Faery Worlds - Six Complete Novels (12 page)

Jensi nodded vaguely at Gwenika, but looked thrilled to meet Gwena.

“Everyone in your clan thinks very highly of you,” Jensi told her. “They say you are the best dancer since someone called the Corn Maiden, and you’ll be invited to join the Tavaedi for sure.”

“It’s too soon to say,” said Gwena, although she looked pleased.

Her younger sister Gwenika chewed her lip and looked away.

“Who is the Corn Maiden?” asked Dindi. A shiver had coursed through her as soon as she heard the name.

“You’ve never heard of the Corn Maiden?” Gwena asked. “But she’s famous in the Rainbow Labyrinth too!”

Jensi and Kemla exchanged a baffled look. “No.”

“Maybe your people know her by a different name. She was the best dancer that has ever lived.” Gwena blushed. “I’m not saying I really dance like her. People just say that.”

The Corn Maiden. Dindi’s heart thumped. Should she say anything about the doll, the Vision? Gwena, in particular, might know more about the Corn Maiden, and be able to tell Dindi if the corncob doll actually had some importance.

Then again, she might make a fool of herself.

She wished there were some way she could invoke Visions from the doll again, to learn more, before she started telling other people about it. That way she could be sure they wouldn’t just laugh at her—or worse, call her a liar.

Dindi

The days of walking blended together, not unpleasantly. Now that they traveled with Yellow Bear tribesfolk, it was easier to barter with clanholds along the trail, so they ate better and hunted less. The pace was swift but not grueling, and it must have been safe from marauders, as the Tavaedies let the Initiates hike at their own pace. For long stretches, Dindi and Gwenika walked alone together, mostly out of sight of the others.

It was on one of these stretches that Gwenika asked, “Do you ever think about becoming a Tavaedi?”

All the time.
She answered, “Maybe. What about you?”

“Maybe.” Gwenika chewed her lower lip. “Do you know what
tama
you’ll do?”

Dindi looked at her in surprise.

Gwenika lowered her voice, even though no one was close enough to hear them. “I know it’s a secret. And I know you said no one in your clan was a Tavaedi. But I thought you might have said that to… fa, you know. Hide. So no one would steal your
tama
. Mama says only the Initiates who perform the best tamas will make it. My sister knows enough steps to handle a difficult one, but it’s easy for her. Mama says even if I get an easy one, I’ll likely still flub it. But it’s not my fault! Whenever I try to dance, I get sick, because of the hex on me.”

“I don’t know what
tama
I will do,” Dindi said. Her heart thumped so hard it hurt. This must be what her grandmother meant, that if only she had known the
tama
of the Unfinished Song, she would have passed the test.

“I’m just being realistic. It doesn’t matter. I’m happy for my sister. She’s the important one. I don’t matter.” Gwenika’s whole body shuddered when she coughed. “How can I when I’m so sick with Incurable Coughing Foot Pox?”

Dindi had never heard of Incurable Coughing Foot Pox.

“I’ll be dead by morning,” moaned Gwenika. She examined her foot. It was a perfectly ordinary foot, complete with five healthy, pink toes, except for a single blister on her sole. “Look, the characteristic death poxes have appeared already!”

“Try to survive the day, at least,” advised Dindi.

“I’m sure my sister Gwena will do well in the Testing, but I probably won’t be able to participate,” Gwenika said, teary-eyed. “But really, what does it matter if I go through the Initiation? I’m likely to die before we reach the tribehold anyway.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“You don’t believe I’m really sick, do you?” Her faced purpled and she began to cry. “You’re just like all the rest! But I am, I really, really am—oh, Mercy—”

Gwenika gasped. Her face had turned ashen. Dindi followed her gaze and saw several diminutive but ugly Yellow fae riding upon squirrels, creeping toward her.

“They’re coming for me,” Gwenika whispered. “The yeech. Those are the fae who bring me the sicknesses. You can’t see them, can you?” Gwenika asked, already resigned to a negative. “No one can, except for…”

“Who?”

“Gwena.” She said her sister’s name with an odd catch in her voice.

The yeech were following a faint, luminous trail, like a ribbon of pale yellow light, that led to Gwenika. One of them darted forward and pricked Gwenika with a tiny spear. She bent over coughing so hard she vomited on the dirt trail.

“I believe you, Gwenika,” Dindi said. For the first time, she did. “Let’s get away from here. Maybe we can outrun them!”

They took off running down the trail until they were both panting. Up ahead, Gwena and Kemla were walking together, and heard them coming.

Gwena turned around and smiled innocently at her sister. “How are you feeling, Gwenika? Sick again? Poor baby!”

She and Kemla burst into snickering laughter. Dindi’s skin crawled at the sound.

Gwenika stopped and stood still until the older girls disappeared from view.

“No one believes me about the yeech,” said Gwenika hoarsely. “No one believes I’ve been hexed. So who would believe me if I told them I knew who did it—or that it was my own sister?”

Dindi put her arm around her shoulder. “I believe you. I don’t know what I can do to help. But somehow, we have to find a way to stop her.”

Kavio

The woman led Kavio to an isolated dome-shaped hut in a clearing in the woods. He did not dare leave his canoe unattended, so strapped it onto his already heavy rucksack.

Her home was not far from the river. Someone had erected sticks and slim tree trunks in a fence around the clearing, but it was a shoddy defense at best. Inside the fence, a shallow ditch formed a circle around the hut, but it was not deep enough to constitute an obstacle.

She invited him to sit, but though he removed his rucksack and his canoe, and stretched the pains from his back, he remained standing.

“Have you no clan?” he asked.

“I do,” she said. “I am Ruga, daughter of the Lark Creek Clan. But they won’t let my son in the clanhold, and I won’t leave him alone. So we live here, we two. My sister and her husband help me, though they won’t spend the night here. I’m no beggar. If you heal my son, I can give you your price.”

“What sickness hexes him?” asked Kavio.

Ruga fidgeted with her rope necklaces.

“I’ll let you judge,” she said, then cupped her hands over her mouth, calling, “Gremo! Hey ho, Gremo!”

Kavio expected to see a small child, but a full-grown man shambled into view, from round the backside of the hut, walking in the ditch. He was skinny enough his ribs showed, but otherwise seemed healthy, and obviously strong, for behind him he dragged a boulder almost waist tall. It was the immense stone, Kavio saw, which slowed Gremo’s pace to a crawl. Hundreds of ropes had been wrapped around the boulder, and thrown around Gremo’s body, so it looked as if a nest of mad spiders had spun a web to glue him to the rock.

Gremo would not meet his eyes, or acknowledge his greeting. Instead, the man muttered to himself and shambled forward, ropes streaming behind him, dragging the great stone across the yard, following the curve of the ditch. The stone would never fit through the door of the hut, but Gremo did not remove the ropes, or make any attempt to enter. He kept going round the yard, in the same rut, which indeed, he must have created.

“The ropes are knotted too tightly to remove,” said Ruga. “That is his curse.”

Kavio walked closer, and Gremo flinched away, ashamed. He kept slogging forward, the rock grinding behind him. Kavio sliced at the ropes with his obsidian blade, but the stone edge only dulled against the cords without cutting them.

Ruga was right. The ropes glowed in his Vision with many Chromas, Blue and Yellow especially, entwined like a nest of snake. The bindings between Gremo and the rock were magical as much as physical. The magic web would have to be destroyed before any blade could hew the ropes.

Gremo cringed and whimpered during the inspection in a way that made Kavio want to slap him and tell him to stand like a warrior.
I am not my father,
Kavio reminded himself,
and I should pity weakness, not punish it.

“Don’t be afraid.” Kavio hoped he kept annoyance from his voice, but Gremo cowered under his arm. Exasperated, Kavio walked to the far side of the yard and sat against a log in the fence.

“What are you doing?” demanded Ruga. “Why aren’t you dancing? Do you wish me to hide my face?”

“I need to look at the knots,” Kavio said. “Then I will tell you if I can untie it.”

“You promised me you would heal my son!” Her voice rose to a screech.

“I promised nothing. Please, auntie. I’ll tell you when I’m ready.”

Grumbling, she went behind the house, and he heard the sound of a mortar on pestle. He let the rhythmic thud-thud-thud fade into the background. Dimly, he was aware of the wind in the trees, the smell of bread when Ruga began baking, the purpling sky as day shifted to evening. But he never removed his gaze from Gremo, the ropes, and the rock. Gremo made several rounds about the house while Kavio watched. Ruga brought a piece of flat corn bread and set it beside him on a leaf, but he ignored it.

In his mind, he reworked the knots seven upon seven times and then seven upon seven more, but try as he might, he could not make the pattern unfold. The bread, now stiff, tasted flavorless and gritty with sand. He ate the whole thing. His stomach growled afterward, less satisfied with the small offering than complete neglect.

At sunset, a man armed with a spear and painted for war entered the compound.

“You! Outtriber!” He jabbed the spear toward Kavio. “My wife’s sister told me a stranger was here.”

Ruga hurried from behind the hut. “Lambo, I asked him here. He’s a healer who can cure Gremo.”

“Is he, now? Doesn’t look to me like he’s done any healing, only lounging around on his arse, guzzling your food and beer.”

Beer? There was beer?

Lambo stomped over to stand chest to chest with Kavio. “You may think Ruga is an unattended basket, but she has kin to collect her deathdebt.”

“And Gremo?” asked Kavio. “Would his clan collect his deathdebt?”

“Gremo is her baby, and Ruga would die before letting harm come to her baby.”

On the other side of the yard, Gremo continued to grunt softly as he heaved the rock. The muscles across his emaciated back gleamed with sweat. He was no baby.

“He’s never gone through Initiation?” Kavio asked. “He’s been suffering this hex for that long? No wonder the magic is so tangled and strong.”

“Smoothly spoken, but fancy gabber about magic doesn’t prove you are even a Tavaedi, still less that you can free Gremo from the stone. Others have tricked Ruga out of her gold. But look at her, outtriber. She has no gold left, or she would be wearing it. She’s promised you a sun and a star, I’m sure, but she has nothing left to barter. So save your tricks and your lies.”

“I’ll take your warning for what it is worth to me,” Kavio said. “Which is not much.”

He turned his back to return to his spot by the wall.

The shuffle in the dust and a growl would have been warning enough, but Lambo’s attack was also clumsy. Kavio ducked beneath the first blow and lifted up into a throw that sent Lambo sprawling onto his back. In the same move, Kavio grabbed the spear, which he held to Lambo’s throat.

“Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear,” Kavio said. “I don’t care about the gold. I don’t require payment. The magic of the knots is an interesting puzzle, and I hope I can untangle it. If I can, I will. If I can’t, I’ll say so. Either way, I will be moving on in a few days, at most. So I would appreciate it if you didn’t eat my time.”

“Forgive me, Tavaedi,” Lambo quavered. “Let me keep my life, I, I, I have children of my own and, and, and my wife…”

Kavio dropped the spear on the dirt. Fighting a man of little skill made one’s Shining Name smaller, his father had always taught him.

He walked away and went to the river. He relieved himself under a tree and then bathed. The water washing over his skin felt cold and made him think of the icy mountains between him and the home he would never see again.

A bowl of beer would have been welcome.

When he returned to Ruga’s compound, Ruga and Lambo both greeted him with astonishment. Ruga clapped her hands and squealed.

“You’ve returned! You’ve returned!”

“I feared I had offended you, Tavaedi,” Lambo said. “And that you’d changed your mind about freeing Gremo and departed.”

“And left my rucksack and canoe here?” Kavio raised an eyebrow. “Hardly. You didn’t touch it, did you?”

“No, no, Tavaedi!”

“Good,” he said. “Don’t.”

Kavio

The next day, another woman joined Ruga, Lambo and Kavio for morning meal. Kuruga was Ruga’s younger sister, Lambo’s wife. She looked like a less tormented version of Ruga, still a twitch too lopsided to be pretty, but with more black than gray hair and a more thoughtful tilt to her head. During the meal, she shared trivial news about the clan with Ruga. Lambo spoke little, and Kavio said less. No one mentioned Gremo, who, after sleeping beside his boulder, had started up walking in circles again as soon as the sun had risen.

Kavio spent the day sitting by the barricade, studying Gremo, the ropes and the rock. He ate when bread was set beside him, but otherwise did not move. The tangle of magic cords still perplexed him.

Kuruga brought him the evening meal once it was obvious he did not intend to join the family.

“Lambo is right,” she said after a moment. “You’re not like the others who promised they could heal Gremo.”

“I promised nothing.”

“I know. But Ruga won’t believe that, no matter how many times you tell her. When you fail, it will hurt her. The longer you stay, the greater her hope, the more it will hurt her. You should leave, tonight. Say nothing to her. Just go.”