Madfall Read online

  “A woman doing man’s work is against God and the laws of nature,” he pronounced, the words cold and sharp like icicles.

  She did not dare argue, not with the priest. She feared him more than she feared the dragon. If the dragon chose to harm her, one snap of his powerful maw and she would feel no more. The priest, on the other hand…

  One of her earliest memories was of this same traveling priest’s first visit to her village and the women he’d accused of being witches. He’d burned three grandmothers who’d never been anything but kind to Einin, one the very midwife who’d birthed her, another known for her knowledge of herbs, and the third with nothing to call her to the attention of the priest but a mole on her cheek.

  The old women had taken a long time to die. To this day, Einin’s stomach heaved at the smell of burned meat. Not that she had much meat in her pot this past year, not since the war had taken the last of her brothers.

  “You have not confessed your sins,” the priest said, and if winter suddenly blew back into Downwood, the village square could not have turned colder.

  Einin shivered as she bit the inside of her cheek. Who had time to sin? She worked every minute of every day to survive. Although, life was slowly getting better in Downwood.

  Somewhere nearby, a babe cried, but not the keening sound of hunger they’d all grown weary of. They had enough milk in the village again.

  Four days prior, six stray cows turned up in a clearing just past the edge of the woods. An odd piece of luck as the nearest village—the village of Upwood—was on the other side of the hill, part of the rocky path far too steep for the animals to have walked. The cows were wild-eyed and scared to death, but calmed soon enough once they were tied up in various barns.

  They were a boon on top of all the other changes that had happened in the past fortnight.

  From the moment the blacksmith’s eldest lad had tied the talon to a twenty-foot pole in the middle of the village, things had begun to turn around. Every time someone began losing heart, he looked up at the top of that pole and thought, If someone from this very village could take on a dragon, nothing is impossible.

  People expected a turn of luck, and so it happened. With the backbone of fear broken, they were nicer to each other, more helpful. Tasks were done more easily; more was accomplished before each nightfall. Improvement was visible in every corner of the village of Downwood.

  “You have returned from the dragon,” the priest said, arriving at the root of his true dislike for her at last. He tapped the side of his hawkish nose with his forefinger. “God has sharpened my senses so I might root out evil. I sense something unnatural about you, girl.”

  Einin tucked in her chin. Why can he not be happy for our change of fortune? He’d given many a sermon that addressed the village’s sufferings, all blaming the great devil in the hills. Why did her victorious return fill him with anger?

  Understanding came to her in a sudden flash, and she blinked, nearly raising her gaze to his, catching herself at the last second, snapping her head back down and biting her lip. But even as she hid her reaction, she could not unthink the thought that now shouted in her brain.

  The priest hadn’t been able to vanquish the great devil with his many prayers. Einin’s return with the talon implied that she might be more powerful than he, and she a woman! That was why he disapproved of her so much.

  “I returned but by God’s grace,” she hurried to say, keeping her voice meek, knowing as soon as she said the words that they wouldn’t help. The priest would hate the idea that some inconsequential maiden had been chosen as God’s instrument and not him.

  The priest proved her right the very next second.

  “You boast of your unwomanly and ungodly ways,” he accused her. “You refuse young Wilm’s offer of marriage. You think yourself too proud to be subjected to the godly correction men are called to provide women who are weak and unable to resist sin.”

  Wilm was the butcher’s son, a beefy young man two years older than Einin. He beat the family dogs, the family livestock, and his sisters, as his father beat Agna, Wilm’s mother. Einin had no wish for Wilm’s godly correction.

  She clasped her hands in front of her and dipped her head lower, hoping one of the matrons on the cobbler’s front steps might yet speak up for her. But the women stayed silent. Their silence hurt, even if they had their reasons.

  The war had left few able-bodied men. When Einin had gone to the cave as sacrifice, it meant one fewer maiden to compete with these matrons’ daughters for a husband.

  Even friends… Einin glanced at Minde, the cobbler’s wife, listening in the half-open door. But Minde looked away from her with regret in her eyes, cradling her youngest daughter to her side.

  Einin cast no blame. Her hopes had been foolish. Of course none of the women dared speak up before the priest. They saw the writing on the wall as Einin herself was beginning to see. The priest was working up to an accusation of witchery. Anyone who took Einin’s side might get caught up in the net the man was weaving.

  As the priest went on berating her for her unwomanly clothes and other disobediences, a few of the village men ambled over to see the source of the disturbance. Einin knew them all, as they all knew her, had known her from the moment of her birth. Yet none of the men spoke up for her either. None had been brave enough to confront the dragon, and the fact that Einin had done so and lived shamed them. Her very presence in the village was a daily reminder of their own cowardice.

  Men were superior by the will of God. By God’s will did they rule their wives; by God’s will did their wives owe them full obedience. Men were, by far, stronger and braver. And yet it’d been Einin who had returned with a talon. Unnatural.

  She blinked hard as she understood at last why her victory had been celebrated upon return but the victor had not. She’d volunteered as the sacrificial virgin, and the only thing anyone had expected of her was to die. She hadn’t even been able to get that right. So talon or no, she was not going to be forgiven.

  Her instincts prickled—an indistinct premonition of danger—the same feeling as when in the woods she found herself watched by a wolf from the ridge.

  The priest narrowed his beady brown eyes at her. “I cannot fathom why the evil beast let you leave.”

  “Perhaps it is not entirely evil?” She dared offer an opinion, immediately regretting it.

  His eyes narrowed dangerously. “That is precisely what an evil beast would want you to think.”

  “Is it evil because it’s a beast?” The question escaped her before she could stop it. Then one more. “We keep beasts in the village and don’t call them evil.”

  “Sheep, goats, swine, and cows. God put them under our dominion, for man’s benefit.”

  “Only the wild beasts are evil, then?” Stop talking! She bit her lip.

  The priest shook his head. “Even a wolf pup can be tamed. Even a bear. You’ve seen them at the traveling carnival.” His voice grew more frigid still, as if to let her know his pronouncement was final. “But that dragon is evil.”

  Because it cannot be tamed? Because it is truly wild and free? Because it is not under the priest’s dominion and could not be trained to bend the knee? Einin dared ask no more. She was grateful that the man hadn’t struck her down already for all her impertinence.

  Yet with all that she was, she wished for freedom. Did that mean that she too was evil?

  “I’m told you are to embark on a journey,” the priest said, every word laden with suspicion.

  Einin stole a glance.

  He watched her as closely as before, but something in his gaze had changed. He no longer watched her as if examining her. His gaze had hardened, as if he’d come to a decision.

  A cold shiver ran up Einin’s spine. In that very moment, she understood that she must leave, that indeed her very life might depend on a speedy departure.

  “I am to go to Morganton, Father, leaving on the morrow,” she said in a voice as meek as she was capable of ut
tering. “My Aunt Rose had her babe, her seventh, and she’s sick with the fever. Her husband came home maimed from the war. I go to help.”

  She had resolved to stay in her village as many times as she had resolved to keep her word and return to the dragon’s cave. She’d made up the tale of her aunt at one such point, since she could not tell anyone that she was returning to the dragon of her own free will. Making a pact with the great devil would mark her, in the priest’s eyes, as the servant of the devil. She would be burned on the spot.

  Were she to go to the dragon, her ruse would likely hold. She did have family in Morganton, and the place was far enough to the north that nobody here would ever know whether she’d arrived there or not.

  The priest watched her as if he intended to see right into her heart. Einin held her breath, silence blanketing the street.

  Robet, the miller, broke it, limping around a corner, a wide grin on his wrinkled face as he called out to the small gathering.

  “I’m come from the woods. We’ll have timber enough to rebuild the mill! Must have been a mudslide. All the trees on the ridge felled by last night’s storm have been brought down to the valley. The timber is all right here, close enough now.”

  When his good news wasn’t received with cheers and pats on the back, he stopped, his jubilant expression turning puzzled. Then he caught the undercurrents, and the smile slid off his face altogether.

  Einin glanced up at the priest from under her lashes. The zealous fires that burned in the man’s eyes did naught to reassure her. If she thought her departure would be viewed with relief, she’d been mistaken.

  The priest clearly saw her wish to leave as an attempt to escape his judgment. Einin’s throat tightened as she waited for him to order her to stay. He didn’t.

  He scowled, then turned without a word and strode away, casting a meaningful glance to this man and that as he went.

  Chapter Three

  Dawn had not yet risen from its featherbed the following morn when Einin stopped at the edge of the woods to look back at her village. In her brother Hamm’s brown shirt and britches, she blended into the darkness. She watched her hut, the front door, through which the village elders were even now entering, led by the priest.

  “Caw.” The raven on the low branch just above her gave its opinion.

  Her stomach clenched. “Definitely a close call.”

  If premonition hadn’t awoken her in the middle of the night, she would be waking now to hard hands grabbing her.

  “The priest said I was unnatural,” she told Midnight, the black bird she’d befriended in the woods when she was a child. “He’s probably right.”

  She should want to give herself over to Wilm’s godly correction instead of running from it. Something about her had been wrong as far back as Einin could remember. Maybe because she’d been raised by her father and her brothers instead of a mother.

  “I don’t want to spend my life standing by the kitchen fire, bowing and scraping to a husband who beats me.” She wanted to run wild and free. Be her decisions right or wrong, she wanted to be the one to make them.

  Weeks ago, when the men in the village had begun talking about a sacrifice to appease the great devil in the hills, Einin knew they were likely to pick her. She had no family to protest on her behalf, nobody left. So she’d volunteered before the priest could have put forth her name. Her choice. At least, it’d been that.

  Now, having made yet another choice, Einin watched her hut with tears burning her eyes. The light of the men’s torches flickered in the windows, but not for long. Soon they came pouring out, their expressions even angrier than when they’d entered.

  ’Twas the rope in the blacksmith’s hand that scared her the most—a length of rope long enough to tie a witch to the stake so she could be burned.

  Einin wasn’t going to volunteer again. Not today. Today, she chose to live.

  “I’d better get going. Try to be quiet,” she whispered to the bird.

  She turned into the woods and hurried, her heart pounding as she sneaked away. If the men looked for her, they’d look for her on the road to Morganton, God willing. They had no reason to suspect that she’d head to the deep woods in the opposite direction, staying off the roads. Nevertheless, she walked as quickly as her legs could carry her, toward Upwood, the nearest village, on the other side of the hill.

  Midnight flew ahead, waiting on a low branch for her to catch up, then flying ahead again, playing the game for a good while before he grew bored and disappeared.

  While Einin missed the company, she did not raise her voice to call the bird back. She didn’t know who or what might hear her instead. Menacing shadows loomed over her, the trees like hungry giants bobbing their heads to see her better. Wild creatures called to each other in the night with sharp, frightful sounds. A loud call from a hooting owl overhead made her jump.

  An owl hooting at dawn predicted doom, the old women of the village always said. Einin shivered. The dark woods before her scared her nearly as much as the men behind her.

  The bears will be waking. The wolves never cease hunting. And the giant wild boars…

  Einin drew her lungs full of cold air and pushed the beasts out of her mind. She had to, or she might not be able to put one foot in front of the other.

  She kept her punishing pace until the sun came up, then reached its zenith in the sky. A small creek called from ahead. Her parched throat sent her forward.

  “Caw.” The raven settled onto a low branch that hung over the water and preened.

  Einin drank, then rested there on a flat rock, eating most of the food she had brought: a boiled egg, a small chunk of cheese, tossing bits to the bird, who snatched them neatly out of the air. Then she finished the heel of last week’s bread loaf. She’d never baked that round of sourdough on the sideboard the eve before. She’d been too busy worrying about the priest.

  “They’re far behind me now,” she told Midnight as she finished her meager meal, tossing the bird the last crumbs. “Upwood isn’t that far. Just over the hill. I’ll be there before nightfall.”

  She’d bolted from her hut in the middle of the night, running for the shelter of the forest, thinking that anything was safer at that moment than the village. Her only thought had been to grab what food was at hand and get as far away from the coming torches as possible. Upwood had seemed the best choice.

  Except… Her mind fully awake now, Einin realized the impossibility of the village as her safe haven. Upwood was on the traveling priest’s circuit. So were all the other villages she knew.

  She swore between her teeth. “Dratted dragon droppings.”

  “Caw.” The bird finished his share of the food and tilted its head at her.

  Einin looked at the forest, as if somehow she could gain strength from the familiar rocks and trees. She’d been here before, with her father and their goats. She knew most of the forest. The woods were where she’d always felt the happiest, the freest—jumping around with the goats, chasing them, then letting them chase her.

  Now and then, a goat would disappear, and the whole family would try to find the lost animal. Einin never looked too hard. She liked thinking about those goats out there, living free, running wild through the endless forest, visiting distant lakes and ruins, seeing the world as she would never see it.

  Back in those days… Other than keeping the cottage in order, her job had been milking the nanny goats. Her brothers helped with other tasks like butchering and selling the meat. Sometimes they made kidskin gloves that a merchant carried to faraway castles. At other times, they made wineskins that never went farther than the nearest village markets. Hamm was a great maker of cheese. He said their mother used to make the fattest cheese rounds in the village, along with the best goat milk soap, but Einin couldn’t remember. She’d tried to make soap, but her mother hadn’t written down the recipe, and Einin’s soap never hardened, no matter what she did.

  Her favorite part of being a goatherd’s daughter had been pla
ying with the kids.

  Her father used to laugh and say Einin was like a goat kid herself, and at times, she’d wished she were a runaway goat. Wild and free.

  “Now I’ve done it,” she told the bird as they rested on the fallen log. Ran off into the woods. Yet, instead of excitement, fear filled her veins.

  The creek sang behind her, the birds chirped in the trees, the forest full of life. She knew where she was, but she was more lost than she had ever been. With a painful certainty, she knew that she could never go back home again. “That was the last time I saw that hut.”

  Downwood was out, and so was Upwood.

  “Caw.”

  “Can’t go to Morganton either.”

  Aunt Rose did not, in truth, have a fever, nor would Einin know if her aunt did. It had been a year since she’d last received a message from her aunt, brought by a traveling tinker. While Einin didn’t doubt that a helping hand would be welcome in the modest house of her mother’s sister, another mouth to feed would be a burden.

  “We shall survive in the woods.” She pushed to her feet, marshaling all her confidence.

  Yet she couldn’t help but notice that in the deep shadows of the trees, here and there, snow still lingered. The nights were freezing. Few plants grew, the trees barely budding. She didn’t think the wild birds had laid eggs yet.

  “I will start with building a lean-to.” She marched forward to gather sticks.

  She worked herself breathless, but when she had her pile, she realized she had no strings to tie the sticks together. Here and there, she could see clumps of long grasses, but in the sunny spots, their leaves were too dry and brittle, while in the deep shade, wet and rotten.

  “A fire, then.” She searched her bundle, but she couldn’t find her flint. Either she’d forgotten to pack it, or else she dropped it as she’d hurried through the night forest.

  She had no knife to throw, no bit of wire to build a snare.

  Einin blinked hard, her eyes burning as she stared reality in the face. This past winter, the whole village, everyone pulling together, barely survived the punishing cold and hunger. Attempting to eke out a living in the woods would mean nothing but slow starvation. If she didn’t freeze first.