Shannon Hale - Book of a Thousand Days

She turned white and shook like a hare facing a hunter. I patted her face and shook her and prodded her with my toes, but she wouldn't agree, she just stood there, dumb and shaking. Ancestors pardon me, but I dumped wash water over her head.

My lady was angry. "Why did you do that?"

"To wake you up! To make you make sense. Tell me, my lady. Why won't you go to him? Why?"

"I don't want to say. You won't believe me. But I know it, I know they all want me dead. And if one doesn't kill me, the other will. Lord Khasar will come after me. He's a beast and he tears out the throats of goats with his teeth.

I saw him."

"Oh, my lady," I said, and turned my back so she couldn't see my expression. First she claimed Khan Tegus is plotting to kill her with arrows and knives and now Lord Khasar bites goats. In her mind, I don't think she's ever left the tower. She's still seeing things that aren't there.

Day 62

The girls at the next fire wash plates and platters and occasionally help Cook with the stirring. Sometimes they say things about us pot scrubbers, or about my mottled face and my lady's slowness. It makes Gal glare and Qacha hold her laughter. Maybe before the tower, such talk would have made me feel low, but I have no patience for it now.

The world is far too beautiful to waste a moment on such nonsense. Even so, we four scrubber girls keep to ourselves.

Except there is one boy who's a cutter--that is, he cuts up vegetables, prepares meat, that sort of kitchen work.

Well, he had some free time and he came and helped me scrub pots.

In his free time. Then today we caught eyes as we worked and he winked. I giggled about it with Qacha, but I don't know what to think. His name's Osol and he has loads of hair and a fine jaw. Maybe he hasn't noticed my skin splotches? How could he not notice? All the same, I keep the left side of my face turned away from him whenever I can.

I haven't heard any gossip about Khan Tegus. Or Lord Khasar.

Day 64

Today was my free half day, but Saren had to work. I wasn't going to leave her, she's likely to fall apart without me nearby, but the girls insisted.

"Go have some freedom," said Qacha, walking me to the door. "You haven't taken a half day since you arrived."

"But Sar--"

Gal grumbled. "That girl works slower than a snail makes a trail. Let her get kicked out of the kitchens already."

"Never mind," said Qacha. "She'll be fine. I'll watch Sar. Go on!"

It felt so nice to have someone looking after me a bit, and I believed Saren would be just fine with a solid mucker girl like Qacha watching out for her. So I left.

It was strange walking about without my lady hanging on my side. Ancestors forgive me, but I felt as though someone cut me loose from heavy chains. First I went to the market. A caravan visited the khans house two days ago, and I hoped to view some splendid performers.

Sadly, this caravan had only one contortionist and all he did was stand on his head and occasionally wiggle his legs, so I moved on, gliding my hand over the finery for sale --bundles of cinnabar, camphor, and sandalwood, bags of brown and white sugar, pearls and purple gems safe under glass, fragrant waxes in square bundles, turquoise, pink coral, and my favorite--blue nuggets of lapis lazuli.

I was gazing at the blue stones when I heard the caravan storyteller's magnificent voice. She boomed during the dramatic bits and then went low and eerie to make your hairs rise. The desert folk don't know the Ancestors and their tales, so the stories she told were foreign to me. Stories of night and fear, some so strange they left me feeling shrouded in ghosts.

One was like the story of the skinwalkers that I'd heard before--people who deal with the desert shamans to gain animal powers, but the storyteller added more details than I'd ever heard. First, a skin-walker offers his spirit as barter to a desert shaman, then he must kill a close relative--the more he loves the person he kills, the greater his power will be. Imagine such a thing! After that sacrifice, the desert shaman summons a predator spirit into the person, who then gains the added strength and cunning of that beast as well as the ability change into its shape. The storyteller told of man-leopards that prowl the desert night and with one bite turn a living person into a corpse.

My mouth went dry and I wanted to cover my ears, but I sat and listened anyway. Could it be true? Only the shamans should have power to change into animals, as foxes in service of the Ancestors. Shouldn't they?

It was a dark story and I needed lightening, so I headed back to the khan's house and visited Mucker in the stables. That magnificent yak grunted happily and snorted over my hands, leaving them warm and somewhat sticky. I sang to him and brushed him, and he looked shiny as polished wood when I left.

Here I am out in the sunshine, a full hour left for me to just sit and smile. Osol passed by, making a run to the dairy, and he dropped a wildflower on my book. I called out a greeting as he scurried away, and he looked back at me and winked. And smiled. He has a smile to be proud of.

The sky is a yawning blue, big and delicious, as though it wants me to be happy.

[Image: Picture of Flowers]

Later

Saren didn't do quite as well as I'd hoped. She panicked, there was some screaming, and they had to stuff her in a closet before Cook heard.

"She threw a tantrum like a waddling child," was how Qacha explained it. "I don't know how you put up with her."

"She's had a time of it," I said. "She lost her family."

"Who hasn't?"

I couldn't explain about the tower, and about Saren being gentry and made of softer stuff than muckers. But are they? I mean, her khan is gentry and it makes me smile to imagine him throwing a tantrum. Would Saren be like Tegus if I could heal whatever ails her? Then again, didn't the Ancestors make gentry perfect? And if they did, what about Lord Khasar?

I'm not sure about any of it anymore, and that's the truth.

Day 67

Today Qacha, Saren, and I were sitting on the floor scrubbing pots, and we mucker girls got to reminiscing about the steppes. Living every day under the Eternal Blue Sky, surrounded by animals, milking in the mornings, making cheese and yogurt, washing and cooking and cleaning, and then running free through the grass like antelope. I can still imagine myself in that life, as clearly as if I'm eight and in two braids, drinking milk fresh from the mare and twisting dry grass into play dolls.

"I never, ever imagined, not for a moment, that I wouldn't stay there forever," I said.

Qacha nodded. "We had a nice herd of sheep and my father would tell me, 'You see that lamb there? That one will be part of your dowry. And that one, too.' But then Khasar attacked, and we were camped too near the city, and his men stole animals and scattered the rest and killed... well, never mind. But before the attack, I thought I'd marry some mucker boy within the year." She laughed at that, all pleasantness again.

"And now here we are," I said, scraping some slop out of the pot and flinging it into the fire.

For a time we scrubbed in silence, then Qacha asked, "Would you go back right now if you could?"

I tried to see my lady without looking at her. She was elbow deep in her pot, but her face was earnest, as if she might be listening. I wished I could tell Qacha,

I'm trapped. I've taken an oath. Sar is actually an honored lady, the Ancestors made me from mud to serve her.

I can't leave her. She's a bird with a broken wing. She needs me.

But I said, "It's an odd thing to live all your life in one place and then lose it forever. It's a strange thing not to know if I'll ever be a mama like my own."

Qacha just nodded. She's a good one, that Qacha. She seems to sense when to keep talking and when to let the words drizzle into silence.