The Luck of Brin's Five (3 page)

“Hush!” said Brin. “It is a person . . . a Moruian. Perhaps it is an Islander.”

Old Gwin who had been wrestling with the shining body bag found the way to work the fastening and began to peel it off.

“You see, Mamor?” I said. In the confined space we slid off the body bag and had it folded away quickly.

“Not bad . . .” said Old Gwin. “Fetch clean snow in a basket. There's a cut . . . oh poor dear . . . the Luck has a burn. The Luck's poor dearest hand is burned.”

“If it were perfect,” said Harper Roy, “we might not have a Luck.”

While Old Gwin washed and dressed the burned hand and the cut head, we examined our new Luck. We saw a tall, strongly made figure, like our own and yet not like. The proportions were different: heavier muscles, especially on the shoulders, like a porter. Arms shorter, head more round, face rather more flat, eyes more frontal and so on. This has all been detailed now and studied, but we were the first ones, so I believe, to make such observations.

The hair we could not believe: black as night, soft and curly as fleece; we all touched it as the Luck lay there, breathing strongly. We compared it with our own hair, all straight, of course, and fine, from Old Gwin's gray strands to the even brown of the grown-ups and the streaked blonde of myself and Narneen. Then the skin, paler than ours even in winter, pale and unmarked by the sun, the way grandees in Rintoul might be, if they took care and used sunshades.

“An Islander?” asked Brin.

The Luck wore a beautiful suit of rich, soft fabric, all in one like the body bag; a dark blue suit down to the feet, covered in white stockings after the heavy boots came off. Over the suit was a sleeveless vest covered with pockets and pouches, closed with that same interlocking fastening that had tried Old Gwin's patience. We took off the vest and laid it aside, then Mamor worked the fastening on the beautiful blue suit and drew it down over the shoulders, drawing the burned hand carefully from the left sleeve. More clothes—a shirt and long trunk-hose in fine white woven stuff.

“A quick look!” said Old Gwin. “We mustn't freeze the Islander to death!”

“It's not cold,” said Harper Roy. “This is the Luck's showing!”

We laughed, and Brin stripped off the shirt; Old Gwin gave a sharp intake of breath.

At first I saw only those tantalizing marks of difference—like and unlike all together. The stripping made the Luck more slender because the suit gave shape and padding. The rib cage was the same, the muscles heavy like an athlete or porter. The skin was utterly foreign in its pallor and the pattern of body hair, thick on the chest and descending onto the belly, was unlike a moruian.

“I think the Luck could grow that hair on its face!” said Mamor.

“So much?” said Harper Roy enviously, feeling the Luck's smooth chin. “You're right. It has hair scraped off right up to the ears.”

Old Gwin was amazed at something else: two circular marks on the hairy chest.

“Great North Wind!” whispered Harper Roy, “what sort of creature is this . . . to have teats on the chest?”

“They're not true nipples,” said Brin. “Could they be scars? Some kind of ritual cicatrice? Remember the legend of the Branding.”

Old Gwin clucked and made some crude remark to Mamor, which he did not repeat. She made a sign to avert threads of evil and reefed off the Luck's last garment. There was no doubt, the Luck was a male person, and below the waist his appearance was remarkably normal. There was a round, sunken scar in the center of the body, which we found puzzling, but the rest of him quite sound and well-formed. Gwin covered the Luck and put back the beautiful blue suit; Narneen, cheeky wretch, had slipped off a white sock and counted the Luck's toes. Five of course, rather squashed and flattened from their tight covering.

Gwin said: “Leave him be!”

“Name the Luck!” I said. “He must have a name.”

“It will tell us,” said Mamor. “Give the poor fellow time.”

“No,” said Brin, “Dorn is right. A nickname would be our gift to the Luck. Roy?”

The Harper ran a hand over the strings and pronounced first.

“Nightbird.”

“Starfall.”

“Blackbird.”

“Kind Star.”

“Dark.”

“Blueskin.”

So it went round the circle until someone said “Diver . . .” and we knew this was the perfect name.

A diver is a bird with blue plumage, the color of the Luck's blue suit. Divers come to the Warm Lake for a while in spring, for the shrimp hatching. Diver! How we laughed!

“Perfect!” said Brin. “It gives nothing away.” Narneen gave a squeak. We saw that the Luck—Diver—had opened his eyes, and they were blue. Not green or tawny or brown or hazel or any color but blue, bright piercing blue, an eye color unknown among the Moruia.

We stared and Diver stared back, taking in slowly the recesses of the tent, the glowing candlecones, the ring of faces. I heard the sound of the wind, thrusting at the edges of the tent. Outside was the glebe and beyond its wall the forest, the mountainside. We were perched high on Hingstull, upon the round orb of Torin, a small bead woven into the network of two suns. But the mystery of the spinning universe had been caught and held, for a moment, right here in our tent. I stared, on his behalf, at my own family. What could Diver see?

The looms that took up so much space, the brightly colored pieces of work drying or stretching up above us; the colony of spinners, all we had left, wintering in the fork of our tree. The wool sacks, the racks where Old Gwin kept food baskets. The hide bags for clothing, the sheafs of parchment and cypher threads and music skeins that Brin and Harper Roy had collected, Mamor's weapons.

Then the Family . . . the adults, who looked to me as well-worn and pleasant as the familiar objects we had made for our use every day. Thin brown faces, mainly hairless, though the Harper grew a lock on his chin. Heads of straight soft hair, plaited or tied, of a plain bear-brown; eyes widely spaced, long-lashed, all dark brown except Mamor, whose eyes, like my own, are hazel. Straight features, long upper lips, straight teeth . . . Old Gwin's were almost gone.

We were muffled in winter tunics and leggings and shawls, but Mamor's build was noticeably the heaviest; he had a scar on his left cheek. Brin's face was the noblest; she wore the vented robe and a copper amulet, very old, the only metal we carried in the house, besides four knives. Then the children, Narneen and myself, thin, straight and brown as the rest, our hair lighter.

Diver looked hard and raised his head. Old Gwin clucked and gave him another pillow. Then we began to speak, reassuring him. He spoke, in that surprisingly strong, guttural voice; his words seemed harsh, well-formed, dropping hard as graynuts into the murmuring pool of our speech. His teeth were as straight as ours; he curved up his mouth . . . we all smiled back. Narneen laughed, and Brin, picking up Diver's sound right hand, laced fingers in the sign that is called “Welcome.” She said the word; Diver easily repeated it, and that was the first word he learned in our speech. We all made the sign with his hand or our own and repeated the word to him.

He greeted us, then became anxious; his words made us cringe a little. Harper Roy mimed the tale of the vessel landing in the lake and made zooming, splashing noises. Then we showed the Luck his body bag, the vest and the white tents that had supported him in the air. He was calmer. He took the vest, and from the first of those magic pockets dosed himself with two small orange globes of medicine. Then he opened another pocket and brought out a flat package of dark brown squares, wrapped in crackling metal paper. Old Gwin made an averting sign, not the first or the last; she was very superstitious. Anything to do with fire or metal frightened her.

Diver broke off a dark brown square and ate it. Then he broke off other squares and held them out in front of us.

“Go on,” said Brin, “it must be fit to eat.” She took a piece, then Narneen . . . always hungry . . . then the rest of us. It was indescribable. The sweetest thing I had tasted in my life to that moment was wild honeycomb, and not much of that. We devoured that first square of chocolate like Twirlers in ecstasy.

Diver had other rations, but we refused them and ate our blackloaf; we were positive now that our luck had changed. It was difficult to speak with Diver; but very soon he took from his vest a small sheaf of paper and a little, hard blue pen. With these he began his drawings. He was very skillful at drawing all kinds of simple things, and he could draw faces . . . our faces, his own. His work was clever as a tapestry tale-weaver. At the very beginning of his life with us, something was said that rings in my mind still, because it is so strange.

Diver listened to us very closely but he could scarcely repeat anything we said, at first, because our speech is fast and soft. But without prompting, he spoke up and said, “Moruia.” We agreed, pointing to ourselves, and he said again, “Moruia of Torin.” It could be argued that he caught the words from our speech or read our thoughts. This is not so. Diver had no magical powers in the true sense; he was “thought-blind” and could not use a Witness. I believe
his
explanation: that his ancestor spoke these names in a prophecy long ago, in the system of another star.

Our luck had changed. We slept late; and when we awoke, Mamor and Harper Roy had been to the lake. They had performed funeral rites for Odd-Eye and buried his body. I often thought of Odd-Eye in the days that followed, and sometimes in dreams I spoke to him and told him how well we were doing. I wondered if his soul-bird had flown with the North Wind, our Great Mother, or if it still hovered near us, watching, as certain brave souls are permitted to do. But I was a child and could not mourn long.

That morning my main interest was in food; Roy and Mamor had picked up a sack of mud-crabs, washed up on the lake shore out of season. Then on the way back Mamor shot a scrub deer. They saw certain other things and came back quickly to report. I left off threading the contrary little brute of a mat-loom and was unloading the mud-crabs.

“There's company!” said Mamor, jerking his head towards the lake.

“A search?” asked Brin.

“It will come to that.”

“Armed vassals,” explained Harper Roy, “trying to drag up Diver's ship in a net. It will go all the way to Rintoul.”

“What was that crest again?” mused Brin. “Star and spindle. Do you know that, Mother?”

Old Gwin snorted and went on skinning the deer with her own shell-knife. “A branch of Clan Galtroy. That crest was quartered on a hanging by Roneen Tarroyan . . . may her soul-bird fly far . . . Galtroy are southern grandees. City-folk.”

Mamor shook his head. “That was not the only crest we saw.”

“What else?” asked Old Gwin, catching something of his tension. “Out with it!”

“Three knots,” said Mamor. “The armed vassals in the patrol all bore this device.” Brin looked for confirmation to the Harper, who struck three notes on his harp. I was filled with uneasiness.

“What crest?” I asked. “Brin, tell me, who is that?”

“We live on his land, child,” she said patiently, kicking the changes on the great loom and running the shuttles through. “That is the device of the Great Elder, Tiath Avran Pentroy.”

I blurted out the terrible nickname: “Tiath Gargan!” It was a name to frighten children; all the adults turned to me and laughed.

“Yes!” said Mamor, “old Strangler Tiath himself. This Galtroy visitor and a party of Pentroy vassals have been using the hunting lodge at Twin Peaks, beyond the lake.”

“Will they come searching?” I looked at Diver, deeply asleep on a pile of bedding, within wind of our looms.

“They shall not have our Luck!” said Brin firmly.

“Maybe they'll be content with the ship,” said Mamor.

“It was a fine sight,” said the Harper, “roundish . . . silver . . . made all of metal.” Old Gwin hissed and made the averting sign.

“Cook the food,” said Brin. “If the weather holds we'll travel south tomorrow.”

“After we eat,” I said, “could we do the binding ceremony?”

They all approved, and I was proud to be taken into their counsel. So at midday we feasted on mud-crabs and venison, then we woke Diver, and Old Gwin fed him some broth. Afterwards we enacted the binding ceremony with a white cord. Diver was refreshed from his long sleep and watched everything we did; I think he understood it. We bound all our wrists together, chanted and clasped hands. Then Old Gwin drew out a message skein, and it went round the circle with each of us tying the knots that spelled out our names. Narneen and Brin guided Diver's hand, and there at the base of the skein was his given name, Diver. He was bound a member of our Family, Brin's Five.

After that we drank water and went back to our weaving. Narneen, lucky wretch, was permitted to leave off her carding and spinning and sit with Diver. He began at once to learn our speech, beginning with the names of common objects. He was especially quick and diligent in this study, copying what Narneen said in his penetrating foreign voice and writing in another small bound sheaf of paper. We felt his determination, his eagerness to know all things; we took things more steadily on the mountain before Diver came. He was of a different race; there was an edge of impatience about him.

The break in the weather did not last long enough; Mamor believed another blizzard was coming that would keep us on the mountain. As we were dismantling the looms that same evening, Narneen heard something. Old Gwin and Brin buried the Luck in a cloud of new work and blankets; Whitewing, that bird of evil omen, stood outside our tent.

“Peace to Brin's Five from Hunter Geer, their glebe neighbor.”

“Peace in sad time,” replied Harper Roy, lounging at the open flap with a bunch of red mourning threads.

“Sadness?” The albino peered boldly into the dark recesses of our tent.