A Succession of Bad Days

by Graydon Saunders

  There’s another truly gentle smile from Grue, just at Chloris.

  “For myself? I identify as happy.” Grue says that in a completely serious way.

  Chloris nods. That wasn’t any kind of a joke, Grue completely means it.

  Halt’s taken the needles out of something, looks like it’s done. The butt-ends get tapped on the table, reflexive length checking, I think, only maybe it’s not as reflexive when Halt does it, all that knitting patterns into the Power. Grue looks up, over at Halt, back at Chloris and Zora.

  “What does not kill us makes us stranger, and who would be a stranger?” It might be a quote, it’s meant kindly, but Grue says it as a definite thing. “We all get eccentric, and agree not to use words like normal or even regular at one another unless we mean statistics, and then only if we must.”

  Zora nods, five or six times. Chloris nods, on the way to sitting down and folding over, head in hands. I tuck myself under Dove’s arm, and Dove leans on me. Just a little, or we fall over, but Dove leans back.

  “Halt?” I can feel Dove’s head tipping, just a little to the side, before Dove asks this.

  “Yes?” Halt says, looking up from rapid needles.

  “Do you ever shape-shift?” There are all manner of stories. The knowledge of them isn’t in Dove’s voice, asking the question.

  Halt smiles. “Never, Dove dear. Though sometimes I stop pretending.”

  Dove grins, nodding thanks at Halt. I can feel it just about as easily as I can feel myself smiling.

  Halt gives me a look, and I peel myself out from under Dove’s arm, heat up the teapots, and start pouring tea for everybody. Grue’s got one of the glass company tea mugs, Halt’s always got a teacup. Well, a teacup from an extensive collection, this one is painted with dark blue dusk-roses at an incredible level of detail. There’s a plate of, cookies? biscuits? Thin square shapes. We didn’t have that in the larder.

  Everyone gets their tea, social tea, not the desperate need for fluid, there’s a tinkling of spoons, and everyone gets a, call it a biscuit. Nothing I’ve ever had before. Some kind of shortbread?

  “It is customary,” Halt says, “to label leornere for the public safety.” We get a smile. “Polite circumlocutions confuse. You know enough to be dangerous, and not enough to be reliable.”

  We’re all nodding.

  Halt starts producing lumps of fabric, hats, they’re hats, from that voluminous knitting bag, and hands them to us. If it’s knitting, the needles weren’t a millimetre wide. You know basic 'one black fleece, three white fleeces’ grey? They’re that colour, but it’s not wool. Some kind of silk? There’s really no guessing what kind of fibres Halt has access to. Round hats, no brim, it’s an eight-centimetre-deep band with an oval top and something even finer for a lining. Darker lining. Of course it fits. Two black buttons, one over the other.

  “Buttons over the left eye.” Grue sounds cheerful, not Grue-is-always-cheerful cheerful, but entirely cheerful. Grue was one of Halt’s students, this might be additions to the family from Grue’s point of view.

  “Those hats are for formal occasions.” Halt produces pieces of card, each with four buttons. “The label of custom is two buttons, vertically arranged in the hat band. Circles filled with embroidery if you must.”

  I take my card, take the hat off, take a careful look, turn out to be a bit slower than Zora turning up the lights. The black in the buttons is something very shiny, set in metal. The black stuff looks like it has depth, it can’t, but it looks enough like it does that I peer at the back of the buttons on the card.

  “Thank you, Halt.” We all say it at more or less the same time. Dove, whose buttons are red and gold, three red and three gold, is just barely controlling a fit of giggles.

  What’s funny?

  Tell you later.

  Chloris has white and green, Zora a very changeable purple, light or dark, more or less red or blue, depending on the angle of the light.

  “Is dinner — ” it really is only just about dinner time — “a formal occasion?” Chloris asks.

  “Today, it might be,” Halt says, clearly pleased.

  No one says anything at dinner, in the very Creek way where you don’t say anything because taking any kind of formal notice wouldn’t be polite.

  Zora manages to shift into Zora fourteen days later. If there’s a visible change, I can’t see it. Whatever it is, Grue agrees that it’s real, and spends some time talking Zora out of going straight for trying to turn into a tree.

  Chloris takes another three days past that. Chloris produces visible changes, hair shifting a couple of green shades lighter. Over the next month, the darker of the two greens goes silver, the implausible silver of molten aluminium in a vacuum, not the hair colour that gets called silver, a change that makes Chloris giddy, just ‘happy’ isn’t enough.

  Dove, twenty-one days into trying, quietly stands up and looks like they rose more lightly. It’s not a big change, but visible, sharper of face and springier of motion. ‘Springier’ comes out in the classes with Block, whose eyes crinkle a tiny amount before noting that excellence may be expected of a combination of youth and treachery.

  Day twenty-eight, I have the clever notion that I might be going about this wrong. It’s the right kind of idea, I think, but I am, after all, not a dot. I’m trying to make theory work as practice.

  Wind up walking out the door of the house in my head, Dove’s head, our head, up the jumbled rocks, down to the loose smooth grey cobbles of the beach. I find a cobble about the right size for Edgar’s head, and lug it back to the flat space outside the door into the dim quiet of the back garden. Searching around in the jumbled rocks provides rocks I can pile up as legs and torso and arms. Stubby arms. The big round cobble goes on top of the pile.

  I put clothes on it, Creek-style pants and wrapped jacket, what I’ve been wearing this winter. Wouldn’t work with material rocks or material pants. Haven’t got a hat. Hrmm. I fish a hat out of the house, stick — they stay where I put them — a couple of teeny black pebbles on the brim.

  Back up to the beach. It’s always very dim, always the same temperature, I would have felt cold, but I don’t, not anymore. Even if I let go of the house, let go of the circulation with Dove, let go of most of Edgar, really, I’m fine.

  The water’s colder than the air, but still, it’s fine. I don’t go out very far, there’s a sort of bay, and out past the bay-mouth bar, this long sand-spit, it’s deep. There are things down there, I can feel them. Not evil, not angry, but hungry would be a good bet. I can stay in the bay, it’s got enough to eat for now.

  It takes a bunch of trips. There’s some weed that does for hair, there’s a couple round smooth polished bits of shell for eyes, there’s bits of carapace, scattered about on the bottom, that I can drape over the shoulders of the stones. It’s not the real thing, but it’ll do as a stand-in, and Edgar’s going to need armour.

  I have no idea how Halt does this, anything like this, with that spider in the way.

  Squeezing through a spider would be really insanely fiddly.

  The pile of rocks looks right, it’s Edgar, I’ve got the gaps and the seams out of it, it’d be a presentable statue in a memorial garden, it’s getting so the colours are right, it’s one even composition now, all the same kind of stone. The bits of carapace are sitting beside it, I don’t understand armour. Edgar’s still going to need it, but it’s going to have to wait.

  “Praise then stone and the basis of being,” Dove says behind me.

  I turn around. Dove’s just stepped out of the open door, head tipped, just a little, looking at the statue. “You didn’t ask Wake for the whole poem?”

  “Didn’t realize there was a whole poem.”

  “They think there are nine elements, where Wake’s from. Stone’s the bottom one, the one everything else sits on.”

  I nod, well, sorta. It makes sense, I mean, stone’s just chemicals, but if you’re starting before you’ve got the idea of chemicals or charg
e, it’s the most durable stuff, and there’s an awful lot of it, and everything else is piled on top of it most of the time.

  “This hatching?” Dove doesn’t sound worried. There are flames in Dove’s hair, individual red-and-crimson ones, tucked behind each ear like feathers, and you can see gold fire coiling in Dove’s eyes.

  “Making sure I don’t lose Edgar when I do hatch.” The jacket and pants are beside the statue, right now. Checking for seams. None left, it’s one solid Edgar.

  “I think that’s what happened to Halt, lost the human. Probably twice.”

  “Twice?” Dove doesn’t sound doubtful, just curious.

  “Grandma Halt’s stuffed through that spider. I don’t think the spider was voluntary, it’s a lot of trouble and no benefit I can see. Pretty sure that’s a lost human. I just have the feeling there was one before that, Halt’d have to have had a lot of practice to be able to get Grandma Halt through the spider.”

  “Can I put some plants back here?”

  “Sure.”

  Boxwood and dusk-roses in red and gold and pearl-grey and midnight blue, you won’t find the last three colours growing anywhere material, and tiny flowers like stars in dark, dark green leaves for ground cover. The statue’s got a plinth, too. And I think those are yew trees, up toward the rocks.

  Dove’s really warm. We’re a bit more balanced, hugging like this. “Aren’t you a fright,” isn’t supposed to sound affectionate, but Dove doesn’t leave anything but affection in it. “Do I get to make Edgar-requests?”

  “Taller?”

  Dove’s head shakes. The fire-feathers, well, say tickle. Weird sensation.

  “Great strapping lads haven’t worked so well,” Dove says. “Edgar’s doing entirely fine for looking at, and you’ve continued the trend.” Dove’s chin lifts, pointing at the statue.

  “Edgar will be a lot happier not worrying about broken ribs from a hug.”

  Dove snorts. “Not to mention getting out in front of Block’s exercise program.”

  “That, too.” Edgar’s statue’s muscle definition is implausible. Implausible isn’t going to stop Block trying, and Block’s got, we’ve got, a long time. I’d rather sooner than later.

  “Under-equipped for a Creek?” Edgar’d be stuttering that, it’s a lot easier to think about when I don’t have to be Edgar.

  “Some,” Dove says. “Prehensile, generally, and can spiral both directions, specifically, are ahead of size by my preferences. Retractile, if you do worry about size.”

  No wonder Kynefrid looked so astonished after that first tavern visit. “Can you wait for a bit?”

  Dove nods.

  It takes awhile to find the right rock, long enough that I grab a snack. Mustn’t think of Dove as tasty. Dove smells tasty, but that’s short-term thinking. Much more sensible to have that hunger become Edgar’s urge for squishy mammal skin contact.

  Dove’s sitting on a bench by the door that wasn’t there before, but that’s fine, it’s just furniture, a memory of wood and iron.

  Adding the rock is only a little complicated, getting the statue right meant a lot of practice.

  I look over at Dove, then I try to look inquisitive. Dove smiles, nods, stands up, extends a hand.

  “Done for now?”

  “Done for now.” Time to be Edgar again. I mean, I am Edgar, if Edgar is anything that talks, it’s just as accurate to say material, at least until I hatch.

  “Good,” Dove, taking the hand I’ve just now got to take. “It’s been three days, only person not looking concerned is Halt.”

  I’m saying “Three days?” as we step back through the door and I’m sitting up in my bed in the Round House.

  Chapter 22

  Wake had four months in the schedule for learning shape-shifting. It takes me a few days, but I manage to feel better about my thirty-one days after learning that, and Zora only barely manages to avoid being smug.

  Wake manages to look pleased, greatly to the credit of Wake’s name as a teacher. It’s more and more obvious that the teachers are juggling teaching us and running all over the Second Commonweal doing things they’re the only people available to do. “The work of Independents summarizes as ‘is it safe?’, ‘can we make it safe?’ and ‘is it good for anything?’” Wake says.

  Somewhere around the third day of getting used to, call it the material advancements, Dove picks me up and hugs me, might be as hard as the feeling asks, rather than as hard as Dove can, but I’d have needed medical treatment before either way. Now I can just hug back.

  It’s an improvement.

  Getting used to being hugged with my feet off the floor, well, I’m willing to practise.

  Wake’s cheerful resumption of teaching us everything about mud, well. We need to know. But I couldn’t call it an improvement.

  Wake alternates with Grue; just because we can manage to turn into ourselves doesn’t mean we’re done with shape-shifting. Grue starts discussing control and broad alterations of metabolism in between having us practise shifting on short notice, or into versions of ourselves that aren’t tired or hungry and only aren’t tired or hungry, no other change. That’s a lot, much tougher to do than it sounds like it ought to be. You know you’re tired in some really basic way.

  It takes about a décade to get used to being so much stronger. I only break one plate. Turns out Creeks get strong, the kids are like kids anywhere, the horseshoe-bending thews come on in youth. So they’re all sympathetic and random folks in the refectory tell me stories about the time they pulled their shirt-sleeve over their head when they were fourteen. I try to give suitably Creekly answers. Nobody looks offended.

  Wake has everybody else break a plate, and runs us through fix-things-through-alternative-probabilities mending of them, the tiny-small version of pulling the Tall Woods into existence from far away in chance. Zora suggests we do it linked up, so that way we can agree on the colour. This works; the mended, never-broken, there’s probably a specific word in some language somewhere, plates are all the same colour. They’re not, quite, the same colour as the other plates, but they’re all exactly the same as each other.

  Wake looks visibly pleased, which is a surprise. This is supposed to be an easy thing to do. I ask. Apparently we may be asked to do this again, in the presence of people with colour-measuring devices, having potentially demolished a large old branch of probability theory as applied to the Power.

  Aside from the plate, it’s as though everything became lighter. Including Steam, who gives me an appalled look the first time we do push-hands, after. “Doesn’t show when Ed’s dressed,” Dove says, and there’s a two décade supply of appalled, severe, and displeased looks from nearly everyone in the new battalion. Student-buttons or not, the Line considers Dove one of theirs. Saying anything won’t help me, so I don’t. Chloris and Zora individually produce a few “Bath!” remarks when the appalled starts to slide into actively disapproving. That runs into descriptions of the bathtub at the Round House and, in a few days, tentative questions from our host gean about how hard was the tub to make? Is blue the only colour?

  Blossom, who apparently has ‘think of something’ for a syllabus that afternoon, says “What colour were you thinking of?” and then “We’re not that short of iron,” and we go make a big green tub that’s only green for the outer five millimetres or so. Managing the whole diffusion thing is trickier that way, it feels slippery, but the whole thing still feels easier, in that ‘done this before’ sort of way. Which doesn’t make any sense. Zora did the tub; I’ve done window panels, we all did window panels, but the windows were made as clear as we could. It still feels easier. Might just be like the drain-gates; those were horrible the first time, but knowing they worked last time counts for a lot.

  Zora makes the drain-plugs out of nickel, solid nickel. Low domes forty centimetres across still weigh more than thirty kilos. “Durable,” the person who runs the bathhouse says, in what I’m nearly sure are completely approving tones.

  Th
e bathhouse roof is not meant to come off; “We could pick the whole building up?” doesn’t really sound like a question when Chloris asks it, and there are concerned faces. Blossom takes a couple hours to have us practise the ‘further away in a funny direction’ thing on some unwanted hunks of rock in a corner of the stone-yard. We produce some gravel and a couple hundred kilogrammes of stone dust. Trickier than it looks. Blossom then slides the tub far enough away in that odd direction it’d be too small to hold most loaves of bread and floats it into the bathhouse, because ‘further away in funny directions’ and ’lighter' have nothing to do with each other.

  Four days later we do the other three tubs; something about heat retention and ease of cleaning, officially, plus someone in our host-gean having located some scrap iron, an old keg of older nails rusted into a single mass in the dim corner of a cellar. I suspect it’s got something to do with everybody wanting to use the shiny new tub, but can hardly complain. I’ve been using Zora’s splendid first example of the type for a season.

  It’s quietly studious, mostly, the winter. I get better at everything in fits and starts. It seems to be either that or some things are easy and some things are hard to impossible. Happy to take ‘some progress everywhere’.

  Dove has trouble with the book parts, just as expected. If Dove can’t hold it, it’s not quite real. ‘Hands’ goes a long way, any exercise of the Power counts as ’hands', but words on the page, as a collection of facts, frustrate Dove. It’s not that Dove has trouble reading; can read fine, will read for fun. About one in twenty in the Creeks can’t, far more tactile in how they learn than Dove is, by no means stupid people but turning symbols into words doesn’t work for them. There’s not much to be done for it; the Book-gesith got mightily concerned about it, generations back, and there’s been some prying at the problem ever since, but whatever went into the Creeks is somewhat less talky and somewhat more clever of hand than the general average of people.