by Andy Giesler
“Don’t worry, they’re still inside you. The little blind girl who beat you up didn’t hit you that hard. We took you back to Haven and re-woke your naughts for a day, long enough to heal you. But naughts won’t mess with the frontal lobe. So once your naughtwork stabilized your body, we brought you back here for hugs and chicken soup.”
“No. I mean why did you take my naughts offline again?”
“How did Lee die?” Livv asked.
Sickness washed over him. “We don’t know.”
“You went looking not long after she left Haven.”
“Right. You looked, too, later. None of us found her. Maybe it was a chimera. And she’d mentioned the Edge to me. Maybe she fell.”
“Yeah. You said that. The whole thing bothered me. It felt as though you went looking before you had a very good reason to worry. You talked through it well enough, but that’s what you do, Gabriel. You talk through things.” Livv took his hand in hers. “It felt wrong then,” she said, “and now it feels wrong all over again. And another thing. We all go to Surecreek to see what’s happened with the weaver’s daughter and the Pit. You meet with the weaver, a meeting you insist on having without the rest of us. Then you tell us she said nothing that mattered. So we take her off to our own meeting, and when we get back to Surecreek? You’ve gone to a secret meeting with her daughter. Almost as if you’d planned it. That was strange.”
“The weaver didn’t tell me where to look. I followed a hunch. From something her daughter said at Festival years ago.”
“Alright. Still bothers me, but let’s set it aside a minute. The thing is, when we finally did talk with the weaver, we could tell she was hiding something. Then at the very end, when she finally opened up, she said some pretty surprising stuff.”
“Livv…”
“Stuff that made me wonder. So now I wonder whether you have surprising stuff to say, too. We’ve disagreed on a lot, Gabriel, but never on the bigger goal. Never on the People. If we mess up bad enough, all of them die. Your side lost. Mine needs the truth. Please. Tell me.”
“Livv, I don’t know what their weaver said to you, but…”
He cried out as she dislocated his index finger.
“Sorry. I hoped you’d just tell me. Stakes are too high, though. I need the truth, and you’ve got time to kill.” She leaned in. “Let’s kill it together.”
When I Was Twenty: My Family
1
A Good-old Song
Forager Fen
Come sit you down, I’ll tell of when
A crafty coot called Forager Fen,
He sought to rule the women and men
Of a village, name of Where, oh.
Where, oh? Where, oh!
He sought to rule the women and men
Of a village, name of Where, oh!
The folks of Where were goodly folk
But Fen, he was a sneaky bloke.
He went to council, and he spoke
And gave them quite a scare-oh.
Scare, oh? Scare, oh!
He went to council, and he spoke
And gave them quite a scare, oh!
He said, “I’ve seen a chimer-ay
A-lurkin’ bout, on down the way.
It’s going to be here any day,
And no soul will it spare, oh!
Spare, oh? Spare, oh!
It’s going to be here any day,
An no soul will it spare, oh!”
The Elders said, “If this be true
We know exactly what to do!
We’ll call our shepherds, two-by-two,
And so we will prepare, oh!
Pare, oh? Pare, oh!
We’ll call our shepherds, two-by-two,
And so we will prepare, oh!”
But Fen, he said, “I’ve bitter news,
It found your shepherds in a snooze,
And now upon their bones it chews,
A-suckin’ on the marrow!
Marrow? Marrow!
And now upon their bones it chews,
A-suckin’ on the marrow!”
Said faithless Fen, “But fear you not!
For many chimer-ays I’ve caught
With this here trap that I have brought,
The ugly beast to snare, oh!
Snare, oh? Snare, oh!
With this here trap that I have brought,
The ugly beast to snare, oh!”
“And for this kindness,” Fen declared,
“By which your village may be spared,
I only ask that you’re prepared
To make me King of Where, oh!
Where, oh? Where, oh!
I only ask that you’re prepared
To make me King of Where, oh!”
Although the Elders thought this good,
Their Weaver Who, she huffed and stood,
Picked up her staff of hick’ry wood…
And whupped his bottom bare, oh!
Bare, oh? Bare, oh!
Picked up her staff of hick’ry wood
And whupped his bottom bare, oh!
Their Weaver Who, she wasn’t cruel,
But one may not a village rule,
Lest we be herded by one fool:
Of this, we should beware, oh!
Ware, oh? Ware, oh!
Lest we be herded by one fool:
Of this, we should beware, oh!
2
The Hard Road
Now and again, you see somebody doing something that just…I don’t mean to be uncharitable, but it just makes you wonder what’s wrong with them. Like maybe they oughtn’t be out in the world on their own. You see them, and you think to yourself, “I would not my own self, in no way or circumstance, do nothing so foolish as that.”
And yet there they are, doing it. So you wonder on it. If you’re kind, you maybe try to help them, or even try to stop them. But still. You wonder on it.
I’ll tell you one thing I’ve learned in my many years upon the World That Is. Something I’ve learned often and hard and personal. Sometimes that person truly is a fool. But sometimes—not often, but sometimes—even though you can’t see it in no clear way, that person is actually nothing like a fool. They might be desperate. They might even be brave.
Would you like to know the difference between a brave person and a fool?
The fool has a choice.
Here. Let me show you something. Everybody hush up for just a moment, and listen real good. Sh. Shush now.
…
…
…
Alright then. Do you know what you just heard?
Crickets? Why yes, that’s right, little mouse. I guess I heard crickets then, too.
The wind? Gracious, such good ears. Do you think you really heard the wind? Or maybe you heard something else as wasn’t the wind itself?
That’s it, lamb, you’ve got it. It wasn’t the wind just quite. What you heard was a whole lot of leaves brushing ‘gainst each other. The wind made it happen, but you didn’t hear the wind. Observing’s important. That’s some good observing
But there’s one other thing you heard that you don’t even know you heard: you heard the sound of Apprentice Woodsmith Root at the tender age of twenty, moving soft as a shepherd as she sneaks past you.
I can say without vanity that my sneaking was something quite uncommon. Sneaking is about being silent, and somebody like me, who relied so heavy on her hearing and touch, had a different sense of silent than most folks.
Unless, of course, I happened to try sneaking past you by sneaking right in front of you as you watched me, plain as rain. Because without sight I couldn’t tell the difference between your backside and your front. Or maybe I missed a rock in my path and tripped and landed on the ground with a whuff. In that case, my sneaking wasn’t quite so good as your typical bull hog’s.
Anyhow, though. When I cared to be, and when it worked out as it ought, I could be most ’specially quiet.
Okay now. Listen to this:
&nb
sp; CRUNCH! CRUNCH! CRUNCH! CRUNCH! CRUNCH!
You know what that is? That’s the sound of Apprentice Woodsmith Root, frightened and alone and fleeing for her life at the tender age of twenty, as she tries to sneak past you in the woods toward the end of a dry and leafy late October morning.
You’d have to be a fool to pick late October as a time to sneak from Surecreek all the way up to Through. Besides all those noisy leaves to walk on, the thinning brush gives you less cover, and the blowing leaves hide the sounds of whatever else is out there looking for you. You’d have to be a pure dolt to flee at a time like that. But while I’ve done enough things in my life to get me called a fool, and rightly so, in that particular situation I wasn’t. I didn’t choose October. October chose me.
Though I had no choice about when to flee, and few choices about where to flee to, I could choose how I did it. And I tried not to be a fool in that choice.
Imagine making your way from Surecreek up to Through with your eyes closed. I mean no offense, but you’d most likely end up in a hole someplace with a broken leg, or in a wolf’s belly, or maybe drifting all bloated down the Sheiss.
Since I’d spent so much of my life in darkness, why, I might do a little better than you. I might miss Through by only a day’s walk. But miss it I would. And I don’t care to ponder the welcome they’d have given me on one side or the other, whether at Newbridge or Ashland. Worse, the dim, low-sagging sun gave me little warmth to judge my direction. So the straight route overland didn’t seem wise.
But the Scheiss, that was an easy thing to follow by sound alone. And if I could follow it up to Market, I knew there was an Old Way running straight west to Through. So I figured choosing that route would make me less a fool.
I was wrong, of course.
Or no. Maybe I was right. I’m not sure myself, given all that happened after. But whether I was a brave girl or a fool, so far as I could imagine, I had no wiser choice.
If you’ve ever walked it, you know the South Market Road holds hand with the Scheiss all the way up to Market. Of course, I durst not go skipping along the Market Road, for I imagined all manner of folks were looking for me. So I picked a path in the woods beside it. Near enough to the edge that I could still hear the Scheiss rushing and bubbling along, yet not so close, I hoped, that folks on the road would see me coming.
And my. Folks were on that road! I hid so often. Late October? Folks go up and down the Market road for the last bit of harvest trading before winter, even from Altland—maybe more than any other time than early spring, when some villages run awful short on needful things. And I imagined some number of the folks on the Market Road were on it because of me.
So here’s how I did it.
Shuffle along, as slow as I could bear, through those confounded, crunching leaves—just a little ways. Stop and hide and wait a good long while, listening. Was anybody coming? Was I still near enough the Scheiss to hear it? If not, I’d wander around a while, stopping and going, ‘til I heard the flowing water. Then I’d wait some more in case folks were coming down the road. If they were, I’d hide ‘til they passed. Then I’d shuffle along, as slow as I could bear, through those confounded crunching leaves—just a little ways farther.
Trudge. Wait. Hide. Listen. Wander. Trudge. Chew on some jerky or hard cakes or dry apples. Wait. Hide…
Gracious. It took twice a honeydipper’s afternoon.
At first, when I’d judged my food was enough to get me to Through, I hadn’t counted on the slow going through October’s confounded leaves. I’d never moved so slow in my life. And after three days, I started wondering real serious whether my food would keep me.
I went by night mostly. Night was cold and moving kept me warm. Well, a little less cold, anyhow. I slept by day. There are worse beds than leaves, and many times I thanked Shepherd Gabriel for his warm blanket, but I’ll tell you this: once or twice in my life at least, I’ve had better rest than I did on that journey.
You might think my whole situation would leave me crackling with wakefulness, and at first it sure did. But as the days rolled by, it wore on me. Wore me out, really. The pattern of it came to numb me. Trudge. Wait. Hide. Listen. Wander. Trudge. Wait. Hide.
By and by, it got to feel so common-everyday that it left me time to think, which wasn’t the best thing for me just then. But time and my thoughts were my only company.
3
Where I Came From
However bad things are, self-pity never made them one pinch better. And gracious, I had plenty to wallow in as I walked along. More misfortune, it seemed to me, than a person ought to have. But of all the things I wallowed in, there was one I visited over and over.
Where I came from.
When I was a nubbin, I used to ask Ma where I came from. I wasn’t sure what I was asking, nor what I hoped to learn. The way I figured it: I was here, yet I didn’t used to be here, so I something must have made me happen.
A weaver’s daughter never knows who fathered her. “Village stands together, weaver stands alone.” Maybe you’ve heard that. It means there’s some things a weaver must do herself. Among those things is raising her family. A weaver takes no man to husband. She just keeps going to that special weaver Honeynock, four times a year, til she’s got a daughter, or two, or three. If she bears any boys, she sends them to her caller’s village.
But at a young age, I didn’t know any of that. I just wanted to know how I came to be in this world. So I kept asking, and in time I vexed Ma so much that she answered. When she told me where I came from, that story became a part of who I was. I even took a sort of pride in it, though I’d had nothing to do with it, really, and though I knew pride to be a shameful thing.
Most folks are born in their parents’ home. If things go real wrong, a few might be born at the midwife’s or the mender’s. Hardly ever at all, one leaf in a tree, somebody might get born on a road going from one place to another. Me? Ma said I was born deep in the woods in a pile of moldy leaves next to a muddy stream a day’s walk from anything like a village, with wolves howling not far off.
Ma was up on pilgrimage in the Divide. Some pilgrimages must be done alone, and this was one of them. When the stars say it’s time to go, well, you go if ever you can. Ma was rugged and stubborn. She wasn’t about to let a bellyful of babe keep her from her rounds. That’s how weavers are. Foot to hill, face to wind.
Besides, she figured it’d be all right. I wasn’t due for another couple months. But I’ve always been poor at following rules.
A weaver knows enough to stand in for a midwife at need. So when I asked to be let out of her belly, Ma midwifed for herself. She had little choice about it. Like I said—that’s the difference between a brave woman and a fool.
She squatted down in the brush by a half-frozen creek and delivered me herself, just past daybreak on a sharp-cold March morning. In an ice storm, if you can believe it.
I believed it. I believed so many things.
Round and round I went on that story. I couldn’t get past it. Nobody in my life had seemed so sure to me nor so true as my ma, except maybe Woodsmith Abram. Yet for my whole life, she’d kept the most important truth from me. She lied to me about where I came from.
And I kept wondering. Where did I come from?
Anyhow. As I trudged along, I chewed on all that had happened, and I fretted on all that might, and I wallowed in anger and self-pity, and between all that? I wasn’t paying attention the way that a sightless, lonely, hunted girl sneaking through the woods ought to.
Otherwise, maybe I would have heard him.
Probably not. But still. Maybe.
As it was, I didn’t know he was there ‘til he spoke to me, real soft, just louder than the wind and the wretched leaves crunching under my feet.
And what he said, was: “Priiiiii-ttyyyyyy…”
4
An Unexpected Party
Well. That was not good.
I wasn’t sure who I’d stumbled on, but off the road, in the woo
ds, a pinch before dawn? I could only figure it was somebody who was waiting to be stumbled on. Who might enjoy an unwanted conversation with the folks who stumbled on him. And so, like he was trying to get our conversation started, he called to me again real low. An elder man’s voice, it was, raw like a mason grinding rocks.
“Priiiiii-ttyyyyyy…”
I stopped. I waited.
“The girl can’t see, can she?” he said.
I wasn’t about to answer. Him saying that, knowing that, left me more kinked in the bowels than before. But I took a calming breath, then I held my staff a little tighter. Put my legs in the stance. He sounded to be six or eight paces off, and at least one woman high off the ground. Up on a rock a tree branch, from the sound of it. Too far for me to swing at him, and too far for him to do anything to me. Yet it seemed real likely he’d be closer soon enough. So I got ready.
Even with Gabriel taking my sight from me, along with all the other things he took, my body hadn’t forgotten the Shepherd’s Dance. I don’t guess it ever will. It had become a song my body sang without trying. So I supposed that once this scoundrel tried getting closer, there was a good chance I’d come out of this better than he would.
I supposed that right up ’til I heard the sound that I’d never heard before. Sort of a creak and a groan, it was. Like somebody opening a door on leather hinges. Or like a tree bending in the wind. Or maybe both.
“Does the girl guess I’m an Outcast?”
Much as I wanted to, I didn’t nod. Just waited.
“Can the girl guess what the Outcast has in his hands?”