by Gayle Greeno
Vesey sidled to the far end of the room, almost beyond her periphery.
“Right.” He whistled a tuneless song. “Don’t think she’ll come awake. All tuckered out.”
So she had gone off, eaten supper with Varon, sitting on his workbench and swinging her legs, playing like a child with a curled wood shaving when she felt the constriction in her chest and gasped.
“What is it, Doyce?” Concerned, Varon grasped her by the shoulders, straightening her hunched body so that she could draw a full breath of air. But she couldn’t, mouth open, fighting for breath—and still she couldn’t. Then the band of steel around her chest eased, and she inhaled the wood-scented air into her lungs with hunger. Then she spasmed again
Without knowing why, she knew it was Briony, something was wrong with Briony. “The baby!” she screamed and pushed out the door, running, cloak left behind. She fought to pull the damp, cold air in and out of her lungs and ran on, oblivious to the knifelike pain in her chest. Varon matched her stride for stride, unsure if he should stay alongside or outpace her and run ahead.
Early dark was already settling around them as they reached the house and she grappled with the door latch. Varon finally reached around her and slammed the door open, bouncing it against the entryway wall. Strangely enough, in the midst of everything, she had wondered how badly the knob had gouged the plaster.
The fire roared, too, too high, flames fingering upward, grasping at the mantle with its flowered tiles. Dark inside, curtains drawn, dark except for the flickering light and grasping shadows writhing on the walls. Vesey stood by the cradle looking dreamily at the baby. He held a pillow in one hand, placed it firmly over the baby’s face, pressing down with masklike concentration, then lifting the pillow, pressing down, smoothing the white muslin casing, lifting the pillow up again. The baby lay motionless, silent. Vesey looked in their direction but his eyes comprehended nothing. The draft from the open, banging door made the fire jump even higher, scattered papers, billowed the curtains.
“By the Lady, no! Vesey, stop!” Roaring, Varon bowled Doyce aside as he rushed into the room. “Vesey, no!”
Vesey twirled around to the other side of the cradle and veiled the baby’s face with the pillow. Varon’s big hands closed on his son’s arms and he lifted him bodily over the cradle, shaking him frantically. Vesey smiled and spat at his father.
A feeble cry, a thin, strained sound with little breath to spare. She heard Briony’s cry but was rooted in place, kneeling in the entryway where Varon had knocked her as he’d rushed in. The sound offered a reprieve of sorts.
Vesey struggled, kicking at his father, digging his nails into Varon’s arm, squirming and twisting like an eel. “Vesey, Vesey, child, please,” Varon pleaded, holding his son off from him and straining to look down into the cradle at his daughter. Vesey’s feet touched the floor for an instant, and with a burst of strength he broke free. Varon lunged and missed, and Vesey twirled away, humming.
“My love, my love,” he sang as he grabbed at the baby and crushed her tight against his chest. He seemed almost to float above the floor, keeping a piece of furniture, a table, a straight-backed chair, between himself and his father as he dodged. Varon moaned, face blanched with terror. And always the fire, leaping and crackling, the shadows blending and melding as they accompanied the dancing boy and baby.
She dragged herself upright against the door casing and stepped into the room. Her chest pounded and she couldn’t speak. Vesey and the baby danced on, oblivious to the leering flames behind them and Varon closing in front of them. Varon snatched again at the weaving pair, and the boy slipped under his arm. Pivoting back, Varon slammed a hip into the table, knocking it over. She charted the slow-motion glide of an oil lamp, bulbous pottery body freshly filled that day by Vesey, as it slid off and crashed on the floor, languid fingers of oil reaching toward the fireplace. Righting himself, Varon grappled again with the boy and found himself sliding in the oil, rolling toward the fire. He pulled himself up short and rose doggedly to his knees, eyes intent, measuring Vesey’s rhythms. “Come on, child, come on, love. That’s my boy. That’s my Vesey. Give her over now.”
Vesey stuck the pillow into the fire and pulled it out, one end aglow. Feathers burst forth, flaming up in tiny pinpricks of light, then falling black and shriveled. One stayed alight as it drifted down and landed in the spill of oil. The flames jumped greedily. Vesey ran through the house, waving the pillow with one hand, fanning the flames, the baby embraced to his chest with the other hand. Varon dodged after him, leaping a line of flame that trembled at his knee, tasting the oil, and suddenly he was alive with flames the oil on his clothes turning him into a torch.
“Varon!” She screamed his name, released at last, and ran for a blanket, anything to smother the flames.
He rolled on the floor, slapping and beating at the flames. Grabbing the blanket from her, he snarled, “Get Briony, get her out of his hands!”
Small blossoms of fire erupted through the house, like a sudden profusion of spring flowers bursting forth after a quenching rain. She followed the pattern they set forth, but she couldn’t spot the boy or the baby. No matter which way she turned, he had been there a hairbreadth before but was gone. Heavy, smoke-filled air teared her eyes, weighted her lungs, hampered her search.
The touch came so gentle, so tentative at first that she almost missed it. Faintly soothing, lulling, totally at odds with the rest of her feelings. “Oh, Vesey loves, and Vesey loves....” The song echoed through her, coiled through her brain. “Oh, Vesey loves Briony, and Vesey loves ... Daddy, and Vesey loves... no, likes, yes... Vesey likes Doyce sometimes. ”
“And Doyce loves Vesey,” she thought as hard as she could, but she couldn’t make herself believe it.
“No, oh, no, Doyce doesn’t love me like Mama loved, Mama loved me. ”
Flames curled up and around the blue-checked homespun drapes she’d sewn with such care, ate at the wall, spurted up around the willow kindling basket, tasted the wood shavings and chips Varon brought home each evening for stoking the fire. The flames from the fireplace advanced unrulily into the room, rushing forth like children freed from school. Varon distractedly pounded at them with the blanket, his face and hands soot-streaked and puffy red from flash burns. “Find her, Doyce, find Briony and get out! Lady take Vesey to hell and gone with his mother!” he bellowed, pants and jacket still smoldering, still alight. “Can’t see a thing, can’t see to find them, my eyes!”
The house wasn’t large: a kitchen, a living area, and a bedroom off that to the back, a loft area above where Vesey slept. But it seemed huge, as desperately daunting as an unknown land. Up the ladder to the loft, feeling her way as the heat and smoke thickened and turned ugly in her lungs, and there, outlined by the flames, was Vesey, catwalking one of the beams, Briony tucked rag doll-like under one arm. She edged after him, but he vanished, sliding down the central support pillar.
She heard and felt the hard, flat “whomp” as the fire reached the ten-gallon storage crock of oil, could sense the air shiver with delight, the flames’ glee at finding sustenance. She dropped down and clung to the beam, held it by her fingertips as she readied herself to drop into the circle of flames. Varon stood surrounded, back against the wall, beating futilely with the charred, smoldering blanket.
Vesey stood in one of the few clear patches, bouncing Briony’s tiny bootied feet near the edge of the flames, tossing her into the air. One little slipper sailed off and away.
“My love, my love.” The message curled around her and within her, circling as voraciously as the flames, as suffocating as the smoke.
“Oh, Vesey! I’m coming!” she cried as she released the beam and felt her legs crumple under her, spilling her on the floor. It was the last thing she remembered.
Voices now, and hands, insistent, prying, tugging. She didn’t want to be bothered, why did it matter? “I’ve got her! Anybody find the baby?” Coughing, choking. “Not yet. Varon’s on the other side, I
think. Don’t know if we can reach him.” Another voice, thick, phlegmed with soot: “Got the baby. What of the boy?”
She tried to speak, to say that Vesey was with Briony, had to be near her, but she couldn’t. “Well, keep looking. And keep the buckets coming! Maybe we can reach Varon.” Sudden yell of panic: “Back off! Get out! Roofs coming down!” And strong arms swept her up, swept her away into the blessedly cold, clear night air.
More voices: “Lady take you to her bosom, Varon, old friend. We tried.” “I don’t think the baby’s alive.” And a woman started to keen at the loss. “Is Doyce?” “Think so, barely.”
Briony dead, Varon dead and, it had to be assumed, Vesey dead as well, completely consumed at the heart of the inferno. The neighbors had sifted through the ashes in the days that followed, trying to salvage anything that would start her on a new life, give her some remembrance or keepsake. They found the remains of Varon’s body, but nothing of the boy’s, except for a misshapen, half-melted piece of silver, its thin chain long gone. It had been the medal of the Lady that Else had given her son at his birth, a family heirloom. He had worn it around his neck like some sort of talisman.
She had known the Conciliator’s hearing with the Seeker Pair present would be necessary after the fire. She didn’t look forward to it, but it didn’t matter, not really. One more ritual obligation to go through, like the funeral. What she hadn’t expected and what had almost completely unnerved her throughout her testimony was the unwavering stare of the ghatt.
She gave her account slowly, clearly, hesitating only a few times over the right word or phrase. Once she lost the gist of what she had been saying and stopped dead, confused, staring at the white bandages on her hands and arms, wondering why she was here and what they wanted of her. The Seeker prompted gently and sometimes asked for clarification or amplification. And the ghatt sat unmoving, watching her. It seemed to be looking into her deepest being, assessing, weighing. Its large green eyes, edged with a deeper jade around the slitted pupils, neither condemned nor judged, but gave her the impression she had somehow been found wanting in the final balance. Not a new feeling.
Dismissed at last, ground down with exhaustion, she stood to leave and glanced back at the ghatt, pensively rubbing its face with a paw. It struck her like a bolt. Nearly ten years as a eumedico, yearning for the final level of training which would allow her to reach out and touch minds, but to no avail. The power did not exist. Then the strange, momentary bonding with Vesey’s mind before he died. Now this ghatt, sensing her inward thoughts as clearly as if her skull were a pane of glass. “Lady save me, truly, from ever coming near another ghatt,” she prayed and could not control her sudden trembling.
The ghatt stopped his washing, blinked rapidly. The words pierced her brain directly, not through the Seeker-intermediary. “Do not be afraid. The sharing can be sacred. You will see someday.” She whirled in blind panic, praying her legs would hold, and fled the room.
Doyce sat, blanket cowled around her neck, fists dug deep into the material, arms crossed, pulling the blanket tight around her. Not that cold out, not in the least, but her memories ran cold, cold as ice, cold as ashes, fire and freezing in her veins. Enough, enough for this night, or what remained of it. How long had she been sitting like that, astray, restlessly wandering through the past? But once she’d started, there’d been no stopping.
The citronella candle still burned, but barely, beginning to gutter in a sunken pool of wax. Unclenching her hand from the blanket, she extended her arm, reached out to the sleeping ghatta, wanting the reassurance of stroking the warm, breathing body. Her hand landed a bit more heavily than she’d planned, and the ghatta jolted awake. Ah, she’d woken her too brusquely, a bead of moisture, condensation from the warmth of her breath, hovered at one pink nostril, the profile slack and sleep-ridden as she tried to pull herself into waking.
“Mzwurp?” Khar vocalized her protest, huffled slightly, managed at last to pry her eyes open. All four legs extended in a long and languorous stretch until her paws touched together, chin pulled in tight to her chest, then extended as far as she could. “No sleep?” She yawned. “You haven’t been sleeping? Then that’s why ...” She didn’t complete the thought so Doyce could hear; that was why she had slept so peacefully, so hard and so long, there had been no dreams from Doyce for her to guard against.
Doyce rose, unwrapped herself from the blanket, shook it out, the breeze threatening to overwhelm the candle flame. “Couldn’t seem to sleep, though I’m tired enough to. Got wound up in the past somehow and had to unravel it. I don’t know why, it never changes.” She dropped the blanket, stretched as well, hands high above head, then on hips as she bent one way and another.
“Could you sleep now, Bondmate?” The ghatta walked over to the blanket, poked at it, hooked a corner with her claw to drag it back in invitation. “There’s still time before dawn, and no rule that you have to rise with the sun.” She crooned a ghatta lullaby through Doyce’s thoughts, tempted and teased with images of rest, respite from the past.
Doyce swayed, rocking to the inner melody the ghatta crooned, cocooning her and sheltering her. “Don’t know. So tired, so very tired, but sleep doesn’t seem to help. Just as tired afterward.” Despite herself, she fisted a yawn, then another one, rubbed eyes burning from lack of sleep. “The dreams can’t be any worse than what I can and do remember when I’m awake, can they?” Kneeling, she smoothed the wrinkles from the blanket, then lay down. “Can they?” Her voice came plaintive, drifting as drowsiness at last overwhelmed her. “Can they?”
“No, love, no, not while I’m here. Now sleep, sleep.” No, not tonight, not if she could help it, not by all the Elder powers she could pray to, and she’d make them hear her plea. “Sleep, love, sleep.”
Khar waited, watched, listened to the night-world around her, busy, busier than the day. Owl wings’ ghost-soft sussuration, death squeak, the scent of blood. Death came during the day as well, but at night it seemed more vivid, certain scents and sounds supplying images for the unseeing eyes. Crunch, snap, the sound of tiny, hungry jaws, shrew, she judged, munching at the brittle wings, chitinous body of a cricket sluggish in the cool of dark.
She sat sentinel-still, wondering if, when, what, Doyce would dream tonight, or whether her memories had been release enough to dampen the dreams? A possessive white paw tapped at blanketed knee, momentarily jealous of the Doyce-world before Khar, before the ghatta had become the center of it. But was she the center? Had she ever been the core, or did she simply rim Doyce’s life, holding it in place when the center could not hold?
Careful, cautious, she prowled the sleeping mind, anxious, wistful for a hint that she centered in a pleasant dream. But Doyce slept, at peace. Why did humans appear so vulnerable in sleep? Whatever physical grace they possessed—and that was limited by ghatti standards—metted away in sleep to a touching awkwardness, defenselessness, leaving them susceptible to both inner and outer worlds in a way that even the exhausted slumber of a ghatten did not. Well, if Doyce slept that deeply, dream fragments familiar and unthreatening, perhaps she had time for a brief mindwalk.
She mindlinked out ... out ... even farther beyond, ever-vigilant. Too hard to shake the last disastrous experience from her senses, despite the practice with Mem‘now and the others. Contact M’wa and P’wa? Possible, certainly. She searched for their signaling mirror-image mind-patterns, then floated by them untouched ignoring the invitation, the desire to speak with those who understood. Out ... out even farther, she allowed herself to be clasped by the echoes of the ancient mindvoices, ancestral thoughts, striations in the air like the strata of primeval rock. She spiraled once, twice, a third time through the layers, the levelings, reveled in the suddenly open path, the easy lift of the quarto turn, the spiral she despaired of attaining, and dropped back slightly, gasping. So close! So damnably near! Nearer than it had ever been before, more palpably achievable.
Still, a comfort in their stability, even a perverse comfort
in her stability in the old spiral, she was what she was, knew her place until the Elders deemed her ready. “Old ones, Elders, I am true to her, always true to her. Help me help her. I fear those dreams. They void the Truth. So far I’ve been able to reshape them, but if they become stronger than I? What then?”
“Then ... ? Then ... then?” the voices echoed back at her, fragments of her fears, levels, layerings, and shadings of the past, past answers distorted but there if she could but hear them. “When ... truth ... ?” “Is found ... found ... found....” “What ... then ... then, then?” “When ... then.... ”
No mockery to the echoes of the past, but no answers either. Still, comfort in feeling the touch of the past, and with that she spiraled herself down, down, savoring each slow swirl of echo, pure as water distilled from glacial ice.
Sky edged salmon-pink in the dawn in the east, wary as a trout back-finning in place before rising to snatch a waterbug. Beware, oh, trout! Does that waterbug conceal a hook? The line to snatch you out of your watery real-world and leave you gasping for breath in a nightmare-world? Khar shook her head, puzzled over the imagery that had entered her mind. It resonated like a fragment of a tale told to ghatten, but she had no memory of it. Was she to learn a new tale? Natural? Unnatural? Hook and line? Was there “bait” out there she was missing, that might hook Doyce and pull her away from her? Or were the Elders merely having her on, riddling her? After yesterday’s mindblocking with fish and now this, all she wanted was to see a fish in one place: on a plate in front of her! Not wriggling free to tantalize with watery illusion. Water distorted her vision, though it didn’t the fish’s. Distortion? What was distorting her vision? Nothing could distort her vision, she was ghatti, she knew Truth!
Khar returned to herself, checked Doyce’s dreams again, and curled on Doyce’s discarded tabard, nestled close for comfort. Not supposed to be on the tabard, she chided herself, but it felt so consoling, so rich with the scent of Doyce and the natural sheepskin smell. She gave a thoughtful, considering lick down her foreleg, let it veer off so her tongue rasped the sheepskin.