Page 18 of The Shape of Silence

For the hundredth time, Morggán glanced around the dwelling, making note of a man’s things, tools she surely hadn’t fashioned herself, extra clothes that did not include so much as a single léine or kirtle, the scythe and saw that hung on the wall behind the door, both surely too large for her to wield. Her husband, he assumed, gone now mayhap. He wondered how long. The rhythm of her day suggested an orderliness that had been in place for some time, not as if she were scurrying or hurrying to manage the work of two people only recently.

She’d been in and out all day. At one point, she returned with two rabbits, secured in a pouch that hung from her belt, which she proceeded to skin with surprising efficiency at a worktable around the front left corner of the house. Later, she returned with his sword and belt, and his boots and gambeson, and set them just inside the door in a neat, careful stack, then stepped back from them as if she had laid down an offering.

She spoke but rarely, most often when he asked her something, less often when he only made a remark.

“Have ye snares?” he’d asked by way of conversation. “Or do ye set box traps?”

“Snares.”

“Always rabbit? Or do ye find other critters caught?”

“Mostly rabbit.”

“Guid for stew,” he’d mentioned.

She’d nodded.

Her voice was sweet and soft, not timid exactly, but unused, was his assumption. Or maybe she kept her voice low on purpose, unacquainted with noise—another voice—altogether.

Admittedly, he was fascinated, and not only by her ethereal beauty—nae, not ethereal, but... something, he couldn’t name it as of yet. He only knew that she seemed out of place, even in her own home.

But aye, fascinated, he was, by her resolve, her steadfastness, the way she simply kept going. By how she seemed not disturbed by his presence—numerous quick blushes aside—but simply went about her day, which now included attention to him or at the very least awareness of him, and how she seemed to have configured that into her hours, even as she showed no signs of hurrying about as she came and went.

At the same time no motion was wasted, neither was any made in haste. She moved with a quiet, unremarked grace that did not match the cut of her clothes; dressed as a man, one might expect her to be rougher in her ways, coarser perhaps, yet every movement was clearly feminine, every action soft and graceful.

He thought she shouldn’t be so bonny, though. Not with this lot as her life. Though young, she should appear haggard, this being her existence. Her mouth should be drawn down, her lips thinned with perhaps a constant anxiety. He might expect her brow to be permanently knitted into place, angled low over her striking eyes. Assuming food was scarce, her cheeks should be hollow; the skin of her hands should not be so fine, should be hard and weathered past any softness.

Instead, she was... fresh, as if she’d lived a completely different life until only recently.

He didn’t press her for conversation, not yet, not after having observed that she seemed to go out of her way to make no noise herself, watching where she stepped, letting her feet fall softly, not swinging her arms so that there was scarcely even the rustle of fabric.

She offered him a bitter concoction, advising he should probably continue with the fever medicine for another day.

“Just to be safe,” she said, handing him the bowl of steeped liquid.

He swallowed it down in two gulps, but resisted shivering at the pungent taste.

“My thanks to ye,” he said, handing the bowl back to her.

She listened with her eyes, he realized. When he spoke, she watched him intently. Often her lips would part as she studied him. It was almost as if she gleaned what he said from his expression, not from his words. It made him wonder what sort of man had taught her the habit, and whether malice had anything to do with it.

At present, she was on her knees near the pot that had hung over the fire all day, stirring the contents with her short knife. Steam rose from the rabbit stew and drifted into the dim space of the hut, carrying the plain, savory smell of meat and herbs. She set a small pan near the edge of the coals as well, but Morggán had no idea what might fill it.

He stayed on his feet, as he had all day, one shoulder braced to the wall. Sitting would mean standing again, and however weary he felt, this was still better than forcing his ribs and wounded thigh through the misery of rising from the floor as he’d been forced to do this morning.

“You don’t talk very much,” he said at last, using his own tongue rather than the English she seemed to prefer.

She did not look up from the pan as she set it closer to the heat. “You do,” she replied, without a shred of either accusation or apology.

“I come from a large family—quiet is a rare thing.”

Again, she simply stared, and yet Morggán was smacked by an impression that she cringed inwardly at the very idea of constant noise.

Often enough throughout the day he managed both sides of the conversation. Or rather, he answered questions he would expect any other person to ask. She seemed to have no interest in questions, or in him. He wondered if she would eventually ask when he was leaving, or mayhap she would simply tell him he was well enough to be gone.

“I am not entirely sure whether or when to expect my army, or even if any survived.” He chewed the inside of his cheek, thoughtful for a moment. “I do not expect they would make for Ard Cael—not any one of them would want to be the one to have to say ‘aye, he’s lost’.” ʼTwas not arrogance, merely fact. No one would dare tell his mother they hadn’t been able to find him, that they’d given up.

“An army usually means...war,” she said with some hesitation.