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She shook her hair back, lifted her chin in defiance and turned her back on both of them. Jodoli, I noted, showed little interest in the exchange. I wondered if he were truly as passive as Olikea named him, or if it was beneath the interest of a Great One to take affront at such an exchange. Firada bared her teeth at her sister. It could have been amusement or satisfaction at having vanquished a potential rival. I had no time to ponder it further, for Olikea strode up to me and stood over me in a manner that was almost threatening. I had never had the experience of looking up at a naked woman who was bristling with fury. It was both daunting and strangely arousing.
‘You are right. It was your foolishness that demanded I come here. You owe me transport back to the People.’
Soldier’s Boy said nothing. I was inclined to be a gentleman and see that she was safely returned to her family. But the Great Man was a bit weary of her exploitation and demands. She still seethed before me. He compromised and spoke firmly. ‘If you wish me to quick-walk you back to the People, I will need the strength to do so. I will attempt it if you aid Likari in finding food for me today. That seems fair to me.’
He would have been wiser not to add the last comment. It was like spark to powder. She exploded with righteous indignation. ‘Fair? Fair? You know nothing of fair. For months, I have brought you food, taught you even what foods you should be eating. I have lain with you for your comfort and release. I have nagged you, to no avail, to allow me to feed and tend you as a Great Man should be attended. I have struggled to make you behave as you should and to teach you your duties to the People. And what has been my thanks from you? Have I been lifted in honour by my people? No! Have you done great deeds for them? No! Instead, you have spoken of the intruders as “my people” and said that there is nothing that will turn them back! Treachery and ingratitude. That is what I have received from you! Insults and disobedience! How is one to be the feeder of such an insufferable Great One? And now look at you! All the work I did for you is wasted. You are thin as a starving man, thin as a man no one respects, thin as a man cursed by the forest, thin as a man too stupid to find food for himself. You will do no great deeds. It will take months, perhaps a year or more before you become as fat as you were. And every day that you struggle to regain the power you wasted, Jodoli will eat and hoard his strength and grow. You will never be greater than he is. And when all the kin-clans gather at the Wintering Place, you will be mocked, and the people who bring you will be mocked. All my work, all my fetching and gathering and tending of you, you have wasted. What good did it do me? What good did it do any of my kin-clan?’
It was like watching a geyser erupt. Every time I thought she would pause for thought, she only gulped down a deep breath and blasted me again. Jodoli and Firada were mute witnesses, horrified in that fascinated way of people who watch an unthinkable event take place. I think Soldier’s Boy took it calmly only because within myself I was so divided as to how to react. The Gernian wished to acknowledge that she had not received what she had expected. The Great Man resented the burden of abuse.
Soldier’s Boy crossed my arms on my chest, only too aware of how the skin hung limp and empty on my forearms and breast. Even my fingers looked odd to me, their plumpness lost. I shared his sudden wave of mourning for all my hoarded magic lost. Olikea was right. I looked like a man without power, unhonoured and thin. I would be mocked at the gathering of the kin-clans. Disappointment flooded me and it turned into anger. He pointed a finger at her. ‘Olikea,’ he said into her tirade. I do not think he used any magic, but she was silenced as suddenly as if he had.
‘If you wish me to quick-walk you back to the People tonight, go find food for me now. Otherwise, I will be too weak. If you do not wish to help feed me, that is fine. Beg passage of Jodoli. But those are your only two options. Choose, and do it quietly.’
She narrowed her eyes and their green made it a cat’s stare. ‘Perhaps I have choices you know nothing about, Jhernian!’ She turned on her heel and strode off into the forest. I stared after her, wondering how I could ever have imagined that she felt love or even affection towards me. It had been a transaction. Sex and food given to me in the expectations that I would acquire status and power, and that she would share in those things.
Firada puffed breath out of her pursed lips, dismissing Olikea’s show disdainfully. ‘She has no other options. She will return, with sweet food and sweet words, to wriggle into your favour again. My little sister has always been thus. My father spoiled her after my mother was taken.’
Jodoli came and ponderously lowered his bulk beside me. Soldier’s Boy suppressed a wave of envy. Jodoli looked very fine, his skin smooth and oiled, his belly sleek and rounded as a gorged forest cat. His hair was glossy, sleeked back from his face and then braided into a fat tail. I looked away from him, unable to bear the sharp contrast with my saggy skin and protruding bones. ‘We must speak, Nevare, of Olikea’s accusations. I know you have been a divided man, unwilling to concede that the intruders must be killed or driven back. But now they have cast you out, perhaps you will feel differently about them. Perhaps you will admit that they do not belong here.’
Soldier’s Boy rubbed my hands together, looking at my fingers. A divided man. Little did he know how accurately he spoke. ‘How do you know they cast me out?’ he asked Jodoli.
‘The magic whispered it to me. You would not come to the forest of your free will, so it had to turn your people against you. Now they have disowned you. When you say “my people” today, to whom do you refer?’
It was not a question just for Soldier’s Boy, a Great Man of the Specks. It was for Nevare to answer as well. Soldier’s Boy spoke for both of us.
‘I do not think I will say “my people” for a very long time.’
SIX
Confrontations
As Nevare, I did little the rest of that day. I retreated to the back of my mind and became an onlooker in my life. Soldier’s Boy ate the food that Likari brought him, drank deeply of clean water, and then slept. He woke to the wonderful aroma of hot food. Olikea brought it. A hastily woven net held leaf-wrapped packets the size of my fist and roasted tubers. The packets held chunks of fish cooked with a sour root. The leaves that held them were edible and added their own piquant touch of flavour. He ate the food and commented on it favourably. That was the only conversation between them. Neither apologized or explained where the situation now stood. It seemed far simpler a resolution than could ever have occurred between Gernians.
When Likari brought food, he ate that as well. I do not think that pleased Olikea but she didn’t talk about it. Instead, she took a wooden comb from her shoulder pouch and painstakingly combed out my hair. She spent far longer on the task than it deserved; I had never realized how good such a simple thing could feel. I do not think Firada approved of Soldier’s Boy’s easy acceptance of Olikea’s return. She announced that she was taking Jodoli down to the stream to wash him and to rest there. She stalked away and he stolidly followed her, a placid bullock of a man.
Olikea ignored their leaving. Likari had gone off to look for more mushrooms. She continued to work her comb through my hair. There wasn’t much of it. I had given up keeping it in a cavalla soldier’s short cut some time ago, but there was still not enough to plait or dress in any fashion. Still, it felt good, and the Great Man allowed her gentle touch and his full belly to lull him. He fell asleep.
Strange to say, I did not sleep. I remained awake and aware of all the sensations a man may feel with his eyes closed. I wondered if this was how it had been for my Speck self in the days when I had been so firmly in charge of my life – or thought I had been. In a way, it was pleasant. I felt that I had let go of the reins; surely no one could hold me responsible now for the chaos that my life had become. The early afternoon was warm, summer stealing one of autumn’s days, but here, deep in the shade of the forest, there was a pleasant chill that tickled the surface of my skin. If I lay very still, my body warmth lingered around me, but the slightest breeze stole it away. It did not much bother me. The moss I rested on was deep and my body had warmed it. I was comfortable. I was naked, I realized belatedly. Olikea must have taken my clothing when she rescued me. She had never approved of how much clothing I wore. Her discarding it struck me as foolish. Naked, others would more quickly see how wasted and thin I was. However strange my clothing might have seemed, at least it might have kept some of the disdain and mockery at bay. Among the Speck, few things were more pitied and despised than a skinny man. What kind of a fool could not provide for himself, or earn enough regard from his fellows to have them help him in a time of injury or sickness? I looked such a fool right now. Well, Soldier’s Boy was in command of the body now; he would have to deal with it. I let my mind drift to more pleasant thoughts.
I heard birdsong, the sound of the breeze in the needled trees, and the very light rattle of falling leaves whenever a gust of breeze was strong enough to dislodge them. I could hear them cascading down, ricocheting through the twigs and branches until they finally reached the forest floor. The Speck were right. Summer was over, autumn was strong and winter would be on its heels. Real cold would descend, followed by the snows and harsh winds of winter. Last winter I’d had a snug little cabin to shelter me. This winter, I would face that weather with not even the clothes on my back. A tide of dread started to rise in me, but again I turned it back with the simple demurral: it was not my problem. Specks seemed to have survived well through the ages. Whatever their tactic was, even if it was simply the stoic endurance of cold and privation, Soldier’s Boy would learn it and last the winter.
A bird sang again, loudly, a warning, and then I heard the crack of its wings as it took hasty flight. A moment later I heard something heavy settle into the branches overhead. A shower of broken twigs rattled against my face, followed by the slower fall of leaves. I looked up in annoyance. A huge croaker bird had settled in the tree above me. I grimaced in distaste. Fleshy orange-red wattles hung about his beak, reminding me both of dangling meat and cancerous growths. His feathers rattled when he shook them and it seemed as if I could smell the stench of carrion on them. His long black toes gripped the branch tightly as he leaned down to peer at me. His eyes were very bright.
‘Nevare! You owe me a death.’
The croaked words shot ice down my spine. I arced as if I’d been hit by an arrow, and then peered up at the creature in the branches overhead. He was no longer a bird. He wasn’t a man either. Orandula, the god of balances, teetered on the branch over my head. His long black feet gripped the branch with horny toenails. His nose was a carrion bird’s hooked beak, and the red wattles dangled from his throat now. His hair was a thicket of unruly feathers, and feathers cloaked his body and dangled from his arms. Unchanged were his piercing bird-bright eyes. He cocked his head and stared down at me. He smiled, his beak stretching horribly as he did so. As I stared, fixed with terror, his little black tongue came out of his mouth, dabbing at the edges of his beak and then retreated again.
It wasn’t real. It was too horrible to be real. Every prayer I knew to the good god bubbled to the top of my mind. I tried to form the words, but Soldier’s Boy slept on, his mouth closed, oblivious to my terror. I tried to close my eyes, to block out the sight of the old god, to make him a dream. I could not. My eyes were not open. I did not know how I was seeing him. I struggled desperately to lift an arm and put it across my eyes, but my body did not belong to Nevare. Soldier’s Boy slumbered on. I could not look away from the old god’s piercing gaze. It was horrid to experience such terror, and to feel at the same time the slow and steady breathing of deep sleep and the calm heartbeat of a man contentedly at rest. Soldier’s Boy could sleep but Nevare could not flee from the god in the tree above me. A whimper tried to escape me; it could not. I tried to look away; I could not.
‘Why do they always do that?’ Orandula asked rhetorically. ‘Why do men think that if they cannot see a thing, it goes away or stops existing? I should think any sane creature would want to keep its eyes fixed on something as dangerous as me!’ He opened his arm-wings and rattled the pinions at me menacingly, and the whimper inside me tried to be a scream. His smile grew broader. ‘Yet, without exception, when I pay a visit such as this, men try to avert their eyes from me. It’s useless, Nevare. Look on me. You are mine, you know. Neither your good god nor your forest magic will dispute my claim. You took that which was intended for me. Your life is forfeit. You owe me a death in payment. Look at me, Nevare Burvelle!’ When he commanded me to look on him, a strange thing happened. A chill calm welled up in me, just like the cool air over the water within a deep well. I recognized something in him, or perhaps something in my situation. Inevitability. I still feared him with a heart-stopping intensity but I knew I could not escape him. Struggle was pointless. The calm of despair filled me. I could look on the god I had cheated. I found a voice to speak to him, one that did not use my lips or tongue or lungs. I met his gaze, even though it was like pressing my palm against the tip of a sword.
‘A death? You demand a death? You had a hundred deaths, a glut of deaths. How many did I bury at the end of the summer? Strong soldiers, little children. Strangers. Enemies of mine. Friends. Buel Hitch. Carsina.’ My voice broke on the name of my former fiancée.
Orandula laughed like a crow cawing. ‘You tell me what I took, not what you gave me. You gave me nothing! You stole from me, Nevare Burvelle.’
‘All I did was free a suffering bird from its impalement on a sacrificial carousel. I lifted it from the hook and released it. How is that so great a trespass that I must pay for it with my life? Or my death.’
‘You wronged me, man. The bird was mine, both its life and its death. Who were you to say it should not suffer? Who were you to pick it free and put life back into it and let it fly away?’
‘I put life back into it?’
‘Hah!’ His exclamation was a harsh croak. ‘There speaks a man! First, you will pretend you did not know how grave a thing you did. Then you will deny you did it. Then you will say—’
‘It’s not fair!’
‘Of course. Exactly that. And then finally, each and every one will claim—’
If I had had lungs, I would have drawn a breath. I invoked the strength of the words with the full force of my fear. ‘I am a follower of the good god. I was dedicated to him as a soldier son when I was born, and I was raised in his teachings. You have no power over me!’ The last I uttered with conviction. Or attempted to. My words were drowned in the caws of his laughter.
‘Oh, yes, the final denial. I can’t be your god; you already have a god. You keep him in your pouch and let him out on occasions such as this. Calling on your good god is so much more effective than, say, pissing yourself in terror. Or, at least, it has a bit more dignity.’ He spread his tail feathers and leaned back, rocking so hard with laughter that the big branch shook. I looked up at him, unable to avert my eyes. He took his time getting his hilarity under control. Finally, he stopped laughing, and wiped his feathered arm across his eyes. He leaned forward, turning his bird’s head sideways to look at me more closely. ‘Call him,’ he suggested to me. ‘Shout for the good god to come and rescue you. I want to see what happens. Go ahead. Yell for help, man. It’s the only thing you haven’t done yet.’
I couldn’t do it. I wanted to. I wanted desperately to be able to cry out to some benign presence that would sweep in and rescue me. It wasn’t a lack of faith in the good god’s existence. I think I feared to call on my god lest he come to me, and find me lacking and unworthy. I knew in my heart, as most men do, that I’d never really given myself fully to his service. I do not speak of the way that a priest resigns his life to the service of a god, but rather to how a man suspends his own judgment and desires and relies on what he has been told the good god desires of him. Always, I had held back from that commitment. I had always believed, I discovered, that when I was an old man I could become devout and make up for my heedless youth. Age would be a good time to practice self-discipline and charity and patience. When I was old, I would give generous alms and spend hours in meditation while watching the sweet smoke of my daily offerings rise to the good god. When I was old, and my blood no longer bubbled with ambition and lust and wild curiosity, then I could settle down and be content in my good god.
Foolishly, I had believed that I would always have the opportunity to be a better man, later. Obviously, a man’s life could end at any time. A fall down the stairs, a chill or a fever, a stray bullet; youth was no armour against such fates. A man could lose his life by accident, at any moment. Some part of me, perhaps, had known that, but I’d never believed it at a gut level.
And I’d certainly never considered that at any moment, an old god could materialize and demand my life of me.
I didn’t merit the good god’s intervention and worse, I feared his judgment. The old gods, I knew, had been able to plunge men into endless torment or perpetual labour, and often did solely for their own amusement. Such anguish on a whim suddenly seemed preferable to facing a just banishment.
My cry of supplication died in me unuttered. I looked up at Orandula, the old god of balances and felt myself quiver with resignation and then grow still. The feathers on his head quirked up in surprise.
‘What? No shrieks for rescue? No pleas for mercy? Eh. Not very amusing for me. You’re a bad bargain, Nevare. Looks like half of you is the most I can get, and it isn’t even the interesting half. Yet, being as I am the god of balances, something in that appeals to me.’
‘Do what you will to me!’ I hissed at him, weary already of teetering on that brink.
He fluttered his feathers up, gaining almost a third in size as he did so. ‘Oh, I shall,’ he muttered as he eased them down. He leisurely groomed two wing plumes, pulling them through his beak and then settling them into order. For a moment, he seemed to have forgotten me. Then he pierced me with his stare again. ‘At my leisure. When I decide to take what you owe me, then I’ll come for it, and you’ll pay me.’
‘Which do I owe you?’ I was suddenly moved to ask him. ‘My death? Or my life?’
He yawned, his pointed tongue wagging in his mouth as he did so. ‘Whichever I please, of course. I am the god of balances, you know. I can choose from either end of the scales.’ He cocked a head at me. ‘Tell me, Nevare. Which do you think an old god such as me would find most pleasing? To demand your death of you? Or insist that you pay me with your life?’
I didn’t know the answer and I didn’t wish to give him any ideas. My fears toiled and rumbled inside me. Which did I most fear? What did he mean when he said those words? That he would kill me and I’d become nothing? Or that he’d take me in death and keep me as his plaything? What if he demanded my life from me, and I became a puppet of the old god? All paths seemed dark. I stared up at him hopelessly.
He fluttered his feathers again, then suddenly opened his wings. He lifted from the branch as effortlessly as if he weighed nothing. Then he was gone. Literally gone. I didn’t see him fly away. Only the swaying of the relieved branch testified that he had been there.
‘Do not wake him!’
Olikea’s warning hissed at Likari did precisely what she had told the boy not to do. Soldier Son stirred, grunted and opened his eyes. He drew a deeper breath, and then rubbed his face. ‘Water,’ he requested, and both his feeders reached for the waterskin that lay beside him. Olikea was a shade faster and a bit stronger. She had her hands on it first, with the better grip and snatched it from Likari. The boy’s eyes widened with disappointment and outrage.
‘But I was the one who went and refilled it!’ he protested.
‘He needs help to drink from it. You don’t know how. You’ll get it all over him.’
They sounded for all the world like squabbling siblings rather than a mother and her son. Soldier’s Boy ignored both of them, but took the waterskin away from Olikea to drink from it. He nearly drained it before he handed it back to the boy with a nod of thanks. He yawned and then carefully stretched, noting with displeasure how the limp skin dangled from his arms. He lowered them back to his side. ‘I feel better. But I need to eat more before we quick-walk tonight. I would like cooked food to warm me; the world will cool as night comes on.’
He groaned as he sat up, but it was the groan of a man who has eaten well, slept heavily, and looked forward to doing the same again. How could he be so unaware of all that had befallen me while he slept? Did he even sense that I still existed within him? How could he have been so blithely unaware of Orandula’s visit to me and how it had terrified me? Yet so he seemed. How had it been for him, submerged within me for the better part of a year? I recalled the moments when he had broken through and into my awareness, and the times when he had forced me to take actions. What had it taken, there at the Dancing Spindle, for him to push me aside while he both stole and then destroyed the magic of the plainspeople? Had it been a burst of passion, or had he simply gathered his strength and waited for a moment when he desired to use it? I needed to learn how he had manipulated me and to discover why he was now ascendant over me if I were to survive and ever re-capture control of the life we shared. I was not certain that I wished to be the one in command of our life, but I did know that I was reluctant to cede full control to my Speck self. I refused the notion that I might never again control my own body. The strangeness of the situation suspended my judgment of it. The terror I should have felt hovered, unacknowledged.
Likari had anticipated Soldier’s Boy’s appetite. In his basket, there were several fat roots from a water plant and two bright yellow fish that were just now gasping their last breaths. The boy presented the basket expectantly. Soldier’s Boy nodded at it, pleased, but Olikea scowled.
‘I will cook these things for you. The boy does not know how.’
Likari opened his mouth to protest, and then shut it with a snap. Evidently his mother had spoken true. Nonetheless, his lower jaw and lip quivered with disappointment. Soldier’s Son looked at him dispassionately, but I felt for the boy. ‘Give him something!’ I urged my other self. ‘At least acknowledge what he has done for you.’
I could sense his awareness of me, just as I had once been the one to feel his hidden influences on my thoughts and actions. He scowled to himself, and then looked at the boy again. His shoulders had fallen and he was withdrawing. Soldier’s Son lifted the waterskin. ‘My young feeder will fill this again for me. The cool water was very good to have when I awoke.’
The boy halted. My words transformed him. He lifted his head, squared his shoulders and his eyes sparkled as he smiled up at me. ‘I am honoured to serve you, Great One,’ he replied, taking the waterskin. The words were a standard courtesy among the Speck when they addressed a Great One, but the boy uttered them with absolute sincerity.
Olikea folded her lips tightly, and then briskly added, ‘Bring firewood, too, when you come back with the water. And see that it is dry, so that it will burn hot to cook the fish quickly.’
