about your inheritance.”
It wasn’t too bad. What Uncle Lurgan felt he would gain by all this was unclear to Niav, though Aunty Grizzel seemed to have a pretty shrewd idea.
“He and Helygen probably hope that Fearn will end up with one of their girls,” she said. “It’s probably Estra, she is the eldest. Besides, Lurgan has developed the notion that Estra has inherited huge magical ability from both him and her mother, that wretched Seyth. I can’t say I’ve noticed.” Then she ruffled Niav’s bright hair. “If we have an extra mouth to feed, I can do with any help I am offered. Besides,” she laughed, “Fearn can always refuse. He is not daft”.
That didn’t help explain Aunt Grizzel’s sudden sense of friendship – even duty – to Artin, when only a few days earlier she had seemed to be suggesting that he might have had something to do with the deaths of both of Niav’s parents, not to mention that of his own poor wife, Orchil.
Kyle and Estra had to be endured, but Fearn seemed a tolerant child, if self-contained. However, spending more time with her younger cousin Canya was a real joy. Canya was pretty and clever and kind, and her voice was clear as a blackbird and smack on the note and you could suddenly find yourself singing in harmony with her without having planned it at all.
But cousin Estra was a problem. She could be so obsessive about things. All the river-mouth children liked to go beachcombing together in search of bits of jet, and the tiny snake stones that were small enough to turn into saleable jewellery, but Estra was always contriving ways of isolating Niav from the rest of the group because she wanted to be “special friends” with her. Niav found this most annoying, but frantic complaints to Aunty Grizzel fell on deaf ears.
“Nothing very special about poor Estra,” was all she would say.
This seemed a bit harsh on Estra, who was the best of the three girls when it came to learning things from the two aunties. Helygen was not only a superb herbalist, she was incredibly house-proud and a consumate cook. Niav found she had a lot of catching up to do to be level with her cousins. Her aunt was also very conscientious, strict about care and safety with her herbs and potions with five children around, and a very good teacher too; extremely patient – not as erratic as Aunty Grizzel.
Uncle Lurgan would be out with the boys and the great dog, caring for the flocks, but was also responsible for their instruction in the skills of hunting and tracking. Niav and Canya would have loved to do this too, until Fearn told them how Lurgan managed to surround even that with endless ritual.
With Aunty Grizzel all three girls now learned the skills of spinning and weaving. Lurgan would probably have disapproved had he known that Grizzel also tried to hand on everything that she had learned from Niav’s parents, even letting them take a try at scrying in the smooth stone water-bowl that was kept in pride of place on the dresser beside her little drum and the ritual rattle.
But Estra continued to be a real trial for Niav. She was convinced that there must be some sinister magical connection in the way that both their mothers, Seyth and Befind, had died in the clutches of the river and so, equally, this should make an important bond between the two of them. Niav found all this very upsetting. She wondered if her own nagging worries about her parents’ deaths would seem equally crazy if she were to talk about it in public. She certainly didn’t feel ready to haul everything out in the open for a loud-mouthed idiot like Estra to pull to bits and put together again, almost certainly all wrong.
In the end she decided to try to see if anyone besides Estra felt poor Seyth’s death was anything other than a dreadful accident. It was the least she could do before dismissing Estra as annoyingly cracked in the skull. Since Estra, whether she liked it or not, was her cousin, she thought it only fair to ask people on both sides of the river what they thought.
She spoke to women rather than men because she didn’t think it was the sort of thing men would feel they should be concerned about. Everyone seemed sincerely touched that young Niav was taking such a charming concern in her