The Pattern Scars

by Caitlin Sweet

  Uja was perched on the top step. When she saw me she spread her wings and flapped them. I walked slowly to the staircase and down, expecting her to keep pace with me as she usually did (hip-hopping from stair to stair), but she did not. I looked behind me and saw her poised, her wings still outstretched—and then she was flying, gliding past me like a blossom caught in wind. She was so beautiful that I forgot where I was, for a moment. She sketched a wide circle that became a spiral and landed by the front door. She cocked her head up at me and whistled a question (“What are you waiting for?”) and I continued down the stairs to her.

  Only when I was at the door did I begin to think clearly, or indeed at all. Uja stood up on her talon-tips and inserted her beak into the lock. She wiggled her head and I heard a click.

  “Uja,” I said when she was looking at me once more. I was trembling with anger. “Why didn’t you do this for me months ago? You knew. You knew, but you didn’t help me.”

  Blink, blink.

  “You could have . . .”

  Blink.

  My anger was gone but I was still trembling—because there probably had been a reason that she hadn’t helped me before, and because the door was unlocked. I pulled it open and stepped onto the path. I blinked, now, in the early morning sunlight; it had been months since I had been outside in anything but darkness. The air was warm but tinged with autumn, and I took great gulps of it. I walked along the glass-pebbled path, and each step was firmer than the last. The black iron fence was before me, and Uja was beside me, and the gate, too, was unlocked and waiting.

  “Come with me?”

  She rolled her delicate bird shoulders and cooed and stepped back, gracefully, just as she had within the circle of grain.

  “Uja,” I said, one more time. Not a question, any more; just a word. I reached out and laid my hand on her head. I had never touched her before. Her feathers were as smooth as the silk of my dress, though they prickled when I drew my hand back over them. I ran my finger along her beak—which was cool—and she nibbled it. “Thank you,” I whispered, and then I was thrusting my way clumsily out the gate and she was singing me a high, sweet, vanishing farewell.

  I knew where I was going. Maybe I had actually managed to think, as I lay motionless in bed, or maybe it was just that there was only one place to go and my embroidered shoes realized this as soon as they touched the cobblestones. I had no idea how to get back to the brothel—and anyway, that was not where I needed to be. Later, perhaps, after I had done what must be done.

  I tried not to be distracted; tried to look only at the castle and the way in front of me. But there were people in the streets—so many of them, shouting laughing, some singing from open windows. Most of them paused to look at me—a wild-eyed girl, lost on her way home from a royal ball?—and I avoided their eyes, kept my feet moving. It was almost too much: the noise, the smells of cooking and midden heaps, the smirking urchins who darted at my skirts, imagining coins. I kept walking. I strode through alleys and along broad avenues and narrow pathways, and if I needed to double back and find new ways I hardly noticed. I was breathing open air and I had words to speak and I was very, very close.

  The road that led up to the castle gate was wide. Only here did I slow. I felt a first sickly lurch of fear, looking at the five guards and their spears and shields, which glinted like Otherseeing mirrors in the sun. I watched them speak to a man on a wagon covered in scarlet cloth (they turned him away), and to a group of women and girls holding armfuls of scrolls (who were gestured inside). I hesitated. I stared at my shoes. I picked up the slippery folds of my dress and walked over to them.

  “Yes?” The man’s voice was rough but not unfriendly. He was not smiling, and his helmet hid his eyes.

  “I must speak to King Haldrin,” I said, too loudly.

  “Indeed,” another guard said. He sounded bored.

  “Yes.” I breathed in deeply, silently. “One of his seers is a murderer.”

  The other three guards had gathered around me. All five stared at me, then at each other.

  “And who are you, to know this?” asked the first one.

  “I was his captive. He taught me and promised to bring me here, but he was lying. He held me prisoner for months.”

  “And how did you escape?” The second guard, no longer bored, grinning.

  “A bird,” I said, and, quickly, over the swell of their laughter, “It doesn’t matter. I must tell the king. He must be warned.”

  “Awfully pretty dress, for a prisoner,” one of the ones behind me remarked, and they laughed again.

  “Look at me!” I cried, and they fell silent. “Look at my eyes! What do you see?” They did look, as I gazed at each of them in turn. They looked and were still silent. “I have the Othersight. My eyes are dark with it already and will only grow darker, until they are black like his.”

  “Like whose?” the first guard asked. “What is this man’s name?”

  “Orlo.”

  I waited for them to gasp, but instead they shifted and chuckled. “There is no Orlo here,” the first guard said.

  “There is. He teaches. He serves the king and Teldaru. He grew up with them. Let me in.”

  “She’s mad,” someone beside me said, and someone else grumbled in agreement. A third spat over his shoulder.

  “I’m not,” I said quietly.

  The first took off his helmet. His hair was short and grizzled and the skin beside his pale green eyes was crinkly with lines.

  “Jareth,” another said, “don’t go all soft now, like always. She’s a mad child or a criminal—doesn’t matter which.”

  Jareth looked at me, and I at him. “Maybe,” he said slowly, and a chorus of groans rose. “But she has the Othersight. Someone inside might know how to help her, at least.”

  “Another wounded birdling for Father Jareth,” a guard said in a high trill of a voice.

  Jareth scowled. “Enough, Marlsin. You’ll do an extra two hours’ watch tonight.” He took hold of my arm, just above the elbow. “I’ll take the girl in and you’ll none of you give me more trouble. Back to your places, now.”

  I heard them move away; heard Marlsin mutter something. Then Jareth drew me under the great arch of the gate.

  We crossed a dusty courtyard. I smelled horses and baking bread but did not turn my head to seek out the stables or the kitchens. I looked where Jareth took me, up a flight of steps so long that my legs ached when we were only halfway. People spoke to him on the stairs, and when he led me inside the keep at the top, but I did not look at them, either.

  The keep was dim. We paused for a moment. “King Haldrin?” he asked someone—another guard, for while I did not look up at his face, I saw his sword and shield. The other man said, “His reading room—where else?” and Jareth guided me on, down a hallway lit by lanterns. I expected a series of halls, more steps; a place that was enormous and grand. The door we came to was quite plain, as the others in the hall were: wood and bronze, without insignias or ornament. For a moment I thought he had brought me to a prison cell, and I pulled my arm back, trying to wrest it from his grip—but then he rapped, and a man’s voice called, “Enter.”

  The room was bright. I blinked, and the wash of sun hardened into a series of arched windows that looked onto sky and green. Bookshelves lined the walls. The books upon them were not neatly arranged, but scattered, leaning against each other, or lying on their backs or fronts, or even open. Some of the shelves bristled with scrolls. I looked from them to the tapestries on the walls between the shelves, to the worn carpet on the floor and the large, scarred table upon it. To the man sitting at the table, twisting around on his chair to look at me.

  Orlo was right; he is young, I thought, as if Orlo might have lied about this too. King Haldrin’s hair was brown and curly enough that I could barely see the golden circlet that lay upon it. His eyes were blue. They narrowed as he gazed at me, but not really in a frown. He was clean-shaven, as Orlo was.

  “Jareth,” the kin
g said. His voice was warm, and I felt a surge of hope. “How did you find me?”

  Jareth cleared his throat. “You are always here, my lord. When you are not in the Great Hall, that is. And Larno told me, too.”

  The king sighed. He was smiling. “And I try so hard to be elusive.” He rose, stepped closer to us. “Who is this?”

  “A girl, my lord, who claims . . . well, she claims something that sounds a little mad, really.”

  The king stepped even closer. He was gazing into my face, into my eyes. “She has the Othersight,” he said.

  “Yes.” Jareth sounded relieved. “She does. And she says—”

  “Perhaps she should tell me herself.”

  My throat was dry. As I was walking here I imagined a great hall that would echo with my words; a hall full of people, and the king on his throne above me. I had been ready for this—not for a room of books and one smiling, waiting man.

  “There . . .” I bit my lip, wiped my palms on my dress. “There is a seer here at the castle who kills people. He uses the Othersight—Bloodseeing—it’s forbidden, and he uses it to murder them.”

  “So you see,” Jareth said, “I thought to bring her to you, because you could decide whether to take her to Mistress Ket for help”—he gestured at the windows, and at what lay beyond them—“since she does healing. The girl may be mad, but—”

  “Jareth.” The king’s voice was quiet. “Leave us, please.” After the door had closed, he leaned back against the table. “How do you know this?”

  “He held me captive at a house in the city—he took me from a brothel and told me he’d teach me, told me he lived here at the castle and that he knew you well, ever since you were boys.”

  “What is his name?”

  “Orlo,” I said, with the last of my breath.

  The king did frown, now. “Orlo?”

  I nodded.

  “I knew an Orlo once, when I was very young, but he died.”

  “No,” I said, “no—he’s a seer, and he lives here; he told me so.” I swallowed tears. “He told me.”

  There was a door set in the far wall, between two windows. A door leading out to the leafy courtyard, where the seers’ pool was, where the school was. It opened, as my words faded. I did not turn to it, at first, but clung to the king’s gaze as if I would convince him silently, since my speaking could not. But then I heard a growl, and knew it, and I did turn, slowly.

  Borl was in the doorway. He was growling at me, his ears back against his skull.

  “Borl!” King Haldrin said sharply. “Quiet, now!”

  No, I thought—because there was a man behind the dog, blocking out the sun.

  “That’s him,” I said, too hoarsely. “That’s him”—lifting my hand, pointing at Orlo, who was looking at the king with his honey-coloured brows raised.

  King Haldrin’s frown was puzzled, as was his voice. “Teldaru,” he said, “what is this?”

  Book Two

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  They put me in another prison. More walls and locks—and him. Even now, years later and surrounded only by branches and sky and doors I can open, I can hardly catch my breath, remembering.

  I thought I would write and write, once I’d set down that first “Teldaru?” Because that was it—the one word I’d been writing to, all this time so far—and surely everything after it would be like the loosing of a deep, held breath. But it did not happen that way. I slept, or did not sleep, but lay looking at the midsummer sky, with its heavy grey storm clouds.

  Yesterday morning, in a fit of restlessness, I put the princess on my hip and walked out my door. Sildio sprang from his stool. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so surprised. I told him to close his mouth and added that I was going out. We went through the keep, the princess and I, and down into to the central courtyard, where a troop of players and artisans from the north had set up their tents. I watched the child’s sightless eyes roll as they followed all the sounds: the fire-weavers’ hissing patterns and the actors’ strange, swirling words. These things distracted me too, so that now and then I thought, I have not worried about my writing in minutes! with a start of surprise and relief. When we returned to the room I was exhausted and achy (my body hasn’t been the same, since I was ill last spring), but still restless.

  This morning I woke to rain pouring in through my partly-open shutters.

  Time is passing. I am making this Pattern by not making it, and it is knitting around me, and I do not want it to be this way. So I am ready, again, to write the Path behind and then to walk the one ahead.

  I remembered, in my newest cell—a tiny room with no windows and a door made of oak that shuddered when it closed. There was nothing to do here except remember.

  I remembered how Teldaru had frowned at Haldrin and said, “I don’t know what you mean. Who is this girl?” And then, when the king explained, how Teldaru said, “She must be mad.”

  “She doesn’t look mad.” The king searched my face, which had gone as numb as the rest of me.

  “Hal.” Teldaru looked regretful. (Teldaru, I thought, over and over, the word a heartbeat under my own.) He was absolutely clean-shaven. No tiny red-gold hairs to catch the sun or scratch along my forehead. “You’ve seen it before: people unable to bear the weight of their own power. People who desire the Otherworld but cannot stand its glow.”

  I laughed. It was more of a cackle, and it would not help me—except that Haldrin, still gazing at me, said, “Yes, I’ve seen such people. But she’s different. She . . .” He will do it, I thought as he looked at me. He will understand. He wants to.

  “What is your name?” he asked me.

  I turned to Teldaru. “Why don’t you tell him?” I said, then laughed again at his regretfully shaking head and his regretfully uncomprehending eyes.

  “He knows,” I said to the king. “I didn’t know his, but he always knew mine. I am Nola. I am also Mistress Hasty Seer and Mistress Overcurious Seer and . . .”

  A broken breath, nearly a sob—and no, I must not cry.

  “Nola,” said the king.

  I heard things, from my cell. Muffled footsteps and voices; laughter and shouting.

  It’s the opposite of the house, I thought as I stared up at the ceiling plaster. There I had space and it was full of things, but empty of people. Empty rooms and an empty garden beyond them. Here I have nothing but a pallet and a chair and a lantern, but the world is right on the other side of my door. I can hear it. I can smell it, onions and bread and meat—Laedon’s kitchen—or was Laedon also a lie?

  “Nola,” the king said again. “Teldaru will take care of you.”

  “No.” I sounded quite reasonable now, which was strange, since there was a knot of screaming in my chest.

  “Yes.” Teldaru took a step toward me. Borl barked, once. “You are an Otherseer. You are unwell. I will find somewhere quiet and private and I will tend to you.”

  “Is there anyone we can tell?” Haldrin said. “Any family in the city?”

  I saw: it was so simple, the way out. “Yes,” I said quickly, “Bardrem—he lives at the brothel where I—”

  “Good.” Teldaru nodded briskly. “We will find him and tell him where you are.” He smiled at me—concerned, reassuring.

  “No you won’t,” I said, even more quickly, so that Haldrin would hear at least some of my words, “you’ll say you’ve looked for him and then you’ll say you couldn’t find him, or maybe that you found him and he didn’t care, and everyone will believe you because—”

  “You see?” Teldaru’s voice was louder than mine. He lifted both hands, shrugged, quirked his brows again, at the king. “She is raving. But she is lucky that her madness led her here, for there would be nothing but misery for her in the city. She is lucky, too, that she is young. Young and strong.”

  I could not look away from him. (Teldaru Teldaru Teldaru said my pulse.)

  “Come with me now . . . Nola.” He said my name like a question, as if he might have got it wro
ng. “We will begin by finding you a more appropriate dress. And some food.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I said. “And why don’t you like my dress? You gave it to me.”

  I thought, I could reach up and unhook the lantern and smash it against the wall. I imagined flames catching on the bedclothes and mattress and on my clothes as well, beginning with the hem of my plain brown skirt. They would have to open my door then. They would pull me out, coughing and blistering—or, even better, Borl would pull me out with his jaws clenched around my flesh or my belt, and Teldaru would say, “Well done, Borl” and pick me up and carry me to another locked room where I would have no light at all.

  How long had it been? A day, two? The door had opened several times (keys jingling, bolts sliding)—on him, of course, bringing trays of food that smelled wonderful but tasted like dust. He did not speak to me. He stared at me as I picked at my food (I’d rather not have eaten at all, but after a few days I needed to), and took the corner bucket out to dump its contents somewhere. I blushed, the first few times he did this, but after awhile it was just another thing he did, silently and swiftly.

  The first time he spoke, Haldrin was with him. I did not know what time it was, of course, but I was sleeping, and woke to the rattle and slide of the lock and bolt. When I saw the king I struggled to sit up, holding bedclothes around my shoulders, even though I was dressed.

  “Nola.” The king sat on the chair, pulled close. His tunic was very fine: a deep red stitched with golden thread and studded, at its hem, with tiny circles of copper. The lantern light plucked at him, and his shine made me blink. “How are you?”