Sheri Tepper: Grass

From the balcony outside her bedroom window, Rowena, the Obermum bon Damfels, let her troubled gaze settle on the back of her youngest daughter’s head. Above the high, white circle of her hunting tie, Dimity’s neck looked thin and defenseless. She’s a little budling, Rowena thought, remembering pictures of nodding blossoms in the fairy books she had read as a child. “Snowdrops,” she recited to herself. “Fringed tulips. Bluebells. And peonies.” She had once had a whole book about the glamorous and terrible fairies who lived in flowers. She wondered where the book was now. Gone, probably. One of those “foreign” things Stavenger was forever inveighing against As though a few fairy tales could hurt anything.

“Dimity looks so tiny,” said the maidservant, Salla. “So tiny. So young. Trailing along there behind them all…” Salla had cared for all the children when they were babies. Dimity, being youngest, had stayed a baby longer than the others.

“She’s as old as Amethyste was when she rode for the first time. She’s older than Emmy was.” Try though she might, Rowena could not keep her voice from sounding defensive “She’s not that young.”

“But her eyes, mistress,” Salla murmured. “Like a little girl. She doesn’t understand about this Hunt business. None of it. None of it at all.”

“Of course she understands.” Rowena had to assert this, had to believe it- That’s what all the training was for; to be sure that the young riders understood- It was all perfectly manageable, provided one had proper training first. “She understands,” Rowena repeated stubbornly, placing herself before the mirror, fiddling with the arrangement of her thick, dark hair. Her own gray eyes stared back at her accusingly, and she pinched her lips into an unlovely line.

“Doesn’t,” said Salla as stubbornly, quickly turning away to avoid the slap Rowena might have given her if she could have done it without moving. “She’s like you, mistress. Not made for it.”

Rowena tired of looking at herself and chose to change her ground. “Her father says she must!”

Salla did not contradict this. There would have been no point. “She’s not made for it. No more than you were. And he doesn’t make you.”

Oh, but he did, Rowena thought, remembering pain. Made me do so many things I didn’t want to. Let me quit riding, yes, but only when I was pregnant with the seven children he made me have when I only wanted one or two. Made me ride right up until the time I got old, with lines around my eyes. Made me bring the children up to the Hunt, when I didn’t want to. Made them all like him, all the way he is — except Sylvan. No matter what Stavenger does, Sylvan stays Sylvan. Not that Syl lets on what he really thinks. Sylvan just roars about everything. Clever Syl, to hide his true beliefs among all that bluster. And Dimity stays Dimity as well, of course — but poor Dim — Dim couldn’t hide anything. Would she be able to hide her feelings this morning?

Rowena went back to the balcony and craned her neck to look over the top of the wall. She could see the movements of the waiting mounts, tossing heads, switching tails. She could hear the clicking of hooves, the hruffing sound of a breath suddenly expelled. It was too quiet. Always too quiet when the riders mounted. She had always felt there should be talk, people calling to one another, greeting one another. There should be… something. Something besides this silence.

Outside the Hunt Gate the hounds circled and the mounts waited, shifting impatiently from foot to foot, tails lashing, necks arching as they pawed the ground, all quietly as in a dream where things move but make no sound. The air was warm with their steamy breath, full of the haylike smell of them, the sweaty stench. Stavenger’s mount came forward first, as was proper, and then others, one by one, coming for the Huntsman and for the whippers-in, and then for the riders of the field, the oldest riders first. Dimity stood behind Emeraude and Amethyste, shivering slightly as first one, then the other vaulted up onto the backs of waiting mounts. Soon she was the only one left unmounted. Then, just as she decided that there was no mount for her, that she could slip back through the gate, the mount was there before her, within reach of her hand.

It stared at her as it extended a front leg and crouched slightly so that she could put one foot on the brindled leg, grasp the reins, and leap upward, all as she had done time after time on the simulator, no different except for the smell and the heaving breath which spread the vast ribs between her legs, wider than the machine had ever done. Her toes hunted desperately for the notches between the third and fourth rib that should be there, finding them at last far forward of where she thought they should be. She slipped the pointed toes of her boots in, locking herself on. Then it was only a matter of hanging onto the reins and keeping her spurs dug in and her legs tight while the great creature beneath her turned high on its rear legs to follow the others away, west. She had worn her padded breeches for hours on the simulator, so they were properly broken in. She had had nothing to drink since early the previous evening and nothing to eat since noon yesterday. She wished fleetingly that Sylvan could ride beside her, but he was far ahead. Emeraude and Amethyste were lost in the welter. She could see Stavenger’s red coat, the line of his back as straight as a stem of polegrass. There was no turning back now. It was almost a relief to know that she couldn’t do anything but what she was doing. Nothing else at all, not until the Hunt returned. At last there was sound, a drumming of feet which filled all the space there was to hold it, a resonant thunder coming up from the ground beneath them.

From her balcony above them, Rowena heard the sound and put her hands over her ears until it faded into silence. Gradually the small sounds of insect and bird and grass peeper, which had ceased when the hounds arrived, began once more.

“Too young,” brooded Salla. “Oh, mistress.”

Rowena did not slap her maidservant but turned to her with tears in her eyes instead. “I know,” she said. She turned to see the end of the line of riders as it fled away down the garden trail toward the west.

Riding out. she said to herself. Riding out And they’ll ride back again.

Back again. Saying it over and over like a litany. Back again.

“She’ll be back,” said Salla. “She’ll be back, wanting a nice hot bath.” Then both of them stood staring into the west, not seeing anything there except the grass.

Down the wide hallway from Rowena’s suite of rooms, in the mostly unused library of Klive, certain nonhunting members of the aristocracy had assembled to consider a matter of continuing irritation to them all. Second leader at Klive was Stavenger’s younger brother, Figor. Some years ago, following one of the many hunting accidents which occurred every season, Figor had stopped riding to the hounds. This left him free during hunting seasons to take upon himself many of the responsibilities of the estancia while Stavenger was otherwise engaged. Today Figor met with Eric bon Haunser, Gerold bon Laupmon, and Gustave bon Smaerlok. Gustave was the Obermun bon Smaerlok, head of the Smaerlok family still, despite his disability; but both Eric bon Haunser and Gerold bon Laupmon were younger siblings of the family leaders, men who were also hunting today.

The quartet assembled around a large square table in one corner of the dimly lit room, passing among themselves the document which had occasioned their meeting. It was a brief document, headed with the cursive arabesques which spelled out the names and attributes of Sanctity, laden with seals and ribbons and signed by the Hierarch himself. This same group of aristocrats had responded to similar documents in both the remote and recent past, and Gustave bon Smaerlok betrayed considerable impatience at having to do so yet again.