The Waters Rising

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Yet one would suppose you have many friends, all around the world,” said Precious Wind.

  Sister Tomea smiled, a small, catlike smile. “I do not presume to say it is true, but one might suppose that, yes. Now, one more thing before I take you back to your rooms. Those of us with blue veils and stoles are responsible for the hospitality of the abbey. You are guests, and we are the ones who see to your needs and comfort. If you need something, ask any of us blues, or ask any brother or sister to find one of us for you.”

  “Your colleague in brown is assigned to the stables?” asked Bear.

  “He is a brother of the soil, which includes the stables, the barns, the farms, the tillage of the earth, the animals, the use of their manure on the land, the wagons and carts, the maintenance of roads, the building of walls. The green brethren are the planters and tenders of trees, pastures, and crop land. Red stoles are our healers. One of our many educational arms is the college of healing. Gray robes with hoods and black bands are architects and planners who see that we have irrigation channels and drinking water and that our refuse is properly disposed of so we don’t generate illnesses. Black robes are scholars and teachers. Helmed men are among our warriors. Those who are leather clad or those with leather aprons are craftsmen of one kind or another: potters, woodworkers, carpenters, masons. Scholars and craftsmen wear an insignia on the left shoulder that tells what they do. Only our singers wear unadorned white. The abbot and prior and other members of the council wear gold.

  “Now, are you ready for a night’s rest?”

  Xulai nodded, heaving a great sigh of relief. She wanted nothing more than to sleep, preferably for a long time, and she could see from the expression on Precious Wind’s face that she agreed. There was something she needed to talk with Precious Wind about, but . . . she could do it later. Bear led the menfolk off in another direction while Xulai and the women followed Sister Tomea, finding the route of corridors, gates, and cloisters almost familiar.

  Xulai had thought of reading something—there were books on the shelves of their sitting room—but when she entered the room she staggered, overcome by weariness so deep and punishing that it was like a sudden sickness. Without a word, Oldwife and Precious Wind led her into the bedroom, where Oldwife helped her undress, pulled a nightgown over her head, and tucked the covers under her chin.

  “Oldwife, is my face dirty?” Xulai murmured.

  “Would I have let you go to dinner with a dirty face? Why would you ask that?”

  “Ever since I’ve been here, it’s like people don’t look directly at me. They sort of stare over my shoulder.”

  Oldwife tucked the blanket more closely. “You’re just tired. Go to sleep now.”

  Fat black-and-white Bothercat came to curl near her shoulder; spotted Vexcat stretched along her side, the unvarying rhythm of their purring floating her even deeper into stillness.

  The older women left the room, shutting the door behind them. From Xulai’s cloak pocket a small black nose appeared, whiskers twitched, a head emerged. It was not a very large creature, but it was most certainly a good deal larger than a chipmunk.

  Xulai dreamed. She had become a tree, a tiny one, roots clipped, limbs clipped, wired into a strange, lopsided shape and planted in a shallow bowl. She was very happy in her bowl, but something had happened to it. It was cracked.

  “Broken,” someone said firmly. “It cannot be mended again.”

  Xulai felt for the crack with one of her roots. The sensation was like feeling for a loose tooth with her tongue, feeling around the break, the hole, fascinated by the rough underside of the tooth and the tenuous fragility of its connection to her. Her root pressed into the fault. Under the increased pressure the bowl cracked wide; a piece of it fell outward. Her root went sliding after it, searching for something. Soil. Deep soil.

  She found it. Ecstasy came as energy flowed upward from the earth. She sensed more of it waiting in every direction. There was room for her roots to move, to ramify. There were no boundaries. She flexed her limbs and the wires around them loosened the tiniest bit. She put out a bud and slightly extended a leaf.

  “Enough,” said someone into her ear, stronger than a chipmunk voice, more forceful. “Enough for now.”

  She wanted to argue, but it was too much trouble. It had been such a long, long day . . . trip . . . life . . . time.

  Xulai woke in the morning with the memory of her dream quite clear. It stayed with her as she sat up, waking the cats, who had been curled against her side. Yawning, she fumbled her way to the washbasin, trying to hold on to the dream as she washed her face, combed her hair, still half-dreaming as she put on the clothes she had worn the evening before.

  Oldwife’s bed was empty. She had risen early, as she always did: up with the chickens, as she herself said, and to bed with them also. Before leaving the room, Xulai thrust her hand into the pocket of her cloak, which was hanging on a hook beside the door, and stood very still, eyes wide with shock. Very slowly, she withdrew her hand and stepped back. A nose emerged, whiskers, two black eyes considerably larger than chipmunk eyes, two small round ears, then a body that came out a bit at a time and kept on coming. Front legs, a long, brown belly, back legs, a long, long tail. On the bed, the cats sat up, ears pricked, and watched very carefully, without moving.

  “Cookies and grain did very well for chipmunk,” the creature said. “I will need meat. Or fish. I can also make do with eggs.”

  “What?” she asked. “I mean, who?”

  “Suit yourself.” The creature nodded. “I’d suggest a name that’s not species dependent. It’ll save you changing it every little while.”

  “Species?”

  “This one? I’m sure it’s the weasel family. Perhaps mink, or ferret, or perhaps a young fisher. Ah, yes, that has a certain resonance. A young one, not fully grown. Don’t worry about it now, just remember the eggs.”

  The creature disappeared into the pocket of the cloak once more, and Xulai, her eyes still wide with surprise, trailed by cats, went into the sitting room and across it to open the outside door for them. When she turned, she found Oldwife and Precious Wind sitting by the woodstove where the kettle steamed, staring at her, their teacups unregarded in their hands.

  “What?” she said testily.

  Oldwife said in a strangled voice, “Child! Why, you don’t look like yourself!”

  There were no mirrors in the bedrooms but there was one in the dressing area of the bathroom. Poised before it, Xulai stared at a stranger. No. Not a stranger, just someone unfamiliar. It was herself, but she looked thinner and much less childish. Precious Wind came in and peered over her shoulder.

  In a voice totally lacking surprise, she said, “Well, overnight you’ve grown up a bit.”

  “Overnight?” Xulai cried angrily. Change was one thing, but this was something else again! “People don’t grow up overnight.”

  “Of course not. What I meant was . . . I think you have ordinarily appeared much younger than you really were.”

  “This is the same dress I wore last night! It fits. It fit me yesterday and when we left Woldsgard, so I obviously haven’t grown!” She stamped back into the sitting room, angry for no reason she could name. “Nettie made me this dress ages ago. It still fits. So I can’t have grown any. Where is she? She’ll tell you.”

  Oldwife and Precious Wind shared a glance, then Oldwife said coaxingly, “Nettie is visiting with her aunt. She never measured you when she made your clothes, Xulai. She just took a piece of cord from your shoulder to the floor and knotted it, then one from the middle of your neck to the shoulder, from the shoulder to the wrist, around your waist, around your chest—come to think of it, she recently changed that one . . .”

  “My chest?” Xulai put her hands inside the long striped coat to feel her chest, strangely soft. “I have . . . I have breasts?”

  “I don’t know,” said Oldwife. “I never saw breasts on you, and I’ll guess you never saw them, but then, maybe both you and
we were only allowed to see a little girl.”

  “You all stay here,” Xulai muttered. She went back to the mirror and stripped off the clothes she had just put on. She had breasts. They were not large; Tingawan women didn’t have large breasts. But they were definitely present. She raised her arms, felt of her groin. She had hair growing both places, dark and silky. Precious Wind had explained this long ago in the bath at Woldsgard. Precious Wind had told her all about women and how they changed when they were no longer children. Women did the moonblood thing, too, that monthly thing. This could not have happened overnight, and yet she would have sworn yesterday that she had no breasts, no hair growing on her body.

  In the mirror she saw herself shaking, though she couldn’t tell whether it came from anger or fear. Panic, perhaps. She wanted to cry or scream. She put her clothes back on, awkwardly mishandling the buttons with trembling fingers. It would have been pleasant to curl into a ball on her bed and pretend this was not happening. She had known persons at Woldsgard to do that when confronted with unpleasant reality. Farmer Gilsek’s widow did so after he died, Old Fennig, who worked at the forge, when his son ran off. Curling up in a ball hadn’t helped either of them, so it was unlikely to help her. She took three deep breaths and concentrated on the Way of the Turtle, an exercise Precious Wind had taught her when she was very young and excitable. The Way of the Turtle was slow and placid and very, very quiet.

  She went slowly back to the sitting room, where she poured, very slowly, a cup of tea, keeping her hands still, her mind still. When she had seated herself and sipped at it, very slowly, she said in as calm a voice as she could muster, “I have breasts. I have hair on my body. It didn’t come overnight, so I’ve been like this for some time. But you two haven’t seen it? Last night in the bath, you didn’t see it, Precious Wind?”

  “We didn’t see it.” Separately and in unison.

  Xulai tried to set the tea mug onto the table and succeeded only in spilling it on the floor.

  “Sit down,” said Oldwife to Precious Wind in a firm and commanding voice quite unlike her usual one. “Xulai is upset and she’s obviously got to be told, and since the ones mostly concerned are here and she’s already upset, this seems as good a time as any. Where are the men?”

  “Gone to breakfast,” Precious Wind said. “We won’t be disturbed for a while.”

  Xulai put her cup on the table and folded her hands in her lap, trying desperately not to be angry at them, any of them, or all of them! “If there’s something to be told, I believe it may be past time to tell it!”

  Oldwife wiped her lips with her handkerchief and took a deep breath.

  “Justinian, Duke of Woldsgard, and Xu-i-lok were in love. No, no, listen, don’t flounce! I’m telling you. I have to start at the beginning. They were like two birds on a branch, giddy with happiness. They were betrothed and set a date for the wedding, but they did not wait on the wedding to love one another, and by the time the wedding date arrived, Xu-i-lok was several months pregnant.

  “On the morning they were to be wed, she went walking in the woods. She returned white in the face, crying to Justinian that she had been cursed with death and with barrenness, that is, that in the future she would never become pregnant. She cried and laughed and cried again. The laughter was because she was already pregnant, though the one who cursed her had not known that. I was in the next room, making up their bed. I heard it all. I heard her laugh and cry, over and over . . .”

  Her words came out, all in a train, as though rehearsed a thousand times, Xulai vaguely realized, as they no doubt had been.

  Precious Wind caught Oldwife’s glance and took up the story: “She and her father were staying at Woldsgard. The two of them together determined they could defeat the curse. By focusing all their power, they could defeat it for Xu-i-lok, but not for her unborn child. Or they could protect the unborn child, but not Xu-i-lok.

  “Xu-i-lok shut herself up in the shrine room she and her father had set up at Woldsgard. She was in there three days. When she came out, she said she had consulted the spirits of her people, and she told Justinian she chose to save the child. I heard her arguing with her father. He wanted to save her. He said she could have other children. She told him something that I didn’t overhear, and he stopped arguing. However, Xu-i-lok said that in order to protect the child, no one could know there was a child.”

  “You’re talking about me,” said Xulai, white faced. “You’re talking about me!”

  Precious Wind shook her head, held up her hand. “Don’t say anything yet, Xulai. Just listen. Xu-i-lok stayed in her rooms. She and the duke had two marriage ceremonies, one performed by people from the abbey, one by priests from Tingawa. They did them both quietly, privately, with only a few trusted friends as witnesses. Shortly after that, it became known that she had fallen ill. After that, no one was allowed to see her but the duke; her father; Oldwife, who has midwived hundreds of babies in her lifetime; and a couple of Oldwife’s sisters. When the child was born, that is, when you were born, Oldwife and her family smuggled you out of the castle and took you up to the Gancer home in the farmlands toward Karf.

  “The ambassador, your grandfather, was with your mother when you were born, Xulai. I was there, a trusted friend, part of his entourage, which was a large one. Among the larger entourage was a fan waver or serving girl, a rather silly young woman, a remote cousin of a cousin of the ambassador’s family. Her name was Bright Pearl. She surprised no one by falling in love with a Norland lad, a farm boy whose family supplied Ghastain with vegetables. He was in Karf visiting relatives. Bright Pearl married him and went to live on his farm, east of Ghastain. When the ambassador, your grandfather, returned to Tingawa, when he learned that the curse on your mother might be fatal sooner rather than later, he let it be known that the child of Bright Pearl would be Xakixa for his daughter.

  “And what did Bright Pearl think about that?” snarled Xulai.

  “Nothing at all. She never knew anything about it,” said Precious Wind. “She was off in the country with her Norland farmer; she changed her name to plain Pearl—there had never been anything particularly bright about the girl to begin with—and subsequently bore him three sons, all of whom are still raising leeks, parsnips, and potatoes to supply the city and court of Ghastain. We keep an ear open for news of her or her family. She died several years ago during an epidemic of lung disease that swept through several villages. She never knew anything about you or your parents; she never had anything at all to do with the court. No one here in Norland knew what your grandfather told the people in Tingawa. There may be someone there he has trusted with the truth, but I don’t know who that might be. The world believes you are Bright Pearl’s daughter.”

  “And I . . . I was with you all the time?” Xulai said to Oldwife.

  “With me and my two older sisters. They both died years ago. The only ones in Norland who know the truth about your parentage are Precious Wind and your father and me.”

  “Bear doesn’t know?”

  “Bear was sent later,” Precious Wind said. “The . . . the sea wars began to be more troublesome, and your grandfather thought at that point we might need some rather personal kind of protection on the way to Tingawa. Bear has been told the Bright Pearl story; he knows nothing about your real parentage. You’re just Xulai, daughter of Bright Pearl, an obscure family member who is no longer living. Lately, he’s started thinking Xu-i-lok may be haunting you. He believes you use a Tingawan name only because of your function.”

  “But he thinks I was sent from Tingawa.”

  “He was told to say that about you! Actually, he believes you are Bright Pearl’s child and were born here. He believes it is better if you do not know about her, for children have odd notions, sometimes, and go off hunting for fathers and mothers they would be better off without.”

  “Didn’t he think it odd that I didn’t grow up?”

  “He was told you retained the childish appearance as a protection. To keep yo
u safe. A kind of disguise. Which is true.”

  “Bear is tired of being protective,” Xulai said. “He’s talking a lot about getting back to Tingawa.”

  Precious Wind frowned. “I’ve heard him. Your father sent money here for him . . .”

  “I know. He told me. Money for him and for you. Do you have the receipt, Precious Wind?”

  “I do.”

  “Who signed it? Whose seal is on it?”

  “Why, I suppose—”

  “Please. Look. Now.”

  Precious Wind retreated to her room, came back with a folded bit of stiff paper. Xulai looked at it and paled.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “The prior signed for it. This is his seal. I saw it on his finger. I think he’s an evil man, Precious Wind. He has already lied to us. Please, do not give this receipt to the prior. Until we find someone here we know to be trustworthy, do not give it to anyone.”

  “I was going to tell Bear today that his bride-price is here, waiting for him.”

  “Precious Wind, I have a bad feeling about it. My father said it was a great deal of money, a small fortune. He thought Bear should not have it until he was on his way to Tingawa. It could have been tempting to someone. Let us be sure it is here, waiting for him, before we raise his expectations.”

  Precious Wind considered this. She had never thought that there might be someone inimical at the abbey! All in all, it might be wise to wait a few days while things were checked. She said slowly, “Bear’s preoccupation is a troublesome development that none of us foresaw. I suppose I have the authority to tell him he may go on to Tingawa. That might be the best thing to do . . .”

  Xulai stood up. “How long ago did you bring me to the castle?”