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They're seventeen, the hurt is four years old, and they're in the middle of fighting when Eilir finds out what, exactly, happened to Astrid at the Change.
She's not even sure what they're fighting about, to be honest, and she tells her mother that when her mother asks: not sure, other than Astrid alternates from being lost in her own little reality, one based on the fantasies of the pre-Change world, places that never existed and magic that didn't happen, and . . . . intensely, obsessively in denying herself anything fun out of this one. Fasts and vigils and vigils and fasts and ritual, shifting to readings and stories and might-have-been-but-really-weren'ts.
For fourteen year olds, that's fine. But they're not fourteen, and it's not changing. And it's driving her crazy and not for the first time, nowadays, she's maybe cursing herself a little for the blood-bond, because otherwise she could just walk away.
But she's not going to do that, because that would be asking for trouble, so she ends up seeking out her mother for help.
Sign is nice for privacy in Dun Juniper; she knows otherwise everyone overhears everything, because you can go where people can't see you (like now, in her mother's loft), but the dearth of walls plus the lack of sound-proofing means the hearing people have to spend a lot of time pretending they're not hearing private stuff they don't want to. Half of them have figured that out, and more and more people learning ASL aren't ostentatiously doing her a favour so much as trying to find a way to have some kind of private life at all.
But Sign, when she and Mom are alone, with Rudi having his nap over in the trundle-bed, means that nobody else knows when Juniper Mackenzie interrupts her daughter with, Have you ever given a thought to why she might be hiding so hard, my heart?
And Eilir stops, and looks and her mother, and barely keeps from making a face: that's not Mom-face, that's High Priestess Witch Queen face and Eilir does not want to be having this conversation with her High Priestess, she wants to be having it with her mother. Sometimes she really wishes they were actually two different people, instead of two facets of the same.
But she's also not stupid enough to ignore that kind of question from her High Priestess, either, even if she didn't want to see it in the first place. Especially not when said High Priestess is also Astrid's. No, she admits. Knows she looks sullen.
So think about it, Juniper replies, same face, same serenity to motions that always comes when she's like this.
How? Eilir demands, disgruntled. I wouldn't be here if I knew what to do! And she thinks her mother sighs, just a little bit. Eilir tries not to grind her teeth.
What else is she hiding from, my heart? the Witch Queen asks. What else does she avoid? Then, shift abrupt, she's Mom again for a moment and adds, Be a love and get me some chamomile while you're thinking.
A way of telling her not to give the first answer out of her head - also, Eilir has to admit, taking the stairs down, a way of giving Eilir a few minutes to get a hold on her resentment. She notices those details of Mom's work, too. Other people don't, which is how Juniper gets away with them, especially with Mike. But Juniper knows her daughter sees what she does, so for Eilir, there's also a message in the fact that she's doing it.
By the time she's got the infusion, and exchanged a quick hello-good-bye with Diana, Eilir comes to the glum conclusion that the message is a rebuke: that this is something she should have been thinking of before. When she has a momentary sullen thought as to why she had to do all the thinking-of, she's got the answer before the question even finishes - well, two answers.
One being, what Astrid should be doing has no bearing on you.
Two being, which one of you's the High Priestess' daughter and had her head opened since she was a babe? That's right, Eilir Mackenzie, you. That's who.
When she reaches the top of the stairs again, Rudi's still asleep, and she hands her mother the infusion. Okay, most spooky Mom-person, she signs, with a sigh. What is it I'm missing? Astrid avoids - well, almost anything that could be fun, except for hunting, riding and combat-practice, and maybe reading but I don't think that's even fun for her anymore. Every ritual we do together, she's going through Hecate or Artemis or Athene or - and that's when Eilir stops, then adds, And she avoids boys. Oh.
That had been another thing that turned into a fight, and Eilir hadn't been sure how - how pointing out that one of the boys was panting after her to Astrid and then teasing her about how flustered she got turned into a snarling match that actually had Astrid finish by yelling out loud and storming away. And being nasty, on the way there - not that Eilir gave much of a damn what people thought about her sex-life, it wasn't the words that hurt, it was that Astrid said them and was trying to hurt.
Now which 'oh' would that be my love? Juniper asks, looking half-satisfied. There are two to be had.
The something-happened-'oh', Eilir answers absently, what is the - and then she stops. OH.
Juniper glances past her, which means Rudi might be waking, but when Eilir follows her mother's look over to the trundle-bed, he just turns over and goes back to three-year-old baby-dreams. Eilir scrubs her face with both hands and sighs. She never told me, she signs. Her mother takes a drink before she answers.
I think she's wrapped the whole thing so carefully in stories that she doesn't even really remember what truly happened herself, love. The look of concern is High Priestessy, too, because that kind of fiction can come back to bite you - believe in something enough to make it half-true and it could warp things, if your will was strong enough. Neither of them talk about it - her or Signe. I only pieced it together with guesses from Mike's extremely edited version and Ken's half-hints. Her mother was the only one the bastards actually touched before Will, Erik and Mike launched a rescue, but -
Like that matters, Eilir finishes, her mind going back to what Astrid would say, that bandits (not even, that close after the Change, but what else do you call them?) killed her mother, and how then there was rescue. Oh, Mom. She has, wrapped it up in stories - it's all about her mother, nothing about her. She chews on the inside of her bottom lip. What do I do?
She does actually know better. The question just comes out anyway, so she's half expecting the swat when Juniper replies, She's your friend, Eilir. That's for you to decide.
*****
What Eilir decides is to light the candles on her altar, paint a big bright metaphysical sign over her head saying HELP and then sleep on it, prepared to wake up from restless bad dreams with a headache and the feeling like the first edges of the coming flu. It's only a first step: she might not get it. But she's a little bit at a loss, so it's worth trying.
She doesn't get dreams. She gets insomnia instead, half-awake dozing while her mind spins in the darkness and somewhere along the line the rest of the pieces fall into place and sort themselves out.
She missed it in the first place, she realizes, because even before the Change Astrid's world hadn't been hers. Her world had been Mom's shows, homeschool, Circle, friends from the specified outings that were relaxing mostly for the fact that everyone there spoke Sign and she didn't have to lipread. Her world had been adults who paid attention, who were involved, who cared, and who believed in magic to start with; it was peers who were part of those families. It was people who made sense.
Eilir can look at Ken and Signe and Erik and know exactly how Astrid started down the road to where she is. She started out rejecting the world because the world rejected her; she started out preferring her daydreams, where people kept their word and life meant something and she wasn't just the daughter of some rich idiot in a world that hated her and was full of filth - she started that before the Change.
And then there was her mother. And now there is a world where those fantasies make a lot more sense, and make reality make a lot more sense.
Eilir leaves the candles to burn out, and resigns herself to being exhausted for the day. And in the morning, she finds a song-lyric in one of the Lackey books that'll work, and sends it with the posset for good dreams, because someone's always taking mail to Larsdalen.
It's actually kind of sad - in the tragic, not pathetic sense - how fast the message comes back: no more time than it would take for Eilir's note and gift to arrive in Larsdalen, for Astrid to scribble out a response, and for it to come back with the very next messenger sent.
Astrid's just says I'm sorry. And thank you. And since Eilir's dead sure Astrid doesn't have the first clue why they were fighting so much either, it means she's willing to apologize without qualification when she doesn't even know what (if anything) she did wrong.
It strikes Eilir that it might be a good idea to get Astrid out of Larsdalen sooner, rather than later. Because nobody there had a clue, either.
*****
That's the first oh, and (Eilir thinks) the more important. The second oh - the one about how Astrid might feel about Eilir, even if she didn't know it (and given all the wool she was wrapping around herself, she probably didn't) needed more thought. And Eilir gave it more thought. A lot more.
It hadn't crossed her mind before, but that didn't mean anything. She knew enough about herself by now to know how attraction worked for her: one day she'd look over and see something in someone that grabbed her attention, even if she hadn't ever noticed it before, and then usually she'd act on it. With boys she had to be aggressive - between being small, being Deaf and being the Chief's daughter, a lot of them seemed to think she'd break. With girls she was shyer, but that was mostly just because she was never quite sure how to read the tell-tales - she found for the most part, if she stayed still long enough (metaphorically speaking), most of the girls she liked would make the move on their own.
But for her, sex was also just something enjoyable, about pleasure and a moment of connection, and she'd never really been bitten with anything else. She thinks that might have been more of a problem if she'd finished growing up in the unChanged world; here, though, Mom and the Coven basically set the rules, the tone that everyone looked at things through, and that tone was if nobody's getting hurt, have fun.
She's not entirely sure how to honour the nobody getting hurt this time. Even - maybe especially - given that when Astrid arrives for this visit, and Eilir's looking at her with new eyes, she realizes attraction is not going to be a problem.
Realizes, in fact, that there might be a certain similarity between Astrid and, oh, every other girl she's liked enough to want to sleep with. A certain imprint. Just a slight one, as long as your standards for slight include elephants and blue whales.
Oh, she thinks, this could go so very, very badly.
*****
Astrid is frighteningly eager to please, at least on the Astrid scale of these things. And not just with Eilir, although it's more with her than anyone else. Eilir tries to imagine six months with Astrid alone with her family, in light of what she's now knows, and it makes her want to wince. Not that the Larsson-Havels are bad people - they aren't, and Eilir loves all of them. Well, most of them. Most of the time.
It's just Astrid might as well be a raven in a nest of oversized sparrows, and none of them realize they're pecking too much. Or at all.
Mostly, for a while, for a couple weeks, Eilir just observes and thinks. She's relatively certain her mother is watching her observe and think, but she doesn't bring it up with Juniper again. For all love, and all respect, she suspects even as High Priestess Mom's given all she can - which is probably why she passed it on to Eilir this much in the first place. Even healthy (Eilir thinks) Astrid would still answer the darker aspects of the Goddess, the Huntresses and the Gatekeepers, virgins who weren't ever the Maiden, not really, because they never intended to be the Mother, and might be said to skip all the way to Crone in one step.
Juniper Mackenzie was about the living, the growing, the flourishing things; where she was comfortable with death was in the long cycle of age. Astrid was something else. Something this world would need a lot more of. Something Mom touched gingerly and with great reluctance and Astrid would throw herself at.
(It occurs to Eilir to think - really briefly - about how it might be to have any kind of important relationship in her life and not think of things this way, not think of how it reflected in the otherworld as much as here. It's a weird thing to contemplate, though, like walking around with her hands over her eyes. She and her mother have never talked about whether or not Eilir will be Priestess, or even when, but that's because they both know she will be and when it's time she'll know. She's always felt things, always known things.)
And Astrid would run towards it because she'd been anointed to it, however stomach-turning it was to think of it that way - anointed with her mom's death and her own first kill being right after.
(She thinks of things this way because it makes the world make more sense, too. Which, maybe, is only natural: the world isn't the one where she was going to be a teenager, with all the steps and mistakes along the way.)
Can I get you to look over something? Astrid asks, on the night of the fourteenth day she's there. For fourteen days, she's been as friendly as she could be, Eilir thinks, and trying as hard as she can to be something like normal. And part of that's good, because it means there is something there to work with. Because she will have to come back to the world at least a little, and this means Eilir might be able to lead her without making it a big thing.
But it's also obviously a strain. And the tentative way she asks, her Book of Shadows on her lap, makes Eilir want to punch someone - someone else.
Astrid's on her second book, the same as Eilir's on hers; both of their first books are here, put away under Eilir's altar, on the basis that nobody in Dun Juniper would dare touch them, and Eric's enough of a dick sometimes that he would. Eilir signs, Of course, and Astrid scoots over on the bed so she can open the book and they can both see.
It means her thigh's up against Eilir's, and they're shoulder to shoulder. The book opens flat across their knees between them, and Astrid points to the beginning of a particular spell.
It's almost comfortable again.
The comfortable lasts, for Eilir, about two days, before it changes places with now we'll test your self-control and she has to remind herself that hauling someone to bed with her would be a bad idea for a lot of reasons, from probably upsetting Astrid to not being fair to whoever Eilir chose to being a kind of self-deception in and of itself.
She isn't good at self-denial. It makes her cranky. Enough that at one point, Chuck gives her a hard look and asks, What pissed in your cornflakes?
Eilir grimaces at him. Nothing, she replies. Sorry.
Chuck's expression of scepticism couldn't be clearer, but he accepts the apology and lets it go.
It's probably worse with Astrid than it would be otherwise because it's not even like it's easy to extricate herself and spend enough time alone to get herself off to whatever fantasy her mind comes up with - and not like she really wants to.
It takes her another week and a half watching her anamchara until she's willing to decide her-mother-the-High-Priestess is right. Not that she had that much doubt, but (as Mom would have an appropriate saying for and Eilir doesn't bother to) in this case, it's much better safe than sorry.
Even deciding it doesn't make anything move much faster: it just shifts the question of whether to when and how, and that means more thought and more care.
Celibacy - that was, celibacy when she's actually interested, actually wanting - doesn't have much to recommend it, really. Actually, celibacy doesn't have anything to recommend it. Celibacy, Eilir thinks, is the stupidest idea anyone ever had, and it was no wonder so many Catholic priests had gone crazy.
Only two days after she has the thought, they go riding. It's Astrid's idea, but Eilir doesn't think anything of it - riding is one of the things she won't have to teach Astrid to enjoy again, along with killing things (or practicing the skills you need to do it) and it's a really beautiful day. They take food with them, and Eilir grabs some of Dennis' beer, because one of the advantages of the Changed world is nobody gets uptight about ridiculous arbitrary things like "legal drinking age" for something as soft as beer.
Even if Danika is still cagey about the vodka.
Astrid sings for at least part of the time they're riding. Eilir can't lipread songs, and Astrid's voice is the wrong tonation for her to be able to feel at all, but it makes Astrid happy and - Eilir suspects - it's another thing her family would give her grief for.
We're setting up a permanent trade-mission in Corvallis, Astrid says, when she's finished whatever song it is. Zeppelt's set to take up residence.
I bet he's panting for it, Eilir says, laughing. The man hated Larsdalen in the Changed world, even if he'd never be disloyal enough to say it. Civilization! and she mimics one of his most applicable expressions. Astrid grins in response.
Totally, she replies. Then she adds, Look like a good place to stop?
It's one of the grazing pastures, but the herds haven't been near here in a while and besides, they brought one of the leather tarps to sit on. Sure, she says.
They don't need to tether the horses: both Asfaloth and Eilir's own are well-trained enough to stay nearby, and there's nowhere for them to disappear to anyway, and not much in the way of threat. But Astrid winds up standing at Asfaloth's head anyway, reins still in her hands and fiddling with them, so much so that Eilir has to tilt her head.
Something wrong? she asks, takes in Astrid's entire posture
"I - when I was back - " Astrid starts to say out loud, and then she flushes and drops the reins to free up her hands. Eilir blinks at her, at the stumbling and at the flush - it's not like Astrid's as easy to lipread for as Mom, by now, after all, so it's not like she's going to get mad about it.
Astrid starts again, gets as far as signing, Aaron talked to me, and he said I should - before she stops herself again - but that much is enough for the light to turn on in Eilir's head. She steps in, but she lets Astrid finish first, because she thinks that much is important.
I love you, Astrid just signs, finally. Not like I used to say, before, like - which is when Eilir takes Astrid's hands in hers to stop her and steps the rest of the way in to kiss. Astrid's that much taller than her, she has to stand on her tiptoes and pull Astrid to bend down. And it's clumsy because, she knows, Astrid has never kissed anyone in her life and reading descriptions in books can only do so much. It means she's a little stiff, a little careful, and that she doesn't know where to put her hands, but that's okay. You can learn these things. The point is what the kiss means, right now, not that it's a good kiss.
When Eilir lets it end she doesn't step back, just makes sure she's smiling and squeezes the hand of Astrid's she's still holding before letting it go so she can say, Good. That makes things a lot easier, since I love you too.
Astrid looks like she might cry, so Eilir kisses her again, just soft on the lips, resting one hand against Astrid's cheek. And as much as her body and her libido think it would be the best idea ever to push this right now, because really (among other things, says the logic she knows is suspect) this is the most privacy they're going to get for ages - as much as she wants, she leaves it at that and steps back, still smiling, and says, We should have lunch.
Astrid's breathing fast, but at least half of that is the aftermath of terror; there's relief when she smiles, and signs Okay, and that tells Eilir that was the right choice.
She's going to have to change the bottom half of her clothes when they get back to the Dun, and possibly douse herself repeatedly in cold water, but it's the right choice.
I'm sorry, Astrid says, when they just lie there for a little bit after lunch. She has to roll over on her side and take her hand back to do it. She smells of horses, leather and Astrid; she's wearing Mackenzie clothes, which means Eilir can just see the outline of her body and the salvaged sports-bra underneath. Talking is a better idea than just looking, because looking makes her want to touch and it's easier not to, easier not to push too fast, if she's got something else to do with her hands.
What for? Eilir asks, staying on her back as Astrid sits up, picking a bit at her kilt and the leggings underneath.
For being such a bitch, Astrid replies, bluntly. I was scared. Am scared. Aaron guessed why and kind of shook sense into me, but then I didn't know how to . . . . She lets it trail off.
It's okay, Eilir replies. Touches Astrid's knee in reassurance, and is kind of glad she's still got more to say so she's not tempted to leave it there. I get it.
Now Astrid flushes a bit, and adds, I also don't know what I'm doing. Like, at all. And there's something really - Eilir doesn't have the right word, but maybe it's appealing, to this uncertainty on Astrid. Maybe because she has any kind of uncertainty so rarely, or maybe because Eilir knows it's okay, that it's something she can . . . fix, maybe.
Or maybe it's possessiveness. Although it would be funny, she might admit to that. And since the thought, now, of sitting up and pushing her back, of Astrid's hands as uncertain as they had been with the first kiss, the thought of how her face would change, trepidation-to-arousal-to -
And whether her skin, fair as it is, would flush and how much and where, whether it would spread down over her collar and to the tops of her breasts -
Okay, Eilir thinks. Yeah. That would be it. She covers her thoughts, grins at Astrid. Good thing one of us practiced, she teases, and Astrid goes even more red before she laughs.
Eilir sits up and can't resist one more kiss, her hand falling to rest at the top of Astrid's thigh, and this time she thinks the breath is just sharp because of her, not because of anything else. But still. And besides - C'mon, love, she says, sitting back, and caught out a little because it didn't occur to her that using the sign would actually be hot, but it is. We didn't bring enough to stay out here for the night.
Astrid nods. The tops of her cheeks are pink, just along the bone. She signs I love you, because clearly she's trying to kill Eilir by now.
Eilir just smiles at her and stands up, extending her hands to help her anamchara to her feet.
It strikes her, as they gather up everything they brought and mount up, that they're definitely going to have to find a way to get Astrid out of Larsdalen - if not to here, then somewhere.
Her mother looks annoyingly knowing when they get back to the Dun. When Astrid gets drafted to go for more firewood while Eilir's helping with the food preparation in the kitchen, Eilir takes the moment to give her serene Priestessy-ness a glare. Juniper gives her daughter a fox-grin, and then, a little more serious, she signs, Be careful.
Eilir rolls her eyes. I am, she retorts, and then, glancing to make sure Astrid isn't back, she adds, Celibacy sucks.
Mom snorts. Cry me a river, she replies, dryly. Consider it a lesson in the joys of anticipation. And is moving away and out of line-of-sight before Eilir can think up a reply.
Astrid's coming back, anyway, and Eilir watches her for a moment; her arms are full of split logs, but there's still this careless grace to how she moves, the way she shakes stray bits of hair out of her face. And Eilir can be patient, and careful, she really, truly can, she's absolutely sure.
But somewhere, a goddess is laughing at her, she thinks, and it's not fair.