A Daughter of No Nation

by A. M. Dellamonica

  His mom’s a tree. A dryad? Naiad? She wasn’t up on her fairy tales. I should’ve played more Dungeons and Dragons in college instead of volunteering to go shoot wildlife for every ethologist with a research grant and a boat.

  Once the transformed trees were out of sight, the trail she had chosen might have been any little strip of land in the Pacific Northwest. It led upward to another little shelf of rock, another viewpoint. This one had a tumbled plate of stone, much like those that led across the marsh, lying like a table on the land. She hitched herself up on it, as if it were an oversize bench, and set herself to watching the landscape.

  From up here, the harbor, encircled as it was by land on one side and the skull planters with their redwood trees, looked like a lake. Shifting clouds of crows moved in the trees, giving the perimeter of the foliage a black, mobile border.

  After about ten minutes, Parrish appeared, moving silently. Something in the bush caught his eye, and his hand darted out. He brought it to the table, laying it there. A white spider the size of his thumb tumbled onto the stone table.

  “Crab spider. Blends in with the lichens,” she said. “Nice specimen.”

  “You’ve seen it, then.”

  She nodded. “So…” She laid down a pause, but he didn’t pick it up. “Your mother’s a tree?”

  He seemed to be considering where to start. “It’s customary for all the island nations to send a certain number of children to the Fleet each year. Issle Morta, as you deduced, has a low birth rate. The monks generally buy and then free a number of willing adolescent slaves from the Isle of Fury. But my mother always intended me for the Fleet. And when I was gone…” He made a gesture, indicating the cliff below.

  “You didn’t know she was planning to get transformed?”

  “In retrospect, I might have guessed.” He let out a long sigh. “I wanted to go. The Fleet sounded magical. It was a chance to be … to live, to see the world.”

  “Why’d you quit?”

  “I was expelled.”

  She remembered suddenly: Cly had said he’d been disgraced.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago. And it led to…” He gestured down at the harbor, at Nightjar. “All those years with Gale. I’m not sorry.”

  They sat in silence, looking out over the ocean, the clouds. It was deliciously quiet. The air was just verging on cool, and the sky was dotted with high cirrus clouds, spread like fish scales across the blue. The air smelled of cedar and ponderosa pine, and after weeks at sea it was nice to be somewhere so still and rooted.

  “After matters with Beatrice resolve,” he asked, “you’ll return home?”

  “I don’t know. I feel so—I need to be here. But how do I give up everything? Plus I’m endangering Bram.”

  He nodded, indicating assent and understanding, and his total lack of a good answer.

  You don’t bullshit people, she thought, admiringly. It was a rare gift. Impulsively she reached over, taking his hand.

  She’d meant just to squeeze it and let go—probably meant to, anyway—but his fingers turned in hers, intertwining, and a jolt went through her. She hadn’t really thought this through, and now he was holding on.

  And it wasn’t as though she wanted to wrench free.

  He introduced me to his mom. Took me home to Mother.

  Parrish shifted so they were face-to-face and put out his free hand, fingers brushing her cheek. His gaze was so steady, it felt like a dissection.

  Sophie’s mind whirled through a dozen possible things to say and came up dry. That one hand continued its tour of her cheek, resting briefly under her chin, and when she didn’t break away he curled his fingers back, brushing the nape of her neck and pausing there.

  She shivered.

  The space between them had closed; she didn’t remember getting closer, didn’t remember him moving but he was inches away now, and one totally unwelcome thought ran through her mind: Bram, you little shit, you could’ve just said he liked me back, instead of teasing me about having a crush.…

  And then Parrish was kissing her. It was unhurried, sweet, the contact laced with a strange abundance of gravitas. Just one long kiss, then he pulled back. To what? Check she was okay with it?

  Okay? Hey, let’s brush that crab spider off the stone table and …

  “Sophie,” he said.

  She returned the kiss, with a lot less solemnity, then broke away. “Yes?”

  “If you’re amenable…”

  “Yes?” I’m amenable, she thought. If anything, she was too amenable.

  “I’d very much like to court you.”

  Court?

  Don’t laugh, don’t laugh, he’s sticking his neck out here. “If by ‘court’ you mean—”

  A crashing off to their left interrupted her. Parrish had his javelin out and her behind him in a second.

  The oldest ambulatory person Sophie had ever seen in her life came battering his way out of the deep bush, dressed in a tattered black robe and smelling of manure and woodsmoke. It smacked the javelin away and then slapped Parrish, hard, across the face.

  “Garland!” It had a voice like a teakettle. “What are you doing? Unhand that female immediately, you lecher!”

  CHAPTER 24

  Parrish broke into that infectious, delighted smile. “Brother—”

  “No!” Horrified, steam-whistle shriek. “I’m one of the nameless now. I have let the last shred of proud individuality.…” The stranger mimed releasing something to the wind. “Shame on you, mating here like Erinthians and your mother, what? Fifty meters away?

  “This is a place of contemplation and penance, Garland. You of all people should know what happens when we give in to our base urges.”

  Brother No Name was clearly an extremist even by the monastery’s standards, believing not only in no sex but no hygiene and, possibly, no food. Mortification of the flesh he left to the environment—under his ratty robe, Sophie could see that his pallid, leathery flesh was covered in scratches and bites.

  Parrish seemed thrilled to find him alive, even though the monk switched from Issle Morta’s language and began haranguing him in a piercing whistle.

  The sermon went on for so long that Sophie began to doubt what had passed before. Had Parrish really kissed her? Maybe they were at a higher altitude than she thought. What could a person like Parrish possibly mean by ‘courting’?

  “Speak Fleet,” Parrish begged.

  “—fes matalla … sleep in a bed, do ye? Three meals a day?”

  “I am very comfortable, yes.”

  “Now that Verdanii spy who enthralled you is finally gone to ash and story, you could return to the forest and repay your debt to the dead.”

  “The brother was opposed to my going to Fleet,” Parrish explained, by way of including her.

  “Only one who was. His mother, ol’ Brother Cray, the boy himself, all mad to fling him to the sea. Look how that turned out. Sailing hither and yon, no home, all to keep that scandalous woman alive, and now you seem to have picked up a new one.”

  Here Sophie got a significant glance.

  “Righting wrongs and saving lives, humph!”

  “He shouldn’t right wrongs?”

  “Death finds us all, girl. That woman was doomed, double-doomed from birth.”

  “Meaning what? Why fight fate? Why rush it?”

  “Exactly!” He beamed at her, snaggle-toothed. His breath was eye-wateringly rotten.

  Parrish said, “I’m at peace with my current circumstances. My past actions, too.”

  “I won’t have you rutting like a Redcap silverstag while you’re home! Your word on it, Garland.”

  He didn’t try to hide the smile. “I am sorry we offended you.”

  “That’s no promise.” The monk brightened. “Well, you stink of lust. I’d better stick around to stiffen your resolve. Are you Hell-bound?”

  “No. Back to Ossuary.”

  He wriggled between them like a five-year-old, a
lmost as light, bony as scythes and his robe greasy with filth. “Let’s go.”

  Thus chaperoned, they marched back down the mountainside in near silence. At least one monk failed to hide an expression of dismay at the sight of the nameless brother. The old man promptly whistled at him.

  As they stepped back within the confines of the monastery’s wall, Sophie took a step toward the red door. But Parrish kept moving, widening his eyes meaningfully and steering toward the cabins where the others were waiting.

  “Who’s this?” Bram said as they approached the two A-frames. Tonio, she saw, had returned. He seemed sober, lost in thought.

  “Found Garland copulating in the woods. On his mother’s grave, no less!”

  Verena looked as though she’d been slapped.

  “Strictly speaking,” Sophie said, “that’s not—”

  Parrish interrupted. “The brother has graciously agreed to join us for the evening. Tonio, may I ask if you concluded your business?”

  “I did, Garland, thanks.”

  Did Parrish think Tonio was up to some mischief? What would that entail here? It was almost as elusive a concept, in this setting, as courting.

  “Would you ask the monks for a washbasin and a fresh robe?” Tonio nodded and headed across the compound. Parrish continued, “Tomorrow we’ll wrap up our visit here.”

  He was choosing his words with care.

  Hiding our purpose? wondered Sophie.

  “Bram, perhaps you can take your sister”—he emphasized their relationship, none too subtly, so the nameless monk couldn’t rise up in ire at the prospect of Sophie going off out of his sight with a man—“and see if the two of you can arrange for us to have that conversation in the morning?”

  “Why me?” Bram said, but Sophie hauled him up.

  When they were out of earshot, she murmured, “I’m betting Brother No Name will disapprove of our waking the dead. Parrish seems to be hoping he won’t find out why we’re here.”

  “And since the guy’s clamped on to him like a lamprey…”

  “It falls to us to make the appointment. Exactly.”

  “Makes sense.” He looked at her sidelong. “So. Sofe.”

  “Oh, don’t, Bram.”

  “Rutting on Momma’s grave?”

  “It was a kiss! Also, he wants to court me.”

  “Once again you’ve found yourself on the cutting edge of the eighteenth century.”

  “Anyway, his mom’s not dead, exactly. She’s a transform.”

  “That makes all the difference in the world,” he said gravely.

  “I will make you eat that magnetometer.” She led him to the barn doors she’d seen earlier, knocked until a monk peered out, and asked about the defector, Highfelling.

  “We’ll bring him up from the catacombs tonight,” the monk said. “We must review any instructions left by his widow or offspring and the language of the inscription itself. It was a long time ago; I wasn’t keeper then. What are your names?”

  “Sophie and Bramwell Hansa.” She realized that she knew someone else on the other side of that crimson door—a man from Isle of Gold, John Coine, who’d arranged Aunt Gale’s death and then, later, sacrificed himself in a conspiracy to make it look like Sophie herself had been the guilty party. He’d be in there somewhere, dead.…

  “Do they rot?” she asked.

  The monk shook his head. “When they cease, putrefaction ceases, too.”

  “Hooray for that.” Bram rolled that over. “The bacteria involved in the process of decay must die along with the subject of the spell.”

  “Or suspend, somehow. If they’re not really dead.”

  “I don’t know ‘bacteria,’ Kir,” the monk said politely. “But I assure you that my charges aren’t asleep. We’ll have Highfelling prepared for a dawn rising.” With that, he closed the door in their faces.

  “Thanks,” Sophie said to the closed portal. “Do you think we offended him?”

  Bram shrugged, glancing back at the A-frames. “God, they’re washing the old guy down. Let’s not go help with that.”

  “Agreed.” They walked instead toward the gate, taking a seat on a fallen log that may or may not have been a monument to a dead monk and watching the wood children. The primates were munching, contentedly from the look of them, on a haul of salmonberries and wild blueberries.

  “I almost ended up living here,” Bram said.

  “I’d never have let that happen.”

  “I know,” he said. Then, in a rush he said, “Sofe, it’s okay to want things. You know that, right?”

  “Are you talking about Parrish?”

  “Parrish, sure. And a passport and the right to do research here. You don’t have to try to pick the least of them and negotiate with the universe—‘hey, if I only want this and I give up the rest, can I have it?’”

  “You’re therapying me again.”

  “You’re allowed to want things, that’s all.”

  “I’m making Verena miserable. You’re risking your life.”

  His tone sharpened. “I’m allowed to want things, too.”

  She thought about reminding him about their parents, then decided that a fight wasn’t what she wanted right now.

  “We can do the astronomy capture tonight,” she said. “Set up the camera, shoot the night sky. Maybe one frame every five minutes? It’s clear out and there won’t be any light pollution. Depending what we get, we might be able to work out how many years it’s been since the twenty-first century and whatever year this is.”

  Bram nodded. “How good will the images be?”

  “It’s not a telescope. But an astronomer could probably work with whatever we catch. Unless of course you want to make that your next doctorate.”

  “My next project is gonna have to be learning to read spellscrip,” he said. “How else can we come to understand magic?”

  “How are you going to accomplish that?”

  “Not sure,” he said. “If Annela comes to trust you, or we come up with some reason why the info would be useful, she’ll relax.”

  “Worth a try.” She nodded. “In the meantime, I shot a few pages of a spell book. We’ll have to try to get the pictures home.”

  “I can probably memorize them, if I learn the alphabet. But I also brought a spare camera chip. I’ll swallow the one you’re loading, if I have to. Oh, and that box of stuff you bought with the dead homing pigeon is a spell kit.”

  “You took my bird corpse?” She wanted the passenger pigeon for comparison with the species that had become extinct, at home, in 1914.

  “I’ll get you another. Come on, they’ve got the monk washed and dressed. Night’s coming; we should turn in.”

  Easier said than done. Bram, like their parents, was ever a reluctant camper. He settled into his bedroll and then commenced noisy fidgeting. The worst of it was he was trying to be quiet; but every time Sophie started to relax, he’d explode again.

  Brother No Name had divided up their borrowed pair of shacks so that she was with both siblings, and Verena was managing to lie without moving against the wall of the A-frame, radiating rage and jealousy across the wood-beam floor.

  Parrish told Verena he was taking me up there, she thought. Broke it to her that he was going to … ask me out, basically.

  She hoped this was true; otherwise, Verena would have gotten the news when the eccentric monk said they were making love at Stronia Bel-Parrish’s feet.

  Next door, Tonio and Parrish were bunking with the monk. Or trying to—she heard the occasional rustling there, too, and once an aggrieved and piercing shout of “Watch your elbows, lad!”

  Who wouldn’t be attracted to Parrish, what with the face and the build and the lamb’s-wool hair and the fact that he was the only person on this superstition-ridden world who was interested in provable facts rather than hocus-pocus?

  Even if he did seem to believe in true love and, possibly, predestination.

  He’s not into Verena, he’s just not. He’s
almost twice her age. She’s a kid; she’ll get past it.

  This bit of rationalization didn’t do a thing for the irrational guilt, the sense that she’d somehow wronged her newfound sister.

  After everything, had she just come back to Stormwrack for Garland Parrish? Was all this desire to explore and angsting over citizenship and butting heads with Cly and trying to help Beatrice just some kind of extended subconscious agenda in getting close to a cute guy?

  Supercute. And what the hell does “courting” mean?

  In the other hut, someone—Tonio?—snored softly.

  Sophie turned her head until she could see across the compound. The great gate was shut for the night, a precaution against specters (happily, serving the dead didn’t mean providing easy prey for the big cats), and a small herd of goats had been corralled nearby to serve as additional warning, not to mention bait, if one got in. The grave markers and huts were barely outlined, velvety black on black. The moon was new, the sky so dark that, given the lack of light pollution, the only thing you could see with any accuracy at all was the stars.

  They were scattered across the black, vivid constellations, some familiar. Stuff she had seen before—the triangle of Saturn, Spica, and Mars, the constellation Cassiopeia.

  She could hear high-pitched chittering—bats, out on the hunt—and the rush of wind in the foliage. Some of the wood children hooted to each other. A monk was praying out there, too, soft bass voice singing cadences in a language she didn’t understand, and something was snuffling out by one of the graves.

  There was so much to discover here. She thought of walking away before she and Bram had unlocked the puzzle of Stormwrack and Erstwhile, how they were related.

  Issues they weren’t supposed to explore.

  She caressed her book of questions, thinking about how Cly had said he’d follow her to the outlands.

  Thought experiment: What if I stayed away, but Parrish came with me?

  She imagined him living in San Francisco, sipping lattes and checking his e-mail on a smartphone, making his living as … what? An underwear model? Maybe he’d help her analyze reef footage.

  Nope, that didn’t scan at all.

  There was plenty of science to do at home.

  But magic had ruined that a little, hadn’t it? Inscription was a game-changer. She didn’t know how it worked, but it blew all their assumptions about the nature of reality to hell. If she wasn’t allowed to tell anyone, it only increased her duty to research it. Her duty, and Bram’s, too.