Tuyo

by Neumeier, Rachel

  “I don’t know. Perhaps.” He spoke very quietly, not looking at me.

  That was not the answer I had wished to hear. I should have delayed a little longer. But if I had delayed too much, Markas might have realized what I was doing.

  Aras slipped. I steadied him before he could fall. Any Ugaro child would have known how to walk on the ice. I said nothing, but breathed out in relief when the air suddenly chilled against my face and I knew that the ice below us was safe. When we came to the northern bank, I jumped up into the snow, reached down, and pulled him up after me. I took one moment to cut the thongs that bound him, pushed the coat into his hands, and shoved him toward the edge of the forest. He stumbled, caught himself, pulled on the coat, and wordlessly went in that direction.

  I followed, taking the lead as he came to the trees and slowed, uncertain. The snow was deep there, but I broke a way through the high drifts, straight north and a little west, and came out, as I had guessed from the lie of the ground, on the other side of a narrow finger of forest, to clear land. On this open ground where the Sun could reach down, the snow had melted in the short days and refrozen in the long nights. An inch beneath new snow, the frozen crust was strong enough to bear my weight. And I weighed more than any Lau.

  For now, I wanted speed above all, and broke into a jog, barely picking up my feet, a light, skimming jog that seldom broke the crust. It was not fast, but it was a pace I could hold for a long time. The cold air felt good in my lungs and against my face.

  Aras did not have to run to keep up with me. He walked fast, his longer legs covering the ground as fast my jogging pace. The forest spread out before us. Soon there would be no open country, but by the time we came that far, speed would be less important.

  “Ryo—” Aras began, coming up beside me.

  Swinging around fast, I hit him across the face. I had not known I was going to do it, so he had not known either. He fell hard and awkwardly, and knelt in the snow even after he recovered, his hand pressed to his cheek and mouth.

  “Do not speak to me!” I said, and was almost shocked at the ferocity of my tone. But I meant it. I said, meaning every word, “If you touch my mind at all, I will kill you. Do you think you could stop me?” I took a breath again and added, not quite so fiercely, “You may answer.”

  “No,” he said, not looking up. He might have been lying, but he went on quietly, “Your mind now is so precarious, anything I tried to do would send tremors in a thousand unpredictable directions. You would feel that instantly, and your hatred is so intense, nothing I could do would prevent you from killing me.”

  I wanted so badly to do it that the longing made me tremble. But I was almost certain I would be killing an innocent man. Precarious. That was exactly the word for how I felt in my mind and my heart. I said harshly, “We will go west and north. If you did the things I remember, I will find that out. I will try not to kill you until I prove your guilt with the bodies of my people. I will try not to hurt you. Get up.” Despite my hatred, seeing him shaking, I added almost gently, “Can you get up?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s only the cold. Thank you for getting me the coat.”

  Seizing his arm, I jerked him to his feet. I said roughly, “We cannot rest here,” and turned back to the north. I gave him my shirt and jogged to keep myself warm. He wrapped my shirt around his shoulders and neck, covering his mouth as well, and walked fast to keep the pace.

  The snow beneath the trees was soft and deep. I broke a path for him, swinging my legs out wide with every step and wishing for the flat woven paddles my people make for travel in such conditions. But I found a ridge with shallower snow on the windward side, and that was better. He did not complain, but his breath came hard. He was not used to walking a long way. Certainly not in the snow. I did not slow, and he did not ask me to.

  As we went, I looked over the land and listened to the wind. If anyone came after us, I neither saw nor heard any sign of it. I listened for the clapping of wings as startled ptarmigan burst into the sky, I watched for a hawk to drop low as a company of horsemen startled up a hare. But there was nothing.

  Late in the afternoon, the temperature came up a little. Soon after that, it began to snow. Flat, featureless clouds stretched out overhead, the kind that mean snow will fall for a long time and over a large area. I stopped fearing pursuit after that. In three hand’s-breadths of time, our trail would be lost—at least to the Lau.

  The light began to fail, and it grew colder again; then cold enough even I felt it. Aras fell, twice and then again. The third time, he was slow to get up. I pulled him to his feet and turned aside into a thicket of young spruces. I found a good place where trees grew close to the face of a shallow cliff. The open space there was not large, but a small fire would warm a small space better, and the cliff face would help by casting the warmth back again. I began to make a fire, irritated at the long effort involved.

  Then Aras called fire to the tinder, exactly as he had done many times in front of me, calling fire to the wick of a lantern. I had forgotten he could do that. Rage came, that he had dared to use Lau magic. I swung to face him, but he bowed immediately in silent apology. Even furious, I could see how stupid it would be to hit him because he had started a fire more quickly than I could.

  Turning my back on him, I built up the fire. I built it up higher than I would have made it for myself, and told him curtly to sit between the fire and the rock face of the cliff. Then I took back my shirt and went to find something to eat before the long night stretched too deeply across the winter lands.

  Wild plums grow in rocky country such as we had come to. I picked some of the frozen fruit that clung to the branches, wishing for a proper basket. Yes, and if I had a bow, I could shoot the stars from the sky, if I had arrows. I carried the little plums in my shirt.

  Then I followed a rabbit trail. I managed to spot a rabbit before it dashed away, and was ready with a stone to throw. If my eldest brother were still alive, I would be glad to tell him how right he had been to make me learn to throw fast and straight, when I had complained that a bow was better.

  Garoyo was still alive. I was certain of it. Aras had not staked him down in the snow and cut off all his fingers, nor any of the rest of it. I was certain he had not done that. Almost certain. The memory of Garoyo’s death was so clear. I trembled with grief and fury and told myself at the same time that it was not true, that none of that was true. But I could not tell whether I believed the one thing or the other.

  Someone had said to me, I don’t believe you are naturally an angry or fearful man. I could not remember clearly, but I thought it had been Aras who said it. His tone had been kind. I thought of that as I crept back beneath the spruces, and by the time I straightened cautiously below the branches, I almost did not want to kill him. It helped that he did not look up at me, but kept his eyes on the fire. He sat as near the fire as he could get, but he was still shivering. I could hardly believe even a Lau could feel the cold so much in so snug a place. But I remembered how I had suffered in the overwhelming heat of the summer country when all around me the Lau did not even seem to notice the ferocity of their Sun.

  Aras did not speak, and I remembered I had ordered him not to, and regretted my harshness. I struggled not to remember the reasons for my anger, but the images came back to me. I saw him flinch, and was glad my thoughts hurt him, and ashamed for being glad of that, but I could not help it. I said harshly, “Use a cantrip if you wish. If it would help warm the air.”

  He looked up in surprise. Then he bowed his head. I did not see him do anything. Maybe the air grew a little warmer. I could not tell.

  I had already skinned and cleaned the rabbit. I threw it on the ground beside him, tumbled the frozen plums out beside it, put my shirt on again, and crawled back beneath the spruce branches.

  I found an aspen tree easily and peeled off some of the smooth bark. Long grass stems, frozen but strong, could be found where the dim light of the snowy dusk made its way t
hrough the branches of the trees. It is hard to melt enough snow to satisfy thirst, but eating snow will make even an Ugaro feel the cold. I wished for one of my mother’s large bowls. But I could make a basket reasonably fast, sufficiently watertight to serve the purpose.

  I went back again to the shelter and found the rabbit threaded onto a skewer and set over the fire. Aras plainly had not known what to do with the wild plums. I made a bowl of aspen bark for the plums and a little more snow and set that near the fire to warm. Wild plums are very sour without honey, but some things one cannot manage when traveling rough.

  The rabbit was tough and lean and would have been much better if my mother had been the one to cook it. I tried not to think of her because even though I did not believe the terrible memories of her death, I could not get them out of my mind. Aras stopped eating his share of the rabbit when I thought of her. “Eat it!” I ordered him, and he turned his face away and put the meat in his mouth. He ate the entire portion I gave him, and his share of the plums, and drank water bitter with the taste of the aspen bark. I put more wood on the fire. Then I stood up and said, “Give me the coat.”

  He looked up at that. Then he got slowly to his feet and took off the coat and gave it to me, and wrapped his arms around his body instead, trying not to shake with cold.

  I spread the coat out on the ground where he had been sitting. I said roughly, not looking at him, “If you only have one covering, always find a sheltered place out of the wind and put it beneath you. The earth will pull more heat from your body than the air. Come here.”

  He stepped close, not looking at me. I lay down, pulling him down to lie with me, against my chest, his hands between our bodies where they would be warm. I put my arm over him and pulled him close. It was the way a man might lie with a lover, and I hated him, and he knew it and held very still. But his shivering eased at last.

  “Go to sleep,” I told him, and tried not to think of what he had done to my younger sister, of how he had pushed her down—

  He shuddered against my chest. “Please,” he said in a low voice. “Please, Ryo. Think of something else.”

  “Shall I think about what I will do to you if you did that to her?” I asked, and hated myself for saying such a thing, for believing he might have done those things when I knew the memory was false, but I could not help believing it. My arms tightened. I could pin him down exactly that way, do to him exactly what he had done to her . . .

  He was shaking again. Not with cold. I enjoyed his fear, the power I felt over him. “Please,” he said again, his voice strained, and I enjoyed that too. He did not try to push away from me, even now. Whatever I did to him, he could not prevent me, and he knew it. I was stronger than he was, and Esau had taught me how to wrestle—

  Esau had taught me how to wrestle. He had taught me the moves I had used to kill Markas. If my body remembered that, it must be true. The other was false. It must be false. I knew it was false. I eased my grip on Aras. The anger and hatred were still there. But shame at what I was doing to him—what I was doing even though I believed, or almost believed, or wished to believe he did not deserve it—overcame the bitter wish to hurt him. “I am sorry,” I told him. “I am sorry. Go to sleep.”

  Casting around for gentler things to think about, I thought of a song. It was the song we sing to the Dawn Sisters. That brought memories of my sister back to me, but I shoved away everything bitter and terrible and remembered her instead as a baby, putting her doll into my hands, falling asleep in my lap. She had been perhaps three winters then. I must have owned about ten winters myself, much too old to bother with a baby sister, but I had not moved because I did not want to disturb her.

  No sorcerer had any reason to interfere with memories from so long ago. I knew this memory was true. It felt true, in a different way from any of my recent memories, that seemed true one moment and false the next, brittle and ambiguous.

  I sang a few words of the song under my breath. Aras had stopped shivering at last. His breathing evened and deepened as he stopped holding himself rigid against me. If he had not been exhausted with effort and cold—and with long fear and helplessness before that—he might have lain awake much longer. I, younger and beset by memories I did not want to think of, did not sleep for a long time.

  The next day was like the first, except I was no longer concerned about pursuit by the Lau. I had other concerns instead. I did not know whether the land here belonged to the inTerika or whether we might already have come far enough west to have entered inKera territory. If they caught us moving secretly through these forests, an Ugaro in company with a Lau, warriors of either tribe would surely doubt there could be good reason for this trespass. They would probably kill us both, and while I had nothing now to live for, no people to return to, Aras might not—probably did not—I was almost certain he did not deserve that death.

  If he deserved death, I wanted to kill him myself.

  Still, the land was wide. If I paid attention, I should be able to avoid any war party.

  I allowed an early stop so that Aras could rest and so that I could warm aspen twigs by the fire, bend them into shape and bind them into place. Once I had the frames, I wove strips of bark through the twigs to make snow paddles, such as my people use to walk on top of loose snow. Making such paddles is a tedious, difficult task, one that is more suited to a woman or a craftsman than a warrior. My elder sister made very good snow paddles. Mine were terrible, but I hoped they would be better than nothing.

  Once the Sun stepped below the world, Aras did not hesitate to lie down close to me. The cold was a greater goad than fear of my anger or hatred. This time, as soon as we lay down, I managed to think about quiet things, peaceful things. Wolves running single-file across a snowfield. An eagle, turning and turning in a wide and luminous sky. Curtains of light, wavering and melting against a field of infinite stars. Aras fell asleep at once.

  I lay awake for a long time, trying to sort out memories that were false from the truth that had been hidden from me. I could not do it. The more I thought of a memory, the truer it seemed, even when I was almost certain it was false. Only distant memories of my boyhood came easily to me, and those memories were tainted by what had happened later ... by what I remembered happening later.

  When I finally slept, all my dreams were confused, filled with grief and rage.

  On the third day, I led us directly onto a party of inKera warriors.

  -20-

  Perhaps a bird had flown up, disturbed by our approach. Whatever gave us away, I did not notice it. Whatever signs might have revealed the warriors we approached, I did not notice those either, which was indefensible carelessness.

  Even with the snow paddles, I had found I had no choice but to take a slower pace than I wished. Aras tried to obey my demands for a better pace, but the cold exhausted him. Though I had known the cold would be hard for him, my best imaginings had fallen short. I was beginning to believe he would die of the cold before we came to inGara territory. That was not the death I wanted for him. If he had done the things I remembered, he deserved far worse.

  Then, early in the afternoon, I came down a small ridge and put out my arm to steady Aras, and he stilled above me. I turned quickly. But it was much too late. The warriors were no more than two bowshots ahead. They were spreading out, stringing their bows with slow, ostentatious movements. They did not mind if we saw them because we were too close for us to get away from them and too outnumbered to fight. There were ten of them: a scouting party.

  I was furious with myself, but fury would not help. I made myself speak quietly. “We will go down to meet them. We have no choice now.”

  Aras nodded, but he asked only, “Do you remember Hokino inKera?”

  “He is the inKera warleader. I have never met him.” Perhaps that was him before us; it might be. I could not remember hearing any suggestion that he was unjust. But it could hardly be seen as anything but just to punish a man who had brought a Lau into the winter country for some
evil purpose. I could think of no argument that would persuade the inKera warleader I had done this for any honorable reason, not during this year of bitterness and blood.

  Perhaps I could persuade him to take us to his brother. That might at least delay our deaths, though from everything I knew of him, Soro was even less likely to listen to us or show us mercy than Hokino.

  After what he had done to my people, Aras did not deserve mercy from any Ugaro. After what he had done, I had no reason to wish to live. Except perhaps he had not done those things. It was impossible to sort out truth from lies, and now was not the time. I shoved the whole tangled mass of doubt and rage aside and told him, in the steadiest voice I could manage, “These are not Lau. When we come to them, you must kneel rather than stand up straight—” I broke off. Someone had told me the guest of Lord Aras should not cower like a dog. Had that happened? The fragment of memory came and went. I blinked, ran a hand across my eyes, took a deep breath, and lengthened my stride.

  When we came near, I recognized Hokino, though I could not remember having met him. When I dropped to my knees, it was not only to acknowledge that these men had caught me at a severe disadvantage, but because the confusion was so great I could not keep my balance. I said, “Hokino inKera—” in a voice I hardly recognized as mine.

  “Ryo inGara,” he answered, and examined Aras with amazement. “And the Lau warleader, is it not? Far out of place and a little more ragged than when we last met.” The taksu came strangely to my ears after so long.

  As I had warned him he must, Aras knelt as well. He did not lower his gaze, but watched Hokino intently.

  I bowed my head, hoping Aras would understand he should show a much more humble manner. I said, “Please, warleader, I ask you to be generous. We only wish to pass through, to the lands of my people.” It occurred to me that I could ask him, Have you had any news of my tribe, has anything terrible befallen my people? Only now, when I might find out immediately, I was afraid to ask, for fear he might tell me.