Shannon Hale: Book of a Thousand Days

Anyway, with my mother passed to the Ancestors' Realm, I made the long walk from the summer pastures to the city, hoping to find work. The city had too many people for my mind. Where do they all sleep? How do you feed so many bodies? My head hurt trying to reason it out. I found the house of chiefs soon enough and purchased employment with my last animal. A thin woman people named "Mistress" had me stand before her and tell what skills I had, declaring at the end that I would be of best use working in the stables. When she rose from her chair to show me the way, she winced and rubbed her back.

"Have a pain there, Mistress?" I asked.

She didn't answer. I suppose it was right nosy of me to speak up like that, but I thought I could help her, and why sit quiet when you can be useful? So I said, "I might help that pain, Mistress, if you let me."

She didn't argue, so I put my hand on her back and I started with the song for body aches, the slow, sliding tune that goes, "Tell me again, how does it go?" and then twined into it the hopping tune for buried pain that goes,

"Berries in summer, red, purple, green."

She stretched when I was finished. "You're a mucker, then? I've heard of the healing songs but never thought much about them." She looked at me thoughtfully, then set in on any number of queer questions.

"What is the proper remedy for a lady in fits?" "Make her drink warm milk and rub her back," I answered easily enough.

"Show me a straight stitch."

And I sewed a line straighter than the finger of Ris, god of roads and towns.

"Let me see your hands," she said, and checked them for calluses. "Mmm-hmm. And your mucker mother taught you all the healing songs?"

"I don't think a body can know them all, but I know the useful ones, like the song for helping a mare birth a foal and the song to get a she-yak to stand still for milking --"

"No, no, I have no use for horses and yaks. The songs for aches of back and belly and head. Like you just sang for me."

"I know dozens, I guess."

"Then I'm going to make you a lady's maid for the most honored house in Titor's Garden. Our lord's second daughter, Lady Saren, she's bound to need a fresh maid by the time your education is done. She certainly seems to go through them quickly."

Mistress sent me to an old man named Qadan, who lived beside the house of chiefs. I cooked and cleaned for him, and in the afternoons, a group of hopeful scribes joined us for lessons in reading.

"As Lady Saren's maid you'll need to know your letters," Mistress had said. I didn't know then why this is so, but I do now--because unlike most gentry, Lady Saren herself doesn't know them.

What a strange and wondrous time it was, eating two big meals every single day, sleeping by a fire always lit, and learning the secret language of ink strokes. On days when I finished chores and errands early, Qadan taught me sketching. I was so busy and my belly so full, I would fall asleep even as I was falling into bed.

But some nights, when I tossed on my mattress, awake and staring at nothing, the sorrow would strike me.

Quiet there in Qadan s dark house, my heartache felt like a river, and I was sinking into it, carried away fast in its coldness. That's the best way I can explain it, and what I mean by it is, I missed my mama.

Sometimes Qadan threw candlesticks at us when his back pinched him sour, but mostly he was a good teacher.

He said the best way to practice writing was to keep a book of thoughts. The first one I wrote in was left behind in our rush to this prison. I found this blank book of stitched-together pages among the parchment and inks, and I asked my lady if I might take it for my own. She had no use for it.

It seems a bit of a laugh now, all that time spent learning and now I find myself in a tower with no occasion to write my lady's love letters or keep her books. Instead I'll record the details of our confinement, so when the seven years are over and the lord's men pound through the walls, if all they find is a delicate lady and her humble maid shriveled like old ginger roots from lack of sun and air, they'll know somewhat of our happy time still breathing.

Though my lady doesn't sound happy. She's thrashing on her mattress again. I wonder, is it in the gentry's nature to suffer so? Could the Ancestors give gentry beauty and perfection, food and large houses, and a world to do their bidding, and yet curse them with wretched sorrow? My poor, poor lady.

I had best go see to her now and finish my account later. There will be, I'd guess, plenty of time to do so.

Day 13

While I was washing up tonight, my lady fell asleep on my mattress, not wanting to climb to her chamber. She wears fashionable shoes with the toe long and curled toward her ankle, which are certainly pretty but do make it difficult to clamber up ladders. It wouldn't be proper for me to sleep on her mattress, so I'll finish my story before making my bed of the grain sacks in the cellar. The Ancestors bless her.

After one year with Qadan, Mistress had me take the oath of a lady's maid. I cut my finger, splashed drops of blood toward the north and the Sacred Mountain, and swore to serve the gentry and my new mistress however the Ancestors saw fit.

"But I'm still a mucker, right?" I asked.

"You'll always be a mucker," said Mistress.

I was relieved. I know muckers are the simplest of commoners and becoming a lady's maid is a right honor, but I couldn't give up the wild steppes forever, couldn't turn my back on Mama and all she taught. I feel like a mucker from the ends of my hair to the mud of my bones.

After the oath, Mistress escorted me to the city's center and left me at the lord's house. It was near as beautiful as a mountain in autumn with its three-tiered roof covered in red and green enamel tiles. Inside was less welcoming--

grand and cold, the floor stones seemingly cut from ice. Everyone was running around, women were wailing, men were yelling. At the time, I thought it was always that way. I hadn't heard yet of the trouble.

Hours I spent sitting in a corner, waiting for someone to be sensible. I could see myself in a mirror, and I stared and thought how plain I looked in my mucker boots and working clothes inside a gentry's house as fine as sugar. I'll sketch it from memory, so it won't be just right.

[Image: Drawing of a Young Woman Sitting On The Floor]

No one paid me the least mind, and though it wasn't proper, I decided I'd find my new mistress myself.

Ancestors forgive me, but what else could I do? I was of no use to anyone just sitting there.

Errand boys rushed up and down corridors, maidens sulked on benches. Some wept. When I asked for directions to Lady Saren's chamber, no one questioned why I wished to go there.

I entered the chamber slowly, squinting. I'd never met any gentry before and was worried that the glory of the Ancestors might be so bright inside her, it would burn my eyes. I was a little disappointed then to find my lady looking much like anyone else, still in her white sleep clothes, her hair in a braid with half the hair poking out. Her eyes were puffy and red, her nose wet, her feet bare. She sat on her bed, alone, straight as a tent pole.

The first thing I wanted to do was comb her hair straight and plait it tight, dress her and set her up like a proper lady, let the glory of her divine ancestors shine in her properly. But I had to stand there, quiet, and wait for her to look up and see me. It isn't allowed for a commoner, of course, to speak to gentry first.

The flats of my feet were aching by the time she saw. And in all that time she hadn't moved.

"Who are you?" she asked. There was something about her manner that reminded me of a little girl, though I learned since that she's sixteen years.