Ever see an ogre after a mob of bereaved parents gets through with her?
Didn’t think so. But I have.
Certain human responses can trump even an ogre’s fell enchantments. Watching twenty kids disappear right out from under your helpless gaze all because your mayor was a cheapskate might induce a few of them. Hanging was the least of what they did to her. The only way I knew her was by the tattered crimson of her gown.
Mortals. Mortals and their infernal ingenuity. I shook my head in admiration.
And was that…?
Yes, it was! Indeed, it was! My old friend, Henchmen Hans himself. Loyal to the end, swinging from a rope of his own near the mayoral gallows branch. And wearing his second best suit, too, bless him. Though torn and more than a little stained, his second best was a far sight better than what I presently wore. Needed something a bit more flamboyant than a dog blanket, didn’t I, if I was going to visit Lake Serenus in the morning? Bring a swan girl a fresh bag of caramels. Help her babysit. You know. Like you do.
Waste not, want not—isn’t that what the wharf boys say? A Rat Folk philosophy if I ever heard one. So, yeah, I’d be stripping my good old pal Hans right down to his bare essentials, or I’m not my mother’s son. And then I’d strip him of more than that.
See, I’d had to share the Pied Piper’s fine repast with three starving mortal children earlier that night. It’s not that they didn’t deserve their victuals as much as, say, I (although, really, who did?), and it’s not like Nicolas didn’t press me to eat seconds and thirds. But I still hadn’t gotten nearly as much as my ravenous little rat’s heart desired.
The juniper tree whispered.
It might have said anything.
But I’m pretty sure I heard, “Help yourself, Maurice.”
Martyr’s Gem
For Janelle McHugh
Of the woman he was to wed on the morrow, Shursta Sarth knew little. He knew she hailed from Droon. He knew her name was Hyrryai.
“…which means, ‘the Gleaming One,’” his sister piped in, the evening before he left their village. She was crocheting by the fire and he was staring into it.
Lifting his chin from his hand, Shursta grinned at her. “Ayup? And where’d you light upon that lore, Nugget?”
Sharrar kicked him on the ankle for using the loathed nickname. “I work with the grayheads. They remember everything.”
“Except how to chew their food.”
“What they’ve lost in teeth, they’ve gained in wisdom,” she announced with some pomposity. “Besides, that’s what they have me for.” Her smile went wry at one corner, but was no less proud for that. “I chew their food, I change their cloths, and they tell me about the old days. Some of them had parents who were alive back then.”
Her voice went rich and rolling. Her crochet hook glinted on the little lace purse she was making. The driftwood flames flickered, orange with tongues of blue.
“They remember the days before the Nine Cities drowned and the Nine Islands with them. Before our people forsook us to live below the waters, and we were stranded here on the Last Isle. Before we changed our name to Glennemgarra, the Unchosen.” Sharrar sighed. “In those days, names were more than mere proxy for, Hey, you!”
“So, Hyrryai means, Hey, you, Gleamy?”
“You have no soul, Shursta.”
“Nugget, when your inner poet is ascendant, you have more than enough soul for both of us. If the whitecaps of your whimsy rise any higher, we’ll have a second Drowning at hand, make no mistake.”
Sharrar rolled her brown-bright eyes at him and grunted something. He laughed, and the anxious knots in his stomach loosened some.
When Shursta took his leave the next morning at dawn, he lingered in the threshold. The hut had plenty of wood in the stack outside the door. He’d smoked or salted any extra catch for a week, so Sharrar would not soon go hungry. If she encountered trouble, they would take her in at the Hall of Ages where she worked, and there she’d be fed and sheltered, though she wouldn’t have much privacy or respite.
He looked at his sister now. She’d dragged herself from bed to make him breakfast, even though he was perfectly capable of frying up an egg himself. Her short dark hair stuck up every which way, and her eyes were bleary. Her limp was more pronounced in the morning.
“Wish you could come with me,” he offered.
“What? Me, with one game leg and a passel of grayheads to feed? No, thank you!” But her eyes looked wistful. Neither of them had ever been to Droon, capital of the Last Isle, the seat of the Astrion Council.
“Hey,” he said, surprised to find his own eyes stinging.
“Hey,” she said right back. “After the mesh-rite, after you’ve settled down a bit and met some folks, invite me up. You know I want to meet my mesh-sister. You have my gift?”
He patted his rucksack, which had the little lace purse she’d crocheted along with his own mesh-gift.
“Oohee, brother mine,” said Sharrar. “By this time tomorrow you’ll be a Blodestone, and no Sarth relation will be worthy to meet your eyes.”
“Doubtless Hirryai Blodestone will take one look at me and sunder the contract.”
“She requested you.”
Shursta shrugged, sure it had been a mistake.
After that, there was one last hug, a vivid and mischievous and slightly desperate smile from Sharrar, followed by a grave look and quick wink on Shursta’s part. Then he set off on the sea road that would take him to Droon.
Of the eight great remaining kinlines, the Blodestones were the wealthiest. Their mines were rich in ore and gems. Their fields were fertile and wide, concentrated in the highland interior of the Last Isle. After a Blodestone female was croned at age fifty, she would hold her place on the Astrion Council, which governed all the Glennemgarra.
Even a fisherman like Shursta Sarth (of the lesser branch of Sarths), from a poor village like Sif on the edge of Rath Sea, with no parents of note and only a single sister for kin, knew about the Blodestones.
He had no idea why Hyrryai had chosen him for mesh-mate. If it had not been an error, then it was a singular honor. For his life he knew not how he deserved it.
He was of an age to wed. Mesh-rite was his duty to the Glennemgarra and he would perform it, that the world might once again be peopled. To be childless—unless granted special dispensation by the Astrion Council—was to be reviled. Even with the dispensation, there were those who were tormented or shunned for their barrenness.
Due to a lack of girls in Sif, to his own graceless body, which, though fit for work, tended to carry extra weight, and to the slowness of his tongue in the company of strangers, Shursta had not yet been bred out. He had planned to attend this year’s muster and win a mesh-mate at games (the idea of being won himself had never occurred to him), but then the Council’s letter from Droon came.
The letter told him that Hyrryai Blodestone had requested him for mesh-mate. It told him that Hyrryai had not yet herself been bred. That though she was twenty-one, a full year past the age of meshing, she had been granted a reprieve when her little sister was murdered.
Shursta had read that last sentence in shock. The murder of a child was the highest crime but one, and that was the murder of a girl child. Hyrryai had been given full grieving rights.