Authors: Kathryn Lance
After a time the fox-cat gave up, and then Evvy heard a startlingly loud, high-pitched crying and then a scrabbling sound above her on the wall. The crying changed to a continuous howl, and then began to fade. An image of Zach appeared, holding out to her a warm cloak made of white wool. Evvy stretched out her arms and let him enfold her in the soft, warm fabric. Not since the night he had slept with her under her cloak had she felt so safe and so at peace.
The dream of Zach was suddenly replaced by glaring torchlight, and Evvy looked up to see two leather-helmeted warriors standing above her, their bodies grotesquely distorted by shadows. She looked around. Where was Zach? He had been here only a moment ago.
“It’s a girl-child,” said one of the warriors, sounding surprised.
“She’s freezing,” said the other, and unhooked a long, heavy cloak. Evvy tried to twist away, hating the cloak and its ugly dark color. Why were they bothering her? The warrior knelt down and placed the cloak around Evvy, then swept her up in strong arms.
“Zach,” Evvy tried to say. “Where’s Zach?” but her mouth could not form the words correctly and she looked up helplessly. The last thing Evvy saw before she fell asleep again was the strong, clear face of the warrior and the silky golden braids which spilled from beneath her armored hood.
When Evvy awoke, bright sunlight was streaming through a curtained window just behind her head. Astonished, she looked around, thinking at first that she must be in the loft bed in her own home far to the north. Beside her on either side were rows of neat, empty wooden beds, stacked one above the other, like the one she was lying in now.
Quite suddenly she remembered all that had happened yesterday and the day before and felt a clenching in her chest. Where was she? And where was Zach?
She threw off the covers and ran to the massive wooden door. Her legs were scratched and bruised, and her bare feet felt cold against the wooden floor. She realized she was wearing nothing but a very short woolen tunic, much too small for her. Fearing the door might be barred, she pushed against it with all the force she could summon. It swung open easily, and she stumbled, then stopped in confusion. Before her was the largest room she had ever seen. At one end was a stone fireplace, its hearth taking up nearly the entire wall; ahead of her soft light fell through oiled-skin windows; and at the other end of the room four women sat at a long wooden table, working with their hands and talking in low voices. There was no one else in the room.
Her confusion began to turn to panic. Before she could think what to do next, one of the women at the table put down the green wool she had been working with and stood. As she approached, the woman’s short red hair stood out from her head like a cloud; below it her plump face was dotted with tan freckles. “Look who’s awake,” she said, smiling. “How do you feel this morning?”
The woman looked kindly. Evvy hung by the door, embarrassed by her skimpy costume. “Where am I?” she asked.
“You are at a place called the Garden,” said the woman.
Evvy felt her heart skip. So she had found the right place! “Is Zach here?” she asked next, unable to keep the excitement out of her voice.
“Who?”
“The man I’ve been traveling with.”
The woman frowned in puzzlement. “You were alone when we found you. Don’t you remember?”
“He promised he would meet me here.”
“We’ve seen no one named Zach,” the woman said. “Hilda,” she continued, speaking to one of the women still at the table, “fetch Katha. Tell her our guest is awake.”
Evvy scarcely heard her. Zach was not here. That meant . . . She didn’t want to think what it meant. Perhaps he had lied to her, had never intended to come here. Or worse . . . . She remembered again the throat-cutting gesture Orin had made, his statement that Zach had gone to where he would cause no more trouble. She must return to the bridge as quickly as possible, and with help.
The woman with red hair took her arm. “My name is Gunda,” she said. “We can get acquainted while you eat breakfast.”
Evvy felt that she was about to start crying. But this was no time to act like a child. She would not do that again. She put her hand on the lyre-bird bracelet and turned it around her wrist, then took a deep breath and held it until the ache in her throat was gone. She looked directly at the kindly red-haired woman and spoke in as adult a manner as she could manage. “Thank you for letting me sleep here,” she said. “But now I have very important business. May I speak to the father in charge?”
“There are no fathers here,” said the woman. “No men at all. Only women and children.”
Evvy was too shocked to speak. How could women live without fathers and husbands to take care of them? Who hunted for them? Who wove their cloth? And who would be able to help her now? Once again she felt tears pressing behind her eyes, and she looked down at the bracelet, turning it round and round.
“Sit down and eat,” said Gunda firmly. “You can’t do anything if you’re starved. I’ll get you some proper clothing. Then you’ll see our leader, the Mistress. She has asked to talk to you. I’m sure she’ll be able to help with whatever your trouble is.”
Evvy felt as if the world she knew had turned inside out. It was true that there were no men here – everything was done by women. The golden-haired warrior she had seen last night, Katha, was a military commander, apparently as competent and deadly as the Principal was said to be. Although Evvy realized that Katha could not be more than a very few years older than Evvy herself, the woman was tall and muscular, and her tanned face was lined and grim-looking, as if she had never been a child. As soon as she had heard Evvy’s story, Katha had dispatched two mounted and armed women to the bridge where Evvy had last seen Zach, brushing aside Evvy’s urgent demand to accompany them.
“If he’s alive, they will find him,” she said with cool certainty. “You would only be in the way. Don’t worry about it. My soldiers know what they are doing.”
How could she not worry? Never in her life, not even on the day she had first left her family home, had Evvy felt so helpless. Her whole being was clenched with the need to find Zach, a need so urgent it felt physical. She could not focus her mind on anything else even for a moment. Every minute her ears strained for the sound of mounts’ hooves, though she knew it might be hours, or even the next day, before the women soldiers returned.
Only the little fox-cat, which had led her here and had been waiting for her in the yard, seemed to understand how unhappy she was. She scooped it up in her arms as soon as she saw it, and sympathetically the small animal began to lick her cheek with its rough tongue, then buzzed reassuringly as if to say, “I am with you.”
Just now it was indeed with her, helping her to satisfy the curiosity of the leaders of this strange place, while she waited for word of Zach.
She was sitting on a wooden bench in a tiny, dark cabin. Although it was full daylight, the two small windows were shuttered, and the only illumination came from flickering odorous fish-oil lamps. Beside her was Katha, and across from her, in a dark wooden chair on rockers, sat the Mistress, leader of the Garden. The tiny room seemed to be all furniture, with scarcely space to walk. There were chairs, tables, and chests of shiny polished wood, all obviously made before the Change. On a long, high bench at one end of the room were dozens of dark and shiny objects, some glittering with metal, others glass, and all with mysterious shapes. Lining two of the walls from floor to ceiling were row upon row of dusty, colored boxes which Evvy realized with a start must be books.
The Mistress was by far the oldest person Evvy had ever seen. She was dressed in a long dark gown with a short white coat buttoned over it, instead of in the tunic and trousers worn by the other women Evvy had seen, and she was small, shrunken, like an animal or a sick child. Her thin, pale hair was pulled sharply back from her face, but her tiny features did not look severe. When she spoke it was slowly and with some difficulty, as if a part of her mouth no longer worked, and Evvy had to lean forward and concentrate to hear her.
Just now the Mistress and Katha were watching the baby fox-cat as it played on the wooden floor. “Remarkable,” said the old woman.
“It saved the girl’s life,” Katha said. “Its cries appeared to be deliberate, as if to attract our attention. Apparently it has imprinted on her.” The fox-cat seemed abruptly to tire of playing and yawned, then trotted over to Evvy, jumping into her lap.
“Remarkable,” said the Mistress again. “It’s almost as if it understood you.” Now she turned her intense blue eyes on Evvy. “Evvy, daughter of Eugenia,” she said. “I can see you are impatient. You want to learn what has become of your friend. But I can promise you that Katha’s soldiers won’t return one minute sooner than they return.”
Evvy was astonished; the old woman had scarcely seemed to know that she was in the room. After a moment the Mistress’s face twisted in what Evvy finally identified as a smile.
“Now, you can fill this time in worry and imagining. I expect you are very good at that. Or you can make the time pass by telling us how you have come here. The choice is yours.”
When Evvy had finished her story it was late afternoon. The Mistress and Katha had both listened with absorption, asking many questions, making her go over some parts. Katha in particular had seemed anxious to discover if Zach had touched her or hurt her in any way; the Mistress had wanted to know what, exactly, Zach had done at each juncture, how he had behaved, and what he had said.
The Mistress asked Evvy once again to describe Zach’s appearance, and she did, explaining how frightened she had been at first by his size and power, and how quickly she had come to see his gentle side. As Evvy spoke, the Mistress closed her eyes and nodded her head. For a moment Evvy thought the old woman had fallen asleep, but when she reached the end of her description, the Mistress’s eyes snapped open.
“When do you expect the guards to return?” she asked Katha.
“Soon,” said the younger woman. “Before sunset, anyway. You’re convinced it’s he, then?”
“I’m certain of it,” said the old woman. “Zach is not a common name, and only one Zach we know of works for the Principal.”
“I’d caution against too much hope,” said Katha in a matter-of-fact tone. “From what Evvy says, it’s not likely he’s alive.”
Evvy felt her throat tighten, and she was about to protest when the old woman shook her head, looking impatient. “Zach is a remarkable man,” she said. “Anything is possible.”
“It’s true, then?” Evvy blurted. “You know him?”
Again the Mistress made her grotesque attempt at a smile. “Zach spent the first twenty years of his life here,” she said. “Katha was a baby when he left, but I knew him well. Very well indeed, though I haven’t seen him in nearly as many years as he lived here. He is my son.”
T
HE
P
RINCIPAL WAS IN A
rage. It seemed that nobody around him could be depended on. In the early days, when he had first taken the Capital and was beginning to unify the District, he had been able to see to almost everything himself. But the Capital had long since expanded from a half-settled ruin to a thriving city, and with it had grown the complexities of management, as well as the necessity of training new men to extend this small area of light into the darkness that was the world. He simply didn’t have the time or patience for routine anymore, and Zach, who generally attended to such details, was out in the District. Berton, the bumbling fool who was covering a small part of Zach’s duties as general factotum, seemed incapable of anything but stammering apologies.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Berton was saying for the third time. “Nobody knew anything was wrong till it was too late, and they just died.”
“They just died?” said the Principal as evenly as he could. “Fourteen of the finest mounts, just died because nobody noticed they were sick?”
“The mount-master has been sick himself these last few days, and we thought he’d see to them when he returned.”
“Do you know how much those animals cost?” said the Principal. Before Berton could answer, he went on: “More than you could earn in a hundred years! And it wasn’t my metal, it was money I’ve collected from my people to build a better life for them. I suppose the deena-cursed criminal who sold us the sick mounts is gone too?”
“I . . . don’t know, sir,” said Berton, trembling.
“Well, find out!” the Principal shouted. And with that he hurled the book he had been reading after his rapidly departing assistant. He stood still and took three slow, deep breaths, then crossed the room to retrieve the book. He sighed. The binding had been split in half. His aides’ incompetence had cost him some valuable animals; his own intemperance had damaged an irreplaceable book. If only Zach had been here, none of this would have happened. Zach would have seen to the new mounts, would not have accepted ill animals, would not have waited for the mount-master to recover. If Zach had been here, he himself would not have given in to this childish tantrum.
The Principal ran a hand down the face of the book and set it on his desk. It could be mended. Not so the mounts, but he realized that they were not really the cause of his outburst, or of the unease that had kept him on edge for weeks; rather, it was just that Zach was not here.
The journey that Zach had undertaken was long and perilous to be sure, but Zach was a seasoned traveler, and no matter what sort of difficulties he had encountered, he should have been back at least three weeks ago. For the first week or two that Zach failed to return, the Principal had been impatient because of the prize that Zach was to bring him. The descriptions of the girl had been intriguing and stimulating, even allowing for his tax men’s inevitable exaggerations. It was unlikely, but it might even be that this girl was one he would want to make his legal wife. In any case, he had not had a girl in a while now and felt the needs building in him.
As the days had passed, the Principal’s thoughts of the young girl had begun to fade, and his concern centered on Zach himself. What could be delaying him? Had the girl’s parents changed their minds? But if so, Zach had orders to take her anyway, and certainly poor farmers and their wife wouldn’t be able to prevent him.