Fish Tails (7 page)

Lillis had left Hench Valley wearing Healer Ma's shoes. Healer Grandma Lillis returned to Tuckwhip wearing those same shoes. The only way she could guard this child was by living there or taking her away, and—­yet again!—­everything about the child spoke of a predestined life in which it would be unwise to interfere too greatly. Joshua thought it would be dangerous for the child and for Lillis if he came within reach of Gralf, and Grandma concurred, suggesting that Joshua take a short vacation, look up some old friends. She thought she wouldn't be staying long. Just long enough to find out what was going on, then maybe she'd leave and take the little one . . .
ones
with her.

She visited the other mothers just as a Healer Grandma would do, checking them out, seeing if they were healthy. Grandma Lillis decided that as soon as they were weaned she would take them away. All of them were alike: healthy, vigorous, and they cried seldom if ever. They looked at the world out of wide, knowing eyes.

And they disappeared
. As they got to early weaning age, they disappeared, one at a time. Only Grandma Lillis realized this, and she nodded to herself: so these babies were intended for something specific, and someone had come for them! When they disappeared, the mothers of the babies behaved oddly for a few days, walking around, peering behind things, as though trying to find something that was lost without knowing what it was. Sometimes each would take a gold coin from a pocket and fondle it, wonderingly. The little ones had not been sold or killed; gold had been left behind to pay for what . . . ? The womb? The breast? Certainly no one had ever abused the infants, not by word or action. No one had abused the women who had borne the children either, which was most surprising! No one took the gold away from the mothers either, which was truly astonishing! The third boy was only a little under a year old when he, too, was gone
. All gone, except for Needly!

Unfortunately, when the others had gone, so had the protective immunity that infancy had provided. Gralf had begun to notice the baby. Lillis, who was now a Grandma, managed to keep the infant out of his way while she waited for someone to come and collect the little girl. Her wait was a troubled one, as she half hoped someone would come soon, before the child fell to harm, half longed that no one would take her. Lillis had a great store of thwarted mother love saved up, and she had come to love Needly dearly. She had loved all her own but had given them up as she had
been told,
had
presumed,
had
accepted
that destiny required her to do so. This one, she rebelliously decided, would be taken over her dead body! She even threw a few tantrums with those . . . Oracles, asking them to find out what in . . . was going on?

The Oracles reacted to tantrums as they did to anything suggesting criticism. They disappeared. They were simply not there when one went looking for them. If eventually discovered and confronted, the Oracles were oracular, meaning allusive rather than definitive, indicative rather than directional, and always refusing to clarify until the matter in question culminated, at which time they invariably said, “Well, that's more or less what we meant.” With Lillis occupied full-­time down in Tuckwhip waiting for Needly to disappear, Joshua did disappear. Lillis had a crying fit over this, before deciding that she had deserted him, and in all honesty, she would have done the same if he had deserted her. When the second year passed, and the third, Lillis decided Needly's continued presence could mean only that she, Lillis, was considered to be an adequate custodian or keeper or guardian. This both pleased and annoyed her. Someone could have told her! It would have been polite! She could have told Joshua, and she could have taken the child to their home. If he had consented. Probably.

The child, though remaining as pallid as those strange growths sometimes seen in cellars, thrived and grew and no one . . . nothing ever informed Lillis, now Grandma, whether she really was the proper guardian or whether Needly had just been overlooked. Was Needly different in some way? Was she, Lillis, supposed to
do something
about Needly, or was
something else
supposed to happen? Fearing any attention paid to the child, Lillis did what all mothers in Hench Valley did for their daughters: she uglified the child so that nobody would look at her covetously. Even as she rubbed soot on the child's skin and made her hair look like a rat's nest with a carefully contrived horsehair wig, Lillis kept exploring, looking around herself for clues, going off into the woods and speaking into the silence of the trees, asking!

Once, only once, she went all the way to the Listener and asked it, not really expecting and not receiving any answer.

She wanted badly to take the child away but was fearful of upsetting some larger purpose. She had learned many things from her real family . . . the one she had supposedly been born into.
She had learned that there were larger purposes in the universe than those readily apprehended by human beings, and though it would be egocentric to believe one was, necessarily, part of any such predestined thing, if one truly thought one was involved, then it might be wisest to go along with it.

Lillis did believe it: she thought she might be caught up in such a purpose. She was, nonetheless, annoyed.
If something was supposed to happen, someone or something ought to be kind enough to give her a set of ­directions!

No one did. She struggled with her annoyance—­sometimes outright rage—­and kept the matter to herself as much as she could. Rage was wearying. It wore itself into tatters and the pieces eventually blew away. It was entirely possible she was already doing precisely what
they, whoever they were,
wanted her to do, and until something else was required, she would simply go on doing whatever it was she was doing. She had dealt with the Gralf-­being-­the-­Pa-­in-­the-­house problem early on by saying she had a disease, and if any man bothered her, his parts would fall off. Gralf believed her. Gralf told every other Pa, and they too believed. Also, Gralf was neither as young nor as insatiable as he had been at one time.

As Needly grew, Grandma taught her everything she could about healing, herbs, the nature of plants and how to distill them into useful, portable substances. She taught her about beasts and their treatment as well. She took the child, from the age of five, with her when babies were delivered and had her assist in the process, borrowing newborns now and then so that Needly could feel them. “See, that's the head. Feel it. Imagine it all slimy, but under the sliminess, that's the way it feels. That's the little arm, feel it, and the leg. See, if it's turned wrong in the womb, you might have to grab this and pull, so. Understand?”

Neely did understand. Her strong little arms and tiny hands proved extremely useful in several difficult births in the other towns in the valley! Lillis taught her how to clean wounds and treat them. She taught Needly to look carefully at the difference between what a person says and what that person actually does—­putting this in context of “other places.” In Hench Valley there were no differences between vile words and vile actions. And she went on waiting for a sign. The only thing about Needly she felt at all strange about was that when Needly was told something important, real, and meaningful, she always nodded, as though checking an item off a list of things she either already knew or had been expected to learn.

Lillis had been wearing healer shoes when she had left Hench Valley; Healer Grandma had returned to Hench Valley in that same pair of shoes. And though Needly was certainly odd enough to warrant stoning, for the Healer Grandma's sake, Needly had been let strictly alone.

As did any girl in Hench Valley, strange-­looking or not, Needly grew up to live what the men called “a good life fer a wummin.” Up early in the morning to fetch water from the well, and it not even an hour away, she had a nice stroll in the morning! The yoke across the shoulders was a burden, true, so the men said, females who grew up to the yoke grew strong under the burden! Besides, they weren't expected to carry full buckets until they were maybe six or even seven! And once the water was fetched, there was only the stock to be seen to—­little of it though there was—­and the byre to be shoveled and the house swept and the day's grain to be ground in the hand mill and the meals to cook and the garden weeded as the Great Fathers had intended. It was all good, healthful exercise for the strengthening, training of young females. Constant chastisement reinforced all three.

It was each girl's own Ma who broke the girl into hauling water and digging gardens, thus building up helpful calluses on shoulders, hands, feet. It was a girl's own Ma who uglified her by rubbing manure in her hair and mud and soot on her face, thus making her even fouler to see and worse to smell than the usual Hench Valley person. Girls were kept salable until puberty by making them as undesirable as possible. Repeated chastisement by a girl's Pa and her brothers kept her in line. Slap and Grudge tried chastising Needly only once. Grandma had heard their whispering and had been poised to intervene when the unexpected happened. Slap raised a stick. There was a loud noise. Still holding the stick he had intended to hit Needly with, Slap lay in a corner, black-­and-­blue in the face and upper body. Across the room from him, Grudge nursed a broken arm. Even after Slap and Grudge were healed, no one touched Needly. It was almost as though someone had dropped a veil of invisibility over her.

If and when girls were de-­uglified to be sold or mated, most of them stayed alive for quite some time, just as Trudis had. Men didn't spend that kind of money on somebody who'd be around only a year or so, unless they were like Old Digger, and Old Digger bought really young ones, sometimes as young as eight or nine years old, and kept them only three or four years. Never past their womanlies, though. Once they started to get breasts, Digger was finished with them. They disappeared and he'd go back to digging salvage or gold out of the buried cities until he had enough to buy another one.

Gralf liked to annoy Grandma by talking of selling Needly to Old Digger. If he sold her to anyone else, he'd have to pay taxes when the king's tax-­hogs came by Hench Valley, the far east edge of what the King of Ghastain considered his own lands, but nobody'd know he'd sold her because Digger didn't keep them long. There'd be no taxes on a girl who just disappeared. “There's no taxes owing on girls who just run off, and that's what I'll say she did, run off.” Gralf considered himself clever, and he bragged drunkenly to Grandma about his plan to sell Needly and fool the tax-­hogs.

“Who's going to fetch the water then?” Grandma asked the air in her casual murmur, speaking the garbled, half-­swallowed tongue Hench Valley ­people spoke rather than the speech she had taught Needly to use when they were alone. “Needly goes, I'm gettin' too old to do much. Alla' yer boys but Slap and Grudge're gone. Y'think they'll decide to help? Y'think Trudis gonna stir 'rself allofa sudden? Wonder who'll feed the stock and hoe the garden?”

The mutter was mere misdirection. Grandma had spurred the first and second of Gralf's sons into departure with stories of cities and women and drink. Slap and Grudge would follow very soon. As for Grandma herself, she had no intention of being anywhere in Hench Valley once Needly was out of it, and the minute Gralf started talking about Digger, she knew it was time for Needly to go.
If some purpose was to have been served by Needly's being here, in this place, that purpose had had plenty of time to declare itself.
Grandma said this quite frequently and loudly! She was letting THEM,
the Planners,
know. Whoever THEY were.

Yes, Grandma decided. The purpose had either been
met
or
canceled,
and Grandma intended to be gone in the dark hours, taking the child with her. Dull-­witted as he was, Gralf half suspected that's what would happen. Grandma had gone away before, she'd likely do it again. He could kill the old lady, of course, but that wouldn't get the water brought either. Besides, some said she was a witch, and killing old witch ladies was
jitchus,
real jitchus.

When he considered selling Needly, Gralf hadn't thought about who'd do the work. Trudis didn't turn her hand to anything. Couldn't cook worth spit. Couldn't fetch water without spilling most of it. Couldn't fork out hay without catching a pitchfork tine into the hide of the cow or milk goat she was supposed to be feeding! Hellfires, he had to put his own water in the kettle on the back of the stove at night to be sure he had tea water hot in the morning! Had to do it
his-­own-­self
! Well, he made damn sure there was only enough water for him. Trudis wants hot water, she c'n make her own fire, fill her own kettle! Far's he c'd figure there was only one thing Trudis did do fairly well, fairly often. He enjoyed it some, but—­though he was incapable of expressing it in those terms—­
surfeit had been sure death to appetite.

Though Lillis well knew Gralf and the way his mind worked, he had one idea so ridiculous that she had never suspected it for a moment. On that long-­ago Midsummer Day when Gralf came home with Lillis's daughter, one of his reasons, not the least one, had concerned Lillis herself more than it had her daughter. Lillis was known to be a midwife, a healer, she knew herbs; the ­people she helped probably paid her something for doing it. Certainly no Hench Valley man did anything for anyone without being paid. So, Gralf figured, since she was making all those pennies with the herbs and the healing and the midwife thing, those pennies could just as well add up in his pocket as in hers. A house always belonged to the eldest woman in it, which had never seemed right to Gralf, but that house was the man's to rule! If he ruled, then nothing said he couldn't take whatever pennies she got. Those theoretical pennies—­in theoretically improbable aggregate—­had figured large in Gralf's decision to accept the utterly inedible cake Trudis offered him before he followed her home.