by Diane Duane
Even in the darkness, she saw the slight smile form. “Duonna,” he said, “my father suggested you might, and told me to ride that road with you if you asked. Good luck with them.” He nodded at the kitchen.
She smiled, took Arnulf to her room, warned him where the lumps in the mattress were, and left him.
***
The argument was brief, for even Mariarta’s father had to admit that, so close to the alpagiada, no one else was free to send. Next morning the neighbors’ horse was borrowed again, and Mariarta and the Knight’s son of Attinghausen rode off together. Town gossip had them betrothed lovers before they were out of sight. Mariarta didn’t care, being too full of the new morning, the horse she rode, and the feel of the road awaiting her.
“Before we go too far,” Arnulf said, “will you show me a thing?”
“Gladly.”
“What has this creature done? I’ve heard the stories, but my father charged me to look for myself and bring him word.”
Mariarta turned in the saddle. They had just passed the bend in the road that hid them from the village, but the lower slopes of Piz Giuv were clearly visible. “See there—” She pointed at the long brown barren scar down the side of the mountain, from the snowline straight to the fringes of the village. “And here—”
She nudged her horse around the next curve, and showed him the Plans’ house: what was left of it. The roof was smashed flat, the walls broken out sideways. Splinters of wood and lumps of stone from the house’s foundations were everywhere. “Toni Plan went up the mountain, thinking to hunt the Bull alone. It chased him around the alp a while, then let him run—and followed him home.” She turned away from the wreckage. “His two children were in bed, his wife was there with the new baby at her breast. The Bull came—” Mariarta shook her head. “Toni lives with Paol now, but for how long, we don’t know. He won’t eat or speak, he gets thin....”
Arnulf, pale, stared at the shattered house; then reined his horse back to the road. “Let’s go get you what you need,” he said.
***
They rode with good speed, but Mariarta had no feeling of haste; the easy, eager nature of her travelling companion made sleeping on stones a pleasure, and eating bread by the roadside a feast. It was altogether different from traveling with her father. This was more like adventure, even though she knew the country—and her companion she knew nowhere near as well, and found his talk eternally interesting. Only once she wondered how quiet the wind was on this trip, whispering to her not at all....
They saw few other travellers, and had no trouble along the way. In four days they struck the mouth of the Schachental valley, which runs east from the Reuss, south of Altdorf. It was rich pasture country, alp after lush green alp rising on the south side of the vale. They spent the night in Unterschachen, the main town of the valley. The next morning they left early.
Mariarta looked at the mountains as they rode. “That alp over there, under Eulen,” Mariarta said, as they rode down the slope to cross the Wanneller Bach, “that’s where the herd lived who invited the screech-owl to dinner, isn’t it? —and the owl became an owl-headed man, and ate everything in the herd’s hut, and almost ate the herd too, except the Virgin saved him?”
Arnulf laughed, shook his head. “A silly story, but they say it’s so; and the owl turned to stone, so you can see its head there. An odd sort of thing for you to be interested in.”
“I might be interested in other people’s hauntings, and not have to explain it,” Mariarta said. “But it’s news from elsewhere. We are far from the great cities, and the rich alps—even their foolish stories have some weight with us, in the heights.”
“You could easily—” Arnulf said, then closed his mouth abruptly and turned his attention to fording the stream.
—Come to live somewhere else, the wind whispered his thought to her on the wind; then it dissolved into an image of the heights of Attinghausen, all wrapped about with cloud.
Mariarta smiled sadly. Despite all Arnulf’s traveling and knowledge, he sometimes seemed impossibly carefree and innocent to her. “Someday,” she said, “perhaps I will: but for now—” Their horses struggled up the bank onto the road, barely more than a rocky track. “Where is the farm?”
“Right at the head of the valley,” Arnulf said, pointing left and upward. “Gurtenstalden—see that cliffwall, where the green runs to that spur of stone?”
Mariarta nodded. A tiny brown house was just visible there; the track they rode was the last thing it led to.
It took an hour of climbing to reach the house, on that bad road. “Whoever’s up here likes their privacy,” Mariarta said.
“Or peace and quiet,” Arnulf said, as they came around the last bend of road. “Or the hunting.”
Up the cliffside, the calm brown shapes of two chamois stared at them. Further up the cliff that backed onto the heights of Chli Geissberg were five or six more. “They’re bold! Usually they flee even the sight of people.”
“Which shows you how few people come here,” Arnulf said. They reached the last patch of green before the cliff, a wide, fair pasture starred with flowers, full of handsome golden-brown cows. Mariarta and Arnulf got down to walk the horses to the brown house that lay in the pasture’s center.
Before they had come far, someone came stooping out of the low door at the front of the house. He was tall, dark-haired, broad-shouldered, with a somber look about him, but something cheerful in his eyes. He wore milking-clothes. “Welcome,” he said, in a warm deep voice: “will you have something to drink?”
“Gladly,” Arnulf said. The man led them into the house. It was like one of the huts that the herds kept on the alp, but better furnished, with a handsome carved bed in one corner, near the fireplace. Hanging on a hook above the bed was a noble crossbow of laminated horn, the stock inlaid with graceful designs in bone. The morning’s milk stood in wooden pails, waiting to go into the big copper cauldron over the fire. The man dipped big wooden cups into one pail, handing one each to Mariarta and Arnulf. They drank them greedily. When they finished, and thanked their host, he said, “You didn’t tell me last time that you had a sister, young sir.”
Mariarta blushed; enough light came in the open door to show her that Arnulf did too. “I haven’t,” he said, “but I’m told I ought to have one like this.”
“I am from Tschamut, sir,” Mariarta said. “My father the mistral could not come, being ill.”
The farmer regarded her oddly. “Then you— No, wait for that. Come see the calfling.”
He led them out around the back, where an open-sided cowshed was built against the house-wall. Inside it, one of the handsome brown Schatla cows was tethered; busily sucking from her was a white bullcalf, well-grown. It was more than white: it was silver, and seemed to shine of itself in the shade of the byre. Mariarta was reminded of the lamb....
The bullcalf stopped suckling and looked up, licking its nose with its tongue. The look was altogether that of a baby beast, thoughtless, innocent, mild—but those eyes reminded her of someone.
“This is the one,” Mariarta said, shivering.
“That’s well,” the farmer said. “Then he’s yours.”
Mariarta straightened up. “I’m sorry—I don’t even know your name.”
“Wilhelm,” he said; “there’s not a family name, people usually just say ‘of the Schachental’.”
Some memory smote her, then fled before she could seize it. “That’s well. Signur Wilhelm, my father would bid me ask what price you want for the bullcalf.”
“As for that—” The farmer paused. “You’re really the mistral’s daughter of Tschamut?”
Mariarta’s memory struck her again. This time she saw in sunlight what she had not been able to see in the house, in shadow: that face in the firelight of her own house. But back then he hadn’t been that interesting: there was something else more important— Mariarta laughed. “‘Gugliem dil val Schatla,’ you said it was—but of course in Daoitscha that would b
e ‘Wilhelm von Schachental’—”
“Just ‘Tal’, sometimes,” he said: “people here will always be shortening names. Duonna, it’s hard to believe. You were the little girl who—” He laughed. “But it’s been six years. I’m flattered you remember me at all.”
“A scolar comes to our town, how should he not be remembered?” Mariarta turned to Arnulf, who was thoroughly confused. “Arnulf, this gentleman and I have met. He came to our town on his way from the monks’ school in Chur, while I was small. And he—”
“—drank her father’s good wine, gossiped with his town council—and came away with my skin intact.” Gugliem, or Wilhelm, laughed. “I got home safe, eventually, and took up the family property. This is all that remains of it, this alp and the next one: taxes—” He shrugged. “I do well enough. This winter I’ll wed an old friend of mine from downvalley, once I convince her father that my herd prospers.”
Mariarta nodded. “The bullcalf—”
Wilhelm shook his head. “I can’t take your coin for that, duonna. Not with the trouble you’ve been through. And your people were kind to me once— Just take him. I have two bulls already—"
“But it must be worth a solida—”
“You’ll need a cow to suckle him by until you can get him on home pasture,” Wilhelm said. “Take his dam; you can send her back in the fall with the traders.”
“Sir,” Mariarta said, “if we were ever kind to you, you’ve paid the debt now: we owe you more kindness yet, should we meet again some day.”
Wilhelm bowed. “You’re more than welcome. Take him, with blessing: and may he free you of your trouble at last.”
***
She brought the bullcalf home. Comment was passed as they went through Ursera about how Mariarta traveled, and with whom: but mostly people stared at the calf. It burned silver-white like sun on snow, and onlookers crossed themselves when the calf, tethered by a neck-rope to its mother’s bell harness, glanced innocently at them.
Mariarta understood their nervousness. As she and Arnulf made their way along the road that would lead them to Tschamut in a few miles, she wondered whether the villagers would be so eager to have the silver bullcalf when they saw it. Its eyes were those of a beast, but also Urs’s—an Urs too young to know what speech was. She wondered what might come later.
The Tschamuts people too crossed themselves, shaking their heads at the beauty and uncanniness of the bullcalf. Arnulf led the calf and its mother into the pasture beside Toni Pal’s. Everybody, even Mariarta’s father new-risen from his bed, came out to lean on the fence and gaze at the brown shape and the white one as they grazed.
“There’s a punishment if you like,” Paol muttered. “Play around with holy things the way he did, there’s what happens.”
“More to it than that,” said Old Gion. “Holy water’s not going to hurt you normally. It doesn’t hurt thirsty people who drink it when there’s nothing else. But go baptizing dumb animals—there’s the damnation. Church-magic is for men, not dumb beasts with no souls—”
“The holy sacraments are nothing to do with striegn,” Bab Luregn said sternly. Gion shuffled his feet. “But it’s true enough that the sacraments are for men alone. See how the wicked boy is born into a beast’s body, to learn first hand what manner of creature he wasted the blessed water on.”
“Maybe it’s so,” Mariarta said softly, as Arnulf came up beside her. “But will you at least bless him?”
The priest glanced unwillingly at the Knight’s son, for the bab’s father-house was at Einsiedeln, in Attinghausen’s demesne. Finally he said, “In a blessing there can be no harm. But what good it will do a soul already being punished by God—” He went away.
Arnulf smiled half a smile, then said to Mariarta, “I must go home. Send word if you have any need, and tell me how the calf gets on.”
“I’ll do that,” Mariarta said. For a long moment they smiled at each other.
Arnulf turned away. “Master mistral,” he said, bowing to Mariarta’s father, “my father salutes you by me, and says to you: ask for help, if in any way we might help you in days to come.”
Mariarta’s father bowed too. “I will do that, young sir. Ride with God.”
Arnulf mounted and rode off. Mariarta watched him go, breathing out sadly: then turned back to gaze at the silver bullcalf.
The wind laughed softly in her ear, and Mariarta shivered.
***
“We need more cows,” Mariarta said to her father, three weeks later. Her bab leaned back on the father-bench, sighing.
From the pasture, bellowing floated to them. In this short time the bullcalf had already grown as big as a full grown bull. The three cows were having a hard time with him: he would chase one after another of them around the field, sucking them dry in turn. When they tried to stand him off, he rampaged around the field, ripping the good turf, banging into the fences. What he’s going to be like in the fall—
“At least,” her father said, “he’s living up to the tale we were told of him. And the priest’s blessed him.”
Mariarta smiled. It was only unwillingly that Bab Luregn had done so—and the bullcalf had chased him out of the field when he was done. Mariarta had seen a glint of amusement in the bullcalf’s eye. His amusement—Urs’s? There seemed no doubt. That was the worst of it, of course: the sense of someone waking inside that body, the look growing sharper, more intelligent. And more tormented. Mariarta went to check him no more often than necessary, for she was finding it difficult to face the expression in those eyes—innocent and uncaring so short a time ago: now, longing, trapped, desperate. And the wind brought no breath of Urs’s thought to her.
Up the street toward them came young Paol, the woolseller’s son. Paol had noticed Mariarta’s friendship with the Knight’s son of Attinghausen, and apparently thought her value had increased. Her father was not amused...but was also still considering what to do about Reiskeipf. The thought had occurred to him that if Mariarta was safely married elsewhere, that particular problem would end. To make matters worse, he had fallen several times in the past couple of weeks, usually when climbing stairs. It’s starting, the wind had whispered to Mariarta in her bab’s voice, the way it did with my bab. Oh, God, not so soon....
“Good morning, mistral, Mariarta,” Paol said.
“Good morning,” Mariarta said.
“Will you walk?”
“I was just about to see how the bullcalf is getting on,” Mariarta said, getting up: “certainly you can walk there with me.”
They walked to the fence, leaned there, looking into the pasture. “He’s coming along well,” Paol said.
“He is.” Mariarta watched the silvery shape, blinding in the sun, go thundering off after his dam. The cow dropped her head and shook her horns at him, belling like a pugniera about to start a fight. The bullcalf shied, then went off after one of the Tschamuts cows, which fled him, mooing desperately.
“He must be four feet at the shoulder already,” Paol said.
“Four and a half. Cla managed to measure him yesterday.”
“He’s very wild. What’s he going to be like by the fall?”
“Bigger, I hope. We’re bringing another three cows.”
The bullcalf gave up on the second cow, went for the third. “And what then?” Paol said. “After the six, and the nine.”
Mariarta glanced at him. “You know perfectly well.”
“A pure maiden. Of which there are only four in the village—”
“Barbla, who has been holding off half the boys in town, to the great frustration of all of you,” Mariarta said, “and little Telgia, and Eulscha, and me.”
“It doesn’t have to be you,” Paol said, quietly.
“What??”
“If you wanted to stop being a maiden—”
Mariarta swallowed. That, above all things, was what made a girl marriageable. To simply give it away—oh, some did, but—
But for the sake of your life—
“Paol,” Mariarta said slowly, “think about it. In how many stories with maidens in them does the maiden walk away from the meeting with the monster?”
Paol looked shocked. Plainly he had not thought about this.
“Whoever has to do this,” Mariarta said, “is probably going to die. Do you want it to be one of them? Who—” She stopped herself from saying, who hasn’t done anything to deserve it.
But still—the chance to simply be out of the danger, set free from fear—
She glanced up, breathed in sharply: Paol cried out and jumped back from the fence. The silver bull was standing not a foot away, its huge face inches from Mariarta’s. How had it come up so softly, like a ghost—
Its eyes dwelt on her. The sorrow in those eyes, the fear and pleading, were unmistakeable. It showed no anger, though. If this was Urs, it was not all of him—none of the spite, the black moods. Mariarta glanced at the alp, scorched and shadowy even in full sun. That dark side of him, perhaps, was elsewhere, serving out a different punishment.
It would be so easy, Mariarta thought. To be free—
She slowly reached out to rub the huge head between the brows. “No,” she whispered. “No, we’ll see this through together. Don’t be afraid.”
It was a useless warning. He was afraid, would continue to be: perhaps that was part of the punishment this part of Urs must bear. Meanwhile Paol ran off, terrified. Mariarta was terrified, too, but there was no one to console her. Even the wind was still.
She stood there, bearing what she felt: and so came into her womanhood.
***
The summer ended. Mariarta’s father stopped trying to come down to the bab-seat, preferring the shame of being bedfast to the embarrassment of bruises. He was not eating much, either—he complained that food seemed to have little savor. This gave Mariarta an idea...and shortly she scandalized Onda Baia and many others by openly taking up hunting.
The scandal got worse, not better, when Mariarta was immediately successful. But she refused to fail just to placate the village hunters: her father’s appetite mattered a great deal more. Her first brace of hares, and the three pernitschs she brought home the day after that, cost her no effort, for the wind blew behind her as she aimed; she could not miss. The chamois, two days after that, surprised even her. Mariarta had been whistling for it, the way the old herd used to do, mimicking their call. But the wind took up the whistling and bounced it from crag to crag—and a one-year buck came bounding down the cliffside at her. She aimed through the swirl of suddenly fearful light, found the beast’s heart, let its blood go. It was a bitter two hours’ work, hauling the carcass home, but Mariarta would have died rather than ask anyone for help. That night, the village’s hunters (along with everyone else) were too busy eating its roast meat to give Mariarta any trouble. And the skin would bring coin-money in Ursera—not a great deal, but every solida helped.
