by Andy Giesler
So, I’m afraid.
Those words don’t belong here, but there’s no place else they can go, and they have to go somewhere.
I’m afraid.
Lord, protect us.
6
May 29, 2163
Eli is dead.
Shepherd Gabriel
1
Shepherd Gabriel and the Trip to Haven
Shepherd Theo laughed, his cloak rippling as he sprinted down the last stretch of the Kaskut River before Haven.
“Oh, come on,” Shepherd Sumiko said. “Tell me I’m wrong. Nanna of Mannsfield? If I went for ladies, she’d be the one.”
“Hadn’t noticed,” Theo said. “She’s past her breeding years.”
Sumiko squinted at him, vaulting lightly over a fallen tree. “Okay. You seriously need to explain that.”
He shrugged. “Look. Twenty years ago, maybe. Now she doesn’t register that way. My genes know they can’t use that body as a vessel to the future.”
“Theo, you’re a shepherd. Your genes can’t use any body as a vessel to anywhere. Your little guys can’t survive the exit. You do get that, right?”
“A hundred million years of evolution don’t know that. They’re standing behind me just shaking their head, saying there’s no point in visiting that melon patch. Monkey instinct. Look, I’m not proud of it.”
“You, shepherd, are a moron. As though twenty years mattered. Most weavers are hard, but Nanna of Mannsfield tight.”
“If you like them old, you must really like the Humble.”
“Good lord. That one.”
They ran a while longer, their lanky footfalls hardly louder than Shepherd Gabriel’s gasping as he struggled to keep pace. Sumiko said, “We should have culled the Humble decades ago.”
“Probably,” Theo replied. “She’s a throwback.”
Finally Gabriel spoke, gasping through his paces. “That’s not always a…a bad thing.”
Sumiko laughed. “Says the Propagandist in Chief. Forget your own gospel, Gabriel?”
Gabriel stumbled, picked himself up, and launched after them again.
“Don’t joke with Gabriel,” Theo said. “Everything’s terribly serious. Anyway, there’s no need for us to cull the Humble Weaver. Time will do it soon enough. And…now…we’re…home!”
Sumiko and Theo skidded to a stop at the gate’s threshold, their slide kicking a shower of pebbles against the wall. Gabriel fell into the wall and turned to lean against it, his sweaty back leaving a streak in the dust as he slid to the ground. Sumiko pulled a water skin and a journey cake from her pack, then patted Gabriel on the shoulder. “See you inside.”
Gabriel sat panting while Market’s shepherds, straining, pushed open the massive stone gate. As their footfalls receded, Gabriel slid his hand down the wall and pressed it deep into the dirt, pushing aside earth and stones, bloodying his fingertips. At last he felt it, six inches down, where nearly two millennia of rain and wind had buried it. Runes softened with weather and age. He said the words under his breath.
“Speak, friend, and enter.” He smiled a half-smile. Lee had chiseled the runes as a private joke shortly after Haven’s wall rose.
He missed her.
He stood, dusted off his robe, and entered Haven.
When I Was Twenty: My Wondrous Mistakes
1
A Good-old Clapping Game
How Many Had You?
Old Maid, Old Maid,
How many had you?
None for you,
None for me,
Run away home!
Old Stag, Old Stag,
How many had you?
None for you,
None for me,
Run away home!
Old Folks, Old Folks,
How many had you?
Five sweet children,
Just as we should --
One for Ma,
One for Pa,
One born still,
Two that sickness carried off.
Run away home!
2
Return to Market
We were down near the branch of Slowbird Creek and the Scheiss when I asked Runner Zeekl, “You mind if I scout ahead?”
I knew he’d want to puzzle on that, so I gave him all the time he needed to settle in with it. Sure enough, after a while he asked, “But you…Deborah, you’re an apprentice woodsmith still, yeh?”
“Yep.”
“And…I’m not sure what all happens in Surecreek all the time, but you ain’t…you didn’t start up as an apprentice runner nor nothing like that, did you?”
“Nope.”
“Well then,” he said, seeming pleased with hisself that he could answer my simple question. “No need for that. Woodsmiths don’t scout ahead.”
“I know they don’t. Even so. With us being a runner short? You can’t scout and pull the cart, both at once. Do you mind if I help out just this little bit by scouting ahead?”
“Hey now, now, that’s the thing, ain’t it? Why’d the Elders send us to the Pile with just the one runner? That ain’t real kindly. That ain’t hardly done, yeh?” It wasn’t the first time he’d asked me, and he asked it with more than a touch of whine.
And you know, I’d wondered that myself.
If I cared to, I could imagine the village Elders saying, “Well, golly. With Deborah going along, they don’t hardly need but one runner. They’re more than safe in her strong and capable hands.”
But just as easy, I could also imagine them saying, “Well, golly. If Outcasts or wolves or a chimera were to take our least able runner, or our valuable but frustrating woodsmith, or his downright troublesome apprentice…you know what? Sometimes misfortune hides a blessing. Let’s see what Grandmother Root decides.”
I didn’t guess about it out loud, though. I just I left Zeekl to his slow and purposeful thinking. We rolled ahead, him pulling the wagonload of Abram’s and my crafts, mumbling to hisself. Finally he asked, “So hey, Deborah. Let’s say it don’t bother me none. And let’s say you scout up ahead and whatnot. Will you tell Runner Aimis about it when we get back to Surecreek?”
I touched his shoulder lightly. “Course not, Zeekl. Just between you and me. And him”—I nodded at Abram walking beside the cart—“but he don’t talk much.”
“No,” Zeekl said. “No, he sure don’t.” After we walked another stretch he said, “Well, I guess it don’t bother me none. If you’re not telling Aimis. You’re not telling him, yeh?”
“Yeh!” I said. Then I kissed him on the cheek, and I whooped, and I ran on ahead.
Running.
My goodness.
Even three years later, every time I stretched out my legs, I was caught up in the wonder of it. To move so fast I could make my own breeze. And though I didn’t dare do it while Zeekl and Abram could still see me, once I rounded a bend down the Market Road, I really set my legs free. Then it wasn’t just a breeze, nor even a wind tugging. My passing blew up a gale that pulled my hair back straight and tried its best to tear my clothes right off me.
Ah. Sorry about that. Suppose that’s not polite to say.
But still, that’s how it was.
Before I’d gotten too far ahead of them, I jumped at a branch above me, two women high. I spun around it once, bark ripping the flesh from my hands, then I crouched atop it and listened, and watched, and grinned, and grinned, and grinned.
3
About Sight
It’s that sort of thing led to my ruin. Running faster than I ought, jumping higher, and I don’t know, all such whatnot. I tried to be careful about it. But careful don’t always work.
Looking back with an elder’s eyes, it’s a blessing that I stayed out of the Pit as long as I did. And I’m setting aside all the general everyday reasons folks might have sent me there, of which there was plenty. Gracious. I would have sent me. Sometimes I wonder why the good folks of Surecreek suffered me so long. But then, after seventeen years of poking Surecreek in the eye with so ma
ny ordinary reasons? Once the voice spoke to me—just that once—and things began to change, I found myself whole new kinds of reasons that I never could have imagined before. None of us could.
It was a week or so after the voice, I guess, before I figured out that these strange and not unpleasant feelings in my head, feelings that had some connection to the outside world, were what most folks called “sight.” Seeing wasn’t at all like I’d imagined, though truth be told, my imagination on that point didn’t have much ground to stand on. I’m not sure what I expected it to be like. Maybe like feeling things with my fingers, but farther away. Turns out, though, it was much different from that.
I never did get the hang of seeing colors, which is a shame. And from what I could tell, my sight was much hazier than everybody else’s, especially far off. I couldn’t see myself in water nor glass, neither, as others might. Even so, it was a glory. No better word for it. Over the next couple months, I got better and better at seeing. Before long, I was making my way about the village without my staff, the same one I’d carried with me since I was fourteen.
Some months later, once I decided I didn’t need my staff no more, I slipped over the wall by night. I went off to that lovely place not far from the wall, the wooded glen all rich with earthy smells by the nameless creek, the place where I’d spent an evening with wolves half a lifetime before.
The old ash that I’d kept to my back that night? It had come down a few years earlier in a gale, opening its hollow heart to the sky. I sat with my back against its broken, mossy trunk for a time. I sat remembering that night and how I’d swung an even littler staff, for all the world a staunch and sober weaver. Recalled the joy I’d felt despite the uncomfortable circumstances. I’m not ashamed to say I thanked that staffed for its help and kissed it before climbing the ash’s trunk and dropping it down inside, back home again. Back in the woods it came from.
Then I went back home, and I didn’t use my staff no more.
When the sight first came to me, it was a cause of some consternation in Surecreek, what with folks wondering if it was Gebohra Muerta’s work or other such darkness. I wondered just that myself. All those years of people saying I had the Nothing within me, and here it seemed like I really might. I supposed the Nothing might sound very much like that voice I’d heard. But as folks do at such times, everybody turned to the village weaver for guidance, and she assured them it was a gift from Grandmother Root and not no darkness at all.
Which wasn’t one bit true.
Maybe she knew that. Maybe not. At that time, I’d never known Ma to break the truth, or even to tenderly flex it as I did sometimes. But ever since, I’ve wondered how much she knew and when she knew it. I never got to ask her. But whatever she knew, saying my sight was Grandmother Root’s gift left me at peace in Surecreek a little while longer. And soon enough, everybody got used to me seeing.
So anyhow. It surprised me a little that seeing was nothing like feeling nor hearing, but I’ll tell you something that surprised me even more. Guess it surprised other folks, too.
We were having an awful chilly winter, so chilly that it even snowed a couple times—which it had done the night before. And not just the usual snow that flitters down then runs away at the sun’s first smile. This snow was deep enough to stay for days. More than ankle deep it was, sure as night.
It was January or February. Not sure which, but I’m sure it was a Monday morning, because it was wash day. Runners Hedd and Tepp had just come back from escorting traders down to Big Betwixt, and along the way their cart cracked a wheel, so Woodsmith Abram sent me to fetch it. I was rolling the wheel back toward Abram’s shop, listening to drying blankets flap in the wind, when somebody smacked Young Josiah, Butcher Abbie’s son, right in the back of the head with a big, cold, wet ball of snow.
As you might expect, I laughed. But as I ought not have done, I called out, “Time for some ducking practice, Josiah!”
Well. Josiah stormed over to me and stood right up by me and said, “Were you talking to me?”
To which I said, “No other Josiah hereabouts needs ducking practice.” I ought not have done that, too. But sometimes my voice gets ahead of me.
And he said, “Now there. That just ain’t fair. How you expect me to duck what I can’t see?”
That puzzled me something special. “Peace on you Josiah, I didn’t mean no never-mind about it. But how could you not see it? It was coming right at your head.”
Josiah spluttered, then he yelled, “It hit me from behind!”
“Wait,” I said. “You can’t see behind you?”
Which, right after I said it, I realized I oughtn’t.
It came rushing in on me all at once what a fool I’d been. Of course he couldn’t see behind. All that talk about seeing what’s in front of your own chin, and of keeping your eyes forward, or keeping them open, and of something sneaking up from behind. I should have known it. But I’d been so dazzled by the wonder of my own sight, I hadn’t thought a whittle about nobody else’s. I just figured whatever I could see, that’s what seeing really was. It had to be more true than whatever I’d guessed about seeing.
It never for a moment occurred to me that my seeing and their seeing might be two quite different things. And right that moment the truth thumped me on the noggin: Most folks couldn’t see behind them. Nor in the dark. Nor even with their eyes closed.
Of course they couldn’t. Such a self-centered fool I’d been.
But it was too late. I’d said what I’d said. Josiah just stood there real quiet for a moment, then he crunched away toward home through the snow, maybe a touch faster than he needed to.
Anyhow. That was my first mistake, I think.
Well, not my first mistake of course. I’d been making mistakes all my life, and some of them quite memorable. But that was my first truly wondrous mistake.
4
The Quiet Night
Where was I?
That’s right. On the way back to Market.
My second trip to Market felt more peaceful than the first. Honeynock didn’t wait me this time, though I did think on Miller Daivit now and again.
What waited me was trade. A year’s worth of Abram’s and my side work. Special things we’d found time to make in between all the everyday work Surecreek needed. Delicate carvings of critters and flowers. Shiny boxes with clever latches. Little men that climbed toy trees, and little women that leaned out from the windows of toy houses. Useful things. Playful things. Beautiful things.
Given the mindful touch of Abram’s work, and my own work, which wasn’t so rough besides, we could expect to make good trades for Surecreek. Maybe white sugar from the Alters’ marshy Southland. Maybe special stone, real soft or hard, from the central quarries. Maybe even a thing or two of metal.
My apprenticing had come along well. Abram said he might declare me a worthy woodsmith before I was twenty-one. I’m not speaking high of myself. That’s just a true fact. So for the first time in my eight years as apprentice, Abram agreed to take me along for his annual midsummer’s trade.
After running up ahead of the others, I didn’t stay in that tree grinning to myself real long. I’d offered to scout, and scout I did. But when I found nothing more frightful than an ornery squirrel or two, I turned back and met up with Abram and Zeekl, just a little farther along than when I’d left them.
It had taken us a long while to get on the road that morning. We had to convince Zeekl to leave Aimis behind, and Aimis needed convincing, too, and the Elders needed consulting, and between all that cluck and jabber we started later than we ought. I suppose we were only two-thirds of the way to Market when night came on. “Getting dark soon,” Zeekl said. “Time for making camp.”
So we did. By the time night fell, we had a happy little fire crackling in a clearing some ways off the South Market Road. As the night went dark, the sky’s stories seemed even brighter than in Surecreek. The stars showed me Gebohra Muerta and her sack of poison gifts. The fallen People of
the World That Was. And though she don’t smile on us in summer, I knew Grandmother Root’s stars were below the trees someplace. It was all there in the sky, a story for anybody who cared to look, reminding us of what had happened so very long ago.
Partway through dinner, I realized Zeekl was twisted up, muttering to hisself as he chewed, and it didn’t take me long to figure why. When runners need to camp overnight, as often they do, they share the night in watches, trading places once or twice depending on the season. Yet here we were, with no other watcher to help us. So no doubt he was worrying out how he could stay awake all night and still be awake enough in the morning to pull the cart and watch over us.
So I said, “Zeekl? Wonder if you’d do me a favor.”
“What’s that?” he asked, sounding in no mood to do nobody no favors.
“Well, I must’ve slept too good last night.”
“Slept too good?” he asked, cocking his head. “How’s that?”
“Well, just too good, you know? Deep as night. I got too much rest. You’ve done that, too, sometimes, haven’t you, Woodsmith Abram?”
Abram looked at me real slow, then he seemed to think on it, and he nodded.
“So here I am, awake and not about to drop off no time soon. Don’t guess I could sleep for love or kindness. What I need now in a real bad way is to stay awake, yet I know it’s time for bed. So I’m wondering, do you mind very much if I stay up and watch a while? I hate to put you out this way, but if you don’t mind sleeping, I’ll wake you when my eyes start to droop. It’d be a real kindness if you do that for me, Runner Zeekl.”