The House of the Stag

by Kage Baker

  “But—but people can only live in the woods happily if someone else is protecting their right to do that. We learned that, in terrible sorrow. Even the Beloved Imperfect accepted it at last, on that great day in the wheat field.”

  “No, he didn’t. He told you what you did was wrong.”

  Lendreth was silent a moment. “Who told you that?” he said at last. “Was it Sister Seni?”

  “No. No one told me. I knew.”

  “Then tell me what we are to do, Child,” said Lendreth, with bitterness. “Seven years I have waited for your great counsel. Let me receive it now.”

  She got to her feet and looked into his eyes. He blinked and drew back a little, and at last dropped his gaze. “We will leave people alone,” she said. “They will be happy and free in the woods. If people want to learn the Songs, they can come to me and I’ll teach them.”

  “But I haven’t taught you the Songs yet.”

  “I know them.” To prove it, she sang the Song for Easing Pain.

  He listened and wept, for she sang it perfectly, and when she stopped, he raised his hands and praised her. “Now there is nothing left for me to do.”

  “Yes, there is,” she said. “We should plant a garden on this island, instead of putting houses all over it. We can grow medicine plants in the garden. That way if people get sick, they can come here and get anything they need.”

  “You are most wise,” said Lendreth, bowing his head. “It shall be done.”

  But, looking at him and seeing into his mind, she saw how unhappy he was. “What do you want to do most, Lendreth?”

  “To go from here. To be alone awhile.”

  “Then you should take your stick and go exploring. Look for medicine plants to bring back. Visit my people who went to live other places. See if they need anything. Come back and tell me how they are.”

  “I will do your will.” Taking his staff, he bowed and left her.

  The first thing she did, when he had gone, was ask the Mowers to pull up all the sharp stakes they had put around the island. The empty houses were dismantled and neatly stacked. She had the Mowers use their tools as tools again, digging up the ground to make planting beds, though some of them grumbled at that a little, being proud of the sharp edges they had put on their spades and mattocks.

  She called all the other disciples to her, then, and set them to making the garden she wanted. It pleased her to be spoken to instead of over, and to have adults listen to her without smiling and winking at one another. People from the forest on the shore came willingly to help, when they saw they weren’t going to be forced to stay there. They brought young fruit trees and planted them on the island.

  One little house was saved out for her, and there she kept the pearls and the toys people brought her. By night she slept on the island, with the disciples.

  The years passed happily then.

  One by one the other trevanion came to her, those disciples who grew restless and wanted to be out in the world, accomplishing things, gathering knowledge. They asked for permission to roam like Lendreth, and she sent them off gladly.

  The Mowers came to her too and humbly asked whether they might be her special guards. As gently as she could, she explained that she didn’t need guards, though she was always grateful for their labor in the gardens.

  The Mowers withdrew, a little sullen, and she saw that they thought themselves unappreciated, because they had greatly enjoyed marching along the perimeter of the island watching out for dangers. They had liked being called heroes. It let them forget the truth of what had happened that day in the wheat field, when they had given way to rage and clubbed dying men and animals to bloody pulp.

  Some of them went away into the woods and formed a guard anyway and patrolled the forests on their own. She knew that anyone who sought for trouble must, sooner or later, find it, and she sent them word to that effect; they returned word that they were not afraid to face danger for the sake of their people.

  But the sun streamed down by day, and stars lit the night. Her people lived in peace, as they had lived in the old times. Children were born. Dances were held in the open meadows, under the moon, and then more children were born.

  She grew older. Suddenly men who had used to speak readily and pleasantly to her stammered when answering any question she put to them. No man could meet her eyes, now. Those men among her disciples found reason to go on journeys, like the wandering trevanion. She was bewildered and a little hurt, until she looked into their minds.

  “If they want to lie down with me, why are they so unhappy about it?” she asked Seni.

  Seni made a face. “Because they’re ashamed. This started with Lendreth and his disciples, and I always said it was a bad idea. Coupling’s wrong, they said; too much distraction for a disciple, they said. Pleasure’s a trap, they said, and lust betrays you into loving one person when you ought to love them all, but chastely.”

  “But how can coupling be wrong? There wouldn’t be any more children if everyone stopped. And people always look so happy together.”

  “And so they are,” said Seni. “Look at the world, Child. The stag and the doe find each other, the little birds make their nests together. The butterflies join in midair. It’s the comfort and glory of the world, and all life comes from it. When the Beloved was with us, oh, he was all our delight! Many’s the time I lay in his arms.” Tears began to well in Seni’s eyes, as always happened when she spoke of the Beloved.

  “Should I take lovers?”

  The question stopped Seni’s descent into weepy memory. “You? Well—perhaps you’re a little young yet. And it’s not a question of should, Child. It isn’t a duty. You find some pretty boy and … it’s a good idea to go to the dances, you know, because the boys gather there waiting for the girls, and you find someone nice and you talk a little and, er, perhaps you dance together and then you … just … go off into the bowers with him. And drink of the cup of delight.”

  “I think I’d like that,” said the Saint.

  Seni laughed a little uneasily. “I’m sure you would, Child. I would only hope the boys wouldn’t fight each other for you.”

  “Why should they fight?”

  “Dearest Child, haven’t you seen your reflection in the water? You’re the most beautiful girl in the world.”

  She waited half a year, and then one night she went across the lake, with Seni and Kdwyr, to the people who lived in the forest there. The drumming had already begun when she arrived, the little white flowers perfumed the night air. The stars were like the flowers across the sky.

  The drumming stopped at once when she came to the dancing green, and after a frozen moment all the people rushed to her with glad cries and welcomed her, and found a seat of honor for her. They brought her gifts of pearls and spilled them into her lap. It seemed like a good omen.

  The trevani who lived among them came and bowed to her, sat beside her, and spoke long and sonorously to her about how little fever there had been that year, how well the community was doing, and how well he had heard all the other communities were doing.

  Eventually she was able to intimate that she would like to dance. It took her three iterations before she was able to make herself understood to the trevani, after which he stammered and coughed and finally announced to the world that the Blessed Saint would dance. Instantly, a throng of boys was before her, every one of them eager to lead her out on the green.

  But none led her aside to the bowers afterward. She looked into their minds, each one, as she danced with them and saw their simple and straightforward lust wilting, unable to stand under the weight of awe. Not one of them dared so much as kiss her.

  “It’s all that trevani’s fault,” said Seni angrily, as Kdwyr rowed them back across the lake. “He’s made them think it’s shameful. As though there were anything wrong with a little tumble in the flowers! But you should have seen the way his sort used to look at Meli and me, when we’d been with the Star. Lendreth took me aside once, asked w
hether I didn’t think I was distracting our Beloved from his holy work. Do you know what I said to him?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said the Saint, gazing over the side of the coracle and watching the stars slip by on the black water. She felt a numbness around her heart and wondered if she’d cry later, when she was alone.

  “You are their daughter,” said Kdwyr, as he worked the oars. Both women lifted their heads, for he seldom spoke. “Or you are their mother. No man lies down with his mother or his child.”

  “Hm.” Seni looked down, pursed her lips, and was silent a long moment. Finally she muttered that the right boy would soon come along, then said nothing more the rest of the evening.

  The Saint felt ashamed of her self-pity, angry at herself, and scoured it away with work. Seeing how widely the communities of her people were scattered, it seemed good to her that she should establish another garden of medicinal herbs.

  The preparations took most of a year, cutting slips for transplant, collecting roots and rhizomes and seed. She gathered her disciples together and set out through the forest, traveling far.

  Little communities were everywhere now, and she enjoyed visiting them as she traveled, hearing news, seeing the ways in which they had begun to grow. In one place, they had learned to build airy platforms in the branches of trees and lived in them; in another, they wove walls of rushes and lived under trees; and in another place they lived in caves along the bank of a river.

  Now and again the Saint and her disciples encountered demons stumbling along on the forest trails, some of them violent and mad from chewing a certain root, laughing wildly to themselves. She would signal her followers, and all together they would step off the trail. They sang the Song of Concealment and the demon passing noticed only a grove of slender trees to one side, if he noticed anything at all. When he was well past, the Saint would dispel the illusion and they would journey on.

  Far to the west she found a green sheltered valley with a spring, and planned her garden here. One great tree stood in a wide meadow. Working with her disciples—and many new ones had come to her, as she traveled—she made rooms under the tree’s low branches, the walls woven of willow, to be a place for the care of the sick. They made a garden in the meadow all around, neat beds of herbs and woven frames for vines.

  It was a place of exquisite peace.

  The Saint was sitting at the loom under the tree, weaving cloth, when she heard the cries of alarm. She rose and through the lattice saw a blur of scarlet, racing down the hill and through the garden, across the carefully tended beds. Something was running, seeming not to see the fences broken through or trampled as it came on, until at last it crashed into a stand of palings and toppled.

  Even then it arms and legs thrashed, in a curious automatic way, for its body thought it was still running. Its stare was blank and set.

  The disciples gathered around it, fearful, mattocks raised. The Saint pushed her way forward. “What is it?”

  “Is it a demon?”

  “It’s a girl!” She knelt beside the body, looking on horrified as the flailing limbs grew still. Only a girl, younger perhaps than she was herself, but belonging to no people she had ever seen; for the girl’s skin and hair were both the color of the setting sun, and her open eyes were like black stones. She wore a scarlet tunic. Clutched in one hand was a flared thing of some golden metal, like a curved tube ending in a bell shape. The arrow in her back was golden too, with scarlet fletching.

  “Is it dead?”

  “No,” said the Saint, seeing that the runner now closed her eyes and lay trembling. “Together with me, lift her! Let’s bring her into the house. Bring water. Bring bandages and salves. We’ll save her.”

  They had to cut the red tunic, for it was glued to the girl with dried blood. She was emaciated, the edges of the wound were torn and bloodless, she had run a long while and a long way with the arrow in her back. Little blood welled up when the Saint drew the barbed head of the arrow forth, singing the Song to Ease Pain.

  “Why would someone shoot a girl? Have the Riders come back?”

  “Is she one of the Riders?”

  “No!” said Seni. “They were nothing like this.”

  “The Riders have not come back,” said the Saint firmly. “I would know. When she’s well, she’ll tell us herself what she is.”

  “There’s a man among my people who might know,” said Lut, who was one of the new disciples. “Uncle Gharon. He knows about things like this.”

  Washed and bandaged, the runner was put to bed. They eased her head down on the pillow. She sighed, opened her eyes and perhaps saw the Saint, there beside her. A pleading look came into her eyes, the first human expression she had shown; then she died, without ever having said a word.

  The Saint reached out and caught the slack hand, as if she could pull the girl back from the shadow. “No!”

  “Aht, aht.” Seni shook her head. “I thought we might lose her. Poor thing, she’d bled out too much.”

  “But we’d saved her.” The Saint burst into tears.

  “Sometimes they still die, Child.” Seni put an arm around her.

  “But I never—this never happened before!”

  “It won’t happen to your people. This was someone else’s child.”

  The Saint sat alone by the body a long while, miserable with guilt, examining the things they had found with the girl. A small, flat wooden case contained a written message of some kind; it was in no language the Saint had ever seen, nor could she guess at its meaning. The curved thing of golden metal was beautifully made, its function a mystery until one of the disciples put his lips to what seemed to be a mouthpiece. He blew, and a high hard bright note sounded.

  The arrow that had killed the girl was beautifully made too, no chipped stone head but golden stuff cruelly sharp, and so were the matched and curved blades she had worn strapped to her forearms. Yet there was nothing to tell whose daughter she had been, who might mourn her, or why she had run so far before her fall.

  They buried the girl in the garden, keeping back her possessions to give to any who might come searching for her. The Saint summoned to her Lut, the young disciple who had been born in that country, and he went to the place his people lived and brought back Uncle Gharon.

  Uncle Gharon came slowly, for he walked on one leg and one wooden stick fitted to the stump where his other leg had been, and this was not the greatest surprise: he was a demon, with skin like greened copper and eyes like rubies. He was able to meet the Saint’s gaze for a moment before wincing and looking away. He bowed his head in greeting politely enough.

  “So you’re the Holy Child,” he said, in a voice like river gravel crunching. “Grown-up now, though, aren’t you? My wife always speaks of you as a baby.”

  “You married one of my people?”

  “I did, Lady. A pretty thing, and she keeps a pear orchard. I get all the pears I can eat.” His eyes blazed crimson with the intensity of his emotion. “Big buttery yellow ones, and the red ones that taste like smoke, and the sweet green ones, and the late ones you have to pick out of the red leaves in autumn, brown and soft but, oh, what nectar!”

  What a strange lust, thought the Saint, but she merely bowed her head and said, “I am glad you live in peace among us. And you may tell my people I am sixteen now.”

  “I will, Lady. I’m two thousand, myself. Well, and you wanted to see me about a dead girl? Wasn’t me killed her, though it might have been one of the young ones. They’re all fools, the young demons.”

  “No; she died here.” The Saint beckoned, and Seni brought the runner’s effects, with the arrow that had killed her. She set them before Uncle Gharon, opening out the cloth in which they had been kept. He looked down at them and grimaced.

  “Ah. No, not my people at all.” He picked up the arrow and turned it in his hand. “She was Fireborn. Her own people killed her.”

  “Why would they do such a thing?”

  Uncle Gharon shrugged. He pointed westw
ard with the arrow. “A day’s journey that way, Lady, you’ll find a strip of red stone, running in either direction to the horizon, wide enough for five men to walk abreast. Sit and watch it long enough and you’ll see boxes come down that track, propelled on round feet, and in the boxes sit red men working a kind of land oar that makes the boxes go, and other red folk riding along in the boxes, with all their goods and gear.

  “Before them you’ll see a red girl running, and every now and then she’ll blow on one of these.” He tapped the golden horn. “And, now and again, you’ll see just a girl, running alone. But, Lady, take my word for it, and don’t go look yourself, nor send your people. You don’t want a flight of these nasties coming your way.” He set the arrow down. “Nor their axes, nor their spears, nor their fire-flowers neither.”

  “But why would they hurt us?”

  “Ah, I’m not saying they’d hurt you, not on purpose. But they war amongst themselves. They live out on the plains in hives of stone, and the different hives quarrel, and the red folk die in tens and hundreds in their wars. They’re all mad as stoats.” He pointed to his temple with one finger. “Sometimes you can go down to the red road with boxes of fruit and they’ll stop and trade things for it, axes and beads and whatnot, nice and friendly as you please. Isn’t that right, Lut?”

  “It’s true, Mother,” Lut said to her, a little sheepishly.

  “Other times they’ll scream at you and shoot. I’ve dodged a few of their arrows in my day, by the Blue Pit. You just never know, with them.”

  She came back sadly to the island garden. Her people were well and happy. The sun still shone, the gentle rains fell. But when she lay down at night and closed her eyes, she saw the dying girl.

  In the next spring, Lendreth returned. He was lean with his travels, the sun had darkened his skin, but his face shone with eagerness as he strode along, swinging his staff. He bore on his back a heavy bag, stuffed full and bound shut.