A Place to Begin
Richard Parks
Richard Parks is a Mississippi native, married, no children, three cats. He says,
“Whether it’s something in the environment or the local gene pool, Mississippi has always produced more than its share of scoundrels, myth-makers, and storytellers. I don’t know why, but we can’t help it.” In his day job he’s a computer network administrator. He sold his first story to Amazing SF back in 1980. After a hiatus, he sold his second to Asimov’s SF in 1993. He was a frequent reviewer in the 1990s for SF Age. Since then he’s placed stories in Science Fiction Age, Asimov’s, Dragon, Realms of Fantasy, and Weird Tales, as well as in numerous anthologies. He published a number of fantasy stories this year, giving us several fine ones to choose from for this anthology.
“A Place to Begin” is set in an oriental fantasy China, another of the traditional settings of fantasy. It appeared in Weird Tales, the oldest and still one of the best fantasy magazines. It is a transformed retelling of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” with added depth and finely tuned prose.
Long ago, when the wind spoke with a voice you could understand, in a village by the sea there lived a poor girl of almost infinite potential. Her name was Umi, which meant
“ocean.” She had a sweet face, and hair long and glossy black, but so did most of her friends. Umi was hardly worth anyone’s notice, to her own way of thinking. So it was to Umi’s great surprise that she returned from gathering wood late one evening to find her mother and father in intense but polite conversation with the most powerful sorceress on the island.
“Umi, this is Lady White Willow. She has come to take you into her service,” her father said. “It is a great honor.” Her mother said nothing, but merely looked sad. The next morning Umi made a bundle of her few possessions, bowed to her mother and father, and followed the sorceress, leaving her family, her friends, and the village that had been her home. She never saw any of them again.
As they made their way out of the village, the folk there either bowed to White Willow as they would a priest or noble, or just avoided her gaze altogether, hurrying out of her path as decorously as possible. Umi couldn’t decide if there was more respect or fear in their deference; there seemed to be a good measure of both. Umi studied her companion as best she could while they walked. The sorceress’s name fit her well. White Willow was tall and slim, and her hair was white as mountain snow. Umi tried to judge her age and failed. Despite the testament of her hair, White Willow did not look any older than Umi’s own mother. Her robes were of fine silk, and silk wrappings cushioned the thongs of her sandals. She carried a stout stick, but so far had merely used it to help balance herself as the road turned into a mountain path as they traveled away from the sea.
“You’re staring at me,” White Willow said, finally. It was the first time she’d spoken to Umi directly.
“I’m sorry,” Umi said, “but I’ve never met a sorceress before.”
“Nor been bound in service to one, I suppose. Are you angry with your parents for selling you to a stranger?”
Umi shrugged. “It is often the lot of girls from poor families. Some fare worse, I hear. No doubt Father did what he thought best.”
White Willow smiled then. “Strange how that seems to happen most often when gold and silver are involved. Well, then—are you afraid of me?” she asked. There was a pleasant tone in her voice that, for some reason, did not reassure Umi in the least.
“Yes, White Willow sama,” Umi said. Indeed, she was even too afraid to lie about it. The sorceress nodded in satisfaction. “That’s as it should be, but don’t worry—I will be fair to you. If you are obedient and work hard, I will not mistreat you. If you prove to be lazy or obstinate I promise you will regret it. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Lady. I will try to please you.”
“Well, then. Let us hope you succeed.”
White Willow’s home was on a small plateau on the side of a great mountain, a place so flat and green it was as if the forces of nature themselves had chosen to rest there before finishing the mountain they’d started. The plateau was high but not so high that trees would not grow; White Willow’s home was a rambling collection of buildings nestled into birch, maple, and stone. It seemed part fortress, part temple, part woodland glade, and part cave and den all at once.
At first glance it was hard for Umi to tell where the house ended and the mountain began again. After a few weeks it was even more difficult, as spring had come to the land and new leaves were everywhere, hiding stone and timber. Umi explored whenever her duties allowed, which was fairly often. White Willow required little of her except to sweep a certain stone path once a day, and fetch two pails of water from a nearby mountain stream at the end of that path, one in the morning and one at evening. An elderly woman name Kyuko did all the cooking, another slightly younger lady who may have been the cook’s daughter served as White Willow’s personal body servant. There were three thick-bodied men of indeterminate age who saw to the gardens and buildings and did most of the heavier work, including hauling water for the baths. This in itself seemed strange to Umi, since in her own village most of the women worked like donkeys, as hard as or harder than the men. It was very light work, compared to what Umi was used to. She saw no reason to complain on that score, and didn’t. Yet it was hard not to wonder why White Willow had brought her into service in the first place, to use her so little. In time, Umi found it beyond her ability not to wonder about it. When the opportunity presented itself, she asked her mistress about it. White Willow had merely looked at her for a moment and said, with no trace of anger or any other emotion Umi could detect, “Starting tomorrow, sweep the maple grove path twice, morning and afternoon too.” Not being a particularly foolish girl, Umi did not ask again. Yet still she wondered.
Spring turned into summer as Umi became more at ease in her new home. The questions in her mind were still present, but it was as if the warming days had lulled them to sleep, even as they soon coaxed a nap out of Umi on a particularly languid afternoon, when the sun was bright and fierce and the shadows of the maple grove were a welcome haven. She finished her sweeping and then rested against a tree. When she opened her eyes again it was nearly dark.
“Mistress will be wanting her water…”
Umi hurried to fetch the pail, then ran up the path to the place where the stream bubbled out of a fissure in the mountain slope and into a shallow rock basin, a quiet place of ferns and shadow. Umi filled the pail, then hesitated. The run and her long nap had left her very thirsty, yet White Willow had warned her against drinking from that particular stream.
“Perhaps it’s poison,” she said to herself. The water certainly didn’t seem tainted: there was no scent to it at all, and indeed it looked so cold and fresh Umi couldn’t resist. Rather than disobeying White Willow directly, she took a drink from the pail itself. The water was as cool and sweet as it looked.
“That was reckless of you.”
Umi couldn’t see who had spoken. For a moment her vision had blurred; indeed she was afraid then that the water had been poisoned. Yet she felt no pain, and in a few moments she could see again.
In truth, she could see better than ever.
Suddenly, and even in the fading light, the leaves on the maples and the ferns growing by the basin looked extremely bright, as they might after a spring rain. Now Umi noticed that there were characters written on the stone basin, though she could not read them.
“Why didn’t I notice this before?”
“Because this is the Miru no Mizu, the Water of Sight, and you drank it, silly girl. Or did you think White Willow uses it to bathe her feet?” Now Umi followed the sound and saw something else she had never noticed before. There was a
niche carved into the rock a scant few feet from the fissure, and in that sat a small bamboo cage, and in that sat a small bird. Its feathers were blue and red and gold; it was the prettiest thing Umi had ever seen. Yet when she looked at it closely the feathers and bright colors faded, and something very different sat on the perch. It was horned and taloned and it smiled at her with pointed teeth. Its skin was as red as fire. Frightened, Umi stepped back. “You’re not a bird!”
“Of course not, you ignorant child. Do birds commonly speak, even in this place of magic? I’m a shikigami. A creature summoned by White Willow to do her bidding.”
“You look like a devil,” Umi said.
“Is it so? I may resemble an oni, but who has heard of one as small as I? Perhaps we’re a related folk, I do not know. That does not make me a devil. I looked like a bird a moment ago,” the creature pointed out. “That does not mean I was a bird.” Umi could see the truth in that, but she was still careful to keep her distance. The cage looked strong, but the creature inside looked strong, too. “I must go,” Umi said.
“White Willow is waiting for me.”
The creature smiled again. “Do what you must, but a word of caution, girl: until the water leaves your body many things will look quite different, perhaps startling, to you. Do not let White Willow catch you noticing any of it, or she will know you’ve disobeyed her.”
Umi saw the sense in that. “Why are you helping me?” The creature didn’t look at her when it answered. “Because this time I choose to. Ask me again when the answer is different.”
Umi didn’t understand what it meant, but she had no time to ask. She took up her pail and hurried back down the path to White Willow’s house.
“You are late, Umi.”
The sorceress sat on a blue silk pillow while her servant unbraided and combed out her long white hair. Umi stood in the open doorway with her pail. There was movement at the edges of her vision, colors, devices, things that she had never noticed before. She tried not to pay attention to them now, but that was surprisingly easy. Umi used most of her concentration trying not to tremble.
It wasn’t simple fear at White Willow’s obvious displeasure that shook her so; it was the sight of White Willow herself. She didn’t look so greatly different now. She was still a human woman, her hair still long and white as the snow on their mountain’s top. No, what Umi saw now were things just below the surface of White Willow’s face, things hidden to Umi before now.
The first was time, or more correctly, age. White Willow had the surface appearance of a fairly young woman, but Umi now understood this was not true—the sorceress was very, very old. Her unlined face now seemed as cold and lifeless to Umi as that of a painted porcelain doll.
That wasn’t the worst part. Under White Willow’s cold, distant stare, Umi felt herself constantly weighed as if on a merchant’s scale, her value falling this way or that, constantly changing, constantly reconsidered.
How long before the scale turns the wrong way?
Umi bowed low. ” Gomen nasai, White Willow sama. I foolishly let the warm sun lull me to sleep.”
“Is it this, then? Nothing more?”
Umi felt White Willow’s gaze on her as a bird might feel a cat’s, but she kept her eyes averted and her head bowed! “I didn’t wake until nearly dark, and thus am only now come to bring your water.”
White Willow said nothing for very long moments, then sighed wearily. “I’ve had a long, tiring day. I may not even require the water. Still, failure must bring punishment. Is that just?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
White Willow contented herself with a sharp blow of her fan across the back of Umi’s hand, with dire warnings of what would happen if she proved tardy a second time. Umi left the water and scurried gratefully out of the room, the sting of her punishment already fading. She tried to put as much distance between White Willow’s chambers and herself as she could, short of leaving the house. She had seen much to disturb her in White Willow’s room, but she had seen more along the path from the spring, and was in no hurry to encounter them again in the present darkness. Umi considered what to do for a moment, but only for a moment. She smelled something wonderful coming from the kitchen and remembered she hadn’t had supper yet. Kyuko the cook was tending the coals under the grate, which was empty, but there was a bowl of rice and three pickles sitting on the windowsill. The old woman grunted.
“About time. I was about to toss this to the foxes.” Umi doubted that; she had yet to see Kyuko express more than mild annoyance at anything, and certainly not to the point of wasting food. Still, she was careful to express her gratitude, and the old woman smiled. With her round face it made Kyuko look something like a melon with teeth.
Umi ate in comfortable silence as Kyuko went on with cleaning up the kitchen. The kitchen seemed safe from the disturbing visions Umi had discovered elsewhere, but Umi found herself studying the old woman now with an intensity that she didn’t understand. It was as if Kyuko had been here all this time and Umi had only now noticed her. The way the glow from the embers traced a line of gold along the side of her face, damp with perspiration. The way all her movements seemed practiced and precise, almost unconsciously so. Umi found herself wondering how many times the old cook had done just this, in the very same kitchen, performing these very same duties with gentle good humor.
“If it is not impertinent to ask, how long have you been with Lady White Willow?” Kyuko had been looking out at the woods, a distant expression on her face. The question apparently caught her by surprise. She hesitated for several long moments, clearly giving the matter some thought. “Well, I’m not sure one can really be said to be with our mistress, since she is mostly complete unto herself. I’ve been in her service since I was a little girl.”
“Like me?” Umi asked.
Kyuko smiled. “Much like you. I remember the day she came to our village. She looked at many young girls, but she chose me. It was a fine day.”
“Weren’t you sad to leave your family?”
Kyuko raised an eyebrow. “Weren’t you?”
Umi bowed her head. “Forgive me; it was a foolish question.” Kyuko dismissed that. “I hadn’t thought of it in such a long time. The days here seem to flow together like currents in a river; there’s no separating them.” Umi nodded. Until today, that had been true for her, too.
Umi’s dreams were vivid and frightening. She woke early and visited the privy; afterwards she felt more than normal relief—the world seemed to have lost its strangeness. Now the leaves on the maple trees did not suggest disturbing patterns, hints of things unseen. They were just leaves, the stone wall that ran along one side of the grove path was simply a wall and did not, as it had seemed the evening before, have a section with eyes and small, stout legs. Umi swept the grove path carefully and then went to see Kyuko in the kitchen for her breakfast.
Now it was time to fetch the water.
Umi took her pail and trudged up the grove path. Not dragging her feet, exactly, but not hurrying either. When she came to the spring she filled her pail as usual and then stood there beside the water for several long moments, waiting for she didn’t know what, looking for the same. She looked where the writing was, where the shikigami had been, and saw neither. She finally turned her back on the spring and hurried back to White Willow. Umi didn’t want to be late a second time.
It was three days before Umi drank from the pail again. The little creature was in its cage as before, now regarding her thoughtfully. In fact Umi had taken a little more of the water this time, and she looked at the creature very long and intently when it appeared. It ignored her scrutiny. “I wondered how long it would be before you took the water again,” it said.
“How did you know I would?”
The creature smiled, showing very pointed teeth. “When a person is touched by magic it is hard to let the world go back to the way it was. Some people can do it with no problem at all, like old Kyuko. I did not think you would be like her.”
It laughed. “And have I? No, Umi-chan. I merely spoke the fact; I made no judgment. I think that part came from you.”
“I—” Umi blushed crimson. The shikigami was right. “What do you know of Kyuko?” she finally asked.
“Just that she came as a young girl to White Willow’s service, as have you, and when her time came to drink the water she drank once and never again. Perhaps that was best for her, who can say? She is content enough with her life…or so one could suppose.” Umi frowned. “You make it sound as if drinking the water was expected!” The creature showed its teeth again. “Isn’t it? In my experience the one infallible way to make sure a certain thing will happen is to forbid it.” Another smile. “She’d rather reduce her power than be insecure in the power she does possess. I think White Willow is very wise in that.”
“I do not understand,” Umi said.
“Of course not. Else you would not be standing here talking to me.” Umi took a deep breath. “Then what should I be doing, save hurrying with my pail to my mistress?” Umi asked. “And, come to that, what does White Willow really want of me? My duties are but few; such that I’m hardly worth even the small price I’m sure she paid my father.”
The small creature was grinning from ear to ear, almost literally. “You have little wisdom as yet, but you’re a clever enough girl as your kind go. Yes, there is more to this matter as you have guessed. But what? That would be good for you to know.”
“Do you know what White Willow really wants from me? Will you tell me?”
“Of course I know.” The shikigami seemed to consider. “I might tell you. For a price.”
“What do you want?”
“My freedom, of course. Release me.”
“Why are you imprisoned?”
“That’s my affair,” it said, but Umi shook her head.
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