Skin Read Free Page B

pot.
    Bebin rose and took up a flame to light the torches. ‘Was there another returned
with him?’ she asked.
    ‘Who could you mean?’ jibed Cah.
    We all knew she spoke of Uaine, also fostered to the east. She had awaited his return
for three summers.
    ‘He was alone,’ I murmured.
    Bebin turned away and my heart fell.
    ‘Uaine will be schooled to a high warrior now,’ said Cah. ‘He will set his sights
beyond a kitchen girl when he returns.’
    I could have struck her with a fire iron, but I knew Bebin had more sense than to
listen to Cah.
    Bebin walked the curved room, igniting the torches, each one revealing more of the
swirling red circles that marked our walls. She lit only the kitchen’s eastern half—the
realm of the living—where the floor and shelves were crammed with baskets, grindstones,
grainpots and buckets. The western half, where our beds were laid, was the place
of the dead and must remain always in darkness.
    ‘Empty your bowls, Cah, Ianna,’ snapped Cookmother. ‘It is time for your lessons.’
    Cah groaned.
    ‘What was that?’ said Cookmother. ‘Rather wash out the shit trough, would you?’ She
reached over and snatched Cah’s bowl.
    ‘I had not finished,’ said Cah.
    ‘You have now. Get your cloak.’
    Bebin smiled as she caught my eye. Four years my elder, she had finished her schooling,
but every morning except wane days and feast days, Cah and Ianna, both my age, were
still expected to go to the shrine, where learners gathered before dispersing to
the rivers or to the craft huts for schooling.
    I followed them to the door and watched them walk off, laughing. Learning was wasted
on both of them. Ianna had no brains for it and Cah had no gratitude. They had no
idea of their privilege. I would have cut off my first finger to be in their place
for just one summer. But I was not permitted to go with them or hear any talk of
what they learned. It was forbidden for the unskinned to be taught.
    Neha nosed my hand. I squatted beside her and buried my fingers in the swathe of
white fur around her neck. She was not a large dog—her shoulder only at my knee when
I stood—but her carriage was proud. She turned her snout to meet my caress. Her face
was unusually marked—half-grey, half-white in perfect division—but it was her eyes
that drew the most curiosity: the one belonging to the white side was ice-blue, the
other brown. It gave her an eerie, lopsided stare that, combined with her wary temper,
many felt marked her as a friend to the dark spirits. But I knew her soul was true
and I had taken many years of comfort from her odd-eyed gaze.
    ‘Come, Ailia,’ called Cookmother from the hearth. ‘Fraid will be ready for her bath
and you know she does not like to wait.’

The moon has a name—a Mother’s name—but it is too powerful to say.
    We say only brightness or light of the night.
    We are too small to say its true name.
    A name. A soul. They are the same.
    I PUT DOWN the brimming water bucket and struck the bell at the Tribequeen’s outer
door. Although I had passed this threshold daily since I had turned twelve, it still
made my belly flutter. I paused at the inner door and she called me through.
    Inside, the air was heavy with birch smoke and the scent of the walnut oil she rubbed
in her hair. She sat, straight-backed, on a stool by the fire. Dressed only in her
linen night-tunic, without the layers of bracelets and neckrings that marked her
as our leader, she looked pale and thin.
    I was one of the few permitted to see her un-metalled, but I never forgot that she
was Fraid, unchallenged Tribequeen of Northern Durotriga, skin to the deer. She carried
the nimble wit of her totem and enough of its caution as well. Few tribeswomen rose
to rule but Fraid had a stomach for it that her brothers did not, and the shelves
lining the walls were laden with gifts—carvings and jewels—that bore testament to
the bonds she had wrought with our neighbouring tribes.
    ‘Come,’ she