A Mischief in the Woodwork Page 6

  “I saw your manor standing, and hoped I could beg some ounce of hospitality.”

  “Hospitality doesn't exist here,” I said.

  “Minda,” Letta piped up gently, as if in warning.

  She was about to make me look foolish because, in the end, I respected those compassionate ways of theirs so much, wasn't she? I would deny this chap like I had cold authority, and she would object and compel me to take it back and be more amiable.

  “We have nothing to spare,” I tried again, determined.

  Resignation came to his face again. That's it, I thought triumphantly. Keep that bit of decency. Humility will be your one redeeming quality. Don't lose it.

  “I see,” he said, and I nodded with approval.

  I willed Letta to stay docilely quiet behind me, but could barely help from cringing imagining her impending protest. But Tanen spoke before she could;

  “Thank you for receiving me,” he said as he turned away, and took the first steps away from our manor.

  “Minda,” Letta objected more loudly, not to have her voice excluded. “He can't go back out there now. It's getting dark.”

  Tanen paused to glance over his shoulder at the potential exchange. A small trace of hope returned to his face, but he waited patiently.

  “He's lasted this long,” I pointed out. “He's come all the way across the country, Letta. I'm sure it's gotten dark once or twice between here and there.”

  “You should be ashamed, Vant,” she said, and she had me. A lump of hurt and vengeful humiliation caught in my throat as my judgment was overturned in front of the man I had turned away. But I could not help it. The conviction of the darkskins affected me. My eyes fell to the porch as Letta turned to Tanen.

  “We have a fire for warmth, and a corner for sleep,” she told him hospitably.

  He doesn't like you, I wanted to tell her, to convince her she was loathe to be kind to him. He has opinions about you. He would demote you. Demean you. Shame you. Don't cater to him, Letta. He would triumphantly take advantage of her and think nothing of it.

  “Thank you, Monvay,” he said – and it was true; he looked more triumphant than grateful. I ignored the fact that he had called her 'Monvay'. My eyes, risen from their shame, seared into him with unwelcoming disdain. He suffered that conviction, even acknowledged it, but turned back in acceptance of Letta's offer.

  What have you done? I despaired in regards to Letta's blind generosity. We had just welcomed a stranger into our house. One who called the darkskins by that dreaded name, who carried a superior and otherwise unknown air about him.

  And if he had survived in the dark all those nights of his journey, and blazed a trail across the entire forsaken country, I had to make the evident assumption:

  This man was dangerous.

  E I g h t –

  Elephant Dreams

  When the others came down and saw him, there was an initial mutual graveness that settled over them. A spark of triumph lit in me at that, but it was seemingly only the initial shock of a stranger in our midst. They did not necessarily fall right into a comfortable arrangement after it sank in, but none of them seemed to hold the disdain toward this fellow that I did.

  And of course; that was their way. Why could I not be more like them? But I was stubborn in this. I would not have it.

  I pulled Dani and Viola to me, sheltering them with a pointed look into Tanen's sly sky eyes. He was not to come near them. He understood that from my look.

  “Nothing to gape at here, children,” I said. “Back to work with you.” I did not fear that there would be any trouble from their end, curious children though they were. They seemed nothing but shy in Tanen's unorthodox presence.

  They slipped off into the other room together, a hustle of little skirts and trousers. I turned away and went back to the kitchen, for my stew was surely turning to stone by now from neglect. I picked up where I had left off, chopping the remaining vegetables with considerable more force to attest to my vexation than before.

  But then a figure in his fancy white shirt and breeches strolled in, and I measured my cutting more tediously. I did not look up.

  He leaned against the counter behind me. With every thunk of my knife, I was aware of him watching me.

  “I recognize you, now,” he said, finally. “I saw you, in the city.”

  I looked up at the wall in front of me, having not expected that revelation, my knife paused over the carrot. The peeling wallpaper stared back at me, the shadow of my poised hand drawn across it. Then I let it descend again, choosing not to respond.

  “With that other fellow,” Tanen elaborated. “The one who attacked you.”

  I chucked the diced carrot into the pot and reached for a turnip. “Yes?”

  “Yes,” he said, though I had meant to prompt his point, not a confirmation. Perhaps he was egging me to speak.

  Well, he would just have to be disappointed.

  “You took quite a beating,” he observed. I could almost feel his eyes combing me to appraise my injuries. I bristled, straightening, my utensil thunking hard against the counter and remaining pressed there. It took a conscious effort to breathe in my composure and continue.

  “So?” At least he had witnessed what I was capable of. Perhaps that would serve as insurance that he not try anything.

  “So nothing.”

  “Did you follow me here?” It came out sounding challenging.

  “I procrastinated in the city for a bit. I'd been there for a few days, just...stricken by it. I did not just up and trail you after what I saw. But then, after a day or so of lolling about, at a loss in the grand mess and disappointment of what I came upon here... Then I followed your direction.”

  “Why didn't you follow that other brute?”

  “You seemed to know more what you're doing here.”

  I shrugged my eyebrows. Fair enough. “I got lucky.”

  “Can't hurt to keep luck around.”

  “You are here because it's getting dark,” I said, rounding on him. He was perched casually against the other counter. His hair was swept back from his face now, and I looked him in his china-blue eyes. They dazzled. Mine bit. “We would not wish the wardogs on you. It's decency. Not hospitality. You must leave tomorrow.”

  “Have you talked that over with your Baedra Advisor-ess?” he challenged with a haughty twinkle in his eye.

  My chest burned with that word, and his mocking tone. I almost threw a carrot in his face. But I controlled myself. “She is my friend,” I said evenly.

  “You are not very friendly,” he said doubtfully.

  “You would not know.”

  “I would if you tried it out with me.”

  I turned back to my work.

  “Let me help,” he said.

  A different kind of prickle ran through me at that. One of most tentative pleasant surprise. But it was quickly vanquished by the ocean of dislike that already possessed me at his expense. One redeeming offer was not enough to rewire my opinion of him. I was not a pancake to be flipped.

  “I don't require your help.”

  “Am I not to earn my keep?”

  Curse it. I was one big contradiction unto myself, wasn't I? “You may earn your keep by staying quiet, and staying out of the way, and making it like you are not here at all.” That ought to do nicely.

  But a glance at the window ruined the plan. Time to contradict myself once more. “Fine. Finish these vegetables,” I bade. “I must sing.”

  At his quizzical look, I realized he did not know about the weedflowers. And of course; they were native to the western climates. But there was not the time – nor the patience – to spare him an explanation. I bobbed the knife at him insistently so he would take it, and left him to the task as I removed my apron and went to see to the deed of my birthright.

  Immersed in the density of the weeds, I welcomed the song that poured out of me. It centered me, stripped away the things that marred the day and my mood. What happened from then on ma
ttered only in the form of bulbs coming alight to protect the night, fulfilling their place in the order our era had crafted from scratch.

  I completed the rounds, a wandering spirit, blessing the land.

  When I found my way back to the clearing that sported Manor Dorn, I was welcomed into the slaves' approving midst. At first, I did not notice the separate figure standing off to the side beyond them, but he was there. His gaze penetrated my bubble of family and comfort, and my appeased smile faltered as I met those considering eyes. But they were not hostile, this time. Only touched by amiable wonder.

  A little smugly, I broke my gaze and led my procession back to the house. Tanen filed in somewhere after the others, but I was already back in the kitchen – where the stew pot sat bulging, and the only thing left to stew was the stew itself.

  *

  Letta drew me away after dinner to tend to my injuries. I lowered myself to my pallet and lifted my tunic over my head, and she loosened the corset that hugged my body. I held my tunic to my chest and drew my knees up to lean on them as she folded back the stiff flaps completely. Laces spilled down around my hips.

  “Looking better, minda,” she said approvingly, then pressed on a slice. “Tender still?”

  I winced. “Yes.”

  “As it should be. Be thankful you did not have your nerves severed.”

  I grunted.

  Letta grew silent as she worked, and I listened to the trickling drone of conversation coming from the other room. It dwindled presently, and Tanen walked in. The room was very dim, but he saw me. His eyes took in my state, unblinking, and mine blazed with defiance and condemnation. He turned to go back out of the room.

  My skin burned with exposure.

  “You don't like him,” Letta observed.

  “Should I?”

  “You do not have to appreciate someone to treat him as he should be treated.”

  “Please, Letta, not with the noble obligations.”

  “Very well.”

  And that was it. I knew what she thought of my behavior, and she knew I had that sense about me. In the end, it was up to me how I treated this stranger – and I had already established my own prejudice.

  I twisted my fingers into my loose laces and clenched them into fists as Letta's probing began to hurt.

  *

  I dreamed of elphants that night – the giant, stony creatures from Serbae, with ears like great canvases and flesh like the leathery, cracked ground that covered the plains there. They tromped through my dreamscape in slow-motion, thunderous and clomping yet graceful, in their own way, their wrinkled trunks curled up to stay out of the way of their legs. They crossed the plains in a glistening cloud of dust, and came over into Darath – as if that dust cloud was magic in their wake, magic that could spirit them across days' journeys in the time it took to bat a sleepy eye. They plowed through the land, trampling the weedflowers and rattling Manor Dorn with their passing, then moving on to the city, where they trumpeted their bellowing, horn-like calls and tramped over the rubble, stomping it all into dust.

  They disappeared into that cloud to the east, and as the tremors of their stampede receded after them, that's all there was left: dust. Like the thick ash of an erupted volcano hanging over the city. I wandered through it, obscure as fog, coughing. The only sound was the occasional echo of a spared section of rubble settling in a rush like toppled blocks, or granite splitting, that spasmed through the eerie, ash-drifting world of dust. My footsteps stirred through it, thick on the ground. I looked back at my footprints, which disappeared eerily into the obscurity a scant few paces behind me.

  I coughed again, hunching as I pushed onward through the cloud. My breath rasped in the quiet, powder chaffing against my vocal chords like sandpaper. Before long, I could not speak. It wasn't as though I tried, and found out; it was simply an awareness that dawned on me.

  My voice was gone.

  Was this a nightmare? I did not understand why the elphants would raze our land so. It was not like them – not like my imaginings of them. I was fond of the Serbaen creatures that I imagined. It did not make sense for them to star in a nightmare.

  But weariness began to weigh on me with the dust, like the ashes that settled on my shoulders. They grew into little piles there, feathery and like the nubs of tufted wings, until they had collected into increasingly weighty jumbles, and spilled down my back in what had indeed become full-fledged wings incarnate. They were like a heavy cloak, hampering me down. I stumbled under their weight.

  Wings were supposed to carry you, not ground you, I wanted to protest. But my impression of what should be seemed to matter little.

  For my wings were heavy, and there was no stopping them. I stumbled on, determined, but they brought me down.

  I fell to my knees in the dust and ash, catching myself with a boom on my palms. A pall of stirred powder rose from the impact. With a silken swish, the weight of great black feather stems fell around me, my glossy wings spilling off my back to cradle me in a deadweight. I could not rise under their hindrance. I tried, and collapsed back to my hampered position, the appendages soaked in tar, it seemed, as they spread further out on the ground beside me and pinned me there for good. Trying to ascend, even marginally, was like straining against a great net of steel, nailed into the dirt. My wings might as well have sent roots into the ground like trees.

  I was straining against trees.

  Or: I was an angel with roots in this place.

  Not even angels, it seemed, had it easy. Performing miracles was no easy task. It was a struggle. It was a fight.

  A whisper came to me, in the drifting ash. It was omnipotent. Chilling. Convicting. It told me I would do great things, but I would have to stand my ground. I would want to run, but I was being challenged, now, not to do so. I would be convicted if I did.

  Even the angels, it suggested, had to be charged with standing their ground – lest they run from this place.

  Lest they run headlong from our beloved, forsaken Dar'on.

  N I n e –

  Pages of the City

  The ruins of Dar'on had an art about them. Not many, perhaps, were of a mind to appreciate such a thing. But it was there. It was there in the way great walls crumbled to show their tender sides, lying across the land belly-up in beautiful wallpaper mosaics; it was there in the way the roads buckled into paved oceans, rising and falling, swelling and spilling; it was there in the way dust settled in the cracks, like gold veins that lined the precious granite of forgotten mines.

  That paved ocean seemed to have its ways about it, too. It was indeed a poetic explanation for the shifting that took place day in and day out, as if the swells of its buried tide upset the balance of what drifted on the surface, and spilled one thing onto another when that tide took to coming in or going out. And sometimes, as is known to occur with oceans, there were storms – and greater upheavals took place, leaving the city utterly transformed overnight; like that eerie feeling of the first snowfall that blankets everything in the night and makes it a different place by morning. In Surbaen terms, it might be likened to a leopard that has changed its spots. An impossible transformation. But it happened in Dar'on all the time.

  One morning, a tower might be far removed from where it had been the day before. Still whole, but a mile away. The entire city might be rearranged like an array of blocks that a child has wiped out and rebuilt on a whim, again and again. Toppled without ado and built back up, a tireless cycle.

  An avalanche would turn into a glittering revelation of buried treasures unearthed, or a fortress, once towering, would disappear underfoot. And the breath of the gods would rattle through, an eerie whisper, barely winded.

  Later, years later, people would recognize that those currents were the gods there with them, omnipotent and subtle, breathing down their necks. The very gods had flown that low over the land, so close as to breathe among them. An honor, or something entirely more convicting?

  Sometimes, it was so subtle that one
would not recognize it was not merely his own fingers turning the pages of the diary before him. It might seem later that he had blazed through it, that he had devoured the words as if possessed, in half the time it should have taken someone to pick their tedious way through a progressive sea of words. But the pages had blurred by, not one word a stumbling block – sped up until half a volume had come and gone, and the clock on the wall had scarcely shucked its needle-like hand past a single margin.

  For the gods did not need more than a margin on a clock face to accomplish momentous things on the face of their earth. They did not need more than one breath for a long-winded effect. Omnipotence meant there was a network of power abroad. Patterns upon patterns of perfect dominoes, ripe for tipping. A great butterfly effect, always in motion.

  The ripples could not always be traced, but this butterfly had its roots, places its wings were anchored. Perhaps its wings manifested in the pages of a diary, and as the pages turned it was granted flight. A draft hatched into the room, a puff as each page fell. It huffed and puffed a moment, trying to catch on; like trying to pump flickering coals into flame. Then the pages began to turn faster, and the consistency of the draft increased. The metaphoric flames caught. The curtain rippled as if someone had passed. The ashes in the fireplace stirred up from their deathbed. Up the chimney they were snuffed, where they intercepted an unsuspecting bird in flight. Its wings engaged resistance – and at that point, the current was harnessed, given birth, and propelled into the aftermath of the foreseeable future.

  None would think to make the connection that, as the pages of one Winifred Sebastian's diary were turned, great patches of rubble in the city were overturning in conjunction.

  The Great Butterfly was in motion. Like a hamster wheel, this omnipotent creature had taken to its gears.

  Gears that could turn the earth on its axis. Gears that churned beneath the ocean, and rationed the tides. Gears that turned compass points to the great margin that was the North.