by Janis Ian
I've learned how to control my expression, but something must have struck Gemma as odd, for she said immediately, "Oh, that's only my husband's cousin, Bard Jordie Ambersen; he came when he heard from Tam about the children, and we've been having ever so much less trouble with them since he arrived."
She peered at me anxiously, as if afraid that I wouldn't approve, but of course, it was perfectly obvious why the children would be doing better and how could I possibly object? Bardic Gift included a sort of MindHealing and a variant of Projective Empathy, it made perfect sense for him to come and help—
"I think it's fine," I hastened to assure her. "But I'll need to see the children when he is not around, or his Gift will muddle up what I'm looking for. It just rather startled me, no one told me that a Bard had kindly volunteered his services."
"Ah," she said, and smiled, and we went on to make arrangements for the morrow, while Jordie sang on, oblivious, over our heads. One of the history songs, but he was projecting (oh how he was projecting) and while he was teaching them history, he was soothing them, or trying to.
As for me, well—coward that I was, I fled as soon as I could, back to the inn, back to Keria. I didn't want to meet him. I didn't want his questions, his reproaches, or his pity. I especially did not want to see love looking out of his eyes, calling me, calling me back.
Keria said nothing that wasn't commonplace; she knew. She didn't even mention him.
I don't know what woke me. I do know that it couldn't have been more than a heartbeat later that the village alarm bell began to hammer out the tocsin for "Fire." And it would have taken a completely Mind-deaf Herald not to have known, known, that the fire was at the Orphanage.
I don't remember dressing or leaving my room, or (most importantly) snatching up the coil of rope I always had with Keria's saddle. The next thing I recall is vaulting off Keria's back, the rope over my shoulder, a soaking-wet blanket under one arm (you have lived through how many floods, how many fires?), and dashing into a building that was already aflame.
All these Orphanages were built to the same plan; the children were housed in rooms on the third floor, under the attics, their classrooms were on the second, and the domestic arrangements as well as the rooms of the guardians were on the first floor. The staircase—the only staircase—was fully involved, but I pulled the wetted blanket (had it come from my bed? Grabbing one and wetting it down was second-nature, no-thought to me now when the danger was fire) over me, held my breath, and made a dash up it. The flames scorched me, but I go through somehow with nothing worse than a few holes burned in the wool.
And now I heard it; felt it, more than heard it. A song, whose only burden, impelling and compelling, was come to me, come to me....
Jordie. No one else. But in this case, it wasn't meant for me to hear, for he didn't even know I was there. It was meant for the children.
But I followed it. Up the stairs, up past the schoolrooms where flames were licking up behind me, up to the children's rooms, filling with smoke, to the one corner of the building where smoke and flames hadn't yet reached. Stumbling in behind a coughing, sobbing child, to where Jordie stood at a window, surrounded by other children; I couldn't count them, it was dark, too full of smoke, and at any rate there was no time.
But he knew me; knew me before I spoke. I felt it; felt the recognition, but I ignored it. There was no time for him, no time for anything but the escape-plan that every Trainee at the Collegia knew, that surely he knew, for it was one we Trainees rehearsed three and four times a year. It had never been used, to my knowledge. Until now, it had never been needed.
He grabbed a sheet off the bed near him—I handed him my belt-knife (when I had put on my belt?) and he began tearing strips off the sheet while I made the rope fast to a ceiling-beam and threw the rest of the coil out the window.
It went taut almost immediately. :I have it,: Keria said, :And—good, I've got four men on it. Five.:
:Back it up as far as you can,: I told her, and the rope began to slant. :And get more people on it.:
Meanwhile Jordie had knotted a strip of cloth around a child's wrist, and was looping it over the rope, singing all the while, projecting calm as hard as I had ever felt it. He tied the other end around the child's opposite wrist, sat her on the window-ledge, and before she could think what was happening, pushed her out the window.
For that was the escape-plan, of course; ropes slanted out the window, and what we called the "slide for life" down them, hanging onto towels, scarves, anything we could find to loop over the rope. Best if it was the metal rings we kept in our rooms for the purpose, of course, but anything would do....
While the first child was on the rope, screaming bloody murder, I already had the next on the rope and Jordie the third half tied. They were already in such a panic despite his projection that honestly they didn't know what we were doing, and they were howling so badly that they never even heard the ones outside screaming.
We could see perfectly well now, though...the flames were getting close.
And worse than that, was the smoke. It was making a thick layer near the ceiling so we had to crouch to keep our heads out of it. And the heat—
Worst of all somehow was the voice of the fire, a howl, a roar, the sound of a hungry beast that had every intention of devouring us. I've never heard anything like that before, and it echoes in my nightmares nearly every night.
I tried to count littles as we shoved them out the window and came up two short; that was when I saw them, on the floor of the hallway, not moving, where they'd dropped in their tracks trying to get to us. We hadn't been able to see them until this moment.
Maybe they were dead—but maybe they weren't. And I knew if I could get them out the window there would be someone out there who would at least try to breath life into them—
I draped the steaming blanket over me again while Jordie shouted, and dashed out into the hall. Thank the gods they were little—I grabbed both of them and dragged them into the room; Jordie shook his head, but I tied them on and shoved the limp bodies out the window, one, two—but the smoke was roiling, looking like a live thing, with little flamelets starting to like over the surface of it. I had never been in a fire like this one, this bad, but I had a horrible, sick feeling about this. Something bad, something very bad, was about to happen...
I had my strip of cloth; I think Jordie had his. I had mine up over the rope—I'd just grabbed the other end—
I can't really describe what happened next; it just seemed as if one moment there was only that thick pall of black, roiling smoke behind us, trying to get out the window—
—and the next moment, there was nothing but flame, flame that shoved me out the window. I was on fire as I screamed down the rope, in agony with the pain of my burning skin, my hair streaming out behind me like the fiery tail of a comet, and the rope itself parted before I was halfway to the ground.
Down I came, and I remember being smothered in a blanket, someone, a lot of someones, beating out the flames, and I remember screaming Jordie's name until I couldn't scream for anything but pain....
Thank the gods the human frame can only take so much. Eventually, it all went to black, interrupted now and again by voices and orders, orders which I followed dutifully, because they came from Keria, voices which I mostly ignored. More than once, I prayed for an end to it. Most of the time, when I wasn't too drugged to think, I reckoned I would probably die. There was sharp regret at leaving Keria alone; aching regret that it hadn't been Jordie down that line first. Heralds were expected to die heroically—Bards were supposed to go live and sing about it, after.
Then, at some point, the blackness faded, and I was somewhere else. Not anywhere I recognized, though.
I was sitting on a grassy hillside; pleasant and warm, but for some reason, there was a sort of pearly fog over everything. While I tried to puzzle out where I was, that familiar voice said, as if taking up a conversation I didn't recall, "They're calling us heroes, on the oth
er side."
"Yes," I agreed calmly. "But—"
I turned, and there was Jordie, lounging beside me as he used to do when we went out on picnics. He smiled. "Yes, but. Heroism isn't something we intended, was it? It was just, the children were in danger, and we knew how to save them, so we didn't think. We just did it."
"Maybe that's the essence of being heroes," I said slowly.
He shook his head at me. "Bards aren't heroes. Heralds, now—that's another story, but who is going to believe a Bard as a hero?"
Since that was just what I'd been thinking, I kept silent out of guilt.
But he wasn't done with me, and wasn't about to let me have a word in yet. "When were you Chosen? Was it after you ran away from me, or was that the reason you left?"
"After," I said, shame flooding over me. "I had to run; I think I had some vague idea of getting a job in an inn somewhere, but if I'd stayed—I couldn't have resisted you, all of you, friends and parents and all, but especially you. You all were so sure what I should do. I tried to tell you, Jordie, but—but—"
"But I was eating you alive, sucking you dry, I see that now," he interrupted, gently, so gently. "I see it now, but I couldn't then, and I wouldn't if—if I were still on the other side. You were right to run, I know that now."
I wanted to cry, I wanted to, but I couldn't. I was held in calm despite what I wanted to do. "Jordie—it wasn't just that. It wasn't just me. You were turning into something tame. I felt—I felt as if I was watching a racehorse being hitched to a farm-cart. As if I was making a gryphon catch mice for a living, just so that I could have a steady livelihood—"
"It's all right," he said, and gave me one of those smiles. "It's all right. We'll do better next time. I just—I'm glad I saw you again. I'm glad we were together at the last. And the children are safe, all of them, even the last two."
He looked up, out into the mist, as if he could see something I couldn't, and nodded. "Next time," he repeated. "Next time, we'll do better by each other. Now—you have to go."
"Go?" I said. Now I was completely confused. Surely this was a—a sort of waiting place before you went to the Havens? Or wherever you went when you were dead. "But—aren't we—aren't I—"
"Oh, no. You don't belong here," he said, with that sweet, sweet smile. "You belong on the other side, my love. I stay here. You have to go—"
All the while he was speaking, the mist got thicker and thicker, and brighter and brighter, and his voice grew more and more distant, as if he was drawing away from me. "Goodbye, my love," he said, from leagues away, a whisper in the brightness. "Take wing and fly, on the other side."
And the brightness faded, and I found myself here, in this bed, in this room, in a House of Healing.
On the other side. And somehow, although my face and hair were drenched with tears, under the grief was comfort—the certainty of forgiveness and forgiving, that healing had begun from wounds I hadn't acknowledged even to myself. And a knowledge that some day, whether that day came soon or late, I would find myself in that brightness again, and pass through it.
And we'd do better, next time, on the other side.
(Back to TOC)
Nightmare Mountain
Kage Baker
Now there's only Nightmare Mountain
grown too high to climb
Never would have done it if I'd known
it meant losing home
~ from Nightmare Mountain by Janis Ian
There was once a poor man, and he had a daughter.
He wouldn’t for a second have admitted he was poor. He owned a fifty-acre almond ranch in San Jose, after all. He came of fine stock from the South, and all his people on both sides had owned property before the War. It was true their circumstances had been somewhat reduced in the days following the capitulation at Appamattox; it was true he and all his kin had been obliged to flee persecution, and head West. But they were people of account, make no mistake about it.
Great-Aunt Merrion would sit on the front porch and look out over the lion-yellow hills, and recollect: "My daddy once owned three-fifths of Prince County, and the farm proper was seven miles to a side. Nothing like this." And she would sniff disdainfully at the dry rows of little almond trees.
And Aunt Pugh, who sat on the other side of the porch and who hated Great-Aunt Merrion only slightly less than she hated the Yankees, would wave her arm at the creaking Aeromotor pump and say: "My daddy once owned a thousand acres of the finest bottom-land on the Mississippi River, as verdant as the gardens of Paradise before the fall. How happy I am he cannot see the extent to which we are reduced, in this desert Purgatory!"
Then they would commence to rock again, in their separate chairs, and little Annimae would sigh and wonder why they didn’t like California. She liked it fine. She didn’t care much for the ranch house, which was creaking and shabby and sad, and full of interminable talk about the Waw, which she took to be some hideous monster, since it had chased her family clear across the country.
But Annimae could always escape from the house and run through the almond trees, far and far along the rows, in spring when they were all pink and white blossoms. Or she might wander down to the edge by the dry creek, and walk barefoot in the cool soft sand under the cottonwoods. Or she might climb high into the cottonwood branches and cling, swaying with the wind in the green leaves, pretending she was a sailor way high in the rigging of a ship.
But as she grew up, Annimae was told she mustn’t do such things anymore. Running and climbing was not proper deportment for a lady. By this time there were two mortgages on the ranch, and Annimae’s father went about with a hunted look in his eyes, and drank heavily after dinner, bourbon out of the fine crystal that had been brought from Charleston. As a consequence Annimae very much regretted that she could no longer escape from the house, and sought her escape in the various books that had been her mother’s. They were mostly such romances and fairy tales as had been thought proper for genteel young ladies a generation previous.
To make matters worse, the money that had been set aside to send her to a finishing school had gone somehow, so there was no way out there, either; worse yet, Great-Aunt Merrion and Aunt Pugh took it upon themselves to train her up in the manner of a gentlewoman, her dear Mamma (whose sacred duty it would have been) having passed away in the hour of Annimae’s birth. They had between them nearly a century’s worth of knowledge of what was expected of a fine planter’s lady in charge of a great estate, but they so bitterly contradicted each other that Annimae found it next to impossible to please either of them.
When Annimae was fifteen, her father sold off some of the property to the county, though Great-Aunt Merrion and Aunt Pugh warned that this was the beginning of the end. He bought Annimae a pianoforte with some of the money, that she might learn to play. The rest of the money would have paid off the mortgages, if he hadn’t speculated in stocks.
By the time Annimae was seventeen she played the pianoforte exquisitely, and across the sold-off fields the new Monterey Road cut straight past the ranch house, within a stone’s throw of the window before which she sat as she played. Great-Aunt Merrion and Aunt Pugh were mortified, and thenceforth withdrew from the porch to the parlor, rather than be exposed to the public gaze on the common highway.
One night Annimae came to the end of an air by Donizetti, and fell silent, gazing out into the summer darkness.
"Do play on, child," said Aunt Pugh irritably. "The young have no excuse to sit wool-gathering. A graceful melody will ease your father’s cares."
Annimae’s father had already eased his cares considerably with bourbon, upstairs at his desk, but ladies did not acknowledge such things.
"I was just wondering, Aunt Pugh," said Annimae, "Who is it that drives by so late?"
"Why, child, what do you mean?" said Great-Aunt Merrion.
"There’s a carriage goes by every night, just about half-past nine," said Annimae. "It’s very big, quite a fine carriage, and the driver wears a high sil
k hat. The strangest thing is, the carriage-lamps are all set with purple glass, purple as plums! So they throw very little light to see by. I wonder that they are lit at all.
"The horses’ hooves make almost no sound, just gliding by. And lately, it goes by so slow! Quite slow past the house, as though they’re looking up at us. Who could they be?"
Great-Aunt Merrion and Aunt Pugh exchanged a significant glance.
"Purple glass, you say," said Great-Aunt Merrion. "And a driver in a top hat. Is he an old buck—" and I am afraid Great-Aunt Merrion used a word no true lady ever uses when referring to a member of the Negro race, and Aunt Pugh smiled spitefully at her lapse behind a fan.
"I think so, yes," said Annimae.
"I expect that must be poor crazy Mrs. Nightengale," said Aunt Pugh.
"Poor!" exclaimed Great-Aunt Merrion, with what in anyone less august would have been a snort. "Poor as Croesus, I’d say. Nouveau Riche, child; no good breeding at all. Do you know how Talleyrand Nightengale made his money? Selling powder and ball to the Yankees! For which he most deservedly died young, of the consumption (they said), and left that bloodstained and ill-gotten fortune to his wife.’
"I heard he shot himself in a fit of drunken despondency and shame," asserted Aunt Pugh. "And she’s nobody. Some storekeeper’s daughter from New Orleans. And there was a child, they say; but it was a puny little thing, and I believe she had to put it into a sanatorium—"
"I heard it died," stated Great-Aunt Merrion, and Aunt Pugh glared at her.
"I believe you are misinformed, Miss Merrion. So what should this foolish woman do but take herself off to the Spiritualists’s meetings, and venture into the dens of fortune-tellers, like the low-bred and credulous creature she was."
"And what should that foolish woman come to believe," said Great-Aunt Merrion, cutting in with a scowl at Aunt Pugh, "But that all her misfortunes were caused by the unquiet spirits of those who perished due to Northern aggression supplied by Nightengale Munitions! And one evening when she was table-rapping, or some such diabolical nonsense, her departed husband supposedly informed her that she had to run clean across the country to California to be safe."