Life in Arai Slya was pleasant, even joyful when you felt like fitting in, but when you didn’t, it was like a pair of new boots, blistering you as it forced you into shape. Her father and her two older brothers had left with the packtrain going to Grannsha for the tri-year Fair. She’d wanted to go with them, but her mother was stuck here with a baby too young to travel and Brann couldn’t go if her mother didn’t. She thought it was stupid that she couldn’t go, but no one else saw things her way. Not that she made a great fuss about it, for this was the last summer she could spend free, the last summer before she was officially apprenticed with all the work that meant, the last summer she could ramble about the Mountain, watching animals and all the other life there, sketching in the book Uncle Gemar the papermaker had sewn together for her, with the ink and the brush Aunt Seansi, Arth Slya’s poet and journal keeper, had taught her how to use and make.
From her sketches her mother had woven for her a knee-length tunic with frogs and dragonflies in a lively frieze about the hem, dark greens, browns and reds on a pale gray-green ground. As time passed others found worth in her drawings. Sjiall the painter and screenmaker saw her plant and insect studies and went into the mountains himself searching for more such. Her father and Immer let her design some of their embellished ware. Uncle Migel seized on several drawings of otters and wolves and graved them into his swords and knives and sent her back to the slopes with specific commissions. Uncle Inar the glassmaker and Idadro the etcher and inlayer added her notes to their traditional forms. She could choose for any of them; they told her so. Thinking about their praise made her flutter with pleasure.
Though she was irritated and sometimes unhappy about the life laid out for her in the Valley, she found the outside world frightening. What little she knew about it, from candidates who made their way to the Valley, repelled her. Very few girls came, and those that did had stories to put a shudder in back and belly. She watched the boys shivering at a scold, or turning sullen with shaking but suppressed violence, watched the way they guarded their possessions and thoughts, their despair if they weren’t taken as apprentices. Even those candidates accepted took several years to open out and be more or less like everyone else. Another thing-since the last Fair the trickle of younglings into the mountains had dried up entirely. The Valley folk came back from that Fair with rumors of trouble and reports of a general uneasiness on the Plains. Legates from the mainland were in Grannsha making demands the Kumaliyn could not possibly satisfy, so the stories went. Still, no one expected trouble to come to Arth Slya, they were too isolated and hard to get to; there was no road most of the way, only a rugged winding track that no one in his right mind would try to march an army along.
She wandered back to her boulder, sat eating one of her apples and watching the antics of otters who’d made a mudslide for themselves and were racing about, sliding, splashing, uttering the stuttering barks of their secret laughter. Her hand dropped in her lap as the otters abruptly broke of their play and darted into the trees.
Two shines like smears of gold painted on the air flickered about the treetops, then came jagging down the stream, switching places over and over, dropping close to the water, darting up again. She stared at them, fascinated by their flitter and their glitter and their eerie song, a high swooping sound alternately fast and slow, sometimes unbearably sweet. She sat on her heels, smiling at them, bits of sun come to earth.
They jerked to a halt as if they’d somehow seen her, swooped at her, swinging closer and closer in tightening circles, then darted at her, plunged through her again and again. She gave a tiny startled cry, collapsed on the warm stone.
She woke as suddenly as she went down, a few heartbeats later.
Two children sat on the creekbank watching her from shimmering crystal eyes, pale little creatures with ash-blond hair, bowl-bobbed, silky, very straight, one head a shade darker than the other. They were so alike she didn’t know how she knew the darker one was a boy and the other a girl. They wore shirts and pants like hers and apart from those eerie inhuman eyes were much like any of the children running about the Valley below. The girl smiled gravely at her. “I’m Yaril. That’s Jaril. You’re Brann.”
Brann pushed up until she was sitting on her heels again. “I didn’t tell you my name.”
Yaril nodded, but didn’t answer the implied question. Jaril wasn’t listening. He was looking at everything with an intensity that made Brann think he’d never seen anything like blue sky and wind blowing cedars about and butterflies flitting over the stream and dragonflies zipping back and forth, otters crouching across the creek, black eyes bright and curious, fish coming up to feed, breaking the water in small plopping circles.
“Where’d you come from? Who’re your folks?”
Yaril glanced at Jaril, rubbed at her small straight nose. “We are the Mountain’s children.”
“Huh?”
“Born of fire and stone.” Yaril said, sounding awed, portentous.
Brann eyed her skeptically. “Don’t be silly.”
“It’s true. Sort of.” Yaril stared intently at Brann.
Little fingers began tickling the inside of Brann’s head; she scowled, brushed at her face. “Don’t DO that.” She pushed onto her feet, jumped onto the grass and began circling around them.
“Don’t be afraid, Brann.” Yaril got hastily to her feet, held out her small hands. “Please don’t be afiaid. We won’t hurt you. Jaril, tell her.”
Brann kept backing away until she reached the trees, then she wheeled and fled into shadow. Behind her she heard the high sweet singing of the sunglows, a moment later bits of yellow light were dancing through the trees ahead of her The patches of light touched down to the red soil, changed,-and Yaril stood with Jaril waiting for her. She turned aside and ran on, blind with terror. The shivering song came after her, the shimmers swept through her, caressing her, stroking her inside and out, gentling her, trying to drive the fright from her. She collapsed in the dirt, dirt in her mouth and nose and eyes, the last thing she remembered, the taste of the mountain in her mouth.
SHE WOKE with her head in Jaril’s lap, Yaril kneeling beside her, stroking her forehead. She tried to jerk away, but the boy’s arms were too strong even if she couldn’t quite believe in the reality of those arms. She lay stiff as a board waiting for them to do with her whatever they’d planned.
“Hush,” Yaril said. “Hush, Bramble-all-thorns, don’t be afraid of us. We need you, but we can’t help that. We won’t hurt you. Please believe me.”
Jaril patted her shoulder. “We need you, we won’t hurt you,” he said, his voice a twin of his sister’s, a shade deeper than hers as his hair was a shade darker. He grunted as the mountain rumbled and shifted beneath them, the third quake that day. “You ought to warn your folk, Bramble-all-thorns; this hill’s getting ready to blow… mmmmh, in your terms, Slya’s going to wake soon with a bellyache and spew her breakfast over everything around:”
Brann wiggled loose, got shakily to her feet. She looked for the sun, but it was too low in the west to show over the trees. “Sheee, it’s late. Mama will snatch me bald.” She started downhill. Over her shoulder, Valley courtesy demanding it, she said, “Come on. It’s almost supper. You can eat with us. Mama won’t mind.”
The children caught up with her as she reached the stream and started down along it. “About that supper,” Yaril said. “We don’t eat your kind of food. Maybe I should explain…” She broke off and looked at her brother. “Not time yet? I don’t agree. You know why. Oh all right, I suppose it is a big gulp to swallow all at once.” Yaril blinked as she met Brann’s eyes and realized she was listening with-considerable interest. “Pardon us,” she said, “we forget our manners, we’ll join you gladly, if not for supper. And warn your people about the mountain.”