by Diana Rivers
As soon as the horses went to graze, we ripped off our clothes and ran to throw our filthy, clay-coated, sweat-streaked bodies into the cool water, shouting for the joy of it. Afterward we rubbed ourselves down with rushes and washed again. Pell was the most at ease I had seen her since we first met. She even gave us time to lie on the bank, drying in the warmth of the sun. This had been my first chance to bathe since my escape. I felt some of the horror of all that wash away along with the mud and sweat. I must have slept for a while in that charmed place, for all too soon Pell was shaking me awake.
As we went back to claim our own horses, I wondered again why Pell had left the best for others, and kept such a sorry-looking creature for herself. As if reading my thoughts, she said suddenly, “I would not trade Torvir for that whole pasture full of fancy horses.” As she spoke, he was rubbing his knobby head against her arm while she scratched fondly behind his ears. “He has been with me since before I left my father’s house. He was my first companion when I was alone in the world. Besides, he is not what he appears to be, any more than we are. He can weave through the trees like a cat. He can run like the wind and never seems to tire, but to see him standing in a public place with his head hanging down, he looks like a broken-winded nag that could hardly go at a trot, a useful trick in my line of work. Besides, he knows everything in my head.” I had been well-answered without even opening my mouth. Utterly weary and ready for home, I climbed on my own horse without a word.
Riding back, Pell said with a sigh, “Now I can breathe easier. Even with my skill at story telling, I would have been hard put to explain the presence of so many extra horses in the hands of two poor farm boys, especially since a fair number are missing from Hamishair. No one has ever come to the shelter or even near it. So far the woods have kept us safe, but now that we are all hunted fugitives there will be more risk in everything we do.” She sighed again, more deeply this time. I understood now how much this matter must have weighed on her, though of course she had not said so. After that she seemed lighter and gayer. I could not say the same for me. Given a choice, I myself would have stayed in that green and sunny place, making my shelter there with the horses rather than returning to those unnatural woods. Riding back into them did nothing good for my spirits.
We had dismounted at the shelter and I was struggling to unsaddle Marshlegs when Pell said, much to my surprise, “You are staggering on your feet, Tazzi, no use to yourself or anyone. This has all been too much for you. I think you need some healing sleep. Go find a mat and use what is left of this day to cure yourself.” This was one order I had no wish to argue with.
When I woke it was evening. Pell had already left. There was a small fire burning, with a pot of food and another of tea set by it. I was alone in that place, alone as I had never been in my family’s home. There were no neighbors nearby, not a soul for miles. The wind outside was blowing wildly, causing strange rustling noises in the leaves, making the fire flare up suddenly and then as suddenly die down, sucked away to embers. I could hear my horse shifting about, or at least I hoped it was Marshlegs. She was all I could sense out there. Wind and the night’s creatures and the absence of other humans—I had never been afraid of such things before. I made myself get up, pour a cup of tea, and put some fresh sticks on the fire. As I sat watching the flames and drinking my tea, the wind had a sad, mournful sound. It seemed to be calling to me.
This was my first chance to think by myself since fleeing Nemanthi. Suddenly it was Kara’s name I heard in the wind. Her death came rushing back to me. With it came a terrible new thought. I could see now that it was Kara’s death that had saved my life. Because they were so intent on killing her, I had gotten away with no pursuit. I could hear their shouts and curses again and see the flash of their pitchforks. With a frightful groan the cup slipped from my hands, cracking on the hearth. My life had been bought with Kara’s. I could not get my mind past that thought. With another groan I went staggering back to the mat and fell face first on it. For a long time I lay there twisting and turning, beating my fists on the ground with the pain of that knowledge eating at me.
***
Those next few days in Pell’s shelter were like nothing in my life before. Tolgath’s teaching had been kindly by comparison. Pell was teacher, trainer, taskmaster, and tyrant all in one. As her only student I was at her mercy, the center of all her attention, and she was being driven by the lack of time that lay so heavy on her. I thought she worked me harder than beasts being trained for the traveling animal troupe and told her so, but whenever I grumbled or complained she asked, as always, “Do you know a better way? Have you a better plan? Out with it, Tazzi. Spit it out.” Then I would shrug and fall silent. I saw that she was even harder on herself. Under it all I could feel the concern that drove her. I could even feel some kindness there. In the end I would do as she asked, though she pushed me each day to the brink of rebellion.
Every morning Pell had me practice walking, speaking, turning, sitting in the style of men. “They must suspect nothing,” she told me. “They must have no thought to look any farther.” At the most unexpected moments she would hurl questions at me as to who I was, where I was going and where I was from, what I was doing, and planned to do. I was to answer in my new voice and without faltering, all with some practiced lies we had agreed on.
The simplest version of our story was that we were cousins, poor farm boys from the region of Manorath, near the village of Parthir, farm boys whose family farms had been sold for debt. Pell thought this a good region to choose. According to her it had been hard hit, first by floods and then by a long drought. Supposedly, we had come south to look for farm work or for opportunities in town, stables or kennels or the like, such as would suit our few simple skills. Having no coin for lodging, we had made our crude shelter in the woods.
Now you may think this all sounds easy enough to remember and recite, but not for one like me who has grown up “scandalously honest” as Pell liked to say. I was the kind who blushed and stuttered when I lied. Indeed, there had been no cause to do so until I started meeting in secret with Kara. It was not a concept that came easily to me—that one would choose to use words to hide the truth rather than to make it clear. Pell, on the other hand, acknowledged herself to be a practiced storyteller. She declared with pride that she could easily have invented a new life for us each day. It seemed a strange thing to brag about. I told her so, but she only laughed at me, saying, “I have lived out in that man’s world since I was a girl of eleven. Not likely I could have survived this long on a diet of honesty alone. One might as well learn to do well what one has to do anyway.”
Later she would draw maps in the dirt and drill me as to the placement of roads and rivers, the names of towns and villages. This would go on till I made an error. Then we would start again. Along with this we worked on the saddles and the tack. These we transformed from fancy, well-kept equipment—the best, in fact—to worn and shabby, much-used farm gear. Working diligently, we cut away or burned those parts that were owner-marked, adding pieces of worn leather in places and rubbing it all with dirt and rough stones. Pell was an artist at this kind of altering. She took as much pride in it as if she were doing a fine new piece of work. I also have skilled hands and so was quick to learn.
On top of all this, every night as soon as darkness neared, Pell would ride out on some mission of her own, leaving me alone in that place. Never again was it so bad as that first night. With practice I learned to fight down my fear and to shut the door on my grief. I have no idea if Pell slept at all, for no matter how early I woke she was already up and busy with some project. Often she was storing away sacks of grain and foodstuff in crocks buried in the floor. I knew well enough not to ask how she came by any of this.
On the third morning, I woke to find Pell standing over me. She had a look of longing on her face such as I have sometimes seen on the faces of men. When she saw me awake, she seemed embarrassed and quickly turned away. She would have stepped back, bu
t I caught her hand. “Come sit by me for a while and talk. All we have done is work and drill. We know nothing of each other’s lives. Surely, we have the right to a few words. Other things can wait a little while.”
“Nothing can wait,” she answered bitterly. “For some it is already too late.” In spite of her harsh words, she allowed herself to be pulled down. In fact, she crumpled to the mat with a loud groan, as if releasing some long-pent-up feelings. Even then she did not make herself at ease. Instead, she lay straight and stiff, keeping so far to the other side of the narrow mat that in no place at all did we touch. She was so still and quiet, I even thought she might have fallen asleep. Before I had a chance to feel my disappointment, though, she opened one eye at me and said, “Well, Tazzi, now you have me here, so you may as well tell me your life. At least tell me how you came to be in the tavern that day looking as if a pack of demons was on your trail.” Pell shut her eyes again. With her lying beside me, I talked. I talked and talked as I have never done with anyone but Kara. I told her most of what is written here. She listened with interest to everything I said, most especially when I recalled speaking with animals or told of the wolf who came to the village or the growth of my healing powers or how Kara and I spoke silently with each other and the games we played. This last she questioned me on so avidly that I grew embarrassed. But when I blamed myself for Kara’s death and began to cry with terrible racking sobs, she gave me scant sympathy, not even putting out her hand for comfort. She would only say, “The dead are dead. Nothing will bring them back. Not all your tears can change that.”
The coldness in her voice made me shiver. When I could not stop my crying, she sat up suddenly and said, almost with anger, “It is we who are living hunted with a price on our heads who must look to ourselves. Clearly, no one else will help us. Now with this death edict I will seek out the others to bring them to safety. That is my work. That is my life. I will go out in wider and wider circles and gather us together. I will do whatever is in my power for the living, but I will not mourn for the dead. No, Tazzi, I will not mourn for the dead and you cannot make me do so.” She said this last part with such passion that she frightened me. Then she sat staring off into some far place. I thought her finished when suddenly, with all of that intensity, she turned her fierce stare on me. “These will be terrible years, and they will be wonderful years, and who knows what we will make when we all come together.” Then she gave a great sigh. “Oh Goddess, save us and spare us, this surely is a perilous time.” With that she sank down again and shut her eyes. This time I thought her truly asleep. I even felt a moment of tenderness watching her there. Then suddenly her eyes flew open again. She looked straight up at me.
“So you were lovers, you and your Kara?”
“Lovers?” I could not catch her meaning. Lovers was for men and women and what they were to each other. I had never given that name or any other to what Kara and I had together or what we did.
“Lovers, yes, what else? It is plain enough from what you said. In Eezore, the Shokarn would call you Muirlla, woman’s woman. It would be worth your life there even if there were no edict hanging from a tree to mark you. Among the Kourmairi they say Puntyar. Besides meaning women who are lovers of women, it means all sorts of filthy things, love under a rock, sucking the Witch’s tit, left-handed daughter of bad luck, and much other loveliness, depending on which dialect is being spoken. Have you never heard it?” Puntyar—that was the word Jortho had thrown at me on that fatal night.
“Stop,” I shouted, putting my hand over her mouth. “Our loving was fine and beautiful. It had nothing to do with such filth as that!” I was crying again. The wound had been reopened and some dirt rubbed in it. Yes, I had heard that word, had even heard it shouted at me, but had never guessed at its meaning.
She shook herself free of my hand. “I am not disputing the purity of your love, only the quality of your wisdom. I am trying to warn you that others see it differently. Understand what you do and understand that it is forbidden. That is all I am trying to tell you.”
“Will everything be taken from me?” I felt again that desolation that had swept over me when I thought of my mother.
“Perhaps, and perhaps there will be other things to take their place.”
I shut my eyes, but could not stop the tears. “No,” I said fiercely. “Kara is not a thing, and no one can take her place.”
“Others will die besides your Kara, many if we cannot move fast enough. We cannot cry now for those who die. It will be hard enough in these next few years for those of us alive to stay that way.”
“Pell, how can you be so hard? Do you love no one, no one at all? Is there no one you would cry for?”
“I love us all,” she said abruptly, with hurt in her voice, “but not one more than the other. I love us all and plan to get us through this alive, as many as I can. You think me hard, I am hard. If Kara had been a little harder or a little faster, she might be here with us today. If I die tomorrow, waste no tears on me. You must promise me that. Go find the others and bring them together, for that is what we must do in these next few years. We can thank the Zarn for letting us know we are many and for setting us in motion.”
“But what have we done to them, Pell, that they want us dead? What have we done besides just be.”
“Since we have powers, that is enough for those who rule. That is enough to threaten them.”
“They can have the power if that is what they want. I would trade all my powers for Kara’s life in an instant. What do I need with it? It is more like a curse.”
“Poor Tazzi, it has all come on you so suddenly. I have seen it coming for a long time, for years. I knew they could not leave us be.” Her tone had softened, lost some of its hard edge. She leaned forward and touched my face gently with her fingertips. Then, to my surprise, she kissed my forehead. Her touch, though it seemed meant for kindness, woke a quiver of pain and passion in me. I drew back to look at her and saw again that look of hunger and urgency. With a shiver I pulled her against me and was astonished to feel her stiffen in resistance. She even pushed me back with her hand, to be able to look into my face.
“Understand what you ask for, Tazzi. I can give you my body, but not my heart. That goes to no one till this is over—whenever that will be. If my body is what you wish for, it is yours, full of hunger and want. It has been so for days. I have been trying to curb it, thinking if I rode it to exhaustion it would leave me some peace and let me sleep. If you want more, if what you want is the heart-touch you had with Kara, then you need to look elsewhere. I do not have that to give. This must be very clear between us. I never want to think I have taken a woman without her full knowledge and consent, nor do I want her to think it can be with me other than it really is.”
I pushed her hand away and leaned forward to silence her with a kiss. What I wanted at that moment was something to ease my pain—anything. If I could have that from meeting Pell’s hunger with my body, then I was ready and she was welcome to it. As for hearts, I had no heart to give either. Muirlla, Puntyar, now I knew it had a name. I had thought it was only a game we played.
This time when I tried to kiss her, she met me with a hard bruising kiss of her own. We kissed for a long time, falling deeper and deeper into that kiss. Then she rolled me over and began to strip off my clothes with urgent fingers, saying, “Too long, much too long! One could die of this kind of hunger.” I could feel her trembling. When she had me naked, I felt strange and uncomfortable under her scrutiny. “Shut your eyes, Tazzi. Forget yourself.” I did as she said, feeling her hands on my body as she spread me out to her satisfaction. Then, starting at my feet, she began to run her fingers upward, very lightly at first and slowly, so slowly I shivered with anticipation, then faster and harder till she had me shaking and moaning, lost in pleasure. Suddenly she fastened her mouth to my breast and plunged her fingers deep inside me, deeper than Kara had ever gone. Before I could protest she had withdrawn and was rubbing me into a frenzy of pleasure ti
ll I wanted to beg for her re-entry, twisting about to catch her fingers. Then again, that quick plunge in followed by more teasing torture till I cried out, thrashing against her hand. Afterward I fell back, exhausted and soaked with sweat.
Pell’s hands on my body had been full of knowledge. All had been done with such craft and skill that it made what Kara and I had shared together seem like childish fumbling, yet it did not fill my heart. Instead, it left me strangely empty, even sad. I reached for Pell. She shook her head and pulled the covers over me. “Time enough for that later. Sleep a while. I need you to ride out today. I think you are as ready now as you will ever be.”
Ready, perhaps—she did not ask if I were willing. I fought again my hard battle with fear. Then I dozed for a while till Pell’s restless energy drew me from sleep. She beckoned me over when she saw I was awake. I came to squat by her while she drew plans for me on the floor: where I was to go, who I was to meet, and where that one, in turn, was to go to warn others. Then she made me draw all of it over and over till I made no mistakes and could picture it clearly in my head, each fork and turning of the way.
“I think the guard will not have been there yet because it is so far from here by road and these are only a few small, scattered settlements. Also I am sending you by a much shorter way, roads and paths that the Shokarn are not likely to know. Still, you must be very cautious in case they have already posted edicts in Delorth or even in Thar’s Crossing. Someone going to market in those towns could have carried the word home.
“You are to seek out Tamara. If any stop you or question you, say you are looking to buy a pig from Big Barthelli, a good brood sow, for that is what her father raises. I have drawn you the way there, but once you are close enough, you could find that farm by smell alone if nothing else.