The Orphan's Tales

by Catherynne M. Valente

  I went to find the thread of our mother’s tale and tuck it back into the stitching. Thus, I found a Quest after all. Perhaps it runs in the blood. I chased the tale into the high mountains tipped with snow like wise men’s beards, and down to the sea, laid before me smooth as a dress. The world is wider than anyone guesses. It took years, and along the way, I had something like the education my great-grandmother might have given me. I learned the ways of the grass-and-leaves witch; I learned how to make love potions and cold cures and gout-softeners for those who could pay me, and to look up at the sky to tell a young girl whether her husband would have light or dark hair, and to deliver her baby when the time was right for it, and to bury her when the time was right for that. Silver came again to my temples, a silver like feathers. I did not mind the time, or the distance. That is what an education means.

  Finally I went where I ought to have gone to begin with, to a burnt-out ring of trees and old huts half reclaimed by the golden grasses, where a wildcat hide was still hanging on a branch, and goose feathers blew like ashes through the paths that led from hut to hut. How many times the flock must have come to this place to mourn themselves! The blackened dome-frames smelled of horse tallow and scorched wood. The sun was bright and hard as I walked through the ruins, the old red sash of Leucrotta skin flapping against my hips. The place was not even big enough for anyone to plunder, and I wept for my mother for the thousandth time.

  When the sun had drained itself into the western hills, I heard a colt snort in the distance, and found, not far off, a small black horse chewing the long, dry grass. It was not special—it was not the great black Mare I longed to see—but it was not afraid of me, and it nosed my pockets for apples. Ascertaining that I had none, it trotted off, and with a horsewoman’s logic, I followed after. Soon I was at a dead run, streaming sweat just to keep her in sight. Often she would wait for me to catch up and then canter off again, and in this way we came, at length, to a great hollow cave. By the time I came to the crevice in the cliff wall, the colt was nowhere to be seen.

  The cave was as empty as the razed village. How I wanted to see the Mare! Even the horrid Fox! But the chamber was empty, and the walls were smooth, with no little door to let me pass, and no wolves came to greet me. If the Sleepers still lay within, there was no longer any path to them. I sat on the earthen floor of the cave and called out. My voice hardly even echoed.

  My old bones were so weary, and I had come so far. I will admit to tears.

  I fell asleep there on the dirt, my fists clenched like a baby’s against my mud-streaked face. He was crouching above me when I woke.

  “Why are you here?” he said, and his voice echoed—oh, how it echoed. He was a man whose skin was like paper, whiter than paper, paler than any mortal skin, like snow over snow. His hair fell long and straight to his waist, and over his shoulder was slung a large and barbed harpoon of bone. His eyes glowered golden, and his bent legs were covered in silvery tattoos, a whipping, curving tongue I could not read. Now, I know my grass and I know my leaves and I know my stories. Laakea the Harpoon-Star could hardly stare me in the face but I would know him. “Why do you come to this place?” he demanded. “It is not for you, not anymore. Go home,” he spat. His scorn burned me as surely as a flame.

  “I… I came because of my mother, to find the Wolf-Star, and the light…”

  “You do not have claim to that light any longer. It is all used up. Go back to your love potions and leave us alone; we are not a fountain at which you may casually drink.”

  “Where did she go? The Wolf? The Sleepers? Where is the Mare?”

  His face colored angrily. “The last girl came and went. This place is spent. It had a life, like any tree or beast. It was born when two sisters died here, and fed their gifts to a third, and ended when a horsewoman touched a Fox without permission. The Mare, as you call her, has probably already forgotten it existed. And Liulfr—my kin, not yours—went back to the Sky, to put those bodies in their graves, to do what Stars may do for sisters, and cousins, and kin. Go home. There is nothing for you here.”

  “But I have looked for this place all my life!” I spread my empty, grubby hands.

  “I do not care! Why do you awful creatures insist that we care for every little thing you do?” The Star let out a terrible wail, his beautiful face contorting in grief, his head thrown back, tears streaming from his eyes like lightning. “One of you killed my sister! If I could I would tear all of you apart for one glimpse of her whole again!”

  “I did not kill your sister,” I growled.

  “It does not matter. When you look into the Sky, do you see our faces? No, you see a multitude, all the same. So it is when I look at you. My sister’s body lies within, where the Sleepers were. She is more holy in her smallest blink than the lot of them, and she deserves this place no less than they. But I will not let any little girls drink from her like a cup.”

  “I… I didn’t mean that. But I was young when I began, and now I am old, and if I do not take the light soon, I will die, and my family will perish in the dark.”

  “It is not yours to take. It never was. This is not about your family; it is about mine.” He paused for a moment, his alabaster jaw set hard. “If you are unafraid of the dark, would you pay for the light your grandmothers took? I will give you, one last time, the light you seek, if you are willing to barter for it.”

  “Yes, anything!” Well, that is a foolish promise, but foolishness is not only the province of the young. He knelt before me, and I did not know what to do, but his eyes were huge, vast pools of gold and pleading.

  “Find her. Find her and tell me where we go. Tell me what happens to us, tell me she is at peace. Tell her I love her. Tell her I tried to protect her. I cannot bear to think of her alone!” His voice broke and he was as miserable as a child lost in a dark wood. “Tell her I miss her so.”

  With that he drew his harpoon and thrust it into my heart.

  THE TALE

  OF THE CROSSING,

  CONCLUDED

  ZMEYA’S EYES WERE FULL OF GREEN TEARS. “I miss him, too,” she said.

  “He put his harpoon into me, and more light poured into my chest than my grandmother ever knew. It burned me through and through, like scalding oil poured down my throat. I felt it screaming in me and called out my mother’s name, I felt it screaming in me and called out my brother’s name, and my grandmother’s, and all the names of my flock. The silver came bubbling up out of my mouth like blood and he drew back the blade.”

  Zmeya was nodding. “He never gave up more than a cupful of his light. He still burns where he walks, as we all did in the earliest days.”

  “It was enough so that I seemed to the ferryman a Star, and he brought me here, where I aimed.”

  “How much did you pay him?” Seven asked. Aerie blinked. “Idyll. What did you pay him to ferry you across? How much did you bleed for the harpy?”

  The witch-woman laughed. “Coins are for the living, boy. For those who shouldn’t be here, and for carrying back those who shouldn’t be there. Blood is for those who have no business on this lake. There are other ways of getting to this place—namely, by dying. Laakea offered to cut my throat as quickly as possible, but I knew a faster way. I loosed my Leucrotta-sash from my waist and fell down as dead as when my brother snapped my neck. And here I am, half-goose, as I always was. We have an agreement—I will ferry back to him what he seeks, and he will tie it on again at the new moon.” She looked the Snake-Star up and down again. “So, seeing that you require my more mundane skills, I hope it pleases the child to come out sooner rather than later.” She crouched down and spoke directly to the heavy bulge in the serpent-skin. “Do you hear that, little one?”

  We showed Aerie the island, and cautioned her not to eat the red fruits if she meant to go back. She and Zmeya talked at length, cloistered together like novices, their heads bent, long wings folded around long scales. The serpent asked how she could possibly be with child; the goose asked if she had
pains, chills, aches in her feet. It happened that they were conversing in this way when Zmeya cried out, her voice in the mist like eggs cracking, and fell against one of the gray houses, clutching her stomach. The house yielded hurriedly, cupping her back in its wall. The Itto twins came running, their red feet throwing up pebbles, and caught her up in their arms, whispering to her and stroking her hair and cooing against her neck. They cradled her against them as she pressed her cool snake’s cheeks to theirs. Fourteen wan, wispy lights peered out from behind the thin trees, frightened and flickering. Aerie only shrugged and set to her work, her wings nearly as deft as hands.

  “It did not hurt like this, before, with the others,” Zmeya said, shuddering.

  “You are dead. Your body does not want to give up this hot little clutch of life. It wants to keep it.”

  Seven and Oubliette looked on from a distance, and it seemed to them a terrible birth. Zmeya’s shrieking shot out over the shacks, bleak and rasping. Her feet kicked out on the ground, and a sickly light spilled from her as blood might from a living woman. Finally there was a child in Aerie’s wings, with great black eyes and a shock of dark hair, her skin gray and wet. Zmeya held her and smoothed her daughter’s hair. The fourteen lights looked curiously over her shoulders. One of the Itto twins put out his ruddy, grained finger, and the baby gripped it, her fist sure.

  “What will you call her?” Aerie said. “Names are so terribly important, you know.”

  “I shall call her Sorrow,” whispered the serpent after a long while. “I shall give her now a surfeit of sadness, and hope that it will pay in one stroke for happiness in all her days. Perhaps she will have more days than my other children.”

  The fourteen lights dimmed a little, but not much.

  But it was not to be. The child was sickly, ill, her cheeks hollow. No matter how the serpent tried to nurse her hatchling, her breasts would not fill. No light came filtering through the branches to illumine her, to feed her. The babe’s breath was hot in the air, her wails bright and cutting, the only living thing on an Isle of shades and Stars, and interlopers halfway between. The child had no light that anyone could see, and her little lips trembled in the cold, showing her pink gums, no more than a cold, hungry little girl. Sorrow could not be fed, and she slowly wasted, becoming thinner and thinner, while Aerie waited for the new moon.

  “What is wrong with her?” Zmeya begged for answers.

  Aerie sighed. “You are dead. You cannot feed a child with your hard, cold flesh. You cannot expect the child of dead Stars to glitter and gleam. She will die here, the only thing ever born in the land of the dead.”

  And Zmeya wept, bitter and keen. The lights around her flashed in grief. “Please, Aerie. Take her. Put her on the raft and when your sash is tight around you again, go quickly to the mourning beast by the glass-strewn lake which Oubliette and Seven sought, and take her from the cave—you can have a cave, at last, all your own. I cannot watch another child fade to nothing.”

  Aerie pursed her lips. “You did not want her, you know. It would be no worse than if you had never had her at all.”

  Zmeya drew herself up, her face grave. “Do not try to shame me, woman. A hole was chewed in me, and out she came, and she deserves a chance to step down out of the dark, as I did. She is my girl, delicate and small as a Grass-Star, and I love her, I do love her.”

  One of the Ittos, the one with the child’s voice, touched Sorrow’s damp hair. “She is ours, too, and we love her, and she ought not to perish here where no one can see what sort of beast a snake and a ship can make. Take her.”

  “What is it you would have me do? I am too old to rear a child to grown. I do not think Laakea is the fathering type.”

  Zmeya considered. “He would shut her away so no one could ever harm her, and she would never see the sun. Care for her yourself, I would ask you. Or if you cannot, find a family whose child is dead, and bear her into their open arms. Or take her to a family with linens in a new crib and jewels in their hair, with hearts which are fierce and sweet, and put her in their cradle in place of their daughter, like a magpie with her secret eggs. Find the mortal girl a home in some far-off kingdom, take her to a childless creature who might love her like its own young, but take her, take her away, and let Sorrow grow up happy and whole and fed, warm by a fire and in sight of the Sky.”

  The twins stood on the mended dock and cupped their scarlet hands around their mouths. They made a long, desolate sound, like foghorns on a lonely bay. Seven and Oubliette held hands, and Aerie flared her wings in anticipation. The ferry parted the fog not long after. Zmeya bundled her daughter onto the raft, her tears splashing on the infant’s face.

  “What is it you think you’re doing?” Idyll asked. “I do not bear passengers without payment. And I am not fond of being summoned like a maid.”

  The assembled throng looked from one to another. “What payment can there be on this Isle?” the deep-throated Itto asked helplessly.

  Slowly, Seven drew out a single yellow coin, of old bone, smoothed by his fingers. It bore a faint spider sigil. Oubliette looked at him, her eyebrows raised. “Is this child worth so much to you?” she asked.

  “No,” he said simply. “But I ate the apples the first night I was here. I am sorry I lied, but you would have kept me from it. I know you will never leave her, and now I cannot, either. I do not wish to. I will never leave you. In any gray city, I will stand by you, and you will not be alone.”

  Oubliette threw back her disheveled head and laughed. “I ate the plantains that night, too, that first night you were here.”

  Seven squeezed her hand, and gave over the coin to the ferryman without looking at it, without weighing it in his palm. Idyll frowned and turned it over in his hands. His forehead was creased with concern and disapproval, but he allowed the child to be tucked into his bony arm. Zmeya and the twins held each other up in the midst of the fourteen lights, and they kissed their daughter over and over.

  As the ferry drifted off from the shore of eyes, Aerie smiled faintly, and pressed her cheek to the serpent’s.

  “Don’t worry, my dear, I know just where to take her. And I will tell your brother that you are beautiful still.” She looked around, and back toward the beachhead and the distant houses. “And not alone in the least.”

  As they watched, the goose-woman’s waist cinched itself in, a thickening band of red appearing like a bloody fog—and by the time it seemed solid enough to touch, she was gone. The ferry drifted beyond the mist, leaving them alone on the dock, grim and grieving as a funeral.

  In the Garden

  THE BOY CLASPED HER HANDS IN HIS. THE MOON WAS SO HIGH AND bright that it scrubbed their faces in silver like an industrious nurse-maid. A stiff wind lashed the poplar branches, and the cattails rattled their woody cacophony. The girl sat in the midst of her wood, as red in her cloak as the first sun of winter.

  “What happened to the child?” he cried. “Where did Aerie take her? Was she beautiful when she grew up? A warrior like all Zmeya’s other daughters?”

  The girl laughed, her smile broad and glad in the night, starlight dancing on her lap, her dark eyelids rippling slightly, like the surface of the little Garden lake. The boy blushed, and the girl thought that she liked that best of all, when he could not contain how much he wanted to hear her speak, when he broached his etiquette in eagerness. The blue night shone on his cheeks in patches, and his breath was frosted in the air. Somewhere behind them, a fish jumped and splashed down with a tinkling noise.

  “If you will return to the Garden, and to me, I shall tell you, and things even more strange and wonderful.” She grinned.

  The girl pulled the bird of pearl from the folds of the black wolf tails and tugged on its sapphire tail. It chimed out the midnight hour, long and clear and sweet.

  In the Garden

  IT WAS SNOWING IN THE GARDEN.

  This was not unheard-of—surely in the books of the Sultan there was a woodcut of ladies in fur collars cavorting in the
snow, little bell-strung dogs leaping at their feet. Some few flakes had even fallen when the girl was young, but certainly not this, not a blizzard which sunk men into ice to their knees. Frost had not gilded the leaves of the lemon trees in so long that even the oldest of noblewomen doddering in her bed could only dimly recall what color her dog might have been, and the sound of his jangling bells. Yet the lake had frozen into a reed-rimmed mirror, and the pine needles were sheathed in ice, glittering cold and quiet. Children cavorted; dogs leapt. New woodcuts were hurriedly pressed.

  The chestnut boughs were frozen in place, and the wedding was set for the longest night of the year, so that the feast could last as long as possible. Beasts from far-off places were brought to the Palace to be roasted, and the boy sniffed at plates of rhinoceros, crocodile, camel, bear, and hippopotamus. He wondered glumly what would be served at his wedding. He was tired of being clucked over by seamstresses who seemed only to discuss how much he had grown; and how broad his chest would be in a few years. Needles glittered in their mouths like ice.

  In all the delight at the snow, the Garden was blazing with candles and colors, as the Palace yearned to touch and taste the stuff for themselves. The kitchen maids stuck out their tongues to catch flakes, and young men brought frozen oranges to their lovers. Skirts of violet and emerald swished over the paths; shoes of clattering horn and oiled stag-skin spoiled the perfect white with footprints, like ink scrawled haphazardly upon a page of new paper. Among all of these the boy sometimes thought he saw the girl—but there were so many black-haired girls in the Palace, and each time he rounded a hedge or a clay bowl of winter lilies or a bare plum tree, following a stream of dark curls, there was only a pretty, rouged child with jewels on her forehead. He could not often bring himself to even apologize.