Shannon Hale - Book of a Thousand Days

Many times after that night I liked to lie back and imagine what the gentry might be like--skin that glows like a candle, eyes shining with the wisdom of the Ancestors. Sometimes I actually thought they might have tails like foxes or butterfly wings. Then meeting Lady Saren and her father...

But now I've spoken with Khan Tegus, and though his hand didn't glow or anything, there was something in his voice, in his words, that was different than anyone I've ever known. The mark of the Ancestors must be in him, stronger than in some gentry. Maybe that's why his title is khan instead of just lord. I'll ask my lady.

Later

Lady Saren told me a story tonight while she petted My Lord the cat. How many things she must know!

She said that the Eight Realms were once united under a Great Khan, and the seat of his power was Song for Evela. Now all the realms have their own lord or lady rulers, but in memory of the Great Khan, the ruler of Song for Evela still carries the title of khan. I asked her how she knew, and she said all gentry families keep the history of wars and marriages and so on. Such a thing as history never occurred to me before.

Day 73

It's fully winter now. There's a rim of ice on our well that I have to crack with the bucket. Each time I open the metal flap to the outside, I get blasted by cold. The wash water freezes as I pour it on the ground, and afterward I spend several minutes before the fire just to get color back in my hands. This time of year, it's too cold to snow. High winter out-of-doors is death as sure as a knife in the chest, and a winter's funeral brings bad luck to the whole clan.

I'm a mucker, so I thought I knew winter, but from inside this tower I've learned something new--the winter wind has its own voice. Autumn wind has a gusty warmth to it and a lower tone as though it sings from deep in the belly. The winter wind screeches around the tower, singing the high harmony, its voice sharp with ice. My lady isn't fond of that sound.

A few days ago, I carried her mattress down to the main floor and shut the door in the ceiling so we keep in more of the fire's heat. I think even the Ancestors understand that in winter, a mucker maid and a lady must sleep side by side.

Surely her khan won't return until after winter. Spring seems as far off as the Ancestors' Realm.

Day 92

Yesterday smoke was filling our room something awful, and in a locked tower, air filled with smoke would kill us right quick. I rolled up my lady in all our blankets before I smothered our fire. In the time it took me to clean out the blocked chimney, my jaw was hammering and my fingertips turned blue. I relit the fire and shivered on my mattress until the room warmed again, there being not a spare blanket for my shoulders.

This winter, Goda, goddess of sleep, must have made Evela, goddess of sunlight, awfully drowsy. No memory of sunshine hangs in the air. Everything feels gray and hard and dark. I guess that might make me bitterly sad, but right now, My Lord is asleep on my lap.

Day 98

The guards only bring our daily milk every two days now, sometimes three. In the cold, they must stay in their tents, keeping the fire going nice and toasty, venturing out only to milk their animals and make yellow ice.

To help our milk last three days, I add water. It wouldn't be proper for my lady to drink plain water, as if she were poorer than poor. Even Mama and I always had milk to drink.

Day 122

Little to record. I wash, I cook. I stoke the fire. Whenever the wind moans, my lady shivers as though she feels it on her skin. She's refused to bathe for weeks, but this morning I insisted. When I dunked her hair into a bucket of water, there was a powerful scent, reminding me of the time my brothers' reindeer fell into a stream.

Today, for the first time, I couldn't enjoy the spices in the food. It was as though I couldn't taste them. I can't say why that was.

Still, My Lord the cat is so beautiful.

Day 141

The middle night. I just woke after a dream, though it was the kind of dream that's more memory than imagination. I saw again the last night her khan was here, the sight of his hand lifting up the cat. And then I saw what I gave him in return. I hadn't thought of it again since that night. The memory jolted me awake.

I gave her khan my shirt. Ancestors, there was a basket of washing right by my mattress. I could've seized one of my lady's own shirts. He would've inhaled her scent, the breath of her soul. Even though there was something else at hand, I chose to give him my own garment.

Why didn't the Ancestors strike me dead? After such an offense, I'd think they wouldn't permit this mucker maid to remain breathing. Perhaps they only ignore me because I'm shut up in this tower, cut off from the gaze of the Eternal Blue Sky. Perhaps if

I ever step out of its shadow, I'll be struck in the instant and crumble into a heap of ash.

Day 158

This morning, we... I'm shaking still. I didn't realize until I put the brush to paper. If My Lord the cat weren't on my lap, I don't know that I could be calm enough to write at all.

This morning, we heard voices outside. Now that it's warm enough for the sun to burn holes in the icy ground, we've begun to hear our guards again, chatting as they walk around the tower and occasionally shouting saucy things at us. But these voices were new. One was so deep and loud, I felt it in the stones of the tower. I felt it in my bones.

I was darning my lady's stockings by the orange light of the fire, and my lady was lying on my bed, teasing My Lord the cat with a stocking too holey to save. When we heard the new voices, she sat upright, like a fawn stops grazing when she hears a hunter's step.

"Is it your khan, do you think?" I asked. "Back already?"

My lady didn't answer. She's so often spooked,

I didn't realize that this time she was truly terrified, so badly that she couldn't speak or move.

I left my sewing, fetched the wooden spoon, unhooked the flap, and jammed it open.

"Don't, Dashti," she said too late, just as a hand shot up the hole and seized my arm.

I screamed, I think. The hand was covered in a black gauntlet, the wrist trimmed in metal spikes. It was not her khan.

"Do I have her?" said the voice low enough to grumble in stones. "Do I have my lady?"

"No, I'm sorry, no, no," I said.

"Who is this?" He shook my arm.

"I'm Dashti. I'm my lady's maid. I'm the mucker maid."

He laughed as if I'd just told a wicked joke. "Yes, I know muckers. There are hundreds of the ragged folk wandering the steppes in Thoughts of Under."

He let go, and I pulled my arm inside.

"Put your arm back!" He yelled so loud, the cat screeched.

I didn't want to. Ancestors, I wanted to crawl under my mattress. He may have a voice like an earth rumble and put my lady in the fear shakes, but I recognized the command of gentry, and I must do what he says. I lowered my arm back down the hole.

He didn't grab me again, just tickled his gloved fingers against my fingertips. He was chuckling, lower than his voice. Then he slapped my hand against the wall. It stung like a log full of hornets.

I pulled my arm up, but he said, really slowly and sweetly like I was his favorite lamb, "Back down, Dashti the mucker maid."

Again I lowered my hand, and again he slapped it against the wall. I left it there, and I was crying, but not just because it hurt, I think. The next time he slapped, my lady grabbed me under the arms and pulled me away from the hole. We fell back on my mattress.

"Stay here," she said.

I stayed. After all, she's my own mistress. Let that black-gloved lord growl and yell all he likes, I'll obey her first.