The Waters Rising (29 page)

“And what did Bright Pearl think about that?” snarled Xulai.

“Nothing at all. She never knew anything about it,” said Precious Wind. “She was off in the country with her Norland farmer; she changed her name to plain Pearl—there had never been anything particularly bright about the girl to begin with—and subsequently bore him three sons, all of whom are still raising leeks, parsnips, and potatoes to supply the city and court of Ghastain. We keep an ear open for news of her or her family. She died several years ago during an epidemic of lung disease that swept through several villages. She never knew anything about you or your parents; she never had anything at all to do with the court. No one here in Norland knew what your grandfather told the people in Tingawa. There may be someone there he has trusted with the truth, but I don’t know who that might be. The world believes you are Bright Pearl’s daughter.”

“And I . . . I was with you all the time?” Xulai said to Oldwife.

“With me and my two older sisters. They both died years ago. The only ones in Norland who know the truth about your parentage are Precious Wind and your father and me.”

“Bear doesn’t know?”

“Bear was sent later,” Precious Wind said. “The . . . the sea wars began to be more troublesome, and your grandfather thought at that point we might need some rather personal kind of protection on the way to Tingawa. Bear has been told the Bright Pearl story; he knows nothing about your real parentage. You’re just Xulai, daughter of Bright Pearl, an obscure family member who is no longer living. Lately, he’s started thinking Xu-i-lok may be haunting you. He believes you use a Tingawan name only because of your function.”

“But he thinks I was sent from Tingawa.”

“He was told to
say
that about you! Actually, he believes you are Bright Pearl’s child and were born here. He believes it is better if you do not know about her, for children have odd notions, sometimes, and go off hunting for fathers and mothers they would be better off without.”

“Didn’t he think it odd that I didn’t grow up?”

“He was told you retained the childish appearance as a protection. To keep you safe. A kind of disguise. Which is true.”

“Bear is tired of being protective,” Xulai said. “He’s talking a lot about getting back to Tingawa.”

Precious Wind frowned. “I’ve heard him. Your father sent money here for him . . .”

“I know. He told me. Money for him and for you. Do you have the receipt, Precious Wind?”

“I do.”

“Who signed it? Whose seal is on it?”

“Why, I suppose—”

“Please. Look. Now.”

Precious Wind retreated to her room, came back with a folded bit of stiff paper. Xulai looked at it and paled.

“What’s the matter?”

“The prior signed for it. This is his seal. I saw it on his finger. I think he’s an evil man, Precious Wind. He has already lied to us. Please, do not give this receipt to the prior. Until we find someone here we know to be trustworthy, do not give it to anyone.”

“I was going to tell Bear today that his bride-price is here, waiting for him.”

“Precious Wind, I have a bad feeling about it. My father said it was a great deal of money, a small fortune. He thought Bear should not have it until he was on his way to Tingawa. It could have been tempting to someone. Let us be sure it is here, waiting for him, before we raise his expectations.”

Precious Wind considered this. She had never thought that there might be someone inimical at the abbey! All in all, it might be wise to wait a few days while things were checked. She said slowly, “Bear’s preoccupation is a troublesome development that none of us foresaw. I suppose I have the authority to tell him he may go on to Tingawa. That might be the best thing to do . . .”

Xulai stood up. “How long ago did you bring me to the castle?”

“Fifteen years ago,” said Precious Wind. “You were almost four then, you are almost twenty now. In Tingawa, eighteen to twenty is the age of puberty. Until today, you looked about . . . seven. It was only an appearance, a glamour. Tingawan women mature more slowly than the women of Norland, so it was not greatly remarked upon . . .”

“Oh, it was remarked upon,” grated Xulai. “Dame Cullen said I was a dwarf. Even the duke never called me daughter!”

Precious Wind did not let herself sympathize, though she felt the sadness. She said imperiously, “Think, Xulai! The appearance of babyhood helped keep you safe, as the princess and her father intended. If the duke had called you daughter, you and he would both be dead by now. Only his pretense kept you alive.”

“Didn’t they know that I had to grow up sometime?” she cried angrily. “What would have happened then?”

“You were supposed to be in Tingawa long before that happened,” snapped Precious Wind. “As was I! No one lied about your being the soul carrier; you really are the soul carrier. Bear and I were to remain with the princess as long as she was alive, and then we were to return with you to Tingawa. The princess lived longer than
anyone
thought she could. Somehow, she learned or foresaw that you could not get to Tingawa safely, perhaps for a very long time. She told me this years ago, and she also told me she would provide for you another way.”

“What way?” demanded Xulai.

Precious Wind shook her head. “We don’t know. She looked into the future, she said. She didn’t tell us how or why, or, unfortunately, how long it might take. Lately, Oldwife and I, we have supposed she gave you something of herself.”

Still angry, Xulai said, “I honestly do not know what you’re talking about!”

Precious Wind murmured, “On the way here, when you provided that the horses would not run away, when the duchess made a point of seeing you and all she saw was a baby. When you told the horses they were deer, the tree that it hid wildcats . . .”

“You think she did that?”

“No, we think
you
did that. We think she somehow endowed you with some of her own abilities. Don’t ask me how, because I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. Perhaps she couldn’t. It may be simply that you inherited an ability she had that she herself didn’t understand. She did say, however, that it would be safer if no one knew who you really were but Oldwife Gancer and me.”

“Don’t be angry at us,” Oldwife begged.

“I’m not angry
at
you,” Xulai cried, wiping at the wetness on her face. “I’m just angry! I don’t know who or what I am. I don’t know how much of me is me and how much is someone else. I don’t know if these parts of me will last or vanish overnight. I know everyone was just trying to protect me, but . . . I never called her Mother. Shouldn’t I have at least called her Mother?” Furious tears streamed down her cheeks and dripped from her jaw.

“Did she ever ask you to do anything you didn’t do?” Oldwife asked.

“Yes! No!” Xulai beat at the wall next to her with both fists. “The last thing was hard, I couldn’t do it for a while, but I finally did. I did it the way a seven-year-old child really would have done it, with fear, and delay, and even avoidance. If I’d known how old I really was . . .”

Oldwife cried, “You couldn’t know because you couldn’t act the part! You had to think you were a child! You had to believe it! Oh, they stuffed your brain with all kinds of things, numbers and languages and history, but nothing about . . . being a woman, because you had to think you were a child. So long as you looked very young, people wouldn’t talk about things when they were around you, man-woman kind of things.”

“Oldwife, I heard about all that from the loft in the stables.”

The old woman bit her lip. “Well, she . . . your mother tried! She wanted to keep you safe! If you did everything she asked, then she knew you loved her, and you’ve got to know she loved you! She died to protect you, Xulai. She suffered for years to protect you. And you’ve got to know the duke loved you, because he helped her do it! Not only them, Xulai. Precious Wind has given all those years to protecting you, and so have I. Anything that urgent, anything that terrible and painful, there’s a reason for it. The princess had a reason, be sure of that. If, like they say, she saw the future, she wouldn’t have sacrificed her life, loving Justinian the way she did, if there hadn’t been a reason.”

“But what reason? If I was part of it, shouldn’t she have told me?”

Brow furrowed, eyes squinted, Oldwife considered this.

Precious Wind said carefully, slowly, “I think she felt you would be safer if you didn’t know. Either she knew you would discover it when the time was right, when you really needed to know, or you would be informed in some way. There is something in your future that makes you terribly important.”

It was too much. The tears went on streaming and she wept in Oldwife’s arms as the old woman murmured, “You really did the things we saw you do, Xulai. You talked the horses into thinking they were another kind of animal. You talked a tree into hiding wildcats. You figured out something about the duchess that nobody else knew. So, maybe while you were inside your mama, she put a little bit of herself into you. Or maybe it was already there, just because she was your mama. A different part of your brain, maybe. You haven’t taken hold of it yet, but it’s there.”

“Is it there always? Or will it leave me, too?”

“You know I can’t answer that, Xulai.”

They had reached an impasse. After a few moments’ silence, Precious Wind said, “One thing I think we’d better agree on. We don’t mention this to anyone here at the abbey. No one saw anything of what happened in the forest except we two. No one saw what happened on the road except we two. We should not talk about it even among ourselves in case someone is listening.”

Oldwife Gancer said, “Whyn’t you go to breakfast, Precious Wind? Maybe you can bring Xulai’n me a bite. They don’t count people at breakfast, and this child needs a little time to settle without being angry at the whole world.”

“Precious Wind,” said Xulai, half choking on the words. “Could you bring me half a dozen eggs, please? Boiled eggs? Or meat of some kind?”

Wordlessly, eyebrows almost at her hairline in puzzlement, Precious Wind left them. Oldwife fetched a towel and mopped first Xulai’s face, then the spilled tea before pouring another mugful and putting it carefully into Xulai’s shaking hands.

“So how old am I?” Xulai muttered.

Oldwife patted her shoulder. “As we said, somethin’ like twenty in Tingawan growth years, whatever that means.”

“I don’t understand this,” Xulai cried. “What do I do next? I don’t know what to do! I don’t know how young women that age act!”

“There, there, child, now, well, you just go on being what you are. Precious Wind and I, we’ll school you about the body business. Tingawan women don’t get to that until they’re about your age, and you already know about it. You’re a Xakixa, you came here to be schooled, so you’ll be schooled. Between the duke and those Tingawans, you’ve been well taught already. You speak their language and ours. You read, you write, you know all manner of things. As for not knowing how to act, you act more grown-up than most adults at least half the time! You’ve always been that way. Maybe now you need to learn things that people wouldn’t normally teach a child.”

“What do we tell Bear?”

“He knew you had some kind of protection woven around you. We’ll tell him it was time for it to wear off, that’s what we’ll say.”

“The prior saw me. The sister saw me. I was in the dining room.”

“Last night I told Precious Wind what you said, about people at the abbey not looking directly at you, you know. We think they didn’t see the child at all. She said they were seeing another you. We weren’t, because we were used to seeing Xulai the child and Precious Wind says that’s the image we were accustomed to. When you walked into this room this morning, though, there was no more child. Not a bit. Whatever it was, it was set to wear off when you didn’t need it anymore.”

On the outer windowsill, next to the outer door, Bothercat walked back and forth, tail lashing. Xulai went to let him and his brother in, trying to think of something, anything else. “What are we going to feed the cats? They can’t go to the dining hall.”

Oldwife went into her bedroom and brought out a package. “They’ll have to settle for Woldsgard dried camp stew, just the way they did on the way here. I’ll just break it up and put a little boiling water on it. Nettie will find something else in the kitchens if we run out.”

Cats winding around her ankles, Oldwife prepared their food, holding the bowl aloft while the mixture cooled. When she resumed her seat, she asked, “Are you over being upset with everyone?”

“No,” Xulai replied. “I am upset with everyone and everything, including myself. I don’t know who this new person is. Is she pretty or plain?”

“You look a young lady, certainly. If there’s any more changing to happen, it won’t be much. As for talking and acting, I’d ask Precious Wind about that.”

“You were once a young lady!”

Oldwife looked down, memories flooding in: Rising at dawn to milk cows. Bent to catch the light of fire at night as she sewed clothing. Her shoulders straining under the weight of full buckets from the well, her hands blistered from the hoe, wielded to keep the garden free of weeds. “Oh, no, child. A very long time ago I was a young woman, and that’s a very different thing. People expect a young woman to be useful and work hard. For young ladies, expectations are much higher in some respects, far lower in others.”