by Betsy James
“Why do I have to be anything in particular?” I said, stamping in the dust. “When I die, I’ll be thrown in the fire, same as that Year Altar clutter!”
Nondany clutched his head, gingery and balding, and danced about as if he were trying to pull it off. “By life! My brain is too crowded—I should throw it into the Year Fire! Half-and-Half, what can I put on the Year Altar to stand for my brain?”
“Your papers,” I said, laughing again. “You write everything down; doesn’t that empty out your brain? Throw your papers in the fire!”
He gave me a look I could not read. “Someday they’ll burn. This earth is old, and nothing lasts forever, not even children and their songs. But that time is not yet, I hope.”
On the low branch of an ash tree I saw an empty wasps’ nest, round and weightless as paper. I fetched it down and gave it to him, to stand for his brain.
“Perfect! Perfect!” he said. “Onto my altar it goes!”
I did not tell him I thought he kept those songs not on paper or even in his brain, but in his heart. I told him about Dai instead. To speak of Dai made me feel the way I had when I milked his cow, Moss, in the winter darkness: quiet, patient, safe.
“He’s learning to be a healer of animals,” I said. “Mailin and her man, Pao, are teaching him.”
“Is he waiting for you at Mailin’s?” Nondany balanced the wasps’ nest on three fingers as he walked beside the cart.
“He doesn’t know I’m coming. Nobody does. It’s a surprise.”
“Surprises are good. But if things get too surprising, Half-and-Half, you’re welcome at my sister’s house. Her name is Lilliena. Ask for her at the Downshore market.”
I nodded. I would not admit even to myself that I was grateful. We walked on without speaking, Nondany whistling softly through his teeth. I was thinking about Nail’s mouth with its broken tooth, and what it looked like smiling, when I caught a snatch of that whistling. It was the Rigi’s song.
Instantly I was blushing and hot. Nondany slid a glance at me, grinning like a kid. He kept whistling, kept walking, his brain in his hand.
The road spent all day winding up, winding down, winding up again through ragged hills. Outside of Golden, my last overnight, we were overtaken by another pack train, headed for Downshore this time, the mules unladen and traveling fast.
This time I knew one of the Leaguemen, Ab Lesh, a broad, hard man who hit his wife. I had minded his children sometimes. He had rarely been home, and when he was, he had surely never noticed the nursemaid; but now, when he passed on his big mule, I thought he looked at me and looked again. But he went back to picking at his nails with a pocketknife.
I thought of his little daughter rocking her doll, whispering in her soft voice the lullaby her mother had whispered to her.
Father’s gone. He’ll come home.
If he sees you crying, you’ll be sorry.
If you snivel, you little lout,
He’ll give you something to cry about.
When the train had passed our caravan, the words “Black Boots” ran from mouth to mouth, along with many stories that I tried not to listen to, about how Least Night was spoiled, and what person of sensibility could tolerate it, and so on. I noticed, though, that even the most resentful wore shop-bought ribbons.
I taught the lullaby to Nondany. I was ashamed of it, but he loved it and said he would write it down that night. He was to stay in a different house, and in the field where the caravan camped he hugged me, promised to see me in the morning, and went off with his case and knapsack, whistling.
I sought the house of Milis, so weary and anxious that I could hardly drag my feet. Its portico was a grape arbor, where a little girl sat singing to a grubby cloth doll. Her lullaby was so much kinder than mine that, tired as I was, I fell into despair about my parentage, feeling that my very blood was spoiled.
Milis was harried and worried. Her oldest boy had a cough, a weasel had taken her yellow hen, and, right before I got there, the uncle of a second cousin had appeared with a cartload of caged, indignant turkeys, expecting to be fed and housed on his way to the Least Night market, like me.
“I’ll sleep in the barn,” I said, near tears. “Please don’t be troubled! I’ll be gone before breakfast.”
“The barn! Don’t think of it. Let that old man sleep out there. I never could bear him—he’s owed Arthes a month’s work for fifteen years, and now he’s too old to do it. He’ll carry you to Downshore, if you can stand the smell of him. Let him square the debt that way. If his cargo were yellow hens, one would be mine!”
The old man’s name was Jake. He had red eyes, a week’s beard, and not many teeth, and he mumbled his corn bread. When Milis told him I would be his passenger, he glared. I thought, I’ll spend the day walking with Nondany, thank you.
But out of courtesy to Milis, I agreed to put my bundle in Jake’s cart. What did I care? Tomorrow night I would be in Downshore.
I washed the dinner dishes for Milis, feeling frightened and strange. I would not think about Nall. I thought about Dai instead, his bearded face with its doubting, patient look.
Milis snapped around like a sheepdog, herding her family into a bunch and keeping them there. The boy was dosed for his cough, the girl put to bed with her doll, the husband scolded for muddy feet though there had not been a drop of rain all week. The dog itself slunk out to sleep in the barn with Jake. Milis herded me with the rest, putting me to bed with the little girl as if I were a bigger doll.
“You just be careful down there,” she said. “I’ve had a word with Jake; he knows there’s a new toll on the road, but he won’t believe how much. He’ll learn soon enough.”
“There was a toll when Bian and I left Downshore. After Long Night, two years ago.”
“That’s when this all began. Those Black Boots, they’ll lay on taxes and pop debtors into jail however they like, who’s to stop them? They’ve got the money. But not like it’s been this last while—this last week, even. Road guards, indeed! Murderers, more like. Who’ll argue with a knife? They’re careful who they pick on, but it’s a fist tightening, a cruel fist. That man!”
As she spoke, Milis flashed about the room, dusting here, tucking there, as if she could fix the world by tidying it. Her daughter watched her from under the coverlet, big-eyed.
“That man!” she said again. I thought she meant Jake until she added, “He knows the people must get to the shore and dance Least Night and sing the songs, or what will happen to the sun? We must dance for it. He’s twisting the screws tighter and tighter. What will happen to us?”
“Who’s twisting the screws?”
“That madman in Upslope, Ab Harlot.”
A creeping cold went through me. They pronounced it differently in Golden, but it could only be Ab Harlan, the Leagueman to whom my father had sold me.
“A Rig came out of the sea,” said Milis. “He stole the bride of Ab Harlot’s son and carried her off to be his queen under the waves—that’s what they say—and Ab Harlot’s gone mad with rage. It’s Downshore he’s punishing, worse every day. I wouldn’t go there, daughter. You have your reasons, I’m sure, but if I were you, I’d turn right round and go back the way I came.”
Here Milis seemed to see me for the first time. She pushed back her hair and said, “Well, I’m in a fit! I need a rug to beat. Go well, daughter. But mind what I say.”
She left, quick as a hummingbird. Her little girl, for comfort, held up her dolly and whispered, “Sing to my baby.”
“Your song is nicest,” I said, when I could speak.
She sang in her little froggy voice.
I love the sun, I love you.
I love the moon, I love you.
I love the dew on the green thorn.
At the moment you were born,
Sun and moon and thorn were born—
Born to laugh and born to mourn.
O love, o grief! I love you.
I thought, I must remember that for Nondany.
/> That was all I could think. My mind did not want the rest of it, that I had become the queen of a hundred stories, stolen from a devil king and carried away under the sea by a Rig, or by a sea monster or a water demon—by Nall, whatever he was. When in fact I had been in Creek, making pottery and tending goats.
“I know somebody who will like your song,” I told the child.
“Me,” she said, and yawned, shutting her eyes.
I patted her to sleep and turned on my side. At first I could not sleep, thinking of the morrow. Then I slept, and dreamed.
I dreamed a fire. In it a child lay crying and burning, lifting up its arms to me. I snatched it out. Fire burst from its back. But it crowed, it patted my face with cool baby hands, and I saw that what flickered at its nape were not flames, but wings.
6
A woman’s no means yes.
Woman and rug are the better for a drubbing.
Pain is the surest teacher.
Sayings. Upslope.
I WOKE SHIVERING and clambered into damp clothes, tying the deer mouse sash. The air was cold and dewy and smelled of pines. I could feel how high up I was, among the coastal mountains, so that the day must be spent going down and down and down.
But first it was spent catching Jake’s turkeys. Four of them—there were twenty-eight in all—had gotten out in the night. One was gone forever, for whatever had eaten it had left only the feathery pelt, with feet still attached. The other three had to be searched for. Stinking Jake cursed in his Hill dialect, Milis bewailed and compared the death of her hen, neighbors sympathized.
Meanwhile the caravan began to leave, and Nondany with it. “See you on the road, Half-and-Half!” he said, laughing, and recited a rude rhyme about jailbreak. It was only when their plume of dust had grown puny with distance that we found two more turkeys staring stupidly at each other in a corncrib. We grabbed them, stuffed them into their mended cage, and carried them on toward their fate at the market, leaving the last one to the foxes.
Sweaty and harried, I thanked Milis and slung my bundle under the cart seat. Jake beat the mules’ bony haunches with a switch, but they plodded slow as beetles. Each time we drew near enough to see the other carts beneath their plume of dust, the mules slowed to a creep, flapped their ears, and jerked at their traces, right and left.
“Demon spawn!” cried Jake. “Can’t you go but in circles?” For they had spent their days walking a mill wheel round and did not know how to walk a straight line.
I was beside myself, stuck with this stinking uncle while the caravan, with Nondany and his merry talk, dwindled ahead of us. I would have run ahead and walked with them anyhow, but the way began to go steeply down, and there were places where I had to swing on the wooden brake to keep the cart from overtaking the mules.
Being small and light, I had to hang off the brake lever like a monkey off a mountebank’s arm. The turkeys crooned hopelessly. Jake’s curses began to sound like a chant, almost religious.
Ho, Dop!
You reeking wart-mouth witch!
Ho, Ben!
You flap of rotten meat!
You walleyed, pig-faced tripes!
You flyblown carrion!
Get up! Get up! Move,
You fox-bait, lick-shit, scum-dog, louse-hung mules!
Dop!
Ben!
We had to go carefully, and on the flat stretches we were still behind. We nearly caught up at noonday, in a canyon by a waterfall, but the rest had already watered their stock and were ready to set out on the last long descent to the coast.
I spoke with Nondany for a moment. “Don’t fret,” he said. “You’re right behind us. There’ll be plenty of time for talk at Mailin’s house.”
“Don’t tell them I’m coming!”
He put his finger to his lips and was off, waving, as we watered Dop and Ben.
Then a turkey got out. We chased it here and there among the rocks, both Jake and the turkey cursing. I all but killed it, tackling it, and did not care.
“Young girls have no respect for creatures,” said Jake, jailing it again.
“We ought to keep up with the others.”
“Young girls haven’t a fly’s patience.”
We hurried to catch up, hurried to slow down for the hill. The turkeys gabbled Fire! Murder! Fire! and if I had had a hatchet, I would have chopped their heads off then and there. The sun sloped west. We were still in the dim canyon, far behind the rest, when, at a narrow turning, I felt the sea.
The air changed. It had been dry, the Hill air I had grown used to. All in a moment the breeze went moist and soft, like a hand laid against me. I smelled salt and iodine, fish and weed, the coast and all that dwells there—its countless lives.
I could see only the canyon walls, jerking as we jolted over the ruts. Then we rounded a great boulder and the air brightened, as if we had been in a box and it had opened.
Far below lay the narrow plain and bleak outbuildings of Upslope, widely scattered, though clumped a little closer around the Rulesward and Ab Harlan’s estate. A mile or so west of the settlement the land dropped in broken, half-grassy cliffs to the strip of green seacoast and Downshore’s untidy sprawl, where hearth smoke rose. Beyond Down-shore, still and shining, lay the sea.
I forgot to hang on the brake and stood up, shading my eyes.
The cart lurched forward; its weight pushed the mules faster and faster, like prisoners hustled by a guard.
“Ho, Ben! Ho, Dop! Ho!”
Stones flew, the cart walloped and banged, the turkeys shrieked and despaired. Jake hauled at the reins, and I hung on the lever till white smoke curled from the brake block. We careened around two steep corners and into a straightaway, long and rutted, missed a cliff’s edge by inches, and jangled to a halt in a briar bank.
The mules hunkered, twitching and blowing, dust settling on their ears.
In a whisper I said, “I’m sorry, sir.”
Jake got down, stalked to the back of the cart, and checked each wheel, each cage. The turkeys sobbed boo-hoo, boo-hoo, wagging their wattles. A wisp of dust far below was the caravan, leaving us behind.
“I’m sorry. I saw the sea and forgot about the brake.”
“ Young girls will dream,” said Jake, climbing back onto the cart. Grinding my teeth, I ducked under the seat to check my bundle. The honey crock was unbroken. I stood up and retied the deer mouse sash.
“Young girls will primp and preen,” said Jake. “Get up, mules.”
I went back to my post at the brake. I did not forget it again, though I stared at the sea with new eyes, Hill eyes, thinking, The ocean is a prairie. You could travel on it, far and away to the end of the world.
We rattled down switchback after switchback, the distant water glinting and changing until we reached the plain and it hid itself beyond the cliffs. I crept up to sit beside Jake, sweaty and trembling, with blistered hands. I had forgotten how ashamed of myself I was supposed to be and said, “We’re nearly to Downshore!”
“Young girls will jump first, look second.”
I did not care what he thought, the withered old crank! “Well, I’ll be glad to get there.”
As if our bucketing ride had jarred him into speech, he said, “I got to live. Means I got to sell them turkeys. Means I got to deal with the devil, but I ain’t in a hurry to do it.”
“The devil?”
“Hurling. Him and his deputy.”
“Hurling?”
“Young girls think they’re wise.”
“Please, sir—”
“That Leagueman felly, Ab Hurling. The one looks like a maggot.”
Would I never hear the last of him? “Ab Harlan never goes to Downshore.”
“And where must we pass through to get to Downshore, little miss? And who owns the road guards?”
I said nothing.
“Give me a chance to beat one of them vermin, it’d be worth anything they could do to me,” said Jake, under his breath.
I looked at tha
t old stinking man and shivered worse and differently than I yet had at Ab Harlan’s name. “What have they done?” I said. “Harlan and his deputy—who’s his deputy?” For surely I would know who it was, as I had known Ab Lesh.
“Better you don’t know too much. If they ask you anything, play stupid.”
“If who asks me anything?”
“Anybody.”
I did not think Jake was as ignorant as Milis had supposed. But weariness and fear made me angry What, was I to turn around and walk back to Golden?
The sun was near setting. We drove right into it, shading our eyes. The highway, crossing the north edge of Upslope, was empty except for one cart, not of our caravan; a distant herd of cattle; and, wearing nothing but a pink shirt too short for him, a small boy who flapped a stem of grass at a nanny and her kid. A Downshore child; an Upslope boy would never herd goats.
“You’d think there’d be more people about,” I said. “With Least Night so near.”
“Who wants to meddle with Ab Hurling? And there’s the curfew: All travelers to be off the road by dusk.”
“What happens if we’re not?”
Jake pointed with his chin.
Seen now from the level, Upslope’s scattered stone houses lay a quarter mile south of the highway, each with its kitchen garden. I could pick out the homes of my uncles, Ab Jerash and Ab Seroy, and that of my father—my own—far away south, a speck at the edge of the cliffs. In the middle of the settlement stood Ab Harlan’s walled estate, a little city of mansion and warehouses, the accounting hall, the Rulesward. In front of its high, spiked gates sprawled something new: an army camp—dozens of dirty canvas tents, their cookfires smoking. I saw the glint of pikes.
“Got to have his road guards,” said Jake.
“So many?”
“Guess he can afford ‘em. Mostly they’re bought from other places. But sometimes the press gangs’ll take Downshoremen that’s debtors, or that ain’t paid their breath tax.”