The fire was going to catch up with you.”

“You risked your own life.”

“I didn’t think about that.”

She looked hard at him. Why did he care enough to run into fire for her? It was almost as if…

She would ask her mother.

The wind dropped suddenly, and the effect on the fire was immediate. It became less intense, and the roaring diminished. Duff noticed it too. “Perhaps part of West Wood may be spared,” he said.

Pia hoped so.

They sat staring at the obliteration of West Wood. The rushing sound of flames was the dying gasp of the wood. Pia looked upstream and saw a small group of woodlanders standing on the riverbank, hugging each other and weeping.

She felt like crying herself. Something precious had been destroyed. And how would those woodlanders feed their children now?

The wind came around to the west, a stiff breeze. Perhaps that would halt the eastward advance of the fire.

Olin stopped suckling. Pia put one shoulder back into her tunic and stood up, still holding him close. She said: “Let’s get back to Farmplace.”

They walked along the riverbank. On the other side, a few blackened trees grew in a field of ash. When they reached the village, they had to swim back across the river. Duff carried Olin again while Pia doggy-paddled.

Where they got back onto dry land, Troon was talking intently to some farmers. Pia was curious, and joined the group. Duff did the same. Troon ignored Pia but spoke to Duff. “We must plow the ashes into the ground before the wind blows them away. Ash is good for the soil.”

Duff was surprised. “We’re going to farm the burnt woodland?”

“Yes. It’s not woodland anymore. But it’s fertile soil, perfect for farming.”

Pia was shocked. “We can’t do that!”

Troon looked at her with irritation, then decided he needed to respond. He said: “Why not?”

“Because it belongs to the woodlanders.”

“They have no concept of property. Anyway, it’s no good to them now. Everything’s gone—the deer, the birds, the nut trees.”

“All that will come back, eventually.”

“Eventually!” Troon rolled his eyes. “Eventually means a lifetime. Meanwhile, farmers are hungry. We’ll have a crop next year if we act fast.”

Pia glanced past Troon and was surprised to see Bez approaching. Troon followed her gaze and saw him. All the farmers looked the same way, and silence fell.

Bez stood still and quiet for a moment, then said: “Our home has gone. Only a small area of the wood is left, far too little to feed the tribe. We will starve.”

Troon was quick to say: “The herders lit the fire, not us. Farmers had nothing to do with it.”

Pia said: “But now Troon is going to plow up the burnt wood and sow seeds in the springtime.”

Troon gave her a look of such fury that she knew he would have killed her there and then if he could.

Bez turned his gaze back to Troon. “Then the woodland will never come back. It will be farmland forever.”

“If we wait for the woodland to come back, we’ll all be dead before it happens.”

“My tribe must eat,” Bez said. “The herders who lit the fire will have to feed us. And you, if you farm our land, you must feed us too.”

Troon said: “We can’t feed your tribe. We don’t have enough for our own.”

“You must, and the herders must. You are taking everything from us. The gods require a balance.”

“I don’t care what you think, I’m telling you it’s impossible.”

“Very well.” Bez turned and walked a few steps away. Then he turned back.

“The gods will have a balance,” he said.

He turned again and walked into the ashes of the wood.