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The flames of the fire had almost died down and the purple shadows crept slowly and silently forward, taking the colour from the cloak flung carelessly over the chest, hiding the sheen of the wood bowls polished from much use and finally nestling around her feet. Flavia leant forward and carefully placed another piece of wood on the fire. The shadows eased softly back.
She wondered if she would ever know what had caused her to look up. There had been no sound, just a sense of sudden stillness beyond the circle of sight as she watched her son playing. He stood there; a man with a scar on his forehead and frown lines cut deep, with shadowed, bitter eyes. Her brother. 'They told me you were dead', she had said. Then two days of quiet planning; hard, it had been, to hold to the routines of the day with her head and heart pulling now this way, now that. Now he was two days gone, bitterness wrapped round him like a cloak.
Back when the world and she were younger she had wondered about a singing magic. She had not known whether she truly believed it possible, but she knew she could not have kept the trying secret from her brother and had held back. Still she did not know if she believed it possible, but the trying mattered less for her brother did not, could not, feel as he had before their world splintered and died, and both of them had to bear that knowledge. If she could maybe sing some peace into her own heart then continuing to make her life in the new patterns would be less heavy. Taking off the head rail she unplaited the braid of her hair, shaking it loose to tumble around her shoulders. Tumbling with it, falling lightly to the floor, came the silver stars of the apple blossom that the small hand of her son had sprinkled over her head earlier in the day. Flavia reached for the comb and quietly started to hum. As she combed the thread of the music wound its way upwards, stealing its way through the firelight and the shadows. Slowly the stillness and the warmth of now-familiar items reached out to touch her lightly.
Flavia braided her hair again and stooped to pick the petals from the floor. She stood and walked to the doorway of the cabin, putting aside the apron. Holding out her hand she let fall the petals, watching them drift and turn on the light breeze, then turned back into the cabin, letting the apron fall back again. She would go forward, quiet and determined, for she had another world to build.
The summer heat had come early this year and that morning the dawn wind, whispering over the ground, had raised little whorls of dust which now dulled the greens of the apple leaves. Inside the cabin the fire was dampened down, leaving just the slightest rose-coloured, red-hearted, glow in the hearth.
Flavia pushed from her brow the wisps of hair that had escaped the braid. She sat on the bench outside her home, hands resting lightly in her lap. She had brought out her spinning, but spindle and distaff had been set aside a while back and now she just sat in stillness, listening as the sounds of the boys at weapons training carried up from the field.
While Mull was a child she had worked, through song and story, through telling him of her childhood on the Downland farmstead with its orchard and crops, and the traces of vine terracing on the hillside, to sow the seed of a gentler feeling towards all the peoples of this land; telling of the common interest of all men in their hearths and homes. But then his father had been killed in battle, and the encouragement to hate Ambrosius' warriors seemed to have buried the gentleness, while fierceness and stubbornness became more deeply rooted. Now he was fifteen, old enough to be called to the ranks of the war host, and the peace of the last few years was becoming strained and uneasy. She did not think it would shatter this year, but the day would come when it could not, would not, hold. So every day he went down to the training ground with the others, the hard-beaten earth of the field sounding like a drum beneath their feet.
Briefly, for there was still hurt, her thoughts touched on Aquila. If he had succeeded in reaching Ambrosius and taking on their father's service it was possible he might be of that inner circle in the way her man had been of Hengest's. If, that is, he too was not dead in battle.
Flavia stood and turned towards the doorway. She could not afford to stay longer, her thoughts tangling. It was time to start the evening meal, to hold to the now-familiar routines for as long as she could.
The autumn wind edged under the door, blowing the flames of the hearth fire this way and that. Its dancing light reached out, flickering on the apples in the bowl and bringing out the gentler reds and golds as counterpoint to its own colours.
Flavia sat by herself, alone, dry-eyed as she had been since the torn rags of the war host returned; a tumble of items around her feet, for she had no desire, nor need, to tidy them away. Suddenly there came the sound of voices, exclaiming, then a knocking at the door and a neighbour, breathless and excited, on the threshold. The neighbour was gently put aside and in the doorway stood a man. A man with one shoulder twisted higher than the other for the journey home, despite the care, had taken its toll.
'Mull', she said, half query, half statement, holding her voice level with effort. 'Mother', he replied and came forward to greet her, his eyes gentle in his weary face.
Later, after he had eaten, he told her something of his journey. He told her of the Holy Man, the quiet man who did not ask questions yet seemed to be able to see into the heart, who had nursed him to sufficient health to make the journey. He told her of other things too, and finally of the pass signed by the Commander of Ambrosius' Second Cavalry Wing. Then he paused.
'Mother,' he said quietly, 'I have more to tell you of this man. He has returned your son to you, in place of a pair of crimson slippers.'
Flavia's breath caught in her throat. 'Did he have anything else to say?'
'Yes. He said I was to ask if you remembered the terrace steps under the damson tree and talking there once about Odysseus coming home.' Mull paused, then said those final words, the words he had memorised, '"Look, I've a dolphin on my shoulder. I'm your long-lost brother."'
Mull looked at his mother as she stood, tall and still, by the hearth. Something in her stillness held him in stillness too. Silence spread, linking them, and he could see in her eyes that she understood. He took a deep breath and let the warmth and comfort of home wrap around him.
Later that evening Flavia sat again by herself but not, this time, alone. Taking down her hair she combed it in the firelight and hummed quietly to herself. Not a singing magic but a small, quiet, song of thanksgiving. Her brother, herself, her son.
Flavia wrapped the cloak more closely around her. It had been a long winter and nowadays the cold, even with a good fire burning, pinched into her bones ever more deeply.
Seeing the movement Hilde, at the other side of the hearth, paused in her telling of the tale of the wanderer over many oceans. Glancing over towards Flavia she raised her eyebrows in an unspoken question. Flavia smiled and watched gratefully as Hilde stood, gently moving aside the children leaning on her, to add more logs to the fire. As she picked them up tracings of lichen were briefly visible in the light. Flavia had been sorry to see the old apple tree blown down in the autumn gales, but now they were dry the branches made a comforting addition to the winter fuel.
The logs settled, sparks flew upwards and flames flickered; oranges, yellows and reds, twisting in and out of each other like children dancing. The additional warmth brought out the sweet scent of the few early primroses young Flavia had brought in earlier in the day. Flavia remembered Hilde's gentle querying of the name, with Mull's expression settling to stubborness in his wish to have this daughter take his mother's name, just as it had with the son he had named Ninnias. While Ninnias bore his name proudly and clearly, little Flavia was more often called little blackbird, Osle, both for the colours of her hair and her habit of singing quietly to herself as she moved around.
The children settled back, according to their choice nestling into the folds of Hilde's kirtle or lying with the hounds in a tangle of limbs and paws. Hilde took up the story again. As she half-listened Flavia heard another voice starting to weave its way through the words. A man's voice, gentle and quiet, reading, from a scroll lying open on a table, the story of another journey. She could see a different light, candlelight falling bright on the scroll and firelight catching a ring, waking the green in the heart of the stone.
"The ship bounded forward on her way as a four in hand chariot flies over the course when the horses feel the whip. Her prow curvetted as it were the neck of a stallion, and a great wave of dark blue water seethed in her wake. She held steadily on her course, and even a falcon, swiftest of all birds, could not have kept pace with her."
Pulling her attention back Flavia realised the tale being told at this fireside was coming to an end. In her mind the final words of the other version of the tale sounded,
"Ulysses, noble son of Laertes, stop this warful strife, or Jove will be angry with you.
"Thus spoke Minerva, and Ulysses obeyed her gladly. Then Minerva assumed the form and voice of Mentor, and presently made a covenant of peace between the two contending parties."
It would not be in her her son's lifetime, nor that of her son's children. Perhaps not for many lifetimes, more than she could imagine, but one day, surely, there must come some measure of peace to this land too. Flavia cupped her hands in her lap and closed her eyes.