Chapter 5

Summer had baked off all the green and suppleness of the hills. The redwoods clung to their needles, but the branches sagged from the effort. The birds greeted morning with light song while the buzz of locusts began to rise and fall. The ground crunched beneath their feet.

In the open meadows, the trail was a narrow line through the grasses like a crease in the land. When the trail snaked through the redwoods, it was harder to see, often just a scuffle of needles. Cairns no bigger than a fist provided some guidance. The priest followed faithfully behind the miller's son, never sure if they were on the trail or not, never worried either. The miller's son walked with a casual confidence. He fixed his eyes on his feet and the trail. Occasionally, he looked up.

At midday they climbed up a steep rise. They walked along a ledge wide enough to go single file. The path climbed above the redwoods that filled the gorge below. The priest slid a hand along the chalky wall of the hill. He avoided looking down. He avoided thoughts about the drop. He struggled with the peculiar anxiety of walking next to a drop: if the drop weren't there, he surely wouldn't lose his balance; but with the drop there, losing his balance seemed assured, promised, a compulsion to resist.

The miller's son kept glancing back at him. A studied, concerned look on his face. The priest, embarrassed, smiled apologetically. He didn't like being the recipient of the younger man's concern.

At the top of the rise was a broad hilltop capped with bleached white grasses. In several spots, the grasses were pressed down flat. "Deer," said the priest to himself as he huffed to catch his breath. The vision of deer curled up asleep on this precipice gave him a smile.

"Nope," said the miller's son abruptly. He was crouched down, unwrapping his ankles to remove his shoes. "See how those spots are clumped together like that." He indicated with a nod. "Real close. That way the bodies touch. Wolves do that." He shook his shoe and a pebble dropped out.

"There are wolves in these hills?"

"Sure looks like it." He replaced shoe and carefully bound the wraps around his ankles.

The priest squinted. "Did you know that wolves were in these hills?"

"How come you're so out of breath?" He looked at the priest, his head tilted back as if he needed to look down his nose to get a clear picture.

"Oh, I ..." The priest faltered. Reflexively, his hands went to his waist and traced the wraps beneath.

"What have we got going on over here?" The millers son's grin looked like a half-moon cut across his face. He got to his feet and put a hand on the priest's belly.

"It's ... it's a wrap," confessed the priest.

"Why in sulfur are you wrapping your stomach?" An awkward silence followed. The miller's son fixed his eyes on the priest. The priest felt mocked. Then a look of enlightenment lit up the miller's son's face. "Oh Ulso, you're not proud of being fat? Go on, unwrap that thing. I wanna see just how the gods are providing for you."

The priest looked back, the way they came. All he could see was the path disappear behind the lip of the gorge and the pointed tops of redwood trees. Nothing of their path taken could still be seen. He turned back to the miller's son. He was wide eyed, gleeful, waiting as if he were about to receive a Noel present. The priest felt alone. He didn't know how he could refuse this request.

"Look priest, I won't make you do it. But it's a long walk and you're gonna be chasing your breath all the way to Fael. Sides, I get fed too. Not as much as you, it seems." A laugh interrupted what he was saying, "But I'm sure I get a bit more activity than you do. So, go on and get it over with. Unless you plan on sleeping like that too."

The priest heard what he said, heard the words, and while nothing in those words sounded threatening, there was a look to his eyes that felt menacing, challenging. That look implied the suggestion that one way or another he'd end up complying. The priest lifted his frock and loosened the tie of his wrap. His stomach sprang out and spilled over.

"By the gods!" The miller's son fought back his laughter.

The priest felt some relief. He worried the miller's son would be angry or jealous, see his big belly and argue that it wasn't fair, and that he should be held accountable for it. That was his fear, but the miller's son only looked ready to mock him. The priest was relieved.

"There's nothing you won't eat, huh?" The miller's son gave his bare stomach a playful slap. "To think, I was worried bears would eat our grub. I'm gonna have to hide it from you."

"You never answered me about knowing whether or not wolves were in these hills," said the priest. He wanted to change the subject.

The miller's son chuckled. "What does that matter?"

The priest heard the fay influence in how he spoke. The way in which he answered with a question that could mean so many different things. And he did it effortlessly. "Why haven't we heard the wolves at night in our village?"

"Prolly cause they don't go that way."

Still not convinced, the priest asked, "Don't deer lie like that?"

"Not just like that." The miller's son answered like he was bored with the conversation. Then he said in a more animated tone, "Look there, aego (literally means 'eye', a common way to refer to a priest)".

The priest looked to where he pointed. The hills smoothed out into a vast yellow plain that stretched to the sea. From that vantage, high above it all, so far away, it looked continuous and soft. Just a bed of yellow. The priest knew that not so. Those are dried, brittle grasses with spiky seed pods waiting for anything to brush by and attach to. The ground would be dusty, scrabbly and rough. And further away, that bland yellow would be broken up into plots with farms of dead grasses and bony cattle. Outlined against the horizon, where the land meets the sea, was a magnificent and large square block: the keep at Fael. The priest had been to Fael only once, to learn from the high priests at the temple. He had only ever seen this view twice, on the way there that time, and on the way back. Each time he was struck by awe for what mortals were capable of. It stood starkly above all else. From where the priest stood, he couldn't see that it stood atop a high cliff that looks out over the river and the sea. But he knew it to be so. And he knew that what he saw, that mass of stone, also had roots. It dug deep into the ulth. He once plunged a small portion of that, to an ancient sept, to pray to a forgotten god.

"It's magnificent," said the priest.

"It's just a square. Come on now. You spend all that time building something, you can at least give it a shape."

"A square's a shape," said the priest, almost automatically.

"Come on now, you know what I mean. Don't go playing smart with your words."

"It's just imprecise, the way you said it. And ..."

The miller's son cut him off, "What a man means is more important than what he says. You're not a dummy, aego, you know what I mean without me saying it. And that," he pointed to the Keep, "Is just the simplest thing they coulda made. All that stone and they just do that."

The priest listened and let those words hang in the air for a breath or two and studied the younger.

The priest studied the younger man. He remembered his own youth, when dismissing the efforts of those that came before was an easy thing to do. When being impressed by something was an almost shameful thing to admit. So, the priest said nothing. Age comes with time, not talk, he thought to himself.

"Get yourself something to eat. I'm not risking returning you to your wife any smaller."