‘I journeyed across the Land,
proclaiming our liberation, teaching the women to speak. But there was war. War and bloodshed. Many preferred the slavery of the wolf to the
freedom of which I spoke.’
--
Fairbird, “Dragonwitch,” p. 390
The
River sank through the Southlands, past baking fields of gold wheat and
succulent patches of green jungle. Trembling
clouds of flies batted above its swirls and eddies. Its voice, muffled by the Near World, burbled
and complained as it inched lazily past a collection of sunbaked huts, barely
enough to constitute a village by any but the Land’s standards.
A child stumbled along its banks, her
soft legs almost too newly-formed to hold her weight. Like the arid landscape around her, she was a
creature of soft browns and charcoal blacks, but the sun had not yet licked the
softness and sweetness from her, like it had from the cracked earth.
Her rolling steps carried her down
to the edge of the water, where the rippled brownness drew before her. With her brows drawn together warily, she
lowered a foot into the warm water, letting her toes settle in the muck.
The child hesitated, her eyes drawn
back to the huts on the horizon. Then,
deciding, she swayed forward a step, so the water closed around her
calves. Another step would carry her out
among the rushes, past the shore’s reach.
Before she could plunge forward, a
hand as brown as hers closed around her small forearm. The girl squawked silently, pantomiming one
of the brightly-plumaged birds that serenade the jungle, as she was
unceremoniously yanked from the river and dropped, shamed, upon the bank.
Fairbird!
her rescuer, a maiden, exclaimed, as though she were not trembling with
fear. Although no word passed her lips,
her shaking hands carved the words from the air, plucked meaning from
nothingness.
They were clearly sisters. No one but blood kin could share their
features so closely, like they passed them back and forth between them. And never had someone looked so tenderly on
one with whom they shared no bond.
The younger girl formed a trace of
words with her unfamiliar hands, but the maiden picked her up firmly, setting
her steps to return to the village. The
maiden’s hand snaked free from the embrace to sign, calmly but adamantly, that
Fairbird was not to wander off on her own again. Despite her harsh words, love filled every
fear-drawn furrow on her lovely face.
She smiled at the girl, like they shared a secret, as their steps led
back to the village.
Now,
years later, Fairbird wondered about that smile. If love was all to be seen in Starflower’s
face, love for a babe that would bring about her fall. Fairbird had been but a child then; she had
not looked past the smile and kind words.
Had
there been anger, too—that a promising life should be clipped short to save one
too young to appreciate it? Or fear—fear
of what saving that life entailed?
Surely something must have marred that love. Surely… there must have been bitterness.
Summer had worn away to thin winter
again and again since Fairbird had seen that face, since the fair maiden had
plucked her to safety from the river.
She no longer even pretended to remember anything beyond Starflower’s
smile. Or if love had been all she’d
felt.
She did not know. And she was glad she did not remember.
Her eyes landed on the blot against
the horizon, dark against the twining layers of gold and scarlet and deep
orange. Bald Mountain shimmered in the
heat rising up from the earth, standing sentinel above the civilization spread
out below. With a practiced eye, she
scanned the distance and shivered. It
was just over a day away.
Almost without noticing, she reached
the end of her oration, the final words slipping through her lips. With difficulty, she pulled herself out of her
reverie, into the moment. She stood
before a crowd of villagers, every gaze trained intently on her face, each head
cocked to better hear her words.
“Choose again, people of Mountain
Village,” she commanded. Her carefully
schooled voice shook the air like thunder.
“I do not grant this second chance lightly. Choose between the silence of slavery, or the
fire of freedom that will burn you clean.”
Why had she said that? She’d never phrased it that way before.
Among the raised, browned faces,
there was one pale as death. The amused,
dancing fire in Dark Father’s eyes consumed her.
“I am Fairbird,” she managed to say,
as sweat burst out on her brow. “First
prophet of the Silent Lady. And I have
returned.”
The villagers knew who she was. She could see it in their gazes, in the
rounded mouths, as they beheld the Silent Lady’s sister. But her words dropped like stones into the
pool of their silence, dissipating without a ripple. Their silence was their answer. Just like it had been with the Beast.
They disgusted her, this scattering
of humanity who refused to grow beyond what they had once been. She clung to her disgust, for it spared her
from her fear. An orator put herself in
danger with each unsuccessful speech.
Dark Father had taught her that.
She hated them more than she hated
the Beast.
Then firm applause sounded behind
Fairbird, and it took all her control not to leap from the steps to fly like
her namesake. She blinked, and the pale,
wavering face was gone.
“Excellently done!” a woman cried
from behind her, and Fairbird turned.
The woman stood in the doorway of
the Eldest’s House. She was, Fairbird
saw, as pale as the ironically-named Dark Father, as though the fire burning in
her eyes had leeched all color from her skin.
She had curling coils of hair of an uncertain color—it might’ve been
grey, although she was not old, or perhaps black.
“Who are you?” Fairbird asked. A curious sense of dread crept upon her.
The woman’s lips burned when she
said, “I am Hri Sora.”
Fairbird smiled. Here was the woman she’d come to meet.
Hri Sora
left her alone to wash up before eating, to Fairbird’s relief, and she
dismissed her two attendants, First-to-Dance and New Light, as quickly as
possible. She felt frazzled, singed. Even running her hands through the cool water
didn’t help.
“You did well,” Dark Father
whispered. Fairbird’s gaze dropped to
the basin of water, and she smiled at the pale oval of a face rippling across
the surface.
For years now, that pale, dark-eyed
face had taught her the art of oration. He’d
led her at every step, since the first time she’d met him in the reflection of
her washing basin. While she’d reeled
from shock, glancing anxiously over her shoulder to confirm that, no, he did
not stand behind her, he’d said, “To business.
Does the name Farthestshore mean
anything to you?”
“What?”
“Perfect!”
That had only been the
beginning. He slipped through her
dreams, the edge of her hearing, and the twilight realm of doubled
reflections. Sometimes he even appeared
in life, watching her in the crowd with his curl of a smile. Starflower had given her a voice, but Dark
Father taught her to use it.
“Thank
you, Dark Father,” she said, but she couldn’t sustain her smile. “No one clapped. I thought they were going to stone me again.”
“Remember, they’ve heard one of my protégées
speak before. They’re hard to impress.”
“This Hri Sora,” Fairbird said,
unable to keep a note of petulance from her voice. “She’s talented, then?”
She could feel his laugh vibrating
the earthen vessel, gripped between her hands.
She bit her tongue and waited for him to finish.
“Very,” he said, at length. “Hri Sora is the most noteworthy of my
children. She is the eldest.”
Good,
Fairbird thought spitefully. Maybe her
hair truly was grey. She pictured her a
withered, disappointed hag, although her skin was unlined.
“You’ll be as powerful as Hri Sora
someday, Fairbird,” he said, amused at the envy in her face.
“But what does it cost?”
A smile. “One kiss,” said the Dragon.
“I’ll pay it,” Fairbird said. “When I see my prize in my hand.”
They had
dinner together, Fairbird and Hri Sora, on the steps of the Eldest’s House, now
that the Land had splintered into thousands of kingdoms and every village had
an Eldest, and each Eldest a House.
Fairbird did not dare ask what had happened to the Eldest of Mountain
Village. The fervor in Hri Sora’s discouraged
that.
Young, graceful slaves—Fairbird
couldn’t identify their origin-- glided from the kitchen, with its swept hearth
and hanging bundles of herbs, flavoring the air with their subtle scent. They set plates of figs and sliced mangos, roast
fowl seasoned with herbs and flat bread before her. Her mission was not so easy or profitable
that the meal didn’t delight her, and she lay into it eagerly.
“Your hospitality is greatly
appreciated,” she told Hri Sora. Has Dark Father told her about me yet?
She raised her eyebrows almost
imperceptibly, and Hri Sora nodded slowly.
Good. They understood each other,
then.
“Do not mention it,” Hri Sora
said, her words thick with double meaning.
“Although I am curious. Why did
you come to Mountain Village?”
Fairbird checked her often-flaring
temper before she responded. She was a
prophetess now, of some repute. She was
not accustomed to the… lack of respect in Hri Sora’s tone.
“I am making a pilgrimage to Bald
Mountain,” she said instead. “I have
never seen it in my lifetime, and if I am to understand the words of the Silent
Lady, I must go to the place where it happened.” Unwillingly, she shivered, and Hri Sora’s
eyebrow rose.
“I also plan on journeying to the
mountain,” the woman said. “I would
accompany you, if you allow it. But
first—“ she leaned forward—“please tell me about your sister.”
“Starflower?” Buying time, Fairbird raised a delicate cup
of fruit juice to her lips and admired the view from the steps. Mountain Village had changed greatly in the
years since she had seen it; war had seen it twice burnt down and rebuilt
again. That same war had stripped
familiar faces from the hardworking bustle, although Fairbird was hard-pressed
to muster any real sorrow for their loss.
She had seen too many fall across the years.
“The Silent Lady,” her companion
prompted. A breeze stole across the
broad steps and through her hair.
“Of course.” Fairbird marshaled her thoughts, searching
for her practiced response. “When she
defeated the Beast, the Silent Lady freed the Land and founded the movement for
women’s voices. Then she ascended from
the Land to a better place, from where she watches over us. For almost ten years, I’ve acted as her voice
on earth. I travel across the Land
spreading her word.”
“Lovely,” Hri Sora said with
narrowed eyes. “And you’ve enjoyed no
little success. How many wars can be
attributed to your teachings?”
Fairbird stiffened, but Hri Sora did
not sound accusatory, merely interested.
“Many,” she said, though the word
burned her. “Many more than I imagined
when I began.” She had been a novice
orator then, with no idea how to hold a crowd’s attention. It had been no small wonder that Redclay
Village had driven her away.
She’d been lucky indeed to find a
teacher like Dark Father, and at such a low price.
“Change is often violent,” Hri Sora
said, nodding. “There must be war before
there can be peace. What do you say of
the movement that preaches that men must be silent, and women should control
society?”
“I am… meditating on it,” Fairbird
said with a frown. “But I do not believe
that the Silent Lady would have wanted it.”
“Will you speak out against them?”
“Ah—that depends,” Fairbird said,
sweating faintly. The women in favor of
silence brought about most of the wars.
“Why—“ Hri Sora stopped, frowning, as raised voices
outside drifted through the village, up to the Eldest’s House.
“What on earth is that?” she
demanded, rising to her feet. The slaves
ducked out of her way as she strode forcefully down the steps, breaking into a
trot. Fairbird hurried after her,
regretfully leaving the meal to the attending slave girls.
Hri
Sora stalked to the edge of the village, where her people milled around in
confusion, and her voice lashed like a cat’s tail, harshly demanding.
Fairbird spotted two familiar forms
and once and hurried over to them. Her attendants,
brother and sister, New Light and First-to-Dance. Arguably her best friends in the world, if
one had time for such things. She often
wondered why they stayed with her; the life of a travelling prophetess, no
matter how successful, was neither safe nor luxurious.
“What is it?” she asked in a low
voice. “Does it have to do with us?”
“No,” First-to-Dance said in her
usual, calm way. Fairbird could not
understand how she never seemed angry or weary, when she herself felt drenched
with both. But her nature was as serene
as her lovely dark eyes and her many dark braids, held back with a band.
“A stranger has come to Mountain
Village,” New Light said. He craned his
neck to see above the crowd. “We’re days
from anywhere. They think he is making a
pilgrimage to Bald Mountain, too.”
“Do I know him?”
New Light shook his head
adamantly. “I’ve never seen anyone like
him before.”
“It’s
possible he simply believes in your teaching,” First-to-Dance suggested.
She might’ve said more, but Hri
Sora’s voice snapped above her: “Yes?” One
word, but half a dozen people, men and women alike, burst out in hurried
explanations. Hri Sora’s lip
curled—Fairbird wanted to copy the gesture to see if she could convey the same
displeasure—and six sets of teeth audibly closed.
Then a man stepped forward: a quiet
man, with a simple, open face, dark-eyed and dark-haired like most people of the
Land. He stood, relaxed, with open
palms. Fairbird liked his face at
once. She couldn’t be sure why;
something about the way he smiled faintly even when confronted by an angry
prophetess, but also the calmness in his eye, as deep as a well in dry land. It reminded her, oddly, of New Light. Fairbird felt muscles settle in her neck and
shoulders that she hadn’t even realized were tense. She found herself smiling, too.
“Lady
Hri Sora, Lady Fairbird,” he said respectfully.
“I have come a long way and beg shelter in Mountain Village.”
If Hri Sora experienced a reaction
similar to Fairbird’s, she gave no sign.
Instead, her nostrils flared, like she caught a whiff of a scent she
found distasteful.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
The man tilted his head back to look
at the darkening sky, considering the question.
“I suppose,” he said, in a
pleasantly cheerful voice, “that you can call me Apple Bald.”
Fairbird
lay in silence on her pallet, listening to the quiet cadence of
First-to-Dance’s breathing. Even the
Eldest’s House was not large enough to accommodate Fairbird’s modest retinue in
addition to Hri Sora’s lavish entourage, along with any important guests who
happened to pass through the village.
Not Apple Bald, of course. He’d bartered for space on the floor with one
of the villagers, the same with whom New Light stayed. Fairbird hoped that Hri Sora had forgotten
about him already. Her ire could prove
decidedly uncomfortable.
When she was at last convinced that
First-to-Dance slept, she rose silently from her pallet and crept to the basin.
“Dark Father?” she whispered,
searching the darkness. She angled it so
the bright silver moonlight shining in from the window illuminated it, casting
sharp white shadows across the walls.
The basin was empty. Fairbird sighed and resigned herself to
sleep, although her eyes seemed to spring open against her will. It felt like hours before her muscles
uncoiled enough to doze.
She skimmed across the surface of
sleep, dipping her fingers in its smooth waters. She did not see clouds slowly drift across
the window, stained by moonlight, until they finally succeeded in hiding the
moon’s face.
The
Dragon flew on a moonless night. As
quiet as death, his wings, like shreds of black silk, sliced through the thin cloud
cover. With a quick snap, no louder than
a breath, they furled, sending the dark bulk of his body plummeting through the
clouds, down to earth…
They sprang out and caught the air
just before the arid ground outside Mountain Village single-handedly slayed the
Dragon. With the ungainly, ungracious
fluttering of a vulture, he alighted on a twisted, half-dead tree. It bent, groaning, beneath his weight.
“Apple
Bald,” he hissed. He stepped down
from the broken tree, his wings fanning into a black cloak. “They don’t even have apples in the Southlands!
It’s so terribly funny I forgot to laugh.”
“What a shame,” the Prince of
Farthestshore said. “Although I did not
make that joke for your benefit.”
The Dragon leapt so high into the
air that, if he had unfurled his wings, he might’ve flown. But he did not. Instead, he landed catlike, soundlessly.
“Prince,” he said, with a smile that
began life as a grimace. “What a complete and utter surprise to find you here!”
“I am quite fond of the Southlands,”
the Prince said sternly.
The Dragon cackled. “They’re not fond of you! Barely one in a hundred knows your name in
these parts. They’re more familiar with
the Flame at Night than they are with you.”
The Prince turned mildly, and the
Dragon closed his mouth with a snap of teeth.
“I confess,” the Dragon said at
length, “I did not expect to see you here, which only goes to show that even
the worst of us can be caught off-guard.”
“I’m sure you’ll console yourself
somehow,” the Prince said, the first trace of irritation coloring his
voice. “And I’m equally sure you realize
that I value Fairbird highly. Too highly
to appreciate you catching her in your schemes.”
“You wound me!” the Dragon protested. “She doesn’t even know you.”
“She does,” the Prince said, gazing
to where Mountain Village stood, silent, in the darkness. “She just doesn’t remember.”
“So… this Fairbird…” Undisguised greed glinted in the Dragon’s
eyes. “What say you and I”—he opened his
fist, where two dice rattled like loose teeth– “have a bet?”
It was a mistake. He recoiled as cold fire, like moonlight,
burned in the Prince’s eyes, stronger by far than the Dragon’s. It held him for a moment, unable to look
away.
Then the Prince said, “You should
know by now that there is only one bargain I am prepared to make.”
“Yes, Your Royal Highness!” the
Dragon said, scurrying back. “My mistake,
of course. However…” He licked his lips. “It is a bargain that I would now consider.”
The near
side of dawn came, its weak light falling across the Land. It faintly illuminated three pilgrims
trudging away from Mountain Village, none alike: a smiling man, a young woman
with sharp, weary lines, and a strange, unearthly thing that looked like a woman.
Fairbird had already kissed New
Light and First-to-Dance goodbye. Where
she went, they could not follow. Only
she, Hri Sora, and Apple Bald walked the road to the mountain. Apple Bald’s company surprised her, but if
Hri Sora minded, she gave no sign. She
seemed to have a curiously difficult time looking at him and preferred to
ignore him altogether.
Fairbird strode across the
summer-withered grass, feeling the warmth of the baked earth beneath her feet,
even at dawn. She glanced up at a
gnarled, bent fig tree that had been damaged in a storm. It tossed its lovely, leaf-capped head in the
faint suggestion of a breeze.
Hri Sora’s nostrils flared, and she
anxiously glanced around. Scents swam
beneath her keen senses, but she could make neither hide nor scale of them. Surely that was her Dark Father… but the
other… She knew it: distant, forgotten.
They did not linger long, setting off
across the Land, through the jungle. Bald
Mountain stood like a scar against the sky.
It was not the first journey
Fairbird had ever made. Indeed,
sometimes it seemed she had done nothing but walk since the day Starflower had
left her with a parting promise and no look back. She had gone from village to village across
the land, from the seething, cerulean sea to the far north, where the winters
had a vindictive bite that could kill a man, to the distant south where even
the lurchers sometimes died from sunstroke.
Along the way, she had spread
Starflower’s message: that women could speak, that they had as much right to it
as any man. At least—she had at
first. The message had changed over the
years, as surely as Fairbird had. Some
women took her word too far—the ones who believed that no men should speak, that
women should rule with an iron fist. Fairbird
had even liked the idea at first; it seemed so fitting, almost poetic in its
justice.
She thought New Light had forgiven
her for that.
The sunlight no longer shown so
brightly on the luminous green leaves.
Fairbird shivered, as though a cloud had swallowed her soul.
“Dark thoughts?” Apple Bald said,
walking beside her. Fairbird started;
she had not realized he was there.
“Just—thinking,” she said, looking
away. His gaze was curiously hard to
meet. “About what I’ll do after we reach
Bald Mountain.”
His silence invited her to continue.
“It’s hard to move past the loss of
a family member,” she said, searching for the words, “even when it happened
when you were young. Each time you
discover something new—like when you fall in love for the first time, or
discover afresh what sadness is—you lose them again, in a way.”
She squared her shoulders to face
the horizon.
“I suppose that’s why I’m going to
Bald Mountain,” she said. “I want to see
where it happened. And I want to let
Starflower go.”
“But your preaching!” he said, either
startled or amused; she couldn’t tell.
“How will you continue it?”
Fairbird opened her mouth to speak,
then hesitated. “I guess it’s not a
secret. I think I’d like to stop,” she
admitted. “It’s worthwhile when you’re
young, but I’d like to have my own life now.”
Her shoulders hunched, and she looked past him, to Mountain Village. “I don’t know. I think it depends on if I have anything more
to say… or if I have anyone to stop wandering for.”
“I can see how it might be hard,”
Apple Bald said thoughtfully. “If your
opinion of Starflower has changed...”
Fairbird shot him a glance, but he was
admiring the verdant landscape as he walked.
“When I was young, I only knew that she
beautiful and kind, and that—“ Her voice
caught.
“That she loved you,” Apple Bald
finished.
Fairbird nodded, her throat for a
moment too tight to speak. Then she
continued, “And then she left me. And I
was alone.”
“But you saw her again.”
“Years later. She taught me how to speak, and what power my
voice and my words had. She told me that
we were free from the Beast. It became
my duty to spread her words, the way we scatter grain for sowing.”
“And that was the last time you saw
her?”
“Yes. But she swore that she would come back one last
time… that I would see her again.”
“How wonderful,” Apple Bald said,
but he watched her, and his voice rose like a question.
“Yes,” Fairbird said heavily. “I waited for years, struggling with that
belief. But now—I think that I took her
too literally. That it is in her words
that I meet my sister again.”
“And that’s why you’ll stop,” Apple
Bald said softly. “Because you won’t
need her anymore.”
Fairbird nodded, relieved. “That’s why I didn’t want to go to Bald
Mountain. I thought there would be too
many memories. And I was right.” She shivered, her gaze fixed in the distance. “I feel like I’m drowning in them.”
“Did Starflower tell you why she
left?”
“Of course. She said the Giver of Songs sent her.”
“Forgive me, but… who?”
“I thought I knew,” she said,
looking past the horizon distantly. “I’m
not sure anymore.”
They
didn’t stop until the vast array of stars rose in a dark sky. The mountain’s shadow blotted out half of
them; Fairbird twitched her sheepskin pallet so it faced away. She lay in the darkness with her hands folded
across her stomach and gazed up at the stars, tracing all the familiar
constellations with her eyes: the jester, the princess, the one they called the
Beast. Her cheeks crinkled with a smile
even as her brows drew together when she looked for the newly-christened
Starflower constellation. But it was too
close to the lady moon; she washed out its light.
She closed her eyes against the
heavens and whispered, “Dark Father?”
She sensed a change in the darkness behind
her eyes and knew that he was listening.
“One more day,” she whispered. “Then we’ll be at Bald Mountain. I’m afraid,” she confessed.
“Your past can only hurt you if you
let it,” Dark Father whispered. “But
don’t worry; you won’t be alone. The plan
begins.”
Fairbird stuck out her lip
petulantly. “You always talk about the plan, but you never say what the plan is.”
“Feeling impatient, Fairbird?” he asked. “There are only a few more details before it
will ensure the Southland’s future.”
Fairbird shifted. “About that…”
She hesitated. How to put it? “I’m getting old, Dark Father.”
“What?” he said in surprise. “How old are you-- twenty? Thirty?”
“That’s old in the Land,” Fairbird
reminded him, flushing. “If I ever want
to have a family of my own, I need to start investigating the
possibilities. Soon.”
“Is that what you want?” Dark Father
snapped. “A brood of mewling children
and some spineless man to order about?”
“Well,” Fairbird said,
blushing. “If someone were to offer…”
“You won’t need children when the
plan comes to fruition,” Dark Father said.
“You won’t even think about children.
You’ll be too busy claiming the rewards.”
Fairbird sighed, rubbing the bridge
of her nose. She could feel sleep in the
corner of her consciousness, slipping ever closer. “This had better be a good plan,” she said,
yawning from around her hand. “All for a
kiss?”
“One kiss,” Dark Father
promised. “That will be my reward.”
Fairbird craned her neck back, to
look at the sliver of darkness in the sky, where no stars shone.
“Almost there,” she said quietly.
She
awoke early the next morning, her stomach full of anxiety. She couldn’t sleep or eat any longer, so she woke
the others, and they set off while the day was still cool. The mountain loomed above the travelers, wreathed
and veiled with clouds. The mountain
where her journey began.
It would finish today. One way or another.
They stopped to catch their breath
halfway up the mountain. Boulders
obscured the path, which proved hard to traverse. But they were repaid by a wondrous vista of
the Land spread out below, in a tapestry of browns, greens, and gold.
Fairbird, on edge, took a deep,
steadying breath and stepped forward, prepared to continue the ascent. But Hri Sora tapped her on the shoulder, and
she faltered.
“What is it?” she asked Hri Sora,
Hri Sora shaded her eyes against the
sunlight and pointed wordlessly up. At
the same time, a shadow flashed across the Land, like a cloud passing before
the sun.
Fairbird raised her eyes, and her
mouth fell open. A gaunt, sinuous black
creature sailed on opened wings, a spiny tail rattling behind it. She bit into her lip to keep from shrieking
as it landed in an awkward, swooping gesture.
A chill crept up Fairbird’s spine.
“Isn’t he glorious?” Hri Sora said,
unaware of her companion’s distress. She
favored Fairbird with a rare smile. “Soon
you shall be like that, my sister.”
It was not glorious. It was ghastly. Fairbird fought not to be ill as, in a
gruesome parody of birth, the black wings peeled back like the skin on overripe
fruit, revealing a man of dark blacks and icy whites, with half-strange,
half-familiar eyes that Fairbird had known for years…
“So nice to meet you in the flesh,
Fairbird,” Dark Father said. “The Silent
Lady’s little sister.”
She
did not like the way he looked at her.
He reached out to touch her arm, and she shied away, evoking a frown. Her eyes rolling in panic, she searched for
Apple Bald, but he stood at an impassive distance, merely watching her.
“Shall we continue on?” she asked,
her voice trembling. “All the way
up. To where it happened.”
“Not just yet,” the Dragon
said. “First we must discuss the matter
of payment.” His hand curled inexorably
around her arm. “One kiss, I believe?”
“I’ll pay when the prize is in
hand,” Fairbird said. She tried to tug
her arm free, but he had a firm grip.
The Dragon laughed unkindly. “The prize is already in your grasp,
Fairbird. Just look.”
He pointed out to the great distance
beyond the mountain; unwillingly, Fairbird searched with her eyes, but she saw
nothing. They were far from Mountain
Village; even the smoke of its cooking fires had faded.
“There were people here, only a few
years ago,” the Dragon said, and she flinched.
“None closer than the horizon, for fear of the Beast”—he snorted—“but
they lived here nonetheless. They’re all
dead now. Not because another tribe
swept in. Because the women turned on
the men.”
“Stop it!” Fairbird cried. “Stop now.
You told me to say those things.
It isn’t my fault.”
The Dragon smiled at her. “I gave you the idea,” he said, shrugging. “But, Fairbird dear… you said the words.”
“There are villages like it all
across the Southlands,” Hri Sora said movingly.
“Sooner or later, the women will realize they need the men. But not for some time. Not until hundreds more die.”
Fairbird thought she should feel the
blood dripping from her hands, the corpses stacking upon her shoulders. But she felt nothing except her stomach’s
vague, humble suggestion that it might be time for lunch. She had never seen the violence; it broke out
after she left. But her words stayed
behind her.
“But I wouldn’t have done it if—“ She stopped and stared at the Dragon. Her brown eyes bored into him, until he
shifted faintly under her look.
“Yes, dear?” he asked. “I’m ready for my kiss. Any last words before I take it?”
“Yes,” Fairbird said. She had gone cold, in a way, colder than
winter, colder than the moon. She wasn’t
afraid when she said, “We called Amarok the Beast, but we were wrong. He was a reflection. You’re the
only Beast in these mountains.”
“Enough of this masquerade,” Hri
Sora snarled. Lines of shimmering black
ran along her arms. Before Fairbird’s
eyes had time to widen, she found herself lying upon the prickly grass, her
head pounding.
“No!” someone shouted. Fairbird knew his voice, but she couldn’t
remember his name.
Warm
hands grabbed Fairbird and helped her up.
Through a swollen eye, she saw a dear, familiar face.
“Apple Bald?” she said, remembering
his name.
He smiled. Then he turned away from her, back to Hri
Sora. He raised his hands while she
burned and raged, twisting between a woman and a column of fire. Between these flashes, Fairbird caught glimpses
of a scaly black creature, like a winged rock lizard. She shuddered and looked away.
“Ytotia,” Apple Bald said gently,
half-laughing. He leapt nimbly back to
avoid slashing talons as they whirled toward him. “Please stop.”
“That’s not my name!” Hri Sora
raged. But the column of fire faded, and
she, a small woman, stood there, trembling.
Apple Bald’s smile stilled, like a
cloud sliding across the sun. “You’re
right,” he said solemnly. “That’s not
your name.”
He stepped forward; unwillingly, she
tipped her head so he could place his mouth by her ear. He said something so quietly that Fairbird
couldn’t hear. Hri Sora stared at him
with wild eyes as he smiled at her.
“No,” she said, shakily. “That’s not my name, either.”
“Ytotia—“
Fairbird screamed as the bone knife glowed
in the bloody sunlight, and Apple Bald reeled back. She ran past the Dragon’s arms to fall to her
knees by his side, meaning to save him, but Hri Sora knew knives all too well. Apple Bald’s eyes, even in death, watched
Fairbird kindly. No heartbeat met her
searching fingers.
The Dragon guardedly watched Apple
Bald, held in Fairbird’s arms, for a few moments. Then he sighed and pinched the bridge of his
nose between two fingers.
“Hri Sora, my darling daughter,” he
said. “Shall we review the phrase overkill?”
“You killed him,” Fairbird said
numbly. She reached up and was surprised
to feel tears on her skin. She gave a
sob.
“We were aware, but thank you for
keeping us up to date,” the Dragon said acidly.
“Stop crying. You hardly knew the
man.”
He was right. She hadn’t known Apple Bald. But she’d seen him in a world as sorrowful as
the Land, but he smiled and still loved it.
She would miss that smile.
“Listen, Fairbird,” the Dragon said impatiently. “You want to know the plan, right? Here it is.
You and Hri Sora will help the women who favor men’s silence. You’ll help them found a religion, I don’t
know, probably featuring the Silent Lady.
And once that’s in place, they’ll make you—“
Her noisy sob interrupted him.
“Dragon’s teeth,” Dark Father
muttered. “Yes, Fairbird, it’s terribly
sad, but it does not affect our plan overmuch.”
He reached for Fairbird’s arm: maybe
to grab her, maybe to help her up. But
she stumbled back, avoiding his touch.
“Fairbird,” the Dragon said,
astonished. “You didn’t even know the
man.”
“Yes, I did,” she said. Her voice was slow and clear, the way he’d
taught her. “His name was Apple Bald.”
Something must have changed in her
face. The Dragon reached for her, but
she was already gone, digging her heels into the tough ground. As she raced, her composure deserted her
until she panted with terror, not heeding where she was going. She didn’t know if the Dragon pursued her,
but she ran as though he and all his fiery kin were hot on her heels. Some instinctive, ancestral part of her,
wiser than her mind, had taken over her steps, and she let it run. She did not even hesitate when the ground
fell away beneath her; instead, she coiled her legs and sprang out into the
air, plummeting down to crash into the bubbling, white, raging water of the
Great River.
The
water was no kinder than the fire had been.
In close, compressed darkness, Fairbird whirled and tumbled. Her outstretched hands knocked against the
riverbank, but aside from stripping skin raw, she accomplished nothing.
The roar of the river filled her
ears as she clawed madly, like a doused cat.
She didn’t dare to open her eyes.
She passed through shades of pain into a place where it didn’t matter
anymore.
Senses faded. The River roared on.
Much further downriver, it settled
into a broad, sweeping torrent, prepared to rush across the Near World to the
Far. A dark, sodden lump that might’ve
once been a person drifted down it, swirling in its eddies.
With the last of her strength,
Fairbird opened her eyes.
From beneath, the River was a still
landscape of filtered, flashing brown light.
She was so peaceful and comfortable that she could sleep, arms
outstretched, floating along.
Then a flash of new light pierced
through the bubbles: not brown like the watery half-light, but pure, clean
gold, like the rising sun from the highest mountain. It fell across Fairbird’s face, warming her.
With the last of her strength, she
raised her right hand. She could do no
more. If someone had pressed a rope into
her hand, she would’ve regretfully let it go and resigned herself to a river
grave.
But a warm, strong hand gripped hers
and pulled her from the flood. Fairbird
spat and gasped messily as her head rose from the water, into air that smelled
of rushes and the fast-travelling river.
She pressed her face into the blessedly dry earth of the riverbank and
hacked until her lungs cleared. Then she
lay there for a time, trembling, scarcely believing it was sunlight that warmed
her back, the breeze that ruffled her hair.
She had never realized how beautiful they were before.
Slowly, she raised her gaze. The River thundered behind her, crashing
itself into mist against the rocks. She
was alone in a small, picturesque inlet, soaked to the skin, with all the
strength of a newborn kitten.
The breeze carried voices to her.
“—beautiful, golden—“
“—a lurcher—“
“—like Frostbite.”
Fairbird knew those voices. She bowed her head as this latest piece of
good fortune overwhelmed her. Then she
raised her head and called for First-to-Dance and New Light.
On the
third day, Fairbird returned to Bad Mountain.
She had planned to ever since First-to-Dance and New Light had found her
on the River bank—but only in a distant corner of her mind, so absently that
she hadn’t been aware of it herself until she had voiced it.
“What?” First-to-Dance had
yelped. “You almost drowned! You can barely walk!”
“I can walk,” Fairbird said
stubbornly, but she was overpowered by First-to-Dance’s protests: Fairbird was
weak, she needed rest, she might catch a chill.
She went on in that vein for some time until New Light put his hand on
her shoulder and said, “Let her go.”
And they had, although Fairbird knew
it pained them. Even now, as she came
haltingly up the mountain, she could still see them in the distance, waiting
for her to return to them.
“I need to go,” she’d told them. “I’ve been haunted by this for long
enough. I need to see where it
happened.”
Halfway up the mountain, she paused,
leaning on a boulder to catch her breath.
Her words had been truer than she’d realized. She’d been running so hard from her past that
she’d come full circle to crash into it again.
Would she have been such easy prey for the Dragon if she had come to
terms with it years ago? Fairbird’s
knees felt weak, and she leaned against the boulder, although she’d recovered
her breath.
She did not want to face her
past. It hurt her, to acknowledge that
there were debts in it she would never pay, to a sister she’d never really had.
Somewhere above her, further up the
mountain, a bird sang a light chirp. The
sound gave Fairbird strength. She hauled
herself up from the boulder and kept walking, past the spot where Apple Bald
had confronted the Dragon, where his body even now must lie. She would bury him on the way back, she told
herself firmly. He deserved that. He deserved much more than that, but that was
all she could give him now.
And then, without warning, she came
around a bend and found herself before the Place of Teeth: misty grey shapes
that rose against the overcast sky. A
few more steps and they resolved into harshly curved pillars of stones. The Teeth.
Where two of her family had slipped out of this world. The curving spires drew together like they
would block out the sky.
When
her knees didn’t buckle, Fairbird walked slowly through the weatherworn
Teeth. Once this must’ve been a grim,
terrifying place, but a sort of peace hung about them now. They had witnessed atrocities and horrors and
still stood. They’d accepted what had
happened here.
“But
I haven’t,” Fairbird said aloud. She
rested her hand against the cool stone, as though she could soak in its calmness. “You must teach me to forget.”
She
searched among the stones for lessons.
She ran her fingers across the smooth centerpiece, where Starflower
must’ve waited for the Beast to come.
She stepped away. Here the
Panther Master might’ve died trying to save his daughter. It looked the same as any pebbled piece of
ground in the Land.
Fairbird rose, surveying the Place
of Teeth with disappointment. She had
been over every inch of them, but they had not answered any of her questions. Like where Starflower had gone, and why she
had not returned.
Disappointed, she turned away. Then she stopped.
A woman stood calmly in the middle
of the Path. She was fair-skinned like
the Dragonwitch, but their similarities ended there. Her hair was golden like sunlight or wheat;
it glinted when the wind ran its fingers through it. Her limpid eyes looked frankly at Fairbird,
unreadable emotion in their depths.
“He’s coming,” she said, as the wind
sent the skirt of her pale blue dress dancing.
Fairbird stared at her,
flummoxed. No woman of the Land could be
that fair. No woman in the Near World
could have eyes with that depth of peace and gravity.
And no mobile creature, no matter
their origin or abilities, could climb Bald Mountain in a dress.
“Who are you?” Fairbird asked. “And…”
Her dark brows drew together, almost imperceptibly. “Have we met before?”
The woman smiled without speaking. She looked over her shoulder and said, “He’s
here.”
Fairbird gasped as Apple Bald
clambered up the last steps of the rocky path, looking no worse for wear. Indeed, he looked better. A strange, glorious
light filled his eyes and smile that she had only half-seen before.
“You,” she said in amazement. “But you’re-- dead.”
Apple Bald threw back his head and
laughed, dropping his arm around the fair woman.
“What you saw was a bargain
fulfilled,” he said, which told her precisely nothing at all and, perhaps,
everything she needed to know. “Hri Sora
may celebrate her perceived victory, but the Dragon knows I am neither dead nor
sleeping.”
“I don’t… understand…” Her voice faded away as a suspicion gathered
in her mind. “Are you the Giver of
Names?” she whispered.
“Yes.” Apple Bald smiled. “I am also called the Prince of
Farthestshore.”
“You’re the one who took Starflower
away.” Fairbird’s voice trembled.
“I am.”
“I hate you!” she cried venomously, her throat thick with tears. “You took her from me-- I hate
you!”
“Fairbird,” the Prince said, a deep
sadness in his eyes, “at whom are you angry?”
“You!” she cried. “Because you took her! She—she wouldn’t have—“ But she would’ve. Starflower would’ve given up everything to
help others. Even Fairbird. “Because you didn’t make her st—“ She stumbled to a confused halt, losing the
trail of her argument.
“Wolf Tongue,” she said uncertainly,
clutching for meaning. “Because—“ Why?
Because the people of the Land had obeyed him? Because he had died before she could kill
him? Because, perhaps, she had caused as
much damage as he had? He was gone
now. He couldn’t hurt her anymore.
“See the truth, Fairbird,” the
Prince said softly.
And the weight of that truth rose up
in Fairbird’s throat, until she could hold it back no more.
“Starflower!” she cried. “I’m angry at Starflower! For all the times I needed her and she wasn’t
there, because someplace else needed her more!” The Prince watched sadly as she threw the
water gourd First-to-Dance had packed for her, so it splintered against the
Teeth in her rage. “I am so angry because she said she would
return, and I must live the rest of my life crushed beneath the terrible, unbearable
hope that I might see her again!”
The world reeled as though she might
fall off, or faint, and Fairbird fell to her knees, clutching the base of a
stone Tooth. The Prince bowed his head
as, for the first time since the days of the Beast, Fairbird cried. Great tears rolled down her skin like rain
onto arid land. She did not notice that
the lady’s eyes were also full.
“And I’m angry at myself,” she
whispered through her tears, “because I haven’t forgiven her. Because she wouldn’t have left but for me.”
She leaned against the pillar,
trembling. Then, barely managing to push
the words through her throat, she said, “I’m sorry. For what I’ve caused over the years.” Her voice broke. “I’m so sorry.”
“Do you know what you must do now?”
the Prince asked.
She took a deep breath. “I think—I think I need to tell the
others. Not just the women. All of them.
I think they need to know.” The
Prince might’ve smiled, but she couldn’t see through the mist in her gaze.
Gentle hands raised her and set her
on her feet. She looked up into the eyes
of the Prince. She felt a dead sort of
calmness within herself, but tears still fell from her eyes. She didn’t know why. She could feel nothing.
“Fairbird,” the Prince said. “You will see Starflower again.”
She stared at him and slowly
absorbed his words.
“What?” she demanded. “Where?”
But she didn’t wait for an answer.
Her mind ran ahead of itself.
“I’ll look for her. I’ll travel
and search until I find her.”
The Prince smiled gently at her
impetuousness.
“You cannot find her,” he said. Although his manner was soft, his words were
like stone: immoveable.
“Then I’ll wait!” Fairbird cried,
her eyes bright with tears. She threw
herself down to sit, cross-legged, by a great stone Tooth. “I’ll wait here until she finds me! I’ll—I’ll—“
Tears trembled in the Lumil
Eliasul’s eyes, too, but he smiled through them.
“You mustn’t wait, Fairbird,” he
said. “For it will be years. Your children’s children will have children
before you see her again.”
Fairbird
stared at him in shock. Her vision
swayed, as though she stood on the edge of a great chasm so deep that she could
find no way to cross.
“So
long?” she whispered, shocked.
The
Prince nodded. “But I promise you will
see her again.”
Fairbird sat, numbed into
stillness. She did not see the tears on
the Lumil Eliasul’s cheeks as he bent down to kiss her forehead. Her brow scalded, cleansed, where his lips
touched it, like a seal, or a brand.
“You have a very long wait,” he
whispered. “Don’t waste the years I am
giving you.”
The wind breathed across Fairbird’s
face, parting her thick black hair.
Slowly she raised her head. She
was alone. The Prince and his companion had
left Bald Mountain, or maybe they had never been there at all.
She sat alone as a cold wind rose,
carrying with it the scent of winter.
And maybe peace, she realized.
For who would fight in the cold?
She gazed across the Land, and she as
at peace, too. It was not only the
Beast’s legacy that shaped it. It was
Starflower’s, too.
Just like the day Starflower had
left, Fairbird saw her life spread out before her. She saw the weary miles her feet would tread,
the resistance she would encounter; but it would be different this time. She would speak of peace, not war. The Dragon and Hri Sora could have their
schemes, but the people of the Land had their Prince.
Fairbird surveyed the life spread
out before her and smiled at the unexpected happiness she found there. And, just as she had at the river, she heard
voices carried by the dancing breeze as they wended their way up the
mountain. Familiar voices. Beloved voices.
Slowly, Fairbird rose to her
feet. She smiled at the sky, and
whatever lay beyond, and she came down from the mountain.