The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 13

by Gardner Dozois

“But you played a hero last year.”

  “That was more difficult. Perig understands nobility, and I studied with him a long time. I do as he tells me. Most people are tricked and think I know what I’m doing. But that person – the hero – doesn’t speak in my mind.”

  Ahl moved forward to the play’s other problem. “The sul was noble, but a fool. The tli was clever and funny, but immoral. There was no one in the play I could really like.”

  Cholkwa gave her a considering gaze, which was permissible, since she was still a child. Would she like it, when men like Cholkwa – unkin, but old friends – had to glance away? “Most people, even adults, wouldn’t have seen that. It has two causes. I wrote the sul’s lines, and, as I’ve told you, I don’t understand nobility. The other problem is my second actor. He isn’t good enough. If Perig had been here, he would have made the sul likable – in part by rewriting the lines, but mostly because he could play a stone and make it seem likable.”

  Ahl thought about this idea. An image came to her: Perig in a grey robe, sitting quietly on a stage, his face unmasked and grey, looking calm and friendly. A likable rock. It could be done. Why bother? In spite of her question, the image remained, somehow comforting.

  Several days later, Cholkwa did a play for adults. This event took place at night in the town hall, which was used for meetings and ceremonies, also to store trade goods in transit. This time the back half was full of cloth, big bales that smelled of fresh dye, southern blue and the famous Sorg red.

  Ahl snuck out of her house after dark and went in a back door, which she’d unlocked earlier. Climbing atop the bales, she settled to watch the play.

  Most of it was past her understanding, though the audience gasped, groaned, clapped, and made hissing noises. Clearly, they knew what was going on.

  The costumes were ugly, in her opinion; the animals had huge sexual parts and grimacing faces. They hit each other with padded swords and clubs, tumbled and tossed each other, spoke lines that were – as far as she could tell – full of insults, some sly and others so obvious that even she made sense of them. This time the sul was an arrogant braggart with a long narrow head and a penis of almost equal size and shape. The tli, much less well endowed, was clever and funny, a coward because he had to be. Most of his companions were large, dangerous, and unjust.

  It was the tli’s play. Mocking and tricking, he won over all the rest, ending with the sul’s precious ancestral sword, which he carried off in triumph to his mother, a venerable female tli, while the sul howled in grief.

  The Sword Recovered or The Revenge of the Tli. That was the name of the play. There was something behind it, which Ahl could not figure out. Somehow the sul had harmed the tli’s family in the past. Maybe the harm had been sexual, though this didn’t seem likely. Sulin and tli did not interbreed. Puzzled, she climbed down from the bales and went home. The night was foggy, and she almost lost her way in streets she’d known her entire life.

  She couldn’t ask Cholkwa to explain. He would have told her relatives that she’d seen the play.

  After this, she added comedy to her repertoire, mixing it with the stories about heroes and women like her aunt, far-travellers who did not have to die over some kind of unusual ethical dilemma.

  The result was a long, acted-out epic tale about a hero, a woman sailor, a clever tli, and a magical stone that accompanied the other three on their journey. The hero was noble, the sailor resourceful, and the tli funny, while the stone remained calm and friendly, no matter what was going on. There wasn’t any sex. Ahl was too young, and the adult comedy had disgusted her. It’s often a bad idea to see things that are forbidden, especially if one is young.

  In the end, one of her cousins – a sneak worse than Cholkwa in the children’s play – found out what she was doing and told her senior female relatives. “Clearly you have too much free time,” they said, and assigned her work in the house’s big weaving room. The sword was destroyed, along with the bits of armour she’d made. But her relatives decided the tli mask, constructed of bark paper over a frame of twigs, was good enough to keep. It was hung on the weaving room wall, where it stared down at her. Gradually, the straw whiskers disappeared, and large eyes – drawn in ink – faded.

  Don’t think that Ahl was too unhappy, or that her relatives had been unjust. Every child has to learn duty; and she’d gotten bored with her solitary play, as well as increasingly uncomfortable with hiding her props. Better to work at a loom and have ideas in her mind. No sneaking cousin could discover these, and everything she imagined was large and bright and well-made, the swords of real steel, sharp and polished, as bright as the best glass.

  Two years passed. She became an adequate plain weaver, but nothing more. “We thought you might have a gift for beauty,” said her mother. “The mask suggested this. But it’s obvious that you lack the ability to concentrate, which is absolutely necessary in any kind of art. Anything worth doing is likely to be slow, difficult, and boring. This is not an invariable rule, but it works in most situations.”

  “Give her to me,” said Ki. “Maybe she’d be happier in a more active life.”

  Ahl went to sea. At first, it was not an enjoyable experience, though she had little problem with motion sickness. Her difficulty lay in the same region as always: she spent too much time thinking about her stories. As a result, she was forgetful and careless. These are not good traits in an apprentice sailor; and Ki, who had always seemed pleasant and friendly at home in Helwar, turned out to be a harsh captain.

  At first the punishment she gave to Ahl was work. Every ship is full of nasty jobs. Ahl did most of them and did them more than once. This didn’t bother her. She wasn’t lazy, and jobs – though nasty – required little thought. She could make up stories while she did them.

  Her habit of inattention continued. Growing angry, Ki turned to violence. On several occasions, she struck Ahl: hard slaps across the face. This also had no effect. The girl simply did not want to give up her stories. Finally, Ki beat her, using a knotted rope.

  Most likely this shocks you. Nowadays we like to believe that our female ancestors never did harm to one another. It’s men who are violent. Women have always used reason.

  Remember this was a sailing ship in the days before radio and engines. Weather satellites did not warn sailors of approaching storms. Computers did not monitor the ship’s condition and send automatic signals to the Navigation Service. Sailors had to rely on their own skill and discipline.

  It was one thing to be forgetful in a weaving room. If you fail to tie off a piece of yarn, what can happen? At most, a length of cloth will be damaged. Now, imagine what happens if the same person fails to tie a rope on board a ship. Or forgets to fasten a hatch in stormy weather.

  So, after several warnings and a final mistake, Ahl received her beating. By this time she was fourteen or fifteen, with a coat of fur made thick by cold weather. The fur protected her, though not entirely; and later, when she remembered the experience, it seemed that shame was the worst part: to stand naked on the ship’s deck, trying to remain impassive, while Ki used the rope she had failed to tie across her back.

  Around her, the other sailors did their work. They didn’t watch directly, of course, but there were sideways glances, some embarrassed and others approving. Overhead the sky was cloudless. The ship moved smoothly through a bright blue ocean.

  The next day she felt every bruise. Ki gave her another unpleasant cleaning job. All day she scraped, keeping her lips pressed together. In the evening she went on deck, less stiff than she’d been earlier, but tired and still sore. Ahl leaned on the rail and looked out at the ocean. In the distance, rays of sunlight slanted between grey clouds. Life was not entirely easy, she thought.

  After a while, Ki’s lover Hasu Ahl came next to her. Ahl had been named after the woman, for reasons that don’t come into this story, and they were alike in several ways, being both tall and thin, with small breasts and large strong, capable hands. The main difference between
them was their fur. Hasu Ahl’s was dark grey, like the clouds which filled the sky, and her colouring was solid. Our Ahl was pale as fog. In addition, she had kept her baby spots. Dim and blurry, they dotted her shoulders and upper arms. Because of these, her childhood name had been Dapple.

  Hasu Ahl asked how she felt.

  “I’ve been better.”

  They became silent, both leaning on the rail. Finally Hasu Ahl said, “There’s a story about your childhood that no one has told you. When you were a baby, a witch predicted that you would be important when you grew up. She didn’t know in what way. I know this story, as do your mother and Ki and a few other people. But we didn’t want your entire family peering at you and wondering, and we didn’t want you to become vain or worried; so we kept quiet.

  “It’s possible that Ki’s anger is due in part to this. She looks at you and thinks, ‘Where is the gift that was promised us?’ All we can see – aside from intelligence, which you obviously have – is carelessness and lack of attention.”

  What could she say? She was inattentive because her mind was full of stories, though the character who’d been like Ki had vanished. Now there was an orphan girl with no close relatives, ignored by everyone, except her three companions: the hero, the tli, and the stone. They cared for her in their different ways: the hero with nobility, the tli with jokes, and the stone with solid friendliness. But she’d never told anyone about her ideas. “I’m not yet fifteen,” Ahl said.

  “There’s time for you to change,” Hasu Ahl admitted. “But not if you keep doing things that endanger the ship and yourself. Ki has promised that if you’re careless again, she’ll beat you a second time, and the beating will be worse.”

  After that, Hasu Ahl left. Well, thought our heroine, this was certainly a confusing conversation. Ki’s lover had threatened her with something like fame and with another beating. Adults were beyond comprehension.

  Her concentration improved, and she became an adequate sailor, though Ki said she would never be a captain. “Or a second-in-command, like your namesake, my Ahl. Whatever your gift may be, it isn’t sailing.”

  Her time on board was mostly happy. She made friends with the younger members of the crew, and she learned to love the ocean as a sailor does, knowing how dangerous it can be. The coast of the Great Southern Continent was dotted with harbour towns. Ahl visited many of these, exploring the steep narrow streets and multi-levelled marketplaces. One night at a festival, she made love for the first time. Her lover was a girl with black fur and pale yellow eyes. In the torchlight, the girl’s pupils expanded, till they lay across her irises like bars of iron or narrow windows that opened into a starless night.

  What a fine image! But what could Ahl do with it?

  Later, in that same port, she came to an unwalled tavern. Vines grew over the roof. Underneath were benches. Perig sat on one, a cup in his hand. She shouted his name. He glanced up and smiled, then his gaze slid away. Was she that old? Had she become a woman? Maybe, she thought, remembering the black-furred girl.

  Where was Cholkwa?

  In the south, Perig said.

  Because the place was unwalled and public, she was able to sit down. The hostess brought halin. She tasted it, savouring the sharp bitterness. It was the taste of adulthood.

  “Watch out,” said Perig. “That stuff can make you sick.”

  Was his company here? Were they acting? Ahl asked.

  Yes. The next night, in the town square.

  “I’ll come,” said Ahl with decision.

  Perig glanced at her, obviously pleased.

  The play was about a hero, of course: a man who suspected that the senior women in his family, his mother and her sisters, had committed a crime. If his suspicion was true, their behaviour threatened the family’s survival. But no man can treat any woman with violence, and no man should turn against his mother. And what if he were wrong? Maybe they were innocent. Taking one look at the women, Ahl knew they were villains. But the hero didn’t have her sharpness of vision. So he blundered through the play, trying to discover the truth. Men died, mostly at his hands, and most of them his kin. Finally he was hacked down, while the women looked on. A messenger arrived, denouncing them. Their family was declared untouchable. No one would deal with them in the future. Unable to interbreed, the family would vanish. The monstrous women listened like blocks of stone. Nothing could affect their stubborn arrogance.

  A terrible story, but also beautiful. Perig was the hero and shone like a diamond. The three men playing the women were grimly convincing. Ahl felt as if a sword had gone through her chest. Her stories were nothing next to this.

  Afterwards, Ahl found Perig in the open tavern. Torches flared in a cool ocean wind, and his fur – touched with white over the shoulders – moved a little, ruffled. Ahl tried to explain how lovely and painful the play had been.

  He listened, giving her an occasional quick glance. “This is the way it’s supposed to be,” he said finally. “Like a blade going to a vital spot.”

  “Is it impossible to have a happy ending?” she asked, after she finished praising.

  “In this kind of play, yes.”

  “I liked the hero so much. There should have been another solution.”

  “Well,” said Perig. “He could have killed his mother and aunts, then killed himself. It would have saved his family, but he wasn’t sure they were criminals.”

  “Of course they were!”

  “You were in the audience,” said Perig. “Where I was standing, in the middle of the situation, the truth was less evident; and no man should find it easy to kill his mother.”

  “I was right, years ago,” Ahl said suddenly. “This is what I want to do. Act in plays.”

  Perig looked unhappy.

  She told him about her attempts to weave and be a sailor, then about the plays she had acted in the hayloft and the stories in her mind. For the first time, she realized that the stories had scenes. She knew how the hero moved, like Perig acting a hero. The tli had Cholkwa’s brisk step and mocking voice. The stone was a stone. Only the girl was blurry. She didn’t tell Perig about the scenes. Embarrassing to admit that this quiet ageing man lived in her mind, along with his lover and a stone. But she did tell him that she told stories.

  He listened, then said, “If you were a boy, I’d go to your family and ask for you as an apprentice – if not this year, then next year. But I can’t, Ahl. They’d refuse me and be so angry I might lose their friendship.”

  “What am I to do?” asked Ahl.

  “That’s a question I can’t answer,” said Perig.

  A day later, her ship left the harbour. On the long trip home, Ahl considered her future. She’d seen other companies of actors. Perig and Cholkwa were clearly the best, but neither one of them would be willing to train her. Nor would any company that knew she was female. But most women in this part of the world were broad and full-breasted, and she was an entirely different type. People before, strangers, had mistaken her for a boy. Think of all the years she had acted in her loft, striding like Perig or mimicking Cholkwa’s gait. Surely she had learned something!

  She was seventeen and good at nothing. In spite of the witch’s prediction, it wasn’t likely she’d ever be important. It seemed to her now that nothing had ever interested her except the making of stories – not the linked verse epics that people recited on winter evenings, nor the tales that women told to children, but proper stories, like the ones that Perig and Cholkwa acted.

  Before they reached Helwar, Ahl had decided to disguise herself as a boy and run away.

  First, of course, she had to spend the winter at home. Much of her time was taken by her family. When she could, she watched her uncles and male cousins. How did they stand and move? What were their gestures? How did they speak?

  The family warehouse was only half-full, she discovered. This became her theatre, lit by high windows or (sometimes) by a lamp. She’d bought a square metal mirror in the south. Ahl leaned it against a wall. I
f she stood at a distance, she could see herself, dressed in a tunic stolen from a cousin and embroidered in the male style. Whenever possible, she practised being a man, striding across the wood floor, turning and gesturing, speaking lines she remembered out of plays. Behind her were stacks of new-cut lumber. The fresh, sweet aroma of sawdust filled the air. In later life, she said this was the smell of need and possibility.

  In spring, her ship went south again. Her bag, carefully packed, held boy’s clothing, a knife and all her money.

  In a town in the far south, she found an acting company, doing one of Perig’s plays in ragged costumes. It was one she’d seen. They’d cut out parts.

  So, thought Ahl. That evening, she took her bag and crept off the ship. The night was foggy, and the damp air smelled of unfamiliar vegetation. In an alley, she changed clothing, binding her four breasts flat with strips of cloth. She already knew where the actors were staying: a run-down inn by the harbour, not the kind of place that decent female sailors would visit. Walking through the dark streets, bag over her shoulder, she was excited and afraid.

  Here, in this town, she was at the southern edge of civilization. Who could tell what the inland folk were like? Though she had never heard of any lineage that harmed women. If things got dangerous, she could pull off her tunic, revealing her real self.

  On the other hand, there might be monsters; and they did harm women. Pulling off her tunic would do no good if something with fangs and scales came out of the forest. At most, the thing might thank her for removing the wrapping on its dinner.

  If she wanted to turn back, now was the time. She could be a less-than-good sailor. She could go home and look for another trade. There were plenty in Helwar, and women could do most of them. She hadn’t really wanted to fish in the ocean, not after she killed the fish in the basin. As for the other male activities, let them have fighting and hunting dangerous animals! Let them log and handle heavy timbers! Why should women risk their lives?

  She stopped outside the inn, almost ready to turn around. Then she remembered Perig in the most recent play she’d seen, at the moment when the play’s balance changed. A kinsman lay dead at his feet. It was no longer possible to go back. He’d stood quietly, then lifted his head, opening his mouth in a great cry that was silent. No one in the audience made a noise. Somehow, through his silence and their silence, Ahl heard the cry.