What was he going to say when she asked him where he’d been?
Roxane whispered something to the boy, who reluctantly lowered the rake. Suspicion still lingered in his eyes.
Ten years.
He’d often been gone a long time – in the forest, in the towns on the coast, among the isolated villages lying in the hills around – like a fox that visited farmyards only when its stomach rumbled. “Your heart’s a vagabond,” Roxane always said. Sometimes he’d had to search for her when she had moved on with the others. They lived together in the forest for a while, in an abandoned charcoal-burner’s hut, and then in a tent with other strolling players. They even managed to hold out within the solid walls of Ombra all one winter. He was always the one who wanted to move on, and when their first daughter was born and Roxane wanted to stay put more often – in some reasonably familiar place, with the other women among the strolling players, close to the shelter of walls – he would go off alone. But he always came back to her and the children, much to the annoyance of all the rich men who flocked around her wanting to make an honest woman of her.
What had she thought when he stayed away for a whole ten years? Had she, like CloudDancer, thought him dead? Or did she believe he had simply left without a word, without saying good-bye?
He could not find the answer in Roxane’s face. He saw bewilderment there, anger, perhaps love, too. Perhaps. She whispered something to the boy, took his hand, and made him walk beside her.
She went slowly, as if she must prevent her feet from going faster. He longed to run to her, leaving one of those years behind him at every step, but he had used up all his courage.
He stood there as if rooted to the spot, looking at her as she came toward him after all those years, all the years for which he had no explanation .. except one that she wouldn’t believe.
Only a few paces still separated them when Roxane stopped. She put her arm around the boy’s shoulder, but he pushed it away. Of course. He didn’t want his mother’s arm reminding him how young he still was. How proudly she thrust out her chin. That was the first thing he had noticed about Roxane – her pride. He couldn’t help smiling, but he bowed his head so that she couldn’t see the smile.
“Obviously, no living creature can withstand you to this day. My goose has always driven everyone else off.” When Roxane spoke there was nothing special about her voice, none of the strength and beauty it had when she sang.
“Well, nothing’s changed there,” he said. “In all these years.” And suddenly, as he looked at her, he finally, truly knew that he had come home. It was so strong a sensation that he felt weak at the knees. How happy he was to see her again, how dreadfully, terribly happy! Ask me, he thought. Ask me where I’ve been. Although he didn’t know how he would explain.
But she only said, “You seem to have been well off, wherever you’ve been.”
“It only looks like that,” he replied. “I didn’t stay there of my own freewill.”
Roxane examined his face as if she had forgotten what it looked like and stroked the boy’s hair.
It was as black as hers, but his eyes were the eyes of another. They looked at him coldly.
Dustfinger rubbed his hands together and whispered fire-words to his fingers until sparks fell from them like rain. Where they landed on the stony ground flowers sprang up, red flowers, each petal a tongue of flame. The boy stared at them with mingled delight and fear. In the end he crouched down beside them and put his hand out to the fiery flowers.
“Careful!” warned Dustfinger, but it was already too late. The boy, taken by surprise, put his burned fingertips in his mouth. “So the fire still obeys you,” said Roxane, and for the first time he detected something like a smile in her eyes. “You look hungry. Come with me.” And without another word she walked toward the house. The boy was still staring at the fiery flowers.
“I’ve heard you grow herbs for the healers.” Dustfinger stood indecisively in the doorway. “Yes, even Nettle buys from me.”
Nettle, small as a moss-woman, always surly, sparing of her words as a beggar with his tongue cut out. But there wasn’t a better healer in this world.
“Does she still live in the old bear’s cave on the outskirts of the forest?” Hesitantly, Dustfinger walked through the doorway. It was so low that he had to duck his head. The smell of freshly baked bread rose to his nostrils. Roxane placed a loaf on the table, brought cheese, oil, olives.
“Yes, but she isn’t often there. She’s getting more eccentric all the time, she roams the forest talking to the trees and to herself, looking for plants still unknown to her. Sometimes you don’t see her for weeks, so people come to me more and more often these days. Nettle has taught me things these last few years.” She didn’t look at him as she said that. “She’s shown me how to grow herbs in my fields that usually thrive only in the forest. Butterfly clover, jinglebell leaf, and the red anemones where the fire-elves get their honey.”
“I didn’t know those anemones could be used for healing, too.” “They can’t. I planted them because they reminded me of someone.” This time she did look at him.
Dustfinger put out his hand to one of the bunches of herbs hanging from the ceiling and rubbed the dry flowers between his fingers: lavender, where vipers hide, and helpful if they bite you. “I expect they grow here only because you sing for them,” he said. “Didn’t folk always say: When Roxane sings, the stones burst into flower?”
Roxane cut some bread, poured oil into a bowl. “I sing only for the stones these days,” she said.
“And for my son.” She handed him the bread. “Here, eat this. I baked it only yesterday.” Then, turning her back to him, she went over to the fire. Dustfinger watched her surreptitiously as he dipped a piece of bread into the oil. Two sacks of straw and a couple of blankets on the bed, a bench, a chair, a table, pitchers, baskets, bottles and bowls, bundles of dried herbs under the ceiling, crammed close together the way they used to hang in Nettle’s cave, and a chest that looked strangely fine in this otherwise sparsely furnished room. Dustfinger still remembered the cloth merchant who had given it to Roxane. It was a heavy load for his servants to carry, and it had been full to the brim with silken dresses embroidered with pearls, the sleeves edged with lace. Were they still there in the chest? Unworn, useless for working in the fields?
“I went to Nettle when Rosanna first fell ill.” Roxane did not turn to him as she spoke. “I didn’t know anything, not even how to draw the fever out of her. Nettle showed me all she knew, but nothing helped our daughter. So I rode to see the Barn Owl with her, while her fever rose higher and higher. I took her into the forest, to the fairies, but they didn’t help me, either. They might have done it for you – but you weren’t there.”
Dustfinger saw her pass the back of her hand over her eyes. “CloudDancer told me.” He knew these were not the right words, but he could find no better.
Roxane just nodded and passed her hand over her eyes again. “Some say that you can see the people you love even after death,” she said quietly. “They say the dead visit you by night, or at least in your dreams; your longing for them calls them back, if only for a little while. . Rosanna didn’t come. I went to women who said they could speak to the dead. I burned herbs whose fragrance was supposed to summon her, and I lay awake long nights hoping that she would come back, at least once. But it was all lies. There’s no way back. Or have you been there? Did you find one?”