by Betsy James
Missa turned her eyes to her mother with no obedience in them, withdrew her hand, and hid it in the folds of her skirt. She stepped back among her sisters. A glance went round among them.
Ab Jerash broke this awkwardness with another by asking, “Sir—Mister Nall—what ought we to do?”
His wife and daughters stared at him. A Leagueman had asked a naked native demon what to do.
The demon, by a glance, passed the question to me. I said to Jerash, “Where will the delegation be housed?”
“At Harlan’s home. That was the plan. But, sir, Mister Nall, if Harlan—”
Again Nall glanced at me, and I said, “Send them to Downshore. Someone will find a place for them. They need to see for themselves what’s been happening. The rest of the League here—are they in hiding?”
“The unmarried fled with the paidmen,” Jerash said to Nall, but this time he caught the forwarding glance. Turning to me, he forced himself to talk seriously with a young, half-breed female in dirty underwear. “For the rest of us there was no time. We thought—We saw it coming over the water, that darkness, then those—” He rubbed his mouth. “Ab Harlan’s sons have fled—all but your betrothed. He was taken hostage and must be dead. And Seroy is dead, and Dairois your brother is—”
He would not say the word “tortured.” I would not tell him otherwise. Let him sit with it awhile.
But he laid his hand over his eyes and said, “We have brought ruin on many. I have brought ruin on many. Hear me, Niece! And you, sir, though you are a stranger. I saw what that man was becoming and took no action. You may say the blame falls on many souls, but no less on mine, for mine is the only soul I audit.”
My aunt took a step forward and laid her hand on his arm, as if to say, I stand with you.
“Well.” He looked up. The sweat stood on him. “Here we are. Now. Niece, you say that a town council exists in Downshore?”
“In Tanshari. The name has changed.”
He corrected himself without question. “Tanshari has a council?”
“Yes, and I think you would be welcome,” I said.
“I think I would be killed.”
“These people are sick of killing. They want justice.” In a bitter part of my heart I thought, Justice—and cinnamon, and rum, and ribbons. After a month on the mainland, won’t those little twins want better than a string of beads?
As if he read my mind, Ab Jerash wiped his face and said to Nall, “There’s a myth that the Rigi—that your people used to come to trade.”
“We did.”
“Perhaps we could help them out a little, eh? For example, we import cook pots—everybody needs cook pots. And your people must have things to sell. Until recently Downshore provided us with—”
“Sealskins,” Nall said dryly.
“Exactly! Though that seems to have fallen off lately. Surely there are other items. Weaving? Pottery? And there’s always a market for dried fish. I could speak with the council. Nothing like trading ties to smooth things over.” He slid a glance at his wife. “A splendid opportunity.”
I thought, He’ll fetch up soon enough against Queelic, Hsuu, and zero.
If it was for money that he stayed, so be it—if only he stayed. If this spotless kitchen might see new visitors, if these pale girls might sit, sometime, at Mailin’s table. I thought, We must build Mailin a new table.
“You’re brave, Uncle,” I said.
That pleased him. He was still afraid, but mostly for the girls, and rightly.
“Stay here for now. Keep the doors barred,” I said. It was not much protection; but Ab Harlan’s spilled gold had lain untouched.
This did not satisfy my aunt, who drew Jerash aside and must have begged to take the chance and flee inland, for he told her sharply, “We stay. The delegation must be housed and fed.”
She bent her head, then looked around as if to be sure she had her saucepans.
I said, “Auntie, I’ll help cook.”
“I am perfectly capable of managing my own kitchen!”
But my cousins looked at me with faces hopeful as sunflowers. For I had gossip—really good gossip. I had stories of love and passion, of adventure and far places; I had secrets of romance and men and sex. I had jokes and new recipes and clandestine songs—and I could tell them all this in their own comfortable tongue, Kitchen Hessdish.
Oh, please! their eyes begged.
I said to my aunt, “I still make your cream dill sauce.”
“Tcha!” she said.
I thought of that sauce, in the blue porcelain gravy boat that had come all the way from Rett by muleback, packed in wood shavings in its own little box. It had been a ceremony to make it, to hand the blue boat round and hear my aunt say, “Lila made the sauce this time.” “Missa made the sauce.” I had had my turn the same as the rest.
“Oh, Aunt,” I said, “I’m sorry I caused you so much grief! I was the wrong flower for your garden, but you tended me anyway. How could I do anything but thank you?”
“Thank your father!” she said, and turned her back.
“Is he at the house?”
She made a little assent, but a clatter outside made her gasp and grope for her daughters.
A familiar voice sent Ab Jerash, after a moment’s dithering, to open the door. The wind blew into the house, full of the sound of the drum.
It was Dai shouting on the doorstep, with Robin by the hand. Somewhere he had found tweed breeches and black boots, but nothing more; he looked half Leagueman, half bear.
“Dairois!” said Ab Jerash.
“Good evening, Uncle, Aunt! You’re all right, then? Quite a night, eh? Don’t think you’ve met my wife.”
When I heard the mischief in his voice, my heart eased for him. Then Robin sidled in round as a bun, and who could resist her? Ab Jerash bowed. The women curtsied.
“We’re going down to the beach to dance the Least Night,” she said, beaming. “The Rigi are carrying Harlan down to the sea.”
I heard the music, faint on the wind: the drum still steady, the fiddle, many voices singing.
Soundlessly, my uncle’s mouth said sea.
“To bathe his feet,” said Robin. “He asked to go.”
Asked, said my uncle’s mouth.
She turned to Auntie Jerash. “Won’t you come? We’d love to have you.”
“We’ve knocked on a few doors,” said Dai. “Ab Niram’s gone with the paidmen. Ab Saison, too—they’re bachelors, nothing to hold them. But Ab Hiun’s baby is sick, so they stayed; they’re with Mailin now. Ab Spelmar is passed out drunk; his wife’s there, but she’s terrified—won’t open the door. Been talking to her through the crack—Queelic has. I mean Keeo.”
“Queelic,” said Ab Jerash.
“He seems to have things under control. He’s loading carts from the storehouse and sending them to Downshore, I mean Tanshari. For the festival.”
“I need to think about this,” said Ab Jerash.
“Me too,” said Dai. “Damn. But come with us, won’t you? We’ve got another lot of doors to knock on. They’ll know your voice.”
“I won’t leave my family.”
“Bring them,” said Dai.
Ab Jerash opened his mouth. Left it open. Music drifted in through the open door.
“Girls,” said Auntie Jerash, “you heard Dairois. Get your cloaks and bonnets.”
They fairly scrambled for their cloaks. “Wife!” said Ab Jerash.
“Ab Hiun’s baby is sick. Ab Spelmar’s wife is terrified. Would you desert your neighbors?” She had her own cloak on and was looking for her basket. She shot me a glance like vinegar and jerked her chin at Nall. “Men!” she said. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
From Ab Jerash’s door I could not see Tanshari or the beach, only a glow of fire beyond the cliff’s edge. The wind was full of blown music; it billowed the cloaks of Auntie Jerash and the girls as we ushered them toward Ab Spelmar’s house. Missa threw back the hood of her cloak, and the wind tweaked wisp
s of her light hair from its braid.
Dai held Robin’s hand. My heart was so huge that I could not contain it, I wanted Nall to put his arm around me and hold me tight so I would not burst with this glad and terrible collision of souls.
He did not. I did not know who he was, this man with the changed face and worsening limp, to whom, if I believed him, nothing mattered. Not even me.
For there was, after all, a ghost in the wind, of a lonely girl who had longed so deeply that she had called a man out of the sea; yet she had not gotten what she wanted. There had been some mistake. She had longed for a lover like the one who had kissed her on Mailin’s hearth, and this was not he.
I did not see that little ghost because she walked exactly in my shoes. I only felt hollow and cold and drew away from Nall a little. Still, there ahead of us was Dai, alive and merry; and it was our father who had saved him. I thought, I have a loving father.
“Dai!” I said. “Father won’t know what’s happened.”
“Won’t like it, either,” said Dai. Then, shamefaced, “Wait till morning, Sister? Come morning things will be quieter. I—I have to thank him.”
“I want to go now.” I wanted everything healed, finished, safe. Maybe if I made everything right, everything, then I would be given my heart’s desire?
“May still be paidmen about.”
As if I cared, who had journeyed to the world’s end! “I’m going,” I said.
“Wait till one of us can go too.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Nall.
I did not want him to come with me. I did not know what I wanted, except the man I had longed for. But Dai did not seem to notice any change; he embraced Nall and said, “When that woman’s mind is made up, look out! Sister, give Father my thanks. Tell him I’ll be there tomorrow to say that in person. I’ll bring a mule and take him down to Mailin, she’ll set him right.” He touched my arm and said, with difficulty, “Tell him I love him.”
“I will.”
Nall and I turned aside from the group, toward Father’s house. We took the goat paths that I had so often run, in the high scrub near the cliffs.
Here the ghost of my old self was even stronger. It wore heavy clothes, confusion, a blind longing for something I could not name. Here I had sung into the wind, Come to me! Come to me!
Now I said nothing. Neither did Nall. We walked under the uncountable stars. We left the weeds and stunted pinelands and came to the cliff’s edge where the wind bit, and we looked out over harbor and sea.
There were many fires. Burned house and bonfire smell the same, and I could not tell whether the faint cries I heard were joy or mourning. The drum beat dull as a heart. The little ghost practiced what she longed to say, to make it true by saying it.
Father, I’m home! The world is made whole. You were mistaken: Here is the man you cursed and sent away; he is my true love, and all is well.
The house was shuttered and dark, for Father was a miser with fuel. Dai’s cowshed was roofless, my garden thick with weeds, the cistern clogged with windblown trash. But the dooryard was trodden, and at one shutter’s edge clung a crumb of light.
I knocked. Got no answer. Knocked again.
“Father?”
Silence. Nall beside me silent. I wrestled with the latch of the outer door. He moved to help me, but I shook my head, and in the end I kicked it open as I had used to do when I brought water from the cistern. It hurt my foot. The vestibule smelled of mice, by which I knew my old cat was dead.
The inner door was shut, of course. I knocked on it. “Father, it’s Kat.”
Silence.
Nall held the outer door open for starlight to see by. “Shut it!” I said. I was never to leave both open—it let the wind in. I felt my father’s cold glare already, the same he had turned on Nall sprawled and bleeding on the hearth, as he shouted, Get it out!
Nall shut the door. I heard his breath in the darkness. I fumbled at the inner latch until it grew a long crack of candlelight, and pushed the door open.
“Father?”
On the mantel the last of a candle guttered in the draft, sending up a ribbon of smoke. In that still, cold room all was in order: chairs set to the table, meager crockery washed. Fine hearth ash had settled on everything—even on Ab Drem my father, stretched on the hard black settee with one hand fallen, the other at his breast. His face had sunk in on itself, empty and calm. His mouth, no breath in it, hung open.
I stood without speaking.
Something touched my back—Nall’s hand. I knocked it away. I could not breathe or speak.
Motion to my left: Nall, kneeling to pick up the only object out of place.
Fallen from my father’s hand was a trinket case, of the kind sold by Roadsoul artists at country fairs to hold a coarse painting of your darling. Nall held it up to me.
It was worn with carrying but not with opening, for the leather of the spine split as I spread the covers apart.
Smiling up at me was myself, not myself: Lisei my mother, her red hair braided and pinned high like a crown, mischievous and guilty, fearfully in love. Into the frame was tucked a lock of hair that was two locks: one red and curly, one straight and gold, braided together for half their length.
The air around me grew thicker, or thinner, or clearer, or colder; charged, like lightning air. I closed the trinket case.
I was afraid to touch my father. But I lifted his fallen hand; I laid it on his breast with the other and folded both over the case. They were cold, the skin on them soft and loose, his fingers not yet stiff.
The candle made a sound like moth wings.
There were words in my mouth. Father, Dai loves you. Oh, Father, thank you! Remember Nall? Remember me? I’ve grown up. So much has happened. I’m proud to be your daughter. I love you.
There was no one to speak them to.
I drew a great breath, as if to breathe the words back in. They stuck in my heart, there was no room there. Turning, I saw in the guttering light Nall’s face as still as my father’s, listening.
I knew what he was hearing. The non-sound of it filled the room, empty as the space between two stones.
My breath came in cool, went out warm. I said, “To be alive is not nothing.”
He sat back on his heels.
With my warm breath, not loud, I said, “I am not nothing!”
I turned right round. I opened the inner door. There should have been a Year Altar so I could leave something, but there was only the whitewashed wall.
I looked back. “Be nothing, then! That’s easy. It’s being alive that hurts!”
His eyes opened wide. That was something, anyway.
I slammed the inner door, kicked open the outer one. For the second time in my life I left that house with one man standing in it.
35
Round as an eye, round as the moon,
Full as an egg on the first of June,
Empty as a nest on the first of September,
I am. I am not. Forget me. Remember.
What am I?
(Zero)
Riddle. Tanshari.
I THOUGHT he would follow me.
He did not.
I ran, then walked on the goat trails high above the sea, and Nall did not follow me. The last trace of day had gone and the night was huge with wind, the hollow arch of the sky was full of stars, the earth full of songs and fires.
I would die. I knew this for the first time. It would be me cold on a settee with my mouth fallen open.
I was not afraid. I did not need to make time stop, or clutch and hold it. I just had to breathe and keep moving, walking down the goat path in my broken sandals. I breathed the night.
Little fires dotted the line of the beach, the Least Night bonfire in the middle like the hub of a wheel. Year Altar or not, I had thrown something in that fire, and one of his names was Nall.
The music was working into a good roar, but distant, like a carnival in the next village. I had no thoughts. I only felt the bigness
of the night around me, as if it were alive.
I came to a cattle path and turned toward town. There were people on it—Tansharians, roving and calling and looking to see whether their houses still stood, and with them a few Rigi, men mostly. Some of these revelers were already drunk.
I did not want to meet anyone, or speak. The dim roar of the crowd made my shoulders jump with dread. But if I did not go back, Dai and Mailin would think I had been raped by paidmen, or worse. I began to pick my way toward town.
I did not know where to begin to look for Mailin, but I headed for the bonfire on the beach. I had danced at the Long Night fire, so the Least Night fire would be as familiar as anything in this new world. Suddenly I was uneasy to be a woman alone.
Once down off the cliffs I found the woods above the strand full of shadowy movement, lovers trysting under the low trees. I hurried without listening to the laughter, the soft voices in Rig and Plain. Above the beach, almost running, I caught my foot on a hank of grass and sprawled in the sand.
Someone lifted me up, a fair, curly-haired lad as big as Raím who said, “Trying to fly? Fly to me, sweet lass!” He began to dust me off with caresses, but by the distant firelight he saw who I was and stopped, ashamed or frightened. “Lali Kat, forgive me!”
He looked about—for Nall, I suppose. Not seeing him, he was tipsy enough to lean closer. “We thank you! Downshore, Tanshari thanks you!”
“Don’t thank me. The world changes by itself—”
He was not listening. “We bless you! This is a night to be happy!” He kissed my cheek, and when I did not protest, he gave me a beery wet kiss on the mouth.
I said, “Be happy, then!” and sprang away, like a tranced rabbit that starts and runs. He would find another girl before the night was out. I ran between cookfires just lit, the cooks bustling around them. I tried not to look like myself. Sometimes I slipped past unnoticed. Sometimes there were cries of “Lali Kat!” or “Bear!” and I smiled and ran faster. Carpenters were setting up makeshift booths for food and music, for when did humans let war interrupt a party? Before Hsuu’s magic and the beer wore off, there would be fights and resolutions of fights, black eyes, love babies, new brotherhoods. Flocks of children flitted from fire to fire.
