Unfinished Song(Book 4): Root

by Maya, Tara

  Dindi had already shouldered toboggan pull-cord when she heard the clippy-clop of a horse. Tamio appeared, riding his mare.

  “Dindi, there you are.” He waved. “Uncle Abiono sent me to find you. He wondered why you weren’t with the Tavaedi troop.”

  Jensi pushed herself in front of Dindi. “Tell him to get someone else to carry his bags. We need her services more.”

  “Jensi, I wouldn’t dream of leaving you with no one to help you with your goods,” Tamio said. “My horse can pull your toboggan.”

  He hitched pull cords to the blanket straps on his horse. Then he reached down and lifted Dindi up behind him. He kicked his mare and they galloped away before Jensi could do more than sputter.

  Tamio showed no signs of wanting her to dismount, even after he passed by Abiono and Kemla and the rest of the Tavaedi troop. Riding horseback put them at the front of the caravan, as close to the White Lady as Finnadro and his wolfpack guardians would allow. Although riding all day left Dindi with a unique set of aches, it still bettered walking. In the evening, everyone stopped to make camp by the lake at the foot of the Corn Hills.

  She thanked Tamio for the ride, but left him to find her own sleeping spot. He had done enough for her, and she was sure he did not want to extend their time together longer than necessary. She did not rejoin the rest of her clan in making camp either. Solitude suited her best.

  She filled her skins in the clear lake water. Ice crisped the edges. In the distance, she could see the waterfall below the cave where the troop practiced, and where the Aelfae had once lived. In their swan form, they had glided across this lake, twinned by their own sparkling reflections. She had seen them in Visions.

  Today the lake surface did not ripple. No swans emerged from the silver mists beneath the falls. Never again would their kind grace the Corn Hills.

  On the other side of the lake, however, she saw movement by the water’s edge. The Raptor Riders travelled separately but parallel to the White Lady’s party. They camped across the lake. Dindi could see the female Riders lead their giant birds to the water to drink and bathe. The leashed birds splashed their wings in the water as sparrows in a puddle.

  Orange light gleamed about them and the birds changed shape. Dindi gaped. The birds had become naked men, standing waist deep in the water. They had glorious bodies and feathery hair. Leashes led from collars clasped around their necks. They finished bathing, then returned to the shore, where they put on loincloths and knelt before their mistresses. The women blindfolded them and led them back behind the tree line, to their unseen camp.

  Dindi swallowed a bad taste. The Raptors were not beasts at all, but Imorvae. Like Gremo, she thought, they were men who had inherited the ability to shift shape from Aelfae ancestors. The Orange Canyon tribesfolk kept them like animals.

  She took out the corncob doll and set it on a rock. She knelt across from the doll, and rubbed her hands against her cold legs.

  “Aelfae, whichever of you hexed my family, I need your help,” she told the doll. “I know you probably had a good reason to hate whichever of my ancestors you cursed. I know we humans were not very fair to you Aelfae. But I’m not the one who hurt you. I’m not your enemy. I want to help your people. I want to help her. The White Lady. She’s the last of your kind, isn’t she? And she’s dying. She should be immortal, but she’s dying because of a hex from one of our kind.”

  Dindi took a deep breath. “Fa, I’m not making the best case for myself, am I? But, look. If it was a human who cursed the Aelfae, maybe it will take a human to undo the hex. I want to try. I want to at least try. If you undo the hex on me, maybe I can undo the hex on her. If I were Vaedi…”

  As soon as the word was out, Dindi clapped her hand over her mouth. Something hot stung her eyes, but she blinked it back.

  “No, forget I said that,” she told the doll roughly. “I know that’s never going to happen. If I were the kind of girl who could become Vaedi, Kavio could have loved me. But I’m not that girl.”

  Each breath billowed up into a frosted cloud. “Aelfae, I just want to dance for her. Please give me that chance. That’s all I ask. Please.”

  She stood up and danced herself into a Vision.

  Mayara

  The human children didn’t like Mayara. Savvier than the adults, the children sniffed the outtriber in her blood. Once, when a gang of children caught Mayara alone, they called her names, and, hitting her with sticks, drove her into the piss pit behind the huts. Umka came running, chased them away and pulled Mayara out. Mayara stank of muck and offal.

  “Don’t think too much of yourself, it antagonizes them,” Umka advised as she scrubbed Mayara in the river. “Don’t wear your hair loose, either—braid it, as the other girls do. Don’t show off. Don’t try to do your own thing all the time.”

  The other danger to Mayara, more deadly than the children, was the human Tavaedie troop. Ordinary humans were blind to her magic. The human warrior dancers, however, would have been able to see six Chromas shinning like six suns in her aura, brighter than any of their own. She hid from them when they passed by Umka’s hut. Her shyness pleased Umka, so this wasn’t hard. More painfully, Mayara gave up dancing, even alone, in play, because she knew she would leave traces of her Aelfae magic the Tavaedies would be able to detect.

  Years passed. Mayara avoided trouble by staying close to Umka’s side. As she approached the age of Initiation, however, even the adults began to grumble about her. Though they didn’t realize she was born of their foes, the humans knew she was no real kin of theirs. They argued she shouldn’t be allowed to be Initiated into the clan. Umka always defended her, unaware Mayara dreaded the Initiation ceremony. She would have no way to hide her Chromas from the Tavaedi troop during Initiation.

  The humans had their own problems. Their clan, several hundreds strong, had grown too large. They were a victim of their own success and insatiable urge to breed. However, since they had eliminated their main rivals in the Corn Hills, the Aelfae, there was now more room for the humans to expand. The clan elders decided to split the clan in two, and form an alliance, or klatch. The Tavaedi troop would serve both clans of the clan-klatch.

  Each family had to declare for the old clan, Full Basket, or the new clan, Broken Basket. Bobbo and Umka’s older children, now married with their own families, split about evenly, so the elderly couple wasn’t sure which clan to join.

  Either clan would have taken Bobbo and Umka. Neither clan wanted to take Mayara. When Mayara heard the rumors, she told Umka, “Go without me, go with one of your real daughters. I will live on my own.”

  “Don’t be silly, you are one of my real daughters,” said Umka. “Don’t think we’ll just abandon you.”

  To Mayara’s dismay, Umka kept her word, even when it meant catastrophe. Mayara’s human parents were driven out of their home, now Full Basket clan lands. When they tried to go to the new settlement being built by Broken Basket, the warriors threw spears to warn them off their land too. The only place they could go unmolested was an area near the cave where the Aelfae had been slaughtered. The humans still feared it. Tangled memories of the massacre, strands of magic left by the dying Aelfae, could capture unwary trespassers. So potent and evil were the memories, three humans had died reliving them.

  This would have been the perfect time for Mayara to unbury her wings, and finally begin her search for the last remaining clan of Aelfae, on the far side of the world, but how could she abandon Bobbo and Umka when they had refused to abandon her? Instead, Mayara helped her elderly parents clear trees and built a decent homestead. The majority of the work fell to her, for no matter how they tried to help, they couldn’t handle the heavy labor of cutting trees, tilling unplowed soil hard with rocks and roots, shaping and baking bricks. The year other young people her age passed their Initiation, Mayara proved her adulthood by the sweat of her brow. With no one to help her, she rose before sunrise and slept long after moonrise, and there were days she wanted to sob with exhaustion.
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  She forced herself to stop planning for the day she would fly away to freedom and her own people. Don’t daydream, she warned herself. Wishes, like memories, hurt too much. Don’t dilly-dally. Don’t slow down. Don’t think about what might have been. Don’t forget to tan the badger hide before it stiffens.

  Just when she dared to think their tiny clan of three might survive—she had cleared enough land for a garden and a plot of maize, a small but doughty hut covered their heads, she had a enough fish and rabbits and deer meat smoked and laid away for winter—her father died. Not only did she grieve the loss of the taciturn man who had loved her like a daughter, she and her mother now had no hunter to bring in meat, and no warrior to stand in their defense. Mayara took up his spear. Her stubborn mother still would not leave her, so as best as she could, Mayara became a huntress in addition to a farmer, gardener, builder, cook and caretaker.

  She tried to hunt with the spear, but the clumsy weapon frustrated her. Alone in the woods, where Umka could not see, Mayara whittled a sapling and strung it with gut string. She cut and fletched arrows. She had played with a bow as a child, but it had been years, and she had to callous her fingers anew as she re-taught herself the way of it. The effort was well worth the practice, for with bow and arrow she could take down prey a single woman would never have been able to take down with a spear.

  A pack of humans surrounded her one day when she hunted alone in the forest. They were led by Goryo, Bobbo and Umka’s oldest son, who had always hated her. She notched an arrow and aimed it.

  “Stay back,” she warned. Unfortunately, it was a bluff. She could never break Umka’s heart by killing her beastly son. Umka doted on him, as Umka doted on all her children.

  “Look at the freak,” he called to his companions. “She’s using an Aelfae weapon!”

  The other warriors began to growl and circle her. They snapped at her heels with ugly taunts, angry at her because of her superior weapon, angry at her because she was different and strange.

  “If you were dead, my mother would come home, where she belongs,” snarled Goryo.

  “Kill her! Kill the freak!” barked the men.

  Mayara shot an arrow into the leg of one and the arms of the others, deliberately aiming to maim, not kill. That only served to enflame them without stopping them. They rushed her from all sides, closing in close enough her bow gave her no advantage. They had stone clubs and spears. As the first blow from a stone-headed mace smashed her to the ground, Mayara thought, This is it. I will never know if there are really other Aelfae left in the world. Maybe there aren’t. Maybe they’ve all been exterminated too. Maybe I’m the last Aelfae in Faearth, and now I’m going to die too, alone. And the Aelfae will be no more.

  Dindi

  Dindi jerked out of the Vision. She had been trapped once before in a death during a Vision, and it had nearly killed her. She didn’t want to be trapped again. She had seen Mayara for a third time, more than she had seen any other Aelfae. Had the humans killed Mayara that day? Had she returned to life? Faeries did—unless they were hexed. Mayara had seemed convinced of her mortality. Dindi remembered that all Mayara’s relatives had died and not returned to life.

  They had already been cursed then. Mayara too.

  Dindi rubbed her face. Her cheeks and nose felt like cold, dry bread.

  “Is that the secret, then?” she asked the corncob doll. “Mayara, you are the one who hexed my kin? With your last breath? Because some of mine killed you and yours? Those warriors who attacked you….They were my ancestors, weren’t they? And now I must pay the price for their cruelty.”

  She built a tiny fire, unrolled her mat and stretched out, but could not squeeze sleep from the night. The stars fluttered in the lake, as if they had fallen there and, unable to fly back home, slowly drowned.

  Tamio

  Tamio travelled light. He brushed Clipclop, his mare, and joked with her fae, a little bearded purple vassily, one-hand tall, who rode clinging to her mane. He tied on the riding blankets and set the hoop around her neck, mounted, and nibbled cheese as he rode. Finnadro’s marks were easy to follow, green-dyed leather strips tied to branches along the dusty trail.

  He scanned the other travelers for Dindi. How easy it would be to further his plan on a journey, he congratulated himself, as proud as if the whole contest in the Green Woods had been his own idea.

  She was walking by herself. Perfect.

  “Ride with me?” He held out a hand to her.

  She blinked up at him in surprise. She had big eyes, quite pretty, now that he thought about it, with dark lashes, like a doe.

  “Why?” she asked. “Surely Abiono did not ask this of you.”

  “Must I do only what is asked of me?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer, and simply lifted her onto his lap.

  “Tamio!” she objected. “I can’t ride like this.”

  “Why not? Clipclop won’t mind. You weigh no more than a pixie.”

  She wiggled around until she sat astride. He found her efforts extremely invigorating, and looked forward to the culmination of his campaign against her. He liked the feel of her small waist under his clasped hands. At first, she sat up stiffly, but as the day wore on, and wind whistled through the snow-laden forest, she let him snuggle them both under a big blanket. She rested against his chest and he wrapped his arms more tightly around her. Once he brushed his hands across her breasts, but she made such a fuss, even threatening to get off and walk, that he had to convince her it had been an accident.

  Kavio left her skittish, he realized. He would have to rethink his approach, take it slow. Fortunately, he had long, long days to spring his slow-motion attack.

  Long days and long nights.

  Dindi

  “Why are you riding with Tamio?” Hadi asked. He confronted her at the break for evening camp several days into the journey, around a large bonfire where many of their kin gathered.

  Dindi had wondered the same thing, but having to explain herself to her nosy clan brother irked her. “He offered me a ride, that’s all.”

  “To you?”

  “I’m not a skunk, after all. You needn’t act so surprised.”

  “I’m not surprised in the least,” Hadi said darkly. “Don’t ride with him any more.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “He’s dangerous.”

  “Tamio?” Dindi laughed. “I hardly think so. Not to me.”

  “Why not to you? You’re not a skunk, after all.”

  Dindi pushed past him to put a stick of rabbit meat into the fire pit. “I refuse to have this silly discussion with you, Hadi. I’m a Tavaedi now. I can take care of myself.”

  “You’re not, and you can’t. And you know it. You’re just a serving maid, and anyone can do anything to you, and you won’t be able to do anything about it.”

  That hurt. Even her closest cousins felt nothing but contempt for her. Dindi pressed her lips together and refused to speak further to him.

  The next morning, when Tamio trotted up to her on Clipclop, Dindi was aware of Hadi’s glower from across the burnt down fire pit, but she accepted Tamio’s hand and climbed up behind him onto the horse.

  She enjoyed riding, and even Tamio’s company. He had a wicked sense of humor and used it to skewer their mutual acquaintances. He sharpened his wit frequently on Kemla. Because they could not too much outpace those on foot, they had ample time to hunt, and Dindi found that with practice, she could hit a rabbit or dove from her seat on the back of the horse. Her family appreciated the meat at the evening camps.

  She always camped alone but near her kin, but one evening, Tamio came to her and asked her to ride with him. They never rode at night, but he promised her something special, so she went with him.

  Tamio

  They rode to the top of a rise, thick with aspen and pine. He pointed to a valley of sparkling lakes surrounded by forest.

  “We’ve reached the borderlands of the Green Woods tribe,” Tamio said. “Our path
won’t take us up this ridge—we will go by a lower pass—so we’ll never have as good a view of it as now. I thought you would be interested to see it.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “Dindi,” he murmured, “Can I question you about a hidden thing?”

  “A hidden thing?”

  “Kavio.”

  She stiffened.

  “I am the only one who knows,” Tamio said softly. “About what he promised you and how he betrayed you. I just wanted to say how sorry I am. He was a fool.”

  “He promised me nothing,” Dindi said stonily.

  “Maybe not with words,” Tamio said. He caressed her arm. “But a man who takes a woman’s body gives her a wordless promise, does he not?”

  Dindi stared at him. Her voice dropped to the temperature of the icy woods. “I think you know less than you imagine about Kavio’s relationship with me. He was not my lover, as you tastelessly hint. He was my teacher. I thought that was evident by the trial he underwent and the sentence of death passed on me.”

  “Yes, I know that.” Tamio felt off balance and he did not like it. “But didn’t he also…”

  “No.” She said it so flatly that he did not doubt her.

  “My mistake,” he said. Muck it all, now what? His whole set-up had been ruined.

  “I am returning to camp.” Dindi stood up. He knew if she left now, like this, he would lose his chance forever.

  Just when Tamio was certain all was lost, a wonderful thing happened.

  A wolf attacked.

  The beast raced out of the trees without warning. The thing launched itself straight at them. By instinct, Tamio shoved Dindi out of the way and lifted his dagger to meet the mountain of muscle and fang that fell on him. He managed to plunge his blade into the wolf, but it also sank its teeth into his shoulder. They rolled over each other like wrestlers, but Tamio got the worst of it. The beast nearly snapped his head off.