Free Skin by Ilka Tampke

was lean, but his muscles were long and well worked, the body of
a messenger.
    ‘As you wish,’ I said.
    He waited in silence as I plucked stalks of nettle from the river’s edge and squeezed
their juice into my palm, mixing it with honey from Dun’s bundle. I stepped back
into the shallows. ‘This will stem the blood,’ I said, dabbing it on his swelling
lip.
    There was vividness around his skin, like spray from a waterfall. Our faces were
close. He lifted his eyes. His gaze was a blow to my belly.
    ‘What is your business here?’ I whispered.
    ‘As yours. Taking drink.’ He winced with the movement of his lip.
    ‘But the hook? The wound?’
    ‘Unfortunate,’ he answered.
    ‘But where are you from?’ I pressed. He was certainly a stranger to Cad.
    ‘Surely that is my question to ask, Journeywoman.’
    ‘Journeywoman?’ I gasped, laughing at his error. ‘Not I! Much as I would wish it
were so.’
    He frowned. ‘Then where…?’ His question drifted into silence.
    As he stood in the knee-deep water, I saw the full height of him. His trousers were
rough-made (he was no nobleman) and of a strangely patterned weave. A whistle, carved
of bone, was strung on a plait of leather and wound around his narrow hips.
    ‘Might I know your name at least?’ I asked, standing beside him.
    ‘Taliesin.’
    A bard’s name. Or a magician’s. But he was too young to be either. Why did he not
state his tribe or township?
    ‘Yours?’ he asked.
    ‘Ailia of Cad.’
    ‘Ailia,’ he repeated. ‘Light.’
    ‘Yes,’ I said, surprised. Few knew the meaning of my name.
    ‘What is your skin?’ he said.
    Never had the question laid me so bare. ‘I...I am skin to the deer.’ It was a lie
I had never told. Why could I not bear him to know me unskinned?
    ‘I am skin to the salmon,’ he said.
    Cookmother’s skin. I looked away. Something in me had shifted with my lie. ‘If you
walk with me a short while back to town,’ I said, distracting myself, ‘I can show
this wound to my Cookmother. She will know how further to treat it.’
    ‘I cannot come.’
    His firmness stopped me asking his reason. ‘Then perhaps we should meet again a day
or so hence, that I might check it again,’ I said, relieved, at least, that he would
not discover my untruth.
    He nodded hesitantly. ‘Come here again tomorrow and I shall show you my wound.’
    ‘Here?’ I said. ‘Surely your home—?’
    ‘Is too far,’ he said.
    I stared at him, then reached for his hand. ‘Let me help you out of the water.’
    ‘No!’ he said, almost shouting.
    Startled, I dropped his hand.
    Neha barked. I was suddenly unsure of myself, uneasy with his strangeness. ‘Be very
careful with your eating and drinking,’ I said as I wiped my knife on my skirt and
put it back in my belt. ‘So you do not tax the wound unduly.’
    ‘Good advice.’ He found my eye. ‘I won’t kiss you for thanks. It might tax the wound
unduly.’
    My face burned as I stepped back onto the bank to repack my basket. I glanced about
for his tunic and sandals, but saw neither. ‘In which direction do you walk?’ I asked
over my shoulder.
    He did not answer.
    When I turned around, there was only Neha, barking at the river. I looked to the
forest and called his name, but he was gone. Disappeared like the mist from the sunshine.

Around the pool of wisdom grew nine hazel trees. Each tree dropped a nut into the water, and they were eaten by a salmon.
    By this act, the salmon gained all the world’s knowledge.
    Whoever first eats of the salmon’s flesh will, in turn, gain all the world’s knowledge.
    I HAD SCARCELY walked through the kitchen doorway, when Cookmother thrust two steaming
bowls of broth into my hands and bade me take them to the sleephouse.
    ‘Llwyd is with her,’ she said. ‘And he was here earlier also, asking of you.’
    ‘Of me?’
    ‘Ay.’ Cookmother was bent over the cookpot, and I could not see her expression.
    ‘For what purpose?’
    ‘None that he was