At last she rose from the water as if on this day she had been made new.
As she dressed, two of Yoel’s small sons scampered past the willow, looking to avoid the chores which Nell alewife, their mother, had in mind for them. They may have seen Fern or they may not; in either case, their attention was elsewhere. Nevertheless she crouched instinctively against the bole of the willow, so that whatever the boys saw would be as unobtrusive as possible.
At once the pleasure in her head changed to the hue of vexation. Perhaps all the colors of her mind were no longer hers, but now belonged to Titus.
Blast you, he muttered, you have too far to go. And I am helpless.
Almost as if he wished to punish her for her timidity, he urged her to scavenge all day for wood. And the next day he pushed her to accost one of Yoel’s small sons while the boys played truant from Nell’s chores. Fern herself did nothing except to put out her hand to pause the boy as he ran, and that was enough to make her heart beat in her throat. Titus did the rest. After he had gazed at the boy for a moment or two with his silver-marred eye, he turned away. Snorting in satisfaction, he led Fern back to their hovel.
Because she loved his satisfaction, she hugged and caressed him and fed him barley-mash. When Yoel’s small son and two of his brothers arrived at her storeshed a short time later carrying a firepot full of flame, her ability to grasp that they might have been doing the pig’s bidding had already faded. She understood them only because the farmwives sometimes sent her a firepot as an act of kindness, knowing that she had no other flame to keep her alive if the night turned bitter across the Gentle’s Rift.
Before she lost her honesty, she had been able to accept gifts. But now kindness dismayed her. She cowered away from the children as though they frightened her.
The youngest boy set the firepot in the dirt beside Fern’s woodpile. Staring at her, he asked, “Is she sick, then?”
“You’re daft,” the middle brother snorted with the contempt of his greater age. “That ain’t sick, that’s clean.”
“Cor!” breathed the oldest. “Who’d have thought she looked like that?” Then he flushed and ducked his head.
While Fern tried to sink out of sight against the wall, Titus stepped in front of her. Standing proudly in the center of the space as if the hovel were a mansion and his, he fixed his eyes on each of the boys until they all nodded in turn. Then he dismissed them with a grunt and a jerk of his head.
“Titus,” Fern murmured because she had no other name for her dismay. “Titus.”
He looked at her. As if her distress were a question, he said, Yes, they would be easier—for a time. But then they would begin to fear me, and then I would be lost. However, I seriously doubt that any of these clods and clowns is capable of fearing you. And the children even less than the adults. So I will ask only children for help—and only for you. The rest must be kept between the two of us.
Seeing that she was not comforted, he nuzzled at her until she came away from the wall to scratch his ears. Then he added, I will take it as a personal triumph if you are ever able to say yes to me of your own accord.
Yes, Fern thought to herself. Yes. It was a strange sound. If it had been the name of a pig, she would have understood it. As matters stood, however, the sound could only trouble her with hints of significance; it could not reach her.
Never mind, he told her again. For today we have gained enough. When those whelps return, we will cast our net wider.
She heard sadness in his voice, and so she hugged him with all her strength, seeking to reassure him.
You or no one, Titus whispered to her embrace. You must suffice. I have no other hope.
The boys did not return until evening. While Fern and Titus warmed themselves beside her unaccustomed fire—which she built and tended and kept small according to the images he placed in her mind—hands tugged at the burlap curtain that served as her door, and children entered her hovel. During the day the three had become five, and two of them were girls. They came to her carrying small sacks and tight bundles of herbs.
Here her acceptance of facts failed her. Herbs? For her and Titus? Children did not do such things. Her vague experience of time did not contain those actions. Typically children ignored her; on occasion they teased and tormented her; sometimes they were as kind as a warm breeze. But they did not bring her gifts of witch hazel and thyme, rueweed and coriander, sloewort, and marjoram, and vert. And Titus had not prepared her with images. Whatever she knew and needed in order to live seemed to totter when Yoel’s familiar sons and daughters offered her herbs.
In order to grasp what had happened, to accommodate it so that it could be borne, she had to make a leap across time; for her, a profound leap. She had to connect the fact that Titus had looked into Yoel’s sons’ eyes at some point in the imprecise past with the fact that these children had come here now with herbs. This was a leap greater than understanding that a sow broached in farrow must be helped to release her piglets. It was a leap greater than knowing that the farmwife who offered her a cloak after she had eased the birth pangs of the farmwife’s sow did so in thanks. Those events were self-contained, each within its own sequence. But this—
As though he sensed her distress, Titus began to fill her head with images.
One of them showed her herself as she nodded in thanks and smiled for the children; it showed her rising from the protection of the wall to surprise them with her cleanliness, and to touch each of them gratefully upon the cheek, and to let them know that it was time for them to return home.
But she obeyed without noticing what she did: her attention was on other images, images which explained what the children had done. In those images, he spoke to them, and they complied. When they brought the herbs he needed to her hovel, they were acting on his instructions.
Yes, Titus told her firmly, almost urgently, as soon as the children were gone, there is a connection. You guessed that, and you were right. You do not understand time, but you can understand that it is no barrier to sequence. If you touch the flame, will you not be burned? If Jessup at the hearth of his alehouse touches the flame, will he not be burned, even though you do not see it? If I ask you to bathe, do you not go to the river and cleanse yourself? It is not otherwise with these whelps, or with time. One thing will lead to another because it must.
Yes, Fern repeated because that was the only sound she recognized. Yes, Titus.
She meant neither yes nor no, but only that she knew no other response. Nevertheless she saw clearly what he gave her to see: he had spoken to the boys as he spoke to her, silent and silver; those sounds conveyed images to them, which they had heeded; obediently they had hunted the hills for herbs and brought them to her, telling no one what they did. Again and again the events played through her, showing her the links between them, until she fell asleep; sleeping, she dreamed of nothing else. And when she awakened, the connection had become secure.
Across time, and against all likelihood, Yoel’s children had brought these herbs because Titus had asked it of them.
At her side, Titus snored heavily, sleeping as though he had been awake all night to weave images. He did not rouse when she scratched his throat; dreams and images were gone from her head.
But the connection remained.
“Yes,” she said aloud, although he did not hear her. The sound Titus meant this pig. The sound Yes meant the connection. One thing will lead to another because it must.
She had no idea what all these herbs were for, so she left them where they lay. After a fine breakfast of bread and sausages and clear water, she spent the morning hunting wood; then she returned to her hovel to find Titus awake at last.
About time, he snorted. Did you think I gathered all these herbs for my health? But the hue of his mood was reassuring, and the images he wove for her had an itch of excitement in them.
She set to work promptly under h
is watchful gaze. When she had built up her fire from its embers, she turned to the gifts Yoel’s children had brought. In a bowl of water she mixed marjoram (Not too much), vert (Just so), coriander and thyme (More than that, more), and sloewort (Only a pinch, you daft woman, I said only a pinch). This she settled in the flames to boil, and as it heated she crushed rueweed (Better if it were dry, but it will have to serve) and a little witch hazel into a smaller pot. Once she had ground the leaves as fine as she could, she stirred in enough water to make a paste with a smell so acute that her nose ran.
Wipe it on a rag, not your hand, he told her imperiously. You already need another bath. However, he gave her no images to compel her. His attention was on the bowl steaming among the coals.
At his behest, she stirred the herbs vigorously while they boiled; then she pulled the bowl from the flames and set it in the dirt to cool.
Hints of green and blue and a strange, raw crimson flickered at the edges of her mind while she and the pig waited. Titus was excited, she felt that. And expectant, awaiting another connection. And anxious—
Anxious? Was it possible for the connection to fail? Had he not told her that one thing will lead to another?
Because it must, he finished brusquely. Yes. But it is possible to misunderstand or misuse the sequence. And it is possible for the sequence to be obstructed. It may be that you are too stupid, even for me.
His tone saddened her, but she did not know how to say so.
Instructed by images, she stirred the herb broth again, then scooped a measure of the thick liquid into a broken-rimmed cup—the last container she owned. New images followed. Titus showed her drinking from the cup, showed her face twisting in disgust, showed her spitting the broth into the dirt. Then, so vehemently that her head rang and her limbs flinched, he forbade her to do what she had just seen. Instead she must swallow the broth, no matter how it gagged her. After that she must dip one finger into the paste of rueweed and witch hazel, and place a touch of it upon her tongue. That would cure her need to gag.
He was Titus, the pig who had adopted her; he was her only connection in all the world. She wished to shy away from the broth, but she did not do so. Thinking, Yes, with her peculiar understanding of the word, she gulped down the contents of the cup.
It felt like thistles in her throat; it stung her stomach like thorns and immediately surged back toward her mouth. Her face twisted; she hunched to vomit. Yet Titus’ images held her. Obeying them, her finger stabbed at the paste, carried it to her tongue.
That flavor was as acrid as gall, but it accomplished what he had promised: instantly it stilled her impulse to gag. Her body felt that it had suffered another violation; however, the sensation faded swiftly. By the time her heart had beat three times, she was no longer in distress.
The pig rewarded her with a vivid display of pleasure and satisfaction, as bright as the sun on the waters of the Gentle and as comforting as dawn on her face. Well done, he breathed, although she did not know those words. You are indeed willing. The fault will not be yours if I fail. Then he added, As you grow accustomed to it, it will become less burdensome.
“Yes?” she murmured, asking him for the sequence, the connection. Without words or knowledge, she wished to comprehend what he did.
Now, however, he did not appear to understand her.
He required her to drink the broth again at sunset, and again at dawn and noontime. And when the sun had set once more, Yoel’s children returned, bringing four or five of their young friends as well as more herbs and firewood. They also brought bread and carrots, corn and bacon, butter and apples and sausages and beans, which they had appropriated from their parents’ kitchens. Now Fern was not a beggar: she was a thief. But she did not see the connection, and so she was not disturbed by it. Instead she was simply gladdened that she did not need to abase herself for so much good food.
For perhaps another fortnight, Titus impelled her to do nothing new or strange. Indeed, her life became simpler than it had ever been, so simple that she hardly regarded its unfamiliar ease. Apparently he was now content. Three times a day she drank the broth and touched her tongue with the paste. Often she bathed in the Gentle. And she stopped pressing her bones against the wall when the children—at least a dozen of them now at various intervals—came to her hovel. More than often, she smiled; once she was so filled by pleasure that she laughed outright. The rest of her days and nights were spent sleeping with Titus, roaming the hills with him, caressing and cozying him, or perhaps watching the games and play of the children, and then studying the images in her mind while Titus showed her the sequences which explained what the children did.
She owned a pig, and she was happy. Only her lack of self-consciousness prevented her from knowing that she was happy. If other pigs needed her, she failed to hear their cries or feel their distress. And they no longer came to her when they succeeded at wandering away from their homes. But her knowledge of time was still uncertain, and she did not notice the change.
Of course, the village noticed. With the selective blindness of adults, the farmers and farmwives, the weavers and potters declined to recognize the surreptitious activities of their children; but they had all known Fern long enough to mark the change in her. They saw her new cleanliness, her new health; they saw the gradual alteration in the way she walked. When she raised her head, the brightness in her eyes was plain. And all Sarendel could hardly fail to observe that wherever she went she was accompanied by a pig which belonged to no one else.
Strange things were rare in Sarendel-on-Gentle. They were worthy of discussion.
“A beggar!” Jessup protested in his taproom. “That pig has made her a beggar, I swear it.”
“Be fair, Jessup,” rumbled widower Horrik the tanner. He was a large man with large appetites. He still missed his wife, but because of Fern’s cleanliness he had begun to see her in new ways, ways which did not altogether distress him. “She was only a beggar for a short time. Was it as much as a fortnight? Now she lives otherwise.”
He looked around the taproom, hoping that someone would tell him how Fern lived.
No one did. Instead, Meglan’s husband, Wall, said, “In any case, Jessup, you must be sensible.” To counteract his softheartedness, Wall placed great store on sense. “The creature is only a pig—and not a prepossessing one, you must admit. How can a pig make her do anything?”
Jessup might have retorted sourly, Because she is daft and dumb. She cannot care for a pig with her own wits. However, Karay the weaver was already speaking.
“But where does he come from?” she asked. “That’s what I wish to know. Pigs do not fall from the sky—or climb the sides of the Rift. No village is nearer than Cromber, and that is three days distant for a man in haste. At their worst pigs do not wander so far.”
Wall and the other farmers nodded sagely. None of them had ever heard of a pig lost more than three miles from home.
Like Wall’s, Karay’s question was unanswerable. Glowering blackly, Jessup muttered, “I mean what I say. You mark me. That pig is an ill thing, and no good will come of him.” He had no name for the silver compulsion which had caused him to give bread, sausages, and barley to Fern. “If she no longer feeds herself by beggary, it is because she has learned a worse trick.”
“Be fair,” Horrik said again, and Wall repeated, “Be sensible.” Nevertheless the men and women gathered in the taproom squirmed uncomfortably at Jessup’s words. All Sarendel had heard the tales of the merchanters on their annual drive down the Rift, tales of intrigues and warlocks and wonders. The villagers could adjudge with confidence any matter which was familiar along the Gentle, but who among them could say certainly what was and what was not possible in the wider world?
No more than a day or two later, the wider world offered them an opportunity to ask its opinion. Unprecedented on a white horse, with a rapier at his side and a tassel in his hat, a man entered Saren
del-on-Gentle from the direction of Cromber. In the center of the village, he dismounted. Stamping dust from his boots and wiping sweat from his brow, he waited until Limm the potter and Vail farmwife came out from their homes to greet him; until every child of the village had arrived as if drawn by magic to the surprise of a stranger; until Yoel and Jessup had left their alehouses, Horrik his tannery, Karay her weaving, and the other farmwives their kitchens and gardens to join the crowd he attracted. Then he swept off his hat, bowed with a long leg, and spoke.
His eyes were road-weary and skeptical, but he smiled and spoke cheerfully. “Good people of Sarendel-on-Gentle, I am Destrier, of the Prince’s Roadmen. Lately it has come to Prince Chorl, the lord of all Andovale, that his domain would profit if its many regions and holdings were bound together by a skein of tidings and knowledge. Therefore he has commissioned his Roadmen to travel throughout the land. It is the will of my Prince that I spread the news of Andovale down the Gentle’s Rift, and that I bear back to him the news of the Rift’s villages and doings.
“Good people, will you welcome me in Prince Chorl’s name?”
Yoel tugged at his leather apron. Because he was an affable man who had shown during the visits of the merchanters that he was not chagrined by strangers, he sometimes spoke on behalf of the village. “Surely,” he replied in a slow rumble. “We welcome any man or woman who passes among us. Why should we not? We mean no harm, and expect none.” He might have added, We do not require the bidding of princes to extend courtesy. However, his good nature worked against such plain speaking. Instead he continued, “But I fear I do not understand. What manner of news is it that you seek?”
“Why, change, of course,” Destrier replied as though he found Yoel’s affability—or his perplexity—charming. “I seek news of change. Any change at all. Change is of endless interest to my Prince.”
Yoel received this assertion with some concern. “Change?” He dropped his eyes, and a frown crossed his broad face. Around him, people shifted on their feet and looked away. Children stared at the Roadman as though he might begin to spout poetry. At last Yoel met Destrier’s gaze again and shook his head.
Reave the Just and Other Tales Page 27