brAIDING AND BINDING

WREN

T here is an odd, slight scratching sound at the edge of my tent, and only years of listening to whispers lets me hear the noise above the muddy scuffle around it.

Camp is being settled for the night, a ritual I’m becoming more and more familiar with as time passes in erratic, staggering motions.

In the distance, the soft nicker of horses being given grain, then closer, deep laughter around crackling fires, and closer still, the steady, pacing steps of guards walking.

I am not a full prisoner, but neither am I free. The soft scratch sounds again.

“Yes?” I flatten my voice purposefully. There is no use in showing myself as a mouse, even if that’s how I feel. Around my throat Lorcan snorts.

A mouse, Littler Keeper?

I did not think that out loud, Protector.

He falls silent. Strange lines were crossed the day I was dragged to the Blood Tree, and as though we pretend things are as they once were, we both know, I think, that we are on some previously unknown borrowed time.

The longer we are gone from the village the more it takes from me to keep him with me, the tighter I am binding him to me in ways I don’t understand, in ways it is best that I don’t examine too closely.

“BoneKeeper?” It is Ellie’s voice, hesitant and respectful, and I call her in, feeling significantly more cheerful than before.

“Ellie! Come, come! Thank you for humoring me.”

She enters cautiously, looking around her with careful eyes.

My tent is large, and won’t be cramped with two of us — would not be with four, even.

There is room for the small fire, a bedroll on the far side, a folding, low table for meals, and a second for odds and ends.

She shifts awkwardly from foot to foot, her hands full of blankets and a bedroll.

“Are you certain , Keeper?” Her voice is low, and she seems uncomfortable.

“It would be a favor to me, Ellie, but don’t feel you have to. I’m…the coming rains make me…I don’t feel…” I let my words trail off and leave them open to her interpretation, but it’s enough, and she regains some of the confidence I saw earlier in the clearing, far from the hierarchy of camp.

“In that case, I’ll set up. Here? Or…where do you prefer? By the door?”

“Absolutely not! By the fire? Or, it’s actually warmer back by my bed. You can set up by me if you wish?”

“You’re very strange, Keeper,” she replies cryptically, and stays hovering by the flaps of the tent before making a decision and rolling her eyes comically.

“In for the frying pan, in for the fire,” she mumbles, then walks forward and quickly and efficiently sets up her little sleeping area near my own.

“What?” she asks, clearly worried by the look on my face, and I shrug.

“It still takes me ages to get everything packed up and unpacked, and you’re doing it in an eighth of the time to better effect. I find myself oddly jealous.”

Grinning, she shakes her head. “Well, Keeper, I’m here now, so I’ll give you all the tricks of my trade, as it were. Unless you’ll just let me do it for you? No? I thought not. You are unexpected. ”

“You keep saying that. I feel like a horse with six legs the way some of you look at me.”

Surprisingly, she frowns, before tilting her head and looking me over carefully. “Keeper, I mean no offense, but have you had a full bath since you’ve been with us?”

“We haven’t stopped at a pond, so no. Am I terrible?”

Laughing, she looks around the tent for something.

“No, of course not. No worse than a full ninety percent of the camp. But I mean a bath. A soak.” The confusion on my face must be obvious, because her answering grin is like a candle.

“Oh, blood and stone. You’re in for a treat then.

I can wash and braid your hair as well, if you’re not too tired? Just leave me to it. I’ll sort it.”

WIthin an hour, there’s a round sort of pot in my tent, brought in by three very reluctant men who were clearly bullied into the task by an oddly confident Ellie.

They fill it with steaming hot buckets of seemingly endless water before she shoos them out and studies it critically.

“Do you have any oils or soaps, Keeper?” she asks thoughtfully, then shakes her head, amused at my obvious confusion.

“It’s fine. Even Fifth Tiers have some. I’ll give you some of mine.

” She holds her hands up at my protests.

“Think of it as a favor to me. I mean this in the nicest possible way, but you smell like horse and hay.”

Digging through her small pack, she pulls out a sachet of dried leaves, and a small vial of oil and empties both fully into the water, nodding in satisfaction. “This will do. Into the tub.”

I…don’t move.

“Keeper?”

Feeling absolutely ridiculous, I bite my lip. “I…I’ll be cooked like a chicken, no?”

Ellie bursts into laughter, the bright, startled sound of a starling. “ No , Keeper!” She chortles, tears streaming down her face.

“You’re crying!” I say, shocked, and she wipes her face, breath hitching.

“From laughter only. I promise.”

“The waste of water…” My words trail off, and she tilts her head, face soft, not pushing for any answers to her obvious questions .

“Is joy ever a waste? Now, then. Off with the clothes. I’ll have them washed overnight. Into the tub. I promise you you will not cook.”

It takes me a long moment, but eventually I start to strip down before pausing again. This time she says nothing, just turns her back to give me privacy as I quickly remove the rest of my things and clamber awkwardly into the steaming water.

An eternity later, wrapped in a length of heavy cloth, skin scrubbed to pale pink, eyelids feeling heavy enough to crush mountains, I’m more relaxed than I have ever been in my known life. Ellie is silent behind me, running a comb through my hair in slow, careful movements.

“Ellie?” I mumble, feeling as though all my bones have melted. “If I die now, I’ll leave this world in sheer happiness.”

Her voice is quiet in response. “What a small thing to give such joy. There are hardships in your home that I don’t even have the questions to figure out.”

“The pure water in that tub is enough to fill five families' wells for a week.”

“Perhaps…perhaps during the quiet times in our days, you’d be willing to tell me more about your home. Not tonight. I can hear the sleep pressing against you. But sometime.”

“Of course. I’d be happy to.”

The comb catches on my necklace, and she huffs slightly under her breath. “Are you sure, Keeper?” she asks again, changing the subject, and I reach up quickly to pull Lorcan around to drape down my front.

“I will not remove it, Ellie. It is not worth asking again.” The caution in my words is enough to silence her protests; she asked during the bath if I would take him off, and was surprised at my firm refusal. There is a warning now that she heeds immediately.

“It’s fine. I’m done now anyway. Would you like me to leave your hair, or braid it in the manner of our people?”

Her words are cut off by a knock of sorts at the tent door .

“Yes?” I call out, pulling my blankets tighter around me, but the answer is respectful and no one pushes inside.

“It’s Teo,” his deep, warm voice answers back. Ellie stills behind me. “I have the items you requested, and have been told to report to your tent for the purposes of educating your barbarian mind.”

“Come in,” I invite. Ellie’s hands flex briefly in my hair as Teo enters, dropping the door flap awkwardly behind him. His arms are full of a jumble of items, which he dumps unceremoniously by my sleep roll.

“Ah. Extra dry rations for this week,” he starts cataloging the pile.

“Extra fresh rations will be delivered with yours daily. Extra set of traveling clothes. Some odds and ends that everyone is given when they join our camp. Soap, though I can see I’m late for that.

A second flask. A pack. Well, you have Ellie. She’ll guide you through it all.”

“It all goes to Ellie’s bedroll, please,” I murmur quietly, ignoring the startled silence in the room, before he finally replies in a choked voice.

“Yes, Keeper.”

Ellie has started combing my hair again, lulling me into a dreamlike state. “Have you decided, Keeper? In the manner of yours? Or ours?” she asks, and I sigh.

“Can you just call me Wren, Ellie?” I ask. “And I think braids like yours, please. If it’s not too much trouble. Just…leave the stands with the bones alone, perhaps.”

She doesn’t answer, but begins twisting and sectioning my hair, so I know she hears.

“And me? Should we have our first session tonight, or are you too tired? I can leave and come back tomorrow.” Teo is studiously polite, but longing edges his words like the first touches of burnt orange on autumn leaves.

From behind me, Ellie makes a small sound of distress before catching herself. “I’m sorry, Kee…Wren. I just bent my fingers strangely.”

“Mmm. Would you stay, Teo? I’m far too tired to participate, but maybe if you and Ellie just tell stories, I’ll pick up on something. I’ll…ma ke a mental list of what to ask you for tomorrow. You two talk and I’ll listen, if it’s not too much trouble.”

Again, silence, and then again, Teo’s warm voice, like a sunlit patch of grass in the Harvest Month. “I’d be happy to, if Ellie doesn’t mind. Should I start with the story of when she tried to save two abandoned kittens by hiding them in her dress pockets?”

“Don’t you dare !” Ellie answers, laughter bubbling bright in her voice, echoed moments later in Teo’s.

“Too late, Lolly-girl.” What is clearly a pet name slips without either of them noticing. “She was six, and already a hellion?—”

Ellie roars in protest, and the three of us dissolve into uncautious laughter, even if mine is muted by exhaustion.

They bicker back and forth within the relative safety of my tent walls, far from the rest of the camp where few can hear, and I drift off to sleep in the comfort of quiet voices and affectionate amusement.

I am roused to a heavy darkness by quiet voices.

“Is she safe, Teo? This seems a dream.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. But life can’t continue like it was, Ell. This is…this is a chance. At something.”

A pause.

“Perhaps if she leaves…we could go with her…”

A pause.

“Ellie…” His tone is anguished.

“You will have to make the choice someday, Teo. You cannot have it be both sides of the coin forever.” She is unexpectedly hard, his reply unexpectedly low.

“I promised him my blood.”

“At ten , Teo. You were a child.”

“I was only eight when I promised you my heart.”

“You will have to make the choice.”

The air is thick with emotion, the tent dark. It is no effort to keep my eyes shut and my breathing soft, giving them this private moment .

“We at least have this time now. She’s doing this purposefully. Gods know why.”

“It will be easier for everyone if you can feign a friendship of sorts.” A half-laugh escapes her. “No one will think it odd. You’re already seen as a bit different. It’s only that everyone loves you that lets you get away with it.”

He huffs with faux indignation before saying quietly, “I won’t have to feign a friendship. She’s nothing like I was told. I…I think I like her. Just as a person.”

“No one will look twice at me trailing behind you two, that’s for sure.

” She pauses again, and the fire crackles, a piece of wood breaking off, shifting the small stack enough that the light flares even through my closed eyelids, then dies again.

Her voice is very quiet when she speaks again. “Kylabet likes her too.”

“Oh for Gods’ sakes, Ellie!” He’s clearly exasperated, though amusement wars in his words. “Is it physically impossible for you two to be careful?”

His tone reminds me so much of Lorcan’s earlier that I have to fight to keep my lips from curling up.

“I am careful. She didn’t say anything, and neither did I. But she let me come, and she let you come, and that’s enough.”

“He let us, too.”

There is no immediate response, and then

“Well. At least we have this. For as long as he lets us.” She swallows audibly, then, “It scares me though. To be given this, then have it taken away…I don’t know if I’ll survive that. To be given you, then to have you ripped from me…”

Silence, so long that sleep almost takes me again, so long that the fire is quiet by the time he speaks, his voice low enough to sound like the rumble of the mountains, like the bass of thunder, like the pulse of blood in your ears when you have run too far, too fast.

“I will choose you, Ellie. It’s not a choice in the end anyway. Where you go, I follow. There is nothing else for me. I promised you as a boy, but now I promise you as a man, erasing everything before this moment. Blood to blood. ”

“Blood to blood.”

My false sleep tricks even me, and their words fade as the night takes me again.