by E L Stricker
“I think that families are ... one of the best things we have,” he said, trying to find a way to explain.
It wasn't enough. The villagers needed to understand why it had to be this way, to feel the excitement he felt. He looked at Sabelle, who was still staring at the ground, and his voice froze in his throat.
Conna jumped up beside him.
“We have to do what is necessary. Everyone has to make sacrifices. Report to your new jobs after the morning meal tomorrow. Hunters, gatherers, you know what to do. Food preparation to the central fires, child-watchers and children under five winters to the stone house, other groups to this field. The Leader will be here to tell each of the new groups how to proceed,” Conna said, raising his eyebrows at Illya, apparently waiting for confirmation.
Illya swallowed. “There is deer left, and the Patrollers have been out today to gather. We will feast to celebrate!” he said.
The people began to trickle towards the central fire, looking diminished. It should have been a time full of joy. Elias' imprisonment had set a sober cast on the day, but Illya knew some of it was because of his changes.
Impiri walked ahead of him.
It appeared that she was going to cooperate to avoid being locked up. He frowned. No matter what kind of face she put on, he couldn't trust her. But she had pointed out the water problem early on. He really should thank her no matter what her intentions had been. If no one had thought of it, it could have turned into a disaster.
“Impiri,” he called and increased his pace to catch up with her.
“What?” she snapped, turning around. “I assume I have to cook this feast we are all going to eat now?”
“No . . . it's not that,” Illya said, holding up his hands. “It's late, we'll all work together to cook tonight.” He glanced at Sabelle, who had stopped and was watching them.
“How did you know about the water?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
IMPIRI STARED AT him for a long time. Illya held her gaze. His face felt hot and prickly. A drop of sweat ran down the center of his back. Finally, she spoke.
“And if I don't tell you what I know, are you going to have me locked up like you locked up my husband?”
It was more than a little galling to ask Impiri for help after all she had done to stop him. But he knew that he wasn't going to get anywhere by making her angrier than she already was.
“I could use your help,” Illya said.
“Why should I help you?”
Sabelle came closer and put her hand on Impiri's arm.
“He is trying to help all of us, Mother,” she said, and she gave him the smallest smile. Suddenly, he felt warm all the way to his toes. He smiled back.
“That's enough of that.” Impiri grabbed Sabelle by the wrist. She stormed away from him down the path, pulling her daughter with her. Illya caught snatches of the words she said as they went.
“Foolish girl . . . locked up your father . . . bring us all to ruin, mark me . . . just because you like a boy. . .“
He stood still in the path, grinning idiotically. Ahead of him, there was nothing but problems. He had no idea what to do about the water. The last thing Impiri wanted to do was tell him what she knew.
Tomorrow, the villagers would go to work in their new jobs, and he was sure that most of them would hate him by the end of the day, and Conna's new Enforcers were another thing altogether.
His whole life seemed fraught with troubles, but Illya thought that he felt better just then than he ever had. He whispered the words back to himself, to hear them again.
“Just because you like a boy.”
***
The watering problem was made immeasurably worse when Illya discovered a passage in the book that instructed the ground be kept damp until the seeds had sprouted and the plants were “well established.” This turned out to be a massive amount of work, relieved only after the sun went down at night. To make matters worse, spring shifted to summer that year earlier than anyone could remember it. The rains stopped as if someone had put a cork in the sky. The sun began to beat down with real heat only a few days after the seeds had been placed in the ground. He was forced to pull people off all non-essential tasks just to carry enough water.
Because that included everything that wasn't food-gathering, this turned out to be most of the villagers. Unfortunately, it included Impiri and Sabelle.
Impiri lugged skins of water along with the rest of them. While she said nothing, she made no secret of her feelings, scowling at him at every chance. Perhaps, Illya thought, she was just waiting for a disaster, a sign that the curses she had predicted had come to pass.
In spite of the hardship, the field stayed watered. He hoped that the plants would sprout any day. It was hard to measure work when it evaporated, but Illya took each day without a catastrophe as a victory and a good omen. He told the people so, keeping them going with praise and desperation, holding out for something to happen, a sign to show them all they were doing the right thing. Then, as if in defiance of Impiri's predictions, there was a real stroke of luck.
Benja had spent a few days setting up a new network of traps along the river. It had been natural to Illya to make him a hunter. It was Benja, though, who had the foresight to spend his time hunting fish.
The immediate worry of starvation had receded with Conna's deer, but even that would only last so long. Now, because of Benja’s traps, they caught the steelhead salmon run as it swept up the river past the village. There would be enough for everyone to eat and plenty left over to smoke over the fires to preserve for the winter. It was just what they needed; a reason for celebration and a good omen all at once.
***
The air was thick with smells and sounds as Illya made his way to the central fires that night. Precious fat was rendered from the salmon skins and bubbled and popped as it ran into clay pots. The women who had been given the afternoon off from watering to prepare the feast filleted the fish efficiently and dropped the pieces into the fat to sizzle and spit.
Delicious odors wafted through the air. The villagers laughed with each other. They hummed as they worked. Men were drinking in a group near the fire, hooting with laughter as they played a game of chance. For a moment, it was as if all the tumult and worry of the past months had never happened.
No, it was better than that, Illya thought. Before the roots had gone, the villagers had existed in a state of willful ignorance and preoccupation with their day-to-day worries. If you could just gossip about your neighbors enough, or find the latest omen in the clouds, it could cover up the real problem: the one that was too terrifying to face.
Tonight, the ease was real. The people laughed with new freedom. No matter how much anyone disagreed with him, no one could deny that they had begun to feel hope.
“Hi.”
Illya turned around. Benja stood behind him, wearing an uncertain smile.
“Hey Benj,” Illya said, lighting up at the sight of his friend.
“Thanks for finding the fish,” Illya said.
“Just doing my job,” Benja replied, his voice resting ironically on the last word. His face darkened. Illya flinched. Of all people, he had thought that Benja would support him
now.
Benja must have seen his discomfort because he tried to smile. Illya had watched him smile all his life, but now his expression looked like it belonged to a stranger.
“I like to fish, so it's alright for me,” Benja said; then he turned and walked away. Charlie walked past him with a hugely pregnant Leya and nodded to him.
Unsure how to feel, Illya got his fish then went to find a place to sit at the edge of the circle. Benja had gone to talk to the musicians, who were setting up in the center. Illya looked for his ma, wondering what it would look like to everyone if he sat with her. It had been a while since they had shared a meal.
Grenya was sitting with Aunt Ada and a group of women. They laughed and teased each other, making jokes.
“Be careful wh
en you become a child-watcher, Deede, they say that children are contagious!” Aunt Ada said to a young girl who had just been hand-fasted. Deede blushed and said she wouldn't mind that at all, and all the women laughed.
“When it came out of you, you would,” Grenya said.
Illya turned away. His sister Molly had joined the other young girls where they sat giggling and shooting glances across the circle at the boys. Illya looked back at her, surprised. When had she started looking at boys? Hadn't it only been a few weeks ago that she had sat on the floor of their hut, wailing for dinner like a little?
True, he had not been paying attention lately, but had he really missed so much?
She was small for her age, he knew that. It was because she had never been well fed, but when he stopped to think about it, he realized she wasn't a little anymore, not at all. He was seventeen now. That meant she had gone from twelve to thirteen.
There was an unexpected thickness in his throat, and he turned away to hide his face.
He went to sit by Conna and Aaro, thinking that he probably couldn't keep living in his mother's hut for much longer either, not if he was the Leader. As if he wasn't already lonely enough.
“You alright?”
Illya looked up, startled out of his reverie. Conna was eating his fish and wasn’t paying attention. Aaro was watching him.
Illya shrugged.
“Of course,” he said. “This is all, great.”
Aaro didn’t say anything but watched him for a moment.
“Okay,” he said.
The music started, and Illya closed his eyes and tried to let himself be carried away. The bright fire shone through his closed eyelids. The music sang through the night air. A loud pop sounded from the fire as a rock exploded in the heat. A child squealed and ran to his mother, frightened by the noise. Illya opened his eyes and saw a shower of sparks shooting up from the fire to mingle with the stars twinkling across the dark sky.
The women who had prepared the fish were eating now, having served everyone else. They left the clay cooking pots to the side of the fires to stay warm. The fat in them would be used again and again to cook and preserve food. The musicians started to play.
Uncle Leo grabbed his wife and whirled her around. The light reflected off her graying red hair. She laughed out loud in his arms.
“That's my girl!” He chuckled and spun her out, twirling her around and around until she spun back in and collapsed into his embrace, laughing. Many people were dancing now, spinning each other around. Illya thought he could take at least a little of the credit for their full bellies and a lot more of the credit for the new hope in the air.
Automatically, he looked for Sabelle. He hadn’t spoken to her since Impiri had hustled her away the other day. Impiri had said that she liked him, but that hadn't made it any easier to go talk to her; somehow, it made it harder than ever. He searched through the gathered people but did not see her.
He saw Impiri though. She was sitting alone eating, not aware of him watching. For once, she was not scowling.
On an impulse, he got up.
“Good fish?” he asked as he approached her.
She didn't answer but looked up at him, the familiar frown returning to her face. He sat down.
“There have been no curses,” he said.
“And you had to come over and say you told me so,” she said.
“It's not that,” he said. “I was hoping . . . if you can see now how things could be you would change your mind. Tell me what you know about the old Planter.”
“Or what?” she asked.
“Or I guess you are going to spend a lot of time carrying water,” he said.
“Is that a threat?” she asked.
“It's just the truth,” he said then paused.
“You have been treated the same as everybody else, you know. You didn't have to be,” he said.
She looked at him for a while, her eyes flat.
Illya studied her, narrowing his eyes. Then she smiled, smug and self-satisfied.
“I can tell you what I know, and your plan will still fail. The truth is I don't know much at all,” Impiri said, shrugging.
“You have to know something,” Illya said, raising his voice. “Why else would you let me think that you did?” People had noticed their conversation. They were starting to watch. Impiri took a bite of fish.
“I'll show you, and you'll be just as lost as ever.” She laughed: an unpleasant sound.
She finished her fish and got up, beckoning for him to follow.
They went to the stone house. Impiri opened the door to let him inside, spreading her hands in an ironic gesture of welcome.
“Are you going to take our house next?” she asked. “You already have the cellar and my husband. What about a nice big house to go along with it?”
“Of course not,” he said. Impiri raised her eyebrows, studying him.
“No, I don't suppose you would. Sabelle wouldn't like you for it, would she?” she said, laughing mirthlessly and stopping in the kitchen to light a candle from the banked coals in a wood cook stove.
“That's not why—” he said and stopped. He could feel the heat of anger building in him, but he knew it could do no good to rise to Impiri's baiting.
Illya had never been past the main rooms of the house. There was an entryway, a room with chairs, and then the kitchen. Beyond that were stairs, probably leading to the family's sleeping places above. It was a fitting place for a Leader. He suspected that the house itself had done a lot to lend Elias' Leadership legitimacy over the years. It was hard to look at it when you lived in a one-room hut and not believe that the people who lived there were somehow above you.
She was right that some people in his position would have taken the house; Conna certainly would.
There was a second set of stairs leading down from the kitchen into the cellar. That was where Impiri led him now. He hesitated, wondering what she was up to.
He needn't have worried. When they had reached the bottom of the stairs, there was candlelight to the left beside an Enforcer who guarded the room that held Elias. She ignored it and turned to the right, taking him down a hall and then into a room full of dusty shelves ghosted with cobwebs before stopping at a small door. Illya shivered. The cellar was an eerie place in the flickering candlelight.
“This has always been called the pump room,” she said. “A long time ago, I asked my pa why.” She opened the door, shedding a beam of light from her candle onto an incomprehensible mess of parts, rusted and halfway sunk in mud.
“It's because this is a water pump. This is what it took to water that same field, what the Planter used.” She pressed her lips together and gave him a thin smile. Her eyes brightened momentarily.
“Hasn't worked for the whole life of this village, and it's not about to start now,” she said.
Illya crouched down. Avoiding her stare, he examined the heap.
It was true. There was nothing here but a pile of broken parts, like so many of the left-over “machines” of the Olders. He lowered his head. Even with Impiri's pessimism, he had still hoped to find something.
“How did it work?” he asked, his voice breaking past the tightness in his throat. He had been stupid to think that she would tell him anything that could help.
“Oh, it ran on their 'licktricity.’ It's useless without it,” she said, shrugging. Then, almost gleefully, she continued.
“Those things are pipes,” she said, pointing to a pyramid of long metal tubes stacked against the wall.
“It forced water up from below the ground and then through those, out to the plants.” Her lip curled as she looked at the pump, as if it should be ashamed for treating the water with such little consideration.
“It has pieces that should move to do that,” Illya mumbled to himself. “I wonder if we could just move them with our hands.” Experimentally, he pulled and pushed on various parts of the pump.
It was no use. Even if he'd had the first idea of
how to make it work, it was so rusted that bits of it crumbled off at his touch. The parts all seemed frozen in place.
“Like I said, it's broken,” Impiri said.
Illya stood up and wiped his hands off on his pants.
“I guess there will just be more water carrying for all of us then,” he said.
Impiri shrugged, her mouth pinching. She turned and went back up the stairs, taking the candle with her and not bothering to wait for him.
When Illya returned to the fire, the people were still dancing. They carried on as if nothing had happened, as if they were not all doomed to carry water for eternity. Nearly aching with disappointment, he looked around for Conna.
His second in command was not where Illya had left him. Aaro now sat with Julian and Nico. They had started a game of Targets, tossing stones into circles on the ground. A moment later, he saw Conna.
In Illya’s absence, he had found Sabelle.
They were dancing to the music, whirling around and laughing as if they had no cares in the world. Her hair was unbound. She was beautiful with the firelight on her face. He looked at the way her eyelashes lay on her cheeks; he saw the way Conna held her hands and felt sick.
Illya looked away. He folded his arms across his chest and stared at the dirt, trying very hard not to let it overwhelm him.
A shadow fell over him, obscuring the firelight.
“You'll excuse me, Leader,” said a man's voice above his head.
“What?” Illya said, raising his gaze slowly. His eyes were blurred and he could feel the tears he held back burning behind them.
It was Ban. Illya blinked, his vision clearing slightly.
“I been thinking about this watering,” Ban said. “And I might have an idea.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“YOU AREN'T THE only one who has paper,” Ban said with a small smile.
“What do you mean?” Illya asked, reluctant to come out of his gloom. He couldn't help being curious though. If anyone in the village might be able to figure out a solution that would work, it was Ban.
