by Andy Giesler
He chuckled again. “Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid girl. Stupid girl’s not listening. Listen to Eulee, stupid girl.” Then he started the list again from the beginning.
“Now then,” he said when he’d finished reciting his list, “what’s the one place where there’s been no chimeras at, nor even near it?”
Well, that surprised me real deep.
“The Somber,” I said.
Eulee laughed, real pleased with hisself. “Now the stupid girl sees what Eulee sees. Eulee’s made her be less stupid. When Eulee first figured that, it puzzled him real good. He bets it puzzles the girl real good.” I hated to admit it, and I surely did not admit it out loud, but he was right. It prickled me something awful.
“Eulee knows why there’s no chimeras in the Somber,” he said. “He’ll tell the girl why, too.” Then he said the wisest thing I ever heard from him. He said, “The Somber ain’t where chimeras is from. It’s where shepherds is from.”
“What?”
“There’s so many good-old stories of folks wandering into the Somber. Then they runs back out, or they gets ate, or…?”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, and I asked.
“At the end of the story, stupid girl. If they doesn’t run back out of the Somber or get ate by a chimera, what happens?”
So I thought on it, and I said, “Or a shepherd brings them out.”
“So,” he said. “We know there’s shepherds in the Somber. And we know from Eulee’s list there ain’t no chimeras in there. So that’s where the shepherds is from.”
“Of course shepherds are in the Somber. They watch out for us. There’s dangerous things in there.” But I wasn’t sure I believed that anymore.
“Very dangerous things is in the Somber,” he said, giggling. “Shepherds is in the Somber.”
It seems real strange to say it, but I owe a great deal to Eulee. So do we all. Every one of you does.
If Eulee’s brother hadn’t gotten hisself killed, and if Eulee hadn’t begun gathering up every story he could of the chimeras, and if he and Aylee hadn’t stolen me from the woods and taken me to their house to serve their ma, and if Eulee hadn’t taken to bragging out of pure loneliness for anybody to listen? Well. There’s a good chance you’d all be dead. No. Worse than dead, as you wouldn’t have been born at all. There’s a real good chance it might have meant the end of all the People in the World That Is.
I don’t mean to show proud for what I did later. I couldn’t have done otherwise. If you’d been me, you would have done the same. Eulee couldn’t have done no different than he did, neither. I don’t know who put our feet on those paths, whether Grandmother Root or the Alters’ Son-God pegged to the tree or nobody at all.
But however it started, Eulee did give me his list, and that made all the difference.
By the time I left those Outcasts, Eulee had repeated his list so many times that it became a silent, weary chant inside my head all day while I worked, and a fearful song while I slept, and hardly anything could clear my head of it but being lost in the Shepherd’s Dance. I couldn’t escape it no more than I could escape these three awful folks, and I came to curse his list, just as I came to curse them.
I cursed his list right up ’til the morning when I woke with a gasp and a laugh. Seeing the truth of it. Seeing the secret it hid.
Seeing the answer to everything.
5
Surecreek
Thanks to Eulee’s bragging on his travels, I had a fair idea of which way Through was. Thanks to Aylee’s banishing me to the shed, I had a place to ready myself for the trip. And thanks to weeks of sneaking and squirreling, I’d secreted away the supplies to get me there. After two years and nine months living with those wretched folks, I was ready to take my leave.
Eulee and Aylee were off being a pestilence to good folks, and I didn’t expect them back for days. That evening, I decided to leave before dawn the next day. So it was a great disappointment when, in the middle of the night, I heard Eulee and Aylee return. And it was a great surprise when, early the next morning, I heard a girl weeping.
When I came out of my shed, Aylee called to me, sounding real jovial, “There y’are, lazy girl. Past sunrise already. This here is Ester. Least that’s what her ma called after her. She didn’t say a word the whole trip back home.”
“Ester?” I asked.
Aylee laughed. “My, but don’t you look twisted around. Seemed to Eulee and me like you could use some help with Ma, so we brought somebody.”
“You know,” said Eulee. “To help with Ma. So’s you won’t have to work so hard no more.”
And right then? I’ll tell you, right then the sweat started running down my back and sides. Because I didn’t need no help, and Aylee and Eulee wouldn’t have cared if I did.
I wasn’t about to thank them for stealing some new girl, ’specially one whose family missed her. So I just made my way toward the weeping sound. She was low to the ground, maybe huddled there in a bundle. Once I was close up on her, I kneeled beside her.
“Ester, I’m Leeleh,” I said, soft. “Don’t fret. I’ll look after you.” But when I reached out to touch her, she startled and screamed and wept even harder.
“She’ll be all right,” Aylee said, bending down near us. “Soon enough.”
Ester seemed to fight at first, groaning and whimpering and making Aylee grunt, but then it sounded as if she just went all loose as Aylee dragged her back to the house.
It was an awful windy day, but even for the wind I could smell Eulee come toward me. All these years later, I still think of him whenever I smell old piss or the Strong Drink. Once he’d got real close, close enough to poke me with the tip of his knife, he said, “Eulee’s got something to tell the girl. Something she’ll want to hear.”
“Eulee can tell it.”
“Not out here, he can’t. He’ll tell it in her shed.”
You know what? I considered standing up to it right there, whether he had a metal knife or no. But if I’d done that, Aylee might have seen, and I feared what she might do. How she might help Eulee, and how she might use Ester to stop me. So I thought: My shed will do.
Once we got in there, Eulee closed the door and said, “Surecreek’s dead.”
Well. I about fell to the floor.
Filled with grief and horror, of course, but also with a worry. Because why would Eulee think I cared about Surecreek?
He chuckled. “Aylee figured it. Figured you was from there. Some sightless girl goes missing from Surecreek’s Pit? A few days later, we find some sightless girl in the woods running with Surecreek to her back? Pshaw. Eulee would’ve figured it soon. Aylee just got lucky to figure it sooner.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Why what, girl?”
“Why’d Surecreek die? They wouldn’t remake anything. Why would the Wrathful Spirits visit?”
Eulee chuckled again, just one quick chuckle, but this time he almost sounded sorry. “Eulee figured you’d know why. Figured you had some part in it. Some say you was a chimera that jumped up from the Pit. But Eulee knows all about chimeras. He knows you ain’t no chimera. Still, it must be something about you. Surecreek died two days after you left it.”
The weight of that laid on me like stone, and it was the weight of truth. My ma, Woodsmith Abram, Honeydipper Sadie, everybody I’d ever known had died. Because of me. Yet I still had no idea why. “But why would the Wrathful Spirits kill—”
Eulee slapped me, then he spat. “Stupid girl. Wrathful Spirits? Eulee’s pa was at Greenhill when it died. He was watching Greenhill, to know its patterns, to see how folks came and went, so he might follow them down the road or into the wood and gather gifts from them. Eulee’s pa was sore afraid while that village died. He hid hisself in the woods. Waited a day and a half to move, til he was near dead of hunger and thirst. And Eulee’s pa said there was no Wrathful Spirits.” He leaned in close, and whispered the rest in my ear, stroking my arm. “Only shepherds.”
I wanted so
much to hold back those tears, but they had no mind to let me.
“Why are you telling me now?” I asked.
“Don’t need you no more, do we?”
Which is pretty well what I’d guessed.
“Aylee says the girl asks too many questions, ’bout when and where and how long. Like she’s trying to figure a path away from us. Aylee says the girl’s been nipping things, too, little things she don’t think we’ll notice. Things she might need if she was to run. So”—he leaned in closer—“Aylee says Eulee can finally kill the girl.”
I thought I’d been careful. I had been careful. But I should have known better than to steal from a thief or lie to a liar. Aylee was better at it than I could ever be.
But I’d been even more careful about one real important thing.
For my years with them, I’d been careful to make my staff invisible. They could see it of course. But I’d never done nothing unusual with it. I leaned on it. I felt my way with it. At least once every day I made real sure to miss something with it and trip on purpose. Knowing Aylee and Eulee would chuckle, and knowing it would remind them how helpless I was. To them, my staff was a cripple’s crutch. A thing that I needed. A thing that made up for a lack. A thing to remind them I was less than they were.
But whenever Aylee and Eulee were gone? Whenever I wasn’t suffering Kattie’s curses, or cleaning the modesty pit, or gathering herbs, or fixing whatnot around their home that should never have got so broken?
Then my staff was different. Then it sang for the World That Is while I listened in quiet wonder. What I never showed them, and what I haven’t told you, is that I’d never before in my life, nor have I ever since, practiced the Shepherd’s Dance so often, nor so long, nor so hard.
What else could I do? What else did I have for myself? So I learned every step of ground near that miserable homestead, and I waited ’til Aylee and Eulee were gone and their ma was done with me, then I wandered off past view of the house and I practiced. Sometimes, just to spite Kattie, I’d practice right up on top of the house, on the blanket of earth they’d banked over it, out of her sight, safe from her muffled hearing. By day, by night, it made no nevermind to me. Whenever I could, I’d practice, my body growing stronger and harder and more sure. Day. After day. After day.
So, to Eulee, my “stick” was a funny tool for a poor little girl with no sight. A pitiful thing to keep her from tripping on the littlest stones in her path. Something to make him feel strong and sure.
But that day, my staff became the last thing he ever saw.
I’d never ended nobody’s life. To this day I don’t know whether I meant to. And to this day, I still think on him. Was it my place to decide? I was no weaver. His life wasn’t mine to take.
But I have to remind myself that right then, in that hut, with his knife pressed to my belly, I wasn’t judging. I was trying to keep on living.
I don’t know.
I do hope that counts for something.
6
Taking Leave
I wept.
I wept as I hadn’t before. Bawling out loud, rocking, drooling, sometimes so long at a stretch that I ran out of wind and had to suck and wheeze before I could weep some more, kneeling there on the dirt floor and squeezing my sides as the wind rushed and kicked and raged at my little shed’s walls.
I wept for Surecreek. For Abram, and for Sadie, and for my ma, and for that sow’s butt Potter Aizik, and for Leeleh, and for even Candler Heddie, whose hard life was now ended. For what I’d done to Eulee, and what he meant to do with me. For all that had happened, and all that was to come, which I hardly feared to guess.
Not sure how long I was in that state.
Some little while, I guess.
Then, when I could stand again, I stood in my hut for a while, frozen in place by what I’d done, wondering what to do with Eulee’s body. By and by, I decided it wasn’t for me to choose. If Aylee cared to give him a proper burning, that was her part, not mine. If she cared to leave him there, I didn’t mind. I’d be gone.
I opened the door a touch and listened, but mostly I just heard the wind. So I took a calming breath, and I stepped outside.
That’s when I heard Aylee, about five paces off toward the house, say real sad-like, “Well now. Ain’t this a steaming bowl of shepherd shit. We take you in, we feed you, we treat you like family. And here you are, sneaking off. Somebody must not have raised you right, girl.”
“Eulee said he was going to kill me.” And that gave her pause. I don’t think she was surprised at what Eulee was going to do. Just that he’d been fool enough to tell me before he did it.
“Eulee and I will have words about that, then. Eulee! You was s’posed to wait! Git out here, you lump! Crawl if you must!”
“Eulee won’t be coming out,” I said.
That gave her pause, too. And this time, it seemed a pause full of surprise and worry. “Leeleh, what does that mean?”
“My name ain’t Leeleh.”
“Never thought it was,” Aylee said. “You’re Apprentice Woodsmith Deborah of Surecreek. I’m no fool.” And that’s when I heard it, just hardly, just below the wind’s angry rumble in my ears, the click of her arrow on the bow as she nocked it. “Now tell me, Deborah. What did you mean, that about Eulee not coming out?”
“My name ain’t Deborah, neither. My name is Root. I’m a weaver’s daughter and kin to shepherds,” I said. I swung my staff real brief, once above my head and once rolling about my middle, then I took up the stance. “You’re not the same kind of fool as Eulee. If you know what’s wise, you’ll let me go.”
Which, of course, was bluster and nonsense. What choice did I have but to bluster? If I ran at her, she’d probably kill me. If I laid down my staff, she’d probably kill me. If I waited there ’til she looked in on Eulee, she’d probably kill me. I hoped blustering might spare me that choice.
Suddenly she yelled, “Ester, you get back here!” Except for that, I wouldn’t have known Ester was running off, such was the wind that day.
I didn’t know this girl one whittle, but I feared for her off in the woods alone. She was afraid. Stupid with fear. She probably knew less about where she was than I did when I arrived, and she surely had less chance at surviving in the wild.
“Ester, wait!” I yelled, too.
But, far as I could tell, Ester didn’t wait.
“Aylee, let me pass,” I said. “You let me pass, I’ll leave you be, though Grandmother knows somebody ought to end you.”
“Kin to shepherds,” she said, scoffing. “You’re no shepherd, girl, even if you dance a little like one.”
“Naw,” I said with a sad smile, setting to bolt at her, knowing it would likely be the end of me. “I dance like a weaver.”
Aylee, I’d guess, was in no mood to have an up-close fight with somebody who knew the Dance, whether I knew it like a shepherd or like a weaver. Since her life of thieving had left her proper skilled with a bow? And since she happened to have one right then, drawn on me with an arrow nocked? Well, there was not much pondering for her to do.
She let the arrow fly.
And luck is all that saved me.
Because right as she loosed that arrow, I’d begun my charge on her, which brought my body a hand’s length closer to the ground than the instant before. So instead of that arrow spreading my ribs and visiting my heart, it only dug itself into my left shoulder just above my collarbone.
When I say it “only” did that, I mean it hurt like somebody ran me through with a fiery brand. Looking back on it, getting an arrow in the meat of my shoulder was better than being a dead’un. But at that moment, it was hard to appreciate my wondrous good fortune. I stumbled and cried out, but I kept running toward her voice. When I reached her, I think I caught her between purposes: whether to nock another arrow or to pull out her knife and fight me close.
Suppose that’s why it went so quick as it did.
I think she was alive. I’m pretty sure. It was hard to te
ll with the wind blowing, but I think I heard her moan a little and shift about. I hope so. While nobody would have said I’d lived a proper life to that point, I’d lived a peaceful one when I could. So I hope I didn’t end two lives in that one day.
Wincing through the pain, I felt around in the brush for her bow and found it, then I threw it far as I could. Even knowing she might be waiting for me down there with a knife drawn, I was about to check Aylee to see how bad she was hurt when I felt a screaming pain in my back up by my neck, a pain so loud it quieted the one by my shoulder.
Because I’d forgotten about Kattie.
Most likely, Kattie chanced to see us when she came out after Ester, not wanting to lose her new pet the same day she was given it. However she came to be there, although there wasn’t much meat in those dry, twisted, angry old arms, there was enough to bury me in pain. She pulled out the knife and shrieked, and no doubt intended to visit me with it again, but somehow I swung my staff in the direction of her shriek, then I thrust it with all that was left in me. Felt like hitting a rag doll. She joined Aylee and me on the ground, weeping and cursing into the dirt.
I left Kattie there to do as she might, and I left Aylee there to live if she would. I thought about chasing after Ester, but all I knew about Ester was where she wasn’t. She might have run off in any direction. Even if I could get myself moving, which was no sure thing, I saw no way to hunt down somebody else. I called after her ’til my voice was raw, but she never came back.
I’ve always felt sad about that girl, and often I wonder what became of her. Tried to find out. Several times. Never did. Maybe she made it to Overlook. Maybe some forager family took her in. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
It was hard to think through the pain, and harder to move. I knew enough mending to know I should either pull out the arrow or leave it in. But I didn’t know enough mending to know which, and I couldn’t think clear enough to reason it out. So I left the arrow in place, and I took my staff, and I gathered up the supplies that I’d set aside nearby for my escape. Food, two good water skins, a blanket, a length of good rope, and even a little stone knife.