The Unfinished Song: Taboo (5 page)

Jensi chatted more about grasses, but Dindi barely heard her drone over the song of the sedge sprites, which were climbing to the tops of the grasses. They blew into the hollow reeds, making the grass sing like a chorus of flutes. Tiny frog trolls, no bigger than the river frogs they rode, hopped toward Dindi, beating the throats of the frogs like drums. Drum and flute, chant and song, the faery music sounded like Tavaedi music might have sounded drunk. All the same notes, but none of the restraint, all of the power, none of the rules.

“Come dance with us! Come dance with us!”

The fae offered her all of the bliss of dancing, none of the failure. They wouldn’t test her, judge her, refuse her,
forbid
her.
I
f she went with them now, she knew she would never come back.

“Dindi, are you even paying attention?” Jensi demanded. “You’re staring off into empty space again.”

Dindi looked at her cousin blankly.

Jensi snapped her fingers in front of Dindi’s face. “It’s
over
, Dindi. You can’t behave like a goose anymore. You failed the Test, you’re one of us now. Start acting like it!”

Dindi thought of Kavio’s thinking stones, and the one, lonely stone. She
had to separate herself from Jensi. But what would distract her? Jensi actually
enjoyed
chores.

“Let’s make a bet,” Dindi said, inspired. “I bet I can cut more sedges than you can. Whoever cuts less sheaves of grass has to carry both of our baskets back to the Tor.”

Jensi’s eyes lit up. “Fa! Not going to happen!”

She took out her scythe and started slashing at the cane right there and then, oblivious to the sedge sprites
who
squealed and tumbled and stuck their tongues at her as the grasses where they perched fell to the ground.

Each girl soon lost herself separately in the rushes and sedges along the bank. Dindi walked to the river’s edge, following the song of the fae. There, half hidden by the sedge grass, a bear stood in the stream, large as an aurochs, with shaggy golden blond fur.

Dindi drew in a sharp breath.
The Brundorfae
.

The bear gamboled in the stream, dashing and splashing this way and that, and snapped its jaws at something wriggling just beneath the surface of the water. Triumphant, the bear lifted its head with a large silver fish in its mouth. The bear trotted to a pile of rocks, dumped the fish on a flat rock, and tore into the meal. Soon nothing remained of the fish except a bloody stain and a sprinkling of silver scales and bones. Satisfied, the bear wiped its face with its paws and burped.

Then it looked straight at Dindi.

The bear shook itself. Water sprayed everywhere. It looked at Dindi again, then turned and limped up the pile of rocks, away from the stream.
It was injured, she saw.
The bear was at the top of the rock pile, near a wooded area on the other side of the stream. Again, it turned and looked at Dindi. This time, a brief flare of light shone about it, a golden halo of light.

Dindi
waded across the stream and climbed up the rocks after it.
The bear led Dindi through an area of young trees and ferns, to a clearing dappled with sunlight. A circle of other golden bears waited there, and Dindi’s bear placed itself in the formation. Despite her sense that she had been invited, Dindi feared to come too close to the bears. She hung back behind a boulder mottled with lichen and moss.

All of the bears began to glow with a warm, yellow light. Their fur shifted into long blond hair and gossamer garments. Their limbs turned slender and delicate. Their snouts retreated into the faces of beautiful men and women. Wings like autumn leaves sprouted from their backs.

The Brundorfae—
High Yellow Faeries
—
clasped hands and began to dance. If the warmth of the sun and the strength of a mountain lion and the taste of freshly churned butter on a crisp
pisha
had a material form, it would have looked like the dance of the Brundorfae. Dindi’s feet dragged her closer to the dancers. The golden hair
ed maiden with the injured le
g
g
lanced over her shoulder.

The faery turned and joined the circle of dancers
.
The lower fae had started to stream toward the faery circle, which
was growing wilder and wilder.
A pixie alighted on Dindi’s shoulder. “Join us, Dindi!”

What did she have to stay for?
Basket weaving and cooking and sewing and keeping a farm for some sweaty, useless husband and his grubby brats.

She knew exactly how it would be. The others would find her days later, bloody and twisted, amidst bear tracks.
How like Dindi
, they would shake their heads
, she wandered off in the woods and got mauled by a bear
. Gwenika would have all the more reason to be glad they were not friends.
Maybe
even
Kavio would hear about it and think to himself that she probably deserved it after the way she’d treated him. Hadi and Jensi and the rest of her family would mourn her for a while, but they would build their own lives. In time, they would only mention her when warning the little ones about the dangers of wandering away
to dance with the fae. No one would ever
guess the undeserved bliss she had felt in her last days, as she danced—for the first and last time in her life—hand in hand with High Faeries.

Dindi took a step toward the faery ring. It twirled like a whirlpool of molten gold by now. Music pulsed through the woods and in her veins. Another step. And another. The Brundorfae broke the circle to let her in. A handsome male Brundorfae took one of her hands.

She was dancing alongside them now, matching their leaps and skips with her own. She was keeping pace with the Brundorfae, but until she clasped hands to close the circle, she would not be trapped into dancing herself to her death. She could never judge time while dancing with the fae, but she wanted to savor this dance, this day, this hour, this moment…

The wild circle of dancing Brundorfae moved through the woods along an undetermined path, gradually bringing them to a ridge between two gentle, wooded slopes.
The dance looped madly, a whirlwind. The Circle of Eternity, Kavio called it. The golden haired maiden reached out her hand to take Dindi’s free hand, to close the circle and lock her into the faery ring.

“Don’t be afraid.” The beautiful faery touched Dindi’s fingertips. “Take my hand.”

Deep in the faery song that urged her
Let go, Let
go
,
Dindi hardly heard the drums at first. Subtly, she became aware of the rhythm as a sober, steady counterpoint to the drunken ululations of the fae. She pulled back toward the edge of the whirling bodies to listen to the new sound.

Drums. Tavaedi drums.

The Tavaedi Initiates were dancing together for the first time today
. Curiosity bit her like a mosquito. Strangely, neither despair nor rapture could match the tiny itch of curiosity.
What dances were they learning today? What secret histories were they delving? What mysteries were they exploring?

If she joined the faery ring today, she’d never know
.

Of course she told herself she’d never know regardless because she couldn’t join the Tavaedies. It didn’t help. Common sense didn’t matter now that she had nothing to lose. The irresistible prickle of curiosity dragged her out of the faery circle, toward the sound of drums.

For a moment, she stood poised, equidistant, between the two groups of dancers, each hidden from the other, but both still perceptible to her. She could see the untamed lightening of the faery ring, and she could hear the steady thunder of the Tavaedi
drum beat
. Then she stepped over the ridge, toward the Tavaedies, closer and closer, until the faery music faded and the drumming filled her ears.

Soon she saw bear hides tacked up to wooden posts. Hidden behind the makeshift wall, the Tavaedies danced. She stood on concealed high ground in a perfect position to observe the dancers without being seen. From this vantage, she could see everything from the feathered tufts and painted disks at the tops of their tall wooden masks to the tips of their pointed toes as they leaped and kicked. When they took off their masks, she could recognize faces. The experienced Tavaedies were demonstrating moves for the Initiates. Dindi recognized Brena and Abiono, as well as other teachers.

It would be just like watching the Tavaedies when they performed back in the Corn Hills. She could copy their
movements,
learn their dances on her own. No one need know.

It would be so easy.

If they caught her, they would kill her.

The whole world seemed to shimmer with light, just as if a Vision were going to start. But no Vision of the past appeared. Instead, the real world jumped into vivid clarity. Everything shone more clearly. Colors looked more saturated, sounds flowed together like music. She felt vertigo. She saw herself as if from outside her body, absurdly caught in a confrontation with the rest of her world.

On one side was everyone she had ever known. The Tavaedies who had
Tested
her. The tribes. Her clan. Every authority she respected. Even Mama.
All saying the same thing
.
You have no magic. You don’t deserve to be a Tavaedi. You can’t dance. You have to keep in your place. You have to stay small.

On the other side, there was just her. Stubborn, vain enough to think she knew better than everyone else around her.
Maybe I’m no good, maybe I’m without magic,
maybe
I don’t deserve it. But I will dance.
Alone if I must.
In secret.
In stolen moments. With stolen movements. No matter what it takes, I
will
dance
.

Everything subtly shifted again, and it felt as though the sky and earth and rocks and trees all moved to support her, though nothing moved. As if the wild places, at least, rejoiced in her decision, as though the natural world rebelled with her against the stupidity of human society’s restrictions.

A
sense of exaltation filled her when she looked down at the dancers below. She didn’t recognize the
tama
they were doing, which excited her. She
did
recognize many of the individual moves, which delighted her.

I can do this. I can learn this
.

She picked someone to copy. Why not start with Zavaedi Brena? Dindi giggled. Why not? There was no turning back now. Her boat was in the river. From now on, every day she lived she would be at risk from someone discovering this moment.

Soon she forgot all that. Her body embraced the movements she saw unfolding below her, and that was all that mattered.

Dindi
wondered how she would explain to Jensi why she hadn’t cut even a single blade of sedge grass. While she’d been dancing with the Brundorfae and then spying on the Tavaedies, she hadn’t kept track of the time, though at least she had enough sense to quit before the Tavaedies themselves. She trudged back the way she had come. The sunshine, so pleasant before, felt like one the Yellow Bear’s famous smelting ovens to bake gold. Her shoulder basket weighed her down like a mountain.