All the way from Libreigia to Hasra, Manrie had the same dream. There was a fox racing through the grass, low-slung and gangly, with an uncertain number of limbs. Its speeding form seemed to pay complete attention to each blade of grass, as if the spiked hair of its matted hide was a comb, insistent on rearranging the world in some specific and tiny way. It was hungry, and it was accompanying the caravan, which moved very slowly. The fox was very quick, but somehow always there, loping along beside them. She had the feeling that it would eat everything, eventually, and that they had to hurry because it would devour the towns and villages that they passed through if they stopped. In the dream she was riding on top of the pantry wagon, as she often did when she was awake. She looked down and saw the fox’s red back, like a shard of sunlight in the brown grasses. If she turned her head she would see that the land ahead of them was leeched of its color, as if white mold was creeping over the rind of the world.
When she woke, Koenbahki was beside her. The tangy verdancy of the herbs in their pots filled her senses. Firelight flickered upwards from below, and she stared up at the stars and listened to murmured voices as she waited for her heart to stop racing. Sometimes Koenbahki woke up enough to nuzzle her, to lay a thin arm across her chest and plant a dry, sleepy kiss on her neck. If sleep wouldn’t return to her, she’d get up and go down the ladder to sit by the campfire, where she would often find Cloedeya, sitting at the epicenter of a ring of tents, the firelight flickering against their white sides. Sometimes he was alone, and sometimes the captain, Yoehnen, was sitting with him.
“I find that I must sit and ponder the events of the past few days,” Yoehnen said on the night after they had departed Ineshashar. He was a curious man. He had a very smooth face and hair that was the color of ivory. There was something inalterably feminine about his features, despite his neat little beard. He spoke carefully, and seemed to watch his words with his rather large and glistening eyes. Much of what he said was critical, but his tone was so gentle that she didn’t understand it as criticism until later, when she had spent the whole day mulling it over as she walked beside the wagons. She didn’t like it when he joined her and Cloedeya at the campfire.
“It is strange that the villagers made that choice,” Cloedeya said. “It means that they won’t be a village for much longer.”
He was referring to the people of a little hamlet on the outskirts of Ineshashar, who had declined Manrie’s offer to create a barrow for them. The headman had looked up the road and noted that Ineshashar was only a mile away. “We’ll take our dead there, from now on,” he’d said.
Yoehnen shrugged. “It is how cities grow. Or so the curators say. Little villages decide to set aside their own personality, and latch on to some larger place.”
Manrie shivered. She was sitting on one of the saddles that had been arranged around the fire, the saddle that she always chose to sit on, if it was free. It belonged to a rather plump, quick-witted ranger who the others called Gunk. Gunk liked to carve as he rode, and his small hands were very clever. The saddle horn gained new adornments every day, smooth and intricate despite the jostling of the horse. She liked running her fingers over them as she watched the fire.
Cloedeya said, “I suppose they become neighborhoods. Each with a distinct flavor, nonetheless.” He glanced at Manrie. “This will change us, won’t it? Before the famine there were hundreds of little farming villages, scattered through the hills and along the rivers. The famine sent people to the cities, and many of them never returned home. Now it will happen again. People will align with the places that have the spirit stones. The world will grow more compact.”
“And less lonely,” Yoehnen suggested.
“Lonely?”
He sighed. “I have been riding across this land for fifteen years. Ever since the Lady established her rangers. Riding from village to village, looking for monsters. Hearing of deprivations, of attacks. I always wondered why people insisted on living such isolated lives. Going five miles down the river to establish another town, when they would be safer living together.”
“They were looking for food,” Cloedeya said softly. “At least at first. It took many years to make the land fertile. If you stayed too close to other people, you might starve.”
“And now, if you stay too far away, you will be haunted.” Yoehnen glanced at Manrie, but addressed his next words to Cloedeya. “Have you noticed how we’re changing?”
“Changing?”
“Each town we come to requires something different. My rangers are learning things that they’ve never had to know before. In Pahlabayo we had to form a choir. I knew that some of my people could sing. They often sing, on a safe road. But I didn’t know that Jaskra would take to it like that. He stood in the mouth of that cave and sang the entire time you were inside,” he said to Manrie. “For hours. The others grew tired. And no one would have said that Jaskra was the best singer in the company. Only his voice grew stronger as he sang. Like he was polishing each note. And Sinfaeya. She has become an expert at tapping the ground.”
There were towns along their route that had no barrow or tomb. The people practiced sky burial. They protested when Manrie told them that they must bring the bodies of their dead into the earth from now on. That all people must be buried in the same place, shrouded and carried down stone tunnels to the dark, silent caverns where she placed the spirit stones. Not every town had a cave, and days were lost in scouting the hills, the rangers walking slowly, tapping at the ground with their spear poles, listening for an echoing boom.
The thought of it seemed to make Yoehnen gloomy. He stared into the fire, and the light reflected off of his smooth face. He had been on the road for fifteen years, but had accumulated no scars nor wrinkles. As if the sun had never touched him, the wind never ravished his features. “I suppose it’s good,” he said reluctantly. “If the the Lady has lost the sortition, we may be disbanded when we arrive in Hasra. My people might need some other task.”
Manrie picked up a stick and poked at a log. “It’s not the same,” she said.
“What’s not the same?” Cloedeya asked her.
“Jaskra’s singing. That choir in Libreigia was worse. Their voices were too loud. They hurt my ears, even when I’d gone deep into the center of the Tomb of the Scholars. And the ghosts didn’t like them. Although I suppose it made them more eager to stay. They didn’t want to leave the barrow and get attacked by that singing again.”
“Jaskra sings very beautifully,” Yoehnen said, forgetting that he had criticized the strength of Jaskra’s voice.
“Yes,” Manrie said. She didn’t say her real objection. Jaskra sang well. But his voice wasn’t Taeyaho’s. Jaskra sang old folk songs, marching songs, and made up tunes for poems that he knew by heart. But he didn’t sing to the moment. He didn’t sing about the dead who were entering the graves, as Taeyaho had at Raesidae. When Jaskra was singing, the dead went to their final resting places without an elegy.
Taeyaho no longer sang at all. He rode with the rangers. Yoehnen had given him a horse, a tall, imperious roan, whose white hairs matched his own. It was a very hungry horse. It snapped at the little keedanayo birds that often trailed after horses, eating the flies that plagued them. Taeyaho’s horse would catch the birds and crushed their bones in its flat teeth with a smug, taunting expression on its long face. The horse was blamed for the disappearance of all of the chickens, although Manrie sometimes wondered if the fox from her dream was the culprit. The pantry wagon was bereft of their brooding noises.
One night, when they were in sight of Mount Ingbimoesa, and Cloedeya and Manrie were alone at the campfire, she spoke what she was feeling out loud. “It’s like they’ve stolen Taeyaho,” she said. “First the farmers stole him, and now the rangers.”
Cloedeya was shelling nuts, working carefully with a small, blunt knife. “Maybe we stole him first. He had no one when we found him. And he became one of us very quickly. He’s clever in that way. He knows how to conform to those around him, even if he often wanders off by himself.”
“He doesn’t wander much, now. He’s always riding in the middle.”
Cloedeya glanced up, past the circle of light and into the surrounding darkness. The tents of the rangers clung close to the fire, and he kept his voice low. “It’s the ghosts, I suspect. He is afraid of them riding him again. As are you.”
“Maybe,” Manrie said, digging at the dirt with a stick.
“You’re not afraid?”
“I am. I’m not certain that Taeyaho was possessed, though.”
Cloedeya was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I prefer to think that he was.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s hard to be a chameleon. To change to fit every passing moment. If that is what Taeyaho truly is, I pity him.”
“What will happen when we get to Hasra?” Manrie asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve been there several times. I was there two years ago. The city was unhappy. The Lady has ruled for too long. No one knows how she does it. But her sisters and cousins and nieces are growing restless. They complain about the rangers, and the restrictions that have been placed on the Sangrahalaya. But really, they are only unhappy that they have no chance to rule. It’s a hard thing. They’ve each been trained since childhood. Given all the skills they need to be the Lady of Hasra. And now Katemzan Prahmpara Droegee Daturi has ruled for a quarter of a century, and the rest of the woman have nothing to do.”
“Why do they have so many names?”
“Well, they’re all called Katemzan or Katemzani. They have to add names to distinguish themselves. The names Katemzan and Daturi come from their mothers, of course. But their fathers have to contribute something. Katemzan Prahmpara Droegee’s father was none other than the king of Taokeihla. It’s where some of her oddness comes from.”
“I didn’t think she was odd.”
He pried a nut apart and then looked at her. “I forgot that you’d met her. She has changeable moods. She can be very charming. Clever and inquisitive. And then she will fall silent for weeks, or rage. That is her father’s legacy. The rage.”
“Do you know her well?”
He shrugged. “I’ve cooked for her.” Meaning that he knew all he thought that he needed to know about her.
The next day they came into Ibimendi. Melsa had joined Manrie at Koenbahki on top of the pantry wagon, but she perched at the front, looking down at Maedreth, who was leading the horse. Like a mother watching a toddler take her first steps. Koenbahki was staring out at the roundhouses that clustered in the valleys between the hills.
“Where are all the people?”
“We’ve come in summer,” Melsa said. “They’re in the Gap of Ibimendi, following the Summer King. If we were here in winter, the houses would be full of people. And the Winter Matriarch would sleep in a different house every night.”
“One year, they selected a Winter Matriarch who had six children,” Manrie said. “And all of them were always trying to make people laugh. Tumbling and wrestling and singing nonsense songs. Aizdha laughed so hard that I thought he woke choke to death on his beer.”
Koenbahki studied her face. Then she reached out and placed a hand on her arm. “You’ve been here before.”
“Yes. We were hunting a brahmkarief. Aizdha wanted an exact description of its forlorn cry, so we went through the entire city, asking people to describe it. One boy said that it sounded like the moment when you wake up after a sad dream. Like crying for no reason. And another boy said that it sounded like the moment of shock when you realize that you’ve lost something you’ve been working on. When a bowl you’ve been painting slips from your hands and shatters, or the carving knife slips and cuts off the nose of an effigy.”
“You liked being here,” Koenbahki said.
“Ibimendi is wonderful.”
“What happened to the children?”
“Children?”
“The six children who made Aizdha laugh.”
“They must be older now. In the gap, following the king. All summer long he leads the people in foraging and hunting, and they bring everything back here in the fall. They feast all winter. Nobody starves in Ibimendi. Not even after the famine,” Manrie grew wistful and raised her eyes to the mountains. “People came here from all over the land, and the city grew. But the gap always provides enough forage.” She thought of Baenlaez and the farmers and said, “It can’t go back to the wild, because it’s always been wild. And people learn to eat what the wild provides.”
She stared out at the white domes of the houses, wondering why she hadn’t come to Ibimendi as a starving child. She had met Aizdha in that caravan, and he had been going home to Libreigia. But she couldn’t remember why she had been in the caravan to begin with.
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The wagon turned around the side of a hill and they saw an inn ahead of them. Smoke was rising from its chimney and there were people working in the yard. “I thought that everyone was in the gap with the Summer King,” Koenbahki teased.
“Well, not everyone,” Manrie said. “The keepers of the grove stay all year. And there are a few who remain, to welcome strangers and prepare the city for winter.”
The inn had four upstairs rooms, and Koenbahki and Manrie were given one to share with Maedreth and Little Praeda. The rangers pitched camp in the inn yard, and Cloedeya, Melsa, and Big Praeda elected to stay in the sleeping wagon. The window in the upstairs room looked out at Ibimendi Grove, a bloom of trees on a high hill, settled in the sunlight that fell through the gap. There was a bath in a little chamber at the end of the hall, and Little Praeda led Maedreth off to get washed, fussing at her.
“She treats her like a doll,” Manrie said.
Koenbahki smiled. “Little Praeda has no one else to play with. Haven’t you noticed? Even in Libreigia, she wouldn’t play with the other children. I don’t think she’s ever played with another child.” She sat by the window, and Manrie stood at her side. They looked out at the grove. “Where is the barrow?” Koenbahki asked.
“There is no barrow. They take the dead into the pass and leave them for the scavengers. There is a canyon full of ledges. Scavenger beetles and vultures pick the corpses clean. They call it The Place of Bones.”
“Will we have to go there?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if one of the stones will work outside of a cave.” She paused. “I’m afraid,” she said. Koenbahki reached back and took her hand. “But not of that.”
Koenbahki nodded. She smiled and kissed the back of Manrie’s hand, then glanced up at her. There was always mischief in Koenbahki’s eyes. She had every reason to grieve, but grief seemed powerless against her teasing cleverness. Manrie wanted to fall into those eyes, to see the world as Koenbahki did. To find it cheerfully ridiculous, pleasantly absurd. And she was wise. She said one word and it described all of Manrie’s fear. “Hasra.”
“Yes,” Manrie said.
“You’re afraid that the Lady wants you to speak to the dead. To the ancestors.”
“Yes.”
Koenbahki stood and put her arms around her. “And what if she does? You will still be Manrie.”
She smelled of herbs, of sweat, of sunlight. “Will I? I have memories that aren’t my own. The starving girl, she was so obsessed with her fat farm wife. How do I know that I really feel this way about you? How do I know that it isn’t just her feelings, infecting me?”
Koenbahki’s hand stroked her back. “Just as long as you feel this way. Maybe some of the intensity came from her. But I don’t mind, as long as you love me.”
“And the old guardsman. He was in Ibimendi. He and his entire company had to leave Cahntada and go west. They passed through here. When we came into the barroom below, I wasn’t sure if I was really walking across the room, or remembering the way that he walked across it.”
Her firm hand didn’t pause. Its movement seemed to root Manrie to herself. “Just as long as you walk across it with me.”
“But there are things that I don’t remember, Koenbahki. About myself. When we were in Libreigia, I kept thinking about a woman. A sad, pathetic little woman. I kept expecting to see her somewhere in the crowd, watching me. But I don’t know who she is.”
“Maybe you were looking for your mother.”
“My mother?”
“When I joined the caravan, after Raesidae, I kept asking about you. Big Praeda told me that your mother had sold you to Aizdha the Scholar, even though she didn’t need to. But she kept looking for you, in the city, after she did so.”
“What happened to her?”
The hands faltered on Manrie’s back. “She died, Manrie. Maybe she was among the ghosts.”
Manrie buried her face in Koenbahki’s shoulder. “Why don’t I know that?”
“Manrie, there are things that I don’t remember. From my childhood. From Yenceyan. When we were fleeing, when we were going to Mueslahvin’s Fort, my father told me that I always used to make woven buns when I was little. That I would place the raisins in neat little rows, and get upset if I thought they were uneven. But I didn’t remember that. He remembered it for me.” She paused. “That’s why it’s so sad that he’s gone. Part of me is gone, too. The parts that he remembered, and that I didn’t.”
Manrie lifted her face and looked at her. She kissed her. “We should tell that to the Lady of Hasra,” she said.
The humor came leaping back into Koenbahki’s eyes. “Why?”
“Well, if she thinks that I’ll be able to learn everything that the ancestors knew, she should know that they probably have gaps in their memories.”
“Yes. I’m sure that my story about my father will dash her ambitions and she’ll give us tea and send us on our way.”
“She’ll probably ask me to take the dead back into Hasra Tomb, first.”
“Well, yes, I suppose. But then we can go to Yenceyan, like we meant to.”
Manrie kissed her again and turned back to the window. “Let’s go into Ibimendi, first. I want to show you the grove.”
They waited for Maedreth and Little Praeda, and then the four of them went down through the barroom and out into the dappled dusk. Ibimendi was a city of trees. Most were the small junipers and camphor trees that pervaded the mountains. But there were also orunehew, the sleeping trees that curled their leaves at night. Little Praeda was fascinated by these, and ran about picking up the thin tubes of fallen leaves, bouncing them in her hands and trying to peer through them. Maedreth ran beside her, hitching up her skirts and laughing, and Manrie said, “I’m not sure that Maedreth ever got to play when she was a child, either.”
“I wonder how old she was, when the witch cursed her,” Koenbahki said.
“You don’t know?”
Koenbahki rolled her eyes. “I was only in Raesidae for a few months before you came. I didn’t learn all of the stories. Can we go into one of the houses?”
Manrie shrugged. “Anyone can go into them.”
“Then why do they need an inn?”
“They don’t. We do. Come on, you’ll see.”
They walked down a side path to one of the houses. It was as big as the inn. Its curved white walls caught blue shadows, the shapes of the trees flattened so that they looked like cut paper. There was a heavy door but it swung in easily on its hinges. The room beyond it was dark, the only light falling from a chimney hole in the ceiling. It was empty and forlorn. They stood in the doorway, peering in, but didn’t step farther into the house.
“You’re right,” Koenbahki said, “I wouldn’t want to stay here. How do they stand it?”
“It’s very different when it’s full of people. In winter there’s a great fire in the center of the room, and lanterns hanging on the walls. People sit together in large groups, feasting and playing games. There’s laughter, and children running about. But it’s not like one of our homes. There aren’t any objects that live here.”
“Live here?” Koenbahki asked, teasingly.
But Manrie didn’t want to be teased. She was remembering. “In Aizdha’s chambers back in Libreigia, there was a long table and two beds, one on either side of the room. And there were clay plates and bowls that lived on a shelf, and another shelf where we kept our clean clothes. There was a curtain and a wash basin, and Aizdha went down to the public baths every three days. There was the bestiary, of course, but there were also five styluses, including one with a scar on its handle that I liked the most. And there was an ink pot, and books and scrolls that he had borrowed from the library. They were always scattered all over the table. Even when he was out somewhere, it was like he was always in the room. Because of the things he left there.”
“And you? What did you have?”
“I didn’t have anything. I was a slave.”
Koenbahki shivered. “I had a spindle and a loom in Raesidae. But they didn’t really belong to me. They belonged to the Zairisets. I suppose my robes belonged to me. I made them, after all. I had a bowl that I brought all the way from Yenceyan. A little mixing bowl that my father gave me when I was a child. He said that it could just be mine, and no one else’s. But Craejo broke it when we were in the throes of passion. Or he was, at any rate. Manrie, if they all sleep together in this house, does that mean that people…”
Manrie frowned. “I don’t know. Aizdha and I always stayed at the inn. It’s strange. The things in our room at the inn aren’t ours, but just the fact that they’re there makes it feel more comfortable.”
Koenbahki agreed. “I wouldn’t want to sleep here. Not unless it was full of other people.”
Noise behind them, and they turned from the door. Little Praeda was standing in the road under the orunehew trees, and there was a man with her. She was crying loudly, and Maedreth was running in anxious circles around her, like a moth flitting about a candle flame.
Manrie rushed back up the path, Koenbahki at her heels, then saw that the man was one of the arborists. He was kneeling beside Praeda and mumbling to her. He looked up as Manrie broke through Maedreth’s frantic circle.
“She saw one of the spirits,” he said.
Manrie looked around. “Where?”
“It walked by. It was old Opejo’s ghost. She died in the spring. Her body was taken into the gap, but her spirit chose to stay with us here.”
Manrie and Koenbahki’s presences seemed to give Maedreth permission to come closer. She went to Praeda and the little girl turned and buried her face in her robes. “We should have brought her blindfold,” Manrie said angrily to herself.
The arborist looked up at her. He was a small man with a long nose and a bald patch. “Why is she afraid of the spirits?”
“Bad things happened to the people of her village. They were the first spirits she saw.”
“Ah. But it seems that we live in a land of ghosts, now. Perhaps she can learn to look at them. Opejo is very kind. Should I ask her to come here?”
Manrie shivered. “On some other day, maybe.”
He studied her. She wondered if he could see her fear on her face. But he got to his feet and dusted his robes lightly with a careful hand. “Were you coming to see the grove?”
“Yes, but it’s later than we thought it was.”
“The grove is very beautiful at night. And there are eight different kinds of butterflies there now.”
Manrie looked up the street. The grove seemed to blossom in the dusk. The last rays of the setting sun caught at the tree canopy, and she could see flickering shapes hovering over the crests of the trees. “Can we, Manrie?” Koenbahki whispered, awed.
“Maedreth, will you…”
“We will go and hide,” Maedreth said. “In the inn. No one will see us. Would you like that, Little Praeda?”
A rustle of skirts as the little girl nodded her head. Maedreth led her away. The arborist gazed after them. “There are spirits in the inn, as well,” he said in a low voice.
“She has a blindfold. She wears it at night.”
He grimaced. “It is bad, to look away from the world.”
“She’s just a girl.”
His face held disagreement, but he stayed silent. He turned to lead them up the road. “A flutter of labalieti has come down from the mountains. They are very rare.”
“Labalieti?” Koenbahki asked.
“Come. See.”
The labalieti had wide wings that were broken into three segments. The arborist told them to hold out their palms, and then he put a drop of oil in each. The labalieti quivered down from the limbs of a hawthorn tree. There were five of them, and they darted about the girls’ cupped hands. The tips of their wings had a phosphorus glow that revealed the sinuous patterns of blue and white on each segment. Manrie watched Koenbahki’s face. Her eyes were wide with delight. Aizdha had loved this grove. She could hear his voice. “The butterflies do not belong in the bestiary, of course. Although their presence makes me wish that I had begun a different sort of book. A natural history.” Then, sadly, “But butterflies have already been studied. The library is full of scrolls that describe their patterns and habits.”
“There’s a story about them,” Manrie said quietly, remembering. “A folk tale. They say that the labalieti were formed from the tears of the Once Again Maiden.” Koenbahki tilted her head, but her eyes remained on a butterfly that was resting on one of her fingers and sipping gently at the oil. “She was one of the ancestors,” Manrie said. “She wandered off from Hasra, and everyone thought that she was dead. And then Lehtahnbin found her when the horse led him here. She shared his campfire for one night, and in the morning she was gone. He looked for her for many days, but she had disappeared. When he returned in later years, he found her again. She was the same age as she had been when they came through the door at Hasra. They say that she is always that age, and that she is only seen every seven years.”
“Why does she cry?” Koenbahki asked.
“Because she’s lost, I suppose.”
Something about the story, and the butterflies, drew them closer. As they were leaving the grove, they found that the arborist had put the drops of oil on Koenbahki’s left hand and on Manrie’s right, so that when they interlaced their fingers the spots of oil touched. They both noticed, and Koenbahki gave a little laugh. Manrie turned towards her and embraced her. They found each other with their lips, and Manrie’s body flushed with the richness that Koenbahki touch always brought to her. Then they were fumbling at each other’s robes. A drum owl thrummed across the sky. The trees shivered in a small breeze, and butterflies detached themselves from the branches and fluttered like falling leaves. They lay at the trunk of a tall pine tree, and a door seemed to open around them, and they went into the warm room that they made with their bodies. And Manrie thought, it the depths of ecstasy, that this was her memory. Only hers. That she would always know that it was hers, and that she could find herself within it if she got lost.
It was dark when they returned to the inn. Little Praeda was asleep on one of the beds with her head in Maedreth’s lap. Koenbahki went down the hall to the bath chamber. Manrie went to the window and looked out at the grove. Moonlight bathed the tops of the trees.
The rangers white tents were smudged with blue shadow in the courtyard below, and the two caravan wagons were silent and still. A campfire cast its light against their walls, but Cloedeya wasn’t sitting beside it. The rangers had set a picket, and she could see a man standing at the edge of the encampment, facing the road. Another man was riding towards him, coming back from patrol. There was something about this man’s posture and the way that he sat a horse that was deeply familiar to her. She watched him, the familiarity scratching at her mind. His head seemed too small, but it was the normal size of a man’s head. He rode through the glow of the campfire, going to picket the horse at the side of the inn. He seemed to feel her gaze, and looked up at her. Firelight flickered on his pearlescent hair, and his features were still as beautiful as they had been when he had come walking along the stream bank, swinging a line of bluegills.
They stared at each other, and she breathed, “I know who you are, now.”