Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

After a while, Richard said, "Try this on." He tied off a last sinew knot, bit it free, and held out what seemed a thick folded something – with long rawhide laces – but no boot. "Left foot."

Baj bent to adjust the cloth wrappings on that foot, then fitted the soft leather on, laced it, and stood. It seemed little more than a thick stocking against the ground.

Richard leaned to feel the fit. "Your feet will be sore in them for a day or two. Stepping on pebbles… rocks."

"No doubt."

"But after, very comfortable, light, and easy to move in. You tie the lacing crossways tighter or looser. Tie them all the way up – or fold the top down."

Baj took a few uneven steps through weedy grass. "It seems to fit…" He came back and sat. "Thank you, Richard. They'll do very well – and I won't complain about rocks or pebbles."

The wind – as all night winds – seemed to have a touch of winter to it. Baj reached back for his cloak as Richard unfolded a second wide strip of leather, set Baj's worn right boot on it for pattern… It seemed the only allowance he made for moonlight, was to peer at his work a little closer.

The night wind seethed softly through the birches, promising that soon they would be north and nearer Lord Winter's wall, and the short summer left behind them like a dream. North to the Shrikes and Boston's Guard – their alliance, it seemed to Baj, likely to turn to war.

"Little chance," he said aloud.

Richard, silvered by the riding moon, raised his head from his work. "What?"

"To win against New England."

"No, not a good chance." Richard looked down at his work, peered closer, and sewed again. "Not a good chance – but better than no chance." He broke a tendon thread, said "Shit," and knotted off the end… then rethreaded his needle, an impressive thing to accomplish in such soft light. "Though perhaps Frozen Jesus may help us."

"Frozen, Floating, or Mountain Jesus – they've spent a long time helping only armed men, and rich men, and clever men… and no one else at all."

"Yes." Richard raised his head from his work, his great crest of hair… of fur… powdered with moonlight as with snow. "But that is only surface knowing; an old man with coyote in him, told me that truth-fishes swim beneath all surfaces."

"Gulf sharks, perhaps," Baj said. "Except for the Coopers, I've known only decent people murdered." Saying so, he hadn't meant the Robin woman as well, but saw that Richard took it so.

"Still, wrongs may be made right."

"It seems to me, Richard – and not speaking of the Robin woman – that to go against Boston as is planned, is to win on a carpet of captive women's corpses. In what way is that not true?"

Richard set his needle down. "It is true – true, and the only way the tribes and Person Guards will be freed to see to it that other daughters and granddaughters and great-granddaughters will not someday also be taken for hostage breeders… How can Frozen Jesus object?"

"How not?"

Richard bent to his slicing and sewing. "Baj, you were a prince. What are high Sunrisers taught of Greats and Gods? Is there only Lady Weather, her sad daughter, Summer, and the Winter Lord?… Do the Jesuses speak together, or quarrel among themselves, so that many matters go badly? Or is there no Great at all, but only chance?"

"… I'm not the one to ask."

"You must have considered those questions." Richard bit his thread, knotted the end, and plucked at the stitching to test it.

"Mmm… Listen, Richard, I'm twenty years old, and was nothing but a whore-house, booze-house fool many of those years… though I did hope to become a competent poet. So, deep questions are still too deep for me, though at least I have the sense to know it."

"But you were taught by wise people."

"Yes. Yes, I was well taught – and paid no attention to any of it, though my brother did. Newton, or old Peter Wilson, would have been the ones you needed for serious questions. They both… both would have had good answers for you."

"No thoughts, then, yourself?" Richard turned the moccasin in his huge hands, flexed the double sole.

"No. I've been… I've been too busy to worry about it." The night wind was rising; Baj felt its chill through his cloak's thick wool. "- But if you want a child's thoughts, Richard, as to Gods and various Jesuses… well, when I was ten years old, I imagined that all Greats existed in a… a sort of swirling substance, like tumultuous water, like the river we crossed. I thought they all existed there, spinning and sailing this way and that – and if you called (if I, as a boy, called), I might catch one's attention while he or she whirled past. And if I caught them in an eddy, if they were still enough to hear such a minor voice, then they might command something done – or might not, if they thought that more humorous – before the currents of all things spun them away either to pleasures or more important duties – I wasn't sure which."

"That's a picture." Richard set cross-stitches, thick fingers deft, the curved needle sauntering in and out under moonlight barely bright enough for shadows.

"Only a boy's picture, imagining some explanation for the confusions of the world."

"Yes, an unreliable place."

"As I, so young, discovered at every festival, when perfect looked-for gifts – a champion racing stallion, a ten-crew iceboat built by the Edgars – could rarely be depended on… And I've found, recently, that a child's imagined currents may be only a single great whirl-pool, by which we, and every Jesus also, might be taken under."

Richard sighed a deep sigh. "You see, wisdom at ten years old. And grimmer wisdom at twenty."

"Not wisdom. Only wishes and words, Richard – and either of my fathers would have been bored (one politely, the other likely not) to hear me. These aren't the sorts of questions that even Used-to-be-princes are meant to bother their heads with – which was one of the pleasures of being a prince."

"Try the right." Richard handed the moccasin over, and Baj stood to tug it on, cross-tie the lacings.

"… That's really… that's comfortable. Thank you very much, Richard."

"I require a payment," Richard said.

"Name it." Baj paced back and forth through moonlight in his new moccasin-boots. They were very light on his feet, and so simply made – sized, sliced, folded and sewn. It was oddly pleasant, wearing them, to feel the details of earth – as he would, of course, also feel the details of sharp stones.

"You are to pay me… the beginning of forgiveness for the murder of the Robin lady."

Baj stood still, and noticed that Richard, seated for his sewing, yet nearly met him eye-to-eye. That massive boulder-size seemed to hold sadness to match its muscle.

"Payment given, Richard."

"And in your imagined rapids, your whirling pools," the big Person shifted and heaved to his feet, "- in them, no ship of mercy sails?"

"Only, I suppose, as a Warm-time poet put it: 'in the narrow currents of our faltering hearts.'"

Then a long, deep, considering hum. Baj supposed it was Richard's method for keeping the sounds of the world from troubling his thoughts.

"- I'd be more interested," Baj said, "in what you, and Nancy also, make of the world."

Richard, looming over, smiled his grizzle-bear grimace. "We make… do."

When Nancy returned – still silent to Baj, as he to her – the three of them wrapped themselves in their cloaks and blankets under sheltering birches, Errol, innocent as any puppy, curled against Baj's side. And after a time, all – even a wakeful Once-a-prince, remembering a Robin woman's eyes – slept to the conversation of wind and trees.

Until, just before dawn, the rattle and thud of drums came to wake them.