Safely You Deliver

by Graydon Saunders

  It shouldn’t suit Pelōŕios so well, Pelōŕios’ kind was created to perpetrate slaughter, but it does, and in more ways than the shimmering black hide against the pale bark of vast trees. A little bit of unconsidered tension goes out of Pelōŕios’ spine.

  Mikka’s looking at me, in the least worried way I can remember. “You can have it all there at once?” Mikka means the whole of the Tall Woods, as a perceived thing.

  I nod. The Tall Woods are doing well. The anchors didn’t damage the otherworldly migration routes, Ed’s pointing out a Resplendent Eagle-Hawk to Dove’s neeves, we don’t get them all the time and there isn’t enough for even one to eat just in the Tall Woods. So the ecology has to still be connected back.

  “We had an Eagle-Hawk fly out a few times this spring, big spirals and making the swans nervous.” Not that the swans ought to be, it’s an entirely material creature, even if it is large enough to try for a cygnet if swans were material creatures instead of self-reproducing weapons with a substantial metaphysical component. Thankfully, the Eagle-Hawks seem to be able to figure that out without making a try for a cygnet.

  Halle’s looking pained, and of course. I wave a better view on the air, and there’s an eep and Mikka looks at me.

  “Not worried about flustering Mother.” Which only makes sense, Mother would already be completely flustered just standing here, Mother’s a food biologist who mostly works with fermentation organisms, the complete lack of overt parasites or biting insects would have sunk in by now. There would be gestures.

  Halle approves of the Eagle-Hawk; shiny dark purple back and head, abundant crest feathers, bright red irises, three tones of red in the breast feathers, and a shiny black beak make for an impressive bird. The big red stripe in the wings when they’re flying is impressive, too, but this one glares back and shows no sign of moving.

  I have to explain that we’ve never seen a baby one, there isn’t enough woods here for Eagle-Hawks to nest, we see them when they come through and visit, but not for very long.

  Halle’s fine with that, and says “Hoist, please” to Pelōŕios, who does. Which puts Halle at a height to hug Mikka round the neck without Mikka holding Halle up. The hug counts more that way if you’re Halle, and if Halle keeps that up the evident fondness for unicorns will be entirely forgiven.

  Though I’m afraid it’s ‘Aunt Zora’s unicorn’, not unicorns.

  Ambition laudable in the young Pelōŕios says, with an overtone of snicker.

  The seats are still there, no one is looking impatient. Dove’s holding Grackle, something about the carved marble has done something to Grackle’s equanimity, the seats or the big bowl of leaves. Wondering how the bowl isn’t full of dirt, it’s never rotted leaves, is a question, but I don’t think a sinister question.

  Our bottle this year is some old black currant brandy, we were given two bottles and drank the one that sensed worse. It was excellent, so we can hope sensing got the relative quality correct.

  Mikka looks at the big carved seats, too large even for a large Creek lad, looks at Grackle, and says to all of us “If the birds can come through, doesn’t” — a wave at the seats — “worry you?”

  All of us shake our heads. “They let the pond turn into a swamp, they weren’t going to insist that their watch-the-fall-of-evening place stayed perfect, it was allowed to grow.”

  “They keep sending us nicer drink than we send them,” Chloris says. It bothers Chloris.

  We try, but they’ve got a much larger land area and a much deeper peace. Certainly an older one, what we borrowed the Tall Woods from has been there a long time, I can’t get less than twenty thousand years.

  It could be five times that, or fifty. If I had to attest, I’d pick fifty.

  This year’s bottle is dark brown glass and large, more than two litres. Ed hoists it by its gravity, anything set flat in the marble bowl stays flat.

  Our bottle goes in upright, because you keep brandy off the cork.

  It’s a more glorious day in here, somehow, and it was glorious enough outside. Not the sort of day you always get for Festival. Grackle looks around, sees children starting to look over-awed, and says “Back for lunch.”

  Which means me, Pelōŕios, a joyous and floating Halle, and Mikka in a clump, neeves and classmates stringing out, Dove, Hawthorn, Grackle, and, last in the line, Blossom. The line of people spreads out, there isn’t a path, everyone’s following Pelōŕios.

  “Mama.” Dove’s voice is calm, happy, quiet only so the children don’t hear. “I’m in love with death and a starving darkness. Chloris is gracious and lovely and Ed’s diligent and polite, and neither of them can show you what they continue to become in the Power or you’d die. I’m the simple thing, all that fire.”

  Grackle looks sad, and pats Dove’s shoulder. “It seems unfair.”

  Dove’s head tips through a slow perhaps, it’s not even “maybe.” “Everybody’s got a job to do. Looks like ours is ending large trouble.”

  Dove grins across at Grackle and Hawthorn. “Couldn’t say I’m not suited for it. Can’t say we’re not.”

  I’m not, and the ghost of Dove’s voice saying You’re what’s to defend appears in my ears, memory or the link because when you externalize large parts of your mind you stop being able to tell which sometimes.

  Swift and Junco are trying to get Ed to talk about sorcery, which isn’t working.

  Poesy and Nimblewill are asking Chloris about tomorrow, and the possibility of something fancy for their hats. I can feel Chloris’ care to show only a little interest.

  Hawthorn says, just as much quiet so the children don’t hear, “Was by the cemetery” and nothing else, nothing in the voice tone, no more words. Hawthorn’s worried.

  “Had to make sure it wasn’t me,” Dove says, a little more quiet.

  Two astonished looks.

  “The Power’s not a kind thing. Talent, ignored talent, leaks around the edges. It might have wanted a different future. Wake just reached back a year and changed the peace-abiding for everybody, something complicated. Where kid-thorn ended up isn’t complicated whatsoever.” Dove’s still quiet. No human feeling, which, Grackle and Hawthorn go oh dear across their faces, it’s not anything like enough reaction to Dove going entirely do-the-job like that.

  “Didn’t, certain-sure I didn’t, it was going to matter a lot when I had to make the metaphysical transition. Did, even without the plan.” Dove almost smiles. “Only way it might have mattered is if me not being there moved my raw talent away, made it a little more likely the kid-thorn would sprout when I wasn’t there. Halt says no way to tell, and no way I’d have done much more good if I was there.”

  Then gets stuck on the air. Hawthorn nods, very slowly. Pelōŕios is looking back at me sidelong. Mikka’s smiling back at Halle, who is too happy to talk but not too happy to point. Mikka can’t give better names than “leaf” and “bird” and “butterfly,” I say “Evening Sky-fragment” and Pelōŕios snorts.

  It’s something when a unicorn thinks the butterfly names are too poetic.

  “I could wish you’d had less reason to prove you don’t give up,” Hawthorn’s saying.

  Chloris has smiled the gentle smile of the inescapable end of all that lives, and made Nimblewill actual nimblewill wings, to child scale, every intricate covert feather, that move when Nimblewill thinks. Poesy says “Nighthawk?” in hopeful tones, and Chloris makes those, too, and hands them each the little aluminium binding tag.

  “I shall be glad there are those who will remember with you” Grackle says, in a quiet voice no obvious sort of glad.

  Dove says “Thank you, Mama” and it’s real, if quiet. “Sorcery’s not all bad.”

  “Asks a lot,” Hawthorn says.

  Dove can’t possibly be upset if Ed’s making Swift and Junco appropriate wings, wings that don’t come out vast and terrible, anyway.

  The bottle goes right on floating. Swift’s got swift wings that are as proportionately long, extends a
wing into a tree, hears the whack sound and clearly feels the impact. All the kids’ eyes go wide when they figure that out.

  We get out of the woods, Halle looks behind behind to see them and that the four kids have wings. This is grounds for some pointing, Mikka saying “Do we point at people?”, and Halle saying “Make me a unicorn, please,” to me.

  “Unicorns are people.”

  “Into,” Halle says, most extremely determined.

  “Can’t.”

  Halle doesn’t believe me.

  “I know how, but it’s not allowed. I could turn you into someone who had wanted to be a unicorn even when you hadn’t.”

  “Do want,” Halle says.

  I say Help? to Dove.

  “If you were an adult, and there had been a formal request to Parliament, they’d still say I wasn’t allowed, because I’d be turning you into a creature with a metaphysical metabolism, instead of the material one you inherited. That’s not allowed at all ever if you do it to someone else. Sorcerers who want to be Independents are allowed to do it for themselves, but you can’t do that to other people.”

  “Why not?” was inevitable.

  “If you’re an adult, you’re allowed to alter yourself.” Blossom, not Dove. Halle nods. Hawthorn’s kids have some trouble remembering Blossom’s an adult, but Halle hasn’t.

  “No matter how much you want to be a unicorn, if Zora made you into one, you’d be Zora’s unicorn, not your own unicorn. People belong to themselves, not other people.”

  Halle sighs. I don’t know how Blossom managed to communicate that, but it worked.

  “If Mummy says?”

  “Mummy does not say,” Mikka says quellingly, just before Blossom says “Not even if,” in commiserative tones.

  “It’s hard.” That’s addressed to me, and Halle sounds certain-sure.

  “It takes work.” If you can learn it at all.

  Halle looks so morose Pelōŕios looks concerned. Is concerned, enough to make an interrogative two-tone whistle, head snaked back to look at Halle floating by Pelōŕios’ off shoulder.

  Halle pats Pelōŕios’ nose in reassurance and knuckles away tears.

  Ed hands Halle a piece of hard maple candy, Hawthorn’s kids have already got theirs, and says “It’s hard to know someone can and you can’t.”

  Halle nods and says “Thank you” in a small voice. Mikka’s come back to equilibrium from not knowing if that was a moment to sweep Halle up in a hug or not.

  Lunch helps.

  Chapter 39

  Zora

  It tries to be a good Festival.

  The weather’s lovely, clear, just enough breeze to be glad of, and somehow warm and mild at the same time. You can be glad of the breeze without feeling hot outside away from shade.

  The first day, everyone read the news. Or heard the news, there was a lot of discussion. No one being dead of plague seemed implausible, and then accounts from what there’s general agreement might as well be called survivors start to show up. It’s like being rescued to have the cause of your death removed from the past, just rescue from further away than usual, is the consensus. People remember dying, and now they’re not dead. The memories look like the kind that constrain, and the Hale-gesith’s got a bunch of people trying to guess what to do that will help.

  The first formal news published by the Book-gesith has several survivor accounts, plus a statement from General Chert that no material invasion has been observed. “We’re looking like a sheepdog hoping for a second bit of cheese” isn’t something Chert says, but the whole statement implies it. It has the final casualty lists from the overt arcane attack, the four dead and twenty-three hurt who happened to have been near Halt on the road and the fifty-six psychological casualties from variously close unprotected witness of demons near Wake. None of the physical casualties near Halt were due to Halt; there was a lot of concussion and heat flash involved in what Reems sent.

  By the middle of the third day, the correspondence societies have delivered specific descriptions of the physical attacks, complete to damaged bronze bulls and waggons, to everybody in the Commonweal who cared to read about it. It becomes impossible to maintain a proper Festival mood for just about anybody adult, and the serious half of youth.

  The carousel was popular anyway, with considerable waiting for second turns, every infant attempt at patience, and various infants quite tearful that their turn was over. Pelōŕios and Zagreus the piano-maker agree that the music’s respectable, but would be better if it were played live, and there’s a discussion about how to make it loud enough without discordance. Sixty-four riders present an acoustic challenge.

  I had six lamb skewers. Mikka, who had the expected one skewer, got a terrifically nervous look, and I had to explain at some length that, while I’m far enough progressed in my studies that the peace-abiding doesn’t work completely reliably anymore, I’m at absolutely zero risk of pregnancy, since I would have to really want to, and I don’t. Never mind how necessary sex might or might not be, or the lad’s dose of peace-abiding, if a lad was required.

  Besides, if I ever do have children, I’m going to grow them in vats, like a proper sorcerer ought.

  The declaration gets me a snicker, which is progress. And then some more concern, because Halle asks if I’m so hungry because sorcery is that much work, with a lurking implication that maybe asking to be tossed in the air quite so often is excessive. I manage to explain, without having to do anything dramatic, that tossing Halle in the air isn’t something I experience as work but yes, sorcery is that much work. Sorcerers develop metabolic connections to the Power in part because you can’t eat fast enough.

  The parts about so you don’t poach yourself, or that I almost did cook my brain at Kind Lake, or that there are some examples of trying really hard to eat fast enough from the Bad Old Days, I leave those out.

  Halle produces a solemn nod, floating there at Pelōŕios’ shoulder height. Everybody’s been calm about a unicorn; Mikka’s adopted a policy position where it’s an obvious advantage to have your infant up where you can see them, unicorn or not. Everyone was calm about Constant and Chloris dancing, which was remarkable not because everybody could see through both of them the whole time, but because their surfaces have started to ripple with the music.

  Calm doesn’t go far enough that anyone, hardly anyone, will address Constant or Edgar or Chloris by name; that’s been going on, respectively, since Constant started manifesting regularly, Ed hatched, and Chloris started getting frequently immaterial. It’s starting to happen, quick enough to notice, about Dove. “Dove’s always been like that” won’t extend to perish in flames, people who work in wreaking shops heard that, doctors heard that, and wanted to know why. They didn’t all hear the same words, but everyone’s agreed to refer to the intent that came ringing across the Power with Chert’s phrase. The public Line report about the attacks was dry and formal and factual. Dry doesn’t keep people from understanding what happened.

  Aside from teachers and the Captain, Eirene, determined to treat us as regular people, will call all of us by name, and Hyacinth and Doucelin do, though it might be an expectation of their duty for Hyacinth and Doucelin. Can’t offhand think of anyone else.

  “Everyone will still use my name.” Which I say quietly to Mikka, because I’m not sure how I feel about it.

  The rest of us, and Hawthorn and Pallas and Celandine and some people who were on the March, Dove’s three surviving file-closers, Slow and Slice and someone who goes by Meek and chortles, are out in the big tub in the west porch of the Pond Pavilion. Grackle’s talking to Chloris’ Aunt on the east porch, where there are chairs and no younger people. That wasn’t planned, but Grackle only doesn’t look like Dove’s mother. Chloris’ Aunt didn’t have much hope of getting out of the conversation or the good beer once they’d been chance-met during the general celebration.

  “They haven’t seen you get a fit of crankiness,” Mikka says, smiling. “Though you don’t seem to, latel
y.”

  “Lack of frustrated talent.” Hard to say that lightly enough, because it’s most extremely true.

  Mikka nods. “Thanks for all the child-tossing.”

  “What aunts are for.”

  Mikka’s face goes odd, an expression I don’t recognize. Mikka, well, having a child, time, just because I don’t notice me changing doesn’t mean other people won’t.

  “If Halle is high talent, sorcery will be a good thing. Have that good memory near it.”

  “Not very likely, two in successive generations of one family.” Can’t quite keep my voice light. “You can’t tell anything about prospective talent when they’re three and a half.”

  Mikka says “Waking up from sparkles?”

  “There’s a bunch of studies. Infants are erratic about talent, you don’t get really solid indications until ten or eleven, usually, in Creeks, mid-kid developmental stage generally.” Careful breath, not too deep. “The usual tests for high talent aren’t completely reliable in Creeks. There are some new ones expected to be better.”

  Mikka’s looking at me.

  “There was a suspected case of another parasite like Ed had last year. It wasn’t, but we got handed a test-improvement exercise, that parasite uses Power, it should be possible to detect it.”

  Blossom’s notion of the first thing you do with anything squishy and biological is “read everything” for a troublingly accurate value of “everything.”

  It was at least partially a “doing what you’re not good at” exercise. Surprises don’t care what your speciality is.

  Mikka’s not looking at me the same way. Still looking at me.

  “Sorry. I’ve been thinking too much.”

  Mikka snickers, waves at the north wall, which is all windows and has large sling chairs near it.