Watersmeet (3 page)

Her mother broke into her thoughts. “You heard the other news, Abisina? About Charach?”

The tremor in her mother’s voice startled Abisina.
Is Lilas right? Will the village turn on their healer?
She turned back to Sina, searching her face for reassurance. “What will it mean, Mama?”

Again, Sina’s voice betrayed her: “I don’t know.”

No!
The anger at Lilas’s taunts rose again, claws and teeth bared. “We can’t let them do this, Mama! We have to fight—like Paleth!” Abisina snatched the coltsfoot and flung it into the fire, watching in triumph as it blazed up in a brilliant flame.

But as mother and daughter looked on, the flame dimmed, leaving sprigs of white ash that crumbled and disappeared.

Abisina’s fury crumbled with it.

Sina said nothing, and Abisina mumbled, “I’m sorry, Mama.”

“I felt the same when I was your age,” Sina said.

“Mama?”

Sina looked at her daughter. “There is something that I should have told you earlier. I was afraid. But I should have seen that you’re ready. Vran . . . for all his strength and power . . . was only a man.”

Abisina expected the door to fly open and the Elders to come pounding in. “Mama! You can’t say that!”

“What I’m saying is true, Abisina. The villagers have forgotten. When Vran, the man, died, his legend lived on until he became some sort of god. Yes, he led the people over the Mountains Eternal, and that is miraculous. But miracles—they come from somewhere else, somewhere beyond human power. It wasn’t Vran alone who led the people. And we can be sure of that because, later, he went so wrong. . . .”

Abisina shook her head, the blasphemy ringing in her ears, and with another glance at the door, she whispered, “I don’t understand.”

“I know, dear heart. The story I have to tell begins— well, it begins when Vran first came over the mountains, but I will start in Vranhurst, where I lived before Vranille existed.”

Abisina sank onto a stool by the fire while Sina sat in her chair, the soup forgotten on the table. Sina’s hand went to her throat, to the necklace that she wore hidden inside her tunic. The necklace was made of a white, glowing metal. A pendant hung from the delicate chain—ribbons of metal, thin but strong—each weaving among the others until they merged into a single twisting strand. Abisina knew the necklace was a gift from her father, although Sina had never told her this. On the rare occasions when her mother spoke of him, her hand went to this necklace.

“I know you have wanted to learn more about your father. It never seemed safe. Now that Charach—”

“Charach? I don’t understand.”

Sina began again. “Growing up in Vranhurst, I felt as you do now. We weren’t outcast. My mother was the healer, and my sister and I had the green eyes, so we would be healers, too. But I saw the same wretchedness you see: my mother coming home distraught when she had to surrender a newborn to the Elders for a supposed flaw. She did what she could—covered birthmarks with chalk, stripped color out of darker hair. She couldn’t save them all. Three of her own children had been left outside the village walls.”

“Why?”

“Green eyes,” Sina replied bitterly. “They let me live because people were convinced that the healing gift came with green eyes. They let my younger sister live, so that if something happened to me, she could fill my place. But the Elders said, ‘No more.’ I saw what my mother and father went through with each child—the months of hoping and worrying. They didn’t care if the baby was a girl—as long as it had blue eyes!

“Then the Elders called for volunteers to found a new village, and I knew I would be forced to go. They would need a healer, and my sister was too young. I didn’t know how I could leave my family. But then one night, a man named Filian came to see me. I hardly knew him. But Abisina, he opened a new world!” A smile lit Sina’s face. “He put into words all the wrongness I had been feeling—the wrongness you feel now. Vran was a man, he said, a man who could be as wrong as any other man. Why did we continue to follow his teachings when they brought such suffering? Filian said we are afraid. We have to fight so hard to survive! It makes us feel better to believe that we are following a god’s commands—not a man’s. It gives reason to our misery.”

Abisina broke in: “Even if Vran were just a man—” and then dropped her voice. “How does that change anything?”

“It changes everything, Abisina! You know it’s wrong that babies are abandoned and that Paleth was punished for speaking the truth. All of this is based on Vran’s teachings! If he were wrong, all the rules that govern us are wrong, too.” Sina clasped her hands together. “After talking to Filian, I felt light! The sense of injustice I’d been carrying was gone! He told me about his vision for Vranille. There were others who believed as he did, and all of them had volunteered to go. Vranhurst wasn’t sending any Elders at first—too dangerous—so Filian thought he had a good chance of leading the settlers away from Vran’s law. And once the other villages knew what life could be like, they, too, would follow Filian.”

Sina’s face darkened, and she sank back into her chair.

“Filian was so sure, so powerful in his vision. I would have followed him anywhere. But right from the start there were problems. You’ve heard of those hardships again and again on Founding Day. Filian made little progress in opening others’ eyes. We spent most of the summer clearing the land, building shelters and a fence, planting and combing the forest for anything that might sustain us through the winter. It was then that I met your father.”

Abisina gripped her seat. Had the time come at last? She’d long since given up asking. Mentioning him brought too much pain to her mother’s face. Abisina didn’t even know his name.

“I was off collecting herbs.” Sina paused, and when she spoke again, her voice had a different quality—breathy and wistful. “I can remember the first time I saw him, standing in a ray of light that reached all the way to the forest floor. I know I’ve never really described him to you. He—he was beautiful.” Sina sighed, while Abisina waited anxiously. “You have his coloring. Hair the color of the raven, skin like copper.”

“What?” Abisina leapt to her feet. “He was outcast?”

“Where he comes from, there are no outcasts.”

Abisina tried to take in her mother’s words. “He—he wasn’t Vranian?”

“He came from beyond the northern mountains—the Obrun Mountains, he called them.”

“It’s true? Those stories about creatures from beyond the mountains? But—but—they’re devils!”

“No!” Sina grasped her daughter’s clenched hands. “They’re human, as we are.” She pulled Abisina to her. “We’ve been taught so well,” she said, “taught to hate any creature different from us. And you must understand. I had come here to escape that. To reject Vran and his teachings. Filian said that we needed to work
with
the dwarves, the fauns—even the centaurs.”

“But the centaurs—what they do to us! They’re our enemies!” How many times had she hidden from centaurs in the forest—under an overhang or up a tree? She shuddered at the image of their malevolent faces as they thundered past her hiding spots. Without thinking, she felt for the bow she always wore outside the walls.

“Filian believed we brought their hatred on ourselves. We moved into their land with one thought in mind: build a homeland for Man. We didn’t care that there were creatures already here. But have you ever wondered why we speak the same tongue—centaurs, dwarves, and humans? Filian believed that long ago we all shared this land—that Vran’s ancestors must have come from this side of the Mountains Eternal. And your father said that all of us—all creatures—are united by the same spirit.”

Abisina tried to make sense of what her mother was saying.
I look like my father. His hair is black like mine.
“I—I always imagined him—like Vran.” As she said it, the bands around her chest tightened more.

“Oh, Abisina!” Sina hugged her again. Her mother’s necklace pressed into Abisina’s chest, and suddenly her father was there, too—this new father from beyond the mountains.

“You’ve always told me I have gifts, Mama. And I’ve tried to believe you. But it gets harder and harder. All my life I’ve heard them say I’m a demon sent as a punishment to Vranille.” Abisina’s voice broke.

“It was Elder Theckis who told the village that.” Sina released Abisina. “He was both your savior and your tormentor. This is part of the story, too. Theckis saved your life.”

Abisina moved back to her stool, braced for Sina’s next words.

“When you were born at the beginning of the second summer, we were just getting back on our feet from fever, the centaur raid, and the starvation of winter. Much of the settlement had been wiped out. Filian was dead. . . . Two men had left for Vranhurst to bring an Elder and more people. Once the Elder arrived, I knew you would be left outside the wall. You were only a few days old, but you already had a head of hair as black as your father’s and skin that I knew would darken. I brought you to Theckis and showed him.

“Though he is an Elder now, Theckis had been a follower of Filian, his right hand. But like so many, Theckis believed that our settlement had been cursed for straying from Vran’s laws. Or that’s what he said. As our dreams fell to tatters, he may simply have decided to save himself by professing the beliefs of those now in power. He turned to the way of Vran.

“I threatened to expose his support for Filian if he didn’t save you. I had saved him from the fever, and he owed me his life! So when the Elder from Vranhurst arrived, Theckis told him that some had strayed, and the raid and the fever were Vran’s punishment. He had decided to let you live as a reminder of Vran’s curse on us for our weak loyalty. The Elder believed him. You were saved—but outcast.”

Sina stopped speaking as Abisina absorbed her words. She had been saved by Theckis when hundreds of other babies had died. The women had always been particularly cruel. Abisina had been spared when their own children had perished, their cries getting weaker and weaker from the other side of the wall.

But is life as an outcast really better than the release of death? Especially death as an infant?
In the rituals, in the ceremonies, in the talk along the lanes and in the storehouse lines, Abisina had learned that the world was divided between the Children of Vran and the creatures who hated Vran. Centaurs, dwarves, the devils beyond the mountains—they were man’s enemies: unnatural and evil. Like her.
I might have been better off with those other babies. . . .

No! I did not deserve to die, any more than they did. I’m not a demon! Didn’t Mama say that my father, who is dark like me, is beautiful? That beyond the mountains I would not be outcast?

A new thought came to her. “Why—why did my father leave us?”

The fire, sunk now to a bed of coals, cast shadows on Sina’s wasted face. Her words were dragged from deep inside her: “I made him. I was sure that Filian would accept your father as I did. But when I told him about your father, Filian flew into a rage. He said I was putting all that we had worked for at risk. That the people would turn against us, and drive us from Vranille. He forbade me to meet your father again. But I had to say good-bye. So one night, I slipped out. Your father was waiting for me at the edge of the trees. He knew. Without my saying a word.

“ ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘You will be welcome in my home.’ But we both knew I wouldn’t go.”

“He asked you to go with him? To leave Vranille?”

Sina nodded, eyes on her daughter’s anguished face.

“And you said no?”

“I couldn’t leave, Abisina! I still believed in Filian’s vision. And I couldn’t leave the people here without a healer.”

“We could have lived where I would not be outcast! I could have been accepted! I might have had
friends
!”

“I did what I thought was best, Abisina! You must believe—”

“You don’t know what it’s like for me here, Mama. You say you’re like an outcast—but people
talk
to you! Touch you! You can go into their houses and walk the streets without wondering when you will be hit or kicked or spit on!” She was yelling now, not caring who heard her. Let the Elders come! So what if it was the Eve of Penance! What more could they do to her? There was the door right in front of her, and every instinct in Abisina wanted to fly out of it. To run into the night and away to this place beyond the mountains that offered her a future.

“Abisina!” her mother pleaded. “When I told him to go—I didn’t know about you. I realized a few days after he left—when it was too late. For a while I hoped he would come for me. But he had been so angry. He swore he never would.” She stopped and her next words were barely audible. “And he didn’t.”

Silence stretched between them until Abisina could hear the wail of the wind beneath the fire’s hiss.

Sina spoke again, her voice flat: “When Filian guessed my secret, he threatened to send me back to Vranhurst. But then the centaurs struck and he, along with so many others, died in the raid. We had unknowingly built Vranille on their sacred winter grounds and when the herd returned—well, you know the story. Filian had hoped to make peace with the centaurs”—she laughed bitterly—“and then he helped build a settlement on one of their most sacred places.”

Abisina stared into the coals, her rage cooling in the face of her mother’s sadness.
It has been hard for her, too—this life in Vranille.