Friday, May 1, 2708

(May Day—First I feel the drums, beating in my bones.  Then I hear the instruments and voices:  the music and the laughter of the harvest dance beckons me to the lights of a village.

I have no messages to carry today, just information to gather, catch as catch can.  Any village’ll do for a start.  I smile and head towards the sounds.

I hope I’ve washed the smoke-smell from my clothes and hair by now; soldiers might dance there with the maidens, crowned in wreaths of grapevines and corn husks and those bright flowers that love the autumn best.  I sigh and get myself together before the village gate, running a comb through my hair and splashing some water from my canteen onto my kerchief, to dab at my face the best I can.  At least, before I slept for the last time in Home Base, I had a bath--a real bath with real soap.  Lilac soap.  So I'm not too bad, I guess.  Better than a lot of folks coming in from the road.

Too much better?  I freeze.

Naw, don’t worry about it.  Most folks don’t pick up details like that.  That’s what Cyran keeps me around for.

I walk in , but it takes a ways yet to reach the village square.  The houses all stand empty, even the dogs and cats gone off to see if they can mooch a morsel dropped by revelers.

I remember May Day, when I had a mother to dance in the harvest, after Papa died in the mine and she found work in the fields.  On that day even the Lord of the Manor seemed all right, a Santo Nikki who’d donate an ox every year for his field hands to feast on, who’d pass the jug as merrily as the men and dance with every woman, holding the work-rough hands in his, kissing cheeks like they were his daughters.

It never dawned on me what he could do, if provoked.

I’ve no cause to complain, though; God avenged me, and no orphan could ask for more than that.  Fire broke out everywhere that dry, dry autumn, and not a hand raised among us to light it--I listened, I followed people; I am absolutely sure that nobody but Heaven set those fires.  The Landlord perished first of all, and his heirs didn’t have much left to farm.

But that left the rest of us homeless, on the road.  I learned, very young, how to watch and learn what I needed to live from day to day, how and when to make myself invisible.  “Sharp-eyed Shermio”, they call me, but they have no idea.

I can make out lyrics, now, and the sounds of feet.  I come around a turn and see the town square whirling with dancers.  With minutes I join the watchers on the sidelines.  Yep, soldiers do indeed dance out there, but that’s okay; people have somebody to look at more interesting than me.

Holidays make a terrific time for blending in--so many out-of-town relatives mingling in the crowds, so many distractions, and half the folks see double, anyway, and the rest won’t know what they’re looking at.  Loose tongues talk as people spread out their secrets as freely as the food, lying right out there for the snatching.  I catch a breath of grilling sausage smoke and my eyes and mouth water.

People wear their brightest colors as they dance the harvest in--same as they did in my village, and to much the same tunes.  I don’t usually dance, myself, unless it would make me obvious to not join in.  I don’t want anybody watching me, studying me; they remember my eyes too well, and I can’t seem to do anything about that.  So I just stand by and tap my foot to the beat.

I don’t know what I’m after, here, really, but sometimes that’s the best way to go in.  Check out the possibilities, stay open to everything.  Maybe a drunken soldier will let something useful slip, that I can carry to Cyran.  Maybe an angry peasant will speak more of his rebellious heart than he intends.  Maybe I’ll just get a lead on where I can spend the night, and that would suit me, too.  One thing’s for sure, though; tonight I’m having supper!)

 

Saturday, May 2, 2708

For days now we have hidden out with Petro, trying to listen through rock for any pursuit, safe and yet not feeling safe at all.  He has begun to ration the lamp-oil, lest we waste all of our effort to provide him with it, so that we live mostly in twilight, now, the only brightness pooled around his looms, when we don’t dwell in blackness entire.

We scrub cold wool in the drafty dark, we wash his dishes and polish his walls of rock between the hangings.  We make ourselves useful in any way we can in this place of unending night.  And sometimes the stone around us trembles and we wonder what the army has blown up now, or perhaps what our own forces have done, or maybe the planet just twitches in uneasy sleep, appalled at what her stepchildren play at.  Increasingly I find myself as tremulous as the cave, and curse my own cowardice.

Kief's foot nudges me out of my bed.  "Get up, Deirdre--your turn to push the press."  I growl at him and take my place forcing the heavy stone wheel around to squeeze out still more oil that Petro won’t let us use.  With so many of us working at it, he ought to have enough to last him till the next band of rebels hole up with him; meanwhile, I suppose, we keep in shape in our idleness.  Lazy old miser—he could give us a little more light, at least.

"Oh, we pay our way, all right!" I grumble as I shove at the stubborn bar.  But all I really want to do is sleep.  All I do when nobody assigns me tasks is sleep.

So why do I feel so desperately restless?  The wheel infuriates me, going around and around in circles, going nowhere.  Yet the thought of climbing out again under the exposing sun jitters my nerves so much that the slightest sound in the cave makes me jump.

"I hate this!" I shout.  "I hate this stupid wheel and this stupid cave and this whole stupid war!"  Why can I never get enough rest no matter how much I sleep?

I become painfully aware of everybody staring at me and remember that I'm supposed to be the mature one of the band.  "Sorry," I mutter.  "Just stir crazy."

Kief chuckles and says, "I know what you need.  Come 'ere."  My heart jolts, wondering what, exactly, he has in mind.

He leads me deep into the draftiest back cave, lamp in hand reflecting up and down the moisture-dripping walls.  I can hear the underground river in here, louder and louder as we approach the brink of the chasm that it thunders through.  The draft comes through its passageway, heavy with the river’s spray.  I feel soft things squish underfoot.  Glancing down, I discover much litter of cigar and cigarette butts, soggy with the cavern's damp.

"I'm surprised you haven't asked for this, yourself," he says.  "But this is where we smoke.”  He sits down on the rock and beckons me down, as well, in his little globe of light.  “It gets too stuffy if we do it back in Petro's living-quarters."

Smoke?  He lights up his pipe and I can smell what superb taste he has in tobacco; he must loot only the very best.  "Here, share a puff with me, till you can get a pipe of your own."  It smells so heavenly sweet, so dark and inviting, so...

"Oh no," I moan, starting to reach and stopping myself.

"Oh no?"

Again my hand starts to reach, and I stop it again.  In a small voice I say, "I'm addicted, aren't I."

"So?"  He inhales with pleasure and exhales swirls of magic.  "It's only a hunger.  When you don't have food, or tobacco, or rest, you tough it out.  When you do, you take what you need and enjoy every minute of it.  Simple--sacrifice or pleasure.  Needs met or unmet.  Endure or enjoy--that's life."

"But I...I never meant for this to happen."

He shrugs.  "It happens.  Sometimes things go as we mean, sometimes not.  When not, we deal with what we get.  Again--simple."  He places the pipe in my hand and I don't know whether I tremble for tobacco or at the tenderness of his touch.  "Go ahead," he says with a smile.  "Why deny yourself pleasure when you could die any day?"

It feels so good and warm inside, even better than I remember.  And the savor of it--Kief truly has superlative taste!  And by that I realize that I'm already smoking it, too late for any resolve.  Satisfaction returns to me with every breath.

With gusto Kief says, "Vigor, alertness, protection from hunger--how many gifts besides joy and taste tobacco gives us!"

I sit on my rock and nod, listening to the river, as I hand it back to him.  "And disease," I add.  "In the long run, tobacco kills you."

He chuckles at that.  "In the long run!  Rebels never live to see the long run."  How young and happy he sounds, his laughter echoing across the stone.  He tosses a rock into a chasm so dark that the lamplight doesn't touch it, and far below I hear a splash like one pure, black note.  "Our lives are short, but our deeds immortal--who could ask for more than that?"  He draws with slow delight and passes it back to me.  "Anyway, we're Mountainfolk, you and I.  We have more than enough lung capacity to spare."  His shirtless vest indeed exposes an impressive expanse of chest.

"First rule of warfare--never take any resource for granted."

"First rule of life, you mean.  But the second is, live as though you have nothing and everything--because it's true!  Refuse no gift, mourn no loss.  Just live."  He takes back the pipe and draws on it with as much relish as if he sucked immortality from the smoke itself.

"Anyway, I'm only half Mountainfolk," I tell him.  "My mother was Irish."

He raises an eyebrow.  "Your mother?  But I thought the Tilián..."

"I wasn't hatched!"  I snap, snatching the pipe back.  After a soothing breath I say, "Yeah, we're mostly orphans or abandoned or adopted, as you've obviously heard.  But my mother's family held onto visitation rights.  I've met my mother; she was all right."  Relatively speaking, God bless the poor wretch.

"Was?" he asks gently as I pass the pipe back.

"She died right before I came here.  I guess that had a lot to do with me seeking a long-term assignment."

"You cared a lot about her."

I sigh and shake my head.  "I wanted to.  I wanted to feel something more.  I hardly knew her."

He shrugs and hands the pipe over.  "I never knew my mother.  She might've been Irish, too, for all I know."  He shakes out his long and gleaming locks.  "This copper hair doesn't come from nowhere.  But it's more likely French--I hear a little French colony landed in these mountains early on, in the Great Migration.  Fools didn't bring enough women, I'm told, and had to marry in with the mountain tribes."

My words smoke as I say, "I'm impressed--you know a lot more than I'd expect.  Can you read?"

He shakes his head and takes the pipe back to cradle it shyly in his hands.  Then he smokes, and for a moment that's all he does.  "I read people," he says at last.  "I have had many, many teachers."