Spindlefish and Stars

CHAPTER THE SECOND

WHEREIN THE POCKMARKED SWINEHERD CURLS HIS LIP

FROM HER PERCH, CLO WATCHED THE SKY FADE FROM PINK to gray and gradually brighten into a pale, washed blue. The town, in the distance, came to life: little figures—men and oxen and sheep and horses—moved in and out of the gates, and the murmurings of the village—shouts and cries and clatterings—came now and again on the wind. With increasing agitation, Clo heard the tower bells chime six.

Then seven.

Then eight.

Then nine.

At ten, the sun had grown too strong, and she backed a little into the forest, settling herself against a mossy stump. Here, she could still see the village and the paths that wove around it, but in the shadows, she felt less desperate. So she would wait. What else was there to do but wait? He would come. Always.

By now, thought Clo, if her father had come home, they would have already breakfasted together. She would have warmed yesterday’s cold crust over the fire, sliced the onions thin. He would have asked her how she slept—Clo, did the rats keep away?—and she would have fibbed and said they had. By now, he would already have fallen into a deep sleep on his pallet on the floor, and she, surely, by now would already be outside picking weeds from their garden. She squinted hard at the little town, imagining herself there scratching in the dirt around the tubers, yanking out rogue shepherd’s purse and goosefoot, scurrying to the well and back for water, tending to her seedlings, going about her morning as it should have happened.

At eleven, the trees stopped saying shush, shush, shush and fell into a quieter, steadier ssssssss.

Not much later, Clo’s stomach began its own rumbling monologue, complaining that, in her mistaken anticipation of pastries from her father’s pockets, she had not eaten. She untied her sack and, looking over her collection of turnips, took the smallest of the little crop. She rubbed it clean on her tunic and ate it like an apple. Afterward, her mouth felt dry and puckered; she smacked her lips and swallowed and wished desperately she had something to drink, but her father was the one who always carried the skins of water. Always.

At two, full of midday heat and the steady hum of insects, a stillness settled over the town: the little figures in the distance were resting. Clo watched an emerald beetle climb steadily up a tree trunk until it disappeared into the leafy canopy.

By five, when the sun was beginning to dip in the sky, Clo’s little plant of foreboding had itself gone to seed. She felt within her a whole garden of dread rooting and sprouting and twisting its vines.

Smoke was now rising from the village cooking fires. Clo thought of the suppers she usually prepared—working quietly around her father’s sleeping form—to share with him before he went to work: a simple, thin soup, a hunk of bread. She imagined herself pulling from the embers the loaf she had shaped, ladling out the steaming broth and its soft scraps of potato and turnip into their bowls, hiding from her father that she was giving him the meatiest pieces. Though she was now too full of anxiety to be hungry, she thought of the comfort of those foods with longing.

By the time the bells tolled six and lights from the village showed against the deepening sky, Clo, who was not a hand-wringer, was, in fact, wringing her hands in earnest. She twisted her fingers and bit her lips and stood and paced and stared at the town. Should she return? Should she remain? Should she go on? What had become of her father?

Her feet padding steadily across the carpet of needles and moss and leaves, she reconsidered his goodbye to her the evening before. Had there been anything amiss? No… not amiss. Not exactly amiss. She had been sewing by the fire while he shuffled about, wrapping his brushes, his rags, his potatoes, his pots, and placing them in his can. She had shown him her poor attempt at patchwork—I’m trying to mend your winter tunic, Father—and he had sighed, looking over her stitches—I’m afraid the cloth is too worn to hold together, lambkin. He had kissed her as he always did on the crown of her head, the pale bristle of his chin scratching her brow. If only I had stronger thread for you, my daughter, that tunic might see another winter. But all the same, you are good to try. Good to try to keep us warm as the days grow shorter. His smile had been small. He had pulled his cloak over his narrow shoulders, fastened its dark button. Good night, my lambkin, my daughter so full of care. Good night, Father, good night.

As she wrung her hands and paced to and fro, a flash of movement on the village wall caught her eye. Clo stopped, squinted. A little figure wobbled atop the stones. The figure swayed, then tumbled, and was lost against the darkness of the structure. Clo stared.

In a moment, she caught sight of the figure moving across the field. It was striding quickly but unevenly, as though struggling under a weight. It did not, Clo thought, have her father’s gait. Though she did not share—fully share—the townsfolk’s opinion of her father as a gray and wizened, stooped and shuffling old man with a leg and an arm and a foot in the grave, she could not help but admit that he moved more… hesitantly than he once had. She frowned, her little garden of dread stirring again. Yes. Hesitantly. Especially in recent months. This figure, moving with long legs and impatient speed, could not be her father. It was, however, moving directly toward her.

Clo stepped back into the shadows of the trees.

The figure continued its quick advancement. It was burdened; as it drew closer, Clo could see a pack slung over its shoulder. And it was a boy. A boy a bit older than herself, perhaps fifteen. He was tall and thin and, thought Clo, when she could finally see his face, mottled with angry pockmarks. His nose was as large and bulbous as a branch of cauliflower.

She stepped behind a thick trunk, hoping he would not see her.

It did not matter that she hid; he came straight to her.

He circled the tree and stopped in front of her. Pushing a shock of bright red hair from his eyes, he stared at Clo, his eyes traveling up and down her person. His lip curled. Just slightly. A slight sneer. She pressed her spine against the tree trunk.

“Are you Clothilde?” he said, though his words, stretched through thick accent and boyish mumbling, sounded more like, “Art tha Clatil?”

Clo, who had not spoken to anyone but her father in many months, said nothing. The boy smelled like a swineherd, and his boots, mud-and muck-covered, suggested the same.

The boy dropped the pack he was carrying.

“If th’art Clatil,” he said, his lip still curling, “thy father said I’d find a lass with all the beauty of th’ stars and sun here beneath th’ tallest pine, but”—he paused and ran his eyes over her again—“th’art but a nipper as spindle-shanked as I’ve ever seen.”

Clo still said nothing, but her hands, at the mention of her father, trembled slightly. She curled her fingers into her palms to hide her agitation. The boy noticed her small fists and laughed.

“If th’art Clatil, thy father has given me a silver coin for a letter and a parcel to deliver. So”—he removed and held aloft a square of paper—“art tha Clatil?”

Clo’s eyes narrowed and settled on the note pinched between the boy’s long, dirt-stained fingers.

“Clatil? Clatil? Art tha Clatil?” The boy waved the letter back and forth above Clo’s head. She grabbed for it. The boy, laughing again, moved it swiftly out of her reach.

“Ah. Th’art Clatil. Hold, and I’ll read it.” The boy moved the paper to the end of his nose and narrowed his eyes at it. He huffed, then squinted, and huffed again, and finally murmured out, “Me-yiy dee-arrrrre-esss-teeeee seee-lllow—”

“Give it here.” Clo jumped and snatched the letter from the boy’s grasp. She scanned the text anxiously. It was in her father’s hand, but scrawled and smudged—not written with his usual care. Inkblots bloomed over and obscured some of the text.

“Canst tha read?” The boy was incredulous.

“Of course I can read.” The text swam in front of her.

He gawped at her. “How did tha come to learn? How did a lass like tha come to learn?”

“My father taught me,” she murmured. Of course he had taught her. He’d held her at the table on his knees while she traced the letters with her small fingers and learned their sounds—C-L-O, yes, lambkin, that’s your name. He’d made sure—when he could—she’d even had books to practice with—Try this sentence now. Yes, of course she knew how to read.

Clo shook the letter as though to loosen the distraction and tried to steady herself enough to focus on the words. My dearest Clo, the letter began.

The boy watched, bemused. “So th’art a spindle-shanked and a clever lass. I’ve not met a lass who could read, and most lasses do li’l more’n scrub pots an’ do stitchin’—”

“Stop talking, will you?” The boy’s garbled chatter muddled her brain. She shook the letter again.

Clo read and reread the letter, cursing the ink smudges and rubbing her thumb at them as if she could erase the splotches and leave the text beneath. Of its sense, she only understood forgive and canvas and travel alone. And save me.

The garden of dread that had been growing all day twisted again, the blossom hot at the back of her throat. She swallowed. ———n—save me. Can save me? Cannot save me? Which was it?

“Where is my father?” She spun to face the boy. “Where is he?”

“Th’ last I saw him, he was crouchin’ in th’ pens, like he was a sow rootin’ in th’ straw. And he grabbed me like this”—here the boy hauled at his own collar—“when I come in, and he said I’m t’ have a silver coin for safe deliverment of this”—he pointed to the letter in Clo’s hands—“and this.” Here the boy, kneeling and untying his sack, lifted a bundle, which he dropped at Clo’s feet.

It was her father’s cloak wrapped and knotted around a heavy parcel.

Kneeling in the leaf litter, Clo worked at the blue woolen knots. The words crouchin’ in th’ pens made her fingers shake so she could not loosen the fabric; the wool, pulled too tight, did not want to give way.

“He said I’m to take from th’ lass some wood’n matter. Hast tha got wood’n matter? It’s for th’ payment. ‘Be sure,’ he says, ‘to take the wood’n matter.’”

Clo, desperately trying to open the parcel, did not look up. The boy was speaking nonsense.

“Wood’n matter. I’m to take it back or—or tha’ll not get this.” The boy wrenched the cloak-wrapped parcel from Clo’s hands.

“I have no wood!” Clo tried to grab the parcel back.

“Woooood”—the boy stretched his mouth grotesquely around the words—“aaaaan maaaaaaattteeer. He says tha’ll be carryin’ it, and I’m t’ have it.” The boy hesitated. “It’s for my payment. Mine.”

“Look.” Clo stretched out her arms. “I have no wood. No-thing wood. I have my clothes. And”—she gestured to her small sack—“some turnips. And… ah.” Understanding came with unease. Why had her father promised this? Didn’t he need it for his work? Clo hastened to the bag of turnips and things. “Here.” Pushing the turnips aside, she lifted the wilted bundles of garden weeds from her sack and handed them reluctantly to the boy. She did not like to give these away; she had grown them for her father.

“Wot’s that, then?”

“Your wooden matter.”

The boy looked skeptically at the shaggy plants. “’S not.”

“I promise you. If my father promised it, this woad and madder is exactly what you are meant to have—it’s worth… several coins if you sell it at the market. Now return that package to me.”

The boy tossed her the cloak-wrapped lump and, relieved of his burden, turned to go. But he took only a few strides in the direction of the town before he stopped.

“Is’t true wot they say on him?”

“Is what true?” Kneeling over the parcel, Clo kept working on the knotted cloak. What village gossip had this muck-boy overheard? That her father scraped the night soil? That he had three entire limbs in the grave?

“Well, th’ cook, he said he knew thy father soon as he saw him arrive at th’ house offerin’ his service. Recognized him right away.”

Clo kept her gaze on the bundle. Her father had been recognized? Still, this was no cause for panic.

“That’s right. Th’ cook, right away, he said, ‘That’s th’ thief did steal from my last master.’ He told the steward, ‘You watch him; he’s a chiseler and a thief.’ An’ wouldn’t tha know, there has been a theft. Just today th’ house is all a-tumble with it. Jewels missing out of th’ lady’s chamber.” The boy, raising an eyebrow at the parcel Clo was still trying to open, paused to gauge her reaction, but if he saw how her lip trembled or how her hands grew still at the word thief, he did not let on.

“My father’s no jewel thief.” Clo chose her words carefully.

“Well, and here’s th’ thing. The lady’s maid, she argued with th’ cook. She said she knew him, too! ‘That’s no thief,’ she said. She knew him when she was a girl, she said. ‘A famous dra’tsman, he is,’ she told th’ cook. ‘Painted all th’ lords n’ ladies. Lived in th’ great house. Painted my mother, too,’ she said, ‘even though she was just a washerwoman, God rest her soul, and he painted a wee one for me, too.’ And she’d had a locket, even, and she showed it to us, and lo if there weren’t a tiny biddy there, lookin’ so red-cheeked and lively she were almost breathin’.”

At this, a loud Ha! burst from Clo. Living in a great house? Painting lords and ladies? “That’s definitely not my father,” she said, her voice firm and certain. She rocked back on her heels to gaze directly at the boy. The swineherd waited a moment, watching, but she shook her head. “Stories. Only stories.”

“Lot o’ stories. In th’ stables, there’s no muck to shovel without th’ pigs to make it.” But shrugging, the boy turned to go.

Kneeling again over the package, Clo tugged violently at the wool; the knots would not come free.

“Wait!” she called after the boy.

He kept walking.

“Wait!” Clo darted after him into the field.

“An’ wot, then?” He stopped, turning. “An’ wot?”

She could not look at the boy. “My father—was he all right? Was he hurt?”

“He was hidin’ in th’ pens. I’d not call that right.”

Clo hesitated. “Do you know… where is he now?”

The boy glanced down at the wilted plants in his hand. “N-no.” He shrugged and looked away uncomfortably. “But I’m sure he’s gone on. I’m sure th’art to go on.” Gesturing to the parcel, he turned again to go.

“Wait—just one more thing.”

“I’ve no time t’ wait.” The boy turned so he was walking backward. “Wot? Wot?”

“What’s a Haros? Do you know what a Haros is? A town? A person? It was in the letter.”

The swineherd shook his head. “I’ve heard of no such things.”

“Well, what’s a harbor, then? Do you know?”

“Tha canst read, but tha hast no idea o’ harbor?” Still walking backward, nearly tripping, the boy doubled over laughing. “And tha thinks me ignorant. All here knows th’ harbor. Th’ harbor? Th’ sea? Th’ water that’s full o’ salt and has no edge?”

Clo shook her head.

The boy frowned and waved at the woods before turning away. “A day’s walk through th’ woods,” he called over his shoulder. “An’ tha’ll smell’t afore sightin’ it.”

Clo watched the swineherd stride across the darkening fields. In all her travels, in all the mountains and valleys and highlands and lowlands she had ever crossed, never, never had she seen a water that was full of salt and had no edge. Clo, wall-jumper, turnip-eater, letter-reader, felt her world shift to include the idea of sea.

It felt as large and deep and dark as the word alone.

CHAPTER THE THIRD

PERTAINING TO THE UNWRAPPING OF A STINKY CHEESE

FOR A LITTLE WHILE, AFTER THE MUCK-COVERED SWINEHERD had disappeared, Clo continued to sit under the pine. She read and reread the ink-splattered letter and worked despairingly at the woolen knots on her father’s parcel while night thickened around her.

She turned the word sea