Free Skin by Ilka Tampke Page B

it.
His eyes caught the day’s dying light. ‘I was impressed by your words at the feast
yesterday,’ he said as we walked.
    ‘I suspect the knave Ruther was less so.’
    Llwyd chuckled. ‘Though it appears it did not quell his interest.’
    Now it was I who laughed. ‘No, it did not.’
    ‘Were you always of the kitchen? Raised by the Cookwoman there?’
    ‘Since near birth.’
    ‘And you have learned the plants by her?
    I glanced at him, unsure what to confess. ‘I assist her when her bones stiffen, deliveries
and the like.’
    ‘Nothing more?’
    I faltered. Llwyd was the keeper of all Caer Cad’s learning. It was only by his sanction
that healers could practise their arts.
    ‘Tell me,’ he continued, ignoring my silence, ‘has an animal appeared to you since
Beltane? An animal of unusual countenance or strangeness?’
    We had reached the kitchen. The doorskins were pinned open. I saw the firelight glowing
through the doorway and caught a waft of Cookmother’s sour milk dumplings on the
evening breeze. Suddenly I was very keen to be inside. I thought hard on his question.
‘None strange,’ I said.
    He kissed my cheeks. ‘Go well, maiden, enjoy your sweetmeats.’
    It was only later, as I lay between Cookmother snoring at my back, the buck curled
in my arms, and Neha grunting at my feet, that I remembered the fish I had seen as
I bathed in the river.

    I rushed through the next morning’s tasks, then set about grinding a tincture, making
sure I was noticed by Cookmother as I pounded the white meadowsweet petals to a paste.
    ‘What do you make?’ she duly asked.
    I could not tell her that I was to meet Taliesin, a stranger of tribe unknown, who
waited within a breath of the forbidden forest. She would never have permitted it.
So I did, for the second time, what I had never done before: I played fool with the
truth. ‘Dun requested something further to dull the pain,’ I announced. ‘I promised
I would bring it this afternoon.’ I stared down at the quern, my cheeks burning with
the lies, and with the shame of not yet delivering even the first batch of herbs.
    ‘Good then.’ She poked a wooden spoon into the mixture. ‘Throw in a little nightshade
if he’s making such a fuss.’
    With my face and neck splashed with rosewater, my braids tied, and Cookmother’s fish
pin at my breast, I hurried out the south gate and down to the Cam. I soon reached
the Oldforest, where only Neha saw me again stop by the river, instead of turning
north toward Dun’s farm.
    He was not there.
    ‘Taliesin?’ I called, answered only by a mocking silence. I sat on the bank with
the afternoon yawning around me, feeling stupid for thinking he would come. Finally
I picked up my basket, whistled Neha to my heel, and began to walk away.
    ‘Ailia!’
    He stood dripping on the bank, sunlight splintering off his wet shoulders.
    I walked back and stood before him. He was even finer today with his hair in damp
tendrils around his face, water beading on the ridges of his cheeks. Again he wore
nothing but a pair of rough trousers, roped at the waist, and the carved bone whistle
at his hip. ‘Would you not have waited?’ he asked.
    ‘I have waited long enough,’ I said.
    ‘Be gone then, if you wish to stay no longer.’
    I snorted. ‘I will check your wound at least.’
    ‘At least.’ He presented his lip.
    ‘What is this?’ I traced my fingers over his mouth. There was nothing left of yesterday’s
cut. Just a thin silver scar. ‘It’s perfectly healed,’ I said in awe. ‘How can it
be?’
    ‘You tended it. Did you not think your own herbcraft was potent?’
    ‘Well, yes, but—’ I faltered, hoping his swift healing would not bring our meeting
to an end.
    He flopped onto the grass.
    ‘How did…why were you in the water?’ I asked, sitting beside him.
    ‘I had to cross the river.’ He stroked Neha’s ear; she in turn licked the water from
his hand. ‘Sweet-tempered dog.’
    I laughed. ‘Not