The Great Alta Saga Omnibus

by Jane Yolen

  The ballads that Magon cites in the section on historical balladry are of little interest tunewise, as they are derivative of famous standing ballads of later composition. As to their historicity—well, he simply offers the same old shaky thesis about the White Goddess, the albino girl of exceptional height and strength who single-handedly both destroyed and saved the Alta worship system. Magon states this thesis but offers no more historical evidence when talking about the ballads except the internal evidence of the rhymes themselves, which any scholar knows is difficult to count on given the mutability of folk rhyme. We should as soon trust legends.

  As to the dialectic songs, such as the infamous “Come, Ye Women,” with its preposterous pornographic double entendres on the words “counte” and “lie”—it has already been well proved by von Tassle, Temple, and others that this song is a nineteenth-century fake, composed at a time when feminist agitators were once more on the rise throughout the Isles, linking themselves backward in time with the Alta Luxophists.

  So once again Magon’s reputation as an academic and scholar has been proved to be a tissue of thinly woven cloth, the threads tattered and worn.

  THE STORY:

  Walking through the meadow proved to be more work than either Jenna or Pynt had thought. If they went straight across, they would leave a trail of crushed lily bells that even a child might follow, and Catrona’s first rule in the woods had been: No tracks, no trouble. Besides, the ground was spongy and it made loud sucking noises as they walked, noises which provoked Pynt to giggles. So they backtracked and went, instead, along the tree line that circled the enormous sward.

  By the time the sun was directly overhead, they had gotten only a third of the way, and the flower-covered green still stretched endlessly before them.

  “I have never seen an ocean,” Pynt grumbled as they marched along. “But it cannot be any larger than this.”

  “Why do you think it is known as the Sea of Bells?” Jenna asked.

  “I thought that was just a name, like the ‘Old Hanging Man.’ It takes a great deal of imagination to see a man’s face in that rock,” Pynt said.

  “How would you know? You have not seen any men.”

  “I have, too.”

  “When?”

  “When we were helping at Selden. At the flood. They are a hairy lot.”

  “Lumpy, too,” Jenna said, walking with an exaggerated swagger.

  Pynt giggled.

  By evening they could see a faint smudge on the horizon which Jenna thought might be trees.

  “The end of it, I think.”

  “I hope.”

  “We can camp here tonight and make it to the end of the Sea of Bells by midday tomorrow.”

  Pynt sighed. “If I never see a white lily bell again it will be too soon.”

  Jenna nodded her agreement.

  “White is a boring color.”

  “Thank you,” Jenna said, flipping the end of her braid into Pynt’s face.

  Pynt grabbed the braid and yanked it. “Boring, boring, boring,” she taunted.

  Jenna pulled back until the braid stretched between them, then suddenly stepped forward and doubled over, butting her head into Pynt’s stomach. Pynt sat down on the ground quite hard, but as she had never let go of the braid, she pulled Jenna down with her. They both burst into laughter.

  “Now … I … know …” said Jenna, in between deep breaths, “why the first thing warriors do after their final Choosing is to cut their hair.”

  “You could tuck it into your shirt.”

  “And then it would stick out of my tunic like a tail!”

  They both began to laugh again.

  Pynt tried to look serious and failed. “You could be known as the White Beast of Selden Hame.”

  Jenna shrugged out of her pack and unbuckled her sword. She stood up and crouched over, swinging her arms low enough so that her knuckles grazed the ground. “I am the Beast. Fear me,” she said in a low, growling voice.

  Pynt gave a high-pitched scream, like the squeak of a wood rat. “Oh, do not hurt me, White Beast,” she cried out in mock fear. She dropped her own pack and sword, then began running around in circles. “Oh, help me! Help me! The Beast is here!”

  Jenna chased her in ever-decreasing circles until at last they collapsed together in a tangle of arms and legs, with Jenna on top, laughing.

  Jenna got up and pulled Pynt to her feet, giving her a fierce hug. “I am glad you found me, Pynt. I am.”

  Later in the evening they camped on the ground because there had been no cat sign or bear sign or sign of anything larger than a rabbit. Pynt uncharacteristically talked of her fears as the small fire crackled and the thin line of smoke unwound like a gray thread from a skein.

  “I am sometimes afraid that I will not be brave in a real fight, Jenna. Or that I will laugh at the wrong moment. Or …”

  “I am sometimes afraid that you will never shut up and go to sleep,” Jenna mumbled.

  “I am sometimes afraid that …” Pynt continued, ignoring Jenna’s comment. But when she realized that Jenna had fallen asleep, she sighed, turned her back to the fire, and went to sleep herself.

  They rose to a morning so fogged over that they could not see the meadow, though they had slept not ten feet from it under the overhang of trees. The fog seemed to get inside of them as well. They found themselves whispering and moving about on tiptoe, as cautious as little animals in the undergrowth.

  “No twig snapping today,” Jenna said, her voice scarcely audible.

  “None,” Pynt agreed.

  They collected their gear and buried the fire, brushing its remains into the dirt so that there was no sign of their overnight stay. Jenna rebraided her hair and Pynt ran quick fingers through her black curls. Then, squatting on their heels, knees touching, they whispered their plans.

  “It will be slow going until the fog clears,” said Jenna, her voice hissing on the word slow.

  “If it clears,” answered Pynt.

  “It will clear,” said Jenna. Then, as an afterthought, she added, “It has to.”

  “Do you remember the story Little Domina told us?” Pynt asked. “We must have been eight or nine years old. When we camped out and she scared us so much, you got sick and threw up your dinner.”

  “And you wet your blanket and cried all night.”

  “I did not.”

  “You did. Only I was not sick and I never threw up.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  Jenna was quiet for a moment. “The story was about a Fog Demon. With a monstrous snout and wide horns.”

  “It strangled runners by stuffing streamers of mist down their throats,” Pynt added.

  “It was just a story,” Jenna put in quickly. “We were silly to be so frightened. We were very young.”

  “Then if it is just a story, why are we still sitting here?” Pynt asked.

  “We could walk,” Jenna said. “And not run.”

  “Yesssssss,” hissed Pynt.

  “It is only a story,” said Jenna.

  “And the fog will be lifting soon anyway,” said Pynt. “It always does.”

  There was a sudden crackling sound from the woods, as if a number of twigs were broken at once.

  “What was that?” asked Pynt.

  “A rabbit?” Jenna’s voice was uncertain.

  “A Fog Demon?”

  There was a scrabbling behind them. Neither of them dared to move. A red squirrel ran up to Jenna’s foot, stood up on its hind legs, and chittered at her. Then it ran off, scurrying in a zigzag pattern back toward the woods.

  “A squirrel,” said Jenna, relief evident in her voice. She stood. “We are only frightening ourselves this way. There is nothing out there but the forest and …”

  “And that boring meadow,” said Pynt, standing and buckling on her sword. “Now, if only we knew which way the boring meadow lies …”

  “That way,” said Jenna, pointing.

  “No, that way,” said Pynt, pointing
in the opposite direction.

  They were still arguing when a slight breeze lifted the edge of the fog like a hand lifting a comforter and they could see the meadow’s edge, with the weak sun, a ghostly white, sitting on the horizon’s lip.

  “That way,” they said together, pointing in a direction that neither of them had guessed before, away from the sun, westward and slightly north.

  But the fog did not disappear. In fact, it settled more firmly around them, tucking them in. The result was not comfort but a cold, continuing layer of fear. They stuck to the edge of the forest and whenever they halted, even for a moment, they set their swords down on the ground pointing in the direction they were to continue in, the only steady markers they had.

  The birds were still or had long since flown out of the fog. The small animals had all gone to earth. A silent, motionless white world surrounded them and nothing they did seemed to make a difference. The silence was broken only by the shuffling of their feet through the leaves and the sound of their breathing. They walked shoulders touching, afraid to lose contact with each other, even afraid to stop talking, another tenuous link in the fog.

  “I do not like it,” Pynt said, every few feet.

  After the tenth time, Jenna ignored Pynt’s complaint, babbling instead about life back in the Hame and about her anger at Mother Alta. Pynt’s antiphonal response broke in at regular intervals.

  By lunch they still had not reached their goal, or at least they assumed it was lunch, for both their stomachs growled at once. It was a loud, unlikely noise in the fog.

  “I have nothing left to eat in my pack,” Jenna said. “And there is only a little milk in my flask. It is quite sour.”

  “I do not even have that,” complained Pynt. “I was counting on ferns today, and mushrooms, and perhaps a squirrel for tonight.”

  “We will find nothing in this fog,” Jenna said. “So we will just have to go hungry.”

  “In another day we could have cheese. From your sour milk!” Pynt tried to laugh at her own feeble joke, but the fog thinned the sound until it was but a hollow mockery.

  They did not stop but walked on, their remarks to each other less and less frequent, as if a Fog Demon had, indeed, stoppered their mouths with streamers of mist.

  Once Pynt tripped over an exposed tree root, falling heavily onto her knees. When she rolled up a pant leg, she clicked her tongue at the large bruise already purpling her right knee. Moments later, Jenna walked into a low, overhanging branch and spots, like black blossoms, bloomed before her eyes.

  “You are too tall,” Pynt whispered. “That branch sailed miles over my head.”

  “You are too small, so things on the ground rise up to meet you,” Jenna answered.

  It was their first exchange in almost an hour.

  And still they walked.

  The fog began to grow darker, as if it were nighttime instead of day. Their shirts were soaked and Pynt’s curls had plastered in wet tendrils against her back. Their leather vests and leggings smelled dank and sour.

  “Is it night already?” whispered Pynt. “How long have we been walking?”

  “I have no idea,” Jenna said. “And I do not—wait!” She put her hand on Pynt’s arm, drawing her close. “Do you hear that?”

  Pynt strained into the mist. “Hear what?”

  Jenna was silent for a moment longer, turning her head back and forth as if trying to catch a sound. “That!”

  There was a low, thrashing noise behind them and then, as if on the thrasher’s trail, a high, faint yip-yip-yipping.

  “A cat?”

  “Too noisy.”

  “A bear?”

  “Not noisy enough.”

  “Is that meant to be comforting?”

  “It is meant to be truthful. Hush.” The sound had moved away from them and Jenna turned completely around trying to locate it again.

  “Gone,” she said. “Whatever it was, it is gone now.”

  “I counted two whatevers,” said Pynt. “Not one.”

  “Is that meant to be comforting?” Jenna asked.

  “It is meant to be truthful,” Pynt said.

  They walked on.

  When the sound came again, it was somehow in front of them. Or else they had gotten turned around. Neither of them was certain.

  “There it is,” whispered Jenna.

  “There they are,” Pynt said at the same time.

  The thrashing was closer, as if twigs and brush, brambles and briars, were being knocked about with careless disregard for the trail. And along with the thrashing was the sound of heavy, frantic breathing. Farther away, something sounding very much like an enormous animal charging through the woods was accompanied by a thunderous cry. “Garoooooom! Garoooooooom!”

  Instinctively, Jenna and Pynt shrugged out of their packs and stood back-to-back, their swords in one hand, knives in the other.

  “Oh, Jenna, I am terribly afraid,” Pynt whispered.

  “You would be stupid not to be,” Jenna whispered back.

  “Are you afraid?”

  “I am not stupid,” Jenna said.

  Something larger than a cat and smaller than a bear scrambled out of the fog, tumbling at their feet, and breathing in high, sobbing gasps.

  Jenna bent down, knife in her right hand leading the way. Her heart was thud-thudding so loudly in her breast, she was sure Pynt could hear it. She stared into the mud-stained face of a boy who could not have been more than fifteen or sixteen years old.

  “Who …” she began, her tongue suddenly stuttering over the familiar syllables. Bright eyes, wide, frightened, and incredibly blue, stared back at her.

  “Merci …” the boy cried. “Sisters of Alta, ich crie merci. Ich am thi mon.” His voice was ragged and torn.

  “What is it saying?” whispered Pynt from behind Jenna.

  For a moment Jenna could not speak; then she looked over her shoulder at Pynt. “It is a boy. Slightly older than us. And he is speaking in the old tongue, though I cannot think why.”

  The boy sat up, his fear tempered by curiosity. “Isn’t that how you Altites speak? That’s what I was taught. And that if I ever needed aid from you, I was to say Merci, ich crie merci, ich am thi mon and you’d be forced by your vows to help me.”

  “We have not taken our vows yet,” said Pynt. “We are only thirteen years old.”

  “Only thirteen? But she …” He gestured toward Jenna. “She looked older.” He stared at Jenna, then shrugged. “My mistake. It must have been the white hair.”

  Pynt spat to one side. “You know nothing, boy.”

  “I know a lot,” he argued. “And I’ll know a lot more when …” He hesitated and let the sentence trail away.

  “No one speaks in the old tongue except the priestess,” Jenna said. “And in prayers. Or when we read from the Book.”

  “The Book of Light?” He seemed to have forgotten his fear in his excitement. “Have you seen it? Have you touched it? Have you read it? Or …” He seemed to search around for the right words, then shrugged and plunged ahead. “Or can you read?”

  “Of course we can read,” Jenna said with disgust. “Do you take us for savages?”

  The boy shrugged again, this time in a kind of apology, and stood. Just as he got to his feet, there was a thunderclap of noise nearby, and an enormous double-headed horned creature burst out of the fog screaming indecipherable curses.

  “Oh-oh!” muttered the boy, scrambling away from them and disappearing once more into the fog.

  But Pynt and Jenna stood their ground.

  “Back to me!” Jenna cried, and Pynt moved immediately to stand with her.

  At Jenna’s cry, the creature reared up once, towering above them, a black monster in the swirl of white fog. Then it charged toward them, a long, sharp weapon scything down from above.

  “Duck!” Pynt screamed, scrabbling under the musky-smelling belly of the beast and coming up the other side. She thrust her sword toward the horned head of the creature. Leapi
ng at the last, she hit something and crashed at the same moment into its huge, sweaty body. For a moment the breath was knocked from her and she fell backward onto her pack, spilling its contents. She pushed herself into a desperate somersault to get out of the way of the beast’s flailing legs, and when she stood again, her sword was gone. Whether it was in the creature’s neck or lying on the ground somewhere, she could not have said.

  The great animal lay on its side, and all Pynt could see in the fog were its struggles to get up again. Then she heard the clang of steel on steel, and she made her way quickly around the beast toward the sound.

  Jenna and another horned creature were in full battle. It was the ringing of their swords against each other that Pynt had heard. For a moment she did not understand, and then in sudden illumination realized that the horned creature had been the rider. What had fallen had been its steed, which was even now struggling to its feet.

  But Jenna seemed to be losing the fight, for the demon was bigger and stronger than she. Forgetting her own fears, Pynt ran silently behind the hulking horned fighter, bent down, and threw herself against its knees. The backs of its legs were fleshy, but when she grabbed the front, she found they were unbending and hard, as if the creature wore leathern armor. She pushed against its knees again and this time it fell heavily backward on top of her. At the last minute, she reached around and knifed it in the thigh.

  Jenna leaped on top of them both and thrust her sword unerringly into the creature’s neck.

  The demon shuddered once, made a small mewing sound, and was still.

  “What … what kind of creature is it?” Pynt asked, when Jenna had rolled the heavy body off her. Her arms ached and both her legs felt as if they had weights attached. There was a sharp pain in her side. “Is it a Fog Demon?”

  Jenna was breathing hard. Her sword still thrust awkwardly from the creature’s throat. She squatted by the body, put her face in her hands, and wept.

  Pynt crawled over to her and put her arms around Jenna’s legs. “Why are you crying?” she asked. “Why now, when it is all over?”