Raetian Tales 1: A Wind from the South Read Free

you are.”
    “Tell me, do.”
    “You’re a scolar! ” And that was exciting. “Let me see your book!”
    “You mean a student in the Dark Art?” His laugh was quieter this time. “No, I’m afraid you mistake me again.”
    “I heard you, though. You were singing in the Old Language. Scolars need the Old Language for their spells, the way priests need it to make Mass.” She clambered over the rocks to get a closer look at him. His black was dusty—the cloth of his breeches and short cloak were patched. He was exactly the picture of the wandering scolars , who went from town to town doing odd jobs for lodging and food. In return for their hosts’ kindness, they would look in the black book they all carried, find treasures buried on their hosts’ land, or lift curses. They could heal sick cows, and tame dragons. Of course, all scolars had sold their souls to the Devil, but you could still get some good out of them—
    The young man was shaking his head. “No, I’ve been with the monks, far away down the valley in Cuera, where the Bishop rules. I sang what you sing at night. But you say Maria, seies salidada , and I say Ave Maria, gratia plena—”
    Mariarta smiled to herself. Scolars often preferred to do their good secretly, and if he wanted to be secret, she didn’t mind. “It’s suppertime,” she said, burning to get him home, where everyone would see him and be astonished. “Come to our house and dine.”
    He bowed to her. “Bien engraziament,” he said, and picked up his satchel from the ground.
    Mariarta hurried to get the bucket and yoke, but the deep voice behind her said, “Ah no: let me carry that for my hostess.” The scolar hoisted the yoke onto his shoulder as if it was nothing, and went on up the path.
    They came to the street. “This way,” Mariarta shouted, running off to the right: “this is where I live!” If everyone in the street turned to look at her in surprise, that was exactly what Mariarta wanted. And they all saw the scolar following her, and everybody stared at the stranger. And why shouldn’t they?  Mariarta thought proudly. Twice, maybe three times a year, someone came through the village who people there didn’t know. And this was her stranger—
    “Here!” Mariarta cried as they came to the house, and the scolar gazed at the gold letters over the doors, still flushed faintly with the rose light in the west. Quei che vegn da cor va a cor , said the curves and swirls of the letters Mariarta’s father had carved twenty years ago when he married her mother.
    The scolar smiled. “‘What comes from the heart, goes to the heart,’” he said. “May it be so.” And he walked around to the kitchen door.
    Mariarta went after him in time to see her mother, in the doorway, looking with surprise at the young man who put the yoke and bucket down. Mariarta remembered her manners. “Mam,” she shouted, “here is someone who God has sent to dine with us!”
    “‘Whom’,” her mother said. “Don’t screech, Mati. Young sir, come into the kitchen and warm your outsides, and take a glass of vinars to warm the rest. Mati, fetch your father.”
    Off Mariarta ran across the kitchen and into the low-ceilinged frontway. There across the stone floor the cattle looked over the half-doors of their big dim-lit shed, the left-hand side of the bottom of the house. Stairs led to the hall with the storage-presses, and the bedrooms, but Mariarta knew her father would be in the big warm room at the right-hand back of the house, the solér . She ran to its carved door and knocked.
    Only silence answered. This was a game Bab had been playing with her, ever since he taught her about knocking. Mariarta would burst in before he gave her leave, and he would scold; and the next time her bab would wait longer. Now she waited, and danced from foot to foot in an ecstasy of impatience, clenching her fists and making faces with the unbearableness of it.
    “ S’avonza!” he finally said.