Aloren

  “Gracious gods.” Trid sat back on his hands. “Why do you hate us so much?”

  I stopped rocking. “Three guesses.”

  “We’re not all like Andrei. Have you never met a decent human? And it’s not completely his fault. He’s in a trouble spot.”

  “What?” I said hysterically. “What’s he got to be troubled about?”

  “I’m not allowed to tell you,” he said. I stopped to think. Trid kept his friendships guarded. I failed to remember any ugly or alarming things coming from Trid’s mouth, and my heart slowed.

  “Swear on your silence?” I slid farther from him and rose to my knees.

  “Yes.” But he frowned, remaining seated. “I haven’t much to go on, anyway. And you won’t tell me more, will you?” He looked down at the slates, and then up, scowling a little. “I don’t like this,” he said, “and you’re right. I won’t be able to watch the dancing. This hurts my stomach enough right here. Listen––and clean the pride out of your ears––can’t I have someone take you in? You’re a very small girl, and even if you weren’t––whoever you said you were, I should like to think you’re fed regularly and warm in the winter.”

  I began to cry. “No, don’t, Aly.” He climbed to his feet, and I followed suit, backing away. “Don’t make me feel worse,” said Trid miserably. “I could help you, if you’d stop refusing it.”

  Ashamed of my tears, I scrambled over the slates, keeping in the shadows.

  Twenty-One

  I wasn’t sure what to do with myself afterwards, and I jumped at small noises and kept out of direct sunlight. I visited none of my regular haunts, making it very difficult for anyone, including Floy and Mordan, and Trid, to track me down.

  Padlimaird and I were catching up one day, sharing a smoke. We’d stolen Wille’s old pipe and a bit of Nefer’s leaf to ‘calm my nerves’, as Padlimaird put it. He’d seen me slide beneath an overturned boat to hide from what looked like Trid’s brown horse; and he pulled me out, saying I was like to grow a shell like a turtle.

  So we sat beneath a magnolia on the harbor’s eastern bulwark, and I was drawing the sweet smoke from the wood when Trid and Max crept up behind Padlimaird.

  Max held a fish above Padlimaird’s head. He squeezed, and muck snaked out from a hole below the tail and dribbled all over Padlimaird’s orange hair. The pipe fell out of my mouth.

  Paddy felt the goop on his neck and jumped to his feet. He turned white as the spring sun on the water. Max collapsed into laughter, and before I had the chance to smile I clenched both sides of my head and scowled.

  “Explain yerself,” I said.

  Max wiped his eyes and sat up. “A bet.”

  “Do you ever stop betting?” I said.

  “Do you ever stop wilting things?” He glanced at the tree.

  “Hasn’t wilted,” I said. “There, you won.”

  “No, I bet Trid I’d be the first to make you bloom something.”

  “You tom-fool,” said Padlimaird. His hair was sopping, as he’d just dunked his head in the water. “Why would that’ve made her happy? What ye really need to do is give her a swollen ass, or anyone, really, to yell at. She loves yellin. Or y’should make an idiot out of yerself instead of me.”

  “By now,” said Trid, “she should’ve bloomed every tree in the city.”

  “Don’t work like that, m’lord.” Padlimaird wiped his face on his shirt. “You gotta be touchin them, and it’d be a mighty wondrous thing to see Aloren touchin every tree in the city. She probably can’t get her arms all the way around this one.”

  “But I did give her someone to yell at,” said Max. “That tree didn’t move.”

  “This little tree?” said Padlimaird. “Too small. Don’t work with trees like this. Give her time to make up an insult for everyone she knows and she’ll unfurl an avenue of oaks.”

  “I thought she had to be touching them,” said Trid.

  “That’s a fine looking thing you got there.” Max nodded at the pipe.

  “Have a drag,” said Padlimaird brightly. “Wille won’t mind human slobber all over it. Not like he uses it anymore.”

  Max picked it up and took a big draw. He coughed and buckled over with a green face, and soon everyone was laughing except him.

  ***

  “What’d it taste like?” said Max’s twin brother. “Poxy rat arse?” The swallows played tag, zipping in and out of cracks between the stones set where the river poured into the harbor. The boys had found me swimming in my old chemise, diving for mussels. It was hot, and Luka insisted the harbor was off-limits for swimming and threatened to tell the nearby guardsmen.

  At this Andrei ripped off his shirt and ran out on the nearest pier. But he stopped and came back when Max began describing his handsome smoke rings. I climbed out and dropped my mussels on a rock.

  “Everyone has the same saliva,” said Trid testily. I cracked a mussel and ate it.

  “Not really.” Pulling his shirt back over his head, Andrei sat next to Trid. He scrunched his nose at me. “Depends what the person’s been eating.”

  “Not exactly a person, is she?” Luka watched me crack another.

  Trid stared at him. “What’s your mother been teaching you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Luka to Trid. “What’s your uncle been teaching you?”

  “Nothing. My uncle’s in Dirlan.”

  “Yes. How convenient for him that you’re here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re reporting back to him, aren’t you?”

  “What in the seven hells are you talking about?” Andrei frowned at Luka.

  Max flicked his brother’s ear. “One of his ‘Trid’s a spy from the enemy state’ theories.”

  I sucked on my third mussel and wondered when it was that Lorila had become an enemy state.

  “Natridom’s almost old enough to be investigated,” said Luka, shrugging. “Old enough to be an informer for Caveira, anyway. I’ll bet he’s writing mountains of letters about these soldiers from Omben.”

  Trid rolled his eyes, but his ears went red.

  “Luka,” said Andrei, “go fling your shit around with the other monkeys.”

  “A couple more months, Natridom, until you’re sixteen. Can’t wait to see what they find. Herist isn’t very happy about Caveira’s military. I can’t see him any happier with you, if it turns out––”

  “If he’s questioned at all”–– Andrei was standing up now––“it won’t be by Herist. He’ll be questioned by me.”

  “That’s unlikely,” said Luka, smirking up at him. “How are you going to turn sixteen before he does?”

  I looked up. “How could Herist be any more likely? Interrogating Trid about Caveira, his old accomplice?”

  “Aloren, be quiet,” said Trid.

  “It’d be so easy to shut him up, why are you still––?” I glanced at Andrei and threw my last mussel into the harbor.

  “We need to talk,” Andrei said to Trid.

  “About what? How silver is more grey than white?”

  “Maybe.”

  Without another word the two boys walked down a side street, leaving their horses roped to a poplar and grazing on the grassy levee. Max stretched his neck after them.

  “Poxy rat arse?” He turned to his twin. “You taste like poxy rat arse.”

  “Me?” Luka idly cracked a snail under his boot. “Andrei’s the poxy rat arse.”

  The boys laughed and the laughs sounded identical.

  “A perfect monster.”

  “I say we leave before they come back in horrible moods.”

  I shivered, even though the sun was out and baking the stones. One of them said something to me, but I turned my back and they walked away, voices fading.

  The chips of the swallows filled the silence. Then a great shrieking and howling came from beneath the boulders to my left.

  I jumped up and clambered over the stones, where a pool of silt collected before the water found the harbo
r. A crew of older boys, workmen’s sons by the clean look of their shabby clothes, most of them Gralde, crowded round the strip of muck. They were torturing a saebel.

  She was made of mud and river, slimy, squirming, shimmering like an eel. Algae hung from her fishbone teeth. The boys, stupid as they were, knew at least not to touch her, and they held her in place with sticks.

  I wormed through the group and kicked at the sticks. “Stop it! She’ll give you a lifetime of bad luck, you dolts.” I pushed them back, and the saebel fixed her green eyes on me.

  Before I could leap away, she slipped her weedy hand into mine and pulled me through the water and into her eyes.

  My hair waved about my chin, green-black. My hands reached for a surface that wasn’t there, swirling the murk. I panicked, struggling, but it was no use: she held me by the broken strings of my spirit, unhurt by the flame, grinning with her bony teeth.

  Helping, you who ask no help?

  You shan’t allow us the return of favors?

  Half acts weaken earthly balance;

  Bargain is the language with which

  We soothe our skins.

  “You can’t help,” I said. “Let go.” Instead, she yanked at my spirit threads. The pain slammed up and down my body, and she seemed to delight in it.

  Tell me, daughter of clay, who is alone?

  We are alone.

  You are caught in a circle.

  We are alone, standing

  Like trees in a wood, rushes in a pond.

  The balance can tip no further.

  The river runs the wrong way,

  Taking us from this side

  To weigh heavy on the other.

  We haven’t a circle, or a net,

  But gifts we have,

  So the spheres

  Don’t roll from their foundations.

  “I don’t want your gifts.” The gifts of the saebelen were double-edged swords. “Leave me alone.” But she didn’t like being refused; it hurt like a needle through the eyeball.

  No gifts, warm heart?

  A lesson, then.

  The roots groan

  And the green fades,

  But the earth musn’t roll away.

  A lesson, flowing through seasons,

  With heartbreak beneath,

  For spiritbreak

  Dappled on the surface,

  Isn’t enough for us who are alone and fading,

  Daughter of clay.

  She let go of my fire and disappeared.

  I stood in the sunlight, shaking from the pain, ankle-deep in mud.

  “A lifetime of bad luck?” said one of the boys. He was almost grown, his chin patchy. “You wouldn’t give us the same, would you?”

  “She’s an angel,” said another boy. He took a pull from a jug. “And almost naked in that thing.” He smiled. “A sweet little angel, wet as a snat.” He gave my hair a yank. His breath stank of whiskey.

  “She wants it. Look at her, so eager,” said one. His face was pointy, like a rat’s. They crowded round me, heads knocking together.

  I stepped back and felt rock against my shoulders. I wondered at my stupidity––I wondered where Floy was. Bile burned in my throat.

  I jumped at Rat-face and ripped his shirt. Laughing, the others caught my arms and pushed me into the rock.

  “Look at those forearms on her,” said one. “Taming lions, sweetheart?”

  Rat-face fished for a handful of mud. “She’ll do for a bit of taming.” He squeezed my jaw open and pushed the stuff into my mouth. I jerked back and bit his fingers. He howled and the boys laughed appreciatively.

  “Now he should be made to kiss her.”

  “Graic had a fine idea. Let’s mark her up,” said another one, shoving Graic away and dipping his hand in the mud.

  “No,” I said, wrestling with their hands. “Let go.”

  “Shush.” He drew something big and lewd on my chemise. “Looks pretty.”

  “What’re you doing?” Andrei’s voice came from the back. “I’ll call the greys.”

  “The greys?” drawled the boy in front of me, turning round, taking his hand back. “What are you, Herist’s arse fuck?”

  Andrei laughed, and it made me positively sick. “He’d prefer your mother over me, I’m sure.”

  The boys in front of me stiffened––caught sight of his broach, probably. I was shaking in huge, wet jerks, sick with disgust and so angry I felt I must scream or melt. The boys gaped like fish.

  “Move,” he said, and they went right enough, and I pushed after them, eager to be gone.

  I slapped into his front, imprinting the lewd picture on his stomach. I collected my limbs and wiped the stomach with an arm.

  This did nothing for it. He pushed through the water with leaping strides. I dived and grabbed his ankles, and we both fell into the mud.

  “Where’re you going?” I shouted. He tried to get up but I pushed him down. “Take all ten o’ em single handed, would ye, you great, stupid fuck?” I lost my senses, and began pounding on him, kicking, punching and slapping.

  He dragged himself to his feet, covered in mud, and I drummed fists on his chest and ripped at his hair. My rage was a fire in the head. He caught me by the waist, and all I could see was a monster, Herist, the Queen.

  I bent over to bite his arm; he flung me away. My back slammed against the rock, and I fell in the mud, legs sticking out. He turned at the noise I made, and my mouth was already open, so I said, “Go after em, then.”

  “Are you sane?” Big drops fell into the water around him. “I’ll have bruises over every inch of me, I expect.” He wiped mud from his upper lip. “I wanted to make certain they knew my face.”

  “Ugliest face in the city.”

  “Well it is now,” he said angrily. “I’m sorry.” He took my arm and pulled me up.

  “You’re a brute, that’s what y’are.”

  When we climbed up to the horses Trid was sitting on the grass. “You were frightened,” said Andrei to him, “that when all was said and done she would’ve called you a brute.”

  Trid looked up, and tossed me an embroidered bit of red wool. “Wear your tunic.”

  It was scarcely my fault. But I didn’t tell Floy. And the mere thought of my brothers finding out made me sick.

  ***

  A row of old peach trees hung over the road by the sea cliffs. I passed them every day at dawn. They were noisy––singing, gossiping, laughing; they helped me endure the weaving. I hummed their songs as I wrapped stems around my bleeding hands and twisted ropes of saxifrage, columbine and sorrel.

  Leode’s framework was finished: it looked more a pile of compost than a tunic; and I was almost done with Arin’s, which practice and honed skill had rendered a little more shirt-like.

  The morning after the trouble with the boys I walked past the peach trees. I was musing over the saebel’s groaning roots and rolling spheres, and when I’d gone downward a-ways I found I had no tree song to hum.

  I retraced my steps and wasted half my hour digging around the roots, climbing the branches, and kicking the trunks. But I didn’t hear a single word or note.

  They were dead in spirit, and I sat down on the path and cried. My hair stuck to my face. Floy sat on a bough above my head and sang so anxiously that Mordan heard her song all the way from the pool.

  “They’re dead,” I said when he flew into my lap. “All of em. I was too late to lay me hands.”

  “You’d have been too young, too.” My tunic knocked his feathers around and he looked at my chest with a rolling eye. “You’ll get into trouble, with that rose showing.”

  “I’ll get in trouble either way.” I thought of the Gralde who had started the trouble yesterday and the human who had stopped it. “What’s the difference, anyways? Between humans and Elde?”

  “Arrogance,” my brother said immediately, and he stepped off my ankle. “Arrogance is the difference.”

  He started pacing, and my eyelids lowered and my mind wandered
––thinking of Andrei’s face, which yesterday, dripping with mud and red from my slaps, hadn’t looked so much ugly as bewildered. I felt a bit guilty and shifted my legs. My brother kept on: “A tree isn’t self-sustaining. A tree needs the sun. We need it, too. But humans, they think they can generate their own sunlight.”

  “Like a fungus?”

  “Reyna––”

  “Sure wish I could.” I threw a rock at a dead tree. “Maybe it would’ve helped them trees, too.”

  “Those trees didn’t fall asleep for lack of sun.”

  “They were always thirsty.” I made a circle in the sand with my finger. “All of them are thirsty. And it rains plenty here.”

  “It’s the river. Be happy you haven’t got to see.”

  “What’s happened to the Cheldony?” I looked up. “A saebel sang she was running the wrong way. A very old saebel. Do the old ones tell the truth? Is the river running backwards, Mordan?” But he wouldn’t answer, and the peach trees were just a tick in a big tally.

  Since my visit to the Cheldony two years back I’d begun to notice. The trees were tired, without energy, like old folk who stop drinking water, and dry up. But I never heard tree-song as dead as what was in those peaches along the road, and I started making visits to other trees I knew in the city.

  One by one they fell silent: the magnolia on the bulwark, the locusts beneath the belltower, the apple trees in the riverside square, the maple beneath Natty’s window. Tired, they said, tired, tired, tired. And then a hard silence, like bare rock in winter. Folk talked about it in brief, or not at all, as though it were too grave to take seriously.

  On the day the maple fell silent I wandered along the river. A group of men were fortifying the banks with sand and stone, hidden by the steep hill, singing heaving songs. A clump of mountain laurel grew here, and whenever I waxed morose I would creep under them to hear the air-tales the trees traded of rain, earth, and nesting weavers.

  The buds hadn’t opened yet, as though the sleepiness had spread to the outer bushes. I crawled beneath them; their voices were faint and I tried to sing them awake: