The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,72

run ahead because she seen someone else she knowed, so that left me and Jemiu walking together.

“Is there some secret you’re keeping from me, Koli?” my mother asks me then. “I don’t mean I want you to tell me what it is, though you can if you want to. I’d just like to know if there is such a thing. It would make sense of how you been behaving.”

I opened my mouth to give her a lie, but the truth squeezed itself out first. “I got something on my mind, Ma, for true. But it’s not something I can tell.”

“Is it about Spinner?” Ma asked. And though that was only a part of it, she seen in my face that she guessed right. She put her hand on my shoulder again, the way she done the night before when we was on the gather-ground. “She’s a lovely girl. And a solid one, which is more. There’s probably many a man today will be thinking I wish I might. But a marriage and a fuck thrown on the grass at Summer-dance is two different things, Koli. You’re young, still, to make such choices. And you’ll find the choosing comes different as you get older. Not easier, nor harder. Just different. Bide your time.”

I didn’t say nothing to this. I nodded, for I seen there was sense in it, but I didn’t trust myself to answer.

At the edge of the gather-ground there was tables set, with pitchers of beer and cider and water for all who come to help their own selves to. Just beyond was the pit where the boar was roasting. They had gun to cook him at yesterday’s lock-tide, his belly stuffed full of apples and potatoes and cloves and wild rosemary, and he was all but done. Smoke from the fire was kind of hanging in the still air, like sheets on wash day. The smell of the roasting meat was in it, making my mouth water.

I poured some cider for Jemiu, knowing she favoured it, and beer for myself. We clinked the mugs together and drunk up, then I poured again. Salt Feast was not a time for holding back, nor I was not much inclined to.

Athen and Mull didn’t need to worry. We had arrived early enough to find good places, next to the rush-walk and near the tabernac where the three couples was to make their promises. The tabernac had been decked out finer than you can imagine, with make-pretend flowers sewed out of cloth of every colour, all weaved round six iron staves with glass beads set in them. Since I ducked out of the share-work, I didn’t see any of this until now, and I hadn’t knowed how all-out Catrin had gone. This was not the old tabernac decked up bright, but something new that Catrin had overseen. She must of decided the old one was not good enough for her only son’s wedding day.

The day being more advanced now, I found there was some heat to this Winter sun after all. What with that and my rucked-up thoughts, I went back to them tables with the jugs on them more than once. By the time they gun to carve up the pig and hand it round, I was more than half drunk. And the salt on the meat, that give it such savour, kept priming my thirst so I didn’t stop when I should of but kept right on going.

I seen Mardew Vennastin on some of them journeys to the beer jugs. He was taking on ballast in much the same way, and making heavy work of walking as if it was a windy day. Ramparts was right in among the rest of us, of course, for there wasn’t no rules or no distances at Salt Feast, any more than there was at Summer-dance. There was Fer, Rampart Arrow, in a dress with bright blue knifestrike quills on the neck and shoulders, which was beautiful and kind of scary. And there was her husband, Gendel, in a white shirt but with fresh woad striping his face and lower arms, so he and she was perfectly matched.

And there was old Perliu, Rampart Remember, standing next the tabernac with his son Vergil, Catrin and Fer’s brother, the onliest Vennastin who was not a Rampart. The old man was talking to Vergil the whole time, like he was telling him a story. Maybe it was the story of what was happening right in front of