“You look good, honey.”
“Nevermore!”
“Sure. Unless you mean you don’t never want to see me again. I ain’t easy to get rid of.”
Viviane stared, and nodded at last. “‘And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, on the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door.’ We read that in school.”
Nevermore bobbed his head. “Pretty, ain’t it?”
“I hadn’t thought of it like that, but yes, I suppose it is. The thing that I don’t understand, the part I don’t understand at all, isn’t that raven. It’s you, Nevermore. You’re a magic animal. He’s gone back to his mother—I took him…” She wept.
Nevermore waited patiently until she dried her eyes. “You took him back. You did the right thing, honey. You knew it was, and you did it. That’s not somethin’ to cry over.”
“He’s gone, and that little woman is, too. So there shouldn’t be more magic animals. Not any, including you.”
“I got some teachin’ to do.” Nevermore cocked his head, regarding her through one bright eye. “Only I don’t teach for free. How ’bout that pretty watch you got?”
“This?” Viviane glanced at the pink watch—1:27. “It’s stopped. It’s been stopped for years. I don’t know why I put it on this morning.”
“Don’t matter,” Nevermore told her. “I want it.”
“Then you can have it.” She took it off and held it out. “Will you answer questions for me? For this?”
“You bet I will, honey.” Nevermore’s bill closed on the strap. He backed away before transferring it to a claw. “Soon’s I take it to the bank. It ain’t far, and I’ll be right back.”
She shook her head. “I’m not comfortable here. I don’t know why, but I’m not. I know I’m back in my own time. The fairy—I mean that little woman with wings—told me so. I’m uncomfortable just the same, maybe just because I was so happy until today.” She looked around, trying to recall the direction from which she had come so long ago.
“That way, honey.” Nevermore pointed with one wing. “Go that way, and you’ll get out quick. Don’t worry about me, I’ll catch up.”
When he had gone, she walked in the direction he had indicated. She was old now. Old, and there would be no pension for her, no Social Security. Would she starve? It didn’t matter, she decided. Her life was over, and she would be better off dead. The world might be right now, as the small woman said; but she was not right for the world, and knew it. How happy they’d been, once upon a time….
“Okay, honey.” Nevermore swooped past her head to crash-land on a limb not far ahead. “You got questions? I got answers. Not for everythin’, but lots of answers just the same. Whatcha wanna know?”
“I should’ve been thinking of questions while you were gone.” Confronted by her negligence, she felt foolish and helpless. “I didn’t, I was woolgathering. What questions would you ask if you were me?”
Nevermore balanced upon one leg to scratch his head. “You said you didn’t get it about magic animals. Maybe you could ask about that.”
“All right.” For a moment Viviane bent her head in thought. “That little woman I assumed was a fairy is gone. Merlin was a great and powerful wizard; but he was a little boy the last time I saw him, and anyway he’s gone, too. But you are…Well, you know what I mean. Why?”
“I’ve got clearer questions than that now an’ then, honey. So what I’m goin’ to do is say it my way. Then I’ll answer. You’re sayin’ there’s two of us here an’ one’s a magic animal. How come? Ain’t that it?”
“Fine,” Viviane said.
“It’s ’cause you’re here, that’s all. You’re the magic animal, honey. Not me. You can turn yourself into a bird. You think I can turn myself into a girl? I can’t. I can’t build a fire or open a door. I like shiny stuff, just like you. Only I can’t make it. I have to find ’em or steal ’em or bargain for ’em like I did. That shirt you’re wearin’? I like the buttons, but I can’t button ’em. Or unbutton ’em neither.”
“I don’t believe I follow this.”
“Well, try. It ain’t tough. Humans are the magic animal, the only one there is. Ask your horse or any dog you run into. You got a cat?”
Viviane nodded.
“Cats catch birds, and there ain’t much we can do about it except fly. Suppose they were tryin’ to catch you instead. How long you think they’d last?”
“You said I could turn myself into a bird.” Viviane looked thoughtful. “I didn’t do that. Merlin turned us both into birds.”
“He gave you that shape, honey.”
“That’s what I said.”
“So you can use it if you really want to. Once a wizard gives somebody a shape, she owns it. Get me? Like, if he’d given you the things you got on your feet. Once he gave ’em, they’d be yours. You could wear ’em or take ’em off, see?”
“You’re saying I can be a bird again if I want to.”
“Right.”
“This—it used to be a drawing-in wood. Daisy told me.” Viviane paused, feeling the wood’s rejection. “It isn’t anymore, or not for me. If I were a bird, I could get out quicker.”
“Sure.”
“Then I’d like to be one. Why aren’t I?”
“Maybe it’s because you got too much sense, honey.” Nevermore studied her before he spoke again. “You’re goin’ to need somebody who knows his way around. You’re goin’ to need somebody like that bad. I’ll do it, only you got to do like I say.”
“I will.”
“Okay. Stick with me. I ain’t goin’ to chase you. Fly down below me, all the time. Don’t ever get as high as I am. You goin’ to do that, honey?”
Viviane nodded. “I’ll do whatever you tell me to.”
“I’m not goin’ to tell you anythin’ except what I just did. Look up at the sky, okay. Now close your eyes, but keep on seein’ the sky when you do. Spread your wings….
“Now go!”
She did, and opened her eyes again as soon as she was on the wing. The black bird rose through the trees until it was higher than the treetops, and she with it.
There was the mountain, with the wood on its flank. There was the trail, a yellow-brown thread winding among the hills. And there—
Someone was hurt or dead, sprawled beside the trail. The black bird had seen it, too, and shot ahead of her, lower and swifter with every beat of its wings. She followed it, knowing it was the right thing to do, though she could not remember why. Here a silver thread crossed the trail—the creek, of course. The black bird was across it already, lower and lower. And she—
Was a wingless girl, hurtling through the air.
THE roar was not just the rush of her blood in her ears. Bruised and aching, she sat up and saw her mother’s ATV raising a dust plume as it sped along the trail. Her voice was gone, but there was a damp red bandana about her neck. She took it off and waved it.
“Are you all right, Viv?” Her mother bent over her, and her mother’s fear lent a tremor to her mother’s voice. “Daisy came home without you, and I’ve been worried sick.”
“I don’t know.” Viviane cleared her throat and spat. “I—you recognized me, Mom?”
“Of course I recognized you!”
“I don’t have a compact. Can I see yours?”
“Your face is bruised, Viv.” Her mother sounded more worried than ever. “I wouldn’t—”
Viviane spat again. “I don’t want your makeup, Mom. I just want to see it.”
A badly bruised girl of fourteen stared back at her out of the powder-dusty mirror.
Snapping the compact closed, Viviane returned it and struggled to her feet. “I’ve got a crazy question. Will you answer, please? Even if it’s crazy.”
“Yes. Anything.”
Viviane held out her right arm. “Am I still wearing that pink watch Dad got for me?”
“It must have come off when you fell,” her mother said. “We can look for it later.”
<
br /> “Don’t bother,” Viviane said. “I never did like it much.”
Her mother had begun to search already. “Here’s your Swiss Army knife.” She waved it triumphantly.
“I think I’m short a quarter. Don’t bother to look for that either.” Viviane was scanning the trees at the edge of the wood. She accepted the shiny red knife and flung it to the black bird perched there. “Here you go,” she called, “and thanks!”
ON the third day of the new school year, sitting in the cafeteria with Joan, she froze.
Joan tried to follow her eyes. “What’s the matter, Viv?”
Viviane put down her fork and pointed. “That guy. The little one.”
“Him? That’s Joe—”
“Never mind.” Viviane motioned her to silence. “It doesn’t matter what you call him. I know his real name.”
She jumped to her feet and waved. “Merlin! Over here! It’s me, Viviane!”
The dark, slender boy whirled, eyes wide and bright with hope.
Stonefather
ORSON SCOTT CARD
Orson Scott Card began publishing in 1977, and by 1978 had won the John W. Campbell Award as best new writer of the year. By 1986, his famous novel Ender’s Game, one of the best-known and bestselling SF novels of the eighties, won both the Hugo and the Nebula Award; the next year, his novel Speaker for the Dead, a sequel to Ender’s Game, also won both awards, the only time in SF history that a book and its sequel have taken both the Hugo and Nebula Awards in sequential years. He won a World Fantasy Award in 1987 for his story “Hatrack River,” the start of his long Prentice Alvin series, and another Hugo in 1988 for his novella “Eye for Eye.” His many short stories have been collected in Cardography, Tales from the Mormon Sea, Unaccompanied Sonata and Other Stories, The Folk of the Fringe, The Elephants of Posnan and Other Stories, First Meetings: Four Stories from the Enderverse, and the massive Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card. His many novels include Ender’s Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppet, Hot Sleep, A Planet Called Treason, Songmaster, Hart’s Hope, Wyrms, Seventh Son, Red Prophet, Prentice Alvin, Alvin Journeyman, Heartfire, The Crystal City, The Call of Earth, Earthborn, Earthfall, Homebody, The Memory of Earth, Treason, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind. As editor, he has produced Dragons of Light, Dragons of Darkness, Future on Ice, Future on Fire, and Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Century. His most recent books are the novels Magic Street and Shadow of the Giant. Card lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his family.
In the vivid and compulsively readable story that follows, pure storytelling at its very best (which takes place in the same fantasy world as the Mithermages series, the first novel of which is coming from Del Rey in early 2008), he introduces us to a boy born in poverty who has nothing but his own wits and native abilities to count on in order to survive in an indifferent and even hostile world—and who ends up using those abilities in ways that will not only change his own life, but the lives of everyone else around him.
WHEN Runnel was born, he was given a watername even though there had never been a wetwizard in the family.
In the old days such names were given only to those babies as would be sacrificed to Yeggut, the water god. Later, such names were given to those who would live to serve as priests to Yeggut. Still later, wetnames went to children of families that pretended they once had a watermage in their ancestry.
But now, in the village of Farzibeck, wetnames were given because the mother was fond of a nearby brooklet or because the father had a friend with such a name. This close to Mitherhome, the great city of watermages, it was no surprise that waternames were more popular than any others, even among rude peasants.
Runnel was born to be the rudest of them all, the ninth son and fifteenth child of a farmwife who had the gift of conceiving children readily and bearing them as if her loins were a streambed and each baby a spring flood. Mother had the wide and heavy hips of a woman whose body had reconciled itself to perpetual pregnancy, yet her cheery smile and patient temper still drew men to her more than her husband wished.
Runnel had the misfortune of looking like neither of his parents, so perhaps Father had dark suspicions about the boy’s siring. What other explanation could there be for the way Father pointedly ignored him, whenever he wasn’t cuffing him or berating him for the constant infraction of being an unloved boy who persisted in existing.
Runnel wasn’t especially good at anything, and he wasn’t especially bad at anything. He learned the work of a hardscrabble mountain-country farming village as quickly as most, but no quicker; he played the games of children as vigorously as any and enjoyed them as much, but no more. He was too ordinary for anyone to notice him, except that his brothers and sisters could not help but pick up Father’s disdain for him, so that he had to fight a bit harder to keep his place when they lined up for food from the stewpot that Mother kept simmering by the fire.
Mother liked him well enough—she liked all her children—but she called them all by each other’s names and didn’t know enough numbers to take a census and notice when one or two were missing.
Runnel took all these things as his lot in life—he knew nothing else. He flung himself out the door and into whatever day the world presented to him, and came home stinking of sweat from whatever work or play had taken up his hours.
His only distinction, if one could call it that, was that he was a fearless climber of rocks. There was no shortage of cliffs and crags in the vicinity. The children grew up knowing all the grassy paths and steps that allowed them to climb wherever they wanted, with no unusual effort and danger.
But Runnel was impatient with circuitous, gentle routes, and when they all went to play king of the hill or just to look out from one of the lesser crags that overlooked their whole valley, Runnel would go straight up the cliff face, his fingers probing for creases and cracks and ledges and ridges in the stone. He always found them, sooner rather than later—though what was the point, since he rarely reached the pinnacle before anyone else?
His older siblings called him stupid and warned him that they’d refuse to pick up his broken body when it fell. “We’ll just leave you for the vultures and the rats to eat.” But since he never fell from the cliff, they had no chance to take out their spite on his corpse.
It could have gone on like this forever.
When he reached the age that might have been twelve, if anyone bothered counting, Runnel began to get his man-height, and his face took on the shape it would bear throughout his life. Not that he ever saw it—no water in that sloping land held still long enough to see reflections, and he wouldn’t have bothered anyway.
Two things happened.
Runnel began to take notice of the village girls, and realized that they took no notice of him, though they had eyes for all the other boys of his height. They neither flirted with Runnel nor taunted him. He simply didn’t exist to them.
And Father began to be more brutal in his beatings. Perhaps Father thought he finally recognized who Runnel’s real sire must have been. Or perhaps he simply recognized that mere cuffings were nothing to Runnel now and it would take more serious effort to explain to him just how despised he was. Whatever the motive, Runnel continued to bear it, though now there were always bruises, and sometimes there was blood.
He could bear the disdain of the village girls—many a man had found his bride in another village. He could bear the pain of his father’s blows.
What he could not bear and did not understand was the way his brothers and sisters began to avoid him. Father’s constant seething rage against him had apparently marked him in their eyes as someone different and shameful. Their father could not be unjust; therefore, Runnel must deserve the mistreatment. The other children did not strike him—it would have been redundant—but they began excluding him from things and playing mean pranks on him.
On a certain day in early spring, when it was still cold, and old snow lay in all northern shadows, the children t
ook it into their minds to run like a flock of geese for the steepest of the crags they were wont to climb, and as Runnel began his own separate ascent, he somehow knew that this was a joke, that when he got to the top he would be all alone, while the others were off somewhere else.
Yet he continued to climb, thinking: I’m too old to play these games, anyway. I should spend my time like the older boys, lounging around or wrestling near the stream, where the girls came to fetch water, and gape and jape and try to draw their smiles or, failing that, their disdain or mockery.
But if he tried, then it would shame him and hurt him if they still paid him no attention. Besides, he didn’t think any of the village girls were interesting. He didn’t care if they noticed him. And he didn’t care that when he got to the top of the crag he was all alone.
The world spread out before him. Mountains were all around, but so high was their valley that this crag was merely one among many, and he could see far and wide over the shoulders of the neighboring peaks.
He saw the pass that led over the Mitherkame—for in Farzibeck they had other names for the other mountains, and only used the sacred name for the great spine of mountains that lined up in a long row like the ragged teeth of a fighting sword—sharp obsidian flakes jutting from between the two halves of a split branch.
The track that crossed it between two of its sharp teeth was called “the Utteroad” if you went west toward Uhetter, and “the Mitheroad” if you went east. That path, the travelers said, would take you down to the great valley of Mitherhome, the city of the water wizards, which was surrounded on all sides by holy water.
On the pass, Runnel could see a wagon moving up the grassy road, though it was so far off that he only knew it to be a wagon because of how slowly and lurchingly it moved. And maybe he could see the animal pulling it, or maybe it was just a blur in the cold sunlight.
He thought, Why am I here, when I could be there?
Wizards: Magical Tales from the Masters of Modern Fantasy Page 41
