by Andre Norton
Egil frowned. “You understand Mother is no longer her own mistress.”
Arona stared at him. “Egil! Nobody would stop her from coming to something like this! Come on! Let's go find out.”
Egil set his face stubbornly. “No.” Arona shrugged and left, puzzled.
Elthea the lame weaver came to borrow a mule. “I'm heading for Dame Loyse's farm. Isn't that where your mother lives? Is there anything you want me to say to her?” Egil scowled and looked at the ground. “Tell her I'll get her free one day.”
“What?” Elthea exclaimed, and rode out, thinking. In Dame Loyse's yard, she was shocked to see a huge iron cooking pot, filled with dirt and planted with flowers, sitting by the door. This was raduth, conspicuously using a useful thing only for show. There were tales that Dame Loyse's daughters did no work because they were too rich to need to. Elthea snorted in disgust. Raduth.
The old weaver dismounted and sat in Loyse's polished wooden rocker, drinking cider and eating little cakes while she dickered over a beautiful length of embroidery. At a break in the talk, she said, “Egil has a message for her mother.”
Loyse's eyes widened. “The witling? Oh, dear, is it wise to ask after her? The poor thing gets so hysterical so easily. But,” she shrugged gracefully.
Elthea scowled at her new embroidery as Loyse left the room. No witling had made the cloth she was looking at.
As soon as Loyse left, Lisha sidled into the room, dressed in an ill-fitting hand-me-down of Dame Loyse's, a child of about eight in her arms. “Help Lowri,” she begged in badly accented speech. “Please help.” She glanced around· as if afraid, though Loyse had a name for kindness. A witling? Hysterical?
Elthea unwrapped the rag that bound the child's arm. It was swollen and red, and hot to the touch. Lisha set her face. “Pardon. I no speak so good your—language. A—geeth?” She formed her hand into a head and snaked it back and forth, hissing.
“Goose. One goose, two geese.”
“Bite Lowri.” She feigned biting with her hands. “I ask Mistress please help.” She bit her lip, distressed. “Mistress say,” she shook her head with a sweet smile and caroled, as if to a child, “No get in temper, Lishakins.” She looked up again. “Need,” she searched for a word.
“Healer.” Elthea rose, took the child's arm, and hobbled to the door. “I will. You stay here. I'll be back. With elders.”
“Mistress not let me go. Nowhere.” Lisha said, very softly, glancing around again as she followed the weaver to where her mule was hitched.
Loyse came bursting into the yard, wide-eyed. “Oh, there you are, Lishakins! You naughty thing! Did she bother you? I have to watch her constantly,” the farmer confided, “or she wanders off everywhere. Now, Lishakins,” she caroled.
Elthea set the child behind her on the mule and snorted. “Nonsense! She's no more witless than you, young woman. They speak a different tongue, that's all.” She clucked to the mule. “I'll be back.”
Lowri dug bare feet into the mule's side. “Mistress," she said with a curl of her lip, “keeps her locked up and talks to her like a baby.”
“I heard,” Elthea said curtly. Loyse was shouting at her to come back. The rode into the village center and dismounted at Dame Floree's. Healing House was empty but for a young stranger-woman with a broken arm and bandaged ribs, who sat on the front porch stringing pungent vegetables with one hand. “Where's Floree?” the weaver asked.
The stranger pointed. Elthea shook her head. “Tell me.” A flood of the strangers’ tongue followed. Elthea shook her head again and rode over to Records House. Arona understood this gabble. The old woman sat in the dooryard and called, “Arona Bethiahsdaughter!”
Arona put her head out the door. “What's wrong?” she demanded, alarmed.
Elthea snorted “The stranger ain't witless. Shy, maybe. Daughter's hurt. That wretched fool Loyse don't listen, keeps her mewed up. You speak that gabble. Well?” she challenged.
Arona looked down, her face scarlet. “I thought Dame Loyse . would be kind. Everybody says she is.”
“Where's the healer?” the weaver demanded.
“I … I don't know, Mistress Elthea,” Arona admitted, tears starting to come from her eyes. She blushed more furiously, wiped her eyes on her sleeve, and glared.
“Come on,” Elthea ordered. Arona grabbed her sandals from the porch and followed, running. There was nobody at the healer's, nobody at Sacred House, nobody at the meeting hall. Grimly the old, lame weaver, Lowri in her arms, searched the village on muleback. None of the elders were anywhere to be seen. Lowri was starting to look pale, though she doggedly sat upright on the mule and clutched her wounded arm to her fiercely. The clouds were covering the sun again, and the mule laid its ears back. A dog ran around in circles, then dashed under a porch.
Elthea stopped and pulled a handful of divining sticks from her pocket. She shook them and cast them, studied them, and shook her head. “The witch's place,” she said.
The log cabin they came to had been long abandoned, for its owner died without daughters. The Jommy, who'd had to leave the village in haste, came back a year later with one of Gunnora's Daughters, and a strange woman in a dun robe, who carried a shining blue stone. It hurt to look at the stone. The strange woman gave no name, saying it was against the custom of her kind, but with a wise, sad smile, said, “You may call me The Dissident.” As nobody had heard that word before, she explained, “The Witches of Estcarp loathe the Falconers, for Falconers set themselves apart from women.”
“Or we from them,” Natha Lorinsdaughter muttered that day.
“So, for that reason, they will give no help to you Falconer women.”
“That doesn't make any sense!” Arona had blurted out that day. She was very young, with a front tooth missing, and her mothers hastened to hush her, with apologies to their visitor. But the strange woman shook her head sadly and laughed. “Out of the mouths of babes,” she said, and said no more.
What she did in the village or why she was there, nobody knew, except perhaps the elders. She had lived there for years now, helping Floree the Healer and Birka the Priestess at times, and working her garden like any other woman the rest of the time. A few families had offered her a strong girl to cut her wood and haul her water; The Dissident politely thanked them and refused.
Of course the divining sticks would point to a woman who helped the Healer, Arona thought, politely not speaking her thought, as they dismounted. Smoke was rising from the chimney; somebody was home. Elthea sat on the mule in the dooryard and called, “Hello the house!” There was no answer.
Arona added her louder, higher voice. “Dissident? Dame Witch? We have a hurt child here. Can you help us?” Again no answer, but now Arona felt very sure indeed someone was home and choosing not to answer. Anger boiled up within her: at a woman who healed not answering a cry for help; at elders vanishing when people needed them; at Dame Loyse for dismissing Lisha as a witling; at herself for believing in Dame Loyse's kindness and arranging for Lisha and Lowri to live with Dame Loyse; even at Egil, for being so pushy that people got the wrong impression. Boldly, rudely, she picked up Lowri and went to the door and knocked.
“… think we should postpone the maidenhood party?” she heard the priestess ask anxiously, in a lowered voice.
“No,” the Witch answered, “or you'll tip people,” her voice trailed away, “off,” and she rose. “Arona,” she said in a cool, remote voice.
They were all there, gathered around The Dissident's hearth, cakes and cider and needlework at hand as at any gathering. Dame Floree, Dame Maris, Dame Birka, Great-Aunt Lorin, about five others, and a velvet-haired gray cat with blue eyes. They were all looking at the angry girl who had, with unthinkable rudeness, burst in without a sign of welcome. Lowri Lishasdaughter rested in her arms. “She's hurt!” Arona protested, her voice cracking on the last word. “We couldn't find anyone to help! I… .” Then, her face scarlet, she thrust Lowri into Dame Floree's arms, stared at the women, and fled.
She would have run right past Elthea's mule, but the weaver turned the animal around and called, “Well.”
“They're all in there,” Arona said, choked. “Talking.”
Dame Birka had come out on to the cabin porch, and beckoned Elthea over. “You could have been among the elders,” she said in a severe voice. “You chose not to. Accept this as our business for the while. Arona, you will say nothing to anybody, not even to hint. On your mother's name?”
Arona had shrunk away from them and now looked up sideways. “On my mother's name,” she vowed, chilled to the bone by what she had imperfectly sensed in that cabin. Then, hiding her face behind Elthea, she walked back to Records House.
Five
Bad Vibrations
Leatrice learned to race out with her new friends after sheep, practiced roping, stood watch in the night against wolves, and speared Rabbits for supper. Day followed day, and her face grew brown with the sun. Her hair grew tangled, and she tucked it up under a cap like the others.
Then, very near the end of roundup, a foxwolf called from the hills, very close. She was on watch. She shivered. Her roping and spear-throwing skills were still raw. What could she do if the flock were attacked now? Cry for help? Restlessly the sheep baaed behind her, and the dogs stirred in their sleep. One lifted his head and woofed softly.
A lamb began to bleat, high, shrill, and terrified. Leatrice raced around to the source of the sound to see the foolish little beast several hundred people-lengths away from the flock. Where was the other watchgirl? Who was she? Why hadn't the dogs given notice? She roused the nearest dog with the butt of her spear, then raced after the lamb. A slinky grey shadow hovered over the lamb, its teeth at her throat. “Wolf!” Leatrice cried, a ringing cry her mother would surely have slapped her for. “Wolf!”
The beast looked up at her, unafraid, bared its bloody teeth, and then went back to eating. Hoping she was holding her spear correctly, she drew her knife with the other hand and drove the spear into the predator's throat.
It wasn't there! The wild beast slipped past her and ran into the night. She knelt beside the lamb to see if she could help it. Too late she saw the grey beast leap for her own throat. In haste she threw her arm up to protect her face. Its teeth closed oh her forearm. In searing pain she raised her knife with her free hand and stabbed again and again, only hoping she was doing some damage. Then she felt hands on her shoulders.
Nidoris whistled as she pried the dead beast's jaws from the new girl. Her sleeve was in shreds, and blood runneled forth from the bite marks. Brithis and Nelga held Leatrice down while Nidoris painfully picked every scrap of anything she could see from the wound by the light of a burning stick Saris, the missing watchgirl, held. Then Nidoris uncorked a skin nobody had been allowed to touch, and bathed the wound in it over and over. Leatrice tried not to scream in pain, for these girls were so much like boys, they'd surely despise her tears and hysterics. The cries came out anyway.
Nidoris patted her shoulder. “Where's your clean bloodrag?” she asked.
Shamefaced, for such things were not talked about in her home, Leatrice whispered, “I'm using it.”
“That's why it attacked,” Brithis whispered. “Oh, Leatrice, why didn't you tell us?”
“She didn't know!” Nidoris snapped. “That does it. That wretched village of hers neglected—does anybody have a clean bloodrag?” Brithis handed her a rag and she bound Leatrice's arm. “Saris! Where in Jonkara's name were you?”
“Same thing as Leatrice,” Saris said simply. “It came on suddenly. You know how these things are.”
Nidoris made a nasty noise. “Next time, wake someone first. There!” She put her arm around the trembling, whimpering girl whose head was now buried in her other arm. “That was brave of you! And you get the skin. Did you know that? Be proud.” She led Leatrice back to the fire, where half the girls were now awake and watching. “Here! Our Leatrice killed one of Jonkara's Dogs all by herself!”
The girls set up three cheers. Leatrice, her head full of pain and reaction to fear, realized fuzzily she was being made a hero. She, the girl who could never please her mother! But somehow she doubted Huana would take her feat this well. And they were going back tomorrow. She started trembling.
Nidoris offered the special skin to her and Leatrice obediently gulped it. It was harsh, raw ale, the very soul of ale. “Lifewater,” Nidoris said as Leatrice sputtered and choked. “Dame Gondrin makes it well. It's for healers.” She and two others helped settle Leatrice in her bedroll.
I'm a hero, Leatrice thought in wonder. Then she slept.
Oseberg Morgathson squirmed as Noriel the Blacksmith touched a hot curling iron to his hair. It was shaggy by his old standards; she clucked over how cropped it was. His sister Leatrice, curled and robed, her wounded arm proudly displayed in an embroidered sling, refrained from laughing until Aunt Noriel brought out a gown she had worn as a girl. “I can't wear that!” Oseberg protested as Leatrice put her hand over her mouth. Giggles poured from her in a broken stream, punctuated by hiccups. Their mother, Huana, squirmed worse than Oseberg, though she looked lovely in a dress borrowed from the birdlike Eina Nathasdaughter, the Jommy's own cousin and named for his mother. Pride, Noriel decided. Huana was poor and Oseberg was far too big for beauty; Huana would accept neither.
“There,” Noriel said, satisfied. She looked at Oseberg's face, critically. Coming closer to him, she whispered “You'll want a sharp blade to take the hair from your face.” He balked; she said softly “I know how cruel these girls can be; they'll tease you about being an ancient, and laugh. Only crones have hair on their faces, and even they take it off.”
Oseberg twitched. “The girls will laugh at me?” he asked in a low voice. She nodded; he accepted the blade and went to the other room.
“Good children,” Noriel said, patting Huana on the shoulder. “Oseberg's coming along very nicely; you should be proud. And when they taste your cooking, Huana, your name will be made. Imagine, Bethiah making so much of Yelen's chicken! Oseberg, are you sure you don't want a hair ribbon?”
“Quite sure!” he howled, and nearly tripped over his unfamiliar skirts as they came down the steps. If Egil saw him all dolled up like this, he'd never live it down, but Aunt Noriel assured him this was the way people dressed around here, and the girls would think him a bumpkin if he Wore his old clothes to this party. What was it about? Nelga somebody was newly marriageable. Not that apprentices married. Was she as pretty as Brithis?
The party from the forge met another group on the path, a family with a girl in her early teens. “Hello, Dame Noriel,” Brithis called out. Oseberg tensed, terrified of her laughter. “Oseberg! Your hair looks cute. It's different. Is that the style where you come from?” She raised a hand to his carefully made curls. “Good evening,” she said politely to the others. Huana set her lips tightly; Leatrice stepped back a bit so Brithis could walk beside Oseberg. Oseberg suddenly walked more lightly, and smiled. “Hello, Brithis,” he said.
Egil had an equally pretty robe one of the elders had given him, but he belted it and tucked it up to the approximate length of a man's holiday tunic. He carefully combed his budding mustache, polished his boots, and offered one arm to his sister Hanna when he called for her at Healing House. There was no way to detour by Records House in hopes of seeing Arona; he had delayed as long as possible, but she had not appeared.
“You look very pretty this afternoon,” he told Hanna as he escorted her to Nelga's mother's house. “Four more years, and you'll be the queen of your own coming-out party. Are you happy working for Dame Floree?”
“Oh, yes! I got to watch her sew up Lowri's arm and cut away the proud flesh. Lowri cried and cried and Dame Floree had me cuddle her and give her a sweet to help her.”
Reflecting on the kind of child who would enjoy seeing such surgery, Egil nearly missed the women on the path intersecting his. When he saw them, he swept off his cap in what he imagined to be a grand sweeping bow. “Mistre
ss Arona,” he said.
“Hello, Egil. How's Lowri?” the girl answered, distracted. The hens had been upset that morning, cackling and fluttering as if a fox had been at them; Dame Butthead the goat had nearly refused to be milked; and the cat, Little Red Pest, was under the bed and would not come out. Did that presage a whirlwind, or an earthquake, or simply trouble in the house?
Egil ground his teeth. One day he'd be worth her notice! Suddenly, the earth started to rumble and the path shook like a giant stirring. From Lookout Mountain came the cry of extreme danger, and it rang throughout the village as if every throat had taken it up. Egil felt an urgent, “Run for the caves!” command and his voice echoed his thought. “Run for the caves!”
“Run for the caves,” Arona repeated, as the danger cry came again and again. Then, “The hens! Dame Butthead! And the cat!”
“For the love of … are you worrying about a stupid cat now?" Egil shouted.
“The goat and the hens!” she cried out, racing back to Records House to the back fence.
Dame Butthead was tossing her head restlessly and trying to find a place to hide. Expertly, Arona looped a rope noose and called the goat, then tossed the rope around her horns. “Egil! Catch!” she called out, heading for the henhouse. The ground was shaking under their feet so she could hardly stand. She found the hen cage and shoved three of the squawking, terrified biddies into it. Then the chicken house started to shake. “Run, Arona!” Egil screamed, shoving her with one hand. The hen cage banging against her knees, she ran. The barnyard tilted upwards, then back. She threw herself down, flat on her face; Egil threw himself on top of her.
With a shivering roar, the chicken house collapsed. Arona looked around cautiously, got up, and began to run north. “This way!” she called to Egil. Then she lifted her skirts and raced through the woods so fast he could not catch her.