The Luck of Brin's Five (11 page)

I was afraid, uncertain of what to do. What I saw was like a dream and I was in the dream and out of it at the same time. If I shouted a warning, would the cry hang in air and never reach Diver and Roy? Would the watcher be alarmed, angry.

The voice in my head asked: “What would you do on the mountain, child?” and I answered; I spoke the answer in a low voice.

“I would high-call to Roy. . . .” And I knew the strangest thing of all:
I was not alone on the rock
. There was one who stood at my back, shedding a mild radiance, a feeling of warmth all round me. I was linked in thought, guided, as Beeth Ulgan had guided Mooneen, the poor twirler.

I rose to my feet and high-called with all my skill to Harper Roy. The trick is to produce a smooth flow of notes, between singing and calling; I knew it was done right when the back of my throat tickled. The high-call flew out, straight to Roy's ears, like the call of a morning bird. I called, “Danger . . . danger . . . danger,” and then, “Tree . . . tree . . . tree.”

I saw Harper Roy spring back and lift his head, then give the returning call, “Heard . . . heard . . . heard.”

A figure leaped up from the bushes, and Diver gave a shout. He ran forward a few paces, and I was afraid he might use the stun-gun. But the watcher was very quick, racing away now, bent double among the scrub.

“Have no fear, child; the creature is not worth your Luck's weapon.”

I sank down again and, still deep in the dream, I turned my head. The fire of Esto was in my eyes. A tall figure in black and green, not ten paces away, on the uneven summit of the rock.

“Who?” A bordered robe, long hands, but not the restless bird hands of a grandee. A glint of metal, dull gold, green gold, in one hand, and I knew. I thought the words: “Maker of Engines . . .”

A low chuckling laugh. I put up my hand to screen out Esto's light. The words were spoken this time: “Guard your Luck, Dorn Brinroyan!”

There was a first light gust of wind, stirring the vines, and I was alone.

I climbed down from the rock and ran without looking back through the trees and across the open spaces. I was out of breath when I came up to Roy and Diver.

“Now what's this?” said Roy sharply. “Why are you out after us, watching from the rock, high-calling?”

“The watcher . . .” I gasped, pointing towards the place.

“You did warn us, I suppose.”

“But what was it?” I begged. “What sort of a person?”

Diver shook his head. “Tall, wild. A male. I have a feeling I've seen that creature before.”

“Some outcast,” said the Harper, “some wretched berry-picker scavenging for a poor broken Five.”

“Well, what do you think of her?” asked Diver proudly.

He meant the glider. It sat on the grass, free of its coverings, like a fallen insect, a poor flitterling indeed. I had never examined one so closely before, although I knew they were made mostly of bentwood, covered with oiled fabric. This one was large—fifteen paces long and the wings a good twenty paces if one had not been broken. Yet it seemed a frail thing to sit in, above ground. When I looked more closely still, I saw that the bentwood was very finely worked; two lengths came from the tail in a swooping curve and arched over the pilot's chair. The wing, scalloped along its backward edge, fitted through this arch and was ribbed with short lengths of tough silken cord, most still unbroken. The fabric was a silk-weave, fine flax of a pale, clear yellow, mottled and torn in places, or stained with berry juice and bird droppings. The whole contrivance rested lightly on bentwood runners.

“It is beautiful,” I said at last. “But can you make it fly again?”

Diver laughed. “Better than before!”

Then he and Roy began to examine the craft again, walking around it, flexing the broken wing, getting down on their haunches to peer between the curves of bentwood. I was impatient with them and still afraid. There were times when grown-ups had no sense and not enough fear. I sat on the fallen tree, staring through the bushes to the river reeds, the path where the watcher had come and gone. Had he used a boat? I carried the memory of that other watcher, the presence on the rock; the certainty of the experience was not fading but sinking deeper into my mind. If I did not speak soon, I knew I would never tell them, I might never tell anyone.

I had never in my life kept an important thing from my Family. I had scarcely covered up the least mischief, had not bothered to lie about trifles: snatched graynuts, dropped stitches, time spent tree climbing instead of gathering food or dye-herbs. Should I turn away from them now and not try to explain that the Maker of Engines was protecting our Luck?

Diver and the Harper had hitched ropes to the head of the glider; we cleared the runners and swung it round. Roy called me, and I ran to lift the broken wing off the grass; the glider swung easily in a half-circle.

“Back to the fixed house glebe?” asked Diver.

“We could work on it here more secretly,” suggested Roy.

“No!” I cried. “No, by the fire that burned the world! There is danger . . . the watcher . . . the outcast!”

They smiled but not scornfully. Suddenly Harper Roy gave a click with his tongue and strode towards the watcher's low tree. I stiffened, wondering if the creature had returned.

“Easy now. I had a flash that we do know that watcher,” he said, tugging his chin-lock.

“Yes . . . but from where?” asked Diver.

The Harper made the sign that means “Discovery!” “The twirler! The Leader . . . what was his name?”

“Yes!” said Diver. “The twirler . . . I never got his name!”

“Petsalee, Host of Spirits!” I cried. I thought again of Mooneen, the poor crazed wretch that Beeth Ulgan had enchanted.

“Poor devil. At least he escaped Tiath Gargan,” said Diver. But now the Harper was thoroughly alarmed, and I understood why. We tried to make Diver understand.

“He was a spirit-warrior, an outcast, that's true . . .” said the Harper, “but he was also the Leader. Maybe he had a little substance, a bag of offerings, or a gift of fortune telling. And we know he fell into the hands of the Pentroy!”

“You mean he was hanged? That was his spirit?” teased Diver.

“No! But did he
buy a life?
” said Harper Roy.

It was an alternative to death, shameful, so it was said, but possible. A condemned person was sometimes permitted to buy into vassalage . . . become a lesser servant, like the clan slaves in ancient times. Diver understood.

“So Petsalee might be Tiath Pentroy's vassal?”

“His spy! His telling-bird!” I whispered.

Diver took it more seriously. He and Roy picked up the ropes, and we went back through the morning fields. We took a wide detour around the fold and the rock, then pushed and dragged and slithered the glider right under the spreading trees of the house glebe. We went straight indoors and told of our adventures.

Brin and Mamor joined with Roy to convince Diver of the risk. Petsalee was deeply suspect and a real threat to our security. He was one of the few who could weave the threads between Beeth Ulgan and our Luck. Mamor was all for scouring the riverbank and capturing the wretched “spirit-warrior,” but we restrained him. Old Gwin still held firmly to the old threads; she could not believe that such a holy person could “buy a life” or turn traitor.

We settled down late in the day to our ordinary routine, if life in a fixed house could ever be ordinary, of weaving, cooking, playing, sleeping. Diver began searching up and down for wood and fabric to mend the glider. I was so quiet and worked so well at the mat-loom that Gwin felt my chest to see if I had a fever. I was still clacking away in midafternoon while Gwin dozed and Roy turned aside into another room to change a harp string. Narneen had run off to watch Diver and Mamor working on the glider. I saw Brin leave off her beautiful hanging on the great loom and climb the stairs to the room of evening. I went after her, and we knelt together by the bundles of new work and bedding.

“What ails you, Dorn Brinroyan?”

“Will you believe I speak the truth?”

The story was a burden to me; it had become false, as if it had happened to another person. There sat Brin, round, soft and tall, in the golden tan vented robe; in the warm light of afternoon I saw her too in the special way I had seen Tiath Gargan on the black barge. I saw her forever: Brin, my pouch-mother. We were not quite alone together, for by this time the hidden child was nickering and stirring in its place. She heard me out and looked me in the face.

“I believe you, child.” She went on with her sorting for a few moments then asked, “Do you think this is the power of your thought? Are you marked for a Witness, like young Gordo?”

I shook my head, a bit regretfully. “No, it is all outside myself. Or maybe it is the power we all have as children. The Maker of Engines works this will. It could have been performed on any one of us . . . except Diver maybe.”

Brin sighed. “Gwin waits for a Witness to be born of the Five. She points to Narneen.”

I felt a shock of envy, but I remembered certain things. “Narneen could be a Witness. She feels things before any of us.”

“Well, we won't put ideas in her head.”

We smiled at each other, and the burden was lifted; I felt comfortable again. I saw for the first time what it was that Brin had been sorting from our bundles. It was the beautiful showing cloth, five yards square, embroidered with birds and flowers.

“Yes,” said Brin, “it is time. Your sib is too heavy for me.”

I was filled with such excitement that I broke the silence of the golden afternoon; I rushed from room to room telling everyone.

The child had his showing that evening after supper. We asked Diver to find a name. He sat at the edge of the showing cloth, watching our new sib flex its limbs and make baby sounds. He admitted that children of his race were different: fatter, he said, and not so wide awake. He uttered many strange names, searching for one that went as well in one tongue as another. Roy is such a name. He spoke a name To-mas; Gwin and Brin smiled.

“Tomar,” chuckled Old Gwin. “Tomar . . .”

It is a good name because it has two meanings: “great courage” or “great mischief.” So there it was—the new one became Tomar, and Brin wove in his name on her skeins. He was measured, exercised, wrapped and put into Narneen's old swing-basket, with the green silk ropes at his hands and feet, so that he could pull up and stretch as babies do.

“When will he walk?” asked Diver.

“No hurry,” said Brin, “ten days or twenty. He may take his time.”

“When do your children walk?” asked Mamor.

“A newborn child cannot walk,” said Diver.

“Not newborn,” said Gwin, laughing. “New shown! Hark at the Islander.”

“That's the difference,” said Diver.

Now the year was far advanced to the spring; and by the time the two suns spent together in the sky, we knew it would soon be New Year's Day. I do not know how the next plan was made . . . it seems reckless now. Probably it came from Diver and Mamor, smoothing their pieces of curved wood and drawing in the dust. There is at Otolor Spring Fair a flying contest called Vantroy or the Bird Clan. There is a great prize of silver credits and woven stuff. Brin and Roy, who had gone to the fair as children, had often told us of the strange craft entering, the admiration and laughter, the winners . . . One they recalled was a sprig of Dohtroy who stood on the seat of her golden glider and flung pearl-shells to the crowd. Perhaps it was this glorious memory that persuaded Brin to agree that Diver should enter and try his luck. Perhaps she agreed to please Mamor and Diver, thinking, as I did secretly, that the poor glider would never fly.

Diver was not troubled by any such doubts. He was out all day by the machine, bending, patching, smoothing, or carving with Roy's knife or his own sharper one, on those curious spin-toys of curved wood. He had me cry out every time a flitterling went by, and we examined its design through his glass. I became familiar with the designs and would cry out, “Green slot-wing” or “Antho broadtail” or “Pedal fan.” The pedal fan models pleased him most, though his glider would be truly “an engine,” and he could not believe that this was quite fair. We assured him that it was. In fact the Bird Clan was the very place where “engines” came into their own. The prohibition against “fire-metal-magic” did not work against the young clanspeople who supported the contest. There were machines that flapped, flopped, buzzed, clanked, and gave off sparks and clouds of steam. One promising craft that Roy remembered had a sort of metal pot-stove aboard and flew very well until it exploded in midair. Blacklock's entries were notorious for their magic and their complexity.

I used to sit in the grass beside our glider and shiver with excitement. We were going to Otolor, to the fair, to race in the Bird Clan, and I should see Blacklock at last. Tomar was brought out, for Gwin insisted that a weaver's child must roll in the sun to get rid of its first-fur. He was an exceptional child, I decided; anyone could see that from the way he tugged his swing ropes and smiled and tried to eat grass and hauled himself up onto his little, gripping tree-bear feet. Diver saw it at once and made his silkbeam pictures of the baby, which he could do, now there was plenty of sunshine.

Fifteen days from the showing, Diver had his spin-toys in position on the nose and on the wings of the glider; he set them in motion with the engines from his vest, which had worked his magic equipment. The only things he did not take to pieces were his shaver and his stun-gun. He was pleased with the result; the spin-toys buzzed and spun so fast they were invisible. At this sight Tomar cried out and took four steps. Diver had been busy with his paints from the Ulgan's barge, and there on the glider's side was its new name
TOMARVAN
. We were delighted, because it meant so many things: Tomar's bird, his wing, his flying machine. Or perhaps it stood for the bird of great courage, the flying machine full of mischief.