The syringe, filled from Tua’s bowl, was pressed into Daya’s hand. She turned, gathering the body’s heavy center in her arms and gliding her cheek up Tua’s soft inner thigh.
Before dawn she was wakened by obscure discomfort. It was not, as she had thought at first, something bad in her gut. The sensation was of a burning in her lower belly and vagina.
The wagon was full of the sounds of sleepers. On the floor a fem gasped her way laboriously toward orgasm – probably old Ossa, who always went back for a second round of douche. If no one could be induced to lie with her, she would manage by herself, fingering her own body to its climax.
The burning feeling flickered out. Daya settled herself in her bedding, which was still damp from the douche.
By morning she was feverish. She curled, moaning around her pain. She felt people handling her, trying to straighten out her limbs, washing out her vagina and lifting her onto a pile of soft blankets at the back of Elnoa’s wagon.
She tried not to cry out. There was Tua standing over her, weepily repeating that it could not be her fault. Then Tua was gone, sent away. Elnoa, could not bear whiners.
They did not abandon Daya in her trouble. Someone was with her all the time, burning sweet-scented herbs in the fire bowls, gently restraining her when she sought to dig the pain out of her own body with her nails. It was she who, because of the wandering of her mind, felt herself leaving them.
As she lay burning it seemed to her that her head was swollen vast enough to contain whole populations; she could not understand how the wagon held her. She kept hearing the cracking of the short, split-ended switches that young male overseers used to drive labor fems. She smelled the scents that had mingled in Master Kazzaro’s private chamber. She tasted the flavor of someone’s body – her old lover the pet Merika, coming to her to receive solace. Or maybe it was the limping fern, name forgotten now, who had taken Daya under her protection down in the kitchens; she had applied salves to Daya’s cheeks, vainly trying to repair the jagged holes torn by the broiling spit.
The pain in her body was surely the pain of cubbing, but this place was not the Holdfast hospital. There was no screaming here.
She was fed broth. She thought hazily, How sorry they are for me, how angry with the unknown fem who’s killed me.
Someone was bending over her, mumbling, breathing on her, tugging at her legs –
Ossa. Old Ossa was dragging at her. At first it seemed like another vision. Daya pushed at Ossa, but the old creature slapped her hands away and continued dragging her toward the far end of the wagon.
Looking up suddenly, Ossa smiled at someone behind Daya and panted, ‘Oh good, she’s too heavy for me. Help me drag her over to the door.’
The other person leaned down to take hold of Daya’s shoulders. It was Kobba. She said, ‘Why are you pulling at Daya like that? What are you trying to do?’
‘Tip her out, get rid of her,’ the old fem whispered, tugging alternately at Daya and at Kobba.
‘I’m sick,’ Daya moaned, shrinking against Kobba.
Kobba hissed, ‘She’s sick, you old fool!’
Daya was terrified that between them Kobba and Ossa would pull her to pieces. Her inflamed flesh would part with a sickly tearing sound and release a stinking gas –
‘Yes, yes, she’s very sick,’ Ossa replied. ‘She’s breathing sickness on us all. Help me toss her outside. Can’t you smell it? Her decay makes the whole wagon stink.’
‘That’s the smell of all the medicines we’ve been trying on her. Let her go!’ Kobba commanded.
Ossa backed off, panting distressedly between her crooked teeth. As Kobba lifted Daya in her arms, the old fem whined, ‘I have to guard my health. Nobody looks out for me. They pinch me and abuse me, they say I don’t work to earn my food. It’s not my fault my sight is going. Spoiled little pet. It’s all very well for you, Kobba, you’re still young and strong.’ She rubbed her hands on her wrinkled flanks as if to get rid of the touch of Daya. ‘Man slime.’ She wept a little, sniffed, and shuffled off.
It was good to have strong friends who could drive away one’s enemies with a frown and a sharp word. Daya watched Kobba’s squinting face floating above her and prayed to Moonwoman for an end to her pain.
Kobba’s voice said harshly, ‘Ferns are saying you’d rather see your pet dead than send her to the Mares.’
Daya turned as much as the pain would allow. Kobba was standing near her, rolling up a leather window to let in daylight. Elnoa reclined on her couch of cushions. No one else was there.
Elnoa signed, She may after all recover.
‘She’ll die. You must send her to the Mares now. Maybe they can cure her, maybe not, but if she dies here people will say that’s what you wanted because she was annoying you. If she dies with the Mares, the blame falls on them.’
Elnoa signed something Daya could not see; her vision kept washing in and out of focus. Her throat was burning. She could not understand why they went on talking, ignoring her, when she needed something to drink so badly.
Kobba said, ‘Is this how you would act if she were the property of your master in the old days?’
Passionately Daya explained to them that she was too valuable to be let die. It came into her head that she had offended them with her scarred smile, that they did not want to look at her. She promised not to smile again, ever.
No one seemed to hear her. Kobba went on talking, louder and louder, until darkness enfolded and protected Daya from the sound.
Why were they moving her, didn’t they know how she hurt? She wept and flinched from their hands.
‘Hush,’ Tua whispered in her ear, ‘we’re trying to help you.’
Deftly she wrapped Daya’s hands in a strip of cloth, binding them together forearm to forearm beneath her breasts. Someone else was there, putting things into a wicker box. Was that Emla, sneaky fingers pawing through Daya’s clothing?
‘Don’t let Emla,’ Daya moaned.
Tua patted her, smiled at her, and lifted her up. She was carried to a trade wagon and nestled into a hammock, separated only by a curtain from stacked bricks of tea.
Elnoa came in and lowered herself onto a bench beside the hammock. She had brought a cushion with her, which she tucked behind Daya’s head.
Elnoa’s lips trembled slightly as though she were trying to whisper. She leaned forward, doubling the rolling flesh of her body over her thighs. Her eyes were wide with emotion, green like sea waves standing toward the beach. The eyes seemed to speak almost as much as the hands, as if hands and eyes were the living spirits of that huge bulk.
I have been consulting my ledgers, she signed. Someday civilized people will find and read them, and they will learn from them what our lives were like and how we ended, cubless and dwindling away one by one to nothing. Did you think I wrote only figures, totaling up my wealth for my own amusement? I write everything there, all that I know – what I remember of life in the Holdfast, what I know of life here. Your stories are fancies, Daya, that will vanish when you do. Nothing will be left of you, for all your fine imagination. In my ledgers the facts are written.
All our works will disappear – the wagons will rot, and the tea will grow wild over us. Only what I have done and thought, sitting quietly and using my mind while others used their muscles, will last. It is in my ledgers, and my ledgers go year by year, volume by volume, to safety in a dry place in the hills where they wait for discovery in the future. My voice that has not spoken for decades is in them and will outlast all your loud talk, your whispers, your singing of songs.
The words made no sense to Daya. She knew they should. She wanted to smile at Elnoa, but remembered she had promised not to.
Meanwhile, Elnoa continued, the past recorded in my books is useful to me. The past tells me that nothing pleasing should be wasted, not even when it is also a troublesome nuisance – which is what you are, Daya, with your intrigues. It is something, too, that though the masters took your looks from you, here in the
Grasslands you have more lovers than ever you had at home. You and I are alike in that; we two have subdued adversity.
The actual signs she used, Daya saw, meant simply, ‘we both have beaten bad luck.’ But with Elnoa’s handspeech, grander and subtler interpretations invariably suggested themselves, overwhelming utterly the blunt common equivalents of her gestures. Daya thought, what a good friend, to come and soothe my feverish vision with the cool, deft dancing of her hands.
So let no one say, she was signing, that I am like a bad master, that I neglect those who belong to me. I am sending you to the Mares to see if they can cure you. You are no burden to the wagon crew, though they complain – you have grown lighter than dry grass. They will do as I have told them, and take you to the Mares and pay the Mares to do their best for you.
I will write down what I have done for you, and perhaps a few of your stories, if I can remember them.
Touching her fingers first to her own mouth, then to Daya’s, she patted her smile onto Daya’s burning lips in place of a kiss.
FEDEKA’S CAMP
8
I could kill her, Alldera thought grimly, looking at the pet fem’s scarred, sleeping face: choke her, slice her throat. Her little game with Emla’s bracelet wrecked me. Without even meaning to she did it. She sent me here to Fedeka (out of guilt; it cancels things out). And she came here nearly dead herself (that cancels things too).
Alldera sat sewing strips of colored cloth together. The outside walls of Fedeka’s small tent were covered with similar strips that had been dyed in Fedeka’s battered dye pots and fastened on with a stitch or two to weather and fade. They fluttered outside in the breeze like faint voices.
Alldera worked close to the fire. The Cool Season was well advanced and the morning sun brought bright light but little warmth. She wore a cloth tunic under her leather shirt and kept her feet curled near the flames. There was no room to stretch her legs. With two guests and Fedeka’s bundles and pouches and baskets cramped inside, the leather walls bulged. Sometimes Alldera took her blankets and slept outside in spite of the cold, just for the freedom to straighten her limbs.
Her ribs still ached in the mornings when she got up: Daya’s fault. Even Fedeka could not promise complete recovery, for Alldera was no youngster any more—a disquieting surprise, to realize that – who would heal easily and completely.
If this pet bitch says the wrong thing when she wakes up I’ll wring her neck.
The needle jabbed and Alldera yelped. Then she saw Daya’s eyes open just a line and Daya’s leg strain furtively to loosen the blankets in case she should have to run. Let her try. It felt good to see the pet fem afraid.
Alldera said briskly, ‘Fedeka’s out. She says your danger’s past, so she’s left you with me for a while.’
Daya’s eyes, enormous in her wasted face, opened wide. ‘What will you do?’
Plain scared of me and straightforward about it, Alldera thought. ‘I’m going to stay with you. I’m a grateful patient and a guest in Fedeka’s tent. For her sake, I won’t do you any harm. She seems to consider you valuable. I saw how she fought to get you from the wagon crew. She just wanted some supplies from them, but there you were in the wagon, and she wouldn’t hear of letting them take you on to the Riding Camp Women.
‘She says, by the way, that there was nothing wrong with any douche made from her ingredients. Somebody must have doctored yours. I suppose you have a lot of enemies.’
Daya licked her lips nervously. ‘Maybe Emla had it done. Clever bitch. Maybe because she was annoyed with me over the bracelet.’
‘I’m surprised you didn’t foresee that.’
‘There are always risks,’ the pet fem murmured dreamily. ‘No one can foresee everything.’
Well, you certainly could not fault the bitch for nursing a grudge.
Daya said drowsily, ‘You’re sewing those strips to your pants …’
Carrying cactus pads in her hat, which she held upside down by the cord, Alldera trudged home to Fedeka’s tent. She could see the two of them together outside, Daya’s slight form reclined next to the leather groundsheet that Fedeka had spread out to work on. Fedeka sat sorting through piles of dried plants, crumbling them thoughtfully in her fingers, smelling them. She had only one arm, having lost the other to Holdfast machinery.
As Alldera drew nearer they looked up at her and let their conversation trail off. Talking about me, she thought. She was surprised by Daya’s easy intimacy with Fedeka, whom Alldera had come to regard as a person of energy and determination. What could such an individual find in Daya the pet?
Alldera put the hat down and squatted to build a fire with twigs from the fuel pile.
‘How does your side feel?’ Fedeka asked.
‘Doesn’t hurt.’
‘Did you run at all?’
‘You said I shouldn’t rush things.’ Alldera was afraid of how badly she would run, like a cripple. With flint and metal she struck a spark into the little tower of dry sticks and grass she had made. She took a green stick and held it out toward Daya. ‘Run some of those pads onto this so we can roast them and get the spines burnt off.’
Daya obeyed silently.
Fedeka took her portion of the evening tea and tucked it into her cheek. Alldera had not been able to wean her from the revolting femmish habit of chewing the stuff instead of drinking its juice. Fedeka shook her head over Alldera’s careful brewing procedure.
‘The things people will swallow to relieve thirst! Somebody once told me that Ossa actually guzzled down one of my douche mixtures one time because it had been in the shade and was cooler than the water in the water bottle.’
‘Let me tell you about a master I knew,’ Daya said, settling herself more comfortably by the fire. ‘He used to put earth into his beer before he drank it. Well, you can imagine what kinds of dirt his fems found for him to use …’
She was full of stories. Alldera had to admit that she told them cleverly; but how repellent they were. Alldera could never enjoy them as the tea camp fems had. She thought about it, sitting back from the fire and deliberately not listening to Daya’s words. Maybe, she thought, it was because she had tasted real freedom among the Riding Women, while the others had simply run from Holdfast Slavery to a more comfortable bondage in the Grasslands. The same stories were told here as had been told in the Holdfast. Yet Fedeka listened and laughed.
Alldera had not presumed to approach Fedeka’s bed, but Fedeka slept with Daya as if it were a matter of course.
‘What are you doing out here?’ Alldera snapped. Daya was sneaking around after her.
‘Looking at the country,’ Daya said. ‘It’s beautiful.’
Relenting a little, Alldera said, ‘I never saw a dry riverbed before. How does Fedeka know that a river really ran here on the plain in Ancient times?’
‘She hears all sorts of things from the Mares.’
‘Everything dried out, and the rivers vanished,’ Alldera said. ‘It’s hard to imagine.’ She turned her head, alert to a sound out on the plain east of them. Darkness was drawing on.
‘It’s Fedeka,’ Daya said quickly. ‘She’s gone off to pray.’
Restless, Alldera got up from the smooth-sided boulder she had been sitting on. ‘I thought nobody paid attention to Moonwoman here.’
‘You’d have seen a different side of things if Fedeka had shown up in camp.’ Daya’s voice softened and took on warmth. ‘When she arrives, suddenly everyone starts saying prayers at meals and making water offerings and everything.’
‘Because she’s different from them, she’s free, and they respect her.’
‘Oh, yes. Fedeka is the freest of the free fems. She keeps her own ways, gathering her dyes and potions. There’s not a growing thing in all the Grasslands from green threads finer than your hair to spiked bushes thick as your wrist that she hasn’t gathered, dried, and boiled up.’
Alldera said abruptly, ‘You’ve traveled with her before, she says.’
‘Yes.
But she’s most comfortable alone, so I never stay long. Even her interest in a skillful pet fem dies down pretty quickly. She has another lover. She gives her body to Moonwoman out there in the dark.’
Was that the only way to find your strength if you couldn’t find it among your own kind – to give yourself up to something greater? The sound of Fedeka’s prayer came distinctly through the evening air. Her voice was strong and unselfconscious:
Pour us into us through the thickest walls of our prisons,
Grains of silver, to bend to any pressure;
Strength of grizzled iron, to bear any blow;
Fastness of rock, to outlast them all.
Alldera groaned under her breath. Daya asked her what was the matter.
‘Where was this great Moonwoman when we were living our wretched lives back there and dying our terrible deaths?’
‘Fedeka says she was in our minds, giving us strength to exist.’
‘Strength to work and strength to die, you mean,’ Alldera said bitterly. ‘An ally of masters, not of fems.’
Alldera ran, feeling full of power. Sometimes she crossed the blurred tracks of laden horses, and the sight of them gave her the most peculiar, wrenching feeling. She remembered the days with the Riding Women when it had been the impressions of femmish wagon wheels that had caught her eye.
She was surprised when Daya asked to go running with her. The pet fem soon gave it up. She was not able to mask her disgust at filthying herself with sweat and dust.
Alldera still went with Daya in search of plants for their meals, or to scrape up the white salt crusts the dyer used to fix her colors in cloth.
Skimming this white mineral off the sand one morning, they found tracks and droppings of sharu. Daya jumped like a startled foal and looked anxiously around. This wandering life had thinned her down and browned her until she seemed to suit the land. It was hard now to picture her in Elnoa’s rich nest.