her away into places that was all uncertain to fetch something I didn’t have any call to be asking for in the first place.
“Ma,” I said. “I mean to be better from now on, and help you more.”
“Show it by doing it, Koli,” she says to me, but she put her hand on my arm and give it a squeeze. I went and got her a cup of beer, and some for Athen and Mull too, not forgetting myself. It begun to feel like a party now, and by and by it begun to sound like one too, with Jil and Mordy striking up and a lot of people singing ‘We Took It As It Run’, not to mention some bawdier stuff.
Then Cal killed the pig, which got a big cheer, and Catrin give a speech about the wedding that was to come. Three couples, side by side on the rush-walk, and babies to come soon after. “These young people is the future of Mythen Rood,” she says. “And what you got to do when the future comes is open your arms to it. For that’s where life is, and if you look for it anywhere else, you’re gonna come home empty-handed.”
It was a fine speech that got everyone clapping and stamping. I did a little of them things, but it was only for the look of it. To tell you the truth, I didn’t greatly like what Catrin had got to say. It was somewhat like what Veso just said to me, that everything had got to change. I was more with them that wanted everything in the village to stay the same, in spite of everything I done to change my own place in it.
Catrin was right, though, for all that. The past isn’t a place you can live, even in good times. And the times that was coming next was not what you would call good.
Not for me anyway.
28
Despite what I said about the sun being shut away for the year, the day of the Salt Feast and the wedding come in bright as anything. But it was cold too, which was the main thing you wanted when you was cutting and salting a pig. And since there wasn’t going to be no catchers going out that day, my mother for once did not curse the sun for showing its face.
Athen and Mull was awake and up at a crazy hour, painting round their eyes with kohl and drawing patterns on each other’s faces with henna dye. In spite of all that labour they was ready before me, which shamed me somewhat. I come awake to hear them shouting through the door at me. “Come on, Koli! Everyone will be there already! Don’t make us late!”
“It’s yet three hours before the wedding,” my mother’s voice called in answer to them. “Do you give him his peace now, and come help me get into this dress.”
I heard my sisters run away along to Jemiu’s room, which they was very happy to do. I dragged myself up, with a somewhat heavier heart, and shrugged and elbowed my way into my best shirt and trousers. The DreamSleeve was on the bed where I set it down the night before, halfway hid under the bolster. I struggled for a moment or two with the thought of leaving it there, but could not do it. I slid it into my belt again, where it was least awkward to carry and least likely to be seen.
We met up in the kitchen, my ma and the girls all just about as splendid as could be and me looking like a wad of spittle in a pint pot. Mother cast a stern eye over me, after which she took a washcloth to my face and a comb to my hair. “I don’t know what it is about you that attracts the dirt,” she says, which made Athen and Mull laugh and me along with them. It was like being a little boy again, before I went Waiting. It cheered me, instead of irking me as it might of done another time.
Outside in the street, everyone was streaming out of their houses and walking on up to the gather-ground, in such bright colours that they looked like birds or flowers, almost, instead of people. They was all in a holiday mood, as you might guess, shouting hello and greet-you each to other as they walked. Athen dropped back to talk to her friend Pold, and Mull