by Andy Giesler
Need to sleep. Busy tomorrow. Harvest, and planning, and finding some way to weave such different folks into a community.
6
November 23, 2164
It’s been a while. Feel I can finally catch my breath.
Emma took her folks south yesterday. We wicked folk who remain will miss them, but I guess we can still see them now and again.
Emma didn’t want to bring any tools of violence with them, but while she wasn’t looking, I slipped a cardboard boxful of weapons onto one of their carts. I showed what was in it to Nettie Glick, who’s been practicing ever since we met that chimera. “In case you run across any murderous rabbits,” I said. She smiled and gave me a quick hug, then left without a word.
I think they’ll get by.
Harvest went so well with the extra hands. We sent plenty of food down south, and still kept plenty ourselves. Winter won’t be easy, but so much better than the last one.
The new folks work hard, most of them anyhow, and they seem grateful to be doing something with a view beyond yesterday. Along the way we made another short trip to New Philly and brought back five more. We’ll consolidate everybody into six farms for the winter so we’re not as spread out. It’ll be easier to look out for one another that way, but it’ll be cramped with all these new folks, and all these babies besides.
When I Was Twenty-Three: The Shepherd's Gift
1
A True-old Story
A Story that Ain’t So Good, But that You Should Probably Hear Anyhow, which I Learned from the Hidden Folk in Years to Come, Filling in Some Missing Bits as Best I Could: How the Hidden Folk Came to Have the Holy
Many years ago, so I’m told, there lived a runner who did a terrible thing. Runner Birtte of Holyhock did this terrible thing—knowing it was terrible and knowing that if folks learned the truth of it, it would mean the Pit for him.
At that very same time, so I’m told, in that very same village, there lived a young weaver. Weaver Hope of Holyhock was uncommon quick and sharp. She saw things clear that others didn’t guess. She made it her business to know all that happened anywhere near that little village.
In time, she learned Runner Birtte’s secret.
Now, Weaver Hope of Holyhock knew her duty. What Runner Birtte did, he might well do again, and her village would not bear it. Runner Birtte needed a Badbefore, that Holyhock might have a Goodafter.
But Weaver Hope of Holyhock, she also knew that runners travel all over the World That Is. They learn many things a weaver with a hungry mind might wish to know, and they can do many things she might wish done. So, believing that a wrongness today might turn for the good of her village tomorrow, she mudded thumbs with Runner Birtte. She would overlook his terrible deed if he promised he’d not do such a thing never, ever again.
And.
If he promised that from then on, he would do whatever she bade him.
Runner Birtte loved his life. He accepted her offer.
Some years later, so I’m told, the Humble Weaver of the World That Is died, as will happen to even the best of Humble Weavers. And when all the weavers of the World That Is met in conclave to choose them a new Humble, they chose Weaver Hope from the little village of Holyhock in the far west of the World That Is. She was younger than most who take up the role of Humble, but all the weavers could see the breadth of her vision and the quickness of her mind.
In time, that new Humble Weaver came to know things from the shepherds that she was not meant to know. Things that made her ponder greatly. Things that made her wonder if we all might live forever, just as the shepherds do. To answer her wonder, she desired to possess a tool from so very long ago. Something forbidden. Something powerful. She wondered long and often how she might gain such a thing.
Then one day she thought on Runner Birtte.
When first she told him that he would visit the Somber and fetch her such a thing, he said he would not. That it was not worth his life. That he would rather visit the Pit. And even though the desire for that forbidden thing burned her like an ember, she smiled at him smooth as metal and said, “I’ll miss you sorely, Runner Birtte, but your choice is your own. Very well. Come now, and drink of the Cup.” For the Humble Weaver knew people’s hearts. She knew how Runner Birtte loved his life.
So Runner Birtte visited the Somber.
Then he went again.
And again.
And yet again.
The thirteenth time Runner Birtte visited the somber, he found what she desired. He found it beneath an ancient heap of tiles in that frightful place: a box. A box as hard and cool as metal yet lighter than pine, dirty and ancient, but somehow still whole after such long years. And when he opened the box, he found something inside glowing blue of its own accord, making light without heat like a frightful thing from the good-old stories.
By the time he brought this box to the Humble Weaver, he was in great pain, but he was relieved to be done with his journeys. He very nearly opened the box to show her the dreadful thing within. But seeing that the change was already taking him, and not wishing to become a chimera herself, the Humble Weaver said, “Birtte, you keep your distance, now, and leave the holy thing in its box.” Then she listened to his story, hoping that the distance and the box might offer some protection from this thing—from what must surely be an ancient tool from so very long ago.
When he finished his tale, the Humble Weaver pondered for a spell. Then she told Runner Birtte that if he’d do just one more thing for her, she would forgive what he owed for the rest of his life.
She bade him carry the box and travel with her to a holy place she knew, one not so far away. A holy place that no other weavers would visit at that time of year—one where Runner Birtte and the Humble Weaver could be alone. When they arrived, while he was still a person enough to understand her, she told him to lie still, that she might bind him to a tree with heavy ropes. He feared what she might do to him, but she promised to watch over him through his illness. Whimpering with pain as the awful change took him, he did as she told him.
Then, with cicadas scritching so loud on that soft, early summer’s afternoon, the Humble Weaver sat down on the mossy ground, and she took out an apple for her supper, and over Runner Birtte’s wails of agony, she waited.
2
The Tanner
As you might imagine, I was deep afraid at my confinement, and at the company I was confined with. But I couldn’t think of one way that I might escape it. All I could think of was the Weaver’s Breath, as my ma had taught me years before.
A long, slow calming breath—though I was careful to take it real quiet.
Then let go of whatever’s troubling you—which in my case, sounded like it was rather large and getting up from the cave floor.
Then think “the World That Is” while you notice the littlest details of everything around you.
The first thing I noticed was the breeze. The second thing was the stone floor and walls pressed against my arms and legs. The third thing I noticed was the breeze again. The same breeze I’d noticed while speaking with the Humble Weaver. And somehow I couldn’t stop noticing it.
Then it washed over me how it mattered. It mattered not just once, but three times.
It mattered because it was blowing on my face. That meant whatever was waking up behind me, if it had much sense of smell at all, it could follow my scent to the cave’s mouth and eat me.
It also mattered because it had been blowing for my whole talk with the Humble. And a long talk it had been. I hoped that might help to hide me. Because now my scent was likely spread all through that cave, however deep it went. So if it was a dark cave, as seemed likely deep in the night? And if I moved away from the mouth where the breeze was blowing? And if I was ever so very quiet? Well, it might be hard for that tanner to tell the difference between my smell lingering all about that cave, and my smell that was me myself.
Most of all, that gentle breeze also mattered because if it was blowing, it must be blo
wing to someplace. Someplace that, even if it didn’t let me escape the whole way out, might be a place I could crawl to where the chimera would not find me.
Which, taken all together, was not a bowl brimming over with hope aplenty, but was somewhat preferable to being eaten alive at the cave’s mouth in great gouts of gore. So, soft as a shepherd, I crept down from the cave’s mouth and made my way slow and careful around the cave’s edge.
As the chimera rose, it made one of the most awful sounds I’ve heard in my long life. Not awful for its loudness, nor for its harshness, but just the contrary. A soft sound it was, something like a person moaning and whimpering as he tried to speak, but not enough like a person to manage it. That sound stopped me still, the stab of it deep as I realized that, for all my own wretchedness, at least I was not some poor young tanner of Muddy Bend, dizzy with fear and pain and horror as I watched the Nothing knit my body into one shape, then unravel it and knit it into another.
I did so wish I might do something for this poor man. Little though it was, I decided at least to think of him as a tanner who’d been wronged most awful, and not only as a frightful beast.
After a moment, I realized with some little relief that he was moving toward the mouth of the cave, as I’d guessed. He moved with a limp and a drag, as though he wasn’t yet accustomed to his new shape, or he wasn’t fully formed, or his two sides didn’t match. As he limped and dragged his way to the mouth, I crept deeper along the cave’s edge.
The cave stayed quite shallow floor to ceiling, and more than once I had to go back on my path when it got too low to continue. But as best I could tell, the cave sounded wide and deep, and I hoped in all that space to remain hid from the tanner for some little while, at least.
As I moved, I stopped often to keep my quiet. Creeping deeper into the cave, careful to feel the walls high and low along the way, I found a few little nooks where the breeze seemed to go, but none were wide enough for me to follow it.
Until I found it.
A bigger gap in the cave wall, low toward the floor.
Now, it wasn’t a gap when I found it. It was just a good-sized stone by the wall, like so many others I’d passed along the way. I suppose somebody less accustomed to feeling their way through the world might have passed it by. But I’ll tell you this: my fingers know the difference between a plain old everyday stone, and a stone that somebody’s gone to the trouble to work. And I couldn’t think of no reason for somebody to work that stone except to make it fit in that spot. And fit it did. Nice and tight.
Which made me awful curious what might be behind it.
With a good bit of tugging and fingernail bending, I managed to pull it loose, roll it to the side, and open up that gap. Whether it led into another chamber, which seemed likely, or to the out of doors, which did not, at least it would be a different place than where I was. The hole leading to it was small enough that I doubted the tanner could follow me, and that seemed a hopeful thing. But as I felt around it more careful, my hope flickered out again, because it was too small even for me. I was almost sure of it.
Almost.
I’d worked my head and one arm into the hole, gouging my flesh quite bad, and I’d just about given up on going farther, when three things happened at once.
First, there was a sound back in the main cave, muffled by my body, but seeming right behind me. A sort of bubbling moan, I guess.
Second, my fingers, flailing for purchase, grabbed up something. A small thing, straighter and smoother than anything in a cave ought to be. I held it for just a heartbeat, but in that heartbeat I began to wonder real hard on what I’d found. Then it fell from my grasp.
It fell from my grasp because—and this is the third thing—the tanner grabbed my legs and pulled.
If the good part about that hole was the escape it offered, then the bad part was that with it being so small, and with me wedged in it, I could hardly hear a thing behind me. For example, a thing like the tanner creeping up on me.
As the tanner yanked me from my hole, ripping more flesh from my back, before the pain truly set in I had half a thought. Something about what the Humble Weaver had said as we spoke.
And as the tanner took my right arm in his mouth and bit down so hard I heard bones crack, half of another thought mumbled soft through the remarkable pain. Something about how more chimeras happened up by this holy place than the others.
And when those two half-thoughts met somewhere between the top of my head and my wailing scream of pain below it, a complete thought spoke to me. What it said was: Root, you well and truly need to get yourself back to that hole, and ’specially to that little thing you held a moment before the tanner pulled you back out. Since that will be a good deal harder once you’re in the tanner’s belly, it’s time to do what you can to keep from getting eaten.
I spent much of my childhood on pilgrimage in the wild, so Ma taught me a thing or two about defending myself. I suppose all weavers teach their daughters such.
If something attacks and you’ve no staff, nor no hope of running off? Eyes are real good. No matter how burly a body is, its eyes are squishy and tender. But not knowing the tanner’s shape, I doubted I could find his eyes quick enough. Ears are real good, too, whether slapping or pulling. But they’re hardly any easier to guess at than eyes. A kick in the nether parts? Sure, that’ll do, but not if something’s sitting on your legs. I’ll tell you. It’s not so easy to figure the right thing to do when you’re drowning in the pain of a broken arm, and when your ripped flesh is leaking your life in a red puddle all over a cave floor.
So. I did the best I could.
3
The Hidden Folk’s Secret
I should maybe say something about those two half-thoughts.
Oh now, stop it. Don’t fret and moan. I’ll be quick. I know you want to find out whether the tanner ate me.
While we were talking, the Humble Weaver said she couldn’t get to the Holy real quick even if she wanted to. And when she said that, it struck me real funny and it stayed with me. Just days before, she’d used the Holy to turn that poor tanner into something that wasn’t a tanner no more. I supposed she might have sent the Holy away, but that seemed a good deal of trouble to go to. They could just take it with them when they finished doing dreadful things to that poor, innocent follow.
And way back when I was learning Eulee’s list, it often struck me funny, too, that one holy place deserved more chimeras than the others. That holy place in the Divide, I don’t guess I’m telling secrets to say it’s somewhat more holy than the others. The good-old stories say Grandmother Root chased Gebohra Muerta across the World That Is and up into the sky, so weavers figured maybe the place farthest from Grandmother Root’s home of Surecreek was where they left us. And the place farthest from Surecreek? That would be the Divide.
So sure. That holy place was special. But the more I learned about chimeras, the less they seemed about holiness and mystery and magic. They seemed about tools, reliable and regular and true. So one place oughtn’t have more chimeras than another just because it’s holier. But it might if the Hidden Folk used that place more often.
That much, I’d puzzled out while the Humble Weaver spoke with me.
So maybe when the Hidden Folk weren’t reshaping innocent tanners and lumbermen and foragers into chimeras, maybe they hid the Holy in a deep and secret cave. Someplace close enough to be handy when they wanted it, yet not so close to the holy place that weavers would stumble on it, even if they cared to go poking about in a dark cave. Maybe the Hidden Folk kept it safer still by putting it behind a rock, in a nook far at the back of that cave.
And maybe, though the Hidden Folk spread their work across all the World That Is, maybe the place where they kept the Holy was where they used it more. Maybe they hoped for better luck at a more holy place. Maybe taking it to other places felt risky. Maybe they just got lazy.
My thoughts didn’t come to me nowhere near that clear, of course, what with the gushing blood an
d the crushed arm and the ripped flesh and the twisted thing that had once been a tanner leaning over me and slobbering on its way down for another mouthful. Naw. It was more of a tickle in my head ’til I could think it out more clear later.
But that tickle was about the little thing in the nook that I’d grabbed a moment earlier. A thing that had felt like nothing I’d ever touched before. Like a little box it was, hard and cool as metal, yet lighter than pine. In my fingers one moment, then lost again in the wildness of being pulled from that hole.
If those two half-thoughts were right, then that thing I held so brief was the Holy. An ancient tool to wake the Nothing within me and maybe, if I was real lucky, to save me from getting eaten.
But since being near the box hadn’t woken my Nothing, nor had holding the box, I figured the Holy was inside the box. That it couldn’t help me ’til I took it out. Though “figured” is too proud a word. A better word is “hoped.”
If my hope was true, there was one thing I did know: I had to get back there, get that box, and open it up if I cared to keep on living.
4
The Shepherd’s Gift
That tanner, Grandmother bless him, had been kind enough to crush my arm near the wrist and not near the shoulder. That meant I could still move that arm, though as you can probably imagine, it was a touch uncomfortable.
And that tanner, Grandmother bless him, had also been kind enough to crush my right arm, and not my left. Oh, I know it. Few folks favor the left, and those as do are scolded for it. I always thought of that as just one more way I’d been shaped for the consternation of others.