by Shannon Hale
Today I find myself remembering one night as a little girl, when our gher was still full of family, and a traveling shaman stayed the night. It's good luck to offer any stranger one night under your felt roof, but doubly so for a shaman. How excited we were! I remember watching the shaman with wide eyes and doing my best to blink as little as possible. If he turned into a fox, as I'd always heard shamans can, I was determined not to miss the sight. The shaman didn't transform that night, but he told us stories of the Ancestors and what they willed us to do in order to enter their Realm one day. And he told us how gentry were the children of the Ancestors, how it was a commoner's privilege to serve them. It was the first I'd ever heard of gentry.
Many times after that night I liked to lie back and imagine what the gentry might be like — skin that glows like a candle, eyes shining with the wisdom of the Ancestors. Sometimes I actually thought they might have tails like foxes or butterfly wings. Then meeting Lady Saren and her father . . .
But now I've spoken with Khan Tegus, and though his hand didn't glow or anything, there was something in his voice, in his words, that was different than anyone I've ever known. The mark of the Ancestors must be in him, stronger than in some gentry. Maybe that's why his title is khan instead of just lord. I'll ask my lady.
Letter
Lady Saren told me a story tonight while she petted My Lord the cat. How many things she must know! She said that the Eight Realms were once united under a Great Khan, and the seat of his power was Song for Evela. Now all the realms have their own lord or lady rulers, but in memory of the Great Khan, the ruler of Song for Evela still carries the title of khan. I asked her how she knew, and she said all gentry families keep the history of wars and marriages and so on. Such a thing as history never occurred to me before.
Day 73
It's fully winter now. There's a rim of ice on our well that I have to crack with the bucket. Each time I open the metal flap to the outside, I get blasted by cold. The wash water freezes as I pour it on the ground, and afterward I spend several minutes before the fire just to get color back in my hands. This time of year, it's too cold to snow. High winter out-of-doors is death as sure as a knife in the chest, and a winter's funeral brings bad luck to the whole clan.
I'm a mucker, so I thought I knew winter, but from inside this tower I've learned something new—the winter wind has its own voice. Autumn wind has a gusty warmth to it and a lower tone as though it sings from deep in the belly. The winter wind screeches around the tower, singing the high harmony, its voice sharp with ice. My lady isn't fond of that sound.
A few days ago, I carried her mattress down to the main floor and shut the door in the ceiling so we keep in more of the fire's heat. I think even the Ancestors understand that in winter, a mucker maid and a lady must sleep side by side.
Surely her khan won't return until after winter. Spring seems as far off as the Ancestors' Realm.
Day 93
Yesterday smoke was filling our room something awful, and in a locked tower, air filled with smoke would kill us right quick. I rolled up my lady in all our blankets before I smothered our fire. In the time it took me to clean out the blocked chimney, my jaw was hammering and my fingertips turned blue. I relit the fire and shivered on my mattress until the room warmed again, there being not a spare blanket for my shoulders.
This winter, Goda, goddess of sleep, must have made Evela, goddess of sunlight, awfully drowsy. No memory of sunshine hangs in the air. Everything feels gray and hard and dark. I guess that might make me bitterly sad, but right now, My Lord is asleep on my lap.
Day 98
The guards only bring our daily milk every two days now, sometimes three. In the cold, they must stay in their tents, keeping the fire going nice and toasty, venturing out only to milk their animals and make yellow ice.
To help our milk last three days, I add water. It wouldn't be proper for my lady to drink plain water, as if she were poorer than poor. Even Mama and I always had milk to drink.
Day 122
Little to record. I wash, I cook. I stoke the fire. Whenever the wind moans, my lady shivers as though she feels it on her skin. She's refused to bathe for weeks, but this morning I insisted. When I dunked her hair into a bucket of water, there was a powerful scent, reminding me of the time my brothers' reindeer fell into a stream.
Today, for the first time, I couldn't enjoy the spices in the food. It was as though I couldn't taste them. I can't say why that was.
Still, My Lord the cat is so beautiful.
Day 144
The middle night. I just woke after a dream, though it was the kind of dream that's more memory than imagination. I saw again the last night her khan was here, the sight of his hand lifting up the cat. And then I saw what I gave him in return. I hadn't thought of it again since that night. The memory jolted me awake.
I gave her khan my shirt. Ancestors, there was a basket of washing right by my mattress. I could've seized one of my lady's own shirts. He would've inhaled her scent, the breath of her soul. Even though there was something else at hand, I chose to give him my own garment.
Why didn't the Ancestors strike me dead? After such an offense, I'd think they wouldn't permit this mucker maid to remain breathing. Perhaps they only ignore me because I'm shut up in this tower, cut off from the gaze of the Eternal Blue Sky. Perhaps if I ever step out of its shadow, I'll be struck in the instant and crumble into a heap of ash.
Day 158
This morning, we . . . I'm shaking still. I didn't realize until I put the brush to paper. If My Lord the cat weren't on my lap, I don't know that I could be calm enough to write at all.
This morning, we heard voices outside. Now that it's warm enough for the sun to burn holes in the icy ground, we've begun to hear our guards again, chatting as they walk around the tower and occasionally shouting saucy things at us. But these voices were new. One was so deep and loud, I felt it in the stones of the tower. I felt it in my bones.
I was darning my lady's stockings by the orange light of the fire, and my lady was lying on my bed, teasing My Lord the cat with a stocking too holey to save. When we heard the new voices, she sat upright, like a fawn stops grazing when she hears a hunter's step.
"Is it your khan, do you think?" I asked. "Back already? "
My lady didn't answer. She's so often spooked, I didn't realize that this time she was truly terrified, so badly that she couldn't speak or move.
I left my sewing, fetched the wooden spoon, unhooked the flap, and jammed it open.
"Don't, Dashti," she said too late, just as a hand shot up the hole and seized my arm.
I screamed, I think. The hand was covered in a black gauntlet, the wrist trimmed in metal spikes. It was not her khan.
"Do I have her?" said the voice low enough to grumble in stones. "Do I have my lady?"
"No, I'm sorry, no, no," I said.
"Who is this?" He shook my arm.
"I'm Dashti. I'm my lady's maid. I'm the mucker maid."
He laughed as if I'd just told a wicked joke. "Yes, I know muckers. There are hundreds of the ragged folk wandering the steppes in Thoughts of Under."
He let go, and I pulled my arm inside.
"Put your arm back!" He yelled so loud, the cat screeched.
I didn't want to. Ancestors, I wanted to crawl under my mattress. He may have a voice like an earth rumble and put my lady in the fear shakes, but I recognized the command of gentry, and I must do what he says. I lowered my arm back down the hole.
He didn't grab me again, just tickled his gloved fingers against my fingertips. He was chuckling, lower than his voice. Then he slapped my hand against the wall. It stung like a log full of hornets.
I pulled my arm up, but he said, really slowly and sweetly like I was his favorite lamb, "Back down, Dashti the mucker maid."
Again I lowered my hand, and again he slapped it against the wall. I left it there, and I was crying, but not just because it hurt, I think. The next time he slapped, my lady grabbed
me under the arms and pulled me away from the hole. We fell back on my mattress.
"Stay here," she said.
I stayed. After all, she's my own mistress. Let that black-gloved lord growl and yell all he likes, I'll obey her first.
"It's him. It's Lord Khasar," said my lady.
And I stopped wondering why she refused to marry him.
"Are you in there, Lady Saren? Do you believe you're hiding, stashed in a tower all the world can see? You're not very good at the hiding game. You never were."
I wish I could write that my lady stood tall, that she declared she would never love him or bow to him or tremble at his voice, let him do his worst, or somewhat of that bold kind of talking. I saw her show a bit of courage to her father once, but at Lord Khasar's voice, she covered her face and cried so hard she squeaked like rusted hinges. I'm sorry for her, I am, but sometimes I think crying's done for and it's time for doing. If only I knew what ailed her, perhaps I could help, but I guess there are corners and folds of my lady's soul that I'll never see.
I sat with her, put one hand on her belly and one on her back, and sang the song for bitter sorrow, the one that goes, "Darker river, blacker river, faster river, pulling me." I sang while Lord Khasar spoke. She calmed some. I didn't dare go pull the wooden spoon and shut the flap. He couldn't touch us, safe here in the center of the room, but his voice slinked in like smoke. Not even in the cellar under sacks of barley would we be able to hide from that sound.
These are the sorts of things he said.
"Your father hobbled to Thoughts of Under to see me, whining like a girl in two braids. He told me, 'My daughter awaits you in the watchtower on the border of our lands. Knock down the walls! Take her, bound and gagged, I care not. She is refuse to me till she bends her will to your own.' He spoke grandly, but his knees shook. Do your knees shake, my lady? I don't trust a man who fears me, and all fear me. Do you fear me, my lady? " He laughed heartily at that.
"I remember your eyes when we first met. You were eleven years old? Twelve? Your eyes were as dull as a cow's, but you looked lovely dressed in silks. You still do, don't you, my jewel? You are beautiful adorned in gold, so who cares about your dim eyes?
"And I remember how your eyes changed after sleeping one night in my house. You no longer had cow eyes, but mouse eyes, rabbit eyes, the wide eyes of prey. How much I enjoyed that night, I really can't express. Besides you, there's only one other person still living whom I've allowed to see me feeding. I hope you feel that honor, Lady Saren. I trusted you with that secret because I know you'd never dare tell."
Here he laughed with a dark, dry rasp, and I wished I knew what he was speaking about. My lady lay on my bed, one arm wrapped around her face, the other clinging to my waist, her entire body quaking.
"That's when I wanted you as my own. I told your father then that you would be my bride. But I won't knock down this tower for you, not today. I won't force you out yet. I'm having too much fun."
His voice was nearly a whisper, and yet we could still hear. "The day will come when you will choose me over the tower. Knowing what you know, you will still choose me. I hunger for that day."
Then for some time, silence.
I think he'd been gone a long while by the time we could sit up and breathe. My lady still clung to me. I was too shaken to sing anymore, my voice felt sticky and my heart clattered about, so I held her till she could stop shaking, too.
"You'd met him before, my lady? You knew his temperament, that's why you refused to wed."
"Yes," she said. There were secrets laden in that word "yes" that she didn't explain. I could feel it, and it made me afraid.
"His voice is heavier than lead," I said. "And he slaps harder than your honored father. Do all gentry slap people? I suppose it's a noble's right, but I wonder, your khan doesn't seem like to slap."
"No," she said. "I chose him because I thought he was safe."
She was so beautiful as she said those words, even with the red eyes of crying. She made me believe she could choose whomever she wanted, and the poor man would have no choice but to fall in love with her, too. Perhaps even Lord Khasar was in love with her, in his own way.
"Did Khan Tegus make you laugh?" I asked.
She shrugged, and I realized I'd never heard her laugh. She pulled her knees up and stared at the fabric of her deel stretched tight between them. She took a deep breath and I hoped, hoped, hoped it meant that she was going to talk more. It's so rare with my lady. I don't know if she was always a quiet one or if her will to speak has been smothered by the tower darkness. When she opened her mouth, I had to suppress a sigh of contentment.
"After my father and I spent time at Lord Khasar's house, after I saw what that man was, I thought to betroth myself to someone else before Khasar officially asked. I knew he would ask, as soon as I turned sixteen and was of an age. I chose Khan Tegus. He was on friendly terms with my father and I thought him gentler than most. We wrote letters for years. I told my maid Qara what to say and she wrote for me. Qara was my best friend. When my father condemned me to this tower, she ran away."
My lady's eyes were empty as she spoke. I shivered, imagining being a child in that large house with floor stones that look to be cut from ice instead of passing winter nights in a snug gher. To be raised by a fierce lord who slaps instead of by a mama who sings.
This was the most my lady had ever confided in me, and I longed to keep her talking. "How did you first know you loved Khan Tegus? Did you — "
"I'm tired," she said and climbed the ladder to bed.
And that's how it is with my lady. Sometimes we share a few words about the food or My Lord's prowess with the rats or the cold that burrows between bricks, but let me broach the topic of her khan, or black-gloved Lord Khasar, or her father and his house, and my lady is suddenly as tired as a weeping willow in full leaf.
My Lord the cat is asleep on me or I would've ended my account and gone to bed long ago. His purring shakes my lap but steadies my hand.
Day 160
The guards generally don't speak with us. Sometimes they shout at us, but they don't expect a response. Times I've asked them for news of the world, for fresh meat, for anything. Even knowing they'll say no, it's a thrill to holler through the hole and know that another person hears my voice and might answer. Her honored father must have warned them sharply to leave us well alone, but this morning I got one to speak.
I held open the flap to dump the wash water and splashed someone's boots.
"Watch it, now!"
"Sorry," I said, not afraid, for I knew the voice as belonging to one of our regular guards. "Is he gone?"
"Lord Khasar? Yes, gone two nights ago, thank the Ancestors."
"Did he hurt any of you?" My hand still smarted from the bashing and made scrubbing my lady's stockings and unders no pleasant task.
"Not much," he said.
It was more than he'd spoken to me in all our tower days, so I risked more questions.
"Can you tell me, what does the sky look like today?"
"Sky? It looks like a sky."
"Is it blue?"
The guard snorted. "It's always blue."
But he's wrong. Though we call it the Eternal Blue Sky, I know that sometimes it's black, sometimes white, sometimes yellow-, pink, purple, gray, black, peach, gold, orange, a dozen different shades of blue with a hundred different kinds of clouds in thousands of shapes. That's what makes it so wondrous. If the guard couldn't see that, I wouldn't bother to explain.
"What of the world?" I asked. "Is there news from Titor's Garden? From my lady's family?"
The guard laughed like a horse snorts. "I feel like I'm talking to the dead. You're not coming out of that tower, miss, not unless that lord from Thoughts of Under breaks you out, and then he'd snap a maid's neck and toss her to the dogs, more than like. Enjoy your brick room and don't worry about what's outside. Nothing here belongs to you anymore."
He was laughing when he said it, but I could read his
voice plain as my own letters — he was sorry for us, and he was sorry for being sorry.
They weren't nice words he said. He could've lived a good life and died never having made a person feel rubbed down to bones and too sad to hold together. Still, it can't be an easy thing, guarding two girls who've been thrown into the rubbish heap of Under, god of tricks. I think he laughs because he doesn't want to hurt for us.
While he was still close enough to hear, I sang the song for stone hearts, the one with the bristling tune that goes, "Chick tight in a shell, wings up and away." He listened some, then walked on.
Day 162
Spring's here, the first breath of it anyway. The stone floor is not so cold at night, and the air coming in from outside, which used to smell like a hole dug deep, now smells like blue sky. My Lord senses the change, too. He's friskier, wants to jump and play, and I exercise him with stockings and bits of salt meat.
I thought my lady's mood might change with the season, but she's still the same, her back rounded more than straight, her eyes dim. I try new songs on her, I combine songs. Though sometimes her temper lifts, the change never lasts long. But I'm mucker stubborn, and I'm determined to discover her ailment.
A fresh breeze just found its way up the dump hole. I wish I could see the buds on the trees, just trembling to open and be leaves, and hear all the honeybees out and buzzing, so happy to be free of their winter hideaway they're like to burst.
Day 180
I would write more if I had something to say. I'll draw here the profile of my lady as she stares at the wall. She's been sitting in silence since dinner, and it's nearly time for supper.
Day 233
This past week I was wishing for something new to happen so I could have a reason to write. It's bad luck to make a vague wish like that, because Under, god of tricks, is bound to grant it with something unpleasant. And so he did.
Lord Khasar returned today.
"I'm back, my lady, my love!" He shouted heartily, as though he called all the world to dinner.
"I wish I could hit him," said my lady. "When I think of him, I want to punch him with all my strength. I wouldn't care if he hit me back, if only I could hit him once, hard, between the eyes."
