Moongather

by Clayton, Jo;

  The boat was clean and well-kept, obviously the darling of some poor fisherman’s heart. There was extra rope, pieces of canvas for patching the sail, cord for reweaving nets, neat coils of fish line, a small packet of needles and coarse thread—and much more. Halfway round, she kicked into her bow, lying where she’d dropped it, still strung. “Yael-mri would have my hide.” She knelt, slipped the loop, ran her hand along the carefully tended stave, pleased that the wood seemed strong still in spite of its repeated inundations. She hung the bow over a mast cleat to continue drying, stretched, patted a yawn.

  Higher up the cliffs hanguli-passare nested in hollows in the chalk and were flying about, their long leathery wings and small furred bodies coping easily with the thermals along the cliff face. Their cries blended with the steady roar of the surf and the creaking of the boat as wind and tide shoved it about She moved slowly along the rail, running her hand over the neatly patched and oiled wood, shamed by her carelessness with her bow, shamed by the theft of this boat. Even if she sent gold back to pay for it, this kind of loving care had no price. She stopped her wandering and stood, eyes closed, listening to the harsh wild cries of the circling passare, drawing comfort from them as she had before and would again from similar sounds and smells and touches. Animal and earth and green growing things—they were always the same, always what they were with no pretense, never soul-hurting as humankind could be, as humankind had been to her over and over again.

  Standing by the mast, she faced toward Oras, wondering what was happening there, if Tayyan was still alive. I should go back. I have to go back. He’d take her to the Plaz, he’d want her alive so he could question her. Damn that fool Lybor, trying to use a brassy Norid in her plots. Question her! She threw her head back, flung her arms out. “Ahhhhhaaaaiiiiy, Tayyyyaaaannnn!” The cry was torn from her throat, an agonized recognition of the terror that ran in her blood. The Norid. She saw again the narrow black form, saw his stiff black hair, his gaunt red-brown face, Norid, Norid, cheap street Norid with his petty tricks. Then the image changed to the one that haunted her, the face she couldn’t forget, couldn’t ever forget—the elegant spare face, colorless as moonlight, with a black bar of eyebrow, a mouth thinned to a blue-pink line, with a fine gold ring and a pendant ruby dangling from one nostril, moving with his upper lip as he spoke. The ruby grew and grew, flooded her in bloodlight, pulsed until she danced with the pulsation, small wild girl child marked as misborn, thrust apart as misborn, small girl dancing, unseen fire searing her, swallowing her.…

  When she was again aware of what she was doing, the boat was in open water, the cliffs a dark line on the horizon. She shuddered and swung the boat back to the shore. Her mouth was dry; she drank the sour wine, gulping it down until her head swam with the fumes. She slipped the tether over the tiller bar and curled up on the deck, dizzy with the boat’s movement and the wine in her belly, cuddling the sagging skin against her breasts. She shifted position and drank again. And again. Then she fumbled the stopper home and cradled her head on her arm, drunk and exhausted, already half asleep. Her money sack hit the planking and the coins inside clanked dully.

  Tayyan wrinkled her long thin nose. Hitching her weapon-belt up over her narrow hips, she eyed her shieldmate. “Dammit, Serroi, we’re not on duty now. Who cares if a couple meie stray out of the harem? Who cares if Morescad put a curfew on us! Not me. What he doesn’t know damn well won’t hurt us. And he won’t know a thing if we go out over the wall. Look, little one, Lucyr set up this race. Only man I ever met that knew more about macain than my father. Five macain, none of them ever beaten, one of them bred in my family’s plexus.” Her dark blue eyes laughed as she ruffled Serroi’s mop of sorrel curls. “A mountain-bred macai from Frinnor’s Hold, love, out of Curosh’s stable. Cousin to my mother’s sister’s husband. You got any idea how long it’s been since I saw a good race, a really good race?” Her fingers tangled in the fleecy curls; she tugged gently at them. “Come with me, love?”

  Serroi sighed and gave in despite painful twitches of warning passing across the eye-spot on her forehead. She pulled away from Tayyan’s fingers, caught her hand and brought it to her lips, kissed a finger lightly then bit down hard on a knuckle, laughed and danced away when Tayyan grabbed for her.

  The race grounds: an hour’s brisk walk outside the city. A long rough oval scratched in the dull brown earth of the arid ground south of Oras. Torches. Wine-sellers scooping wine from purple-stained barrels into pressed clay bowls. Noise and laughter and wine and excitement whirled around Serroi until she felt as if she moved in an expanding bubble that refused to burst. In the center of the whirl, five macain plunged and snorted—racing stock, big bones, long ugly limbs, claws digging and tearing at the coarse earth, throwing up bursts of small rock that spattered the crowd and pinged down unheard among stamping boots. The roar rose to a shriek. Powerful hind legs launched the macain into a series of long jolting leaps.

  Tayyan clutched Serroi’s shoulder, beat up and down on it as the animals swung around the far curve and headed back to the finish. A lanky greenish-brown macai with a wiry hill-man perched high on its back was gradually opening distance between it and the other four.

  “Curosh, Curosh!” Tayyan whooped with glee as the macai came plunging toward them. “Come come come come!”

  Serroi shrieked along with her shieldmate, her alto counter-pointing Tayyan’s squeal, her premonitions forgotten as she surrendered to the noise and excitement around her. Yells. Curses. Stamping boots. Arms whacking into her back and sides. Wine bowls splashing over her. Flecks of gravel striking her face. Smells of mansweat and animalsweat washing over her. Bits of foam splattering her. Crowd roar. Surge of bodies pushing the two of them forward. Jostling. Yelling. Laughing. Crowd madness absorbing them as the watchers surged around the snapping winner.

  The bubble burst. Serroi came back to sanity, dizzy from wine fumes, nauseated, her head throbbing. Tayyan was stuffing gold and silver coins into her money sack and talking energetically to a smallish man with hair like straw and a brown, weathered face like a withered old root. Serroi hauled her away and the two meien edged out of the scattering mob, crunching over the gritty earth toward the Highroad and the city gate.

  Tayyan was still excited, pouring the contents of her money sack into her hand, counting her winnings, crowing her triumph, ignoring Serroi’s growing withdrawal. The eye-spot was throbbing, each small nip a warning shout. Danger ahead. Watch out. She said nothing—there was nothing to say, the warning was unlocalized in time or space and there was nothing around them but the moonlit plain and the plodding sportsmen returning to the city. Even these grew quieter as they approached the gates. More than one of them had passed wine and coin to the guards on duty there, bribing them to leave the gates open a crack. By good fortune none of the guards belonged to the Flame. Or perhaps fortune had nothing to do with that. Domnor Hern enjoyed a good race; only harsh and unyielding pressure from counselors, wives and the Sons of the Flame had brought him to banning races and condemning the wagering that went on at them.

  The two women passed unnoticed through the gate, but once inside, Serroi walked faster, pulling Tayyan after her with some urgency. In the city there was a growing hostility to the meien, a hostility fostered by the Sons of the Flame. Domnor Hern still used them as harem guards but the other meien were gradually being dismissed by their employers. Outside Oras, in the small villages of the Mijloc, the priests of the Flame called them devil’s whores and other names even less polite, led campaigns against those followers of the Maiden who still sent problem daughters to the Biserica valley for training as weaponwomen, healers or Servants of the Maiden. The custom—its origins lost in the mists of mythic time—of providing sanctuary at the Biserica for runaway girls and women had created a reservoir of resentment among the more conservative Mijlocim that was easy enough to stir into revulsion and fear.

  Tayyan dumped half the coins back in her sack and stepped suddenly in front of Serroi, grinning bro
adly as she hugged her shieldmate, then caressed the eye-spot with the back of the fisted hand that held the rest of the money. “Little borrower of trouble,” she said affectionately, still rather drunk with wine and excitement. “Here. This is yours.” She stepped back, caught hold of Serroi’s right hand and dropped a pile of coins into the palm. “I bet a couple of decsets on Curosh for you.”

  “Tayyan, you know I don’t play those games.” Serroi tried to give back the money.

  “You’ll spoil no sport tonight, love.” Tayyan laughed and danced away, lifting her hands to the gathering clouds, yawning and groaning with the pleasure of stretching her muscles. She stopped, hands on hips, grinned at Serroi. “I’m for bath and bed. Join me?”

  Serroi nodded, unhappy because she couldn’t match Tayyan’s high spirits. She walked several minutes in silence, then she sighed and tucked the coins into her own money sack.

  The boat heaved as the wind shifted. Serroi stirred, her tongue furry, her head throbbing. She pushed against the deck and lifted her upper body until she was sitting with her legs crossed before her, hands clutching at her temples. She swallowed, swallowed again. People, she thought. I need people. And water. And food. She focused her desire then followed the tugging of the eye-spot southeast toward the cliffs.

  She beat her slow way against the wind to the distant shore but she was still some way out when the sun touched zenith and the wind dropped to an erratic series of puffs too weak to lift a feather. The sail flapped against the mast, then sagged, flapped, sagged. She shook the wineskin, unstoppered it and lifted it high, let the thick sour liquid trickle into her mouth. The sun steaming the moisture out of her until she felt her skin frying, she sucked at the wineskin, her eyes on the faint line of the horizon, the tantalizing dark line, so close and so impossibly out of reach. She dozed a little but sleep brought the nightmares back; finally she kept awake, trying to drift without thinking.

  Late in the afternoon a cooler breeze tugged at her hair and teased the sail into slapping noisily at the mast. Sodden with wine and sweat, she staggered to her feet, collapsed onto her knees as the boat rocked under her. She shook her head, groaned, then looked over her shoulder at the sun hanging low in the west, almost touching the flat line of ocean, tipping the waves with crimson. Crawling because she couldn’t stand, she got to the mast, pulled herself onto her feet, her head slowly beginning to clear. People, she thought, desired, then sent the boat where the eye-spot pulled her. The sail filled and the small boat danced lightly across the swells. She blessed the builder. A sweet ship, steady and responsive, built with love and maintained with love, skimming over the darkening water with a singing hiss.

  As she drew near the white cliffs she saw another tappata with a pier angling past the outlet, small store-sheds, and a crude stone fort. Driven by wind and the incoming tide, the boat was a bird under her hands swooping down on the pier. The sheds and the fort were deserted, crumbling. She frowned with disappointment, but her eye-spot still tugged her strongly inland, so she settled back and let the wind blow her along the finger of water winding between perpendicular cliffs of chalk.

  THE CHILD: 1

  The small dirty child was playing with the chinin pups, tumbling recklessly about on the tundra, mashing down grass and flowers, ignoring the prodding of scattered fist-sized rocks. The chinin were play-growling, small sharp teeth worrying at her torn and mud-streaked clothes. Tugging at the ankles of her boots, stomping on her, rolling on her as they wrestled with each other. She was filthy and wet, bruised, scraped in a hundred places, and she loved it, she bathed in the trust and warmth the chinin gave her, felt herself one of them, a chini among chinin. And forgot completely, or refused to think about the scold she’d get later on from her weary mother, the strapping her father would give her, the tormenting she could expect from her normal brothers and sisters. In this play she lived utterly in the present and was supremely happy.

  “Serroi!” She recognized the harsh voice of her grandfather and got reluctantly to her feet. She slid her eyes to his face, then stared down at the toe-peaks of her boots. He looked angry and embarrassed. She sneaked a second glance at the man beside him, puzzled by the stranger’s presence. The green blotches on her skin and her smallness offended her grandfather’s sense of self-worth; she was a symbol of his son’s lack of control, conceived against custom at the radiant hot springs where the windrunners wintered, usually kept well out of sight when there were visitors to the camp. Yet now her grandfather was calling her to meet a tall man in a narrow black robe. She came scowling to her grandfather’s side, furious with him for spoiling her joy and too familiar with his heavy hand to dare show her fury.

  She stood away from her grandfather, knowing by instinct and experience that he didn’t want her touching him, stood with her head bowed, her curls tumbling forward hiding her face, stood sneaking looks at the strange man because he was beautiful in her eyes and she was starved for beauty. He was tall. Grandfather who was a mighty man among the People came only to mid-chest on him. He was snow-pale with finely chiseled lips and a nose straight as a knife-slash. A small gold ring passed through the outside of his left nostril. A gleaming red stone hung from the ring and moved when he smiled at her. His hair was black smoke floating around his narrow high-cheeked face. His eyes were black too, the black of the polished jet ornaments her mother wore to the Iangi-vlan festival at summers-end. He seemed to her more a strange wild animal than a man and because she felt most at home with animals she dared smile back at him and lift her head, forgetting, for once, the green blotches that marked her as misborn.

  “This is the child.” Her grandfather’s lips were stretched in a wide humorless smile; he was almost fawning on the stranger.

  “Her parents agree? She must be a free-will gift.” The man’s face was low and musical. Shivering with pleasure at its beauty, Serroi paid little attention to what the two men were saying. Adults talked over her head all the time about things she found complicated and uninteresting. Instead, she concentrated on the singing joy his voice made of his words.

  Grandfather shrugged. “Summers-end she goes to the priest anyway. My son consents.”

  “The child’s mother?” The ruby flashed sparks of crimson as he spoke.

  Serroi sneaked a look at Grandfather at the stranger’s question. His red-brown eyes opened wide with surprise that anyone would bother about what a woman thought. “The out-daughter will do what my sons says.”

  “Then put your mark on this.” The beautiful stranger slipped fingers inside his sleeve and drew out a short roll of parchment which he handed to Grandfather. “It is a deed of gift.” He proffered a tiny pot of black grease and showed Grandfather how to set the mark of his thumb on the deed. When that was done, he took the parchment, rolled it again and tucked it back in his sleeve. Once again he smiled down at Serroi, held out his hand. “Come, child.”

  Lost and bewildered, wanting to do what he said, afraid of what was happening, she looked from her scowling grandfather to the beautiful man, then walked hesitantly toward him. After a final glance at the chinin pups who stopped their playing and sat on their haunches watching her, she took the stranger’s hand and trotted beside him, her short legs taking several steps to his one. After a few minutes she looked back. The pups still sat in a ragged half circle, their eyes mournful as they watched her leave. A chini pup howled suddenly and the others joined him. Disturbed by the sound, she bit down on her lip and walked faster beside the dark figure striding across the tundra toward one of the many outcroppings of rock rising like snaggle teeth from the rolling land.

  Behind the rock a vinat was tethered to a heavy stone, grazing at the soft spring grass. He was hitched to a carved and painted cart like those the Iangi priests rode in when they traveled between the windrunner camps. Around the four sides, carved vinat with gilded horns leaped and ran on a yellow ground. Above and below them ran chains of red and yellow flowers, green leaves and twisting vines. Over the top of the car arched carved
ribs with loops where a covering could be tied, though there was no cover on them now. Serroi watched as the stranger lowered the back gate of the cart and began untying thongs on a large leather bag.

  With an odd quiver in her stomach, she moved away to the grazing vinat and stroked tentative fingers over the thick fleecy curls along the animal’s front legs. The graceful narrow head lifted, the limber neck curved round and the vinat was nuzzling at her, its nostrils quivering, ears flicking with pleasure as she scratched along the jaw line just above the fibrous beard that could sting like fire when the vinat brushed it over an attacking predator. More stiff short fibers shone like gold wire on the palmate horns. With its throat protected, with its horns given an added sting, with its razor-sharp hooves, the vinat was a nasty fighter and hard to handle, even half-tame.

  “Come here, child.” The musical voice had a touch of warmth that surprised her. Her heart beating erratically, hoping for she knew not what, she left the vinat and circled the cart. The man took her hand, smiled down at her from his great height. He looked gentler now, less like a long-tooth sicamar prowling a herd. “Sit here.” He pointed to a small rock sunk deep in sweetgrass and limul flowers. As she sat, he brought a basin filled with water and perfumed white foam. He knelt beside her, settling the basin in the grass by her boot toes. After turning back his sleeves, he dipped a rag in the water and gently cleaned her face. The cloth caressed her skin though the foam got in her eyes and stung them. The water was deliciously warm. She sat very still, vibrating with pleasure at the warmth, the gentleness which she took for tenderness, the first she’d experienced since her mother weaned her. When he finished with her face, he washed her hands thoroughly, even cleaning out the small arcs of dirt under her short bitten fingernails.