by Rich Horton
To continue:
The first thing Peero did when he reached the marketplace was rent a pail from a porter-woman carrying beer to those too lazy to haul their own drink from the cask-man to the field north of the market, where tables and benches (and a tent or two, with straw-tick mattresses) were for hire. The second thing he did was buy two-thirds of a pail’s worth of water. Tugging his kerchief down, he splashed his face, rinsed his eyes, and drank the rest. And that, the rental of a pail and the purchase of less than a full measure of water, took half the money he had brought with him.
Many of the food-sellers had tied canopies over their stalls to protect their merchandise from the grit-laden wind. Peero, after returning the pail, moved slowly toward the herbalists and greenstuffs vendors.
Most of the women (and the men) in the marketplace had covered their hair that day; many wore scarves or kerchiefs over their mouths as well. Peero looked for prominent noses; he looked for missing fingers. Left hand, right hand, it didn’t matter. Who knew if his mother’s cousin had gotten that detail right? He looked so long without spotting anything (prominent noses? All the noses looked about the same to him—that one there had a crook to it, another bore a bump, another was a bit large, true, but it belonged to a man; as for fingers, most people he saw had the full set—a couple of men and one woman lacked a hand, but all three of those were customers) that he began to wonder if the cousin hadn’t mixed up this marketplace with the smaller one to the south.
He looked so long that hawkers stopped calling to him and stall-holders gave up trying to attract his attention with teasing comments and jabs at the probable state of his purse. They have decided that I am simple-minded, Peero reckoned, a halfwit come to gawk at the wonders of the world.
He was nerving himself to approach the vendors and put the question to them: Do you know a woman who sells here, who has two fingers missing from one of her hands? Most would ignore him; the ones who didn’t would probably lie, whether there was coin offered or not. (But first he’d have to get coin; though he’d brought very little with him, he did have a couple of items he might be able to sell—an iron-bladed knife that Bairen had left behind—stolen, probably, but Peero counted it no thievery to steal from a thief—and the luck-pouch his sister had slipped to him when their parents weren’t looking. The knife would bring more, but it might be recognized; if he returned home without the luck-pouch, his sister would be angry. He would have to leave the place of produce sellers and herbalists to sell either—the ironmongers and weaponers were back where the cask-man had his stand, and the luck-merchants had a small patch in the western section of the market. He’d almost made up his mind to retrace his steps and try to sell the knife when, from behind him, there came a tug on his sleeve.
Peero turned, so quickly that the boy—near-grown, but still wearing a green ribbon sewn to his cloak, indicating he was marriageable but as yet unspoken for—stepped back and put his hand on the hilt of a dagger (with no sheathe) stuck under his belt. Between belly and belt—a bad place to carry a sharp object. And the green ribbon looked new, yet it was poorly stitched to the cloak.
“What do you want?” Peero asked.
“You are disturbing the clientele.”
Clientele? A fancy word for a marketplace apprentice. “I am looking for a woman with graying hair and missing fingers.”
“Look for her somewhere else.”
“I was told she was here.”
The boy—if it was a boy, and not a girl in disguise, or a eunuch dressed as a marriageable youth as a joke by his employer, or one of those folks born with both male and female parts, or with neither—said, “This is place of business. If you have no business here, then leave.”
“Who sent you?” Peero grabbed the boy’s wrist and twisted it; had he been more skilled, the youth could have tried to reach for the dagger with his left hand, but the hilt was tilted too far to the right. He had eastern eyes, whoever or whatever he was, gray as the sea with the tiniest tinge of blue; they were difficult to read. Peero twisted the boy’s wrist harder, making him cry out.
“Leave him alone.” A different voice, older, and a woman’s.
“Gladly. It’s you I need to talk to.”
“Me?” The woman circled him; he watched her eyes. The boy did not struggle.
Grayish hair. A nose a bit broad at the bridge. He could not see her hands; she kept them behind her back. Holding a weapon of her own, possibly.
“My brother stole something from you,” Peero said. “I have come in the name of my family to make amends.”
“Your brother.” She circled him again.
“He was seen.”
“Oh, then it must be true.” She stopped walking and met his gaze. “If your business is with me, then let this one go.”
“Is he your son?”
“I have no children.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. In these wild and hungry days, the world is no fit place for children.”
“Did you meet a bard once when you were young?”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Peero gave the boy a look: don’t go for the knife. The boy grimaced in agreement, and Peero released his wrist. “Scat,” Peero said, but the boy glanced at the woman and waited for her assent before striding off, head high. This whole section of the market had just seen Peero lay hands on a child, but he was a stone and could not be hurt by what others thought of him.
The woman was still standing with her hands behind her back. Well, what reason did she have to trust him, after what his brother had done?
Plain-looking, his mother’s cousin had said. But the stone had been placed in Peero’s hand, not on his heart. She was younger than he had thought at first, perhaps quite close to his own age—some people went gray sooner than others—and her nose gave her face character. In fact, it complemented her strong chin and her deep-set eyes. He felt a hot twist in his belly, and from the look the woman gave him (not eastern eyes, not at all, but as dark brown as his own) he feared that the heat had rushed to his face.
She wore no hood or hat, scarf or kerchief. Peero pushed his own hood back, untied his kerchief, and mopped his face. They were in the open, with the eyes of dozens on them. Had Bairen done the same, torn from her what he had taken, in the middle of the marketplace? Peero had pictured his brother going to her stall, but his mother’s cousin had never said that, only that the woman sold at the marketplace.
“You don’t look much like him,” she said.
“Who?”
“This brother you claim stole something from me.”
“Thank you for the compliment.” The wind was strong; the wind was always strong. He blinked against the dust. “Bairen.”
“Is that your name, or his?”
“His.”
“I see.” She stood very still, her hands out of sight.
“When I was born,” Peero said, “they gave me a stone, to bless me with the gift of strength.”
“I was given a blossom from a bitter-bark tree.”
“To endow you with a talent for working with wild plants and herbs?”
“No. Because I was the youngest of ten and there was no need for me. Bitter-bark tree blossoms flourish and fade inside of a week.” She gave him a little smile.
After a moment, Peero said, “It was the opposite with Bairen. Our mother had lost several babies. Everybody wanted him to live.”
“So his grandparents blew long life into his hands. I know.” She smiled again. “Sometimes the gifts they mean to give us are not the ones we receive.”
“It is difficult not to come to that conclusion. Clearly, you’ve lasted more than a week.”
“Clearly.”
“And Bairen, the bastard, became light-fingered and airy-minded.”
“Is he a bastard?”
“No. Though my father has several.” Peero didn’t know why he’d said that; he felt the heat rise to his face again.
“It happens. Even in the
best of families, or so they say.”
Peero was growing increasingly uncomfortable. “Shouldn’t we go someplace—quieter?”
“Quieter?”
“Out of—out of the wind.”
“I’m sorry for your long journey,” she said. “Truly, I am. But your trip was for no purpose.”
“I have to try.”
“Try what?”
“To repair what Bairen did. To make amends.”
“There is nothing to repair.”
“But he stole—”
“He stole nothing.”
“He was seen. He took a necklace. And then he—”
“There is no burden on you. There is no stain on your family. Go home, brother of Bairen.”
“Let me see your hands,” Peero said, suddenly.
So many people watching them. How would this tale be told in the future, how would it be passed from mouth to malicious mouth? The thief’s brother came and hurt a child; the thief’s brother came and fought with the woman he should have been offering compensation to.
“Are you married?”
“What? No.”
“But you wear no ribbon.”
“I’m too old for that.”
“Missed your chance, did you? Some settlements have odd customs.”
“Stop it. I am old enough now to decide for myself. I cannot be asked for.”
“I see. Well, I tell you again, brother of Bairen, Bairen the light-fingered and airy-minded, as you named him, that nothing was stolen from me. If he has stolen from others, you must go make amends to them, if that is your duty.”
“Let me see your hands.” A fear like ice gripped him now, banishing all heat. He had told himself that he did not believe in blessings and curses, that what people grew to become depended on their own natures and what they were taught. Now he was afraid that the woman possessed a strength mightier than any stone, any mountain; he feared she would stretch out her three-fingered hand, and render him to ash.
Render. Rent. Bairen had done more than steal; he had rent something from her. So the tale ran; so his mother’s cousin had whispered. And his sister said, darkly, You know what he took. Her years, Peero, he took her years to add to his own. Believing and disbelieving (in his sister’s clarity of sight, in his own stone strength, in the likelihood of Bairen being able to steal a lifespan) he had come to give them back to her, if possible. And she stood there smiling, teasing him about marriage, and filling his heart with an emotion he could not name.
If there was magic here, it was the sort he wished, fervently, did not exist.
“These wild and hungry times will end one day,” she said.
“So we must hope.”
She shook her head. “It is not a matter of hope, but of action. Do you think it was the old emperors who kept the grayness away, who controlled the wind? They were too busy raising armies and collecting taxes. We have the power to set the world right, but only a few of us know it. Perhaps your brother did steal. But the objects—and the gifts—that he took from people, he kept safe, adding bit to bit, until he had acquired everything that was needed. And no, he never told you that, because if he had, you would have dismissed his words as lies, excuses, fancies.”
“You must have spoken to him for a long time.”
“Not so long. He was in a hurry.”
“Do you know where he was going?”
“If I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Why won’t you show me your hands?”
“Because you are not ready yet.”
“Why did my brother come to you?”
“Because I was ready.” She glanced down. “Not completely ready. I have been growing readier, though. Your brother took nothing from me that I did not freely give. He added it to the rest, all the bits and scraps and strengths he had gathered for years, the tangible and the scarcely perceptible. And then he left everything, all of it, with me.”
“I don’t understand.”
She shrugged.
“But I don’t think you understand, either. It is in your face, in your eyes. Your death is standing just behind your shoulder.”
“Ah, perhaps it is the blossom of the bitter-bark tree, catching up with me at last.”
“I came to help. To stop it, if I can. To delay it, if I can.”
“Very well. I will do it here, in front of everybody, so that all can see. I will do it in front of you, so that you can carry the tale back to your family. That is how you can help. I know I cannot end these wild and hungry times; they did not arrive in an instant, and they will not retreat in an instant, either. It is likely that the repair, to use your word, will take longer than a lifetime. But we must do what we can, and what I can do is begin. It will be up to others to continue it. You tell them that.”
“Continue what?”
“The wind bothers you. It hurts you.”
“The wind bothers everybody. It hurts everybody.”
“Then we will start with the wind.”
The woman brought her hands out from behind her back, and Peero saw that she had five fingers on both of them.
She laughed softly. “Believe me, that was a surprise.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Like fire. Now be silent, and watch.”
She turned, extending her left arm to the north. She shut her eyes and breathed. She stood standing and breathing as the sun (dim through the grayness, but still visible) slipped over the top of the sky and began to sink into the west. She stood for hours, motionless except for her breathing; Peero settled himself on the ground and watched.
He watched because she had asked him to; he watched because it was the only thing he could do. He watched because she was beautiful and doomed. He knew her death was coming ever closer; he knew she was calling it to her. No one in the marketplace interfered; no one approached them, except once, when the boy who might not have been a boy strode up and placed a pail of water next to Peero, then swaggered off again.
Peero knew the precise moment that she died. It was the instant after the wind stopped.
The wind stopped.
She fell.
It was nearly dusk.
The boy came again, then, with two others, older men, who picked her up and carried her away. They did not speak to Peero.
He waited a while, but no one came near him.
I am strong, he thought. I can walk home in the dark. I have had no food since breakfast, but I have had water. And now, without the wind, the traveling will be easier.
I will tell the story to father and mother and sister, to niece and nephew. I will tell what I saw. What I do not know, I will not invent. They will hear only what I can swear to with one hand on my newborn-stone and the other on my mother’s breast.
And so he must have done, for this is the tale, more or less, as it was recorded by the new lords with their fast ships and their inks and their metal-nibbed pens, and unearthed (literally; the scrolls had been buried in sealed jars) by Neitta the Younger. Perhaps Peero did father children eventually, and gave the story to them, or perhaps it was his niece or nephew who passed it on. In any case, as the story clearly descends from Peero, Bairen appears as a minor figure, despite the fact it was his actions which set the events in motion; similarly, the greenstuffs vendor who, in a another telling, might have been featured as the heroine of the piece, is not even afforded a name. (Pitmarr, in Resennan Motifs, volume three, mentions this tale in Appendix C, but only to note that none of the female characters are given names. Pitmarr, as is well-known, holds to the opinion that while the new lords recorded as many of the relicts of Resennan tradition and culture as they could, the tales of the wild and hungry days are mostly their own invention.) There is also the curious element of the youngster of undetermined gender, who also is not named. The character is extraneous to the tale, serving no discernable purpose. However, if the account is meant to be a historical record, the chronicler likely felt obligated to include every detail still extant, even if its significa
nce had been lost.
That was centuries ago, of course, and even a conscientious chronicler could have mistaken fiction for fact, or indulged in a certain amount of embellishment (the dialogue in the tale certainly must have come from the chronicler, along with Peero’s internal monologues; it is unfortunate that the account has survived in only this single version, thus affording no opportunity to compare variants or conduct contrastive analyses) but many elements can be confirmed from other texts of the period—the tradition of birth-boons has been well-documented, for example, along with the grayness of the days and the ferocity of the wind. Finally, there is the expression “wild and hungry times” or “wild and hungry days”; no reputable historian disputes that this was the name given to the period by those who lived in it. (Except for Pittmar, of course, but he cannot be considered unbiased.)
Much is still not known about the wild and hungry times, and possibly will never be uncovered. But perhaps we have some indication of how they ended, or began to end—with the halting of the winds, by the actions of a young man deemed a thief and a disgrace, and a woman who had lived her whole life knowing her parents wished her to wither and die as a bitter-bark tree blossom faded and crumbled to dust.
Unless, of course, someone whose name began with a consonant or a vowel simply made the whole thing up.