Son: Book II: Chapters 6-16

Claire had learned about death already in her time here, for they had buried an old fisherman earlier, and she had helped Alys wash and wrap the gaunt body before his sons lifted it into the box they had built.

The moon was a thin sliver against the gauzy gray of earliest morning.

"Don’t cut Bryn!” she implored suddenly.

No husband! Wanton thing! We suspected something like that! So she was tossed out of where she lived!

Glenys, who had welcomed Claire’s attentions at the handfasting ceremony in early summer, now smoothed her skirt smugly over her newly rounded belly.

“I was a willful girl,” she said.

He balanced a wooden yoke across his wide shoulders, and two buckets hung level from either side.

Beside her, in the sand, the laughing children imitated Einar, dragging their feet and limping dramatically, and then watching the furrowed ruts they made fill with seawater and smooth over.

Claire wore a thick furred vest that Alys has stitched for her from an animal hide, and warm boots from the same hide, laced with sinew.

"Summer babies fare better," she told Bryn.

She found him rubbing salve into the leg of a sheep that had caught itself in a thorny bush.

Claire could picture the fisherman arriving home in weather just like this to find a squalling infant and a wife turned blue and lost.

She shuddered at the thought of a little boy expected to atone for his mother's death.

Claire could hear her murmuring the names—white willow, nettle, meadowsweet, goldenseal—and knew she was pondering what combinations to create.

Claire had watched her stitch the flesh and wrap an astringent poultice around the leg of a small child gashed by a fall on the slippery rocks, soothing both the terrified mother and the screaming toddler at the same time with her reassuring voice.

Claire had watched her stitch the flesh and wrap an astringent poultice around the leg of a small child gashed by a fall on the slippery rocks, soothing both the terrified mother and the screaming toddler at the same time with her reassuring voice.

He had always been so shy and halting in his speech.

She had seen him look that way at a half-grown lamb prancing in the meadow on a midsummer afternoon, admiring its agile charm.

She could see that he had no experience with a human infant, though he was sure and facile with lambs.

She felt his fondness again, and her own for him, and the futility of it for them both.

Slowly she bent one knee, lowered herself, remained there poised, then rose again.

Bethan and her companions were no longer giggling, exuberant children; they were becoming taller, quieter, preparing for womanhood to come.

The redheaded twin boys scuffled and scampered together while Bryn, their mother, fretted over their misbehavior and laughed at their antics.

With summer approaching, plants coming into flower, and Alys in need of more help as her strength began to ebb, there was a great deal to do.

“I've given you what's been in my mind for all these years, since I climbed out. Every night since then I've climbed out again. I've felt again each rock, each bit of moss, each twig and hollow and cleft and turn: at night, when other men are mending their nets or sharpening their tools or making love to their women—I've been remembering the climbing. I have a map in my mind and I've given it to you and you'll be safe."

Here was the place he had described, where suddenly, in this massed section of boulders, was a rift, a deep gap in the rocks, a place where she must jump to the next foothold.

If she had needed her arms for balance on this precarious perch, she would not have been able to drink.

It was painstakingly slow, but she was moving upward instead of sliding down.

Gingerly she untied the tight leather strip and let it fall away.

She held it to her lips briefly, trying to impart a message, a thank-you, a goodbye; then she threw it as hard as she could out into the night beyond the cliff.

Instead, he was narrow-shouldered and thin, with a sallow complexion and neatly trimmed dark hair.

He was reaching for her arm, and Claire didn't want to be touched by those sinuous, silk-encased fingers.

Then he bowed, and his lipless mouth stretched into a mirthless smile.

The tongue flickered again as he drew out the word “reciprocity.”

His voice was contemptuous.