Watersmeet (2 page)

But that look was—intelligent.
Abisina shook her head as she watched Elder Theckis disappear into the storehouse with Jorno on his heels.

“Get out of here, Outcast!” The Elder kicked him roughly.

“Out of here, Outcast!” Jorno echoed, his smile never flickering as he fell onto the dirt, then scrambled to his feet and stood at the door.

Elder Theckis emerged with a small wedge of cheese, and the crowd murmured in disappointment. Though she stood at the back of the line, Abisina could see green mold splayed across it. But the widows—rejected even by women because they had no men to hunt or farm for them—would accept whatever the Elders gave them. No one moved.

With a piece that small, I’ll get nothing
, Abisina thought, but she, too, stood her ground.

The Elder lifted the knife to cut the first piece—

“Theckis!” a raspy voice called. “Theckis!” Another man wearing a red sash and iron pendant hurried toward them, his gray beard blowing back in the wind. “It’s true!” he cried. “The rumors are true! He’ll be here for the Ritual!” Theckis stared at his fellow Elder while the villagers stirred. “He’s coming, I tell you!” the bearded Elder insisted. “Charach is coming to Vranille!”

At his words, fear gripped Abisina. But the widows greeted the news with passionate cries:

“Blessings from Vran!”

“We’re saved!”

“Our deliverer!”

Some knelt in the dirt, while others wept openly. A few laughed, the cold wind carrying the harsh sound from their lips.

Abisina hadn’t noticed Jorno slip from the front of the line, but suddenly he was coming toward her, staring blankly as he bumped her with his shoulder.

“Get home!” a voice whispered in her ear as he rushed past, moving toward the village with his uneven gait.

Had Jorno spoken to her? Abisina looked to see if anyone heard, but the noise of the crowd had changed from joy to dismay as Theckis closed the storehouse door on the hope of food. The second Elder waited impatiently.

“We need our cheese!” someone cried.

Abisina raised her head.
Who would dare to speak so defiantly?

A girl of about sixteen winters stood before Elder Theckis at the steps of the storehouse. Her chin was up, and she stared into the Elder’s face.

Paleth.
Abisina groaned inside.

When Abisina had five winters, her mother had been called to remove a centaur’s arrow from the shoulder of Paleth’s father. Unable to enter their hut as an outcast, Abisina settled in the dust outside to wait. After a time, she felt someone near her—standing still, waiting. She braced herself for the kick or blow that was sure to come. But whoever it was didn’t move. Unable to stand the waiting, Abisina peeked toward her tormentor.

A girl stood there, smiling. Their eyes met. The girl held out her hand in offering, but Abisina could not make herself move. The girl had just taken a step toward Abisina when a sharp voice from inside the hut called: “Paleth!”

With a quick look over her shoulder, Paleth snatched Abisina’s hand, put something in it, and fled back into her hut. Abisina sat stunned. A child, someone her age, had smiled at her,
touched
her. Then she remembered that the girl had given her something. She opened her palm to find a shiny white pebble winking up at her—the pebble that Abisina now carried in a scrap-pocket sewn in her waistband.

This same defiant Paleth now confronted Elder Theckis.

He finally found his voice. “What did you say?”

“We need our cheese,” Paleth repeated.

“Elder Theckis!” the girl’s mother cried, shocked at her daughter’s boldness. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying! She’s had the fever!”

The ravages of fever were plain on Paleth’s drawn face, but her eyes were clear and steady. “We’ve had nothing but moldy potatoes and rancid flour for weeks,” she said, ignoring her mother. “My father died protecting this village. We deserve to be fed!”

The Elder’s rage sputtered forth. “You—you will not speak to me like this!” he screamed. “Take the girl away!” A few women rushed to take Paleth’s arms, but her mother threw herself at the Elder’s feet.

“She doesn’t know what she’s doing! Take pity on her, in Vran’s name!”

“How dare you, a woman, invoke Vran’s name to
me
! Get out of my sight or you will suffer the same punishment,” Theckis commanded, and another woman hurried to lead the mother back toward the village.

Paleth struggled as she was carried off, repeating, “We need to eat! We need to eat!”

Abisina tried to block out Paleth’s fading shrieks and her mother’s sobs. Around her the crowd was breaking up, the talk returning to Charach. The echoes of that name intensified Abisina’s dread. Jorno’s whispered words came back to her:
Get home.

Keeping her head down, she sought a way through the crowd, but every step was blocked by another clutch of women with the name Charach on their lips. Abisina dodged one group and then another. She broke free of the crowd and began to run, wanting only to put distance between herself and that name.

“Run, demon, run!” someone yelled after her, followed by a loud laugh.

Without looking back, Abisina ran through the dusty alleys of the village, dashing among the earthen huts that squatted under the merciless sun, cutting across little patches of garden now barren. She avoided the larger lanes that ran around the village in seven concentric circles and the six central roads that divided it like spokes of a wheel, each running from the outer wall to the common ground at the center. These roads and lanes would be especially busy today, clogged with villagers making preparation for tomorrow’s Ritual.

Her hut stood on the outer ring, closest to the log wall. All the outcasts and the widows lived on this outer ring. In exchange for the small amount of food and protection they were given, these expendable villagers made the dangerous journey over the wall and into the surrounding forest to collect firewood. Although the location of her hut was supposed to be a symbol of her shame, Abisina liked being away from the activity of the village. She knew her mother could live closer to the center if it were not for her, but Sina always said that she preferred to be near the forest where she gathered the plants and roots she needed for her work. Of course, when Sina went into the forest, the village sent an armed guard to protect their only healer.

Abisina reached her hut and ducked inside. It was quiet and dusky; her mother was out tending to the sick. She sank down on the stool before the fire, where a few embers glowed from the morning’s blaze. Paleth’s shrieks still echoed in her ears.

As she had raced through the village, she’d noticed a change among the people, a churning of anticipation and hope unheard of on the eve of the Day of Penance. As the Elders were always reminding the villagers, they did not deserve to call themselves Children of Vran. He had brought their forefathers to this new land to be masters of it, but, generations later, they were still huddled behind the walls, living in squalid villages, barely eking out a living, and battling the beasts they should have dominated. Tomorrow, the Elders would grind penance out of them with grueling rituals and fasting.

But today, the people of Vranille had cast off the habit of submission. Clusters of women stood together talking in excited voices. Children played games of Kill-the-Dwarf, and no mother hurried to shush them. Men and guards, returning from prying the last of the blackened potatoes from the frozen ground, stood with their spades and bows over their shoulders, debating how Charach would lead them against the centaurs. The news of Charach had spread—and the villagers felt invincible.

Then Abisina heard Lilas again: Charach’s coming to get rid of you and your freakish mother!

She shuddered. Would the village really turn on her mother? They needed her healing! And Sina was not truly outcast, not like Abisina with her black hair, copper skin, and unknown father. True, Abisina was not marked or deformed or deficient in her mind like some outcasts. And she had learned much of her mother’s skill. In fact, her mother had said many times that Abisina had the gift of healing, perhaps greater than her own.

Abisina had once believed that the villagers would accept her when they knew how well she could heal. But now she knew better.
Stop your daydreaming
, she chided.
You are so far from Vran’s Paragon of Beauty! You have the healer’s green eyes and the gift, but what Vranian would allow you to lay your “dwarf-dirty” hands on him—even with death approaching?

And now that Charach was coming, wouldn’t it only get worse? Deliverer, they called him. Savior. Heir to Vran. Ever since rumors of Charach’s arrival had filtered in from the other villages, the insults and violence Abisina lived with had taken on a sharper edge. When villagers spoke of defeating the evil in the land, Abisina caught their sidelong glances at her and the other outcasts.

She had always assumed that her mother’s role in the village would shield her, but sitting now before the dying embers, Abisina began to wonder.

You didn’t get left outside the walls. That was Mama’s doing.
Sina had delivered babies, set broken legs, brought down fevers—there was no family in Vranille untouched by her skill. They needed her and had let her keep her daughter. Could Charach, as a priest of Vran—some said a new
incarnation
of Vran!—could he change that?

“Stop shivering like an old woman!” Abisina burst out, standing up so quickly the stool fell over. The hut was dark and cold. Her mother would be home soon and would need supper. She grabbed a stick and began to stir the coals.

As the small hut warmed, the bunches of dried plants hanging from the roof released their individual perfumes: yarrow, lavender, feverfew, chamomile, elfwort, clover, and flax. Abisina breathed deeply, inhaling the smells that always clung to her mother’s skin. The scents brought reassurance as surely as Sina’s presence would.
My mother will know what to do.

Abisina had brought in a few sticks of the precious firewood from the dwindling stack outside the cottage, shaken the sheepskins and animal pelts on the sleeping platforms, swept the dirt floor, and swung the cooking pot over the now crackling fire to warm the soup left from the morning meal. She was crushing some dried yarrow and chamomile into her mother’s mug for tea when something on the table caught her attention: a few dried plants with faded yellow flowers, tied with a leather thong. Coltsfoot. Used to cure coughs, bring down fevers, and lessen swelling. It was her mother’s gift for the Ritual of Penance.

The anger and fear of the afternoon seized Abisina again. Tomorrow, her mother would make this required gift to honor Vran—when it was Vran who caused all this misery; whose teachings made the widows beg for food rejected by the rest of the village; whose name would be invoked as Paleth was punished; whose model of perfection rendered Abisina ugly and outcast. Abisina snatched up the coltsfoot, ready to throw it in the fire, when a gust of cold air announced her mother’s return.

Sina smiled wanly at her daughter from the open doorway and headed to the fire, as Abisina hastily put the coltsfoot back on the table.

“If the Ritual day is as cold as this, I’ll have to treat the whole village.” Abisina’s mother was tall and thin, though the three-year famine had made her skeletal. Even her penetrating green eyes were dulled. Without looking at her daughter, she said, “You heard about Paleth?”

“I was there.”

Sina remained silent while Abisina laid out the bowls for the watery soup. Finally Sina spoke: “They beat her. She has at least four broken ribs.”

Abisina gripped the handle of the kettle tightly as she poured boiling water over the herbs in her mother’s cup. “She was already weak from the fever,” she said.

As Abisina gave her the tea, Sina reached out and touched her daughter’s hand. “There’s more. Theckis insisted she be outcast.”

Abisina turned away to hide the mix of emotions on her face.
If Paleth is outcast, I can speak to her!

Abisina hated herself for the thought. How could she wish her life on anyone? Walking through the village with head down as children threw insults or rocks. Kicks from people like Lilas and others slightly better off than the outcasts, who flaunted their status by their cruelty.

Perhaps worst of all was the loneliness. Of all the outcasts, only Abisina had been born into her status. Flawed babies were simply left outside the walls to die, the village unwilling to feed and clothe them until they were useful as wood gatherers. The others were outcast as older children or adults, when hidden flaws were discovered: ominous birthmarks, missing digits, simplemindedness, excessive timidity or softness—any trait that moved them further from Vran’s Paragon of beauty, intelligence, strength, and bravery. Even among the outcasts, Abisina was outcast; most of them had spent years despising her before their own defects were discovered, and they continued to shun her when they found themselves of her caste. In fact, the only happiness Abisina knew outside her own hut was in the forest. The freedom she found there was worth her constant fear of centaurs. And in the forest, she had her bow. Even outcasts were permitted to carry a bow beyond the village walls, and she spent hours practicing her shot, until she could hit a fist-sized target at seventy paces in a stiff wind.
If Paleth were outcast
, Abisina couldn’t help thinking,
we could go to the forest together! I’d teach her to shoot, climb trees, read—