Wintertide Read Online Free

That’s why she asked me to take care of you, now. She said the runes show danger, in the next year especially.”
    Tanta’s runes had long shown danger. But never before had the Healer discussed that with anyone other than Khamsin. And even those discussions had been maddeningly sparse, frustratingly cryptic. Her seventeenth year, was all that Bronya would say. If danger were to come it would be then.
    “Did she say what kind of danger?”
    “No. But she asked that I keep you safe.” He hesitated. “She won’t be around to watch after you very much longer.”
    Khamsin swallowed the lump in her throat. “When?” Her voice was soft. “Did she say when?”
    “She says before Wintertide.”
    That was just two months away.
    She stood suddenly, folded her hands and held them against her chest as if she could keep the hurt inside from escaping. The empty mugs and remnants of honey bread were still on the table. She cleared them away because she needed something, anything to do.
    “I’m sure Tanta Bron just wanted to thank you for your friendship. To tell you how important it is to her. And to me, too. You and Mowrina have been very good friends, Tavis.” She stacked the mugs in the water basin.
    Tavis came to stand beside her. He took her trembling hands in his own. “She asks that I be more than that now.”
    “You’ll always be one of my dearest friends…”
    “Bronya wants me to take you as my wife.”
    “Wife?” She tensed, startled at the word. She knew it was common for a girl to marry around her sixteenth year; one of the village girls, still an infant when the Wintertide raid took place, wed last Summertide.
    And Tavis was a bachelor who had a large, three room house and a prosperous smithing business. He was more than eligible. But she, Khamsin, a wife? The possibility never occurred to her.
    Besides, marriage meant love. And she wasn’t in love with Tavis.
    She stared at the bearded man. “Why would Tanta Bron want us to marry?”
    “So that I can take care of you.”
    “I can take care of myself!”
    Nixa, curled on her hearth side pillow, slitted her eyes open at Khamsin’s exclamation.
    Tavis glanced away from her and at first Khamsin thought she had hurt him by her declaration. But his gaze, she noted, touched on Bronya’s braided ribbons and cloth banners painted with cryptic runes that hung around the room. Then moved to the shelves lined with jars filled with herbs and powders. Things not found in a smithy.
    “Tanta Bron has taught me much about healing work. She would want me to stay, to help the villagers. And for you to continue to tell me when the villagers needs help. Just as you’ve always done.”
    “That’s not what she said to me, Kammi.” He shook his head slowly. “It’s Bronya’s wish to see us wed. For you to be a wife. Not a Healer.”
    You must marry, child. Bronya’s words were weak in her mind. The runes, the runes tell me this now.
    The runes say I must marry Tavis?
    Khamsin felt the old woman’s tiredness. Then a sigh. That has not been clear. So much isn’t clear anymore. But who else? There’s no one else in the village who accepts what you are. That has been shown to me.
    A torrent of conflicting emotions surged through Khamsin. She tamped them down quickly, lest her frail Tanta be hurt by her confusion. She had no desire to see Tanta Bron hurt. She knew all the old Healer had done for her, how she had risked her life just to raise her. She owed Tanta so much.
    But to marry! And to someone not of her choosing. Even the girls in the village were permitted to choose.
    But she had no choice. Even if she wanted to choose a husband, there were none in Cirrus who’d have her: Khamsin, child of the maelstrom, with Hill Raider’s blood in her veins.
    None but Tavis the Smith.
    She didn’t love Tavis. But she did like him. They’d been friends since she was little, though there was a nine-year difference in their ages.
    She glanced at him, felt his concern