It was the sweat, Gerrick decided. Something about sweating at night that made the experience even worse.
It pricked his skin and felt like tiny bugs crawling under his clothes. Bad enough during the day. But at night it just felt wrong. And that made it that little extra bit annoying.
It was a brilliant, warm spring night, without a cloud. The perfect night for lying on the grass and staring at the stars; maybe alone with a lyre, maybe with a lyre and a beautiful lass from the nearest tavern. It was a new moon, so the stars were burning-bright and the arch fair shimmered across the northern sky; three solid bands of milky-white, with thin strands of night-velvet glimpsed between them.
And he couldn’t appreciate it, even for a moment. His legs had gone beyond sore. His back throbbed; Gerrick knew it was because he was too hunched over, but his bag was so heavy and he’d grown too tired to bring himself to correct it. Tomorrow morning he knew he was going to wake up feeling even worse than he did today, and the thought weighed on him as heavy as the pack.
Something hard and metal was digging into his side, and had been for the last two hours. It didn’t matter how often he shifted the weight, or how carefully he tried to re-pack; there was always something digging into his back somewhere. Every now and then someone from behind him would tread on his heel, or a person to the side would bump into him, or someone in front would stop suddenly. That last was the worst. A red, biting anger would flare inside Gerrick when that happened, like pouring spirits onto a flame, and he had to bite his tongue every time to stop himself screaming at them, or throwing his pack down and sitting where he was like an angry child.
If he didn’t know he was being watched, all the time, he’d do it. If he didn’t remind himself that he was young and strong, and many of those around him were not, he’d do it. But the people had decided that he was some sort of leader, and if that was going to keep them walking than it was on his shoulders to live up to it.
All that said, he was done now. Enough.
Gerrick looked up. This was a horrible place to camp; a lower valley in the midst of gentle hills. Exposed. They were headed for a hill; maybe ten minutes trudge would get them to the bottom.
Gerrick clamped his teeth hard together. All the parts of what he was were swearing black and blue at him that this was where he stopped. He was done now. And he was not these people.
But Gerrick was not all himself. If there was no other leader, than there had to be another Gerrick. And that Gerrick knew that the top of the hill would be a much better place for camp.
He pulled himself up. Breathed from the diaphragm, like a good singer, and called out as loud as he can. “We’ll camp at the top of that hill tonight. Nearly there, everyone!”
There was not much response; a few people carried the word down the line. They’d become very spread out; a long winding snake of humanity and the occasional ox or donkey. Here and there someone carried a torch; Gerrick wished they wouldn’t. The arch was bright enough to see by tonight, with no clouds and after being out for a while. One night they might need those torches.
Another irritation. Another thing to let go of.
And still a hill to climb. Gerrick grit his teeth, and thought of how wonderful it would be to sleep.
When that didn’t work, he thought about what the Nith would do if they caught up.
Worse than sweat was setting up camp after a forced march. Gerrick was more asleep than awake, even when on his feet. He tried to do tasks that he’d already done, forgetting he’d done them the moment that he was finished.
But now he had his bed roll laid out and his head back on the straw-stuffed bag he’d been using as a pillow, and he lay out flat.
The feeling from his back as iron-hard muscles unclenched was agonising. Gerrick knew he needed to move them a little less, let the cool down gently instead of all at once, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He tired enough to fall asleep mid-sentence.
And opened them. Sleep was not coming.
Not three paces away, another family was laying out their own beds. “Thank Father Hibbin that his hair was bright enough for us to see by tonight.”
“Stars, Adair, can you ever, for one sentence, not mention Father Hibbin?” A woman a few metres further down snapped.
“What?” Adair replied. Gerrick was looking at the stars and couldn’t see either of them, but he could hear him bristle. He shut his eyes again, tight this time, and willed sleep. If he was asleep he couldn’t hear people argue. Couldn’t hear the long days of fear and work threaten to snap.
“I’m sick of it! Hair my hairy fucking arse! The arch is the fucking arch; that’s all.”
“And what is the arch, then?” Adair shot back, “It just sits there? It just is?”
“Yes!”
“Then it isn’t anything! You can see it! What can you see if there is nothing there?”
“There is something there! A big crack in the sky, that shows the light from the other side! Not some hoary god’s hair. If you had your way, everything would be a god’s something-or-other.”
“That’s because everything is a god’s something-or-other.” A female voice now; Adair’s wife. Defending her faith, defending her husband.
And lashing out at the first thing she’d had to lash out at for days.
Gerrick shut his elbows over his ears. He was asleep. He couldn’t hear a thing.
“And there’s the gods watching us now I suppose? Watching and spitting on us, and doing nothing!”
That tore it. Someone was going to have an arm torn off, now. Shouting something like that would get somebody’s arm torn off. And now Gerrick was sure it was going to be the man-that-wasn’t Adair. He would ask his name. And then he, Gerrick, would tear off his arm for saying the words that would make somebody’s arm be torn.
It was Sofia who spoke next; in that faraway voice that she’d only recently acquired. Gerrick hadn’t even known she’d been nearby. “Up north, it’s not an arch,” she mumbled, her dark skin still too pale in the starlight, “It’s just a long, straight line. We call it the Mother’s Needle.”
Gerrick felt heads swing around.
Sofia was a target at the best of times. The witch-girl, the weaver, the newcomer from the north with her strange knowledge and her strange Goddess. Sofia was the reason that they were all still alive; it was Sofia who had warned them of the coming of the nith. But that very foresight was terrifying. And in a sea of familiar faces, the one northerner with the strange accent and the bright-coloured clothes stood out.
These were not the best of times. Sofia had been struck by some sort of illness; a seizure that she’d said had plagued her since her youth, but it had taken the fight from her and left her needle-sharp wit dulled and vague. Now she spent her time staring intently into the space between things instead. The march hadn’t helped.
“You can take your magic right back to the north,” The man-who-wasn’t-Adair said, “At least I know who our gods are when they ignore us. It’s better to see the back of a person I don’t like.”
“Needle? How is that a needle?” Adair said, “What needles do you use in the north? Is that how you spin your drafts?”
“It changes. The… needle, arch, whatever. In the north it’s a line, straight down the middle of the sky. Like a frozen bolt of lightning. It’s a…” Sofia’s voice trailed off into nothing. She was prone to doing that now, her gaze unfocusing. It was annoying.
She did not need to do anything annoying right now.
Gerrick was up on his feet. He wished he could say it was in one movement. If he told the story he was going to say it was in one movement. But it was laborious, with popping joints and screeching muscles for every inch of height. He felt like a machine made of rust.
But he stood up, and he breathed from the diaphragm for projection.
“Actually,” He said, with volume and confidence and just the right twist of sardonicism. It turned heads; they knew his voice.
Right, now they’re listening; what do you have to tell them? Gerrick asked himself. “Actually,” he repeated, for time: “It’s not hair or a needle!”
A span of silence, with only Gerrick’s heart filling it. He swallowed on a dry throat that was only getting drier. Usually he lived for these moments; making up everything on the spot before a crowd demanding an answer from him. At the moment his mind was oozing like honey out of his ears, though, and he didn’t know if he would have anything else to say.
“It’s a wave!” Gerrick said, the first thing that snapped into his head when he saw it. “A wave that felt the sea was far too clammy, and leapt into the sky to escape it! But once there, if froze in place, and we’re left with the arch. See? Simple.”
“That’s an awful story. Aren’t you a singer?” Adair said, and he said it with force, but there was the ghost of a grin waiting behind the words.
Got them.
“You’re right, you’re right. It’s stupid. Why would it stay in the sky to freeze when it left the sea for being too cold? The truth is… The truth…” Gerrick cast about; he actually reached out with one of his hands to try and pull the words he needed out of the air.
Sofia had told him about weaving her drafts; about turning your vision inside-out, and seeing not just things but the threads of creation that made the things, and seeing just how to tug on just which ones. That was magic, apparently. Gerrick sometimes wondered if he did the same thing. The stories were all out there; the stones and mortar that made tales were just lying about, and all he had to do was find the ones he needed and order them the right way.
“It left because it was a wave above,” Gerrick said, and he wasn’t certain at first why, but he saw that he was on the right path. “There was a time, long ago, when the entire ocean as we know it was flipped upside-down. The waves that now we see were once the below-waves, rolling across the ink-black depths of the very bottom of the sea. The waves above were gentler things, and slow; that did not battle with the land, but lived by it, and kissed it only gently.”
“But the waves beneath grew jealous. They wanted new homes, and they forced themselves upwards, churning the ocean with them. Most of the gentle waves-above raised no complaint, and were subsumed, sinking deeper than deep. But this one; this wave saw what was coming. And it leapt.”
Gerrick pointed above him: “There it is, in a home that no wave would have thought possible. It is no longer toiling back and forth forever; no longer threatened by the unending force of the waves beneath. It is beyond their reach. And, I like to think, a little sympathetic.”
The singer turned towards it and waved. “That’s why it’s helping us out. I think it sees a little of itself in us.”
He counted two beats under his breath before turning on his heel; “And I, for one, would now like to sleep. We need to keep moving tomorrow. I think one story’s enough, eh?”
“Trying to hedge out the competition before there is any competition, eh?” Said the man-who-was-not-Adair, but he was smiling as he said it. It was a small smile, and tired.
Gerrick returned it, and said nothing.
He didn’t lie down until he saw the man and Adair’s family had settled. Once he was certain that the night could pass at least without violence between them, he turned to his own bedroll as it if was his lost mother.
And in turning saw Sofia, now staring up at the arch.
“I always called it a needle, you know.” She said, “That was just it’s name. But now… It really does look like a wave. Did the Mother weave it as a wave, or needle? It can’t be both.”
Gerrick put his hands on her shoulders, gently. They were hunched upwards, even now, and as solid as planks. “Come on Sofia. Lie down. You need your rest too.”
“But which is it? I should be able to see the threads…”
“Leave it for tomorrow. Wisdom can come after sleep. Please. For me.”
She looked up at him then, and her eyes focused. For half a moment, Gerrick saw the prophetess that had been lost in the illness. The woman that they desperately needed to lead them. She was so close to the surface. Maybe another night of rest would bring her back.
He missed her.
“And hell,” Gerrick said, “Maybe it’s both. They’re good stories.”
