A Mischief in the Woodwork

CHAPTER 2

The Ritual

It was my specific charge to perform a special ritual each day. I had been bought for a very distinct quality: my voice.

Manor Dorn, being a lonely manor on the outskirts of town, was vulnerable on all sides. We were a plot surrounded by open land – a beacon of a victim. Utterly exposed. We may not have been able to predict the shifts in the city, or what would come of them, but there was one thing we could count on:

Wardogs.

They hunted at night, and we were at their mercy.

The only thing that kept them away was light – it hurt their eyes. They spent years on end, or even the majority of their lives, hibernating in the nooks and crannies of the world. Spring did not awaken them. War did. The smell of carnage roused them from their nests, and once they got a taste they did not sleep for a very long time. They hid by day, sensitive to the light from their habitual deprivation, but they came out to prowl when dusk hit.

We had a means of defense in the surrounding land, but it was tricky. The weedflowers could be stimulated into glowing bulbs by way of song. They bloomed when sung to by a comely voice, and glowed like fireflies when awakened thus. But they only lasted a matter of hours. I had to sing them awake right at dusk in order for them to last until dawn. A chilling duty, but normal to me. I had not known this country when it was not plagued by such things.

I heard the stories, though. I knew that a generation ago, things had been very different. A generation ago, there had not been a population of dark-skinned slaves. They had been our neighbors. Simply the foreign Serbaens.

Then war had reached their land, and swarms of refugees spilled across the border into our land: Darath.

Instead of giving them shelter, we had taken them as slaves.

For some, there was no excuse better than taking advantage of the helpless. For others, they tried to justify their response in that these people had unrightfully invaded, and must face the consequences that any trespasser was dealt.

The Wardogs were just one of the many things that people now blamed on the darkskins – (or 'baedra', as we called them in their own language, because they 'didn't deserve a place in our own language'. It didn't make sense to me, and rang in irony, that we would not utter of them in our own language, but would deign to speak in theirs.) There was tell of how misfortune and decay followed the darkskins here, how they were the dirty ones who brought it – creatures, rather than folk, whose culture was dark mischief. It was easy to blame them, for how events undoubtedly coincided, and to keep them with a vengeance as slaves. For some it was fear, rather, that needed an excuse to keep the mischief-makers in their place. But for me, the stories and excuses were all unwarranted. For I lived among the mischief-makers every day. They were my friends. And they did not fit the descriptions.

But it was of no consequence. There was not a judge left in town for these matters. There was only the countryside, the ruins, the people in their nooks and crannies, all in the same boat, and the rituals that had come to be a way of life. Such as the ritual before me now. I had not known things any other way.

I had been sought for the job because 'no darkskin could have a voice lovely enough to make flowers bloom'. It was an ironic purpose, existing to protect the Masters from the nuances that came with their own choice of slaves, but it was how things had come to be. These were dark times, and strange times, and order had gotten lost in the mischief. Trampled into dusty fragments of old and figments of wild imagination.

With dusk came mist. There was rarely a night that we didn't have mist. Sometimes there were clear pockets, even clear fields, but billows to an extent always came to eddy about. It was materializing now as I treaded off the porch and faced the vast field. Exposure washed quietly over me as I stepped out of the shadow of the manor, leaving that haven behind me. The first breath of chilly night air wafted into my face and drifted on to the manor walls, raising the hairs on my arms. I shivered. The rags I wore – a crudely-crafted, flimsy, loose tunic over one of Victoria's old corsets, and a fraying silk skirt – were insignificant to the dropping temperature. I pulled the fabric of the loose tunic up over my bare shoulder, where the big neck often fell askew. It offered little in the ways of sealing out the cold. There was nothing for it but to finish my task, and retreat inside.

The other slaves filed out behind me. They always came to lend me their support, to sing in the background and guide me back through the mist after I had done the rounds.

I paused before the field, and Letta lifted the back of my tunic to loosen the corset strings. It was not a practical garment, but it was one of the things we were reduced to – wearing hand-me-down undergarments as the best clothing we could attain.

I stretched my lungs as the strings loosened, assuring I had a proper range. Finished, Letta let the tunic fall, and I stepped forward into the fringes of the dead grasses and brown weeds.

The sky was painted with the last inky colors of the day, a sullen tapestry sinking quickly into utter darkness. I trailed my fingers over the ugly weed buds as I treaded into their midst, letting the rising mist swallow me from sight.

I entered that quiet world of softly shifting fears, where nothing but the faint hiss of the mist spoke and nothing but the smearing breaks in the gloom stirred for miles. I eyed those breaks warily, alert for any shift that might be something more than the gloom clearing. The Wardogs could be on the premises any time past twilight. They could be slinking through the field now, and I could stumble right into the path of a hungry beast coming our way.

I could go to ribbons beneath an onslaught of fangs any instant.

I calmed my nerves. It was all part of the job. Just get it done, Avante, I told myself. Then I could go back inside.

I breathed the mist into my lungs, distilling its sting, and then began to let my voice out. It was a haunting lilt, a hymn of ancient words. I sang them from a sacred place in my being, as if speaking in a code that the gods had instilled in me. It filtered out, echoing through the mist. Muffled but rousing.

As the distance fed off of my lonely voice, I became aware, as always, of how alone I was out there. Singing while exposed had the frightful feel of calling attention to myself. I could imagine the beasts perking their ears toward the sound across the countryside, pinpointing me in the gloom. It was haunting calling them so.

I fanned out as I sang, flitting slowly from place to place to awaken the buds. They curled slowly open, touched by my voice, and took on the faintest hues of light as I did the rounds. Sometimes, as I drifted through the gloom, I could hear the faithful chant of the other slaves, lined up at the edge of the field to sing me back. Sometimes, I could not. My voice would fall in pitch when I lost them, becoming tentative as I strained to make them out, as I feared I had strayed too far to find my way back. But the buds would dim, and I strengthened my voice again. I could not risk letting the light die. Whether my voice overrode the beacon voices of my fellow slaves or not, I had to sing the flowers to their full potential before they would sustain themselves.

I circled the manor by a memorized path. I'd counted out the steps by day in the beginning, and stayed true to that pattern, as best I ever could, to complete the task ever since. In wider and wider circles I went, until the buds were sharp lanterns in the night. Then I wound my way back toward the sound of the voices that sustained the lament, my slippers crunching softly on the grasses. As I got close, I caught glimpses of the slaves' formation through the billows, and I released a sigh of relief.

We were safe for the night once more.

They trailed off in equal relief when they saw me emerge from the mist, and ushered me inside. I rejoined them, and Letta folded me against her with an arm as we turned to go back inside. Dashsund drew the children similarly to him, holding them against the cold, and we all filed back through the door.

I let the screen swing shut behind me, and then turned to cast my eyes through its filter and across the field once more. A crop of firefly sentries shone through the gloom all around us, pin-pricks of lancing light to any godforsaken Wardog that contrived to prowl the territory.

Satisfied, I shut the door with a bang against the night, and threw the latch into the wall.