Fish Tails (4 page)

“Yes. It does that.”

Indeed, the stone had lost its fiery glow, drifted through orange and yellow into a transitory emerald green that had almost at once become muted, faded, as though lichen had crept over it. Now anyone looking casually toward it would have been unlikely to make out its outline against one or the other of the guardian peaks. On the ledge below it, however, still shining with bronze light, the wings of the other marvel folded abruptly, like the flick of twin fans. The great, thick bronze rope of her tail, tasseled in gold, lashed against the ledge of stone, and three great cymbal crashes broke the air into shards:
Gone, Gone, Gone
.

All other sounds ceased, and the echoes from those immense strokes had barely faded before the unreality opened her beak, the tongue within it quivering as the brazen throat uttered a sound of pain and sorrow and longing and timeless, universal grief: a cry that fled across the sky like a shadow only to return from the distant mountains, broken into a thousand echoes of mourning, again and again and again.

As the creature cried, rainbows dropped from her eyes, one by one.

“She's crying,” mourned Needly, cupping her hands to catch her own tears.

Grandma squeezed her shoulder. She had once heard, or perhaps read, that Griffins wept crystal tears. The reason for the tears was evident as that marvelous beak dipped down between the front paws to greet another, smaller being creeping from the shelter of its mother's body. This tiny one was more gold than bronze—­the larger creature's mirror but in miniature—­and the watchers both knew that the mother was weeping over the child. Her child.

Then the smaller creature also lamented, and to her, also, the echoes responded, as though the world itself grieved and could not be comforted. The mother took her child between huge, padded front paws, enormous ivory-­gold claws curving around it to enclose it safely, and launched herself from the ledge into the gulf of air above the watchers, her wings unfolding with a great crack of sound. They, mother and child, soared. They, grandmother and child, went to their knees under the buffet of downthrust air.

The winged ones spiraled upward until they were only a golden spark in the sunrise.

Silent time moved on, drawing no attention to itself. When it became certain the marvels would not return, Grandma showed the little girl the easy way to reach the Listener. See, she said, how the these hollows hid, how that little crevasse concealed, how this stone's shadows disguised the simple way to reach the Listener. They followed this hidden way quite easily and stepped together through a shadow on what appeared to be a solid wall to step out upon the ledge itself. Together they found a feather the baby Griffin had lost and several crystal tears the mother Griffin had shed, each enclosing rainbow lights. Together they leaned against the Listener to feel the far-­off throbbing Grandma had felt before, as though there were a heart beating inside the stone. Their thoughts were varied and in no sensible order. Nonetheless, they amounted to a plea, which was what the Listener heard it as, yet again.

And so, strangely, as they turned to make their way back home—­a place neither of them really thought of in that way—­both of them felt comforted, almost as if they had heard a whisper, a murmur from some immense distance saying, “Coming . . . coming . . . I hear you . . .”

I
T WAS
G
RANDMA WHO HAD
chosen the name “Needly” for the child. Even at birth she had been slim and silvery, white of skin and almost white of hair—­the “almost” indicating no tint of gold but instead an almost metallic silver. She had wide eyes that went here and there, in and out, stitching the world together, making a shape of it at an age when most babies could not even focus their sight. This one was sharp, bright and perspicacious, as Grandma told herself. She was also an anomaly, for Needly was born to Grandma's daughter, Trudis, and Grandma had firmly intended that this disastrous daughter should
never
bear ­children!

Her intention had been thwarted at every turn. Trudis had borne seven, Needly being the last. Now, in hindsight, Grandma could not regret the other six—­the two infant girls who had died, the four boy babes dropped into the world like gravel into a riverbed, losing themselves among unremarked heaps of other such gravel. Perhaps in some way they had opened the path for the seventh child, the wondrous child, Needly. Even Grandma—­who often longed for marvelous and remedial things that had small chance of happening—­even she had never dared hope for such a one as Needly.

The child was extraordinary, and in Hench Valley being extraordinary was a death sentence. Grandma had removed the baby from Trudis's erratic and often nonexistent care and went to considerable effort make the little one seem ordinary. Part of the effort consisted of naming the child without seeming to do so. The menfolk of Hench Valley used only ugly words for females, whether human or animal, and all females acquired their names by accretion of epithets. “Worthless” was a common valley name for a girl. “Ugly,” “Slow,” “Dirty” were others. Even if one had a treasured mare, the name would not hint at it. Glory-­on-­hooves would receive no better label than Mud. Grace-­in-­gallop would be nothing more lovely than Lump. Not that glory or grace had any place in Hench Valley. Except for Needly and Grandma and an occasional visiting cat or dog, all the valley's occupants actually were mud or lump, whether on four legs or two.

Grandma decided upon “Needly” at first sight of the child. The slender form, the steely pale hair and skin, those wide eyes, that pointed gaze made the name inevitable. Thereafter, Grandma had frequently sneered the word aloud, referring to the child thus, but without any apparent intention of naming her. In Needly's case, repetition succeeded where obvious intention would have failed. The label was not euphonious. It had no connotations of grace or fortune. It had the sneer of derogation necessary for females, and therefore it could be allowed where a loving or kindly word would have been jeered into nothing. Of course, when Grandma was alone with the little girl, the word was tenderness itself. The child understood this very well, though she was still too young to speak.

The power of names went unconsidered in Hench Valley. No one living there knew why the place was called Hench Valley. No one living there knew why the four settlements within it had the names they did: Tuckwhip; Gortles; Grief's Barn; Bag's Arm. Grandma thought, perhaps, that at that time, some centuries before, when love was still permitted, even expected, a father losing a woman in childbirth could possibly have named a child Grief, and that child might have built a barn. A son named Bagger or Bags could lose an arm in an accident and bury that part of him near the place he lived.

Male children were given names: Pig-­belly, Suck-­tooth, Fat-­ass. These names were used only until the male in question caused a pregnancy. After that each added “Pa” to his name. Pig-­belly-­Pa. Suck-­tooth-­Pa. Fat-­ass-­Pa. Females lost their labels once they had children, each becoming a Ma, or, a generation later, a Grandma. Men never became Grandpas, however, since they were assumed to have had no part in producing the grandchild. So it was pretended, at least, though incest was not uncommon in Hench Valley. The only exception to these generalities was Grandma Lillis, who had first been identified as “Ma the healer,” and was now called “Grandma healer,” the word “healer” setting her into a separate category, making her valuable enough to leave alone at an age few other women reached, certainly not while still whole in body and mind.

Needly had been of no immediate value to her Ma or her putative Pa: Trudis had, in fact, put the child to the breast without even looking at her, and did not seem to notice when Grandma removed her from the household. If girls were valued at all by Pas, it was as a future source of profit. This child here, marveling at the Griffins in the dawn light, was still a year or so too young to prove profitable. Girls when just about beddable—­those who lived that long—­were very briefly profitable at eleven or twelve because they were in very short supply. Females had a high vanishment rate among Hench Valley folk. The reasons varied: girls were “Sold to somebody at Grief's Barn.” Or “at Bag's Arm.” Or “at Gortles.” Girls “disappeared.” Girls “up and died.”

All this was part of the reason Grandma had intended Trudis to remain childless.

T
HE PROBLEM OF
T
RUDIS HAD
begun with her birth in Tuckwhip, one of the small Hench Valley towns. Grandma was then known merely as Lillis. Lillis had moved into Tuckwhip with a stranger man and had built, from the ground up, a well-­constructed house. No one moved
into
Hench Valley. No one had ever built a
decent house
there because no one there knew how. Somehow this man did. He was one whom the resident men had thought it unwise to either insult or attack, a man who made no attempt whatsoever to become acquainted, much less friendly with any of them. He was not a Pa, he would not use the title, his name was Joshua. Lillis had subsequently borne him twin girls—­Sally and Serena (becoming a Ma in the process). When the little girls were around two, Joshua had gone away a month or so before Jeremy had arrived to father Jules the golden-­haired. After Jeremy had come Jubal to father lilt-­voiced Sarah, and then after Jubal, James, whose children were twins again—­sturdy Jan and Jacky the dancer, who never toddled but went directly from a crawl to the extravagant grace of some creature born with winged feet.

Lillis thought she
should
feel it was promiscuity, this sequence, but she didn't. Each of them was different from the others, distinguishable, that is, but they were so much
alike
! It was a kind of faithfulness with the added spice of novelty! Each of them had returned every now and then to visit Lillis and his child or children. When each child, including the first ones, reached the age of four or five, his or her or their father arrived to take the child or children away. All Lillis's men had shared the way they behaved as well as their appearance. All of them were taciturn to other villagers, strong, capable, and—­with Lillis—­companionable, affectionate, and exceedingly intelligent. The one who had
actually
arranged such matters: a person? an agency? To herself, Lillis called them or it
the Planners
. It was clear that
the Planners
preferred that the person or agency found useful should live in a very unpleasant place among quite unpleasant ­people but
nonetheless
do it as happily as was possible
under those conditions
. Each time child or man went, Lillis had grieved: she had accepted grief as part of the bargain but she had not foreseen its weight.

When Lillis was twenty-­five, Trudis was born: her last child; the child who confounded all assumptions. Her father had resembled those whom Lillis called “the J's,” but he had been in some ways quite different. A little somber, perhaps. Not so musical. Unlike all the other of Lillis's children, Trudis had proven to be perfectly suited to Hench Valley and therefore—­obviously—­she was also an inappropriate candidate for leaving it. Inexplicably, despite her extremely select parentage, by the time she was two, Trudis was seen to fit the Hench Valley mold all too perfectly. It was as though the valley itself had engendered her. Trudis's father went away, returned saying he had sought advice and subsequently followed that advice. He told Lillis with regret and sorrow that Trudis had simply had not turned out to be . . . suitable, and when he left—­reluctantly, as each of the others before him had been, though for a different reason—­he left Trudis behind.

Lillis would not accept this. Her pride rebelled against it. Lillis was a stubborn woman. She believed, with all her mind, that the man had been as carefully selected as Lillis herself, and no child of
theirs
could be . . . what Trudis was!

In Hench Valley, the Rule was that each house was owned by the eldest woman in it. The owner could be a Grandma or a Ma or the oldest girl born to the preceding Ma: Lillis and Trudis occupied her house together. The rule also said that if there were any women of breeding age in the house, there should be a man in it, a Pa. In Lillis's case, however, once her last consort left, she had no man in the house. Only the fact that she was the Healer Ma kept possible invaders away. Though the reason was unspoken and very possibly indefinable by local standards, no one wanted her to be
owned
by anyone else. She was too useful to them all.

Someone had sent Lillis to the valley originally.
The Planners
and the ­people Lillis
thought
were responsible might not be the same person or ­people, which did not matter at the time. She had no real “relationship” with either.
The Planners
had governed her life until now—­and she had agreed to it, for she had been told that the result would have “beneficial consequences for mankind.” This promise came from a sufficiently exalted source in a sufficiently exalted place that Lillis believed it. Implicitly. The words were sufficiently lofty and lacking in detail to allow almost any interpretation, and “beneficial consequences” dropped into lockstep with Lillis's unbreakable habit of looking on the bright side. All went well and as planned, thus, until Lillis had her last child, Trudis.

Ah, Trudis! Those senders had looked deep, very deep, into Trudis within hours of her birth. Without dissent they considered Trudis to be both useless and hopeless. Worse (from their point of view) this judgment required that they look deeply into those of themselves who had arranged for the girl's parentage. Those individuals were evaluated also, and were judged as having been, at best, inept. Years of research had been backtracked. Hundreds of studies had been reviewed and re-­re-­reviewed. Fingers of various types had been pointed at faces of various species. Everyone agreed that it was an unfortunate mistake, and—­given perfect hindsight—­completely preventable occurrence. These particular foreseers, however, did not consider perfection to be impossible. Everything else in the plan was on target, however, and in the face of Lillis's furious determination they felt sufficiently distracted, and, moreover, sufficiently
guilty
to let her try to salvage Trudis.