Jo Clayton: Moongather

“Silence, woman.” The Norid’s voice was unemphatic, but Lybor closed her mouth and snuggled closer to Morescad.

The Norid faced the Domnor. The air shivered around him as his hands moved through a complex sign and he began a guttural unpleasant chant. Inside the pentacle the air thickened and a bilious green smoke slowly changed from a mist to a billowing shape, many-armed with a great gaping mouth.

Serroi’s skin started to itch; her eye-spot throbbed with pain and power. She dropped a hand to the Sleykyn’s sheath and closed her fingers tight around the hilt of his poison knife.

The Norid groaned and swayed, sweat popping out on his face. Within the pentacle that shape was solidifying, a huge warty thing curving over the Domnor.

Serroi shivered, remembering too much, eyes blurring, mouth dry. Maiden help me, I can’t go in there. I can’t. Tayyan, help me. Ayyy, I can’t.

The Child: 13

For a year Serroi worked her way south over the plain, gaining fluency in the language, begging at times, other times working in stables and for farmers, staying in one place for a day, a week, sometimes even a month until she found enough money or other means to move farther south, following her eye-spot’s tug, hunting the Golden Valley. She kept away from people, trusting no one, making no friends, fending off questions about the green color of her skin. At times she was desperately lonely with no one to talk to; even the animals weren’t enough. She needed an outlet for her strong affections and there was no one; sometimes she felt like she was going to burst in a thousand pieces, sometimes she almost turned back to find Raiki-janja, but she never quite lost the urge to find the Valley. She slept in stables on straw, bathed out of buckets, found no way to wash her clothing, discarded it when it was soiled beyond bearing, buying new things when she could. She kept nothing she couldn’t carry easily, went across the Cimpia Plain as a small grubby boy whose wizard’s touch with animals won him a job whenever he wanted it. At times the steady attrition of small irritations wore her down until once again she considered giving up. There were no great dangers to be faced, nothing but dirt and hard work and loneliness, but they wore her down until she thought seriously of turning back. The stubborn core that made her fight the Noris, that kept her alive in the desert, kept her moving toward her goal.

Toward the end of her thirteenth year she was working in the stable of a busy tavern in a small trade city on the edge of the Plain when she felt something like a blow in the stomach, though no one was near, no one touched her. She closed her eyes, felt warmth suffusing through her. The hostler led in two lanky high-bred macain and cuffed her for dreaming on the job. “Clean ‘em good, boy.” He snorted. “They belong to a couple of high-nosed meien. Old Poash is in there kissing their feet.” With a sneer he muscled the animals into two stalls. “Lick ‘em clean, brat.” He wandered off, leaving her alone to do the work.

Two meien. Excited and fizzing with a new hope, she stared after him. Going or coming? If the meien were going home, perhaps they’d take her with them. She sighed and began washing the macain, cleaning their neck fringes, scrubbing their backs, working the tiny stones and other irritants from between their toes and out of the cracks in their pads. She pushed out the claws and polished them until the white-grey horn gleamed dully. The macain whined and burbled, nosed at her until she scratched behind their ears and under their chins. Finally she fed them an extra helping of fat yellow liga seeds and left them crunching happily.

She walked through the quiet stable, checking on the other animals, stopped by the door and looked around. A lamp lit by the door, the stables swept clean. Gear hanging neatly on pegs, wiped clean. She nodded to herself, stretched, yawned. All work done. She was supposed to stay around and tend the needs of any late customers when the hostler took himself off to the battered hedge tavern outside the walls where he drank up his wages after grudgingly giving her the few coins he allowed her for doing the work. She was pleased enough by this. The hostler hadn’t the wit to see her as anything but the boy she pretended to be-and he wasn’t put off by the color of her skin, a color all too evident in the day though she tried to tone it down with smears of greasy dirt. He was too glad to have a silent, willing worker to ask her any questions.

She wandered a last time along the line of stalls then stood in the stable’s doorway looking at the busy bright tavern. She hesitated, but the temptation to see the meien was too strong. Slipping into the tavern behind a group of laughing townsmen, she squatted in a shadowed corner where few were apt to notice her.

The meien were sitting together at a table across the room, their backs to the wall, their shoulders almost touching. They were relaxed, talking quietly together, the current of affection between them waking a powerful need in Serroi, a need that twisted her stomach and blurred her eyes. She blinked, folded her arms tight across herself, and tried to focus on less disturbing aspects of the weapon-women. From their chosen table they could see most of the room, the stairs up to the sleeping rooms on the second floor and the two doors leading into the taproom. One was a broad-shouldered, broad-hipped woman with a round face and a dusting of freckles over a snub nose. She wore her hair short, a shining nut-brown helmet following the lines of her skull. She was far from pretty but had a smile that shimmered with charm and dancing dark eyes that accepted and loved everything she saw. The second meie was slim and golden. Golden skin, golden eyes, hair a slightly darker gold; she wore it long, braided and wrapped about her head. Both women wore leather tunics, divided skirts made of the same leather, knee-high boots, a weapon-belt with a slender sword on the right and a grace blade on the left. Everything about them was plain, without any ornament but the pride that kept them clean and polished.

She gazed hungrily at the two women, wondering if she could ever have their quiet assurance, the bone-deep serenity that she could feel even through the noise and confusion in the taproom. Serroi stirred in her corner, knowing she should be getting back to the stables. The meien helped her resolution by finishing their meal and mounting quietly to the second floor. A drunken townsman called an obscenity after them but was forcibly silenced by his two companions. The meien ignored the incident and turned down the hallway toward their room.

Serroi slipped out and returned to the stable. She had just time to take a last look at the animals before the hostler came stumbling in, drunk and feeling mean. He snarled at her, picked up a whip. She backed away, avoiding easily his clumsy rush. He forgot what he was holding the whip for, staggered to an empty stall and fell asleep on the clean straw inside. Serroi waited until he was snoring then blew out the lantern and climbed to her own blankets spread out on sweet-smelling straw in the loft.

The meien came for their mounts at dawn. Serroi was up and dressed, but the hostler was still snoring off his drunk in the stall. She saddled the macain for the women and led the animals out, ran back inside and fetched her blanket roll, then stood leaning against the stable wall, looking cautiously around before she dared approach them. She could see the serving girls from the tavern hauling in water but there was no one within earshot. As the women swung into the saddle, she ran forward. “Meien,” she called, her voice hoarse with tension.

The meie with the freckled face rode over to her, smiled down at her. “What is it, boy?” Her voice was a musical contralto, her eyes still pleased with the world.