Orain saw her coming back from the thicket, white and shaking, and came over to where she was, with fumbling hands, trying to cut up offal and remainder of the chervine for the sentry-birds. It was hard to find gravel in this snowy country, and so she had to mix skin and slivers of bone with the meat, or they would have further trouble in digesting. He said, “Here, give me that,” and carried the mess over to the birds where they were fastened on their blocks, safely above the snow. He came back leaving them to tear into it, and said, “What’s the matter, lad? Off your feed, are you? Carlo means well, you know, he just was worried that you weren’t eating enough for this rotten climate.”
“I know that,” she said, not looking at him.
“What’s ailing you, youngster? Anything I can do to help?”
She shook her head. She did not think anyone could help. Unless she could somehow talk to her father, who must somehow have fought this battle himself in his youth, or how could he have come to terms with his own Gift? He might hate the very word laran and forbid anyone to use it in his hearing, but he possessed the thing, whatever he chose to call it or not to call it. With a sudden, homesick force, she remembered Falconsward, the face of her father, loving and kindly, and then his contorted, wrathful face as he beat her. . . . She put her face in her hands, trying desperately to stifle a fit of sobs which must surely reveal her as a girl. But she was so tired, so tired, she could hardly keep back her tears….
Orain’s hand was gentle on her shoulder. “There, there, son, never mind – I’m not one to think tears all that unmanly. You’re ill and tired, that’s all. Bawl if you want to, I’ll not be telling on you.” He gave her a final reassuring pat, and moved back to the fire. “Here; drink this, it’ll settle your stomach,” he said, sifting a few of his cherished herbs into a cup of hot water, and shoving the mug into her hand. The drink was aromatic, with a pleasant faint bitterness, and indeed made her feel better. “If you can’t eat meat just now, I’ll bring you some bread and fruit, but you can’t go hungry in this cold.” He gave her a chunk of hard bread, liberally spread with the fat of the chervine; Romilly was so hungry that she gulped it down, chewed on the handful of fruits he gave her as they were settling the horses for the night. He spread their blanket rolls side by side; Caryl had none, so he had been sleeping in Romilly’s cloak, tucked in her arms. As she was pulling off her boots to sleep, she felt an ominous dull pain in the pit of her belly, and began secretly to count on her fingers; yes, it had been forty days since she had escaped from Rory’s cabin, she must once again conceal this periodic nuisance! Damn this business of being a woman! Lying awake between Caryl and Orain, still shivering, she wondered grimly how she could manage to conceal it in this climate. Fortunately it was cold enough that nobody undressed at all in the camp, and even to sleep piled on all the clothes and blankets they had. Romilly had been sleeping, not only in the fur-lined cloak Orain had given her, but in the rough old one she had taken from Rory’s cabin, rolling herself up in them both, with Caryl in her arms.
She must think. She had no spare rags, or garments which could be made into them. There was a kind of thick moss, which grew liberally all through the higher elevations, here as well as at Falconsward; she had seen it, but paid no attention – though she knew the poorer women, who had no rags to spare, used this moss for babies’ diapers, packing them in it, as well as for their monthly sanitary needs. Romilly’s fastidious soul felt a certain disgust, but it would be easier to bury moss in the snow than to wash out rags in this climate. Tomorrow she would find some of it; here in snow country it would, at least, not be covered with mud or dirt and need not be washed. What a nuisance it was, to be a woman!