Tess of the Road

by Rachel Hartman

  The earth under the bridge was cool against her cheek, at least.

  * * *

  To Tess’s immeasurable disappointment, she woke up.

  She could tell without even opening her eyes that she’d made herself ill. Her throat pricked and stabbed as if she’d swallowed a prickly gorse branch. Every inch of her hurt. Her feet were blistered from the stiff new boots, her muscles sore from seventeen miles of hills. The hard ground had compounded her aches; her joints felt swollen and wrong.

  Sleeping longer might have helped, but rumbling wagons and tramping feet rudely imposed consciousness upon her. She lay on her side, curled in her blanket with the gardening hat for a scratchy pillow, listening and resenting and wondering if she could avoid getting up. She curled tighter. Surely she never had to move again if she didn’t want to.

  And she might not have, either, had the man not grabbed her from behind.

  Panic lifted her to her feet before she could even think, and she stared at the ragged, twig-thin man who’d crept up in the night to sleep next to her. He was old, with barely a tooth in his head, and he yawned grotesquely, his mouth a dark hole in his white furze-bush beard. His right hand, clutching a corner of her blanket to his chest, was missing two fingers. He was disgusting.

  Tess’s head pounded from the sudden movement, and her fear condensed into rage.

  “Give me that,” she growled, grabbing at her blanket. It was trapped under his body.

  He croaked, incongruously, “Annie?”

  Tess shoved him off, rolled him over, but the fellow had an iron grip on the corner of the blanket. She tried prying his knobby fist open, which only made him shriek and flail about. His forearm smacked Tess’s aching head so hard her ear started ringing, and the next thing she knew she was kicking him once, twice, thrice in the ribs. His thorax made a hollow sound.

  Tess backed away, panting, horrified at herself. She’d never…she’d been so angry…she could have broken his rib cage as easily as crushing a wicker basket.

  “Oh, Annie,” said the vagrant mournfully. He’d curled into a bony ball, his cheek pressed into the dirt. “I know I deserve that.”

  Tess snatched up her blanket and whipped it furiously, shaking the dust out.

  “What is this place?” he said. He sounded like a child. The dust made him cough.

  Fold blanket. Into satchel with both hands. She had to get out of here.

  The old man ran his three-fingered hand through his wild white hair. “Did the dragon chase you here? I saw it and came running. I thought I could save you this time.”

  The more he talked, the worse her conscience stabbed. She’d kicked a delusional geezer who didn’t know where or when he was. She was a terrible person. Tess swung her pack onto her back and scuttled out from under the bridge. The old man called after her—“Annie!”—but she pretended not to hear.

  Tess hauled herself out of the shadows, desperate to leave bridge and beggar behind, up the rocky embankment onto the road. It was so bright up here, she couldn’t open her eyes all the way. She staggered onto the bridge, into horse and pedestrian traffic. Food carts lined the roadway, and the smell of cooking twisted her stomach painfully; she couldn’t tell if she was hungry or nauseated.

  Tess hurried like one pursued, pushing past the broad buttocks of horses and the shopping baskets of young wives, toward the market square. Around her, children laughed; the sun shone on the market tents; bright flags flapped in the spring breeze; swallows swooped and sang overhead. Every beautiful thing felt like a fist clamped around Tess’s heart, squeezing.

  She stuck her face in the market fountain, not caring how uncouth she looked, and gulped water frantically, like she was trying to drown.

  She’d kicked an old man. He’d been no danger to her, and she’d viciously attacked him, and she’d done it (if she was being honest) in part because he was so feeble. Of all the men she might have liked to kick, she’d kicked the one who couldn’t fight back.

  Tess raised her face from the fountain, gasping, and wiped it on her arm. Women with water jars stared at her; she hurried away, ashamed. She didn’t make it ten steps before she had to pause and lean against a market stall, shaking and sweating and unable to catch her breath.

  She was despicable. How could she go on?

  At that very moment, Tess chanced to raise her eyes and look across the crowded square. There, shining like Heaven’s own messenger, sat that most eminently kickable of men, her father, upon a borrowed horse. Relief coursed through her, and an unaccustomed tenderness.

  He’d come to find her and save her from herself. He’d been worried; he loved her.

  Her lungs unclenched and she took an enormous, restorative breath. This had to be a sign from the Saints. She’d made her point—and made a mess of everything, as usual—and now it was time to concede defeat. She was too tired to keep fighting.

  Tess made a beeline toward her father, ready to place herself in his gentle and capable hands, but herds of milling shoppers stood in her way. “Papa!” she shouted, waving, but he neither heard nor saw. He turned his horse up a side street. She was losing him; even a liberal application of elbows couldn’t clear a path through the crowd quickly enough. She noted where his hat plume disappeared, and the spot became her pole star, guiding her.

  He was long gone by the time Tess broke free of the square. Praying he’d kept to this road and hadn’t turned up any side streets, she ran past mercers, tailors, leatherworkers, her boots thunking on the hard-packed dirt of the road, her head thumping painfully. About a mile along, it curved south, dead-ending at a wide wooden building with a statue at the apex of the roof. Papa was nowhere in sight, but the horse he’d been riding was tied up out front alongside a tiny donkey.

  Tess’s feet slowed at the sight of the Saint on the roof, recognizing her big green apple even before reading the plaque: ST. LOOLA’S HOSPICE FOR THE INDIGENT AND INCAPACITATED.

  Papa wasn’t looking for Tess; he did not yet realize she’d run away. He’d come for Mother Philomela of St. Loola’s. Of course the nuns had to be fetched from town. They wouldn’t have been wandering the fields near Cragmarog, grazing and mooing.

  Tess wasn’t sure what to do. He wouldn’t be relieved to see her, as she’d…Her lungs tightened again. She should have known better than to hope. He might not even take her back home, not when this was where he ultimately wanted to leave her.

  The door opened, and Tess darted behind the horse. She pulled her blanket out of her satchel and wrapped it over her head like a widow’s shawl.

  A widow’s shawl with a light plaid weave. This would fool no one.

  Papa approached the steed to untie it, but he was on the other side, engrossed in conversation with an elderly nun, Mother Philomela of St. Loola’s, as per yesterday’s letter. “We’re at our wits’ end,” Tess heard Papa saying, his voice strained. “My wife insists this daughter was simply born bad—”

  “No one is born bad,” snapped the nun. Tess peeked at her over the horse’s back; she was at least sixty and built like a grain stack, an impression enhanced by her yellow habit. She was looking at Papa shrewdly. “Anyway, you don’t agree with your wife. What’s your theory?”

  Papa hesitated; contradicting Anne-Marie always made him anxious. “I suppose…I assumed our Tess misbehaves for the pure, anarchic joy of disobedience.”

  He thought she was bad on purpose? He might as well have reached across the horse and slapped Tess. She’d never heard what he really thought of her before.

  “So you have no idea, either,” said Mother Philomela flatly. “Tell me more about her. I suppose she’s out drinking till all hours, entertaining young men, dressing like a slattern?”

  “Erm,” said Papa, removing his hat and scratching his balding head.

  He didn’t know, Tess realized, her ears growing hot. He had no idea how she
dressed or what she did all day, or why. Mama was bitter and mean, but at least she paid attention.

  “She punched a priest,” Papa finally said weakly.

  “Feh. Who hasn’t?” Mother Philomela had untied her donkey and was stroking its nose. “Well, never mind. The parents never know. I’ll get to the bottom of it. Our order is salubrious for wild and selfish young ladies. Nothing like a hospice full of graypox victims to give you some perspective. Life is short, by Heaven’s mercy, and we are distressingly fragile.”

  The nun leaped onto her donkey like a woman half her age and began to sing in an unexpectedly clear soprano:

  The flesh is but

  A sack of goo,

  A feast for worms

  To delve into.

  Remember, mortal,

  As you strive,

  That you, ambitious goo,

  Must also die.

  Papa mounted his horse, his lips pinched as if the song disturbed him. Tess had been standing frozen, listening to them talk, and had forgotten to pull the shawl across her face. Papa looked right at her as he turned his steed.

  He looked her in the eye.

  Maybe he thought she looked familiar; his frown deepened, and his gaze lingered. Maybe he thought, That woman could be Tessie’s twin, almost, or the question arose in his mind halfway to Ranleigh Cottage, Wait, did I see…? No, it couldn’t have been.

  He didn’t recognize his own daughter out of context. He rode on, unseeing, unknowing. Tess gaped after him, her voice caught in her throat, insubstantial as a ghost.

  Tess flopped down in an empty doorway at the edge of the market square and leaned her aching head against the frame. Papa had left her shaken.

  She’d always known she was particularly flawed—it was the fabric of her life—but she hadn’t been bad on purpose. Even if she’d been a bit wild as a child, that was a long time ago. Did Papa think she enjoyed shaming herself and her family? What kind of joy, anarchic or otherwise, was to be had from ruining yourself?

  And yet Tess couldn’t quite believe herself born bad, either. Her entire existence had gotten off on the wrong foot, somehow, but it wasn’t uniformly awful. She’d taken good care of Faffy; she’d saved the life of a quigutl laying eggs in the cellar. She’d gone to Mass—well, no, Mama had dragged her. But would someone born bad have given two years of her life unselfishly helping Jeanne find a husband?

  Unselfishly? You whined the whole time, whispered her mother’s voice at the back of her mind. And you almost spoiled it for her in the end.

  Then there’s Will and the baby. And just this morning you kicked a helpless old man.

  Tess closed her eyes against the painful sunshine, deeply weary. Cosmically weary. She’d run away from home, and now she wanted to run away from running away, but it was no use. Tess (born bad) was always with her, wherever she went.

  Wine might have helped, temporarily, but she had hardly any coin in her little purse. She could’ve afforded beer, but…She cringed, remembering yesterday’s state of mind, Mama’s voice in endless pursuit. Being drunk wouldn’t guarantee peace of mind, and besides, she’d be undrunk and penniless before she knew it, and then what would she do? Tess (b. b.) would be waiting for her, worse than ever.

  There was only one permanent way to run away from yourself. Tess considered it carefully. The knife she’d brought was short and dull, and she didn’t know where to stab herself effectively. It would be embarrassing to only mostly bleed to death before scabbing up. The bridge she’d slept under wasn’t high, although there were convenient rocks to dash herself against. Dashing seemed an uncertain art, though. With her luck, she’d merely break her ankle and have to lie there in agony until someone discovered her.

  Mother Philomela’s song had made death sound as easy as it was inevitable, but Tess had (she felt) a special talent for doing things wrong. The bad in born bad was more than mere sinfulness; she’d bungle her own death, given half a chance. She did everything wrong.

  She stared at the mockingly blue sky. Dying took commitment. It was easier to go on living incompetently. What if she put off deciding until tomorrow? She needed time to get her nerve up and work out a foolproof, painless way to do it. Until then, she’d walk on—badly.

  Tess staggered to her feet, brushed dirt off her backside, and drifted back into the market. She bought a pork pie, devouring it joylessly, and a water skin, which seemed sensible. Then, having used up almost all her capacity for planning, she bought some more little cheeses, the foodstuff requiring the least amount of thought or ambition.

  There. Incompetence fulfilled. She’d last one more day.

  You’ll never make it to Segosh, said her mother’s voice. She swatted the gadfly thought away. She couldn’t think about Segosh right now; one foot in front of the other was all she could manage.

  A booth full of shiny quigutl devices stood nearby, and Tess’s feet, operating separately from her will, took her in for a closer look. Most of their wares were communication charms, shiny thniks and thnimis heaped in pewter boxes or strung from the ceiling in matched pairs, tinkling like Saint’s-day chimes. Tess didn’t care for those; her childhood friend, Pathka, had given her a taste for the oddities. A statue that spoke your words back to you, billed as an aid to memory. A four-legged dancing fish, sold as a children’s toy or back massager. A whistling, jack-knifing mechanical shrimp that had no purpose whatsoever.

  Pathka had scuttled out of Tess’s life before most quigutl craft had become legally available to the public, but she’d given Tess a small collection of curiosities during the years they’d been friends. Seraphina had collected such trinkets, too, but her docile statuettes were boring compared with Tess’s restless pets. (Tess drew the obvious parallels between herself and her sister, of course; it was so seldom that she came out ahead of Seraphina in any way that she’d clung to this one victory with a fierce, if misplaced, pride.) Pathka had given her an ever-inching brass caterpillar, a scorpion-cow named Stingy, and a fthootl (Pathka’s word) that fluttered like a drunken butterfly and would poke you in the eye given half an opportunity.

  “It’s supposed to poke you in the eye,” Pathka had explained. “It’s part of a game we play, called Poke Me in the Eye. The object is—”

  “To poke someone in the eye?” Tess had cut in, like the young smarty-biscuit she’d been.

  “No, no,” said Pathka. “You’re supposed to catch it with your eye cone before it can poke your eye.” She had demonstrated; the quigutl had bulgy eye cones like chameleons, and the aperture could widen and narrow, apparently at will. When the fthootl made a stab at her, she clamped down on it. “It’s good for building up ocular dexterity,” Pathka explained.

  “What happens if it gets all the way through?” asked Tess, morbidly fascinated.

  “Blindness,” said Pathka pleasantly, as if she were talking about cake.

  The memory made Tess smile in spite of herself. Most Goreddis found the lizardy quigutl frightening, but if you could get past the surface—learn their language, to start—they were deeply odd. Far stranger than anyone imagined. Tess felt privileged to know this.

  Three quigutl ran the market stall in Trowebridge: a youngster who clambered up the booth’s support columns and fetched additional stock from under the thatched eaves, a middle-aged female who bargained with human customers using a bulky translation engine, and the podgy old patriarch in charge of the money box. He stood upon his hind legs at the back of the booth, dressed in an approximation of Goreddi garb. Breeches were awkward, due to his tail, so he wore a skirt; his shirt frothed with lace and had large openings in back for his second set of arms—his ancestors may have had wings, like the great dragons, but modern quigutl had twiggy dorsal arms with long, dexterous fingers. An absurd little hat perched on his forehead, between his eye cones, his head spines arrayed like a fan behind it. He had more than forty
spines—a sign of great age—but the reddish streaks on his throat pouch showed he could still sire children.

  The sight of these creatures, even the absurdly dressed older male, sent a wave of nostalgia over Tess. She sidled closer, not to buy anything but to listen to them talk. She’d taught herself Quootla so she could communicate with Pathka. She had the wrong mouthparts to speak it, of course, but Pathka had understood Goreddi. Most quigutl in Goredd did; they didn’t have much choice.

  Beside Tess, a well-to-do man in a pink doublet and a sugarloaf hat rattled a box of thniks and said, “Forty-seven is too much. The last transmission box I bought didn’t have the range you claimed. I didn’t want to buy from you again, since you seem bent on swindling honest folk, but the wife insists on supporting local industry. I’m going to be in Lavondaville next week, and I’m inclined to see what the quigs there are selling.”

  Tess cringed. Quigutl didn’t like being called quigs, which was also the Mootya term for dirt, but Goreddis would insist upon being contemptuous or lazily ignorant.

  The female swiveled an eye cone toward the patriarch, who licked his nose. She hefted her translation engine, like an oversized accordion, rapidly manipulated keys on one end, and squeezed the bellows. A voice wheezed: “Forty-seven, and we include a free jenny.”

  From the rafters, a pole descended and a mechanical creature shimmied down, a monkey with the head of a dog, its jaws working frantically. Tess had seen jennies before; they were for fetching jars off high shelves and dusting in unreachable corners. Often they bit people.