Raetian Tales 1: A Wind from the South (9 page)

Then bab Luregn went to the pasture with the holy bread of Mass: other priests took the Host up after him, for he sent for help to Selva and Ursera, and to the Capuchin monk at Mustér, who had once exorcised a glacier. But nothing did any good. The alp withered. From the houses right to the stones of the mountain-scree, nothing grew. Even the birds and insects left or died, and the alp fell deathly silent. Only in the nights could be heard the enraged bellowing of a huge bull. Seeing that supernatural remedies seemed not to have worked, a few men went there armed to try to deal with the Bull themselves. None of them came back. The last of them, the Hunter of Selva, the most skilled hunter from Ursera to Cuera, was found rent limb from limb, his skull crushed like an egg that someone has stepped on.

So Tschamut passed into legend in the countryside round. After all, there were haunted alps enough, but none of them were so haunted that the ghost or demon had cursed the ground barren. That first year was not so bad, since the feed for the livestock was already stored. But the next autumn a third of Tschamut’s beasts had to be sold or slaughtered,  since there would not be enough hay to feed so many during the winter. The village went hungrier during that second winter’s nights than since the avalanche a hundred twenty years before. Many masses for help were offered, many stomachs groaned with hunger, many a tear was shed over the trouble, the sickness, the fear. But in all the town, only Mariarta wept for the first one the monster killed, the one the townspeople cursed: the one who created it.

With help
,  she thought.
My help. I am the other godparent.

Sometimes the wind would whisper in her ear—cool words of encouragement, and strange promises of power to come. But she had no heart to listen. Her work for her father, helping him keep his accounts of the village’s business, took much of her time; she gave it gladly. She made no more journeys to the higher alp, and the crossbow lay in its wrappings under her mattress, where she would not have to look at it and hear a voice say, mocking, but still dear, “‘Oh what a fair maiden we have here—the master herder must hear of this—’” Mariarta desperately welcomed the busyness of her life, which shut out the silences in which she must either hear the wind, or that other voice, lost now in the crash of the thunder, the roar of the Bull.

And in this way, reckoning from the night the monster first appeared, three years went by.

“It’s coming much closer now,” her father said softly.

They were sitting together in his workroom on a fine spring morning, the third year after the Bull appeared. The windows were thrown open for the warmth, and the breeze stirred the parchments on the table, wobbling the feather of the quill which Mariarta had just laid aside. Her father’s eyesight was not what it had been; she did most of the writing and figuring for him, these days.

She looked up from the papers. “Bab,” she said, “think where the story comes from.”

“Yes, I know Flep’s half mad, these days,” her father said, and reached out to the cup. Mariarta lowered her eyes, thinking, 
He never used to drink it unwatered, and never so early in the day.
“But even a crazy man can see straight sometimes, and when duonna Aia sees it too— We have to do something. If the lower pasture starts to go the way the upper one has—”

“Have you thought of something we haven’t tried already?”

Mariarta’s father’s face twisted. It hurt her to see how that particular expression, pained and helpless, brought out the look of weariness about his eyes. The last couple of years had dealt harshly with his looks and health, and more so with her mother’s. She had been trying to keep Mariarta’s father well and healthy as well as herself; the effort was showing.

Her father shook his head. “Not I. When even the monks at Mustér can’t find a plan among all their books—” He drank, frowning.

Mariarta knew that expression. “Then what?  Tell me.”

Her father’s voice was reluctant.  “I had thought of asking the people what they would think of moving the village.”

Mariarta was shocked. “The expense....” And the complications. How to explain to Tschamut’s landlords, the lordly Hapsburgs, that one of their sources of tax was just going to move elsewhere?  If they approved—which seemed unlikely—it would be at so extortionate a price that only four, maybe five generations’ worth of tax would pay it off.  Reiskeipf would be delighted.

“It could be done,” Mariarta’s father said. “Remember that house in Tamins?  The one with the ghost in it that kept knocking things around.”

Mariarta thought. “They took the house down, didn’t they, and moved it a hundred yards to one side.”

“And the haunting stopped. This would be like that.”

“If they would let us take the houses—”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

Mariarta considered: but Reiskeipf’s face intruded. She still remembered the argument her father had had with him last year. Her bab’s position was that the grass-penny should be reduced because the upper pasture was now useless. Reiskeipf’s position, which won, was that the pasture in question was useless because of the actions of someone native to Tschamut—so the tax would remain the same, and the village should consider itself  lucky that the noble Rudolf von Hapsburg didn’t
increase
the tax because of damage done to his property. However, being an understanding landlord, he would give the tenants another year or two to repair the damage. After that, though—

And Reiskeipf had regarded Mariarta. She knew what offer he expected her father to make. To her surprise, her father had refused to make it, and had sent Reiskeipf off without his usual glass of
vinars
. Mariarta was unsure what had caused this change of heart.

“I don’t think they’ll let us take the houses,” Mariarta said slowly.

“Mati, we’ve got to try it. Or something else. People are getting restless, they say we’re doing nothing—”

The breeze coming in the window ruffled the papers, turned up a corner of one: under it on another parchment lay a patch of faded color, traced with fine dark lines. Mariarta gazed at it, then reached out to the map, pulling it free. “You told me that the Urseren council is meeting at the end of the month...”

“In Aultvitg,” said her
bab
. Mariarta traced with her finger the wobbling line of road that led  from Ursera into the lower, northern country. Aultvitg was a town sited at the bottom of the southernmost of the lakes into which the Reuss emptied. The Ursern councilors alternated their meetings between Ursera at the southern extent of their domains and Aultvitg at the northern end.

“Let’s go to the council meeting, then,” Mariarta said.

“For what?  And besides, we’ve been. They had no help for us.”

“They might have some now,” Mariarta said. “
Bab,
listen. We need to be seen to be doing something, you’ve said it yourself!  If you’re seriously considering moving the town, you’re going to have to get the councillors’ help anyway. We would have to have somewhere to move
to
. You should talk it over with them.”

Her father eyed her suspiciously. “You’ve got other things on your mind,
buobetta.
”

Mariarta dropped her gaze to the table again.
He’s withering here,
like the alp. He looks far better when he doesn’t have to look at it every morning when he makes his rounds.
Mummi
sees it too, otherwise she wouldn’t push him to go away as she does
—  Aloud Mariarta said, “It seems to me I should be out of Reiskeipf’s sight for a while. No other way to manage that but to take me away. Eventually he’ll get wind of what you’re thinking, and be hot after you to—”

“Enough,” her father said, frowning. “You’re not to think about him. All the same—”

He went briefly silent. “Very well. It’s in fifteen days, that meeting. We’d have to leave after Massday next week. We’ll stay a night in Ursera...travel the rest of the way with some of the councilors. That is, if any of them are still in town with this nice weather. If I were them I’d have left already—you can never tell how long it’ll hold, this time of year.”

“I shouldn’t worry about that,” Mariarta said, glancing out the open window at the sunlight. “It’s going to be fair enough next week.”

“Yes,” her father said, smiling, but frowning too, “you never seem to have trouble telling what wind’s going to blow. You want to watch that,
buobetta
: bab Luregn—”

“I know,” Mariarta said. Bab Luregn’s attitude toward her had been cool the last couple of years, as the Bull’s malign influence began to spread  toward the town. He did not come right out and
say
“
stría
”—for the Church had often enough declared that witches didn’t exist. But everyone knew that nonetheless there were people who used
striegn
, the dark sort of magic that could make cattle or other people fall sick with a look or a touch. Mariarta was careful to clearly pronounce the holy names in church, and she carefully took the holy Bread to show it did not scald her or make her ill.

“Never mind,” her father said. “I’ll tell your
mummi
that we’re going off on another journey. Two times in three years, now: she’ll think I’m tiring of her.”

Mariarta smiled, reached for another parchment. “A while to go before that. Now,
bab:
you wanted the count of the last old-summer cheeses?...”

•

Two days after the next Mass-day, they set out. Their preparations had been few: her father simply asked Flep for the loan of his horse, and sent to Selva to old Mang Lelias for the loan of another.

Mariarta’s own preparations were as prosaic. She had only the plain linens and grey wools of a mountain girl, with a ribbon or two for her hair, now quite long and shining black after the auburn of her childhood. She packed what she thought she would need, and sat by one of the pools of Rein one day, looking into it, straining to tell if people would think she was worth looking at.

That night, the night before they were due to leave, Mariarta found herself, in dream, sitting by that pool, gazing into the water. Not a breath of breeze troubled it. The pale glacier-tumble of stone at its bottom seemed darker for a change, so that she could see her face more clearly. Another face she saw as well, as if someone leaned over her shoulder, gazing into her reflection’s eyes. Mariarta shuddered deliciously at the feel of the breath on the back of her neck: warm, soft, the touch of the
föhn
at its gentlest, when it comes down the mountain in the late summer to stroke its fingers through the ripening corn and stir the leaves on the vines. She could not see clearly the face which gazed at her. Mariarta got an impression of grey eyes, and a cool expression in them: though the breath stirring her hair, and what seemed in the dream like the soft touch of fingers brushing the back of her neck, conveyed another message entirely. She stretched in slow pleasure in the dream, but did not dare to turn around to look her visitor—her wooer?—in the face.

Have you forgotten me, then?
 

Not in words, but through the touch, through the warm breath, came the sense of what was said. It was like when the wind whispered in her ear, but more intimate.

Mariarta shook her head.
Never,
  she said.

But you do not come to be with me as you did.
The touch wandered lower, stroking, gentle. It was warm here in the sunshine, and the stream murmured drowsily, murmured her name as she had heard the wind do: not in demand or promise, but soft-voiced, like a wooer indeed. Mariarta leaned back against the boulder, closed her eyes better to hear the voice, feel its sweet warm breath. Odd to lie here bare-skinned under the sun, but no one would disturb them. She had a protectress, someone hers alone.

Yours alone,
  said the other. Warmth breathed about her, the wind stroked her, and Mariarta moaned softly with the pleasure of it, the other’s closeness, the sweetness of being touched.
It has been hard, I know. But you are almost ready for me. Soon there will be nothing you cannot have, nothing I will not do for you. Only wait, and be strong. I will be yours as you will be mine, wholly. Nothing will be denied you. Not this, or anything else. You will see.

Mariarta gasped at the feeling which began to fill her, like the wind, rising. The breath stirred warm about her face.
Do not forget the best way to be with me,
  the other said.
Remember the shooting. That was how we came to meet. That is how we will meet again, fully, this time. No more hints and promises. Power, and life. Remember it.

Mariarta lay helpless in the pleasure. One last long stroking: then silence, and the rush of the water turned suddenly into wind in the trees outside her window, in the light of the long twilight before dawn. She blinked, and pulled the covers close about her, cast forlorn on the shores of a dream of eternal summer, and suddenly cold.

•

There was nothing left to do in the morning but go. Nevertheless, her mother was in the kitchen wrapping food for them, more than they would need even if every inn between here and Aultvitg had been eaten bare. Mariarta wandered in, dressed and ready.

“What’s in the bag, dear?” her mother said.

“Nothing, just room for more food.” Mariarta picked up the smaller bags that already lay on the table, loading her own bag with them.

“Good, that’s the old cheese there, you can put that at the bottom. Ah,
zaffermess
, is that the biggest skin we have, Baia?”

“The other one’s wormholed.”

“Nuisance,” Mariarta’s mother said, handing Mariarta the smaller wineskin. “You two won’t have a drop to drink after the first day.”

“There’ll be plenty,
mummi.
” Mariarta took the skin. “Are we to take that bread too?”

“Yes. And sausages, the dried ones—there are ten of them, the ones your father likes—”

“And none left for us,” Onda Baia said under her breath.

“
Buseruna,
you old glutton!” Mariarta’s mother said, so sharply that Baia flinched. “Are you going to deny a little pleasure to a man going out into the dangers of the road—”

“We’ll be all right,” Mariarta said softly, and her mother paused in her hurrying to look across at her with that old soft look of understanding in her eyes. Mariarta could hear the thought on the sigh she breathed out, the way the wind might have whispered it to her:
who knows what might happen to him out there?  Or, while he’s gone, to me?  These pains—

“It’s only a week to Aultvitg,” Mariarta said. “The same back, and only a few days of council in between.”

Her mother smiled, and said, “—without even some meat to comfort the poor empty stomach, Baia, how can you possibly—”

Mariarta smiled sadly, and went away to see about loading her horse.

An hour or so later, all the village was out in the street to see them off. Bab Luregn had come with his holy water sprinkler, and blessed them until they were half-soaked.

“Bring us an answer,” said Flep to Mariarta’s father.

Her father, looking fine in his linen shirt, simply nodded. “I don’t promise to bring back a troop of knights, or a Cardinal, but we’ll do what we can, Flep.”

He shook the reins and moved off. Mariarta went after him. Slowly they rode into the silence of the road, where nothing moved but dust-whirls in the wind, and nothing spoke but the
föhn
.

•

The first time they had done this trip, nearly a year ago now, Mariarta had been torn between agonies of excitement and dread. Everyone knew it was dangerous, sometimes fatal, to be “on the roads”: anything could happen. At the same time, it was a marvel to see something
new
every time you went around a curve: a vista of mountains, a beautiful woodland, someone else’s tended fields or alp.