Chapter 5

Kristabell left the little cottage following Rowan out into the sunshine and onto the hard packed dirt path. She felt quiet, pensive. Both more and less lost than when she'd arrived. “What did he mean Rowan?” she asked him, stopping on the little bridge and watching the water as it flickered and rushed over the rocks in the stream bed below. She turned and looked into Rowan's dark eyes. She saw a complicated confusion there, and then his face fell and he sighed. “Honestly . . . I don't quite understand what he meant or why he said exactly what he said. Not enough to reassure you. I'm sorry.” 

She could see that he was telling the truth. Not just that he couldn't clear up Gwydion's statement, but that he was sorry he couldn't. Kristabell didn't look away but whispered, not entirely expecting an answer, “How did I get here? What happened to me? Why can I understand you? Am I dreaming? Am I a fai. .  .” She didn't get the word fairy out. Rowan's fingers flew to her lips and he placed them there gently, but it was enough to keep her from speaking. There was a look close to panic in his eyes and he shook his head but it was a barely perceptible head shake and a new expression formed in his eyes. Understanding. Then he put his arms around her, drew her close and she stood there leaning against him, letting the steadiness of his heartbeat stop her world from reeling. She didn't make any move to leave his arms. She found that she rather liked it there. It was a strange feeling, new, and strange, but not unpleasant. After a few minutes Rowan said, “Let's not talk about this. Let's talk about something else. Tell me about you? What are you good at? What do you like to do?” He pulled away but took her hand and started walking, drawing her along beside him back up the path.

“Gardening mostly. Herbs, vegetables, fruit trees. I know my way around most growing things, although I have no experience with grains. I can cook too, but our kitchens are different and I've never cooked for more than three people. Other than that, I read.”

“Read?” Rowan wrinkled his nose. “Old scrolls and documents like Gwydion?”

“No!” Kristabell smiled. “Well yes, sometimes if I'm curious about something but mostly, I like to read stories, you know, for fun. Adventure stories full of romance and magic. Stories that make me forget my own life, or make me feel like there is more out there than concrete and noise. This place is like something out of a story,” she said wistfully. “I keep figuring that this must be a dream.” She looked at Rowan, into his dark wild eyes.

“It's not a dream. I'm not dreaming. My eyes are open,” he said a little cryptically and they walked back to the castle in silence, but still hand in hand.

*

They were back too late for lunch so Rowan lead her around the outside of the castle—it wasn't really that far—to the kitchen door. He ducked in and was out within minutes with half a loaf of fresh bread, some goat cheese that tasted like gouda, a little dish of butter, and some figs. As they sat in the shade at the edge of the kitchen garden and ate Rowan told her, “There's a lot that needs to be done right now so everyone pitches in. I figure you're all right if I leave you with Fenna and Thomas in the vegetable garden. They need help hauling cabbages. Just do what Gwydion said, and stay out of the woods.”

“That's fine. I like cabbages. I mean from a physical tactile perspective as well as to eat. I have a bad habit of planting too many in my garden at home. I always end up giving half of them to a food bank.” Rowan smiled at her and she asked him, “So, other than cabbages what else do you grow?”

“Kale,” he answered. “Rutabagas, potatoes, carrots, kohlrabi, radishes . . .” The list went on and on, “And in terms of fruit we grow apples, pears, plums, grapes, figs and cherries. There are hazelnut and walnut orchards as well.” 

“How did you get the variety of crops that you grow? Did you bring seeds and roots with you from the old country? How did you get potatoes up here?”

“Some were brought from the old country others were traded for from the south, or brought over from the Orient by ship.”

Kristabell started asking about whether they tilled their soil or if they used no till methods, how they rotated their crops and then started in on fertilizers. 

“Woah!” Rowan laughed. “I have no idea what kind of manure we put on the fields or when. I'm not usually here in the early spring, that's beyond me,” he paused, “Your hands are so soft and your skin is so fair. I didn't figure you for the kind of girl who would know so much about dirt. I figured you were some rich mans pampered daughter.”

“Definitely not,” Kristabell shook her head. “Back home I decided that I didn't want to go to school anymore so I worked. I had my own garden, and I also worked at a garden centre which is a place where people go to buy seeds, pots, soil, and plants. My hands are always this soft and my skin always stays this colour. I don't tan or burn.”

Rowan nodded thoughtfully.

*

Kristabell spent the rest of the day with Fenna and Thom, the head gardener, in one of the very large vegetable gardens that had been cut terrace style into the hillside and surrounded by a low stone wall. There were many cabbages. They loaded and carted cabbages all afternoon and Kristabell was glad that she was used to physical labour because she had never worked so hard in her entire life. That night at dinner she ate ravenously then sat and listened as if in a trance as Leif played his harp. She tumbled into bed and slept the sleep of the exhausted.

Life went on like this for the next few weeks and if Kristabell was dreaming she certainly wasn't waking up. She followed Rowan and Fenna around like a puppy dog, spending mornings with Rowan and Gwydion studying the new world where it seemed she now lived and learning its language. She would have lunch with Rowan and then they would go join Fenna for the rest of the day in the the gardens and orchards, packing fruit, vegetables and nuts into baskets and carting them up to the kitchens to be prepared for winter storage. At the end of the first week she had gotten comfortable enough with the new language that she felt more independent and Rowan would sometimes leave her if soldiers had come to Fiannasmere to report to him. The combination of good food, clean air, and hard work had Kristabell feeling strong and healthy in a way that she never had before in the city of her world, but it was more than that. Kristabell was happy. She felt at ease with these people, with Rowan and his family. They seemed to accept her. Rowan's parents treated her in much the same manner that they treated their other grown children. She and Fenna had become friends too. In fact Fenna was the first person that Kristabell had ever formed such a close friendship with, other than Evan, but when thoughts of Evan surfaced Kristabell pushed them aside with a brusqueness that bordered on cruel. Her friendship with Fenna was different too in that Fenna was a girl and they were the same age. They were both born gardeners and they could be falling down dead tired and still spend half the night talking, lying in one or the other's bed in their night gowns, stumbling around language differences, only to wake the next morning and start chattering away again. Kristabell had stopped going to Gwydion's cottage in the mornings, there was too much work to do, but Gwydion would come find her where ever she was, and quiz her language skills or ask her questions about her world. One day while she and Fenna were digging potatoes—uprooting the plants with a spade and their hands and then reaching down, scrabbling in the rich earth to grab the potatoes and chuck them into baskets for Rowan and Thom to retrieve and put on the cart—Thom had become irritated with Gwydion. “She's a good worker when you're not here bugging her with questions. Off with you you pesky old druid!” 

Gwydion had bristled with indignation and bowed to Kristabell, “Perhaps I will see you tomorrow at the midday meal Miss Kristabell.” Then he thumped off with all of the dignity he could muster. It was all Kristabell and Fenna could do not to burst into giggles. Even Rowan had pressed his lips together and looked away with his eyes full of mirth. 

Nessa, who was two years older than Kristabell and Fenna, stayed, for the most part, with her goats. She could usually be found in the pastures or in the dairy but early on she had told Kristabell, “You stay out of the dairy. You're too much like Rowan and Fenna. You'll make the milk go sour.”

Despite the fact that Kristabell wanted to see the dairy and Nessa's goats, she was quite taken with the idea that her very presence could curdle milk. Was it the agrarian version of frying a computer, and did Rowan and Fenna really curdle milk too? It intrigued her to know that Nessa was likewise excluded from the preparation of herbal salves and medicines. Apparently she had walked through the  kitchen once when a batch of comfrey salve for wound healing was being prepared and the whole batch had needed to be thrown away as anyone who had used it had developed a mysterious rash and a craving for cheese. They said that it was because Nessa had a prickly personality. 

And so, for the first time in her life, Kristabell felt like she fit in. The only dark cloud in her sky was the guilt she felt over her parents. She wished, with an ache deep in her heart, that she could let them know that she was okay, but she also knew that she didn't want to leave this world. She would have nightmares that she was trapped in that other world, miserable, and unable to find her way back to her new world, only to wake up in tears with Fenna shushing her and petting her brow. It was near the end of her second week with them that she became aware of the fact that Rowan was courting her.         

She used the word 'courting', because he wasn't flirting with her, and he wasn't trying to get into her pants, but he was paying attention to her. Very pointed attention that had a sweetness to it, and an innocence, despite his obvious designs. One night when she had gone up to her room she had found a little bunch of lavender and vervain on her pillow. She had turned to Fenna and asked if she had placed the herbs there.

“No-o,” Fenna admitted thoughtfully. “I told Rowan that you were having nightmares though. It must have been him.”

At first the idea had been alarming to Kristabell. She knew how she felt about Rowan, but after Evan, she had never expected reciprocation from anyone. She didn't know what to think about Rowan. The heart and the mind are two very different things. She knew how she felt when he looked into her eyes, when he smiled or took her hand. She loved the wildness in his look and the way she felt when she was beside him, but in the world she'd come from, she had been an outcast. Unpopular, friendless and misunderstood. Sheila at the garden centre had been the closest thing to a friend that she'd ever had, up until Evan, and Evan . . . ? She gave the thought a vicious kick and it retreated to the shadows. It seemed unbelievable to Kristabell that someone like Rowan would be attracted to her. She was an eighteen year old high school dropout, what did he see in her? But Bronwen was only in her early forties at the most. She must have been close to eighteen when Rowan was born, so obviously Kristabell's age wasn't much of a drawback in this world. That, and the fact that there was no formal education here. Everything was learned through experience and apprenticeships. Kristabell's skill with plants was seen as a valuable skill by Rowan's people. From their perspective she was mature and educated. It was a difficult shift for her mind to make, and when she let herself think too hard about Rowan and everything that he was, she could wind up feeling very confused. Rowan was beautiful and intelligent and kind, but he was also the Captain of the King's army. Twenty-three had seemed too young to Kristabell, for a position with so much responsibility and pressure, but after she'd seen Rowan and Leif sparring outside the stables a few times, she had changed her mind about that. One thing was obvious, they knew how to fight, and watching Rowan with a sword was like nothing she had ever seen before. The speed with which he moved and the power he seemed to have access to boggled her mind. It must be said that Rowan was not a big man. Five foot eight at the most, and by Kristabell's guess, no more than one hundred and sixty-five pounds. Leif, on the other hand, was over six feet tall and at least two hundred pounds. They would crash together, sword blades clashing with a plangency that set her teeth on edge, but no matter how fast Leif came at Rowan, he would always be deflected by the smaller man and no matter how well planned Leif's attack, he would always be forced back by Rowan. Each time Kristabell watched, it ended in Leif's surrender. One hot afternoon when she was walking back from the gardens she caught the end of a match. Rowan smiled at her and waved as he headed back to the castle for a bath before dinner. Leif was sitting on a hay bale, too exhausted to get up. Kristabell approached him and asked, “Do you ever beat Rowan?” 

He looked at her, his eyebrows knit in irritation. He usually answered her in monosyllables. “No.”

“Does anyone ever beat Rowan?” she asked. 

“No.” He answered as if she was asking stupid questions.

“Other than Rowan, does anyone ever beat you?”

This time she got a small smile, “No.”

Kristabell nodded and walked away. By rights, Rowan should be a cocky bastard, but somehow he wasn't and Kristabell knew that she had fallen in love with him.

The next day she was picking pears and packing them into baskets when Rowan came by driving a cart pulled by a horse and loaded with lunches to take out to the fields. He hadn't been at breakfast that morning. According to Fenna he'd been in a meeting with two lieutenants from a patrol. “Kristabell,” he called to her. “I'm taking this out to the fields then making a trip to the mill. If Fenna can spare you, would you like to come?” 

Kristabell turned to Fenna. She didn't need to ask. Fenna nodded, smiled and said, “Go.” But stuck her tongue out at Rowan.  

Kristabell walked over to the cart and Rowan reached down a hand and pulled her up beside him. Once she was seated he flicked the reigns and off they went. It was the furthest out from the castle that Kristabell had been since she had arrived and it was nice to sit back and see something new. The fields were being ploughed and readied for fall planting and dry grain was being gathered for milling. There was a bustle of activity all around.

As they made their way along the cart track they hit some ruts. Rowan reached out and slipped his hand around her waist holding her steady. He did it so naturally and so nonchalantly—without pausing as he related to her how he'd been attacked by an irate, seasonally confused, humming bird that morning, making her laugh—that she hadn't thought anything of it. But even after the track smoothed out his hand was still around her waist. Kristabell's first reaction was to think to herself, 'It doesn't have anything to do with me.' It was like when they'd first met and he'd brought her to the castle on his horse. She'd had to ride somewhere. But his hand was still on her waist and he'd left lavender and vervain on her pillow. He'd asked her to come for a ride with him. He wanted, she realized, to be close to her. She let herself relax then shifted a little closer, and Rowan slid his hand a little further around her waist.

They stopped and ate lunch with Leif out in the fields then headed onward to the mill to get flour to take back up to the house. The entire time Rowan asked her questions about herself. He seemed to want to know everything. How she felt about her world and his, what her thoughts were on big philosophical questions, what she wanted out of life. He already knew her fairly well owing to their mornings with Gwydion, but he never seemed to get bored of her or, and this was the remarkable thing to Kristabell, to think that there was anything strange about her. As they rode back up to the castle she asked him, “Do you like being a knight? Do you like fighting?” He sat quietly thinking, and then said slowly, “Most of the time, I try not to think about it. I'm good at it, and right now it's needed, but . . . the short answer is no. I'm more like you. You said that you wanted a happy home and a big garden, and . . . I guess I have those things. I love them, so if I want to keep them, for the time being I have to fight. Maybe someday it will end.”

They rode the rest of the way up to the castle in silence, but he had slipped his hand back around her waist.