Cast Under an Alien Sun (Destiny's Crucible)

by Olan Thorensen

  She saved the best for last: a letter from Anarynd. Maera twirled strands of her long brown hair through her left forefinger, as she read the letter for the fourth time. A smile played across her lips, as she imaged Anarynd’s latest stories and thoughts about her suitors. With blonde hair, an eye-catching figure, and a little-girl-wonder face, Anarynd had drawn male attention since she’d entered puberty. Though her male relatives kept men who were too interested well away, Anarynd was not reticent about enjoying the attention. What was new in this letter was more detail than usual about one specific suitor, a district boyerman’s eldest son from northern Moreland Province. Maera noticed herself frowning at where this new suitor was from. If Anarynd married and moved farther north, Maera would see her even less often. Maera chided herself. The important thing was that Ana, as Maera called her, became happy in a marriage. If it meant she and Maera were farther apart, that was a trivial consideration. Maera knew that was what she was “supposed” to think, and she honestly hoped only happiness for her best friend, but still . . . Ana, please don’t move farther away!

  Maera smiled at herself, folded the letter, walked to a cabinet, and placed the letter in the box holding all of Ana’s other letters. As she returned to the table, she saw herself in a mirror. She stopped for a moment. She and Ana might seem like two improbable friends. As attractive and vivacious as Ana was, Maera saw herself as a contrast. Ana always took great care about her clothes and appearance. The young woman in the mirror wore her usual plain smock, this one a purple shade—a deliberate choice, since it helped hide new ink spots—a pair of long stockings, and uncombed hair tied into a ponytail to keep it out of the way. Then there were the shoeless feet. Maera had preferred going shoeless as long as she could remember. Her parents and the family’s station discouraged her being shoeless in public, but when in her own quarters and sometimes in other parts of the family manor, she indulged in being barefoot, if temperatures allowed.

  She looked at a bookcase holding her timepiece, an expensive gift from her parents on her twelfth birthday. Time to make the eldest daughter of the Keelan hetman presentable to the world. She washed as much of the ink from her hands as possible, combed her hair and braided it to lay atop her head, changed into a sleeveless full dress with a white undershirt, and donned thin stockings of delicate cloth and well-crafted everyday women’s shoes of the finest gurnel leather.

  She was ready to play her roles: dutiful daughter of the hetman, benefactress of orphanages and hospitals, scribe and unofficial advisor to the hetman, and . . . what? The mirror showed her ready. She saw an average young woman of undistinguished appearance, a little slenderer than most, perhaps shorter than average, and a serious look.

  Her thoughts went back to Ana. The first time they’d met was when Maera visited Ana’s family in Moreland Province. It was the custom among the clan leaders’ families for children to go on extended visits to other clans. The plan was to help keep the clans’ future leaders and their wives, in the case of female children, from becoming too insular and to identify potential future marriage partners. How much this helped reduce inter-clan conflicts was uncertain, but the custom was long-standing. Maera’s visit that year had been to the family of Brym Moreland, first cousin to the Moreland Clan Hetman, Gwynfor Moreland. Brym was, in theory, sixth in line to be heir to the Moreland Hetman position, meaning it unlikely he or his family would ever be any closer to the succession, but high enough in the Moreland clan to be a proper site for a visit by a Keelan daughter. Under other circumstances, the visit would have been with the hetman’s family itself, but Culich Keelan and Gwynfor Moreland detested each other, so all parties were satisfied with Maera visiting a secondary branch of the Morelands.

  That was how she met Ana—Anarynd Moreland—second daughter of Brym and Gwenda Moreland. Maera was fourteen and Anarynd thirteen. Maera was shorter and slenderer than Anarynd, and they were so different in personalities and interests, it was to general surprise that they developed into steadfast friends. An outside analysis might have speculated the reason was that they complemented areas where each girl thought herself lacking. Anarynd had always been doted on because of her appearance, and she took her attractiveness for granted, whereas Maera had never seen herself as other than ordinary. In reverse, the young Maera always seemed to know she was smarter than anyone else, although contact with scholastic brothers and sisters at abbeys caused her to revise that opinion to “smarter than almost anyone else.” In contrast, Anarynd was never praised for being clever, and by the time the two girls first met, Maera was reading texts most adults couldn’t manage, while Anarynd could hardly read. Education of family girls would never have occurred to Ana’s father or mother as something either desired or useful. Both girls were willful but in different degrees and manners. Anarynd pleaded or pouted to get her way, while Maera resorted to stubbornness and arguing. They were so different and so perfect for each other.

  At first, the two girls had little interest in the other. Everything changed the day of the year’s Harvest Festival. The local Moreland version drew from the surrounding twenty miles. Several thousand people engaged in activities scheduled and unscheduled, religious thanksgiving and prayers for the coming harvest, food of all varieties, physical contests for the men, home crafts for the women, games for the young, dancing in the evening, and less respectable activities in darker corners late at night. Anarynd and Maera accompanied Anarynd’s mother and aunts on a tour of the activities, when Maera spotted a group of early teen boys shooting crossbows at improvised targets. Maera asked whether she could watch the boys shoot, and Gwenda Moreland assented, after telling Anarynd to go with Maera so she wouldn’t get lost in the crowd or be subjected to inappropriate behavior by any males not aware of Maera’s standing. Although Anarynd was annoyed at having to shepherd the odd Maera, she was pleased to be out of her mother’s view and to have the opportunity to practice flirting.

  After a few minutes watching, Maera’s mouth twisted in disdain. “Most of them can’t shoot worth anything. I’m better than any of them.”

  “You’ve shot a crossbow before?” asked a startled Anarynd.

  Maera glared sideways at Anarynd. “Well . . . yeah,” as if the answer was obvious.

  “I never have,” Anarynd confessed.

  Maera turned to face Anarynd. “Why not?”

  “It’s . . . just not something women do.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because.”

  “Pretty lame reason, if you ask me. Have you ever wanted to try it?”

  “I’ve never thought about it. It’s just one of those things that men do and women don’t.”

  “That’s not the way it is in Keelan.”

  “All women in Keelan do things like crossbow shooting?” asked an astounded Anarynd.

  Maera hesitated. “No. Not all. But any who want to, can.”

  Anarynd looked back at the boys occupied with their contests. “I wouldn’t mind trying. Maybe sometime we could sneak out of our estate and go off into the woods to try it,” whispered Anarynd, as if hatching a conspiracy.

  “Why wait? There’s plenty of crossbows right here and targets all set up.”

  “With the boys,” said Anarynd in a sly voice. “Hmmm . . . that could be fun talking the boys into letting us.”

  Maera looked at Anarynd and asked—already expecting the answer, “And how would you go about getting them to let you try?”

  “Oh, they’re just boys.”

  With a coy smile, Anarynd transformed into a young seductress, sashaying over to the cluster of boys. They parted like water before a gale, hovering just out of touch. Maera followed. She couldn’t hear whatever Anarynd said to the boys, but within seconds, one of the older ones was showing her how to hold the crossbow. She fired, and the crossbow quarrel arched high above the targets.

  Maera choked back her thought. Merciful God, I hope Anarynd doesn’t skewer some person or animal wherever the quarrel lands.

  Instantly, a sec
ond boy handed another cocked crossbow to Anarynd. The next five minutes or more, Anarynd fired many a quarrel without coming close to a target, not that any of the boys noticed. Finally, she turned to Maera, “Do you want to try it?”

  The closest boys noticed Maera for the first time, with an irritated look she interpreted as, Why would we be interested in her?

  Maera flushed, angry at the boys, at Anarynd’s act, and at the world in general. “Well, I couldn’t be worse at it than you,” she snarled.

  Anarynd turned red. “Okay, Miss Smart Mouth, let’s see what you can do.” She handed Maera the last loaded crossbow.

  A rustle of discontent rolled through the gathered boys, and the tight cluster that had been around Anarynd expanded, as the level of interest waned.

  Maera took the crossbow, eyed the target forty yards away, and raised the stock to her shoulder. She looked over the quarrel at the target and pulled the trigger Twang! sang the string as the quarrel leaped out in a flat trajectory and buried itself within six inches of the bull’s-eye. The stunned silence was deafening, followed by exclamations.

  “God above, did you see that?”

  “What luck. She didn’t even aim.”

  “Whoa, nice shot.”

  “Why are we letting girls shoot?” another said, along with similar and less polite comments.

  Anarynd stared at Maera for a moment. “I guess you have done this before.”

  Maera held the bow out to the boy who had originally handed it to Anarynd. “Not a bad bow, but shoots a little to the left.”

  “Try it again,” said the impressed boy, to the disgust of the boy standing next to him, who looked like a family relation.

  “Hell, that was just a lucky shot,” said the second boy.

  Peeved again, Maera stood the bow on its point, pulled out the cocking lever, and pumped to recock the string. The first boy handed her another quarrel, which she slotted into the bow stock and notched it to the string. With a smooth motion, she raised the bow and sent the second quarrel three inches from the bull’s-eye. Proof that the first shot was not a fluke reanimated the group of boys, and during the next fifteen minutes, Maera sent further quarrels into the center of various targets. Several of the older boys tried, without success, to match her marksmanship. By then, the group had split into the boys who disassociated themselves from a female competing with them and those who admired her skill. The latter group wanted to discuss the merits of various bow styles, pull-strengths, and quarrel lengths and asked whether she had done any hunting. The episode ended with Anarynd’s mother and coterie finding them and swooping them away from such unseemly activity.

  Later that night, after the evening meal and after socializing to the limit of her boredom, Maera lay in bed. She’d just closed her eyes when there was a knock at her door. Anarynd let herself in, crossed to the bed, and sat. A surprised Maera sat up.

  “Maera . . . no one listens to me.” Anarynd’s voice bespoke a resigned sadness.

  At first, Maera was uncertain what to say, though she wondered why the girl was telling her this. The silence dragged on.

  “Uh. . . what do you mean no one listens?”

  “Oh, they listen, but they don’t listen.”

  “You mean they hear the words but not the meaning?”

  Anarynd nodded. “To my parents, I exist, but only to do what they expect. My brothers treat me as a sister who should know her place. Iwun, my younger brother, and I are near in age and played together when we were younger. He listened then, but everything changed a year ago when he began spending more time with older boys and our father and our older brother.”

  “Learning the way he was supposed to treat you, I bet.”

  “Yesterday, the boys at the bow range, they listened to me only because of how I look and how I flirted with them. I could have been saying anything, and they wouldn’t have noticed or cared.”

  “You knew that would happen before we went over to them.”

  “It’s what I do. It’s the only way I can get people to listen!” Anarynd exclaimed.

  Maera sighed. This wasn’t how she’d planned on spending her sleep time, but Anarynd obviously needed to talk, something Maera too often missed in her own life. She knew her parents loved her, but somehow she never talked to them as much as she wished she could. To turn away someone else in need didn’t seem “right.”

  Anarynd continued, “They listened to you yesterday. You didn’t flirt with them. You showed them you could do something as well as them or better.”

  “Some were okay with it, but some left,” Maera said with a grimace.

  “But many did listen,” insisted Anarynd. “I wish I was more like you. That I could make people listen to me.”

  “I don’t know if you can make people listen as much as want to listen,” Maera said.

  “How do I do that?”

  “What can you offer them except your looks?”

  Anarynd was silent for moments, then shook her head. “Nothing I can think of.”

  “Then maybe that’s the problem. You need to have things to say and show you can do things. Do you read much?”

  “Read?” echoed the other girl. “I don’t read much.”

  “Well, what do you read?”

  Anarynd flushed. “I already said I don’t read much.”

  Oh, Graceful God, she can’t read!

  “Anarynd . . . you can’t read, or at least not much at all, can you?”

  The blonde’s face reddened more, and she shook her head to confirm. “It’s not considered necessary for a woman to read, as long as she knows how to take care of her husband and family. Is it different in Keelan?”

  “Yes. Not all girls go to school as long as the boys, but that’s the choice of the family and the girl.”

  “Girls don’t go to school at all in Moreland. I know a few words that my brother Iwun taught me. He would come home from school and want to show me what he’d learned that day. I wasn’t interested most of the time. Then he stopped sharing with me.”

  “That’s something you need to do—learn to read.”

  “How? My family wouldn’t let me go to school, and if they did, I’d be with six-year-old boys. Mother can’t read, and father and my brothers wouldn’t think it worth their time to teach me.”

  “I’ll teach you,” asserted an annoyed Maera, before she took the time to think about it. “I’m here for another month. How much do you know? The letters? Any words at all?”

  “Iwun taught me the letters, and I know the words for some things like animals, food, places, and peoples’ names.”

  “Good. You aren’t starting from nothing. I think if we work very hard the next month, you might be able to read simple texts. Then, when I’ve returned home, we can write letters to each other for you to practice. I can also talk to my teachers and family and send you books as your reading gets better.”

  “Do you really think I could learn?”

  “You’re not dumb, Anarynd, just stupid for letting other people tell you who you can be.”

  As if I’m all that different. I’m put into roles, but at least I have more freedom than this blonde blank spot.

  “Oh, thank you, Maera!” exclaimed Anarynd, wrapping her arms around Maera tightly and squeezing. “I’ll work really, really hard. You’ll see.”

  Anarynd released Maera and pulled back to look her in the eye. “We mustn’t let anyone know. I’m sure my family wouldn’t approve. We’ll have to find ways to be alone.”

  Maera was already planning ahead. “Neither of us has any particular duties or activities, so no one should notice if we spend time together and away from others. Going for walks, for example. Once we’re out of sight, we can work on reading.” Maera was in full conspirator mode. If she had to endure this visit, she might as well play at deceiving adults.

  “We’ll need quills, ink, and paper . . . and take care not to get the ink on ourselves or, if we do, wash it off before someone else sees it. We can also ‘play�
� in our rooms during the day and work on reading after the others go to bed.”

  Maera paused. She was about to tell Anarynd something she had never told another person.

  “Anarynd, you say you wish you were more like me in being sure of myself and making people listen to me. Today, I wished I was more like you in some ways.”

  “More like me? Why?”

  “I don’t have many friends, and boys don’t seem interested in me. I don’t say I want them to ogle me all the time, but I’m not attractive and don’t know how to talk with them. Maybe you can help me.”

  “Of course! It’ll be fun teaching you. And don’t tell me you’re not pretty enough. You just have to use what you have.”

  And thus was born a conspiracy between two pubescent girls. Maera would teach Anarynd to read and be more assertive and, in return, get lessons in dress, rudimentary makeup, flirting, and playing on male egos. To Anarynd’s discouragement, Maera learned the first two well enough, but the flirting and talking herself down to a male’s level never took hold. For Anarynd, it was two years before her father realized she had learned to read. Although she was never going to be a scholar at Maera’s level, the ability to read not only expanded her horizons, it slowly imbued her with enough confidence to assert her own wishes on occasion and when it was important enough. Even this level of independence didn’t sit well with her father, but their eventual semi-truce involved Anarynd following his wishes on small matters, in exchange for more freedom to follow her interests. The big things, by mutual consent, they tried to avoid.

  Over the years, the two girls each spent several sixdays a year visiting the other. The visits of Anarynd to Maera were longer, because the Morelands eventually figured out the source of the changed behavior of their once-docile daughter.and only reluctantly allowed Maera’s visits.

  In addition to the visits, they wrote to each other once a sixday. The letters conveyed all of the things girls, and then young women, talk about to their best friends: what they were feeling, Anarynd’s lessons, Maera’s studies. Then, as they got older, they wrote about looking ahead to when they would marry—more eagerly in Anarynd’s case than Maera’s. Their paths, which had casually come together, would stay intertwined during the rest of their lives, albeit with episodes of both joy and despair.