The Great Alta Saga Omnibus

by Jane Yolen

“He can have my cape,” Scillia said.

  “Give me your jacket, boy,” the man said to Jem, ignoring Scillia’s offer.

  “Wouldn’t Scillia’s cape be better?”

  “You young snot! She was in the water herself after that cat, and you still wetting your pants on shore.”

  “I never!” Jem said. But he handed over his jacket quickly. Then he asked, his voice suddenly sly, “If you were close enough to see all that, why weren’t you in the river, too?”

  Scillia stared at the man, her face full of the same question.

  He shrugged. “I had my bow out and an arrow nocked, boy. I was waiting for a shot that wouldn’t hit your brother. But then your sister waded in with her cudgel and the cat was gone downstream before I could let it fly. You can go back and pick up my gear. I dropped it and came at a run.” He gestured back along the river bank with his head. “I was out hoping for some deer meat. I didn’t expect to be carting home such a young buck!” He laughed. “Up you come, my lad.” He picked up Corrie easily in his arms and walked along the river side.

  Scillia trotted next to him, holding on to Corrie’s hand.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Jem ran back, found the bow and arrows on the trail, gathered them up, then followed quickly after.

  THE TALE:

  Cat was sleeping in a tree by the river when he heard a call for help. Looking down, he saw Boy being swept along by the water.

  “Whatever are you doing?” asked Cat, arching his back and walking to the end of the limb.

  “I am drowning,” Boy cried. “Pray give me a hand.”

  “As I am a cat, I have no hands, only paws,” said Cat. “And how do I know you will thank me for what I do? Besides, water is not my element, and the river is much too cold this time of year. And …”

  But by the time Cat’s excuses were counted, Boy had drowned.

  Moral from the South Dales: Help first, chat later.

  Moral from the Northern Provinces: If you cannot swim, do not go near the water.

  Garunian adage: Never trust a cat to do a dog’s job.

  THE STORY:

  They met one of Marek’s men halfway back to the inn.

  “What goes?” he cried out the moment he spotted them, then came at a crashing run.

  “A tussle with a mountain cat,” the laughing man said. “And a plunge into the river. But he’s a tough lad. He’ll have scars to show his mam.”

  “His … mam …” the guard spluttered, and Scillia had to cover her mouth with her hand to keep from giggling aloud.

  “My mother is …” Jem began, drawing himself up proudly.

  “Jem!” Scillia cautioned, but it was too late.

  “My mother is Queen Jenna,” Jem announced. But if he thought this news would devastate the man who had so recently been calling him names, he was mistaken.

  “I know,” the laughing man said. “We all know around here. But if the Anna wishes to see her old mates, and do it in private, we can all turn a blind eye.”

  Scillia rounded on him. “You knew when you … you … you …” Her blush deepened.

  “I did not know who you were till the captain claimed you,” he said. “So the compliment stands, lass.”

  Scillia thought he must have known when he had seen her empty sleeve, and she couldn’t decide which was worse, his knowing or his not knowing.

  Just then Marek himself appeared on the trail. “By Alta’s Hairs!” he called and ran toward them. “Is he hurt? Is it bad?”

  By then even Corrie was willing to attempt conversation. “I’ll have scars,” he said, an obvious pride in his voice. “A mountain cat. It was an adventure.”

  “Adventure, my ass!” Marek exploded.

  Scillia began to giggle in earnest then, and her laughter rose precipitously toward hysteria. “I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I am sorry, Marek.”

  “Sorry puts no coins in the purse,” the laughing man quoted.

  Marek took off his cloak and wrapped it around Corrie. “Give me the boy.”

  “Gladly,” the laughing man said. “He’s no small burden.”

  “And tell me your name that we might reward you.”

  “As for my name, it is Kerrec. But reward the girl. It was she drove off the cat and pulled her brother from the river.”

  Jem pulled a long face at that. “It was Sil’s fault he was in the river to begin with. She …”

  “Kerrec’s right,” Corrie interrupted. “Sil saved me. But my neck hurts something fierce. Is it all right if I cry now?” His voice was hoarse and there was a bit of a whimper in it, though he tried valiantly to hide it.

  “Cry on, lad,” Kerrec told him. “If it had been me, I would have been out-howling that cat long since.”

  The men took turns carrying Corrie, quick-marching him to the hostel.

  But all the way back, Scillia could not help but agree with Jem’s assessment. It was her fault that Corrie had been in the water and under the cat’s claws. She knew she would never forgive herself for it.

  THE HISTORY:

  Memo: Journal of International Folklore

  In your Volume #372/4, you published an article by the late professor of history, L. M. Magon, entitled “Cat’s Cradle: A Study of Feline References in Dalian Lore.”

  Magon postulates in this article that a great cat, somewhat between puma and African lion in size, roamed the Dales in the period just before and after the Gender Wars. He makes this incredible claim though no fossil evidence for any such animal have been found in the Dales past the Late Pleistocene. He cites ballads like the famed “Lullaby to the Cat’s Babe” and widely-disseminated folktales such as “The Cat and the Drowning Boy” (Folk Motif #763, Long Excuses) to support his hypothesis, but nothing at all in the way of fossil history.

  As you no doubt know, the cat family can be traced through fossil records about forty million years into the Lower Oligocene. They were recognizable as cats even back that far while most other modern mammal types looked scarcely the same creatures as today. However, cat distribution in the Dales was always spotty after the land mass broke away from the mainland, about one million years ago. This information in short form is available to anyone with an encyclopedia, though for a more in-depth look, see Dr. M. J. Piatt’s remarkable book The Catastrophe of Cats (Pasden University Press). Therefore I am puzzled as to why you let such a piece of pseudo-scientific maundering into your otherwise fine scholarly journal.

  It is certainly true that Dalian folklore is liberally sprinkled with references to cats. I have no quarrel with that. Adages such as “Better the cat under your heels than at your throat”; songs like the above named ballads; the ever-popular Cat Cycle of stories; and even the famous March Tapestry in which Great Alta is pictured with a cat’s head and one cat’s paw peeking out from beneath the folds of her dress. But there is no way a careful scholar can connect these references to a hitherto unknown species of large wild cat roaming the Dales. Not if that scholar has paid attention to the well-documented studies of the family Felidae published both here and on the Continent.

  I uncovered this travesty of scholarship while researching my father’s life. He was a man who spent years battling the false notions and absurd allegations put forth by “Magic” Magon.

  Therefore I hope that you will run my letter in your regular letter column and answer it—if you can.

  THE STORY:

  Jenna was at the inn when they arrived back. She gathered Corrie up and saw to his doctoring without recriminations of any kind.

  Scillia thought that her mother’s attitude seemed careless, but Jenna was being rigorous in her even-handedness. She was afraid that if she started to scream—at Scillia for casually leading the boys off into danger, at the boys for being so stupidly biddable, at Marek and his men for their damnable inattentiveness—she would not be able to stop screaming. Mostly she was afraid to task Scillia for running away because of the answers she might get back from her. Jenna felt the weight of guilt descending
on her, a guilt she had been feeling more and more of late. Before, it had been guilt about the kingdom, about how she and Carum were managing the ever-increasing burden of it. Guilt about taxes, about short crops and long winters, guilt about the threat of invasions from the Continent. That she would now have to add guilt concerning her children to that litany made her afraid.

  She had grown used to the guilt.

  She was not used to the fear.

  The Hame’s infirmarer, a stern-faced woman with a large jaw, was providentially with Jenna’s party, not still out searching the woods with others from the Hame. Even more providentially, she carried a vulnerary in her leather kit.

  “Lay the boy down by the fire,” she said. “I will do what is necessary.” She made him comfortable, got him into dry clothes. And as he dozed by the fire, worn out from fear, shock, and blood loss, she made a poultice out of HealAll and bandaged his neck.

  “Soup when he wakes,” the infirmarer said, “and wine for the strengthening. He is not to be moved from here or agitated for a full week.”

  “Boys are boys. He will be up and complaining in a day,” Kerrec whispered to Marek who nodded his agreement. But neither of them said it aloud.

  Jenna shook her head. “But we were planning to leave sooner than that.”

  “You may leave,” the infirmarer told her as though she were the queen and Jenna a mere subject. “The boy must remain.”

  “I will stay with him,” Marek said.

  “And I,” Kerrec added. “He will come to no harm here.” He grinned suddenly, the laugh lines around his eyes deepening. “No further harm, that is.”

  The infirmarer turned to the two men, patently ignoring Jenna who was all abristle with guilt. “The boy’s wound does not touch the great muscles and he will not lose the use of the arm. But boys being boys, he will need to be encouraged in the use of it later in the week or it will go stiff from his fear of moving it.”

  “I understand,” Marek said, his face reddening.

  The laughing man just grinned.

  “And I will leave the vulnerary. The poultice should be changed beneath the bandage four times daily.”

  “I have some knowledge of that,” Kerrec said.

  “Good.” The infirmarer’s large jaw seemed to chew on the word. Then she turned to Jenna. “Now, you see, there is no need for you to stay. I will myself return daily to check on the boy as well.”

  “No need,” Jenna said aloud, adding only to herself, except the need of the heart. She sat down next to Corrie and ran her fingers through his fair hair. He did not even stir.

  He has, she thought, his father’s face. The same long lashes fanning and shadowing his cheeks. She sighed. He is so young. Fighting back the tears, she thought: I have been so stupid in this. These children are not just mine. They belong to the Dales. I must preserve them.

  She turned to Marek. “We go back this very day. You will remain here with Corrie and I charge you not to move him till he is fully recovered. The rest of us go home for I promised the king not to be overlong.”

  “May I stay, mother?” Scillia asked quietly. “May I help nurse Corrie?” If she could do this one thing, she thought, there might be a bit of atonement in it for her.

  “You are the throne’s heir,” Jenna said. Her voice showed her exhaustion. It was uncharacteristically distant. “You will not mope about here trying to assuage your guilt. You will act like a queen and return with me. It is past time you learned what it is to rule.”

  “Me, too?” Jem asked. “Me, too?”

  “Of course you will come, too,” Jenna said. But there was only crankiness in her sentence and Jem’s eager face turned wary. They both knew that he was soon—too soon—to be shipped off to the Continent, a hostage to the fate of the Dales. To tell him with good grace that he was coming home when it was not to be for long and certainly not to rule, would have broken even Jenna’s resolve.

  Turning, she signaled the guard. “Be ready to ride before the noon meal. We will eat along the road.” Then she was gone back to Selden Hame to gather up her things and Scillia’s for the long trail home.

  THE MYTH:

  Great Alta took the girl child in her hand and turned her this way and that.

  In the sun of Alta’s gaze, the upper half of the girl turned dark, as if baked by the sun. But her lower half remained light.

  Then Great Alta broke the girl in half, as if she were a cake fresh from the oast, holding a piece in each hand.

  “So you shall be broken by history, by family, by love,” quoth Great Alta. “And when you are repaired, you shall be greater than before.”

  two

  Hostages

  THE MYTH:

  Then Great Alta took the boychild to place him in the oast of her gaze. But the boychild twisted and turned and managed to slip from her grasp. He ran across a great bridge that spanned an ocean and was gone from sight.

  “The farther you run, the nearer you stay,” quoth Great Alta.

  THE LEGEND:

  Jess Hamesford of New Moulting has an iron figure that has been in his family for generations. The figure is in the shape of a ginger-bread boy. The top half is painted a light color, the bottom dark.

  It is said by the Hamesford family that the figure was one of twenty handed to the men—ten Garuns and ten from the Dales—who accompanied the Two Princes when they were exchanged at the port of Berike. The captains of each accompanying force got the same, but their figurines were made of pure gold.

  THE STORY:

  The day the princes were exchanged was one of those cold, grey days in late winter when there was a skim of ice on the ponds, and both horses and humans breathed out a moist mist.

  King Carum had insisted the family have red robes lined in ermine for going down to the dock, ostentatious for the Dales but necessary for the occasion. And warm, he reminded himself as a sop to his conscience. Their inside wear was just as ornate. Jem and Corrie wore green and gold cottas, and stockings of green embroidered with gold leaves. Jenna and Scillia were in dresses of the Garun courtly style—low in the bosom and high in the waist, with ribbands below the bodice bound round to the back and tied in a false bow. They looked beautiful and uncomfortable in equal measure.

  Jenna did not complain but held her head in a manner that suggested—to those who knew her well—pain and distance. It looked to outsiders like royal disdain.

  However Scillia voiced her dis-ease and unhappiness at every opportunity.

  “Papa,” she told Carum, “they are all staring at me.”

  He knew she meant that people were staring at the one empty sleeve, so apparent in the formal dress.

  “They see me next to mother and know I am not …”

  Not whole. He knew that was the bald statement beneath her plaint. Not entirely whole. So he did what any father would have done: he wrapped his arms around her, no matter the councillors gaped at it, and whispered, “You are the loveliest girl in the room. Lovelier even than your mother.”

  The last was too blatant a lie for Scillia to stomach. “Oh, papa—not you, too!” She pulled away from him and would have fled the room except that the first of the Garuns chose that moment to arrive in full regalia and with trumpets—trumpets!—blaring.

  Carum looked over at Jenna and for the first time she raised an eyebrow at the proceedings. Holding out his hand, he said: “Come. We will see their trumpets and raise them.”

  Jenna, who did no gaming, looked slightly puzzled, but took his hand anyway. He led her away from the children to the twin thrones on the raised dais. A dais just new-made for the occasion, he reminded himself, careful not to move awkwardly as he took the high step up. He held Jenna’s hand firmly to keep her from turning around too soon, their backs to the Garunian delegation almost—but not quite—an insult. Then just short of the full snub, he turned them both in place and slowly he sat onto his throne.

  Jenna sat on her throne at the same time, holding herself upright, aloof. Partially—Carum su
spected—to keep from weeping at the prospect of letting her son go across the ocean. But partially because the low bodice of her dress embarrassed her.

  Their three children stood slightly to the right of the platform, backs to their parents, all in a line. The privy council—three men and two women—stood slightly to the left. It made an imposing picture.

  There were no candles or torches ablaze near the thrones. Carum had been quite specific about that. He would rather be in the half-shadows than have Jenna’s dark sister Skada with her brutally honest tongue mixing in the final negotiations. Honesty had its place, but Carum knew its place was neither in horse trading nor treaty talks. This, he thought with sudden bitterness, is a bit of both.

  For all that he disliked the Garuns—a silly, contentious people—Carum had his son’s welfare to consider. He had no illusions about his children, though he loved all three with equal fervor. Corrie was a go-along, content to follow anyone else’s lead, but with a sense of humor that made him a good companion. Scillia was a moody questioner, never content with easy answers, especially for herself. And Jem was an occasional bully and a frequent blusterer. But he had a core of fire. Like my own brothers, Carum thought. Still he was only a boy.

  But he was also a prince. Carum knew that it was imperative that the Garuns be reminded that all the Dales held the child—son of the Anna—in the highest esteem.

  He sighed, a sound so quiet he thought that no one had noticed. Just a soft expiration into a noisy chamber. But Jenna, always alert to such changes in him, reached for his hand. He is my son, Carum thought angrily, and all I can think of is esteem. His anger was all turned inward and for once Jenna’s touch did not help.

  The actual words of the exchange treaty had been worked out months before between councillors on both sides. Carum and Jenna had held themselves apart from the meetings, as had the Garunian king, Kras. But nevertheless, they knew every word of the pact.

  As if they were burned into my heart, Carum thought.

  Today was to be the public reading of the document and the exchange of tokens: bejeweled figures of the two boys made by craftsmen from both sides of the waters. Carum shook his head at the waste of labor, at the expense. The figurines were pretty baubles, but he would rather have spent the money on the farmers in the Maulten District who had had too little rain in the spring and torrents of it in the fall.