Beyond Binary

by Brit Mandelo

  I was just sixteen when we began, and the sky was always grey with the start or end of snow. I learned to move when I was too cold, too sore, too tired. I learned to keep going. All the things I wanted—Ad, my mother, a life of endless hard blue days in the fields, and just one true friend with dark hair and a father still alive—all those precious things became buried under a crust of long outlander muscles. I began to imagine myself an arrow laid against the string, ready to fly. I looked at the village kids with my arrow’s eyes, and they stayed out of my way.

  By the summer I knew enough not to knock myself silly. I was tired of the same exercises and hungry now for more than just revenge: I wanted to be a warrior. “Show me how to use a sword,” I begged Tom constantly, sometimes parrying an invisible adversary with a long stick.

  “No,” he said for the hundredth time.

  “Why not?”

  “There’s no point until you get your full growth. You’re tall as me now, but you might make another inch or two before you’re done.”

  “You didn’t make me wait to learn how to fight.”

  “Swords are different. They change your balance. You’ve got to make the sword part of yourself, it’s not enough just to pick it up and wave it around. It’s true that you’ve learned well,” he added. “But you haven’t learned everything.”

  “Then teach me everything.”

  “Leave it alone, Mars.”

  I had no idea I was going to do it: I had never given him anything but the obedience due a teacher. But I was so frustrated with behaving. “You teach me, damn you,” I said, and swung the stick as hard as I could at his ribs.

  He softened against the blow and absorbed it. The stick was dry and thin, but still it must have hurt. It sounded loud, perhaps because we were both so silent.

  I stammered, “Tom, truly, I was wrong to do it, I just….”

  “You’re stupid, Mars.” His voice was very quiet. “You’re not the strongest, you never will be, and no sword will change that. I’m heavier and faster than you, and there’s thousands more like me out there.” He waved at the world beyond the fields, and when I turned my head, he reached out and twisted the branch away as easily as taking a stick from a puppy. “All you have are your wits and your body, if you can ever learn to use them.”

  What had we been doing, all these months? “I can use my body.”

  A bruise I’d given him at the corner of his mouth stretched into a purple line. Then his smile changed into the stiff look that people wear when they are forcing themselves to a thing they’d rather not do; like the day he’d butchered Ad’s favorite nanny goat while she cried into my shoulder. I did not like him looking at me as if I were that goat.

  “You want to learn everything.” He nodded. “Well, then you shall.” And he came for me.

  I managed to keep him off me for more than a minute, a long stretch of seconds that burned the strength from the muscles in my arms and legs. But he was right; he was too strong, too fast. First he got me down, and then he beat me, his face set, his hands like stones against my ribs and my face. His last blow was to my nose, and when he finally stood, he was spattered with me.

  “This is everything, Mars. This is what I have to teach you. Become the weapon. Do it, and no one will touch you in a fight. Otherwise it’s only a matter of time before someone sends you to the next world in pieces.”

  I was trying to spit instead of swallow; it made it harder to breathe, and every cough jarred my broken nose.

  “I regret this,” he said remotely. “But every time we meet from now on will be like this until you win or you quit. If you quit, I’ll teach you nothing ever again. That’s the lesson. I don’t think you can do it, you know. I don’t think you’re ready. I wish you hadn’t pushed so hard.” He spoke as if he were talking to a stranger on the road.

  He left me at the field’s edge, under a creamy blue sky and the alders that were scarred with months of practice; all those pointless hours. After a long time I dragged myself up and limped home, turning my head away as I passed the Homrun cottage so I would not have to see whether Tom was watching. I let my mother bind my ribs, avoiding her questions and the silence that followed. Then I wrapped myself up in wool blankets and shivered all night, bruised and betrayed, frightened, and hopelessly alone.

  ∞

  He beat me badly half a dozen times in the next year. Between our fights, I practiced and worked and invented a thousand different ways to keep distance between us, to protect my body from his. None of it made a speck of difference.

  The day came when I knew I could never win. There was no grand omen, no unmistakable sign. I was milking our goat, and I suddenly understood that Tom was right. Someone would always be faster or stronger, and until I learned my place I would always be hurt and lonely. It was time to make peace and stop dreaming of Lemon City. I should be planning a fall garden, and tending Ad’s grave. So there, it was decided; and I went on pulling methodically at the little goat’s dry teats until she bleated impatiently and kicked at me to let her go. Then I sat on the milking stump and stared around me at the cottage, the tall birch that shaded it, the yard with the goat and the chickens, the half-tumbled stone wall that bounded our piece of the world. If someone had come by and said, “What are you looking at, Mars?”, I would have said Nothing. Nothing.

  Massive storm clouds began moving up over my shoulder from the west. The shadow of the birch across the south wall faded, and the chickens scuttled into their coop and tucked themselves up in a rattling of feathers. The wind turned fierce and cold; and then the rain hammered down. I hunched on the stump until it occurred to me that I was freezing, that I should see that the stock were safe and then get inside; and when I tried to stand the wind knocked me over like a badly-pitched fence post. I pulled myself up. Again the wind shoved me down. And again. This time I landed on one of my half-dozen unhealed bruises. It hurt; and it made me so angry that I forgot about my numb hands and my despair. I stood again. There was a loud snap behind me. It took a long second to turn against the wind: by that time, the branch that the storm had torn from the birch tree was already slicing toward me like a thrown spear.

  I took a moment to understand what was happening, to imagine the wood knifing through me, to see my grave next to Ad’s. Then the branch reached me, and I slid forward and to the right as if to welcome it; and as we touched I whirled off and away, staggered but kept my balance, and watched the branch splinter against the shed. The goat squealed from behind the wall; and I laughed from my still, safe place in the center of the storm.

  ∞

  I had an idea now, and the only way to test it was by getting beaten again, and so I did: but not as badly. When he’d finally let me up, Tom said, as always, “Do you give in?”

  “No.”

  He was supposed to turn and walk away. Instead, he kept hold of my tunic with his left hand and wiped his bleeding mouth with his right. He took his time. Then he said, “What was that first move?”

  I shrugged.

  “Who taught you that?”

  I shrugged again, as much as I was able with one shoulder sprained.

  “I expect I’ll be ready for it, next time.” He opened his hand and dropped me on my back in the dirt, and set off down the road toward the village. He favored his right leg just slightly: it was the first sign of pain he had ever shown. But that wasn’t what made me feel so good, what made the blood jizzle around under my skin: it was the way I’d felt fighting him. I treated him just like the flying birch limb—allowed him close, so close that we became a single storm; and for just a moment I was our center and I spun him as easily as if I were a wind and he a bent branch.

  The next time went better for me, and the time after that. It became a great dance, a wild game, to see how close I could get to him, how little I could twist away and remain out of reach, just beyond his balance point. He was heavier than me, differently muscled: it taught me to go beyond strength and look instead for the instant of instability, t
he moment when I could make him overreach himself. It was exhilarating to enter into his dangerous space and to turn his weapons against him; it was delicious to be most safe when I was closest to my enemy. I didn’t notice my hurts anymore, except when parts of me stopped working. Then I would retreat to my corner by the cottage fire, sipping comfrey tea and reliving each moment, sucking whatever learning I could from the memory of each blow. My body and his became the whole of my world.

  And the world was changing. I got those last two inches of growth and my body flung itself frantically into adulthood. I suppose it must have been happening all along underneath the sweat and the bruises and the grinding misery. But now that I was noticing it, it seemed to have come upon me all at once, and it was a different feeling from the days when Ad’s smile could make me feel impossibly clever. This was the lust I’d seen at the dark edges of the village common after the harvest celebration, the thing of skin and wordless noise. No one had told me it would feel like turning into an arrow from the inside out and wanting nothing more than something to sink myself into. Sometimes it was so strong that I would have thrown myself on the next person I met, if only there had been anyone who wouldn’t have thrown me right back. But there was no one. I could only burn and rage and stuff it all back into the whirlwind inside me: make myself a storm.

  And so one day I finally won, and it was Tom who lay on one elbow, spitting blood. When the inside of his mouth had clotted, he said, “Well.” Then we were both silent for a while.

  “Well,” he said later.

  And: “You’ll be fine now. You’re a match for anyone, the way you fight. It’s okay to let you go now. You’ll be safe.”

  And then he began to cry. When I bent over him to see if he was hurt more badly than I thought, he gripped my arm and kissed me. He did not stop me when I pulled away, and he did not try to hide his tears. I didn’t understand then what kind of love it is that kills itself to make the beloved safe: I only knew that my world had shaken itself apart and come back together in a way that did not include me anymore.

  I told my mother that night that I would leave in a week. She did not speak, and all I could say over and over was “I have to go,” as if it were an apology or a plea. Later as I sat miserably in front of the fire, she touched the back of my head so softly that I wasn’t sure if I was meant to feel it. Her fingers on my hair told me that she grieved, and that her fear for me was like sour milk on the back of her tongue, and that in spite of it all she forgave me for becoming myself, for growing up into someone who could suddenly remind her of how she got me. I had traded scars and bruises with the village kids for years, but never before had I hurt someone I loved just by being myself; and in one day I had done it to the only two people left to me. And so I felt my world hitch and shake like a wet dog, and my choices fell over me like drops of dirty water: none of them clean.

  ∞

  I set off early, just past dawn. Over breakfast, my mother said, “Here’s a thing for you,” and handed me a long bundle. When I unwrapped it, the lamplight flickered across the blade inside and my mother’s sad and knowing eyes.

  “Don’t look at me,” she said. “That Tom Homrun brought it around three days past and said I wasn’t to give it to you until you were leaving.”

  There was no scabbard. I made a secure place for the sword in my belt, across my left hip.

  “Feel like a proper soldier now, I expect,” my mother said quietly.

  “I just feel all off balance,” I told her, and she smiled a little.

  “You’ll be all right, then.” She nodded, then sighed, stood, fussed with my slingbag. “I’ve put up some traveling food for you. And a flask of water as well, you never know when the next spring might be dry.”

  I tried to smile.

  “Which way are you heading?”

  “East. In-country.”

  She nodded again. “I thought you might head west.”

  “Mum!” I was shocked. “Those are our enemies.”

  “You’ve had more enemies here than ever came out of the west, child,” she said. “I just wondered.”

  I took a breath. “I would never do anything to hurt you, Mum. You’ve been nothing but good to me.” Another breath. “Tell Tom…give him my thanks.” Opening the door, the damp, grey air in my face. “I love you, Mum.” Kissing her dry cheek. “I love you.” Three steps out now, her standing in the door, half in shadow, one hand to her face. “Goodbye, Mum.” Four more steps, walking backwards now, still looking at her. “Goodbye.” Turning away; walking away; leaving. Her voice catching up with me, “I’ve loved you, Mars. Godspeed.” The bend in the road.

  ∞

  I was alone on the road for a week. Every day brought me something new: a stand of unfamiliar trees, a stream of green water, a red-hooded bird that swooped from tree to tree above me for a hundred paces before it flashed away into the woods. I walked steadily. I didn’t think about home or the future. I became more thin. I played with the sword. It wasn’t balanced well for me, but I thought a good smith could remedy that, and meanwhile I learned not to overreach myself with the new weight at the end of my arm. Carrying it on my hip gave me a persistent pain in my lower back, until I found a rolling walk that brought the sword forward without swinging it into my leg at each step. Ad would have called it swagger, but she would have liked it. There was one moment, in a yellow afternoon just as the road lifted itself along the rim of a valley, when I could hear her laugh as if she were only a step behind me, and I missed her as fiercely as in the first month after her death. And I kept going.

  On the eighth day I met people.

  I heard them before I saw them; two speaking, maybe more silent in their group. I stopped short and found myself sweating, as if their sound was warm water bubbling through the top layer of my skin. I hadn’t thought at all about what to do with other people. I had met fewer than a dozen strangers in my life.

  “I think there’s something in the wood,” one of the voices said brightly.

  “A wolf?” A hint of laughter.

  “A bear.”

  “A giant.”

  “A creature with the body of an eagle and a pig’s head and teeth as big as your hands.”

  I was beginning to feel ridiculous; it made me move again. I came out of the trees into an open place where my road met another running north and south. Just beyond the crossroads, three people sat with their backs against a low stone wall that bounded a meadow. I slowed my step. I had no idea how one behaved, and I’m sure it showed. The woman who called to me had the same glittery amusement in her voice that I’d heard as she’d described all the fabulous monsters I might be.

  “Why, it’s not a bear. Ho, traveler.” She nodded. I felt awkward, and I wondered if my voice would work properly after so long in its own company; so I only returned her nod, hitched up my belt, and kept walking. As soon as it was clear that I meant to pass them by, she scrambled to her feet, scattering breadcrumbs and a piece of cheese from her lap into the grass. “Luck, don’t,” the man said, and grabbed but missed her. She darted toward me. I turned to face her, my hands out, waiting.

  “Ah ha,” she said, and stopped out of my reach. “Perhaps a bear cub after all. I don’t mean to detain you against your will, traveler. We have Shortline cheese to share, and we’d welcome news of the world beyond this road.”

  She was relaxed, smiling, but she watched my body rather than my face, and her knees were slightly bent, ready to move her in whatever direction she needed to go. She looked strong and capable, but I could see a weakness in her stance, a slight cant to her hips. I could probably take her, I thought.

  I put my hands down. “The place I’ve come from is so small, you’d miss it if you looked down to scratch. But I can trade flatcakes for a wedge of cheese and your news.”

  “Fair enough,” she said.

  She was Lucky, and the man was Ro. The other, silent woman was Braxis. We ate cheese and my mother’s cake in the afternoon sun, and they told me about th
e North, and I gave them what I knew about the West. I was nervous, but gradually their laughter, their worldliness, won me over. They never asked a question that was too personal, and they gave exactly as much information about themselves as I did, so I never felt at a disadvantage.

  “What is it you want from me?” I asked finally. I don’t know exactly what made me say it. Maybe it was the combination of the warm gold sun and the warm gold cheese, the bread and the cider from Braxis’ wineskin. Maybe it was hearing about the great cities to the north, Shirkasar and Low Grayling, and the massive port of Hunemoth, the way they made me see the marketplaces and the moonlight on the marbled plazas of the noble houses. Maybe it was the looks the three of them traded when I answered their questions.

  Braxis raised an eyebrow in my direction. It was Ro who answered.

  “Okay, so you know when something’s going on under your nose. That’s good. Can you fight?”

  I tensed. “I’ve told you how I grew up. I can fight.”

  “We’re going to Lemon City, to the auditions. We need a fourth.”

  “What auditions?”

  “Hoo hoo,” Lucky said with a grin.

  “Three times a year they hold an audition for the city guard,” Ro said. “They only accept quads, they think it’s the most stable configuration for training and fighting.”

  “So,” I said. I thought of Tom under the alders, of Lemon City as I’d imagined it with Ad.

  “So you probably noticed there are only three of us.”

  “You came all this way from Grayling without a fourth?”

  “No, of course not,” Ro said patiently. “He left us two days ago. He found true love in some stupid little town with probably only one bloodline, but he didn’t care. He’s a romantic, much good may it do him in the ass-end of nowhere.”

  “And you’d take me just like that, not knowing me at all.”