Six Moon Dance (4 page)

The Bastable family resulted from exactly this sort of understanding. Harad Bastable was a good worker who inherited a good farm when his older brother died. One of his nearest neighbors had a plethora of daughters, some of whom did not want to marry into the city. Pretty Suldia agreed to wed Harad, and her family agreed to let her do so in return for payments or support to be given them in their age. Suldia soon produced a daughter, Pearla, born at home and registered at the Temple at six months of age, as was required for girls. Three years later, also at home, Suldia bore twins: a son, Oram, and another daughter, Ornalia.

Oram and Ornalia, soon called Ornery, were inseparable. Perhaps from this connection, perhaps from something genetic—the Bastables had a few cattle and knew all about freemartins—-or perhaps from example, Ornery grew into what the farm people called a crower, a boyish girl, one who liked boyish things, a scrambler over, a climber up, a rider of horses and tamer of creatures. To look at them both, the boy and the girl, one would find little difference between them. Both were lean and freckled, with generous mouths full of frequent laughter. Both had good appetites and ferocious energy.

Pearla, on the other hand, grew to be a very feminine woman, and in her twentieth year she was offered for by a young man from Sendoph who had seen her in that city during the harvest festival. At that same festival, Pearla had seen Hunks riding with their patronesses in the street and had decided on the spot that she wanted one of those for herself. If what it took to get one was a few years of not unpleasant boredom, then she would spend the few years.

It helped that she did not object to the young man who was offering for her. Nothing about him stirred her sensibilities, but he smelled of spice water, he had a carriage of his own, the family had a good haulage business of boats and ships and wagons that went from here to there and back again, as well as a grand house with several supernume servants plus (one could not help noticing) a goodly number of invisible people.

So, with much backing and forthing as to the terms of the dowry, Harad and Suldia agreed that the family in Sendoph might dower Pearla in, if Pearla herself approved. The prospective bride went to Sendoph to spend a few weeks among the maybe-husband’s family to see how she liked being treated as a lady.

Ornery was saddened at Pearla’s approaching marriage, not so much at the loss of a sister, for they had never been playmates, but because the event suddenly made her confront her own future as a female, a sister growing up in her brother’s shadow. Oram would inherit the farm. Her parents would use the money received from Pearla to dower in a bride for him, but even before that, Ornery herself would most likely be dowered in to some city man, which she would hate!

Truth to tell, Ornery did not feel herself drawn to men at all. Though she was of an age to be stirred by romantic or erotic thoughts about men, she remained unmoved. The Hags wouldn’t force her to marry, but they could make life miserable if she didn’t. She was registered at the Panhagion, and if she got to be twenty-one or two without being dowered for (an event which also required registration at the Temple) the Hags would want to know why. If she refused to be dowered, the Hags could make her a Hagger or even name her to Temple Service, though usually it was newborns who were named, so they could grow up Hag-rid. Being a Hag was easier, so they said, when you’d grown up to it. Though what was hard about it, nobody knew! Though there were only a few of them around anytime one went to Temple, they never seemed to sweat at anything.

Ornery didn’t want to be a Hagger. Haggers had none of the honor and all of the labor. Maybe she’d just run off and become a Wilderneer, living in caves in the badlands, letting her hair grow long, sneaking and pillaging for her living. Females didn’t become Wilderneers, though. At least Ornery had never heard of any.

Pearla’s departure brought all these matters boiling to the surface of Ornery’s mind, and she became so aggravated and belligerent over her role apprehensions that she was rude to her mother, at which her father threatened her with total and perpetual responsibility for the kitchen garden if she didn’t straighten up. Fuming, Ornery decided to get up before dawn and run away—maybe forever. Probably just for a while. Leaving the home valley was a strictly forbidden pastime that was nonetheless habitual for Oram and Ornery both.

At this particular juncture, however, Ornery hated Oram along with everyone else, so she did not take him with her. Besides, he was bossy and wouldn’t let her go where she wanted to, and today she intended to do precisely what
she
wanted to and nothing else because that’s what Pearla was doing, so it was only fair.

Ornery rose before the family wakened, filled her pockets with apples, a chunk of bread, a bit of cheese, and went out into the early morning. Not far from the farm was the beginning of a southerly-tending valley, from which she climbed over a ridge to a narrow canyon, and from the end of that into a lava tube that had only bits of its roof left, here and there. Far along this tube, among areas of tumbled stones, was a pit into a lower tube, one that could be climbed down into by way of shattered ledges, and then there was a long walk down that tube, lit only by occasional gleams from cracks above, to a darker pit, one leading to a tube three layers down. Easing the descent was a rather short rope, which was all Oram and Ornery had been able to get away with. Rope was valuable, even short bits of it that could be made into bridles or gate ties or whatever.

Ornery lowered herself onto a steep pile of stone that had fallen from the pit opening, a pile which made descent possible as otherwise the rope would have been far too short. Lying against the rockpile were the torches Ornery and Oram had fashioned the last time they had come here, and at the edge of the dim light that came through the pit opening was the cairn of rocks they had piled to distinguish one direction in the tunnel from the other. Both ways looked the same, dark holes leading endlessly into the black, and since the rope often twisted and turned during the climb down, it was difficult to tell one direction from the other. It was probable, Oram had claimed, that monsters lived down there. There were many stories of such. Big wriggly things that set up stones called Joggiwagga, and huge four-eyed flyers called Eigers. So far as Ornery knew, they were only stories told to the twins by someone she couldn’t remember.

On a conveniently located smooth stone beside the pile, Ornery sat down to take her breakfast. After eating, she would light the torch and go some way in the direction marked by the cairn, not that she expected to find much. She and Oram had already explored the other way to the limit of their light, finding nothing but rock and more pits and the bones of various things that had maybe fallen in and couldn’t get out again, all of them too small to be monsters.

She had finished her bread and cheese and had just set her teeth into an apple when the rock beneath her shivered. At first all her rumination about Wilderneers and monsters came flooding back and she figured something huge was coming down the tunnel. She dropped her lunch forthwith and started up the rope, only to be shaken off, tumbled down the stone pile, and left bruised and battered on the floor of the tunnel while the world went crazy around her. Stone cracked. Rocks fell. The pit opening seemed to jitter in midair, like an eye blinking against a glare. There was a sound from inside, outside, somewhere, that went past the limits of noise into something heard with the skin and the bones, a sound so huge she could not exist inside it.

So, for a time, she stopped existing. When she came to herself again, the world was quiet, the pit opening was gray with dusk, and from it the rope hung like a worm on a web, twisting gently in a hot little wind that came from down the tunnel. Windward, far along the tube, shone a fiery light. Something had fallen, letting the outside in, or something inside was burning. She thought of going to see, but she ached so that she could not make herself go an inch farther than necessary, and she was, besides, overcome with a feeling of such grief and horror she could not move. In her dazed condition she seemed to hear a gigantic voice calling to her, though it wasn’t her name it called, which made no sense at all.

She buried her face in her hands and merely sat until her dizziness subsided, then staggered to the top of the pile where the rope hung. Her first two attempts were abortive, and on the third try she managed only with excruciating difficulty, as though she had never climbed the rope before. In the light, she could see her bruises and bloody abrasions. All the air was thick with dust and smoke. The way back to the valley took forever, even though there were two moons still almost full that rose as the sun set in a blaze of crimson, purple, and orange. She lost her way, coming to a hot waste she had never seen before and losing herself as she tried to go around it. The mountain trembled again as it grew darker, emitting wavering fumes across the faces of the moons. Eventually, weariness conquered and she fell into a little grassy pit, pulling her coat around her and relinquishing everything else. Mama and Papa would be furious, but she’d deal with it in the morning.

Morning came. She rose, looked around herself, told off her landmarks and realized she had gone past home. She went toward it and came upon the same waste she had encountered the night before, ash and mud and stink, with smoke rising from the edges where things had burned and there, at the far side, a piece of roof she recognized as from the chicken coop and beside it a tall post that had stood at the gate to the vineyard, crowned with a circlet of dried vine.

She screamed first, then ran about, then trembled and merely wept. She tried, but could get no closer, for the earth burned under her feet. Either her people had fled or they were dead under all that black. The nearest people were at the mines, along the foot of the scarp, but the way there was blocked by smoking rock. The nearest farm was down valley, and she finally turned in that direction, walking along the hills above the black, realizing along toward midmorning that she had gone long past the neighboring farm, that everything down this valley was gone.

There was a family one valley over. She crossed the ridge and came there in the early evening, trudging up their lane to be confronted by dogs and people.

“Why it’s Oram,” cried the woman of the house. “That’s your name isn’t it, boy?”

Ornalia didn’t correct the misapprehension. “My family, all gone,” she cried. “Buried, and all the cows and chickens. All but my sister Pearla. Oh, they’re gone, all gone….”

And the farm folk, between questioning and answering and giving her tea and food and offering the use of a washbasin, at once made plans to send a wagon to Sendoph to report what had happened to the neighboring valley. Oram, they said, could ride along.

Pearla was alone in the house when Ornery came, for the dowerer and his parents had gone to Naibah to arrange payment of the dowry. Oh, she had seen the mountain blow, she said. Oh, she had feared for her family.

“The vineyard gone,” grieved Pearla. “Oh, Ornery, I can’t imagine it gone. I can’t imagine Mama and Papa, gone. So quick, like that.”

“There’s just mud and ashes,” sobbed Ornery. “No house, no barn, no storage houses, no poultry house, no orchard. Mama … I hoped for a while maybe, well, maybe, but everything’s gone, all down the valley….”

They cried on one another’s shoulders and told one another it would be all right, though it was a good deal easier for Pearla to say, who, though orphaned, would not have her life much changed from the one she had already planned. Still, they both wept, taking a long, uninterrupted time in which to grieve and talk of their sadness and despair, and after that of the fact that Ornalia was adrift, with no place to call home.

“Oh, you can stay here,” Pearla wept. “They’ll let you. I mean, you’re old enough to be dowered for, even now.”

“I’d rather die,” spat Ornery, all yesterday’s anger bubbling up through her grief, like mud roiled up from the bottom of a clear stream.

“But, you’ll want to someday….”

She cried, “Never. I don’t want to be married, I don’t want children, the idea of being married off to some man is just … repulsive.”

Pearla flushed. “Well, Ornery, it’s not wonderful, I know. I mean, my intended, he’s nice enough, but … oh, he doesn’t stir me at all. None of the Family Men I’ve met do. They seem all tangled up in these deals and games and strategies of theirs. They give you a flower and candy, they say sweet things, and it all comes out like Oram being polite to Grandma Miby.”

They both laughed, wiping tears. Oram had had to be extensively coached to say, “Hello, Grandma Miby, how are you today?” and it always came out in a completely wooden voice.

“But,” Pearla went on, “there’s Hunks, Ornalia! And they’re oh, they’re wonderful. My mother-in-law, she has one, and she says they make life worth living. Some of the things they know how to do….” She sighed. “And I’m only twenty, so by the time I’m thirty, I’ll have a Hunk of my own!”

Ornery shook her head. “Call me Ornery, Pearly. I don’t feel like being Ornalia, and I don’t want a Hunk, either.”

“You could serve the Temple as a Hagger….”

“Doing what? I’d have to give up all life except Temple life. I’d have to serve wherever the Hags say to serve. That’s no life for me, Pearly. What I’d really like is a stephold for myself. A tiny croft with a few sheep, a garden, and a loom for winter work. Some women have done it, begging sickly lambs from the neighbors and nursing them into a flock, building their own shelter of turf, getting by through full season or lean….”

“Some women have done it, true, but they weren’t young or fertile,” said Pearla. “I doubt the Hags would allow you to buy even a stephold farm, though you will have some money coming.”

“From where?” Ornery was astonished.

“If Mama and Papa are dead, if Oram is dead … my dowry will come to you.”

“But I can’t use it as I like,” cried Ornery.

“Even if they’d let you buy a farm, they wouldn’t let a healthy young woman stay unmarried.” Pearla stared thoughtfully into the fire, shocked by all this loss into an unusual consideration for her sister. “There’s an idea creeping around in my head, though. You say the family who helped you thought you were Oram?”