I dropped a coin on her table, and she slid something across the rough planks.
This one, she said.
I snatched up a hilt of bright false jewels and peeling paint. I didn’t test the blade or look at it. I didn’t want to be betrayed by the knowing. Placated, the hawkers gave way before me. They jostled and called out as before, but when I passed their last stall it was as if I crossed beyond their borders, and they returned to their places. I went to Loran’s side.
Nikander joined us, with a show of shaking his head ruefully. I’m sorry you should be burdened with such . . . unpleasantness, milady, he said, and he looked directly into my eyes for the first time.
But here, before we enter the fortress itself, he continued, is a display created especially for pair-bonded fair lords and ladies such as yourselves.
A stereogram, no doubt? Loran said.
Indeed, sir.
Loran led me into a small room filled with clear light. Running across the middle was a white marble barrier fashioned like lacework. There were two places to peek through.
Beyond that screen is a painting. Two paintings, actually, Loran explained. Taken separately, they mean nothing—just streaks of color and jumbles of dots across the canvas. But when the viewers are bonded as we are, and one painting is viewed through your sight and one is viewed through mine, and we allow our intimacy to combine those views into a single image, the true nature of the portrait is revealed.
Loran and I looked through and both saw a nonsense hodgepodge of streaks and blots, as if someone had let squirrels run through their paints. We took each other’s hand, and he softened his breath and let his eye go a little out of focus, and I copied him.
The two images swam towards each other, and mated, and suddenly we grasped the picture as it was meant to be seen. It was the Gray Fort in all its grace and magnificence, a sight that stopped the breath and sent the heart soaring in your chest as if it had been given hawk’s wings. We could build strong walls and tall turrets and dream-like palaces. Armies would cower at the thought of testing our defenses. We were everything the Folk told us we weren’t. We had had hands that created works of beauty, and wise minds that calculated how to shape them, and strong arms that drove our enemies before us—and this even after we had clawed our way out of chaos; the faintest shadow of the forgotten days of our true power, that had been stolen from us.
My shawl was wrapped so tightly around the hilt of the dagger that I couldn’t recognize its shape in my hand, and Loran suspected nothing. I flicked my wrist, and the loose scabbard slipped off and clattered on the flagstones. Then, while both of us were held by the vision of the fort, I raised the blade and brought it down hard into my own right thigh, and twisted it.
The pain drove through me in a sickening wave and I lurched against the marble screen. Loran, however, struck in the center of his old axe wound, spasmed with a grunt and dropped to the floor. He landed half-curled on his side, struggled to rise, and slipped.
I limped to him, and his scalp felt my fingers slide along it as I pulled his head back by his hair. I looked into his eyes.
Thank you, milord, I said. It was beautiful to see.
Loran saw the dagger in my hand, and saw my intent, and smiled with real joy.
I knew I chose well! he said.
I didn’t understand. I wondered if it mattered.
The blade is sharper than I would have thought; when I make the single thrust to drive it through his eye socket, perhaps I will survive the agony. Perhaps I will be suffered to live long enough to see the Folk strike back against my city in reprisal for the assassination of an Elven lord. Then my race will be pushed too far, and we shall rise up and have war again, to the terrible delight of both our peoples.
And things may turn out differently this time.
AMOR FUGIT
ALEXANDRA DUNCAN
In the soft space when the sun dips behind the trees and crickets fill the shadowed grass with their high metal voices, my mother and I ready our lanterns. Sunset is the vigil hour. My mother wraps herself in a heavy woven shawl, purple like the mountains looming to the west of our cottage. Fireflies bob and flicker over our wheat field. Our mouser takes up his post on top of the garden gate, regarding us with his bright stare. A crisp, early autumn breeze moves over the wheat. I shiver in my white linen chiton and rub my arms for warmth.
“There,” Mother says, pointing.
I squint into the dim. Yes, there. I catch a hint of movement along the brambles at the edge of our wood. I breathe in, letting the darkening air fill my mouth, lift my lungs. Dusk tastes sour honey sweet. Sweet because the fading light means my father is making his way to us through the far-off wood. Sour because my mother will snuff out her lantern and leave me alone as soon as he comes into sight.
When I was a child, I would stand at the window and cry to see the sun go down.
I am too old for that now.
Mother opens the hinged glass door of her lantern and blows out the flame. In the moment before the light goes out, I see sadness written deep around her eyes and mouth. It’s not the kind of sadness that makes her sullen and snappish at her work, or stare wistfully across the fields. It’s something else. The only time I think I might have felt something like it was when our first mouser died. He was yellow like saffron and liked to rub against my legs when I fed him bits of meat. I called him Rumbler, for the sound he made in his throat when I was near. I have since learned not to name our farm animals.
Mother squeezes my hand. I don’t look as she sets down her lantern and steps backward into the night. It’s easier that way, like looking away when she pricks the soft side of my arm with a lancet for inoculations. I try not to listen to the receding shuffle of her footsteps and concentrate instead on picking out the glimmers of light reflecting from my father’s belt, the hilt of his hunting knife, the metal clasps on the shoulders of his traveling cloak. They flash in the moonlight as he approaches, like little stars moving through our fields. He has reached the foot of the hill leading up to our house. With one hand he supports a dead stag, slung across his shoulder. I know I should stand still to welcome him, like a dignified girl who is studying to become a woman, but I break into a run. The lantern swings beside me and my skirt flaps like a flag as I careen down the path. He meets me halfway, holding out his free arm and pulling me into a fierce hug.
“Ourania.” Father breathes out my name as if he’s been holding it in with his breath all day.
I don’t say anything, but bury my face into his shoulder, like a little girl. He smells of sweat, crushed leaves, and animal blood, and his cloak is rough against my nose.
We walk up to the cottage, hand in hand. I kneel by the hearth and start a fire with my flints while he hangs the stag’s carcass in the cellar. I set out a basin of warm water and a clean cloth so he can wash the blood and dirt from his arms. When he is clean and we are sitting at the table for our simple meal of bread, cheese, soup, and wine, he asks what he always asks.
“Did your mother leave any words for me?” His face goes still and his shoulders tense as he waits for my answer, as if everything turns on what I might say.
I pick up my wine cup and take a swallow. I don’t like the way the drink dries my tongue, but I like that Father doesn’t try to water it for me, the way Mother does. “She says to tell you she mended your heavy cloak, so it’s ready for winter. We killed a rabbit and she added its fur at the collar. She thanks you for the meat.”
Father smiles to himself and takes a long drink. When he sets his cup down, his face is flushed. He’s still smiling, and little points of light glitter in the folds of his eyes. I pick up my spoon and blow into my bowl to cool the broth. We both fall quiet for a time, focused on our food, making ourselves accustomed to each other’s presence again after the long day apart. Later, he will tell stories by the hearth until our fire sinks down to an embered glow.
Long ago, when Day was a young woman, she blazed across the sky with little care in
her heart. When she laid her head down to rest, the world became dark. When the time came for her to bring light to the world, she warmed everything, from the heath balds to the ocean deeps. Her only joy came in giving warmth.
But one night, she turned to look back into the dusk, and caught sight of a man. His robe was white and glistening like sun-warmed ice, his strong arms the pale blue of milk after the cream has been skimmed away, and his hair coiled and curled around his brow in midnight waves. This man was Night. He lifted his eyes, bright as two stars, and found her watching him.
They each left their paths and went to one another. Day fed her light to Night, Night offered up his cool for Day to sip, and they found how they curved together to form a whole. Thus Day and Night first knew love.
I wake with the sun on my face and the smell of fresh bread and olive oil hanging in the air. The mouser is curled up next to my feet at the end of my cot. I shove him off the bed and force myself up. The sun is high and hot already, and my head aches from too much wine. I’ve let myself sleep past dawn. I’ve missed Father’s parting. Mother had no one to greet her. The goats will be sullen and stubborn when at last I get around to milking them. I pull on my ear in frustration and hurry to wrap my chiton around myself, stepping quickly toward the kitchen.
Mother’s face shines with sweat, but she smiles to herself as she pulls a loaf of bread from our stone oven on a long, wooden board. She must have passed within a hand’s breadth of Father as he was parting, in the confusion between night and dawn a heavy mist can cause. She straightens and slides the bread onto the table for cutting. A pail of cool milk rests on the center board.
“Why did you let me sleep so late?” I ask. Petulance sneaks into my voice. She’s only being kind, giving me a morning off from my chores.
“You looked so peaceful.” Mother rests her hands on her hips. She’s tucked the hem of her long skirts up into her waistband to keep them out of the fire and I can see the broad arch of her calves, thick and strong from walking. I wonder where her trek takes her each night. Does she always make for the same place or does she wander? Does she rest? She must. But when, and where?
Mother slices the bread and lays a plate of it on the table, next to a shallow bowl of spiced olive oil. She wipes her hands clean on a broadcloth, pours a small measure of wine into two mugs, and tops them off with water. She slides one to me and sits down at the table with the other.
“Drink up,” she says, sipping from her mug and reaching for a slice of bread to dip into the olive oil.
I wrinkle my nose at my own cup. I know the wine is for killing disease in the water, but my tongue curls at the slight, familiar bitterness of it. I sop my bread in oil and bite off a big, crackling chunk to scrub the taste from my mouth.
Mother has me practice my Latin as we weed the garden. We bend our backs under the heat of the late morning sun, yanking invading threads of root from the spaces between the arugula, spinach, and tomatoes. Mother kneels in the dirt and calls out infinitive verbs over their leafy heads.
“Colere,” she calls. She winds the stem of a prickly weed around her gloved hand and tugs.
“Colere,” I repeat, then string out the conjugation. “To cultivate. Coleo, coleas, coleat, coleamus, coleatis, coleant.” A bead of sweat drips over my eyebrow and lands on one of the flowering yellow weeds that try to take over our garden each year. I rip it out and toss it in my compost pail.
“Amare,” Mother returns, without missing a breath.
“Amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant,” I say into the dirt.
“Consecrare. Exspectare. Invigilare. Demetere,” Mother calls, and I send each of the words back across the leafy rows in turn.
After we finish weeding, we take small horsehair brushes and dust the stamens of our scarlet runner bean flowers with pollen from the pistils of a hearty green snap-bean. As she dips her brush into the well of each flower, Mother tells me how she hopes to breed a hybrid with the sweetness of the scarlet bean and the snap-bean’s resistance to frost.
When the sun nears its zenith, we retreat inside to escape the midday heat. Mother prepares a meal of greens from our garden and lies down on a low divan by the cool north wall to wait out the worst of the heat. I pocket one of the newest books she has brought home for me and lie down with it in my room. I can never sleep through the midday, like Mother does. Even when I draw the shades and strip off my dress, I can only lie on my back and sweat into the bedclothes. I sit up and lean against the stucco wall, sweat gathering in the hollow of my back. I trace the gold-leafed imprint of words on the book’s cover. Sometimes I will sneak out and read up in the olive orchard, where the breeze reaches.
I sit quietly until Mother’s breath slows to a gentle snore. Then I slide my legs off the bed and walk barefoot through the common room, quiet and careful as a mouser on the hunt. As I pass the place where she lies, Mother’s breath skips in her sleep. I freeze, looking down at her, and hug the book to my chest. Her lips move rapidly and her brow creases, as if she’s arguing with someone in her dream. Then she breathes out. Her body relaxes into the divan cushions.
I step carefully until I pass the threshold into the kitchen, and then I run, out the kitchen door, through the garden, over the gate, and up the hill behind our cottage, where a cluster of olive trees overlooks the valley. I settle at the base of the oldest tree, its branches curving over me like the whalebone parasol Mother brought back from her journeys one time. The canopy of tiny leaves shades my head, and a soft breeze cools my skin. I lay the open book across my lap and look down on the valley.
From here I can see the flat roof of our cottage, with its high stone wall squaring off the large garden in the back. The valley dips down, split by a dirt path. Our fields billow with wheat on one side, and on the other, a corral encircles our little herd of goats. They rest in the shade of a lemon tree, not far from our barn and silo. From here, it all looks like something effortless, a spread of wildflowers cropping up naturally by a roadway. You can’t make out any of the muck and sweat from so far up. A light wind trails its cool fingers up my spine and across the nape of my neck. I lean my head back into a fork in the olive tree’s trunk, stretch out my legs on the mossy grass, and close my eyes.
A muffled trill of laughter sounds somewhere behind me, waking me with a start. The book drops from my slack hand and snaps closed on the ground. I scoop it up and pick my way through the olive grove, toward the meadow that lies on the other side, and the sound of voices. The sun still rides high in the sky, but tilts a little more sharply than when I fell asleep. I’ve only slept a short time. I pause at the lip of the meadow behind the shelter of a broad, old tree.
“Ollie ollie oxen free!” a voice rings out from a low scrub bush only a few yards to my left.
Two girls in pale blue and pink frocks, with hair like tails of wheat, dash from the shade of the trees out into the blinding bright meadow. The smaller one chases the taller, her hands outstretched. The older girl turns back, shrieks in mock terror, and lifts her knees higher as she hurtles forward through the tall grass.
“Maria! Julia!” a woman’s voice calls from the near corner of the meadow. I shift my gaze and see a matronly figure in a pale, fitted dress and a broad straw hat sitting on a checkered blanket. “Stop running around and come sit in the shade. You’re going to give yourselves heatstroke.”
“Yes, Mama,” the older girl says. The small girl drags her feet as her sister leads the way over to the blanket.
“Look at you, you’re all red,” the mother says as they draw near. “You know young gentlemen don’t want a wife with ruddy skin, right? Come out of that sun.”
The girls drop down, obedient, to the blanket and begin making chains out of the same sort of yellow weeds my mother and I rooted out of the garden earlier. The mother reclines stiff-like into her resting place, as if something is hemming in her stomach and keeping her from moving in the natural way. Maybe it’s all the lace and ruffles across her bodice, or the tight row of pearl
buttons down the front of her dress. I look from the bare arms of my chiton to the patches of sweat darkening the sides of her dress and the fair curls at the back of her neck. She must be a strange one to wrap herself up this way in the dead heat of summer. I peer out from under cover of the olive tree, my palms pressed against its rough bark. I look at my hand on the wood. The sun has browned my skin the color of an oil-fried fish and dirt rims my fingernails. This woman must be rich, to never have to go out in the sun. She must have servants to milk her goats and serve her dinner. Father has told me about such people, and Mother has read to me about them from her books, but I thought they were fancy tales, like the cat who makes his master into a lord.
The small girl drapes a chain of weedy flowers around her neck, and the older one arranges a shorter chain on the crown of her head like a diadem. But the sun must be making them drowsy, for after a few minutes they rest their heads next to their mother’s breast and close their eyes. The wind rustles the leaves, and the dappled sunlight ripples over their sleeping forms. They make me think of statues fallen to the bottom of a clear pond.
I step forward to the edge of the meadow, meaning to take a closer look at them in their strange clothes. As I move from behind the tree, something comes into view that makes me freeze, poised with one foot in the air and one hand trailing behind me. On the other side of the blanket, a young man lies on his back. He’s clothed in white shirtsleeves and trousers of the same pale, striped material as the woman’s dress. A vest crosses his middle, fastened with a row of brass buttons. A broad-brimmed hat tips back from his head, and under it, two dark brown eyes stare back at me.
I turn and flee through the olive grove. I hear a scuffle in the dirt as he springs up to follow, and a hoarse whisper calling after me. His shoes crackle over the carpet of twigs and small stones, where my bare feet pass silently. I round the last row of trees and am about to hurl myself forward into the safety of the sunshine, when he grabs my arm. My own momentum swings me around. He catches me about the waist with his free hand, and we stand face to face, gaping at each other. He can’t be more than a few years older than me, around the age when my father says men should be off learning war. His eyebrows angle down into a troubled knit as he stares.
The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2011 Edition Page 51
