Leirah and the Wild Man: A Tale of Obsession and Survival on the Edges of the Byzantine World

By Jean Michelle Miernik

Leirah and the Wild Man: A Tale of Obsession and Survival at the Edges of the Byzantine World is a historical thriller set in the 11th century.

Leirah dreams of stealing a Viking longship, hunting pirates, and freeing the world's thralls. As if by magic, the dragon boat of her fantasies appears at her backwoods ho

• Language: English
• Publisher: Indy Pub
• Release date: Oct 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781087917122

Book preview

I

The Wild Bo

Ihold the groaning mast with my thighs and bare feet and one hand, and I lean as far as I can, shading my eyes. A gust of wind parts the mist above the Volga to expose the garish stripes of a Viking longboat’s sail, and with this vision of terror come the smells of wet wool and man-sweat and the sounds of children crying.

I shimmy down the mast until I can drop the rest of the way, landing softly as a lynx beside my twin brother Aven, Captain of the Pirate Hunters, who has already drawn his saber. Without a spoken word of command, our crew of orphans gathers behind us and prepares to leap aboard the craft and swarm it like furious bees.

As we have done many times before, we’ll take the children home who still have homes, and we’ll keep all the children who can’t be returned to their homelands because their people have been slaughtered or won’t take them back after what the slavers have done to them. Or because they have already been with the Vikings so long, they don’t remember where they came from or even what their names used to be. They’ll have thrall names like Lazy, Stinky, and Dump. We’ll give them new names and ancestries just like our own Tata did for me and Aven when he told us our mothers were queens. Princess Anezstinka, Daughter of High Queen Slavoboka!

 We’ll sail all the way to the Glass Mountain out east, between the Scythians and the Turks, and we will squeeze our starveling child-bodies through narrow gnomes’ halls within the rocks, where no grown man can reach us, and at the summit, we will ask for the blessings of the Months, who outlive every king and every god, to heal our wounded charges and set them free in that heavenly nation above the thunderclouds where no one can be bought or sold or sacrificed for gold or holy favors.

We will—

My brother drops his saber, and the pupils of his blue eyes shrink to dots. Leirah. He says my name out loud, and my sailor’s clothes turn into dirt-caked leather. The fallen saber becomes a broken wood plank, and my bare hands and feet go sticky with sap from the pine tree that rises above us from what used to be the deck of our ship—and is now the muddy bank of a river that is not the Volga, not even close, only our quiet Matka Danu.

The game is over, the thread of our fantasy snapped.

But the Viking boat persists. I stare through the spindly trees at the shape drifting vaguely toward us, picking its way clumsily around a snag-littered bend. It is an awesome thing to behold, a fat sea monster from another world complete with curling tail and sharp-toothed open jaws. The light flits in and out of patterns carved deeply into its swan’s neck, intricate as fine basket weaving.

Aven whistles, startling me. He gives me a command in the twin-talk that only he and I understand, which sounds like birdsong to anyone who isn’t paying attention: Hide.

Aven always leads our games, but I hate it when he gives me orders in real life. I’m bigger than he is, and I’ve been in this family longer, even if we are about the same age. So I ignore him.

No one can see me in the shadows anyway. I blend in with the toasted-bread color of last fall’s leaves from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet—my dark blond braids, my skin, my leather clothes, even my yellowish eyes—and I’m as thin and sharp as any of these leafless trees. Invisible.

I am glad, though, that Aven is hiding. He can’t hold still the way I can, and he blends in with nothing and no one. I don’t understand when people say that he and I look like a real brother and sister, because we are opposites. I am dull and same-same-same from top to bottom, while Aven is a clashing thing with lightning-yellow hair and eyes pale blue as a misty summer sky set in a face dark as an acorn. No one in the whole world looks like Aven, especially not in the summer when the sun bleaches his hair and darkens his skin. A real Viking would snatch him up for sure.

And the dragon boat is realer than real. As it passes me, I smell it, yes—the sweat, the wool, and something enchanting too, exotic florals and herbs and spices—and a deep voice sings out from the ribs of the monster, where three oars flail and splash from three small, dark holes. The voice sings a bawdy song we’ve heard traders sing before, traders from the east but not so far east as the Scythians or the Turks. This voice sings in an accent I have never heard, full and round and rollicking but somehow different, and sillier, than I’ve ever imagined a Viking sounding.

Aven whistles at me again from wherever he has gone to hide, but I am already jogging upriver as if the boat is dragging me in its wake. I know these woods so well that I dodge every branch, stepping as quietly as I can. My nostrils flare, and my mouth opens and closes around words I’ve never fully understood, in a language I’m not sure I know, and the almost-but-not-quite-knowing aches in my throat and behind my navel the way it hurts when there isn’t any dinner and Aven and I sit down and chew on the air, pretending it’s meat and strawberries.

When Aven whistles again, I am furious. How can he run away from this moment we have called into being with the cravings of our own imaginations? I’m hungry. I’m restless. I’m tired of living here in the Wild Bo with Tata, waiting for our hair to grow out so he can cut it off every two years and trade it for bug-infested wheat flour and goose fat.

The longboat scrapes over a sunken tree and picks up speed, sliding out of sight. No. My longing flares into a violent covetousness. The calling of fate riles up my blood. I am ready to crush a Viking’s head with a rock for that ship.

I don’t notice Theofric standing in my way until I trip over his long, snaky foot.

Where’s the mending, piss puddle? My older brother’s voice creaks like a dead tree in the wind. I back away. Emerging manhood has afflicted his face and throat with a splotchy, greasy crust, and his swaybacked, slumpy body smells of a goat’s back end.

I live in terror that such things will happen to my beautiful brother Aven one day. Aven— I stutter, Aven has the mending. We’ve just finished. That is a lie, but Tata has not caught us at it yet. Aven and I have learned to do our stitching so quickly that we have time to embroider lively animals romping across the seams—birds, deer, fish, worms, turtles, cats, squirrels—and then set it all down and play the imaginary games that Tata says we must give up now that we are too old for them.

I look back over my shoulder as if my twin is right behind me and say, Come on, Aven, let’s go. Tata needs us to—

Why were you running? Theofric grabs the roots of my tight braids.

I roll my eyes up at him. Didn’t you see the boat?

He sneers. Is that what you and Aven have been doing all this time? Making one of your toy boats?

No! I force as much indignation into my voice as I can. The—the big boat with oars. The…

I cannot believe Theofric is still standing here bothering me instead of running after that boat—or away from it. "The dragon longboat, Theofric. God’s balls, didn’t you see, hear, or smell it coming around the bend just now?"

He bares his grimy teeth at me. There are no boats on the river, stupid. It’s Rusalnaia. And Vikings don’t sail the Danu. If they did, do you know what they’d do to a couple of babyfaced idiots like you and Aven? He gives my head a little jerk and puts his rotten mouth close to my ear. They’d fuck you to death and then scalp you for your pretty hair. Maybe in reverse order.

I clamp both of my hands hard over Theofric’s, grinding his knuckles into my skull, and bend forward. I know it’s hurting him more than it’s hurting me, but he hangs on.

Ooh, such a fighter. The Vikings will be impressed. Maybe they’ll decide to keep you alive and sell you down the river instead. You know what they’ll do then, to make sure you don’t get fucked to death before they can sell you?

I try to get around him, but he has the long arms and legs of an imp, and I don’t want to have to touch him anymore.

He starts to breathe heavier, but he doesn’t lose his grip on my hair. I thrash back and forth as he huffs, They’ll pierce your dirty bits through with metal rings in a track from front to back, laced through with a chain which you will have to work hard to keep clean if you do not want to die of rot from the crotch up. Oh no, hold still, I haven’t told you what they’ll do to Aven. Listen, you’ll need to know this. Hey! They’ll fold his little sapling in half and pin it that way with a metal bar. It’s a way to make a eunuch, see, without cutting it all off, because half of the ones they cut die right away. In a few weeks, see, the pin breaks a man one way or the other—either in spirit first or by rupturing the flesh when it stiffens in his sleep.

I stop struggling and squeeze my eyes shut, as if that will push out the images Theofric has vomited into my mind. I scream, Hellfire goddamned whoreson shit-for-brains Theofric! Where do you even pick up this trash? At your mother’s house?

He shrugs. They’ve seen everything down at Mama’s house. He sounds hideously proud. And they’ve taught me things. Not just horrible things but nice things too. He yanks my head up. I could teach you if you promise to be nice to me.

I let go of his knuckles with one hand, aim a hasty kick at his tenders—which of course he bends reflexively to block—and at the same time, I swing my free hand into a full-force bear slap to his unguarded face. The impact makes a satisfying crack that echoes merrily over the river, and then I am finally free, leaping away from him, wiping my slimy palms on the sides of my leathers.

Too soon, I hear Theofric grunting and crashing after me like a wounded bear. I glance around for something I can use as a weapon, because I doubt I can outrun him. But before it comes to that, we hear a ridiculous imitation of an eagle shriek from above, and a tree limb spears down to the earth between me and Theofric.

Theofric gets his legs tangled on the limb and goes down facefirst into a dry shrub, and my twin brother’s laughter rains down on us like squirrel chatter.

It would be funny if there were any way we could survive this.

Another voice emerges from the woods ahead of us, calling our names in the tones of a cuckoo: Lei-rah! A-ven!

I have never been so happy to see our older sister Cecily. We must be near the site of our new mud hut, because Cecily’s arms are full of household things, some tangled parts of a loom, a lamp, and two wooden buckets with willow handles. Her round, pretty face is all flushed, and the two chestnut locks of hair at her temples stick to her cheeks and throat.

I want to peel them off her skin and tuck them under her headscarf, but the warning look she gives me tells me that she wouldn’t thank me for it. I should know better. She insists upon keeping those locks uncovered to create the illusion that she isn’t shorn bald as a sheep underneath her scarf, despite the fact that there isn’t anyone around who can admire her beauty except her brothers and sisters and Tata—or is there?

Cecily! I whisper urgently. Did you see the boat that just came up the river?

Leirah, I’m not in the mood for your games right now. Where’s Aven? Where’s the mending?

Right here, Aven says breathlessly behind me. We’ve just finished, he pants, holding up the stack of towels and aprons, his cheeks flushed and sweat shining above his eyebrows.

Cecily shifts her burden. You poor thing, she spits. You’ve worked yourself to exhaustion making those stitches.

I had to fight off Theofric, I say, glancing nervously behind me. He tried to pull out my hair.

Cecily takes a deep breath, puffing up her chest, and bellows, THEOFRIC, YOU MAGGOT!

I am startled. Cecily has never come to my defense with so much spirit before.

Theofric still doesn’t come. Maybe he’s thinking up a heroic tale about what happened to his face. And plotting his revenge.

Cecily yells, This year’s crop is my dowry, you know! If you break one hair— She whirls around, muttering the remainder of the threat like a secret curse, and stalks away.

Aven and I follow her to the place where Tata has already made a good mess of digging a new foundation hole the way he does every spring and every fall, once we have fouled up our old homestead and depleted the woods around us. After the earth is dug, we all work together to put together the parts of the clay hearth and then the walls and the roof made of salvaged pieces of hide and thatch and wood patched together with fresh materials from the wilderness all around.

Tata can still dig like a badger, but this year he looks older, his limbs bony, his bald head shiny and splotched with age. When he looks up at us, his mouth works silently, blistered lips pulling and stretching over the ruins of his teeth that have been worn down to nubs by a diet rich in acorn flour and river sand.

Cecily, I say, though I am looking at Tata, what did you mean about this year’s crop being your dowry?

Cecily ignores me and hands her things to our newest sister, Sanna, a slave girl Tata bought last year from the house in Rezno where Cecily’s and Theofric’s mothers live. The whorehouse. For all of Tata’s faults, he has a soft heart. She was too young for that work, he said. We think Sanna might be a year or two older than me and Aven. At the time, we worried about having another mouth to feed on top of the cost of buying her, but she has more than earned her keep, working hard and cleverly gleaning the woods of more edible tidbits than we’ve ever been able to find before she came along.

Tata, you’re going to need help with that digging. Cecily’s voice sounds pretty when there is a drop of affection in it. I’ll go and find your prodigal son. I cringe, knowing that if I had insulted Theofric to Tata’s face, I’d be made to pay for it. But a glance of good humor passes between Cecily and Tata, and I feel a spark of jealousy. Cecily is the only one of us who is a child of Tata’s blood, and you can tell by the roundness of their skulls and their slightly pointed ears. They make Tata look like a wizened old elf but give Cecily a fairy-like sweetness.

As soon as Cecily has gone, I take the mending out of Aven’s arms and hold it out between me and Tata like a soft shield. Who is Cecily marrying? I blurt out.

Tata’s prominent eyes flare. He looks over his shoulder at Sanna, who is walking back toward us on her quiet little tip-toes, and he says, Take this mending, little bunny, and look over the stitches.

She ducks her head into a graceful bow and gazes up at Tata with something like gratitude in her striking green eyes. Sanna has the same two locks of hair as Cecily, to hide her own baldness, and she wears Cecily’s castoff clothes, but—though I would never reveal the thought to Cecily for fear of my life—Sanna wears everything better. Sanna’s temple locks are poppy-red against her faded headscarf, her eyes are big and bright, and her bearing is as dignified as if she were a secret princess. Her figure blooms with such health that layers of rags cannot hide its loveliness, and her skin is fairer than the rest of ours, and dappled with soft brown spots across her nose and cheeks, like a fawn’s hide in reverse.

Sanna goes away with the mending without looking at me and Aven. She likes each of us very well alone, but she’ll never speak to us when we’re a pair, as if there is something indecent about it. Maybe wherever she is from—and she hasn’t yet told us—brothers and sisters do not play together.

When she has gone, Tata spares some affection for me. Leirah, my golden one, he says, your time will come soon enough.

My—Tata, you said we’d apprentice first. You promised.

His eyes narrow, and his worn-down jaws work together. He leans on the handle of his digging spade. That’s right, he says, the affection draining until his voice creaks with impatience, and so you shall. I promised you each a good future, didn’t I? None of you with a past you can boast of, as I have, and yet you are the ones who shall have the bright futures. He hawks and spits impressively far, well outside of the edges of the foundation he has cut. In Cecily’s case, I’ll have to do it backwards and get her married first, if only for show. I can’t send a maiden up the river to Rezno, now can I?

My lips go numb. I blurt out, Cecily’s not old enough to—get married! That’s all I can say. The farming people around Rezno and this part of the Wild Bo tend to wait until they’ve neared thirty years of age to marry, to prevent themselves from drowning in their own children, though I have heard of a girl Cecily’s age having an accident that hastened her nuptials. I don’t know what other nineteen-year-olds are like, but Cecily is as much a child as I am, in her mind anyway. She’s more childish than Sanna, and Tata rescued Sanna from that place. I don’t even have words for what kind of work goes on in the house at Rezno, at least not words Tata will let me say before him.

Tata raises his voice to a growl. It’s only for decency’s sake. They needn’t live together. Willtham’s in no hurry to get children. Cecily will learn transcription from Helena. I’ve given all you children a good start in reading and writing, but Helena is the best writer up and down Matka Danu.

My head twitches. "Willtham, son of Helena, as in our brother?"

Tata rasps out a sigh and bugs his bloodshot eyes at me. His lower lip hangs down so wearily that I can see all of his lower tooth-nubs. How many times have I explained this to you? Willtham is Theofric’s half-brother, and Theofric is Cecily’s half-brother, but Cecily and Willtham have no relation by blood.

But—

And if they feel brotherly and sisterly about each other, so much the better. They won’t be tempted to procreate while they’re still children where it counts. He knocks on his skull.

I am so horrified I feel a mosquito bumping against the inside of my dry, gaping mouth. I’ve never met Willtham, but I know that he is older than she is, and if he is still a child where it counts, it doesn’t seem likely that will ever change. Poor Cecily may not be the crispest turnip in the furrow, but she doesn’t deserve to get married off to her whoreson simple brother up the river. I do not even want to know what Tata is planning for me if this is his idea of a bright future.

I turn my head back and forth as if searching the woods for help. What if—what if—what if we sold Sanna’s hair? Her hair is prettier than mine and Aven’s anyway. Then Cecily wouldn’t have to…

Tata shows us his helpless, empty palms. I have no buyer for red. I hear the men of the Gardariki like it way up past the Kingdom of Rus’, but Vikings don’t come by this way. He squints pointedly at us, and I blush with shame again. Which is a good thing, you know. Oh yes, I know about your silly games. If you don’t value your Tata’s protection from Vikings, how do you expect your little rescued thralls to thank you? Hmph! We’ll harvest your hair tomorrow after we’ve put the house together—and tomorrow, he says, raising a knobby finger of doom toward the sky, things are changing for the both of you. No more of this twittering like birds and sitting around all day. You’ll be a woman and a man as soon as I can feed you enough to flesh out, and then… Well, Leirah, you’ll take over the spinning from Cecily, and Aven, I could use another man to cut wood. It’s past time you both learned men’s and women’s work.

I open my mouth to argue, but Aven whistles at me to shut it. He pulls me away by the elbow and whispers to me, Please. Please, Leirah.

My heart quickens. I whisper, What? What can I do?

Please, he repeats, "please let Tata send Cecily up the river. Don’t mess this up for us."

Our faces split into bloodthirsty grins at the same time, and we cackle like ravens over a carcass.

I don’t hate my sister Cecily, but somehow Aven can make anything seem like a joke or a game. I chase him into the woods and forget everything for a short time. I forget the dragon ship. I forget Cecily’s bright future. I forget my hair, and I get burrs caught in it. Aven has to help me pick them out.

We don’t come back until the horrid smell of our supper taints the air.

When we are all squatting around the fire, nibbling our gritty cakes of acorn meal and goose fat, Tata, who seems to have been chewing at our earlier conversation this whole time, starts seasoning our supper with his grains of wisdom. Don’t look back, that’s what the elders say.

Aven’s gaze slides to meet mine through the ripples of heat unfurling from the flames. Tata goes on and on with more of the same, thinning out the quotes of ancient philosophers with dribbles of genius gleaned from the traders and blacksmiths and peat cutters he’s met here and there. He finishes: Better to eat a crust of bread in peace than to feast amidst chaos.

But his words, like this meal, only make us hungrier. Inside our bellies, thunder.

II

The Viking

Theofric’s face is no uglier than usual, so I guess it was only his pride that needed time to heal. Now he is acting like nothing happened, which suits me. I won’t get in the way of his preparations to leave us for his spring journey to Rezno.

He arranges our trade goods on the riverbank: pots of wild honey, bone fishhooks and shell spoon-lures, furs, baskets of nuts, and all of the manuscripts he brought home on last year’s trip, on birch bark and parchment and cloth and stone, in many different scripts, which Tata has taught us to decipher. Each year, Theofric returns most of the old documents and brings back new ones, like portals to worlds so distant we can never see them, not from the highest spruce tree we can climb.

Tata says this education grows our souls as surely as meat grows our limbs. I am not sure he understands the folly of this. I’ve had so little meat that only my bones and my desires grow. I have had so much education it has not left room for sense in my brain.

Which is why, on the morning before the golden crop of hair is to be harvested from my head and Aven’s, we are out in the woods playing Queen of Sheba like wild animals who can speak a dozen languages.

Make way for Her Royal Highness! Aven screams into the wilderness in a barbaric version of Coptic. He holds the two front handles of a litter we have made out of green boughs, and Cecily carries the rear. Aven is almost as tall as me, and Cecily is not, so I recline at a steep angle, my feet above my head.

I fan myself with a burdock leaf. Cecily has wound my braids into a tower on the top of my head, using a rattly old hornet’s nest as a scaffold, and Sanna has draped me in a gown made of headscarves. My eyes are blackened with wood char and my lips reddened with berry pulp.

Sanna leads our procession, marching down to the river. We have hung stupid things on birch and willow branches, mockeries of offerings to the water spirits—worn out stockings and grouse bones and false birds’ nests made out of my combed-out hair.

I think Sanna looks like a rusalka in the river’s morning mist, even shorn bald. Her limbs are beautiful, her body both voluptuous and strong, her eyes green as a spring fern. I want to make her a flower crown.

But Sanna turns around as though she has read my thoughts and scolds, That’s enough.

Cecily halts. Aven takes another step so that the litter jerks, and he almost drops me, and it makes him laugh, but he holds tight.

Sanna says, If Tata sees this, he’ll think we’re trying to sell Leirah down the river.

Cecily clucks her tongue. No one is on the river.

Sanna crunches her way into the brush at the side of the path and curtseys with great irony. Well in that case, don’t let me stand in your way.

Sanna always tires of our games suddenly, just before the best part. Cecily never tires of our games, even though she is a grownup girl. But none of us dares tell Sanna what to do. We pretend very hard that we have all forgotten her rescue from slavery. So Cecily and Aven carry me on without her.

The water sings below us.

Sanna calls down to us from uphill, muffled by the mist so that she sounds impossibly far away: Cecily! He has come!

My litter jerks to a halt again. Cecily asks, Tata? Did you say Tata is coming? She squints upriver, mutters a curse, and with an explosion of strength, throws up the handles so forcefully that I sail over Aven’s head and slap into the shallow water at the river’s edge.

"Yeezoos Chreestoos!"

Someone else has cried out on my behalf. I am gasping for air and fighting my own cramping muscles to climb up out of the bone-shattering snowmelt. The voice that cried out is deep and male and unfamiliar, and now it shouts in a higher pitch, Rusalka!

I scramble up the muddy slope, struggling to keep possession of the headscarves. I howl, Aven, help me!

But Aven is on his knees in the mud, red-faced and laughing so hard he can barely utter, Y-y-your f-faaaace!

I slap a muddy, cold-numbed hand to my cheek and imagine the smeared charcoal and berry pulp. My hornet’s-nest hairdo sags down over my eyes. Aven manages to take my hand, and Sanna reaches down to clutch my other wrist, dragging me into the brush. Cecily is gone.

Behind me, I hear the new voice stutter in the dialect of Rezno, Is that—Is that—

No! Theofric barks. That’s my other sister, not even my real sister, just some— He trails off into a mumble and then shouts, Cecily! Where are you?

Sanna roughly straightens my garments and disentangles the hornet’s nest from my braids. I peer through the foliage and see Cecily step meekly to the edge of our new favorite sunning rock, her head down and her hands folded in front of her skirt, her two locks of hair dangling innocently against her cheeks.

The newcomer throws a rope to Theofric from the deck of a small trading boat. You rat! She is not so changed.

Theofric shrugs and pulls the rope to bring the boat to shore.

Cecily offers the young man her little hand. When he is standing on the rock beside her, I can see that he is very tall.

He is also so handsome that I stuff my fingers into my mouth and bite them, tasting bitter mud. He is lean but broad-shouldered, with rough-cut, dark hair long enough for the breeze to tousle. His brow is manly, his nose long and straight, and his cheekbones high. He smiles, confident of his fine teeth.

He tilts his head and touches the point of Cecily’s little chin to make her look up at him. I remember you, he says with wonder.

Tata comes skidding down the riverbank, calling out in Rezno, Of course you do, son! It hasn’t been a dozen years since you lived under the same roof!

Cecily looks bewildered.

I count backward. A dozen years ago, Cecily was seven years old.

Tata leaps onto the rock and claps the young man on the shoulder. Welcome home, Willtham!

Willtham smiles, and his whole face shines with its own light.

I hear a little snort behind me and see that Sanna has clamped her hand over her mouth. Her green eyes blaze. The moment she sees me looking at her, she grabs my wrist with the strength of a goblin and drags me uphill, whispering, Come on, Leirah, go!

She shoves me into our new half-built hut, strips the wet scarves from my body, and stops to wring one out and put it on her own head before she dresses me in a light brown homespun dress. I don’t object. The color of this fabric looks like mud on Sanna and Cecily, but it turns into amber on my strange self, bringing out the gold in my hair and eyes and skin. It makes me feel beautiful even as I still blend into the drab browns of the early spring forest, a comfortable way of being, like a camouflaged animal.

As soon as I realize how much I am thinking about how I look, I am horrified. My heart races. Willtham does not look like an idiot at all. Even if he does believe in rusalki.

Sanna rubs my face clean with a rag and twists my roughened braids into a coil. Poor Cecily, she whispers.

What do you mean? I laugh. I saw how you looked at him. I drop into a whisper. Willtham is handsome! All this time Theofric has lied about him being ugly and stupid.

Sanna neither blushes nor smiles. Her green eyes are cold as river ice. I think everyone up and down Matka Danu would agree he is handsome, she snaps. But Cecily’s heart belongs to another, always and forever.

What? I search Sanna’s face for a sign that she is joking. Cecily doesn’t know any men.

Sanna heaves a long sigh. How would you get through your days without me to save you from being so dull? Do you truly not know why Cecily despises you?

I can only blink. I thought everyone despised their siblings.

Sanna leans her forehead so close to mine she looks like a cyclops. Do you realize why she always goes along with the stupid games you and Aven play?

I shrug. I had assumed it was out of boredom, the most common motivation for any of our actions.

Sanna backs away and shakes her head, pity in her eyes. She’s been in love with Aven since the first day she saw him. But you keep him besotted with yourself! Oh, you have the same right as anyone else to be vain. Only, I wish you would not play with Aven’s heart. He is such a sweet boy, and he adores you.

My mouth falls open as if Theofric has punched me in the side of the head. I can only grunt, Ugh! and push Sanna away.

She puts a hand on her hip. Is that all you have to say?

My nose wrinkles up. "Aven is my brother!"

She quirks an eyebrow. Not really.

I feel an ugly blush coming on. "But Aven isn’t even… a man!"

As soon as I say the words, Sanna’s eyes go wide and glassy and fixed. She reminds me of a water bird peering down into a pool. I cannot fathom what it is that she wants from me, what I would not gladly give to her.

She dimples her cheek in a half-smile. What is he to you, then?

My heart thunders a warning.

I say carefully, "Aven is not grown. He is still a boy. Cecily is a grown woman. And blood or not, he is a brother to both of us. How could she possibly look at him that way?"

Sanna grins. Cecily can see the man he will become, and she would wait any number of years to have him. That is, if you could find it in your heart to tell Aven the truth, that you see him only as a brother.

I recoil. Whatever you think, Aven does not love me in that way. And even if he did, I could not give his heart to Cecily in a box.

You could snuff out his hopes for you along with Cecily’s envy. If you wanted to.

I roll my eyes. Tell me how I would do that.

Sanna holds me under that water bird stare until she catches me squirming. Then she says, Seduce Willtham.

I laugh in her face. Yeah, right. Cecily would love that. If it were even possible.

Sanna blinks slowly. It is. And she doesn’t want him.

But he’s so handsome!

See? Sanna grins in triumph. You like him! Now, don’t be greedy. Let Aven see it too. Don’t keep leading him along.

I’m not—

She quiets me with a damp rag on my face. Just one last smudge there, and—there, that’s better. I’ve left a tiny bit of that wood char in the roots of your lashes. Leirah, you are smoldering.

My stomach clenches. I am not the temptress she makes me out to be. No one is in love with me, least of all Aven. How could Sanna even think it? No, it’s impossible.

My insides writhe like snakes. I believe none of this, yet now I can’t unthink it. Sanna is no fool, and I can see that she believes what she says.

I stand up and leave the hut, intent upon proving her wrong.

My cheeks burn as I hear Willtham’s manly voice, and I know I look ugly when I blush, so I march ahead, bringing my awkwardness as an offering of peace to Cecily.

Tata has made a fire near the riverbank, and they all stand around it. The drinking horns are filled, and Willtham is making a toast to Cecily in the proud language of the Western Diocese of Rezno, something about the blossoming of a childhood love. Her round face is turned up to his, all sweetness and sunshine, and I stop in my tracks.

Cecily does not need my help.

Willtham looks down at her so tenderly that I feel a scratch of envy. Oh, to be looked at in such a way.

He raises his horn above her head and switches to the language of our Wild Bo. He mispronounces the words and puts the emphases in the wrong places, but a tear still pricks the corner of my eye when he finishes, That we may never be apart.

He bends his head down, and I suck in my breath. He kisses her in front of everyone—with Tata watching! His lips fall on her fair brow, and her eyelids flutter closed.

Above me, I hear: "Rah!" Aven likes to cough out my nickname in a dead-on imitation of a mother doe reprimanding her fawn.

I look up at my brother squatting on a pine branch above my head, and the tension in my face and throat dissipate. I can’t help smiling. And I can tell from the inside that my horsey grin is not anything like Cecily’s dreamy smile.

Aven whispers loudly, I spun this gold out of straw for you, and he casts down a hoop of ratty hair that lands on my shoulders like a necklace. He has undone his braids, and his hair stands out all around him, bigger than a lion’s mane. He has combed it out and twisted his own shed hairs into a frayed, itchy rope.

I lay my hand upon it, over my heart, and tilt my head back to show him my dazzled eyes. Oh, Aven, I warble up to him in a mockery of tearful gratitude.

He begins to giggle and covers his mouth, and the sudden movement upsets his balance, and he comes crashing down.

Theofric smashes his way through the woods toward us. What are you doing over there, you little freaks?

Tata calls after him, ineffectually as usual, Take it easy, son, it’s a celebration!

Willtham squeezes Cecily’s shoulder. She leans into him.

Tata beckons us toward the fire with a good-natured scoop of his hand. Come along, you two, you’re old enough to join the toast!

I brush Aven off while he shakes with laughter, all his many white and evenly gapped teeth on display. Fortunately, he is wearing his tough old leather tunic and trousers. I pick the pine needles out of his hair as we walk toward the fire.

Tata hands us each a hollowed-out sheep’s horn and introduces us. Here are the twins, Aven and Leirah.

We join the circle around the fire, and Willtham grins at us in good cheer, but Cecily’s smile is gone.

I wonder if Aven and I have gone too far with our childish behavior, but no stain of embarrassment marks Cecily’s cheeks. Her stare is unblinking, her skin bloodless. She is a water bird like Sanna, and I am a toad. What game are they playing with me?

Willtham asks, What is that? and reaches toward me.

I flinch at his touch on my collarbone.

Willtham lifts up the rope of tangled hair. His mouth tilts into a playful smile. Beautiful, he says, as if he is joking, but he looks into my eyes for one heartbeat too long.

I tear the hair necklace off of myself in a panic and loop it over Cecily’s scarf-draped head, shoving Willtham’s hand along with it. A gift for the bride! I announce.

Behind me, Aven shatters into a fit of laughter.

Cecily’s gray eyes crackle red in the whites, but still she does not blink. Leirah, she says in a voice too sweet. Is Sanna coming?

I fix my face. I believe she is in the hut.

Come with me. I need to speak with her. She leaves Willtham with a squeeze of his hand.

I turn to lead Cecily back to the hut, and she steps on the back of my heel, hard with her little bark shoe. I am wearing sandals, and she chafes a strip of skin right off. I hurry out of her path, but then I realize she is doing it on purpose—again. And again!

She growls after me as she stomps, You just can’t—stop—making fun of me, even—when—I’m about to be—sent—away—and you’ll never—have to see me—again!

Once we are deep in the shadows of the woods, I let out a squeal of pain. I feel terrible, not just in my heels, but because my attempt to reassure Cecily has gone sideways. And Aven is doubled over behind us now, still gasping.

I spin back to face Cecily and try to apologize, but that ratty necklace of hair is still fluttering around her murderous face, and I fall to pieces, laughing as if possessed by a mad mushroom spirit.

Cecily stoops to the ground, picks up a sharp rock, and hurls it with a fury she has never unleashed upon me before.

It strikes my shin and leaves a gash in my thin skirt. But I am so far gone, the shock of the strike and the blood running down my shinbone makes me laugh even more.

When she lunges at me again, I leap to the nearest beech tree, plant my foot against its crooked trunk, and launch myself high enough to catch a branch with one hand. I swing my whole body up and skitter away to the other side of the trunk.

I keep climbing so fast and so high that I finally run out of breath to laugh, and Cecily cannot reach me with sticks or stones or anything she can throw, though she tries.

All the while, Aven’s insane laughter echoes through the trees.

As soon as it is safe, Aven and I follow the snowmelt streams and waterfalls down to the bank of Matka Danu, the Mother of Everyone, even Aven, even me, for it is time to purify ourselves for the harvest. Maybe after this, Cecily will finally forgive me.

Aven and I strip off our deerskin shirts and trousers and turn them inside out to the air and sun. We lounge on the sunning rock and take turns combing and lousing each other’s hair.

Aven and I can go a long time together without uttering a word or even a whistle, communing with our breath and our hands and the easy way of twins who share a single soul.

There is no greater ecstasy than being combed and loused while dozing on a sun-hot stone, lulled by our Matka Danu. Only Aven can float me to this heaven without accidentally pulling me down by the roots in my scalp. My hair is rough and stiff as straw, but Aven knows how to dress it with walnut oil and comb it out glossy and smooth, a trick worthy of the goblin Rumpelstilzchen.

My turn to work on Aven is also a pleasure. How soothing it is to draw my fingers over his head’s beautiful wheat field, hunting out tiny beasts and snapping them between my teeth. Aven’s hair is soft, a majestic cloud of curls that rises up until it comes tumbling down over his ears and eyes.

While the others eat the midday meal, Aven and I fast. We take in nothing but the snowmelt waters running down into Matka Danu. And then we cast our whole bodies into her rushing, grasping current, and her icy touch knocks away even the memory of hunger. We gasp and dive and race each other against the current until our skin and the flesh beneath goes numb, all the way to our bones, and our bodies are cold and hard and tough enough to wrestle a catfish from the rocky mud we stir with our blue, stinging toes.

While Sanna builds the herbal fire inside of the smoke tent, Aven and I use the last vestiges of life in our limbs to crawl ashore and wring out our hair in the sun. We shiver so hard it hurts the insides of our ribs. We slap the beads of water from each other’s arms and legs, and we laugh until we can barely breathe, drunk on pain and chill and the springtime light doubled on the surface of Matka Danu. We rub and chafe each other with the same vigor we use to start a fire, until the spark of life takes hold in each of us again.

When we can finally breathe again, we hear something strange down the river.

A creak of wood beams and rope. A ship of great size, not just a little fishing boat. Men shouting, lots of men, big men with resonant chests. Unfamiliar words in a foreign accent.

My eyes find Aven’s, and we rise together, and we move without speaking a word.

We go to the water’s edge and peer downriver as far as we can see. The birds and bugs and frogs keep on singing. The trees wave and dance, some of their branches garlanded white.

We turn to each other and smile with just our eyes. The woods expect no trouble today, and we have always trusted the merciless judgments of the woods. Perhaps we have heard the voice of the Leshy, who fools humans with imitation sounds better than the cleverest raven’s.

Perhaps this boat, and the dragon boat that came up the river before which no one else saw, are visions that we share in our twinned soul.

Someone comes stomping down the hillside behind us, through the underbrush, but we are not startled. We recognize Cecily’s tread before we hear her voice. Lei-rah! A-ven!

We climb back up onto the sunning rock, obedient little geese.

Cecily wipes her filthy hands on her skirt and takes hold of our purple fingers and helps us rise up on our shaking legs and climb up to the place where fragrant smoke rises into the sky. We leave our deerskin clothes behind. Cecily will go back and hang them over a branch and beat the dried-up dust out of them with a plank of wood.

Willtham is loading up the trading boat, so go on. Don’t be shy. Cecily prods our naked backs.

Theofric slouches over to watch us—or me, in particular, his gaze oily on my clammy skin, from my bony chest to the cloudy, split bruise on my shin. It strikes me in that moment that he is more naked and exposed than I am, unaware of his own repulsiveness. He’s the mindless slime that once was a caterpillar, not yet a butterfly, without the dignity of a cocoon. I know I am nothing beautiful to look at, but he thinks I am because he is that stupid and starved for what he wants.

Aven snarls, What are you looking at, dirtbag?

Shut up, shit stain. Theofric’s voice cracks hilariously.

Aven claps a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing out loud, and I duck through the tent flap in a hurry, drawing Aven close behind me, and the sound comes out of his nose in a hideous noise that infects me like a demon. The very moment the tent flap closes, I try to swallow my own laughter, and I hork and snort so uncontrollably that the herbed smoke makes me dizzy right away. Aven, my heart, my soul. When we are together, he is no more a boy than I am a girl. We are only us, a single spirit dragging two mockeries of human form after us like puppets on strings.

When we are sure Theofric has gone away, we let it out and laugh until our whole bodies curl into fists and tears wash our faces.

Everything is upside-down and inside-out, like the feeling in our guts when we swing high on a rope over the river and reach the top of the arc and linger, suspended in the sky for a moment that detaches completely from the past and from every possible future, before we transform from weightless to weighty and we are pulled into one irrevocable, downward fate.

We gulp the smoke inside the tent, and then we lose our voices and then we lose our minds to the dreams.

I hear the music of a spring torrent raging down a mountainside, and then there is silence. I am emptied out of fears and thoughts. There is only the numbing smoke in my eyes and hair and mouth and lungs. I see a jammed wagon wheel sliding on mud. Time skips and lurches. The fire burns slow and fast, forward and backward and up and down.

The cold snap of dusk breaks the spell. The fire has gone out, and I can see through the open tent flap that they have enlarged the fire outside, on the riverbank. They are all sitting around it in celebratory fashion, toasting Willtham and Cecily again.

Aven is already gone. Beside me, I see my deerskin suit, a new pair of bark shoes, a jug of water, and a crust of root bread baked with real, precious wheat flour. Oh heavens. I am half-dead