SEASONS
by Sebastyin
Part I:
Summer: Birth
We were born in the Summer of the Plague. Of all the children
born during the months when the sickness wasted our village, only Eryn and I survived. I
have often wondered why the gods -- if indeed there are gods -- spared us. Perhaps for the
sake of our mothers, who were yellow-haired and fair as the sun; they were sisters,
Siljah, my mother, and Siri, Eryn's mother. The plague took Siri and her mate, too, and
that was the reason that Eryn was brought into the home of my father Parlan.
I remember little of the early years, when my mother was alive. Only that Eryn was with
me, even then. I have often tried to recall the sound of Mother's voice, and the things
she must have said to me. What I always hear in my memory is her softly chiding me,
"Adan, be gentle with your brother." Siljah always called him my brother, and
let him call her "Mother." But when she left us, Parlan said he was my cousin,
and that Eryn must never call him by any name but "Uncle." It seemed cruel to
me, but it was for the best, because we should not have grown together thinking of the
other as a brother. (Eryn and I always said that Siljah left us, rather than that she
died.)
If Eryn had not looked so much like our fair-haired mothers, maybe Parlan would not
have hated him as he did. He would have forgotten his grief with the passing of the years.
But the reminder of his sorrow was always there in front of him, and his sorrow made him
bitter, and his bitterness made him cruel.
He took in a widow, Dreda, to cook and clean and take care of us. She was not a hired
servant like the wealthy men had in their homes; for all her work she was given a warm bed
to sleep in and she shared our food. She rarely spoke at all, and even then she only said
what had to be said.
It happened one night that I got out of bed to relieve myself -- in our little home in the
village this was done outdoors -- and I walked past the room in which my father slept. I
saw that the door was ajar, and knew that he always shut it at night. Thinking to do a
good turn, I went over to close it softly, so as not to awaken him. I heard a strange
sound coming from the room. It frightened me, because I had never heard anything like it.
It wasn't loud, but my curiosity led me to stand there a moment. And the noise came again.
It was so much like the sound of an animal that I did what I should not have done. I
opened the door to my father's room. If I had been quieter about it, he would never have
seen me. And if he had not seen me, he would not have pushed himself up off the bed, and I
would not have seen that Dreda was lying underneath him. I closed my eyes tightly, and
turned and ran back to my room.
I got into the bed and pulled the covers over my head. I could hear the sound of my heart
beating away in my chest with a terrible 'thump-thump' sound. I thought my father would
come and snatch the covers off me and beat me because I had seen him lying on
Dreda. But
the minutes went by, and he didn't come. So I woke Eryn up and told him. At first, he
thought I was making it up to make him laugh. But when he saw I was afraid, he knew it had
really happened. So we held onto each other and kept the covers over our heads. We were
only children then.
The winters were very harsh and cold in our village, and Eryn was often sick in the winter
months. He would take a fever and have to stay in bed for days at the time. I stayed with
him as much as I could during those times so he would not be lonely, and this is how we
began to tell stories.
Once when he was very ill, I thought of a story to cheer him. I called the hero by a name
I made up, but Eryn knew it was about him because I said that he had pale green eyes and
golden hair that shone in the sunlight. The story was about a boy who went to a strange
new land, and met people very different from us, and I made up exciting adventures that
took place there. After an hour or so, my mind had run dry of new things for the hero to
do, and I stopped talking. Then Eryn began to tell more of the story. He said the hero met
a boy who had hazel eyes and curly sun-colored hair that fell over his face -- and that,
of course, was me. It turned out that he was much better than I at making up mythical
beasts and odd-looking plants. But he would take so long telling about what we saw that
sometimes I would say, 'Eryn, let us make something happen.' And so we made a whole story;
he made the places and I made the deeds. This was so enjoyable that we did it even when he
wasn't sick.
Each day we had work to do, and we tried to do that together also, as much as we could. As
we grew older, the work we were given was harder. The first thing we did each morning was
to feed the animals, those we had for egg-laying and milk-giving, and those we had for
eating. The feed-bag was very heavy to begin with, although it grew lighter as we fed the
animals. Every morning, Eryn would try to lift the feed-bag. He was not strong enough to
pick it up, and I always carried it until it was more than half-empty and then I would let
him carry it. But he never gave up the habit of trying to lift it each morning, even
though he never did.
Despite all that, there were things Eryn could do that I could not. He could sing all the
songs known in our village, and it was most pleasant to hear him sing them. His voice
sounded like the notes of the rantha pipes that shepherds play so well. (I always forgot
the words or sang the wrong tune.) He was also much better than I at guessing games, and
he never failed at Finding the Bear. This game is played by young and old, with three
wooden cups which are turned over on the table. A stone, which is the bear, is put under
one of them, and a person with quick hands moves the cups around. I always thought that I
had kept my eyes on the cup under which the bear was hidden, but the best players are so
skillful that the eyes are easily tricked. Eryn knew where the bear was every time, and
some said he could see through the cups -- but of course that is impossible.
Eryn was good at that sort of game because it was the only kind he could play. He could
not run races or wrestle with any of us. I was an excellent runner, one of the best three
in our village. I was good at wrestling, too, often winning against older boys. One
afternoon in the late summer, after all my work was done, I stayed in the commons to
wrestle. I didn't mean to stay out as long as I did, but it was hard to walk away from
those who challenged me, for fear they would say I was afraid to take them on. Thus, it
was after sundown before I went home. Eryn had gone into the house to rest after our
chores, and I found him still lying in our bed. I saw immediately that he was crying, so I
put my arms around him and asked him what was wrong. He said it was because I was out
wrestling in the commons for so long. At first, I thought he meant he was angry with me
because I had left him alone for all that time; but after he explained I understood that
he was sad because he couldn't wrestle. I told him it mattered little if one could wrestle
or not, and reminded him about all the things he did so well, but he only said, "It
isn't the same thing at all." No matter what I said, he wouldn't stop crying. So I
leaned over and kissed him on the forehead, in the way that mothers kiss their children. I
had never done that before, and I felt it not only with my lips but other parts of my body
as well. A feeling overtook me of not wanting to let go of Eryn, ever. He rested his head
on my shoulder, and I held him like that until Dreda called us to dinner.
There were many good omens during the summer that marked our fifteenth year. For seven
days, Anata's hens laid eggs with two yolks, and this was a sign of abundance. On the
evening of the seventh day, a new star was seen in the skies -- or perhaps it was not a
star at all but some new form of heavenly light. It was shaped like a horseshoe, and
people said it was a sign from the god Eas, whose token is the horse. Children were told
not to point their finger at the star, lest its magic be abated. The most wondrous sign
was the growth of the green flowers in the valley beyond the hills. Not only were the
leaves and the stems green, but the buds as well, and they opened into
green-petaled
flowers. No one had ever seen such a thing before. Everyone in the village said that
something important would happen soon.