by Andy Giesler
So I swung that broken right arm real feeble and thumped the tanner in the neck. That pulled an awful scream from me, which between that scream and my feeble tap on his neck maybe confused the tanner for about half a heartbeat. But I wasn’t trying to hurt him nor confuse him, really. Since his body had a shape I could hardly guess, I was just making sure where his neck was.
Because if you can’t get to the eyes or the ears or the nether parts? Well. The throat is not a bad choice.
I’ve never been real big as folks go, but three years of the Shepherd’s Dance had put a hardness on me. So, braced against the cool cave floor, I balled up my good left hand and threw it with all that was in me and, whether by luck or blessing, my hand found his throat. A thick and muscled throat to be sure, but my blow was just enough to make him gasp and fall off me, which was just enough to let me stumble back to that hole.
By the time he’d caught his breath, I had the little box in my hand.
By the time he lunged at me, I figured how to open it.
By the time he crashed into the cave wall beside me—because it was as dark in there for him as it was for me, and he was only guessing where to find me—I felt…something. A feeling that grew on me. Almost like something was moving right through my body without being there at all. Like a voice I couldn’t hear.
I leapt back from that hole, jumped on him quick as I could, and climbed onto his back. He thrashed and flailed at me. One of his arms flapped about like it had no bone nor muscle in it, which might have been a relief except that his other arm was as mighty as an Alter mason’s. He’d just managed to get that beefy thing around my neck and was trying to pull me off when, from the middle of my head, my own voice said, “I’ve found a Wicc signal, Aura Lee, so I’m ready to wake up. You prob’ly recall this, but I need to remind you Inner Frontier Bionetics still owns me, and they can—” and I yelled “Shut up!” and the voice shut up and I twisted the tanner’s head clean around, as you might do to a chicken.
And while I grieved to kill him, I could not think of one single thing I might have done for that tanner that would have been the least bit kinder.
5
The Humble’s Comfort
I could see the tanner’s body.
I could see the cave all about me, in front and in back and to the sides, but nothing in it held my focus like that twisted, half-knit body. I don’t wish to say no more about it, only that his shape still haunts my nights, and on that particular night it filled me with wrath as I hadn’t felt before. To think one person might do this to another, however good her reason might seem.
All of a sudden, I realized that though my pain was gone, it had been replaced by a ravenous hunger, and there was a heat on me that I worried might set my flesh afire. My body began to yell at me, demanding food so loud that it was all I could do not to eat the misshapen meat that had once been a tanner from Muddy Bend. Somehow I pulled myself away from him to search the cave, which was even larger than I’d guessed. I found things there, and I ate them. Some moldering bits of this and that still stuck to bones that the tanner hadn’t finished. A couple of bats in a high place that he couldn’t have reached. I’d just as soon not think on it. I was still hungry after, but not so hungry as to feel I might eat the body of what had once been a person.
When I reached the cave’s mouth, my guard still stood outside it, keeping a respectful distance and leaning down to peer in. No doubt he’d heard much of my meeting with the tanner. I hoped it had troubled him. When I reached between the beams for the metal bars, first he jumped back with a gasp, then he rushed forward swinging his club at my hand again. This time it was him who yelped, though, for I took the club from his hands and swept his feet from under him.
I still couldn’t quite reach the bar, so I tried lifting the top beam direct, but whatever strength the Nothing put in me, it wasn’t enough to break heavy wooden beams nor bend the metal bars that fastened them.
My guard got to his feet, and I used his club to sweep them out from under him again, then I reached for the metal bar on the right. And while I could only touch it, just as before, I reached so fierce that I leaned into the beam ’til something snapped—a bone inside me, I think—yet that didn’t trouble me as I finally held that bar and began to work at it. It was set in place good and proper. I don’t suppose I could have moved it without the Shepherd’s Gift, and even then, it was a struggle.
Seeing me do this, my guard ran for help, bellowing for the others to come. That gave me a moment to finish my work, climb out of my cage, and fetch my staff from the underbrush.
What happened next happened quick.
Judging from their Dance, three among the Hidden Folk were weavers. Before then, I would not have killed except to save my own life. But as we fought, I felt the tanner watching me from the Village of the Dead, him and all the others who’d come before him, all the good and helpless folks who’d ended up as Eulee’s list, and I thought on all those who might come after if the Hidden Folk kept at their well-meant but wrong-headed Badbefores.
Though I had no right to, I judged as a weaver might. I judged that the Hidden Folk needed a Badbefore, so that all us others might have a Goodafter.
The weavers died, along with three others who remained to fight. The half dozen others fled. I let them go. Without their weavers or the Holy, I didn’t suppose they’d cause much trouble.
I found the Humble Weaver some ways off, not far from the holy place. She lay in the brush at the base of a hoary old oak. The Goodafter Cup’s scent was on her lips. I put my ear to her chest, but there was nothing to hear.
Maybe she only wished to die, not caring much what came after. But knowing her what little I did, her drinking of the Cup seemed a request for a proper finish, even though that request was to somebody who’d left the weaver’s path and had no right to ritual. I very nearly left her there, left them all there for the animals, but then I remembered the tanner. I figured even if I wasn’t a weaver, he was due what respect I could give. Might as well chuck the others into the Pit after him.
I ate more than my fill of the plain fare in their packs, then with tools I found among their gear I started on a Goodafter Pit.
As I dug it, I thought of all the folks who’d gone in all the Pits of the World That Is. Even when I was a child, the reasons for the Pit seemed soft and shifting. But we don’t ask those things, Young Root. They’re weaver’s business, and none of yours just yet, Young Root. They’re given down to us from Grandmother Root herself, and she knew the reason of it. Now hush up, Young Root, and throw in a stick like everybody else and watch them burn.
The longer I dug, the more it prickled me. Because the Pit was to save us from chimeras, and chimeras came from the Nothing. And it seemed to me the Nothing had rules. Not soft and shifting rules like those that sent people to the Pit, all those weavers’ rules that wouldn’t get along if you put them in a room together. The Nothing seemed to have rules that were simple. Reliable. True.
If you get a chimera’s blood in you and you get its sickness, you need the Pit.
If an ancient tool wakes the Nothing in you and you start turning chimera, you need the Pit.
But if you’re confused and you startle some folks by yelling despite yourself? Or if you’re a man who lies with another man? Or if your body gets the Shakes real bad? Then, you ain’t turning chimera. Then, the Pit don’t protect nobody at all.
All it does is murder you.
As I thought and I dug, getting madder and madder, I suppose that Pit got deeper than it was meant to be. But that wasn’t all bad. It had to hold more folks than a Pit usually did.
I filled it with wood and bodies, and I said the words, and I set the cleansing fire.
6
Finding Gabriel
Finding Shepherd Gabriel was easier than I’d imagined, except for the part where I nearly died.
I figured I’d have to scour the World That Is for weeks or months hunting for signs of him. Turned out, all I had to do wa
s ask.
Once I’d done what was proper for the tanner, and for the Hidden Folk besides, I had another meal, one that would make a hungry mason blush. Then I got myself snug up in a tree and slept for some time. I think it was only a day, but for all I knew it might have been three. I woke near sunset of some day or another, and I set to eating, and to thinking on what might come next.
All I could think of was Shepherd Gabriel.
The shepherds had a good deal to answer for, whether or not it was in me to make them answer. But I also had just plain questions, and of all the shepherds, I figured Gabriel was the only one who might be in any kind of mood to tell me what I cared to know.
While I thought on how I might find him, I took time to hunt up a better hiding place for the Holy. I’ll not say where. By the time I’d put the Holy in, or on, or under wherever I’d put it, I had a thought on what might come next.
That’s how it was that I met two runners on a road far from where I’d hid the Holy. The only folks in the World That Is who know more of its happenings than runners are weavers, and I couldn’t think of nothing to make a weaver point me to Shepherd Gabriel. But I could think of something that would make a runner point me to him.
Before stopping them, I watched them from the woods a while, keeping pace with them out of sight. One who seemed a good bit younger than me scouted up ahead, and one who seemed a touch older pulled a cart behind.
Back when I’d sent the Hidden Folk naked into the Pit, as was proper, I’d set aside their clothes and other belongings. From that pile I’d retrieved a weaver’s cloak and staff that, if they didn’t quite fit me, at least didn’t look too suspicious.
So when the younger, scouting runner rounded the next bend, he found a weaver standing in the middle of his path. I stood with my feet set in that stance you likely know, the stance that says, “I am a weaver, and just now I’d care for your attention.” Which, again, it bothered me deep to not just stretch the truth but break it. But it seemed needed. I told myself it was a Badbefore.
The runner stopped. “Weaver?” he said, “What’s…how can I help…um…” He shifted this way and that like I’d caught him at something naughty.
“I need to find Shepherd Gabriel,” I replied. “Have you word of him?”
“Well…of course. But don’t you know?”
Uh-oh. Yet I saw no way but forward. “I asked a question,” I replied. “Answer me, boy.”
“He’s on Festival rounds. Near the end of them by now.”
Which was a puzzle. When Eulee mentioned the delay in Festival, that was strange, but three years’ delay was stranger still. “Why was Festival delayed?” I asked.
And that puzzled the runner even deeper. “Weaver, without no disrespect, how can you…why don’t you…”
About then, the other runner reached us with his cart. “Peace on you, Weaver. Here now, Apprentice Hem, what’s amiss?”
“The, um…the weaver wants to know where Shepherd Gabriel is, and why Festival is delayed.”
“And you’ve told her?” the elder runner asked.
“But Runner Zakery, shouldn’t she…I meant, don’t weavers all know—”
Zakery’s slap to the head cut him short.
“My apologies, Weaver,” said Zakery. “The boy’s young. Seems he don’t know yet”—another slap—”that weavers asks questions for their own good reasons. You’ll find Shepherds Gabriel and Michael down at Greencreek. Shepherd Michael’s done…well…real tolerable at learning Festival from Gabriel, that Gabriel might take the Shepherd’s Rest.”
Which was a real surprise.
So very long ago, the good-old stories say it was common for shepherds to weary of their work and take the Shepherd’s Rest, growing old like an ordinary person and then dying in their time. Yet none had rested in generations. It was hard for me to imagine Gabriel lying down to die.
“Thank you, Runners. Now, don’t speak to nobody of our meeting, or awful things will happen! I warn you, they will! Peace on you, and Grandmother smile upon you.”
And I was off, straight into the woods, slowing just long enough to retrieve my own little staff and drop the borrowed one, holding back at first to keep from moving too quick in the presence of those runners, but then letting my legs loose as I hadn’t in years, or maybe ever. Because right at that moment, Shepherd Gabriel was halfway across the World That Is. I wasn’t sure how quick I could get there, but I cared to find out.
7
An Unfamiliar Festival
I’d like to have watched from the safe distance of Greencreek’s wall, but my sight was always poor except up close, so I leaped down from the wall, wandered to the outer edge of the crowd, and crouched in the shadow of somebody’s home.
While it’s not my place to say so, since I probably do no better, Shepherd Michael’s Festival was a sorry thing. Not all sorry. Some of it was a wonder. The crowd could hardly take in his feats of skill and motion. When Shepherd Gabriel juggled at my first Festival, I wasn’t able to see him do it. But even though Shepherd Michael was far enough from me to be hazy, I could tell the difference clear. Shepherd Gabriel had been a joy, but Shepherd Michael was a marvel, like a good-old story come to life, and a story you’d not believe if somebody told you.
And I’ll speak blunt here too: when it came time for songs, you didn’t listen to Shepherd Gabriel for the beauty of his voice. It wasn’t some old, bent, creaky thing, but I imagine half the folks in Surecreek could hold a tune more straight and pretty. When Shepherd Michael sang, though, it seemed the ground itself sang with him. His voice was clear and low and mighty, and few singing voices I’ve heard were so beautiful.
But that’s not what Festival is about. Not really.
Festival is about the stories.
It’s about stories of folks so kind, or lonely, or brave, or foolish, yet you could almost imagine knowing them. And even as a nubbin, I’d understood those stories were meant only in part for fun and fascination, but mostly they were meant to teach. While we laughed or gasped or cried, our hearts knew the reason for it, and they learned these pretend people’s lessons just as though we’d been kind, or lonely, or brave, or foolish our very selves.
When Shepherd Gabriel told those stories, he told them like a question. Like he wondered if we might care to hear them, and by asking us, he let us choose to make these pretend folks a part of ourselves.
Shepherd Michael told stories as a drover might tell wayward sheep. They were the same stories, and they might have even been the same words, but there was no gentleness nor question to them. You could hear it plain as daisies. These were things we ought to know. If we didn’t? Well, we’d better learn them right quick, or there’d be trouble.
Now, maybe I was recalling Shepherd Gabriel’s Festival with a child’s ears. Maybe it was full of magic for me because it was my first. But I don’t think so. And far as I could tell from the folks of Greencreek, they didn’t think so, neither. They didn’t dislike it. They gasped and even chuckled now and again. Shepherd Michael ended the night just as Shepherd Gabriel had, throwing those little wrapped treats to all the children of Greencreek. The children squealed and giggled, of course, and their parents gave a great tapping of feet in appreciation.
So his Festival wasn’t a bad one, not at all. But the whole affair felt like a secondhand account.
After, as Shepherd Michael left the center and began to move among the crowd, somebody who’d sat up near the front stood and walked the other way from everybody else, away from Shepherd Michael and into the night.
I followed him.
The man wandered back through the houses and hen coops and gardens, across to Greencreek’s gate. He spoke brief with the watcher, who opened the gate and let him out. I waited a moment, then not far from the gate I leaped to the wall top and climbed slow and careful down the other side, trailing quiet behind the man.
He walked to the back of the village, then to the edge of the woods far from the wall, out beyond Greencreek’s ea
stern pasture. Then he stood there, leaning on his staff and staring into the darkness.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and he swung around fast, not taking up a fighting stance but ready to.
“If you tell me who you are and why you’re sorry, I’ll probably forgive you,” the man replied.
“I’m sorry for hitting your head so hard. I’m pleased you’re not dead.” I pushed back my weaver’s hood.
He sort of sagged, then he looked away a moment, then back at me. I heard that little “whuff” of his that he used for laughing. “Root,” Shepherd Gabriel said, then he was quiet a moment. “I’m pleased you’re not dead, too. Thank you for sending someone to tend to me by Slowbird Creek. I imagine you risked your hide in doing it.”
I wasn’t sure what to say about that. So I didn’t.
“What’s next?” he asked.
“I have some questions,” I replied.
“I suppose you do.”
“Quite a few, really.”
And I was just about to ask one when I saw something—someone—moving up behind me so fast I hardly had time to spin and take the stance before Shepherd Michael was upon me.
8
The Shepherd's Dance
Shepherd Michael pelted me with dirt as he slid to a stop, his chest pressed against my skinny little staff’s end.
He looked at me, then he turned his head to the side just a bit and he looked at me some more, then he said something in the Shepherds’ Speech, sort of low and flat, maybe angry, maybe wary, or maybe filled with awe.
“Shepherd Gabriel, what’s that mean?” I asked.