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- Woven Hurdles, Swept Ash
- A Hearing at the Dark of the Moon
- Nobody Stops You
The Mercy Fold
Where the longest trail in the Nightbough ends, the trees fall back from a round clearing ringed with woven hurdles of willow and bramble, tall as a man's shoulder and bound with pale cloth. This is the Mercy Fold. The ground inside is bare, hard-packed and grey, swept every dusk into a broad circle of ash with a single flat stump at its heart, worn smooth by hands rather than by weather. There is no door in the hurdles, only a gap where the trail enters, and the pale cloth is tied at the height of a kneeling person's eyes.
It is the Softstep's meeting ground, and four rites are kept inside the hurdles, each with its own name and its own hour. Outsiders know them only from what carters and runaways say, and what they say agrees more than anyone would like.
The Sweeping comes at dusk. The most junior member sweeps the ground bare with a twig broom and draws the ash into its circle, so that the floor is blank for the night. At dawn the elders walk the circle barefoot and read it. Every print is a visitor, and the print of a boot, a trap-jaw or a hound is entered as a debt against whoever left it.
The Warding Smoke is lit at nightfall. Fires of dried dung burn in a ring just outside the hurdles, and the rank smoke drifts across the clearing and does not lift. Deer, hare and fowl bed down inside the Fold because of it, for wolf, fox and bear will not cross the smoke, and the Softstep will not harm even the wolf. The dung is gathered by hand each morning along the trails by the Gleaners, the lowest rank, with baskets and without gloves. The Softstep hold that a mercy that costs nothing is no mercy.
The Calling of Names comes at the dark of the moon. The whole company stands on the ash in silence while the names of the creatures lost that season are called, one at a time: the doe in the snare, the owl in the felled tree. After each creature's name a second name is called, that of the person held to account.
The Hearing follows for any who are named and brought in. They are set on the flat stump and heard once. The company does not answer. Those who have been heard are said to leave by a different trail from the one they came in on, and some are said not to leave at all.
The Fold is not guarded. A traveller who wanders into it by mistake finds only a quiet place, a very clean floor and the unpleasant sense of having been expected.
It is the Softstep's meeting ground, and four rites are kept inside the hurdles, each with its own name and its own hour. Outsiders know them only from what carters and runaways say, and what they say agrees more than anyone would like.
The Sweeping comes at dusk. The most junior member sweeps the ground bare with a twig broom and draws the ash into its circle, so that the floor is blank for the night. At dawn the elders walk the circle barefoot and read it. Every print is a visitor, and the print of a boot, a trap-jaw or a hound is entered as a debt against whoever left it.
The Warding Smoke is lit at nightfall. Fires of dried dung burn in a ring just outside the hurdles, and the rank smoke drifts across the clearing and does not lift. Deer, hare and fowl bed down inside the Fold because of it, for wolf, fox and bear will not cross the smoke, and the Softstep will not harm even the wolf. The dung is gathered by hand each morning along the trails by the Gleaners, the lowest rank, with baskets and without gloves. The Softstep hold that a mercy that costs nothing is no mercy.
The Calling of Names comes at the dark of the moon. The whole company stands on the ash in silence while the names of the creatures lost that season are called, one at a time: the doe in the snare, the owl in the felled tree. After each creature's name a second name is called, that of the person held to account.
The Hearing follows for any who are named and brought in. They are set on the flat stump and heard once. The company does not answer. Those who have been heard are said to leave by a different trail from the one they came in on, and some are said not to leave at all.
The Fold is not guarded. A traveller who wanders into it by mistake finds only a quiet place, a very clean floor and the unpleasant sense of having been expected.