Orson Card - Hart's Hope

"My mother's gone, pass and all."

"What's that to me?"

"Her lover took her away after they killed my dad."

Lover. It was a strange word. What part had love in Inwit? Yet the boy looked afraid, his eyes

looked weak and he was ready to spring, ready to run at a word. Was this true, then? Had he no parents?

"I've got nothing," Orem said. "Little enough for me, nothing for you."

"I know the city. I'll be useful."

"I'll find my own way."

"If the guard catches me I can be your brother, and then I won't lose an ear for having no pass."

It hadn't occurred to Orem. That they'd take an ear from a child.

"They wouldn't." "God's name they would."

Flea Buzz grinned, and suddenly all the pathos was gone. Was he a fraud, after all? Orem

cursed himself for a fool. Yet he did not send him away, even so.

"What's your name," asked the boy.

"They call me Scanthips."

"By God, a name that's worse than mine."

"I'll call you Flea. That's not a bad name."

"And I'll call you Scant."

"You'll call me Sir."

"Like hell. Come on, them as I've heard was hired was hired on Shop Street." And they plunged

into the crowd on Piss Road.

Flea was a companion such as Orem had never had before. He was so jaunty that even the coldness of the shopkeepers was cause for laughter. Flea would bow and elaborately compliment the shopkeepers that they met—those that didn't drive them out immediately. And when they had been sent away, Flea would parody and mock. "Oh, I love you like a son, but if I had a son I'd have to send him away without work, lads, you must understand, times is so hard that if it goes on like this another twenty years I'll waste away and die myself, die myself!"

Orem laughed often because of Flea, and covered far more ground because Flea knew his way through Inwit, but by late afternoon it was clear there'd be no work for him on Shop Street. He needed to rest, and Flea led him into the huge cemetery. The trees were a haven to Orem, like a touch of home, even if there was no underbrush and the trees were cropped and tame. A touch of home, only there were no birds. Orem noticed it and said so.

"The dead take them and ride," Flea said. "They go everywhere on birds' backs. It's why you

never kill a bird. There might be a spirit there who can't get home, and he'll haunt you forever."

"The dead are gathered up in the nets of God," Orem said.

Flea looked at him blankly. "I thought you weren't a priest."

"I'm not anything if I don't find work," Orem said. "A man is what he does to earn his bread. A

carpenter, a farmer, a halfpriest, or a beggar."

"Or a thief?" asked Flea. There was an edge of anger to his voice.

"Why not, if it's how you live?" "I steal, Scant, but that's not what I am."

"A man is the greatest, boldest thing he dares to do. I play the snakes."

Orem shrugged. "I don't know what that means."

Flea grinned. "Then you'll have to see, won't you, Scant."

At the Snakepit

Orem guessed they were near the Swamp when the smell of the town became a reek, and what huts there were stood on stilts. "Got to stick tight to me," Flea said. "There's sinking sands here, and clay sucks you down, if you step in the wrong place. Stick tight."

Orem stayed right behind him, imitating as best he could the intricate path that Flea followed among the great-rooted trees and the cattail stands. After what felt like a mile through the meaningless maze, Flea abruptly stopped. Orem jostled him.

"Stand back," said Flea. "You never know what the snake's going to do."

Flea picked up a stick with a short fork at the end—it looked as if it had been cut that way. He dug with it, scraping dirt away from a board hidden in the ground. Then he pried under the edge of the board. A high whining sound came from the hole. Orem flinched involuntarily. Not a child in Burland didn't know that the whine of a keener meant death if you didn't get away. They lived only in places like this, where the country couldn't decide whether it was lake or land. It was as good a reason to stay away from swamps as any.

Flea laughed, but not at Orem. "Three days, and he didn't suffocate. Now that's luck, that's luck!"

Orem watched with fascination as Flea inched the board open, always with the stick. When a keener moved, it moved like a bird, quick and invisible until it stopped again. And there it was, a flash of green skittering over the ground, straight toward the nearest standing water. It got no farther than a few feet away, though, and then it lay wriggling, neck neatly pinned under Flea's stick.

"Can I trust you with my life?" Flea asked.

"Today."

"Then hold this stick and don't let up the pressure."

"No."

"Once this keener hits water and drinks, it'll follow us out of the swamp, you know that." "Tale to frighten children."

Orem walked over and took the stick. At the faint change in pressure the keener let out a high wail, but Orem held firm. Flea laughed nervously. "That's right, that's right, hold her tight, they say she's just like a woman, lots of music and death when she bites." Orem knew that Flea was just talking to hear the sound of his own voice. The snake began flapping its whole body from the stick down, slapping out with the tail. Flea showed no sign of paying attention to that—he reached out his hand and pinched the keener tightly right behind where the stick had it, then pulled slowly backward until the head was drawn tight up against the stick. The keener made a choking sound, but Flea was humming. Now he dared reach right up behind the jaw; he took a tight, tight grip. "Not yet," he whispered. The snake wailed. Flea drew his left hand down the snake's writhing body until he had hold of the tip of the tail as well. "Now let go."

Orem waited another second, afraid.

"Let go, you want to strangle it?"

He let go. Immediately the snake writhed violently in terrible shudders and spasms; Flea held on. The snake whined, the snake cried out, for all the world as if its child had died. Flea giggled in relief. "Tricky, that. Tricky, tricky. If you don't hold the tail it flips you in the eye, you know, and you drop it and it gets you. Now come on. The pit's a ways on."

Orem had hoped that catching the snake would be bravery enough for one day. He would gladly have left Flea then, but he didn't know the way out of the Swamp.

The snake pit was not deep—there could be no deep pits in the Swamp, for the water would seep into any cavity. They had only been there a few moments when other boys began arriving, each holding a keener by the neck.

"Flea!" called several, and "Buzzer!" Flea thrust his keener's head toward them playfully. A few of them eyed Orem.

"Scant," said Flea, by way of introduction. "He's a pisser, but he'll do."

One by one the boys came to the edge of the pit and cast in the snakes. Each keener immediately rushed to the water and drank. Then they began trying to slither out, toward the boys. Each snake that came close to the edge was flipped back with a forked stick. The sound of a funeral filled the clearing as the keeners wailed and whined.

"You, Scant," said a boy. "You got no stick, you do the rats."

Rats? Flea was quick to fill in what Orem didn't know. "Off to your right, there, in the castle."

The "castle" was a fence of stones, roofed with wood. Inside were whimpering and scurrying rats. Orem was not delighted at the prospect of reaching in to take one out. Again Flea advised him. "Take the bag and hold it ready and open a stone in the wall." Orem did it clumsily once, and the first rat got away; the second two went into the bag, and then he was able to kick the rock back into place well enough to keep the others in. The rats fought each other and struggled in the bag, lunging every direction and making it hard to hold.