The Mount

by Carol Emshwiller

  Little Master pulls the guard off me and then begins to cry. Not just drooping ears, but that high-pitched trembly sound that twangs my backbone.

  I shush him. “Stop it. They’ll come.”

  He stops, but they come. My father first. I guess he can see right away what happened. He grabs me and lifts me up and shakes me like I’m a rag, not a Seattle almost as big as he is.

  “Whose side . . .? What’s this Hoot?”

  “I don’t know what you’re asking.” But of course I do.

  “Whose?”

  He keeps shaking me. Can’t he see I only just this minute almost got choked to death? Can’t he see I’m still holding the knife? And just the way he taught me? Ready to kill? And how can a person think when they’re getting shaken up like this?

  “Not your side! Not yours! I’ll never be on your side.”

  He drops me . . . not drops, throws me down. When my father throws something, it really gets thrown.

  “We killed him, didn’t we? It was Little Master killed him, but I was going to.”

  The mounts are crowding around us, and then here’s Jane asking me if I’m all right. Asking both of us. And saying, “For heaven’s sake,” like she does, but to my father this time. “For heaven’s sake, your own son.”

  She helps me up. She even helps Little Master mount. Then she takes my hand and leads us to where our things are and sits us down and gives us drinks and washes our faces.

  Little Master droops. He says, “We’re each others’ only ones,” and he won’t get off until I say I’ll hold him on my lap. I start thinking, Merry Mary, Merry Mary. It’s because I want to be on somebody’s lap, too, but I never get to be.

  “Say me,” Little Master says. “Say me then. As if a mother. Don’t try to sing, just say.”

  I remember all the things Merry Mary sang and said back when I was little. Those tales and songs were mostly from the time before the Hoots. Till we got up there at the village of Wilds, I’d never told them to Little Master or anybody. If you’d asked me, I’d have said I’d forgotten all about them. Sunrise didn’t tell me any back down home. I was always too tired. Sometimes I heard her humming as I went to sleep. She strummed on a homemade guitar kind of thing. She only did that at night when we were all locked in and the Hoots were in their burrows.

  Back there our playtimes were short and our trainer wouldn’t have let us tell stories. If there was any singing, our trainer did it. But up at the village we had time. I could remember things, and Little Master and I could sit out someplace by ourselves and talk and tell. First we just talked about how good it used to be back home, and all the things we missed, but then I thought about Merry Mary’s tellings. I changed three bears to three Sams or Sues without hosts and one lost baby Hoot wobbling on his skinny legs. I didn’t want to scare Little Master with bears. (There really were bears around there.) Any princesses I always made into Hoot mothers. Stepmothers I made into wicked trainer mothers.

  I turn us away. I say, “Once upon a time,” and he puts his arms around me and leans, all relaxed, his cheek against my neck, his damp breath tickling. “Once upon a time a baby Hoot got lost in the woods. He could walk a little bit better than most because he practiced. You could see muscles in his legs. When you squeezed them, they felt like rubber, not like a bunch of loose strings.” Little Master grunts and looks up at me, surprised, but then cuddles in again. (I’ve never said anything like this before, but I’ve been thinking about leg muscles, how mine are strong because I made them strong on purpose.) “This little Hoot practiced every day. Secretly. Even his faithful Sam mount didn’t know. He didn’t dare use the go-round. He had to go round and round by himself.

  “One day he was out in the woods practicing going some real place. He was even shouting, “Go, go, go,” to himself, and he was go, go, going farther than ever before, because his legs had gotten stronger than even he knew, when he came upon a Wild Sam house in the middle of nowhere. . . .”

  The mounts are below us, down the hill. They’re going through their cast-off tack. Some are so mad at the bits, they’re trying to destroy them. I wonder if I can get any of that tack for myself. Well-behaved Sams like me don’t ever need reins and bits, but those things do look nice, and these are silver. Maybe some would fit on my knife belt.

  The mounts seem much too quiet for a batch of twenty-one Sams. They hardly talk at all, except a word or two now and then when they have to, but they pat each others’ shoulders a lot. They keep looking around as if waiting to be captured and brought back and maybe poled. They haven’t been free long enough to know how it feels. I guess by now I do know. Sort of know. Except I’ve never been without Little Master. And a good thing, too, or I’d be choked to death. Without him, maybe dead a lot of times.

  Jane is listening to my story almost as much as Little Master is. My father comes up, and Jane says, “For heaven’s sake,” to him again. She’s still angry about the way he threw me down. He sits near us, listening, too. And staring at me. I see on his face that he’s going through about ten different feelings all in a row. He frowns, he wonders, he gives up, he doesn’t give up.

  Then there’s a kind of giving over. That’s a lot to see on somebody else’s face, especially a face like my father’s, but I know it’s something like all that.

  Before I finish telling about the three Wild Sams who live in the woods, my father goes back down and sits with the guards’ mounts. Maybe he already knows how it ends. After I get that baby Hoot on his feet and lost, I just tell the story in the regular way. (If my father does know the end, I wonder was it Tutu told him? I laugh out loud to think of my little-bitty father sitting on Tutu’s lap. Little Master wants to know why I’m laughing so he can laugh, too, but when I tell him, he doesn’t think it’s funny.)

  When my father sits with them, the mounts bunch up around him. A lot of them use hand signals instead of talking. My father speaks to them mostly that way. I wish I knew what they were saying.

  I’d like to talk to the young ones, but I have to go on telling. Since Little Master just saved my life, I owe him at least the end of the story.

  I’ll bet those three young mounts can talk just fine. I mean they can’t have mouths utterly ruined in just a few years. And they’ve only just hardly grownup. I mean no one would ever make somebody my age into a guards’ mount. How could somebody my age have done enough terrible things? But maybe, back when I’d just arrived . . . just been taken from my mom . . . that time when I wouldn’t get up and go for my training workout. . . . If I’d kept that up, not even let them explain things to me, maybe I would have gotten to be one.

  Anyway, those Sams don’t want me there with Little Master on my shoulders. I do have a good scar and they don’t know I got it saving a Hoot.

  Later, there’s food. Every mount carried some. It’s mostly dry cakes like we always have, but there’s fruit and cheese and nuts. They have all the best stuff. They’re supposed to be healthy because of their job. Back home, I was supposed to be healthy, too. I haven’t had any of that sort of thing for months and months. They give some to my father and he brings it up to us.

  I ask him about those hand signals and I tell him I like how they look. “But what were you talking about?”

  “Just ta—ta—ta—ta. . . .” Long pause, then a loud, “Talk!” as if that was a terribly important word. (He’s not ever going to tell me anything. I don’t know why I asked.)

  He’s given Jane and Little Master and me all the food he brought. While we eat, he sits, elbows on his knees, examining his hands—turning them over and back again. I wonder what he’s reading there. New scars, I suppose. I hope he’s thinking how he shouldn’t have used those hands to shake me so hard and throw me down.

  Little Master eats fast, as though someone will take his fruit away, and all of it at the same time. Stuffs it in. He’s not tasting anything. I say, “Hey,” and then everything is gone. I take tiny bites to make it last as long as possible. I want to think about this
food and remember back when I was important enough to get it (or better than this) every day.

  Jane tries to give some of her fruit back to my father, but he won’t take it. He lets her feed him a few orange sections and grapes, one at a time. That makes them laugh. I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen him laugh. Smile, maybe—a little bit.

  I make Little Master stay back with Jane so I can go down to those three young ones that I cut loose. They move closer to each other and away from me. The way they look at me you’d think I was older and wiser, but they have got to know a lot more, and more important, things than I do.

  First I sit—not too close—and don’t say anything. They don’t, either. They all three have painted-on mustaches, though it looks as if two have beginnings of their own real ones. I guess not good enough yet. They don’t have misshapen mouths as my father and the older mounts mostly do.

  Then, finally they ask—and it’s my father’s question over again. “Whose side are you on?”

  And then, “Are you a Wild or a Tame?”

  And, “That guard that almost killed you was our captain. She’s as bad as a Hoot gets.”

  “I know that.”

  “We wouldn’t have put up with her here.”

  “I know.”

  They all sputter a little but nothing like my father. And even to me they use signs. They take for granted that I know them. I pretend I do.

  “How did you get to be guards’ mounts? What did you do?”

  “We were incorrigible.”

  They leer. They’re proud of it.

  “We’re worse than any Wilds.”

  “Still are.”

  They start to laugh and snarl and make gestures as if they’ll leap-and-choke me, but I don’t flinch. I don’t like people to think I’m a Wild. They think Wilds don’t know anything, which they don’t. I pull my lip up and out to prove I’m not, and then I ask, “So what did you do that was so bad?”

  “Revolt. Big one.”

  “We killed Hoots.”

  “All of us did.”

  “What about you?”

  “You mean me?”

  “You took a pretty good hit. Looks like maybe top-to-bottom.”

  I have a lot on, but my leggings are too short. You can see my calf and ankle, and my cheek and my neck down to my collarbone.

  First I feel proud, and I don’t know what kind of lie to tell. I should have practiced one. But I’m not on their side anyway. Only sort of, when it comes to what they wear, and how they march, banging down with their metal heels. I guess I’m on a very small side, with only Little Master and me in it. I might as well stick up for us.

  I point my chin up to where Little Master is—sitting on Jane’s lap now. It looks as if she’s telling him a story, too. “I saved that baby Hoot,” I say.

  The young one—that youngest—the one I wanted most of all to be friends with. . . .

  Talk about fast as a rattlesnake or the leap-and-choke. He punches me. Two punches. One two. Before I have time to even think one. I fall back, about as hard as when my father threw me, but this time I get up fighting. Except he’s trained for it. He knows tricks and nasty punches to the wrong places. And he kicks. And he knows how to block. I don’t come close to hitting him. Not even once. I don’t know anything. I didn’t even know there were things to know. My father never taught me. If I lose, it’ll be my father’s fault.

  And here he is. Everybody (except me) stops when they see him. Nobody says a word. I keep hitting, but, like before, all I hit are the mount’s wrists. My father grabs me.

  “Go ahead, throw me down. Throw me away again.”

  “Never.”

  He keeps on holding. When I stop fighting (what’s the use anyway?), it turns into a hug. He’s too big and sweaty for hugging. All us Wilds smell. (It’s what they call a bear hug, though I’d like to know who ever got hugged by a bear, and, if so, I’d like to know why, and did they live to tell about it?)

  And he hugs too tight. He says, “I wasn’t. . . . Never, never, never.” His wet breath right in my ear.

  He leads me back to Jane (his iron grip still). When we get up there, he lets me pull away. I walk back towards the mounts a little and squat to look at the cast-off tack. I pick up a bit. It’s one of the best. The cheek-pieces are silver and in the shape of a leaping Sam, one leg way out front. It has a little goldish lump in the middle where your tongue goes. If you pull on the sides, I’ll bet that lump turns up against the roof of your mouth.

  I hide it under my vest. I can’t wait to try it out—see what that lump feels like, but I don’t dare until I get by myself, just me and Little Master. My father would have a worse-than-ever fit if he saw me with that in my mouth—no matter how beautiful it is. I wonder, does he care anything at all about art?

  Back when I was going to be the mount of The-Ruler-Of-Us-All, I wonder what I would have worn. I mean, for show. Would I have gotten to have a mustache? I wonder if Little Master knows. I’ll bet gold instead of silver. So now, because of my father, I’ll never get to look good. I look down at myself, this sheep-yarn sweater, too-short leather leggings. I had to cut the toes out of my shoes. For sure I look like a Wild.

  So far I’ve managed to avoid calling my father anything at all. I never needed to. I don’t know what to call him. Maybe Heron. If I call him Beauty I’ll bet I’d get another shaking.

  I go back up and tap him on the shoulder.

  “I have to know how to fight.”

  “No!”

  “I have to.”

  “I want . . . you not. . . . Not like me.”

  “Don’t you want me to defend myself?”

  “You weren’t. Not defen . . . ding.”

  (I’m going to ask those three young ones. If one of them won’t teach me, then I’ll just fight with them and watch to see how they do it.)

  Then my father does what he always does, turns and walks away. From everything. We’re at the saddle of the mountain. There’s a peak on each side of us. He turns and walks towards the highest. Like he does, he picks a steep way.

  When I sit down by Jane, she says, “There he goes again. One of these days. . . . Poor old Seattle. He’s going to kill himself by mistake. Or maybe on purpose.” She stands up and watches until he’s behind the cliffs, then she starts packing things up. “He never had a chance to be even a little bit happy. Ever.”

  Little Master crawls over to my lap. “We have,” he says. “We have a lot of fun.”

  Jane says, “In solitary, too, sometimes. Those Hoots know what that’s like. They’re herd animals just like we are. They know.” Hard to tell if she’s talking to us or not. “Isn’t it odd that solitary should make a person even more solitary?” Then she says, “I wish I knew. . . . Oh dear.” And then she looks up towards where my father must be, though by now you can’t see him.

  Chapter Eight

  My father isn’t back yet. Jane doesn’t know what to do with twenty-one guards’ mounts. Are they in charge with Heron gone? And where will they be safest? She doesn’t think they should stay here. All she knows is to take them back to the village and wait for Heron. If anybody comes after them, she can hide them up at the mountain ruins. She tells me maybe it’s me they’ll follow, not her. Since Heron isn’t here, it’s maybe only me.

  “But they don’t like me with Little Master on me.” (They’d like me even less if they knew he was The-Future-Ruler-Of-Us-All.) “They don’t like me anyway.”

  “You’re Heron’s son. You have obligations. Just like he has.”

  Not again. I had enough obligations when I was the mount of Little Master About-To-Be-The-Ruler. And I’m still the only one responsible for him because if any of us ever find out who he is, they’ll kill him in a minute.

  “Well, if my father’s got all these obligations, where is he? Why isn’t he here doing his obligations like he should be doing?”

  That stops her.

  “But they won’t like a Sue, let alone a Tennessee, leading them.”
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  (I know exactly how they feel.)

  “Maybe if we both do it. I mean we’re the only ones who know the way.”

  The mounts hardly know how to walk, except in rows. Up here the ground is so rough there’s only a few places where they can do that. They’re going to have to change. Well, I had to change in lots of ways, and I didn’t want to, so I guess they can.

  We dip down into a high valley and then start up again, towards the last pass before the village. It’s even higher than the one where the halfway hut is—used to be. We’re up beyond trees, even the ones that are blown sideways into funny shapes. We’re up where the lupine is dwarfed and flattened. Everything is.

  Mostly we’re walking through piles of rocks. That’s all there is to this mountain, but they’ve made a pretty good path here. The guards’ mounts have to go one-by-one. Their metal heels clang, but not, anymore, in any rhythm. They’re too busy watching their footing to keep track.

  Jane goes first. She knows the way the best. And I come right behind her.

  But what happens is what always happens up here in the mountains. (Another good reason why they shouldn’t have the village way up here.) Nobody’s been noticing the clouds. Or I haven’t. A hail storm. We run. Any direction. Everybody. Every direction.

  I pull Little Master off my shoulders and curl myself over him to protect him as I run. Little Master has his big hands spread over his head. I run, but there’s no place to go. Except I have to go someplace fast. It’s Jane pushes us down, squeezes us partly under a slightly overhanging rock and curls herself around us. These mountain hail stones aren’t just any old hail stones. She’s going to get herself bruised.

  No wonder those plants hug the rocks and stay small.

  I say, “I don’t need for you to do this. I can do it.”