The Book of a Thousand Days (10 page)

I pray to Evela, goddess of sunshine, bring us into your light again. Ris, god of roads and towns, let us find home. Vera, goddess of food, give us enough to eat. Goda, goddess of sleep, use your skill on Under so his tricks won't touch us. And Carthen, goddess of strength, make me strong enough to break down the walls.

We're not going to die. I already decided.

Day 932

Just hours ago a wonder occurred.

I was lying on my straw mattress. I was asleep, mostly, though I was still aware of my lady snoring. Forgive me, Ancestors, but it's the truth--my lady snores like a ram with a cold. And that wasn't the wonder.

I was dreaming of the rats. These past months, I dream asleep and I dream awake. Often I'm not sure which is sleep and which is madness, just as I'm never certain when it's noonday or deep night.

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In the dream, I could see through the floor into the cellar, down to the ragged, silvery shapes of the rats scurrying. I saw them nosing along the cellar floor, finding a fallen grain here, a bit of wax from a cheese wheel there. Then I saw them climb some empty crates and leave the tower.

The dream shocked me awake, and I sat up.

"The rats got into the tower," I said, right to the darkness. "That means the rats can get out."

I lit a candle in the fire and crept down the cellar ladder. Little eyes looked back at me in the dark. One scuttled away, and I followed. It disappeared behind some crates, but I heard the sound of its claws as it climbed. I stepped onto an empty barrel and held my candle up close to the place where the wall and ceiling meet. This is what I saw.

[Image: Picture of a Rat Going Through a Wall crack]

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I gave the area a hearty shove. The wall moaned. I hit it again. I tore a slat of wood from a barrel and wedged out a brick, then attacked it with my fists. I started to feel good striking the wall, and I got a little angry, too. The anger felt like a stinging breath of late autumn air after sitting by a hot fire.

I don't know how long I fought with the bricks, but my hands were bruised and my shoulders ached something powerful. The rats got out of my way. I guess they knew I wasn't fooling around.

Now there was a hole big enough for a girl. For me. Night air whooshed down into the cellar and tasted like grass. I stood there and just breathed. I guess I should admit, I was a little scared to leave.

But eventually I did put my hands through the hole and feel level earth, I did crawl up onto hard ground and fight my way out of some nasty shrubs, and I did stand on real dirt and look up.

I was outside. I was under the stars.

I breathed in as if it were the first time I'd breathed in years. My body felt stripped naked, washed hard in cold water, dried, and dressed again.

I was under the stars, like a fish is under water. Tomorrow we'll leave the tower. If the guards are out there, ready to shoot an arrow at the mucker

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maid escaping, or the knocking men wait to do terrible things, then know, Ancestors, that I did my best. I tried to do my duty.

And save my lady, who once said that her mucker maid was her best friend.

[Image: Picture of a Woman Standing Outside At Night]

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PART 2

The Adventure thereafter

[Image: Two People Walking Towards a Village.]

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Day 1

I decided to start numbering the days at one again to mark the time when we began anew.

I was up all last night. Who can sleep when there's real air to breathe? Who can sleep when there's a sky? Still, I thought it wise to let my lady rest as long as she could, so for hours I kept company with the stars. When I couldn't stand to wait another moment, I clambered back inside, wrote in this book, and then woke her with the news.

She seemed happy. She seemed relieved. But at the hole in the cellar, she waffled. She said she couldn't climb up it, she said her ankle hurt, she said the hole was too small, she said anything to stay inside. After some time of this, I guess I got a bit tetchy and, Ancestors forgive me, I ordered her like I would a sulky sheep, pushing her from behind. I thought all she needed was to feel that glorious night air, but when I scrambled out behind her, I found her clinging to the side of the tower and shaking like a cornered rabbit.

I put my arms around her to make her feel tight and safe. I said, "Breathe the air, my lady! Look at the stars!" But she just shook.

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Thinking it was the darkness of night that haunted her, I waited for the sun to come up. It was nearly dawn. The sky brightened in the east, turning white, yellow, then blue. It was perfect. I hadn't realized that by firelight, nothing in the tower had shown true colors. All we saw for years was black, gray, and orange.

My lady kept her eyes squeezed shut.

"Look, my lady. Open your eyes and see the colors."

It was the wrong moment, for just as she peeked, the first edge of sun rose over the horizon to peek back at her.

My lady screamed and fell to the earth. "The sun burst! We're going to burn up!"

"It's just so bright, I think, because we're used to darkness. We'll grow accustomed to it in time."

But she insisted that she was burning and rolled around, screaming and thrashing at nothing.

I dragged her inside.

We'll try again tomorrow.

Day 3

We've spent the past two days taking little steps out of the tower, shielding our eyes and looking around,

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then crawling back in. My lady tries to be brave, and she bites her lip and cries silently, sure she's on fire, but I tell her it's just the normal sun, that Evela, goddess of sunlight, will protect us. I've sung the song for good courage and the song for clear thought so many times, I feel hoarse and drained, as though the words plucked out my own courage and thoughts and tossed the rest of me aside like grain husks.

There are no guards with strung bows aimed at the escaping maid--at least I think there aren't since I'm still alive, but I can't yet see past my outstretched hand, not with the sun shooting bright arrows into my eyes.

Last night we sat under the moon for a long while, and my lady finally breathed in and sighed and seemed happy to be in the air again. She never once let go of my arm.

I spent this afternoon in the tower washing, making bundles of our blankets to carry spare clothing, and baking barley bread stuck with peas from the barrel scrapings. We'll leave tomorrow. I've packed brushes and ink enough, so I can keep writing of how we fare. I hope there will be much to tell.

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Day 5

Oh, I feel so low, I want to curl up in the dirt and just moan, moan, moan. Everyone's gone. Everything's burned.

We knew from afar that something wasn't right. There should've been people passing us on the road to her father's city. The sun was so piercing I couldn't see much, but all the world felt wrong, as if the road appeared flat but was actually as steep as a mountain, as if we'd died in the tower and were just ghosts wandering a shadow world.

My lady wouldn't look up. I draped a blanket over her head and she stumbled along, her eyes on her feet.

"Would you like to go back to your father?" I asked.

"He won't have me. And even if he would, I won't have him." She gripped my arm as if without me she'd drown dead in the sunlight.

"We can't live out in the open like this," I said, "not for long, not without a gher. We need to --"

"It doesn't matter where we go. Lord Khasar will find me and wed me and then kill me."

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"It won't come to that, my lady. If you won't go home, I'll take you to Song for Evela and reunite you with your khan."

"No! I won't see him."

"But he's your love," I said. "He'll take right care of you."

My lady had stopped walking and stood in the center of the road, hunched and shivering.

"He won't." Her voice went raspy soft and strange as she said, "He wants to kill me with arrows and knives."

Well, those words nearly knocked my feet out from under me. "Khan Tegus wants to kill you? Why would you think that?"

"I heard the whispers."

I nearly laughed as I asked, "Voices whispered to you that Khan Tegus wants to murder you with arrows and knives?"

She looked at me then, her eyes clearing a bit, and said, "No, I didn't hear anything. I just don't want to see Khan Tegus anymore. That's all."

My guess is that she's tower-addled something fierce, her brain awry in her head and her understanding tilted steep. But it's not proper for me to make decisions for her. So what's a mucker maid to do?

We slept the night under a tree, my lady's back

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pressed to the trunk. I lay awake for hours, playing a game, trying to keep my gaze on the black parts of the sky, but my focus couldn't help but slide back to those bright stars. My eyes wanted the light. I breathed in as though I'd drink the sky cold. It was a good night.

Then this morning we approached her honored father's city. I saw a gray smudge that must've been the wall, but there was a dark spot that didn't seem right. As soon as we were close enough to make out details, I gasped right out loud. My lady looked up then and saw it, too.

"There's a hole in the wall," she said. "Someone broke the wall."

We kept approaching but stayed in the shadows of the trees that line the road, though they didn't feel any safer. The city gate was gone. Torn out? Burned?

"I don't understand," she said in her little-girl tone. "If something happened to the gate, shouldn't there be workers to fix it? And there used to be gate guards. Didn't there?"

She started to cry, and we had to stop. I held her head to my shoulder, rocking her, rubbing her back. Poor thing, I don't think she knows where to put the whole world.

We lay down under a tree and I sang a soothing song, one for deep sleep that goes, "Trout in the water,

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deep underwater, swimming so silver." She succumbed to sleep, and I left her in the shade and crept toward the city. Not only was there a hole in the wall, but the entire length was marred with black marks. Arrow shafts stuck between stones.

As I climbed atop the heaping rubble, a striped snake startled beneath my foot. It didn't attack, just swam deeper into the stones. The snake was surely a sign of something, though I'm not sure what. All creatures belong to Titor, god of animals, but the snake is the favorite beast of Under, god of tricks.

[Image: Picture of a Snake Moving On Rocks]

When I'd climbed high enough on the wall, I finally witnessed the whole truth of it. Her honored father's city is no more. It's razed, gutted, gone. No sounds. Even the smoke from the burning has blown away. I could see heaps of stone, charred wood, broken wagons. No people.

Qadan and Mistress. All the folk in my lady's house, her father, sister, brother. That city that teemed with people, all gone. All dead?

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A cat passed me and meowed as though nothing were wrong in the world. My heart tipped up in hope that it was My Lord, but this cat's fur was brown and white. She didn't come when I sang. I guess she'd been a wild cat for too long and no longer craved the company of people.

I've had time to write, as my lady has slept all of the night and most of the day. We have just a day's worth of the flat bread left, so I need to scavenge more food, but if I'm not by my lady's side when she wakes, she screams. I braid her hair as tightly as I can without pulling loose her scalp, making sure every hair crisscrosses another. I sing, sing, sing every song I know and I even make up a few. But my lady's not well. She is not well.

Day 6

Is her khan's land burned down as well? Is everyone gone? Maybe we're the last living souls in the world and we'll drift from tree shade to tree shade, eating grass and speaking with snakes and cats until we're stooped from age and crumble into the dust. Today I keep thinking of all the people who have left and never returned--my brothers, Khan Tegus, our guards, this