by Shannon Hale
"I never, ever imagined, not for a moment, that I wouldn't stay there forever," I said.
Qacha nodded. "We had a nice herd of sheep and my father would tell me, 'You see that lamb there? That one will be part of your dowry. And that one, too.' But then Khasar attacked, and we were camped too near the city, and his men stole animals and scattered the rest and killed . . . well, never mind. But before the attack, I thought I'd marry some mucker boy within the year." She laughed at that, all pleasantness again.
"And now here we are," I said, scraping some slop out of the pot and flinging it into the fire.
For a time we scrubbed in silence, then Qacha asked, "Would you go back right now if you could?"
I tried to see my lady without looking at her. She was elbow deep in her pot, but her face was earnest, as if she might be listening. I wished I could tell Qacha, I'm trapped. I've taken an oath. Sar is actually an honored lady, the Ancestors made me from mud to serve her. I can't leave her. She's a bird with a broken wing. She needs me.
But I said, "It's an odd thing to live all your life in one place and then lose it forever. It's a strange thing not to know if I'll ever be a mama like my own."
Qacha just nodded. She's a good one, that Qacha. She seems to sense when to keep talking and when to let the words drizzle into silence.
Day 69
I'm in the root cellar with a candle, and Cook doesn't know. I should be scrubbing, but I have to write now so I can stop shaking.
Earlier when we'd worked through all the dirty pots, Cook had us wash some deels for the serving girls. When the clothing was dried and folded, she sent me and Gal to deliver them to the other side of the house. We walked down those long corridors, all fit tight with stone floors, the walls snug with tapestries over carved wood, windows set with glass, porcelain bowls resting on lacquered tables, the most beautiful place I'd ever been. We hooked arms as we went, both afraid and elated to be walking freely through such grandeur. She can be a nice girl sometimes, that Gal, she's just sadder than the last lamb.
We passed by the doorway to the feast hall, and what a sight! Glass windows in all colors, a ceiling so high someone on horseback couldn't reach it when stretching.
Then up ahead three men were walking. Toward us. One was younger than the rest.
"I saw him my first day here," whispered Gal. "That's Khan Tegus."
Khan Tegus. That was his face! Those were the shoulders, the arms, the chest, the whole being of the man who once was no more than a boot, hands, and a voice. Thinking of our talks, of the laughing parts, of My Lord the cat and the pine bough, it was hard not to shout hello. I nearly rushed forward to greet him as family does, gripping forearms, touching cheeks, smelling his neck to invite in the breath of his soul.
And then I remembered how I gave him my own shirt. If he knew what I'd done, how I pretended to be my lady, he could hang me on the south wall.
His face seemed a kettle of worry, those men talking at him as they walked, and I wished I could hold his hand and sing him some ease. As he passed us, the corridor didn't feel so wide anymore. His sleeve brushed mine.
He looked at me, for barely a moment.
Only just now did I realize what I should've done—tell him at once that Lady Saren is here. Or is that what I should've done? Is it my duty to obey my lady or to do what's best for her? Nibus, god of order, direct my thoughts.
Day 70
Why didn't he come for us? For her? He said he'd return, but he left us in that tower, for Lord Khasar, for the knocking men, for the rats.
I must return to work. Tomorrow her khan is holding a feast for visiting gentry from Beloved of Ris, the realm to our northwest. We've been preparing for days and a mountain of pots teeter, waiting for the wash water.
I wonder, does he ever think of us? Does he remember? Has he snapped a pine needle just to smell it?
Day 71
It's past midnight and I've been just sitting here, staring at the fire. I don't want to write, but I may as well, since I can't sleep.
Tonight we scrubbed more pots than I thought existed in all the realms. As I was hauling water in from the well, Koke, one of the serving boys, brought us his apron and asked if we could wash a spill out of it. Qacha grabbed it. She thinks Koke's a sweet boy, and he thinks she's the prettiest thing since the first flower. I think he spilled brown sauce down his front as an excuse to approach her. Osol the cutter came over while we talked with Koke, and he smiled at me once. I smiled back. Why wouldn't I?
"You should see the lady," Koke said. "The clothes she's wearing have so much embroidery, there's not a lick of plain cloth left. Even so, she's not pretty, though she's not like — "
He glanced at me and I think he was sorry he'd said it. I didn't want him to feel sorry, he's a good boy mostly, so I asked, "Who is she?"
"Lady Vachir? She's the ruling lady from Beloved of Ris. It's for her Khan Tegus is having the feast, you know. What with Lord Khasar bringing war to his right and his left, Song for Evela needs all the other realms to be allies as close as family, and Beloved of Ris is our nearest neighbor, now that Titor's Garden is ashes. Everyone expected Khan Tegus and Lady Vachir would announce their betrothal tonight, and sure enough — "
I dropped the bucket. I splashed water over me, soaking my deel robe two hands up the hem and breaking the bucket's handle in the process. Qacha tried to fix it for me fast, before Cook noticed. Gal ran for another bucket to fetch more water. My lady and I just stood there.
They asked me what was wrong, if I felt faint, if I should sit down. Qacha sang me the song for sudden illness and stroked my hair. No one noticed my lady, how pale she looked, how her hand trembled. I noticed. I should have gone to her, I should have counseled with her, sung to her, combed her hair. But I couldn't move.
Later
I guess I thought we'd work in the kitchens until Saren came to her senses, until she shook off the terror, breathed free of the tower, and save fit to be a lady again. I guess I thought he'd wait for her forever, never love another. What should I do? What can I?
Day 74
Lady Vachir is gone now. They'll be wed this winter.
Day 78
News has tumbled down into the kitchens. Lord Khasar overcame Goda's Second Gift. He did not raze it, as those traders had hoped. He killed all gentry and swore all the warriors who'd survived into his own army.
I watched Gal as she listened to news of her homeland, but if her ears heard, her eyes didn't show it. I think she believes her family dead. I think she has less hope than a rock has sugar.
Koke said Khasar will most likely rest his warriors, train his new recruits, and then turn his eye to Song for Evela.
"Engaged to Lady Vachir in the nick of time," said Qacha. "Now the khan's warriors will unite with hers."
"Could Khasar come to Song for Evela?" I asked Koke.
"I'd bet a mare on it. He'll be here before winter, that's my guess."
I think about taking my lady away, but where would we run? Without a gher in winter, we'd die as fast as the honeybees. Cold is its own kind of tower.
Day 79
That boy Osol who winked at me, I save him today winking at one of the cutter girls. I guess he's just a boy who winks. It doesn't matter, not in the least. And I'm not going to think about him anymore.
Day 80
It's not as though I would've married Osol.
Day 82
Last night I saw Qacha staring at her hands —split fingers, rave skin torn from washing. Scrubber work is hard on the hands.
"My mama was pretty at my age," she said.
Then this morning, Cook saw Qacha rubbing mare's milk butter all over her fingers. There was screaming and cursing, and when it all died down, Gal and I found Qacha sitting on the ground outside the kitchen, weeping and too afraid to enter. I'd never seen her cry before. Her face showed a welt the shape of a wooden spoon.
"Cook says she'll have my hair torn out if I come back in. But my papa can't keep me in the stab
les and I've nowhere to go. If I leave the city, I'd have to leave Papa, and Koke . . . how'll I ever see Koke again?"
I could've sung her a song of comfort, but that wouldn't cure the cause of the sobbing. I guessed she'd hoped the butter would keep her hands pretty. Someone once said I had beautiful hands.
"Gal, come with me a minute, will you?" I said. "Qacha, I'm going to go see if we can't get Cook in a good mood before you ask for your post back.''
Cook was sweating over a pot, greasy black smoke rushing at her face.
I said, "We're caught up on all the pots and — oh, Cook, you look hot as a fire stone. Would you let Gal stir for you a moment while you sit a step back from the heat?"
"For a moment," Cook said, though she looked suspicious.
I sat her down, brought a stool for her feet, and begged a chance to rub her shoulders. While she rested, I hummed.
What ails Cook? I wondered, humming, touching her shoulders, trying to get a sense of her pain. Soon my hum turned into a song. I started out singing the song for body aches, for tiredness that runs over all of you like water over stones, the one that begins, "Tell me again, how does it go?" I could feel Cook want to get up and I thought I'd lost her, but then I guess she chose to let herself feel better for a time. Her shoulders relaxed beneath my hands.
Taking the tune for body aches, I wove in the words for common pain, "Swan on her nest and the sunlight just so," while touching her shoulders, her back. I guessed her feet were sore, too, but I didn't dare touch them or she might figure out what I was up to. Her face was singed from smoke heat, her hands raw around calluses, and I closed my eyes and thought of the sound of the song going into those areas. She sighed, and I knew she was allowing the song to sink in. But there's usually something deeper than simple pain.
I tried weaving in a new song, the one for heartache that goes, "Tilly tilly, nar a black bird, nilly nilly, there a blue bird." I sang it softly, like you should when the hurt's buried deep and you want to ease it out slowly. It was just a guess, but who in all the realms doesn't have some heartache? Her shoulders tightened, then relaxed. I thought to go deeper.
"Prick, prick, blood on the cloth," I sang, now joining the song for body aches with the one for betrayal. No sooner had I begun than Cook lowered her head and sighed, long and sad as a wind stuck in a chimney. Suddenly, that large woman seemed as small and fragile as any tiny girl.
"Enough, I need to get back to work," said Cook, pushing me off and standing, but now her voice had lost its hard edge.
I rushed back to Qacha and told her now was a good time to apologize. When she asked to be a scrubber again, Cook scolded her right proper, but there wasn't fire behind it. Within an hour, Qacha was scraping pots beside us.
"I've never seen Cook so calm," she said, already laughing again.
Gal asked, "Do you muckers have the changing powers like the desert shamans? Trick things into being what they're not?"
Qacha and I laughed. It was an absurd idea.
"Just the opposite," Qacha said. "The songs nudge things to be what they really are — a healthy body, a heart as calm as a baby's in the womb."
I agreed. "But there's no power in them, they're just songs."
"Well, I don't know about that, Dashti," said Qacha. "I could hear you singing back there, and I've never known someone to combine two songs together. That was clever. And choosing the right songs just for Cook — it's quite a feat to tame a beast like her."
"Cook did it, I just helped," I said.
My lady sidled up close to me, asking for a hand with a pot she couldn't get clean, and we all set in to work as hard as silence permits. A bit later, I noticed that Gal kept sneaking peeks at me, her face thoughtful.
Later that night in the dark by our hearth, I'd just dropped off to sleep, my head on Qacha's leg, when something poked me. When I opened my eyes to darkness, I gasped, for a moment terrified that the whole world was gone, that I was trapped in the tower again. But it was just night, just Gal prodding me awake. I eased away from Saren, lifting her arm from mine so she wouldn't wake, and sat up.
"I hear you humming at me sometimes," Gal said. "I run away from it because I haven't wanted to be anything but sad. But . . . " Gal's chin trembled, and she rubbed viciously at her face with the backs of her hands.
"Easy, Gal."
"I just don't know," her voice was a grating whisper, "don't know if my family's dead, don't know if they'll ever come for me. . . ."
"And you can't let yourself give up hoping," I said, "not until you're sure either way."
"But the hoping, that's what really hurts."
I reached for her and she shoved me off, then just as suddenly changed her mind and leaned into me, as if she'd never been hugged in her life and didn't know how to hug back.
I rocked her as we sat there, in the greasy dark of the kitchen, snores bumping around us. I sang the song for bitter sorrow, "Darker river, blacker river, faster river, pulling me." She cried, softly at first, then harder, and then calmed, her head resting on my lap. She's sleeping like a newborn now.
It's funny, I don't feel tired at all. So I sit here and wish and wish that I could find the song that would heal my own lady.
Day 88
I'm hiding in the cheese closet and hating the close walls and dim light, and if Cook finds me I'll be out on my hide, but I must write this. Shria, the white-haired woman who first gave us work in the khan's house, came into the kitchens today. She said the khan had requested a mucker who knew the healing songs to attend to him, and Cook said, "Qacha, you're a mucker, aren't you?"
"Yes, but so's Dashti, and she's a better singer than I am, by leagues."
"Dashti would be best," said Gal, acting bold and pushing me right up to Shria. And she smiled like I didn't know she could. In the way that the sun's so bright in the city after the rain wipes the smoke from the air, that was Gal's face after crying all night.
"Whatever ails the khan, Dashti will fix him right."
I stammered and looked at my lady, who offered no help.
And so Shria will come for me tomorrow. She'll take me to my lady's khan. I don't know what to think. I cannot think.
Day 89
All morning, my heart never let me forget what was to come. Thump-thump, thump-thump, it tapped at me. I didn't know when Shria would appear, so I stayed startled and alert all day. It reminded me of summers as a child before my brothers left, when our family set up our gher in the summer pastures and there were loads of children around. The Hunt, we'd play, some of us being animals hiding in the tall grass, the others searching us out with small bows and blunt arrows. How my heart would pound! I waited, crouched, prayed to Carthen, goddess of strength, and wanted to cry for the thrill and the terror. That's how I felt today.
I was up to my shoulders scrubbing a pot when white-haired Shria was suddenly before me.
"You're the mucker girl?"
Thank the Ancestors that I didn't actually scream, though the sound felt as real in my mouth as a bite of potato.
"Come with me, but wash first. You smell like grease and smoke."
She watched me as I scrubbed my arms and face, as if to make sure I did it properly. I asked to bring Saren with me. My thought was if her khan save her, he'd sweep her back into his love and the life of gentry, and all would be put to right. But Shria didn't even bother to say no as she walked away. I pled with my lady not to scream and to let Qacha take care of her, then I ran after the woman.
Shria led me down a lush corridor, through two chambers, and into a small, dark room with a love ceiling like that in a gher. My lady's khan sat cross-legged on the floor, leaning forward to speak with two other men, and Shria and I stood quietly, waiting to be acknowledged. I was glad she was there. I've spent so long alone with Saren, I'd nearly forgotten that on entering the presence of gentry, I must keep quiet until he acknowledged me, or until I died, whichever came first. Just then, I was relieved to stand still. My feet were wood planks, my back a brick w
all. My heart was so loud in thumping I waited for Shria to scowl at me for being noisy.
You're a mucker, I reminded myself. You're not pretending to be Lady Saren and you're not trapped in a tower. You're just a mucker and a scrubber. You can be who you are just fine.
After a time, I found it interesting to watch her khan like that, my eyes free to row over him. I could understand why my lady chose him. He must've been a fine boy, lean and strong, and now he had the bearing of a warrior. He also looked intelligent. Or at least there was humor in his eyes, which to my mind makes a person wiser. And I already know he can laugh.
Finally her khan looked up. Right at me. I think I might've gasped.
"Shria, is this the mucker girl? What's your name?"
"Dashti, my lord," I said, wondering if he'd ever known the name of Lady Saren's maid, but his eyes showed no recognition.
He dismissed Shria and sat on a love couch, continuing to address the two men. "Years ago, I met a mucker from Titor's Garden. She sang to me a healing song, made this old pain in my leg dissolve."
"If I'm not mistaken, my khan," said one of the men, "that's the injury I myself gave you."
"It was you, wasn't it, Batu?" Her khan's frown twitched with humor. "I'd forgotten. You were teaching that slicing maneuver with your sword and I turned my horse the wrong way."
He straightened out on the couch, and I knelt beside him, placing my hands on his leg just below his knee where I thought I could feel the subtle heat that hovers around pain. He nodded at me once as if to say that I had my hands on the right spot, then continued to converse with the men.
I didn't dare sing for him the same songs I had in the tower. If he realized who I was, that I'd given him my shirt, I think I would just crumble like old bread underfoot. Instead I offered the song for new wounds. It's a battle song, urgent, fiery, "Hold, hold, strike and flee." Though he was absorbed in his conversation, I could tell it wasn't working. He seemed disappointed, the unease of his pain making him tired of the whole world.
