by Gayle Greeno
“Of course,” she waved a welcome, slid along the bench to make room. Once Francie’s cane wedged under a root, and Doyce controlled herself to not jump up, offer uninvited help. Francie had her pride and with good reason—she could function. But every time she focused on the withered hand and arm, the leg painfully stretched in its brace, it magnified her own remorse, her guilt.
“Guilt? We’ve been over that before,” Khar reminded her.
“I know, I know. I know rationally. But you can’t be sure, because it happened before your time. All you can see is what I’ve internalized. ” What she could do was unburden Francie, take the sewing box so her sister could maneuver onto the bench without the box bumping.
With a grimace of thanks, Francie possessively drew the worn wicker box to her as if its familiarity comforted, her identity concealed within it. Doyce craned to look inside as Francie opened it, hoping for a clue as to what her sister had become, beyond the label of “crippled.” Everything so neatly organized, confident in its place, except for those few errant strands—Francie trying to escape the confines of her life? Francie had garnered local fame for embroidering intricately decorated trims and braids to be sewn on cuffs and collars, hems and waistlines. How she could bear the repetitious, meticulous details, the flying needle endlessly reworking itself in practically the same spot gave Doyce a panicky feeling of constraint. But that skill was Francie’s contribution to the family’s coffers, weaving trim on a small lap loom and then enhancing it with needlework. Having trained herself long ago to work left-handed, Francie began to ply her needle. It seemed it took forever to finish even a few centimeters of banding, color worked over color, finicking delicate stitches, demanding patterns that scrolled on, never-ending.
“Argh!” Exasperated, Doyce drove her fingers through her hair, gave the trim a tug to attract Francie’s attention. “How do you find the patience? Over and over and over. Don’t you have nightmares you’ll never reach the end? Don’t you get bored?”
Francie selected another color, began the diagonal overcast stitching. “Oh, there are minor compensations, though sometimes I’m the only one who appreciates them. Take a close look at the edging on Miz Swain’s overvest sometime.”
“What do you mean?” Doyce tried to picture it in her mind, remembering the woman who had bought two ells of fine-weave wool from her mother yesterday.
“Here.” Francie smoothed a short length across Doyce’s knee. “Couldn’t resist a memento for myself.”
Doyce examined it, held it near and far, turning it, angling it this way and that. A scrolling pattern of birds and foliage. Turned it sideways, flexed it to catch the light and gasped in glee. Subtle, very subtle, almost undetectable unless you hunted for it, but visible nonetheless. Minutely worked in the spacing, apparently part of the pattern, she could discern the shadow script, “Fat sow, fat sow,” repeated over and over. “Does Mother know?”
Indignant, Francie snatched it back. “Of course not! And don’t you dare tell her or Mother.”
“But how can you enjoy it without sharing the joke with someone?”
“I just did, didn’t I?” The laugh lines evaporated from Francie’s face. “Doyce, there’s something else I should share with you. It’s been too long, and I’m not sure I fully realized when we were younger what it meant to you, did to you. Or to me—because accepting wasn’t easy, either. Time you knew the truth, stopped miring yourself in guilt and fears. But you refused to listen before, ran crying when Mam or Da tried to tell you.”
“Explain what?” She lobbed the words back like hostile missiles to defend herself against the opening skirmish, avoid confronting her sister or herself. “I don’t need anything explained, rationalized after all these years, Francie! I know what happened, I was there!” Hard, so hard, to carry the humiliation, the shame for all these years. Oh, she’d repented, but lacked a way to expiate it, offer a penance capable of making a difference, changing a thing. The child within her kicked, drummed tiny feet and fists against her, butted in time with her agitation. Discomfort, but not as severe as what she faced each time she saw Francie.
“I know how you became paralyzed, Francie, it was all my fault! If I hadn’t pushed you ...” she covered her face with her hands. “Don’t make me relive it again!”
But Francie continued to stitch, implacable, without removing her eyes from Doyce’s face. “So tell me what happened,” she challenged. “I want to know every detail you remember. Don’t make up anything, don’t gloss over anything. Relive it, if you dare,” she taunted, “and I’m sure Khar will tell you if you stray from the truth. Am I right?”
Doyce rose, seething with resentment, almost downright hatred, at herself, at Francie, for making her confront this. Couldn’t the past stay the past, couldn’t any of this be left alone, not prodded and picked to death? She grasped the arbor lattice with strained fingers, staring through it, beyond it. Finally leaned her forehead against it so that the lattice served as a kind of spectacles, framing and focusing her thoughts.
“Or blinkering your vision.”
“End of winter,” she began, coughed out the words. The pond lay on the other side of the knoll behind the house, and they’d spent much of the winter days outside, sliding on the sled their father had made them. Francie, the elder at seven, always steered, while Doyce, almost five, rode behind, arms locked around her sister’s waist. Sometimes Francie stretched full-length on her stomach, knees bent, feet waving in the air, while Doyce piled on top, their faces rosy-cheeked with cold, chapped and wind-burned, hair sticking out from under their knit caps. Sailing, zooming down the hill, across the frozen, wind-swept pond, crashing into drifts, rolling in the snow. Shrieks of laughter, sharp and ice-bright in the air.
But that day had been different, the past few nights unseasonably warm, snow melting, pond ice rotting, refreezing each night to display a deceptive solid surface. Oh, they’d been warned not to venture on the pond, that it wasn’t safe even for their minimal weight, and Francie had conscientiously steered the sled to one side or another as they glided downhill, ever-obedient, the responsible elder.
The last trip down something had happened; Doyce clenched her eyes shut, strove to see it, feel it. The sled slewing, the stoppage of motion—what? a runner worn through the snow down to the grass?—the abrupt halt, the sensation of flying, screaming with delight. And Doyce had landed on the icy pond, the cattail outcropping near shore, her sudden weight forcing little water geysers to spout around each stem where the ice had melted away.
Francie, still on land, rolled over and righted herself, shoving up her red knit cap where it had sunk over her eyes. “Doyce, get off there. Now!” she yelled from the bank, mittened hands sinking into the rotted, raddled snow as she struggled to her feet. The disapproving tone made Doyce laugh, giggle more wildly from where she lay on her back, dizzy with watching the clouds swirl above her, waving her arms in arcs, sweeping her legs back and forth, regaining her breath after the breathless landing. Even the ice laughed with her, little creaking, wheezing sounds, bubbling burps. “Doyce, you’re going to break through!”
Francie’s hand on her ankle, tugging her toward shore, and she fought and kicked, not ready to leave, digging mittened hands into any cracks and protrusions in the ice she could find, faintly surprised when one mitten came back sodden, soaked with water. Surprise gave way to dawning recognition as a gush of water flowed up her back, her fanny sinking as the ice beneath gave way. “Francie!” she’d screamed. “Getting all wet!” Scared now, and cold, her coat growing heavier and heavier.
But Francie continued pulling, Doyce helping now, not fighting it, until at last Doyce lay safe on the bank. Rolling onto her stomach, she saw her knit cap, a bright sunny yellow, forlorn on the ice. “Mama’s going to be mad!” she’d wailed, remembering all too well the fierce scolding three days earlier when she’d mislaid the hat, thought it lost. Panicky, heedless of anything except her goal, Doyce began to worm her way back across the ice.
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br /> Weight pinned, froze her in place as Francie lay atop her, halting her, then dragged her back by one wrist, mitten and coatsleeve parting company to expose the skinny extremity. Francie swung with all her strength, let go and sent Doyce stumbling toward the shore. Regaining her feet, angry beyond measure, she charged Francie, wool-covered fists pounding and thudding, pushing. “That hurt, Francie! It hurt!” Tears streaked her face, warmth burning against chilled flesh.
Releasing the arbor, Doyce turned to face her sister, tears streaming down her face. “I pushed you again, and you fell backward, the ice gave. Slabs of it rising on either side of you, the water splashing up, the slabs settling back down. I pushed you in and then ... you took fever from that, a burning fever that even the eumedico couldn’t bring down before it’d done its damage. If I hadn’t pushed you, you wouldn’t have fallen through, taken sick, wouldn’t be paralyzed.” Arms embracing her stomach, she moaned, swaying, hiccuping with the strain.
“Think about it,” Khar advised, “concentrate harder on those last few images. You jumped to the end, left something out.” While Francie said, “Nonsense, almost right, but not quite. What you wanted to do and what you did are two different things.”
Head slumped, she tried to picture it, reenvision what had happened in those frenzied final moments. Why could she see Matty’s and Kharm’s lives so clearly but not this? “Emotional involvement’s not the same,” Khar offered.
Emotional? A child’s rage and fear bringing her to a white-hot boil, the world narrowed by her fury—at Francie for tossing her like that, hurting her, bossing her around, worry over the discarded hat, although that stood a distant second now. Lips peeled from pearly baby teeth, grimacing as she lunged at Francie, fists flailing, and ... fell flat on her face, screaming with resentment, wailing for her cap. Francie had cautiously turned, judging the hat’s position on the ice, debating whether she could reach it when her foot slipped and she crashed down, an incongruous look of surprise on her face as the ice split beneath her. The yellow knit cap sailed skyward, descended, and drifted like a flower petal on the now open water.
“I ... didn’t push you?” she appealed. “You were going after the cap even though ... you knew better?”
“Oh, you wanted to shove me, right enough. Figured I’d redeem myself by rescuing the hat. Redeem myself with you—and with Mam if you tattled that I’d hurt you. Always had to be the good sister, the responsible one, keeping you out of trouble.”
“In other words ...” Doyce couldn’t bring herself to say more, her sense of relief alien and unsettling.
“It was an accident. If you hadn’t run back to the house to fetch Mam and Da, I would have drowned. You’re not responsible, not for me falling in, not for me coming down with a brain fever, nothing.” Francie jammed the needle through the unembroidered fabric, rolled the band around her useless hand, overlapping it to make it neat. “Easier to store this way.”
And for the life of her Doyce didn’t know what to do, how to react to this revised knowledge. Letting go of guilt and pain, remorse and sorrow, wasn’t easy. What to replace them with? The potential of a new beginning for her and Francie, unclouded by the past, an adult relationship to be forged if she were brave enough. “I don’t suppose I could order some special embroided trim from you? Something with stylized ghatti on it?” She picked over the next words in her mind, discarding some, unsure which to choose. “And possibly something worked into it—a secret message, a secret reminder? What do you think—dunderhead, numbskull? Dumb cluck?”
“Dumb cluck is appealing, but that requires a chicken motif, not ghatti.”
Although sorely tempted to toss a suitable rejoinder their way, Khar discovered a more pressing problem staring her in the face—through the lattice, to be precise—and Khar slipped around to confront it. F’een, with his odd, diamond-patched stripes, stood his ground, tail flicking, olivine eyes stubbornly determined. Khar conquered an overwhelming urge to administer a chastening swat for such bald-faced temerity. Instead, she sank her claws into the grass and set herself firmly so he couldn’t brush past.
“But we’ve just had word! She must be told immediately!” he protested. “You can’t hide the truth from her—Jenret’s been taken hostage!”
“I can and I will, if I think it necessary.” How she disliked youth sometimes, so full of the importance of their new role as Seeker Bonds, brimming with innocent self-confidence after studying so hard, absorbing so much, certain everything ran exactly by the rules. Well, there were rules and there were rules.
“If you don’t tell her, I will, or I’ll insist Cady do it. It’s her right to know.” The ghatt made ready to lunge by her. He might be younger, faster, but he wouldn’t make it, not if she had to rip off half his ear, spit it in his face.
She exposed her fangs, snarled under her breath. “And I heard the message as well. Koom on Mem’now’s mindnet. Mind you, they’ve delayed in informing us, and the Seeker General didn’t specifically say to inform Doyce. Koom simply said we should be aware of the situation. Tell her about Eadwin’s royal progress if you’re bound and determined to tell Doyce something, even though she’s not your Bond.”
The ghatt persisted. “But why not tell her? How dare you keep secrets from her?” He almost wailed his dismay, skinny tail lashing. “I couldn’t hide something so momentous from Cady! She trusts me!”
The question was whether to lay down an edict—which she wouldn’t hesitate to do, given her seniority, her height on the Spirals—or whether to explain her predicament, one that all knowledgeable ghatti would have deduced. Did he have enough sensitivity to understand, even lacking the experience? What did he—or Cady, for that matter—truly know of Doyce or herself? Oh, the tales, of course, the swashbuckling stories of heroism, their ability to conquer all foes. And of course F’een would blithely assume she and Doyce would dash to Jenret’s rescue. That’s what courageous champions did, after all.
“One little thing,” she grated, and flicked her whiskers in Doyce’s direction. “One little thing you haven’t taken into account, have you? Think, simpleton! Try to see!”
Itchy with impatience, the poor ghatt stared at Doyce sheltered by the arbor, wondering what he was supposed to see. “Well, uh ... she’s increasingly great with ... child,” he finally mumbled.
“Child?” An ominous inflection convinced him he’d inadvertently slighted the truth, had better think harder.
The ghatt concentrated. “Two? Doesn’t happen often for them, does it? That’s why she’s so big.”
“Pregnant women are not identical to pregnant ghattas.” She let that sink in. “Those babies want to come early, and you’ll increase the risk by telling her Jenret’s been captured. She won’t sit still for that, and I won’t have her galloping around the countryside on Lokka without regard for the babies. I’ve never seen a human ghatten born, and I don’t intend to see it alone in the midst of the forest with hostile Resonants or Reapers leaping out of the bushes. She’ll have it properly—the way humans do!”
“Oh.” The ghatt’s head bowed, and he licked a flank, glared his fractious tail into submission. Another, more perceptive, “Oh!” as enlightenment dawned. “Truly—they don’t just drop them?” and shook himself in embarrassment. “Of course, truly. I apologize.”
“Jenret can take care of himself for the time being. He and Rawn would insist if they thought Doyce would attempt anything foolish, imperil herself or the babies.” She thought it was beginning to sink in, wash over the ghatt that experience counted far more than abstract learning.
“Cady and I could go instead, in your place.” A certain hopefulness seized him, perked his ears.
“And your place is here, that’s why you were sent—to protect Doyce and Davvy. After all, you and Cady scored first in self-defense, despite your size.” She let the compliment meld with the comment about his slight build to take him down a peg, remind him of his duty and Cady’s. “Now, can you convince Cady not to say anything?”
“I think ... yes.” He paused. “We still have much to learn, don’t we?”
There were moments when Khar’pern found herself desperately tired of teaching.
The old man held a steady, ground-devouring pace, not too fast but sure-footed. He laughed softly, these wooded, rolling hills as intimately known as the wrinkles on his face, old, familiar friends, a mapping of sorrows and joy. Same with the woods. Not much he didn’t know about the southeast wedge of Canderis. Man-and boy he’d hunted, fished and trapped this land when he wasn’t on the road with Esmerelda, his donkey, drawing the cart with his knife-sharpening gear.
He’d shoved the cart into a hayrick at the edge of a deserted field, unharnessed Esmerelda, and slapped her butt to send her off safe. The sense of being followed had lain heavy on him for several days, eyes spying out of nowhere, rustlings where there should have been none. Nobody’d be out to hurt Uncle Billy, now, would they? Uncle Billy, as familiar a fixture as ever could be, traveling with Esmerelda, never staying overlong at any one place, but sharing gossip, listening, as he spun the circular whetstone into motion, hands steady setting steel to stone. Sparks flying, the grinding sound that set some people’s teeth on edge but music to his ears, wrists cocked to hone just the merest edge, sharpen without wearing away too much. Yes, Uncle Billy’s blades stayed sharp, and he stayed sharp and safe by never out-wearing his welcome.
Well, be damned to them, that pack of teenage boys could follow all day and all night if they chose, and he’d lead them a merry chase. Exercise’d do them good, learn them a lesson. And that half-trained pack of hounds didn’t frighten him a whit. He’d made friends with just about every dog in each town, a wise precaution. If that didn’t suffice, he had his pepper packet handy but hated to use it. Wished he could fling it on the boys, he did, set them a-sneezing, coughing and choking, tripping over deadfalls as their eyes teared and watered. Dogs’d never been Uncle Billy’s enemies. No, nor people, either. ’Specially if you let them see what they wanted to see. Hide in plain sight, and that’s what he’d done ever since they’d massacred the Fifty, his cousin and brother amongst them. The Lady’d smiled on Uncle Billy, saved his foolish young hide that fateful day by giving him the green-apple quick-step, too busy scooting down the path that night to join them. No, acting standoffish, cowering, shrinking from normal, everyday contact made folk suspicious. But not of a fine, upstanding, outgoing citizen like Uncle Billy.