Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [93]
They talked little, and they would not answer my questions about Cecilia. They seemed to know completely who I was (which was more than I knew), so completely that it was a matter beyond discussion, as accepted as air to breathe. I was weak with hunger but afraid to ask for food. If I gave any sign of weakness, would they change from kneeling before me to killing me? Maggie had said they murdered people here to “take their souls.” The belief might be folklore but the murder would be real, and I had no wish to dwell permanently in the country of the Dead. Not yet. So I walked as swiftly as they, grateful that the pace was not too quick, because of the old man. And with each step, I felt the peat springy beneath my boots, saw the torches bobbing ahead of me, smelled the sweet night air, experienced all the sensations that meant I was still alive.
Was Cecilia? Was she somewhere just ahead, in that town faint on the horizon?
And so we came to Hygryll. It lay in starlight among a group of hillocks, odd hills that were both wide and low. Then I realized that Hygryll actually lay in the hillocks. Each was a large round building made of, or covered with, earth and peat. A leather flap covered the doorway of the closest one. The old man pushed it aside and we entered.
I stood in a low, windowless round room of stone. A fire burned in the center, the smoke going up through a hole in the roof. The men set their torches in holders on the walls, and I saw stone benches heaped with fur blankets ringing the central space. Baskets rested under each bench. The only other furnishing was a large drum. One of my captors took the drum and went back outside. The others tossed fur blankets on the floor beside the fire.
“Sit down, hisaf,” the old man said.
I sat. I didn’t know what a hisaf was, or what they thought I was. I dug the nails of one hand into the palm of the other to steady myself. Outside the drum began to beat, a slow rhythm but not monotonous, a message I could not begin to decode.
One by one, men and women came into the round stone room. None was young, although none seemed as old as the green-eyed leader. I looked eagerly at each, but none was Cecilia. And yet it seemed to me that I could see something of her in this girl’s chin, that youth’s eyes. Each came to me, knelt, and said in their rough accents, “Welcome, hisaf.”
More and more people, until the room was full, warm with the heat of their bodies and heavy with their silence. These were different from the people I had known all my life in The Queendom: the farmers at country faires, the inn-keepers and faire folk, the soldiers and courtiers at the palace. They were different from Lord Solek’s savage warriors, with their smiling and singing, their ruthless discipline. They were different even from Hartah. These sat somehow heavily, saying nothing, waiting stolidly.
They reminded me of the Dead.
When it seemed the room could hold no more, the drummer came in from outside. He put his drum on a bench and went out again. The old man stood. He spoke slowly, and despite his accent, I could understand most of his words.
“Here comes a hisaf. There has not been one among us for a very long time. He was not born in Soulvine, and has never been in Soulvine, but Soulvine is his home. He is welcome. Soon he will travel to—”
I didn’t catch the word but, of course, he meant the country of the Dead. That was, after all, what everyone wanted from me, everywhere.
The old man finished, “But first, we will eat.”
Food! My empty stomach gave a loud growl. Surely food would end my light-headedness. The stuffy room didn’t help; I was shifting between a heightened, almost dizzy awareness of every detail and sudden bouts of sleepiness. In the body-packed gloom, someone threw a handful of dried leaves onto the fire and it flared. A sweet, pungent scent filled the room.
The door flap opened, letting in a brief blast of cold air. Young men and women entered, all about