“I—” She stopped. She looked into the faces of the crowd, her throat closed tight and finally her eyes fell on the kindly old face of Master Clayware. People were not like stones, she thought numbly, becoming smoother with the squeezing and scrubbing of years. Master Clayware’s face was as wrinkled and folded as dried fruit. She looked into his eyes and spoke. “I do have a tapestry,” she whispered. There was a shifting in the crowd but the faces did not soften. The silence swelled up like a bubble, and Leba broke it with a hissed, “Liar!”
“But it’s true. It’s true!” Marwen cried. “And there is something wonderful in it—wonderful enough to frighten Cudgham. So he burned it. Grondil made it for me after all, but she hid it so that you wouldn’t...” Her words were tumbling over one another like rolling pebbles, and she forced herself to stop and breathe. “I’m sorry. The Tenets of the Tapestry says that no one has an enemy without a cause. I should have tried to understand, I should have served....”
There was shuffling and coughing throughout the crowd, and a woman began to make a fuss over her child. Someone pushed Marwen back down into the dirt.
Merva lifted a hand to the people.
“Silence!” Her head, neck and back were as straight and stiff as a drying pole. “Your ‘shoulds’ are eloquent Marwen, but they will not recover the past. Your sentence is banishment to the northern wilderness without beast or bag. The Taker shall decide if you live, as she should have done at your birth. So be it.”
Marwen listened. She felt lighter, as if relieved of a burden. Her tapestry was gone, but fate was mindful of her and would force her steps for a little while at least.
Maug and two of his friends, Bero and Japthas, stepped forward. Merva smiled at them and then at Marwen, benignly.
“These young men have volunteered to see to the task. Take her.”
Maug approached her with a rope.
“Do not bind me,” Marwen said, her fingers clutching at the dust. “I will go willingly.”
Maug looked at Merva who nodded her head slightly. While Maug stood there, Master Clayware stepped forward to speak. The crowd murmured, but Merva could not silence Marmawell’s most respected citizen.
“Do not bind her,” he commanded in a quavering voice. Maug hesitated, then dropped the rope, and after a silence Master Clayware continued speaking. “The sentence has been passed, but I would ask you to consider: Buffle Spicetrader has brought news of a dragon in Ve, heading west from Verduma. Without Marwen, without an Oldwife, we are defenseless.”
Some of the younger people smirked, and someone laughed aloud. But most people glanced anxiously at the sky, and the children ran to their mothers.
“Dragons?” Merva said in a condescending tone. “I do not believe in dragons anymore than I believe there is a wizard, Master Clayware.”
The old man nodded patiently. “Believe what you will. In the old days, we listened in faith to the Songs, and we were happy. Grondil’s grandmother told me herself before she died that she had seen the wizard and believed. This child, though—will you not for Grondil’s sake be more lenient? As a child she obeyed the laws perfectly, excelled in letters, and spoke of the wizard with passionate innocence. You thought she held herself above you, you thought she rejoiced in her superiority, and so you despised her and ostracized her. Do you not take any responsibility for the misuse of what is obviously a great gift of magic?”
Merva answered in a loud voice, her composure gone. “If her magic is great enough to save us against dragons, let her save herself!” She looked at Marwen. “Return to us, and I will reconsider your fate, but the wilderness is a place that cares not for little girls’ tears. The Council is ended.”
She turned and walked away.
“I didn’t cry,” Marwen called after her, and she thought Merva’s step faltered.
In a few moments, the entire crowd had returned to their work and their play, leaving Marwen alone except for the three young men and Master Clayware. The old man opened his mouth, then closed it again.
The three young men mounted wingwands, and Marwen was instructed to ride behind Maug. He smelled sour, and there were pimples on the back of his neck. She hung on to the wing-wand’s shell rather than put her arms around him, but the takeoff jolted her and she grabbed on to his shirt. He turned his head toward her.
“Don’t be shy, witch. If you think I’d fancy an ugly like you, you are wrong.”
Master Clayware raised one hand, and Marwen thought he would have called them back if he could.
They flew north into the desert hills where few streams ran, and the predominant inhabitants were insects and ips. She thought of Opalwing waiting without socks on her antennae, able to fly, and she called out to her with her mind but without hope. She was not afraid of the wilderness, but the immortal hills could be harsh with those of the world who needed food and water to survive.
At some point Marwen fell asleep, for she awoke as she was pushed off the wingwand, still too groggy to steel herself against the fall. It was freshwind. Maug, Bero and Japthas loomed over her, silently, their eyes shifting. Marwen scrambled to sit up, but Maug pushed her back down with his foot and held her there, his weight on her chest. She could smell wingwand manure on his boots.
“You may be a witch, but you are also getting to be a woman,” he said, “though a scrawny homely one. I think she should grant us a wish, don’t you boys?”
Bero laughed, and he and Japthas punched each other. Marwen struggled to breathe against the weight of Maug’s foot, but she did not try to sit up. She felt a coldness in her throat and stomach, as though she had swallowed a large stone. She was still, her eyes locked on Maug’s eyes. They were as hard and shallow as mirrors, and in them she was tiny as an insect. He lifted his boot from her chest and toed her spidersilk further up her thigh.
She forgot her speech to the villagers about understanding. She reached into her apron pocket and drew Cudgham-ip out by the tail.
The boys staggered a few paces back, their eyes full of wonder and terror.
Marwen sat up, swallowing air.
“Aye, you should be afraid but not only of ip poison. For this, Maug, is Cudgham Seedmaker, my stepfather.” Marwen could not keep her voice from shaking. Even with all the magic in the world, she would be afraid of Maug who had another power, one she did not understand, a shrinking power. She watched their confidence crumble a little with only a slight lessening of her fear. She crawled forward, shaking the ip at them.
“You hag!” Maug screamed as he and the others ran to their mounts. “I hope you die in these hills like you should have when you were born!”
She watched them fly away until they were mere blemishes on the cloud-stippled blue of the morning sky.
Chapter Five
Believe in yourself, in love, in the good of others but, more importantly, believe in the magic, for in this there is power to obtain all other beliefs.
Cold and hunger were hard upon her waking moments when Marwen emerged from a black sleep. She lay still for a time, cradled in the earth’s arm. Above her the roof of the little hollow in which she had found shelter was filled with bared roots dangling like exposed nerves. The hollow seemed to have been scraped by some bisor beast that wandered these round and rolling hills. Further out Marwen could see that the hills became more muscled, with overhanging rocks protruding from the crests like brows.
She stood up. On the gold-grassed slope above her was an oldman rock, well-bearded with moss, pocked and splotched with age. She picked up a pebble and placed it at the foot of the rock.