by James Enge
“Yes. It has been tedious.”
“At least you have your sister for company.”
“Not really.”
Aloê smiled ruefully, sure that she knew what Hope meant (although it turned out she was wrong about this).
“But how do you . . . ? How do you . . . ?”
“Don’t seem to hear what. Hear what you’re saying,” Hope said thickly, in a voice unlike herself somehow.
“It’s just . . .”
“Sorry. Still not hearing. Ask Ambrosia. Likes to explain things.”
“Are you ill? What’s wrong with you?” Aloê was wondering if this affliction might affect her in the months (months!) to come. But she was also surprisingly worried about the well-being of this woman whom she had only just met, and had never in fact seen.
“My sister,” whispered Hope, and said no more.
There was a kind of thrashing sound, then silence. Ambrosia gave a long sigh. “I wonder what day it is?” she said aloud.
“The same day as when we first talked, I think,” Aloê said. “Although it seems to be night now.”
“Hey!” Ambrosia yelped. “Are you still there? Mallowy, or whatever your name is?”
“Aloê,” the vocate responded icily.
“Yes, exactly. Look, I’m sorry if I was rude, earlier. I didn’t grow up around people, and I guess I’m still learning how to act.”
“Your sister doesn’t seem to have that problem,” Aloê pointed out.
“Just because she’s my sister doesn’t mean she’s lived the same life as me. Have you got any sisters?”
“Yes.” Aloê thought about her smug vicious siblings, male and female—the ones who had known all about Cousin Nothos and did nothing to stop him, nothing to help her. “All right. I see your point. Maybe I’ll just try to clue you, as they say, from time to time.”
“Thanks. I enjoy learning stuff. It’s one of the things I’m really good at. I’m going to have to learn a lot more about people if I’m going to rule the world.”
“Oh. Um. Are you going to rule the world?”
“Well, at least the interesting parts.”
Aloê scuttled her half-formed plan to educate Ambrosia in civility. If the only thing that protected the future from Ambrosia I, Ruler of the Interesting Parts of the World, was the girl’s abrasive manner, Aloê wasn’t going to tamper with it.
“Are you feeling all right?” Aloê asked.
“Am I crazy, do you mean?”
“No,” said Aloê honestly. She didn’t think there was any point in asking a crazy person if she was crazy. “Your sister seems to be suffering from some sort of affliction, and I thought you—”
“My sister is my affliction,” Ambrosia said curtly. After a pause she added with painful honesty, “And I’m hers, I guess.”
“Fair enough,” said Aloê, who could imagine the horror of being confined with one of her sisters for months on end. “It’s just that she seemed to pass out when I was trying to ask her an urgent question.”
“Oh, always ask me the questions. I’m good at questions.”
“Well, you’ve been here a long time.”
“Months at least. It’s hard to track the time. I was in Withdrawal for a while, but Hope kept sneaking out and using the life. And that’s not fair, don’t you agree? She’s already had so much more than me.”
“I can’t really tell what’s fair in that sort of situation,” Aloê said carefully.
“I suppose not. But that can’t be your urgent question, is it? About how long we’ve been here?”
“No, but it’s related. How do you piss?”
“Well, I usually—Wait a moment.”
Aloê had waited many a moment already, so she said, “I’m waiting.”
“Are you saying you haven’t urinated since you’ve been here?”
“I haven’t.”
“So when was the last time?”
“Sometime yesterday morning.”
“Yesterday morning. Not the morning of the day now ending, but a day before that?”
“Yes. Although the wickerwork beast knocked me out when it captured me yesterday. I might have relieved myself when I was unconscious, I suppose. But I see no signs of it.”
“And you would, I guess.”
“Well, at some point we would have passed through the sea, so . . .”
“But you couldn’t have been underwater for very long, or you would have drowned.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Are you fully human, do you think?” Ambrosia said curiously.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know if I agree. This is really wonderful. I mean, your sphincter urethrae must be made of steel!”
“What’s the sphinxy youthy-thing?”
“Muscle. Keeps you from urinating. I read about it in a book. Of course I read another book that said it was a yellow elf in your schmedge that kept you from urinating. But I think that was satire, or a metaphor, or something. The book about the muscles was more convincing.”
“So when you have to do it, you . . .”
“The usual way. I may be odd in some respects, but my plumbing is quite ordinary. Oh! You’re asking where I do it?”
“Yes.”
“I just sort of squat down and do it through the wickerwork.”
“And you’ve been doing this for months?”
“I know it sounds disgusting, but, you know, the thing is actually a plant. It uses the urine—absorbs it and takes it away.”
“Yeccch.”
“Look, you do what you have to do in this sad life.”
“You’re wise for one so young.”
“I bet I’m as old as you! Older, even!”
“How about . . . how shall I put this—?”
“Dung? There won’t be any.”
“I don’t see how that can be.”
“Periodically, the basket-plant will extrude bubbles of water. You can wash with it or drink it; it’s perfectly clean. But you’re not going to be fed. Your life is sustained directly by tal.”
“What?”
“It’s brilliant, in its way. You have to give him credit. There are traps around this place, which was a kind of herbarium in the old days when people used to live around here. The traps catch animals, and kill them by extracting their tal. Then the tal is directed by a shielded channel toward us, sustaining our physical life without the need of ingesting physical sustenance. Like it?”
“Sounds cruel.”
“I know, and I can’t figure out why. It’s no worse than killing animals and eating them—they’re dead all the same. Still, this seems worse somehow. Ingenious but cruel. That’s him all over. He let me inspect the traps the last time he was here and was letting us walk around a little bit.”
“He?”
“Our captor. Merlin Ambrosius. My father and your former colleague in the Graith.”
“Weird. Do you know why he’s kidnapped us?”
“I know why he kidnapped me and Hope. I don’t know about you. I kind of expected you to be Morlock.”
“Morlock?”
“That’s my brother,” Ambrosia said smugly.
“Yes, I know.”
“Merlin hates him so much— Wait a moment, do you mean you know Morlock? Know him personally, not just about him? I guess he’s kind of famous back in the Wardlands.”
“Well. He’s known to some.”
“Does he ever talk about me?” Ambrosia asked eagerly.
Gingerly, suspecting that the answer would sting the volatile girl, Aloê said, “Not to me.”
“Hmph,” Ambrosia said sulkily. “I don’t suppose you know him very well, then.”
Aloê bit back a sharp reply. For one thing, she didn’t want to hurt the girl. For another, she was coming to realize that what Ambrosia had said was true. There was much she didn’t know about this man she had recently decided she loved.
“Ambrosia, would you do me a
favor?”
“Guess so. Anything to keep the peace. What is it?”
“Will you pretend you’re not there for a while? I absolutely have to empty my bladder, and I can’t do it while we’re having a conversation.”
Ambrosia laughed. “Sure, why not? I have to think about something anyway.”
It took a very long silence and many relaxing thoughts of rushing waters, but Aloê finally succeeded in voiding her bladder in a corner of her wicker cage. After she did so, bubbles of water began to extrude from the wicker walls, and she used them to rinse the cage and herself, and also quench her not-inconsiderable thirst. It must have been trained not to supply water until someone made water, Aloê reflected.
She, too, had something to think on. No matter why she had been kidnapped, she was not spending months in this cage. She was already itching for more space and light; she would be crazier than Ambrosia in a few days.
But she didn’t think she would have to. After all, she had her staff.
The binding reeds that prevented escape took time to react. It could be that, if she charged the impulse wells in her staff, she could strike a couple of blows harsh enough to blow a hole or two through this thing.
She would take her time. There would probably be only one chance; she didn’t doubt that the wickerwork beast would take the staff from her once it knew what it was capable of. And she wanted a maximum impulse charge in the staff. She formed the habit of shaking the staff back and forth more or less continuously, switching hands when she grew tired. It wasn’t as good as spinning the staff, she suspected, but she didn’t have space for that. Eventually, the impulses would add up. As long as she didn’t accidentally release their energy by bumping the sides of her cage with the staff; she was increasingly careful not to.
It was boring. But she had little else to do, other than sit and think, which she could do at the same time, doubling her meager entertainment.
“Hey, Aloê,” Ambrosia called over.
“She’s out at the moment, sailing on the Broken Sea. Would you like to leave a message, or wait?”
“I guess that’s funny. Listen, I had an idea.”
“I’m listening.”
“Was Morlock with you when you were kidnapped?”
“Not with me. Not so very far off.”
“It must be. It must be. Only I can’t quite . . .”
“This is where you tell me your idea, Ambrosia.”
“Oh. Yes. Look, if you talk to Hope you might get a different story—”
“Where is she, by the way?”
“Shut up!” Ambrosia shouted shrilly. “You’re talking to me now, see? Talk to her later if you want.”
“Well, almost anything beats talking to you.”
Silence for a moment. Then Ambrosia said, “Lots of people say that. I’m sorry. I guess maybe you don’t understand what it’s like.”
“That’s true. Don’t let it worry you. What was your idea, honey?”
“Merlin wants all his children in one place, this place, is the thing. The Two Powers are after him, see.”
“Oh. Are they?”
“They’re after Ambrosius, anyway. Who else can it be?”
“Hm.”
“This region is safe from them, for a couple of reasons.”
“Name them.”
“Look, let me tell you this in my own way.”
“Why? I have a reason for asking about the Two Powers, Ambrosia.”
“Ah. All right, all right. There’s some kind of talic wave over this whole area. It makes human life difficult, godlife impossible. It’s like a god repellant. The Two Powers may run rampant over the rest of the world, but they can’t come here.”
“Interesting! Who made it? Merlin? Or is it natural?”
“I asked him, last time he was here, but he didn’t say anything. So I figure he didn’t make it, or he would’ve been boasting all over the place—that’s the kind of shnakbart he is.”
Aloê didn’t know what a shnakbart was, but the broader point was fairly clear. “I’ve heard stories,” she said.
“I could tell you some. Anyway, if the Two Powers catch someone of his blood, they can use the blood to find Merlin pretty reliably.”
“Useful to know.”
“I can teach you the spell; it’s pretty easy. Blood of the person you’re trying to find works best. Next best is the blood of their life-mate, because mate changes mate as two become one.”
“Oh?” Aloê started to have a glimmer of where this was going.
“Sure. But not so bad is the blood of a descendant, parent, or sibling. So Merlin wanted himself and his blood under protection somewhere. Mama isn’t here—she’s technically crazy, and this talic force might kill her.”
“Why?”
“She’s always drifting off into rapture, her mind a thousand miles from her body. But if she did that here, the talic force would drag her mind so far from her body that they could never be reunited.”
“Unpleasant.”
“The technical description for the state is ‘death.’”
“I know. Ambrosia, I studied seeing with Zuluê at New Moorhope in the Wardlands.”
“Oh. Oh. I’d like to go there sometime.”
“I wish you could,” Aloê said. There was that stab of guilt again. How different would the brilliant and embittered young Ambrosia be if she could have studied with the great seers of New Moorhope, the great makers of Thrymhaiam? And she could be enriching the Wardlands instead of being permanently shut off from them.
“Anyway, he put Mama in a jar and hid it, I think. He’s always doing that, and she just lets him. They have this very sick relationship, let me tell you. Me and Hope am here—”
“Are here.”
“Shut your face!” screamed Ambrosia. “Oh God, I’m sorry,” she said almost immediately. “I’m trying to be better about that. Really I am.”
“It’s all right, honey,” said Aloê soothingly. She didn’t like being screamed at, but she was beginning to pity this bitterly unhappy girl.
“Ah. Anyway. So it just makes more sense to assume that Merlin was intent on grabbing Morlock, and got you by accident. Otherwise we would have to posit another motive on Merlin’s part. And ‘it’s vain to do with more what can be done with less,’ you know.”
“Vain, but fun sometimes.”
“We’re too busy for fun, here. So, what I’m wondering is—had you been travelling with Morlock for a long time? Had he like, bled on you or something that morning?”
“Or something.”
“Huh? Hey! How long had you been travelling together?”
“A while.”
“Oh, gross. Oh, I don’t want to hear this.”
“So don’t ask questions if you don’t want the answers.”
“This is my brother we’re talking about. You can’t be screwing my brother.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, all right. Why not, I guess. I don’t know why I should care. How recently had you, um—”
“Less than an hour before I was captured.”
“Yeccch. Look, now we know, anyway. The cage-beast must have smelled Morlock’s, er—”
“Semen,” Aloê supplied helpfully.
“Gross. Anyway. It must have smelled it on you. And it grabbed you instead. Simple! I guess you’re mad.”
“Not really. I think I can do something here that maybe Morlock couldn’t.”
“What?”
“Get out.”
“Really? I have a plan for getting out, too. I can’t tell you mine, but you can tell me yours.”
Aloê considered it. But she wasn’t sure that the wickerwork beasts couldn’t hear; they could certainly smell, after all. Also, she didn’t think it was smart to let Ambrosia have anything she wanted on such unfair terms; it might get to be a habit with her. “No,” she said at last.
“Oh, come on!”
“Absolutely no.”
“I’d tell you. Really I would. But I�
��m afraid you’ll tell Hope and she won’t like it. She’s got no imagination.”
“She seems much more mature.”
“Like I said.”
Aloê didn’t respond to this at all. She sat and spun the ends of the staff back and forth in tight circles that just failed to graze the walls of the cage she sat in. Ambrosia made various discontented sounds that didn’t rise to the level of words, finally muttering her way to silence.
Conversation ended there for a while. The ambient light of evening had long ago faded into darkness, and Aloê felt the urge to sleep. But she didn’t. There was a fair charge built up in the impulse-wells of her staff; she didn’t want to release it accidentally by laying it down or jostling it in her sleep.
A dark ocean of time passed by, unmarked by islands of word or thought.
Eventually Ambrosia said, “Hey, Aloê.”
“Yes?”
“So. You’ve had sex. What’s it like?”
“With your brother?”
“Ugh. No, that’s sick; I don’t care about that. Why would I? I mean in general.”
That was a little tricky for Aloê to answer. Eventually she said, “Good when it’s good. Bad when it’s bad. Like most things. I’m not sure what to tell you, honey.”
“Is it like in books and poetry and things? Like music and sugar and thunder and stars in your eyes and junk? Or is that all lies? I can’t believe it’s such a big deal, you know? But part of me wants to believe it, and I guess you know which part that is.”
Aloê had never been in a position to have sentimental ideas about sex, but she thought she knew what Ambrosia meant.
“It’s not exactly like they say—,” Aloê began.
“I knew it!”
“—but it is very intense. I guess that’s what all the poetry is about. It’s messier and more ridiculous than most books will tell you. But it’s very important—whether it’s going well, or going wrong, or not going at all.”
“Oh,” said Ambrosia gloomily.
Gingerly, because she really had no idea how old the girl was, Aloê said, “I take it you never . . .”
“Not likely. Your father trying to kill you all the time cuts into your social schedule.”
“What? Isn’t Merlin putting you here to keep you safe?”
“To keep him safe. If my spilt blood was lying around in the world somewhere, the Two Powers might use it to find him. The only alternative to the present situation would be to completely obliterate my blood physically from the world, which would be a nuisance. So here we sit.”