The Riddle - Alison Croggon [75]
On the fifth day, as Cadvan had predicted, they entered Edinur, once a rich farming community like the Osirian. But Edinur was no more cheering than the wastelands they left behind them. The last time they had passed through Edinur at night. Now they rode through in daytime, and the blank, pitiless light exposed its full despair.
It hit Maerad as they entered the first hamlet. It was a collection of maybe two dozen houses, once a thriving community, but now it looked more like a battlefield. At least three houses had been burned down, and nobody had bothered to tidy their melancholy remains. They stood, shells of blackened timber and rubble, with bindweed and wild ivies already groping over them. Other houses just seemed to have been abandoned, their shutters swinging in the breeze, their doors, once painted brightly in reds and blues and oranges, hanging drunkenly off their hinges, their orchards and gardens grown wild with neglect.
A group of grubby, barefoot children were playing in the road. When they heard the clatter of the horses, they looked up, frightened, and scrambled off into one of the houses. They were pitifully thin and their clothes were rags and scraps, barely enough to keep them warm in summertime, thought Maerad, let alone the coming winter. A child, little more than two years old, was left behind in the road bawling for his playmates, his upper lip encrusted with snot. Maerad pulled up Imi and stopped, bending down to speak to him.
“Where is your mother?” she said. The child leaped back in terror, fell over in a puddle, and began to scream more loudly. At this, Maerad dismounted and picked him up. He was a mess of tears, his ragged clothes wet through. She tried to soothe him, but his crying simply got louder, and he struggled in her arms until she was forced to put him down again.
Suddenly a door shot open and a big woman ran out, holding a frying pan, screaming. “Leave him alone, you scum! Get your filthy hands off him!”
Maerad, completely taken aback, moved away from the child, her hands in the air. The child kicked her shins and ran for the woman, clinging to her dirty skirts. Her face was gray with tiredness and her hair was a matted mess of knots and filth.
“I’m sorry,” said Maerad. “He — he just fell over. I wanted to find his mother. I didn’t mean —”
“He’s got no mother, as you well know. You’re all the same, all of you.” The woman stood square, the frying pan raised above her head.
“Lady,” said Cadvan. “I assure you, we meant no harm. We are but messengers passing through, and we thought to help the child.”
The woman looked at him steadily, a glimmer of doubt in her face, and then slowly lowered the pan. She glanced furtively at Maerad, and something like shame entered her expression; Maerad had a sudden glimpse of the woman she might have been, had despair not nearly destroyed her. “Well, then. You speak kindly.” She paused, as if searching for unfamiliar words. “I am sorry. His mother died of the sickness and it makes me fret, looking after all these kittens, and their parents under the ground, and no help. But I’ll not let them be taken.” She lifted the pan again, and Maerad cautiously backed away.
“Taken?” she said.
“It’s always men who come. Men in cloaks. And they take the children who still live, they say to go into orphanages. With nary a question of those who care for them and love them.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “They’ve taken eight from here. But they’ll not take any more. Not while I’m here.