lovely,” she added, pulling one out from the pile laid ready for trading.
But he settled instead for a saffron-coloured belt with an arrow-shaped jet fastening like the one on Grizzel’s necklace. Niav had woven it and she dimpled in pleasure.
She watched Aunty Grizzel holding Artin in animated conversation as they walked past the friendly, long-nosed pig that snuffled at the water-trough, and wove their way through the browsing flock of small-horned, dark-coated sheep till they reached the thorny compound hedge; then she slammed the gate after him. What on earth had all that been about?
***
Niav was troubled in her sleep; she kept waking to hear murmurings as Aunty Grizzel moved about the hut and finally went out on some night emergency – though she was back in her bed in the morning.
The next day the news spread that Artin’s wife had died in the night. She must have been a bit more than unhappy. Had she even seen her new belt?
“Three rough men can’t care for an infant!” declared Grizzel to everyone’s astonishment except Niav’s. The two of them walked up to Artin’s bothy through the dry grass.
The little boy Fearn was not exactly an infant – a grave child, with his thumb in his mouth. He had his mother’s hair and his father’s eyes. He knew what was going on all right – not the first death he had seen, Niav felt sure.
She and Grizzel stood by him while the three men dug the grave beneath the alder tree, brothers in looks, brothers in action. All three of them, shirts laid aside as they navvied, had a white mark on their brown backs, in between the shoulder-blades, where the sun had refused to tan them. Artin’s mark was the clearest and most symmetrically defined, like the wings of a great bee, or a double-headed axe.
No wonder people thought of him as one of the chosen.
“Under the alder,” remarked Grizzel to no one in particular. “It was alderwood he used for his confounded boat that stole my family away.” Niav winced at the pain in her voice. Weren’t things bad enough?
“Of course he would, alder doesn’t rot. It’s just a tree. You use it yourself for your dyeing: most of the greens, and the gold – and the red too. Is that somehow an insult to my dad and mum as well? I never heard anything so daft.” Symbols were all very well, but Niav felt her aunt could get a bit carried away sometimes.
“But never blue,” Grizzel went on as though Niav hadn’t said a word. She was watching the three of them bundle poor Orchil, wrapped in her cloak, into the readied grave. “I wonder what caused such unfairness? Bastard!”
Surely Aunty Grizzel must have meant that last word for fate – never for someone like Artin?
***
The people of the river-mouth were amazed, and deeply honoured, that when Artin The Smith and his brothers sailed away to the south, Fearn came to stay with Grizzel and Niav.
Uncle Lurgan took great exception to this and came storming up to their compound. He stood there, seething in his sandals, his wisp of a beard jutting in thwarted dignity while poor Aunt Helygen stood wringing her hands tearfully behind him.
“What that child is entitled to is a solid family life with us. He needs the proper preparation for his future. I am sure it would never have occurred to Artin that we would arrange for anything else!”
Aunty Grizzel stood there as majestic as a cedar, and as impervious. “He didn’t mention it.”
“Poor soul, he would be so grief-stricken. It must have slipped his mind,” ventured Helygen. “There needs to be a responsible man in his life, like an uncle, for support.”
“He isn’t short of real uncles,” Grizzel replied. “I can’t remember that sort of offer ever being made by you for your real niece, Niav here.”
Niav’s heart almost stopped beating at the horror of the suggestion.
But it was eventually settled that Uncle Lurgan would take on the role and duties of Fearn’s foster father. The only consequence as far as Niav was concerned was that Estra, Kyle and Canya ended up with more frequent crossings of the river in order to allow all the children “plenty of time together”, and Fearn and Niav would often go over to the big family hut on the east side of the river.
“You have a perfect right to go there,” Aunty Grizzel said cheerfully. “Rather more right than they have, if you want to be old-fashioned