Sheri Tepper: Grass

On this first day of the fall hunt, Diamante bon Damfels, Stavenger’s youngest daughter, stood among those slowly gathering on the first surface, all murmurous and sleepy-eyed, as though they had lain wakeful in the night listening for a sound that had not come. Among the still figures of the hunters, servant women from the nearby village skimmed, seemingly legless under the long white bells of their skirts, hair hidden beneath the complicated folds of their brightly embroidered headdresses, bearing bright trays covered with glasses no larger than thimbles.

Close between Emeraude and Amethyste (called Emmy and Amy by the family and “the Mistresses bon Damfels” by everyone else), Dimity was polished and brushed to a fare-thee-well, immaculately turned out in her hunting garb, and with a headache already from hair drawn back severely to fit beneath the round black cap. The older girls had red lapels on their coats, showing they had ridden long enough to become members of the Hunt. Dimity’s collar was black, as black as the shadows lying at the back of her eyes, shadows her sisters saw well enough but pretended not to notice. One couldn’t indulge oneself. One couldn’t allow malingering or cowardice in oneself or in members of the family.

“Don’t worry,” drawled Emeraude, the best advice she could offer. “You’ll get your Hunt colors very soon. Just remember what the riding master told you.” At the comer of her jaw a little muscle leapt and leapt again, like a shackled frog.

Dimity shivered, the shadows writhing, not wanting to say and yet unable to keep from saying, “Emmy, Mummy said I didn’t have to…”

Amethyste laughed, a tiny shiver of unamusement, emotionless as glass. “Well of course you don’t have to, silly. None of us had to. Even Sylvan and Shevlok didn’t have to.”

Sylvan bon Damfels, hearing his name, turned to look across the first surface at his sisters, his face darkening perceptibly as he saw that Dimity was with the older girls. With a word of excuse to his companions, he turned to come swiftly over the circle of pale gray turf, skirting the scarlet and amber fountain grasses at its center. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, glaring at the girl. “The riding master told Mummy…”

“You’re not nearly ready. Not nearly!” This was Sylvan, who spoke his mind even when it was unpopular — some said because it was unpopular — somewhat enjoying the attention this attracted, though if challenged he would have denied it. To Sylvan truth was truth and all else was black heresy, though on occasion he had the very human difficulty of deciding which was which.

“Oh, Sylvan,” Amethyste said, pouting prettily and pursing lips she had been told were fruitlike in their ripeness. “Don’t be so harsh. If it were up to you. nobody but you would ever ride.”

He snarled at her. “Amy, if it were up to me, nobody would ride, including me. What is Mother thinking of?”

“It was Daddy,” Dimity offered. “He thought it would be nice if I got my colors soon. I’m already older than Amy and Emmy were.” She glanced across the first surface to the place where Stavenger stood watching her broodingly from among the elder Huntsmen, his lean and bony figure motionless, the great hook of his nose hanging over his lipless mouth.

Sylvan laid his hand on her shoulder. “For heaven’s sake, Dim, why didn’t you just tell him you aren’t ready?”

“I couldn’t do that, Syl. Daddy asked the riding master, and the riding master told him I’m as ready as I ever will be.”

“He didn’t mean—”

“I know what he meant, for heaven’s sake. I’m not stupid. He meant I’m not very good and that I’m not going to get any better.”

“You’re not that bad,” Emeraude soothed. “I was lots worse.”

“You were lots worse when you were a child.” Sylvan agreed. “But by the time you were Dim’s age, you were lots better. So were the rest of us. But that doesn’t mean Dim has to—”

“Will everybody just quit telling me I don’t have to?” Dimity cried now, the tears spilling down her cheeks. “Half my family says I don’t have to and the other half says I’m ready now.”

Sylvan was stopped in mid-bellow, stopped and stilled and turned suddenly soft. He loved her, this littlest one. It was he who had first called her Dimity, he who had held her when she had had the colic, who had carried her against his shoulder and patted her while he strode up and down the corridors of Klive, the thirteen-year-old boy cuddling the infant and yearning over her, Now the twenty-eight-year-old yearned no less over the fifteen-year-old girl, seeing the infant still. “What do you want to do?” he asked tenderly, reaching out to touch the moist little forehead under the brim of the black cap. With her hair scraped back and tightly bound she looked like a scared little boy. “What do you want to do, Dim?”

“I’m hungry and I’m thirsty and I’m tired. I want to go back in the house and have breakfast and study my language lesson for this week,” she cried through gritted teeth. “I want to go to a summer ball and flirt with Jason bon Haunser. I want to take a nice hot bath and then sit in the rosegrass-court and watch the flick birds.”

“Well then,” he started to say, his words cut off by the sound of the Huntsman’s horn from beside the Kennel Gate. Ta-wa, ta-wa. softly-so-softly, to alert the riders without offending the hounds. “The hounds,” he whispered, turning away. “God, Dim, you’ve left it too late.”

He stumbled away from them, suddenly quiet. All around them conversations ceased, silence fell. Faces became blank and empty. Eyes became fixed. Dimity looked around her at all the others ready to ride to the hounds, and shivered. Her father’s eyes slid across her like a cold wind, not seeing her at all. Even Emmy and Amy had become remote and untouchable. Only Sylvan, staring at her from his place among his companions, seemed to see her, see her and grieve over her as he had so many times.

Now the riders arranged themselves on the first surface in a subtle order, longtime riders at the west side of the circle, younger riders at the east. The servants had skimmed away at the sound of the horn, so many white blossoms blowing across the gray grass. Dimity was left standing almost by herself at the east edge of the turf, looking across it to the path where the wall of the estancia was pierced by a massive gate. “Watch the Kennel Gate,” she admonished herself unnecessarily. “Watch the Kennel Gate.”

Everyone watched the Kennel Gate as it opened slowly and the hounds came through, couple on couple of them, ears dangling, tongues lolling between strong ivory teeth, tails straight behind them. They moved down the Hounds’ Way, a broad path of low, patterned velvetgrass which circled the first surface and ran westward through the Hunt Gate in the opposite wall and out into the wider gardens. As each pair of hounds approached the first surface, one hound went left, the other right, two files of them circling the hunters, watching the hunters, examining them with red, steaming hot-coal eyes before the files met one another to stalk on toward the Hunt Gate, paired as before.

Dimity felt the heat of their eyes like a blow. She looked down at her hands, gripping one another, white at the knuckles, and tried to think of nothing at all.

As the last couple joined one another and the hunters moved to follow, Sylvan left his place and ran to whisper in her ear, “You can just stay here, Dim. No one will even look back. No one will know until later. Just stay here.”

Dimity shook her head. Her face was very white, her eyes huge and dark and full of a fear she was only for the first time admitting to herself, but she would not let herself stay. Shaking his head, Sylvan ran to regain his place. Slowly, reluctantly, her feet took her after him as the hunters followed the hounds through the Hunt Gate. From beyond the wall came the sound of hooves upon the sod. The mounts were waiting.