2.

The Hill That Doesn't Want You

Orbag, autumn, AGH 4

Ketil Bostock had put two blue marbles on the wall, but he kept a finger on the larger one.

“All the way to the house,” he said.

“You said up the hill.”

“The house is up the hill.”

Grethe Swainson looked past him. From the lower street you could see a pale piece of wall between the trees and, when the wind moved the branches, the corner of a roof. The path disappeared before it reached either. It was not a very large hill, though she had never liked that part of it where you could no longer see what you were walking toward.

“You wouldn't have to go inside,” said Snorri Jobson.

Ketil gave him a look.

“Nobody said inside.” Snorri pressed his lips together, then added, “You wouldn't be let in.”

“How do you know?” Grethe asked.

“My aunt went up.”

“To the house?”

“Nearly.”

“What happened?”

Snorri rubbed a bit of mortar out of the wall with his thumb. “She said you could feel it.”

“Feel what?”

“That you weren't wanted.”

Grethe waited. Snorri looked at Ketil, who was making the small marble go round the large one.

“Then what?” she asked.

“She came down.”

“Perhaps she was tired.”

“She wasn't tired.”

“You weren't there.”

“Neither were you,” said Ketil. He closed his hand over both marbles. “That's why you have to go.”

She did not have to go. Her mother would be starting supper soon, and the trousers Grethe wore had been mended across one knee that morning. There was a hard ridge of thread on the inside. Going up a hill would make it rub. She could say all of that, but Ketil would hear that she was afraid, and Snorri would look at her without quite meaning to agree with him.

“How would you know I'd been to the house?”

“You'd tell us.”

“You'd say I hadn't.”

“Then knock. We'll hear.”

“You won't hear from here.”

He shrugged, pleased with how difficult she was making it. “Go home, then.”

She hooked a thumb under one braid and pulled it out of her collar. It was already coming undone. Ketil watched her do it.

“You could go home and cry,” he said. “If you're still a baby about your father.”

Her little lower tusk caught the inside of her lip. She had shut her mouth too hard.

Snorri stopped digging at the wall.

“I'm not.”

Ketil lifted his eyebrows.

She knew that look. If she stayed, it meant he had been right. If she went, he would find something wrong with how far she had gone. He could put his marbles away afterward and say there hadn't been a bet, only a dare. He had done that to other people.

“Both of them,” she said.

“If you get to the house.”

She went before he could put another part on it.

The first stretch was easy. She passed the last yard, where sheets billowed above a fence, and walked with her arms swinging so anyone watching from below would see how easy it was. At the bend she nearly looked back. She made herself look at a stone instead and kicked it out of her way.

For a while the path went straight upward. She took long steps. Her mended knee pulled every time she lifted it, and her breath began making a sound she would have hated Ketil to hear. When the path narrowed among bushes, she kept going at the same pace because stopping here would mean stopping before she had even reached the part that was meant to be frightening.

The ground slipped under one shoe. She caught a branch, got a palm full of dry leaves and had to stand while the small stones she had loosened rattled down behind her.

Nobody called up from below. There was a faint hammering somewhere in town.

She let go of the branch. Her heart was going much too fast. Sweat cooled beneath her tunic, and her hair had stuck to the back of her neck. She pushed it away and found a flat place beside the path where she could sit without sliding.

The hill had taken longer than it ought to have. She had been sure she could reach the house while the boys were still watching. Now the roofs below looked small, and she could not find the wall where she had left them.

She found a different roof instead.

It had a low, crooked chimney and a dark patch near the far edge. Her father had helped put that roof up before the war. Grethe remembered looking up at him from the street and being told to move out of the way because something might fall. He had kept one hand raised until she moved. Then he had waved with it, as though that were what he had meant to do all along.

There were newer slates there now, paler than the others. She could not remember which part he had worked on. The patch might not be his.

She stared until the chimney doubled, wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and stared again.

At home there would be the scrape of her mother's knife, the board knocked against the edge of the bowl. Grethe could go down and be there before the food was ready. Her mother would let her lean against her for a minute. Then she would ask what had happened, and Grethe would have to say it was only Ketil.

It wasn't only Ketil.

“I'm not a baby because I miss him,” she said.

The words sounded strange spoken here. Too loud, although she had hardly raised her voice.

A dead leaf turned over beside her shoe. She picked the stem out of the lace, drew the knot tighter and sat a little longer. The hammering below stopped, then began again with three quick blows.

When she got up, she turned toward town. Then she looked back at the next bend, still hidden by bushes. Snorri's aunt might have stopped somewhere like this. Perhaps she hadn't seen anything either.

Grethe wanted to see the house. She could go as far as the bend and look.

The steep strip where someone had cut across it was bare and stony. She left it and took the proper path round the hill. It was longer. She took it slowly, and before she reached the bend her breathing had quieted.

She reached the house from the side.

There was no wall to touch without being seen. A narrow strip of trampled earth separated the path from a garden, and beyond the garden stood the house, with a chair propping its open door. Another chair stood outside beside a board carrying a cup and a folded cloth. Grethe could see a broom inside. It was leaning at the same angle as the one at home, too upright to stay there for long.

A woman knelt in the garden with a small fork caught under something she was trying to pull up.

Grethe stopped.

The woman's mechanical hand held the shaft while her other hand worked at the earth. There was a short click when she changed her grip. Grethe had seen that hand in pictures, raised or resting on something important. In the pictures it had never been dirty.

“Excuse me.”

The woman did not look up.

Grethe swallowed. “Excuse me?”

“A moment.”

She waited.

The root came free suddenly. Soil struck the woman's sleeve. She sat back, looked at the piece she had pulled out and said something too quietly for Grethe to hear.

Then she looked over.

“Yes?”

Grethe had intended to ask which way led back to town, pretending she had come from somewhere else. Now the path was beside her and town was below her and the woman was waiting.

“It was a dare.”

“Was it?”

“To come up here.”

The woman glanced at the root still in her hand. “You've done that.”

“To the house.”

“Ah.”

Grethe did not move. The trampled strip looked suddenly much wider.

“What do you win?”

“Two marbles. If he gives them to me.”

“Do you think he will?”

“Probably not.”

The woman's mouth moved at one corner. “You should have taken them before you set out.”

“That would be stealing.”

“Then you've conducted this more honorably than I would have.” She put the root aside. “Come in from the path. You can sit down while I get this out of my sleeve.”

Grethe stepped across the strip. She took care not to tread on the turned earth. Close to the house she could smell damp roots and something baked.

“Are you Eren?”

“Yes.”

“I'm Grethe.”

Eren shook dirt from her cuff. More fell out than Grethe thought a sleeve ought to hold.

“I didn't come to take anything,” Grethe said.

“Good.”

She wished Eren would tell her something else. Not that she was brave. Something about how she knew Grethe was not a thief, perhaps, or that it was a fine afternoon for a walk. Eren went on brushing her arm.

Grethe pointed at the chair beside the cup. “Was that The Great Hero's?”

Eren stopped brushing her sleeve.

"I mean Hammond's?" Grethe said.

“That's Tarren's chair. My cousin. They live here.”

“Will they want it?”

“Eventually. They've gone to buy a latch.” Eren reached inside the door and pulled out a low stool. “I'll have this.”

Grethe climbed into the chair. One leg was on a stone and it shifted beneath her. She sat very still.

Eren noticed, nudged the stone out of the way with her shoe and set the chair down properly. “There.”

“Thank you.”

Eren went inside. Grethe heard water, then the broom falling. Eren said something else that was difficult to hear.

She came out with a cup of water and two pieces of bread on a plate. One piece was narrow at the bottom and wide at the top. The other was the reverse.

“Tarren cut it,” she said, seeing Grethe look.

Grethe took the wider piece because Eren had held the plate nearer that side. The bread was chewy at the crust. She had not known how hungry she was until she had something in her mouth.

“My father died,” she said.

Eren held the plate a moment longer, then put it on the board.

“How long ago?”

“Four years. I was five.”

She waited for Eren to say that was a long time.

Eren picked a crumb from the plate and ate it.

“In the war,” Grethe added.

“I see.”

The cup was cool against the place she had bitten inside her mouth. She drank carefully.

“People say things,” she said.

Eren looked at her.

“That he was brave. I know that. They keep telling me.”

“Would you rather they didn't?”

Grethe turned the cup between her palms. “I don't know.”

Eren waited, working at a lump of earth stuck to her shoe.

“Sometimes they say it when I wasn't asking.”

“Yes,” Eren said. “They do.”

She bent and knocked the lump off against the stool.

Grethe ate more bread. The woman in the pictures had stood beside other people Grethe knew by their names. Hammond was usually there. Once she had asked why he had no bread in any of the pictures, because her father had told her he baked, and the grown-ups had laughed. She still did not know whether it had been a foolish question.

“Did Hammond make bread?”

Eren's foot stopped against the stool.

“Sometimes he did.”

“Good bread?”

“He thought it could always be better.”

Grethe looked at the piece in her hand. “Was it bad, then?”

“No.” Eren laughed, a short surprised sound. “No, it was very good. That was the irritating part.”

“Why?”

“Because you would be eating it and he would be explaining what was wrong with it.”

“You could tell him there wasn't anything.”

“I did.”

“What did he say?”

“Usually something about the oven.”

Grethe pictured a large loaf and someone arguing with it. “Couldn't you just eat it before he finished?”

“I tried.”

“Then he couldn't show you.”

Eren looked at the remaining bread and smiled properly this time. She tore a small piece from the heel.

“He liked that better than people telling him he was wonderful,” she said. “If you wanted another piece, he believed you.”

Grethe rubbed her thumb over a loose crumb. Her father used to cut the heel in two, lengthways, so she could have the crust from both ends. Her mother cut it the easier way. Grethe had never asked her to do it differently. It seemed an ungrateful thing to mind.

“I thought he was still here,” she said.

Eren's hand stayed on the plate.

“Hammond?”

Grethe nodded. “Not here here. In the world.”

The garden was getting colder. She drew her feet back beneath the chair.

“You mean the Avatar,” Eren said.

“They said it's him, only different.”

“Who said?”

Grethe could remember the words more clearly than the person who had said them. People talked when they thought she was interested in something else. “I don't know. At home. Not Mother.”

Eren looked past her toward the town. Grethe wished she had not asked, though she still wanted the answer.

“Thanatos' Avatar is someone else,” Eren said. “Hammond died.”

“But you could go and ask.”

“Ask what?”

“For the Avatar to come here.”

“No, Grethe.”

Eren's voice had gone sharp. Grethe slid one foot to the ground. She had not meant to tell a grown-up what to do, and this was a particularly bad grown-up to have chosen.

“You've still got your crust,” Eren said.

Grethe looked at the bread in her hand.

“Stay and finish it.” Eren pushed the plate away from the board's edge. “I'm sorry. You asked me a question.”

Grethe drew her foot back. She could see the broom through the open door now, lying across the floor with its handle pointing out.

“I want Hammond to come in and ask why I've cut the bread while it's still hot,” Eren said. “I'd argue with him about it. I know exactly what I'd say.”

She rubbed a little soil from the side of her finger.

Grethe nodded, although she still had the beginning of a question. If the Avatar agreed—but Eren had already answered that.

“I can't ask a nameless vessel to be Hammond for me. Even if they share a body.” Eren said.

For a while neither of them spoke. There was no one coming along the path. Grethe had heard that the woman on the hill wanted to be alone, but Eren had brought out two pieces of bread, and someone else's cup was already there.

“Do you never go down?” she asked.

“I was down yesterday.”

“Oh.”

“Was that part of the dare?”

“They said you stayed here.”

“I do stay here. I live here.”

Grethe almost laughed, then wasn't sure whether she should. Eren saw her face.

“You may tell them I went to buy onions. It will disappoint them.”

“They'd say it wasn't you.”

“Then don't tell them.”

Grethe took another drink. This time it did not hurt her mouth. She thought of the cup her mother used in the morning, the one with a chip at the foot so it clicked twice when it went down on the table.

“Sometimes I hear his cup,” she said. “From the stairs. Mother uses it now.”

Eren turned back to her.

“For a bit I think he's having breakfast. Then I remember. I don't really think he's there.”

“I know.”

“I'm not pretending.”

“I didn't think you were.”

Grethe set her cup down very gently. It made almost no sound. “She asked if I wanted her to put it away. I said no.”

“Do you want her to?”

“No.”

“All right.”

Eren took the plate inside. Grethe sat with the last crust and listened while she set it down. There was a brief scraping noise; when Eren returned, the broom stood farther inside, where it could not fall across the door.

She crouched beside the root she had pulled up, picked it up and put it in a heap with the others. Grethe finished the crust. She had reached the house. She had sat in its garden and drunk from a cup. Ketil would want something else now, probably a piece of the door.

Eren brushed the earth with her fingertips and picked up something small.

“Have you a yard?”

“A little one.”

Eren held out an acorn. It was smooth and brown, with a pale mark where its cap had come off. Grethe reached for it, then looked up to make sure it was being offered to her.

“Somewhere for this?” Eren asked. “Where it won't be walked on.”

Grethe thought of the back wall, the dry strip where the washing did not drip. “At the end of our yard. There's room.”

“You should ask before you put a tree in it.”

“It's not a tree yet.”

“That's generally the best time to ask.”

Grethe closed her fingers around it. It fitted into the crease beneath her thumb. “How far down?”

Eren showed her with the end of a finger. “Cover it about that much. Don't bury it so deep you lose it.”

“How long before it comes up?”

“Not tonight.”

“I know that.”

Eren's mouth moved again. “Then we agree.”

Grethe opened her hand and looked at it once more. There was nothing to see that had not been there before.

The light had left the lower part of the garden. She could still find a patch on the chair's arm, but it was narrowing.

“Should I go now?”

“If you want to be home before dark.”

She slid down, careful of the chair's legs, and put the acorn in her pocket. “Thank you for the bread.”

“You're welcome.”

At the edge of the path she turned. “Could I tell you if it grows?”

Eren was picking up the fork. “Yes. Ask when you see me in town, and we'll find an afternoon.”

“Or I could knock.”

“You could. I may be busy.”

Grethe nodded. That sounded like her mother when a neighbor called before the washing was done. She could manage that.

She went down by the long path. At the loose stones she slowed, keeping one hand over the pocket. Twice she thought she had lost the acorn and had to stop and feel for it. The second time she took it out and carried it the rest of the way.

The wall was empty. There were fresh scratches in the mortar where Snorri had been picking. One blue thread caught on a rough place moved in the evening air. Neither of the marbles was there.

Ketil might have gone to the pump. If she took the next turning, she could be there before he went home.

She rubbed the acorn against her tunic and went straight on.

Her mother had the supper pot off the heat and was scraping something from the bottom when Grethe came in.

“Where have you been?”

“Up the hill.”

The spoon stopped.

“I went to the house. Eren let me sit down.”

Her mother put the spoon back in the pot. “You should have told me.”

“I didn't know I was going.”

“You knew before you got there.”

Grethe looked at her shoes. There was earth up the sides, but the repaired knee was whole. “It was a dare.”

“Who dared you?”

“Ketil.”

Her mother let out a breath through her nose. She turned back to the pot. “Wash your hands.”

“Can I plant this first?”

Grethe opened her palm. The acorn had left a curved mark in it.

Her mother looked, then looked at her. “Did she give you that?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you thinking of putting it?”

“At the end. The dry bit.”

“Beside the gate?”

Grethe had forgotten the gate. In summer it stayed open against that strip of earth. “Farther along. By the wall.”

“Show me.”

Her mother put a lid over the pot. They went out together, Grethe hurrying because it was much dimmer in the yard than it had been above town. She chose a place where the gate could not reach. Her mother tested it with the gate anyway, then found a small piece of wood to loosen the earth.

Grethe crouched beside her. The damp soil was cool beneath its dry top. She made the hole with two fingers, looked at its depth and took out another pinch.

“It doesn't need to go that far,” her mother said.

“I know. Eren showed me.”

“Then why are you digging?”

Grethe put the pinch back.

The washing bench stood nearby with a bowl upside down on it. One leg was a different color from the others. Grethe had forgotten about that leg until she saw it from down here.

“He put his boot under that,” she said.

Her mother looked over her shoulder.

“When it went crooked. Father put his boot under it.”

“My boot.”

Grethe looked at her. “It was his.”

“It was mine. I remember wanting it back.”

“He said it was helping.”

Her mother sat back on her heels. “He said that to me, too.”

Grethe remembered the bench tilted sideways, her father crouched under it and a boot squashed almost flat beneath the short leg. He had told her not to knock it while he cut the new piece. She had been very careful, walking all the way round the other side each time she wanted to watch.

“You went out with one boot,” she said.

“I wanted him to notice.”

“Did he?”

“He asked whether I'd brought the other one for the other leg.”

Grethe laughed, and her mother laughed too, shaking her head at the bench as though he might still be underneath it making suggestions.

Grethe lowered the acorn into the hole.

“He did give it back.”

“Eventually.” Her mother pushed a little earth toward her. “Full of shavings.”

“I could get a stick so we don't step on it.”

“After you've covered it.”

Grethe drew the soil over the acorn. Her mother reached past her to break up a lump, and they pressed the loose earth down together.