by Betsy James
I wore the deer mouse sash, but Raím did not come. I had not thought he would. The mountain, big as the world, began to grow smaller behind me, to dwindle and disappear.
The cart jolted so much that once we were around a bend in the creek and hidden by the broad-trunked river poplars, I got down and walked. The wooden wheels creaked, and the carter sang.
Your mother calls me a dirty trucker
Who can’t read or write or think.
Tell her not to foul the water
That someday she’ll have to drink.
He had tied bells to the ox yoke, and as the oxen’s shoulders dipped, the bells rang. The ox bells jangled, the axles squealed, and the carter’s voice wove itself into that music until his ugly song was sweet.
Near noon we came to Ten Orchards, but because it was not market day, there were no booths with their shady awnings, the streets were empty and dusty, and all the little shops were closed up against the heat. We kept straight on, following the creek westward into narrow canyons. Because I had traveled only on the Low Track, everything past Ten Orchards was new.
Soon our creek lost itself and its name into a little brisk river, and our cart track joined a highway that wound between cliffs and tablelands, following the water. We began to see other travelers: Roadsouls first, in green or purple wagons full of children dressed in stolen silks. Then, in the late afternoon, we met a train of Leaguemen heading east.
I had not seen Leaguemen in more than a year, for Creek had banished them from the village. Every few months a couple of them would bring their mules and paidmen to Ten Orchards, lay out their wares by the fountain, and sell to the little shopkeepers—wholesale only, brandy and molasses, mirrors and beads and milled goods like the silks that would someday end up on the backs of Roadsouls. I had taken care not to go to Ten Orchards when the Leaguemen were there. I was afraid one would know me and take me back to my father.
Now, seeing the mules in the distance like a line of ants, I climbed into the cart and looked for a scarf to hide my hair. Then I realized that since at my father’s house I had always been made to crop and cover it, who would know me with it long? I let the wind blow my curls across my face and peered through them at the mules and men, like a creature peeping from a thicket.
The paidmen rode first. They were called “road guards” and rode on ponies, armed—men of all colors and sizes, nicked and nocked by the swords of who knows what distant wars. Some had eyes or fingers missing. Their gear was patched and outlandish, gathered from foreign tribes, half of it no doubt rifled from corpses. They sang as they rode, loud grunting songs hardly recognizable as the Plain tongue. Seeing these men, you wondered what kept them from seizing the mule train and turning bandit themselves.
I knew the answer to that. It was money. Within the paid-men’s ranks, bribes and counterbribes, double-edged blackmail, payoffs, threats, and sudden disappearances—no one called them murders—were the rule; any trouble ended, often as not, in an unmarked grave by the roadside. I had heard this myself, as I played with my doll in a corner while my father and uncles talked in low voices over their games of War.
It was money that kept the paidmen under control, and that money belonged to the Leaguemen. Several rode with each train, on mules, for mules are steadier than ponies. Most Leaguemen were tall, and pale in spite of their travels. Even in the heat they wore dark tweeds and twills, as if they were cold, for they trace their line to a cold country, north, where farmers starved and only a trader with a sack of gold could thrive. They worshipped Light. This always seemed strange to me, as so much of their time was spent worrying about darkness. The natives—which is to say everybody but Leaguemen—called them Black Boots. I remembered my father coming home, weary and bitter as always, beating the dust of the road from his tall black boots with the brim of his broad hat.
That made me think, What if this train has come from Upslope and one of these Leaguemen is my father?
I jumped off the cart and darted behind it. But I soon saw by the style of their hat crowns that they were from the South Road. They were indifferent to me; I was a native and a woman.
But our caravan was not indifferent to them. As soon as they passed, two women trudging by my cart began to cluck their tongues and say, “Black Boots! The country is overrun!” and “I wouldn’t have them in my house!” as if they were a plague of spiders.
The first woman, who earlier had given me four apricots, asked me, “Did you ever hear of a Black Boot who had a heart in his body?”
I was ashamed and said nothing. I was half Black Boot.
She hardly noticed my silence—she was a talking woman—and went on to say how dreadful they were, that proper as they seemed, at night they turned into demons and sucked blood from the necks of goats.
My shame turned to astonishment. She said that away west, where the sun set, there was a Black Boot devil king laying waste to the countryside because he had been robbed by the king of the sea, that he had swallowed the Long Night fire and could breathe smoke, and a lot more such truck; but I was so entertained by the thought of my father sucking at goats’ necks that I hardly heard her.
I thought how I would tell that story to Dai. Maybe I would tell Nall, and he would laugh; I remembered how he laughed with his whole body, the way a puppy barks. Thinking about him, my cheeks got hot. I did not notice that the conversation had switched to garden pests until one of the women turned to me suddenly and said, “How do you deal with cabbage worms?”
With a gasp I said, “I—I never have yet!”
She looked surprised. “And they’re such a common nuisance!”
“Decoction of stenchweed and red pepper,” said the other. “With a little tobacco juice. Sprayed lightly on the cabbage.”
The first woman shook her head. “Would it were so easy to get rid of the Black Boots!”
That night I stayed at Marga’s house in Weedrun as Bian had ordered, sleeping crosswise on a big bed with five children laid in a row like kippers, though kippers do not kick. The ceiling was smoky black, but the sky through the open window was white with stars.
I was careful always to hide my scars. I did not want to explain them, and so went apart from the others to wash; no one questioned this. In the morning Marga brought me back to the carter as he harnessed the oxen, with directions to Beshko’s in Little Water.
“You’ll be fine,” she said, like Bian. “Just keep your eyes open.” She scowled and gave me a little pat. “They’re all mad down there.”
“In Little Water?”
“No, where you’re going—those Shorefolk. Too many Black Boots; one of them’s gone mad, we hear,” and she repeated the story of the devil king. “Anyway, it’s too damp there by the water. How do they dry their laundry? Give me a sunny hillside.” She hugged me and went off, trailing her children like ducklings.
We trudged and trundled, thirty people and five carts, down each twisting canyon and out again onto each narrow plain. Every morning we set out singing. I had told the Roadsoul girl that I did not know any songs, yet now it seemed I heard a song at every turn. And at every turn the same story about the Black Boot king, or some version of it.
Not far beyond Marga’s I walked and bantered awhile alongside a Weedrun boy my own age. He was merry; he let me string his bow so I could feel the satisfying thuck when the bowstring slipped into the nock. But when I told him I was going to Downshore, he looked fierce and said, “I hear it’s not so good in that place.”
“Not so good as what?”
“As it was.”
As it was when? I remembered Mailin’s house, smelling of biscuits, a basket of kittens on the hearth. How could anything be better than that? I thought of Nall on that hearth, pulling me down to a kiss. My heart gave a soft lurch. I said, “What’s the matter with it?”
“Black Boots, they say.”
“The Black Boots live in Upslope, not Downshore.”
“I heard there’s a plague of them in Downshore, like rats. And
a big king rat.” Whipping imaginary arrows from his quiver, he shot the empty air—thip! thip! “Let those Shorefolk eat rats! If the Black Boots stepped outside the market in Weedrun, we’d skewer them. We’d throw them to the snakes.” He pushed down his sash a little to show me the serpent tattooed around his hips, like a Creek man’s, but a different pattern. “There’s my sign, darling. Show me yours.”
He wanted to see the breast tattoos all Creek girls wear—all but me—so he could know what clan I was and whether it would be right to keep on courting me.
“No,” I said.
“Are you married, then?”
“No.”
He looked confused and edged away, though he turned back once and made a kissy-mouth.
I pulled up the neck of my blouse. We traveled westward and downward, following the river.
I spent one night in Lilygate at the home of Erissilie, a wise, wiry woman who lived in a house with painted lintels.
“Who will you go to in Downshore?” she asked me next morning, as we walked back to the carts.
“To Mailin. A healer.”
“Is she a relative?”
“A friend.”
“You’ll want friends there. Downshore has troubles.”
It was one thing to hear this from a spotty-faced Weedrun boy, but when I heard it from this quick woman, my heart chilled. “Has something happened?”
“Only the usual.” She made a scornful face. “Black Boots! If they stay within bounds, they’re a blessing of sorts; but when they multiply, they’re like leeches on a body. Downshore is the body.”
I fell silent. I did not want her to know I was a League-man’s child.
“Tariffs and taxes and fees,” she said. “And those strutting road guards! I didn’t travel to the Long Night dance this year, for I couldn’t bear to deal with them. There’ll be few dancers this Least Night.”
At least she was not going on about demon kings. And nothing she complained of was new. In my father’s house, as I cooked and sewed and cleaned, I had overheard conversations and thought nothing of them: such-and-such native beaten for striking a paidman at the tariff booth; so-and-so of Downshore evicted from his fields for failure to pay a debt. I had paid little attention. They were just natives. My task was to darn my father’s socks. Now it occurred to me that the people being beaten and evicted would be Mailin and Dai. And Nall.
“On the coast the Leaguemen are everywhere, like roaches,” said Erissilie. “Any house may have a few, but it’s bad housekeeping that makes them swarm.”
I smiled and thanked her and climbed into the cart. But that evening, when we came to Stonehallow, my eyes were sharpened. It was a market town like Ten Orchards, with many little shops, and everywhere I saw signs of the League-men: windows dressed with mirrors and silk ribbons, all overpriced; casks of foreign rum; milled and printed linen. Yet who would not yearn for those things, in a little town where otherwise a girl’s showiest kerchief would be dyed with berry juice? But nobody seemed unhappy, and the rum sold briskly.
In Stonehallow I stayed at Hamarry’s house. Hamarry was old, she smelled fusty and had a pet ferret even fustier. Her knuckles were red with arthritis, but she could knit like lightning, shouting at the reluctant children who had been sent to clean her house. I cleaned too, because the children were no good at it.
She said nothing about the Black Boots. “That’s it, that’s it!” she said, her needles clicking like crickets. “Erissilie-Marga-Beshko’s sister-friend, Bian-from-Creek, she’s your aunt? I heard she married some hunter, well, they all marry hunters, so did I, ha! You’re just as foolish I expect, young girls are, some lad catches your eye and there’s your whole life gone, snap, a lap full of babies and grandbabies and it’s all over, you’re an old woman knitting at the hearth and that’s it, that’s it!”
I could not wait to get out of there. She shrank my whole life to the size of a poppy seed, and ate it. And the ferret stank; I could still smell him on my blouse the next day though I washed my clothes, hung them to dry, and slept naked under a ferrety quilt.
I walked on with the carts. I spent a night in Marsh, where there was no marsh, and a night in Towers, where there were spires of black stone riddled with holes like gassy cheese, with flocks of birds living in them. Everywhere it was Black Boots this and Leaguemen that—I got sick of it. We came to the coastal hills. We began to see hardy northern olive trees, and voices had a round, soft sound like Downshore’s, like Nall’s.
The weather grew warmer. For traveling Bian had sewn me a new undershift, rabbit brown, with a pocket for valuables (but I had none); as the heat increased, I wished I could skin off skirt and blouse and walk in nothing but my shift and the deer mouse sash.
By now I hated to tell anyone I was going to Downshore. But it was not possible to lie, so I had to listen to the Black Boots’ every sin—how they had raised the road tolls, sold shoddy linen, and watered the rum for sale at Long Night. I could not see how weaker rum would make for a worse night.
Sooner or later the story always came out, patched and strange, that the lord of the Leaguemen had been defiled by a sea monster, or that a water demon had snatched away his daughter—such wild reports that at last I thought, Someone has heard that awful chant of fat old Olashya’s and has made a tall tale of it.
This consoled me, but it reminded me how much I did not want to see any of my Upslope relatives. I was so lonely with traveling that it was not Nall I yearned for, but Dai, to make the crazy world right.
At last I came to Loyeme’s house in Fenno Pass. Before I knew it, I had an apron on, a ladle in my hand, and a two-year-old drooling on my leg. We were getting supper, and there was no time, in that busy kitchen, to make up lies about the Black Boots.
4
The things the heart tosses forth
Are polished like brook stones,
Semiprecious like amber.
No king would war over them—
They don’t have that glitter—
But a child would carry them pocketed
From full to slender moon,
And guard them in a wooden box forever.
Year Altar Song. By Nondany, Downshore.
LOYEME HAD A SECOND GUEST, a man going home to Downshore.
When I heard this, I was all terror and hope. Maybe he knew Nall? For all Downshore had heard about him, the man who came out of the sea.
But Nondany, as the other traveler was called, had been gone from Downshore even longer than I. It was only after some trouble that I got even that much out of him, because he was on the floor knee-to-knee with Meg, Loyeme’s little daughter, playing hand slaps.
“I know one,” the girl said.
The miller had a goose, goose, goose,
And the goose got loose, loose, loose …
And they were off, slapping hands and thighs and elbows, so funny! He knew dozens of them and was quicker than she was. He was a tiny man with a round body and spindly legs, not old like Hamarry, but not young. “Here’s one for you, Meg,” he said. “It’s from the mill town of Rett.”
I listened. I had been born in Rett.
Night and day, bright or black,
Shuttle and heddle go klik-klek-klak …
It went on for many verses. I liked the goose song better, but Meg loved this one because it had a part where you cuff your partner’s ears. She would have played it all night, but her mother herded her off wailing.
Nondany got up off the floor, dusted his knees—he wore a Downshoreman’s short pants—and bumbled across the room to his luggage. Opening a battered case, he took from it a box, and from the box a quill, ink in a corked bottle, and a sheaf of fine, thin paper. I saw the page, dense with writing and with designs and diagrams like tattoos. Murmuring, his nose an inch from the sheet, he wrote among what he had already written and up into the margin. Nodded. Wiped pen, corked bottle, folded paper, and put it all away.
I thought he must be a holy man of some sort, making religious notations. I wo
uld have asked Loyeme, but she was putting the children to bed, so I said right out, “Sir, what are you writing?”
He squinted at me, wiping his inky hands on his tunic. “That shuttle song from Rett. I’ve known it for years, I don’t know why I never wrote it down before.”
It was a hand slap. Why should anybody write it down? I said cautiously, “I was born in Rett.”
“Were you! Kat is your name, am I right? Did you sing that song?”
As if I had been allowed to sing anything! “No. We left when I was five.”
“The perfect age, five,” said Nondany. “Teeming with songs. But what you sang would depend on which sector of Rett you lived in, of course. If your playmates were Mill children, or the children of Roadsouls or artisans from Welling—the hand slaps are quite different for each group. Leaguemen have the fewest, as you can imagine.” I blushed, thinking he had guessed my parentage, but all he said was, “It has been terribly difficult to learn League children’s games. A tragedy, really.”
He talked half to himself, as extremely nearsighted people sometimes do—as though the rest of the world were not quite real. His face was wistful.
I said, “I know one.”
“A hand slap from Rett?”
“From the Leaguemen.”
“By life! You do? What is it? Will you teach me?” He was back on the floor, cross-legged and slapping his thighs, looking like a child on his birthday.
Feeling foolish, I sat down too. It was a plain slap, no ears or elbows, but my hands remembered it. His hands matched mine magically. I thought I might have forgotten the words, but as I slapped, my mouth remembered them.