A Mischief in the Woodwork

CHAPTER 8

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 mattered 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.