by Jo Clayton
Tuli lay back, colder inside than she’d ever been in her life. For the first time, she wanted to be angry, wanted to have that fire in her head that blanked out everything but the need to hurt. She lay on the blanket, cold and nauseated, empty.
“Little sicamar.” There was an awful kind of triumph in his voice as he pulled up his trousers and tied the laces. “You drew blood, you know that? Whee-oh, what a ride you give, Tutu. Told you you’d like it, didn’t know how much, did I?” He didn’t understand anything, he thought—oh, Maiden bless—he thought she was pleased, he didn’t have the faintest idea she wanted most of all to tear him into bloody shreds, how stupid he was, how stupid I was to think I wanted him for a friend, to let him even get started in this. “You better get back before someone misses you.” She could hear his feet kicking through the dead leaves on the ground as he walked toward the outer circle of hanging limbs. “Eh-Tutu, don’t forget to roll up the blanket, tuck it in the hollow on the backside of the trunk, we’ll need it next time.” The leaves rustled as he pushed through to the outside. She could hear him whistling as he strolled off.
Tuli sat up, slowly, painfully. She still hurt but more than that she felt soiled inside. “Next time,” she said. She pulled her tunic down with trembling hands, grateful for the slight increase in warmth. “Stupid,” she said. She got painfully to her feet and started to pull her trousers up, changed her mind, pushed them down over her boots and kicked out of them. “Stupid.” Standing first on one foot, then on the other, she tugged her boots off and threw them on the blanket. “Never.” She bent and felt about for her trousers, then her boots, carried them out into the moonlight. “Not with him.” She dropped her clothing on the greasy creek bank and plunged into the water, shouting involuntarily as the liquid ice closed around her reaching to her waist. She waded to shallower water, scooped up a handful of sand and scrubbed vigorously at herself, ignoring the pain, scrubbing away the feel of him, wishing she could scrub the memory of him from her mind, until she felt cleaner though she didn’t know if she’d ever feel clean again, not really. She ran from the water when she was finished, rolled on the grass to dry herself a little, then scrambled back into her clothes, her skin tingling, the blood racing in her veins. “I won’t let him spoil this,” she said. “I won’t let him steal the night from me,” she shouted to the moons, shouted futilely, she knew that. Her sureness was gone, she couldn’t get it back, that sense of invulnerability when she ran the night. Nothing would ever be the same again, the change that she’d rebelled against before was almost complete now. Nothing would ever be the same.
Rane kept playing the flute even though Tuli stopped talking. Tuli gathered courage and lay watching her, taking pleasure after a while in the neatly chiselled features of her stenda face, in the unconsidered grace of her lanky body, in the sense of control she got whenever she looked at the ex-meie. Rape’s calm helped her reduce the thing with Fayd from the monstrous horror it had grown to in her mind to a mere unpleasant and uncomfortable episode. Tuli dropped her chin onto her fists and listened, smiling inside, to the slow, sighing music from the flute. Far down the slope the noises of the work continued unabated, but that all seemed terribly remote from this patch of grassy brush-free mountainside, sheltered from the wind, warmed by the late afternoon sun. Tuli yawned lazily, her eyelids dropping. Rane finished her song, shook out the flute, set it on her thighs, reached out and brushed a straying lock of hair off Tuli’s face. “He wasted no time boasting about the two of you?”
“None.” Tuli folded her arms on the ground in front of her, dropped her forehead on them, hiding her face. She felt Rane’s hand touch her head once, then withdraw. She spoke to the dust. “I was carrying stone. About halfway through the morning he walked past hanging on to Delpha, you don’t know her, she’s a tie-girl from down south, she’s.…” Tuli sighed, then sneezed as the dust came into her nose and mouth.
“You don’t get on so good with the tie-girls.”
“No.” Tuli turned her head so her cheek rested on her arms, her face turned away from Rane. “No, they don’t like me much. He ignored me, the lout. Fayd ignored me. Not that I wanted him to fuss or anything, but he went past me more’n once like he didn’t even see me. And Delpha was giggling, she’d look at me and look away, sneak a look and look away, and a couple tie boys kept hanging around and grinning at me. And touching me. You know. Ayii, Rane, I hated it, but I didn’t do nothing. When things got too bad I went off, up here sometimes, it helped a bit, but they wouldn’t leave me alone. And … and then Fayd and Delpha came by. They should have been working, both of them, they’d got no business lazing around like that. And Delpha stopped and stopped him when she came up to me. And she looked me up and down. And she pushed out her chest and flopped that red hair around and flapped her eyes at Fayd and told him, I didn’t know you went with boys and she laughed and … and … things kind of exploded and I jumped her and I don’t know much what happened after that till you pulled me off her except Delpha kept screaming I was crazy and Fayd sort of hung back and flopped about with his stupid mouth hanging open. Am I crazy, Rane? I don’t know anymore, I can’t … can’t hold onto myself even when I know I have to, I do things I hate after, things I know are wrong when I’m doing them but I can’t stop. Everything’s wrong. Everything.”
Rane laughed, shocking Tuli. “Don’t exaggerate,” the ex-meie said, her words like Annic’s slaps serving to unseat the fit of whatever threatened to overtake her. “Tuli, I’m setting out on a swing around the mijloc to Oras and back. Tomorrow, early. You want to come with me?”
Tuli felt a sudden flush of relief, a lightening of her spirit. Then she drooped. “Da won’t let me go.”
“I think he will. He understands more than you think.” Rane laughed and got to her feet. “You stretch out up here and get some sleep.”
Tuli flattened her hands on the sleeping pad, forced her eyes determinedly shut and kept herself lying still until she couldn’t stand it any longer. Small itches raced across her skin as if thousands of chinjim were infesting the blankets and crawling over her body, their threadlike legs running, running, all over her. With an explosive sigh she kicked the blankets off and sat up, scratching vigorously at arms and legs. The odor of the tent’s heavy canvas was sharp in her nostrils, Sanani’s steady slow breathing an irritation to her nerves, a reproach almost. Tuli rubbed absently at her arms, shivering more and more as the cold sank to her bones. She snagged one of the blankets and pulled it around her shoulders. The itches started traveling over her again and a dull ache spread across her back. She sighed and got to her feet. No good. I can’t sleep and I can’t just sit around and scratch. Not bothering to dress or pull on her boots, the blanket clutched around her, one corner dragging on the ground, she pushed through the entrance slit and stood awhile in front of the tent, sore in body and spirit from the strain of the past days.
Shaking hair out of her eyes, she gazed around, wondering if she dared go for a walk, tilted her head back to watch the shrunken TheDom drift through wispy clouds because she didn’t want to think about that anymore, jumped and gasped when she heard a crash behind the tent, clamped a tardy hand over her mouth though the small sound she made was lost in the night noises, the creak of tent poles, the rustles of leaves, the tiny rattle of grit blowing across the mountainside.
“More than enough wood for morning.” Her mother’s voice.
“Good. I’m beat.” Her father.
Tuli crept along the side of the tent to the point where it joined the canvas windbreak that blocked off three sides of the cookplace.
“Some coals left. Hand me those two short pieces, I don’t want to go in just yet, been a long time since I’ve had you to myself.” Laughter, warm and low from both of them, blending. The sound of liquid pouring into mugs just barely audible above the night noises, the subdued crackling from the fire. Tuli spread apart the edge of the tent and the end of the windbreak, saw Annic set the cha pot back on the iron plate at the side
of the fire, saw Tesc sitting on the section of treetrunk rolled there to serve as a crude bench. Annic settled herself on the ground by his knees, worked herself around until her head was against his thigh, her back partly against the wood, partly against his leg. He sipped at the mug he held in his left hand, caressed her hair, the side of her face, with the other. Tuli got a queer feeling in the pit of her stomach and pulled back, but put her eye to the slit again after the silence between them had persisted for several minutes, not sure what she was going to see, not sure she wanted to see it, unable to resist the prodding of her curiosity.
They were just sitting there drinking their cha; they looked comfortable with each other, content just to be there. They looked happy and for a very very brief moment, as long as she allowed herself to be, before she drove it away as if it were something white and loathsome that lived in dead meat, she was almost sick with jealousy.
Tesc sighed and set his cup on the trunk beside him. “The ties are getting edgy. They want representation on the Council.”
“Mmh, that means Ander Tallin’s been acting natural again.”
Tesc laughed. “Trust you to see through a wall. He wants to collect all the food and tools and keep them locked up in a shed and doled out every day—by him, I suppose. He says the ties are getting a lot too uppity.” Tesc chuckled. “I suspect he tried ordering someone about and was called on it.”
Tuli frowned. She’d never paid much attention to anything but the way people acted to her; what they felt about each other and what that might mean to life up here hadn’t been important—now it opened out vague but fascinating possibilities that distracted her from what her parents were saying. She rubbed at the wrinkles on her forehead, thinking about the other taroms and their families, startled to find them only cloudy outlines without names and faces.
Annic got up, refilled her cup and brought the pot back with her. “Looks to me like you’d be better off with a couple good ties backing you. Want more cha?”
“I shouldn’t, never get to sleep.” He grinned suddenly at Annic. “Fill it up, I just thought of a better way of rocking myself to sleep.”
Annic chuckled. “The woman tempted him.”
“Always.” He reached out and took her hand. They stood like that for several minutes, smiling at each other in a way that shut the rest of the world out. With a soft laugh Annic finally pulled away, poured cha into his cup, handed it to him, and settled back leaning against him.
“Problem is,” he said, “what we do up here is going to set patterns for a lot of years when this is all over. Hard to see what’s going to come of it.”
“Tell you this, I don’t want to live anywhere Pleora Tallin can order me about. What a chinj. She thinks Anders should be headman.”
“So does he.” He drained his cup. “Forget them. Let’s go in.”
Tuli got hastily to her feet and ran along the tent. When Annic and Tesc came in she was curled up in her blankets with a roll of wool tight over her ears.
Tuli looked back. Her father had walked down to the wall with them. Now he stood watching as they rode away, a blocky solid blackness in the gap where the gate would be. She felt a sudden surge of affection laced with grief, a premonition that it would be a long time before she saw her father again, if she ever did. After looking back until she couldn’t see the ragged top of the unfinished wall, until her neck and shoulders ached, she swung around and stared at the silent black and grey hills in front of her not sure what she felt now, excited, happy, uncertain, lost; it was good to get away from the valley, that was true, but she was already missing Da and Mama and. Sanani and she wouldn’t think about Teras. Rane was interesting, but when Tuli thought about it the ex-meie seemed as shadowy and shapeless as the outlaw tarom families had been last night, interesting was a cold word, a distancing word. She glanced around to Rane, saw the woman smiling at her with wordless friendly understanding. Tuli began to feel better. Immersed in that slowly warming silence they rode through the cold pre-dawn morning, following a rambling trail torn by macai claws, compressed by the iron-tired wheels of supply wagons.
“Should be snowing soon.” Tuli looked about at the white patches of frozen dew on ground and grass, lingering on the leaves of isolated trees.
“Should be.”
“You don’t think it will?”
“No.”
“Oh.” Tuli inspected the broken earth before her, shook her head and laughed.
Rane tilted her head, a question in her dark green eyes.
“I asked Fayd how he found us.” Tuli waved a hand at the rumpled earth. “A blind man could.”
“Too many people to hide. Anyway, what’s the point?”
“I didn’t sleep much last night. I got to thinking.”
Rane smiled.
Tuli snorted. “I did. Why hasn’t Floarin wiped us out? She could pretty easy.”
“Why should she?” Rane leaned forward and patted the shoulder of her macai. “The mijloc is culling itself without much effort on her part. And there’s the Biserica, she has to deal with the Biserica first.”
“She’s going to attack the Biserica?” Tuli was horrified. “She can’t do that. It’s … it’s.…”
“It’s obvious, Tuli.” Rane shrugged. “Shrine Keepers are trained there, the core of Maiden service is there. If she wants to force the Maiden out of the mijloc, she has to take it.”
“Can she?”
“I don’t know, Tuli. That’s one of the things this trip is about.”
The sun started up, turning the tops of the hills to a shimmering red-gold. As they left the last of the frost behind them, the thick matting of yellow cloud over the mijloc began to break apart. Though they were still a good half day from the bottom slopes, they soon started to feel Plain’s heat leaking up into the hills. No more patches of ice-white, no red glitter of dawn-lit dew. The scattered clumps of brush and the now-and-then trees were wilted and drooping, no frost to bring the leaves down or turn them to familiar fall colors. They rode along the winding wagon track, moving at an easy walk, Rane apparently in no hurry to reach the Plain.
“What do ties think about being ties?”
“I’ve never been a tie. What brought that up?”
“Something I heard Da say.”
“Ah. I see.” Rane rubbed at her nose, stared ahead between the spiky ears of her mount. “What do you think about ties?”
“I don’t know, they’re ties, that’s all.”
“What do you think about being a tarom’s daughter?”
Tuli opened her eyes wide. “What?”
“Would you be any different if you were born a tie?”
Tuli brooded over that for the next three hills. The yellowish light and the heat were increasing together. There was some wind stirring the heavy air but it didn’t help much. After the sharper, colder, thinner air of the higher reaches, this was oppressive and rapidly growing unbearable. “Most of the ties I knew seemed content enough.”
“What if they were unhappy about something?”
“All they had to do was tell Da and he’d fix it if he could.”
“But what if your Da was a different sort of man, what if he didn’t give one damn about what ties wanted, what could they do?”
“Nothing, I guess, except go off the land and see if some other tarom would take them in.”
“Would that be any too likely?”
“No, I s’pose not. But most the taroms I know are pretty much like Da.” Tuli scowled at her macai’s bobbing head. “They’d starve, most like, if they had to leave the land like that, ties I mean. There’s no place for them to go.”
“And people don’t like change. In fact, if you think of it, Tuli, things haven’t changed much on the Plain for several hundred years.”
“Up to now,” Tuli said.
“Up to now, yes. If you were still back up there, Tuli, what would you want most?”
“To have some say in what happened to me. Not to be told to run and play like
a good child and keep my mouth shut and do what I’m told.” At first Tuli spoke without really thinking, just responding to Rane’s question. When she heard what she was saying, she stopped and stared at Rane. “Oh.”
“Answered your own question?”
“Oooh, you’re sneaky, you are.” Tuli nodded. “I see what Da was saying. Setting patterns.” She spoke gravely, rather proud of herself, looked shyly at Rane, blushed at the wide grin on the ex-meie’s face. “Well, isn’t it so?”
“Very much so.” Rane mopped at her forehead with a bit of rag she pulled from a pocket. “Dammit, it’s not an hour after sunup and look how hot. We’re going to have to lay up for a couple hours come noon.” She patted the rag over her face, dragged it into the neck opening of her tunic. “On the whole, Tuli, I’d say the next hundred years will be hard ones for the Plain, even if we win this fight. Might take that long to settle everyone down again.”
Tuli licked her lips and thought of the waterskin by her knee, but she wouldn’t say anything before Rane did. “You know, I think Da’s kind of enjoying himself. Oh sure, he hates it too, but when he’s not reminding himself about the tar and the Aglim and all that, he … well.…” She shook her head.
“He was bored, I think. On the tar. Too easy.”
“Oh.”
The clouds were gone and the swollen sun was clear of the horizon. They were riding right into it, forced to keep their eyes turned from it, focusing instead on the withered grass and the rattling brush close to the ground. There were more trees along the hills now, big wide-armed brellim whose stiff leaves were starting to rot, hanging limp and wrinkled from withered stems, smelling of rot too, a smell at once wet and musty and sickening. The silence around them was eerie, as if everything had died or left except grass and brush and trees and they couldn’t leave only die slowly and unbeautifully.
“Do you think I could be pregnant?”
