Sometimes she dreams that the man in red comes back to claim his horse and she wakes sweating in a crimson universe strangled by huge vines. “What’s the matter?” says Dasya as they ride down toward the road. “Nothing, nothing,” she tells him breathlessly. “Keep riding.” And only when they are on the road with nothing in sight but the lights beginning to flicker in the bildiri villages, only then does she confess her fear of the man in the scarlet cloak. “I’ve never heard anything so mardh,” says Dasya. His ringing laugh on the empty road. “But I was afraid of him,” she says, beginning to smile in spite of herself. Tav is shaking her head in disgust and Dasya goes on laughing, trotting on Na Faso, upright in his black coat. “Look where you’ve brought us to,” he crows with a broad sweep of his hand. “Running away from a man because he was wearing red.” She laughs, looks about her, exclaims: “Yes, and it’s getting dark.” They can smell kitchen fires on the fading bluish air.
No time to go back to Sarenha. “Let’s go to Uncle Veda’s,” Siski says. All the way she is happy and even warm in the twilight. The intimate jingle of harness, Dasya riding close to her over the bridge. And at last the yellow windows of Valedhara.
Years later, at a ball, she will speak of her Uncle Veda’s house. It seemed enormous to us when we were children. There were so many people coming and going all the time, the strangest people, herdboys and merchants and feredhai. Sometimes there were black tents in the courtyard and children playing around the well, or there would be goats destroying the garden. And the neighbors’ bildiri servants used to hide there when they were drunk or got into trouble, and there would be terrible fights about it. Someone even tried to shoot my uncle once, I think, over a maidservant who had been accused of theft. But no one ever stayed angry with him and everyone used to come when there were parties or country dances at Valedhara. No, not proper balls of course, but wonderful dances all the same. They were held in a barn that was never used for anything else. It didn’t seem strange to me when I was a child. I used to go with my mother, and later I went with my sister or even alone. Imagine: a barn full of people, with hardly enough room for the orchestra, and everyone stamping and clapping and making noise. You would see landowners dancing beside their servants, and no one cared. It was as if, in that barn, it was always Tanbrivaud Night . . . There was a dance called the sadh that we used to do—oh, I can’t do it anymore, but it was a real Kestenyi dance, a feredha dance. To do it you had to keep your chin high, like this, and look very arrogant and severe. It didn’t matter so much what you did with your hands and feet. We used to laugh at Olondrians—pardon me, but we used to laugh when Olondrians tried it, because they would concentrate so hard on getting the steps, and their heads would just hang down and make them look so awkward and funny. My uncle used to say, “Your eyes should be like a pair of arrows.” He was wonderful at the sadh himself. I used to feel almost afraid of him when he danced, he looked so magnificent, so proud. And really, you know, he was just a sweet and scatterbrained kind of man, who already seemed elderly when I was a little girl.
Once we found ourselves on the road after dark, and we went to Valedhara without having warned Uncle Veda that we were coming. We found him in the front room—a cramped little parlor with a green carpet and smoke-stained walls—tying up a dog’s injured paw. The whole place smelled of dog. There were a few other visitors there, as always, a few old men and a herdboy with a fever. And Uncle Veda jumped up and kissed us and squeezed the breath out of us, so happy to see us, you could see that he was delighted. Right away he began to turn the house upside down to find things for us to eat. He had a servant, a sort of high chamberlain if you will—steward and valet and butler all at once. A lot of Kestenyi gentlemen live that way, dependent on just one servant. This steward of his was a very capable organized sort of man and Uncle Veda used to praise him to everyone, and really it was probably true that he kept my uncle from losing his lands, Uncle Veda was so softhearted and hopeless at business. Of course the steward was always at his wits’ end—I still remember his pained expression and how we children used to mimic it. But he was devoted to my uncle, despite the difficulties, and when my uncle moved to Bain, he left Valedhara to his steward.
That night, the night I was telling you about, Uncle Veda patted him on the shoulder and said, There, there, I leave everything to your intelligence. And the steward created a wonderful supper, nuts and cheese on toast and an egg pudding, and we spread out an oilcloth and ate on the parlor floor. You see it was the only room with a fire. And when we had finished Uncle Veda gave us each a tiny glass of Eilami brandy. I was only thirteen or so, it was terribly special to be allowed to drink brandy. It made me feel so warm on that cold night . . . But it wasn’t enough for Uncle Veda to feed us, he began frowning and fidgeting and snapping his fingers, and finally he stood up and exclaimed, No, it’s too dull for young people, we must have a dance! It was already very late, but he knew everyone and he sent to the village for several of the young men who could play the diali and the guitar, and he ordered in all the servants, even the herdboys and the gardener and the grooms, and the girls who used to come up and clean the house on feast days. There were twenty or thirty of them. And they rolled the carpet back, and the musicians, winking at each other and looking very amused, began to play so vigorously that you felt like dancing at once. Even the girls, who were terribly shy, took off their shoes . . .
She is quite drunk when she tells this story but not so drunk that she does not know when to stop. Her listeners have lost interest. She raises the glass to her lips. Looking at the windows white with steam where, among the floating lights, dancers turn like the bodies of the drowned.
The morning after her uncle’s dance she slips downstairs in her stockings, into the rustling, sighing sound of communal sleep. She peeps into the parlor where, among the herdboys stretched out on the carpet, dogs lie snuffling against their tails. Some of the dogs have already gone into the kitchen, to be near the stove. A pearly glow falls through the oiled paper pasted over the windows. Uncle Veda turns, holding the handle of the coffeepot. “Ah, my dear. I knew you’d be up before the others.”
“What time is it?” she asks.
He glances at the windows. “Nearly noon. Now try this.” Pouring coffee into a blue tin cup. “That’s fresh milk from our Sinoud.”
She laughs, sitting down at the table. “Surely you haven’t been milking already.”
“And why not?” he cries, as he seats himself before his own battered cup. “She wasn’t dancing all night, poor beast. Why should she suffer? Ah, you see, there’s nothing like fresh milk. Now, what to have for breakfast?” He frowns, smoothing the few sparse hairs on his ruddy head.
Dear Uncle Veda. No one can help being happy in his presence. Even the smoky and cluttered kitchen seems cheerful when he is beside the stove, in his brown work shirt and a blue scarf fastened about his neck with a pin. His pipe diffuses the comfortable smell of rooms where people have come in from hunting. When Tav and Dasya come down he pours them coffee and hands out sticks of raush. Just to hear him exclaim in triumph when he discovers a cheese in the pantry, to see him put on his vast green hat, is enough to make one laugh out loud. He waves to them from the porch for a long time.
By the red field,
by the black field.
Oh, the impossible distance.
There is no rest, no rest on the road
that leads to Harmavyedh.
By the red field,
by the black field.
Great fields of singing wheat,
pity me where I walk in the silence and bitter solitude
of the tras.
Songs of her heart, Kestenyi songs. Songs of Bron and Tevlas, of the hills. They sing as they ride, following the rhythm of the hoof beats. One night when they hear music they creep out and crawl on their stomachs up the rise to where the feredhai are camped on a plain
of stones. Fires in the night. Shadows move to and fro, shadows of women and of horses being led to the big artusa. Shadows of hands clapping. And the tents lit by the lamps inside, taking on the color of the human body. She watches, her eyes as huge as the stars above, hardly breathing, desperate to memorize each line of song as it pierces the cold air. Knowing that she may never hear this song sung in this way again, that the feredhai will carry it away with them into the desert. As they will carry their knowledge, all the secrets of survival in a wilderness of sunlight, wind, and chalk. The map of the wells, the taste of mare’s milk. She seizes the song and draws it into her as she would draw that nourishment, that knowledge. She drinks two songs, three songs, entranced. When the camp is silent at last and she and her sister and cousin slip back to the house, she will not speak to them, she can only hum and mutter to herself, helpless as if in the talons of a fever. And lie on her bed with her eyes wide open, lightly touching her fingers together, singing. Perhaps she even sings in her sleep. At dawn she is rewarded by the music she still remembers, notes that have not deserted her in the night.
The windows are pale, the room very cold. She reaches out with her mind, as if groping to lay her hand on a book in the darkness, and is sad because she cannot remember the tune of one of the songs although she tries it with a number of variations. The words, too, some of the words are missing, as if the gold leaf has begun to crumble from an illumination, and the more she struggles with it the more her efforts rub away at the delicate surface, inflicting further destruction. But she is happy with the songs she has and she sings them over and over as she puts on her mantle and slippers and pads downstairs, and as she enters the kitchen where Nenya is already boiling milk for the coffee and Tav is washing her hair beside the stove.
It is not fair, it is not right.
Four gold moons on a branch,
four gold moons.
Oh unhappy spirit,
drink at another well.
“Don’t sing that in the morning, it’s bad luck. You should sing happy songs.”
“But the feredhai don’t have any happy songs.”
“Then don’t sing feredha songs,” says Nenya, pouring the thick hot coffee into a glass. Siski takes it outside to drink on the empty terrace. Her breath is white and frost hangs on the trees. She does not believe that feredha songs can ever cause bad luck, not in this place where the words and music seem to be a part of the air, the shadows of the mountains, and the sky. He lay with his face alight, alight. And his hands in the light alight, alight. Alight, alas, and the color of molten silver. In the music she sees the boy struck down and wrapped in his mantle on the sand with an oil lamp burning beside him through the night. Killed in one of the feuds that sweep through the desert, setting everything ablaze. His soul goes walking over the mountains into Oud. Shall we ever see that place, shall we ever find him, our winged stallion? She watches sunlight color the trees.
“I follow you, Iselda.” She turns with a cry of delight to see her cousin walking toward her, rubbing his eyes.
“Do you remember all the words?”
“What are we doing up so early?” he says, squinting into the brightening orchard.
“Never mind that, do you know the words?”
He grins, sets his coffee glass on the balustrade, theatrically clears his throat. Then his voice, sad and true, darkens his eyes, which can never retain their mocking light once he has begun to sing.
I follow you, Iselda.
My arms are bleak with love.
Oh silver brooch, clear spring,
wind that brings the rain from the mountains.
I dream of you, Iselda.
My eyes are ringed with love.
Come lift the door of my tent
at the hour of confidences and lamps.
I torment you, Iselda.
My heart is white with love,
and you spit at my shadow as if at an evil thing.
It’s growing colder and soon Dasya must go back over the mountains, back to his home on the Isle before the first snow. Tav scratches at the stove with the tip of her Amafeini dagger, unhappy because the autumn is almost over. Because at Ashenlo their tutor awaits with his dreary diagrams, maps of the empire penciled on rough paper. Dinners with seven courses, riding the horses round and round the little yard. And wet woolen stockings. And their father.
“Don’t think about it,” Siski says, tweaking one of her sister’s plaits. The hot stove makes her glow all through her clothes. And Dasya comes in yawning, looking strangely tall from where she sits on the floor. He wears a white tunic with short sleeves.
“Aren’t you cold?” she asks him.
“No.”
He leans back, propping one heel against the wall. “Where are we going to ride today?”
That’s it, she thinks. He doesn’t think about it, I try not to think about it but he, he really doesn’t think about it.
“Maybe into the village again or around the edge of the Kesuen lands,” she says. “Maybe as far as the Well of the Hornets.”
“Yes, to the well.” By his smiling eyes she knows that it is true, that he is turned toward the future, shining, without regrets.
That night, even Tav and Siski forget their sadness, climbing a rickety footman’s ladder to light the lamps in the avla. The old lamps sputtering, black with filth. Above them hangs the ornamental dome, colorless now, showing stars where panes are missing. The children’s slippers glide across the floor, their shadows haunt the walls. They are playing londo with bits of broken marble. Flutes. Eight. The South. The sound of the makeshift pieces striking the mosaic floor sends echoes toward the night.
“I don’t think I could do it,” says Tav.
“You would if you had to,” says Dasya.
He casts the West and moves his marble chip forward with his toe. Tav stands with her hands on her hips, sucking her lower lip, observing the floor. “No,” she says. “I’d rather starve.”
“You don’t know, you’ve never starved,” says Siski. She casts a Nine.
“No, but I’ve been hungry,” her sister argues. “You remember when I got lost in the Abravei for a whole day. I was hungry but I’d never have eaten my horse.”
Tav squats and casts. Seven. She moves her chip to a square of jasper. Then Dasya casts, his wrist supple in the grimy light of the lamps. He looks up and swears and the sisters glance at one another and giggle. “We ought to make you put your tongue on the stove,” says Siski.
“Try it,” says Dasya, smiling. And because of the arrogant tilt to his chin the girls chase him, sliding and losing their footing on the floor, and the avla rings with shouts and with a high wild squeal as Siski slips on a londo piece and falls hard on the tiles. “That was mine, you shedyun,” her sister shouts. “I was winning!” Dasya is laughing, holding his stomach, leaning against the wall. Siski scrambles up and throws herself toward him, snatching at his belt as he twists away, locking her fingers under the leather.
“Get him, get him!” she gasps at Tav, her arm jerked forward as Dasya whirls about, trying to yank himself out of her grip. He seems to be dancing, the lights spinning about him. Then he falls backward on the hurtling, compact body of Tav, who has seized him about the neck. Siski falls on top of them with a scream and pulls her fingers free of the belt. “Who am I?” she says, her arm on Dasya’s throat. He arches his back but Tav has pinned his arms from beneath and he soon lies still. “I don’t know,” he says in a choked voice.
“Who am I?”
“A twenty-year-old mare.”
“Who am I?”
“I don’t know.”
“Say it.”
“A shoemaker.”
“Ugh, get up,” groans Tav.
Delicately, severely, Siski presses on Dasya’s neck. His eyes are
bright, his cheeks turning red.
“Say it,” she warns.
“No,” he laughs.
“Say it or I’ll never get up.”
He closes his eyes and tries to shake himself free of her hair, which is falling onto his face.
Then he opens his eyes again. “You beshadun,” he grins, panting. “All right. You’re the Queen of the White Desert.”
2. And All the Windows Fade
The refugee woman stands in front of the house. She has arrived early. She blows on her fingers and stamps in the pale gold light. At last she sees her Nainish friend coming briskly down the street with two others. The refugee already thinks of this stranger as her friend.
They go around to the back door, and the quick-mannered Nainish woman knocks. A small boy opens the door and lets them into the kitchen. After a moment a footman arrives with half an apple in his mouth. At the sight of this apple, saliva floods the refugee’s mouth with sweetness.
The footman leads them into a huge, cold storeroom. Mattresses lie tumbled at one end and there are piles of cotton and down and dry leaves everywhere. The refugee’s new friend rolls up her sleeves, and one of the others, a tall, plump girl, takes a spool of white thread from between her breasts.
The Winged Histories Page 24