“And the queen?” Ghost thought about the queen almost as often as she thought about Alba.
“She is kind to him. Kind to us all.” Dagmar’s countenance darkened. “We pray for her.”
Ghost tipped her head to the side. What would it be like to be loved enough to be prayed over, to have a temple of keepers advocating with the gods in your behalf?
“Why do you pray for her?” she asked, her voice curious but quiet.
“She is heavy with child. She has not fared well in the past. Alba is her only living offspring. All the rest, all sons, have died in her womb. She’s lost two more babies since coming to live on the temple mount. She has spent time with Master Ivo, and we’ve drawn runes into her skin. She doesn’t want to lose another child.”
“Then you must pray often,” she choked, and the keeper studied her, his gaze morose. “I would pray too, if I knew how,” she added.
“Do you feel the sun on your shoulders?” Dagmar asked.
Ghost wore a scarf over her head, the front deeply cowled to keep the sun from her face. She loved its warmth on her cheeks, but her skin blistered easily and never deepened in color to protect itself. Dagmar’s skin had grown brown through the warm season, though he spent less time out of doors than she. He should be pasty and pocked, like the moon, but he wasn’t. She’d seen some of the other keepers, but only a few. Many stayed inside the temple walls, guarded by the king’s forces on the ramparts and at the gates. The few she’d seen were almost as fair as she.
“Of course I feel the sun,” she answered, lifting her eyes to his.
“Do you feel the hum in the air?” Dagmar pressed.
“Yes. I feel it.”
“That’s God—Odin or Father Saylok or the Christ God. If he has a name, I’m not sure we know it. But I feel him . . . or her . . . like a presence at my back, guarding me and guiding me, and pushing me onward. It is easy for me to imagine God’s love. I have only to think about Bayr. About how deeply I love him, how much I would give to keep him from harm or pain, how my thoughts are never far from him, and how his happiness is my own.”
Ghost understood that. If she understood nothing else, she understood that.
“Mayhaps we each have our own god, like our own mother, someone who gave birth to our soul and watches over us until our soul returns,” she mused.
“Mayhaps,” he said, gentle. “Did you know your mother?”
“No. She must have . . . been afraid of me. I was found in the woods, wrapped in a blanket, left to die. But I didn’t. An old woman found me—she was almost blind and didn’t realize I looked as I do. She was lonely, and her children were all grown. I stayed with her until I was five. When she died, her son made me a servant in his house. I’ve been in many houses since then. These last years are the first time I’ve ever lived alone.”
Compassion shone from his face, but the keeper did not dwell on her past.
“I remember my mother. But only briefly. She died young,” he murmured.
“Life is not kind to women,” Ghost sighed.
“My sister said the same thing. But life is not especially kind to men either. Life is suffering, and we all suffer.”
“Mayhaps God did not love your sister as much as his other children?” Ghost heard her bitterness and met his gaze with defiance.
“Or mayhaps he loved her more and could not be without her.”
“You see good where there is none,” Ghost whispered, moved.
“Even amid the suffering, the good is not hard to find,” he said, his eyes soft on her colorless face.
“Will life be kind to Alba?” Ghost knew her wistfulness caught him off guard, and she looked away. She always tried not to ask after the girl, but she sometimes couldn’t help herself. She thought the keeper took her interest as general, the interest anyone might have in a princess, in the only girl child, as so many in the village referred to her.
“If Bayr has any say in the matter, life will not dare harm her.” Dagmar smiled. He rose and prepared to go. She was never ready for him to leave.
“How do I pray, Keeper?” she called after him.
“Just speak. Talk to the sky as though you talk to a friend.”
Ghost frowned as she watched Dagmar lope away. Then she turned her eyes to the hills and the sheep, her thoughts heavy and her heart light. She would talk to her god the way she talked to Dagmar. After all, he was her only friend.
The boy had grown considerably. He was only twelve but looked like a man. He was not yet as tall as Dagmar, but his hands and feet were huge, his shoulders broad. From a distance, Ghost thought it was the keeper, come to visit. Bayr moved like his uncle, his back straight and his stride fluid, but his hair was not shorn and his clothes were different—a tunic of gray and hose a few shades darker. Still, it was the child he carried on his shoulders that had Ghost clutching her chest and leaning heavily on the staff she carried when she tended the herd. Ghost knew the infant she had pushed from her body—she visited the infant in her memories every day—but in five years, Alba had changed so much she was unrecognizable. The baby had disappeared. She’d taken on a new form and become someone else.
“We’ve . . . come . . . t-to . . . visit.” Bayr’s smile was open, his eyes full of light, and Ghost nodded, a jerking nod that must have made her look like an old woman having a fit. His duties at Alba’s side had kept him from visiting her all these long years.
“Th-this is Alba,” he said carefully, pulling the girl from his shoulders and setting her on the ground. She was slight for a girl of five, but taller than Ghost had expected. Alba clung to Bayr’s hand and peered up at Ghost, her eyes as dark as her hair was light. The contrast was beautiful, and Ghost bowed so their faces were level and she could study her closer.
“Hello, Alba,” she greeted the girl, finding her voice and steeling her heart. She would not weep and scare the children. She wanted them to come back.
“And Dagmar? Is he coming too?” she asked, needing something to say, needing his steady presence.
“No. The k-keepers are g-gathered in . . . s-supplication,” Bayr spit out, and flushed at the difficulty the word represented. “The queen . . . is l-laboring.”
“Mother is having a baby,” Alba added, the words flowing from her mouth without hitch or hiccup. Clearly, spending time with the boy had not harmed her language skills.
“N-n-no one will m-m-miss us,” Bayr murmured. “And the q-queen is suffering. Her pain is . . . our p-pain.”
Ghost nodded once, understanding. Bayr did not want Alba to hear the queen’s cries. She turned to the sheep, wanting to distract Bayr and Alba from their worries, and introduced many of the woolly beasts by name, telling the little girl and her looming protector about their antics and their moods, their personalities and their peculiarities, even pointing out the colors in their coats.
Alba liked the little lambs and made friends with them immediately, her hand outstretched, her voice soft.
“All th-the animals l-l-love h-her,” Bayr said.
Ghost nodded, overcome with quiet joy as she watched the child who moved among the sheep as though she’d spent her whole life tending herds. Ghost had given her something of herself after all. One hour stretched into two, but instead of leaving, Bayr called to Alba and announced they would have lessons in the sunshine.