This man knows how to live in the mountains, Wing thought as he reached the table and steadied himself against a chair. The feel of the chair under his hands caused Wing to look down.
Mesko wood? Wing thought. He looked the chair over. And it’s nearly perfect. That’s not an easy thing to do with Mesko.
“There you go. Eat up and get movin’ on,” the old man said pushing a plate toward him. From beneath the pile of food at its center, Wing could see that the plate had been engraved with what looked to be a tree.
“Thank you for taking me in, patching me up,” Wing said in Rieevan. He was still too tired to try and muddle through with the painfully little Fultershier he knew from Nien’s insistence.
“I’ve fixed up more wounded animals than you’ll see in a lifetime,” the man replied in Rieevan.
Wing gripped the chair harder, staring at the man openly.
“Don’t be so surprised,” the man spat at him. “Clearly not all of us are as uneducated as you Rieevans are. I know four different languages, besides the Fultershier, which you just slaughtered by the way.”
“But how…?” Wing asked.
“Little things called books,” he snarled. “Another thing Rieevans know painfully little about. Or so I’ve been told, since no one’s allowed to visit.”
The venom in the man’s tone seemed excessive for someone who’d never been to Rieeve, but Wing thought better than to persist. Besides, there was a greater matter at hand: Wing had to stay, he needed to recover, and he needed to learn what the man knew if he had any hope of reaching Legran.
“I need to get to Legran,” Wing said, grateful that he could speak Rieevan.
“Good luck.” The old man looked him over. “The condition you’re in, I’m surprised you made it to the table.” With that he headed toward the door; but in a motion that surprised the old man no more than Wing himself, Wing made it to the door first and planted his hand firmly against it. “Will you teach me how to live out here — ?”
Like I was once able to live with Rieeve, with the fields, with the land there…
The man squinted up at Wing. “Where’d you come from, anyway?”
Wing felt the muscles in his throat constrict around the word: “Rieeve.”
“They don’t teach those kinds of things there, Rieevan?”
“No,” Wing replied flatly,
Quiet for a breath, the old man lowered his head and muttered, “Goes to figure. I open my door to someone more than once a revolution and suddenly they’re moving in.” Straightening his coat, he glanced up at Wing. “The name’s Rhusta. And it’s not about living out here, Rieevan,” again, Wing noticed, with the same disdain, “it’s about surviving.”
“You’re not starving,” Wing said, indicating him.
“I’m not.” And Rhusta reached for the door again. “Kindly move your hand.”
Wing understood Rhusta’s words to be a caution, not a question, but he kept his hand where it was.
Rhusta looked up into Wing’s face, something in his gaze both portentous and melancholic. “Trust me on this, you should just go back home. It’s apparent your people aren’t meant to be out and about.”
Home.
The word entered Wing like a sharp blade. He bent a little and his eyes fell to the floor.
When he looked back up an anger surged behind his feverish eyes with such intensity that Wing felt as surprised by it as the old man, Rhusta, appeared to be.
Struggling to control his voice, Wing said, “Teach me.”
A heavy silence drenched the room like rain, forming riverlets of challenge between them.
“I don’t wanna waste my time,” Rhusta finally said.
Wing remained firm. “I promise, you won’t.”
Rhusta’s eyes avoided Wing’s as he turned again to the door. “Eat first. You’re thinner than a Mesko sapling. I’ll be back.”
From the doorway, Wing watched the old man’s back as he moved off with surprising speed across the snowy clearing and disappeared into the trees.
Wing didn’t know how long he’d slept when he woke up to hear Rhusta coming back into the cabin.
Reaching behind the door, Rhusta grabbed a heavy sweater and a long-sleeved leather cloak and threw it at Wing. The clothing landed at Wing’s feet where he lie by the fireplace.
Wing looked up.
“Well, you coming or not?”
Wing got to his feet, painfully pulled on his boots and, crawling into the sweater, swung the cloak around his shoulders and followed Rhusta as fast as he could toward a nearby brook. The edges of the brook were frozen, but there were some large boulders, dark backs to the sun; upon one of these Rhusta sat and handing Wing a strip of what looked like the dried entrails of an animal, gave him orders to watch. Taking a long, thick stick in one hand, Rhusta tied the catgut into a notch at the head of the stick. He then dug around in the dirt next to him and came up with a small, jagged bit of bone.
“And if you want, you can even hook one of these little fellows on the end.” Producing a worm, he forced it over the point of the bone.
Watching, Wing did the same, then cast his roughly hewn fishing pole into the stream in front of him.
The first four days were spent in much the same way, and Wing was grateful for the rest. Silence seemed to be the order of almost every day with Rhusta; not that Wing minded overly. He had little mind to talk and most of what did come out of Rhusta’s mouth contained a certain hostility that Wing found impossible to understand and difficult to bear. Still, the long sunsteps in the sun on the bank of the brook warmed Wing’s cold, worn body and a steady compliment of food began to renew his strength.
It was somewhere near the end of the second turn as the two sat at the edge of a crystal-clear pool that Wing had the audacity to ask a question: “Did you say you speak the language of Legran as well?”
Rhusta raised an eyebrow at him before looking away into the pool. “Of course,” he said.
“Will you teach me?”
“That, too?” he growled.
The next day, Wing received his first lesson in arrow making spoken in the language of Legran.
As the two sat side-by-side on the front deck of the cabin under pale rays of sunlight, carving and shaping the springy wood they’d scouted out for use as shafts, Wing wondered how long Rhusta had lived up here. Part of him wanted to ask — it should have been such a simple question. But it wasn’t. Nothing was simple with the old man.
Wing tensed and released his shoulders. He really wanted to leave. If he could learn enough of the Legran language, perhaps Master Monteray would be more willing to converse than the old man.
Wing laughed silently to himself. Me, wanting to talk. He glanced up at Rhusta whose head was bent over his work, his gnarled but nimble fingers working the wood with surprising grace. What you bring out in me, Wing thought. The desire for things I’d normally take pains to shun.
As time-consuming and difficult as the making of arrows had been, bow-making proved to be of an altogether different complexity. The two spent days just finding the right tree. Once they’d found it, they took the trunk — a span at least Wing’s height — and the work really began. By the end of three days, Wing’s hands were blistered and his body sore. It was only then that Rhusta thanked Wing for his help, informing him that the wood would make some fine bows in the revolutions to come.
“What?” Wing said.
“The wood’s got to season, see,” Rhusta said. “So that’s why we’re going to use these staves here.” His eyes glinted. “I traded for them in Legran two seasons ago.”
After the many sunsteps, the blistered and bloodied hands, the aching muscles — Wing could only look at him.
“I’m doing all this for you, here, cramping my life. Least you could do is help me out for future.”
Clearly, this was what passed as humour for the old man.
Rhusta’s sadistic levity aside, as time progressed and the two men began the work of making gl
ue and drying and fitting sinew to the seasoned staves from Legran, Wing discovered something unexpected — a feeling that reminded him of the joy he’d once felt working with his father. Even though Rhusta rarely gave spoken direction (Wing had learned quickly to watch and follow), it seemed as if the two of them had stumbled upon a familiar rhythm. There were even times when Wing suspected that Rhusta was beginning to enjoy his company.
With the bows completed and strung, Wing began the next phase of his training by chasing Rhusta all over the hills, hiding behind shrub and tree, getting wet and cold, waiting and watching.
“It’s about stalking,” Rhusta had said. “You move well and you’re patient. You just can’t be afraid to let that arrow go.”
The old man had never yet proffered the remotest compliment, so Wing let it go. Besides, Rhusta was right. Like a sword, the bow and its arrows just felt wrong in Wing’s hands. And looking at the fent, watching as it nibbled on a tall shrub...well, killing it mid-nibble felt wrong, too.
It also didn’t help that whenever he did manage to let an arrow go, his reflex was to close his eyes.
He missed every time.
“Think you could contribute to the evening meal sometime?” Rhusta asked part way through the following turn.
Day had gratefully passed into evening, and as the fire died down to coals and the sun began to fade over the mountainous horizon, Rhusta sat at the side of the fire, belching in gratification at having once again enjoyed a hearty meal. Wing sat a little way off, gazing out the window up toward a distant hillside and a dark stand of solitary trees huddled below the rocky peaks.
“Well?” Rhusta said.
Wing offered him a muted glance.
It was the night following the third day of hunting and Wing was hungry and tired. They’d tracked a large je’der all day, but when the perfect opportunity had come Wing had been unable to shoot the arrow. Rhusta dropped the animal instead. He’d then launched into a demonstration of what could be done with nearly every part of the poor creature: They scooped out and boiled the brains, split the gut, pulled out the entrails, and separated the hide from every possible ligament and sinew. By the time they’d sat down inside the cabin to eat, Wing was exhausted (mentally and physically), and had hardly any appetite left. Rhusta, however, had plowed into the meal like it might be his last and when finally satiated wiped his mouth and, pointing to the pot of boiling brains, said, “The juice from the brain there we’ll use to tan the hide, and I’ll show you how to do it right, otherwise you’ll chafe your skin clean off.”
“Off?”
“You need clothes, Rieevan. Clothes that will survive out here, not that crap you came here in.”
More with the jabs, Wing thought. But the old man was right, his clothes were in tatters, he did need something heartier.
“So,” Rhusta continued, “once the innards are dry, you use them to string your bow or tie into line for fishing, right?”
At that point Wing had simply nodded. All he’d wanted was to sleep.
Now, beside the fire, Rhusta obviously thought Wing had not heard his not-so-subtle reprimand and decided to restate it in even less delicate terms: “Won’t do you much good to learn all this if you can’t, actually, see it through.”
To both their surprises, Wing found Rhusta’s statement fiendishly amusing. He laughed — a dark hint of a laugh. “Well, that about sums it up.”
Rhusta’s brow furrowed. “Sums what up?”
There was so much Wing could have said in explanation about all the things he’d not seen through. His study of the Ancient Writings that had uncovered not a single answer. The repeated offers to join the Cant that he’d turned down. The warning visions he’d tried but failed to understand. Even his desire to let the mountains have their way with him had fallen just short.
Fle ke’ tey, he thought. I can’t even die right.
But all this Wing left unsaid and unexplained.
“Well,” Rhusta said over Wing’s continued silence, “don’t wait to eat your own kill. I don’t want you dying of starvation now when you’re just barely recovered from the last time.”
Wing was sure that was Rhusta’s way of being kind, but he didn’t bother to stop the only reply that came to mind: “Don’t worry that you may succeed where Eosha failed.”
Wing felt Rhusta’s eyes cut to him, then quickly look away. Unable to tell what impression his response had — whether the old man had felt guilty, amused, or inclined to deride him for self-pity — Wing didn’t really care.
If I can retain even half of what he’s teaching me, Wing thought, I’ll be able to make it to Legran — finish one thing. After that, it doesn’t really matter.
Beside him, Rhusta returned his gaze to the fire and, like Wing, said nothing.
Chapter 53
Surfacing
W ing came in the cabin near the end of the fourth turn to find the old man gone; he didn’t wonder where he was. He and the old man were both creatures who preferred their alone time and, therefore, needed as much as possible living together as they were in the one-roomed cabin.
Glancing around, Wing wondered what there might be to make an evening meal of.
Walking across the room toward the small wood stove and cupboards beside them, he decided to take the opportunity while Rhusta was gone to look over the cabin wares that resembled the Rieevan style so closely. Taking up a ceramic jug and rolling it slowly in his hand, both admiring and curious, Wing’s eye caught a small brown-clad book amid a long row on the second shelf of Rhusta’s bookshelf. Setting the jug back in its place, Wing stepped to the bookshelf and pulled it out. Carefully, he opened the worn pages. There was a bit of scribbled writing in the margins that Wing did not recognize, yet the text itself was as familiar as his own hands — it was a copy of the Ancient Writings. And it was hand written in Rieevan.
How did Rhusta get a copy of the Ancient Writings in my language?
Bewildered, Wing went to look in the front of the book where the family name and its history would be written, but caught only a glimpse of a name before he heard Rhusta upon the door of the cabin. Closing the book, he pushed it back between the others and took a few quick steps away from the old wooden shelf, pretending to busy himself with his original thought: Dinner.
Coming inside, slapping dust off his legs and hanging up his coat, Rhusta said, “You hungry?”
“E’te,” Wing replied though he’d managed to lose his appetite upon discovering the small copy of the Ancient Writings.
“Good, there’s got to be some unfortunate critter in the trap down by the pond,” Rhusta said, sitting down and removing his boots in the chair next to the bookshelf.
Wing glanced sideways at the books, hoping he had not left something out of place that might catch Rhusta’s eye. No sooner had he the thought, then Rhusta reached up and dug out the small ledger with one gnarled finger. Wing grimaced; he’d pushed it too far into the shelf. Pretending not to notice and hoping Rhusta would simply exact the book and get on with the evening’s routine, Wing stiffened when Rhusta asked, “Can you read?” his voice alloyed with the blunt tone Wing was accustomed to.
“Yes,” Wing said, noting the insult.
“Well, good. Looks like they taught you something there.” Rhusta tossed him the book. “I’d like to get your opinion on something.”
Wing missed catching the book and bent to pick it up; he heard Rhusta sigh.
“On what?” Wing asked. He’d begun to feel sick in his belly.
“Your people, your race, they have a, uh, how to say — an interesting take on the book. Would you agree?”
Wing glanced at him. He had no idea what any of the other valleys knew or believed about the Ancient Writings, except for what Nien had told him.
“Interesting…?” Wing asked.
“They actually believe in it, as in, it speaks the truth of god?”
“Yes,” Wing admitted, wondering where Rhusta’s line of questioning was going.
Rhusta snorted. “Typical. I’d heard your people are pious in the extreme.” Wing swallowed, trying to conceal the pain Rhusta’s words struck in him. “Are you aware, Rieevan, that other valleys do not share this belief?”
“I know most Quienans don’t seem to,” Wing said.
“Indeed, they don’t. In fact, no other race that I know of does.”
“So,” Wing asked, both resenting Rhusta’s tone but also curious. “What do they think it is?”
Rhusta shrugged. “Like any other historical account — a thing providing information, a memoir of sorts, one side of history.” Rhusta hesitated ever so briefly. “The opinions of dead men.”
“Not a high appraisal,” Wing noted, voice tight.
“Should it be? Many books have been written. The gods — your Eosha — why should such an idea or a being not speak to all, but only to a few who had the propensity for scribbling?”
Wing couldn’t think of a reason. It was, he realized, a conversation Nien would love to be having, though possibly not in this way, not with the apparent, however confusing, antagonism in Rhusta’s voice. “You seem to have all the answers.” Wing indicated the book. “So why ask my opinion?”
“Guess I don’t need to now. Your questions just confirmed what I suspected: that your people, the Rieevans, believe the book to be true. A thing of god. And none of them have the imagination to consider that it just might not be true for everyone, or for anyone, really.”
Wing swallowed. He didn’t like the old man much at the moment and hated even more that he’d just spoken Wing’s own mind. So many times, Wing had battled with that same question and come to the same conclusion.
Unhappily, Wing said, “True or not, my people believed they were, yes.”
Wing & Nien Page 43