The Totem-Maker (part sixty-seven)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Seven

Winter Alone

(part sixty-seven)

I thought they were a league distant. I made out the red in their clothing, in blankets over the haunches of their plodding horses. I felt braced by tension as I waited my first duty, not knowing whether the traders were courteous, all, and spare of speech, as those of my escort had been…

Part of my mind peddled to me the fear of being robbed, or taken again in slavery. Part said in return: the Tollhouse is a place of power; the Tollkeeper the embodiment of power. Stand firm.

The gate—I noticed suddenly—needed swinging closed. Once I’d barred them the road, the law of the Tollhouse obtained. (But the gods, in their bluster, had opened the gate.)

I tugged, I shoved, I found my little strength insufficient—with my struggles well in view. But in the lulls of wind I heard only a command, an answer, some soft talk.

I would have to find a rope, mount Cuerpha…

Loop the rope round the gate’s top. I could visualize this, but could see myself trying to ride without reins, gripping the rope, jerking from the saddle into snowmelt and mud. I skidded home.

Cuerpha, whose hooves were in a state to need this exercise, carried me to the road. The traders called a repeated phrase. I feared for the sound of my voice, that it would ring young and small, that my office would not be believed. I spurred to a tight turn and cantered Cuerpha as far as the gate.

He bathed me in a slurry…of snowmelt and mud…exuberant, almost disobedient.

I will tell you here my garb was a strange sight, as all I owned I wore at once. My feet were wrapped in cuts I’d taken from the old Tollkeeper’s woven mat. The traders reached me reining my skittish pony, dancing my way to them.

Two leapt to the ground. I saw their clothing was stitched everywhere in vines, rosettes, patterns like flakes of snow or stars. They wore leather helmets, and over their tunics leather aprons, plated with metal. Their teams drew six wagons, two cabined, painted in the designs of their clothing, showing in common that rich, brownish red. They spoke and pointed, laughed now; their fingers played the air with a trotting motion.

I would be rude not to dismount as well, to meet them with my face at their level. They mocked me within my sight, and smiling. I smiled too, walked nearer leading Cuerpha, tilted my head and made my steps a clownish gait.

A jester. I could hardly aspire to more.

A cabin’s shutter opened and a woman put her head out, shouting. Her hand came next, bunching a circle of red stuff.

A trader went to banter and scold…

He came back toe to toe with me. Rough but good-humored, he caught my bare head in the woman’s gift. Others had wrenched the gate wider; the caravan chiefs were whipping their beasts ahead.

I adjusted my new hat. Behind the laughing tail of the caravan fell an earthen jug.

What was it meant for?

71

Winter Alone

The Totem-Maker (part sixty-eight)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)