A Mischief in the Woodwork

by Harper Alexander

  But just because I could claim a certain amount of understanding did not mean it could not still swipe me right off the face of this earth if I did not watch my back, I reminded myself. It would not do to get cocky. I may have been privileged, but I was by no means its master.

  *

  On one of my passings through the kitchen, I could not help but notice the paper was still on the counter, its fate as yet undecided. I realized, then, that I had not read past the one article, and I paused to take it back up, to skim the rest. It was a lot of what could be expected, I found – and then had to laugh at myself for thinking the manner of things predictable, at this point.

  I turned the page anyway, for old time's sake.

  Something caught my eye in one of the old articles, snagging my closer inspection before I could barrel onward. My eyes flicked back to it, where the word 'Shifter' was written in one of the crossed-out sentences. Intrigued, I turned the paper so the article fell straight, and began to read.

  To my astonishment, it was about Ombri. Naming herself Shifter had been for more benefit than her own fantasies, I saw as I read. Johnny had caught wind of her. Documented her. How he had come to gleam the name, I couldn't be sure, but I remembered wondering, upon hearing Ombri's tale, for whose benefit she had re-titled herself, for surely there had been none out there but herself. But I had been wrong, I saw. It had not just been for her own benefit. It had inadvertently been for the benefit of all who would read about her.

  Except...we hadn't. That the article was crossed out might have been what intrigued me the most. I hadn't read it before, and I most definitely hadn't crossed out an article without reading it. And of course, if someone else crossed it out, it would explain why I hadn't seen the article. I'd skipped over it just like all the rest that were marked likewise. But I always read the paper first, didn't I? That was not really in question, as far as I was concerned. As far as I was concerned, Johnny had to be the one that had crossed this out. Written it, and then...decided he did not necessarily want to broadcast it?

  It was curious. But I could relate, for there were things I withheld on a daily basis from those around me as well. It was interesting, running across evidence of others practicing similar discretion where the greater things of this age were concerned.

  I smiled to myself, slightly, reading the article about Ombri. Seeing the evidence that someone else had taken note of her noteworthiness, but then also thought to protect her, to gauge publicity of the vulnerable girl out braving the transcendent odds. He had thought to hesitate where exploiting her story was concerned; some things were not meant to be imposed on, were not meant to be betrayed out of context. Some things were meant to remain intimate happenings between the city and its chosen, not proclaimed like so much gossip for the masses to devour, to abuse.

  Ombri was one of those things. Something to be god-breathed into legend, in its right time – not cheapened in the newspapers.

  I stood in the kitchen and considered the subtle tribute to Ombri, for a time, pondering my own privileged standing for having stumbled upon it. For having stumbled upon this thing clearly canceled from the common knowledge of others. It could be no coincidence that I had stumbled upon it, I was sure. It was just another tribute to the fact that there were things I was allowed to see, that others were not.

  But I did not let that liberate me. On the contrary, I returned the paper to its place on the counter only glad that little Ombri's private greatness would go down in history as it deserved, that she had a wondrous legacy to her name, and could never simply be snuffed, now, by any who might be of the opinion she and every trace of what she was ought to be wiped clean off the face of the earth.

  *

  I cleaned Modo's cage, later, and paused to reach my hand through the little door, extending an offer of friendship. Skittish, the bird flitted away from contact and clung to the far bars, looking over his shoulder at me.

  Just let me touch you, I willed.

  Just let me touch you and see if you're happy.

  Willing him to me did nothing to tame him, however, and eventually I discontinued my coaxing. I shut the door, leaving him in peace, but watched him still. He settled back onto his perch, ruffling his feathers. He did not look miserable, I thought, but surely he couldn't be happy, here. Not when he had spent his whole life as a child of the wide-open sky. I considered letting him go, but there was still a part of me that wasn't quite inclined to release the gift that he was, and he had been such a boost of morale for anyone who passed through the room. He had brought a small spark of life to this house.

  What are we to do with you, little Mo?

  I wondered, offhandedly, if it was dangerous for birds, out there. We didn't see many, except the buzzards. How in the world had Tanen caught this little fellow? And had he smothered one of the only sparks of light to flit across the land, trapping it here?

  Yet, who would appreciate such a thing, out there? He had certainly been more appreciated here, hadn't he?

  I let a breath out of me, undecided where a fitting fate for this little fellow was concerned. But I recalled what it felt like to fly, as I had experienced it through the arrow, and I could not imagine being deprived of such a thing, had it been a gift born into me. It seemed almost akin to cutting off the air that someone breathed.

  Yet I couldn't quite compel myself to free the creature, not that day.

  “You are the closest thing to an angel any of us have seen in a long time, around here,” I said to him instead, explaining. And I moved on, as if resolved to keep that little angel for a rainy day.

  *

  I was hanging up the laundry to dry in the front room when Ombri joined me. She was a bit short to reach the lines, so she made herself useful handing me wet garments from the basket. In honor of my new 'golden' perspective of our dimension, I had taken to drawing the curtain away from the window to let the light in whenever it was just me at work in the room, and the day's pallor-like radiance was making a patch of light on the floor now.

  Having been a child of the open city herself, Ombri did not take issue with it either, and the two of us worked in harmonic silence for a time before she glanced up to look out that very bared window, and asked,

  “Where does he come from? The white one who has no scars?”

  I followed her eyes to the dusty pane that showed Tanen out at work in the field again, this time with Henry. “From Cathwade,” I said, turning my attention back to the clothes.

  Modo was darting about his cage, excited to have visitors and activity in the room. We had to be sure to string the laundry lines away from his cage, or he would strew sticky seeds all over the wet garments.

  “There is more to where a person comes from than his city. I didn't mean that,” Ombri said.

  I resisted sighing, allowing one more flick of my eyes to address the man through the window as I resigned myself to having to respond. Only then did the dismay turn to my own wonderment, as I realized I couldn't rightly answer her. I had yet to discover as much for myself. I had seen things, touching him, but nothing that actually declared what role he had filled in his home setting. And I had been so loathe to forge any closeness between us that I had failed to demand his story, as I really ought to have before letting him implement himself in our own home.

  And I couldn't tell her that which I had discovered, because it was not mine to tell. Certainly not before Tanen himself knew. Given the circumstances, it seemed it was at least his right to be the first to know.

  “I do not think he has known cruelty as we have, dear Ombri,” I said at last, lightly shaking out a skirt. “Beyond that, I can not say the particulars, but I'm sure you have seen his like before. It should not be too hard to imagine.”

  She considered the visual that the window offered a moment longer before bringing her attention back to our task. “He does not look at you like an inferior,” she pointed out.

  “I'm afraid you have a jaded sense of what it is to be looked down upon, min
da,” I said with gentle ruefulness, tenderly touching her face.

  “He looks at you with desire.”

  To that I scoffed slightly, completely dismissing all tenderness as I pinned the skirt to the line. “Of course he looks at me with desire. I am the only porcelain-skinned woman within his reach. A gentleman can desire a slave, Bri – that is part of what slaves exist for.” I had to wonder, as I said it, though – did he view me that way? It occurred to me I didn't actually believe he did, but I could not bring myself to admit there might be something else there. Yet, it would be so much more intolerable if what I claimed was true. I said it to deflect Ombri's speculations, because frankly I didn't want to hear any more of it, but what if there was truth to such an angle?

  Saying it got me thinking about it.

  And just what I needed – some new loathsome suspicion to tack onto the rest, when I was trying to rally my efforts to save his life.

  Presently, Victoria appeared in the doorway, her hair falling in wet strings around her face and shoulders. She peered tentatively into the room, still a meek presence in the midst of the new kind of family that we created. Ombri glanced at her, and handed me one more garment with a sense of finality.

  “I told Victoria I'd braid her hair,” she said, and I watched her depart to join the other girl. They disappeared back into the kitchen together – poor Victoria had taken to washing her hair only in the kitchen sink, since coming to us, afraid to set foot back upstairs, even now that the tub was ripe for use.

  Henry and Tanen came in, shortly, and with Ombri's words fresh in my mind I could not help but notice the glance that Tanen cast my way. He ducked into the kitchen to wash up his hands, and my eyes trailed after him in turn until I caught myself.

  With Ombri's other words still fresh in my mind as well, though, I found myself wondering if it was perhaps time to ask the questions that could have been expected of me (or anyone else here) from the beginning, and ask them by way of the conventional method. It would save my integrity, and Tanen's as well.

  That evening, when I was taking the laundry back off the lines, he sat down in the front room to fix a tool that had broken during the day's work, and I hazarded a composing glance in his direction. Modo plastered himself against the far bars of his cage to distance himself from Tanen, but looked over his little bird shoulder at the man, considering him.

  I hesitated a few moments longer, and then let the words escape my lips.

  “Tell me about yourself, Tanen,” I prompted casually enough, managing to maintain a nonchalant air. Having a task to occupy my hands helped.

  His attention rose from the broken tool, caught by the request. “What is it the Lady Siren wishes to know, at long last?”

  “Everything that I do not.”

  “That is a lot.”

  “Only if you have any relevant substance to you.”

  His eyes gleamed wryly at the piece of wit, rather than taking offense. He ducked back over his work before speaking, perhaps composing what he would say. “In Cathwade, I was the son of a well-known architect and engineer. He designed many of the buildings there. Most before the mischief set in. When things began to crumble, one of the theories was that his designs were faulty. At least there, he became a go-to culprit on the same level as any...Baedra,” Tanen said, still stuck on that word. And perhaps I was about to find out where part of his feelings were born from. “It destroyed my family,” he continued. “He went from being a well-respected man of the town to being chased into hiding, fingers and pitchforks pointed at him. A lot of people died in those first collapses, so there was a lot of consternation ripe for distributing.” It seemed that his head ducked lower, here, and his rhythmic motions fixing the tool slowed, becoming morose. “He couldn't just stay locked up all the time, of course – and he was not the kind to. Eventually, he was mugged on our veranda just outside the house, by someone who needed someone to blame. Someone who needed a more satisfying death than that of a slave.”

  Because a slave could be killed any day, on any whim. Pointlessly. Killing them was too common a practice to bring any satisfaction where true vengeance was concerned. Vengeance called for a bigger price.

  “While he still lived, my father kept his designing alive as well, even if it was behind closed doors. He was always making things...sketching something...”

  “Is that why you know how to craft things so well?” I asked, corset armor and bows and arrows coming to mind, followed closely by his more recent irrigation system in the garden.

  To this, he grinned slightly. “He taught me a thing or two, about how things fit together. It was all he could do, when he was chased into the confines of his own home, to work on passing on his legacy. Not that anyone would have taken to the idea of another Nysim assuming a stance of business should the mischief blow over. Our name was ruined. We were the wrong people at the wrong time.”

  It was inevitable that hearing someone's story caused my heart to soften, at least in places. This little bit of his life humanized him, painted him as a soul who had been through things just like anybody. I did not think what he had been through made him worthy of hating the darkskins, but it seemed that was just something he had come by naturally, a result of the like-minded 'superior' family he had been born into. And really, if a child was taught something, how could he be blamed for it? At the same time, it made me begrudge him all the more for it, because I wanted to be able to blame him.

  Keeping myself composed, I asked, “How many summers have you seen?”

  “At some point the days were left to blur, but...two past twenty, if any of us are keeping track.”

  A couple summers older than I. But likewise, the years had begun to meld together, and unless one was keeping special count, it was difficult to say precisely what year we were in.

  “How many summers to your name?” he turned the question on me, and as good a truth as any came to my lips;

  “A slave is always far older than his years, Tanen Nysim. None should suffer such depleted spirit or abuse to his body until the capacity of his years. And as many a slave drops dead far before the expected lifespan of a soul, he might as well be called old by thirty.”

  I turned to face him as I said this, the laundry finished, the basket hoisted against my hip. And his eyes – they actually showed what I thought might be the barest signs of impact. A small trickle of pause, of gravity, of... It was too soon to say 'sympathy' or 'guilt', but it just might be there, somewhere deep down, waiting to be unearthed. Dug up.

  Exploited.

  For I could see what he must be thinking; according to my answer, I was very nearly old, standing before him nearing the peak of my days. I still had a few good years left, perhaps, but most of it had already been used up.

  It was a little different for us these days, of course, but the point had been illustrated, and I could see, triumphantly, that it didn't rest as well with him as it might have, a few months prior or sugar-coated in some justifiable manner. Nearly half a dozen things flashed through his eyes before me now – the initial twinges I identified as well as something that might have been the desire to protest, the discomfort of letting it settle in, and a hint of recognizing something he might be taking for granted. A hint of erstwhile repressed desire for me, as Ombri had alluded to. Maybe even a hint of more decent lamentation for what I might be on the verge of missing, in this life, if I were to drop dead before a regular man's prime.

  What he could show me, perhaps, if fate saw me let him.

  And instead of finding such a cause repulsive, my fingers itched to let him.

  So I hoisted the basket of laundry and left him to come to terms with the perspective that I had aimed to impart, before that other slant could develop.

  Escaping fate once more.

  *

  Seeing the first hints of response in Tanen, I felt a stirring of hope, and the driving need to latch on while I had the groundwork. Even the smallest window was worth diving through, when the overall window w
as two months wide. I may no longer have been in the habit of counting summers, but it was time once again to count days.

  I found Letta in on the pallets before everyone else came to bed, and cast about in the doorframe looking for a way to broach the subject that came laden on my mind. She arranged sheets, content in the silence of her work.

  “Letta,” I said at last, and she acknowledged me. “There's something...”

  She waited for it, saw it stick, and took up a helpful stance. “Come in, minda. Sit.” Patting the pallet next to her, she waited for me to accept the invitation. I did so, hesitantly, not one to come for help like this. But a life in my hands was too great a responsibility to keep exclusively to myself. I did not feel as though I could tell her, but if she could help... I did not feel as though I could bear entrusting this only to myself, in every way, shape and form. Some sort of counsel was the least I could seek.

  I folded myself onto one of the pallets, trying to compose what I wanted to say. “I need to know how to change someone,” I said at last, keeping it to the point.

  She continued arranging sheets as she considered my words. “Are you sure the great Avante wishes to add to her list of duties? Her undertakings are many and considerable, these days.”

  “I cannot help if priorities don't number themselves,” I said.

  “Does this soul wish to be changed?”

  My silence was enough to spur her next answer;

  “Not even the gods change the unwilling, Vant.”

  I stared at the pallets bleakly, not knowing what else to say. Surely it had to be doable, if I had been granted the chance to try my hand at it. Unless that had just been some sick joke, and this was all to teach me something.

  “You cannot change someone who does not wish to be changed,” Letta maintained. “However, you may be allowed to alter if they wish to change. You can, perhaps, be someone's reason to change.”