A Mischief in the Woodwork

CHAPTER 35

The Prime of So Many Summers

I kept thinking about the Baltane's manor, though. I couldn't help it. Had there not been other things weighing on my conscience, I would very much have liked to visit it. To feel for myself what had taken place there, and how it related to what had become of the Dorns. I still longed to make connections with the insight that had been granted my fingertips, even if I could do nothing to change fate with that understanding.

A short time ago, I would never have dreamed of wanting to stray from my strict routine and staunch course just for the sake of exploring, but having survived my recent combing of the city in all its vastness and terror, visiting a neighborly manor seemed like child's play. Maybe even the stuff of vacations. I could have a quaint little stay there. Ombri would take care of the weedflowers, and I could feed my new muse. Become a sort of traveling hobbyist.

It occurred to me for the first time: I was no longer afraid of the mischief.

I had never been terribly meek in that arena anyway, but a soul would have to be completely blank to sail through indifferently. It would be inhuman not to suffer a healthy amount of distress in the face of such destructive unknown. But I had been through it and back, now, and felt as though we understood each other, the mischief and I. It was no longer the stuff of nightmares, to me.

But just because I could claim a certain amount of understanding did not mean it could not still swipe me right off the face of this earth if I did not watch my back, I reminded myself. It would not do to get cocky. I may have been privileged, but I was by no means its master.

*

On one of my passings through the kitchen, I could not help but notice the paper was still on the counter, its fate as yet undecided. I realized, then, that I had not read past the one article, and I paused to take it back up, to skim the rest. It was a lot of what could be expected, I found – and then had to laugh at myself for thinking the manner of things predictable, at this point.

I turned the page anyway, for old time's sake.

Something caught my eye in one of the old articles, snagging my closer inspection before I could barrel onward. My eyes flicked back to it, where the word 'Shifter' was written in one of the crossed-out sentences. Intrigued, I turned the paper so the article fell straight, and began to read.

To my astonishment, it was about Ombri. Naming herself Shifter had been for more benefit than her own fantasies, I saw as I read. Johnny had caught wind of her. Documented her. How he had come to gleam the name, I couldn't be sure, but I remembered wondering, upon hearing Ombri's tale, for whose benefit she had re-titled herself, for surely there had been none out there but herself. But I had been wrong, I saw. It had not just been for her own benefit. It had inadvertently been for the benefit of all who would read about her.

Except...we hadn't. That the article was crossed out might have been what intrigued me the most. I hadn't read it before, and I most definitely hadn't crossed out an article without reading it. And of course, if someone else crossed it out, it would explain why I hadn't seen the article. I'd skipped over it just like all the rest that were marked likewise. But I always read the paper first, didn't I? That was not really in question, as far as I was concerned. As far as I was concerned, Johnny had to be the one that had crossed this out. Written it, and then...decided he did not necessarily want to broadcast it?

It was curious. But I could relate, for there were things I withheld on a daily basis from those around me as well. It was interesting, running across evidence of others practicing similar discretion where the greater things of this age were concerned.

I smiled to myself, slightly, reading the article about Ombri. Seeing the evidence that someone else had taken note of her noteworthiness, but then also thought to protect her, to gauge publicity of the vulnerable girl out braving the transcendent odds. He had thought to hesitate where exploiting her story was concerned; some things were not meant to be imposed on, were not meant to be betrayed out of context. Some things were meant to remain intimate happenings between the city and its chosen, not proclaimed like so much gossip for the masses to devour, to abuse.

Ombri was one of those things. Something to be god-breathed into legend, in its right time – not cheapened in the newspapers.

I stood in the kitchen and considered the subtle tribute to Ombri, for a time, pondering my own privileged standing for having stumbled upon it. For having stumbled upon this thing clearly canceled from the common knowledge of others. It could be no coincidence that I had stumbled upon it, I was sure. It was just another tribute to the fact that there were things I was allowed to see, that others were not.

But I did not let that liberate me. On the contrary, I returned the paper to its place on the counter only glad that little Ombri's private greatness would go down in history as it deserved, that she had a wondrous legacy to her name, and could never simply be snuffed, now, by any who might be of the opinion she and every trace of what she was ought to be wiped clean off the face of the earth.

*

I cleaned Modo's cage, later, and paused to reach my hand through the little door, extending an offer of friendship. Skittish, the bird flitted away from contact and clung to the far bars, looking over his shoulder at me.

Just let me touch you, I willed.

Just let me touch you and see if you're happy.

Willing him to me did nothing to tame him, however, and eventually I discontinued my coaxing. I shut the door, leaving him in peace, but watched him still. He settled back onto his perch, ruffling his feathers. He did not look miserable, I thought, but surely he couldn't be happy, here. Not when he had spent his whole life as a child of the wide-open sky. I considered letting him go, but there was still a part of me that wasn't quite inclined to release the gift that he was, and he had been such a boost of morale for anyone who passed through the room. He had brought a small spark of life to this house.

What are we to do with you, little Mo?

I wondered, offhandedly, if it was dangerous for birds, out there. We didn't see many, except the buzzards. How in the world had Tanen caught this little fellow? And had he smothered one of the only sparks of light to flit across the land, trapping it here?

Yet, who would appreciate such a thing, out there? He had certainly been more appreciated here, hadn't he?

I let a breath out of me, undecided where a fitting fate for this little fellow was concerned. But I recalled what it felt like to fly, as I had experienced it through the arrow, and I could not imagine being deprived of such a thing, had it been a gift born into me. It seemed almost akin to cutting off the air that someone breathed.

Yet I couldn't quite compel myself to free the creature, not that day.

“You are the closest thing to an angel any of us have seen in a long time, around here,” I said to him instead, explaining. And I moved on, as if resolved to keep that little angel for a rainy day.

*

I was hanging up the laundry to dry in the front room when Ombri joined me. She was a bit short to reach the lines, so she made herself useful handing me wet garments from the basket. In honor of my new 'golden' perspective of our dimension, I had taken to drawing the curtain away from the window to let the light in whenever it was just me at work in the room, and the day's pallor-like radiance was making a patch of light on the floor now.

Having been a child of the open city herself, Ombri did not take issue with it either, and the two of us worked in harmonic silence for a time before she glanced up to look out that very bared window, and asked,

“Where does he come from? The white one who has no scars?”

I followed her eyes to the dusty pane that showed Tanen out at work in the field again, this time with Henry. “From Cathwade,” I said, turning my attention back to the clothes.

Modo was darting about his cage, excited to have visitors and activity in the room. We had to be sure to string the laundry lines away from his cage, or he would strew sticky seeds all over the wet garments.

“There is more to where a person comes from than his city. I didn't mean that,” Ombri said.

I resisted sighing, allowing one more flick of my eyes to address the man through the window as I resigned myself to having to respond. Only then did the dismay turn to my own wonderment, as I realized I couldn't rightly answer her. I had yet to discover as much for myself. I had seen things, touching him, but nothing that actually declared what role he had filled in his home setting. And I had been so loathe to forge any closeness between us that I had failed to demand his story, as I really ought to have before letting him implement himself in our own home.

And I couldn't tell her that which I had discovered, because it was not mine to tell. Certainly not before Tanen himself knew. Given the circumstances, it seemed it was at least his right to be the first to know.

“I do not think he has known cruelty as we have, dear Ombri,” I said at last, lightly shaking out a skirt. “Beyond that, I can not say the particulars, but I'm sure you have seen his like before. It should not be too hard to imagine.”

She considered the visual that the window offered a moment longer before bringing her attention back to our task. “He does not look at you like an inferior,” she pointed out.

“I'm afraid you have a jaded sense of what it is to be looked down upon, minda,” I said with gentle ruefulness, tenderly touching her face.

“He looks at you with desire.”

To that I scoffed slightly, completely dismissing all tenderness as I pinned the skirt to the line. “Of course he looks at me with desire. I am the only porcelain-skinned woman within his reach. A gentleman can desire a slave, Bri – that is part of what slaves exist for.” I had to wonder, as I said it, though – did he view me that way? It occurred to me I didn't actually believe he did, but I could not bring myself to admit there might be something else there. Yet, it would be so much more intolerable if what I claimed was true. I said it to deflect Ombri's speculations, because frankly I didn't want to hear any more of it, but what if there was truth to such an angle?

Saying it got me thinking about it.

And just what I needed – some new loathsome suspicion to tack onto the rest, when I was trying to rally my efforts to save his life.

Presently, Victoria appeared in the doorway, her hair falling in wet strings around her face and shoulders. She peered tentatively into the room, still a meek presence in the midst of the new kind of family that we created. Ombri glanced at her, and handed me one more garment with a sense of finality.

“I told Victoria I'd braid her hair,” she said, and I watched her depart to join the other girl. They disappeared back into the kitchen together – poor Victoria had taken to washing her hair only in the kitchen sink, since coming to us, afraid to set foot back upstairs, even now that the tub was ripe for use.

Henry and Tanen came in, shortly, and with Ombri's words fresh in my mind I could not help but notice the glance that Tanen cast my way. He ducked into the kitchen to wash up his hands, and my eyes trailed after him in turn until I caught myself.

With Ombri's other words still fresh in my mind as well, though, I found myself wondering if it was perhaps time to ask the questions that could have been expected of me (or anyone else here) from the beginning, and ask them by way of the conventional method. It would save my integrity, and Tanen's as well.

That evening, when I was taking the laundry back off the lines, he sat down in the front room to fix a tool that had broken during the day's work, and I hazarded a composing glance in his direction. Modo plastered himself against the far bars of his cage to distance himself from Tanen, but looked over his little bird shoulder at the man, considering him.

I hesitated a few moments longer, and then let the words escape my lips.

“Tell me about yourself, Tanen,” I prompted casually enough, managing to maintain a nonchalant air. Having a task to occupy my hands helped.

His attention rose from the broken tool, caught by the request. “What is it the Lady Siren wishes to know, at long last?”

“Everything that I do not.”

“That is a lot.”

“Only if you have any relevant substance to you.”

His eyes gleamed wryly at the piece of wit, rather than taking offense. He ducked back over his work before speaking, perhaps composing what he would say. “In Cathwade, I was the son of a well-known architect and engineer. He designed many of the buildings there. Most before the mischief set in. When things began to crumble, one of the theories was that his designs were faulty. At least there, he became a go-to culprit on the same level as any...Baedra,” Tanen said, still stuck on that word. And perhaps I was about to find out where part of his feelings were born from. “It destroyed my family,” he continued. “He went from being a well-respected man of the town to being chased into hiding, fingers and pitchforks pointed at him. A lot of people died in those first collapses, so there was a lot of consternation ripe for distributing.” It seemed that his head ducked lower, here, and his rhythmic motions fixing the tool slowed, becoming morose. “He couldn't just stay locked up all the time, of course – and he was not the kind to. Eventually, he was mugged on our veranda just outside the house, by someone who needed someone to blame. Someone who needed a more satisfying death than that of a slave.”

Because a slave could be killed any day, on any whim. Pointlessly. Killing them was too common a practice to bring any satisfaction where true vengeance was concerned. Vengeance called for a bigger price.

“While he still lived, my father kept his designing alive as well, even if it was behind closed doors. He was always making things...sketching something...”

“Is that why you know how to craft things so well?” I asked, corset armor and bows and arrows coming to mind, followed closely by his more recent irrigation system in the garden.

To this, he grinned slightly. “He taught me a thing or two, about how things fit together. It was all he could do, when he was chased into the confines of his own home, to work on passing on his legacy. Not that anyone would have taken to the idea of another Nysim assuming a stance of business should the mischief blow over. Our name was ruined. We were the wrong people at the wrong time.”

It was inevitable that hearing someone's story caused my heart to soften, at least in places. This little bit of his life humanized him, painted him as a soul who had been through things just like anybody. I did not think what he had been through made him worthy of hating the darkskins, but it seemed that was just something he had come by naturally, a result of the like-minded 'superior' family he had been born into. And really, if a child was taught something, how could he be blamed for it? At the same time, it made me begrudge him all the more for it, because I wanted to be able to blame him.

Keeping myself composed, I asked, “How many summers have you seen?”

“At some point the days were left to blur, but...two past twenty, if any of us are keeping track.”

A couple summers older than I. But likewise, the years had begun to meld together, and unless one was keeping special count, it was difficult to say precisely what year we were in.

“How many summers to your name?” he turned the question on me, and as good a truth as any came to my lips;

“A slave is always far older than his years, Tanen Nysim. None should suffer such depleted spirit or abuse to his body until the capacity of his years. And as many a slave drops dead far before the expected lifespan of a soul, he might as well be called old by thirty.”

I turned to face him as I said this, the laundry finished, the basket hoisted against my hip. And his eyes – they actually showed what I thought might be the barest signs of impact. A small trickle of pause, of gravity, of... It was too soon to say 'sympathy' or 'guilt', but it just might be there, somewhere deep down, waiting to be unearthed. Dug up.

Exploited.

For I could see what he must be thinking; according to my answer, I was very nearly old, standing before him nearing the peak of my days. I still had a few good years left, perhaps, but most of it had already been used up.

It was a little different for us these days, of course, but the point had been illustrated, and I could see, triumphantly, that it didn't rest as well with him as it might have, a few months prior or sugar-coated in some justifiable manner. Nearly half a dozen things flashed through his eyes before me now – the initial twinges I identified as well as something that might have been the desire to protest, the discomfort of letting it settle in, and a hint of recognizing something he might be taking for granted. A hint of erstwhile repressed desire for me, as Ombri had alluded to. Maybe even a hint of more decent lamentation for what I might be on the verge of missing, in this life, if I were to drop dead before a regular man's prime.

What he could show me, perhaps, if fate saw me let him.

And instead of finding such a cause repulsive, my fingers itched to let him.

So I hoisted the basket of laundry and left him to come to terms with the perspective that I had aimed to impart, before that other slant could develop.

Escaping fate once more.

*

Seeing the first hints of response in Tanen, I felt a stirring of hope, and the driving need to latch on while I had the groundwork. Even the smallest window was worth diving through, when the overall window was two months wide. I may no longer have been in the habit of counting summers, but it was time once again to count days.

I found Letta in on the pallets before everyone else came to bed, and cast about in the doorframe looking for a way to broach the subject that came laden on my mind. She arranged sheets, content in the silence of her work.

“Letta,” I said at last, and she acknowledged me. “There's something...”

She waited for it, saw it stick, and took up a helpful stance. “Come in, minda. Sit.” Patting the pallet next to her, she waited for me to accept the invitation. I did so, hesitantly, not one to come for help like this. But a life in my hands was too great a responsibility to keep exclusively to myself. I did not feel as though I could tell her, but if she could help... I did not feel as though I could bear entrusting this only to myself, in every way, shape and form. Some sort of counsel was the least I could seek.

I folded myself onto one of the pallets, trying to compose what I wanted to say. “I need to know how to change someone,” I said at last, keeping it to the point.

She continued arranging sheets as she considered my words. “Are you sure the great Avante wishes to add to her list of duties? Her undertakings are many and considerable, these days.”

“I cannot help if priorities don't number themselves,” I said.

“Does this soul wish to be changed?”

My silence was enough to spur her next answer;

“Not even the gods change the unwilling, Vant.”

I stared at the pallets bleakly, not knowing what else to say. Surely it had to be doable, if I had been granted the chance to try my hand at it. Unless that had just been some sick joke, and this was all to teach me something.

“You cannot change someone who does not wish to be changed,” Letta maintained. “However, you may be allowed to alter if they wish to change. You can, perhaps, be someone's reason to change.”

And with that, she had spoken her wisdom. I could tell. I mulled over the words, trying to feel out if they carried the epiphany I was searching for.

Letta did not ask who it was I wished to change. She either knew without asking, or felt no need to know. She simply finished with her sheets, and then the others were filing in, and I moved to my own pallet.

As I lay awake that night, lashes drawn but mind mulling, Ombri whispered my name in the dark. I opened my eyes to acknowledge her, where she gazed at me with her big, beautiful amber-brown eyes, tucked into her covers on the pallet next to mine.

It was the kind of whisper that drew you out of a state of hibernation, but left you wondering if you had imagined it. Her gaze and the words that responded to my opening eyes proved she had roused me, however, when she said:

“None of the rest of us labor to loathe him like you do.”

And something in me faltered, impacted with just as much conviction as what I had only just striven to stir in Tanen himself.

*

I stayed to my brooding quarters, that night, but the next night the echo of Ombri's words saw me slip out of my covers and pad quietly from the room. The floor boards in the front room were creaky, but I skirted the worst of it from memory, was careful not to disturb Modo all afluff in his sleeping feathers, and stole onward through the kitchen. I almost paused, there, but something propelled me onward, spurring me to see this through. Only in the doorway to Tanen's little adjoining room did I pause, searching out his form in the dark to see if he was awake.

“Tanen?” I whispered, and he stirred.

“Vant? What is it?”

I took the liberty of wandering in, not sure how to answer. Seating myself on the chair that was poised to keep an eye on the sick, I rubbed my palms across my knees and glanced about the confined room before speaking. “Do you think of me as a slave?” I asked, my eyes wandering back to him.

He pushed himself up onto his elbow on the bed, and his sheets fell from his shoulders to reveal a bare chest. My gaze caught, and my fingers twitched where they rested on my knee. I clenched them into my skirt.

I could not say if my tone was challenging or geared for a let-down, but either way he seemed to catch onto the seriousness in it. Enough, at least, that he thought about his answer before giving it.

“I think you're a saint, in this age, Vant. You sing flowers into light and slay Albinos twice your size, and disappear into the maw of that godforsaken city only to reemerge, unscathed.”

“But in another age? Would you think of me as a slave then?”

“If you carried yourself as one. Perhaps.”

That was satisfactory, somehow, and I let it go in decent conscience.

“You were born to sing,” Tanen elaborated, even though I had gotten what I'd come for – whatever it was. “Not to work. That's how I see it.”

“Are you saying I'm a pansy?”

A small flash of his teeth in the dark. “I wouldn't dream of it. I don't fancy getting whacked like that other guy. I'm just saying you're a siren. A beautiful siren.”

Since he was being so complimentary, I decided I may as well let him in on a kind secret of my own, for a change. “I wouldn't whack you, Tanen,” I said. At this point, given what I had taken up on his behalf, I figured it would probably be decent of me to let him know that. It was the least I could do, really, for a man I knew was on Death Row – give him the privilege of knowing I would never kill him myself.

“Do you suppose there's a better chance of slaves outliving thirty, these days?” Tanen asked, and the personal tinge of hope that came with the question carried a flattering meaning.

“I don't know,” I admitted. We weren't being whipped to death, anymore, but there was no telling where the current destruction would leave us all. I knew some, but there was still a lot I didn't know. “I just know that, either way, we've all lost a good many summers by now. It's all blurred into one big age of survival. But like you said... If we're surviving just to survive... What's the point in that?”

“So I was right about something,” he teased.

Instead of responding, I found myself wondering if he was getting uncomfortable propping himself up on his elbow yet, and my eyes took in the muscles holding him there. And the lingering slashes and scars that were the healing blows from his encounter with the wardog. And the response that came to me: let his philosophy be an inspiration, in this moment; show him there was a part of me that responded to the idea of wanting to live, rather than just survive. To experience things.

I moved from my seat, crossed the small space between us, and alighted on the edge of his cot. A small hint of surprise lit his eyes, but he seemed to accept the idea fairly quickly that this was in fact why I had come. The lines of his body were just waiting to be traced, packed with the residue of secrets that I needed to aid my intimate project surrounding him. One thing that would do nothing to help me change a person, I was sure, was my limited perspective pertaining to his inner workings. I needed to know the intimate intricacies of what made him tick.

I touched my lips to his, this time, and he drew himself up to receive me. A part of me could not believe I would do such a thing, but it was a distant part, little more than a betrayed echo from my past. I squashed it, not open to dissuasion. I was on a mission, and if anything, I had always been one who was able to buckle down and own a mission.

If Tanen died, it was not going to be on me. I would do everything in my power to see that fate deflected, now that I had been bequeathed with a sense of accountability. And if I failed... Well, at least I would have made up for my prior hostility toward him in the meantime.

My fingers took the liberty of going straight to his chest, eager to make contact. Sparks coursed through them immediately upon resting against his skin, and I drank it up, preparing myself for the visions.

Tanen's own touch went to my neck, a light grasp that served as an anchor to harmonize our kisses. And the part of me that would have been disgusted to partake in such with him before found that contrary to my preconceived, prejudiced notions, it was pleasant, kissing him.

My fingers swept around to his back, over his scars, running slowly down his spine, and a horde of visions was stirred up – some of them indeed the kind that I was seeking, snippets of his past, his experiences. One of them: what it felt like to be pinned beneath a feeding wardog in the city. But it was not these that I found most arresting. It was the insight of current thought, rather, that I found myself snatched up by. For I could see into his mind in its current state, all awash with desire, and I could feel one experience more keenly than all the other bits that flitted through him – the one he was experiencing now. And, sharing these things as my sixth sense allowed, I very quickly began to lose myself in the empathy, until I was mirroring the sentiment. Matching feeling for feeling. What I felt was his own desire, but since I indeed felt it, it was as good as my own.

People had spoken of the magic of intimacy before, explaining what a special experience it was, but while they may have been wise in the ways of such, not a one of them knew anything compared to what it was like to be so thoroughly immersed in the experience. Tanen and I were only kissing, and yet I was inside of him, immersed in his mind, his heart, his soul. Twined into his very being.

Our spirits touched that night, and it was a more intimate binding than any conventional means. Who could have known that all it would take was the mere aspiration of touching someone to fulfill a bond that I would not soon be able to break.

Our lost summers twined together through the ages, and I became more invested in this man's spirit than ever before.