Complete Short Fiction, page 56
The Dalhousie house was high and proud. Most of it had been designed by her father, Perin, in his most exuberant style, a style he could not possibly afford for his own dwelling.
Tessa passed through the front hall, which stretched up three stories to the balcony of the upper bedrooms, and into the back dining room, crowded with women readying themselves for their charitable exercises. They made room for her at a table, poured her tea, asked about her family, praised Perin’s castle.
“Margen’s hiding upstairs,” Zabeth Trasker told her, “peeking over the balcony. I think he’s waiting for you.”
Several of the other women tittered. Tessa was of marriageable age, and had, as yet, not made any indication of her preferences. Margen Dalhousie was a possible mate for her, as she had known since they were both children.
“More likely he’s waiting for Mark,” Tessa said. This caused more amusement. Zabeth’s son, one of the few other eligible males in Calrick Bend, was notorious for his dreamy lateness.
Tessa kept a good face on it, but it took effort. The Wolholmes were in a difficult situation, and, in a sense, it was her duty to marry, and soon, so as to assist their survival. These friendly, cheerful women sitting around her, ready to do their Christmas duty to the poor of the canyon, would slowly move themselves around her until it was all inevitable. The earlier she moved on her own, the more choice she would retain.
“Tessa has other things to worry about than my son, or even Zabeth’s.” Alta Dalhousie appeared, a signal for chairs to be pulled back and coats put on.
Alta smiled and took Tessa’s arm. Despite her formidable reputation, Alta Dalhousie herself did not look particularly imposing. She was shorter than Tessa, and slight, with a mass of curling gray hair and bright blue eyes.
“Dalka’s coming with us?” Alta was serene, willing to put up with irregular requests as long as they didn’t interfere with any of her plans.
“Yes.” Striving to imitate Dom, Tessa bit down on any following phrase like “I hope that’s all right,” or “she really wanted to.” It left her feeling anxious, as if there was a hole in the conversation. How did Dom do it so easily? Dalka joined them at the front door.
For a moment, the women stood and laughed in the cold air of the courtyard, adjusting their hoods, tugging on their embroidered gloves, exuberantly swooping their long sleeves. This was a dignified assemblage, gathered for the purposes of charity to the weak and poor, but it was a glorious day nonetheless, the sun bright, the world sensible. Their children were gathered in their front rooms eyeing the presents left by the Traveling Kings in gratitude for assistance on their journey, their husbands were sleepily contemplating a day free of labor, and they themselves were happy to be doing good in such high style.
Tessa, Alta, and Dalka crossed a teetery plank over an ice-filled ravine, carrying heavy packs. Their mission was to the isolated houses that hid themselves in the cliff-base jambles and the high cracks at Pakor and Brant Spurs, far above the easy cart roads. Alta went first, to scatter sand, which she kept in a blue-enamel bucket on the live thorn fence. She used a small silver shovel with a delicate tracing of leaves up its handle and fork tines at its edge, so that the sand spread evenly. Then they climbed up the trail, over the root bulges of the hairy-barked oaks that grew in a line along the ridge, now almost thick enough to be cut down and turned into furniture, an old Dalhousie skill. It was steep and icy enough that Tessa considered stopping and pulling her crampons out of her pack. Instead, she reached out and took Dalka’s gloved hand in hers. Together, the three women formed a snake long enough that at least two of them were always standing on firm ground. They writhed their way up the icy slope.
“We don’t go up there,” Swern Toroma said, snipping off a length of binding cord with an attachment on his hand. He had not stopped working the entire time he spoke, as if to show by the frenzy of his activity how little he really needed their help.
“But have you seen them?” Tessa asked.
He shook his head. He was slender and pale, and looked much like his sister Fila. “I don’t see them. No reason to.”
Tessa, Alta, and Dalka stood close together, fastidious in the midst of the messy kitchen. Swern’s wife, a woman from up canyon, was not around, but it was clear that, whatever her duties were, they didn’t extend to cleaning.
“You talk to your sister.” Tessa was insistent. Somehow, she thought, Fila had told her brother about the nature of Gorr’s wound, perhaps in a moment of unwise confidence. Swern had used that information against Gorr at the last trading expedition.
Swern glanced at her suspiciously, then returned to his task. “And why shouldn’t I? With a husband like that . . . but I haven’t talked to her in the last few days. And you know what? I hope that bastard ran off, killed himself, whatever. Then maybe she could bring the land back to the family.” He gestured with his rigidly splayed fingers at their basket. “They don’t deserve your help up there.”
“That is not for you to decide,” Alta said. “Will you be all right?”
“I’ll be all right when I get my land back.”
A baby started crying in a back room. Attempts to shush it just made the crying louder.
“Good day, then,” Alta said crisply. “Thank you for your hospitality.” The three women left, and resumed their climb up the slope.
“It’s a sad situation,” Alta said, as they climbed through the piled rocks of the jambles. “The Toromas were once a proud family.”
“Richer than now, maybe,” Dalka said. “But never rich. It’s hard, high near the wall like this.”
“Harder when the better part of your land leaves,” Alta was making some sort of point, Tessa wasn’t yet sure what. “It went with Fila, on her marriage to Gorr. Fine, it was settled on her, she was the most responsible. Still—”
“Do you think it should have been handled some other way?” Tessa asked.
“The inheritance?” Alta thought about it. “It is natural that the land should pass through the daughter, of course, but still . . . Swern and his family barely survive. Meanwhile, Gorr and Fila make little of their land, so that they’re poor also. When it finally passes to Malena, its value will be much lower than it would have been. Swern, with help, could work it, but there’s too much anger. So he spends his energies in manipulating the negotiations—keep this quiet, I’m not supposed to know—so that others don’t get full value for their produce.”
Tessa was pleased by the confidence, though she doubted she was the only one Alta had told, and suspected there was a reason she was being told.
The three women walked up to the silent, shuttered Merewin house, and knocked on the door. The sound echoed hollowly in the narrow cleft where the house hung, but there was no answer. They knocked again.
Frost had grown over the cracks of the door and the sides of the shutters. There was no mark of footsteps in the frost on the front stair. And no one had built a castle.
Alta was grim. “I was afraid of this.” She looked up at the sheer walls of the cleft.
“They went for a walk!” a small voice called.
“Is that you, Malena?” Tessa said. “Where are you?”
“They went for a walk. You can leave that.”
The women descended the slope from the house to the beginning of the terraced gardens. Two large trees flanked the entrance to the cleft, twining around the rock outcroppings. Tessa peered up into them and finally spotted the tiny Malena, who sat placidly on a high branch.
“Hi, Malena,” Tessa said.
“Hi.” Malena was as solemn as ever. Her legs dangled down.
“How long ago did your parents leave?” Alta asked.
“Not long. But they said don’t wait. Just leave it, they said.”
The wind blew through the top of the cleft with a high, lonely whistle. It was cold, but Malena seemed quite comfortable on her perch. Tessa wasn’t even sure how she had climbed up there.
“Malena,” Alta said. “Could you please come down?”
“No!” Startled by the request, Malena scrambled up another branch, small enough that it sagged even under her tiny weight. “I have to wait for Momma and Poppa.”
Dalka knelt and put the tray on the front stair. “Do you promise to eat this if I leave it?”
“We’ll eat it!” Malena’s voice was ragged, a little frenzied. “They’ll be back soon. Then we’ll eat it.”
The reeds she had gathered from the pond the previous morning were stacked neatly against the side of the house. The land around them was silent.
“All right, Malena,” Alta said. “Say hello to your parents when they return.”
“Okay.”
The woman climbed back down the path until Malena was invisible behind them.
“Something’s happened,” Alta said. “I don’t know what. Fila’s run off, Gorr’s done something. They may not be coming back.”
“Gorr’s done for Fila,” Dalka said with grim relish. “Finally.”
“Maybe.” Alta thought. “Tessa, do you think Perin knows anything?”
“They haven’t spoken in years.”
“Yes, I know. I had hoped that, perhaps, recently . . . well, that leaves Old Man Lewis. He must know something.” Alta stared up at the cliffs. “Finding him is something else again, of course. Do you know where he is, Tessa?” Her voice grew sharper.
“I saw him, yesterday.” Tessa felt as if she was betraying a confidence, though Lewis had been out on the pond for all the world to see.
“But not since.”
“No,” Tessa said. “I can try to find him. Meanwhile, Malena’s terrified. What shall we do?”
“I’d knock her out of that tree with a broom,” Dalka said. “She’s not coming down otherwise.”
“Dalka!” Tessa said, startled. “You don’t mean that.”
“No, I don’t.” Dalka was reluctant. “She’ll get hungry and come down on her own. Then we can get her.”
“Excellent,” Alta said vigorously. “Then we’ll bundle her up—the poor thing must be freezing—and take her over to Dalhousia. We have a spare room, Tramt is over in Perala this term and I’m sure he won’t mind.” She eyed Tessa. Alta was testing her, Tessa realized, waiting for her reaction to this seizure of Malena.
Dalka stuck out her heavy lower lip. “No need for you to take care of her.”
“Who else will? The Toromas?”
There was little answer to that, though they were probably her closest relatives.
Dalka glanced at Tessa and shrugged. “Well, if you want to take the trouble. . . .”
Dalka was putting up the effort for her sake, Tessa realized. For the Wolholmes. If Malena ended up at Dalhousia, eventually the management of her land would also, at least until she reached her majority. Dalka was not interested in land herself, but she knew what Tessa needed. At the moment, Tessa didn’t care. She remembered the tiny girl clinging to the upper branches of a tree in winter, her parents most likely lying dead somewhere unknown, with no one to help her, and no comfort but a cooling tray of food brought by distantly dutiful neighbor ladies.
“She can climb down and go into the house if she wishes,” Alta said. “I checked, and the key was hanging under the stairs. If we just leave her alone—”
“I’m not leaving her up there alone. She’s a little girl!”
“Good idea,” Dalka said. “We’re through, aren’t we, Alta? Tessa can stay up there with her.”
“As you say.” Alta was brisk. “We’ll be back soon, Tessa. Keep the poor thing company, keep her out of trouble.”
When they were out of sight, Tessa headed back up to the Merewin house. Despite herself, she sympathized with Dalka’s urge to swat Malena out of her tree with a broom. There was something exasperating about the little girl’s stubborn refusal to be helped. As she crested the hill, she searched the branches for Malena’s tiny dark shape. The branches swung free in the breeze. The food had brought her down, then.
Tessa crouched and moved more quietly, as if stalking some wild animal. The air moved gently over her. The high cliffs rose above, their cracks outlined by snow and frost, a few desperate plants clinging to them. As she went, she examined the farm with a practiced eye. There was some evidence of decay—cracked pipe plants ready for infection, inadequately insulated roots—but nothing too dangerous yet. A little extra work in the spring could take care of it.
She squinted into the shadows of the cleft. The tray was gone from the front stairs. Tessa walked slowly to the house, looking carefully around her. The girl was tiny, and clever. If she wanted to hide, here on her own ground, it would be difficult for Tessa to find her. But Tessa herself had been a champion at hide-and-seek as a girl.
Tessa reached under the stairs, found the key, and opened the door. “Malena?” she called. The girl was gone.
Tessa searched slowly through the house, looking carefully. There was a family picture on the wall of the living room: slender Fila looking attentively at Gorr, his hand on her shoulder as he stared at the camera, and tiny Malena, ignored, sitting at their feet and looking off at something out of view. The girl’s space in the house was tiny, just a bed that folded into a corner so as to be out of the way during the day.
A shelf above held a few toys, neatly laid out in a row. Tessa picked up a bulge-eyed duck with wheels. Its head bobbled back and forth as she held it. Spots of paint had flaked off. She set it back. There were no empty gaps on the shelf. Even Malena’s favorite loose-headed doll sat floppily in its place.
The house was in frantic disarray. Drawers were pulled out in the bedroom, clothing strewn on the floor. Personal objects had been yanked out of cabinets. It didn’t look like a simple matter of slovenly housekeeping. Everything was clean. The floor under the piles of sweaters and pants was buffed to a dull shine, not a spot on it. Sora herself could not have found fault. Someone had been searching for something in a frantic hurry. Had it been found? Tessa continued, hoping to find the place where the search had ended.
Cutlery and spices were tossed about the kitchen. A dented tea kettle lay in the corner. And in the sink, some sort of dark liquid. Scattered along the sink’s edge were the sort of seedpod ampoules that Dalka used for dispensing medications. All were crushed, and the liquid oozed out of them. Tessa ran a finger down the thick whitewood sink and sniffed: a bitter smell that she could not identify. Half the kitchen was a mess. In the other half the cook pots and wood bowls stood in perfect arrangement, ready to be of service.
Tessa gathered several of the empty seedpods, and as much of the liquid as she could in one of Fila’s food containers, and put it in her pack. Perhaps Dalka would be able to recognize what it was.
The back door of the kitchen opened into the pantry and the back storage area. Tessa poked around back there, though she felt that she had already found what was significant, even if she did not understand it. All the food was in order in the pantry, all the equipment in the storage area, ready for spring.
Sunlight glinted in through the window. It was late in the morning, the only time direct light made it into the cleft. She was about to turn away, to head home, when a gleam of metal caught her eye. She stepped forward. Hanging from a nail by the door, returned by the one who had borrowed them, was a pair of ice skates.
Alta Dalhousie stood in her courtyard and poured steaming tea from a towering urn. Search parties found their leaders, warmed themselves up, and headed out through the gates. Most of Calrick Bend was here, and despite the seriousness of the cause, they carried with them some of the conviviality of Christmas, strengthened by their common energy.
“Ah, Tessa.” Alta poured for her as well. “You must be cold.”
“Any sign?” Tessa drank slowly, trying not to bum her tongue. Warmth pulsed outward from her throat.
“None. But how far could a little girl go in such a short time? After all, you only had your eyes off her for a few minutes.”
Tessa felt herself flush, and was glad that Alta had turned away as she said this, to add more hot water to the urn. Tessa—childishly—wanted to point out that Alta and Dalka had been chattering away too, while Malena escaped. That might annoy Alta, but it wouldn’t alter anything. And Tessa needed Alta in as friendly a mood as possible.
“She did seem to vanish most thoroughly. Here, could you help me with this?” At her direction, Tessa carried wrapped bread, still warm from the oven, out to tables in the courtyard. “Most unusual. She’s only five, and even the most energetic five year old has no stamina for distance. I remember when Margen tried to run away, we were in a panic, then found him on a vine trellis in the next field, eating his sandwiches as if he hadn’t had food in days . . . but that was nothing compared to this.”
Tessa was not going to tell Alta that Lewis had taken the girl. Lewis was tolerated in the canyon, but not truly trusted. Those search parties could easily turn to a grimmer purpose.
“Will you be going home now?” Alta was easy. “You must be tired.”
“No, I . . .” Tessa thought about what to say. “Gorr and my father were friends. They were in the war together.”
“They stopped speaking around the time Malena was born, didn’t they?” Alta headed off Tessa’s argument before she had even gotten to it. “Perin hated Gorr’s anger. And good for Perin.”
“But Malena—”
“Perin also disapproved of the way Gorr cut the Toromas off from their land,” Alta continued serenely. “Gorr had the right, having married Fila, but still . . . it wasn’t a good idea, do you think? Hatred is a poor basis for cooperation.”
