9

As they rode back toward Seafront, Susan with her arms around Roland’s waist, she asked: “Will you take the glass from her?”

“Best leave it where it is for now. It was left in her safekeeping by Jonas, on behalf of Parson, I have no doubt. It’s to be sent west with the rest of the plunder; I’ve no doubt of that, either. We’ll deal with it when we deal with the tankers and Parson’s men.”

“Ye’d take it with us?”

“Take it or break it. I suppose I’d rather take it back to my father, but that has its own risks. We’ll have to be careful. It’s a powerful glam.”

“Suppose she sees our plans? Suppose she warns Jonas or Kimba Rimer?”

“If she doesn’t see us coming to take away her precious toy, I don’t think she’ll mind our plans one way or the other. I think we’ve put a scare into her, and if the ball has really gotten a hold on her, watching in it’s what she’ll mostly want to do with her time now.”

“And hold onto it. She’ll want to do that, too.”

“Aye.”

Rusher was walking along a path through the seacliff woods. Through the thinning branches they could glimpse the ivied gray wall surrounding Mayor’s House and hear the rhythmic roar of waves breaking on the shingle below.

“You can get in safe, Susan?”

“No fear.”

“And you know what you and Sheemie are to do?”

“Aye. I feel better than I have in ages. It’s as if my mind is finally clear of some old shadow.”

“If so, it’s Alain you have to thank. I couldn’t have done it on my own.”

“There’s magic in his hands.”

“Yes.” They had reached the servants’ door. Susan dismounted with fluid ease. He stepped down himself and stood beside her with an arm around her waist. She was looking up at the moon.

“Look, it’s fattened enough so you can see the beginning of the Demon’s face. Does thee see it?”

A blade of nose, a bone of grin. No eye yet, but yes, he saw it.

“It used to terrify me when I was little.” Susan was whispering now, mindful of the house behind the wall. “I’d pull the blind when the Demon was full. I was afraid that if he could see me, he’d reach down and take me up to where he was and eat me.” Her lips were trembling. “Children are silly, aren’t they?”

“Sometimes.” He hadn’t been afraid of Demon Moon himself as a small child, but he was afraid of this one. The future seemed so dark, and the way through to the light so slim. “I love thee, Susan. With all my heart, I do.”

“I know. And I love thee.” She kissed his mouth with gentle open lips. Put his hand on her breast for a moment, then kissed the warm palm. He held her, and she looked past him at the ripening moon.

“A week until the Reap,” she said. “Fin de ano is what the vaqueros and labradoros call it. Do they call it so in your land?”

“Near enough,” Roland said. “It’s called closing the year. Women go about giving preserves and kisses.”

She laughed softly against his shoulder. “Perhaps I’ll not find things so different, after all.”

“You must save all your best kisses for me.”

“I will.”

“Whatever comes, we’ll be together,” he said, but above them, Demon Moon grinned into the starry dark above the Clean Sea, as if he knew a different future.

Chapter VI

CLOSING THE YEAR

1

So now comes to Mejis fin de ano, known in toward the center of Mid-World as closing the year. It comes as it has a thousand times before… or ten thousand, or a hundred thousand. No one can tell for sure; the world has moved on and time has grown strange. In Mejis their saying is “Time is a face on the water.”

In the fields, the last of the potatoes are being picked by men and women who wear gloves and their heaviest scrapes, for now the wind has turned firmly, blowing east to west, blowing hard, and always there’s the smell of salt in the chilly air-a smell like tears. Los campesinos harvest the final rows cheerfully enough, talking of the things they’ll do and the capers they’ll cut at Reaping Fair, but they feel all of autumn’s old sadness in the wind; the going of the year. It runs away from them like water in a stream, and although none speak of it, all know it very well.

In the orchards, the last and highest of the apples are picked by laughing young men (in these not-quite-gales, the final days of picking belong only to them) who bob up and down like crow’s nest lookouts. Above them, in skies which hold a brilliant, cloudless blue, squadrons of geese fly south, calling their rusty adieux.

The small fishing boats are pulled from the water; their hulls are scraped and painted by singing owners who mostly work stripped to the waist in spite of the chill in the air. They sing the old songs as they work-

I am a man of the bright blue sea,

All I see, all I see,

I am a man of the Barony,

All I see is mine-o!

I am a man of the bright blue hay,

All I say, all I say,

Until my nets are full I stay

All I say is fine-o!

–and sometimes a little cask of graf is tossed from dock to dock. On the bay itself only the large boats now remain, pacing about the big circles which mark their dropped nets as a working dog may pace around a flock of sheep. At noon the bay is a rippling sheet of autumn fire and the men on the boats sit cross-legged, eating their lunches, and know that all they see is theirs-o… at least until the gray gales of autumn come swarming over the horizon, coughing out their gusts of sleet and snow.

Closing, closing the year.

Along the streets of Hambry, the Reap-lights now bum at night, and the hands of the stuffy-guys are painted red. Reap-charms hang everywhere, and although women often kiss and are kissed in the streets and in both marketplaces-often by men they do not know-sexual intercourse has come to an almost complete halt. It will resume (with a bang, you might say) on Reap-Night. There will be the usual crop of Full Earth babies the following year as a result.

On the Drop, the horses gallop wildly, as if understanding (very likely they do) that their time of freedom is coming to an end. They swoop and then stand with their faces pointing west when the wind gusts, showing their asses to winter. On the ranches, porch-nets are taken down and shutters rehung. In the huge ranch kitchens and smaller farmhouse kitchens, no one is stealing Reap-kisses, and no one is even thinking about sex. This is the time of putting up and laying by, and the kitchens fume with steam and pulse with heat from before dawn until long after dark. There is the smell of apples and beets and beans and sharproot and curing strips of meat. Women work ceaselessly all day and then sleepwalk to bed, where they lie like corpses until the next dark morning calls them back to their kitchens.

Leaves are burned in town yards, and as the week goes on and Old Demon’s face shows ever more clearly, red-handed stuffy-guys are thrown on the pyres more and more frequently. In the fields, cornshucks flare like torches, and often stuffies bum with them, their red hands and white-cross eyes rippling in the heat. Men stand around these fires, not speaking, their faces solemn. No one will say what terrible old ways and unspeakable old gods are being propitiated by the burning of the stuffy-guys, but they all know well enough. From time to time one of these men will whisper two words under his breath: charyou tree.

They are closing, closing, closing the year.

The streets rattle with firecrackers-and sometimes with a heftier “big-hang” that makes even placid carthorses rear in their traces-and echo with the laughter of children. On the porch of the mercantile and across the street at the Travellers’ Rest, kisses-sometimes humidly open and with much sweet lashing of tongues-are exchanged, but Coral Thorin’s whores (“cotton-gillies” is what the airy-fairy ones like Gert Moggins like to call themselves) are bored. They will have little custom this week.