by Various
“I smell it,” Mara said. An acrid, charged smell, sharp in her nose. “You just see if I’m wrong.”
“No,” Keera said. “It’s fine. We’ll finish up here in another hour or so, anyway.”
Mara laughed and scraped her knees in the dirt of the endless field of turnips. She knew they wouldn’t finish in an hour, not even if they worked all day. The field was too large, the weeds too persistent, the turnips sick with a leaf blight. And above, lightning was stirring.
• • •
At noon precisely, Mara started up the path to the Lady’s house. Within five minutes she was winded, feet slipping on the sharply pitched slabs that lined the steep path up to where the house perched on a ledge, looking as if it were poised to jump. Above her, the sky was greening.
She watched her feet, though she knew the way. Better to watch them than to watch the way the town receded into a blur behind her, small and low, a daub of darkness in the wide flat plain. Everything flat, save the great hill where the Lady’d made her home.
She’d made the first switchback when one of the finches fluttered out of the sky to hover near her hairline. Impossible to say if it was the same one that had spoken to her in the field—they were as like as siblings. She thought it was, though. “Prompt as always,” it said.
“That’s the way my mother raised me.” She kept on walking.
“Just as my dear mother said, when I was just bare hatched from my egg: ‘Timeliness is goodliness,’ she said, didn’t she?” The finch darted around her face, flying close enough that she felt the air move.
“You never hatched from an egg.” She didn’t know this for certain, of course, but felt fairly sure. The egg that could make such a creature had never been.
“Ah, such a clever girl,” the finch said with a trill that she thought was probably laughter.
“I’m nearly there,” she said. “Why don’t you go tell your Lady that I’m coming?”
“She knows,” the finch said, flitting ahead.
Mara swore low under her breath and walked on, stolid as a mule, staring at her feet. The finch flew back with a huge bug in its mouth, crunching through the hard outside with a sound like bones breaking. “Everything tastes better when caught on the wing,” it said, through a mouthful of insect.
“I wouldn’t know.”
The bird trilled laughter again and swooped to settle on her shoulder, crunching its meal close to her ear. They walked through the last switchback together, not speaking, and then the Lady’s house met her at the top of the path, crooked and full of windows.
“In the usual place,” the finch said, and lit off her shoulder to one of the high windows, left open to admit the breeze and the birds.
The Lady’s door had a latch that was never locked. Mara pressed the pale wood with her fingertips and the door opened easily, as if a stiff wind could send it swinging. She tried not to look to closely at the grain of the wood, because it always seemed to her like faces.
The house stunk like oil and rust, and like the little bodies of bugs and rodents that the clockwork birds left chewed but undigested on the carpets. Mara was used to the smell, though, and her eyes only watered a little. She stepped over the bare spots in the rug and the places where it was stained dark, and where small things cracked under her feet.
“Hello, my dear,” said the Lady from the next room. Mara hurried to join her, slipping through an open door into the parlor.
The Lady sat near the window, a metal bird nestled into the fold of her collar. “Go on, then,” she told it, and the bird stirred, stretching its wings so that every silvery pinion showed wide and sharp. Then it swooped in front of Mara, flashing close to her eyes. She sucked a breath but stood still.
“Silly creatures, aren’t they?” said the Lady, craning her long neck to watch the little bird go. “I think they get jealous.”
Mara said nothing. The Lady clicked her beak and motioned Mara in, gesturing to her usual chair with a knobbed hand heavy with rings.
Mara settled in the chair, listing to the left just a bit by habit, avoiding the broken spring hidden under the dusty velveteen. The Lady looked out the window for one long moment, then twitched the drape closed, plunging the room into hazy half-light.
“How are your eyes, my dear? Any improvement?” The Lady leaned close to peer into Mara’s face, clicking her tongue behind her beak.
Mara sat very still, trying not to flinch as the vulture’s head drew near. The Lady had done her a great favor. “They are,” she said hesitantly, “perhaps a little better, ma’am.” The Lady drew back, crooking her neck to look at her sideways. “Can you see what is in the bottom left corner of that tapestry on the wall? The green one.”
Mara squinted. She’d seen the green tapestry before, she felt sure. “A doe?” she hazarded.
The Lady clicked her tongue. “We shall try again. It is a process.”
“Of course,” Mara said.
The Lady picked up a small jar from her side table, one with a large foggy crystal cragged out of the top. “Lean forward,” she said, unscrewing the lid.
Mara leaned forward. The Lady dipped her fingers into the jar and brought out a dripping lump of pale clay. Mara opened her eyes wide, though the urge to shut them nearly overwhelmed her.
“Shh,” the Lady crooned, sibilants whistling through the cruel arc of her beak, wrinkled fingers outstretched. Gently, she smeared the clay over Mara’s open eyes, once from corner to corner, then from brow to cheek, like a cross.
A shudder raced through Mara’s body, one that made her teeth clack together. She stilled herself, and the vulture woman patted her hand. She heard the Lady get up and move to the far side of the room. “Just a few minutes,” she said, and dragged something heavy over the carpet.
Mara’s eyes flicked sightlessly in their sockets, trying to trace the scuffs and sounds of movement that were now her only indications of place and presence. The shuffle-drag of whatever the Lady was doing, the whuff of the wind behind the drapes, the far-off cries of a bird. The sound of her own heart beating. She swallowed. “Lady, is it true what you said?” “Is what true?”
“That the harvesters are coming to kill us and steal our crops.”
The Lady made a noise deep in her throat and Mara heard her step away. “They come, yes. It has been long since we saw them last, has it not? I had begun to think they were scared away.”
“Or all gone, at last,” Mara said. It was her sister’s pet theory, that the past group of harvesters, two years ago, had been the last.
“No, that shall never be,” the Lady said sadly. “For all men must harvest.”
“Oh.” Mara tried to blink but the clay held her eyes open. “Do they strike everywhere, or only here?”
“Everywhere that is, harvesters are. It is how men evolved, to be hunters and killers.”
Birds kill, too, Mara thought, but said nothing.
She heard the Lady sit back in the chair across from her, and some prickling in her spine told her she was being examined. She knew how the Lady moved even without being able to see her. The Lady gave the same scrutinizing stare to anything that interested her, or anything small that moved too quickly and looked too much like prey. She sat with her head cocked and her long, naked neck craned out of the cowl collar of her dress, where, somewhere beneath, the bird’s rough skin turned to human flesh.
“I’ll peel it off, now,” the Lady said, “and we’ll see how it has worked.”
Mara’s hands almost leapt to claw at the stiff dressing and peel it away, but she held still and let the Lady do it. A long claw slid over her face, under her eye socket along the bone, then crept under the edge of the clay. The Lady hooked her fingers, pulling away, and the clay popped away neatly, impressed with a hollow where her eye had been.
Mara squeezed her eye shut, glad for the ability to do so. When the Lady pulled the poultice from her other eye, Mara closed it, too.
“Open them,” the Lady said.
The
room fuzzed then swept into focus. The thing at the corner of the green tapestry, Mara saw, was an eagle with a man in its talons.
“How is it?” The Lady peered at Mara’s face, swept a hand in front of her to see how her eyes focused. The rings on her fingers glittered even in the dim.
“It’s—better than it’s ever been,” Mara said. “Everything is sharp, even the far-off things. I might be able to see all the way to the river, if I tried.”
“Not even I could see that far,” the Lady said, but she sounded pleased. “We shall see how long it lasts, this time.”
“One day it will be forever, won’t it?”
“Yes. One day it will be forever.”
Mara rose and smoothed her hands over the front of her only dress, still rough and uncomfortable after years of special occasions. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
The Lady rose as well, and turned to the window. “I need no thanks for providing for my people. Do make sure that someone is on the river road in two day’s time, though. Midday. Your sister and her man should be easily capable.”
“I shall see it done. Keera is honored by your trust.”
“She is a fine fighter. You both are a tribute to your family.”
“Thank you,” Mara said, but the Lady paid her no mind. She threw open the drapes and gazed out the window. Watching for birds on the wind, Mara supposed.
She made a hurried half-bow, feeling awkward and out of place, and left the room. Being able to see the filth on the carpet, the feces and the crushed rodent skeletons, brought little pleasure. Some things were better left blurred.
The finch found her as she pushed open the Lady’s door and stepped onto the bluff. “And how are you seeing things now?” it said, a mocking tone to its voice. “Clear as the day? Shall it now be you who informs us of the dangers come close?”
“I see fine,” Mara said shortly, “but my insights remain woefully human.”
“That is woeful indeed.” The finch chirruped and swooped a low circle over her head. “I wish you true sight, Mara of the Goldwater.”
Mara watched the bird dive off the side of the bluff, weaving through the rocks and brushy twigs of the high desert scrub. It dropped low and out of sight, somewhere in the talus pile below. Mara worried her lip with her teeth and started down the path, watching the ground in front of her, perfectly alone.
She saw the first branch of lightning stretch soundlessly across the river, and held her breath until the thunder came.
• • •
Mara refused a rifle when Keera offered her one, though when they were young she had been the better shot. “I’m not coming along to do any killing,” she said. “Just to watch for trouble.”
“If trouble came along,” Keera said, “you’d be more use with a gun than without.”
“I’d be more like to shoot myself in the foot.”
“Your eyes are better now, aren’t they?” Keera handed one of the rifles to her husband, Rey, and he shouldered it.
“Good enough to watch for trouble,” Mara said.
Keera shrugged and took up her own rifle. “There won’t be none. Didn’t the vulture say there was two of them? She’s not been wrong before.”
“No.” Mara stepped out onto the front porch of her sister’s house and marveled at the way golden motes of dust swam in the sunlight slanting through the hole in the roof. Such detail in life, if you could appreciate it.
She had wanted to take the rifle. It would have been like taking her old life back. But that wasn’t her life anymore, and the seeing never lasted. While she had it, she would go with them and keep watch, but taking up a gun again would be too much. Bad luck. She still carried a thick-bladed hunting knife in her boot. That would have to be enough.
The two of them joined her on the porch, and Keera latched the door behind them. “It’s good to have you with us,” Rey said, and smiled his dimpled smile. Mara didn’t smile back. Once she would have, maybe, but not now.
“Did the vulture tell you what time these harvesters are supposed to appear?” Keera asked.
“Midday.”
“That’s fine.” Keera studied the sky, the early morning pale brightness of it, still pink-tinged at the horizon. “It’ll take us about an hour and a half to get there, but we’ll beat them if they’re not early.”
“Hope they’re not.” Rey stepped down to the beaten dirt path, crooking his fingers at them. “We’ll miss them for sure if we keep standing here.”
They walked three abreast while the path allowed it. At first, it was flat and straight, and their boots kicked up puffs of fine dust, faintly greasy where it landed on their cheeks. Rey and Keera chatted amiably as they walked; Mara spoke when spoken to but found her mind on the task ahead. Her mouth was awash with something bitter, something that tasted like bile, like fear—and she felt ashamed. She’d been trained for this, born to this. Protecting the town from those who would harm it. Her nerves had gone soft with her eyes.
“Mara?” Keera said. “You all right?”
Mara started and realized she’d stepped off the path, kept going straight on as it narrowed. It was greener, here, closer to the water. “Yes. I’m fine.”
“Sure,” Keera said and tapped Mara’s elbow with her elbow as she passed. The familiarity of the gesture was soothing.
The river road stretched for miles, long enough that no one in the Goldwater had ever ridden its entire length. No one even knew how long it really was, for that matter, or what other places might lie alongside it—no traders ever ventured to the Goldwater. The only ones who rode that way were the harvesters.
“It’s pretty out here,” Keera said,
This time of year the river was sluggish, lapping shallow over the rocks. In some places, it was low enough that the bigger rocks stuck out and dried on top, almost enough of them to form stepping-stones to the other bank. Long-legged bugs stepped over the stagnant pools behind downed trees, mincing and delicate. Mara agreed, “It is pretty.”
They set their ambush in a copse of trees near a rise in the road, crouching behind a downed log. Keera and Rey propped their rifles over their knees and waited, squinting against the sun.
“S’almost midday,” Rey said, after a time. He sounded bored. “Anyone see anything?”
“No,” Mara said, staring down the road to where it faded into the horizon.
It was remarkable how far she could see.
Keera said nothing for a time, but then brought her rifle to bear, her expression firm. “There,” she said. “Dust.”
Mara swiveled to look and at first saw nothing. But after a moment, it appeared: a cloud of dun-colored dust, rising in the distance like the trail of a snake.
“Could be animals,” she said.
“It’s not.” Keera and Rey moved up behind the log, rifles readied, no tension in their faces. Keera looked back at Mara and nodded. Mara nodded in return and shifted in the copse, coating herself in shadows.
They waited silently. Mara scratched an itch on her nose; Rey shook his head fiercely to dislodge a fly. It’s too long, Mara thought. They’re taking too long. They must have seen us.
Keera lifted a hand, never taking her eyes from the road. “Scythes,” she whispered. Rey nodded and readied himself. Mara counted the seconds, lips moving silently—one, two, three, four, five, six—
Keera fired, shuddering back with the recoil, then Rey fired. The shots were deafening in the little copse, the shock of them traveling through Mara’s blood and leaving her shaky. She saw Keera’s trigger hand go to the bolt on her rifle and tense, then relax. The men were dead.
“Easy,” Keera said, pulling back the bolt to release the spent cartridge. A curl of smoke and the smell of spent gunpowder wafted out and disappeared into the warm air. Keera’s hand shook a little, like it always did after she killed. Rey clapped her on the shoulder and she smiled at him.
Mara scrambled forward to the downed log, hooking her elbows over the top and peering out into the road. �
��They were harvesters?”
“Scythes on their backs,” Rey said.
Mara hesitated. “We’ve got to do something with the bodies.”
“Leave them for the birds,” Rey said, and chuffed something like a laugh.
“We’ll pull them into the woods,” Keera said, getting to her feet. “No harvester deserves a burial—the animals will take care of them.”
They stepped out of the copse and onto the road, sunlight flooding Mara’s eyes and making her blink.
The bodies lay half-on, half-off the trail, heaped in careless piles. Two men in rough-spun and denim. One wore a black hat that had slipped back when he fell and cradled the back of his skull where it lay on the ground. A grey horse stood away from them with its head down.
Both men were headshot, as Mara and Keera had been trained to do. One had a round dark hole in the middle of his forehead, like a bloody third eye. The other shot had nearly missed—the second man’s face was blown off from cheek to ear, a red ruin with the white of bone and broken teeth standing out.
“Wait,” Keera said. Mara turned and saw her face was pale. “Where are their scythes?”
Neither man carried anything like a scythe. They were empty-handed, in fact; the horse was laden with supplies, but the men had nothing but their own blood in their hands.
“I saw them,” Keera said, her voice ticking higher.
Mara looked to Rey.
“I saw them, too.” Rey’s hand was closing convulsively on the stock of his rifle. “They had them on their backs; they reflected the sun. I saw them.”
“All right,” Mara said, softly. “It’s fine.”
She knelt down by the body of the man who’d been neatly shot and tipped its head so its neck was not so unnaturally crooked. Its eyes were open, but she didn’t bother closing them. They wouldn’t have stayed. She picked up its right hand and examined it, running her thumb over the palm and the mounts of the fingers, feeling for calluses. The hand was as smooth as a preacher’s.
“It’s no matter,” Keera said. “No one comes this way if they don’t mean us harm.”
“You’re right.” Mara pressed the dead hand back to its chest, lying across the heart. “The Lady said they were harvesters, anyway.”
