Aloren (5 page)

“Don’t look so glum,” Floy said.  “It’s half done already and the ground’s wet.” 

I walked through the wattle fence and picked at the ground. 

“You’re not planting wildflowers.  Use some leverage––stick the pole between your elbow and knee.”

Floy’s heckling set a fire in my limbs and I gradually pushed all the way through the unbroken ground. 

After that I strung up the poles that had been lying in a pile for the runner beans.  Then I slid around on the wet grass to rid myself of mud, stumbled about in the woods, and fell into a pile of leaves.

I slept like a boulder all through the next day and woke in the evening, sore and sick with hunger.

The birds were roosting in a pine.  I threw a clod of dirt at Mordan. 

“None of that!”  He shuffled out of range.  “I’m trying to keep cleaner than you, at least.”  They both followed me to the back door to find what the innkeeps had left.  There was a bucket of cream this time, but more exciting were the loaf of rye and the round of white cheese. 

“Don’t eat too fast.  You’ll throw it up,” said Floy.  I wasn’t listening.  I sat on the stoop and threw Floy and Mordan morsels of bread; and was finishing the cheese when somebody who wasn’t a bird interrupted:

“Lord, do you eat once a month?” 

I jumped up and slopped cream down my dress.

“Quiet,” said Floy and Mordan.  I choked on a piece of cheese.  The boy, a few years older than me, slugged me between the shoulders.  The cheese came up in my mouth.

“Bright one, ain’t you?  Can’t even chew properly.”

A little girl poked her head through the door.  “You’re
loud
, Wille Illinla.”  She spied me and her eyes grew wide.  I didn’t wonder at it.  My yellow dress was mottled with mud and my hair bristled with sticks and dead leaves. 

“Our saebel!”  The little girl stepped off the stoop. 

In the little girl’s place stood a woman with a red nose and ashy hair pinned tightly to her head.  She looked like an outgrowth of the house.  “Adzookers!” she said.  “It’s hideous.”  She grabbed the little girl and pulled her back.  “Not so close, Emry, it’s like to ravish you.” 

The boy Wille burst out laughing.

“Ravish?” I said, and Mordan cawed angrily from the roof; and at that moment I felt contrary enough to test my limits.  “I––“ 

My stomach squirmed and vomit came up in my mouth.  I shook, sweating under my dress.

“She in’t a saebel, Marna, I don’t think,” Wille said.

“How would
you
know?” said the woman.

“Saebels don’t have mothers––just spring out of the earth, don’t they?  If she’s really a saebel she won’t have a belly-scar.” 

Marna got hold of me under the arms.  She lifted my dress and chemise, and my navel poked out above my undergarments.  Wille nodded solemnly. 

“What do you want?”  The woman became weary.  “And what happened to you?”  She wiped her hands, filthy from my gown, on her apron.

“Brigands.”  I twisted my skirt into knots.  Her face softened.

“Those?  Been pouring over the border in droves.  If t’weren’t for the fact we’re out of the way, I would march up to that Lorilan Ravyir and give him and all his wild folk a good thrashing.  I suppose you’ll want to stay on.”  I said nothing, and she blew her nose in her apron.  “Those skinny arms don’t look up to much. But you’ll do fine for planting, running, cooking, even, I suppose.” 

She walked back into the house and Wille followed close behind.  The little girl stepped in front of me, picking her nose. 

“You’re a saebel, ain’t you?” she said.  “Don’t worry, I won’t tell.”  She took me by the hand and pulled me through the door.

Five

The little girl, Emry, was the daughter of Marna Nydderwaic’s dead sister.  Emry was Marna’s darling, and as spoiled as I had been.  She threw a fit when Wille dragged her upstairs to bed.  Then Wille, who liked to explain things, explained to Marna about a poultice the miller needed for a bite on his arm. 

The village was called Milodygraig.  Marna Nydderwaic was Milodygraig’s leech, though she spent most of her time running Milodygraig’s inn in the absence of her dead husband.  I soon found a place for myself as the orphan of Milodygraig, Floy became a sparrow of Milodygraig, and Mordan became very scarce in Milodygraig, as he was helping his brothers poke around the more exiting regions of the country.

That first night Marna strew me some bedding by the hearth.  Sleep didn’t come for a long time––the people in the next room spent half the night loudly downing their beer, and thoughts chased around my head like a cat after a bird.   

***

At first light Marna woke me and gave me a big basket.  She told me not to come back until it was filled to the brim with palendries, and thrust me outdoors.

Palendries, water-loving plants that sprouted silvery fronds year-round, carried no useful properties to the best of my knowledge. 

Nevertheless, she seemed pleased when I came back with a goodly amount. Sneezing something fierce, she placed some above the door lintel and put the rest in the brewing shed.  The palendries above the door kept the torkies away.  I asked Emry what a torkie was. 

“Crag wraiths,” she said.  “They sneak through cracks, crawl into your head, light your eyes up like torches, then make you up and slaughter everyone in the house.”

“Ugh,” I said.

“They can’t abide palendries for some reason.”

“I told you these people were superstitious,” said Floy from a rafter.

It was true.  Marna had rituals and remedies for everything from curbing libido to driving snakes out of the outhouse.  When I suggested a remedy for sneezing (which involved sitting on a stone outside Carderford Barrow  and howling like a wolf towards Glasgenny Peak while eating the heart of a newt), she gave me a clout to the ear. 

Floy found me in the larder, sobbing between the apples and potatoes.  “She’s just another frazzled old bat,” she said.

“Nilsa didn’t hit––”  I stopped myself.

“Nilsa didn’t hit you.  When they’re in a temper, you keep from the room.  That’s all.”

I stopped my crying, and resolved to make Floy’s job easier.

“Careful Reyna,” she said two days later as I stewed laundry in a cauldron.  “When the water’s bubbling like that it’s hot.”

“I
know
.”  My face dripped with steam.

“Have you even put any soap in?”

“Ten bars.” 

Later that day I made friends with the leach barrel.

“The water burnt me.”  I showed her my red hand.  “It wasn’t even hot.”

“It’s not water.  It’s lye water.  Pour the vinegar over your hand, it’ll feel better.”

“I’m never touching soap again,” I said.

“You never touched it anyway.”

***

Washing the sheets wasn’t something I had to worry about much––Marna did her utmost to scrimp.  The meat in the pie was always mutton, no matter the rodent skulls you picked out of it; the porridge was so watered down you could wash in it; the bread was mostly holes; and the ale possessed a peculiar quality I was to find more about later.

I couldn’t give my name, of course, so the folk who wanted horses watered, more beer, or the fire built up, took to calling me Sprout.  A timid little drudge, I was threatened, harassed, and beaten into trying simply and constantly to please Marna.  She inspired admiration, throwing equal effort into her immoral work habits and mollification of the outdated and resentful mountain spirits.

Wille Illinla inspired admiration, too.  One afternoon Marna sent us to collect flour from the miller.  The miller’s wife had a lame ankle, and her maid a broken nose––from fighting wild dogs, she said.  This was clearly a tale, and Wille told everyone in the common room she’d tripped in the broom closet and fell on top of her husband, who was already on top of the maid.  “Then there was a glorious brawl,” he said, “where she took a big bite out of him, and they all started whacking each other with broomsticks.” 

Wille spread lies thicker than a thief at a theophany.  I didn’t care.  When the village boys ran after me throwing rocks, he would catch them and rub dung in their hair.  

Nobody knew Wille’s age, so he switched between being young enough for dung throwing and old enough to get pickled off the ale Marna kept for special guests.  (Nobody knew my age either, but I only ever got small beer and river water.)  Everyone said Wille was going to out-drink his tippler father, who’d run off to be an insurgent in Ellyned.  Wille was keen on insurgency, too.

“The city garrison almost strung Nat Breldin up by his neck,” he told me as soon as he got me alone, “but before they dropped the hatch a mob of White-Ship rebels overran the scaffold and rescued Nat and six other fellows in the name of the real Lauriads that’s gone missing.  Then the nobs got angry and a rebellion broke out when they tried to confiscate weaponry and enforce a bunch of horrible new laws.” 

It took me a while to realize he was reporting current events.

***

“Who’s enforcing a bunch of horrible new laws?” I asked.

“Lord Turncoat, Commander Blackguard, and Lady Odious.  They’re stirring up trouble,” said Leode.  We sat in a round maple deep in the woods, hidden in the shadow of a mountain the locals called Glasgenny and took extra trouble to avoid.  It was two weeks after I’d become an inn-girl. 

“Bless you, Leode,” said Mordan.  “They
are
stirring up trouble.  Bloated laws lead to a bloated guard leads to angry people.  Ellyned’s like to go off like a firecracker.  I can hardly wait.”

“You want a rebellion?” Tem swung his head down to Mordan’s. 

“I don’t know. Yes.”

“A government is an inconvenient necessity, Mordan.”

“This one’s really inconvenient, then.  Especially since the humans overran it.”

“Humans?” I said, not really interested.  “It’s only been, what, two––”

“They’ve been pouring in from Lorila since before Father died,” said Tem.  “Refugee nobles, mostly. The Queen has been very accommodating.”  It struck me how frustrated he was when a new maple leaf yellowed and fell into my lap.

“Most accommodating,” Mordan agreed.

I was becoming antsy.  “Who’s Lord Blackguard?”

“Turncoat,” corrected Leode.  “Chancellor Daifen turned his coat.”

“How?”

“Used to be Gralde.  Didn’t he, Tem?”

“He’s still Gralde,” Arin said.  “Just a stupid one, rewriting laws, getting all matey with Faiorsa’s people, leaving our uncle to fix things by himself––”

I started from my doze.  “We’ve got an uncle?” 

“Blood of the earth, Reyna,” said Arin, “where’ve you been for ten years?”

“She’s too young to remember,” said Mordan, “and so are you. The Queen has discharged Commander Ackerly.  She’s blaming Father’s death on him, I expect.  And meanwhile she’s promoted human Herist to Commander, and he, she, and the ex-Gralde have made an industrious triangle devoted to the implementation of nefarious plots.”

“Have you brought the paper, quill, and ink?” Tem asked me.

“Yes.”  I shifted my weight to wrestle them from my apron pocket.  “What do you want with them?  You can’t write with those.”  I looked at his long legs.

“You’re writing the letter, silly.”

“To who?”

“To whom.  Prince Ederach, the uncle you didn’t know about.”

And so I transferred Tem’s message about Mordan’s industrious triangle onto a page torn from a record book, for the illumination of my uncle Ederach.  I understood very little of it.

As I wrote, Mordan looked at my hands.  “Your hands look horrible.”

“I’ve been working.” Underneath the ink stains they were blistered red.   “I like to work.” Work made me too exhausted to cry. Except when old Mandy Olen hobbled down to the inn to play tunes limber as trumpet vine on her silver flute.  She filled me with a terrible longing to dance.  I wept because I refused it.   

I felt untethered, as though the earth no longer held me down.  I couldn’t trust myself not to float away.

It was a blessing I hadn’t the energy for darker bouts of self-pity.  I was kept busy working, as well as dictating and tying letters to Mordan’s leg.  I sealed the letters with Father’s ring, and until much later, wasn’t sure what my uncle did with them, let alone what he must have thought receiving all those letters stamped with his missing brother’s rosette seal and tied to the leg of a raven. 

Six

“They say King Daonac’s dead,” said the waymapper.  Wille had directly sat down on the bench across from him, because the man was from the south, and Wille was awfully interested in the south.  Ellyned was in the south.  “Someone spotted him floating in the Gael on his way to the sea.  With a bloody sword.  At least, that’s what the folks in Domestodd are saying.” 

Wille sank his elbow into the butter, and I stopped to listen. 

“And his children gat themselves killed by wildmen,” said a man at the next table over.  “All seven of em.”

“Five,” I said.  I dropped the mug I was carrying.  It cracked on the floor; beer splashed over my feet.

“Sprout,” called Marna from her corner, “that’s the third mug slipped through your greasy fingers.  One more and you’ll be gluing yourself back together as well.”

“Oh, five was it?”  Wille flicked a ladybird from his arm.

“Five petals”––I bent to pick up the shards––“mark two seed leaves.”  They stared at me and my face burned.

“You’ve got a terrible bad habit of changing subjects right when we get to the good part.”  Wille turned back to the waymapper.  “So all the Lauriads are dead?”

“I didn’t say Ederach was dead,” the waymapper said.  “And he’s a Lauriad so far’s I know, but I only knows what they tell me, so don’t go taking any of this as though it was true.  I’m only dishing out the rumor that comes before the real food, as them gossips down in Domestodd say.  Whetting your appetite’s all I’m doing.  If you want to know what’s really happening, I would give you the Queen’s address, but I hain’t got me address book with me, and I couldn’t go about reading it, anyway.” 

Beside the waymapper a big brown man sat with his back in the corner.

“He’s joined his black-haired lady,” he said. His voice was true, and when he started singing people lifted their heads and listened.

When into the river he dove.

He wound nightshade around, bound his hands with anemone

Rope for the want of his love.

He shackled his ankles with weeds from the pool

Stitched his mouth shut with blackthorn and thimblethorn cruel,

And sank with the weight of his lady’s death jewel,

When into the river he dove.”

The song must have been new-made, because I had never heard it before.  Other people had, though, and they started singing, too.

“He lost his raven-haired love in the evening

When out of the window she blew.

She left him six birds, six broken-winged swans

Who pecked out his eyes as they grew.

But his old heart was gone when they looked through the holes,

No fire was left but some smoldering coals

That could scarce warm their wings on the grey northern knolls,

Since when out of the window she blew.

They lost their father to Dark in the evening

When she took the place of his heart.

She entangled his hands in a golden-white trap,

And used all of her miserable art

To confound a sad mind and lead sorrow awry.

Too loud was the anguish to hear us the cry

Of the broken-winged swans in their struggle to fly

From the Dark in the place of his heart.”

I wasn’t very surprised.  Noremes make songs for everything.

***

“They saw Father,” I told Mordan when he stopped by to dictate a letter.  “They know he’s gone.”  I stuck my finger into the soil and dropped seeds in the holes. 

I had hidden the saddlebag in a hollow wall at the back of the cowshed. Inside, the Marione had crumbled to dust, leaving a strange assortment of flower stones.  Roughly three hundred of them.

An obscure part of the north pasture overlooking a pond made a fine plot.  The hills circled round so that the place looked like a green bowl with sun and water in the bottom.  I put a pinch of the Marione dust in each hole, hoping it would help somehow, before folding dirt over the seeds.  “And they think we’re dead, too. From bandits.”

“I suppose it’s best they don’t try to look for us,” said Mordan.  I scooped water from a pail and threw it over the loose ground.  “They won’t question Father’s death.  He rode around unescorted most of the time.”

My knee upset the pail.  “Those stupids won’t think how it might’ve happened?”  I swung the pail over my head and it landed in the pond.  “I needed that for dandelions.”  I eyed it contritely.  “Marna’s out of rubbish things to throw in her pot––”

“You said yourself it was bandits,” said Mordan.  “And as you’d have absolutely no trouble passing for one, you could do with a swim.” 

I retrieved the bucket, emptied it over Mordan’s head, and promised to meet him later with my pen and ink.

***

I should have anticipated Emry.  Floy had warned me: “She’s following you around with a honey jar.  I expect she’s looking for an everlasting charm and still thinks you’re a saebel.” 

She found me that afternoon.  I was sitting on a stump, copying down a sentence with a quill I’d cut myself. 

“Daifen has been told by an informer that the raid on the armory was lead by Ackerly Celdior, one of Daifen’s council and a White-Ship spy, so a prompt departure from the lord’s service is strongly recommended for Celdior,” Mordan said at the top of his voice.  “Do you need me to repeat it again?” 

He launched himself into the air when Emry climbed up beside me.

“You were talking to that crow, weren’t you?” 

“You’d make yourself sick on an everlasting honey pot,” I said.

She caught sight of the letter before I could get it behind my back.  “You’re writing.” 

“Jam, too.”

“Or are you pretending?  Can you read?” 

“Why do you care?”

“I’ve never met someone who can read.”

I was confounded.  “Marna can’t read?”   I hadn’t thought much about reading, couldn’t remember a time when I wasn’t literate.  I’d assumed everyone was born that way. 

“Numbers, maybe.”  Emry picked her nose.  “Not words.  A girl’s brain’s too small.  With all that stuff inside she’ll get
notions
.  Her head’ll crack.  That’s what happened to Mammy.” 

God knew what Emry thought
notions
were.

“Reyna,” called Mordan from a nearby tree.  “Please keep quiet.”  I bit angrily at my lip. 

“Do you want to learn how?” I asked Emry.

Her eyes became round.  “But my head––”

“You’ll just be learning to write.  Your head’ll be fine.”

Mordan had to wait to finish his letter, because we started immediately on vowels.  I used names from old stories,  drawing letters in the dust with a stick.

“W starts off Wdirn, who cut off his toe and stuck it in the crack in the sea wall to keep Anefeln safe from the Green Sea.”

“The Green Sea’s gone.”  Emry flattened the dust with her palm and drew a slipshod W.

“Say it,” I commanded.

“Oooodairn.”

We slogged through O, Ai, and E, and then Emry got stuck.

“Agedne,” I said, “the saebel girl who turned into a cedar––”

“Wait.”  She pulled on her braids.  “Ain’t that same as Aidel?” 

I cast about for another example, noticed a blue flower at the foot of our stump.  I picked it.

“A is for Aloren.”

She frowned.  “That’s an aster.”

“Aloren’s the Gralde name,” I said. “Not as common.” The flower’s eye was yellow.  Perhaps it was my face and hands, also yellow from the dandelions I had gathered earlier, or maybe it was my blue eyes, or stained dress.

“You look like an Aloren today,” said Emry.  “Sprout.”  Then she laughed herself off the stump, and I decided our lesson was done.

“Your aunt’s calling you,” I said.  “She’s a walnut pie needs testing.”

Emry got up and ran toward her imaginary walnut pie.  She wouldn’t speak to me for an hour afterwards, but when that had passed she called me Aloren, which caught on rapidly as a hay fire and clung to me like a spurned lover.

***

“Ice aster.”  Tem spat water. “
Where
have I heard it before?”  

He wasn’t the only one.  We all felt something when we heard the word.

I sat in a patch of meadowsweet at the edge of the pond.  The water had sunk, and my seeds had risen, grown into plants that looked like pale versions of their Marione parents.  The red-eyed saxifrage had bloomed alone in the spring; and as the others flowered (with the exception of the autumn gentians), I tended them as best I knew how––thinning, weeding, watering, spreading chicken manure. 

Some of the heads had already withered.  I held the saddlebag open beneath them, and flicked seeds inside.  It was late, and the sorrel had folded its leaves for the night.

“Maybe they’re like real asters,” said Mordan.  “Daisies, fleabane, you know––”

“I don’t know,” said Tem.

“They’re composites.  Got lots of little flowers on each head.  They like the sun.  Bloom in late summer, early fall.”

“They’re
ice
asters,” I said.  “Maybe they bloom in the winter.” I shook a stalk of Mordan’s columbine and rubbed the pods between my fingers.

“Oh, aye,” said Arin, and he surprised me.  For two seconds.  “D’you suppose they sprout out of the tips of icicles?”

“Our Marione flowered in the winter.”  I thought of tying his neck into a knot, and accidentally snapped the flower’s stem.  Mordan gave a foul curse.  “Sorry.”

“How do you know?” said Arin.  “We only saw them in the spring.”

“How do you know they don’t?”

“Bird sense.”

“She’s a fair point,” Mordan said in a loud voice.  “Maybe they shoot up in the middle of some snowy field at solstice.” 

Satisfied, I tied up the saddlebag and sat, quite by accident, on the plump waterskin I had just filled and lugged from the river.  The cord popped, the bag’s neck stiffened, and water poured between my legs.

I sprang up, hugging the skin round the middle, but the neck pointed to the ground and my arms did nothing save squeeze the thing dry.

“She’ll flay my skin off! I haven’t time to fetch more––” 

“Don’t carry on so,” said Arin.  “You’ve just got to tell her, ‘Oh, oh, I went to the river and a wolf was there, and he gave me such a fright I soiled my dress, and the waterskin––the wolf ate it.’”  

“How mature you are,” said Floy.  Then she said to me, “The pond’s plenty full enough, and the only thing anyone’s going to drink right now is ale, unless you count the horses.”

I waded into the dark water, dragging the skin behind.  Mandy Olen’s flute wafted from a window.  Tem stepped after and watched my progress with such an air of irritation that I turned and asked him what the matter was.

“I don’t like that woman.”

“Marna?”

“Wouldn’t think twice about turning you out midwinter with a horse blanket.” 

My legs went weak. 

Tem had always been frank, but this was bad.   I looked down and grew dizzy.  My eyes closed and my mouth grew wide, breathing balance into my body.  The mud gave way beneath my feet, and I fell in.

“Reyna,” Tem called, “did you step in a hole?”

I stood up, spitting and squeezing out my skirts. 

“If only––”  Tem tucked in his neck and his breast puffed out.  “Never mind, my head’s scrambled.”

“Just noticed, did you?” said Mordan.

Tem ignored him.  “If she can’t talk about herself, she wouldn’t be able to write about herself either, would she?  In one of those letters to Ederach.”

“She could’ve carried it to him.”  Mordan fluffed water from his back when Arin hunkered down in the shallows next to him.  “Wouldn’t he recognize her without a letter?”

“He hasn’t seen her since she was four.  And if he were to recognize her, she’d have considerable difficulty explaining herself.”

I had another idea. 

“Couldn’t any of
you
to write a letter about me in”––I glanced at the moon––“half a month?  When you have hands?” 

Tem’s head shot up. “Yes!  But I still don’t know…  Let’s wait for the next time around––a month and a half.”

I didn’t know what to think, scarcely dared trust to hope.  And after two weeks I forgot all about it.  The foreigners came up the road, and the pace of living was troubled enough to quicken.