Maeve

by Clayton, Jo;

  He hesitated, looked up. Through the sparse leaves of the ufagio he could see the clouds lowering, as the wind whipped up the dust and the dry storm came toward him. He cursed softly. Another plan rotted out. He scowled toward the south. Four hours lead on them. But the storm would slow them down some. He walked slowly along beside the emwilea hedge, shoulders hunched over, head drawn down. Anger: hot, ready to explode and spew the pieces of his soul across the land. Grief: like acid eating at him, an itch that had no anodyne. Fear: colder than the glacial ice he’d walked the faras over when he crossed the Jinolimas coming and going. Anger-grief-fear were pressing against his consciousness.

  The uauawimbony tree outside the gate postponed his anguish and rattled a warning. No one left to warn. Manoreh ducked under the umbrella spread of the whippy branches and rested his palm against the brain node, a dark bulge like a head sitting on a spread of twenty-four legs, the cone-shaped circle of trunks that met in the middle forming a dark secret cavity where he used to sit giggling while the wimbony whipped about like a wild thing. The tight wood was cool and soothing under his hand, reminding him of a happier time. He stood a moment reluctant to think of the painful now, but sand was beginning to blow, skipping like fleas under the branch tips. He ducked back under the fringe and walked to the gate.

  The carved gate was knocked flat, the gateposts standing like broken teeth. The watchtower was a wreck, twisted over, spread along the ground by one of the windstorms that had blown by since he left. He knelt by the rotting gate and tore a section free. His fingers twisted in the spongy remains eaten away by time and the tunneling siafu. The wood turned to dust and splinters in his hands, and scores of siafu eggs fell onto the patchy gravel beneath. Dust. Manoreh opened his fingers and stared at the dull gray dust filming his skin. He wiped his hand across the front of his jerkin. Dust. He stood and crunched across the wood into the silent shattered quarters of the bound families. Mud houses melted away, thatching scattered and rotting, rafters jutting up like old bones. And silent. Except for the dust grains whispering along the earth and the howling wind. He walked along the rutted street, remembering the loud cries of the weavers and dyers, the clangs from the smithy, the chant of the story teller in the center of a ring of children, the shouts of children running naked through streets and side alleys. Filled with lively human voices and the noises of energetic living before the hares came, it was a silent accusation to him now. Why was he alive? And why did he leave the land dead?

  The wind was rising to a howl, tugging at his tangled bush of dark blue hair. He walked silently past the emptiness, dry weeds crackling under his boots, leaves and dry weeds rolling past him, driven by the dust-laden wind that scoured at his skin and brought tears. His inner eyelids oozed upwards, triggered by the smarting and he saw less clearly, the wet transparency blocking off some of the feeble twilight. Thunder rumbled repeatedly, directly overhead as the dry storm took hold of the abandoned Holding.

  He felt Haribu Haremaster tickling at him, insinuating spirit fingers into the private places of his mind. When he tried to fight free of them, he was distracted by the rage-grief-fear that walked with him into this devastation of his childhood. He pressed his hands to his face and tried to repress the boiling emotions that weakened him and pointed him out to Haribu.

  It walked by his side, not touching him, a red ghost in the haze of red dust. He burned his head slowly, then bowed to the presence. The spiky head, beaked like a heraldic bird, nodded back. He walked past the court wall. Then at the archway he hesitated, wondering if the Mother Well had been covered or was choked. For a brief moment it seemed important that he know, then feeling empty, he plodded away, the red ghost matching him stride for stride. He reached the wall that enclosed the kitchen garden. The path was choked with old leaves and branches. His feet crunched through them with heavy slow regularity. His head ached. He would have wept but could not with his inner eyelids in place. He cupped his hand over his mouth and breathed deeply, a long shuddering sigh. The red presence swirled closer, wrapped its arms around him, sinking claws deep into his body, the hook beak driving toward his neck. He felt again the cold agony of his grief and the lava heat of his anger as the ghost began to merge with him.

  Haribu Haremaster moved closer.

  “No!” He gasped then ground his teeth together, the dust gritting, rasping at his nerves. Weighted down by the clinging specter, Haribu sniping at him, Manoreh stumbled around the corner, staggering stiff-legged through wind debris that swirled around his feet and rose in choking whorls to attack his face and hands. He shielded his face and lurched along the walkway that led to the barn.

  His feet knew the stones, though everything was swallowed by darkness and dust. The red ghost slid away, but glided beside him, its dark eye smudges fixed on him. Waiting. Like Haribu waited.

  Manoreh slammed into a wall. The barn. He felt along the rough bricks until he found the sliding door into the milking section. Head tucked down, holding his breath, he rocked the door loose and slid it open. He thrust himself through the narrow opening, losing some skin to the rough brick. He shouldered the door shut and turned to face the thick blackness inside.

  Hands guided by old habit, he felt along the wall till he touched the lamp. Praying that after three years the wick was intact enough to take a spark, he wound it up about an inch, relaxing at the smell of the lamp oil. After a few futile attempts with the striking box, the wick caught and diluted the darkness inside the barn with a weak yellow light. The rough wooden stanchions came out of the blackness like narrow gray shadows; beyond them he saw the red ghost watching.

  Ignoring it, he slapped at his leather jerkin and shorts, releasing clouds of dust. His ancestor had built well. The barn was tight against the storm. Still ignoring the ghost, he worked through the triangular gap of one of the stanchions, barely fitting where as a boy he had wriggled through with room to spare. He groped through darkness toward the back of the barn, stumbling over abandoned tools and equipment, working his way carefully toward the old wellhouse and its ancient hand pump.

  As Manoreh touched the handle, worn smooth by long use, his grandfather’s spirit stood beside him, a big knotted old man, dark blue laughter in his squinting eyes. Manoreh worked the handle until he heard the clean splash of water hitting the stone of the trough. This ghost, his grandfather’s spirit, was a friendly, happy presence, giving Manoreh strength to fight off his aches. He plunged his hands into the cool liquid and splashed it over his face, washing away the dense coating of dust. He pumped more water and drank, swallowing again and again, feeling half his anguish vanish with his thirst.

  He moved cautiously back into the fringes of light. He could near the silken whisper of dust driving against the barn. The storm was building. He thought of the hares crouching on the Sawasawa and smiled grimly. Hundreds of them would be dead before morning and more would be weakened, delaying their march.

  He stretched and yawned, feeling comfortably tired, the spirit of his grandfather strong on him. He went to the milking lanes and brought the lamp back. Then looked around for a place to sleep. The hay was damp and stinking of mildew. Manoreh grimaced. Another indictment of his neglect. His father would be grieved. Manoreh stood quiet in the darkness hoping that Father Ancestor would come like Grandfather Ancestor, bringing peace at last and a gentler end to grieving. He did not come.

  Manoreh sighed and stretched out on the floor. A hard bed and a cold one. Briefly he regretted the pack tied behind Shindi’s saddle, then composed himself to sleep. Futile to regret what couldn’t be helped. The lamp light wavered as the oil supply burned away. He wrinkled his nose at his lack of thought. Open flame inside a hayfilled barn. Stupid. He extinguished the flame then lay back staring up into the darkness.

  Overhead the dry storm turned to wet and rain began to patter on the roof. He listened for leaks and felt a brief flash of pride when he heard none. He turned on his side and contemplated the bird-headed ghost crouched in the darkness, visible like an after
-image against the sooty background. “I see you, ghost.”

  The spiky head bowed.

  “Be patient, old ghost. I need you. I’ll be back.”

  The eye smudges flickered.

  “You’ll wait here for me?”

  The head bowed again.

  “Yes, you’ll wait.” Manoreh winced, aware of the danger of this splitting. As time passed the ghost would begin to fade. When there was nothing left, that part of him would be gone. He would grow cold, stiff, would end as a man, even though his body continued walking around. But Haribu Hare-master was too strong. The ghost would have to stay until the Holdings were warned. And Kiwanji. He wondered vaguely if Faiseh had seen the march and was warning his own people. He drifted into an uneasy sleep.

  The blackness merged to dream … a pale woman with skin like sick amber … eyes wide with surprise … eyes bright blue-green like the sky at its zenith just before night … a face he’d never seen before … a type he’d never seen before … everything wrong about her for beauty … shapes subtly wrong … texture wrong … lips too thin … eyes wrong … wrong … too strong … too hard … red hair … demon hair … demon color … probing at him … projecting: QUESTION: YOU/WHO ARE YOU? WHAT ARE YOU? … unafraid … with a forwardness he found hard to accept in a woman … who are you?… he tried to, pull away from her … uncomfortable … disturbed by her … she was magnificent … and wrong … all wrong … something in him reached out to her … distantly he felt her surprise … felt a friendly outreach and a driving curiosity … he jerked away and was deep asleep in minutes.

  Chapter II

  Kitosime walked down the steps, back straight, head high, swaying gracefully. After years of rigid training, her body knew its business even when her legs felt weak and her hands shook as she slid them down the railing. The courtyard was momentarily empty as was the porch behind her. The silence was cool on her skin. At the last step she stumbled but caught herself, clutching desperately at the railing. She stood shaking a moment, eyes closed, caught in a flood of terror. One flaw in her and Old Man Kobe would throw her away like a broken pot. He tolerated no spots on his prizes. She sucked in a deep breath and tried to still the shaking that held her prisoner on that step. Her favored status was her son’s safety. Hodarzu, ah Meme Kalamah, why did he have to be like his father … and me … ah … me … me … me. She glanced over her shoulder at the heavy throne chair blocking the way to the main door. Kobe liked to look at her. He kept her kneeling beside him when he sat in that chair, her back straight, her neck straight, her head held proudly. A living ornament, a testimony to his wealth and power as he made his ponderous judgments. Kitosime the favorite daughter. Kitosime the beautiful. Kitosime the elegant, the perfect expression of the power of his blood.

  She shivered and stepped carefully onto the painted tiles of the courtyard. Grateful for the brief solitude, a rare gift, she walked slowly to the Mother Well in the center of the enclosed space. I can’t endure it, she thought. I drown. I am empty. She rested one hand on the well coping and tilted her head to look at the heavy red clouds that were garish against the morning sky’s bright yellow green, remnants of last night’s twin storms. Not much time left for her. Kobe would be out in a little while and expect to find her waiting.

  The tiles gritted under her sandals as she shifted from foot to foot beside the great well. Though the day was already hot, coolness touched her face. “Meme Kalamah,” she whispered. “Surround my son, hide him. Give me strength to endure, great Mother.” The well whispered back to her, a low liquid murmur that steadied her. “Help me.” The returning whisper was soft and confiding. She felt the coolness bathing her, smoothing away her weakness. She turned away, then stopped with a soft exclamation; something had bruished her foot through the thin leather of her sandal sole. She knelt.

  Two small stones huddled next to the well, dull gray pebbles with holes like eyes in the centers. “Eyestones,” she whispered. She lifted them carefully and placed them on her hennaed palm. They lay on her painted skin, cold and complete with power, taking nothing from the warmth of her body. Slowly she opened the pouch that hung on a leather thong about her neck and eased the stones inside. Filled with a sense of terrifying portent, she glided from the courtyard wanting to run but not able to. She was Bighouse and Bighouse didn’t run. Ever.

  In the quarter the bound families were hard at work. She walked through the cheerful din like a dark ghost, ignored and unable to join in. In the spinners’ circle the women were chatting and laughing, teasing a young bride, sitting crosslegged about a basket of fleece, fingers busy shaping the thread, rolling it on hard knees, winding it on the spindles. Several of the women had their babies with them, sleeping comfortably in the long cloth slings that bound them tight against their mothers’ backs. From time to time the women broke into a work chant while the spindles danced and twirled.

  They fell silent as she passed. She could feel their eyes following her. They knew what she’d come for. They know everything, those women. She envied them their freedom. They could move and laugh without constraint, they could make awkward gestures without losing what was more than life to them. She touched her hair. It was a measure of the distance between her and these her sisters. Plaited into elaborate coils, it took two women an hour each morning to fashion what was really a miniature sculpture.

  She passed blacksmith and tinsmith beating against their metal, the metal crying back in deep ringing protest. She passed the potter kicking his wheel while his sons beat the air from piles of reluctant clay. She passed women holding stone bowls between their knees, grinding agazu root to paste for the many-layered honey pastry. Passed others preparing dyes, or stirring sodden cloth in great cauldrons, the sweat forming rivers on their faces and bodies. She envied them their sweat. The noise died away before her and swelled behind. She walked with the grace of Kobe’s favored daughter, and wanted to groan and cry out her torment, wanted to laugh and work, even to sweat. Instead she went to Papa Goh’s odorus hut for the fezza seed that dulled her senses and made her life possible.

  She halted in front of the isolated hutch painted a dull black and scrawled over with cryptic symbols written in white river clay. Her hands were shaking again. Remembering her training, she tapped her fingers lightly against the skin of the small drum.

  It was hotter inside than by the dryers’ fires. By some trick of construction the hut caught the sun and trapped its heat under, the mud-plastered thatch. Heat shimmered around the skinny naked figure of a tiny man. His eyes were closed into slits and his skin was tarnished like old silver; he was almost lost among the shadows. Kitosime suppressed a gasp as she sank onto her knees and drew in a breath of the fetid atmosphere compounded of urine and ancient sweat, of death and a thousand different drugs.

  She waited, hands on her thighs, palms up, fingers curving into flower petals, a silent begging which was all her pride allowed her.

  Papa Goh shifted irritably. “Are the bones to speak? You want to know where your man wanders instead of staying home and plowing your field?” He cackled maliciously, then stopped as her face kept its doll mask. “You waste my time, woman.”

  “Fezza seed,” she said. Her voice was a doll’s voice, musical but lifeless. She touched the pouch hanging around her neck, fighting back anger. He knew very well what she wanted but relished his small triumphs over her. Slowly she pulled the pouch open and reached inside. She hesitated as her fingers touched the eyestones, then dug further for the cool slickness of metal. He watched avidly as she pulled out a large copper coin and placed it on the floor in front of him.

  “Not enough. Not enough.” Flecks of spittle sprayed out from his toothless mouth. One landed on the back of her hand. She wanted to scrub the hand against the dirt, wanted to scramble to her feet and tear her way out of the stinking darkness. Instead she brushed lightly at the moisture then fished out a second coin and placed it beside the first. She waited, hands resting lightly on her thighs.

  Papa Goh snort
ed and scooped up the coins, then he took a bit of crumpled paper, twisted it into a cone and scooped a handful of dark brown seeds into the top. He thrust the screw of paper at her.

  Kitosime took the seeds, repressing a shudder at having to touch his fingers and take the wretched paper. But she smiled, murmured the proper farewells and dipped out the low door.

  She stood blinking in the morning sunlight, drawing in great gulps of air to flush the foulness out of her system. Then the gong sounded, Kobe would be coming out. Expecting her to be waiting. She fumbled in the twist of paper and thrust three of the seeds into her mouth. The others she stuffed hastily into the neck pouch. Her heart juddered in her breast and the veins at her temples throbbed. She pressed her hands against her eyes and bit down on the seeds in her mouth, letting the juice slide down her parched throat. There was a frantic clacking in her ears. She shuddered. Then the true meaning of the noise reached her and she looked around.

  The uauawimbony tree was jerking about, the seed pods rattling loudly. Kitosime tightened the roll knot over her breasts, reset the brooch pin and smoothed the dress cloth along her sides. She knew who the watch-tree announced. Manoreh’s back, she thought. Why?