by M. A. Ray
“Get down so I can get ready, and I’ll show you what fast hands are really good for.” Tai jumped off and Dingus knelt to loosen his high boots. They were already damp, but he didn’t want to wade out in them and squelch the whole rest of the day. He put his stockings inside them and rolled his breeches so they’d stay above his knees. Tai watched him, suspicion in the coal eyes, and, when he opened the toggles on his jerkin, backed off.
“Is this what you wants to show me?” It was the flattest voice he’d ever heard from any Ish.
“Huh?”
“You is just the same as all thems. The bad ones.” Tai went to all fours, bristling. “I isn’t do that.”
“What—you don’t like fishing?” He’d cottoned on by now to what Tai meant, but he refused to dignify it with a direct response. It’s not enough you got a life a dog wouldn’t want?
“Fishing?” Tai blinked.
“Yeah! Watch.” He took off his jerkin, but left his tunic on, hoping it’d put Tai more at ease, and pushed his sleeves up instead. He waded in a little ways from the fall. Then he crouched—got soaked, but he was already wet so it didn’t much matter—and felt around under the rocks.
“What you is looking for?” Tai asked, lying belly-down where Dingus searched and trying to see. He got in Dingus’s way, but Dingus didn’t really need his eyes for this.
“Just a minute,” he whispered. His fingertips brushed the slippery side of a fish, and he stroked lightly up until he could strike, shoving his fingers into its gills. He pulled it from under the rock and out of the water: a good-sized trout that flapped and gasped in protest.
Tai did a sudden backflip, something to see for sure, since he sprang at least twice as high as he was tall. “Wow, wow!”
“I got a needle in the bottom hem of my jerkin. You want to go get that for me?”
“Yes, I gets it, I gets it!” Tai rushed over to fetch the needle, practically vibrating with excitement.
Dingus dug twine out of his pocket. “You know how to use one of those?”
“I puts the string in the hole, yes?”
“That’s right. Will you do that?”
The needle looked huge in Tai’s hand, but he managed it.
“Okay, now pull it out double—yeah, like that—and tie me a double overhand at the bottom.”
“What?”
“Uh, sorry. Just tie a knot and then tie it again. There you go.” He took the needle and strung the desperate fish through the roof of its mouth. “See, that puts him out of his misery, poor fucker, and you can hold him,” he said, handing it over once it’d stilled. “Watch close!” He caught three more fish, one after another, and then said, “Now it’s your turn to try.”
“Oh, no no,” Tai said, holding his palms out. “I isn’t think so.”
“Just as well.” Dingus straightened. “Not just anybody can do it. Like I said before, it takes fast hands.”
“You wants to work lifting, you gots to have fast hands. My hands is very fast.”
“Caught you though, didn’t I? Must mean mine are faster.” He stepped out of the water, dripping in time with the rain.
“Huh! You isn’t can pick the pocket of an old blind big-mama. You gots nothing.”
“I don’t need to pick pockets. I can get my own food anytime I want with no money at all. All I need is my two hands.” He held them up, spreading his fingers. “But I guess if you can’t—”
“Whoa, whoa. I isn’t say I can’t. I is, if I wants. I just isn’t want.”
Dingus smiled. “Whatever you say.”
“I can. You is watching me now.” Tai slipped into the stream and started feeling along the undersides of the rocks, the same way Dingus had. “You watch,” he said, glaring defiantly. “I gets a fish.”
In fact, he did get his hands on a fish, and quick, too, but it was a big one, and when he pulled it out from under the rock, he overbalanced, dropping it. It splashed away as he toppled into the stream, and Dingus bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.
“You give up?”
Tai scowled again and went back for more. He tried three times, and seized a sizeable fish each time, but couldn’t lift them out of the water. “They is too big!” he squalled, crouching in the water, as if it was Dingus’s fault.
“Try a littler one. It counts just as much.”
“I can do it as good as you is!”
“I bet you can,” Dingus said. “It’s a matter of proportion. Look at these fish I got. They’re bigger than you are! But to me they’re not that big at all. If you got a little fish, it’d be real small to me, but plenty big to you. See what I mean?”
“I is think.”
“Little fish,” he added, “are a lot faster than big ones.”
Tai went back at it. On the second try, he came up with a minnow. A couple of those would make a nice meal for a tiny Ishling. “I is do it, Dingus, look!”
“Hey-la-hey, you sure did!”
He hopped over to give Dingus the prize, and Dingus pushed it down on the needle, right through its eyes. He didn’t want to ruin the meat, so he didn’t pull it down onto the twine.
“I got a royal says you can’t get another.”
“If I gets another fish, you is give me a whole royal?”
Dingus took a silver coin from his pocket and turned it so it flashed in the dim. “It’s a bet, and I’m gonna bet you can’t do it.” Sucker bet, he thought, suppressing his grin at the gleam in Tai’s eye. “You prove you can…”
“I is win the royal.”
“That’s right.”
Tai all but dove back into the water. No more than five minutes, and he brought another minnow. Dingus paid up. Best royal he’d ever lost—and Tai smelled a hell of a lot better.
“Think you could do that on your own?”
The Ishling shook himself, scattering water from his fur. “I gets the way of it.”
“C’mon then,” Dingus said. He picked up his boots and jerkin and extended his hand. Tai leapt on and scampered up his arm to perch on his shoulder. He set off for the camp under the cedars. Tai huddled, shivering, against his neck.
“We isn’t go to market?”
“Naw. You can eat these little guys raw,” he said, holding up the needle with the two minnows stuck on it, “but they won’t taste half as good. I’ll show you how to fix ’em up, and then if you got time you can do it, and if you don’t you can just slurp ’em down. Once we all eat, I’ll take you back to the market.”
“Okay,” Tai said, with a resigned sigh. “But you is trick me. I says I isn’t want, so you is say I can’t. And then I is have to.”
“You mad?”
“Not lots.” Tai muttered, “I isn’t know why I isn’t, but I isn’t,” which Dingus probably wasn’t meant to hear.
Not everybody’s cruel, he wanted to say. Not everybody’s out to get what they can and leave you bleeding. He thought about all Vandis had done for him in the past year, everything he’d seen with his Master; about what it was like to have somebody give a damn just because they gave one, and not because they were kin.
Dingus walked the rest of the way to the camp in silence, with Tai pressed quiet to his neck.
Nobody’s Son
Dingus—with his soft eyes and his clean clothes and his Vandis, whatever a Vandis was—didn’t know much. He was crazy for sure, with his pigshit stories. The hituleti was interesting, and like a dummy, he used his money to share food, so Tai stuck around a little every day. Sometimes when he thought about Dingus’s stupid stories, they didn’t sound so much like pigshit, but Dingus didn’t know much.
Tai had thought so, anyway. After today he was starting to think maybe Dingus knew more than he showed. Food with no stealing, food with no money at all, and he’d taught Tai to get it, and how to take away all the parts that didn’t taste good, with his humongous hands guiding Tai’s. And Tai sort of liked Dingus, well, really liked him, just couldn’t help it. He had funny ears, and he was as tall as one of
the giants in his pigshit stories, and he ran so fast! He even let Tai ride on his shoulder, which was warm, and didn’t complain about how bad Tai stank. And he brought Tai to his sleeping place.
That was a lot of trust, because there was money here. Tai knew it. This wasn’t a poor place. He knew the Boss Man would want him to find it, to bring back as much as he could carry, but he didn’t want to take from Dingus. He just wanted to be here. Probably that was stupid, but he couldn’t make himself really consider taking money, not when he’d have to look into Dingus’s face afterward.
Kessa didn’t like it, him being here. Tai had seen that much right away. Kessa knew a little better what was what and how things worked, but she humored crazy Dingus all the time. She was over on the other side of the nurse log doing some weird Big thing that involved lying on her stomach and pushing herself up on her arms over and over again.
Dingus had showed him how to make a spit and put some of the fish on it, but he had also showed Tai how to wrap the fish in wet leaves and put them on a rock right next to the fire. It was easier, Dingus said. He’d given Tai a salmon bun when they got back to camp, but it fell all the way to the bottom of his empty stomach. After he’d eaten that, and the little fish he caught, he was still hungry, always hungry.
For now, though, he could sit here warm and look forward to an even bigger fish supper, and listen to Dingus sing to himself in his deep, soft voice, a song in hituleti.
After a while Kessa finished with her weirdness and came to sit by them. “Will you tell me a story, Dingus?”
“Sure,” he said. “You want a new one?”
Kessa shook her head and her springy orange curls flew around her face. “I want one about our Lady.”
“Let me think of one.” He turned the spit around and around, for a long time. Then he cleared his throat and said, in his pigshit story voice that sounded magic, if Tai let it sink into his bones: “Now hear this. A long time ago, before the Bearded Ones sold Men the secret of steel, the Lady Akeere was new in Her power and walking, without ever stopping or sleeping, along the Golden Road. Nobody’d learned Her name yet, and nobody called on Her as a goddess, but already three times She’d walked around the whole world, and every time She took a step, She saw something new. The road sloped up over mountains and dived into valleys. She crossed places that had never seen snow and walked through lands where the snow and ice never melted. The world amazed Her, and since nobody called Her name for help or to worship, She never yet had seen anything to make Her angry.
“One day She came to a huge tree in Her path, a cedar, but taller and thicker times a hundred than any other cedar in the world. The Road ran up to it, and ran on behind it, but She didn’t want to step off long enough to go around, because it was so thick even two hundred men together couldn’t have embraced it.”
Tai shut his eyes, imagining the cedar.
Dingus went on. “There was only one thing the Lady could do. She tied Her magic walking stick over Her shoulder and set Her foot in the first hold She saw. For days and nights and nights and days She climbed, while the sun swept overhead and while the stars turned in their spheres. She heard the music the heavens make and saw every beautiful thing in the skies. She climbed for a year and a day, and when She got to the top, She was in the Hall of Heaven.
“Naheel the Queen was there on Her golden throne, and Oda King of Hell lurked around the fringes, wearing his shifting mask of shadow and light that changed like the moon. There was Kradon, Old Man War, with all His bastard sons, and Elemer and Cerama all wrapped around and into each other, staring into each other’s eyes. Hadrok and Dareen were there, who the Lady had known as gods since childhood: Hadrok with His cruel spear of ice, which is named Winter, and Dareen wearing Her shining blue cloak that was all the oceans and seas in the world. Reeda was there pruning a rosebush, and Vard; of course Vard was drunk, slurping right from the bung of His never-empty ale keg.
“When Lady Akeere saw Them all, for the first time She knew a goddess’s wrath. In the middle of the great Hall there was a table so big, it was the whole world. When She looked at it She saw all the peoples that lived there, struggling and toiling and crying out with the pain of being alive, and the gods weren’t doing a thing, even though the people called to Them again and again. They were idle, and it made Her shout! ‘Why are You all just sitting around? Can’t You see all the people? Can’t You hear them calling Your names?’
“‘Little Sister,’ Naheel told the Lady, ‘whether We listen to them or not, it’s all the same, and it goes on like it always has. The world takes care of itself. Come and sit with Us.’
“‘No,’ said Lady Akeere. ‘I can’t sit idle while there’s so much work to be done. Come with Me, Brothers and Sisters, and We’ll work together to make the world better!’
“‘We will not,’ said Naheel Queen of Heaven, and Oda said so too. Their hearts were hard from being gods so long, and seeing all the pain and suffering in the world on Their table.
“Akeere understood She couldn’t do much here; all the gods were too busy doing nothing, but now that She’d seen all the world together, and seen how much trouble there was in it, She thought that Her heart must be bleeding. ‘I won’t let them suffer alone,’ She said, and walked past all the gods to the door on the opposite side. She was about to go through it when Vard stood up and—” Dingus belched, and Tai giggled. He couldn’t help it.
Dingus grinned, too, even though Kessa poked out her tongue, and took a stick to pull the wrapped fish closer to him. “‘It might be,’ Vard said, ‘that Our Little Sister has a point!’” He had a funny voice for Vard, all slurred, so he sounded drunk, and he made big swishy gestures like a drunk man. Tai laughed and laughed. “‘I will go with Her, and She will go with Me, and wherever one of Us is, the other should be, too. What say You, Little Sister?’”
“‘I say, let’s not waste any more time,’ the Lady said. Together They climbed down the great Tree, and went out into the world on the golden road. That’s why in all the Lady’s places, no matter how small, you’ll find something of Vard’s; and that’s why in all Vard’s places, you’ll find a spot set aside for the Lady, even if it’s only Her sign.” Dingus held up his right hand and showed, between thumb and first finger, a tiny tattoo of a leaf. “That’s the reason us Knights do what we do. ’Cause the Lady came down to walk with us.”
“Akeere is Her name?” Tai asked, while Dingus took out a thin knife and sliced pieces out of a roast fish.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Not Vandis?”
Kessa laughed, and so did Dingus. “No, Tai!” he said, laughing and laughing, but it didn’t feel like he thought Tai was stupid. It never did. He didn’t have a mean, cackling laugh like Laben’s, heeheeheehee, no; he had a laugh like a giant’s, as big as he was, and a big smile like sunshine.
“Vandis is a Knight of the Air. I’m a Squire,” Kessa explained, “so I have my badge, but Dingus took the Oath of Service this summer, so he’s a full Knight, with a leaf and all. Vandis is teaching us, so he’s our Master.”
Dingus grinned. “I guess I should’ve explained all that, huh?”
“Maybe it’s help,” Tai sniped, making Dingus laugh again. “So that’s why you feed me. Because the Lady is walk.”
“That’s part of it. I have to, ’cause I swore to do whatever I can for people.”
“Oh.” Tai was a little disappointed. He’d sort of thought—well, it didn’t matter.
“It’s more than that, though,” Dingus went on. He put some fish on a plate, and a small pile of noodles. “I like talk
ing to you. I think you’re interesting and I want to give to you, ’cause it keeps you around.” He put out his Big hand and rubbed his thumb over the fuzz where Tai would someday, if he made it, get his crest. He couldn’t remember, ever once, anybody touching him that way; it was over in about three heartbeats, and Dingus put the plate in front of him, saying, “Let’s eat!”
Tai picked up a piece of hot fish—Dingus had cut it up small, just for him—and nibbled. He wanted it to last and last, but he started eating and couldn’t stop. It tasted so good. Dingus gave him more when it was gone, as much as he wanted, like always. He ate until his stomach bulged, but he still felt hungry. He wanted—well, he wanted a lot of things, but most of all he wanted the thing he couldn’t have anymore. He was already in trouble, he knew that, he shouldn’t have been around Dingus so often and he should never have left the market. He was already in the worst trouble of his life, but if he didn’t put a stop to this, Dingus would get in trouble too. He wouldn’t put anything past Laben, not even killing Dingus, and he couldn’t stand it if that happened. He wished he’d thought about that sooner, but Dingus hadn’t mattered so much, he hadn’t known, he just hadn’t known.
Right away when Dingus and Kessa finished eating, he said, “I has to go.”
Dingus wiped his mouth and stood. “I’ll walk you back,” he said, and Tai should’ve told him no, told him to go fuck himself so he wouldn’t get hurt, but he held out his hand, inviting. Tai scrambled right up and sat on Dingus’s shoulder, wondering why he couldn’t resist one crazy Big. It was weak and stupid, but he curled his fingers and toes into Dingus’s jerkin, coiled his tail against Dingus’s arm. The Big hand came up and Dingus rubbed the backs of his fingers under Tai’s jaw.
Tai leaned into it just a little, until Dingus took his hand away and walked out of the camp. It was the end.
“How’d you like the story?”
“It’s sound like pigshit,” Tai said. “Pretty pigshit, but pigshit the same. The Lady isn’t walk with us, and anyways She is for Bigs, not for little Ish.”