by M. R. Carey
I lifted it up high, like as it was a lit torch at lock-tide, and me standing at the gate. I said, “Acknowledge,” just as loud as I could. Then I waited.
Nothing happened, though I give it a good long time. I heard one of the seats creak, and someone made a noise in their throat like they wanted to cough but couldn’t because of the seriousness of it. Rampart Fire looked at me, expectant, and after a few seconds more she nodded. Meaning I should get to it.
“Accept command,” I said.
What followed was more of that same nothing. I made myself believe I could feel the gun moving, waking up, but it was only my hand getting sweaty and slipping on the grip because of the smoothness of it.
“New user,” I whispered. I only just could get the words out.
I realised something then that I never knowed before, though I’ve proved it many times since. The world isn’t nothing next to the stories we tell ourselves. It bends to any shape we want it to. I seen this moment in my thoughts a thousand times before my testing day finally come, and there wasn’t one of those times where the tech didn’t wake for me. I had heard Catrin hail me a Rampart, in dreams and wakeful wondering every day and every night since I first went into the Waiting House, as though she said it so loud I had heard the echoes before the words was ever said.
But if the world bends easy, which it does, sometimes it will whip back like a green branch and hit you in the face. That’s what it done to me then, so I was left standing like a fool with no ideas in my head, not even the idea of where I was and what come next.
You might wonder at this. After all, I told you enough times already that all our Ramparts was Vennastins, save for one man, Gendel, that was closest kin to them. Who was I to think I might beget a miracle? No one, is the answer. I was the smallest speck of dust in a world that was a thousand thousand times bigger than I even knowed it was, and I didn’t have no right to be treated like anything bigger than that.
But it’s when we’re smallest, when we’re young, that we most have the thought of ourselves as mightily important. A child – any child, I think – believes he stands plum in the middle of everything, and the sun at noon-day seeks him out so it will know where the zenith is.
Or if it’s not so for every child, at least it was so for me.
“Koli Waiting,” Catrin Vennastin said. “Wait no more. Man of Mythen Rood you are, and will be, under what name you choose.”
I was like to forget my name for a moment.
“Koli Woodsmith,” I said.
“Koli Woodsmith,” said everyone else, and I felt the sorrowing burden of it fall heavy across my shoulders. The burden of being nothing very much after all, and having no part to play in the larger doings of the world.
Spinner took my hand and pulled me back to take my place next to her. Otherwise I would of kept on standing there at the table, blocking Haijon’s way to it. She give my hand a squeeze, for solace, no doubt seeing my sadness on my face. And it did solace me, her being one of the onliest things outside my silly dreams that was real to me right then (though in truth I built other, sillier dreams on her).
Haijon was speaking his piece. His mother was asking him to choose.
He choosed the cutter, slipping his right hand into it even though when he played the stone game he throwed with his left.
“Acknowledge,” he told it.
The bar of metal that sit over his clenched fingers went from dull grey to shiny silver. The cutter made a sweet chiming noise, like a bell.
“Haijon Rampart,” Catrin said, “wait no more.”
Spinner was the first to cheer, but she was only a second or so ahead of the rest of the people in the room. A new Rampart was good news for everyone. The best news, because the tech was only ours as long as there was someone it would wake for, and without the tech we would not thrive.
I cheered too, for the same reason and for one more on top of that. Haijon was my friend and I was truly happy for him, even while I was still grieving on my own account.
That happiness wouldn’t last though. And nor would our friendship. I hold myself to blame for both those things, though not for the worse things that come after.
9
Everything changed for me after my testing, but not on that day. That day was celebration and holiday.
After all the cheering died down, Catrin hugged her son to her and said something to him that nobody else in the room could hear. She was smiling, holding to the back of his head like a mother would hold onto a newborn baby, and the smiling and the holding told me it was his mother spoke to him then, not Rampart Fire. And what she said was not for us.
So then we went from the Count and Seal into the recepting room, where beer and food was laid out for all that had come and where everyone could welcome us – Spinner and me no less than Haijon – into the life that we would own from then on. Into being fully growed, and being counted as one instead of just a little less than one.
Jil Reedwright had brung her pipes, and Mordy Holdfast his stringer, so there was music and also dancing. What I remember most about that day – or at least, after the moment when my name got spoke – is that I danced with Spinner three times, the piping fast and wild, my hand on her waist as she galloped and swung. I had liked dancing well enough before then, but this dancing seemed to come out of my heart in all directions into my body and into the world. I forgot my sorrow at not being found to be Rampart and just enjoyed being me.
At the end of the third dance, when Spinner kissed me tender on the cheek, I had no sense of it coming. “I love you, Koli,” she whispered in my ear. “You’re my best of friends.”
I kissed her back. She was taller than me, so I had to lean in and stretch up to do it, which made her laugh. “Should I lift you up?” she asked, teasing me. I would of been happy if she did, but I made pretend I was bigger than I was, pulling myself up onto the tips of my toes and pushing out my chest. “I’ll lift you, Spinner,” I said. “In one hand. And spin you over my head.”
“And when your back is broke, I’ll have nobody to dance with,” she said, laughing that much harder.
“You’ll have me,” Haijon said. He come up between us and put his hand on her shoulder. “I’d only be doing it for Koli, mind. So he didn’t feel so bad about letting you down.”
“Such a good man,” Spinner said, clasping her hands to her chest like she was marvelling at him. “Ramparts is just the best of us, and that’s all there is to it.”
She was teasing him like she teased me, but Haijon nodded, all serious. “Of course we are,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
He danced her away.
He didn’t dance her back again.
10
So Summer went on and I was stepping into my growed-up life. I had got to put my shoulder to the running of the mill now, just like Mull and Athen, and besides that take my part in all the share-works that was going on.
This being after the year’s turning, the worst of the Summer’s dangers was done with, but there was plenty of clearing still to be done inside the fence. There was also a pair of molesnakes that nested in one of the glasshouses and spawned before anyone saw they was there. Rampart Fire burned the litter out, but everyone in the village stood around in a ring to kill the fry as they scuttled away.
Haijon was Rampart Knife, in that share-work. It was the first time I seen him use the cutter, and he used it as well as ever his cousin Mardew did. But Mardew held out his hand straight after, and Haijon give the cutter back in view of everyone. The rules don’t bend on such a thing. The tech belongs to them that wakes it, but that’s in order of testing. If it waked to you first, then you get to keep it as long as you live. There isn’t anyone can claim it off of you. Mardew had been training Haijon in the cutter’s mysteries, and he let him handle it on this occasion to get the feel of it, but it was still his and he made sure everybody seen that.
There was a share-work rebuilding the outer lookout too. This was a building that stood on top of Cloughfo
ot Hill a hundred feet from the village. It was outside the fence but inside the stake-blind, which we called the half-outside. The outer lookout was different from the lookout inside the village – not so tall, but because it was up on a rise in the ground it still let you see further to the north and west than the main lookout did. We was meant to keep this area clear just like we did the ground behind the fence, but we had missed our mark a few times. Trees had grown into the wall of the lookout and they was starting to push the stones out of true. The Count and Seal decided it was time to make repair before the whole thing toppled down, but they made it a third choice – which is to say you could do it if there was nothing more urgent that had got to be done.
I put twenty days or some into that work, across July and August, hefting stones or mixing mortar as it might be needed. I liked it, mostly. Not so much at the start of the day, when the tower had a leftover stink from something that was sleeping up there, but that never lasted too long. It was a change from sawing wood, and though the work was hard I liked to see the wall growing up taller with each day’s labouring. Also, there was echo birds nesting in the roof of the lookout that cried back everything we said. So we would teach the birds to cry that Beren Sallow wet his pants, or Lari and Ban was tumbling, or whatever. The birds was so quick to pick up a cry, they would even join in with us if we striked up a song.
Spinner was there for a lot of those days too, and we worked together most companionable. I kept almost telling her how I felt about her, but not quite getting to it because a hillside in the Summer heat with ash-paint caking on your skin and sweat all stinking you up didn’t feel like the place for it.
I might of done it, all the same, if something else hadn’t of happened instead. One day we was working side by side, just the two of us, and talking away like the words was going to spoil if we didn’t get them said. It was the end of the day and we was the only ones there, which often happened. We seemed neither of us to be so very keen to go back at the end of each day’s work, her to the tannery and me to the mill.
The leaves that was left from those young trees was hanging down between us and the fence, but Mardew had cut the roots into pieces and then we had dug them out, so they couldn’t do us no harm now. The leaves was just like a curtain. We was as alone as we had ever been in our lives.
I don’t even remember what it was we was talking about, except that it was nothing much. All I was thinking of was how good it was to be with Spinner. To be close enough that I could smell her sweat, as though in a way I was breathing her into me.
I reached out my hand to grab hold of a bucket or something, and it touched her side. I started back, sudden like. I wasn’t meaning to touch her without no leave nor warning, and I didn’t want her to think I was.
Spinner turns to look at me. “What was that, Koli?” she asks me, putting her hands on her hips.
“It was…” I stammered. “It wasn’t anything.”
“Then why’d you jump back like you was burnt? I’m not hot to touch.” She put her hand on my cheek. “See? That doesn’t hurt now, does it?”
I didn’t know what to answer. I covered her hand with mine, and kept on looking in her eyes. It didn’t hurt, but it did burn somewhat.
She leaned in and kissed me on the mouth. There was a salt taste on her lips, from her working and sweating hard. It’s nothing much to tell, but I wondered at it. That Spinner had a taste, and I had tasted it.
She put her hand over mine, and then stroked it along my arm. Her skin looked so light next to mine. Like my brown arm was a branch of a tree, and her pink-white fingers was like the blossom of the same tree, moving in the wind.
And shortly after, I stopped thinking at all. I had kissed girls before, in the Summer-dance, and I had kissed a boy, that was Veso Shepherd. Veso hadn’t decided back then whether his love was for women or men, and he put both to the test somewhat. I had even tumbled with a girl once, when the fire was dying down and everyone took hands and walked off into the dark to carry on the dancing without any music. This was different though. For me it was, anyway. When Spinner took me into her, I was taken in whole and delivered to some other place. I don’t know how to say it better than that.
Afterwards we lay naked on our own shed-off clothes, arms around each other, and commenced to talk again.
“I been thinking about doing that a long while,” Spinner said. “And I’m glad I did.”
That give me a glow in my heart. I said I had been thinking about it too. “Yes,” Spinner said. “I knowed that, Koli. You didn’t think you was hiding it, did you? Dandrake help you if you ever need to keep a big secret.”
You might think that would of been a good time to tell my feelings, but I was sure in my heart that it wasn’t. It would of been like I was just trying to thank her for the tumble, and not meaning it. The words didn’t come out anyway.
Spinner seen I was abashed, and laughed me out of it. She kissed me, and I kissed her just as readily, and so we went back and forth a while until we both seen the sun was almost touching the ground and it was past time to go back inside the fence. We walked those hundred feet hand in hand, like lovers, but parted just before the gates and walked in like friends, our arms swinging at our sides.
It was one of the best days I had ever lived through, but I wonder still whether that coming together, sweet as it was, was the thing that kept me from speaking out when words might still of been to the purpose.
Probably not, I’m bound to say. The general belief was that Haijon was strongest out of all of us and I was fastest, but my best skill was always standing too long and deciding too late.
We said goodbye at the water tower, and I watched Spinner cross the gather-ground to the tannery before I turned onto the path that led down to the mill. I was angry with myself, a little, that I didn’t speak to her, but I promised myself I would take the next chance. Tomorrow would do, I thought. And like most people who think that, I was dead wrong. There’s only ever one day that matters, and it moves along with you.
11
I worked the next two days at the lookout, but Spinner never come. I stayed late each day, hoping I might see her again.
At the end of the second day, Haijon come walking out of the gates and climbed the hill to where I was sitting on the steps of the lookout. He brung a jug of beer that he dangled from one hand. “I thought this was a share-work, Koli,” he says, “yet here you sit on your own. So I brung you a little something to share.”
He sit down next to me, uncorked the jug and took a deep swig – then wiped the neck and handed it to me. I drunk deep. It was cold out of the ice house, and went down well. “Well, you can lend a hand if you want, Haijon,” I said, with a belch in the middle of the words. “There’s a shit bucket down there that won’t empty itself.”
Haijon grinned. “I’m Rampart Breakfast, not Rampart Shit-Bucket. Each man got a skill that’s his alone to tend and master, Koli. I’m thinking you might found yours.”
We drunk the beer and we joked about who had the most reason to empty the bucket, while the sun dropped down out of the sky and lights gun to be lit over in the village. We could see the glow of them between the leaves, almost like stars.
“I wanted to ask you something,” Haijon says to me.
“Go ahead,” I told him.
He give me a funny smile. Like he knowed I was going to laugh at him and he thought he might as well see the funny side of it too. “I think I might want to get married.”
I didn’t laugh at all. My thoughts was mostly dwelling on Spinner, and on the sweetness of being held by her. I couldn’t see no downside to marriage right then, as young as we was. “You should do it,” I said. “No girl is like to turn up her nose at being pair-pledged to Rampart Breakfast.”
“This girl might, Koli,” Haijon says. “She is as strong-willed as a boar with its back up. But I think I might ask her anyway. If so be the chance comes up. Maybe at next Summer-dance.”
“That’s a long time to wait, H
aijon. Some other man might jump in and win her heart before you stake your claim.” Then I suddenly thought of a girl we both knowed who was strong-willed, and a chilly feeling come over me. “What’s her name anyway?” I asked him.
“It’s Spinner,” he said. “I know, it seems crazy to think that way. We all been friends so long, it’s almost impossible to think of being something else instead. Only it wouldn’t be instead, Koli. It would be on top of that. We’d still be friends, but we’d be wedded too. Do you think I’m wandering in my wits?”
I had looked away as soon as he speak her name. I looked away still. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”
“But she’s the best there is, isn’t she? And we been through everything together. We tested together, even. I’m making up my mind to it, even as I say it.”
“You can make up your mind to it,” I said. “But maybe think it over before you do it.” I give a grin that was probably a mite sickly. “You know she and your sister don’t get along. You want to bring them under the same roof?”
“Lari?” Haijon looked at me blank, like I was just making sounds that wasn’t words. I think I was, really. “Lari won’t have a say in it, Koli. This is my heart, and my choosing.”
“Well, yes, it’s your heart,” I said. “And that’s a really important thing, Haijon. It’s not to be decided on a heel-turn.”
He frowned, like he was swallowing this down and it didn’t want to go. “I thought you said I should move fast in case some other man asked her before I did.”
That was when I thought it was someone else! I thought. I near to yelled it in his face. “Just wait until you’re sure,” I said. “Then when you’re sure, ask her.”
“You think she’ll say yes?” he asked me, all anxious.
“I don’t know, Haijon.” But I hope not. “All you can do is ask.” I hope not. “And, you know, stand by her choice, whatever it happens to be.” I hope not I hope not I hope not.
