by Mindy Klasky
“Yes, you did.” Aerise fought back new tears. “You believed I had made an arrangement. That I chose to be a broodwhore.”
Zana looked away. She occupied her hands by helping restore the loaves to the satchel. The twitter of awakening sparrows in the branches grew loud.
“Promise me you will go there anyway,” Zana said.
“I have no wish to see the one who did this to me, or his people.”
Zana hiccupped. “You must. I want you to live, Aerise. I want you to live.”
“I make no promises.”
At the tone, Zana shied back and fell silent.
“Go,” Aerise said. “You’ve already risked too much to stay this long.” If her absence from the village were discovered, she would be beaten severely.
Zana fled. All too soon, Aerise was again alone in the woods.
Over the next few days, as she slipped farther into the wild lands, Aerise tried to tell herself that she had meant what she implied to Zana—that she would rather die than seek out the Cursed Folk. Then, as the bread and cheese disappeared and real hunger set in, after the snuffling of a bear in the darkest part of the second night made her wet the seat of her shift in fright, after ants attacked the satchel and cheated her of the crumbs of her rations, she acknowledged that all along she had been following the course of the river toward its source, the place Zana had spoken of.
The susurrus of the stream filtered through the underbrush. Here it was a creek rather than a river, often flowing over stones and fallen logs, no longer the quiet waterway that flowed past her home. She made her way down into the gentle ravine and followed the animal trail that ran beside the stream.
Bruises aching, she clambered slowly over boulders and padded listlessly around tangles of vegetation. In early afternoon she stopped at a cave to rest, only to fall asleep on its soft sand bottom. The nap cost her too much of her remaining daylight, and she was forced to spend the night there.
The next day, as she plodded up steepening slopes and the creek dwindled to a brook, she searched for some sign of the Cursed Folk. Even they could not inhabit an area without leaving evidence of their activities. But she saw only deer tracks, spent feathers, fox scat, the cast-off husks of caddis flies.
Finally her way was blocked by a short cliff. A spring welled up at its base, supplying the stream with much of its volume. Whatever sources of water lay above barely generated a dribble down the terraces of the cliff. These were the headwaters.
Zana had been wrong. The Cursed Folk were not here.
Hunger gnawed at her so desperately it made her sway. The needs of the child were overriding the disinterest in food that usually came with the second or third day of fasting. She limped back downstream. Earlier in the day she had spotted a nettleberry bush on a high bank. She clawed her way up to it and gathered what the plant had to offer. She could see that foraging bears had stripped away the bulk of the crop, but she managed to harvest two handfuls.
She had to peel open the hairy rinds. The itchy filaments lodged in her thumbs. Despite the fruit’s ripeness the squirts of pulp on her tongue were so bitter they puckered her mouth. She had only ever enjoyed nettleberry as an ingredient of jam. The tiny repast only served to intensify the hollowness in her midsection. She turned over a rock and found a fat grub and wolfed it down. That only made her feel as if something were writhing at the bottom of her gullet.
Her shift caught on a broken branch on her way down the embankment, ripping the fabric so that her bare belly showed through the opening, right where she would see it every time she looked down. The sight drained away what little of her dignity she had preserved until then.
Going downhill taxed her nearly as much as climbing, because pregnancy stole her sense of where her weight was balanced. She barely kept on long enough to reach a place where the ravine flattened and permitted the stream to spread itself out and grow still. Sunlight puddled across the surface as she waded along the pool’s edge to a flat boulder. Tadpoles urgently hid themselves in the clouds of silt her feet disturbed.
Aerise lowered herself to her resting spot with effort. She sighed, too spent even to dip her fingers to try to rinse the sticky nettleberry juice from her hands. She did manage to slip the satchel from her shoulder.
Her womb contracted. She knew the sensation, having been through the process of birth twice already. She tried to calm her breathing. One twinge might signify little. She estimated she was not due for another fortnight, but she could not be sure given the stresses she had been put through, or given the half-breed nature of the child. By dawn she might be lying here, spent from labor, the birthing blood attracting wolves she could not defend herself from.
The baby stirred. A sharp kick made her gasp. Looking at her belly in anger, she was startled to see that the glow was no longer steady. The light was pulsing. At its brightest, it matched the level she had become accustomed to over the past few days. At its dimmest, she could not make it out in the daylight.
Then it faded altogether.
Fingers trembling, she pulled the torn edges of the hole in her shift wider apart. The taut skin of her abdomen was its normal hue. The baby’s urgent shifting had eased. She could tell it was still wakeful, but its movements were now gentle—a subtle tickling.
She could not help but think of her firstborn, how he would fuss in her arms, only to be soothed and fall asleep when Duran picked him up and nestled him.
Aerise checked right and left. Then down. The sheen on the surface of the pool included a manlike outline.
Her heart began drumming. A shadow man was lying submerged in the water, apparently devoid of the need to breathe. So insubstantial was he that the current did not alter his position. Even minnows and tadpoles passed through him. He might have placed himself there—no, must have placed himself there—even before she had arrived.
Awkwardly she tottered to her feet—pretending to be even clumsier than she actually was, to conceal the moment when her hand slipped into the satchel and found the knife Zana had brought, which she hid behind her back as she rose.
He rose up as well. His form began to lose its ghostliness.
She knew it was the man who had raped her. Tall, fair-skinned, sparsely bearded, he looked enough like Duran she no longer blamed herself for being fooled in the unlit bedchamber that night. He would also have used sorcery to cloud her mind, of course.
He was naked. Aerise had not expected that, though she had been told that Cursed Folk could not bring their clothing with them when they slipped back and forth between planes of existence. Seeing him displayed in such a way made the mash of nettleberry in her stomach want to come back up.
Rivulets trickled down the muscled flesh of his body. The river sloshed and gurgled around his thighs. Suddenly he was very much a part of the world. Aerise did not waste a moment—she vaulted forward, thrusting the knife as her brother had taught her, low from her waist level, toward his gut. She committed to the leap, not caring how she landed as long as the knife reached him.
At the last instant he faded to mist. She plunged right through him, flopping into the water, which was just deep enough beyond him to receive her. She bounced off the stream bottom, bobbed back to the surface, and stumbled inelegantly to her feet, calf-deep in the midst of the pool.
She whirled about. The man was on the granite slab she had vacated. He solidified once more, taking two further steps back as he did so. He wiped the front of his torso. Blood seeped one drop at a time from a pinprick cut below his breastbone.
If she had been a moment faster, the blade would have penetrated him while he was corporeal. She had the satisfaction of seeing him realize how close he had come to being killed. She had the misery of knowing she had failed.
He was too far off now to surprise him again, in part a consequence of how recklessly she had flung herself at him. But the knife was still in her hand, and there was one thing left she could do. She raised the weapon up, tip pointed straight at her womb.
The shadow man grew very still. She adjusted her slippery palm on the hilt, wrapping her other hand around the first, breathing so fast she was almost panting. His brow furrowed. In the alders, a squirrel peered at them, tail twitching. A frog sprang from the leaf litter into the creek. In the distance, a hawk uttered a territorial screech.
He did not rush at her, trying to overpower her. He did not plead. He simply waited.
Her grip loosened. The knife fell, splashed, and sank out of sight.
She dropped to her knees in the silt and pebbles. Water rode over her folded legs. She pulled at her hair until the pain in her scalp provoked the tears she needed. She was otherwise already drained of tears.
She could imagine all too well what she looked like at that moment—wet, bedraggled, nettleberry juice staining her chin. Wretched.
“Why?” she wailed. “Why did you do this to me? Why thrust your seed into me and not a broodwhore? Did it please you to deceive me?”
His expression contorted with such anguish her eyes widened. She stopped yanking her hair.
“It pleased me not.” His accent and phrasing were archaic. “I did as I must. I did it for her.” He pointed to her belly.
The glow reappeared.
She put her hand on the bulge. “Her? You can tell it’s a girl?”
“Yes. And healthy she is. As I had hoped.” A smile blossomed for an instant, quelled again as he continued to study her. “The price you paid was high. I am in your debt.” He reached out to her. “Will you come with me?”
He said it as if she had a choice. She did not accept his help in rising, but she nodded, and when he led the way, she followed.
The enclave lay far into the forest. It was well clear of the headwaters, the man explained, so that if raiders were sent to burn them out, they would not be found where rumor indicated. His folk avoided the river unless their sentry enchantments revealed the approach of a visitor they wished to contact. Sometimes this was a woman seeking to become a broodwhore. Usually it was a trader, come to parley for goods such as only the Cursed Folk made.
They stopped when they came to a fine old blood cedar. The man reached into a niche at the tree’s base and pulled out a maternity gown. It was woolen—the fabric a product of spindle and loom. He held it out to her.
Because it came from him, she nearly refused it, but the prospect of being able to cover herself better overcame her distaste. Much to her relief, while she put the article over her torn shift, he donned an ensemble of deerskin and otter pelt, finally concealing his bare skin.
The rest of the journey required three long hours of hiking, their pace hindered by her exhaustion. Finally Aerise noticed the signs of habitation she had looked for earlier—a reduced quantity of deadfall branches due to the gathering of firewood, a hint of woodsmoke on the breeze, and then actual footprints on the trail.
Near dusk they reached the edge of a large meadow. Where the trees resumed on the other side she spotted a series of tents as well as an arbor roofed with cattail and fern thatch. She saw no more than thirty Cursed Folk, half of whom were children.
The meadow was soft even this late in the season, making her work to take each additional step. Aerise sighed and rubbed her lower back. “Is it much farther to the main encampment?”
“This is the main encampment,” he said. “We do not gather in groups larger than this, or we would invite a scourging.”
It was the second time he had spoken of the possibility of a raid. “How often does that happen?” she scoffed, recalling how successfully he had avoided her knife thrust. Who would bother attacking an enemy who could not be hurt?
“Often enough,” he replied. “Our memories are long.”
Aerise supposed it would be annoying to lose structures and possessions. Everything she saw up ahead was either portable or easily replaced. It was comforting to think her people could inflict some sort of pain upon his.
By the time they were two-thirds of the way across the meadow, the majority of the inhabitants of the enclave had still barely glanced in their direction. Aerise thought it eerie that the children would take so little notice. Then she recalled the stories.
“How long are your memories?” she asked.
“We age no more than one year for every ten that pass.”
These then were not children like any she had seen. They had lost the boundless inquisitiveness of the very young. Only the babies were her juniors. Of them, there were two. Both were nursing at the breasts of women sitting beneath the arbor. These women, and a third who sat with them, gave off a different aura than everyone else present.
Broodwhores.
The group regarded Aerise intently. Their gazes kept returning to her swollen belly. The scrutiny made the fine hair on the back of Aerise’s neck stiffen. They thought she was like them! They assumed she had made the same choice they had.
Two other women—these movingly fluidly, at home in their environment—strode past the arbor and met Aerise and her escort at the edge of the enclave. One appeared to be only a little older than Aerise, and like her had hair that tended toward coiled. The other possessed subtle lines by her eyes and traces of gray speckled her hair, which was merely wavy, like that of the man.
“This is Cloud,” the man said, and the older woman inclined her head. “And this is Fern. They will be the mothers of the child you bear.”
Aerise blinked. Much as she did not want to think of herself as the child’s mother, it took her aback to hear anyone else described as such. “Both of them?”
“It is our way. Go with them now. If you require me, you have only to ask.”
“And whom do I ask for?”
“You may call me Morel.”
Her brows rose. “You are named after a mushroom?”
“The morel is my favorite treat. We do not share our true names with one of the Uncursed.”
He walked on toward the heart of the encampment. Two elderly men and a woman met him there and ushered him into the large central tent. Aerise’s eyes remained narrowed until the flap fell and he was lost to view.
When her attention returned to her escorts, she found both of them gazing at her coldly.
“You do not deserve the honor he bestows,” Cloud said.
“I did not ask for it.”
“Is it pity you seek? Pity us, who can only be mothers through the likes of you. Now come along. We have prepared a repast for you. Eat before you swoon from hunger. If we must needs shove food down your gullet while you sleep to keep our baby fed, we will not shrink to do so.”
Modest as the Cursed Folk dwellings were compared to the sturdy buildings of Nine Vineyards, the tent Cloud and Fern thrust Aerise into was no hovel. It had four poles and enough headroom to easily stand straight. It even featured a lidded privy hole at the far end.
A roasted partridge, a kettle of porridge, and fresh greens waited on a stand made of interlaced forest twigs. Aerise set about devouring it at once, embarrassed at her directness but too ravenous to do otherwise.
While Aerise ate, Fern lit a large three-wicked candle to stave off the deepening twilight. Cloud unrolled and set up a trio of cots.
“That one.” Aerise pointed. Her companions did not object. Within moments, food gone, Aerise was clambering onto the one she had chosen. She fell asleep moments after Fern covered her with a fur blanket.
At first her slumber was deep, but with a baby pressing upon her bladder, it was inevitable she stirred. She saw to her needs quickly and returned to her cocoon of warmth as fast as she could. Over afterward did she realize she was not alone as she had thought. Fern was lying on the farthest cot, so much in the other realm only her outline showed.
Fern seemed to be almost levitating upon the bed. She was unclothed—Aerise understood the woman had no choice but to be unclothed. She showed no reaction to the night’s chill. Aerise checked for some further attribute of alienness. Hoofed feet. A tail. Perhaps the absence of a navel. But Fern did not look meaningfully different than any y
oung woman of Nine Vineyards that Aerise had ever shared the sweat lodge with.
Some time later, Aerise was briefly awakened again by the noise of the tent flap lifting. Cloud entered. Aerise feigned unconsciousness, but watched from beneath the fur.
Cloud undressed by simply turning to her phantom form and letting her garments fall. As she leaned over the candle she solidified again for a moment to have the force of wind to blow out the flames. For a moment the nearness of the illumination accentuated the detail of her body. Cloud’s bosom rode as high on her chest as a maiden’s. Her lower belly, between the wide hips so well configured for the birthing of children, bore no stretch marks.
In the morning, Fern and Cloud showed they meant their pledge to see that the baby was well fed. Before Aerise had been awake more than a few moments, Cloud was setting down milk and eggs and more porridge in front of her.
Aerise was perfectly willing to cooperate with that particular duty. It was different when Fern ducked under the flap carrying a bucket of steaming water.
“What’s that for?” Aerise asked.
“We will bathe you,” they said.
“I’m clean enough for now.”
The two women moistened rags in the hot water and wrung them out. “Strip,” Cloud said.
“No,” Aerise said. She stood and folded her arms. At full height she loomed over her hosts.
Cloud cleared her throat. “We are smaller and weaker than you, it is true. But if you do not yield, we will call in some of our menfolk to hold you down, and we will bathe you anyway.”
Aerise had known Cloud only a matter of hours, but she could already tell the woman did not make empty threats. Sighing, she slipped out of her clothes.
Little did she imagine what the shadow women meant by “bathe.” They scrubbed her until her skin was red.
“How many times are you going to do that?” Aerise objected when Fern lifted her arm to wipe an area she had already attacked more than once.
“If we are to share this tent, we don’t want to smell your stench.”
