Eight knots

The herb-woman’s hut was actually outside the community lands, across the river, and beyond the birch grove – no one would ever risk planting birches in the village’s territory. The tree border, tree of the waters of Oblivion – as they used to say here about the birch, and Pagey had been seeing the silvery bark since his childhood to find the log cabin of a beautiful witch in woods, who was once close to Lekki and even stayed at their place in the apiary. The red-haired woman left the beekeeper when the threat being revealed became too obvious. Nevertheless, nothing prevented the herb-woman to keep a warm relationship with the beekeeper until today and feel the most tender affection for his foster child.

Pagey knocked on the door three times.

“Look who’s here!” the herb-woman smiled bringing him inside the house.

The young man breathed in a spicy warm air, placed on the fire, something was brewing in the cauldron. Unable to restrain his curiosity, he blurted right out of the gate,

“Why did the Gevers come here?”

The woman pretended not to know what he was talking about and uttered tranquilly,

“Sounds like they have been chased away from the previous place. Would you like a pie? Just your favorite left…”

But Pagey wasn’t up to pies,

“Why are they being chased everywhere?”

“Because they are disobedient in the eyes of the authorities.”

“But who asked them to come down here?”

“Me,” the herb-woman replied calmly.

Sitting down on the bench that had already been chosen by a triple colored cat named Rosehip, Pagey thoughtfully rubbed the pet and frowned,

“You’re not scared?”

“Who?”

“Him.”

“No,” laughed the herb-woman, stirring the contents in the cauldron over the fire. “I’m not afraid of him at all.”

“You know better,” Pagey replied somberly, growing dark more and more. “But if I were you, I’d tread carefully to argue with the druid.”

                                          * * *

A few days later, the community gathered around a big bonfire near the river. Each festival of the Wheel of the Year was a node in public life, and so, it was another cold October, so, they all went outside to celebrate the black Samhain. Remembering the dead, remembering the past, wanting to confuse evil spirits and wicked fairies, the locals dressed up in weird clothes, painted their faces with soot, and even hid behind masks carved from pumpkins.

Hom arrived with his grandfather and the groom – the executioner. The boatman left the crossing and went to the bonfire, incessantly smoking cigarettes and sitting all alone a little distance from the bonfire. The blackberry family arrived at the festivity as a whole – the most successful married couple of entrepreneurs were together with their kids, all as one dressed in black. A few Gever women were here, too.

Pagey noticed Lady Crescent, and he was seized by an incredible joy.

“She’s a Beauty,” uttered the young man with adoration, keeping a close eye on the Gever girl.

Hom made a face,

“You mean, this one? A Beauty? Come on. If there is a beauty here, it must be her,” and with those words, the fair-haired man pointed to the thin and sad blackberry wife standing with all her numerous offsprings.

“The blackberry wife?” Pagey was surprised. “She’s old enough to be your mother!”

“You’d think that someone had ever been stopped,” Hom retorted.

“But she’s married to the bearded man. They’re wealthy. And it’s wrong to think that.”

But his friend cut him off,

“Will you shut up, Pagey? It’s wrong, you know, to drool over a dirty little Gypsy, and that’s exactly what you’re doing.”

“You shut up,” Pagey answered back light-heartedly and stood up to go and say hello to Vita.

But as soon as he went up to her, they all fell silent at the sound of a low voice, familiar to everyone here, which was loudly announcing,

“Let the new year begin. The spoke swung, the Wheel of the Year keeps on moving.”

The druid approached the bonfire and raised his long, powerful arms above the flames.

He was tall and lean, with clear cheekbones incised on his face – you thought, you could even cut yourself with these cheekbones. Throughout his appearance, there was something authoritarian, uncompromising. No wonder people treated the druid with great respect, brought gifts to each full moon, paid the land rent promptly. Of course, the people tried to appease Mr. Kelly – but only because he was an old soldier and kept an eye on justice in the community. They obeyed the druid on some inner, intuitive level.

Slightly touching the gilt buttons on his luxurious dark blue coat, the druid began his message, alas, not with solemn speech,

“Before we start to celebrate the festivity, I ask each of you, who called the Gevers into our lands?”

The herb-woman stood up and having straightened her green dress, answered defiantly,

“Stop pretending you didn’t realize it was me.”

Dumfounded by such familiarity with the lord, people began to whisper in surprise, and the druid continued unperturbed,

“You know the rules established regarding our limited relationship with the rest of the world. Nevertheless, you broke them. You don’t belong in today’s ritual, let it be a lesson to you.”

The herb-woman waved her hand,

“I don’t even live on your property, take a chill.”

“Nevertheless, you called them on my land. Without my consent. Should you go back to your territory?”

Hom, the druid’s favorite, had been silently watching the proceedings, now stepped forward defiantly barking an order,

“Escort this woman to her house.”

Two burly men, the field workin’ people, came up to her, and she had no choice but to obey.

“I knew that this was going to happen,” Pagey thought sadly. “I warned her.”

Standing next to him, Vita stared at him in stony silence, dazed. Neither she nor Pagey could move.

The figure of the druid remained motionless by the fire. Now he was at the peak of his might and power: regal, tough, like a thousand-year-old stone.

Passing by him, the herb-woman muttered caustically,

“You are the same bastard, you’ve always been.”

The two men escorting her recoiled from the woman in horror. The druid seemed to ignore her rudeness, except looking even colder, and his already thin lips tightened into a narrow thread, without uttering a word in reply.

The community people watched silently as this strange woman, who was still full of unspeakable dignity, left their meeting, one of the most important holidays of the year, Samhain – a turning point for the winter.

Pagey turned to Vita and, spreading out his arms helplessly as if personally apologizing for the scene, gave an awkward smile,

“Welcome to our village.”

Chapter 2.

Winter solstice

December 21. Yule

On the winter solstice, Pagey suddenly began to badger for a new pair of shoes with lapels decorated with Arabic ornaments, buzzing about at the weavers’ looms and didn’t calm down until the “oriental” shoes were made to him by special order.

Prior to this, the guy was unpretentious in regards to his clothes: he was content with old Lekki’s garments redrawn to his skinny shoulders and some other stuff that he inherited after Woolf had committed suicide. Pagey recalled that Hom brought stacks of shirts and pants of the deceased to the apiary, there were a few pairs of shoes among other things. So Pagey twisted the wheel of his life, dressed in worn rags of the drowned, and only now the idea suddenly sunk into his heart to wheedle out the fairy Arab shoes.

Lekki, though disliked squandering, went to the expense of shoes for his foster-son, and it was godly: to wear new clothes at night, when the sun was born again, was considered a good omen and promised prosperity in the coming year.

Tied soft leather laces and ratcheted down a colorful scarf around his chicken neck, making him a bit like a Gypsy, Pagey was convinced that his reflection in the mirror had very, very black hair, laid to one side too much, and happily headed to the carts of strangers.

The smoke coming out of the Gever tents was floating along the valley. Of course, the dark visaged lady Crescent was somewhere nearby.

“Hello,” she said.

“Got a minute?”

They moved away from the wasteland, to a sparse spruce thicket. Sitting on a fallen tree, Pagey began to pick at the snow with the toe of his boot, wishing to demonstrate his new clothes to the girl once again.

“Do you fancy going to the fair? You can get there by train.”

“To the cities? What will happen over there?”

“Oh, it should be fun. They go out to the fair for the whole neighborhood. They call it the Christmas market.”

Vita snorted indifferently,

“You seem to be the first one I’ve ever met who’s still impressed by the Christmas markets.”

“It could be adventurous!” Pagey didn’t give up.

Lady Crescent sighed with a smile,

“All right, only if it can really be an adventure.”

“Wait a minute. Does it mean „Yes“? Does it mean you can go over there with me?”

“Of course, it means „Yes“, you dummy! When?”

“Tomorrow!” Pagey blurted out.

Getting lost with each other, they both didn’t even notice Hom lurking behind the tree and listening to all of their simple dialogue. Of course, the blond man had no intention to follow anyone. He was just walking near the Gever tents every single day and see how the nomad women had settled, studying their life and habits, like exotic animals. “Knowledge is power!” Hom’s grandfather taught him, the young Kelly clearly understood that it was necessary first to thoroughly study the selected object before you could obtain power over someone.

And act in a proper manner later.

                                          * * *

“Half-past four again!” Mr. Kelly growled, moving forward the rusty clockface.

The old man always gave the impression of being impetuous, initially embittered as if waiting to be stabbed in the back. Once Pagey witnessed Mr. Kelly cursing like blazes a small, pretty like a fairy girl who lived next door, named Liz, just because she accidentally ran on his allotment playing with kids, and trampling the flower beds with her tiny shoes. Leaning over the girl like a thundercloud, Mr. Kelly was cursing, imprecations poured from his lips causing tears to appear on the girl’s long lashes.

Looking at the frowning old sod, Pagey remembered that, when he had been younger, he was amazed at how Hom managed to grow up so laughsome and cheery.

The Kellys had long lived at the river. A local foster nurse volunteered to help the old man with his grandson at first but the former soldier sent her back a week later, complaining “this rattle gives neither good, nor peace.” In general, being rejected, the foster nurse spread around all these rumors about the family of the military man being obstinate to a liberal lifestyle in the community. Rumors were generally supported by both Kellys – Senior and Junior. Hom had always been drawn up with a bright head, and his grandfather was feeding him science and wisdom. They both had no quiet contentment, no compromise.

“Is Hom at home, Mr. Kelly?” the young man decided to change the subject ignoring the sarcasm about him being late.

“Had the well dried up at the apiary?” the old man reciprocally ducked a question of his opponent. He was eloquently staring at Pagey’s stringy hair, black icicles getting into his eyes, “I’m not just asking products to be delivered within a certain time. I’ll have to clean it after you!”

With these words, Mr. Kelly pulled a blade of grass, which had come out of woodwork, out of a burlap bag and, headed to the house with a heavy sigh.

Pagey was left alone in the yard. Of course, only Hom could invite him to enter the house – Kelly Senior demonstrated his contempt too clearly. However, Hom was nowhere to be seen.

There was a small garden behind the man’s dwelling place, further the allotment bordered with a lopsided ugly shack which the assistant, the executioner inhabited. The village ended at the executioner’s house. Then came the marshes, the river, the birch grove, and then the herb-woman’s hut.

                                          * * *

Passing the birches, Hom stared at the little hut with dislike. He always felt antipathy toward the most mysterious, the most rebellious inhabitant of the village. Local folks called her green woman or herb-woman, Hom once and for all called her the red witch and stuck with this nickname.

“Hey! I need something for insomnia!” he shouted.

“Aren’t you too young to ask me for a potion?” the herb-woman was amazed leaning out of the window.

Hom stamped his foot impatiently,

“You’re pretty aware that I have the druid’s written permission to demand any books, artifacts, and ingredients! It’s not my fault that everybody in the area has been born so stupid and the gods have endowed me with wit.”

“Okay, hold up,” the herb-woman replied wearily, heading to the wall with bundles of various plants being dried. “Where is lunar, sleepyhead? Lavender, mint… Here, take these. And get the hell out of here.”

With that, she slammed a wreath of dead purple flowers at his feet. Hom forced himself to calm down. He could definitely make her pick up the herbs and give them to him in a proper manner. As befits, with reverence. But he wasn’t up for arguments. He was interested in the result of the case, that’s why he quickly put the dried flowers into his inside pocket and left the red witch’s lair without any thanks.

Back in the village, Hom went straight to the drugstore run by Angie, the head of the blackberry family’s wife. The drugstore was located in the outbuilding of the mansion which belonged to the wealthiest family in the area. Inside and out, everything was redolent of the mourning solemnity and darksome romance: Windows curtained with tight black lace did not let in the light; wormwood was scattered on window sills and on the floor, and huge uncut pieces of black agate spotted everywhere, on the shelves among bottles of leeches and alcoholic tinctures.

Angie, the blackberry wife, stood behind the counter, busily counting coins and filling tight leather pokes. She was all in flatland gear, a tightly buttoned black dress, and her face, ash gray with fatigue and hard work with enormous dark shadows under her eyes.

When a bell jingled over the door being opened, the druggist’s wife immediately raised her dark-haired head and saw Hom, then dryly uttered more to herself than to him,

“There you are.”

Hom shrugged his shoulders,

“I just came from the red witch over the birches. She makes me sick.”

One of the young blackberry daughters, who had been cleaning the shelves, decided to have a nice conversation with him,

“I like the herb-woman. I remember, she once gave me cuttings of a tree, and they instantly rooted in the garden.”

The blackberry wife interrupted her daughter.

“Could you leave us alone with young Mr. Kelly?”

She didn’t like gossip, and knew how difficult it was for customers to give the reason why they went to the store in front of strangers, so she waited until the girl went out of the outbuilding and decided to get straight to the point, “Well?! What was it you couldn’t get from the herb-woman that you came here?”

“What does she have that you don’t?” the blond answered a question with a question.

The woman in black took thought,

“A rejuvenating potion, for example. We certainly don’t keep that. And the herb-woman is good at it, you can’t take it away from her.”

Hom shook his head in disapproval,

“That’s pathetic. No, there is no need for any rejuvenating potion. Neither to your shop nor to yourself.”

The hostess of the blackberry house suspiciously squinted,

“Don’t tempt me, Hom Kelly. I’m twenty years older than you, and considering my intelligence, even thirty.”

“Others would argue with you about my wit.”

“Picking on me?”

Hom leaned forward and putting his elbows on the counter, he uttered blandly,

“I just want to say that you don’t need a rejuvenating potion because each time I am tempted to kiss such a poetic cutie.”

“Poetic cutie?” Angie was amazed, taking a step back. “Even my husband has never said that.”

“Your husband sees nothing but profit, which takes up all of his thoughts.”

But the blackberry wife did not like this statement,

“There you’re wrong about the bearded man. He’s a good man after all. He and the kids don’t let me fall apart in the middle of all this glorious stuff good, which I’ve been fed up long ago.”

“I still believe you deserve better.”

However, Angie wasn’t easy to talk to.

“You’re not going to get anything out of me with that sweet talk, so, you either tack about or empty your pockets and buy the product. Why have you come here, Hom?”

After a pause, the blond man dared to look straight into the woman’s eyes,

“Three drops of opium.”

“Are you crazy?!” the drugstore’s owner was outraged. “Your old man will make a fuss through the entire village.”

“He wouldn’t know. No one will know. Just be a good girl and do it for me. I know that you’re really kind and you’ll do it for me. I’d get you back for that.” With these words, Hom poured out a generous handful of golden coins onto the counter.

Seeing the money, the blackberry wife moved away from the counter annoyed. There was a small box on the highest shelf, next to the goat’s skull. That’s what Angie was trying to grab. Getting a tiny bottle out the velvet-covered box, she placed it on Hom’s open palm and knapped,

“And I do not see your face around here.”

“Don’t worry about a thing,” Hom assured her, and left the outbuilding, carrying a portion of the laudanum in his pocket along with the lavender and mint he had obtained from the herb-woman.

He didn’t turn around, he pretended not to hear the blackberry wife screaming after him, “Hom, you forgot your book! Come back!”

“If that rugged lady, with tired eyes and hair as black as all her outfits, starts reading what I have left under pretense of an accident, the matter is settled,” rejoiced young Kelly.

When he got to the apiary, Pagey had already finished his plate of lumpy porridge for dinner (Neither Lekki nor his adopted child didn’t have any culinary skills) and was getting ready for bed. Hom pretended to be surprised,

“Why are you going to bed so early?”

“We’re leaving to go to the fair together with Vita tomorrow morning.”

“Is that a date?” Hom was pulling a face. Naturally, no one could believe that the news was already known to him.

Pagey smiled mysteriously,

“It’s possible.”

“Great! Good luck tomorrow, then. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a drink tonight, does it?”

How could Pagey say no to his senior companion? He didn’t want to. Having a couple of sips of wine with a strange taste appeared as if from nowhere, he tried to understand what Hom was saying and calmed down due to his friend’s voice getting into one monotonous sound. Half an hour later, Pagey slept like a dog on a blanket by the fire, snoring peacefully over the crackling of logs. When Lekki returned home and put his fosterling to bed, Hom was ready to leave and told the beekeeper in an apologetic way,

“Looks like he had a little bit too much.”

                                          * * *

The December sun rose high and made the snow dazzling when the beekeeper who had finished collecting new hives in the shed came to wake Pagey up. The hated curtain-fence opened with a sharp movement,

“Hey, man, weren’t you going out today?”

Hardly awake, Pagey realized that the first train they were going to take to the fair had left a long time ago.

“Damn, damn,” the young man babbled, tossing and turning on the old mattress and trying to figure out what was going on.

His head ached as if it was clamped in a leaden band that tightened with every movement. Getting dressed on the go, shivering with cold, he grabbed a handful of coins that he kept in a broken clay cup, and, hastily saying goodbye to Lekki ran to the wasteland.

Vita was sitting on the same fallen tree smoking a long pipe. She laughed when she saw Pagey coming,

“Wasn’t expecting to see you here at this hour.”

“I overslept! For the first time in my life! I missed the train because I overslept. I’m so sorry, forgive me!”

The Gever girl shrugged,

“It’s okay. We’ll stay in the village.”

“What do you mean? We’ll catch the noon train. Will be at the fair within a few hours.”

“You sure?”

“You bet! Of course, I’m sure.”

He gave her his hand to help her to get down from the tree, but she waved him away impatiently. However, as they walked along the drifts towards the boat crossing site, Vita put Pagey’s hand into her glove, finely crafted of calfskin.

Squinting his eyes down, Pagey studied Vita’s glove. These Gevers looked so strange and unusual! It was obvious that the locals wore quite different mittens in winter which were woolen and prickly. Leather crafters kept their goods for shoes and clothing, no one would come to an idea to make a trifle like gloves out of leather.

And all of this made Vita even more beautiful and unreachable in the eyes of the young man.

But in his shame, he let her hand go out of his hand himself as soon as the boat crossing appeared behind the bare winter trees.

“We must be careful,” he warned lady Crescent. “We all play by the rules here, and won’t tolerate rules being broken.”

Vita looked at him blankly, but Pagey didn’t want to explain anything. He had enough for half of his life to contemplate Lekki and the herb-woman being suffered, the main fornicators in the village. He won’t allow anything like that himself. They need to be discreet for the time being, not to flicker in front of the locals, not to look like a couple. Otherwise… Pagey didn’t dare even think about that. Everyone will see everything, everyone will know everything. And he would not be able to speak to his interlocutress again.

The boatman was sitting on the dock cleaning the clock disassembled directly on his knee with a brush. Clock maintenance was his second job. Having spotted the young ones, the man narrowed his eyes with distrust,

“Where are you two going?”

“To the cities,” Vita cut off dryly.

“The two of you?” the boatman persisted.

Pagey began to make excuses,

“We’re just going shopping at the fair. Lekki is aware. And the others. We have to get to the train, and we’ll be back tonight.”

The boatman, putting the watch parts into his inside pocket, raised and began reluctantly to untie the rope from the dock,

“Well. After all, I have to make a living too. But if you get involved in something indecent, guy, I’m turning you over to the druid, you know.

“Indecent!” Pagey could hardly force himself to keep silent in response. There were loathsome rumors about the boatman. Old Kelly used the word “what” instead of “who” when he was talking about the boatman, thus dehumanizing, depriving of virtues, depriving of spirit. An item, not the individual – that’s how they tried to depict the boatman in the village.

However, despite his bad reputation, Pagey always admired the skills of this man to do the crossing and watchmaking business, Pagey also admired the boatman being sarcastic, making nearly incendiary remarks, and even his appearance. To tell the truth, Pagey was still hoping that his real father lived somewhere in the village, and the boatman was fit for this role. He looked like one of the blackberry family fraught with darkness with his clear marine blue eyes, and pale skin but there was always certain urban dandyism about the boatman: lighters, cigarette cases, cufflinks on the cuffs and watch guards always polished to a shine, leading from the vest pockets to ideally sewn buttons.

Yes, he perfectly fitted for the image of Pagey’s nonexistent father, and the young man was too happy to think the story of his own origin every time he personally saw the boatman.

Meanwhile, the oars started splashing across the frozen water, cracking the thin ice.

                                           * * *

The cities were crowded and filthy. The houses impended over the narrow streets, hiding the sun. People elbowed each other in the fair turmoil. Everything was decorated with green, red and white lanterns, symbols of Yule, called Christmas here, which remained the same everywhere.