The Legend of El Shashi by Marc Secchia Page B

pumphouse, Arlak. Be welcome.”
    A man must be worth his word, a good and trustworthy tenet by which my father set much store. So I worked, and worked relentlessly, from dawn till dusk outdoors in the rain, then after dark in the barn by the light of an oil lamp. I cultivated blisters and splinters by the dozen. By Alldark Week, true to my promise and fuelled by my anger, I had the roof up and the last chinks in the walls tightly wadded with winterbrush and sponghum moss scraped off the rocks that lined the drainage ditches alongside the fields. Farmer Lak pursed his lips, declared his pleasure at the result of my labours, and crushed my hand again.
    I vowed nevermore to shake hands with an Elbarath.
    *  *  *  *
    A rude patch of straw in an unused cattle stall doubled as my bed, with a blanket scrounged from somewhere –I dared not ask–by Alila and Jeria. I treated their exuberance with a gruff caution that shed off the twins like water off a marshlark’s back.
    After being closeted indoors for the whole of a snowbound Alldark Week, while the family made their religious observances and burned potent Jartian incense to ward off Ulim’s Hunt, I began to extend and improve the lyomhouse according to a Roymerian design. After that I turned my busy hands to a new cradle for the babe a nd a snug room beneath the loft eaves for the twins, reached by a ladder. This sealed their affection. Artlessly, they delivered me kisses in tandem that made Farmer Lak cluck disapprovingly … and I? I had to fake a fit of coughing to stay my weeping heart from bursting its banks like a river during Thawing.
    The other farmhands gave me scant greeting. Perhaps they misliked my foreign ways, unaccustomed to their rough jesting and tiresome Elbarath homilies; or, closer to the mark, because I had skills that brought ready praise from the Honoria Lak and her husband. I worked not in the fields, but close to the main farmhouse, which bred resentment and mistrust. For my part, I brooded over Janos and ignored their mutterings.
    As the brief southern snows gave way to Thawing season, I grew more and more of a mind to move on. It had been a good wintering. But I had grown over-fond of the place. The Lak family’s kindness was simpler and more honest than I could either bear or spurn. The long road beckoned. Yet I tarried, until I tarried one day too many.
    O cursed, fateful day!
    On a chill Rimday at the makh of sunup, a biting easterly breeze whined about the farm buildings. The other hands, swaddled in every stitch of clothing they owned, stamped their feet to keep warm and muttered imprecations against the bitter weather. We all pitched hay from the barn’s upper level down into a cart, ready to take to the mournfully lowing jatha in the paddock–they were hungry as always, and doubly so in this wretched weather.
    I felt Lurgo’s eyes upon my neck. He was the youngest hand, a big, raw country lad, and meaner than a tygar with kittens when riled. I made it my business to keep up with him though it cost me blistered hands and an aching back.
    “Lurgo!” Farmer Lak held up his lantern. “Clean up down here, will you?”
    I leaned on the haft of my three-tined pitchfork and grinned at Lurgo.
    “Ulim’s Hounds,” he grunted, scowling back fiercely. “Ah have to clean up yer mess again, stranger!”
    “Jeria, Alila, come down ‘fore you get hurt!”
    Lak’s bellow elicited giggles from beneath the straw beyond where we worked. Farmer Lak had an uncanny knack for knowing exactly where his daughters were at all times. In a trice two dark heads popped up, not unlike puppies at play with eyes a-twinkle and tongues happily lolling–the twins, who must have been spying on the men’s labours. They scrambled to the edge and looked down.
    “We were just playing, Father!”
    “I shan’t speak a second time! Arlak, you asleep up there?”
    Glowering at the twins’ piping laughter, I set to pitching great forkfuls down to the men below. At