by Gayle Greeno
“Byrta and I used to get misplaced in a similar bustle when we were little, shunted to the side because we looked different, acted different. At least we had each other amongst
all the cousins and cattle,” Bard noted absently as a diaperless child burst from the house, a pigtailed girl in hot pursuit. “Hallo, Lindy.” The girl skidded to a halt, stood, one bare foot on top of the other, eyes large, the tip of a braid shielding her mouth.
Two quick back steps, one hesitant step forward, edging around him to see M‘wa on the pommel platform. “You be the twin, the brother. How is she, how’s my Byrta? Did her leg heal? How’s P’wa?” Blue eyes devoured him, ready to swallow his good news whole, as if its digestion would soothe a craving inside her hungry for word. A man stood at the barn door, arms folded across his chest, expression too distant to read. A taller shadow behind him, sun glinting off the prongs of a raised pitchfork, and Bard winced at the recollection.
M’wa had sprung down to rub against the girl’s shins, diverting her while Bard considered what to say, uneasy, hand crushed around the velvet bag in his pocket. “You’ll have to tell her sometime,” the ghatt commented, allowing small hands to caress his neck and head, his ears with the familiar earrings removed.
He knew it, had known it all along, but had always avoided this part in his mind, jumping directly to his gifting her with the velvet pouch containing Byrta’s and P‘wa’s earring sets, two gold hoops and gold balls. Had concentrated on Lindy’s gratitude, her thankfulness for his largesse. Bard the laconic, honoring his sister by honoring the child. When one of a Bond-pair died, the survivor’s earrings were removed—and hadn’t he and Byrta been more of a Bond-pair than he and M’wa, she and P’wa? Wordlessly, he thrust out the pouch, almost dropped it on M’wa’s black head with its white forehead star.
“Lindy,” came a shout from the barn, “you don’t be taking no presents from strangers,” and the man was walking fast, each stride a judgment condemning Bard, ready to scoop the child out of harm’s way.
The girl spun in a semicircle, both hands clutching the pouch, unsure of its contents but recklessly pleased with it, charmed by the deep blue velvet pouch itself. “But, Da,” she protested, “it’s not a stranger! It’s the other twin pair, the Seeker brother Bard and his ghatt M‘wa! How could ye not recognize’em? Like peas in a pod, she told me.”
He’d interposed himself between Bard and the girl, the shelter of the house behind them. “Why, so it is, Lindy, so it is.” His mouth relaxed marginally, but Bard was too intent on his own thoughts to pay much attention. “Why don’t ye thank’em for the gift and scoot back to the house? Yer mither’s wanting ya, I’m sure.”
“No, wait!” Bard swallowed, but the lump remained, lodged like rock-hard bread, able to go neither up nor down. He felt light-headed, sick, bereft, head empty of everything except M‘wa’s comfort, Byrta’s voice vanished, gone so long now. “She should ... she should ... know.” Down on one knee, both to see the child’s eyes and to steady himself, he clasped both hands over her own on the pouch, totally unaware of how exotic his honey skin and hair looked next to the homespun child. He gently loosened her grip, poured the pouch’s contents onto the palm of his hand. “Not gems, because you’re all your father’s gems and he’s no need of more, but a bit of jewelry. Byrta and P’wa wanted you to have them.”
The girl’s mouth opened slightly, not in mounting excitement, but rather with dawning apprehension, reading the unsaid words on his face. “W ... wanted me ... to have them?” But she pressed on, and Bard admired her resolve, though the next words dug a trench through his soul, “Why ... why couldn’t she give them to me herself? Is she ... ?” She shook her head once. “She’s ... dead, isn’t she? P’wa, too?”
No comfort in her speaking the dreaded words instead of articulating them himself. Indeed, coming from an outsider they hurt more than the private litany he’d devised, the constantly whispered reminder, “She’s dead, she’s dead she’s dead,” that echoed in the void her mindvoice once inhabited.
“Lindy! House! Now!” And strong hands propped him against the water trough, fanned him with a straw hat. “Simon, get the boys to scrub out the trough, damn geese’ve been swimming in it again.” The words prosaic, homey, wonderfully distracting, as was the screeching protest of the pump, the splash of water in an old tin mug.“Didn’t recognize you at first. Should have, but wanted to block that episode out of my mind, out of Lindy’s mind, more likely, if I could.”
“Out of Lindy’s mind,” Bard parroted, holding the mug like a sacramental chalice during Bethel services. Not that he and Byrta had often attended services, he thought irrelevantly, against his Sunderlies grandfather’s wishes, against the old religion. M’wa smashed his head under his hand and splashed the mug’s contents across his face. He gasped in shock.
“Deal with it, cope with it. I remember her with every heartbeat as well, so sleekly soft, my other half, my twinsib P’wa, gone. But we have each other, self to self, not enough perhaps, but it’s all we have.”
Blankly Bard thrust out the mug for more water, and the farmer obliged. It dawned on him that he didn’t know the farmer’s name, thought of him only as Lindy’s father. “I’m Bard Ambwasali. My Bondmate M’wa. There wasn’t much time for pleasantries when last we met.” He stuck out his hand, only to grasp the refilled mug.
“Might try drinking it this time. Marlin, Japeth Martin.” He toed the piglet aside as it struggled into Bard’s lap. “Warned her again and again not to make such a pet of it. Have to eat it, you know, sooner or later.” Bard shook his head in agreement. “So, what did she die of? Leg get infected before it could heal proper? ’Twas a bad break.” He shifted his concentration from the piglet, dying sooner or later, for food, not for love, and realized the man spoke about Byrta.
Pulling himself up the water trough, he dusted himself off, ran a hand through the close-cropped hair, tiny curls colored like maple syrup shavings, heritage of his mixed Sunderlies-Canderisian parentage, as was the honey-gold complexion, the smoke-haze eyes. Neither dark mahogany like their father, nor blonde and pale like their mother, he and Byrta had been unique: in their coloring, their twinness, their secret speech unchallenged by others. Upright now, less chance to pity a man who stood on his own feet. “No. No, the leg healed fine. She died in the wars up north this spring,” couldn’t bring himself to say more, to say she’d been beheaded, and hear again his inarticulate cry of grief as he’d caught the severed head, pressed his lips to her mouth. Nor speak of P’wa, head crushed and bloody, lifeless.
“Ah.” Marlin shuffled his feet. “Sorry. More lost there than most of us realized, had other things on our minds here with tall tales of Gleaners and what like. It explains, though, why Lindy’s dreams have been getting worse and worse.”
“Dreams? Worse?” Conversation seemed beyond him, the mere repetition of words the safest course.
“Aye. It’s been over a year now, nine octants, belike, since we sheltered Byrta in our barn waiting for you, waiting for the eumedicos. Late summer, almost autumn then, now it’s autumn, near winter. We can’t do a thing about those dreams, the wife and I, though we’ve tried. Wakes up screaming in the night, most every night, wakes up all the other childers as well.” He shrugged, a vaguely pleased gesture, “And we’ve a brood of those as well as all the animals you see here.”
“Find out more about the dreams. It might be important.”
“What does she dream about?” He didn’t want to know, didn’t want to share the knowledge. No more sharing.
“First she just replayed the attack in her mind, but come spring, things got worse. Didn’t surprise me when she swore she saw Byrta’s head in her dreams, blood streaming from it. Overactive imagination, begging your pardon.”
Bard stood rigid. “No, you didn’t tell him how she died, no way he could know, or Lindy.”
“I wish, wish we could get her away somewhere else, send her someplace different, mayhap a change of scene would tak
e her mind off it.” He sighed, apologetic. “Can’t exactly pull up stakes here, decide to farm elsewhere. Offered to send her to my sister’s, two towns over, but she wouldn’t have a thing to do with that, kept saying it was too close to the hospice there. None of us has got a full night’s sleep for so long now. Half the time I can’t fall asleep waiting for her to scream.” Picking at the straw hat’s brim, shredding it, he confessed, “Feel like I’ve failed. Fathers are supposed to be big and strong enough to chase away the night terrors.”
“We must help. She aided Byrta and P’wa without thought of her own life, now we have to help her.” The ghatt’s words stung his soul, shaming him. What could he do, how could he help, and why, why should he ever involve himself with another human being? “Didn’t Byrta say the girl had a knack for dealing with little ones, children? Used to dandling them, diapering them, and training them on the pot?”
“So?” he ’spoke back. “Since when do we know any children who need a nursemaid only half-again as high as they are?”
“Well, isn’t Doyce going to need additional help, an extra set of legs to run errands, do simple tasks, watch over the infant at odd moments?”
“But you can’t just snatch a child, haul her to Gaernett, and put her in the house with Doyce! I don’t know anything about Japeth Marlin and his family, and he knows naught of me. I could be stealing his child for all he knows!” But Bard had a strange feeling a decision had been reached, whether he and Marlin knew it or not. What set his mind shying was that earrings were part of the traditional bride-price, as if he’d purchased the child, buying her just as his grandfather had bought his three wives before their trek from the Sunderlies to Canderis with their precious cattle. Just as he’d sent back jewelry, gold, and cattle to buy Sunderlies wives for his other sons, Bard’s uncles. Only the twins’ father had fought tradition, earned his bride with love. “You can’t buy a human being. ”
“You’re not buying her. You’re buying time to let her heal and a new environment in which to do it. She’s not property, but she will be your responsibility until she comes of age, decides what she wants to do with her life.”
Diffidently, Bard looked at Marlin. “Would you consider loaning one of your gems to me, sir? A new setting for it, perhaps, and a chance for her to earn her keep, send a bit back here?”
Maroon felt bedroom slippers whispering secrets to the carpet, the Monitor belted his robe more snugly, shuffled over to poke at the fire he’d just coaxed to life. And didn’t he know what would coax it to life even better—some of those damned letters over there in the tray for starters! Paperwork, paperwork, more bloody correspondence to read, digest, answer. Why had he bothered to drag it all into Marie’s little sitting room instead of just girding his loins and taking his place behind the desk in his office? Ruddy light reflected against the blue and white tiles framing the fireplace, and he scuffed to the window, lifted the white cotton curtains with their eyelet lace edgings that Marie kept so scrupulously starched, even with servants here to help her. Even missed the ironing, if she were to be believed. A gradual lightening, as if the sun might consent to rise. At least some things were still constant in life, he decided as he puffed on the glass, watched his breath mist. Overcast again today and that suited his mood.
The real reason he’d sought refuge in the sitting room rather than ensconcing himself in his office was because it still felt so empty with just him there, working through the dawning until it was time for official business to begin. “Oh, Aelbert, I miss you,” he whispered to his ghost reflection in the windowpanes. And N’oor, too, the poor little ghatta who had loved too well, though not too wisely. Gone now, gone forever, and had he ever truly known either of them? Obviously not. Aelbert, so efficient and so self-effacing, a Seeker whose special uniform marked him as part of the Monitor’s staff. Why did you have to yearn for what couldn’t be yours, strive for it in a way that could only harm you?
However justified Aelbert’s dreams, they’d been unrealistically grandiose—a rankling desire for full acknowledgment as a scion of Marchmontian royalty, a place amongst them. And capable of working with Prince Maurice’s perversions to succeed. This, this hadn’t been the young man he’d cherished, depended upon, and he, he’d had no idea what seethed in Aelbert’s brain. But then, why should he? He’d treated Aelbert as useful, necessary, indispensable, but hadn’t viewed him as a human being fraught with his own longings and needs, hadn’t treated him like the surrogate son he’d longed to be. If he had, would it have stemmed Aelbert’s other desires? He’d failed again ... by omission. But, by the Blessed Lady Above, what was he supposed to be—miracle worker, mind reader?
In the adjacent bedroom Marie sighed dreamily, the bed creaking as she shifted, resettled. Listening to make sure she’d fallen back asleep, he touched a spill to the fire and lit the oil lamp. Spreading the papers on Marie’s sewing table, he surveyed them with mounting disgust. Reports from this, reports from that, summary papers from each High Conciliator recounting what had transpired in his or her province each octant. And the letters—from Canderisian citizens urgent to make their voices heard, their views count. Concerned citizens fearful of Resonants, airing their grievances, their woes; and a few from Resonants as well, attesting to their fears, their desire to have their voices heard and counted. Many of those were anonymous, and with good reason, he knew, but a few showed defiant, scrawling signatures as if they’d emblazon their names across the sky and be damned. “This is who I am,” they seemed to cry, “like it or not.”
He worked as rapidly as he could and still remain thorough, gave each piece its due, though many were due a great deal less effort and interest than they believed. Scribbling notes in the margins, at the bottom for his secretary to decipher and send responses. Both justified and unjustified complaints needed soothing; many could be turned over to the Seekers Veritas to determine the truth of the matter. Still, it was one thing to rationally know you were wrong, misguided, and another to actually believe it in your heart and soul. Fears festered, perceived injustices rankled. The sky outside turned lighter, though not especially bright and he could hear the servants beginning their kitchen fires, brewing cha. How he needed it, that first steaming cup when he’d slip back in bed beside Marie to sip it, feign a sleepy wakening that wouldn’t fool his wife, though she’d conspire with him to pretend she did. Of such indulgences, of such shared little lies is life made.
Damn all, how’d this letter land in that folder? Should have remembered it had arrived. He’d known Faertom had made a hurried trip back to Gaernett with this, Darl had told him so. Should have been on top of the pile, who’d shifted it? Probably himself in the shuffling of papers. Scratching his scalp vigorously with his pencil, he pursed his lips as he read:
Dear Monitor:
I’ve spoken with such Resonants as I could find and who were willing to reveal themselves to me. Precious few, I might add, but luckily I stumbled on Faeralleyn Thomas’s family. I’ve begged them to give us time, two octs—though 16 days is hardly sufficient—to demonstrate our sincerity in including Resonants as an integral part of our society. Without such reassurances, I fear they may either emigrate to Marchmont, which may not be prepared for such an influx, or remain sequestered in the forests, letting justified anxieties fester into anger and very possibly rebellion.
They will no longer be content as lesser citizens of the shadows, grateful for the bitter dregs a shadow existence offers them, but want to quench their thirst for equality. The stakes are high: we need them and their abilities, although not everyone realizes how much they have to offer. I hesitate to speak out of turn, but it’s clear to me that they have much to share with the eumedicos. You may not be aware, though all Seekers are aware, that eumedicos no longer possess their vaunted mindtrance skills, the inner “sight” that plumbs mind and body to seek out ailments. It’s possible certain Resonants can assist in training our eumedicos to regain that skill, perhaps become superior eumedicos themselves. Please spea
k with my aunt, Mahafny Annendahl, about this, for she, at least, is likely to be pragmatic about the situation and not dissemble about the lack.
The Monitor was amused by Jenret’s assumptions. “Give me some credit, Wycherley, I wasn’t born yesterday.” He liked and respected most eumedicos he knew, Mahafny most of all. In fact he’d worship at her feet if she could devise a way to accurately identify Resonants. Interesting to think Resonants might know something about mindtrances, only the gullible believed in such eumedico hocus. Not that he’d ever take Mahafny to task for her eumedico rituals. If it worked for most of the populace, who was he to gainsay the practice? Mahafny’d often said half the healing comes from the mind itself. But Jenret’s point was well-taken. He went back to the letter.
Finally, we must have an edict, a proclamation, some sort of law unequivocally stating that Resonants are equal. This may seem overdone, unnecessary, because we know all citizens are equal. We need more than mere lip service to what we know as truth. Further, that any discrimination will not be tolerated and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of our laws. Perhaps we need new laws granting special protections to this group, spelling out the rights and responsibilities of all citizens so that no one group usurps the rights of another—Normal over Resonant, or Resonant over Normal.
Your speedy response will be greatly appreciated as time passes more quickly than we realize.
I remain, faithfully yours,
Jenret Wycherley
Seeker Veritas/Resonant
And is there a mountain or two you’d like me to move while I’m at it, Wycherley? A raging torrent to swim? Postpone, ameliorate, that was the best he could do. He couldn’t even whip the High Conciliators into a cohesive group. So delay, dance and delay, and preserve the status quo. Don’t make it worse, but don’t make it better. The Monitor scrubbed at his stubble. Well, let’s see, I could make sure the applicable sections of the laws are printed and distributed, along with emendations that explain in crystal clear, indisputable language that the laws offer equal protection to Resonants.