A Succession of Bad Days

by Graydon Saunders

  No upset, not much taken aback. Lots of startle. A bunch of waves and nods and one very hearty “Good morning!”. We smile back as well as we can, it’s not heavy, not functionally, but it’d be really embarrassing to drop it, so we’re concentrating.

  The garden gets us into afternoon, and there’s a sort of general pause. “I don’t feel like I’ve caught up with myself yet,” Chloris says, and Dove nods. I feel like I’m the part left behind, the Edgar I ought to be still way out in front, but close enough.

  Zora says “That tree wasn’t there before.”

  It wasn’t, it’s, I don’t know, grey bark, the leaves are mostly oval with jagged edges, and not the same shade of green as the sad forb, deeper. It’s maybe fifteen metres high. Certainly wasn’t there before, we’ve put in a bunch of marsh but it’s still all the same sad forb where it isn’t pond or garden.

  “It’s inside the Peace.” Dove, sounding contemplative. Dove’s angry about missing the tree, but you couldn’t tell from outside.

  “It’s Mulch.” A stiff, fibrous version of Mulch, but the feel is the same. Might be checking on how the ponds came out, we’ve been following Mulch’s advice, as best we wrote it down. Not the same as the centuries of experience behind the advice.

  Not the same as a tree’s view of the groundwater.

  “Do we say hello?” Chloris says, full of doubt.

  Dove’s head shakes. “How’d you spot Mulch, Zora?”

  “Groundwater,” Zora says. “Trying to feel the flow under the garden, if we got the clay layer right. There was a draw.”

  Dove nods. It’s not hard to tell Mulch is there, not if we think about it. There’s still something trying to shove your attention away, of course that tree’s always been there. Good argument against saying hello.

  “Next year,” Chloris says. Chloris thinks Mulch has been rude. Not sure I disagree, but anyone Grue holds up as an example of eccentricity, it’d be an interesting conversation to watch, if Mulch and Chloris ever started talking manners.

  Next morning, the tree is still there, we pass it both ways, down to breakfast and back.

  We don’t go into the Round House, we start walking, carefully, north, into the Tall Woods.

  Best weather we could hope to get, sun and clear sky and only warm. We’ve all got the white ponchos, Grue did something to the original bindings for us, sort of the idea of the braided grass is around the opening of the poncho hoods like decoration.

  We’re not wearing them, but there’s a truism about being prepared for rain.

  I don’t like woods.

  Trees are all right, I mean, shade, food, some of them, something to turn into doorknobs and drawer pulls, something for someone else to turn into doors, trees are important, but woods, wild woods, wild woods from some other world?

  All my experience of woods is being displaced and the stuff before the swamp where we helped rob what I wish was a grave. The first one had a lot of misery and an anti-panda in it, the second one would have been a fatal bad place on our own.

  “Inhale a bit, Ed, would you?” Dove says.

  I try. There’s a lot of, it’s not really spring underfoot, your feet don’t come back up, they do sink down, the leaves are deep and they smell like nothing else, old and patient the way coffee smells dark.

  It’s dim. I like the dim, it’s honest dim, all the leaves up there are eating the light.

  Dove reaches over and ruffles my hair.

  We’re not moving quickly at all. Chloris is caught between whatever around us asks attention and Spook, who can’t decide between mad with glee or terrified. Zora’s eyes are closed and arms wide out, standing in the idea of a tree reaching up for the sun.

  Dove, Dove is listening for birds.

  There are some remarkable birds. There’s one large one, all cyan and vermilion with a great shaggy head crest that’s a ripply green in the shade and a blue that smells of ozone in the full light.

  How did — ? I’d had the view of the thing as though I was standing maybe a metre away from it. Not the light-bending distance view that’s using the Power like a telescope.

  “The standards can do that, no reason we can’t,” Dove says.

  Chloris has given up, and picked Spook up. There’s some sort of negotiation, and Spook winds up on Chloris’ left shoulder, right front paw delicate on top of Chloris’ head.

  Zora’s, you can feel it, you can feel the precise moment when Zora decides that turning into a tree right here isn’t, Zora could, wants to, it’s longing, it’s still not a good idea.

  The butterfly wings sparkle, all the same, even if they’re, well, illusory, but it’s not a very disconnected illusory. The wings do stuff that’s not, I’m pretty sure it isn’t, intentional, it’s Zora’s mood leaking out.

  Zora and Chloris get a bit ahead, there’s a channel, here, it’s maybe a stream when it rains, and then there’s a real — rill? rivulet? really small, half a metre wide at most, maybe a decimetre between some rocks, of flowing water.

  It gurgles.

  Not any louder than the kitchen sink drain, but it gurgles.

  Or maybe chuckles, it’s hard to say.

  “We’re the most dangerous things here,” Dove says. “That ward of Wake’s is getting strong enough to worry Wake, it was set up to be enough if the whole mad idea didn’t work worth mentioning.”

  I wouldn’t have said worry, but I’ll admit I’m not sure how I’d tell worry from anything else, with Wake. The ward is getting strong enough that you see it without thinking about it, a cable three metres through trailed over the landscape.

  Dove’s chin lifts. “Zora’s all delighted at the interplay of life, at the mighty shapes of trees, the aliveness, all that xylem and phloem, air and water becoming wood, leaves becoming soil, all the beetles and the mushrooms. Chloris’d never say it this way, but all this life is all this death, too, everything living and dying undisturbed, it’s — ” Dove waves, at the sky-pillars of the trees, the dimness, the leaves of a thousand, ten thousand, years, generations of these five- and six- and seven-metre thick trees, bark the colour of quenched iron — “a very tidy ecology, it’s had time to get all its rough edges off.”

  “Me,” Dove’s gone quieter, “it’s fire turning into trees.” Dove makes another wave, and I can see as Dove sees, the sunlight on the leaves and the rising water, not as water, but energy, the pull from water becoming vapour, sun-heated, a huge slow heat-engine feeding the photon-swallowing chemistry that’s making more tree.

  “You,” Dove says, still quiet, “are waiting for something to leap out and kill us all.” I get a look, and a smile, actual smile, “Probably for fun, nothing as necessary as predation.”

  “I’m waiting for me to leap out and kill me.” Just as quiet, quieter, it’s Dove. What I mean for Dove to hear will be heard. Could hide us in different coal mines and only mouth the words.

  I get a look. It’s not disagreement.

  “Hatching’s not voluntary.”

  Deep breath.

  “Halt’s the only teacher who might know what’s going on, I’m supposing Halt does, but I’d never be able to tell if Halt only wanted me to think that, smarter than I am and older than rocks.”

  Dove starts to smile, and says “There’s a volcano somewhere.”

  “Lots of rocks.” Not all the rocks, but many more rocks than me.

  Dove takes my hand.

  “Even knowing what’s going on, Halt has to see me as the shell, it might even be a really pretty shell, but the point’s the healthy hatching, not preserving the shell.” This has been bubbling away down there somewhere for awhile.

  Another few steps, I have to jump over the rivulet, Dove can step, it’s a long step, but it works.

  “I’ve been acting like I’m going to be the Wizard Quiet.” Dove’s quiet enough saying it. “Been thinking of myself as hurt, broken, bereaved, something like that, for a long time.”

  We stop. Zora and Chloris are way ahead, there’s not even a g
lint of wing, but I know where they are, hundred-odd metres ahead, slightly left. My head’s leaning on Dove’s shoulder, it’s not really a hug.

  “You did lose — ” what do you say? — “Too much.”

  “Says the lad who lost everything.” Dove’s tone is wry.

  “I didn’t — ” I say, and stop. Because what do you say?

  “You didn’t have to cremate your kids, your brothers, or the handsome lad.” Dove’s, this isn’t sad, I don’t know if there’s a word for this. “My mother and my sister are still there, Gran made twice-sure I knew I was a source of pride, the March North wouldn’t have lessened that.”

  “I’m from here,” Dove says, then smiles. “Not right here.” Right here, under ancient trees from another world. “Around here, though.”

  The watershed of the West Wetcreek, sixty thousand people, it depends on how you count, Corner or not, West-East Canal or not. Not less than sixty thousand, could be a hundred and sixty thousand. Lots of cousins. Pretty much all of them know who Dove is, because Dove is a famous hero with the social standing to dispute with Halt as a matter of right, if Dove wants to.

  Even if it took me half a year, more, to put the pieces of that together well enough to notice.

  “Don’t want to,” Dove says.

  “Have to stop being angry about the name of hero.” Dove, I don’t think Dove can sound resigned, this is more like acknowledging that you’ve only pulled half the plants that aren’t peas and here comes the rain.

  “Angry?”

  “Lots of dead.” Dove looks up, takes a step, I take a step, too, it’s not really that I knew Dove would, it got into my spine without passing through thoughts. Still holding hands.

  “Blossom says that’s normal, blaming yourself for surviving. You’re not special, you miss them. They liked their classmates, that’s all I’ve ever heard Blossom or Grue say.”

  More steps, ten, twenty metres worth. “If Toby’d made it, made it here with us, Zora’d be a lot happier.”

  I get a view of a Creek lad, youngish, mid-twenties, maybe, not as much muscle as usual, the lightest haircolour mix, one of the rare ones, and an impression of grace. Then there’s a still image, same person, face still half-handsome, lying dead and bloody on short-grass meadow. There’s a lot of other people lying there beside one another. I can’t tell this, couldn’t, I get it from Dove, they’re laid out for burial, but fast. People cared but they cared more to find the living.

  “Toby’s shade kept on running One, came home in the standard and said farewells.”

  What I’m thinking doesn’t get into words, there aren’t words. There’s a hand squeeze, don’t think it was anybody’s idea, precisely.

  “Not a good day,” Dove says. “You stayed with the work you’d narrowly obtained, not your family, not gean and familiarity, they’re gone, not anywhere you’re ever likely to get again, then you lost your collective, lost your welcome with the work because of how you’d saved lives, then wound up finding out everything you knew about yourself was — ” Dove’s right hand waves at the rustling leaves, way up there — “likely wrong.”

  Step, step, step.

  “Better than dead kids is a long way downstream of best.”

  I don’t say anything. True, all of it, I haven’t been thinking about any of it because it seems, well, distant. It’s all real, there’s grief, but grief’s about the past. I’m being frightened by the future.

  We go through a shaft of sunlight, it’s not where a tree fell, it’s a bit of outcrop.

  “Do you know why Blossom likes living in the Creeks?”

  “I didn’t know Blossom did.” A bit like asking what geography the west wind likes best.

  “No propensity to do what wizards want.”

  “Doesn’t seem to give Halt any trouble.” Not that it would.

  “Most people, there’s this mix of ancestral meddling to make you want to do what the talented person says, at least four-fifths of the Old Commonweal population had enough to notice. Most of it responds proportional to talent.”

  There’s a pause, as we figure out how to get around a damp patch. No underbrush, generally, not enough light, but there’s ferns here, it’s wet enough and not too dim. Makes the woods seem older, somehow.

  “So Blossom had social trouble?”

  Dove sounds amused. “That, and getting really stuck on ideas because it was hard to think about desires, Blossom’s heredity had a lot of the propensity. Creeks don’t have it, whoever managed the original hybridization took it out, Grue hasn’t found any at all.”

  “Reason behind the reason.” That’s absent, half a thought, and Dove says Hrmm? at me in our head.

  “Why the salvage class is in Westcreek Town. Ostensible reason, there’s surplus enough; unspoken reason, that’s where Halt is, and everyone believes Halt can and will suppress any major lapses.”

  Dove nods.

  “Reason behind the reason, no one’s going to do what we want because we’re sorcerers.” Halt probably likes the challenge. Obvious how it’s good for us.

  Well, the purity of the results. Challenge is going three days too far.

  “Not because we’re sorcerers,” Dove says. “You didn’t, Zora didn’t, notice how that weeding went over. Don’t think Chloris noticed.”

  My turn to say “Hrmm?”

  “Wake went with having us try killing weeds in bunches, Halt agreed, because the food situation’s bad. We got the West Wetcreek watershed off the probable shortages list, there’s places they can’t get off famine risk lists, half the Folded Hills, there’s only one road, only so much food we can get in there. We’re, the West Wetcreek is, closest. We, the four of us, took a bunch of ‘who starves?’ decisions from likely to very unlikely for, well, a quarter of the Creeks.”

  Dove stops, looks up, eyes close, it looks like what people do with the sun on their face, in the dim under the leaves, and then the circle of sunlight around Dove’s about five metres across.

  I duck my hat brim, sort of lean in. Dove puts an arm around my shoulders. Wouldn’t go look for a sunbeam myself, but the internal ecology, fire and silence, fire and darkness, more fire is more silence. It’s a comfort.

  “I could take a Line company. Pretty sure you could, if you didn’t think about it. Together, we could give a battalion a bad day.” Dove’s voice is entirely calm, conversational. “Not supposed to be any apprentices on any list at all.”

  “We don’t know any warding.”

  “Still,” Dove says. “Those orchard buildings, that was a lot of output.”

  “Sanity must outrun power.” That’s a quote, it’s a famous quote, but no one knows who said it. It’s from the political process that created the Commonweal. There are people who think Laurel said it.

  There’s another scholarly position that thinks it was a sorcerer named Wheel, and the chronology of the first record is wrong. Four or five other attributions, it’s not even close to settled.

  Dove nods, it’s more of a hug for a bit.

  “The four of us together,” Dove says, and stops. More Power than anybody, more Power than anything short of a battle-standard or some hideous sacrifice-millions ritual out of the worst of the Bad Old Days. Every day, it’s normal, it’s honestly comforting.

  Power feeds on Power is a proverb, an old one. Anything that depends on the Power, and our increase in skill does, some, you have to have the Power there before you can do something with it, that’s why there’s an Independent qualification for Power raising. We’re never really without access to the Power, someone by themselves would be, would go cold, I think the Independent jargon is, from something Wake said once. We haven’t. So anything depending on the Power goes quicker. Hatching might be such a thing.

  Can’t see why the class survival statistics wouldn’t be. Not having the other students makes it harder, it’s not going to keep Kynefrid from making it, but Kynefrid’s going to work more.

  “Been thinking,” Dove says, which is I mean thi
s with the utmost seriousness, translated out of Creek — “ I’ve been stuck, imagining myself in one particular place, nowhere to go.”

  Dove’s voice is calm, quiet, I could never call it conversational.

  “Always becoming an Independent, a better sorcerer, that’s who I am, not what I do. So who I am can’t be still.” Dove expects this to make a happy future, or maybe a happy future Dove, there might be a difference.

  “Moving toward wholeness.” That’s from something in the Galdor-gesith’s files, a description of an Independent who got damaged fighting something or other, I didn’t understand what. That there was considerable effort expended to put them back together, to give them time and circumstances where they could be sane again, and thus permitted to live, that stuck to my memory.

  “We should get moving our feet.” Dove nods, we untangle a bit, Zora and Chloris are being patient with us but they’re excited about something.

  “An egg is a living thing becoming a chicken, if nothing eats it first, if everything works, if it doesn’t get too hot or too cold or too wet or too anything. It’s not like a rock turning into a chicken, that takes erosion and soil bacteria and plants, you only get parts of the chicken coming from the rock, it’s not a really good analogy, I know hatching is an analogy.” And I stop, because I have no idea what I meant to say, all of a sudden.

  “Is Halt scary?” Dove asks, voice back to conversational.

  “No.” I should qualify this, but it’s Dove, who knows the answer isn’t qualified, it’s just no, whole and entire.

  “Hatching’s not an event.” Dove’s amused. “You’ve got me thinking Halt’s not scary, and I’ve seen demons co-operate because otherwise Halt might be angry with them.”

  Demons? Co-operate?

  “Not making Halt angry is a special case.” Dove thinks this is funny.

  “Figure the consonance isn’t?” It’s really hard to say.

  “Has to be a hatching side effect.” Dove sounds, is, calm. Shrugs. “We balance really well, Grue just sort of shape-shifts into part of Blossom, you know they don’t get a joint self? Our joint self’s somebody I like, you’re durable, you don’t whine. I’ve done much worse.” Actual dimples, Dove looks younger than usual, than Dove has been looking, barely as old as Chloris used to, I’m never going to have a good sense of what Creeks look like at particular ages. “Ask Pallas, if you want an earful.”