Jay Lake - Green

Then it dawned on me she had said your trail. Not our trail. “Where are you going?”

“Higher into the hills.” She handed me the stick and the rabbit. “It… it seems to me we must not be together. Whatever Federo wanted, he thought he could get from the intersection of the two of us. Moreover, I must carry word of all this to whatever is left of my people.”

I wanted to cry. I wanted to kill her. I wanted to beg her to stay. I wanted to lie down in the creek and let the water race to take my life before the pursuing army caught me.

But I did none of those things. Instead, I said, “I will miss you.”

The Dancing Mistress leaned close and kissed me, then passed her rough tongue across my face. “Follow the water. It will take you to the sea, and the city there. I will make a trail that may keep them after me awhile before they discover their error.”

Then, before I could entrap her with either logic or love, she loped off into the darkness. I almost pitied any one of the enemy who met her this night, with her blood on the boil and god-killing still fresh on her fingertips.

This was what the Lily Goddess had feared. I had helped unleash a deicide, for the Dancing Mistress’ love of me. Better that we had never set out at all.

Distant shouting reminded me I must be moving. As I clambered slowly down the creek, the surf was joined by the rolling thunder of a storm. I looked to see a hilltop behind me crowned with jagged streams of lightning.

So we had not killed him. Things would never be so easy.

For hours I crept. Twice I slipped and fell, the second time striking my kneecap so hard, I feared it broken. A wounded ass could be managed, at least for a while, but losing my knee would have been death.

The joint held, though. I kept going. Torches swarmed through the darkness behind me. Some passed in the distance to my left. They followed the Dancing Mistress. Watching that, I slipped again. This time I slid down a chute and over a drop into the darkness of empty air.

Water smacked me in the face as the irony of this death overwhelmed me. Losing my grip on my stick, I went down into cold. Twisting in the depths, I could not find the surface. No light guided me, though the burning pressure in my lungs urged me on. I flailed until my foot met something. There I kicked off hard.

Air came to me just as I finally lost control. So did my stick, which slapped me on the head to remind me how foolish I had been. The wood was thick and fairly light, and would float. For a very long while, I let it do the work while we spun in the pool at the bottom of the little falls.

No irony. Just more pain.

In time, I dragged myself over a shallow bar and into the current of the Greenbriar River. Once again, I let the stick do most of the work. The flow carried me away into the night, only sometimes forcing me to pause and crawl over rocks or sand or logs.

Somehow I managed not to further strike my head or knees.

Even more strangely, I seemed to sleep a bit. I could still see the new moon, her fingernail a little wider this night. Lilies floated on the water with me. Each one opened to show me a face, then closed again. Some were Mothers of the Lily Temple, others Mistresses of the Factor’s house. A few I did not recognize.

Then I was drawn through another race of the current. Without taking my life, it spat me out into a much wider pool, where I was spun awhile until fetching up against the hull of a boat.

A small girl leaned over, then clicked her tongue. “Mama,” she said, “there is a woman in the water.”

I heard a muffled voice answer her.

“No, I think she is dead.”

Opening my mouth, I tried to tell the child I was not dead. Not yet. The silly fool screamed to see my lips move, and fled the rail.

Her mother was there a moment later with a boat hook.

“I am not dead,” I said, or tried to. Mostly, I gasped.

“Corinthia Anastasia,” she shouted, “you are an idiot!”

Something darker than sleep finally claimed me as they pulled me aboard.

I woke with the sense that a great deal of time had passed. How much I could not say.

Corinthia Anastasia sat on a little chair eating fish from a bowl and kicking her heels. The odor made my stomach lurch. I watched the girl a moment. Pale curly hair, pale eyes, pale skin. A normal child living in the company of her family.

I wondered what that felt like.

Around me was the main room of a cottage. A decent-sized fireplace, two wall beds just beyond that. I could see a few pots in the rafters, and a loft as well. Clean enough, but there was little wealth here.

The girl saw me turn my head. “Awake this time?”

“Yes.” I tried to puzzle out her question. “Have I been awake before?”

“No.” She chewed slowly. “You been talking a lot in your sleep. Some furrin speak.”

“I hope I did not bother you.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t care. Some might say you was a witch, but Mama, she’s too smart for that.”

“Good.” I tried to ignore the fish. My stomach was a clenched fist. It seemed unlikely to accept even a sip of juice right now-yet, strangely, I was hungry.

“You are the ugliest girl I ever seen,” Corinthia Anastasia offered up.

I had to laugh at that, or try to. “You’ll go far in life.” Then I realized I was lying on my back. My buttocks mostly itched. As opposed to, say, pain.

How long have I been out?

What had become of the Dancing Mistress? Choybalsan? His army?

I tried to get up, but could not. My limbs had no strength. “Where is your mother? I need news of the world, and must find my way to Copper Downs.”

“She says I am to tell you the world is still here, if’n you ask.”

Panic peaked in my voice. “What about Copper Downs?”

“Still there, too, I guess.” She grinned around her wooden spoon. “We ain’t.”

Arguing with her was not worth the trouble.

Eventually her mother returned. The woman was a larger version of her daughter, with filled-out curves and sun-darkened skin, wearing an orange dress of some coarse weave. Big farmer’s boots stuck out below the hem. Under other circumstances, I might have found her attractive.

“The dock at Briarpool has been burned,” she announced. “My boat with it. It was you that lot of swordspointers was after.”

“Most likely,” I said politely. “My apologies.”

“They set fire to enough else, no surprise.” Her tone was brusque, but regret tinged her voice. She sat on the little bed at about my waist and reached out to stroke my hair. When she spoke again, her voice was soft. “You’ve been badly used time and again, my sweet.”

“Some was my own doing.”

“You might have held the knife in your hand, but I wager others drove you to it.”

“You could say that,” I admitted.

“Foreign girl,” she said. “From across some sea or another. I know what those out of the north look like, and you’re not one of us. But you talk as if you just stepped from a doorway on Whitetop Street.”

This woman had the authority of a temple Mother, but without the edges. I felt an irrational urge to trust her. “Someone in Copper Downs had the raising of me.”

“You ever know any teaching Mistresses?” Her voice was even softer.

The question startled me. “Y-yes.”

“I thought you might have that mark.” Turning to the girl, she said, “Go out and find me some windfall nuts.”

Corinthia Anastasia set the bowl of fish down and slowly stood up.

“And take your time about it!”

“Yes, Mama.”

Moments later, we were alone.

“I was trained up in the Peach Court,” she told me. “Perhaps twenty years before your time.” She touched her own belly where it sloped out a bit beneath her breasts. “I was a very pretty girl. You have to be, to find yourself there, but when my monthly bleeding came, my body wanted to put on more weight than I could work off, no matter how they pushed me. In time, the Factor cut his losses and sold me to a manor well outside the city. Wouldn’t do to have the world know they’d grown themselves a chunky girl.”