Chapter Nine – Wounds
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The girl grew stronger, and, captured heart and soul by that hug, Ja’kh’redd hardly left her side, except to foray into the forests halfheartedly looking for game. He always came back within a few hours, however, to crouch by her side and sing Vidos-hatching songs, or gently lay half of a wing over her as he watched her sleep.
“By the God,” the Hermit told her on the third day, as she grew strong enough to sit up just a little and eat broth, “I think that Vidos loves you.”
She laughed very quietly, and smiled, thinking it was funny. “I bet I’m the only girl who has a pet Vidos.”
“Some tribes eat humans, you know,” the crotchety old man said matter-of-factly. “Of course, Jared is from the Mohmast tribe, which keep to themselves and tend to be peaceable, if strange. I’d call him strange, for sure,” he fed her more broth slowly. “A good hunter, but strange.”
“He is an angel,” she told him when she rested from eating. “I told them that when I was a child. A dark angel, which only looked like a Vidos. It had found me when the… when it happened… and carried me away. I only have a few memories, but they are strong… the strongest is of myself looking down into the surface of a very still lake as we flew over it. I can still see my face reflected in the water, in the arms of the great dark shape with wings of a dragon, and a long tail behind, a Vidos-angel carrying me. And then we went up, and up… and it got smaller, but there was still a white blur in that shape, and that was me.” She gazed into thin air in wonder at it. “And it was so peaceful, and so beautiful. I think I have been flying in that night forever, like it’s a moment outside of time.”
“You speak very well for an Argenian peasant,” the old Hermit observed keenly, watching her face.
“And you are very scholarly for a Trapper,” she countered, glancing at the wall of books.
“I trade for my books,” he defended, insistently feeding her more, so that he could talk without interruption. “I make a good living in Healing and herb-lore as well…”
“Yes,” she cut in, fighting her way out from under his spoon to match wits with him, “but you can READ.”
He narrowed his eyes, gazing at her. “You first, where did you learn to speak as you do? An Argenian peasant doesn’t know such words. Or are those clothes for show?”
“No, they are my clothes,” she said regretfully, pulling at the neck of the rough dress with one hand. She sighed, lay back on the pillow wearily, and explained. Her nurse put his soup away for the moment, knowing that she was too tired to eat any more.
“Jared left me in a very poor village who did nothing kind in their lives but to take me in, when Yora found me on the edges of his field crying. After that, I was a slave-girl, used by the Headwoman of the settlement to cook and clean. For the most part I was a laundress. But every time the Gypsies would come through the village to trade, on their way to Vermoor, I snuck out to speak to the Gypsy boys. I made friends, and every year, they came back and told me more about the world.
“I thought I fell in love with one of them,” she sighed mournfully, “and hating my miserable life in Kulna, I ran away with them. It lasted four weeks, but by then we’d travelled quite a ways West, toward the Sea. They left me near Votath, in Bread Provence, and simply drove away. I walked to the nearest village, and due to the kindness of a woman, was employed as a Laundress.
“This continued for years. I would eventually move on, Westward again, always trying to find a better life.”
“Then it’s remarkable that he found you again,” the Hermit wondered.
She shook her head, equally amazed. “I don’t know what agency caused it, but it cannot be chance.” She looked at him curiously. “What is your name, sir?”
“I suppose after the night you gave me stitching you up, I owe you that, eh?” He cackled. “Thomas, and that is all you need know.”
“Thomas. It cannot be chance, Thomas.”
He remained silent on the subject, watching her.
She gazed at the fire, reliving a long and weary life, though it had only been twenty-one years so far. “When I was fourteen, I made my way to Corsis at last, the Four Cities by the Sea.” For a moment, her eyes shone again with delight. “They are beautiful, left-over from an ancient Age, when the people of Argen were like the people of Nolanar, before the Vidos came and sacked Nolanar. Wonderful cities, with huge white buildings of stone with no seam, and bridges which span the entire bay!
“I lived there and in Movial until only six months ago. It was my greatest fortune to have my advertisement for employment met by a Noblewoman who needed a young maid for her child daughter. Why she took me, I shall never know. Pity, perhaps. A penniless laundress near to begging in the streets, but she employed me in her great House, and I spent the next eight years a Lady-in-waiting.
“Those years were not as easy as they sound,” she said wryly, with a dark glance toward him. “The elder ladies despised me with venom, and this is why I was forced to leave so quickly in the end.” A hollow sorrow. “I loved the girl, now a young woman, but… an incident with a young man who was courting me…” She shook her head, beyond words for the pain of it.
Thomas set about cleaning up his tiny house, stepping carefully over and around the woman who took up the entire center of the floor.
When she was ready, she went on. “Well, it wasn’t meant to be anyway. He was a nobleman. We hardly knew one another, and soon he would have discovered that I was a mere peasant, and an orphan, and would have stepped away. Yet that would have been more honorable than…” a long sigh. “They made it to look as if I were a… a loose woman, planting very strong evidence which I could not deny. I was thrown out of the house, he… well, I never saw him again needless to say.” Her voice was flat and dry at this point, for it had seeped down to bitterness in her.
“I again took the job of a laundress, but I still had the parting money that the good woman gave me. After four months of persecution in Movial for my hair, I finally grew fed up enough to end it all, and purchased a place in a Caravan going to Vermoor as their Laundress.”
“Why Vermoor? I hear it’s nearly the same as Argen for the attitude of the people. Both nations are closed-minded, arrogant…”
“They have red hair,” she said blandly, laying without any apparent will. “All of the trouble in life I’ve had has come from the color of my hair. I tried to dye it, I tried to cut it off, but it was no use. The color of my eyes, skin… there was no hiding it from the bronze Argenian people. They are very superstitious, from peasant to Noble, and took every opportunity to make my life into pain for it.”
The old man snorted, disgusted. “Running away to Vermoor won’t solve your troubles, young woman. For when you go there, you will find another excuse for your trouble. ‘Oh, now I have an Argenian accent, so they hate me,’” he mocked, without a hint of pity. “’Oh, I’m too skinny, I’m too red-haired, I have too many freckles, I’m an orphan, I can’t speak the language!’ Foolish girl, don’t you realize that when you go to Vermoor your life will be twice as hard, for they hate Argenians more than they hate Vidos or Gypsies?” He shook his head, putting his books away by the armload. “You haven’t left your problem, girl, your problem is you!”
“Me? How dare you!” She managed to shout, though her voice was weak. “Do you know what I’ve gone through?”
“If you bust your stitches, I shall not fix you!” He pointed a long, gnarled finger at her warningly, and glared at her with his pale blue eyes.
She lay back, fuming at him, furious that he hadn’t taken pity on her as she deserved.
Thomas cackled to himself, not so much amused as ironic. “That figures, a young woman with all of life before her, beauty, strength, health, arms to work and eyes to see, killing herself with self-pity over the color of her hair. Suicide.”
“Suicide!” She shouted again, furious. “My parents were killed…”
“Were they?” He challenged.
That silenced her, because the truth was, she really didn’t know.
“Chapter Nine – Wounds”