“Handbright, I want to go to Schlaizy Noithn.” And she waited to hear the proof of all her assumptions.
“You can’t do that, child. You’re a she-child. Danderbat womb keepers don’t go. You know that.”
“Of course I know it. But I said, I want to go to Schlaizy Noithn. I want to go regardless of what the Danderbats say. Suppose I go to a Healer in the Outside and ask her to take my womb away.”
“She wouldn’t do it. If she did, the Elders would kill her.”
“Suppose I changed me, so that I don’t have a womb at all.”
Handbright made the ward of evil sign, her face turning hard and wooden at the thought. Her voice was no longer kindly when she replied. “That’s a disgusting thought. How could you think such a thing?”
“Ah. Well, as to that, sister, answer me this. If I have my Talent party in a day or so, or say right after Assembly, when the visitors are gone, how long before I have to do man-woman stuff with old Gormier? Or Haribald? Or maybe old Garbat himself?”
The older girl turned away, face pale. “Ah, Mavin. I don’t want to talk about it. You’ll learn to manage. It’s part of being a shifter girl, that’s all. You’ll live through it. Besides, you’ve known all about that ... you’ve known. ...” Seeing Mavin’s face, she stopped, reddening. “You didn’t know?”
“No. I didn’t know. Not until this morning. I should have known, maybe, but I didn’t. I need to understand all this, Handbright. I have to know what this change is going to mean to me. Suddenly it’s me the old Danderbats are leching for. Now if I’d been Tragamor, you’d have turned me over to the Forgetter to take all my memories and send me out in a minute. Wouldn’t you?”
“Yes. It’s necessary. We always do that.”
“Even if I was a she-child Tragamor, you’d do the same. Womb or no womb, you’d turn a Tragamor she-child away to Schooltown in a minute.”
Handbright nodded, stiffly, seeing where the argument was going.
“But because I’m shifter, a she-child shifter, the Elders have said I have to womb-carry for them. I can shift my legs and arms, grow fur or feathers, make me wings for my shoulders, but I can’t fly or leap or turn into any other thing, for it might change womb and make it unfavorable for carrying baby shifters. If I’m biddable, though, after I’ve had three or four or so, or once I can’t have any more, they’ll let me go to Schlaizy Noithn. Or out into the world. Isn’t that right?”
“You know it is. You’ve known those who went.”
“Oh, yes. I’ve seen them when they went, Handbright, and I’ve seen them when they come back. They say Throsset fled, and there’s a penalty on her if she comes back. She’s gone away far, and none have seen her.”
“Throsset was in love with a Demon, and he took her with him into the Western Sea. That’s what’s said.”
“She went. That’s what I mean. She didn’t stay here in the keep and carry babies for the Elders.”
“The word is she couldn’t. She had no proper parts to do it.”
“Then maybe I’m not the first to think of disposing of the proper parts,” Mavin said angrily. “Handbright, remember how you used to tell me you’d shift into a great sea bird when you had your Talent? You’d be a great white bird, you said, and explore all the reaches of the western sea. You used to say that. But here you are, teaching, baby watching, cooking and carrying for the Elders, and I know for a fact that there’s been much breeding done on you and no end of it planned, for I heard old Gormier talking of it and of how he’d discouraged your leaving ...”
The older girl turned away, face flaming, half angry, half shamed. Undaunted, Mavin went on.
“You stayed here, and let yourself be used by old Gormier, and Haribald, and I don’t know how many others—and because you didn’t have childer, they kept at you. And the years go by, and it gets later and later. You don’t shift, you don’t do processionals, you don’t go to Schlaizy Noithn to learn your Talent, you don’t practice, and it still gets later. And maybe it’s too late to dream of becoming a great bird and going exploring, too.”
“Don’t you understand!” Handbright shouting at her, face red, tears flowing freely down the sides of her tired face. “I stayed because of Mertyn ... and you. I stayed because our mother died. I stayed because there wasn’t anyone else!” She turned, hand out, warning Mavin not to say another word, and then she was out the door and away, so much anger in her face that Mavin knew it was the keep angered her, the world, the Elders, the place, the time, not Mavin alone. And yet Mavin felt small and wicked to have put this extra hardship upon Handbright just now during Assembly, when she must be bearing so much else. Even so, she did not regret it, for now she knew the truth of it. It was a hard bit of wisdom for the day, but it came to Mavin as a better thing than the fog she had been wandering about in until the overheard conversation of the morning. “Still,” she whispered to herself, “I have doubts, Handbright. For you may have stayed out of grief for our mother, and out of care for baby Mertyn ... and me. But there have been eight long years since then. And four long years since Throsset left. And I have been strong and able for at least four or five of those years. So why not have gone, Handbright? Why not have taken us with you? There must be some other reason.”
“Perhaps,” said the clear voice which had spoken to her from within her own mind that morning, “She is afraid or too tired or believes that it is her duty to stay in the Danderbat keep, oldest of the Xhindi keeps. Or because she believes she is needed here.”
Mavin left the room thoughtfully, and went down the long stairs past the childer’s playground. Mertyn was there, sitting on the wall as he so often did, arms wrapped around his legs, cheek lying on his knees while he thought deep thoughts or invented things, a dark blot of shadow against the stars. Mavin considered, not for the first time, that he did not look like a shifter child. But then, Mavin had not thought of herself resembling a shifter child either and had grieved over that. Perhaps Mertyn was not and she could rejoice. She sat beside him to watch the stars prick out, darkness lying above the fireglow in the west. “You’re sad looking, Mertyn child.”
“I was thinking about Leggy Bartiban. He was teaching me to play wands and rings, and now he’s gone. They took him to the Forgetter, and he’s gone. If I see him again ever, he won’t know me.” The child wiped tears, snuffling against his sleeve, face already stained. She hugged him to her, smelling the fresh bread smell of him, salt sweat and clean breath.
“Ah. He may know us both, Mertyn. Handbright says they don’t forget everyone. He’ll know us. He’ll just forget the shifter things it’s better he forgets, anyhow, if he’s not shifter. Why clutter up your mind with all stuff no good to it? Hmm? Besides, I can teach you to play wand-catch.”
He looked at her in surprise. “Well if you can, why didn’t you? I should’ve learned last year. I’m getting old fast, Mavin. Everyone says so.”
“Ah. Do you think you’re getting older than I am? If you could manage that, it would be fine, Mertyn. Then you could take me with you and we’d go travel the world.”
“I’m not catching up to you, Mavin,” he said seriously. The boy had little humor in him, and she despaired sometimes that he would ever understand any of her little jokes. It upset him if she told him she had been teasing so she pretended serious regard.
“No, of course you’re not. I was just wishing, thinking it would be nice to go traveling and shifting.”
“Oh, it would. If you go, you mustn’t leave me all alone here, Mavin. I had Leggy, and he’s gone, and there’s only Handbright except you. I want to go traveling and shifting more than anything. I dream about it sometimes, when I’m asleep and when I’m awake. I want to go. But you can’t go until you’ve had childer, Mavin. Girls aren’t supposed to. Janjiver says it messes up their insides.”
Mavin bit her lip, wanting to laugh at his tone of voice, unable to do so for the tears running inside her throat. “Tell me, Mertyn, why it is it doesn’t mess up a boy shifter?
??s insides? Boys have baby-making parts, too, don’t they? But I’ve seen them shift their parts all over themselves and then put them back and make a baby the same day. So why is it only she-shifters have to be so careful?”
The boy looked doubtful, then thoughtful in that way he sometimes had. “I don’t know. That would be very interesting to know, wouldn’t it. What the difference is. I’ll ask Gormier Graywing ...”
“Don’t,” she said harshly. “Let me find out, brother child, I’d rather.” She left him sitting there under the stars, went out only to return and whisper to his shadow crouching dark against the wall, “Mertyn, if I were to figure out a way to go traveling, would you go with me?”
His voice when he replied was all child. “Oh, Mavin, could you? That would be fun!”
Could she? Could she? Could she do what Throsset of Dowes was said to have done? Leave in the dark of night, slipping away in silence, losing herself in the fire hills or the roads away north to Pfarb Durim. Oh, the mystery and wonder of Pfarb Durrni, city of the ancients!
This was only dream stuff, only thoughts and ruminations, not intentions. She was not yet at the point of intention. Meantime it was Old Shuffle time, Assembly time, and she no less than any in the keep would watch the processions on the morrow.
For it was tomorrow that the visitors would come, tomorrow that the first procession would come through the p’natti, through Gormier’s new pillars and doors. Even now those of the younger clans were probably roaming about in the fire hills in pombi shape or fustigar shape or flying high overhead, endlessly circling like great waroo owls, ready to assemble with first light, making themselves a great drum orchestra to beat the sun up out of bed. She went to sleep in a cubby which faced the sunrise, so that the coming of the shifters should not take her by surprise.
They began before dawn, drumming, hooting, whistling, a cacophonous hooraw which woke every person in the keep and brought them all to the roof where today’s kitchen crew gave them hot spiced tea and biscuits made of ox-root, all nibbling quietly in the pre-morn darkness while out in the firehills that un-gamish hooraw went on and on, rising and falling. Mavin huddled in her blanket, perched within the rainspout once more, out of sight and therefore out of anyone’s mind at all, she told herself. She did not want to see Handbright’s face.
It came toward dawn, and the Elders put their score pads on their laps, ready to note what it was they liked about the procession, already seeing shifting shapes out beyond the p’natti, high tossed plumes, lifted wings, whirlings and leapings just at the edge of the light. Mavin waited, holding her breath. She had told herself that she was not so childish as to be excited, but the breath stuck in her throat nonetheless.
Full light. Out at the edge of the p’natti a hedge of prismed spears arose, shattering light in a thousand directions, then broke into shapes which came forward to the music of their own drumming. They came low, then upward to fly, to catch, to slide down, to rear upward again, to sparkle in jeweled greens and blues, fiery reds and ambers, scales like emerald and sapphire—the mythical jewels of heaven—and eyes which glowed a hundred shades of gold. Beyond the narrowing pillars they thrust upward into trees of gems, glittering from a million leaves, slid forward between the pillars and confronted the square-form portals in contracting shapes of bulked steel, gleaming gray and shiny. Around the slither-downs they came, erupting now into different shapes, some winged, some coiled like leaping springs, some vaporous as mist, all to break like water upon the barrier of the slything walls and take the shapes of fustigars and pombis and owls, tumbling and leaping over the walls and the ways until they were at the walls of the keep itself where they became whirling pools of light and shadow, towering higher and higher, drawing up, up, up to meet at the zenith above the keep in a dome, a shining lattice of drawn flesh, all the time the drumming going on and on, louder and louder, until a crash came to make their ears fall deaf.
And in that moment the high lattice fell, drew in upon itself like shadow to become the visitors from Bothercat the Rude Rock and Fretowl the Dark Wood and a dozen other Xhindi keeps, laughing outside the walls and demanding entrance. So was the first processional ended. Mavin sat in the high hidey hole, mouth open, so full of wonder at it that she could not wake herself from the dream.
Still there were some hundreds to be fed, and it would have taken advance planning and great determination to hide from so many. She was winkled out and set to carrying plates within the hour, and thereafter was not let alone for so much as a moment during the days or nights.
It was on the last day of Assembly that one of the Xhindi from Battlefox the Bright Day sought her, making a special thing of asking after her and begging her company for a walk in the p’natti. He told her his name was Plandybast Ogbone. “Your thalan, child. Do you know what that is?”
She looked at him mouth open. “Full brother of my mother? But she was Danderbat! Not Battlefox!”
“Oh, and yes, yes, child. True. But your grandma, her mother, was Battlefox right enough. Bore six for Battlefox, she did, before taking herself away into the deep world for time on her own. And it was here she met a scarfulous fellow called young Theobald, so it seems she told Battlefox Elders. And he got twins on her, which was your mama and me, and then she died. And young Theobald, he took the girl child and brought her back to the Danderbats knowing their deep scarcity of females, but me he kept with the Battlefoxes, reminding me frequent that I was thalan to any of her childer. He died some time back. And so I am thalan to Handbright, and to you, and to young Mertyn.
“Time ago I invited Handbright to come visit Battlefox the Bright Day, but she pled she could not leave young Mertyn. Today I asked her to bring him, and you, if she would, but these here have convinced her the walls of Danderbat keep are Xhindi gold. It seems a slavey in Danderbat is equal to an Elder in Battlefox—or so she believes. No, no, I lie if I say that’s true, for I’ve talked with her and talked with her, and it’s something other than that. Something is awry with her, and she seems unable to decide anything. She simply does and does and tries not to think about it. Well, you know the old saying, ‘Vary thought, vary shape.’ Since we do not take the same shapes, it is silly to expect us to think alike.” He shook his head. “Though, weary as she looks, I would expect her to have accepted my invitation. Though I have a kinsman or so there who may be a bit difficult—most particularly one kinswoman, of whom the least said the best—she would have companions and help at Battlefox.”
“She’s the only girl behind the p’natti,” whispered Mavin, so moved by this intelligence that she forgot to be wary of telling anyone, and him a stranger man for that. “Until she tells them about me.” So Plandybast Ogbone looked at her, and she at him, sharing a wordless kind of sympathy which she had not felt from any of the Danderbats.
“So that’s the way of it. And when they are told about you, all the oldsters will be at your bedroom door night on night, won’t they? Ah, surely Danderbat keep may be the oldest and the original, but it has fallen into a nasty sort of decay. We do not so treat our she-children at Battlefox and would have you welcome there. Or are you too convinced that the keep walls are Xhindi gold?”
“No,” she whispered. “I want out.”
“Ah. Well. There’s young Mertyn. He’d miss you no doubt.”
“Bring him with me,” she said. “I would. Couldn’t leave him here. To hear unkind things. About me, as I have heard about mother.”
“What is it they say about my sister Abrara?”
“That she shifted forbiddens while she carried Mertyn, and died from it.”
“Oh, Gamelords, what nonsense. I’ve known many who shifted before and during and didn’t die of it, though the Healers do say the child does best which isn’t shifted in the womb. This all reminds me of my other sister, Itter, going on and on about Abrara whom she never knew and knows little enough about. There are some who must find fault somewhere, among the dead if they cannot find enough among the living. Abrara died because
she was never strong, shifter or no. That’s the truth. They should have had a Healer for her when she was young, as they did for me, but they didn’t, for the Danderbat Xhindi set themselves above Healing. Lucky I was the Battlefoxes are no such reactionary old persons, or like I’d have died, too. She should have been let alone, not made to have childer, but the Danderbats are so short of females these two generations, and she had had daughters. She should have been let alone.”
“At the Old Shuffle, we are not let alone.”
He looked at her seriously, walked around in a circle, as though he circled in his thoughts. “You know, child, if I took you away from Danderbat with me, there’d be fits and consternation by the Elders. Particularly since Danderbat is so short of females just now. There’d be hearings and meetings and no doubt unpleasant things for me and you both. That’s if I took you. Stole you, so they’d say, like a sack of grain or a basket of ripe thrilps. If you came to me, however, at Battlefox the Bright Day, you might have a few nasty words from Itter, but I’d not send you away empty-handed or hungry. You’ve seen maps of the place? You know where it is?”
She stared at him, but he did not meet her eyes, merely seeking the sky with a thoughtful face as though he had said nothing at all of importance.
“Yes,” she said finally in a voice as casual as his own. “I know where it is. It lies high upon the Shadowmarches, northwest of Pfarb Durim. If I came to visit you some day, you’d be glad to see me?” she offered. “More or less.”
“Oh. Surely. More or less. I would be very glad to see you. And Mertyn.”
“Ah,” she said. “I’ll remember that, my thalan, and I thank you.” She turned to leave him, full of dignity, then turned to hug him briefly, smearing his face with unregarded tears. “Thank you for telling me about my mother.” Her gait as she left was perfectly controlled, and he looked after her, aware of a kind of envy at her composure. It was better done than he had seen from many twice her age.