“Hot spot?”
“Where the air rises, where the Messengers fly. Remember, I told you. There are other hot spots here and there, every bridge has at least one close by. There’s a big one near Harvester’s, around the corner of the chasm. No one knows what causes hot spots, though some of the old books say it’s probably hot springs, water that comes out of the ground hot.”
“And you’ve never been to any of these places?”
“I was born on Nextdown. And I came here. And that’s all.”
“Ah. Well, if I go journeying while I’m here, perhaps you’d like to g o along? But first, you’ll sleep some more and recover entirely. I hear y our aunt coming. Time for me to get along to Harvesters House ...”
“They took you in then, at Harvesters House?” Beedie whispered.
“Why shouldn’t they? I’m a Harvester, aren’t I? I work well with t he slow-girules, don’t I? Besides, you can tell by my apron.” And Mavin winked at her, making a droll face, strolling out of the room a nd away.
“A very pleasant doer-good,” said Aunt Six. “Well spoken and kindly. You’re a lucky girl, Beedie, to have had such a one climbing the stairs from Nextdown just at the time you needed help. And one not afraid of root climbing, either. What if it had been a Potter? Or a Miner? Not able to climb at all for the down-dizziness in their heads?”
“I’m very lucky,” Beedie agreed, saying nothing at all more than that.
By afternoon of the third day from then, her ribs rebandaged by the Boneman, she was able to visit the Skin-woman who lived just off center lane, midchasm, by the market, in order to have another poultice put on her forehead. A train of Porters had brought in a greatload of pots from Potter’s bridge, and the Topbridgers were out in numbers, bargaining in a great gabble for cook pots and storage pots and soup bowls. Mavin and Beedie walked among the stalls, half hearing it all, while they spoke of the birdwoman at Birders House.
“Of course they’ll let you see her!” said Beedie. “As a messenger of the Boundless, she can be seen by anyone, for any person might be sent a message from the Boundless, and the Birders wouldn’t know who.”
“I’ve been in places they would tell you they did know,” said Mavin in a dry voice. “And tell you what the message was, as extra.”
“Why, how could anyone know? Would the Boundless give someone else my message to tell me? Silly. Of course not. If the Boundless had a message for me—which I am too unimportant to expect, mind you—it would give it directly to me, no fiddling about through other people.”
Mavin laughed. “There are things about your society here that I like, girl. Your good sense about your religion is one of them.”
Beedie shook her head in confusion. “If a religion doesn’t make s ense, what good is it? It has to make sense out of things to be helpful, and if it isn’t helpful, who’d have it?”
“You’d be surprised, sausage girl. Very surprised. But here we are. Isn’t this Birders?” They had stopped outside a tall, narrow house which reached up along the Wall, its corners and roof erupting in bird houses and cotes, its stairs littered with feathers and droppings, and with an open, latticed window just before them behind which a pale figure sat, smiling heedlessly and combing its long dark hair. “Aree, aree,” it sang. “The boundless sea, the white wave, the light wave, the soundless sea.”
“Can we get closer?” asked Mavin in a strange, tense tone. “Where she can see us?”
“We can go in,” Beedie answered. “We’ll have to make an offering, but it won’t be much. I’ll tell them you have confusions and need to be blessed by the messenger.”
“You do that, sausage girl. For it’s true enough, come to think of it.”
They went up the shallow stairs to the stoop and struck the bell with their hands, making it throb into the quiet of the street. A Birder came to the door, his blue gown and green stole making tall stripes of color against the dark interior. When Beedie explained, he beckoned them in.
“I’m Birder Brightfeather,” he said, nodding to Beedie. “I know you, Bridger, and your parents before you. Though that was on Nextdown, and I am only recently come to Topbridge to help in the House here, for young Mercald was no longer able to handle the press of visitors. Will you offer to the Boundless before seeing the messenger?”
“If we may,” answered Mavin easily, moving her hand from pocket to Birder’s hand in one practiced gesture. The Birder seemed pleased at whatever it was he had been given.
“Of course. Go in. Stay behind the railing, please. She becomes frightened if people come too close. If you have a question, ask in a clear voice, and don’t go on and on about it. The Boundless knows. We don’t have to explain things to It. Then if there’s an answer, the birdgirl will sing it. Or perhaps not. The Boundless does not always choose to answer, but then you know that.” The Birder waved them into the room, through heavy drapes that shut away the rest of the House. They found themselves behind a waist-high barrier, the birdgirl seated before them, half turned away as s he peered out through the lattice at the street, still singing as she combed her hair.
“No sorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow go free, to high flight, to sky flight, the boundless sea.”
“Handbright,” said Mavin, in a husky whisper. “Handbright. It’s Mavin.”
“Aree, aree,” sang the birdgirl, slowly turning her head so that she could see them where they stood. She was dressed in a soft green robe, the color of the noonglow, with ribbons of blue and silver in her hair. Her face was bony, narrow, like the face of a bird. She looked like something out of the old tales, thought Beedie, something remote and marvelously beautiful, too wonderful to be human. And yet, this Mavin spoke to her ...
“Handbright. Sister. See, it’s Mavin. Come all the way from the lands of the True Game, all the great way from Danderbat Keep, from Schlaizy Noithn, from cliffbound Landizot and the marshy meadows of Mip, over the boundless sea to find you. It’s been more than fifteen years, Handbright, and I was only fifteen when you saw me last.”
“No sorrow, no sorrow, the soundless sea,” sang the birdgirl, her eyes passing across them as though they did not exist. “Aree, aree.” She stood up and moved about the room behind the railing, around her chair, half dancing, her feet making little patterns on the floor. Then she sat back down, but not before Mavin had seen the way the soft gown fell around her figure, no longer as painfully thin as it had been when Mavin had seen her last, no longer slender at all. Her belly bulged hugely above the thin legs.
“Ah,” said Mavin, in a hurt tone. “So that’s the way of it. Too late for you, Handbright. So late.” She stood in a reverie, seeing in her head the great white bird, plumes floating from its wings and tail, as it dived from the tower of Danderbat Keep, as its wings caught the wind and it beat itself upward into the blue, the high blue; a colour which these people of the chasm never saw, preserved only in these ribbons, in the ritual garments of their Birders. She saw herself, pursuing, asking here, there, high on the bounding cuffs of Schlaizy Noithn; among the seashore cities of fishermen who wore fishskin trousers and oiled ringlets; in Landizot, the childless town; high in the marshy mountain lands near Breem; among the boats of the hunter fleet which never came to land but plied from Summer Sea t o Winter Sea, its children born to the creak of wood and the rattle of sheets; along the desert shore of this other land beyond the western Sea, where there were no Games nor Gamesmen, coming at last to this people living pale and deep, beyond the light of the fructifying sun; fifteen years spent in searching, asking, following. “Well, I have found you at last, sister,” she said to herself. “And your face is as peaceful as a candle flame in still air, burning with its own heat, consuming itself quietly, caring not. You sing and your voice is happy. You dance, and your feet are shod in silk. Oh, Handbright, why do I need to weep for you?”
She turned to take Beedie by the arm, her strong hands making pits in the girl’s flesh so that she gasped. “Sorry, sausage girl. It is a sad thing to come too late. Ah well, let’s go back to your place, my dear, and drink something warming. I feel all cold, like all the chasm night winds were blowing through me.”
“What is it, Mavin? Why are you so upset? Do you know her? Is she truly your sister?”
“She is truly my sister, girl. Truly as ever was. I was fifteen when she left, when I told her to leave, but she is my sister, my Shifter sister, mad as any madman I have ever seen, and pregnant as any mother has ever been. And if I understand your religion, my dear, and the respect that would be due to a messenger of the Boundless, the fact that my sister will bear now—though she did not bear in years past, to her sorrow—bodes ill for the Birders. And, sausage girl, from what I have seen traveling the width of the world for fifteen years, when a thing bodes ill for the religion of a place, trouble follows, and anarchy and rebellion and terror.” Her voice rang like a warning bell, insistent and troubling.
Beedie trembled at her tone. “Oh ... surely, surely it is not such a great thing ...”
“Perhaps not. We will hope so. But I think best to consider it, nonetheless. There is time to be tricksy, child, and best to have plans made before needs must.” She smiled and laid a hand gently on the girl’s shoulder. Strange, to have come so far and made such an odd alliance at the end of it all. “Tush. Don’t frown. We will think on it together.” And she squeezed Beedie’s shoulder in a gesture which, had she known it, was one Beedie’s father had once used and thus won the girl to her as no words could have done.
CHAPTER THREE
Trouble came more quickly than Mavin had foreseen, more quickly than Beedie would have thought possible. It was the following morning that they left Beedie’s house on their way to take a breakfast cup of tea at one of the ubiquitous stalls, when they saw a Birder—not a person they would have recognized except for her robes—fleeing with loud cries of alarm from a group of youngsters intent upon doing her some immediate harm. The expressions on their snarling faces left no doubt, and when Mavin and Beedie came among them like vengeful furies, pushing and tossing them about like so many woodchips, they responded with self-righteous howls. “They’re blasphemers, the Birders ... They’ve blasphemed the Boundless … else she’s no messenger ... need to be taught a lesson... . My dad says they should be whipped.” Indeed, one of the leaders of the child pack had a whip with him.
“And who are you to be judge of the Birders? And what have they done that is blasphemous?” Mavin demanded in a voice of thunder, drawing a good deal of attention from passers-by, including the parents of some of those cowering before her who shifted uneasily from foot to foot wondering how far they might go in interfering with this angry stranger. Beedie, throwing quick looks around, was horrified to note that a good part of the child pack was made up of Bridgers—Bander whelps—as good a guarantee as any that they might go about their evil business without being called to account for it.
“My dad says ... no fit judges for us anymore ... did a bad thing ... Either that or she’s no messenger ...”
Mavin seized the speaker and shook him. “Before you decide to run a mob behind you, boy, better wonder what vengeance the Birders might take if you are wrong! Have you thought what may come from the Boundless as messenger ... to you ... in the dark n ight—with no mob about to protect you?” Her voice shivered like a maddened thing; wild-eyed, her hands shook as though in terror. The boy began to tremble in her grasp, eyes widening, until he broke from her to fall on his knees, bellowing his fear. Beedie was amazed. Anyone within reach of Mavin’s voice could feel the terror, the awfulness of that messenger who might come. The boy took his fear from her pretended feeling, cowering away as though she had threatened him with immediate destruction. The adults gathered about were no less affected, and several of the young ones were hauled away by parents abruptly concerned for their own welfare though they had been egging the children on until that moment.
The other whelps ran off down an alley, yelping as they went. Mavin spun the boy with the whip around, kicking him off after them, and wiped her hands in disgust. The Birder, who had paused at the turn of the street, returned to thank them.
“This riot and attack is all up and down the chasm,” she said, still breathless. “I came to warn the Birders House here on Topbridge, for our house on Nextdown is virtually under seige, and no sooner set foot upon the street than that gang attacked me. They were set on me! I saw their fathers or older brothers urging them on from a teahouse door.”
“You’d best let us take you to the Birders House,” ventured Beedie.
“You’d best stay there when you arrive,” Mavin instructed her. “There is a kind of animal frenzy can be whipped up sometimes among fools and children, often using religion as an excuse for it. When it happens, it is wise to be elsewhere.”
They escorted the Birder to the House, much aware of gossiping groups falling silent as they passed, much aware of eyes at windows, of chunks of root thrown at them and easily fended off by either Mavin or Beedie, who walked virtually back to back in protection of the robed woman. Once at the Birders House, Mavin asked for Mercald and learned that he had been sent to the far end of Topbridge to gather the shed plumes of gongbirds, used by the Birders in their rituals.
“He will return momentarily,” dithered Brightfeather. “I told him to set his robes aside and go. With all this confusion and the violence outside, I wanted some time alone, to think. I don’t understand what is happening.”
“Violence outside?” The newly arrived Birder was peering from the window. They could see no sign of trouble, but the Birder assured them there were small groups of ill doers lurking just out of sight.
This was confirmed as they came from the house after the visit. They encountered a group of Topbridgers skulking just inside an alleyway, keeping watch upon the Birders House.
“There’s some. Ask’m” muttered one of the loiterers, thrusting another out of the alley at them. “Ask’m whether it’s true. She’s puff-belly, right? Ask’m.”
“ ‘Ja see the birdgirl?” panted the thrustee. “There’s some saying she’s swole. Been havin’ at her, those Birders, some say. Mercald’s had atter. ‘Ja see her?”