Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  “What if he tells you to talk to the haunt?” Catherine breathed.

  “Oh, he wouldn’t! I couldn’t!”

  “But he might. You know how he is.”

  Marigold nodded. Her chin piece clinked against her gorget, which in turn rattled her breastplate, with its slipped emblem. “I don’t—oh, what was that? Around the corner!”

  “Not your aunt. Really! I saw the right hand. It was there.”

  “Oh,” Marigold said, visibly relaxing. “Who was it?”

  “I didn’t see. But I guess it was one of those snotty First Chamber girls.”

  Marigold looked puzzled. “Why would they be here?”

  “Oh, Mar, you’re so innocent. Don’t you know they’re all jealous of this?”

  “Jealous? Of this? Of what?”

  “Of all the attention you’re getting from the loremaster! Any of them would die for a private conference with him!”

  “Ooohhh,” Marigold said. Her smooth brow creased. “But . . . Cathy, I don’t think so.

  They don’t like him any better than we do. He’s just as mean to them, you know. Even to Anna.”

  “I know. But she’s probably jealous anyway. That whole crowd sucks up to all the teachers.”

  “But, Cath . . . I don’t think they—”

  “You don’t think it because you’re so nice. But everybody else in our chamber can see it. That Anna—oh!”

  The door opened to reveal the loremaster. Marigold and Catherine clutched hands harder (clink, rattle). The loremaster frowned.

  “You are not needed here, Tyro Catherine. Go away.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “On second thought, stay.”

  “S-stay?”

  “I said so, didn’t I? God, you girls are a waste of air. Come in. Sit there. No, not there—there.”

  Marigold and Catherine settled their armor on the edge of the raised stone hearth, empty in the warm summer. They sounded like a tray of dropped kitchenware.

  Loremaster Gwillam studied them with distaste.

  Long miserable moments dragged by for the girls.

  Just when they could bear it no longer, the loremaster barked, “Tyro Catherine, have you seen this haunting?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Are you lying?”

  “No, sir!”

  “I think you’re lying.”

  “I d-don’t lie, sir.”

  “If you say that, you’re lying now. Everybody lies. Isn’t that true?”

  “Yes . . . no . . . I—”

  “Do you think I lie?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You’re wrong. I lie. Am I right?”

  “Yes . . . no . . . I . . .”

  “Stupid as I thought. Both of you. Tyro Marigold, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to go where you go, do what you do. Everywhere. I will see what you see, and thus gather information on this haunting. I will—”

  “Everywhere?” Marigold gasped.

  “Everywhere. I will sleep in the Third Bedchamber. The tyromistress has given her permission. Her watchravens will accompany me, for propriety’s sake. But I will be with you, and I will get to the bottom of this.”

  The girls looked at each other, appalled. Catherine, the bolder, finally said, “But, sir . . .”

  “But what?”

  “What . . . what if the haunt doesn’t appear again?”

  “It will appear again.”

  Once more the girls stared at each other.

  “However,” Loremaster Gwillam said, “I will certainly not tell you what I expect. You are both too stupid to understand. You may go. I will join you as soon as the tyromistress’s ravens are delivered to me.”

  Outside the loremaster’s closed door, Marigold burst into tears. Catherine put an arm around her.

  “To have him . . .” sob, clank “. . . watch me all the time . . .” clank, sob “. . . criticizing the way he does . . . oh, Cath!”

  “I know,” Catherine soothed. “Old sot!”

  “Sshhhh! He’ll hear you!”

  “I don’t care if he does!”

  But at a sound behind them, they both scurried away, raw-nerved and rattling.

  Tyro Marigold was not lying. The other girl believed her utterly; I examined Catherine specifically to be sure of this. The haunting is real, there is nothing like it in all the modern literature, and I am going to be renowned throughout the Twenty-four Kingdoms.

  All I need is for Marigold either to lose her sword arm or to learn something significant from the haunt of her aunt.

  For the next five days I stuck to Marigold like a spell on a frog. I watched intently as she jousted; no fall severed her arm. I peered over her shoulder at her lesson scrolls; no writing changed to haunted runes from a tutelary ghost. I sat on the sidelines as she worked out in the ring; no opponent’s sword cut through her elbow. I knelt beside her at vigil; no haunt appeared, dressed in bloody armor.

  I was not discouraged. But I may have become a touch impatient with the stupid tyros (it is my only fault). Unfortunately, they are all stupid. This is how I know I will have nothing to learn beyond the grave—I am being given all my trials now.

  On the sixth day, however, it happened. Everybody saw it, even the watchravens.

  Thus is scholarly vigilance rewarded in the worthy.

  “I can’t stand it,” Marigold moaned. “I can’t, I can’t!”

  “Keep your voice down,” Tyro Elizabeth said nervously from the pallet beside Marigold. Loremaster Gwillam slept on Marigold’s other side. Three watchravens perched on the six-inch-high carved wooden fence between.

  “Liz, it’s awful. Today in Summa Logicales he screamed at me that I was horse dung.

  In front of everybody!”

  “I know. But quieter, Mar. Shhhhh.”

  “What does he want from me?”

  Elizabeth didn’t answer. No one knew. From beyond the symbolic fence came the loremaster’s soft snoring. The ravens’ black eyes, wide open, gleamed in the moonlight from the open window.

  “And tomorrow,” Marigold moaned, but very quietly, “we have to—what was that?”

  “I didn’t hear any—oh!”

  Both girls sat up, grabbed each other, and rose to their knees to look out the window.

  Then they shrieked to raise the dead, although in this case that was unnecessary.

  The haunt of First Dame Cecilie of Castle Thlevin stood a hundred yards off, at the edge of the wood. At such a distance she was a small armor-clad figure, but clearly one-armed. She keened despairingly, “Marigold! Marigold of West Riding!”

  “Oh! Oh!” Marigold shrieked.

  “What? What?” screamed the rest of the Third Bedchamber, now awake.

  “Severed yore!” cried the watchravens.

  “Go! Go to her, you stupid girl!” Loremaster Gwillam cried, bolt upright on his pallet, clutching the windowsill greedily. His striped nightcap fell over one eye and he shoved it away. “Go! Wait—go alone!”

  “Alone?” cried Marigold, aghast.

  “Yes, yes! How else can she cut . . . er, how else can she learn whatever she must know from you? Go!”

  Marigold was not the brightest young woman in the Twenty-four Kingdoms, but she did not lack bravery. At an order from a loremaster, she started to pull on her armor.

  “No, wait—I will go with you!” the loremaster cried.

  “You go with—no, no, I’ll go alone!”

  “Are you contradicting me, Tyro?” Loremaster Gwillam pulled himself up to his full height, plus slightly tilted nightcap.

  “No,” Marigold said miserably.

  “Never sore,” said a raven.

  “Ever on the floor,” said another.

  But by the time they reached the edge of the wood, the haunt of Dame Cecilie had vanished.

  The mistake was mine. I admit it; I am not one such as cannot admit when he is in error. I was impatient (it is my only fault). I should not have tried to go with Marigold the Stupid. I shoul
d have instead let her go alone, respecting the sacred privacy of a tuition haunting, and then spied on her with a spell pool. Next time, I will know better.

  Next time, I will be better prepared.

  Next time came two days later.

  Although I thought, before those two days had elapsed, that I had my prize. Tyro Marigold fell at sword practice in the armory.

  She was matched against Tyro Catherine, who was as inept as she. Oh, I will be glad when I shake the dust of this brackish excuse for a castle from my boots, and leave these stupid girls behind me! Living always among women is itself enough of a curse; living with tyros is a flagellation no loremaster should have to bear.

  The practice was held indoors in the armory, a windowless building large enough to hold all thirty-three tyros, only because outside it rained. For an hour the tyros had been set at the pel-quintain, a stake driven upright into the ground, with which they “fenced” with double-weight sword and shield. Each girl wielded forty pounds of metal, so that when it should be changed for regular weaponry, sword and shield would seem light by comparison. Rain drummed steadily on the roof, just above the bannerettes and pennoncels stored in the rafters. A rack against the wall held more shields, swords, and armor, most of it slung over nails and pegs.

  “Change now!” called the training mistress. “Hut, hut!”

  The weary girls staggered to the wall rack and switched their double-weight swords and shields for standard-weight. Training Mistress Joan again paired them off, this time without regard for list ranking. Perhaps it was a deliberate attempt to expose them to different competencies. Or perhaps Joan was weary, too, and paired whomever happened to stand beside each other.

  Or perhaps—I thought then—it was fate.

  Tyro Anna smiled, nastily, at Tyro Marigold, who smiled back, waveringly.

  “Begin!”

  The girls started whacking away. Tyros, of course, were not allowed to foin; a direct thrust of the point by such beginners might cause serious injury. So they slashed and feinted and whacked, most of them unbalanced by the sudden change in weapon weight, all of them looking as silly as flailing chickens thrown into a pond. And in the midst of the whacking and flailing and lurching, Tyro Marigold tripped.

  She slashed at Anna, who moved easily out of the way. The too-hard slash unbalanced Marigold, carrying her sideways until she crashed into a pel-quintain.

  That caromed her into the wall rack of armor. It was bolted to the wall, but the careless and stupid and exhausted tyros had slung their double-weight weapons on the pegs any which way, and many pieces fell.

  A double-weight sharpened sword fell bladeside toward Marigold’s right forearm.

  The room seemed underwater, so slowly did the sword fall. There was time for me to jump to my feet, to raise my fist halfway to the sky, to cry out.

  “Yes! Oh, thank you, Fate!”

  The sword turned in the air, as heavy objects sometimes will. And Marigold turned, too, twisting her body away from the falling weapon. With both these turnings, the sword landed flatside on Marigold’s arm. It would leave no more than a bruise.

  I could not contain myself. “You stupid bitch! Why did you move? Do you know what you’ve thwarted, what you’ve destroyed, you moronic thieving turd, you silly bitch—”

  They all looked at me, tyros and teachers alike, mouths gaping open. They did not understand. I stalked from the room, and it was many hours before I could calm myself and return to my usual deep understanding of a complex situation, my usual far-seeing knowledge.

  She had not lost her arm. Even though it was the perfect time for it. This, I finally saw, was intended as a sign to me. Marigold would not lose an arm, so the other circumstance must be the truth. This was a reverse haunting, and soon Marigold would learn something from Dame Cecilie instead of the other way around.

  Once I realized this, I was no longer disappointed that Marigold had not been maimed. In fact, I could see that her escape was a gift to me. It showed me the broad outlines of the marvelous phenomenon I was chosen to witness, even if the exact details must wait for my later sharp-eyed discovery.

  After that, I stuck closer to Marigold than ever. But in my far-seeing mind I began writing my paper, certain that soon the rest of the gift would be given me.

  The next night, it was.

  “You must try to eat, Mar,” Elizabeth whispered. Catherine hovered anxiously on Marigold’s other side at the long refectory table.

  “I can’t,” Marigold whispered back. “Not with him watching me like that.”

  Loremaster Gwillam sat across the table. His attention had been momentarily distracted by a watchraven, which had swooped over his shoulder and stolen a piece of fish from his plate. The loremaster batted away the bird, which mumbled something unintelligible around the fish in its beak—the mumble ended in either “door” or “whore.” The loremaster then returned his gaze to Marigold. Under that gaze—steady, intent, cold—the girl felt she couldn’t breathe properly, let alone eat.

  Or joust.

  Or fence.

  Or sleep.

  “You must try to sleep,” Catherine whispered at bedtime, squeezing Marigold’s hand.

  Marigold nodded wanly.

  Nonetheless, she was snoring when the voice came from beyond the window.

  “Maaarrrügggooolllddd . . .”

  “Wake up, you stupid girl! It’s her! Dame Cecilie is here!” Loremaster Gwillam shook Marigold until her teeth rattled.

  Fearfully, Marigold crawled up from her pallet and peered over the windowsill. As before, the one-armed figure stood at the edge of the woods.

  “What on earth is she wearing?” said one of the girls clustered behind her.

  “Where’s her armor?”

  “That’s a gown like my mother used to wear when . . . when . . .”

  “She’s pregnant!” Catherine gasped.

  “With a horse, at least!”

  “Haunts can’t get pregnant!”

  “No, they . . . can they, Loremaster?”

  “Shut up,” Loremaster Gwillam said. “Go out there, Marigold.”

  “Me? Alone? No, I—”

  “Go on, you silly bitch! This is it!”

  The loremaster pushed Marigold so hard she fell over. An indignant, scared murmur ran over the tyros. Elizabeth started to say quaveringly, “Loremaster, you mustn’t—”

  when the figure by the woods made a quarter turn, and someone cried, “Oh my good heavens! Now she’s got two arms!”

  It was true. The haunt, undeniably dressed in a gown instead of armor, undeniably pregnant, was also undeniably bi-armed.

  Loremaster Gwillam appeared to be having a fit of some kind. “Two arms! A restored arm! A reverse haunting! Oh, my paper, oh the ground-breaking, oh the scientific sensation, the—get going, girl! Get out there before the haunt decides not to teach you anything!”

  “T-t-teach me . . .”

  “Go!”

  Marigold went. Shaking, and brave despite her fear, she pulled a cloak over her nightdress and stumbled alone across the dark open expanse between the castle and the wood. The tyros of the Third Bedchamber, watching, huddled together in awed silence.

  Closer, closer . . . and then Marigold and her dead unmaimed aunt stood face to face in the gloom.

  “Ooohhh,” groaned Elizabeth softly, in sympathy.

  “She’s so brave,” moaned Catherine.

  “Endeavor more,” said a raven.

  I had it. I had it! Not from that stupid girl, who staggered back from her historical and miraculous meeting and promptly fainted. But who needed her? I went immediately to my chamber and invoked a spell pool. The pool had stood ready for days.

  And there, in the inky waters, they appeared clear as morning. Marigold walking toward Dame Cecilie and, as the tyro got closer, a distinct view of the haunt herself.

  She did indeed have two arms—she held up both to stop her niece from approaching too close. She did indeed wear a house-gown instead of armo
r, and it did indeed bulge in pregnancy. All was clear except her face, partly hidden by her unbound hair as it swung forward. Yet Marigold was certain of the face. She choked out, “Aunt Cecilie . . .”

  “Yes, child. It is I.” The voice, coming from my spell pool, was low and sepulchral.

  “You look . . . you look so . . . waxy . . .”

  “I have been dead these nine years.”

  “That would explain it,” Marigold faltered.

  “Child. Learn from me. Don’t—”

  “Aren’t you . . . forgive me, aunt! Aren’t you . . .”

  “Spit it out, child.”

  “. . . supposed to learn from . . . from . . .”

  The stupid tyro couldn’t finish. Well, the idea of anyone learning anything from Marigold was indeed hard to conceive of. Dame Cecile helped her out.

  “Learn from me, child. Be willing to change your armor.”

  Marigold looked innocently down at herself. “But I’m not wearing armor.”

  “It’s metaphorical,” the ghostly voice said, a bit impatiently. “If you can no longer do something well, don’t do it any longer. Do not go armored in failure. Give yourself to the new life completely. Not like me.”

  “But . . . I can’t do anything well,” Marigold said.

  “Good . . . bye . . .”

  Gown fluttering, the haunt of Dame Cecilie waddled backward into the woods, waving with both arms. The gown slipped back from her forearms and I could just make out, inside the right elbow, a tattoo of clasped hands. It was then that jubilance seized me; that is exactly the kind of detail that makes for memorable papers!

  In the spell-pool image, Marigold gasped. Quickly Dame Cecilie said, “Say no more!

  Please!” and that, too, was a good detail for the paper. Dame Cecilie knew how significant her reverse haunting was, how rare, how important. It must have been a terrible strain on her materialization. She could take no more, not even another word.

  The haunt disappeared into the night woods.

  The pool went dark, and I hurried back to the Third Bedchamber. I doubted that the stupid girl could tell me any more than I had seen—spell pools, after all, are the exact truth—but it never hurt to be thorough.

  The Third Bedchamber was full of girls, more than the eleven that belonged there.