CHAPTER SIX
Cairn
Coh stared at the small heap of rocks, an intensity in his eyes that was rarely seen. His shoulders were hunched; every muscle tight.
He started sweating as he continued the single-sided stare-down. The rocks were part of a cairn Luke and him had built when they were very young. They’d heard about them from the priest’s son at the church, a boy who always smelt like old paper and lard used for candles, and wanted to make one on their own. Supposedly, if you moved the rocks into their proper places, the Creator would speak to you.
Luke and him had never gotten the rocks into the proper places. However, he had learned later that blood normally helped. By then he didn’t care enough to waste a perfectly good bird or other prey. He supposed that was bad, but--
He shook his head, eyes closing. He just had to do it. Try it. He took in a big breath and leaned forward.
“Dalian,” he whispered.
The rocks folded in like a house of cards. Some fell and rolled downhill. A few small chips splattered the creek before the cairn and others got caught in the twisted, stunted tree on the knowe behind. Tiredness slammed him and his knees almost buckled, but he held his ground.
It was him then. Not that he expected anything different--not after what happened yesterday. What had happened before then. Hades, what had sometimes happened when he was younger, even before he had been tainted by the slash of a dumar’s claws.
He let a breath hiss out between clenched teeth and he shook out his hands, trying to avoid panicking over nothing.
Ha. Nothing.
He stepped into the near-overflowing creek, boots rolling on the stones beneath, and he set about finding the old bits of rock.
If the cairn wasn’t rebuilt, Luke would notice. He was sure of that. So he picked through the red erises, white-flowered weeds, and cads trying to scavenge up the old limestone and sandstone hunks.
He didn’t hear Mark come up and then walk away without a word. He saw it, but he ignored it. He just worked.
Work was excellent for dulling the mind, you see. But he’d mentioned that before.
I should have tried it out on something less noticeable, Coh thought. But he shook his head. No, it had to be the cairn.
He wasn’t sure why it had to be, but--the cairn was what had been needed.
#
When Coh returned home, he was almost certain he’d made a mistake (not that he wouldn’t continue what he’d done until he could control this--himself). His mother was looking at him with tearful eyes and was shaking.
He wasn’t sure what was wrong, but he had an idea. He looked down to see if the black marks could be seen through his shirt, but it was brown, of thick cloth, and even he couldn’t even see a thing. He looked back up at her, now concerned.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She hadn’t seen, had she? She couldn’t have seen. She’d been in the house, he’d been behind the small hill in their rear yard. Nobody had seen him except the chickens and Mark--and him only after he’d done the deed, actually tried to use whatever it was himself, and was rebuilding the rocky altar.
He paused, worry starting to build. “You aren’t hurt, are you?”
“You went out?” his mother asked, instead of answering. She crossed her arms, but he could still see phantom shakes.
“Yeah,” he responded. He brushed the dirt off his hands onto his pants and looked at her closely. What was wrong?
“You went out?”
Then he realized. The mud, the water, and the fact he had the hunting knife strung on his belt. “I went to the back of our land, Mum--behind the knowe. Nothing else.”
She shook her head and walked down the short hall, away from the kitchen. He watched her walk into her room and he hung his head and sighed.
Why can’t I just stop making mistakes? He dug his nails into his palms, then went into the sitting room. He’d finished what he needed to do and had nothing else to do. A storm was coming in.
He hoped that wouldn’t have a double meaning.
He hoped, too, that such a simple thing as normal weather wouldn’t ruin anything for them now. Famine was always a problem for a place like Viren. Few realized it didn’t always come hand in hand with drought. A too wet year was just as bad, except they had to live with the knowledge they’d just let their year’s food wash away.
