Loving All of You the Rest of Your Life
And anyway, it's the same old story – – –
a few people just trying,
one way or another,
to survive.
Mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.
And nobody gets out of it, having to
swim through the fires to stay in
this world.
Mary Oliver – "Dogfish"
Part 1
"I'd give you a good price," the butcher said. "I keep telling you that."
"I keep telling you, Jerred—I don't kill my birds. Not for meat, nor for feathers."
Lynnie hid her face in Regin's skirts as Regin paid the butcher, counting out each of her hard-won coins carefully.
"Brats still tugging at your skirts, Regin?" Jerred asked, wrapping up the meat with quick, angry movements. "I warned you about that."
Regin shot him a look that would've frosted roofs in high summer, one dark brow arced. "I don't recall it being any of your business—then or now."
She took the meat, but he held onto the beef, leaning towards her. "You're throwing yourself away on these castoffs."
"Yes—threw myself into the best six years of my life." Her lips parted in a baring of teeth that barely passed for a smile. "Good day, Jerred," she said—and whistled. He flinched.
"Maud, will you carry it for me?" Regin asked the girl on her other side with her dark hair straggling out of her braids. Maud silently picked up the package with her good arm, her left arm hanging limply under her pinned shawl.
"Come on, chickadees," Regin said, patting Lynnie's little back. "Let's go home." They turned and walked past the line of villagers and their stares—some curious, some hostile.
You think they would be used to it, as I've lived here my whole life, Regin thought sourly.
Visits to the village of Ormuth were neither girl's favorite activity, nor Regin's, if she were being honest. They garnered stares and suspicion, the tall, dark-haired woman with strange eyes and her foundlings following behind her, Maud with her useless arm and Lynnie with her port wine birthmark that covered half her face. But today was Lynnie's name day, and Regin wanted to have something special for supper that night. They had braved the stares and the narrowed eyes for meat and sugar, for a roast and a pie. The only truly sour note had been Jerred and his bitterness, for which he had no right. Regin had never encouraged him as a beau. He had only his foolishness and sour nature to blame.
The little group left the village proper and followed the path up the hill to their steading, and the girls relaxed as they distanced themselves from the village, running ahead and laughing amidst the wildflowers. Regin smiled as well, whistling a little tune to which the whippoorwills in the trees replied merrily. Hello, hello, hello!
After a few minutes, the small cottage built against the oak tree came into view, as well as the pens for the chickens and ducks and the geese. The geese, upon hearing their approach, trumpeted their urgent need for grain, specifically Rebel, the gander, and Duckie, a goose that Lynnie had named when she was a little too young to understand the distinction between types of waterfowl. The flock of geese flapped their brown wings, their black and white faces trained on the girls.
"You greedy things," Regin said fondly, opening the gate. She was the main village egg monger, as well as maker of the best pillows and down blankets the village. But she didn't kill her birds for them. Their yearly molts were freely given, and so finite—and worth more. The people had no problem buying her eggs when she carried them down to the edge of the village. Funny, that.
"Girls, you can give the geese a bit of grain to stave them off, then wash your hands and come and help me start supper."
Her girls darted off towards the pens, calling greetings, where the geese fondly nibbled at them both. Regin shook her head with a smile and entered the house.
/
"Regin, Maud rolled her eyes!"
"I did not; you just make me so bored I'm falling asleep!"
"Do not!"
"You never stop talking and it's all nonsense!"
"Girls!" Regin said, smacking the table with her spoon. "You will both be washing dishes and cleaning the coops tonight if I don't get an immediate change in attitude."
"But Regin—"
"I will also eat all this pie myself."
They both subsided, but Regin didn't miss the tongue Lynnie poked at Maud, or the face Maud made back.
Sometimes they tried her last nerve, but she was glad they both acted like children now. When Maud came to her, she was just a little shadow, shoved aside and abused by her family because of her arm. And Lynnie had been left for dead at the edge of the village as a baby—no one knew who by, but presumably because of her dark red birthmark that fools might believe an ill omen. Now Maud was ten and Lynnie was just turned six, and they'd both been with Regin for six years.
She hadn't expected to foster two babes the same year, but no one else would. And they all belonged together, the outcasts in their little steading outside Ormuth.
Regin pressed a kiss on both their heads. "Thank you, chicks. Would you like some pie now?"
Bright smiles bloomed. "After pie, will you sing, Regin?" Lynnie asked.
"How could I do otherwise on your name day? Think what you'd like me to hear." Regin sliced into the gooseberry pie as an owl in the oak outside hooted his nightly greeting to the moon.
/
Regin woke in the darkness to a hand on her shoulder.
"What is't?" she said, lifting a hand to rub her eyes.
"I had a bad dream," Maud whispered.
Slowly, Regin sat up, peering through the moonlight streaming through the window. Maud had not had a bad dream for almost a year. "What was it, my honey? Your family?" They used to shove her in the cellar, and Maud had had troubles with darkness for a long time.
"No," Maud said, surprising her. "I can't remember, but it was…bad. It still feels bad." She scrubbed her good hand across her chest, hunching her shoulder.
"Ah." Regin pulled back the coverlet and patted the mattress. "Do you want to stay with me for a while?"
Maud opened her mouth to answer, but a sharp wail broke the night.
Regin snapped her head around, her dark night braid whipping through the air. She stood and went to the window.
Another wail went up from the village below—and was cut off.
Fires lit—one, then two—then screams began in earnest.
"What is it?" Maud whispered.
"Wake your sister. Get dressed. Hurry!" Regin said, tugging on a day dress over her shift. She shoved her feet into her soft leather boots and ran up the ladder after Maud.
"What is it?" Lynnie cried, her new rag doll clutched in her arms.
"Dresses on!" Regin commanded.
To the girl's credit, they pulled on their clothes in record time. Regin threw open the shutters to the loft, staring out into the dark, trying to see what was happening below. Bandits? Raiders?
Movement in the dark. She squinted, hummed a two-note tune, trying to see….
A building exploded into flame and a blast of sound—the tavern and its beer, likely. In the orange flickering light, Regin caught sight of scuttling dark figures with bone white faces. No, they were bone—skulls, helms. She recoiled.
The geese burst into wild cacophony, calling Intruders! Danger!
The enemy—scaling their hill.
"Duckie!" Lynnie exclaimed.
Her heart wrenched, but Regin seized the back of Lynnie's dress as she tried to dart towards the ladder. "No! The geese have given warning. They will fend for themselves. Girls, you remember how I taught you to climb," Regin said, clawing at the ties in the corner of the cottage roof. She ripped free the ties and threw back the trap door. "I need you to climb."
"But I can't!" Maud cried.
"We'll help you, and you'll use your legs, just like I showed you," Regin said. "Lynnie, you first." Lynnie stuffed her doll down her dress and let Regin toss her through the hatch. "Now give Maud a hand." Regin lifted the girl and heaved her up, where Lynnie caught her hand and tugged. "Both of you—start climbing. Quick and quiet!"
Regin waited until they were clear of the opening, then took a step back and leaped. She caught the lip and heaved herself through the opening. Then she lowered the hatch.
The girls were already two branches up. Regin pressed into the oak's shadow and stared down as the horde of darkness reached her pens. The geese immediately attacked, trumpeting their fury. The ducks had lifted the latch on the chicken coop, and the birds exploded into the night in a flurry of feathers. Some birds the intruders hacked with their swords, each a wound to Regin's heart, but others flew away into the trees.
When a twisted figure wearing a horsehead skull turned towards her cottage door with an axe in hand, Regin began to climb.
They ascended through the branches, feeling their way through the dark, as splitting timber and smashing crockery echoed below.
Rumbles and shouts of a rough, guttural language passed between them. Regin froze, one hand out to find the next branch. Is it—no! Can it be orcs? Here?
Maud screamed, a high, terrified sound, as she lost her grip.
Instinctively, Regin threw out her arm and grabbed her as she plummeted down. The weight of a ten-year-old wrenched her arm, but Regin refused to let go, heaving Maud back towards safety.
"I missed—I slipped—I'm sorry," Maud hiccupped, scrabbling at Regin, at the tree.
"It's all right, it's all right, look here, here is your handhold," Regin whispered, steadying her shaking body.
But the enemy had heard.
"Up th' tree!" one barked. "Get 'em down! Arrows!"
Maud gasped. Regin heard Lynnie sob.
The enemy knew where they were. There would be no safety—not for long. She had to protect the girls, but their only shelter was this tree. And she feared it would be their grave. "Keep climbing," Regin ordered, beating despair back. "No matter what. Keep climbing." She pushed Maud ahead of her, making sure she wouldn't fall, as the first arrow thudded into the tree's bark.
Then Regin opened her mouth and sang.
It was not a complex song—a mournful local ballad about a lost love gone over the mountains, never to be seen again, with many sorrowful verses and a repetitive chorus. But she let the music build as she ascended, as her throat worked to find the right pitch, the right volume, as she poured what power she had into it. She let the music pull it forth, feeling the spark alight within her and begin its work.
It is my right to call upon the Power. It is my Legacy; she told the muscle and bone resistant to the work.
Because Regin was granddaughter to a skinchanger woman—a woman whose second form had been a bird.
The arrows flew thicker, and she was thankful for the leaf cover, but the branches became slender, the leaves fewer, and provided less cover. Her left side began to weaken and twist as the change that she had never managed to complete started. But she didn't need to complete it. As an arrow flew close enough to feel the air around her move, Regin wrung the last pleading notes from the song, letting them ring into the air. Then she stood and extended her changing left arm to the stars—and screamed a long, avian supplication that echoed over the land, that rolled over the trees and hills far further than any natural peal.
"My friends, my kin! In the name of Eru Ilúvatar, the creator of the world, in the name of Manwë the Valar who loves birds, carry my cry! The enemy is here, they have awakened! Have mercy on us! Protect my chicks! Bring the news near and fa—"
A black arrow sank into her shoulder, the one that gripped the tree. Her avian speech cut off in a shriek of pain as her grip faltered, and she fell. Regin hit several branches, attempting to catch herself or slow her fall, but they all broke. She landed in the dirt at the base of the tree, the smell of the creatures around her assaulting her senses. She moved sluggishly, as her chicks cried high above.
Stay there, stay safe, she wanted to say. But the dark closed in, and she was lost.