Tess of the Road

by Rachel Hartman

  “Come look at the corner of the mural,” she said.

  Tess led him around the table and showed him where the picture seemed ambiguous. There were stories about St. Fredricka’s paintings, that they moved or wept or changed, and indeed the image seemed to come and go most disconcertingly.

  The young man tossed his fair hair out of his eyes. “There is a faint something. Damned if I can tell what it is.” He rubbed his cleft chin. “They tell tales in the Archipelagos of a monster under the ice. St. Fredricka came from those parts, you know. Maybe she included a hint of the old legends for her own amusement. Artists do silly things like that all the time.”

  “But if the southern peoples have stories, and the quigutl have similar stories, don’t you think there could be something to it?” Tess implored.

  “Dragon scholars have never mentioned anything of the kind,” he said. “If creatures like this existed, bigger and more powerful than the saar, don’t you think—”

  “That the dragons would admit they weren’t the greatest monsters in the world?”

  His startled expression lit a flame of satisfaction in Tess’s heart. She’d got him thinking.

  “The quigutl say dragons deny the World Serpents because they can’t bear to be second at anything,” she added.

  Ondir’s assistant smiled, quite alarmingly. “Well, aren’t you an unorthodox little thinker. What’s your name, then?”

  Tess felt instinctively that she ought not give her real name. Word would get back to Mama that she’d spoken to a young man. She wasn’t sure how that was a crime, exactly, only that Mama would make it so. However, she wasn’t entirely quick on her toes making up a name, and said, “Therese Belgioso.”

  “That’s a lovely name.” His smile widened and warmed. “Welcome to the lectures, Therese. Do I glean correctly that you’re interested in animals?”

  Pathka and Faffy—how she missed them both!—sprang to mind and produced a knot in Tess’s throat, so she could only nod vigorously.

  “Well then, let me extend a personal invitation to my talk on mountain megafauna next week,” said the young man, his eyes twinkling. “I hope you’ll be back for that.”

  Tess was struggling to regain her voice and think of a clever response—something a real sixteen-year-old unorthodox thinker might say—when Saar Ondir called, “William, finish socializing. I require your assistance with the pulser before these children break it.”

  That was Tess’s cue to fetch her brothers. She grabbed Neddie, and Kenneth steered Paul; they left St. Bert’s an hour after the boys’ bedtime and headed back across town.

  “I want to attend the lecture on animals next week,” Tess told Kenneth.

  “I saw you examining the mural.”

  Tess felt herself blush in the darkness, even though his tone was not suggestive.

  “There are loads of lectures on animals, or explorers talking about the fantastical creatures of distant isles. And there’s not just the public lectures. There are classes—night classes, for honest working people—on any subject you wish. I’ve been thinking of taking one on astronomy. I can’t work at the warehouse forever,” Kenneth added quietly, so the little boys’ big ears wouldn’t overhear. “I hate it. There’s talk of sending me out for collections, because I’m strong. Imagine me breaking the fingers of poor villains who can’t pay.”

  Tess couldn’t; Kenneth could be self-absorbed, but he had a gentle heart. Such violence would surely shatter it.

  “I need to get away from the family,” he was saying. Belgiosos always called themselves the family, as if there were no other. “Anne-Marie had the right idea, marrying outside the business, even if your father turned out to be a rummy choice.”

  Tess scowled at his description of her father. He and Mama did not love each other anymore, if they ever had, but it hurt to hear it said so plainly.

  “If you take a class, maybe I’ll take one, too,” said Tess.

  “Braver together, eh?” said Kenneth, elbowing her and grinning, and for a moment she was painfully reminded of Jeanne, of us against the world. Jeanne had never been a partner for her exploits, though. Pathka had been, but Pathka was gone.

  Tess could endure anything—all the manners and morality lessons in the world—as long as she had a secret joy, something she loved that was hers alone. Sneaking out to St. Bert’s was just the thing to make her life delicious once again, and if it should happen occasionally to bring her into contact with learned young men who would answer her questions and treat her like she was all grown up, so much the better.

  She held the word megafauna in her heart like the key that would unlock her prison.

  Tess and Pathka followed the river until it turned east, and then took the road south over a low ridge. The land beyond flattened and stretched. The sky was enormous here. Tess, who’d grown up in a city, had always thought of the sky as a kind of ceiling, painted blue above her, but out here it was clearly a dome. It went all the way to the ground.

  Pathka had set out in a frolicsome mood, but by late afternoon he was growing cagey. He left the road in favor of creeping under bushes and through ditches, and kept glancing back.

  “We’re being followed,” he said at last, emerging from a muddy culvert.

  Tess leaped to a panicked conclusion: “Papa!”

  Pathka’s head spines flared. “No. My brethren. I knew a few would be tenacious.”

  Tess squinted against the glare. The road behind them stretched straight and empty for a mile or more. “I don’t see anyone.”

  “I smell them,” said Pathka. “If the wind shifts, they’ll smell me. They’re following my tracks, so I’m leading them on a chase.” He sprang over a stone wall into a pasture, scattering sheep.

  The plain ended in low, lumpy hills, thrown up by a river barging heedlessly along. Tess recognized the phenomenon from geology lectures, which amused her.

  The road crossed the river at a frothy ford, putting Tess’s boots to the test.

  Pathka didn’t let her return to the road but led her upstream, through the shallows. “If they can’t immediately smell us, they might give up,” he said. He was up to his neck, swimming with an elegant serpentine ripple. “Even the stubbornest must be tired of following me by now.”

  The bank was thick with horsetails and mud that almost sucked the boots off Tess’s feet. They climbed out into a coppice, a domesticated forest, which made for easy walking, and by the time they glimpsed the road again, it was nearly dark.

  The coppice was made of firewood; Tess gathered some for a campfire, and Pathka’s tongue set the small pile alight. They had nothing to cook, but a fire can dispel a great deal of gloom, and Tess, feet blistered and muscles aching, needed to stave off a darkness encroaching on her heart.

  It was her mother’s voice again. It had been quieter today, or Tess had been distracted, but as soon as the sun had set, it had lit into her: What are you doing out here? You don’t know the first thing about survival. You’ll be eaten by a bear.

  Ah, death. She smiled mirthlessly, and reckoned she could put it off again, until morning at least. She felt squirmy, though, and wished they had some wine. There was only water, and the last of Florian’s bread and sausage, and some cheese (which she felt guilty giving to Pathka now). They ate in silence, and then Tess spread her blanket and lay down, still restless. She was too tired to walk another step, and yet she felt like running, punching, kicking things.

  It was that gadfly voice, still buzzing. She swatted at the air, which helped not at all.

  “Would you tell me a World Serpent story?” Tess asked Pathka.

  Pathka poked the fire with a stick. “Which one? The creation of dragons and quigutl? How the dragons turned their tails upon the truth?”

  The dragons had indeed, Tess recalled wryly. Professor the dragon Ondir had vehemently denied the World
Serpents’ existence, and the scholar Spira, Will’s archrival, had written papers demonstrating their physical impossibility. It had been enough to make even Tess doubt.

  “Tell me a story that proves they’re real, that we’re not chasing a phantom,” Tess said, settling with her pack under her head.

  Pathka, usually a blur of motion, grew still and solemn. “For once, let us squat upon time/no-time,” he intoned, and Tess nearly burst out laughing.

  She’d tried to teach him to begin stories with “Once upon a time.” As a child, alas, she’d been unable to explain exactly what the idiom meant, so Pathka had invented an idiosyncratic Quootla translation. He couldn’t conceive of being “upon” unless there was some verb to go with it, hence “squat.” Since “time” in this case really indicated timelessness, Pathka had put the word in contradictory case.

  Quootla had a suffix, -utl, that could be glued to the end of anything—nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, small rodents—and meant the word itself plus its opposite, simultaneously. It didn’t always translate into Goreddi. Time/no-time almost made sense; blue/orange or fall/rise or dog/whatever-the-opposite-of-dog-is were perfectly intelligible in Quootla but boggling to nearly everyone else.

  Even Seraphina, who had mostly refused to help Tess understand quigutl speech, was baffled by contradictory case. “It’s an illogical quigutl innovation,” she’d said. “Proper dragons wouldn’t tolerate such nonsense. Their brains would implode.”

  Tess’s mind had been malleable in those days, however, and she’d made peace with the usage, even if her understanding would never be perfect.

  “Squatting upon the smug face of time-utl,” she said now, grinning up at the merry stars.

  Pathka’s eyes closed; his skin glowed orangish in the firelight. “The World Serpents are sometimes called the Most Alone, but they weren’t always solitary. The greater dragons and quigutl lived with them for an age of the earth. Long after the dragons abandoned them, chasing after rationality, the quigutl stayed. We cared for our great mothers until our wings shriveled into spindly arms, and our fierce flame became precise and gentle. We would lie upon them, skin to skin, and our dreams would twist and entwine together like smoke.

  “I know they’re real, Tethie, because we all ache with their absence when we’re alone. Sometimes we even dream of them, if there are no other quigutl around.”

  “I thought you said your dreaming was impossible,” said Tess.

  “It was, because I dreamed in the nest, not on my own. Sleeping in heaps silences the dreams, mutes our loss, and lets us forget that we aren’t meant to be apart—”

  A dark shape suddenly shot out of the underbrush like a ballista bolt, hitting Pathka squarely in the side and knocking him into the fire.

  Pathka landed hard, scattering burning branches, but popped back up like an uncoiling spring. His adversary hissed and scratched, spines splayed in fury, and tried to bite Pathka’s neck. They rolled, kicking up dust; thrashing tails struck the fire and sent up sparks.

  Tess leaped uselessly to her feet and flailed around for some way to stop this. She couldn’t throw water on them; she only had what was in the water skin. She flung her blanket at the assailant quigutl like a net, succeeding only in catching the corner on fire.

  Pathka, who’d started out giving as good as he got, abruptly stopped fighting. He rolled onto his back, legs spread and throat stretched out, leaving himself almost mockingly vulnerable.

  “Fight me, Mother!” his attacker squawked in frustration. It was Kikiu.

  “I did fight,” said Pathka evenly. “We’ve had our fatluketh, and now we’re done.”

  Kikiu hesitated, panting, then bit Pathka viciously on the thigh. Pathka skreeled in pain.

  “Now we’re done,” said Kikiu, spitting a scrap of Pathka’s skin into the fire pit.

  Silver blood beaded upon Pathka’s leg. Tess fought down horror, dumped her pack out on the ground, and began ripping the leftover linen from her chemise into strips.

  “The others turned back at the river, but I saw through your little ploy,” said Kikiu.

  “Aren’t you clever,” said Pathka.

  “Merely determined to hold you to your obligations,” snapped Kikiu, flaring her head spines.

  Pathka ignored this last bit of aggression, but Tess glared daggers and wished she had head spines. She’d have shown Kikiu some flare. Pathka needed care, though, so Tess turned her attention to where it would do good.

  Pathka let Tess wrap his leg without snapping or biting, all the fight drained out of him.

  Kikiu cleaned blood off her claws with her flaming tongue and nudged the scattered fire sticks back into the pit. “You left before I could fight you,” she said at last. “You did it on purpose, knowing I couldn’t get my fatluketh unless I followed you.”

  Fatluketh was the rite of adulthood, Tess recalled: hatchlings fought their mothers and then they were free of each other. Pathka’s damaged head spine came from such a fight.

  “Would you believe I wasn’t thinking of you?” said Pathka, wincing as Tess tied off the bandage. “It is possible, perhaps, that you are not the center of the universe.”

  “You never intended to fight me,” cried Kikiu. “You’ve abandoned the nest. What kind of quigutl are you?”

  “That was no nest,” said Pathka. “I’d advise you to abandon it as well, and its false ideals, though I know you won’t. You’re afraid of your true nature.”

  “True nature!” Kikiu scoffed.

  “You may mock,” said Pathka, “but I’m doing what I’ve been called to do, going in search of the Most Alone.”

  Kikiu flinched upon hearing the epithet, as if her mother habitually used the name as a weapon, but she recovered her sneer soon enough, and turned her attention to Tess.

  “How did Pathka persuade you to go looking for imaginary monsters?” said Kikiu waspishly, black-hole eyes watching Tess shake out the blanket. “Do you know why we chained ko to that workbench? Because we found ko at the bottom of the deepest well in Trowebridge, passed out from a self-inflicted wound, poisoning the townspeople’s water with blood.”

  Tess stared at Pathka in alarm; Pathka wouldn’t meet her eye.

  “Ko might have died,” said Kikiu, “and the rest of us been driven out of town, and for what? A bizarre superstition based on ancient stories.”

  “I chose a poor location. It was as far underground as I could get,” said Pathka, looking shifty. He tried to reassure Tess: “I was called; I heard it in my dream. There’s a very old story that says when the World Serpents call us back to them, we must answer—”

  “And when we find them, the world will end,” said Kikiu. “You gloss over that part.”

  “It won’t necessarily end,” said Pathka, his voice pleading now. “The stories say the singular-utl will end. That word is teeming with possible interpretations.”

  “What is more singular and plural than the world itself?” said Kikiu.

  “The World Serpents,” said Pathka quietly. “Or the one who searches for them.”

  “Are you listening, human?” said Kikiu, wheeling toward Tess. “My mother seeks to kill us all, or die, or maybe both. You’ve unleashed ko upon the world—more fool you—but even if the world is safe, can you bear to walk a friend toward death? I couldn’t do it.”

  Tess couldn’t begin to respond. Kikiu had pulled the floor out from under everything Tess thought she knew about Pathka’s journey, and left her standing on empty air.

  “All I know is that I’ve been called,” said Pathka, his voice almost inaudible, like grit in the wind. “How do I live with myself if I don’t answer?”

  “You live/die,” said Kikiu bitterly, using contradictory case. “Like the rest of us.”

  “You do feel it,” said Pathka, rolling onto his side. His limp, exhausted body seemed melted int
o the dirt. “The malaise. The dis-ease. The creeping certainty that we’ve gone wrong.”

  “I feel worse things than that,” said Kikiu, glowering. “You don’t know the half. But I bear them. I submit to the rules, and don’t go crying after myths and phantoms.” She leaped to her feet and shook herself off. “My fatluketh is done, and I am done with you. You have no further maternal claim upon me.”

  “Good,” said Pathka. “Go.”

  Kikiu spit into the dust, turned tail, and fled.

  Tess clasped her hands around her knees, unsure what to say to Pathka. She’d been wrestling her own urge to die, making herself walk on, but what a cruel farce if she was simultaneously walking Pathka toward death.

  Pathka broke the silence. “It’s not as dire as Kikiu made it sound. The end of the singular-utl is likely a metaphorical dissolution, or a merging together. Maybe it’s the entanglement of dreams I mentioned.”

  “Likely. Maybe,” said Tess, poking Pathka with his own hedging words.

  “It’s been a millennium since we left them Most Alone,” said Pathka, grinding his body into the dirt, making a depression to sleep in. “I can’t pretend to know what will happen. But I’ve been called: I’ve got to go. You know what that’s like. You answered the call of your boots.”

  “That was a joke!” said Tess, unexpectedly offended.

  She spread her blanket on the ground, trying to smooth her irritation at the same time, but it didn’t help. Maybe food would help. She rummaged in her pack for more, and was alarmed to find nothing. She dumped her belongings out on the ground; only a single cheese remained, and no money to speak of.

  She lay down to sleep, but the gadfly with her mother’s voice was biting her again: You’re going to starve. You’re a terrible friend. The story hadn’t silenced it; worry over Pathka and food was making it worse. Tess felt herself curling tighter and tighter, like a spring made of bitterness, until she had no choice but to snap.

  “Should I have let that egg kill you? Is that what you really wanted?” said Tess, feeling cruel as she said it. “Why else would you name your daughter Kikiu, ‘death’? Don’t imagine that morbid detail was lost on me. What a name to carry around. No wonder she resents you, when you force her to remember the time she accidentally almost killed you.”