Tanith Lee - Claidi Journals 01 (9 page)

His were dark, like his long hair, which hung to his waist. He was the color of strong tea with a dash of milk. A color that matched the horse he’d ridden. I’d thought he would be older. I never saw anyone so—I don’t know what to say—
terrible
.

I shrank.

To my surprise, he at once looked away and right at Nemian

 

“Any money on you?”

“Money,” said Nemian.

“They use it in Peshamba, or whatever big place you’re headed for,” helpfully explained the bandit.

“You want some money,” guessed Nemian. From one of his host of pockets he took a flat leather case and offered it to the bandit.

The bandit accepted it, opened it.

The bandit and I both stared with curiosity at the weird turquoise-green leaves of paper that were revealed.

Then the dark
eyes
glanced at me sidelong. I felt sick and sidled back.

“Right,” said the bandit. “Well, I can’t use this.” (He sounded as if he was saying it wasn’t good enough!)

“Any coins?”

“Sorry,” said Nemian. He didn’t seem worried. Just well-mannered and willing to talk, as though the mad bandit killers were perfectly normal people met in a garden.

One of the other bandits (not the one with the knife) called, “Tell the tronker to shake out his coat. And what’s that bird got hidden?”

Tronker? Bird?

The chariot-leaning bandit gave him a casual look.

“I don’t think they’re good for much,” he said pityingly. Oh, we’d let him down properly.

“Come off it, Argul,” said the other bandit. “
She’s
all right, that bird, eh?” (Ah. The “bird” was me.) All the old tales of the Waste raced through my bubbling mind—horrible stories, with death at the end of them.

But I glared up at the talking bandit on the horse. I felt so terrified I thought I was going to be sick or cry, but instead I screamed at him, “
You touch me and I’ll bite your nose off
!” There was a shocked silence.

Then all at once they all burst out laughing.

This included the chariot-leaning bandit, the other four bandits, and Nemian.
Nemian
!

Even the Sheeper was smiling—perhaps thinking we’d all now be best friends.

And I was appalled. What had I said… done?

Nevertheless my fingers had curled. My nails felt strong and sharp. How revolting it would be to bite that bandit—but my teeth were snapping.

I’d slapped Jade Leaf; I’d escaped the House. I wouldn’t be stopped, not anymore.

The bandit called Argul shifted away from the chariot.

 

“Better watch
out
,” he told the other bandits, “she means what she says.” He handed the leather container with money back to Nemian. “I can see,” said Argul to Nemian, “you’ve got enough on your hands with that bird you’ve got there. She scares
me
all right.”

“Yes, yes,” warbled the other bandits, “he’s got real problems there.” Then the bandit leader spun around, ran at his horse so I thought he meant to knock it right over, and leaped—
leaped
— up the side of it, as if it were only a little still rock.

Next second he was astride the horse. And unruffled, the horse looked down at me from a dark smooth eye.

“So long. Have a lovely day!” the bandits cheerfully called as they galloped away back down the hill.

==========

We didn’t get to the hill village until late in the afternoon.

Nemian said nothing about the bandits. He had said all he wanted, earlier, when he told me they were mad.

Somehow I kept thinking they’d appear again, mad minds changed, to rob, terrify, shame, and slaughter us. They didn’t.

We had some sheep cheese and lettuce and some beer. I got hiccups.

I was fed up—in a mood, as Daisy used to say.

The sky turned deep gold, and we rumbled over yet one more hilltop, and there was the village. It wasn’t a thrilling sight. Huddles of lopsided huts all over the place, a huge rambling rubbish heap you could smell from far off. Dogs wandered, snarling. A few sullen human faces were raised to glare at us.

It was as unlike the friendly Sheepers’ town as seemed possible, as if specially formed to be off-putting.

==========

Well, I think it was. I’m writing this last section at night, in a sort of barn place, which stinks and is full of enormous rats. Actually the rats are rather handsome, better than the hill-villagers. Quite easy, that.

They behaved foully as soon as we got there. Some stared at us in the sheep-chariot, and some just went in. They’d have banged their doors if they could, but such doors as they have would have fallen off.

Presently a fat gobbling sort of man arrived and baa’d at the Sheeper. Nemian said to me he baa’d so badly the Sheeper obviously could hardly understand, and Nemian not at all.
p>

Even so, the Sheeper told Nemian, baaing properly, that we’d “be all right here.” And yes, they’d let us have a cart with a mule—what is that?—either tomorrow or the day after.

They are called Feather Tribe. They like birds?

Naturally they wanted paying? No, said the Sheeper, apparently. I saw he looked embarrassed. He had to leave us here (to go back to his own so-much-pleasanter place). Nemian didn’t comment. I couldn’t.

We got out, and the Sheeper went into a hut with the awful fat gobbly person. (Later the Sheeper reappeared loaded with sacks of something, got in his chariot, and went off, not even waving good-bye.) Nemian and I were sort of shoveled, by a couple of revolting women, into one of the barns. This one.

I thought Nemian would throw up at once. His face went white and his eyes went white and his nostrils
curled
.

“Oh, Claidi. What can I say? What will you think?”

“Its not your fault,” I said. Grudgingly, I have to admit. I didn’t think it
was
his fault. But in a way it was. I mean, he’d gone “traveling” and then involved us both in all this. I really mean I was angry with him. Love is like this, so the songs of the House used to say. You adore them one minute, then want to throttle them.

Anyway, he didn’t hang about. He left me sitting on the smelly straw and went to find someone to do something. He didn’t come back.

At first I wasn’t worried. Then I was worried. Going to the barn door, I saw Nemian in conversation with the Gobbly Fat One. (Nemian must speak this language too.) They were both drinking something and yowling away with amusement. Typical.

I sat on the stony ground outside the barn.

Soon a dog wandered up and bared yellow fangs at me for no reason. Stupidly, I snapped, “Oh stop it, you fool.” Then I thought it’d leap for my throat. But it whined and ran off with its tail on the ground.

Nemian and the GFO—their leader?—went striding off on what looked like a tour of the village. (This dung-heap goes back to my grandmother’s day. This hole in the roof was made by my great grandfather’s pet pigeon, which ate too much and so fell through.) A woman came up near evening and plunked a bowl down beside me.

“Er, excuse me. What is it?” I asked fearfully.

“Germonder pop,” said she. Or so it seemed.

I tried the germonder pop. And it was OBSCENE. So no dinner for Claidi.

There are no lamps in the barn, though the huts lit up later. The moon is very bright, and I’ve written this by the light of it.

The village Feather Tribe are making dreadful sounds. Are they eating, or talking, or what? It’s sickening.

(I saw Nemian again, about an hour ago. He wandered by with the GFO and saluted me. He seemed happy, enchanted by these Featherers, some of whom were now trailing him in a merry group. Was he drunk, or just being tactful? Or is he… is he useless? When the bandits were there, I never felt for one moment Nemian could save me, as in the old stories the hero always does the heroine, but am I even a heroine? Some, chance.)

==========

Retreated back into the barn. I might as well go to sleep. Deadly day. Yes, of course I should be glad and pleased I’m on this big adventure. But I have to assure you, the smell in here is enough to make the boldest flinch.

Outside, it seems to be getting brighter and noisier. The moon? Is the moon noisy? Who knows?

 

I keep thinking of that glass charm the bandit had, the one who leaned on the chariot.

I think they were the end, being so insulting about me (bird! problems!) when I was only desperate to defend myself, which nobody else would.

FLIGHT

The roof goes up so high, it’s hard to believe it’s a wagon. The bumping helps, though, to remind me.

Its difficult to write here. I’ll leave this, I think, until we stop.

Have to note the colors in the roof—deepest crimson, and purple with wild greens. The pictures are of horses and dogs, mostly. And a sun done in raw gold, dull with time.

They’ve had these wagons forever.

Bump.

I’ll wait.

==========

When I’d been asleep in the Feather Tribe’s barn just long enough to be confused if woken, and not long enough to have had a rest, thumps and yodels started and someone was shaking me. (I believe I said before, that’s a terrible way to wake anyone.)

I shot up, and there were all these Feather Tribe people, looking entirely changed. That is, they were beaming and nodding at me, and one of them was flapping a feathery thing about in front of me, like an enormous wing.

Not amazingly, I sat staring.

Then Nemian appeared through the crowd.

“Its all right, Claidi. Its a gift.”

“What? What is?”

“That dress.”

“Is it a dress?”

“It’s made out of feathers sewn on wool. It’ll be rather hot. I’m sorry. But they seem to want you to have it. There’s some sort of festival tonight.”

“Oh.”

“They want us to go with them to some shrine in the hills.”

“What’s a
shrine
?”

“Don’t worry now. The women will dress you, and then we’ll go with them. We need their help, don’t we? So we have to join in, be gracious.”

I was only more bewildered by this explanation.

 

Anyway, he and the men had gone, and there were only these four or five large women intent on putting me into the feather-dress. I’d been clothed by force quite often in childhood. I knew it was safer not to resist.

My God (Am I using that right? Think so—seems to be a sort of exclamation used in alarm or irritation), that dress. I think I looked like a gigantic white chicken. Also, it
was
hot, and it itched.

Having clad me, the women were leading me to the door, but I snatched up my bag when I saw one of them fumbling with it.

Supposing they could read? And read
this
? (Which was farfetched. They barely seemed able to talk.) Outside, the whole village had assembled with torches.

They were clapping their hands and now started to sing. I think it was singing.

Frankly I wasn’t sure if I preferred this jolly, festive side to them. I preferred the scowling, standoffish way they’d been earlier. Now they kept touching my arms and hair, or my back, and I hated it.

I shouted at Nemian, but he only waved. He was with the GFO at the processions front. I say

“procession,” since this is what it became.

We walked quite briskly out of the village and up a stony track into the hills.

A few dogs ran after, and the festive villagers threw stones at them until they turned back. Sweet people.

No wonder the dogs were so dodgy and cowed.

==========

These hills are strange. The whole of the Waste is strange, of course, to me. But all the parts are bizarre in different ways. They all have a different character.

The hills… are like a place where something intense, perhaps heavy, had been, which now was blown away. They had a weird beauty in the moon-and-torchlight. Where the grass is thick, the hillsides seem covered with velvet, and then bare pieces strike through, harsh and hard. Also there are bits that are worn thin, translucent, and you seem to see through them, down into darkness.

It was all uphill.

The Gobbly Fat One, who was lord, had to keep having a breather, so then we all got one. They passed around a putrid drink. Luckily, when I shook my head, no one forced me to try it.

Inappropriately I recalled climbing all the stairs of the high tower at the House. Perhaps when we got to wherever we were going, the view would be worth the climb.

And it was.

Suddenly we were up on a broad, flat table of land.

They all gave a glad bellow and stamped and clapped and “sang” again, and more drink went around, and I thought if they kept pushing it past and breathing it over me, I’d probably puke all over them and serve them right.

But then they drew off, and I looked up.

 

A colossal sky was overhead, the biggest sky I’d ever seen. It was quite
blue
, with mottled wisps of cloud, but mostly encrusted with masses of diamond stars. In the midst of it, the moon was at its highest point—so white it burned—and was held in a smoky, aquamarine ring.

Dizzy, I looked down. The hills had drawn back, and in front there was nothing but the moon-bleached flat of land, which seemed to stop in midair.

I thought, I bet it drops off there, into a chasm.

This was correct.

Over to one side there were some caves, and the Feather Tribe villagers were scrambling into them with raucous yells.

You can guess that I wasn’t keen to follow, and no one insisted.

To take my mind off the itchy feather dress,.! gazed up again at the stars.

I felt I could float right out of myself and up to them, and in among the drifts of night there would be adventures beyond anything ever found below.

When I looked back this time, Nemian was there, gazing at me. “You have such a graceful neck,” he said to me.

All the starry adventures faded. I was happy to be in this one.

“Thank you.”

“The stars are wonderful, aren’t they?” he said. And then, “But I’d think your favorite time would be dusk.” He hesitated and said, “Because of your mother.”

A lot of noise was coming from the caves, and down the slopes behind us, I could hear some (big?) animal scuffling, and who knew what sort of animal, out here. But all that was instantly rinsed off my mind.