by Andre Norton
“What other wire?”
Mouse lifted her dress and showed the others the blackened place on her abdomen. “Here. They fastened the wire here. I heard them say they were going to put it over the heart on the next one.” She swallowed hard, thinking, considering whether to tell them the rest or not. Well, there was no use in keeping secrets; better to let her sisters know what lay in store for them, so they could prepare as best they could. It would be no favor to hide from them exactly what they could expect. “They said, if the one over the heart didn't work they were going to stick the wires right in us next time.”
Shocked exclamations arose from every side. “What do you mean?” Bird cried.
“I mean in us, stick them under our skins,” Mouse said.
“Ooh, that would hurt!” Flame looked profoundly shocked. “A lot more than what happened to you or me.”
Lisper had gone dead white and she sucked even harder on her thumb. Mouse's eyes filled with tears. “They're not going to stick wires in you, Lisper,” she said. “If they come back and choose you, I'll go again in your place.”
“Not you, not again. Me,” Cricket said.
“No, me,” Bird said.
“No,” Star said. “I will.”
Mouse took Star's hand. “I kept thinking that you could have beaten them, even if I couldn't. Well, that was just for that time. We might not even have to worry about it. I think it was worse with me than it was with Flame.” Her head hurt and she knew she was choosing her words poorly. Nevertheless, she persisted. No matter how badly she was stating things, she had to make them understand. “Maybe they twisted the dials differently or something. I think it will be even harder with the next one. And if it is, they'll have what they want, even if they pick you. But if they get what they want, then they'll leave us alone.”
“Or kill us,” Cricket said.
“We have to find a way to help each other,” Mouse said. “I've been thinking about it. You see, when I was just about to bend, to give in, there was another voice—”
“Yes, you mentioned that,” Star said. “What voice?”
“Somebody—you're going to laugh, but it sounded like my Mama—somebody kept telling me to hold on. So I did. But if they had done that sound thing with the wires again, I couldn't have held on, not another minute.”
“Your Mama!” Bird said. “That's silly. Your Mama is ‘way back on the other side of Estcarp.”
Mouse shook her head and immediately regretted the action. She closed her eyes until her head stopped thumping. “No, she isn't,” she said. “She's close by. Near enough that I can hear her.”
“Then she's got to have a really loud voice.” Cricket sounded nearly as scornful as Bird.
“She did say something about her Mama being here when she first woke up,” Star told them. “How do you know?”
“I told you. I can hear her.”
“How?”
“In my head. Like this.” Mouse concentrated. Star jumped, startled.
“'How did you do that?”
“It's easy,” Mouse said. “I'll show you.”
II
The girls all wanted to learn how to hear, how to do this thing that Star called touching with the mind. Mouse showed them, one by one, and they giggled as they tried it out on each other. Mouse felt a little better as long as she had something to keep her mind off how sick and dizzy she felt. And it was something for them to do, as well. Part of the awfulness of being captive was the waiting, with nothing to do, nothing to keep them occupied.
Soon, with a little practice, the children could all hear one another by mindtouch with varying degrees of proficiency, though it tired them considerably to do so, as if they had been running and playing hard for hours. It was strange. As Bird put it, it was as if they were not so much learning something new as remembering something they had forgotten long ago.
They sat resting for a while, silent. From far below, the sounds of boats on the river drifted up to them. Mouse wished she were on a boat, going far, far away from this place.
“When I was little, my Mama never let me have a kitty to play with,” Flame said shyly. Her eyes were closed and she lay back on the bed. “So I used to make one out of clay. I'd think about it very hard, and then it would be a real kitty for a while. We'd have ever so much fun. And then it would become clay again.”
“Can you do it now?” Bird wanted to know.
“I can try, but I don't have any clay. I'd have to use some of. this straw.”
“Oh, please, do try!” Cricket said.
Enthralled, all the girls watched while Flame sat up and began gathering bits of straw and smoothing them into a bundle, which she tied with gray threads from her dress.
“This is going to be the kitty's body,” she said. The other girls nodded their understanding.
Encouraged by their interest, she then made four smaller bundles—the legs—and tied them onto the body. Forming a roundish clump on one end to represent the head and sticking another piece of straw on the other end for the tail, she added the finishing touch of a strip of fabric which she tied around the “neck” in a bow.
“Well,” she said, eyeing her creation judiciously, “this is as good as I can do. We'll see what happens now.”
She closed her eyes and began to think so hard Mouse could see it happening. She breathed loudly through her nose. Mouse watched, fascinated. Flame paled, faltering visibly.
“I—I can't,” she said. “I'm still too sick—”
“I'll help,” Star said. She reached out her hand toward Flame and Mouse saw—or thought she saw—a spark, a flash of something pass from Star to Flame. Flame took a deep breath, and suddenly a kitten stood, wobble-legged, before them. It was not a very pretty kitten, and its coat was a bewildering mixture of gray and straw-colored fur. But it looked as real as real could be.
A sudden longing for Pounce, who used to sleep on her bed sometimes back home, came over Mouse. “Ooh,” she breathed, “may I touch it? May I pet it?”
“Of course,” Flame said. “You may all play with it, if you don't hurt it. I don't know how long it will stay.”
She handed the kitten to Mouse who cuddled it in her arms. It purred, gazing at her out of yellowish eyes, and batted at her fingers. Then it licked her hand. Its tiny pink tongue was as rough as its fur.
“Let me have it for a while,” Lisper said, and Mouse reluctantly gave the kitten to her. “Hello, kitty. What'th your name?”
The children petted the kitten, and dangled bits of straw enticingly for it to play with. It danced and purred, happily romping from one child to the next, sharing their attentions equally. But the spell couldn't last long; when it was Flame's turn for the kitten, she touched it and it fell apart, a bundle of straw once more. She untied the threads and let the straw drift to the floor.
“I thought you weren't going to be able to do it at all,” Cricket said. “How did you manage, there at the end, just before it turned into a kitty?”
“I don't know,” Flame said. “It was as if somebody helped me, only I don't know how—”
“That was me,” Star said. She looked a little abashed. “I gave you some of my strength.”
III
Star had used to do that, lend her strength to people who needed it, when she and her family were out on the road, and everyone was getting tired before they could make camp.
They all lived together, these traveling merchants, with no wedded wives and husbands but all living in one group with an ever-shifting pattern of relationships. None of the children could be certain who their fathers were, even if their mothers knew, which they often did not. Furthermore, their mothers’ identity sometimes grew hazy in their minds. Women mothered children indiscriminately, and just as casually ignored them if they chose to do so. But there were usually enough women in the mood at any given time that no child went without maternal attention for long. Star had no more idea of who her real father was than any other child in the caravan, but she chose to
believe he was the leader among them, and he was the only one she called “Papa.” She was very proud when he came to stay with her mother, which he did more often than with any of the other women.
On the road, Papa would be trudging along, thinking, Star knew, about having to set up the wagons, having to tend the horses, having to mend whatever had broken that day. And about having to watch through the night lest thieves come and try to steal their poor stock of goods or the small chest of money that was kept under Mama's bedroll. From the seat where Star rode, she found it easy to push somehow, to send a surge of strength out like a puff of fog, enveloping Papa. She could almost see it when it left her body, could always tell when he inhaled it, or it sank into his skin, or whatever happened. He would straighten up, as if he had been unaware of the kink in his back.
“Come on now, just a little farther and we're there,” he'd call to the people in the wagons following theirs. And the others would take heart from the renewed vigor in his voice.
Sometimes, if Star hadn't sent more strength to Papa than usual and she wasn't too tired, she would push a wave of it out to someone else in the caravan—whoever seemed to need it most. Nobody had taught her how to do this. It was something she just naturally seemed to know. And so it had not been at all surprising to her when Bee and the guardsmen had found her family and had taken her away to be trained and become a real Witch some day.
“And that's what I did with Flame,” she said.
“That's a very nice thing to know how to do, give someone a little extra strength,” Mouse said thoughtfully. The other girls began to talk, one by one, telling of what they could do, and though Mouse listened, part of her mind was busy, turning something over and over. There was a drawback, somewhere. But if Star could show them how to push, the way she had taught them how to hear when others spoke, and if some of the other girls had useful talents, even untrained… .
IV
“I can change the way I look,” Cricket said.
“No!”
“Really.”
Cricket was the child of a couple who lived in a small village in southern Estcarp. Her father had a small farm that barely fed his family and, for a little extra on the table, her mother did sewing for the village women. She had one brother, a little older than she, and her mother was expecting another child any time.
“Though how we'll ever feed another mouth is more than I'll ever know,” Cricket's mother would say, sighing.
It was especially hard on Cricket's brother, Gwannyn. He was hungry all the time. And so was Cricket, until she stumbled onto the knack of making other people believe she was her brother. She would just want it so, and it was.
It was very convenient, this ability of hers. She could go into the pantry any time she wanted, could take a bite or two, and he would get the punishment. It was lovely. She did have to be careful, though, when Mama had extra money and made spice tarts, not to eat too many of them and get sick. That would have been very difficult to explain.
Whether it was a trick of the light, or something else, Cricket didn't know. Only sometimes, when Gwannyn was nearby, she would have to want herself into looking like someone else. And usually, she could. She hadn't thought anything at all when Bee and the guards had come and gotten her. She had simply thought it was a very nice thing for Bee to think of doing. She hadn't any idea that everyone couldn't change their shape—in another person's eyes, at least—the way she could.
“Oh, that'th nothing,” Lisper said. “I uthed to keep people from theeing me altogether. I could walk right under their notheth, and they wouldn't notith.”
Lisper had been a very quiet, withdrawn child, easy to overlook in the large establishment of Gweddawl Garth. Everyone who lived there seemed far too busy to have time for the small, thin girl-child who couldn't speak clearly, even if she was the daughter of the garth-holder and, as such, could have been considered minor nobility. Lisper felt invisible most of the time. And one day, to her surprise and wonder, she discovered that when she wished it hard enough, she really was invisible. In fact, all that she could see of herself was a thin shadow, as if she were made of fog. She could look right through her hand, the way you did sometimes when you held your hand to the light and it shone all red and you could see the outlines of your bones. But even her bones went transparent when she wished it so.
Now she could go anywhere, see and overhear anything—especially the secrets over which the grownups were always hustling her away so they could discuss them in private. They called it business and sent her out to play. But Lisper knew it was because they just didn't want to be bothered with having her around. And none of the other children would play with her anyway. When she was invisible, though, everything was different. It was all very exciting, being where she had always been forbidden to go, though she really didn't understand a tenth of what was going on once she got there. The only serious drawback was that she had never learned to wish her clothing transparent as well, and unless she wanted it to appear that her dress had suddenly gotten up and gone for a walk, she had to take it off. And her other clothing as well. This made her secret activities a thing best confined to warm weather. Invisible she might be, but she could still be heard. The sound of her chattering teeth would surely have given her away, and she didn't have any idea what would have happened to her if she had been caught spying, and without her clothes, and invisible to boot. Furthermore, she didn't want to find out.
After Bee had come for her, she had been so happy with her sisters that she hadn't even thought about wishing herself unseen, not even once.
“That ith, until the Houndth caught uth. And Leaf.” Lisper's thumb went back into her mouth.
Cricket sniffed. “I'll bet that if I had thought myself into looking like a Hound—or,” she amended practically, “one of their rotten old dogs anyway, they're closer to my size—if I'd thought that, or if you'd wished yourself invisible, they would never have caught us.”
“Maybe not. But it all happened too fatht.”
“I'll bet I could do that right now—walk out without being noticed, or make the Hounds think I was somebody I wasn't.”
“I'll bet I could do it better. Tho there.”
Mouse privately thought the two of them were bragging more than just a little, but she didn't say so out loud. She was still working on her idea, but something was bothering her. She almost had it, if only her head didn't hurt so much—
“What can you do, Bird?” Lisper asked.
“Nothing much. Sometimes, if things are just right, I can see.”
“What do you mean, you can see?” Star asked.
“Oh, you know,” Bird said, blushing. “See. I always called it going deep.”
V
Bird's Papa was the blacksmith in the village where she used to live, and probably the richest man anywhere for leagues around. He was a big man, bluff and handsome.
Bird's Mama had been the village beauty when she was young, and she still liked to go as handsomely decked out as possible. Her husband indulged her, as much as he could. Her dresses were of the finest material and sewn by the best seamstress in the village. She had carved combs of shell for her hair and red leather shoes for her feet. Bird knew she was something of an embarrassment to these handsome people—a thin, scrawny wraith of a child, plain of face and not likely to grow into any sort of beauty. Bird held no resentment over this; it was just a fact, like any other, and something she couldn't help. Still, it was hard sometimes when strangers looked at her Papa and her Mama and then at her, with a look on their faces that clearly asked, “Why?”
Mama had many pretty things, ornaments and ribbons, clothing and trinkets, and Bird loved it when Mama let her take one of these things for a day and keep it near her. Bird did this with any lovely object that caught her fancy—a perfect flower, a glittering rock—and she would look at it until, as her Mama put it, she had “all but looked all the prettiness out of it.” One of her favorite things was a piece of crystal on a silver chain
that Mama wore sometimes. The crystal was perfectly clear—a smooth, round stone polished with no distracting facets or engraving on it, and despite its plainness it caught every stray beam of light, glowing like a living thing on Mama's breast.
Then one day, Mama lost her beautiful crystal necklace. She looked for it, but it was nowhere to be found.
“Even though it was such a plain thing, I liked it because you gave it to me,” she told Bird's Papa.
“Oh, well, don't fret,” Papa said. “At the next fairing, we'll buy you another, even finer.”
Mama smiled and quit looking for her necklace then, for if there was anything she liked better than pretty things, it was new things. “Next time let's look for one that sparkles and makes rainbows when the sun shines on it,” she said.
When Bird found it much later, out under the bay-tree where Mama had been walking, it never even crossed her mind to take it back to her. The silver chain had broken, and that was why it had fallen off Mama's neck. Since it was by far Bird's favorite thing, she thought Mama might even let her keep it for herself now, and maybe Papa would even get a new chain for her to wear it on. After Mama got her new necklace, of course.
She started to put it in her pocket. But then, moved by some impulse she didn't understand, she looked into it, in a different manner from the way she had done before. This time, she really looked until she could began to see. The more she saw, the more she felt as if she were swimming into the crystal, the way fish swam in water. To her surprise, she discovered pictures in its depths, pictures that moved, of things that were happening a long way away. There was Mama, back at the cottage, combing her hair and humming to herself. Fascinated, Bird tried “going deep,” so she could see more. The picture in the crystal faded, shimmered, and resolved into her Papa, who had gone over to the next village that day, to buy a new riding horse. Bird could see him ever so clearly, and the horse, too. It was red, to match Mama's hair.
After that, Bird began wearing the crystal on a string around her neck, carefully keeping it hidden from sight. She would go into it and see every chance she had. It was fascinating. She discovered she could see people she knew, almost every time. Once in a while, though, all she could see was something like a closed door, and gradually she began to understand that the person was occupied in something private, and if she had looked, she would have been intruding. That seemed fair to her. And, she also discovered, she could not see people or things she did not know, or had only heard of, such as the great ones in Es City, no matter how “deep” she went. It was no great surprise to her when Bee came. Though she had not seen Bee, exactly, she had “gone deep” and had watched herself riding away from her village, in the company of five small shadows and one larger one. She had been very pleased that Bee had had on the kind of necklace she wore. She thought Bee must use it the same way Bird used the piece of crystal. It seemed so right and natural that Bird had not even thought to take her necklace with her when she left to go to Es City.