She scratched at a ragged thumbnail and bit its jagged edge to keep herself awake while she watched the traders’ faces. She hoped no one would bother to look up into the branches, for there was no concealing her cape with the rose petals woven along its hem, which hung in the breeze like a flag.
“Get back, Wynn!” Distracted from his presentation, Joss rose from the tree stump, his knees jostling the array of ornamental cutlery, arrowheads, and scissors on his rickety sellers’ table. Wynn, his wide-eyed son, was caught in a cautious approach to the Bel Amican hunters’ prize exhibit, the snarling beastman. “That wicked dog might snap those bars and make a meal of you, boy!” Shaking his head, Joss muttered, “Children. They say you have ’em because you’ll need ’em someday. But I swear by my mother’s butter and cream that Wynn’s curiosity will ruin us.”
“Stop fretting, Abascar man.” The blond-bearded Bel Amican, who had introduced himself as Sader, took another noisy bite of his carrot and then struck the cage bars with his polished walking stick. “The cage is unbreakable. Catching beastmen…that’s what we do. When we get to Bel Amica, we’ll earn a year’s wage for this one. Hunters will outbid each other for the chance to turn him loose on an island and hunt him down for sport. Best game in the Expanse.”
Juney jabbed her husband with an elbow. “Joss, let’s go. We’ve got more sense than to keep company with folk that smell of beastmen.” She and her daughter, Cortie, a tiny thing with a mop of tousled yellow hair, were already stuffing their cargo bags with the stoneware, the glittering ore, and the sturdy leather shoes they had spread out on blankets for the Bel Amicans to peruse.
Reluctantly Joss pushed his unsold wares off the table and into another bag, then yanked the wooden table legs from their sockets and bundled them together with a strap. He tucked the tabletop under his arm and lugged the pegs and the bags to the family’s vawn and fastened them with the ropes and buckles.
Young Wynn, his frame knobby like twigs and roots, his hair a sooty confusion, stood five paces from the cage, growling back at the beastman, twirling a vawnwhip absently as if imagining a showdown with the monster.
Cackling, an old woman seated on a pallet of cushions on the Bel Amicans’ wagon rocked from side to side. She surprised Auralia, who had not noticed her before. Wrapped in padded blankets like something breakable, only her face, carved in deep-cut lines, and her hands, fingers working at the air like spider legs arranging webs, revealed themselves to the cold mountain air. “My boys got no problem servin’ up beastmen for those who want to bleed ’em and those who want to watch.”
“You speak of what’s worth watching, woman?” Joss laughed. “How would you know anything about that?”
“One more word about my mother’s blindness, and you’ll join her in the darkness,” growled Sader, now holding a hunter’s throw-arrow in each hand.
“’Twas a beastman killed my boys’ papa,” the old woman shrieked, “and their little sister too. Then it spat in my face and burnt out my eyes.” She spewed a string of obscenities so foul that little Cortie laughed and repeated the mysterious words quietly to herself. “Then Elyroth chopped off its tail, and Sader cut off its head.”
Wynn looked up at his father. “Is that true, Pa?”
As if it understood, the beastman roared and pressed his face between the bars.
This set both of the Abascar merchants’ whip-scarred vawns to scuffling in the muddy leaves and tugging nervously at their tree-bound tethers.
Auralia felt an urge to leap down, break the vawns’ tethers, and chase them loose to freedom. But first she’d have to check those saddlebags.
“No use squabblin’, Joss ker Harl.” Juney bound up her goods and swung the heavy load over her shoulder. “We’d best make haste. Rains are starting up again. Wynn’s been sneezing, and Cortie’s lost her heavy cloak. Can’t let ’em get soggy.”
“Don’t go just yet. We’ve one more thing to show you.” Sader slid the arrows back into the sleeves of his green fleece-coat. “Wait until you see this prize. You’ll want to offer all you have, maybe even the vawns.”
“Sader, shut it,” hissed his older brother. “They can’t match the price we’ll earn at home.”
“Earn for what?” their old mother whispered. “What’re you boys conspiring about?”
“May as well show these poor Abascar folk the kind of colors we can wear in Bel Amica.” Sader walked to the wagon.
Cortie uttered one of the old woman’s foul words, practicing, giggling at the sound of it. Juney cuffed the girl in the back of the head.
“What is it, Sader? What’re you rummaging for?” The old woman rocked back and forth, legs imprisoned in her purple blanket wrap. “What are you hidin’ from your mother?”
“Sader, keep that bag closed!” Elyroth seized his brother’s arms. “Let’s leave these wood folk.”
Thunder set the mountain shuddering. Rain tapped the branches around Auralia and whispered on the fallen leaves below.
Sader declared that nothing would vex the merchants more than a glimpse of Bel Amican treasure. Conceding this point, Elyroth sulked, snatched stones from the path and tossed them at the cage. The beastman swatted the stones aside as if they were flies.
“Juney, untether the vawns.” Joss turned his back to the Bel Amicans. “I’m tired of their taunts. And I don’t want Wynn growing accustomed to the sight of a beastman.”
Juney did not move. Sader dropped a bag to the mud, knelt behind it, and untied its leather binding. He drew a fold of cloth out and teased the air with it, wearing a gleeful grin.
Auralia sank her teeth into her thumb to stop herself from shouting. It was one of the stockings she had crafted for Lezeeka. She had not been attacked by Abascar merchants at all. Bel Amican hunters had ventured as far as the Gatherer huts. Elyroth and Sader had clubbed her and run off with her work.
“Brilliant!” laughed Cortie, clapping her hands. “It’s brilliant!”
Her mother moved as if pulled by a powerful force, and Joss said, “Juney, you stay put!”
Sader pushed the cloth back into the bag and unsheathed a curved blade from the side of his boot. “Stop right there, Abascar woman. No closer. Not unless you’re going to pay.”
“What are you selling, you blasted mistake of a son?” shrieked the old woman, who had rocked herself dangerously close to the edge of their wagon. Her eyes, wide and milky white, blinked one at a time.
“Show it again,” said Juney. “Show Joss what you just showed me.”
Sader reached back into the bag and withdrew a fold of cloth that opened to become a vivid span, its edges frayed and incomplete. “You should see all we’ve collected.”
Auralia felt a warm line of tears slide down her cheek.
“Ooooooooh.” Cortie ran to embrace her mother’s right leg. “Can I have those colors, mum? Could we make them into a dress?”
As the sun cut through the clouds and tried to part them, the cloth came alive in the shifting shafts of light. The weave resembled a bed of multicolored polished stones glittering in shallow water.
“Your mum can’t afford the likes of this,” Joss whispered.
Crouching over the luminous display, Sader whispered so his mother couldn’t hear, “You don’t, perchance, have anything special…anything we’d enjoy…to bargain with…do you, woman?”
Joss would have stepped between them, but Juney was so quick to whip the hidden saber from the folds of her skirt that the Bel Amican had barely finished his question before the tip of it pricked his throat. Sader seethed, head tipping backward slowly, sheathed his dagger, and then crawled backward on all fours, away from the blade. He took some Bel Amican hero’s name in vain and glanced back at his brother for support.
“It’s like I said, Sader,” snarled Elyroth. “We’re finished here. There’s no more business to conduct.”
“They’re thieves, mum,” yelped Wynn, jarring them all into a silence like a falling plate before it hits the floor. The Abascar boy
aimed an accusing finger at Sader. He was angry. “These blasted Bel Amicans are thieves. Those colors belong to Auralia. And they stole them.”
Auralia held her breath. Wynn remembered her.
“They’ve robbed who?” snapped Joss. “They’ve stolen what?”
“Thieves!” echoed Cortie excitedly. “Brilliant.”
“We’ve seen her,” said Wynn. “We’ve seen Auralia with the Gatherers. She wears colors just that wild. She’s the one they stole it from. She’s still a girl.”
Joss’s black-bearded jaw wagged as he groped for a reprimand. But the boldness of his son’s fury astonished him.
Sader’s throwing arrows were back in his hands, but he, too, was speechless.
“We don’t rob children,” laughed Elyroth. “We don’t bother with Abascar folk, and Gatherers are the muck stuck to Abascar boots.”
“Auralia’s not a Gatherer,” Wynn sneered. “She just brings them stuff. She’s from somewhere else.” He had picked up a stone, and his intentions were clear.
Auralia realized this was going to end badly. She pushed herself to her knees, poised on the leaning tree like a bird prepared to dive.
When Juney found her wits, she kept her saber aimed at Sader but informed her furious son they would sell him to the Bel Amicans if he didn’t stop making things worse.
Meanwhile, the old, blind Bel Amican woman was turning against her own sons. “Take us out of here, Elyroth,” she snapped. “We don’t need to listen to insults from Abascar brats. If that was my runt making stupid claims, I’d knock him down.”
“It could happen.” Elyroth twirled his walking stick at his side, finding a good grip.
“Ah well, what do you expect?” Sader spat at Wynn. “Living in the wild with parents dumb as his, who do you think he takes after?”
Wynn lunged to dodge his father’s grasp, drew back his arm to launch the stone.
“Wynn! Don’t!”
Auralia jumped.
Her feet hit the ground beside Sader’s stolen treasure and her cape settled around her shoulders so she appeared to be a pile of leaves and roses. She raised her hands, stood, and backed up, pushing Wynn away from the armed Bel Amican.
The merchants from both houses were open mouthed and silent, and Wynn glanced up as if waiting for more people to fall from the sky.
No doubt they were bewildered by what she wore and by her condition. Her bare arms and feet were caked with mud from her struggle up the mountainside. Fresh blood trickled again down her face from the wound inflicted by Sader’s club. Her head pulsed with pain, and she blinked, trying to see through her right eye which was nearly swollen shut.
“’Ralia!” It was Cortie who moved first, toddling to embrace her.
“Give me the stone, Wynn.” Auralia held out her hand. “If you throw it, these men will bloody up your family.”
The boy’s arm fell to his side. “Did they…” He reached a trembling hand out as though to wipe the blood from her face. But then he looked down, seething, and shifted his attention to the tongue-tied Bel Amican brothers. “Give her back what you stole.”
Auralia knelt down, seized Sader’s bag of loot, and slung it over her shoulder. Sader clutched the cloth of the unfinished cloak and backed slowly away, delighted by this new turn of events. He teased her, as if baiting an animal with a strip of meat.
That twisted sneer had returned to Elyroth’s face. “The boy says you made this…this thing…with your own hands. I say you stole it.”
“Elyroth, did you take something from a defenseless girl?” demanded the old woman.
“If I’m wrong,” said Elyroth to the girl, “please tell me. If you do indeed weave things like this, well…you’re invited to join us on our journey back to House Bel Amica. You could craft whatever you like there. We would manage your work, find buyers.”
“For a percentage, of course,” said Sader.
Auralia was still scowling at Wynn. “Drop the stone, Wynn. Please. I’ll be all right. And you will be too, if you forget about them and walk away.”
“Does it…hurt? What they did to you?” Wynn said, voice quavering.
“Poor girl.” Juney, speaking with more concern than she had shown for her own children all day, approached Auralia to enfold her in a motherly embrace. Auralia glanced at Cortie and saw wonder turn to jealousy. “We’ll clean you up good. You can travel with us and weave anything you like. We’ll protect you.” Glaring back at Elyroth, she added, “And we’ll report these trespassers to the duty officers. Bel Amicans who beat Abascar orphans.”
“I’m not an Abascar orphan,” Auralia muttered under her breath. “And I don’t use my colors to buy anything.”
“Elyroth, I’ve a mind to turn this beastman loose so he can tear you apart.” The Bel Amican woman had begun to unwrap the cloth that encased her. “What have you done to this Auralia girl? And what is it you stole?”
Auralia turned, pushed herself free from Juney’s grasp. “Please,” she said quietly, staring at Sader’s muddy boots. “That cloth…it’s not finished yet.” She held out her hands. “Please. If any strand is broken…any strand at all…it will lose its colors.”
“Not finished? What do you mean?” Sader lifted the piece of cloth, spread it over his head, and laughed in amazement as the sunlight, coursing through it, cast rays of changing color. “There’s more?”
“Come and visit me. I have lots of other pieces. I’ll make somethin’ for you.”
“What’s your price then?” Joss glumly asked the Bel Amicans, humiliated that he had been brought so low as to bargain with them. “A vawn? The whole lot we’ve got?”
“You won’t sell what you stole from me,” said Auralia, stepping closer, “because Bel Amicans aren’t thieves, are they?”
The old woman’s brow furrowed over her sightless eyes. “My sons don’t take what isn’t theirs. I taught them right. They must have just found it in the wood. But if it’s yours, they’ll give it back. Won’t you, Sader?”
“Sader, you scum,” hissed Elyroth. “I told you to leave the bag closed.”
Sader blinked again. He lowered his hand. “I’m a Bel Amican,” he said to Auralia through clenched teeth, holding out the cloth to her. And he added in a whisper, “Taking your bag was my brother’s idea.”
Auralia took the cloth, cradling it as something fragile and alive.
“We’ll be back to see the rest of what you’ve made,” Elyroth promised, a note of menace in his voice. “You won’t be harder to track than anything we’ve caught and strapped onto the wagon. But when you hear us coming, don’t run. We might take you for a target and shoot you.”
“I hope you bring your mother along.” Auralia draped the cloth over her shoulder. And then, as every fiber in her screamed run, run, run, she glanced once more at the blind woman’s deep-lined face and the flesh of her arms as fragile as parchment. “She has such beautiful skin.” Auralia walked toward the wagon.
Instinctively, the old woman leaned forward, her large hands folding around Auralia’s. She caressed the girl’s wrists and arms, gasping in surprise. “You’re…you’re so young. You must be beautiful.” She drew her softly forward and placed her hands on the girl’s face. “Fourteen, I’d guess. Fifteen.”
Auralia shuddered when those rough, weathered fingers brushed the swelling on her head. The woman cried out. “Who did this?” And then she screamed at her sons with words that made Auralia cower and pull away. But the woman’s hand closed on Auralia’s shoulder to hold her fast. “Oh, you’re just the age my daughter was when…” She forgot the rest of her words, staring off into space. Her hand tightened over the fold of glimmering cloth and drew back as if from something hot. Then she took the fabric and gathered it into her hands.
“Oh.”
The merchants and hunters watched as the woman gently explored the shining strands with her fingers. She choked and then clasped the cloth to her breast. “It’s beautiful.”
“Either that woman’s
losing her mind, or she’s lyin’ about her eyes,” muttered Joss.
“I tell you,” the old woman wept, pressing the cloth to her face. “I…I can see this. Just this. These colors…in my hands…” And then she let go, let the cloth fall back into Auralia’s arms. “Take it,” she whispered. “It’s yours. And thank you. Thank you. What you’ve done…I could see it. I could see.”
Auralia stepped away from the wagon, shaking her head. “There’s just threads. It’s just cloth. I didn’t mean to…”
Sader brought his fist to his mouth and bit his knuckles. Elyroth laughed and walked to the edge of the wagon. “Mother…what did you see?”
“Blue. Deep blue, like streams of water.” She smiled. “And then…gold. Flashes of gold. The colors, they were flowing into and out of each other.” Her faced was pained with delight and yearning. “Son…what is happening? I think I see your outline. I think I see light. Shadows. Trees.”
Auralia turned and ran, clutching the cloth. She took the path she had come by and left them all behind.
When the fear that snapped at her heels drove Auralia from the path, there was no longer any reason to run. She fought to break her momentum, but the slope was steep, and she plunged downward through the barbed branches gouging her legs, leaves of her fragile garment stripped away in pieces. She stumbled suddenly into open air and fought to keep her balance, staggering across a rocky jag that protruded from the mountainside. She reeled and stopped, the breath knocked from her lungs by the fierce light of the vast nothingness before her. For a moment she thought she had stepped to the world’s edge.
Beacons of sunlight were falling through mist thick as cream. Standing on the stony promontory, Auralia was immersed in clouds that surged above, all about, and below. A sea of shining vapor seeped through the trees and billowed into space, veiling evidence of the land spread out beneath.