by Tara Maya
Then the real shocker came. Hadi started to fight back. He roared too, even louder than Shegar. He shouted something heroic like, “That’s for my family, you mucking sheep-kisser!” He jumped at Shegar with teeth barred, like a crazed honey badger attacking a cougar three times its size.
Shegar went down. Hadi hit his head. Shegar spewed a geyser of blood and teeth. He hit dirt like felled timber.
The enemy crowd keened in agony and shock, but the cheering amongst the Green Woods and Rainbow Labyrinth drowned out their groans. Tamio screamed his approval loudest of all.
He ran into the ring to bear-hug Hadi. Pounded his back, shouting, “You did it, you goat-headed mucker! By the Lost Wheel of the Faeries, you mucking thwacked that sheep-sleeper!”
“Yeah,” said Hadi. He didn’t look too happy about it, but that was just Hadi being Hadi.
“Let’s go get drunk. Vumo has offered to provide the beer. He’s from our clan, but related to one of their Eaglelords or something, so they all defer to him…Hadi? Hello?”
“I should go help with Shegar’s body,” said Hadi.
“What? Why?”
Shegar’s kin were gathering around the corpse to pick it up and place it in the death jar, which they would roll to a Deathsworn menhir outside the sheepmeet wall.
“He was a real honorable opponent,” Hadi said. “I should, uh, honor him.”
Tamio rolled his eyes. “Fa! Get on with it, then, if that’ll let you rest better. But don’t take too long. I’ll be with the old man Vumo, getting tips on how to trap quail.”
Hadi
The menhir was a lot farther away from the sheepmeet than it had looked from the wall. Huffing the whole way, Hadi rolled the jar to touch the upright black stone mounted with a sheep skull and horns.
The sun set prettily over the mountains. Hadi could still see and hear other duels going on in the sheepmeet. From a distance, softened by the ambiance of dusk, the pageantry of ritual death looked romantic: the dust, milling crowd, cheering and mourning relatives, the drunken songs of memorial and celebration, the flute and drum.
“Took you long enough,” said Shegar, unfolding himself out of the jar. “And did you have to roll over every rock you found?”
“You aren’t exactly light as swan feathers.”
“Good job,” says Shegar. “You were pretty weak at first, but you picked up at the end. I think the way I spit out the blood really sold it. The teeth were an inspiration.”
“Where did you get them?”
“Sheep’s blood and sheep’s teeth too! Hope no one looks. Ha! Now, that you’ve killed me, I can start a new life, with a new name, someplace far, far from here. With a lot of frisky ewes. Ha! Winking!”
“Winking,” Hadi agreed. His knees wobbled now that the nervous energy which had sustained him poured away like milk from a jug with a hole. His body deflated. He sank to the ground and hugged his knees.
“You get the spoils of victory, of course,” said Shegar. He had prepared his change of clothes in advance. He tossed Hadi the garments he’d worn during the fight. The wool stank of man sweat and sheep dung. Except for a little ram’s blood, and the fact that the legwals would hang on Hadi like a tent, not a bad set.
“I guess I have to give up these too,” Shegar said sadly. He handed over the last of his worldly possessions.
Hadi perked up. He finally had a pair of sheep-fleece boots.
Dindi
The snowstorm passed over the Spider Loom clanhold, but the damage had been done. The trail leading out of the valley was snowed over, and they would have to wait until it cleared before they could continue. Umbral was not happy, because he worried that his disguise would be questioned, especially since Essi and Farla already knew he was not Rudgo. For Dindi, however, the respite came as a welcome break. Not a rest—hard labor was expected of her; Essi and Farla thought her a slave and treated her as one; and she counted all of the Spider Loom clansfolk as enemies, since their tribe had attacked her ancestral clanhold. Indeed, she probably had deathdebts she ought, in all honor, to redeem in blood. All of that was still preferable to spending time alone in Umbral’s company, which had become too confusing.
Why had she saved his life when they were falling from the sky? She kept asking herself that. She’d needed only to let go of him. Let him drop, while she soared away on her Aelfae wings.
Fortunately, she did not see much of him except at meals and at night. He spent the day in the woods, hunting, cutting firewood, or repairing the wooden slats on the roof. Dindi spent her time obeying Farla, who delighted in having someone lower on the totem pole to bully.
Farla decided to take advantage of the extra pair of hands to make chunyo. Dindi had never heard of it, but she dutifully followed Farla up a mountain trail to a high alpine field dotted with stone hutches. Dindi and Farla were not the only women working in the field, but the others did not greet Farla, nor she them. Farla did not converse with Dindi either, except to cuss, complain or call her names.
The hutches covered pits filled with potatoes. Orange Canyon tribe grew over two hundred kinds of potatoes, but the only ones available here, this late in the year, were small, round, bitter and slightly poisonous. Much like Farla herself. The first task was thus to leech them in a cold stream for a day. Dindi was given the job of wading into the icy water to place the baskets in the stream.
In the evening, they spread the potatoes on a layer of straw on the ground, and when they returned just before sunrise the next morning, the tubers were frozen into hard lumps. They left them that way for several nights in a row, sheltering them from the sun during daylight hours under the hutches.
On the days they did not spend at the alpine field, Farla “helped” her mother weave at the loom. Whatever color thread Essi asked for, Farla sabotaged it. Essi had no idea the threads on the loom were not exactly as she planned them. Dindi did all of Farla’s other chores: she tended the hearth, soaked, diced and mashed frozen black potatoes, hard as rocks—chunyo made in the previous year—crushed spice for the soup, gutted wild guinea pigs for roasting, washed the dirty fleece rugs, and darned holes in the blankets.
If my mother could see me now, she’d be amazed. Dindi smiled to herself. She had not let herself think of her mother in a long time. It hurt too much. What she would have given to be home in the big, subterranean kitchen in Lost Swan clanhold, cooking goat cheese pishas with her mother, her aunts and her cousins.
On the fourth day, Farla took Dindi back up to the potato field. This was when the hardest work began. They had to stomp on the potatoes with their feet, to squeeze out any remaining moisture. Then all the potatoes, several baskets worth, had to be carried down the mountain in a rucksack—this was Dindi’s chore, of course. Down the hill, back at the hut, Farla and Dindi spent the rest of the day peeling the potatoes. Eventually, Farla explained they would be dumped into a large ceramic jar of water to soak for seven days, and then set out on a mat to dry for seven days more. After all that, the frozen potatoes would be near indestructible, and last for moons, even years.
As they squatted together on a mat, peeling the nasty black potatoes, they could hear Essi inside the cabin, bumping and cursing. “Farla! Farla, you useless insect! Help me find my stick!”
“It’s next to your loom, you blind fool!” Farla shouted back without turning her head.
More thumps and cusses from inside. Finally, Essi appeared in the doorway. “Get in here and help me, Farla or I’ll beat you to death as I should have the day you were born hexed!”
“You see how it is! You see how she treats me like a slave!” said Farla, gesturing at the blind woman. “No doubt you thought I was her slave! The Blind Woman’s Dwarf! That’s what they call me! As if I were filth—like you. I, who am her own blood and bone! But what they don’t tell you is that she herself hexed me, my dear blind mother, so that I would never grow beyond the height of a child, and never be able to leave her. How could she survive without her eyes?”
“Do
n’t listen to her crazy lies,” scoffed the old woman. “I was not always blind. She is the one who hexed me, my deformed spawn, my wretched rat pup, so that I would never leave her. She isn’t allowed to own a loom of her own, half-sized roach that she is, so she needs me to weave for her. If it were not for what we earned bartering my blankets, we would starve!”
Farla rolled her eyes.
Essi hurled more insults at her daughter until the old woman began to wheeze and complain of dizziness. Farla shoved the potatoes aside, helped her mother to drink some water, and disappeared with her inside. Snoring followed shortly. Farla returned outside to peel potatoes.
“Why do you do it, Farla?” Dindi asked softly.
“Put up with the old sow? Who knows? One day I may kill her and myself and put us both out of our misery.”
“Why do you not give her the colors she asks for? Why do you make her weavings ugly?”
Farla scowled. “She thinks she supports us with her fine blankets. In truth, the rest of the clan only pretends to accept them, out of pity. Then they burn the foul things. If I were not cursed, I would be married now, and supporting her, not the other way around. I will never be allowed to be a woman, or to marry, but I won’t live off my mother’s weaving. Let it be ugly!”
“Why don’t you weave yourself? Don’t you know how?”
Farla jerked to her feet. She always moved spastically, as if she had to dodge invisible blows just to cross a yard. Dindi didn’t know what the woman was about until Farla darted inside the hut and returned with her arms full of blanket. She spread this in front of Dindi.
Unlike the motley grayish things her blind mother wove, the blanket was pure white with an array of orange and black spiders against a lattice of slender blue webs. The craftsmanship was masterful.
“I learned as a child, before it was clear I would never grow, you see?” For the first time, Farla did not scowl. A trace of pride, under a pink blush, touched her cheeks. She held something precious and she knew it. “I made this. I am a daughter of Spider Lady as much as any woman in this clan. They can’t deny that, no matter how much they would like to.”
“Farla!” Dindi stroked the soft wool. “This is exquisite! Why can’t you show them this and claim your birthright?”
“A girl must stand taller than her loom to become a woman. Otherwise, it is taboo for her to own the loom, and taboo to weave.”
“But isn’t that just a formality? Anyone can see you are a woman, not a child.”
“What’s taboo is taboo.”
“But the taboo is ridiculous.”
“Fa, and I suppose you’d just go ahead and break any taboo that didn’t suit you!” scoffed Farla.
You have no idea. Dindi could tell she wouldn’t make any headway with Farla in that direction. Besides, I’m not the greatest example to follow. Look what happened to me.
“Fa, this is stupid!” Farla said. “What can someone like you understand about someone like me? You’re tall and beautiful and you’ve never had to work hard for anything in your life. Even now that you’re supposedly a slave, your master dotes on you like an ewe with her first lamb.
“Tell no one about my blanket, or I’ll take old Essi’s stick and beat you skinless! Finish the potatoes and put them in the water jar to soak, as I told you!”
Farla folded her blanket carefully and disappeared with it back into the hut.
Umbral
Winter bleak soothed Umbral more than summer lush. The cold, empty mountains demanded nothing from him. They only dared him to survive. They did not tempt him to leach their bounty, absorb their light and color into his darkness. He could walk and stalk them without guilt. Any beast that prowled the winter slopes was like to be as hungry and mean as he, and he would slay it without hesitation. He had a bow to take down prey, and a stone ax to fell firewood. He would let the terrain decide what was best to take home. He did cross paths with a mangy yet fierce cougar, but the killer took one look at him and fled without a fight.
He would have welcomed a fight. Better by far than the fight prowling inside his own head.
Just keep walking, whispered the voice. Just leave. Say you never found her. Say she escaped. Warn her never to go to the Labyrinth. Then leave forever and don’t look back. Let her go.
Shut up, Kavio. Umbral aimed his bow at a branch dropping snow, but there was nothing real to shoot. Shut up, shut up, shut up.
I will kill you before I let you kill her, warned Kavio.
You’re nothing but a shard, a shade, a memory. You can’t kill anyone. You can’t save anyone. You’re dead, you damn fool.
Death won’t stop me. I love her too much.
Shut up, shut up, shut up!
Umbral punched the nearest tree until he bloodied his fist. Surprisingly, that helped.
But it wasn’t enough to stop the thread inside him, Kavio’s memory, which was growing stronger every day.
You want a fight, Kavio? Fine. You’re on. I killed you once, I can kill you again.
Umbral went to the river. The Ice Snake, they called it. It flowed directly from Orangehorn Mountain, from the same headwaters that fed the tribehold, but all through the winter months the surface turned glossy and hard. The ice was solid as earth in places, but thin in others. Umbral found a weak point and pounded it with the butt of his hunting bow until it shattered.
He stripped off his clothes and dived into the freezing water.
Doing my job for me, Umbral? laughed Kavio.
Umbral ducked his head under the water. He experimented with the gills that had appeared for him before, and found he could breathe the water, though it hurt like stabbing daggers. Cold slowed time. Everything glittered more clearly, a transparent universe undulated in slow motion, and he could discern what normally flashed by too fast to see, threads of thought, of heart, of action and reaction, of motion and emotion, the vast tangle intertwining, interweaving, always changing, the very threads of life itself. Nothing was apart from this tapestry, not even the shadow a Deathsworn cast. He could see into his own colorless aura, the threads he knew and the ones which were alien to him: Kavio. These he grasped, in the fist of his mind.
He squeezed.
Terrible pain rippled through him, but he knew it was not his own. A scream bubbled in the ice water, but he knew it was not his scream. A death banged on his heart, but he knew it was not his death. It was working. Kavio was dying. The last memory of his would soon be extirpated from Umbral’s aura.
A tendril of shadow coiled around his ankle.
Nice try, Kavio, but that won’t…
Fool! FOOL! It’s not me!
It wasn’t.
Something else grabbed Umbral by the foot and yanked him under. Maybe his struggle with Kavio had awakened it, or maybe it had hidden there, molting in the cold deep, growing slowly, waiting patiently. Umbral had disturbed it sooner than it was ready, but it was strong, terribly strong, even so.
Tentacles of dark wrapped tightly around his legs and thighs, and more tried to envelope his upper body. If he let it pin his arms to his chest, he would be doomed. A tentacle snapped toward his neck, to noose him. He was naked, without weapons, and had only his bare hands to beat it back.
Feed me! I can fight it! I can save us! shouted Kavio in his mind. The voice was much weaker, even shouting, than it had been before, because of Umbral’s starving and strangling it, but the thread of Kavio was still there, still fighting to return.
No! Damn you! I don’t need you! I don’t want you!
You do need me! And I need you. Stop fighting me, work with me! Or the Thing will win!
Three more inky tentacles slapped Umbral around in the water like a washed rag. Every sound was eerily distorted by the water.
Kavio was right. The last time Umbral had encountered the wild Deathsworn magic, Dindi had helped him fight it. He had drawn on her power. Now he was on his own. Unless he trusted the memory of a man he’d murdered.
Help me, then! He unleashed his hold on
Kavio’s thread, even fed it power.
The transformation amazed him. His body no longer felt like a weight. It was a perfect blade, twisting and slashing the water as if it were as clear as air. He was now floating he was flying. He ripped the shadow tentacles to impotent bits, and then, when the chaff was thrashed and threshed, destroyed the seed of darkness with the Curse.
Umbral burst out of the water in a full leap, somersaulted in the air, and landed in a crouch on the ground. Though stark naked, he no longer felt the cold. Every wire in his being was coiled taunt and tight, a weapon in perfect tune.
It exhilarated him.
This is how it can be, whispered Kavio. If we work together.
Fine.
Umbral could feel Kavio’s exaltation.
I still have to kill her, Umbral added.
The inward harmony ended. Kavio lashed out, trying to take over, and Umbral closed the mind fist around the thread again, throttling it.
I don’t need you to give me your power, Umbral told Kavio. I can take it by force. That’s what I should have done all along.
As you tried to take Dindi’s power by force? sneered Kavio. Look how well that worked. She’s been keeping the real Visions of the corncob secret from you all along, and you were too blind to see it…
Umbral stood up abruptly. What are you talking about?
But for once the voice of Kavio fell silent.
Dindi
After Dindi finished the potatoes, she still had not heard from Farla again. Dindi entered the log cabin to check on her.
Essi was snoring in her corner between the loom and the hearth. Farla was sitting in the middle of the room, ripping the threads out of a blanket.
“Farla, don’t destroy your blanket!” Dindi exclaimed.
She pulled it from Farla’s hands, but it was not Farla’s blanket. It was the Aelfae tapestry from the hobgoblin lodge. Farla had torn threads out to destroy the pattern.