Part One: Rushe-kih Zicahl

I.

Every fall since her marriage, Rushe-kih cursed the late autumn sun. As a Behrowain, her stores were finished long before the Trinnen winter. Her dugout shelves filled with berry stamps and syrups, and pickled cauliflower. Netted sacks of dried herbs, mushrooms, and various sliced fruits, reached from earthen floor to ceiling. She had enough and to spare, which was her style. By next spring it would be used up, she was sure, for she had a generous nature, and few in the village had not served her reserves at their tables.

Once the last pot had been sealed and the final sack sewn up, she longed for snow. In her country freezing winds chafed ears raw and called for hearth fires almost all year round. The crackle and warmth of flames had always given Rushe-kih a feeling of comfort and security, of family all around you, eating together, telling stories, and waiting out the season together. She’d never regretted leaving her tribe and following Hem to his inheritance in the Trinnenlands, but every autumn she found herself weary of the sun’s persistent glare.

Standing with her back to it, she pulled the woolly bed mat from the limb where it had been drying. The craggy Praythian Mountains in the distance had been pink at dusk for a week now, which meant the weather was soon to change. In anticipation, she’d loosened the mat from its frame for one final airing. Observing his wife, Hem left his fields to chop the timber he’d been gathering all summer for the stockpile. Then he conditioned his axe and the other tools he farmed with, wrapped them in their hides and tucked them away on their high shelf in the dugout. He would have spent another week harvesting at least, but once Rushe-kih had decided fall was over it did not do to bring in anything more. He’d tell the lake children to come. They could take home whatever was left.

Walking through the fields, Hem dropped one last potato in his basket. His wife would not object to the offering for tonight’s dinner. She would roast them in the fire with a few carrots and onions. The roots made a hearty dinner with flatbread and goat’s cheese. Unlike his wife, Hem loved the autumn. He gazed across the field at Rushe-kih beating their bed mat against a trunk to fluff it. He loved watching her, feeling the rhythm to which she worked.

Folding the mat over her shoulder, Rushe-kih turned to gather her basket, glancing back toward a willow at the edge of the field. Something caught her eye. She dropped the mat and her basket and ran for a closer look. In the late afternoon shadow, a tangled mass of ivy snaked its way up the willow’s trunk and lower branches. Vamfloria. Rushe-kih panicked.

“Hem! Hem!” she screamed, spinning around to find his figure approaching from the field. “Hem!”

She ran, scrambling in her scuffs over the raised rows of soil. By the time Hem met her, walking his long even strides, she was breathless and white, tears and dust staining her face.

“Hem! Hurry! Vamfloria! Vamfloria beneath the willow! Hurry!” she shrieked and sobbed at the same time.

Hem didn’t hesitate. He strode past Rushe-kih and toward the tree. “Bring me my thick coat and gloves and take a stault over and alert Oriah.”

In all their years together Hem and Rushe-kih had never faced vamfloria infestation on their side of the lake, but Oriah and Jezura had lost two of their Snowy Shags over the last decade from separate outbreaks.

“Buds?” Hem asked Rushe-kih who was running to keep up.

“Full blooms,” Rushe-kih answered, “Dozens. It’s already in the branches.”

“One of the staults must’ve broken out. Maybe a goat. Have you checked the shed?” Hem asked. If Rushe-kih wasn’t exaggerating, the outbreak was too large for a single fowl to be sustaining, even a larger half-bird. Of course, it could be a moose or deer that wandered in from the forest. Hem prayed.

“Not yet. I couldn’t tell what it’s on. It’s too deep. And it’s already up in the branches,” Rushe-kih repeated. She was thinking of the female stault—her favorite. She was close to laying and had been restless lately. Rushe-kih turned toward the shed, grateful to face away from Hem as she smeared the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hands. She didn’t want him worrying about her when he faced the weed. It would be risky enough without him having anything else on his mind.