Powers That Be

by Anne McCaffrey

  Yana’s heart did an unexpected flip-flop. And got even more agitated as Sean grinned at her.

  “If you thought you were going to weasel out of singing tonight, think again,” he said, stepping inside and closing the door. “But I see you have dressed for the occasion. Nice shade on you,” he added, nodding with approval. He stepped up to her, putting a finger on the beaded work of her collar and tracing the design. His smile deepened and his silver eyes gleamed. “A combined effort, if I do not mistake the fine Italianate touches of Aisling and my sister.”

  Yana swallowed, unaccustomed to being complimented on her appearance and inordinately pleased that Sean had. “They were very good to get it finished in time for the latchkay.”

  “Nothing Sinead likes better than a race against time,” he said with a second cryptic smile. The intentness of his gaze reminded her of Sinead’s regard across their trapping campfire.

  “You—you should have seen Bunny’s face when I gave her the blouse they made for her,” Yana said, knowing she was babbling. She reached for her parka, which Sean took from her suddenly nerveless fingers and held for her. Feeling slightly foolish, she turned, shooting her arms out for the sleeves. Deftly he slipped the bulky parka up and onto her shoulders, settling it with a little flick of his hands across her shoulders. Then his fingers brushed the nape of her neck and she had to suppress a convulsive shudder. The memory of their hot-spring interlude flooded her, and she hoped she wasn’t blushing. So she flipped her hood up, pressed shut the parka fastenings, all with her back to him, before she jammed her hands into her gloves and collected the bean pot. Turning resolutely, she smiled at him, just as if she hadn’t gone through all kinds of mental acrobatics over the simple act of his helping her into her coat.

  “Let’s go. My debut awaits!”

  “I hear the boy’s alter-parent is on his way down. Good idea,” he said as they stepped into the well-rutted roadway.

  There were folks behind and in front of them, and every house had lights on to illuminate the way to the hall. Yana hadn’t appreciated just how many people lived in and around the village.

  “Is everyone on Petaybee here?” she asked, trying to estimate attendance from the steady traffic and the numbers of sleds already parked in front of the hall.

  “Everyone who matters to Petaybee,” he answered, grinning at her.

  She mulled that over. “Why should I matter to Petaybee?” she finally asked.

  “Why shouldn’t you?”

  She wanted him to explain that remark and to stop being so cryptic, but before she could speak, someone hailed him from a passing sled. He cupped her arm in his, shielding her from the snow spray, as he called a cheery reply. Then they had to pick their way around sleds and sled dogs, careful not to tread on animals half-buried in the lazy snow that was adding new depth to the old.

  They could hear the happy noise of many cheerful voices, the scrape of fiddles, the wheeze of an accordion, the tootle of a tin whistle, the bass thrum of a bodhran as they reached the front door. Light flared out onto the sawdust that coated the well-trodden snow as the door opened, letting out a puff of warmed air, redolent of leather, clean linen, and herbal scents.

  As soon as Sean was identified, he was absorbed into a welcoming group that effectively divorced him from Yana. She shrugged, impressed by his popularity, as she hauled off her outerwear and tried to find a spare hook on the line down the left-hand wall. She gave up and tossed her parka onto the growing pile in the corner, then slid out of her boots and tied their drawstrings together before setting them down beside the pile.

  An arm snaked around her waist and she was pulled into a tight embrace. She was about to struggle when she realized it was Sean. Then she was guided out and onto the dance floor and found herself, willy-nilly, pumped about in an energetic polka by her grinning partner.

  Those on the sidelines seemed determined to encourage him to grander feats of speed and agility. She clung for dear life to his shoulder and his guiding hand as the room swirled in dizzying circles about her. Three or four weeks earlier she would have been coughing uncontrollably after the first turn about the room, but now she didn’t even feel the need to reach for Clodagh’s cough medicine. She was breathless, of course, but it was with the sheer momentum of the dance as she was swept away in Sean’s arms while other dancers careered around them. She had better not have a coughing fit here. She could be accidentally stomped to death if she lost her footing! But it was all very exciting. She had never—not even when Bry was being extra sociable—danced quite this uninhibitedly. It was unbelievably exhilarating—dancing with a whirlwind. She didn’t know how Sean kept his balance, much less how he kept dancing so lightly, and yet she who, a mere five weeks before, had barely been able to walk without doubling over with lung spasms could now—almost—keep up with him. Whether it was due to the romance of the moment or the beneficial effects of Clodagh’s cough medicine she didn’t know, but she loved it.

  The dance stopped only when the musicians needed to catch their breaths and moisten their throats. Weak and breathless, Yana was obliged to hang on to Sean for fear of falling, and she shivered with reaction to the closeness of the hard, strong body that supported her, and the hands that clasped her body with a touch that sent peculiar ripples up and down her arms and legs. She knew she should pull free and didn’t want to—not in this lifetime.

  Sweat was trickling down her face by then, and she was afraid if she didn’t attend to that she would disgust her partner. Except, just then, he laid an equally moist cheek against hers and laughed in her ear.

  “You offworlders sure can rob a body of breath with your dancing!” he said.

  “Me?” she exclaimed in amused outrage, and pushed back to be sure he was teasing her.

  His silver eyes gleamed with mischief, and he pulled her back to him, leading her off the floor toward the immense bowl of punch, which no doubt consisted largely of Clodagh’s blur-maker. Yana didn’t care what was in the punch: she would welcome the moisture to unparch her throat. Fastidiously, she found her one cloth handkerchief and blotted the sweat on her face. Sean was likewise engaged, nodding and grinning at folks as he released her to get them two full cups.

  “This is perfect,” she said, after rolling the drink around in her mouth.

  Sean’s arm around her waist pulled her close against him. “Helps the nervous performer,” he murmured in her ear.

  “You had to remind me?” she demanded in a mock-accusatory tone. She had managed to forget that upcoming ordeal.

  “Stick with me, babe,” he answered in a mock-gruff voice, “and you won’t need to worry!”

  “You intend to get me suitably drunk?”

  “No one gets drunk on Clodagh’s punch,” he replied with fake indignation, adding with another wicked leer, “but you’ll be so blurred it won’t matter.”

  “Here’s to that,” she said, and chugalugged the rest of the cup. He took it from her hand and passed it to the lady serving to be refilled.

  “Hey, too much of this and I’ll forget the words,” Yana protested.

  Sean shook his head, handing her the cup. “Some words you don’t forget, Yanaba.” He laid his fingers lightly on her shirt above her heart. “Some words come from there and, once spoken, can’t be forgotten.”

  She gave him a long look, awash with a few un-blurred anxieties, like why he had insisted in the first place, why she had let him in the second—and in the third, should she go through with it?

  “Have you placed your bet yet?” he asked, pointing to the breakup board and the knot of people about it. Someone had just chalked in a mark. Sean grinned. “Tolubi’s out by two days and six hours.”

  “How d’you figure that?” Yana regarded him suspiciously.

  He gave an indifferent shrug. “I’m not allowed to bet I’ve been right so often.”

  “Can I?”

  Sean gazed steadily at her. “You could. But, knowing that I’m always right, would you?”

>   Yana returned his gaze. “If you’re always right, I’d be taking an unfair advantage.”

  “You could still place a bet.” His tone was bland and his eyes lazy.

  “A sure thing’s not a bet,” she said. “And I’m not a betting woman anyhow.” She gave him a droll smile. “I always lose, and I wouldn’t want to spoil your record.”

  Sean laughed at that, his eyes twinkling, and she knew her response had pleased him.

  “What would my prize have been?” she asked.

  “Don’t know what it is this year,” he replied. “Usually credit at the company store, or pups, if there’re some good ones due in the spring whelpings.”

  The music started up again, a two-step, and before she could protest, Sean had her out in the middle of the floor dancing with him, one strong arm clipping her waist so that she couldn’t duck away, the other hand with fingers inextricably laced around hers.

  She had time during that dance to see the crowd, standing and sitting around the big hall, and she wondered if the entire “native” population of Petaybee had somehow managed to assemble in this one spot. Kids raced about the edges of the dance floor, tripping over feet, howling with hurt and being comforted by whoever picked them up and dusted them off; babies were traded off as dancing partners were claimed. Little girls danced with their grandfathers and teenaged boys asked their aunties and grandmothers to dance or showed the steps to smaller cousins; a few of the older kids, looking self-conscious, waited to be asked to dance by a member of their peer group, but often little girls and grown women danced together, as did some of the men and boys—whoever didn’t have a partner danced with any other available body.

  Yana spotted Bunny, who was looking remarkably lovely and feminine, in close conversation with Diego near the food table: Diego had already started to munch on a meatroll, and Bunny was nibbling on a hunk of something in one hand.

  Sean was an excellent dancer, possibly the best she had ever been partnered with, and for once her feet seemed to know which way to go. She dreaded stepping on his toes, especially as he had discarded his heavy boots and was wearing some beautifully beaded moccasins.

  Between dances, Sean kept her mug full and piloted her about the hall as he met and exchanged some of his cryptic remarks with men and women.

  “Who are these folks?” she asked in his ear as he maneuvered her to yet another couple.

  “The parents of the Bremport victims,” he said.

  “What the frag! That’s unfair, Sean.” She tried to pull free, but his grip was implacable.

  “Why? They know you’re going to sing. They’ve wanted to meet you. They have. You’re their last link with their dead.”

  “Oh, frag it! That’s not fair. To me, Sean.”

  “Yes, it is, because now you’ll know which faces to look for when you’re singing.”

  “Is that why you’re attached to me like a limpet?” she asked bitterly. “So I can’t escape this ordeal?”

  “It won’t be an ordeal for you, Yanaba, but a release,” he said softly and with such great tenderness that she felt weak-kneed. Damn Clodagh. She was blurring.

  About then, she noticed that Bunny and Diego had not once parted company.

  “Yes, Diego’ll sing, too. You aren’t the only one,” Sean said, observing the direction of her interest. Then he chuckled. “Will the miserable like some company?” He began to propel her in their direction.

  Some quality of the look with which Bunny was favoring Diego made Yana dig her heels in. “No, Sean, we won’t interrupt them.”

  “No.” Sean looked at the young pair, his mobile face thoughtful. “No, I don’t think we will. Bunny’s handling him like a trooper.”

  “Handling him?” Yana bristled.

  Sean shrugged, his expression bland. “Keeping him company, if you like. You know more people here than he does.”

  Just then Sinead and Aisling danced up to them, Sinead leading, as always. Both wore superb leather shirts, Aisling white, Sinead buff, with elaborate decorations which were so tasteful that jewels could not have been better displayed.

  “Enjoying yourselves?” Sinead asked, her expression bland, but the slightly arch tone of her voice seemed to convey some hidden message evidently intended for Sean.

  “Now that you mention it, I am,” Sean said, equally archly, locking gazes with Sinead. “How about you, Yana?”

  “Oh, I am, indeed I am,” she replied. Sinead nodded and kept walking.

  “What’s up with your sister?” Yana asked Sean, as he whirled her in a pirouette to the other side of the room.

  “Don’t let her worry you for a single minute,” he said.

  She caught an odd twitch to his mouth, a twitch of minor irritation, she thought. Well, sisters had been irritants to brothers since the worlds began.

  About the time she was beginning to wonder if the music makers had been trading off with others who looked identical to keep up such an amazing barrage of dance tunes and tempos, the current ones put down their instruments and left the little stage.

  Somehow Sean had timed it so that he and Yana were at the seemingly bottomless punchbowl as the last note died away. He pressed yet another cup into her hand.

  “I’ll be too blurred to sing,” she said, trying to put it down.

  “Drink it. You’re on.”

  With what seemed to her like unceremonious haste, he then guided her across the floor to the platform.

  “No, no, Sean,” she protested, noticing herself to be the center of attention. In the sudden way these people had, everyone was settling into a quiet mode all around the room as Sean led her inexorably to the stage. Even the children were quiet, the babies remarkably all asleep.

  “Yes, yes, Yana.”

  “Why me?” she protested, but her feet seemed willing to follow Sean.

  “You’re the hero.”

  She tried to wrench her arm free of his grasp, but his fingers merely tightened, and then she was stumbling onto the box that was the step up to the platform. She stood there, miserably aware of being the focus of so many eyes, so much unwarranted attention, of her coming ordeal. How could anything she said, or sang, help ease their losses?

  Sean held up both arms and what little noise there was died completely.

  “This is Major Yanaba Maddock,” he announced, turning slowly to take in everyone patiently waiting. “You all know her. She will sing.” Then, with an oddly formal bow, he gestured for Yana to sit on the single chair that was now centered on the stage.

  She sank limply into the chair, feeling the hard seat grind into her tailbone. Sing? She was supposed to sing now?

  A soft beat registered, and she saw Sean, the bodhran in one hand, gently fingering sound from the skin. She blinked and suddenly began the chant that had come to her. She hadn’t rehearsed it since that day, weeks before, when Sean had coaxed the words from her. But they were there, on her tongue, and in the proper order, in the precise rhythm of the drumbeat, and her voice was saying them. She was unaware of anything else because her mind was back there, in Bremport for those few surrealistically macabre and devastatingly helpless and horrible minutes, and she wondered that she could enunciate any words for the pain in her chest, the constriction in her throat, and the unwept tears that pressed against her eyelids. She wished she were even more blurred than she knew she had to be, to let go like this. To perform, as if by rote, any duties that had not been drill-inspired over centuries of practice.

  She heard, from a distance, her own voice, and she had never realized she could sound like that: a husky rich contralto that dipped and rose. She wasn’t really aware of what she was singing until she got to the final lines.

  “I was sent here to die, too, here where the snows live

  The waters live, the animals and the trees live,

  And you.”

  As the last of that vowel drifted into nothingness, she bowed her head, tears streaming down her cheeks and falling into her hands. She couldn’t move and didn
’t know what she was supposed to do next. Maybe Sean would liberate her.

  Then a pair of work-roughened hands slid across hers, pressed gently, and withdrew only to be replaced by another set of hands. By the third pair she looked up, for their touch was like a benison, healing her grief, staunching her tears. She could even smile as yet another set of parents laid hands on hers to mutely offer their appreciation. Seeing the tears in their eyes—tears of an odd sort of sublimated sorrowing—hers began to ease, along with the constriction in her chest, the tight bands about her heart.

  The little ceremony completed, Sean collected her and brought her wordlessly to Clodagh’s bowl, where the woman herself ladled a cup for her and solemnly inclined her head in a regal bow of approval as the cup was handed from Clodagh to Sean and then to Yana.

  Then Sean put his arm about her shoulders and drew her to sit in a space that magically appeared on a bench against the wall. His shoulder touched hers, his hip and thigh brushed hers. She felt drained but exultant, no longer sad but infinitely relieved. She sipped the punch, keeping her head down, unwilling to make eye contact with anyone as she savored what was, as Sean had said, a healing.

  The little susurrus of soft voices, expectant, made her look up to see Bunny leading Diego to the stage.

  “This is Diego Metaxos,” Bunny said, arms above her head and turning around slowly to the audience just as Sean had done. “He must sing.”

  Yana hoped that she had shown as much composure as Diego did. He sat down with more grace than she had, his hands splay-fingered on his knees.

  “I am new come, in storm, here.

  A storm of heart and mind and soul.

  I sought and found storm with Lavelle

  She saved me when the sled crashed down.

  With the heat of her body she saved me.

  With the wit of her mind she saved my father too.

  Saved me to see the cavern that all say I didn’t see.”