Crispin_ At the Edge of the World - Avi [8]
Troth—for so I gathered the girl’s name to be—made some guttural sound. It was not human talk—not in any proper sense. It sounded as if it came from her throat, animal-like. While unsettling, I took it to mean we were to lift.
The girl’s strength surprised me. Between the two of us, we managed to get Bear up. Perhaps Bear also worked, for when upright he opened his eyes a slit. I snatched up our sack, and we began to follow the old woman.
As we went along, it occurred to me that the woman’s way and manner—slow, shuffling, hunched over—had something witchlike to it. And the girl, with her odd, split mouth and her wariness, was just as odd. But at that moment—may God forgive me!—in order to help Bear, I would have embraced the Devil.
7
THE GIRL AND I, supporting Bear from either side, clumsily followed the old woman as she picked her way slowly through the woods. Though I would have never found where they took us on my own, we did not go far. It was not a true dwelling in any sense I knew—rather, it was the crudest of shelters, a space between two boulders over which some boughs had been set to form a roof. A wall of wattle obscured the entryway with bushes, arranged so a passerby would not likely notice what was there. It was well hidden.
Yet once I came round that screening wall, I saw that the living space was not so different from the poor dwellings I knew in my own village of Stromford. Matted leaves and crumbling rushes covered a dirt floor while two heaps of straw appeared to serve as sleeping places. A smoldering fire burned within a ring of soot-blackened stones. From the crude roof hung drying plants and herbs. Among them I spied mistletoe, which alarmed me for I knew it was used in magic spells.
On the ground were two rusty iron pots that looked to be old soldiers’helmets. Three chipped wooden cups lay nearby. There were mazers, too, plus a few closed linen sacks. If I had seen skulls, I would not have been surprised.
The old woman made a motion with her hand, which I took to be telling us she wanted Bear placed on one of the straw pallets. The girl and I did what she asked, though Bear mostly tumbled into a heap.
Making a rolling motion of her hand, the woman said, “Over.”
On my knees, grunting with effort, I turned Bear so he lay upon his back.
The woman, hovering near, made another gesture, turning her hand so the palm faced down, then lowering it slightly.
Were these gestures a casting of spells?
But the girl seemed to make sense of them. She took Bear’s good arm and straightened it. Moving his wounded arm caused him to moan. She did the same with his legs. Then she covered Bear to his neck with his robe as well as a tattered blanket they had, leaving his wounded arm exposed. In all of this, the girl worked with a slow, practiced touch.
The hag stood over Bear, staring down. Then she reached out and fingered his cap. Abruptly, she turned her good eye to me. “Who wounded him with an arrow?” she asked in a voice so broken it was all but indistinct.
“How … how did you know?”
“Though Aude has only one good eye she can see,” she said. “What befell him?” Her gaze was hard on me. “He was also beaten, many times.” She pulled Bear’s blanket back and pointed to red marks across his chest. “Burn marks. Who did these things?”
“I’m … not certain,” I said, uneasy about how much of our history I should reveal.
After staring at Bear for a long moment, she suddenly rasped, “Nerthus wants life to live. Aude will try to help.” A nod and the girl covered Bear again.
Who this Nerthus was, I had no idea.
Again the old woman faced the girl, opened her hand—palm up—and lifted it slightly. Then she moved that same right hand as if she were squeezing something, only to put the hand to her own cheek. Finally, she pointed to the branches hanging from the roof.
“Sorrel,” she muttered. “Marigold. Bark. Barley.” At the last she pointed to a sack and rubbed her hands together as if washing.
Troth plucked some leaves from the branches that hung above. She crumpled brittle bits into one of the iron helmets, then added