The Returning (15 page)

“SHIT!” SELENA WHACKED Diido about the ankles with her stick. “Go swim and wash it off before I let you in here.”

“But they threw it at me.”

“What you expect? Kisses?”

Diido went, not to the river but to the stream that ran off it, to her private place, and found it invaded. A small girl, not from the camp but from the village, was standing by the water. Used as she had become to Downlanders, Diido stared, for the little girl was as dark of hair and eye as Diido herself. Watching her, Diido hurt: for the little girl she herself had been before the soldiers had come; for the angry grieving look on the child's face. Even here, in this place of peace and plenty, so far, far from the soldiers, why that look?

When the little girl jumped into the stream, Diido laughed aloud. “That's more like it, you should play.”

But the child looked at Diido as at a monster, and bolted.

Slowly, Diido stripped; slowly, she sank to a crouch in the yabbering stream, breathless at the chill of it. “K-kisses,” she said to the weeds, her teeth chattering. “Kisses,” to the green-brown water. “Kiss my t-tup they will.”

She was almost back at the camp when she thought of Selena saying that talk wasn't enough, and of Gaida, tiring of her enough to get rid of her, and she backtracked and caught a fish for Selena.

“Fisherfolk? Is that what you were?”

“Yep.”

“Tell me—don't go looking so comfortable. You can talk while you cook that fish.”

Diido told her. She had dived for abalone. Every morning she and Ma and the other divers of their crew swam out to the Piske, moored in the harbor. Philot sailed her—Philot owned her and sailed her. All her divers were girls and women. The boat crew were men. Philot would not let a diver touch sails or tiller or ropes, and she would not take on male divers.

Out of the bay and on the ocean, Philot would order the men to spread the net, and the women would climb out onto it. From here they dived. Diido swam naked but for gloves, worn against the sharpness of the shells, and the basket belted to her waist, to take her catch. She swam with Ma, learning from her.

Philot paid well. People paid her well for abalone. Rich people. Diido's ma could never understand that. “Was I rich,” she'd often said, “I'd not buy stinking abalone.”

Ma dived for the good money that Captain Philot paid. Diido dived because she was Ma's daughter, but she loved it for another reason. On land she was too tall, too thin; she banged her head, tripped over her own feet. In the water, though, her body answered her mind, turned sure and swift. Philot always said she was half fish. Diido had half believed her.

“Is that so?” said Selena. “Is that so.You are . . . fourteen? Fifteen?”

“Don't know. I don't remember when the soldiers came, or what they did, and I don't know how long it's been.”

“Ya, ya, I won't ask no more.”

Outside, the sound of guitars began. Diido wanted to sing, but could not creep out to the fires until Selena was asleep. “Ma'am, show me what you made.” She pointed to the rolls of material, which Selena had carried with a club foot, all those weeks of walking.

Selena pointed with her stick, and Diido brought her the roll. “This one, I made this for a wedding.” Selena caressed it, like it was a live thing. “Not just any wedding, neither, but for Lady Ay to one of Lord Manui's sons.”

Ay and Manui were gone, both houses done away by the Ryuus, though they had been older and Higher than Ryuu.

Diido fingered the rolls of fabric. “I could never wear something like this. Even if I get married, it won't be in this!”

“I never worn any of it, though I made it.”

“And Ay and Manui are dead, and us alive. Being old and highborn didn't help them any, huh!” Diido snapped her fingers.

“Girl, you really have no manners.”

Diido did not know what Selena meant. “Ma'am, will you teach me to weave?”

“Maybe one day there'll be a town here, and there'll be shops and workshops and employment for weavers of cloth, but not yet.”

That night, Diido could not sleep. It was not true, what she had told Selena: Diido remembered the soldiers. She remembered Ma and Pap and her brother. She remembered the Lord Ryuu's army overrunning the City, and all that came with them and after them. Yet, the City was home.

 

THE DAYS RAN one into the other, all alike, yet each a little different. Diido found it difficult to figure how many had passed. But they brought with them at last a softer air; a green fuzz on the trees; a patchy blue to the sky.

Diido ambled along the main street of the village, in and out of the shade of great spreading trees. Her pockets bulged with stones, and her jacket dragged at her neck, weighed down with them. As she walked, she looked, to left and right and around corners, and finally she found him. Down in one of the paddocks, the puddingy boy was shying stones at birds. Diido patted her pockets and grinned.

On the long road from the City, there had been soldiers and bandits and people who had lost their sense of right or wrong, and Diido had dodged them all. Working her way down to Pie-belly without him seeing her was far, far easier. All the fields were terraced, with raised walls of earth, shrubs dotting the tops of them. Diido made it to the paddock by darting from one clump of scrub to the next.

Through the gaps in the bushes she could see him, but the trees pushed up against the slope of the earthwall, and the morning sun was bright on them, so no one could see her hiding in their cover. Piling the stones on the ground, she folded her arms on her upraised knees, pulled her trouser cuffs over her toes, and waited.

The morning had half passed before Pie-belly tired of murdering starlings and slouched and scuffed his way past Diido. Standing up under the shadow of the trees, Diido hurled her first missile.

“Scurull!” Her voice tore her throat. “I'll scurull you.” She flung the stones.
Here's for Selena—pom! Here's for the camp—pom! Here's for Ma!

He bent his head into his arms, this big pudgy boy, one leg up, and howled. Diido laughed and threw stones, and with each little bloody bite she laughed louder.

“Kiss my tup!” She turned her back on him and slapped her rump, laughing and blowing noisy rough kisses into the air. Pie-belly ran. Diido aimed the last of her stones at his rear. “Kiss my tup, yah.” The field was empty but she felt eyes on her back all the way up to the road.

Why she stopped to look at the chickens she did not know. She did not lean on the wall this time; she just stood a moment and watched them. There were still a few stones in her pocket. She took one and threw it, without knowing she would do it, and a chicken fell down where it was. The others set up a squawking and fuss enough to bring the whole village over. Diido went on down the road, turning east and heading downhill, faster and faster, running for the camp.

 

“YOU NOT WELL?” Selena tapped at Diido with her stick. “Hmm. Not singing tonight? Ya, I know about it, got ears you know and the whole camp talks of it anyways.”

From outside came shouting.

“Never known you so quiet.”

“Ma'am? What . . . what is that out there?”

They both paused and listened. The shouting was growing louder.

“Go see, girl. Be careful.”

Halfway through the door, Diido turned. She went back to Selena, helped her up, and sat her in the doorway. “You want to . . . ?”

“No!”

Diido saw soldiers in her eyes.

Where the road came down to the camp stood villagers, a big clump of them.

“They've got children with them, so it's not fighting,” said someone.

Diido thought how silly they looked, standing so close together that their legs and bodies looked like one, their arms waving about like seaweed or branches. The waving produced a dead chicken. Then a shrill boy's voice called out, and the body broke into separate people. Diido saw him, pale and puddingy and ugly, pointing at her.

Her. She did it
. No one had any trouble now, understanding what he was saying.

One of the men from the camp pushed her back. “Out of sight, you,” he said. Diido fled for the humpy.

“What you done?” Selena took Diido's bed-roll and gave her a cloth. “Put all the food in that.” Something in Selena's voice made Diido obey at once.

“Girl, what you done?” she said again, when Diido had wrapped the food up. The princess-among-weavers took Diido's hand and turned her. “Now get. Hide out in the forest on the other side of the village. We'll fetch you later, when it's calmed down.” She whacked Diido about the legs with her stick. “Get, I told you.”

Diido got, taking off across the camp.

 

“YAH!” DIIDO SNAPPED her fingers. She'd evaded the mob, and was well hidden in the double darkness of the pine forest, and the night. “All without seeing me.” She always had so many words in her that they had to come out, whether or not there was anyone to listen to them.

She didn't unroll her blanket, but lay with it bunched under her head, eyes wide open, staring at the stars that crawled past the still branches.

Like an arrow the thought slammed into her head, agonizing:
They will not come for me
. Unblinking, she watched the sky. “I wouldn't come for me, neither.”

Why would they? Gaida was not really her sister, Giitan most certainly not her brother—they had taken Diido up after the soldiers, all of them walking from the fighting. Taken her up? In fact she had clung, like a limpet. And if Giitan had offered protection, if that protection came at a price, better to give him what he asked willingly, Diido had reasoned, than be forced as the soldiers had forced her, and left without anything.

And Selena? Come for her, with her stick and her club foot and no help from Diido? No, no. They would not come.

Diido sang a little under her breath, sang of the City, and the great river that ran through it, the song called “The Lament of the Pearl Diver,” and knew that at first light she would start the long walk back home.

D
A WAS DIVVYING up the day's work, something he had done ever since Ban could remember. Ban sidled toward the door, and out.

“Where do you go?” Ardow had followed him.

Ban shrugged. “Are you My Lord or my brother, always asking where I am going and what I am doing.”

“That war!” Ardow threw the words out with such an unaccustomed bitterness that Ban was halted in his tracks. “As sure as if you did go yourself, it's ruined you.”

Ban could only goggle at him in astonishment.

“Look at you, not a word to say. Before Cam Attling came back you were a part of us, worked with us, and for us. You—”

He did not say,
waste time. Roaming the unkept parts of the forest with no other purpose than to outwalk your own thinking, that is surely a waste of time.
He did not say,
run rather than come face-to-face with any of the villagers, people you've known all your life, no wondering they think you soft in the mind
. He did not say,
don't fit
. But Ban knew all this without hearing it. Thought about it, as he wandered aimless about the fringes of the village.

Then something distracted him. In one of the fields, Farrow Gorlance was dancing. No, not dancing . . . dodging. Ban crept closer. A girl, an Uplander girl, was tucked in a little copse of poplars, throwing stones, and each savage missile was making Farrow Gorlance dance. It was too good a sight to miss. Ban crouched on his heels to watch.

Stumbling and blubbering, Farrow eventually fled uphill toward the road, looking back over his shoulder again and again. At what showed in his face, Ban could not keep from laughing aloud. The girl had slipped out of sight, appearing on the far side of the trees to walk up the lane, easy in her manner as Mistress Fenister strolling about her garden. Ban followed her, silent as her shadow, and better hid.

She dawdled along the Ridge Road; Ban skulked in the trees. She killed Mistress Gost's prize hen; Ban watched. She ran then, and Ban hesitated, turned back. Where the lane led down to the paddock he paused and looked down again, grinning as he thought of Farrow.

He went home, past the shrine, though the way was farther. The shrine was surrounded by Fenister land, but owned by itself and the village. The narrow path to it, through Fenister land, was the shrine's too. Every time anyone walked there they said how it must hurt Fat Fenister, that he could not tax them for walking it, though most of them only came near on Shrine Days, out of fear of the ghosts that lived there.

“Ghosts!” Cam used to say. “It's just old Money Bags, spreading stories to keep those that do have a right to the place out of it.”