The Returning by Christine Hinwood

Alone. Strange.” Cam’s knees unbent, hair and arm and sleeve lifting out of Acton’s sight.
    â€œDo you help me here?” said someone, from behind Acton. “Aye, set her in gentle-like.”
    There was a spattering sound of soil, growing heavier. Acton tucked his head against his knees.
    â€œWho does have a drop for the beast? To see her on her way to the Goddess?”
    â€œHere.”
    Liquid splatted against earth. Acton took the arrow in his hands and clenched them tight around it, then stood up and looked. Jinn was a mound. The edges of the turves they’d laid over the grave hardly showed.
    â€œNow, Acton Mansto,” said Da Palfreyman. “And you all. Do you get on home.”
    Acton walked along the road, alone, the whole of the village still standing there about his post. He walked into the shadows of the plane trees that grew on the bend of the road, and out of them again into Kayforl’s high street. He walked and he thought. He thought of Corban Farmer as a child. He thought of the war that had taken his father, Corban’s sons, Cam Attling’s right arm. He thought of Isla Caross and Minnet, of Corban Farmer’s man, and of the talk of fetching the new Lord to this. He was past the village proper. He thought of Jinn, and turned his face for home. But his feet had their own ideas and took him back through the village, back up the Ridge Road. No, he bid them, but they were deaf, and they walked him past the gatepost—“Jinn.” He bowed to her, the grave—and down the track to Corban Farmer’s house, the lamps shining gold through the empty windows and lighting the night.

Ban Coverlast Courts

    C AM DOVE TO the left: rose up on his toes, pushed off, and hit the water canted to his uninjured side. A flat tongue of rock lapped into the water hole. He hauled himself onto it. “If I . . .”
    Ban watched him set his right shoulder forward, tip his head to the right. Watched him dive left.
    â€œAnh.” Cam surfaced again. His arm gave way as he tried to pull himself out of the water again, and he had to squirm onto the rock on his belly.
    Ban reached to help, stopped before Cam could snarl at him. “You do need to practice it, that is all.”
    â€œHuh.” Cam lay spread-limbed and gasping on the rock. “Practice.”
    â€œIt is not so very long, since . . .”
    â€œNo.” Cam looked at him and, for a moment, through him.
    Ban flipped himself onto his stomach so that sun ran scorching on his back. “You—” He mimicked Cam, right shoulder curving over.
    â€œAye?”
    â€œThat is why you are off balance, trying to protect it. Pull your right shoulder back.”
    What must Cam do, but get up and dive again.
    â€œBetter,” said Ban, surprised. Cam only stood over Ban and dripped chill river water onto his back. “Ai!” Ban rolled out of reach.
    â€œTell me how to swim, and you sitting here in the sun handing out directions.”
    Ban grabbed Cam’s ankle and pulled his foot out from under him. “Yah.”
    Â 
    IT WAS BAN’S chore to milk the goats. Goats were different from cows. Evil and stupidly clever. He liked them for that. The nanny turned those long-pupiled eyes that looked all wickedness on him and tried to tip the pail.
    â€œI don’t like it.” Ardow had followed Ban to the goat shed, to help him with the milking. “You spending so much time with that Cam Attling, I don’t like it.” Ardow was third from youngest, but that made him good as Lord over Ban, the youngest. Over Ban and Hale, as Jerric was of Ardow, and Marrister of Jerric, and so on to Dance, who was eldest of all eleven of them.
    He means , thought Ban, that I did not help today . Which made him feel bad. He did not know how to tell Ardow that, so he said, “What does it matter to you?” knowing it to be wrong.
    Ardow only said, “He’s come back very wild,