The next morning I sat on a shock of grass, glowering into my saddlebag.
A shadow fell over my lap. I turned around; Nefer looked past my shoulder.
“Ye don’t look happy,” he said.
I opened my mouth to tell him off, but something in his face made me say, instead, “It’s seeds. They’ve got to cover the hills.” I took a deep breath. “But there ain’t enough.”
Nefer threw his head back and laughed. “A Gralde without a green thumb?” He swallowed his voice some, as though he were telling a secret, “I knows a trick from West Gavoran, where some of your kind dwell, that makes family trees grow big, whether the branches be full o’ Elde, humans––or plants.”
“How d’you do it?” I said immediately.
“I’m a brigand, girl.”
“How d’you mean––?”
“I’ll be lookin fer somethin in return.”
If he thought I was going to dance in front of all those horrible men, he was horribly mistaken.
“Ye’ve got a while till the next keg night.” It seemed he had read my mind. “I’ll let you brood on it.”
Brood on it I did. Virnrayan artisans pound and shape emotion like it’s a gold ingot. And when faced with curiosity, I was a pushover.
***
My descent into what Mordan called depravity began with the comb. One autumn afternoon, when Toughy was having a game of dice, Padlimaird and I ventured into a little town on the River Cheldony to ply our new trade. (I was to be lookout.) The market was stocked with beautiful things that had come up the river in sturdy little currachs.
Curious, I moved away from Padlimaird and a wholesaler’s purse, and wandered towards a stall full of cups and bowls carved from horn. A woman was bent over the bowls, picking them up, turning them over. A comb pinned her hair in place.
The vendor was saying, “Mammoth tooth it is, madam, from Avila.”
I stepped close to the woman’s back. The comb was ivory––a leaping roe with jet spots. I ogled it, imagining the feel of it on my scalp. For five months the only things I had run through my hair were my fingers.
“Wondrous, hairy creatures they are,” said the vendor, “bigger ’n a whale, each with eight tusks…”
I reached up and took the comb out so gently her hair stayed in its knot. I put the little roe into a pocket on my apron and moseyed off towards Padlimaird. Floy hadn’t come with me, and she didn’t find out until it became very obvious something had been done to my hair.
Padlimaird was working the quay, so I sat on a bench beneath a glowing linden and led the roe through my tangles. When I’d combed it all through, it hung straight and shining to the small of my back.
Someone was selling meat pies nearby. My mouth watered; I had not eaten for two days. My stomach groaned as a little boy devoured a pie, his fingers dripping with gravy.
“Blood of the earth,” said someone behind me. “I’ve never seen such straight hair on a Gralde.” A little woman leaned over me; she’d a gapped grin and a red cloak drawn around her head and chest. Her breath smelled of sage. “Lucky girl.” She ran a hand through my hair and asked for a price.
I drew away from her breath. And I thought of the pies so that it became impossible to think of anything else; and I held out my hair to the woman, who smiled wider.
She bound it into a braid and chopped it off at the base. She gave me three bronze pieces.
The three pies were hot and sweet with cinnamon and cloves, and I ate them with indecent fervor. When I’d finished, the juice dripped off my face.
I walked down to the riverbank for a wash. My hair felt odd enough swinging just past my ears, but realization didn’t hit until Padlimaird walked by without ever a hello. I waded into the river.
My reflection was unrecognizable. A glowering, wild thing, eyes pulled downwards by sadness and ill use, so the world could see and wonder at what the hard mouth wouldn’t tell. And all this framed by a thatch of black. I jumped away and ran to the shore, where I hid my head between my knees and laughed.
***
The ash and maple yellowed, my birthday came and went, and the brigands held the next music night after they’d looted a barge loaded with damson wine. Wille gave me a mug of the stuff. It was late in the fall and snowing. The drink steamed into my face, and I wondered, out loud, where the summer had gone.
“Over the south hills to green the gardens of Virnraya and Aclun, and warm the fins of the Iraelde.” Nefer sat on his battered three-legged stool, smoking. A cloud of smoke floated around him, and we were becoming a bit green-faced.
“The Iraelde don’t live in the sea, Nev,” said Padlimaird. “In’t big enough.”
“No,” said Nefer, “not in the Benara. But they do swim in the bigger ones. I seen em.”
“You seen the oceans?” said Oseavern.
“Sailed em,” said Nefer. Oseavern stared at him, dark eyes big.
“Gorn, Osh,” said Padlimaird. “They ain’t so far from here.”
“Look at that,” said Wille. “Don’t that remind you of Mandy’s flute?”
Begley Turnip, his pinprick eyes twinkling on the opposite side of the fire, was holding a flute that did look like the one Mandy Olen played in Milodygraig.
Seacho looked with his sharp eyes, and said it was the very same. I wondered what had become of Mandy, who’d brought me to tears with her jigs and reels.
Just then Toughy began pounding a dance on his bodhran. His thumbless hands turned to blurs, and Tom got to his feet with a two-stringed rebec. He played a lively but forlorn tune, like winter wind through the mountaintops. Begley took the flute up to his mouth, and blew a counterpart. After a couple of phrases he threw it over his shoulder to Miggon, and yanked Peach up by her arms. They danced wildly and the men slapped their knees.
My feet bounced and Wille grinned. “Lally wants a dance.” I stopped moving.
“Go on, Al,” said Seacho, who was lying on the ground, his brown hair covering a stone. “I’ll steal you a horse blanket if you dance.”
“Don’t,” said Gattren. “Don’t let them twist you up like a spring-toy.”
Padlimaird was still sore over an argument with Gattren. “If you don’t dance,” he said, “I’ll tell Fillegal about them pies you was eatin.”
“Weren’t stolen, were they?” I said. But Padlimaird was as pernicious as his words, and Nefer’s bargain was picking at my thoughts.
So I stood up and and unhappily tapped out the rhythm with my toes.
The men jeered. Then the children began to clap, and my legs to loosen, and I lost myself in a silent scream. Hair whirled around my cheeks, and my skirts billowed past my knees. Kick-slide-ball-front, my feet went, kick-slide-ball-front. Left-weave-left-back up-weave-left-back kick twirl tear rip hack pummel crush kick choke grind and hate, hate and hate.
The music stopped after a while. Floy was yelling at me from some tree. It had gone silent, except for snow rattling against leaves, and I saw eyes, all of them shining at me. Begley tossed Mandy’s flute in the air so that it leaped with firelight.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “It’s like them saebels tootin their pipes in all them old stories and the trees start a-dancin.”
“Her feet.” Tom pulled off his stocking cap and scratched his head. “Climbing the air like stairs they was.”
“I’ve heard of it,” said Miggon. “Can all Gralde types do it?”
“I can’t,” said Wille.
“I said the little girl could dance, didn’t I?” Nefer sat hunched, smoking, on his stool. Fillegal smiled at me and chewed on his tongue instead of his leaf-roll.
***
“The trick,” said Nefer the next day, “it needs sweetness from the Cheldony, so it’s lucky we’re up this far north, so near to her.”
It was dawn. Fillegal had informed us we were setting south immediately, down to thicker soil and fatter pickings, so I slipped away towards the east-west running river with an empty bladder-bag.
I was bewildered upon reaching the Cheldony. The river ran so low she could’ve been a large creek. I hadn’t noticed back in the town––the river flowed wide and placid through that area.
“She’s flowing shallower than she ought, Floy, in’t she?” I looked for a place to fill the pouch.
“It’s the late fall,” said Floy. “Rivers run at their lowest.”
“She’s sick. Can’t you hear her crying?”
“She does sound a bit off,” Floy admitted.
I dipped my hand in to better listen. Minnows threw shadows across my arm, and water, shade, and rock twisted into a face. My fingertips opened a mouth and I heard words, the song of a stony-hearted river-daughter:
Our long lady spat us from dwindling meres
When her cheeks grew exhausted with pocketed stone,
For to polish our hearts was to beg for her tears,
And she’d rather her weeping replenish her own.
I pulled my hand out, shook the water from it. “She lost her heart. Floy, let’s go––I don’t like it.”
As I walked back, I touched the trees and shuddered, hoping I was imagining them––the oaks, elms, beeches, birches, firs, fruit-trees, all of them, moaning in a deep thirst.
***
The horses jostled each other to get out of the way of the switches. Most of them were laden with baggage, and the men walked alongside them, howling lewd ballads. Wille sang as loud as his pipes let him, making Emry and Osh giggle.
“Can’t hear meself think,” said Padlimaird.
“You wouldn’t hear a perishin thing, anyways,” said Seacho.
The caravan stopped to rest by a pool below a slope of scree. Nefer, sitting on his old stool, began explaining to me the details of his family tree blessing.
“Ye starts off feet standin in the dirt, in a place where you can feel the earth movin an’ talkin specially good, so she can hear ye talk back. And them seeds, they has to soak in this all winter––” He frowned, weighed the bladder in his big hand, and held it to his ear. “This water feels sad.”
“A lot o’ rivers run sadly, mate,” Begley pointed out. “Cryin like they was all whupped bloody.” He was sprawled out on a rock, smoking a clay pipe and not looking remotely interested.
“Not Noreme rivers.” Nefer walked over to the rock pool and submerged his head in the water. He shook it like a dog when he came up. “Somethin’s wrong.” He looked profoundly uneasy for a few seconds.
“Anyways, lass,” he said, dripping on my lap, “after they’ve soaked through winter, you take up the seeds, what’ll be as sad as the water, no doubt, and hold em in yer cupped hands––like this––an’ sing to the earth in yer own tongue, cause Gralde’s closest to saebeline.” (Fillegal’s brigands spoke an argot of mostly Rielde.)
“What d’you sing?”
“This:
Norem braechlen lend melluin,
Algarod darnd melair,
Witna ade oed dedwyn.
Rew elde maifgin dair
Cairbelde elnaeghl elde rwb
Na gaerwrn eaor lorena.
Wot gaira sod dem goa go chwb
Ruin elde lingend brena”
“You’d better be around come spring,” I said. “You’re gonna have to repeat it then.”
“And you better be scarce come winter, or Fillegal will dance you dotty.”