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Benek is 19 and life is the best it's ever been. He is not strong—the healer who visited the builders barracks once every moon said he'd been to stunted, too underfed, as a child and his bones would never be quite right—but he's stronger than he's ever been. Three square meals a day, if you counted the stews made from the fief's leftovers square, and a roof over his head each night saw to that. And he was patient, and good with his hands so carpentry worked just fine for him. The Lord was set on expanding his holding so there was plenty of work for him and the twenty or so other men who shared the living quarters counting for most of their pay.
He's sore, often, by the end of the day but that doesn't stop him from laughing at the tales the other men tell him around the hearth on cold nights. He even makes some friends. And then, to his surprise, there's a lover. She's sweet and golden-haired and has dimples that are uneven. And she's too good for him. It's not a lack of confidence that supports this notion, but the fact that she's a Lady and he never should have caught her eye in the first place. But he's patient, and good with his hands and she likes that on cold nights. He can't help but dream of a future even though he knows there isn't one. Even though she'd never gave any indication there could be one. Even when she's betrothed. She still finds time to meet him by the river. Once—only once—he jests about her running away with him. She says nothing. Just rises from the grass to pull on her dress, and slips away through the birch trees.
One day she is gone. She leaves no word, no letter. Word filters through the common folk, as it does, that she's left to be wed. He works. He enjoys stories and friends. He lets her fade.
He still has a lot. Purpose, food, shelter. Security. It's enough.
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Benek is 20 when he is pulled from bed in the dead of night and given five things.
The first is a writ of dismissal. Effective immediately and without recourse.
The second is a a pack with his meager belongings shoved inside. There's a tear on the strap that hadn't been there when he'd fallen asleep.
The third is coin. More coin than he'd ever held at once, and more than he was owed for wages.
The fourth is a warning. Not to return. Not to talk of his time there, or his relation to her. Never to so much as say her name. It's made clear in no uncertain terms what would happen to him if he did. How easily he could be found. Punished.
The fifth is a bundled blanket. Thick and warm. Grey like birch bark. He's still confused by the coin when the bundle is pressed into his arms and it takes him a moment to realize it's moving. He blinks and looks down and sees blue eyes. She's sweet and he thinks she might have dimples and she's so, so tiny. When he realizes that he's meant to care for her he feel faint. He doesn't even know how he'll feed her.
He says this to the Lady of the Fief—and now it makes sense why she was there, cloaked and stone-faced and looking at him as if he were a pestilence—she tells him that animal milk should do.
"But—" his bag slides down one shoulder and he struggled to balance it and the baby "—I can't give her what she should have. Her mother is noble." That was supposed to count for something, yes? Noble blood?
"She has no mother." The Lady says, simply, and leaves him alone with the child and the guard who will escort him to a carriage headed west.
He names her after her mother that first night, jostling along in a carriage heading in the predawn light, but she does not thrive and he takes it away three days later. He prepares himself to lose her. Still, he tries.
It's luck that saves her. The carriage leaves him in a village that can barely be given the name. He uses a coin to buy goats milk because the cow's doesn't seem to be working, and another to sleep in the stables because he can't stop fretting about what they'll do when the coin runs out. She spits up most of the milk. And then she cries, and cries, and cries.
An old woman comes to him and he's already apologizing when she says, "You need to feed her slow."
Her name is Sarra and she leads him to her house at the edge of the village. It's small and the wind rattles it enough to slip through and leave everything chilled, but it's there that she shows him how to wet a rag with the milk so the baby can gum at it.
He stays for three months. Sarra teaches him how to identify what the baby needs—the cry for hungry, or wet, or cold, or gas. The one for comfort is easily his favorite, though that's no surprise. She doesn't charge him, but in exchange he patches the walls. It's not pretty and he has to use what he can find—limited in the winter months—but the home becomes cozy.
Fire takes it in April.
Started at the blacksmiths, and jumped across the village edge on a windy night. Sarra goes East, to live with her daughter's family, and he continues West. He names the baby again and this time it sticks because the baby—Sarra—thrives.
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Benek is just barely 21 when he arrives in Snowsdale. He doesn't actually know this, because he's forgotten his birthday somewhere between the mountains and the valley, but it matters little. It's a pretty place, and quiet. Out of the way. A few questions prove that his skills could be put to to use there, and he's enough coin to buy a modest home just outside of town. It's a shack, really—a stable with a room for an hostler—but it could be improved. And he is still patient and good with his hands.
He paid the cost of the shack and land to the owner's wife. She says, "She's sweet," while pointing towards Sarra and then frowns and adds, "Her mother?" She casts him a sympathetic look when he just shakes his head, and then asks, "Her name?"
And it's here he makes a mistake. He's tired and worn out and grieving in ways he doesn't understand, so when he replies he says—without thinking and for the first time—"Sarra. Sarra Beneksri."
He says it because he is tired. He says it because he heard that warning, months ago, in the dead of night. He says it because he is stupid and doesn't understand that he'd had a chance to give his family a different legacy and because it's never been his instinct to lie.
It's only after he sees the change in the woman's face—sees her step back and usher him out the door as she slides his coin into her aprons—that he thinks of another story. Not a complicated one, either. How easy it would have been to say Beneksra and act the grieving husband. Nothing but the slip of a single letter and he's made his daughter's life harder.
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Benek is 24 when Sarra asks about her mother. She is a little thing underneath a heft of wispy blonde hair that he's become quite good at braiding. She has more energy than he can keep up with, and she sings songs when she wakes—which is always earlier than he wants to wake—and she stops to give every flower she sees a name when they walk into town. She has dimples that are a little uneven when she laughs.
He's prepared for this. Thought of a dozen lies he could tell her. Different names. Different balms to ease a hurt she couldn't understand yet.
But she doesn't ask any of the questions he's expected. Just looks at him after placing a daisy in his pocket where it mixed with the nails he's using to finish hanging a door to the new upstairs bedroom and asks, "When is Ma coming?"
And it had never occurred to him that she was...waiting. He isn't prepared so he tells her the truth. That she wasn't. Never would.
Sarra cries.
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Benek is 31 when he comes home to find Sarra gone. She dearly loves to walk the woods, and in the past year had taken to finding flowers to bring back and plant in the garden she'd started. He's worked hard and what was once a shack was a sturdy if modest house. She's filled it with color and life. He likes to think that together they've made it a home.
So, he has perhaps turned too blind an eye to her turns of melancholy and how she's started to spend more time wandering the brook path than talking to him.
It's not until dusk falls that he realizes there's a problem.
He finds her at midnight, sitting by the side of the road leading East. She has bag with her best dress and a meager supply of bread.
He is terrified even though he's found her. He's seen how the boys in town look at her for all that she's only eleven. He's heard the things the men—grown men—say about her. She's at a crossroads, where people go to beg a carriage and he sees all the horrible things that would happen to her on the road.
He yells at her all the way home while she cries, and when he slams the door behind them she yells back. Screams that she's going to find her mother. That she hates him. That anywhere was better than here.
In his fear and horror of realizing that she has no idea just how big the world is he yells, "You have no mother!"
Later—probably too late—he apologizes, but it's never quite the same between them.
Sarra spends more time in the woods and sometimes, while he's hunting, he catches the sound of her singing to herself through the trees.
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Benek is 34 when he first hopes the gods hear him. A god.
Things were good, he thought. He brings in enough coin doing odd jobs around the village, or selling pelts. They have three horses, a cow, enough chickens to keep them in eggs each morning, and a dog who slept on their stoop and followed Benek at his heels. Sarra was gifted and it was enough for the local midwife to overlook her name and let her apprentice. That gave her a future. And she was growing up pretty. A little too pretty, for his liking, but he couldn't deny that it could be a good thing. The Falconer boy was sweet on her. Perhaps her sweet looks and talents would be enough for him to make her an offer in a few years.
He likes Snowsdale. There were some folk who look down on them, yes, but he'd find that anywhere and for any reason. And they are largely left in peace on their little plot of land. They don't have much but it was a far cry from the labor houses that had raised him, and he is proud of what he's built. He is proud of her.
And he loves the mountains with their old forests, and cold streams, and peaks that where always ice-topped. They were alive and quiet at the same time. He is a decent hunter, but also enjoys the times where he hasn't a need for prey and can linger at the edge of a clearing to watch the wild things at their day. There was divinity there, too. The first time he'd seen a woman with the ears of a fawn he'd thought he was going mad. He'd rubbed his eyes but that only made his vision clear and he'd watched as a herd of deer came to her as if she was an old friend. Then there was the antlered man, and the old woman with feathered hair. It took him several years to realize that they only appeared on the Great Holidays and eventually, they became another facet of the mountains. He'd spot them as he would a bear—slink a little lower to the ground, make sure not to disturb them, and find a path around. Only once had one—the woman with the fawn ears—acknowledged him. She turned, winked, and then walked beneath the boughs of a willow. He did not follow.
It's Firefall when he sees them. Dusk was falling fast and he'd not had a good hunt. He's sat on a rock to fletch some new arrows in the hopes that he might catch some luck and a hare or a partridge might stray across his path. His breath comes in cloudy puffs and his throat burns but he stays, because he can hear Sarra singing. He never interrupts her because she would stop, and he dearly loves to hear her voice on the mountain air. He can just barely see her crimson skirts and the basket through the fir trees that separate them and wonders if there will be huckleberry pie that night.
A crunch of snow sounds from his right. He stops, puts down the half-fletched arrow, and raises his bow but when he turns it is not prey. Weiryn stands up the rise, one foot braced on a rocky outcropping. Benek knows all about Weiryn now. Any hunter in these parts does. The god doesn't look at him. Doesn't shiver in the winter air despite wearing naught but a loincloth. He is watching the cluster of fir trees and from his position Benek knows what has caught his attention. It grows darker, and before the sun sets the god smiles and then turns to disappear over the rise. Sarra leaves soon after and Benek listens to her footsteps go.
He does not go home.
In the stillness of the dark night he trudges up the foot of the mountain to the old shrine to Weiryn carved out of the stone behind a waterfall. It's frozen, as is the path, and he falls hard on the ice before reaching it. Ignoring the throbbing in his already bad knee he uses his flint to light a stubby candle at the base of the shrine and lays the one rabbit he'd caught that day in front of the effigy.
"Please. She is only fourteen. Let her have a quiet life."
He returns each week to make a version of this same plea.
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Benek is 36 when he sees her future slide away in three words.
"I'm pregnant, Da." Her eyes are red-rimmed, but she'd been crying so much of late. He'd given it less thought that he should have, but she'd been prone to dramatics for years now and—well, it made sense now.
He tells her that Hakkon needs to do right by her. He'll give her a chance to tell the boy to come to him first, before chasing him down.
She says it's not the Falconer boy.
He demands to know who the father is.
She refuses. She calls him a hypocrite.
He says it's not the same.
She never does tell him.
He is still 36 when the baby is born. Her eyes are blue, but not like his former lovers and daughter. Blue like the winter sky. And her hair is dark unlike any of theirs—she has so much hair, and when it dries that first night of her life it's curly and makes her look more hair than body.
He's still angry with his daughter. Disappointed in her and so, so sad for her. But he is in love with his granddaughter immediately and without hesitation.
"Veralidaine," Sarra says, late that night, with a smile as the baby makes a gurgling noise and falls asleep.
He doesn't think before he cringes and says, "Bit of a mouthful, isn't it?"
Sarra doesn't respond, but she looks out the window again as if she's expecting someone. It strikes him as odd, but eventually becomes nothing of note. A habit of hers that she'll never shake.
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Benek is 39 when he starts to understand.
Daine is delightful and a handful. He doesn't remember Sarra causing the same sorts of trouble, but the laugh is the same. As soon as she starts talking she talks to everything. Not just people, but the horses and Mammoth and the rabbits. Her chatter fills the silence between him and Sarra.
As soon as she can walk she follows him. He doesn't let her come with him for the hunt—she's much too loud, still—but he's taken to returning early so that they can walk the well-trodden forest paths at dusk. He spends half his time stopping her from trying to share whatever snack he's given her from being shared with a marmot or, gods above, a skunk.
That she loved animals was clear enough. Sarra is always fretting about her getting covered in muck, which is fair because she always does. For her third birthday Sarra sews her a dress from an apron Sarra loved dearly. Pink with a border of forget-me-nots. Daine toddles back inside with a newborn kitten in the pocket several hours later. Winter had been hard so Benek had thought to be practical with her gift and buys more chickens. He wants to encourage her knack with animals, but she's still so small and the horses make him nervous. The chickens are a better size.
He gives her her first chore, and shows her how to feed them. To his surprise she scowls (someday he'll start referring to this as the first scowl) and does not make them her friends. Once, he catches her saying something very rude to them that's hard not to laugh at with her toddler voice and too-serious expression.
In the summer a foal is born. Steely grey like her eyes. He'd meant to sell it—had an interested buyer—but Daine falls in love with the pony, and the pony falls in love with Daine. He can't bring himself to separate them and instead signs on to help build a barn for a family across the valley. It's a long summer and his joints hurt more than ever, but on the nights he is home early enough they walk in the forest and the little foal leaves its mother to fumble behind them.
It's Cloud's that alerts him that they aren't alone. He's checking tracks by the stream—elk, and fresh too—when the pony bumps into his side. He turns to push her away and freezes to see Daine on her stomach, face-to-face with the largest badger he's ever seen. He's had so many talks with her about not approaching wild animals because no matter how much she loves them, they are dangerous.
He steps forward slowly and tries to determine the best way to pull her back. If he can wrap an arm around her, he would be the one to get bit if the badger becomes cross—which is likely. She is chattering away, eyes wide with delight, when the badger speaks.
-And you are the grandfather-
It's a statement, not a question. Benek rubs his eyes and, like the fawn-woman so many years ago, it just makes the image clearer.
"I am." He says, finally, and looks to Daine. She turns when he speaks and grins up at him. Her mouth is purple from the grape juice Sarra had given her earlier.
-Good. We should have met sooner. Her father asked me to check in on her, from time to time.—
The voice was in his head.
"Her father?" He doesn't like this, not one bit. He can tell there's something he might grasp if he wasn't too preoccupied by the talking badger.
-Yes, yes. Of course. Listen, I'm needed elsewhere, but I have to ask why you haven't given her a bow yet? She's a born hunter. It's past time.—
"She's three." He looked at Daine again, who had crawled forward on her belly to pat the badger on either side of his face.
-Exactly.- The badger says this as if they are in agreement and then turns back to Daine. -There's a good kit. I'll check on you soon.—
It's moments later—walking back towards the house with Daine balanced on his hip and blinking silver light from his vision—that it comes together.
At the house he places Daine next to Mammoth but she runs to her mother and tugs at her skirt. Sarra reaches down to tussle her hair but she's looking out the window like she's waiting for someone. Benek watches her for a long time—until she crouches to try and clean juice from Daine's face—before going to the shed. He carves her a bow that week. It takes two false starts, because he doesn't know how to make one so small.
A week later she hits the target he's marked on the fence post.
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Benek is 40 when he gets another question he wasn't prepared for.
Daine is laying on the stoop, nose-to-nose with Mammoth.
"Parsnip had her kittens." She looks up at him and relays this information with the weight only a four-year-old can convey. Parsnip is a barn cat who lives up the road and one of Daine's favorite topics, after Cloud and her Ma.
"Parsnip is always having kittens."
"These are new. She had them today."
"You haven't seen Parsnip today."
"Mammoth did." She turns back to the boss dog and he frowns. He's expected her habit of talking to animals to fade as she got older, but if anything it has become more pronounced. And more...disconcerting. The way they paid attention to her wasn't exactly natural. And several times she'd said things to him she had no way of knowing. Sarra always brushed him off. Said she was perceptive, and picked up on the village chatter from her patients.
He wasn't so sure.
Then she says something that distracts him.
"Grandda, is Mammoth my Da?" She's moved to sit in a cobbler's pose and looking up at him with such sincerity he doesn't even laugh.
"Mammoth is a dog, Daine." Like Sarra, he'd expected Daine to question her parentage. Like Sarra, she's still surprised him. Daine just looks confused so he adds, "No. Mammoth is not your Da."
"Who is?"
And it's the question he expected but he's still not ready so finally he says, "I'm not sure, little one."
It's true. Saying he didn't know felt like a lie, but that he wasn't sure—well, a suspicion wasn't the same as knowing. Because, though his hands have lost some of their skill to pain, he is still not a liar and he is still patient.
Later that day he walks to town to deliver pelts to the tailor. He passes Millick and, without thinking, asks, "How are Parsnips kittens?"
Millick laughs and asks, "How did you know?"
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Benek is 44 when he sees Daine stomping into the woods, tears streaming down her face. Cloud is approaching the gate and he knows exactly what she's going to do because he's mended it more times than he can count, so he unlatches it so the pony can follow the girl.
Sarra is inside, putting away a familiar arrangement of items. A feather, straw, a pebble.
He sighs. "Sarra, you have to stop testing the girl. You're upsetting her."
"I know she's gifted." Sarra draws the strings of the pouch tight, and tucks it into a drawer beneath the window. "It's just taking its time to show itself."
"If that's the case, let it. Stop pushing her."
"She's my daughter."
He bites his tongue at this. It's a familiar line. He wonders if she knows how much it hurts him for his role in Daine's life to be dismissed. But he and Sarra exist in a fragile truce, and he's always worried about upsetting it.
He changes tactics. "Why are you so sure she's gifted? Your gift isn't guaranteed to pass on." He couldn't explain how magic was passed, exactly, but knew it wasn't so simple as a family having it or not.
"No, of course not, but her fath—" Sarra closes her mouth hard, and sets to kneading dough she'd readied earlier that day.
"Sarra."
"I've just a feeling, is all." She flashes him a look built on a too-tight smile, and turns to look out the window as she works her hands.
He knows, after all this time, when she is done talking to him.
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Benek is 46 when he sees him again.
Spring is fading. It's hotter out than is usual, and he can hear the buzzing of insects. It was a good hunt and he is very, very tired. He wants to go home, rinse off the sweat of a successful day, and fall into bed with a full stomach. His joints haven't recovered from winter as they usually do, and he wonders if Sarra will spare him an ointment.
He's approaching home when he spots a buck through a flush of blackberry bushes. He has too much of a load already, but he's close enough that he could come back with one of the horses before it got too dark. Would have to hurry because there were wolves about, but last evidence of them was on the west side of the mountain so he had a chance.
He lowers his string of kills to the ground and draws his bow while still under the cover of the bushes. It would have to be a blind shot. They were thick, and the rustling of pushing through would alert his quarry—but he's made harder kills.
He steps through and looses at the same time. A branch scrapes his cheek at the same time a throb of pain moves through his drawing hand, and he closes his eyes.
On the other side, Weiryn raises and eyebrow at him and throws the arrow to the ground.
"A fine shot." The god grins, turning to face him fully.
It occurs to Benek that this is the best possible response he could have received to trying to shoot a god. It also occurs to him that he should bow, but he wants to loose another arrow so standing still seems something of a compromise.
"Apologies. I thought you a buck."
There's a flash of a smile. "Happens more than you'd think."
Benek doesn't say anything.
Weiryn says, "You've a good shot. And you kill clean. You're known to me and to my woods, Benek."
He can tell that Weiryn expects this to be received as an honor. Expects for this to be something that's not. Benek has to force himself to loosen his grip on his bow. He says, "I should hope so."
Weiryn's smile flickers beneath the raising of an eyebrow. His too-bright green eyes go cold. "Is that so?"
"She waits for you. They both do."
"It's no concern of yours, mortal." The smile is gone. Benek the hunter may be known to the gods, but Benek the man is not.
"They are my family. They are my only concern."
Weiryn studies him for a long moment. Somewhere across the river pheasant calls. Benek feels like his knees might buckle.
"They are my family, Benek Sri."
A regional god. Of course he knew the local ways, and what would cut without a weapon. Benek had learned his lesson with Sarra, and Snowsdale knew him as Benek Todosra. A common name. So common his father could have been named Todo. It was likely enough. And Sarra's life was set to be hard enough with her father's name, let alone people knowing that father had no name to claim him, illegitimate or not.
"Then where are you? Why does my daughter spend every great Holiday walking the forest, only to come home disappointed? Why does my granddaughter ask who her da is? Why does she come home after being called names because the butcher's boy saw her talking to their goat?" His voice rises with his temper. "You left that girl with your child, and have naught been seen for a decade."
"What's a decade? Barely more than a blink." Weiryn actually cocks his head at him, snapping a twig with a brush of antler.
"Not for us. The better part of her childhood gone, and you've left her with this—strange power. This curse."
Now he bristled, and stood tall as he stepped forward. "She is my daughter and has the gifts befitting of that. If fathered—"
"A single night doesn't make you a father," Benek snarled. "Go to her now. Explain to her what she is, help her."
"You don't understand these matters, mortal. I grow weary of this." Weiryn turns and Benek calls after him with the last plea he will ever send to the gods.
"If you don't, I'll tell her myself. I'll tell her you're—" His throat shuts tight and he drops his bow in a fit of coughs.
"No. You won't." Weiryn's voice carries to Benek even though he is already gone.
Benek takes a while to recover. His throat is still raw and he is still a little breathless when he returns home. Still, he sits at dinner and compliments Sarra's cooking. And he sets to hearth games to mark the holiday.
Sarra has slipped out the back with a thin excuse that she forgot to close the pig pen when he puts Daine to bed. He pretends that he doesn't know that she's going to the forest even as he sees her lantern glinting through the trees. He wonders if she'll find him.
His smile is genuine when Daine thanks him for the puppet, and adds it proudly to the shelf where she keeps her favorite things. He opens her mouth to tell her the thing that will change her life, but his throat closes.
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Benek is 47 when he gets the letter.
For years, he'd been sure they could make it work. Yes, it was less than ideal, but there were benefits too. Her strange talents hadn't gone unnoticed but so far people thought it an uncanny skill. She'd even started to bring in coin by helping train animals for the people of Snowsdale. Some hired her grudgingly, yes, and with a mind to make sure their daughter's didn't spend time with her but others were well-enough. Hakkon was a regular and treated her kindly—which was almost enough to overshadow Benek's displeasure every time he heard the man tap on Sarra's window.
And Benek was rarely startled to see her with some new creature out in the woods or, if Sarra was out, in the house. The wolves had taken some getting used to, but even then...he'd adjusted.
But six months prior he'd been hunting at the foot of the mountain when he'd seen her through the trees with a large grey wolf resting its head in her lap. The one he saw her with most. She'd heard him and turned and—for just a flash—her eyes weren't hers. Not a trace of blue—just black around yellow. The wolf turned too and looked at him with the same eyes. He rubbed his eyes and this time, when his vision cleared, there was nothing amiss.
Nothing but a girl talking to wolves.
The next time a trader from Cría comes through he seeks them out. And the next. And the one after. He asks questions about mages, and schools, and cities further away than he'd ever travelled.
He writes to a lot of people.
Most never reply. A few do, and tell him that what he's describing is impossible. To write them if she's found to have the gift.
Then he gets a different response.
His boots are muddy with thaw when he gets home, and he pulls them off just inside the door and calls for Daine. Sarra turns to him, already pouring hot tea into a clay mug, and shakes her head. "I sent her to Lory's with a remedy. She's gone 'til morning."
"Ah, right." He deflates a little, but it's a boon because he should have planned to talk to Sarra first anyway. She'll already be upset that he hasn't included her. "I got a letter. From a mage in Cría." He places the letter on the counter in front of her and she takes it. She puts the mug back down on the counter hard when she starts reading.
"You have no right," she snarls when she's done, and crosses the room to throw the letter into the fire.
"She needs someone who can help her, Sarra."
"You're the one always telling me it's not the gift." She's in a rage and he knows this conversation is already lost, but he'd fight a losing battle for Daine any day.
"She doesn't. You know she doesn't—not in a normal way, anyway." He sighs. "This mage—he says he might be able to help."
"So you'll take my daughter away. Send her away so she's not your problem." Sarra grabs her pack and starts to bundle up the small clay pots she uses to host her remedies in linen.
"So that she has help. Has a future." He is pleading. Despite their past conflicts he has always pulled rank as her father when needed—even when it was in vain—but now he openly begs.
They fight like they haven't in a long time and get nowhere. It only ends when she shoves the last remedy into her pack and slings it over her shoulder.
When he asks where she's going she says, "I need to deliver these to town."
"Go tomorrow." He doesn't want to let the argument go. He can't.
"I've also got to check on Mabel Tailor. It's twins and she's getting close." She pulls her shawl around her shoulders and unlatches the door.
"But—" he sighs and turns towards the fire. The letter is completely gone. Perhaps he can convince her on a different day; a better day. "Avoid the Inn, if you can. There were traveler's there. Rough men. I didn't like the looks of them."
The door has already shut behind her by the time he finishes.