Perched on the bow of the stove-in boat was an absurd little figure, ancient and bearded and brown, no bigger than her fist, with shaggy green fur like seaweed on his back and around his loins.
“What are you?” Her voice was hoarse; she coughed, swallowed.
He scratched the weedy fur around his belly, found a water flea, popped it between his wee thumbnails and flung it onto the mud. “Riverman,” he said. “What do they,” he jerked a thumb at the planks over his head, “call you?”
Nervously shestroked Ailiki’s fur, uncertain what she ought to do-but she’d been taught courtesy to elders even oddities like this little man; besides, friendliness and interest flowed sweetly from him like the incense the Kassian Tai burned for Abeyhamal. “Faan, heshim Riverman.”
“Why you grievin’, Faan?”
She chewed her lip, stared down at the dusty toes of her halfboots. “My mother does THINGS. For money,” she burst out, the Head’s hurting words tumbling in her head. She couldn’t bear to say them.
“So?” Riverman kicked his feet against the rotting planks of the boat, his shiny black eyes fixed on her.
“Ugly things…” Her voice trailed off as she looked past him and saw a head poking out of the river, features sculpted in liquid crystal, delicate mouth opening and closing soundlessly, great lambent eyes staring at her. “What’s that?”
Riverman twisted round, waved his tiny hand at the creature, got a silent laugh from it as it sank gradually into the thick brown water. “Water Elemental,” he said. “Come to have a look at you.”
“Me? Why?”
Riverman shrugged. “Your Ma, he’s Salagaum, uh?”
“Diyo. The Head…” She swallowed, pressed both hands hard on her middle. “He told me…”
“Likes to hurt y’, uh?”
She nodded, the two braids Reyna plaited for her every morning bouncing against her shoulders. “Y’ Ma hurt you? Hurt anyone?”
“Nayo!”
“Vema, tell me. Who’s handsome, who’s ugly?”
“But it’s awful, what he does. Reyna, I mean. Makes me sick when I think about it. How can I go home and look at him? How can I look at my friends. If they know…”
“Of course they know. Did it matter before?”
“Ma’teesee… I don’t think ANYTHING would bother her… there’s not much she doesn’t know… Dossan, she’s never said…” She pressed her hands to her eyes and began feeling better. A little. She was still sick and cold. She couldn’t think about Reyna.
Others came. Tiny people, soap-bubble people, smaller than her thumb. They sang to her, eerie sounds like a wet finger rubbed round the rim of a glass. Bubbles with eyes she couldn’t quite see but knew were looking at her foamed up out of the ground, bobbed in the air about her, shimmering with rainbow ripples over a transparent silver base. They danced along her arms where the flames had been, cool touches that comforted her, eased the terror that took hold of her each time she remembered how close she’d been to burning up herself and everything around her.
Then Riverman sang a skein of hissing popping sounds and the bubble people went sliding away to sink into the levee, taking their light with them, leaving her in sun-striped shadow.
“Wild Magic,” Riverman said. “They like you.”
She slid her palm down her arm, feeling small tingles as if the bubble people had left something of themselves behind. “My teachers say there’s no such thing.”
Riverman grinned at her. After a minute she grinned back.
He scratched and waited, his unhurry as soothing as the everyday sounds coming down through the planks as the porters finished the unloading. “So,” he said after a long silence, “called fire, did y’?”
“Dee-yo!” She wrapped her arms about her knees, shivered.
“Scared y’self, uh?”
She blinked at him; what she mostly felt was numb, but a nebulous queasiness stirred in her. After a minute, she nodded.
“You need a teacher, ‘little Faan. Someone who’ll show you how to manage those things.”
“I’m not going back to that school. Not ev-er. I don’t care what Reyna says. Or Tai. Or any of them.”
“Verna, vema, Sorcerie. Sibyl, that’s who you need go see. Friend of mine. I’ll send word and you go find her, uh?”
She blinked. “Sorcerie?”
“Sorceror in the egg. Hasn’t hatched yet.” He stood up, gave a hitch to the weed-fur about his middle. “Best get home, little one, there’s trouble waiting.” He screwed up his little round face into a clown-grimace, relaxed into a•grin. “Come see me again, uh?”
› › ‹ ‹
Faan stopped at the mouth of the wynd, smoothed her hands over her hair and took a last scrub.at her face, then she stepped out onto the board walkway of Verakay Lane, Ailiki trotting beside her.
“Fa,. Wait for us.”
Dossan and Ma’teesee were running toward her, weaving through the crowd on the street, their school sacks bumping against their backs. She felt like vomiting and for a moment she thought of running away, but she straightened her shoulders and turned to face them.
“Oooo eeee, Fa.” Ma’teesee swung into place at her right side and Dossan settled more quietly by her left elbow. “The mess you left!”
Dossan giggled. “Head looked like he going t’ explode like a too-hot tatee, Fa. He was yelling at the teachers, ‘specially Quiambo Tanish, something about Shinda and… uh. I think witches,” she pinched Faan’s arm, “he was gobbling so fast I couldn’t really catch what he was saying.”
Ma’teesee nodded. “Whatever it was you did, Fa, it scared the potz outta him. Was it magic, huh? huh?”
“Shush, Teesee, I’m telling this. Anyway, Fa, they got him quieted down and back in his ol’ office, then they told everyone to go home and finish lessons there. So we left and here we are. Where you been?”
“Down by River,” Faan said. “I din’t want to talk to anyone, Dossy. It was ol’ pie-face Izmit’s fault, you know, she messed up my lesson book with really eee-vil stuff, worse’n you hear you go down by Jang.” She shivered and lowered her voice as she said Jang. It was a bad place they weren’t allowed to talk about, let alone visit.
Ma’teesee put her arm through Faan’s, squeezed it. “I told y’,” she said. “Shouldda come in with us Wascras. 01’ Doodoo’s kinda fuzzy, but he’s nice and he teaches us all kinds of naffy things, betchya a bag of taffees we learn more than that damakee Izmit and Vazi and Rullah Longnose and all them to-tee ta-tee.”
Dossan giggled, pulled Ma’teesee and Faan into a skipping dance. “Wascra Wascra we the Wascra girls…
“One two three four,” Teesee chanted, breaking free and clapping her hands as she jigged beside them. “Who is it we jaja for,” Dossan chanted.
“Wascra Wascra Wascra girls,” the three of them screamed. They broke apart and went chasing each other down the Lane, ignoring the scolds that rippled after them as they ducked around porters and nearly ran down shopping wives and servants. Ailiki squealed and dashed ahead of them, yipped at Louok the Nimble as he came from Peshalla’s tavern, leapt up on the stage Mama Kubaza was setting up for her band, yipped again as the big woman swatted at her, missing her intentionally, ran through the legs of Zinar the Porter.
› › ‹ ‹
“Manasso Kunin was here an hour ago.” The Kassian Tai sat in her massive Visitation Chair, the Takaffa cloth drapped over one heavily carved arm, her Visit Robes sliding into heavy, graceful folds about her thin body as she leaned forward. “Reyna and Areia One-eye aren’t back yet, which is just as well. I quashed him. For the moment.”
Faan fidgeted and stared at her feet.
“You called fire. That was a stupid thing to do, honey.”
Faan looked up, startled. The words were harsher than she expected, but the tone was mild. “I didn’t mean to,” she said.
“You never do.” Tai sighed. “Well, I invoked my brother and put a scare in that cretin’s head, but I can’t stop tongues wagging.” She leaned back, rubbed her finger along her beak of a nose. “Crops have been bad, there’s talk of drought. Fa, I wish you were older and less… impulsive. When people are afraid, that’s when witchtalk starts up; they need someone to blame.”