Skin by Ilka Tampke

that you have not been made journeywoman.’
    ‘Why do you say so?’
    ‘Because you would look so fetching in the robes.’
    I shoved his arm and he collapsed onto the grass.
    ‘Because you have a mind that asks,’ he said, sitting up. ‘Like a river that finds
new paths. Such minds are rare as jewels. I am surprised it has not been recognised.’
    I reddened under his praise. ‘My tribespeople need me for other purposes.’
    ‘It is not for the tribespeople to determine. If the Mothers want you, they will
call you to journey.’
    ‘But skin is needed to journey—’ I flinched, almost confessing myself.
    ‘Of course,’ he said, frowning.
    I took a deep breath, wondering how long it would be until he discovered how far
from a journeywoman I was. Until that moment, I would drink of the cup he offered.
‘Taliesin, can you tell me of the Kendra?’
    His eyebrows lifted. ‘You ask me of your own Kendra?’
    ‘But Albion is without a Kendra.’
    He looked at me with an expression I could not read.
    ‘Is it so illicit a truth?’ I ventured. ‘Might no one speak of it?’
    ‘How is there no Kendra?’ he interrupted, his voice sharp. ‘What has happened?’
    ‘I don’t know—’ I faltered. ‘The township is forbidden to speak of her. I am told
she is lost…drowned. There is no other.’ I had gone too far with this question. He
would learn too much of my ignorance.
    ‘Drowned,’ he repeated to the river. ‘Then what holds your people to the Mothers?’
    ‘Why…the same that holds yours…’ I floundered. ‘The journeypeople?’ I thought of
Llwyd’s distress, of Cookmother’s words. ‘Perhaps…not enough.’
    Taliesin shook his head, his mood suddenly as dark as when I arrived. ‘You know that
the Kendra is the bridge! If she is lost, there is no hope.’
    With every question I risked exposure but I had to know. ‘No hope for what?’
    He would not meet my eye. Agitation rose off him like heat. ‘No hope for me.’
    His words made no sense. ‘Why?’ I urged. ‘What does she bridge?’
    His expression was incredulous. ‘Surely you know? She opens the gates between the
hardworld and the realm of the Mothers. She stands with the Mothers as they are singing.’
    ‘And…’ I breathed, ‘what does she do?’
    He stared. ‘She sings.’
    ‘How do you know this?’ I asked.
    ‘How do you not?’

    I hurried home through the warm evening, my head spinning with him. I could not fathom
how he did not know of our Kendra’s loss or why his own hopes hung upon it.
    He was as dazzling and unfathomable as the night sky: in equal measure splendid and
despondent, vital and injured, tender and cruel. He had an Elder’s wisdom, yet the
wariness of a child, and in the force of these splits, the whole earth turned within
his sprawling frame.

    It was almost dark when I stole though the south gates of Caer Cad, my pockets stuffed
with herbs, hastily picked.
    Bebin stood as I slipped into the kitchen.
    ‘Tidings, sister,’ I greeted her. ‘Where is Cookmother?’
    ‘With the queen, thanks be.’ She pulled me outside so that Cah and Ianna would not
hear us. ‘I do not know what you have been doing these past turns of the sun, but
I cannot explain your absences to Cookmother much longer,’ she whispered.
    ‘Is she angry, Bebin?’
    ‘I will not lie—today she smelled smoke, but if you settle quickly we can assure
her that you have been returned an hour or so hence.’
    ‘Thank you,’ I breathed in relief.
    She paused, glancing around the queen’s compound, then lowered her voice. ‘Where
have you been, Ailia?’
    ‘Only harvesting,’ I said. ‘The heat—it brings such lushness of growth.’ I had to
look away from her doubtful eyes. I had never lied to her before. I had never lied
before meeting Taliesin. And yet the lies were in service of something pure: my knowledge
of a man who was awakening me. Surely no harm could come of it?

    It was nearly the hour for sleep. We were seated around