Tale of Birle Read Free Page A

out and draw water, the stars hung so close outside the door that she thought she would be able to step out among them, and she felt her blood racing at the possibility. What was known, and safe, seemed then to her like a cell in one of the Lords’ dungeons. All the fear she lived among seemed then like a yoke across her shoulders, a heavy burden that kept her from moving swiftly, freely. Aye, men carried fears like great stones strapped on their backs, she thought. Why else had Da and Nan protested so when she said yes to Muir?
    Birle shifted against the boat-ribs behind her, to find more comfort. Whatever others might say, she had nothing to fear from the night. People just felt safe with known things, things fixed and regular as the sun’s passage across the sky. Night too had its one light, the moon; but the moon didn’t move in the sun’s orderly pattern. The moon even changed its shape, growing and shrinking—sickle to circle to sickle, to darkness. Darkness, Birle thought, looking up through dark air to the tiny lights of the stars, needed no map, because men avoided darkness. The work of darkness differed from the work of day. People slept away the dark, the long nights of winter, the short nights of summer. She wished she could sleep this night away, she thought, her eyelids closing down heavily.

    WHEN SHE AWOKE AGAIN AND raised her head from her chest, Birle’s neck was painfully stiff. Opening her eyes, she wondered if the sun had set forever, yesterevening, and would never rise again. Still, the stars shone white in a black sky. Birle pulled herself up to sit straight against the bow. She gathered her cloak around her. It was as if the sun and the moon had been blown out, like candles, but by what giant’s breath? Granda had asked her once, “There might be people living up there, in the stars, think you?”
    Granda had a way of saying and doing odd things, so Birle wasn’t surprised at the question. “Aye, no,” she promised him. “The stars are only lights in the sky. A man can’t live in a light, any more than in a candle.” They had gone outside into the cold, to bring in wood for the fire. Three winters ago that had been, Birle calculated. A fall baby, Birle was then in her eleventh winter. Granda was an old man standing beside her, his breath floating white in the air before him, watching the moon sail among the stars.
    â€œAye, and you’re probably right, although I like to think it,” he had answered, his voice as warm as summer. He had still been strong enough, that winter, to go out with her to fetch wood from the pile he built up in summer and fall. He had still been alive. “Although,” his voice went on as he piled logs into her arms, “when I saw your mother, with her hair like starlight netted, I sometimes wondered.”
    It was that same night that they had told her about the treasure.
    Sitting on the warm hearthstone, the door bolted fast against the night and the little high windows shuttered safe, Birle had looked up to where her grandparents sat at the table, both of their faces turned to her. “What treasure?” she had asked. “The Inn doesn’t have any treasure. I never heard about any treasure.”
    â€œThe secret held safest is the one no one even thinks to wonder of,” Gran said.
    â€œWhere is it? What is it? Did you bring it with you when you left the Inn?”
    â€œAye, we did,” Gran answered, looking over to Granda, who said at the same time, “We left it with your father, for it is the Inn’s treasure.” Then Gran smiled—a girl’s smile on her old-woman’s face, the smile of a girl in springtime, a girl in springtime dancing at the fair. Gran’s smile never grew old. Birle didn’t know what to make of what they were saying, but that didn’t trouble her. She sat contented, her back toasted by the fire, growing sleepy, and glad to be