Orson Card - Maps in a Mirror - The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card

He followed his storms, and walked through the deserted towns of the Nefyrre. He saw the refugees rushing north and east to the high ground. He saw the corpses of those caught in the storm. And he sang at night the old songs of Greet, the war songs. He wrote his father’s name with chalk on the wall of every city he destroyed. He wrote his mother’s name in the sand, and where he had written her name the wind did not blow and the sand did not shift, but preserved the writing as if it had been incised on rock.

Then one day, in a lull between his storms, Cer saw a man coming toward him from the east. Abadapnu, he wondered, or Nefyrre? Either way he drew his knife, and fit the nock of an arrow on his bowstring.

But the man came with his hands extended, and he called out, “Cer Cemreet.”

It had never occurred to Cer that anyone knew his name.

“Sandmage Cer Cemreet,” said the man when he was close. “We have found who you are.”

Cer said nothing, but only watched the man’s eyes.

“I have come to tell you that your vengeance is full. Nefyryd is at its knees. We have signed a treaty with Greet and we no longer raid into Hetterwee. Driplin has seized our westernmost lands.”

Cer smiled. “I care nothing for your empire.”

“Then for our people. The deaths of your father and mother have been avenged a hundred thousand times, for over two hundred thousand people have died at your hands.”

Cer chuckled. “I care nothing for your people.”

“Then for the soldiers who did the deed. Though they acted under orders, they have been arrested and killed, as have the men who gave them those orders, even our first general, all at the command of the King so that your vengeance will be complete. I have brought you their ears as proof of it,” said the man, and he took a pouch from his waist.

“I care nothing for soldiers, nor for proof of vengeance,” said Cer.

“Then what do you care for?” asked the man quietly.

“Death,” said Cer.

“Then I bring you that, too,” said the man, and a knife was in his hand, and he plunged the knife into Cer’s breast where his heart should have been. But when the man pulled the knife out no blood followed, and Cer only smiled.

“Indeed you brought it to me,” said Cer, and he stabbed the man where his father had been stabbed, and drew the knife up as it had been drawn through his father’s body, except that he touched the man’s heart, and he died.

As Cer watched the blood soaking into the sand, he heard in his ears his mother’s screams, which he had silenced for these years. He heard her screams and now, remembering his father and his mother and himself as a child he began to cry, and he held the body of the man he had killed and rocked back and forth on the sand as the blood clotted on his clothing and his skin. His tears mixed with the blood and poured into the sand and Cer realized that this was the first time since his father’s death that he had shed any tears at all.

I am not dry, thought Cer. There is water under me still for the desert to drink.

He looked at his dry hands, covered with the man’s blood, and tried to scrub off the clotted blood with sand. But the blood stayed, and the sand could not clean him.

He wept again. And then he stood and faced the desert to the west, and he said, “Come.”

A breeze began.

“Come,” he said to the desert, “come and dry my eyes.”

And the wind came up, and the sand came, and Cer Cemreet was buried in the sand, and his eyes became dry, and the last life passed from his body, and the last sandmage passed from the world.

Then came the winter rains, and the refugees of Nefyryd returned to their land. The soldiers were called home, for the wars were over, and now their weapons were the shovel and the plow. They redug the trench of the Nefyr and the Greebeck, and the river soon flowed deep again to the sea. They scattered grass seed and cleaned their houses of sand. They carried water into the ruined fields with ditches and aqueducts.

Slowly life returned to Nefyryd.

And the desert, having lost its mage, retreated quietly to its old borders, never again to seek death where there was life. Plenty of death already where nothing lived, plenty of dryness to drink where there was no water.

In a wood a little way from the crest of the Mitherkame, a treemage heard the news from a wandering tinker.

The treemage went out into the forest and spoke softly to the Elm, to the Oak, to the Redwood, to the Sweet Aspen. And when all had heard the news, the forest wept for Cer Cemreet, and each tree gave a twig to be burned in his memory, and shed sap to sink into the ground in his name.

Once there was a woman who had five children that she loved with all her heart, and a husband who was kind and strong. Every day her husband would go out and work in the fields, and then he’d come home and cut wood or repair harness or fix the leaky places in the roof. Every day the children would work and play so hard they wore paths in the weeds from running, and they knew every hiding place in two miles square. And that woman began to be afraid that they were too happy, that it would all come to an end. And so she prayed, Please send us eternal happiness, let this joy last forever. Well, the next day along came a mean-faced old peddler, and he spread his wares and they were very plain—rough wool clothing, sturdy pots and pans, all as ugly and practical as old shoes. The woman bought a dress from him because it was cheap and it would last forever, and he was about to go, when suddenly she saw maybe a fire in his eyes, suddenly flashing bright as a star, and she remembered her prayer the night before, and she said, “Sir, you don’t have anything to do with—happiness, do you?”

And the peddler turned and glowered and said, “I can give it to you, if you want it. But let me tell you what it is. It’s your kids growing up and talking sassy, and then moving on out and marrying other children who don’t like you all that much, at least at first. It’s your husband’s strength giving out, and watching the farm go to seed before your eyes, and maybe having to sell it and move into your daughter-in-law’s house because you can’t support yourselves no more. It’s feeling your own legs go stiff, and your fingers not able to tat or knit or even grip the butter churn. And finally it’s dying, lying there feeling your body drop off you, wishing you could just go back and be young with your children small, just for a day. And then—”

“Enough!” cried the woman.

“But there’s more,” said the peddler.

“I’ve heard all I mean to hear,” and she hurried him out of the house.

The next day, along comes a man in a bright-painted wagon, with a horse named Carpy Deem that he shouted at all the time. A medicine man from the East, with potions for this and pills for that, and silks and scarves to sell, too, so bright they hurt your eyes just to look at them. Everybody was healthy, so the woman didn’t buy any medicine. All she bought was a silk, even though the price was too high, because it looked so blue in her golden hair. And she said to him, “Sir, do you have anything to do with happiness?”

“Do you have to ask?” he said. “Right here, in this jar, is the elixir of happiness—one swallow, and the best day of your life is with you forever.”

“How much does it cost?” she asked, trembling.

“I only sell it to them as have such a day worth keeping, and then I sell it cheap. One lock of your golden hair, that’s all. I give it to your Master, so he’ll know you when the time comes.”

She plucked the hair from her head, and gave it to the peddler, and he poured from the bottle into a little tin cup. When he was gone, she lifted it up, and thought of the happiest day of her life, which was only two days before, the day she prayed. And she drank that swallow.