by Gayle Greeno
“She needs to relieve herself. What are we going to do?” Doyce asked, one hand massaging the ghatta’s shoulder blades as she looked around, wondering what to do.
“Well, get her off your tabard first,” came Mahafny’s practical rejoinder. “Much as she—and we—may not like it, I’m afraid it’s going to have to be inside.”
A surge of humiliation flooded her brain as Khar protested. Inside like an unhousebroken ghatten. Not to be able to go outside and away in privacy. She scooped up the ghatta, cradling the limp hindquarters against her chest.
“I found an old bone during the night, jabbed me every time I rolled over until I dug it out,” Mahafny said. “I think I can loosen the ground a bit over there. I don’t know about you, but frankly, she’s not the only one who has to go.”
Scratching, hacking, digging, the older woman softened and churned a segment of hard-packed earthen floor about two hand spans wide. Doyce eased the ghatta into a sitting position, one hand still under her chest to support her. The sigh of relief was audible even to Mahafny as the tang of urine filled the air. “Thanks. I’ll cover it once I put her back.”
A draft of morning-freshened air knifed through the dank confinement as the leather curtain over the door snapped back, making them jump. Their visitor from the previous evening, the Erakwan woman who had brought them food, crouched in the doorway, frowning.
“Fah!” She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “No wait go ou‘side. Bad.” The ghatta, struggling to sit upright, caught her attention. “Oh. Unnerstan’. Sick one. Good sign den.” Jerking her head toward the door, she continued, “Mebbe you wan’ do same—but ou‘side? One, den od’er.”
“Mahafny, you have until I count fifty, so don’t linger !” As badly as she had to go herself, Doyce yearned for a few moments alone with Khar’pern. Bless the Lady that Mahafny seemed disinclined to waste time politely debating who should go first.
She made her mindspeech as intimate and caressing as possible, though she wanted nothing better than to shout her anxieties. Reining in her emotions to avoid a sensory overload, she strained not to share the roiling fears within her. “Khar, can you ’speak any of the others? Are the other ghatti close? Or at least Harrap or Jenret, they’re nearby.” To have to use the ghatta like this when she was so sick shamed her, but what choice did she have? And whatever information she gained might help orient her when she was allowed out to relieve herself.
“Hurt, hurt,” the ghatta whimpered a plaintive, little lost sigh. “You hurt, too? Can feel it.” Her obvious concern tore at Doyce.
“Yes, love, but not as much as you, and most of the hurt I feel is yours. But the others?”
“Can’t ’speak far, my thoughts wobble. Hold me, please.”
Doyce cupped a steadying hand under her chin and placed the other on her brow, the ghatta trembling in pain at the contact.
“Ah. Touched Jenret.” Her eyes half-closed, concentrating. “West, about ... about seven huts away from here. I think it’s bigger than this hut, lots of men guarding it. He says not to give up, that they’ll figure a way to escape. And,” the ghatta wrinkled her face, the dark stripes above her eyes crowding close, bewildered, “do you have any flea powder in your famous saddlebags? Does that make sense?”
“Yes, don’t worry. Tell him to have Rawn or Parm ’speak me as soon as they get in touch again.”
With effort, the ghatta focused, the shiver of effort tingling Doyce’s fingers. “Harrap says Lady bless us three.”
“Yes, Lady bless us three and the others out there as well. Now rest, dear heart.” As Khar’s eyes drifted shut, Doyce slid a cautious hand to the back of the ghatta’s head, fingering the head wound. The swelling had subsided somewhat, but what did the paralysis mean? Would it last, or was it only because of the pressure on the brain? Yet they were lucky, both blessed even if she remained crippled. If Khar had lost her ability to mindspeak as Saam had ... both of them to be locked inside themselves with no way to share their thoughts?
As Mahafny shouldered aside the flap to enter the hut, Doyce wasted no time in brushing by her. Outside at last and blinking in the sharp, thin light, eyes watering, she resolutely ignored the Erakwa captors gathered around her at a calculated distance.
“This way?” She motioned to the elderly woman awaiting her, and without stopping for an answer, turned and walked with the sun at her back, toward the west, and toward the direction of the hut holding Jenret and Harrap. How long would her luck hold?
With a show of mock impatience, the woman grabbed her arm, slowing but not stopping her for another few strides. “No, no. Dis way. Not walk t‘rough cen’er of villidge. Od’er way quicker.” And now the hand on Doyce’s arm locked in place, implacable and restraining as a mother holding back a stubborn child from danger.
She tugged once, testing, then yielded with marginal good grace. Let them think she simply didn’t know which way to take. Her few paces in the “wrong” direction had allowed her a cursory survey of the village, and the glimpse of a hut farther toward the center, heavily guarded, where Jenret and Harrap must be held. The village’s size surprised her. Perhaps forty huts or more, if her quick scan had been accurate, with some huts far bigger than others, large enough for extended families. The browns and silver-grays of the bark enclosures, some edged with the green of moss, blended naturally into the landscape without a rough betraying edge. The woods crept close on the northern and eastern sides, but she’d seen cleared, possibly cultivated land along the western margin.
Propelled by firm shoves, she forced herself to march docilely east toward the rising sun, squinting against the glare as she strained to make out details. Grateful, she opened her eyes wider as the forest rose to shield some of the intense brightness. A harder shove pushed her toward a clump of chest-high scraggly bushes with crackling brown leaves, half-denuded, and she realized that this was all the privacy she’d receive. Still, better than nothing, considering that Erakwa surrounded the bushes. Sighing in resignation, rigid with embarrassment, she dug a hole with a stick and then squatted in quick relief. Exactly how Khar had felt.
The walk back was slower, less urgent, but still too short; it gave her only enough time to notice that everyone, old and young, male and female, tried to pretend she wasn’t visible, or worthy of being seen. Their covert appraisal told her otherwise, as did the bristling sensation at the back of her neck. She tossed a hurried glance over her shoulder, then stared straight ahead. She and the others were an undoubted curiosity, but not necessarily a welcome or pleasant one. Behind the carefully blank, neutral faces and sharp obsidian eyes she detected fear as well as hostility, more a doomed, angry acceptance than aggressive instincts, and that puzzled her. As if they unwillingly accepted something they’d had no choice in; strange for the victors of the encounter.
The urge to run, to flee, swept over her just as many hands thrust her back inside the hut. She struggled, dug her heels in, then stumbled forward through the curtain, hating the smothering drag of the leather against her face. She stood panting, fists clenched, quaking in helpless fury as the eumedico watched without speaking. Nothing to do but wait until their time came, whenever that might be.
She settled, curiously formal, with her back half-turned to Mahafny, who sat with legs curled beneath her, one hand on the ground for support. “Well, they haven’t retied our hands, so they can’t believe we’re too dangerous,” she commented. “And we’ve been marginally well-treated, sheltered and fed, at any rate. The woman cared enough to try to help Khar, and it seemed to work. I wonder what they’ve planned for us.”
Doyce interwove her fingers, cursed her unsteady hands for betraying her. “I don’t know, but I still don’t think it’s anything good. There’s activity in the center of the village—as if they’re getting ready to hold a meeting.” She couldn’t explain her haunting feeling about the eyes, the looks, wouldn’t, not and burden Mahafny with additional worries.
“Of which we’re to be the main topic of conver
sation, I suspect. Not the possibility of an early winter, or whether the hunting has been good, or anything as mundane as that.” Mahafny’s voice was bleak but controlled.
The skin covering the door lifted, golden sunshine spilling through, their visitor a blocky shape against the light until the flap fell. The old woman, and again she carried food for them.
She sat, dark eyes thoughtful and assessing, and seemed to reach a decision as she hoisted herself up and pinned back the door flap so that light poured in. Then she shooed them into the patch of sun, clucking and muttering as she busied herself with ladling food into shallow bowls. Steam danced, carrying with it a nutty, sweet scent. Both Doyce and Mahafny accepted with a nod of thanks. The wooden spoon in each dish was flat, more paddle than spoon, but they both set to eating without hesitation. Despite the Erakwan’s knowledge of herbs and forest things, Doyce found she had no fear of poisoning. Whatever it was, the gruel tasted good, with a granular texture enlivened by dried blueberries swollen plump and sugary with cooking. It felt warm and satisfying in her stomach.
“So,” the old woman commented. “So. Now mebbe we talk. Me Addawanna.” Her hand swallow-swooped to her chest and away as she introduced herself.
Mahafny set down her half-finished bowl and mimicked the gesture as she repeated the name several times, spoke her own distinctly, and then added Doyce’s name. Doyce’s name came easily to Addawanna, but the eumedico’s name seemed to have one syllable too many for her. She frowned, rolled it over on her tongue. “Ma-HAF-ny. Ma-HAF-ny. I go fast, it be Maf’ny.” She wagged a playful finger in the eumedico’s direction. “I go fast, you still answer Addawanna.”
“You speak our language very well,” Mahafny responded diplomatically. “How did you learn it?”
“Is hard langwidge. Too many words sound’n same, mean diffent. Not many ‘nough words to mean od’er t‘ings, ’portant t‘ings.” She slapped her knee with her open palm, the sharp crack emphasizing her dislike of the limitations. “I learn long ’nough ago when peoples trabeled nort’ in summer, to what you call ... what? ... Marchmon’? Why you t’ink dat sep‘rate land? Der no mark on groun’ saying ’Dis Marchmon’ dis side’ and ‘Dis our land dat side,’ and even if was, it madder?”
Twisting and looping a braid, she strove with the concept of invisible boundaries. But then Addawanna settled back, her eyes taking on a reminiscing squint. “Young den. Young and, oh,” she conspired a merry wink, “look-in’ for all sorts t‘ings, you know? Meetin’ a man der, your race, he know some my words, I learn some his. Nights shorter ’den in summer, and we busy, busy, but we not busy, we learn.
“No go back much. Der side, dis side. Ni‘er want us back and forth so easy. Not want us e’der place. Not right. Both sides ours much as anybody elses. All ours share first.”
“Sometimes our governments decide things we don’t always understand,” Mahafny guardedly picked her words. “I know that in the old days travel between the two countries was freer, more easy. I journeyed there myself once long ago. But then with the new trade compacts and with a new Monitor in charge ...” she trailed off, aware that her explanation sounded inadequate and almost incomprehensible to someone who didn’t have Monitors or trade agreements or the fear of invasion and conquest, or at least the fear of invasion from others of their own race. Land enough there might be, but not enough for the newcomers to share, even if neither side used all that it claimed.
“So. You no know e‘der, really,” she shook her head. “If ol’ woman like me not know, and wise woman from od’er race not know, how anyone ‘spect to know? Or just pretend? Puff chests and pretend wise and knowing? But that nod’in in prob’em now, not here.”
Addawanna stared at the ghatta, speculating, watching her striped sides rising and falling with each breath. Hating to do it, Doyce brushed Khar’s side, captured one front foot and shook it to wake her, or at least to bring her to a light doze so that she could be called to action.
With infinite slowness, Addawanna reached toward the ghatta and Doyce held her breath. A gnarled finger air-traced the circular striping on her side, not ruffling the fur. “What sort an‘mul dat t’ing? It good? It bad? What it do? Neber trap nod’in like dis. Dey tell of dem in de o’d tales.”
Could they have lived in the woods so long and never have had any real contact with the ghatti? Possible, if the ghatti didn’t want to be seen, but the Erakwa boasted incredible woodlore. Or had there been some sort of mutual avoidance? Doyce wanted to push the hand away, but restrained herself. The touch had been that of someone who liked animals. “I should hope you’ve never trapped any. It’s a ghatta, a female ghatt. Her name is Khar, short for Khar’pern.” The ghatta purred in her steep.
The woman laughed, imitated the sound and the final syllable. “Pern, pern! She big for khatt. You got big mices where you come from?”
Was the Erakwan woman teasing her? “Not cat, ghatt—or ghatta for the females. They don’t catch mice.”
“Den what good dey be? Big beast to be lazy.”
One step at a time, she counseled herself. How much was the woman ready to accept? How much would she accept? How much before another war club smashed down upon the unsuspecting, silky furred head? If not wielded by Addawanna, by someone else in the camp. And did the ghatti have anything to do with their being taken captive—she recalled the Erakwan’s face that day in the Market Square when he’d seen Khar—or had they unwittingly trespassed across some invisible Erakwa boundary of sorts, a demarcation between their world and the Erakwa world?
“They can understand intuitively,” she hesitated and reached for a less abstract word. “They can understand in their hearts if people speak or feel false or true. They know if someone tells the truth or lies, or even if a person thinks he tells the truth but hides the truth from himself.”
“In der hearts? Or in der heads?” A shrewd question. “Can dat Pern-khatt tell, now, if I speak right or wrong?”
“In their heads they hear and understand what isn’t said out loud but thought. But their hearts tell them if it’s true or false.” She simplified a little, feeling it safer. “Khar could tell if you were speaking false or true if I asked her to, but I haven’t asked her to listen because I think you speak true.”
“Ah. But you no know fer sure,” Addawanna admonished with a flick of her hand. “She no hear ev‘yt’ing alia time?”
“Well, yes and no. She hears everything all the time, but she doesn’t always listen.”
The woman scowled. “Addawanna no un‘nerstan’.”
“You do it, too. When you’re in a crowd of people, with everyone talking at once about different things. You hear it, but you don’t always listen, you listen to what interests you, to what you want to hear. Besides, the ghatti don’t think it’s polite to listen to people unless it’s necessary, unless it has some bearing on finding the answer to a problem. Then they listen to what you say and to what you think so they can discover who is right and who is wrong. They stalk truth instead of mice.”
“Dey no snatch your t‘oughts away and leave you em’ty?”
“No, no, absolutely not!” Doyce snapped, indignant at the slur to Khar. Where would the woman conceive an idea like that? And then with a sick certainty she knew. Gleaners. The Erakwa must have had some sort of fateful contact with the Gleaners. How else to explain the unexpected attack? But what would lead Addawanna to think that the ghatti had some relationship with, or an ability similar to that of the Gleaners? Addawanna’s bright eyes searched her, raked over her, and she forced herself back to the more immediate problem of gaining the woman’s trust. “If Khar did what you said, I wouldn’t have any brain left at all, would I? Do you fear seeing what it’s like?”
Addawanna rocked back and forth, one fist drubbing her knee, her lips pursed in thought. The pounding accelerated, then stopped, and her dark eyes sparked defiance. “Try! Addawanna too o’d have any t’oughts wort’ stealing!” A wide smile slashed across her toothless face, then she became
instantly serious, on guard.
“Khar, wake up. You have to wake up, I need you.” Doyce begged and shook the flaccid forepaw again. Scythelike claws flashed gleaming crescents, caging her fingertip without a puncture.
“Am awake.” Her voice came peevish, muzzy with sleep, but not as weak as before. “Am too awake. I heard, but you shouldn’t have said that without asking. No ghatti has ever ’spoken an Erakwan before, their brains are too prickly, like nettles, make you itch all over. We tried to Bond once, long, long ago, and when we bit there was a spark and a flash like lightning. We don’t know why they don’t want to share minds, but we respect their feelings.”
Doyce’s heart sank. “I’m sorry. I never thought. Now what are we going to do?” Being shown up as a liar wouldn’t help their cause.
Khar twisted her head, side-glanced at Addawanna. “She doesn’t feel as bristly as most, not like the one in the Market Square. I’ll try. I’ve always wondered what they’re like inside, we all have.”
“All right. Are you ready?” Mahafny crossed to Addawanna and stood, holding her hand. “Now, think of something you’d like her to know—true or false—without saying it out loud and let her read the thought inside you and see if she can judge the truth, the truth that is within you.”
The Erakwan gave a terse nod, and smoothly, effortlessly, the ghatta transferred her question into Doyce’s mind. She breathed a sigh of relief. She answered, “No, she’s not my mother.”
Addawanna smiled again, but then her face froze, her hand knotting against Mahafny’s until the eumedico gasped in pain. “But sometime, sometime you wish she was,” she said wonderingly.
Damn the ghatta, Doyce thought with a surge of frustration, she’d read the deeper subtext of her silent answer and transmitted it directly to Addawanna without so much as a by-your-leave.
