What would Brona see in Ban now? As a grown man, after so long apart? He still felt too much like a misbehaving boy dragging his feet. Was there any chance she would approve of him using his Learish magic in Aremoria? Would she be furious he’d waited weeks to come to her hearth? What might she be like now, with the island’s roots so withdrawn and unhappy? Could he even trust his memories of her, as they were the memories of a child?
Ban put his shoulders back and pushed his cloak off his left shoulder to clearly reveal the sword strapped to his hip. It did not do to hide his weapon; only thieves and criminals—and spies—did not display what strength they held. His mother hadn’t seen him in years, nor he her, but he could not bring himself to pretend. There was no point in slicking back his choppy hair or trimming it into harmony. No point but to relish the scars on his face and hands, the hard lines war and wariness had cut into his features at too young an age. Brona would see through any lies regardless, unless she’d lost that sharp acumen for judging men. He hoped not—it was why Ban had sent Rory to her in the first place. She would keep him safe no matter what news she had from Errigal Keep, because she’d see the blunt honesty and goodness in Rory himself. The glorious sun to Ban’s wan moon, brothers separated as much by their birth as by their spirits.
Ban Ban Ban, said the trees. You’re home!
They fluttered leaves, reached for him; they chided him for staying away and they sighed piteously because no one spoke to them anymore outside the forest itself. The navels are gone! they cried. Our roots are thirsty, but only the witch feeds us. Only the witch loves us.
Lady Regan loves you, he said.
The White Forest replied, Regan, poor Regan, she needs us but she does not love us.
Both, he said, frowning. She needs you and loves you.
The trees hissed and sighed. One whispered, Elia, and another, Saints of earth, but before Ban could find it, find that tree who said her name, the echo had vanished and all the forest sang together joyfully.
The Hartfare path appeared as if in a dream, at the edge of a narrow clearing and marked with several tatters of blue wool, as if strips of some dark sky had become caught in the reaching branches. Hardly more than a hunter’s lane, but enough for the horse to recognize. The way to Hartfare, once found, lasted only a mile or so before spilling both horse and soldier into the village.
Ban slid off the horse and stood, amazed at how it had grown.
There were perhaps forty cottages, ten more than when he’d last been here. Some little huts for livestock, rows of gardens, and the public house, and his mother’s herbary. It smelled and sounded as he remembered—splatter of mud, clang of metal, and his father’s laughter and his mother’s quiet singing; Brona smearing blood off his palm from a shallow gouge and saying a charm, something Ban could not quite remember, but it made him feel glad. The memories were as distant as dreams, but surely they were real because dreams would not smell like crushed flowers and shit.
His horse stomped her foot and shook her head so the tack rang against her neck. Ban patted her, murmured soothing nothings, and unlooped the reins. He brushed floating moon moths out of his way as he hobbled the horse, and while some eyes on his back prickled his awareness, he lifted off the saddle and blanket to rub her down quickly and let her loose to graze.
Turning, Ban spied two young women peering at him from the nearest cottage window, and an older man kneeling in a patch of long peas, studying him, too.
The road through the village was thick with mud, and a pack of hounds ran out, barking and braying, with a boy calling frantically behind. Ban put his hand on his sword and stomped at them, splattering mud. He did his best to smile at the boy, and let the nearest hounds sniff and lap at his gloved fingers, shove their long noses in his crotch, nearly knock him over. They smelled filthy and wet and terrible. But he liked rough, loud dogs.
The moths did not, and wafted high into the air.
The boy stared at Ban, or rather at Ban’s sword, eyes brown like walnut shells and skin swarthy, marking him one of the clan from far south in Ispania, and so related distantly to Ban and his mother. Ban wondered if the boy was a bastard, too, and if his only hope was to join service as a retainer. He said, “After I speak with Brona, I’ll show you to use the sword if you like,” and the boy grinned gap-toothed and nearly tumbled over one of the dogs.
There were people everywhere. Ban strode faster, before there were more interruptions, before he lost his nerve.
The herbary where his mother lived and worked was built of wood and mud bricks, with fresh thatch from which some small tufts of pink flowers grew, despite the late season. The door was closed, but the square, squat windows were open, and Ban heard his mother’s voice singing in the side garden.
It shook him to his boots, for she sounded so much the same he nearly forgot his own age.
“Mama,” he said, not loud enough to be heard; more for himself, a reminder, a grounding. And when he spoke, some relief blossomed in his chest. With a growing smile, he strode around the corner and found her shooing some chickens out of her sweet pea vines.
At his step, Brona spun, black hair loose, skirts twisting at her bare calves. She held two small dark plums, waxy and ripe. They’d been his favorite as a boy.
“Welcome home,” his mother said, offering the fruit.
Ban took one, but the moment his finger brushed hers, he dropped the plum, frozen.
She was as imposingly lovely as he remembered.
Brona wore her waves of black hair loose and only a thin sleeveless shift hanging off one tan shoulder as if she’d just been awakened, though it was very late in the morning. Her skirts clenched at a waist caught like a bridge between heavy breasts and heavy hips. Red flushed her cheeks and her mouth; her eyes were dark and wet as the mossy forest outside. Horn and amber beads hugged her wrists and bare ankles. The tops of her feet were mud-speckled, and her toes vanished into the grass. She was exactly as Ban remembered, unbound and free, made of the very earth; the memory was a visceral wave of delight followed by the hot awareness that he could see her now the way his father must have. When he left he’d only been a boy and had only a son’s eyes. Now he was a soldier, and understood the hunger of men.
“Ban,” Brona breathed in a thick sigh.
“Mama,” he said, just as full.
She closed the distance, and her hands found his rough cheeks. Brona slid thumbs along his jaw, toyed with the thick, uneven strands of his hair, tugged at the leather jacket he wore. She put her palms to his chest, and there were tears washing her eyes. “What a man you look.”
Swallowing, Ban touched his mother’s waist, wanting to pull her close and hug her until he forgot everything of the past month, or the past ten years, everything but whatever herby soap she put in her hair and the always-sharp smell of her, as if the dry flowers hanging from her ceiling and the herbs she grew and harvested, boiled, waxed, crushed, and turned to tinctures had permeated her skin and blood. Pretend she had kept him, chosen him. But instead he said, “I don’t only look like a man.”
Her laugh was wry. “As irritable as ever. Ah, I’ve heard so much, so many things of my son, the Fox.”
Pride swelled, but Brona swiftly quashed it by adding, “Also, I’ve heard how long you’ve been on the island without attending to your mother.”
“I—I’m here now.”
“Not to stay.”
It wasn’t a question, and she did not sound sorrowful over it.
“Hartfare is not a place for me,” he muttered, wondering if his mother regretted her choices, or if they were worth the specific freedoms that came with her craft. She was respected, but only in the dark, and never by men concerned with stars, those who made their laws. Brona had never married, yet never seemed sorry or lonely—Ban could dredge up no memories of her angry, no matter how hard he tried, and she’d only been sad the day Errigal took him away. Sad, but not fighting to keep him.