Young Warriors (4 page)

It had taken them a while to find his uncle's ship, till near midnight. The mermaid brought Fare close, but stopped when she saw his uncle Comgall leaning over the rail.

“I can make it from here,” he whispered. Biting his lip in fear of the consequences, he lifted the chain over his head and offered the stone to her.

Her lips parted and she accepted it reverently, pausing before she put it around her own neck.

“I have to ask,” he said, and she looked at him, tilting her head. He drew in a strengthening breath. “May I kiss you?”

She laughed once, then covered her mouth, but her eyes were merry as she looked at him. She dropped her hand and, smiling, nodded.

Fare leaned forward and, closing his eyes, very gently kissed her lips. He drew back, startled, and she was gone.

After a moment, he called to the ship. Laughing and cheering, the seamen threw him a line and drew him on board, slapping his shoulders, covering him with a blanket, and demanding to know what had happened.

“I kissed a mermaid,” Fare said.

His uncle considered him. “And how was that?”

“Cold, fishy, and very wet.”

The men roared with laughter.

Far out in the water, Neesha raised a critical brow.
Hot,
she thought,
musky, and very dry.

S. M. AND JAN STIRLING

S. M. STIRLING was born near Metz, in France, in 1953. Since then he has lived in other European countries, North America, and Africa, and traveled extensively elsewhere. His first novel was published in 1984; since 1988 he has been writing full-time, and his latest novel is
Dies the Fire.
His interests include the martial arts, history, anthropology, archaeology, and cooking.

Jan was born and raised in Massachusetts, never expecting to live anywhere else. Then she married S. M. Stirling in 1988 and moved to Canada. From there they moved to New Mexico, where they now live with their two cats. She also never thought of writing until she married Steve. But, she says, there's something about being around writers and computers. After two rather humbling years of trying, her first story was published in a Chicks in Chainmail anthology and her stories have been published in several anthologies since.

ELI AND THE DYBBUK

Janis Ian

IT WAS GETTING ON toward midafternoon of the eve of the Sabbath when Eli met the dybbuk.

The dreamy-eyed son of Mordechai and Ruth was walking along the edge of the Tsar's forest, searching for stray bits of wood his mother could use to build the fire up before sundown, for after sundown all work would be forbidden until darkness fell again. Although why keeping warm was work, Eli did not understand as yet, for he'd only studied Torah a few years now. He kept a careful eye on the sun as he calculated the remaining daylight hours. It wouldn't do to be late.

He had an armload of wood already, wood the Tsar allowed villagers to glean, and if he could just find a few more pieces, he could run home well ahead of sunset. Perhaps there'd be enough time to play with the soldiers' horses before his mother called him to dinner.

In accordance with Jewish law, Eli had become a man just a little over a year ago, when he'd turned thirteen and been bar mitzvahed. His parents were already talking about marriage, his mother dreaming of a girl whose parents would be wealthy enough to support the newly wedded couple while Eli stayed in the shul and studied. She dreamed he would become a great, learned man.

The trouble was, Eli didn't
feel
like a man. He felt like an impersonator, a child dressed up in a man's body. Years of running up and down the hills had made his legs sinewy and strong; chopping and stacking wood had left his arms muscled enough to win pretty consistently when the boys wrestled. But his face was another matter; he had a high, narrow forehead and the watery eyes of a scholar-in-the-making. And it was difficult enough being fourteen without feeling like his face and his body belonged to two separate people!

He loved to feel the wind as he pushed it aside when he ran through the hills. He loved to wrestle; in fact, when the great strongman Zishe Breitbart had passed through the
shtetl,
Eli had been thrilled to be chosen as the one who held the great athlete's iron bars before he bent them. But he also loved to read, stories of heroes mostly—David facing Goliath, Judah Maccabee smiting the Roman legionaries. He day-dreamed constantly; his ears were bruised with the verbal blows of his mother raining down upon them.
Eli, are you
dreaming again while there's no water in the house?! Eli, where
were you that you didn't hear me telling you to pick up the challah for Shabbes?!
Dreaming, of course. Dreaming of riding a huge stallion into his village, his chest covered with medals, his hand resting easily on the hilt of a gleaming sword. Dreaming of saving princesses, kingdoms, whole continents. He loved to dream, and nowhere in those dreams did he see himself married. It was easier to dream of joining the Tsar's army than to see himself with a wife and children!

Much to Eli's dismay, his parents went by the chronological seasons, not the seasons of the heart. They had already consulted the
shadchen
about brokering a possible marriage between himself and Leah, the girl next door. Since she was the only female close to his age for miles around, the arrangements had gone smoothly—except for Eli's part in them.

He mused on the problem as he walked, trying to approach it Talmudically. In the Talmud was stored all the great wisdom of the Jewish people. The rabbis would approach a question with another question.
They wish me to marry Leah,
Eli thought.
Well, what is the problem with Leah?
He considered it for a moment, and decided that there was only one small problem. On second thought, there were two. First, she wanted to marry a scholar, and scholars didn't ride off on white horses to save the universe. Second, Leah was not beautiful, and although Eli was ashamed that it mattered at all to him (for didn't the rabbi advise that one should seek a virtuous, obedient wife, and nowhere in the Talmud was there any mention of seeking a gorgeous one), he found himself wishing she looked just a bit less . . . Jewish. More like the girl-friends and wives of the soldiers he'd befriended: blond and big. Instead, Leah was dark-haired and small, so small that he wondered if her children would be healthy.

In every other respect, she was clever enough. She could already make latkes and blintzes that smelled good all through the house, and she sewed beautifully. But she seemed to have no other interests that he could see, and for Eli, who dreamed of sitting astride a giant stallion in a handsome uniform, the thought of marriage to a girl whose dreams began with latkes and ended with blintzes was too horrifying to contemplate.

So contrary to all tradition, when his parents told him he was betrothed to Leah, with the girl and her parents looking on, he'd stared stubbornly at the ground and refused.

“Why?!” his father had thundered after Leah and her parents had left. “Why?!” his mother had wept the next morning. But he could not explain that it didn't matter because in two more years he was planning to run away and join the army, so he refused to speak. Since that night, both sets of parents had continued to try to convince him, even spending every Sabbath meal together, but to no avail. His mind was made up.

Now, when he passed Leah on the path, she no longer smiled at him, but averted her eyes and hurried away. He was sorry for that, because she was a nice enough girl, but it couldn't be helped. One day he'd come back triumphant, with a saddle trimmed in gold and silver, and they would all forgive him. Of that he was certain. And he wouldn't need a wife then; he'd have his brother soldiers for company.

Of course, he'd neglected to mention this part of the plan to his parents, who loathed and feared the army as they feared the Cossacks, and all that went with them. Eli had heard stories of terrible pogroms in other towns, soldiers who thought nothing of impaling a baby on the tip of a sword and galloping around the village, waving it like a trophy. He found that hard to believe. The Cossacks of his town had always smiled at him as they cantered by. Some even knew him by name. Occasionally they'd let him help with the horses, though he only did this when his parents couldn't find out. He'd have to rush home afterward and clean the muck off his shoes, for he'd been forbidden to ever go near them. But he told himself that he was practicing for his future, and the soldiers seemed to like him. Eli was positive that as soon as he was old enough, they'd welcome him into their ranks like a long-lost brother.

It was in this manner, dawdling and daydreaming, that Eli bumped into Leah and knocked her down. He was walking fast to beat the sun, his eyes half-closed to better see the stallions in his future, when he collided with her back.

“Oof!” she exclaimed, falling facedown into the dirt.

Oh, no!
thought Eli.
She'll think I did it on purpose!
Appalled, he rushed forward to help her rise.

“Are you all right, Leah?” he asked anxiously, peering into her face. Marriage or no marriage, they'd grown up together, and he genuinely cared for her.

Leah looked down at her wrinkled blouse and made smoothing motions with her hands, then slowly raised her eyes to meet his.

“Of course I am,” she purred, arching her neck coyly. “My, Eli, what a big, strong man you've become!”

Eli stared at her in confusion. The Leah he knew would never speak to him in that manner! Leah was always shy in his presence, even more so these past few years. Though she clapped when he wrestled, she did the same for every other boy in the village. He searched her forehead to see if she'd bumped it badly, but there was no sign of a bruise.

“What's the matter, honey, cat got your tongue?” she purred. “I can get it back for you . . .” She smiled then, running her tongue along the edge of her lips, and moved forward to place her mouth on his.

Eli was so startled that he took a step back and fell right onto the ground. There he sat, in a most undignified position, stupidly staring at the girl next door who'd somehow become the woman from a bad section of town! Was she playing games with him now? The thought enraged him.

“I don't know why you're doing this, Leah, but it's not going to make any difference! I won't marry you,” he said with finality.

Leah put her hands on her waist, tilted her head back, and roared with laughter. It was not the laughter of a young girl, though, but the rich, throaty laughter of a woman of the world.

“Marry! Who said anything about marriage?!” she chortled. “All I'm talking about is a little fun!” And with that, she sat right down in the dirt beside him and began to unbraid her hair.

Now Eli was truly horrified. Unmarried women did not unbraid their hair! Even married women only did that in the privacy of their homes, where only their husbands could see. Even the
goyishe
women, the non-Jews, kept their hair bound. Leah was behaving like the basest of women—what on earth was going on here? He began to rise, but she made a chopping motion with her hand.

“Stop right there,” she said in an imperious tone. He stared at her, wondering what had come over the timid girl he'd thought he knew so well.

She pinned him with her eyes, and he was suddenly unable to move. He tried to rise, to run for help, but his limbs would not obey. Instead, he sat like a lump of clay, unable to do anything but breathe.

When her hair was down and hanging loosely over her shoulders, she slowly began to unbutton her blouse. Eli had never been so mortified in all his life. What would her parents think? What would
his
parents think?! It was beyond belief.

He made a small, strangled sound, and she grinned lasciviously. Abruptly, his limbs and his tongue were freed. Panting with relief, Eli jumped to his feet and backed away from her, but Leah rose and calmly walked toward him, still unbuttoning the blouse.

“Leah, Leah, stop! What is it, what's going on? You're not behaving at all like yourself—I'm going to get your parents right now!” Eli threatened.

She stopped and looked at him with a sneer, her features contorted, mouth twisted into a grimace of hate. “Parents?” she spat. “What parents? Those two pious lumps of lard in that dirt-floored hut back there? Those aren't my parents! My parents are long gone, and serves them right!” Then she laughed, a long, maniacal laugh.

The laughter suddenly stopped, and he seemed to hear another voice entirely come from her mouth, one that sounded a bit like the old Leah. “Help! Help!” it cried, and he didn't know what to do, because right away her upper teeth came down on her lip, drawing blood, and her mouth twisted back into a sneer. The change was terrifying to see.

Noticing his shocked expression, Leah composed her face, and for a moment Eli thought it had all been a trick of the sun—the cruel mouth, the furious eyes and narrowed lips. But then she shook her hips at him, darting her tongue out in the air, and the movement was so not Leah that for a moment he felt faint. She kept coming toward him, though, and now survival became paramount. His brain snapped back into gear with an awful clarity as it slowly assembled, then reassembled, all he'd just seen.

This was not Leah! This could not be Leah! Therefore it must be . . .

The thought was too horrible to contemplate. But contemplate it he must, because there it was in front of him. He was a man. He had to stand his ground.

He stopped trying to get away then and turned to confront her, trembling with a fear greater than anything he'd ever known.

“You're not Leah, are you?” he whispered.

She tossed her head, and the unbound hair seemed to have a life of its own as it settled around her face. “Don't be silly, Eli, you've known me all your life. Of course I'm Leah!”

“No,” he stammered, “no, you're not. You're not Leah. You're not even human. . . . I know what you are.”

She stopped moving forward then and rebuttoned the blouse. “Oh? And what exactly am I, then?” she asked, looking down at her fingers as they worked the buttons. “Exactly
what
do you think I am?”

Her tone, at that moment, was more threatening to him than her exposed bodice had been, and Eli took a step backward in terror. But then he remembered that one day he'd be a soldier and soldiers were brave, even in the face of supernatural danger.

“You're a dybbuk!” he spat with all the force he could muster. There, he'd said it.

“A dybbuk?” She laughed, smoothing her hair back into place. “You foolish little boy, you don't even know what a dybbuk is!”

That was it. The real Leah would never have made fun of him like that. She was the gentlest of souls. This had to be a dybbuk. He tried frantically to remember what he'd read about them. Dybbuks were dead souls who'd been too evil in this life to enter heaven. Instead, they wandered the earth until they could find another body to inhabit. A fierce war would take place between the evil soul and the body's rightful owner as each fought for possession. That would explain why she'd bitten through her lip when the real Leah tried to call for help.

Sometimes, he remembered, a dybbuk could be exorcised, but only by a rabbi skilled and experienced in such things. Their little
shtetl
had no one like that. He took a deep breath and studied her face. Leah's appearance, while not beautiful, was kind and gentle. This face had no softness in it. The thought of Leah and this
. . . thing . . .
fighting for Leah's body made him sick to his stomach.

She seemed to sense his thoughts. “So,” she sneered, “you would rush back to town, alert the entire village, have me caught and caged like a wild animal?” She began to advance again, her arm upraised to strike him, but she suddenly stopped as her entire body began to tremble and twitch. She moved like a drunken marionette, lurching forward, then jumping back, her arms flailing, until looking out at him from frightened eyes was Leah, the real Leah. As he rushed toward her, he heard her cry out, “Eli! Eli! For pity's sake, help me! Help—”

One of her hands reached up with a jerking movement and covered her mouth, and the eyes changed back to another's, filled with rage and cunning. In one convulsive movement she tore open her bodice, exposing her breasts. Eli hastily looked away and began to pray.