Listening at the Gate

by Betsy James

  Asked your father for a penny.

  Go away! I haven’t any!

  Asked your father for your hand.

  Give me gold and give me land!

  Gave your father seven acres.

  Kiss her! Keep her! Tie her! Take her!

  As I spoke that last line I was tiny again, taking for granted that fathers sell their daughters. My eyes stung with tears.

  At my quaver Nondany cocked his head, peering at the blur my face must have been to him. He put his small, firm hand on my knee. “These songs are what we sing while we are making our souls. Do you wonder that I love them?”

  “I’m a Leagueman’s child,” I said, for the first time on this journey. “But only half.”

  “What’s the other half?”

  “Creek.”

  “And the other half?”

  I stared at him.

  “And the half besides that? And besides that?” His face was merry. He patted invitingly at the air between us. I put up my hands and he sang, slapping them.

  One for the hurdy-gurdy,

  Two for the show,

  Three for the fiddle-player,

  Four for the—No, no!

  Over to the shimmy-dancer!

  Over to the queen!

  In comes Kat with a tambourine!

  The milk’s in the cow

  And the honey’s in the hive,

  In she goes,

  Out she goes,

  Five, five, five,

  And a six, and a seven,

  And Kat stole the leaven

  And the bread won’t rise!

  Speak no lies

  And an eight, and a nine,

  And you can’t have mine,

  And a ten!

  Hen!

  Shout it all over again!

  Dance, old lady!

  It was a fancy one! Elbow slaps and ear cuffs and nose tweaks, he did it over till I had it, then faster and faster, we laughed so hard that little Meg in her nightshift ran out crying, “Why didn’t you invite me?”

  So we had to teach it to her, until she was mollified and would go back to bed. Then Nondany turned to me and said, “Properly, that’s a skipping rhyme, from Downshore. But it’s played as a hand slap when the weather’s too wet for skipping.”

  “What did you mean, all my halves? I only have two halves.”

  “Is that so? Lucky you. Most of us have more than ten! Hen! Shout it all over again!” he sang, tweaking my nose at the right place. “I think I have an infinite number. So many that I have to take notes, or I lose track of them. Sing me that Leaguemen’s slap again, Half-and-Half, so I’ve got it right.”

  He got out his ink bottle. I recited the words, and this time they did not bother me. He wove them into his overwritten page like a house spider repairing its web.

  “I wrote a song on a bowl once,” I said.

  “And why did you do that?” he asked, wiping his hands on his tunic.

  “I was trying to keep it.”

  “Did it work?”

  “It wasn’t the same as the song was, singing.” It had been its own thing, though. I tried to put that feeling into words, but I could not think of any except, “The clay spiraled up, and the words spiraled down.”

  “What was in the bowl?”

  “Nothing.”

  He peered at me, stroking his chin. But all he said was, “Would you sing me the song you wrote on the bowl?”

  I did. He wrote it down. I said, “Are you writing down all the songs in the world?”

  “Only my share of them. Whatever the sea casts up to me. I’m a beachcomber, you might say.”

  I wanted to tell him the sea had cast up a man to me, and that man was a singer. But I did not dare. Anyway, Nall’s songs had felt magical and important, but Nondany, it seemed, liked nursery rhymes.

  “Teach me another Leaguemen’s chant,” he said greedily, rubbing his hands.

  Of course then I could not think of any, only the common sayings that my auntie Jerash would rap out, like, Love dreams, but money buys land or Children’s tears mean nothing. To my surprise he liked these just as well and wrote them down too. I looked over his shoulder and I saw that his drawings were indeed tattoo designs from this town or that, even a whole line of Roadsouls’ hand tattoos, and some embroidery patterns and face paintings, and two sketches of painted lintels like Erissilie’s in Lily gate. It seemed he was interested in everything. Yet he never asked how I came to be half-and-half, a Leagueman’s child dressed like a Hillwoman.

  When he had put up his ink again, he opened the battered case he had sat on. From a nest made of his spare clothing he took a lute sort of instrument that had a round belly like his own.

  He settled it on his knee like a baby. It looked old; it had wooden strakes like a boat and wave shapes inlaid between the frets. He leaned his ear toward it and, softly, plucked two strings.

  Bee-hum and wind and sorrow, made music. It hung in the air. I had never heard a sound like that.

  “Oh, sir,” I said, “what is it?”

  “My dindarion. You like it?” Quiet as moths at a window, his fingers moved on the strings and a little melody came wandering, as if it had found its way into the room from the night outside.

  I swear the fire burned more quietly while he played. He put his hand on the strings to hush them, then held out the dindarion to me.

  I leaned back, as if it were holy, or dangerous. “I can’t play,” I said.

  “Oh, I know. But feel it.”

  I took it in my hands. It was light as a blown egg.

  “It is older than I am by far,” he said. “Can you guess what it’s made of?”

  I felt ignorant. “Wood?”

  “A bit of wood, yes. But look in the sounding hole and tell me what you see.”

  I looked. “Nothing,” I said, stupider still.

  He nodded. “That is the most important feature of a din-darion. And of a bowl.” He took the instrument from me and laid it back in its nest. “No songs tonight; we’d have Meg out of her bed again.”

  The truth was that he wanted more League hand slaps. But after that sweet melody everything I could remember seemed so awful that I pretended I had forgotten them all. Then, when the stars peeked through the window, I thought of a circle game I had played with my cousins. Even the boys played it.

  Along came a king on a big white horse,

  He asked for the eldest, it was “Yes, of course.”

  Along came a prince in a great gold carriage,

  He asked for the youngest, it was love and marriage.

  Along came a beggar boy, ragged and brown,

  And asked for the middle one.

  They kicked him up and down,

  They said, “You shan’t have our daughter,

  Nor any food or water,

  Not a snip, not a speck,

  But a swift hard kick

  And a stretched neck!

  Hang him!”

  Then, in a whisper:

  But the beggar boy had the moon for his white mare,

  And he bore her away weeping.

  Those last lines had always made me shiver and yearn, with a kind of foreboding; yet it was only a nursery rhyme.

  Nondany was ecstatic. “You’re going to Downshore too, are you not?” he asked when he had written it down. “I’ll look you up. By life, surely you know more Leaguemen’s rhymes!”

  “I’ll be staying with Mailin, the healer. Do you know her?”

  He beamed like the sun. “Of course! How right! I’m in and out of Mailin’s house all the time. My dear Mailin!”

  We sat in satisfying silence. The fire snapped in the grate. Around us Loyeme’s family made tinkering sounds and soft talk as they came in from their chores.

  Nondany said, “There’s a Rig at Mailin’s house.”

  All the blood in my body went to my heart. Then to my face. I said, “A Rig?”

  “A seal man, from the westernmost isles. I was in Welling-in-the-Mountains when I he
ard the rumor, and I thought, I’ll go downriver to Rett, then work my way through the Hill towns, gleaning my bits and pieces, and so back to Downshore.”

  He leaned back. “Think of it! There hasn’t been a Rig come ashore in years. They used to come in their boats to the great festivals, Long Night and Least Night—and why not, when those celebrations were theirs in the first place? The Rigi founded Downshore, if we are to believe the songs.”

  He spoke happily, like a storyteller who has found a new audience. And he had; I listened as though my very skin had ears.

  “There are plenty of Rig relatives in Downshore still,” he said. “There’s even a Seal clan; Mailin is a Seal. The clans and moieties are mostly those of the shore tribes now—I’m a Badger myself—but in the beginning, they say, Downshore was all Rig, and the Rigi traveled between Downshore and the islands as if the great sea were a highway. Rig men wed mainland girls and vice versa; until the Exile, they did. You know about the Exile?”

  I made no answer. He took this as an invitation to tell the story. “Some four generations ago it was. Maybe less. Downshore had begun to kill seals and sell the skins to the Leaguemen. There was bad blood over that, you can imagine! To the Rigi those seals are their ancestors and relatives, and those skins the most sacred link between human and seal. Yet here were the Downshore sealers, selling them to the League to make hearth rugs and ladies’ coats! Such an uproar in the clans and fighting in the council! And the sealers hearing only the clink of coin.

  “Then one Long Night a gang of League lads, drunk, killed a Rig and stole his skin—his ceremonial sealskin, that is, embroidered in silver and jet. To the Rigi that was like stealing his soul. Without his skin, when he died, how could he return to his ancestors and be once more a seal?

  “So that was that. The Rigi got into their boats; they were off through the surf and west-away. Of the full-bloods, only a few who had married stayed in Downshore. Since that hour the Rigi haven’t come to the mainland, and the main-landers haven’t gone to them. In fact, if tales be true, the Rigi have put a bit of magic round themselves—a barrier of sorts. Magic,” said Nondany, like a man contemplating a good dinner. “As if anybody knows what magic is. But how I do natter on. You’ll know all this already.” He squinted at me. “Or, given your parentage, possibly you don’t?”

  “I know a little,” I said. “But the Rig, he’s at Mailin’s? Still? He’s alive? You heard that?”

  Nearsighted or not, Nondany gave me a sharp look. “A rumor. Reliable source, but a rumor. I don’t know why people won’t learn to write, it keeps the message exact.”

  “What did—How did the rumor go?”

  “That a Downshore girl had sung a Rig out of the sea. The girl ran away, but the Rig stayed, at a healer’s house. That was all. The healer in Downshore is Mailin.” He looked out the window at the stars. “They say that when a Rig comes ashore, you can count on either luck or storms. That is called an understatement. Downshore has been spoiling for a storm for some years now; by all reports the weather is thickening as we speak. Mailin’s house would be a safe place for him. I’ve never met a Rig. Maybe he knows some hand slaps.”

  “But he’s alive!”

  “I gather you’ve heard about him?”

  “Gossip,” I said with a gasp.

  Nondany peered. Opened his mouth, shut it, sighed. “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “I wish I were seventeen, and at Mailin’s house, and a Rig there. However, I am not. So I’ll come to Mailin’s house anyway. I look forward to knowing you better, Half-and-Half.” He stood up and stretched his little toad body. “Good night. We’ll talk in the morning. You are delightful.”

  I went to bed on a pallet on the floor of Meg’s room, but I did not sleep. Nall was at Mailin’s house, and I was the girl who had called him, and news of the two of us had reached as far as Welling-in-the-Mountains.

  5

  It is not a flower,

  but something in me

  parts its mouth to morning,

  shuts its heart to heat.

  And something deeper,

  noon or dewfall,

  opens,

  inexorable

  as a rose.

  Gardener’s Year Altar Poem. Downshore.

  OF COURSE THE NEXT DAY I wanted to travel with Nondany and made sure our bundles were put in the same cart. Mine held little more than a few clothes and a lidded crock I had made myself and filled with wild honey for Nall.

  There were three goats in the cart that would have loved to put their noses in the honey. “No you don’t, my dears,” said Nondany, checking their tethers. He tilted a board to make a goat-proof corner in the cart and put my bundle behind his knapsack and the case with the dindarion in it, then climbed out over the wheel. Like me, he preferred walking to being jolted all day, and his legs, though scrawny, were strong.

  He was the nicest man I had ever met, and the oddest. He could not see beyond the end of his arm, but his blindness was not darkness, like Ram’s. To him the larger world was only moving color; yet little, close things—children and their songs, the finger games they played, the toys and tokens of people small and big—these he saw and loved so clearly that they were, for him, the same as the big world.

  He got a pebble in his shoe as we walked in the chill mountain morning and had to stop and take it out. It was the size of a bean, but he held it up to his eye and said, “Here’s a pretty one!”

  He gave it to me to look at. It was red, with a band of crystal round it. He took it back and put it in his pocket. “For my Year Altar. To remind me that sometimes, at least, what lames me is beautiful.”

  “What’s a Year Altar?”

  “How does it happen that you know Mailin, but not what a Year Altar is?”

  I had said little about myself. I did not want him to guess I was the runaway girl of the rumor. Maybe I was afraid he would laugh and say, “You, little Half-and-Half? You called a Rig out of the sea?”

  I looked away, saying, “I went to the Long Night dance, year before last.” Plenty of Hillwomen go to the Long Night dance.

  He squinted at me. But he did that all the time, trying to bring the world into focus. “Then you understand about the Year Fire?”

  “You throw things into it. Things you’re done with.” I had thrown my cumbersome old name, Katyesha Marashya N’Ab Drem, into that fire.

  “That’s it. And a Year Altar is made of things, or tokens of things, that will be thrown into the fire when Long Night comes. Watch for those altars in Downshore, Half-and-Half; you’ll find them at the threshold of each dwelling. With a candle at least, maybe a toy boat, a doll, a pebble—whatever. Odd and pretty things. You’ll like them.”

  “We had an altar like that in Creek. But it wasn’t holy, just a place to put things we liked: flowers, and my cousin’s baby teeth when they fell out, and a hummingbird’s nest. We never burned them. Just, every so often my aunt would say, ‘This clutter’s been here long enough!’ and she’d clean it away. Then we’d start collecting all over again.”

  “It’s the same principle,” said Nondany “Pulling things into a pattern of sorts. A little temporary weaving of the countless threads.”

  I stared. How could he know about what I had felt when I was the Bear—that the world was a loom of countless threads in wordless order? But all I saw was a little dusty man, trudging and smiling.

  I said carefully, “Threads of what?”

  “‘Threads of what,’ she asks. My dear, if I could answer that, I could tell you what the universe is made of. I’d know whether we’re formed from the Light and the Dark in a death struggle, as the Leaguemen think; or knit from the breath of the Great Snake, which is what they believe down south in Enillara; or hawked up by a cat, as I was recently informed by a six-year-old in Bream. Roadsouls call the world’s beginning the Big Fart—but who’d believe a Roadsoul?”

  The man could have been bawling like a calf for all the sense he made. Yet, liste
ning, I felt the way I had when I had run on the mountain: that the world was not narrow, as Bian or my father saw it, but teeming, multiple, intertwining. Yet I could not grasp an understanding that would stay, only fleeting bits.

  “I’m bewildering you,” said Nondany.

  “Yes. No. Yes,” I said. “I like it.”

  “I don’t mean there are actual threads. I am saying that this world, which I don’t understand, reminds me of a loom, which I do.”

  “What are you?” I said. “A weaver?”

  “In a way. I collect and organize, as a weaver does. I collect songs—among other things. I locate them.” He waved his hands vaguely. “I recognize them.”

  At that he fell smack over a stone. I helped him up, thinking he would not recognize a king’s crown unless he banged his head on it.

  He dusted his elbows. We trotted to catch up with the cart, where, in its case in the goat-proof pen, the dindarion hummed faintly with every jolt. “And what are you, Half-and-Half?”

  “Seventeen,” I said.

  “True—until you’re eighteen. I should say rather: What is your calling?”

  Nall was my calling. But Nondany had meant my work, so I said, “I don’t know.”

  “A chickenhearted answer.”

  “Well, I don’t know! I can paint pots. I can scrub floors. I can make cream dill sauce.”

  “What do you like to do?”

  “Paint pots. Scrub floors. Make cream dill sauce.”

  “Well enough,” he said, laughing. “Curiosity is my virtue and my curse. If you like whatever you do, you’ll have a happy life.”

  After a moment I said, “I liked that bowl I made. The one I told you about.”

  “I could see your pleasure.”

  “It wasn’t just the bowl, though. I mean, it was a bowl, but—” It was a bowl the way what had devoured me was the Bear, the way the shivery song about the beggar boy was a children’s game: because there was no other name for it. But it was not the truth.