You cannot imagine how much I miss books here! I have read the ones I brought with me so many times that I know them by heart. At first my family thought it was strange that I spend my winter afternoons reading, but that is the time when there is enough daylight to forgo candles. I have my spot by the window where I drag over a stool, wrap up in my cloak to protect myself from drafts, and read. The books I brought with me were mainly chosen for their benefit to the school: one each about the history of the coastal lands, agriculture, constellations, mathematics and healing. Then I also brought some of the poet Erva’s collected legends and tales from his travels through Lagora, Lavora, Urundien, the Akkade plains, Rovas, Devenland and all the other lands along the southern coast. I have read this one over and over again.
Mother is not best pleased about me sitting idle, as she sees it, and Father—well, Father rarely says much. He busies himself greasing boots or knotting baskets or repairing tools. Then one afternoon when Náraes and the children were visiting and everybody was occupied—Mother was patching a pair of trousers, I was knitting a pair of socks for Akios, Akios and Father were weaving baskets, Náraes was nursing Dúlan and Maressa was playing with leftover yarn—Father said something quite unexpected.
“It sure would be nice to know what’s in those books you read, Maresi.”
Mother looked up.
“I agree,” said Akios. “I can already read a little, but it takes me a long time. And most of them are written in a language I don’t know.”
“Would you like to hear?” I looked with surprise at my family.
“Oh yes!” Náraes’s face lit up. Seeing her excitement, there was no way Mother could object. Náraes has had a difficult autumn and we have all done what we can to ease her burdens and bring her a little happiness. I put down my knitting and fetched Erva’s collection. It is the book containing all the most ancient legends of Lavora: Landebast, who founded the capital and named it after his white-haired daughter Laga; the hero Olok, who slew the terrible sea monster Keal; Unna the Seafarer; and Arra the Raven-Haired, whose song brought mountains crashing down on her enemies and who went on to become Lavora’s most beloved queen. It is the same story that Heo always used to ask you to read, Sister O. I decided to start with that one.
I sat by the window, wrapped in my cloak, crossed my legs, placed the book on my lap and started to read aloud.
I read and read and read and no one in the room uttered a word. I read until the light outside began to fade and the words became harder to see. Then Mother got up from her seat, lit two candles and placed them on the table. I moved into their light and read on while Mother prepared the evening meal. Once the food was served I looked up in a daze, my head swimming with the blue-and-white mosaics of Lagora, and Arra’s nocturnal meetings with Prince Surando.
“I can see the pictures in my head,” said Náraes. “It’s like I’m there in the forest, and in the city, and at the harbor, and in Evia’s house.”
“It’s like our ballads,” said Father thoughtfully. “You can know things that happened in places you’ve never been.”
“And long ago, besides,” I said. “The legend of Arra is very old.”
“Nobody could remember such a long song,” said Mother. “But in those black marks it’s preserved forever.”
“Some songs are very old too,” I said. “But they change over the years. Every singer adds their own touch.”
“Carry on, Maresi!” said Maressa. “More!”
“We’re eating now,” said Mother. “Come and sit down, everybody.”
But once we had finished eating, Mother lit another candle so that I could continue reading.
Now I read aloud from Erva’s collection every day. Náraes and Jannarl come with the children when the day’s tasks are done, and then the whole family sits together while I read. It makes me happier than anything—maybe even happier than sitting in the treasure chamber and reading alone, because when I read aloud we experience the events of the story together. We can discuss them afterward. And I love looking up from the book and seeing Maressa sitting with her mouth agape, hanging on every word, and seeing my mother bent over her sewing yet so engrossed in the story that she looks up the moment I stop reading and silently demands that I continue. This is the closest we have ever been. It makes me wish that the winter would never end.
Yet I cannot sit inside interminably, although this is how Rovasians traditionally spend the long winters. It is not in my nature. I do go out as well, in the morning when the sun sparkles on the snow and casts long, bluish shadows. Of course, that just makes me all the more peculiar in the eyes of others. Apart from Mother, strangely enough, who hands me my socks and gloves and makes sure I go out every day, whatever the weather. I have gloves that I knit myself and woolen socks and Father’s old felt boots and my lovely warm hooded cloak. I have whittled a staff to lean on when I get tired during my walks, and I am in the process of engraving it with shells and snakes, apples and roses, and all the phases of the moon. It is no masterpiece, but it is a good thing to have.
First I usually walk one circuit around the village, wearing Father’s felt boots, and then stop in to see Tauer in the neighboring village. I have taken to assisting him with his daily tasks. Many people turn to him for help, but few offer a helping hand in return. They give him gifts in gratitude, and those gifts are his sustenance. When I was there at the end of autumn he gave me a young goat, one of his own goat’s yearling kids. I believe I grew in Mother’s estimation when I came home with the animal. At last I am contributing something substantial to our table!
When I came here last spring I thought that Tauer dealt in mere quackery and willingly deceived the poor village folk. Now I know better. He has very patiently taught me what he knows, and explained his methods. There is certainly one area in which Tauer’s knowledge is far greater than mine, and that is about the people of Jóla, Sáru and other villages nearby.
He gives them what they need to cure their ailments if he is able—herbs, ointments, good advice—but then he flavors it with a little mysticism.
“It tends to help more if there’s an element of magic,” he explained to me the other day. “Rubbing ointment on a wart is nothing, but if I tell them to go out at midnight and wait at a three-way crossroads, then they feel like they’ve really done something worthwhile.” He chuckled. “Then, if the wart-sufferer happens to be a particularly uncouth young man, I might add that it will only disappear if his heart is pure. Then I give him a weaker salve, and when the wart is slow to disappear, it might encourage him to examine his conscience just a smidgen.”
He is wise in a way that I did not see before. He makes use of everything he knows about the villagers and their families, like with Árvan’s mother. He gave her a salve for her bad back that contained many of the same pain-relieving herbs and roots that I have learned about. But he told her she must apply it in the evening and then stay absolutely silent until dawn.
“And that wasn’t for her sake so much as for that son of hers,” he smiled. “So that his poor ears might get a little respite from her nagging and complaining, at least at night.”
Once finished at Tauer’s, I leave the village and resume my walk. It has not snowed much yet this winter, so walking is not too difficult. I can be alone with the wind and the animal tracks and the cawing of ravens and crows, in sun or cloud. I often walk through the forest. How I love the woods in winter. Frost on the branches, green patches under the densest trees, the translucent winter sun filtering through the branches.
The only human sounds I hear are the chopping of Kárun’s ax and the blows of his hammer, coming from the construction site. He is building himself a new house on the hill between Sáru and Jóla. Sometimes, when I hear that he is up there I sneak into his cabin. Naturally, it is never locked. Kárun has nothing that anyone would want to steal. I do not know why I go there, but it feels so exciting and forbidden! My heart beats wildly and I jump at every tiny sound, even though I know that
he is busy building.
His cabin is very simple. It is made of unstripped, unsealed logs. His father built it, or so I heard from Akios, who knows all sorts of things about Kárun. There is a wide bed in one corner, without any curtains. It must be where Kárun’s mother and father used to sleep. I do not know where he slept as a child. Maybe with them. The bed has a straw mattress with a coarse linen cover. Kárun has no bedsheets, only a thick woolen blanket to cover himself with and another smaller blanket folded up as a pillow. The house is sparsely furnished: a table and bench; a small clothes chest; a home-woven mat on the floor. Perhaps his mother made it. A fireplace, some pots, a bucket, a drum of salted fish. A few circles of rye crispbread hang from the ceiling. Timber-rafters are indeed even poorer than farmers. In winter they chop down trees, and in spring and summer they float the timber on to cities and boatyards and other places where wood is needed. They get paid, but not much. Kárun only lives in his house for part of the year. The cold part.
Sometimes I sit on the bed and listen to the wind whistling through the cracks. I wonder why he has remained in that drafty old cabin for so long.
My fingers itch to tidy up for him. Wash the mat. Scrub the pots until they shine. Bring some bedsheets. Of course I cannot, because then he would know that I had been there. I am careful to erase any traces that I have even sat on the bed.
ϖ
I am writing to you all, but it feels like nothing more than shouting into the night sky. Nobody hears me, and I receive no reply. The winter is relentless, never-ending. I have been home for nearly a year, and I have done nothing. I used the Mother Abbess’s silver to pay off the village’s debts to the nádor. But that is not what I came here to do. I wanted to open windows and doors. I wanted to show the people of Rovas that the world is wide, that their lives are not predetermined and their futures are in their hands. Yet I am unable to influence or help even my own family. Náraes lost her son. Akios is learning to read, but for what purpose? He is destined to take over the farm. What good will literacy do him? I have become a storyteller, a stay-at-home daughter who turns down marriage proposals, ever waiting. For what? I do not know. I no longer know anything. I feel lost and alone.
Forgive me. I probably will not send this letter. I do not want you to know of my failures. Maresi, who was supposed to go forth and change the world, has accomplished nothing. My whole being is one big failure. All I can do is entertain my family with tales, teach Maressa and Akios to read, and make cabbage soup. According to Mother, I cannot even do that right.
Géros has a new girl, Tunéli. It comforts me to know that whatever he felt for me was not true love. He was driven by lust, as was I. Driven by the desires of our bodies. I am glad, because it means neither of us is suffering. Still, I do feel a little prick in my heart when I see them together in the afternoons, not because I miss him but because it is a blow to my vanity, every time.
I enjoyed feeling desired for a while.
Here is the reason why I am so downhearted: one evening Father suggested that I should open up our home as my school. We could gather the village children at our hearth during the times of the year when their work is least needed around the farm. Mother said nothing to support or contradict the idea. So I visited each local farmstead in turn and asked if the families would send their little ones to our house for three afternoons a week. None came but Maressa.
On the third afternoon little Lenna from White Farm appeared too. She stamped the frost and snowy grit from her boots and slammed the door shut.
“Well, is there a school here or not?” She looked around. Maressa was sitting by the window writing letters on a board. She has become very good at it now, and can write her own name.
I stared at her. Lenna was the last person I was expecting. She is practically a little housewife already. She cooks and sews and embroiders and is interested in gossip and hairstyles.
“Of course. If you . . . if you could just sit down next to Maressa.”
“She has already begun learning?”
“I have been teaching her letters since last summer.”
“Well, I’m older, I’ll catch up. Where can I hang my cardigan?”
Lenna has proven to be a very enthusiastic pupil. She thoroughly enjoys learning, but has very little patience and wants to be able to do everything at once (just like Heo!). She chatters incessantly, but asks all sorts of questions with equal zeal. Sometimes I feel like you must have felt, Sister O, when I used to ask you at least a hundred questions per day. I am trying to show the same patience as you always did, and to answer all the questions I can.
However, two pupils—one of whom is my own niece—is no school. It is nothing. Lenna and Maressa are my pupils, but I only teach them to read and count, and I cannot bring myself to take any payment.
The villagers suspect that I want to fill their children’s heads with intellectual nonsense of no practical use that only takes time away from their real work.
There are so many things I need to talk about that no one here would understand. On the occasions when I have tried to speak about what I did in the crypt, or how I heard the Crone’s voice on Menos, and again in the burial grove, Mother withdraws from me. She changes the subject. She turns away. I wonder if she might be afraid of me. Sometimes I think she is. Once, when I was telling Maressa about life on Menos, about the bloodsnails and the morning wash and the sun greeting and other entirely normal things, Mother stared at me for a long time.
“I can hardly believe that I bore and raised you,” she said. “Who are you, Maresi Enresdaughter?”
Her words hurt terribly. I have asked myself this ever since. Who am I? And why is Mother so angry? Or is it that she is afraid?
So there are certain things I keep to myself.
Mother is disappointed in me too, both because I am so strange, and because despite all this strangeness I achieve nothing.
“If they aren’t coming to your school,” she said, “maybe you should consider making some changes to your behavior here in the village.” She did not look at me as she said this. “Act a bit more like everyone else. Like Náraes or Péra. Then once they’ve got used to you maybe they’ll send their children to your school. It’s not as hard as you think, to change yourself, to imitate others and fit in.”
I did not respond. I did not want to show her how much these words hurt me. I am not good enough for Mother, and she believes that it would be better for everyone if I tried harder to conform.
Perhaps she is right. Perhaps it would be better for everyone. But if I become like them, and stay indoors sewing and cooking, and welcome the courtship of some village boy, then I will not be myself. How can I teach others if I lose my own self? I would slowly become one of them, and become complacent. People who are complacent do not try to change things. I must remain strange. I have to make a difference. I have to be the difference.
I know that I am contradicting myself. I already am different, but I get nothing done.
Oh Sister O, please do not tell the others of my failings.
Your novice,
Dear Jai,
Winter continues. More snow has fallen and the nights are bitterly cold, but the sun is already bringing a little warmth and light to the days. Now is the time to take to the woods for hunting and fishing. It is usually only the men and boys who ski out on hunting trips with sleds full of supplies, but Father has always taken out whichever of us was old enough to cope with the hardship: first Náraes, then Náraes and me, and finally all three of us. I had been looking forward to this hunting trip for a long time. I am itching all over from these endless days spent inside, though reading aloud and my little “school” have helped to pass the time. Besides, I have always enjoyed these ski trips and missed them even when I was at the Abbey.
Mother and I packed food for the journey: rye bread; matured goat’s cheese Tauer had given me; a cured sausage we obtained through trade; a small pouch of salt. The hens are not laying currently, so alas there were no boi
led eggs. We were counting on mainly eating what we could hunt or fish. Father made me a new pair of skis. They are beautiful, with fur on the underside of one so they slide well on the hard snow crust but are not too slippery on the slopes. We wrapped ourselves up in every warm garment we own, and I was glad for the long woolen underpants Mother had knit for me. I had knit myself a pair of thick gloves and a cap, and then I wore trousers of homespun wool and two shirts, one very thick woolen sweater I inherited from my grandmother, and my woolen cloak on top of it all. Thus equipped, off we went: Father, Akios and I. Jannarl had considered joining us, but opted to join Máros instead and set off a couple of days before we did.
Father pulled the sled behind him, so Akios and I were free to just ski and enjoy the fresh air in our lungs. The sun was shining as we set off, and the magpies were chittering in the bushes around the frozen, snow-covered stream. We followed the stream eastward into the forest. There were no ski marks to follow on the hard snow crust, and it was so smooth that it was a constant struggle to prevent the skis from slipping and sliding in all directions. It had snowed a great deal, and the forest was beautifully adorned: the snow-laden branches bowed deeply toward the ground. It was quiet—as quiet as only a forest under a blanket of snow can be. A kite flew silently overhead. And yet, when I pulled down my hood and listened very closely, I could hear a tone resonating from the very earth. At first I thought the freezing cold must be causing something to reverberate, but the tone followed us throughout the forest. The others did not seem to hear it. It sounded like a string someone had plucked long ago that was still vibrating with a barely audible tone. It rippled through my skis and boots and into my body, causing my teeth to hum.
I think it was the tone of Rovas itself, and as the day rolled on and we skied ever farther my whole body began to hum with it as well. It was a pleasant sensation, and it gave me the strength to keep up with Father’s pace even when my legs and arms were shaking with strain.
Red Mantle Page 13
