The Waiting Seeds

By K. Curran Mayer

"We could re-plant." The words fell as heavily as a clod of dirt from a spade. Bridy looked up at her uncle Aedmund. He looked like a man of stone, with the cold dawn lending a gray tinge to his normally ruddy skin; his hair and eyes were already gray enough in any light.

She wondered again why he had wanted her to come look at the fields with him. They both knew what they would find, and it was nonsense to think that a girl only just hesitating on the brink of womanhood could explain or help what an experienced farmer could not. Except possibly through the strange blood of her mother, but Bridy didn't want to face that.

She asked, "If the seeds aren't coming up, won't planting again just waste what grain we have left?"

He shook his head. "What else are we going to do? Sit here and wait to starve?"

Once the day broke, it was going to be too beautiful for such grimness, Bridy thought wistfully. The birds were starting to twitter in the hedges, the streams had burst free of ice, and the only white to be seen on the once-snowy hills were the blossoms of apple and thorn trees. But she should be used to such contradictions. The plague that had taken her parents and aunt had flourished at the height of a golden summer.

She bent her head back over the earth cupped in her palm. "It wasn't frost or drought. It's not that they sprouted and died," she said, aware that he knew this. She poked the soil with a gentle finger, seeking out the grain seeds. "They didn't sprout at all. Maybe they're still waiting."

Aedmund kicked at a clump of last year's dead weeds, dry and brittle now, but she could feel his eyes on her as he asked, "Waiting for what?" Bridy's heart contracted at how much he sounded like his small sons, the two boys she was helping raise. Her silence hung between them like a failure.

Aedmund shook his head. "We'll wait a week longer. And then we'll just have to use the reserve seed and hope for the best." He turned and plodded off towards the cowshed.

Bridy followed more slowly. It wasn't a problem with the soil, because the weeds were already starting to thrust green heads into the world. But no crops were coming up in any of the local fields – not the oats, the barley, the peas, or the winter wheat.

Aedmund must think it was the Neighbors, if he was looking to her for help. Did the rest of the village already think the same? Aedmund walked the few miles into the village most days – for gossip, for barter, to give or receive help. But without her parents beside her, Bridy could not face the silence that rippled in front of her or the muttering that followed behind.

Now she wondered what they were saying. How much time did she have before they began hunting for a scapegoat with pitchforks and torches? She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders as she turned back to her uncle's house.

Bridy cleaned the kitchen after breakfast, then thrust a kitchen knife through her belt and went to find her uncle. He was in the barn, trying to mend the axle of a cart. Giggles and dust drifted down from the hayloft above, as the boys romped after the half-grown kittens.

Her uncle didn't look up as she told him, "I'm going after nettles for dinner."

"You'll be taking the boys?" It was hardly a question; ever since snowmelt, the youngsters had been chafing to run wild in the woods. But Aedmund would not allow it unless he or Bridy could go with them. The rest of the village could murmur behind their sleeves all they liked, but Aedmund knew that the children were safer with his niece than anyone else.

But Bridy shook her head. "Not today. I'm going alone."

He looked up at that, an unasked question filming his gray eyes. Bridy tried to smile. "Keep an eye on them, will you? Don't let them follow me."

"You –" He paused to clear his throat, and Bridy shook her head. "I should be back within a few hours." He would know she didn't need that long just for nettles, but she ducked out of the barn before he could force himself to ask. It was better this way.

Once she reached the cover of the trees, she broke into a run for the Hill. Like the village, this was another place she used to go with her mother, but had avoided these last years.

The woods grew thicker by the Hill. The villagers did not gather firewood or pick blackberries here. Bridy's family was the only one that had dared build a homestead so close.

The sun had climbed high, and was beating down on the dry leaves of the forest floor. The unfurling leaves and swollen buds on the trees glowed golden, pale green, and red in the sunlight, but provided little shade. When Bridy reached the Hill, she stopped to pull off several of her winter petticoats, bundling them under her arm before starting to trudge counterclockwise around the great mound.

She didn't know if the terror swelling in her chest were caused by fear the Neighbors would ignore her, or whether she was becoming susceptible to the panic the Hill inspired among the villagers.

She would not be mastered by fear. She would climb the Hill and stand on its crown before she concluded that the door was closed to her and no appeal was possible. She waded into the ring of blooming thorn bush that circled the Hill like a wall. She paused to disentangle her skirt, hair, and sleeves with almost every step.

Bridy had not realized there would be such a good view of the valley from the summit. She leaned against a birch tree, squinting into the sunlight over the empty fields below, swallowing her growing panic.

Behind her, a voice said, "Well-met."

Bridy whirled. It took a moment to find the slim figure leaning against an ash tree a short distance away.

"Good day to you," Bridy offered, trying to keep her voice steady. It wasn't until she walked closer that she recognized Bel, her mother's brother, and tagged on, "Uncle."

He looked her over, his expression seeming oddly detached and thoughtful for his young face. Except for that look, he appeared hardly older than Bridy; though she knew he was more aged than Aedmund. He said, "I have been waiting for you."

"Then perhaps you know my errand." Bridy held her head high, the way her mother had taught her when they walked in the village together and felt the stares and pointing fingers. Her mother had not needed to worry about holding her head up among her own Hill people, but Bridy did not belong here either.

Bel shrugged, not answering. Bridy pressed him, "Is it your people keeping the seeds from growing?"

His eyes shifted away from hers. He stooped to pluck a yellow crocus from the ground by his feet. "If they cannot work the land, they will not stay on it. We should have done something like this years ago."

Bridy squeezed her bundle of petticoats to her chest like a child with a doll. "I know the land was yours, but it is their home now. Where will they go?"

"That is not our concern." Bel twirled the flower in his fingers like a flirtatious girl, but his gaze on Bridy was bitter. "They did not care where we went."

"They have no hills such as yours. They would starve in their houses down there, or go abroad, perhaps to the cities – and like as not starve there."

Bel smiled. "You underestimate us. Do you think we care about those little boys that you tend like a slave?"

Bridy sighed, thinking of how her other uncle would wish to strike the cruel smile from Bel's face. Aedmund and the rest of the villagers would never understand that Bridy's other people had no thirst for blood. Bel was not rejoicing at the prospect of starvation, he simply did not think it mattered. And that, to a human, was cruel.

She answered him, "No. But what of me? I am blood of your blood." Bridy reached for her long braid, pulling it over her shoulder so he could look at how dark her hair was, almost as dark as his.

He did not appear to notice. "As long as you stand with them, you are not one of us." Bel looked across the barren valley, idly crushing the stem of the crocus between his slender fingers. "I will offer you this much. If you come to us, we will look after you. But not the little boys or the gray man, nor any of the others."

Bridy shook her head without even thinking, as if her small cousins were clinging to her skirt instead of romping in a hayloft down below. "If my kinfolk do not eat, neither shall I."

Bel shrugged. "So be it." He dropped the flower and turned to go.

"Wait," Bridy said, though she did not know what else to offer him. She knew better than to plead with a Neighbor.

Bel looked back, shaking his head. His smile on her held a vague kindness now, but still no regret. "I know it is cruel, child. So are we. So were they, when they knew how to find us."

Bridy knew her other uncle, gray Aedmund, would have argued with this, pointing out that his small sons had taken no part in the wrongs done to the people of the Hills so many years ago. But perhaps there was enough of the Hill Folk's cold ways in her to make her accept Bel's statement.

Instead, she said, "There must be some bargain we can make."

"If you think of one, we will consider it," Bel answered with another shrug. Stepping between two tree trunks, he disappeared.

Bridy glanced into the sunlight over the valley again, wishing it were possible to erase a hundred years of blood.

On the way home, Bridy cut tender young nettles, carrying them wrapped in one of her discarded petticoats. She added them to the pea soup she served at mid-day with a loaf of crusty bread.

Aedmund looked at her closely as he sat down, but said only, "You did find your - nettles, then?"

Bridy was spared from answering by little Hereward, who announced, "I hate nettles."

Hereward still had straw in his hair from the hayloft, Bridy noticed as she stooped to put his bowl in front of him. The straw blended against his towhead so well, she hadn't seen it until she came so close. She combed it away with her hand.

Hereward's brother chirped, "If you don't want your soup, can I have it?"

Hereward mumbled something indistinct and shoved a spoonful in his mouth, wincing elaborately at the taste of the bitter greens. Bridy had known he would eat. Food was always tight in springtime, even without the prospect of failed crops.

Bridy considered the stories that the Neighbors stole children. What if they did want a child? Would Hereward or the even smaller Herold content them? A single child, in exchange for bread to feed all the children of the village? It would not be a bad bargain, no matter how much Bridy quailed at it.

There had to be something else she could offer. They did not want her, or they could have taken her today while she circled the Hill. Cattle? The village also had tales of the Neighbors taking stray cattle. Or milk. Bread.

Bridy started up from the table, almost overturning the bench. Her family stared at her as she grabbed the rest of the loaf from the table.

"I'll be back." She didn't bother trying to think of an excuse this time. Aedmund didn't ask for one, only reached to grab Hereward's elbow as the child scrambled to follow.

Bridy wasn't going to waste time climbing the hill again. If they were interested, let them come out. If they didn't want bread, she would find something they did want. She stood facing the fragrant wall of thorns, saying out loud, "I want to make a bargain."

The thorn bushes did not catch on Bel's clothes as he glided out to meet her. "A bargain?" He tilted his head to the side, considering the bread in her hands.

"A tithe. A rent. A gift. Whatever you want to call it. Paid to you by the village for the use of the lands."

Bel's lip curled slightly. "A half-eaten loaf of bread?"

"No, more than that. Gifts from every family in the village," Bridy said. "Bread is valuable to us. Perhaps I could talk them into offering some silver as well. Those that have any."

Bel looked at her and smiled his merciless smile again, as if he could see into her mind and hear the doubting whispers swelling to the angry roar of a mob. "Child, they will not accept such a bargain."

"I think they will," Bridy said, her eyes fixed on the wall of white flowers behind her uncle. "They must."

Bel stepped forward, studying the bread again with his head on one side like a thoughtful crow. "It is not much, compared to the land itself."

"It is bread without the labor of growing it. You have fewer troubles in that hill of yours than you ever did when you worked the land and warred with your neighbors," Bridy said sharply, echoing something she had once heard her mother say.

Bel raised his eyebrows at her. "Still, land is land."

"Uncle. You know as well as I do that my father's people will not hold this land forever. Someone else will come over the sea, sooner or later, with war in their ships. We will reap what we sowed soon enough. In the meantime, let the dead sleep and the living eat."

Bridy could barely believe it when Bel reached to take the bread from her hands. "Very well. We will accept this bargain. I speak for the People of the Hill, as you speak for the village."

His smile felt as cold as a meltwater stream, as he added, "Make sure that the village keeps their end of it - or barren fields will be the least of their worries."

For the first time in years, Bridy went to the village alone, holding her head so high that her neck pained her before she even reached the square.

Several women were gossiping over their buckets at the well in the center of the square. She recognized the wife of one of the village elders. They fell silent at her approach, doubtless making the Sign against evil behind their backs.

"The fields can be healed," Bridy said. "But I will need help."

The women exchanged glances, then the elder's wife asked, "How?"

"Bread, silver, anything you will miss but can still spare for the Neighbors. Something from every household in the village."

Another pause, before the elder's wife asked, "How do you know this?"

Bridy closed her eyes for a second, hearing the roar of mob and flames. Then she swallowed, saying, "I have spoken with - They want the land back, but can content themselves with a tithe."

The women continued to look at her. She could not read their eyes. Finally, a farmer's wife as pale and limp as a linen rag demanded, "How do we know you won't be keeping what we give? That's what I want to know – what you get out of it."

The other women nodded, even while Bridy replied, "The same as you - crops to feed my family."

Bel's final smile rose up in Bridy's memory, chilling her so that she wished she were still wearing all her winter petticoats. He had known this was what the villagers would say. Already several more people had joined the fringes of the crowd, listening, watching, judging. Bel thought it would end in flames instead of a bargain.

Bridy seized on the one thing that Bel could not have been counting on, because he did not understand it. Only a person who knew both worlds could understand. She bowed her head before the villagers. "Please. It's the best we can do. If the seed is not healed, I starve as well as you. I beg of you, please."

Bridy started as a hand fell on her arm, but as she looked up into the lined face of the elder's wife, the roar of flames died from her ears. "I can spare a little silver." The elder's wife turned to her friends, adding, "Well? Aren't you going to fetch something for the Neighbors?" They scattered like a flock of chickens at sight of a hawk.

The elder's wife tightened her hand on Bridy's arm, now that they were alone, hissing, "You had better be right, girl."

Bridy nodded. If Bel had lied, then she would burn. If the villagers did not keep her bargain, then they would all starve together or worse. Relief still swept over her like the warm spring winds. "It must be from every house in the village," she said. "They might try to get out of it if we miss anybody, they always keep their word very – exactly."

The elder's wife nodded. "I'll see to that."

Bridy wanted to slip safely back home now that the village had been set into action, to hide under her uncle's roof once more and cook supper for her little family. But the elder's wife was striding off to gather the village. Bridy followed at her heels.

[End]