Within the Bone

II. A Return

Everything seemed to go better after her encounter with the wildling healer. The bruising on her face faded more quickly with the application of actual medicine and Mara was careful to leave it alone. While she hadn't seen hide or hair of the buck, she had caught rabbits and a pheasant on her way back, ensuring plenty of food. She took an extra two days in the woods, not in wilding territory, but further from Sjaligr than most who weren't hunters went.

Eventually, though, there was no avoiding it and her feet turned back to the homeward road.

The rugged wilderness of the Red Mountains slowly became more docile the closer she moved to the small city built into the rocky cliffs. Sjaligr was pretty enough, strikingly carved into square towers and regal walls, but just the sight of dawn's first light falling golden on the main gate was enough to knot her stomach into a hard lump. The outlying fields were just about ready to harvest, which meant people were up and about even at this early hour, preparing everything for the work to come within the next day or two.

The one benefit of the early hour was that people were too busy and sleepy to pay her any mind. Mara pulled her hood up as if against the chill and strode through the open gate, timing her entry to the city for when the gate guards were distracted with Old Gierdrius and his very cantankerous cow. She sighed with relief when no one stopped her and made a beeline for the smithy that stood beside her father's house. Smoke rose from its chimney, a sign the forge burned anew. No sound of hammer blows yet, but she did hear voices. Mara stopped and listened, only removing her hood and opening the door when she was confident that it was just her mother and sister.

"Sabine," her mother sighed almost despairingly. "You must be more careful with hearts."

"Adomas will be fine," Mara's sister said airily. "He has girls all over town to nurse his pride back to bloated health."

Mara almost rolled her eyes as she eased the door fully open and stepped in, closing it carefully behind herself. That sounded like Sabine up to her usual vixenish tricks, which she supposed was in keeping for any sixteen-year-old girl so favored with the gift of beauty. Mara moved around a rack near the door, footsteps soft enough that she hadn't disturbed the two in conversation. She was used to going unseen.

Her mother was working the bellows with one hand and the lean of her body, every movement precision and mastery carefully applied. She stirred and shaped the coals with a poker in her other hand, protected by heavy gloves. Mara knew from explanation that such sculpting changed the temperature of the furnace based on the amount of air reaching the coals in different parts and layers. Her mother had yet to slow down even after four children and reaching her middle years, though she constantly insisted that her youthful vigor was because of her children rather than in spite of them. Her blonde hair had acquired some red as she'd gotten older, hinting at a fiery temper, but now it was beginning to turn silver.

Sabine sat alongside a workbench, though she probably couldn't even name a tool on it. She had never expressed an interest in her mother's work, nor in the thick volumes along the far wall that described countless years of metallurgic advancements. The girl shared their mother's beauty, particularly the stunning blue eyes that were perpetually warm. Mara's version were harder, like sapphires, but shared the same color. Marks dotted along Sabine's cheekbones in a horizontal line of blue runes, just like their mother's.

"I wish—" Mara's mother started to say, but then she caught her eldest's presence out of the corner of her eye and almost dropped her hot poker on the stone floor. "Mara!"

"Here we thought you'd run off for good this time," Sabine said, crossing her arms. She at least sounded more amused than sincerely disappointed in that comment.