“Now down!” she heard him call.
Sliding partway, grasping tree roots to keep from falling, she stumbled down the treacherous path to the bottom. She wiped her tearstained face with muddy hands and hurried to where Einar was waiting.
“Good,” he told her. “Now do it again.”
Each day through the summer she ran the hill path. On fine days, the mist of the falls made rainbows, and she began to smile when she reached that place, instead of weeping as she had the first time. It began to feel not easy, but doable. She began to come down grinning and proud.
Einar grinned back at her. “You’re growing strong,” he said, then added, “for a girl.”
She glanced at him and saw that he was teasing her. His look was fond. He turned away quickly and tried to hide the fondness, but Claire knew. She had seen him look that way at a half-grown lamb prancing in the meadow on a midsummer afternoon, admiring its agile charm. She had seen him look that way at her, and knew there was a longing to his gaze.
When she felt she had mastered the path, he made it harder. He tied her hands together so that she couldn’t use them to steady herself. When the spring moisture had dried, the path became gritty and treacherous in a different way. She couldn’t grip it with her toes. When she fell, bruising her shoulder because she couldn’t break the fall with her tethered hands, he taunted her. When she wept, he ignored her. She dried her tears and ran.
One afternoon Bryn, her baby in a sling on her chest, stopped by the hut to get a remedy for a spider bite on her ankle. Alys and Claire looked at the hot, swollen sore. “Comfrey root oil,” Alys told her. “I have it here. Sit while I heat it.”
Bryn handed little Elen to Claire. “I’ll take her outside,” Claire said, and she carried the sturdy, curly-headed girl to the dooryard to show her some black-eyed Susans in bloom.
Einar appeared. He came every day now, if Claire didn’t run to the sheep meadow and meet him there.
“It’s Bryn’s baby,” she told him. “Isn’t she sweet?” She handed a picked flower to Elen, who grasped it in a fist and waved it in the air.
“Run with her,” Einar said.
Claire was startled, but she laughed. Then, holding the baby, she ran around the small dooryard. Elen waved her arms in delight.
“Let me feel her weight.” Einar took the baby from Claire. She could see that he had no experience with a human infant, though he was sure and facile with lambs. She watched as with his large hands under her, Einar assessed how heavy Elen was.
“You must start running with weight,” he said, and handed the baby back. “I’ll bring it tomorrow.”
The next day he was back with a crude leather sack half filled with rocks. He tied it to Claire’s back and told her to run the hill path. She did so, and arrived panting at the waterfall. She was tempted to throw a few of the rocks into the rushing torrent, to ease the burden for the run back down. But she didn’t. She ran with the weight, and then ran the path again, and found that her breathing changed, to accommodate the heaviness. After a few runs, the longer breaths she needed came naturally, and it was as if she had always carried it. Alys told her that it was the way of women, to tote a newborn and then adjust as it grew until by the time the child was plump and heavy, the weight seemed naught. Einar left a pile of rocks beside the base of the path and told her to add one more to the sack each day.
Her legs grew muscled and firm. She showed him, one day, how strong and sure they had become. He felt where she showed him, pressing his large hand against the taut, smooth skin above her ankle, and nodded. Then he left his hand there, encircling her leg, and they looked at each other for a moment before he took it away. She felt his fondness again, and her own for him, and the futility of it for them both. She could not stay here.
One morning Einar set a thick log on end. It reached to her knee.
“Step up on that,” he said.
She reached for his hand, needing it for support, but he backed away. Claire checked the log to be certain it was firm on the ground. Then she measured the height with her eyes, raised one leg up, placed it on the top of the log, shifted her weight, and picked up her other foot. But she lost her balance and fell back.
“Try again.”
All afternoon she stepped onto and down from the log. At first she held her arms wide, using them for balance. Then Einar approached with the coarse rope he had used to restrain her hands on the steep path.
“Wait,” she told him. “I don’t need my arms tied.” Firmly she held her own hands at her sides. Wobbling at first, she tested herself again and again until without moving her arms she could maintain her balance as she mounted the log.
“Good,” he said. The next day he brought a higher, narrower log.
Winter came. Outdoors, she ran and climbed on ice. He began to teach her to use a rope, to knot it and twirl it and fling it so that it caught on a rock or a branch. At first it caught things at random. Then, after a bit, she found she could aim with the noose of the rope, that she could choose a log or a bush and catch it precisely on most of her attempts. Then he made the noose smaller. He directed her to capture smaller things: a seedling pine reaching upward from a crevice; a stone balanced on a tree stump. He took away the thick, coarse rope and gave her a thin, woven cord that whistled when she spun it out into the cold air and snapped a twig with its tiny noose.
Inside the hut, in a corner that Alys had cleared for her, she walked back and forth on a piece of rope stretched taut between two posts, her toes gripping the rope, her breath even, her eyes focused, her arms at first stretched for balance, and then, as spring approached, her hands at her side and her movement steady and controlled. She walked the rope forward and backward. She stood on it still as a post: on one leg, then the other. Slowly she bent one knee, lowered herself, remained there poised, then rose again.
Yellow-wing twittered and pranced on his perch, excited as he watched her. Alys, watching, held her breath and then gasped at each new move.
But Claire was calm. She felt strong. She felt ready.
“Now?” she asked Einar.
Einar shook his head. “Next, we begin to strengthen your arms,” he said.
By the following spring, Bryn’s baby, Elen, was sturdy and walking. Bryn was expecting another and hoped for a boy. Bethan, Delwyth, and Eira were tall now, with long legs and secrets that made them whisper and giggle.