Presumably Ellel didn’t know of the substitutions. She had never seemed to notice. So long as the cage was alive with movement and song, so long as the tank moved with glittering bodies, that was all Ellel cared about. Qualary had not been beaten over birds or fish for quite some time. Over other things occasionally, but not over birds and fish.
One of the doors in the apartment was locked and had been locked as far back as Qualary could remember. It was not wise to be seen cleaning next to this door, or she might be accused of snooping. Nor could she move anything, for that would be impudence, a claim to refinement that she, a simple maid, could never possess. So Qualary, who had never desired to be refined, who wanted only peace and to be let alone as much as possible, fluffed cushions, dusted windowsills, washed bric-a-brac, and tried not to think about it. The dust was a constant. Other parts of the Dome had filtered air supplies, but this apartment had been blocked off for fear someone might sneak in through the ducts. They were very small ducts, but perhaps the Witch knew of very small creatures who could get through such tiny openings. Sometimes Qualary amused herself by imagining such creatures. She equipped them with huge appetites and incredible teeth and imagined them coming upon the Witch in her sleep and eating her entirely, starting with her feet. Such imagining had gotten her through many an otherwise impossible morning.
On a particular day she was on her knees, wiping up the floor, when the Witch came in.
“Still at it,” came the hard, metallic voice from behind the mask. “You should have finished hours ago.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” murmured Qualary. She had learned this was acceptable verbiage.
“I’d get rid of you, except I’ve just got you broken in,” the voice went on, as though to itself. “Maybe I could trade you to Ander. He’s got some good servants.”
Whom Ander treated very well, thought Qualary to herself, busily brushing. Ander hired very highly trained and qualified people, after which Ander mostly ignored them, which was fine with them.
“Let the rest of it go,” the voice snapped. “Get up off the floor.”
Qualary stood obediently, eyes down. Looking into those eyeholes was also impudence. Or arrogance One or both.
“This just came in.”
Something was thrust into Qualary’s hands. Cloth. Not too clean. “Yes, ma’am,” she murmured.
“Take it down to the labs. Give it to one of Mitty’s men, Pelly or Josh, one of them. Tell them I want a genome match to the samples they’ve got.”
Qualary bobbed respectfully, picked up her cleaning supplies, backed away, and went out the door, hearing the voice snarling behind her. “Quickly, tell them!”
Qualary went swiftly away in the direction of the labs. The Witch hadn’t really needed to specify Mitty’s men. The people in the labs were mostly Mitty’s men. And in the shops. And in any other place involved with technical or scientific matters. Only the Mittys knew about such things. Maybe the Ellels had known once, or the Berklis or the Anders, but no more.
Once out of sight of the doorway, Qualary spread the fabric between her hands and looked at it. A raggedy blanket. What did the Witch want with a raggedy blanket? Qualary shook her head and sighed. How could any normal person tell what the Witch wanted with anything?
In the apartment. Qualary had just left, Ellel moved slowly to the front door, shut it firmly, and locked it. Then the mask bent toward the door, forehead almost touching it, as though listening. After a time, a bony hand reached out, unlocked the door silently, and jerked it open. No one there. No one eavesdropping. The door was shut and locked once more. Then there was a slow search of the cluttered rooms, a careful check behind each door, behind each drapery, in every closet and cupboard. Only when all of these possible hiding places had been eliminated did she go to the inner door, the perpetually locked door, open it, and go down the long corridor beyond and into the very private room.
In the opposite wall a tall window filtered green and watery light through a green veil of creeper. As she walked to this window, the hem of her robe raised ankle-high puffs of dust that fell at once into the luxuriant layer blanketing every surface. No pattern could be seen in the thick carpet, the carvings on the paneled wall were softened, and the bewildering wall of draperies around the lofty bed was so encrusted, it might have been carved from sedimentary stone. Only the windowsill was relatively free of dust, its surface abraded as though something had been repeatedly and recently dragged across it. Between the creeper tendrils, the window stared blankly across the canyons through panes rendered barely translucent by the accumulated filth.
Ellel’s robed figure leaned on the abraded sill, the eyeholes of the mask stared through a peekhole rubbed through the grime on the glass. “We have her,” she whispered in a voice that even Qualary had seldom heard, one that would have horrified her to hear.
“We have her!”
Silence. Outside the tendrils moved gently in the light wind. Cloud shadows skimmed the convoluted canyons like enormous bats. No sound came into this room except when the narrow window was opened. No one could see into this room.
“A pair of our walkers brought us a blanket,” the voice said conversationally. “The blanket the Gaddir child slept in. It was worthy of a carnival, a circus, so I sent one! A parade. Drummers and dancers and a Wet Nurse. Surely they’ve got her by now.”
The answer came as a breathy crepitation, like dried leaves scratching.
“Good! That’s good, daughter.”
A long pause, during which not even a breath disturbed the air.
“That’s my Princess.”
The Witch turned from the window to stare at the chair beside the bed, a strangely contorted chair that had been clumsily gilded and padded with a velvet cushion. On the arm of the chair was a diadem, one made for a younger and smaller person. On the cushion lay a jeweled scepter Her toys. Things she had had since she was a child. Soon … soon to be replaced with real ones.
She turned back to the window, bony fingers drumming on the sill. So much work yet to do! First the shuttle, then collect what was needed from the space station, then back here Then the fall of Gaddi House. And of the Berklis And of the Mittys. Yes, and most of the Anders, too. She had her walkers. She needed no other allies.
“Yes, daughter,” sighed the whispery voice.
No one could have done better, she told herself. Not even a son, if he had had a son.
After seeing her hovel occupied by others, Orphan moved resolutely upward and southward among ramified ridges, keeping one distant peak before her, stumbling onward along a rocky defile even after sight of this peak was lost. It was evening when resolution gave way to weariness, and she sagged onto a rounded stone to rest. Abruptly, the sun dropped behind the western peaks and she realized she could not go on. All the sky glowed alike, dusk gathered, and there were no directions. Food sack in her hand, she merely sat, staring at stones, thinking nothing.
The guardian-angel nibbled on her ear, chuckled at her, and said, “Come on, come on.”
She was unable to respond. She wanted Oracle. She wanted Drowned Woman. She wanted her squirrel, and her jay, and to be sitting by Oracle’s fire, warm and comforted.
“Come on!” demanded the guardian-angel yet again.
She got up, wandered a few steps farther, then sat down again, blinded by tears She couldn’t move. It wasn’t possible.
Darkness came, and reality with it: hunger and chill and herself without proper shelter because she’d spent the last of the daylight feeling sorry for herself instead of attending to business. Hero would be ashamed of her, she told herself as she crawled beneath the drooping branches of a nearby spruce, where she wrapped herself in her cloak and blankets, cuddled the angel under her chin, and fell into exhausted slumber.
Only to be awakened, breath caught in her throat, by something she heard. The angel stirred alertly at her throat but, unlike itself, made no sound.
It came then, a keening hum, as though something moved through
the air high above her. The hum was succeeded by silence, the normal sounds of bird and beast and insect stilled.
“… Orphan …,” called a voice.
She opened her mouth to answer. Her guardian-angel shuddered, putting its beak to her lips, and she changed her mind. Perhaps it was not a good idea to answer. Not until or unless she knew what it was that called her name in the night.
Not her name. As Oracle had made clear, she was not Orphan any longer. There was a new Orphan. She was someone else. She didn’t know who she was “… Orphan.…”
Sweet, that voice. Like a mother calling. Come, dear one. Come, daughter. Sweetheart, come on. Don’t hide. Come on, lovely.…
“… Orphan.…”
It was like the call inside her. A summons. A beckoning voice that she should recognize. Or was it the place it was summoning her to that she should recognize? The angel shuddered again, and Orphan held her breath, tears in her eyes.
You must answer me, sweetheart. Don’t make Mother angry. Don’t upset your loving mommy. Dear one. Answer Mother.
The tears rolled down her cheeks. She thrust a knuckle into her mouth and bit down on it, hard. Only silence abroad in the night, only silence and that voice, and somewhere the place the voice wanted her to go. To Mother. To Father. Home.
Something moved through the trees nearby. Something large and heavy, at least as large and heavy as a person, though it moved more quickly than a person could have moved in the dark among the trees, among the clutter of branches and twigs, across the stumbling stones.
Oddmen, she told herself, knowing it was true. Here were the deadly creatures, abroad in the night, hunting for her. So Oracle had been right. There was danger. More than mere danger.
“… sweetheart Daughter. Dear one.…” The voice came from the place the other sound had come from, accompanying the sound of movement. Orphan bit her finger until she tasted the salty, metallic tang of blood.
A long silence. From somewhere nearby a bird made a sleepy whistle. A cricket began its continuous count of night moments, creaking them off one by one. Something trumpeted far off, a kind of bellow-roar she hadn’t heard before, but still a natural sound, an animal, bull-like noise. It could be an animal. It could also be a minotaur, or a manticore, in which case, might it come this way?
She felt herself growing dizzy and realized she’d been holding her breath. She gasped.
Slowly the normal night noises resumed. Eventually, though she tried to stay awake and listen, she slept once more.
Morning brought breakfast and determination, after which the day went better. Wherever she might end up, staying where she was was not an option! So she followed a stream up onto the heights, making her way slowly, inspecting each new type of growth or soil as Hero had taught her to do. Here there were oddly burned places scattered across the hillside, almost like footprints, with a smell that made her guardian-angel squawk and flutter away all draggle-winged. She followed it to find an easy path into the next valley She went downward most of the day, stopping well before dark to find shelter and firewood—both from a huge old tree with many dead branches fallen around it and a large, nicely smoothed hollow among its roots. According to Hero, places occupied by wolves, bears, or lions usually smelled strongly of animal; places occupied by monsters stank of decay. This one smelled of nothing but mice, moss, and punky wood.
Sound came again in the night, this time moving lingeringly, east and west, north and south, as though searching. She heard the voice again, but it was some distance away, a mere murmur. She knew what it was saying because she could feel it. The message came to her via some other organ of sense than her ears, apprehending the actual words wasn’t important. The voice wanted her to come home. She wanted to come home. But not with the voice.
She knew it had gone when she felt mousefeet running across her blanketed body and heard the angel making querulous comments above her. Though she lay awake a long time, she neither heard, saw, nor smelled anything else that seemed dangerous. There were not even any ogre howls or griffin shrieks, sounds she had heard many nights from the village.
Early the third morning, she came to a farm where a youngish-looking but gray-haired woman offered her food in exchange for a few hours’ labor. Orphan was willing enough, accepting the burden of a canvas sack and the scrambling climb in the Farmwife’s wake up the hillside to a barren, much-eroded tract of land edged by feathery growths of new trees. The canvas sacks contained more trees, tiny ones only a handspan tall, and the Farmwife showed her how to make a slit in the earth and insert the roots, how to put stones around it to make a catch basin for moisture and prevent its washing out. It took a long time, finding stones and fetching them and making sure they would stay where she put them. After some hours mostly on her knees, her smock tied up between her legs, bedeviled by black, triangular flies that bit like snakes, she followed the Farmwife down the hill and watched as she made a mysterious tally on the side of a tool shed.
“Eight thousand thirty-five,” said the woman, with weary pride.
“Eight thousand trees?”
“When I have done ten thousand, I will be a Sister to Trees,” she said.
“Will they give you a medal?”
The Farmwife laughed briefly, almost silently. “Unlikely, child I must content myself with the title.”
“Who will give you the title?”
“I, myself. It is a title I must earn for myself, in expiation tor the evil done by others. Once I have earned it, I may, if I wish, petition to join a community of Sisters, to live and work with them.”
“Where do they live?” Orphan asked.
“Here and there. Mostly in the mountains, in this part of the world, though there are Sister Houses among the forests to the east, so I’ve heard. Tush Listen to me go on and on. Come into the house. I’ve some ointment to put on those deerfly bites you’re scratching.”
At the pump behind the house Orphan washed the dirt off, applied ointment to the fly bites, and was given a substantial meal of apples, cheese, meat, and biscuits.
“How have you kept out of the clutches of the monsters?” the Farmwife wanted to know. “And where are you headed?”
Orphan shook her head. “I didn’t hear any monsters except maybe once,” she said, deciding to keep quiet about the other things. “I came over the mountains from the village, but I don’t know where to go from here. Where is the nearest city?”
“If you go to the bottom of the valley and turn north, you’ll reach Fantis. But I wouldn’t go there if I were you.”
Fantis. Where the purple people had come from. Where he had come from. Where he was now.
“I don’t know where to go,” Orphan said, fighting down the urge to talk further about Fantis. “It’s kind of.…”
“Fearful, I should think,” said the Farmwife with a pat of sympathy. “I’d offer you housing for your help, which I could well use, but my man wouldn’t have it. He’s suspicious of strangers. Not without reason.”
“Maybe it’ll be easier when you have children,” said Orphan, with a glance at the Farmwife’s bulging belly “They’ll be a help.”
“It’s some years before they become helpful,” she replied wearily. “My recollection is that about the time they’re able to be helpful, they decide to leave home. Also, I’m old to start another family. Never mind. Until some help comes, I’ll have to get by.”
“Maybe angel and I’ll come back this way and drop in again,” Orphan offered.
The Farmwife tickled the angel’s neck with her finger as she said, “Best you not, unless you see I’m here alone. Best you avoid the next few places down the valley too. There’s some feeling against villagers there.”
“But why? We do no harm. And if it were not for the villages, none of the archetypes would be preserved. Where else would one find Oracles, or Wizards, or Fairy Godmothers? Where else would there be Preachers and Princesses and Private Eyes?”
“Well, no doubt someone wants them preserved,�
� ruminated the Farmwife. “For someone sends messengers to cities and towns, to Edges, to farms, telling this Queen or that King, this Milkmaid or that Virgin they must go to such and such a village which has need of their archetype. Also, for those who petition for residency rights, villages are no doubt a convenient place to put persons who can’t get along elsewhere, such as Demagogues and Bastards and Fools. But there are those who say the villages are the centers around which the monsters gather, that if there were no villages, there’d be no dragons, no ogres, no trolls.”
“Just because two things exist at the same time, doesn’t mean one causes the other!” cried Orphan. Burned Man had taught her that.
“I know, child. I’m only telling you what people say.” She shook her head sympathetically. “I’d stay close to the road, for the monsters avoid roads, but I wouldn’t stop along the way until you get to Wise Rocks Farm, almost at the bottom of the valley. You’ll see five pillar stones, sandy red and leaning together. Farmwife Suttle is mistress there; she’ll feed you. Maybe even give you work. And no one there will bother you, as some might.”
Orphan nodded. “Hero taught me to protect myself, so I’m not as unprepared as some might be.”
“Lord, child, I hope not. Most of us leave death out of our reckoning, don’t we? We think death won’t come for us, then we find him lurking behind every door. I did. I thought life would be berries and cream and a handsome prince to bear me away to his kingdom—” She laughed abruptly “Listen what a fool I sound!”
Orphan said soothingly, “I’ve had those same dreams. According to Oracle, most young women do. And young men dream too, vasty dreams of slaying dragons and rescuing maidens.”
“More likely slaughtering someone in the arena to the roar of cheering crowds,” murmured the Farmwife. “Don’t forget the cheering crowds. Do you watch the public amusement screens?”
A Plague of Angels Page 12
