Monday, August 3, 2708

I sit and hold my knees, my sleeping-bag wrapped tight around me, within the chapel of St. Teresa, as I watch the dawn slowly light the sky behind the mountains, beyond these unfinished walls.  I breathe in the scents that only reach their fullest at the margin of the day.  Soft snores surround me, all the little bodies huddled in their own bags, blankets, and furs, under tarps and tents where possible, or simply pulling their heads under the covers—those who didn’t win the lottery for enjoying the limited room indoors.  More fill up the storeroom, the greenhouse and the garden shed, but at least this roofless space gives us a windbreak.  Fortunately, the Charadoc makes the very best sleeping-bag in the world, stuffed with the warm seed-fluff of a jungle tree, useful only at those altitudes where the tree can't grow.  Some kind of lesson there, in the kapok and the eyeworm trees.

I light up the first cigarette of the day and breathe in its wake-up call aroma.  A single winter-hardy bird sings out, piercingly sweet; it doesn't know, nobody seems to realize, really, what soon must happen here, and the consequences.

That’s the dardie huddle-call; I recognize it from my bird-code lessons.  Almost like the mating call, with a doubled, higher note thrown in at the end.  A lone bird cries out for others to come find him in the snow and huddle with hir, warming hir.  The rest of the flock might show up, if they haven’t already flown downslope for the winter.  Or they might leave hir to freeze to death, if the forage is too poor to share with one more mouth.

I spoke with the Abojans last night, before they left the wedding.  They urgently need us to cut our rations, if we can; the newcomers have strained their stores.  They have agreed to share whatever portions we decide among us, unaccustomed though they are to hunger.  I agreed last night, but here my stomach growls for breakfast in the morning, and already I regret it.

What, Deirdre—have you now become accustomed to feasting every day?  Feasting!  I wouldn’t have called it that seven months ago.

I also weigh everything that Shermio told me about General Aliso and about the aftermath of Branko’s Pyrrhic victory.  Have we the troop strength, yet, to take full advantage of what that child bought us with his blood?  And to think that Cyran chose to hold this pass originally as a ploy, not yet realizing how the government needs these barren, lonely rocks as much as we do.

Stratagems, stratagems, stratagems!  My poor head hurts.  I wish, oh Lord, I wish that I could do this any other way.

I’m not sure, but I think I heard in Branko’s words, the last time that we spoke, the first trembling hint of a crack, the kind that comes before a boy attains his man-voice.  Bite my lip, wipe my eyes, turn and stare out over the extreme landscape with its pinnacles and plunging depths.  No use in starting the day sobbing like a heartsick little girl; someone’s got to be the adult around here.  I suck hard on my cigarette to burn the weakening away.

I need more information.  I'm going to have to wake Cyran.  No, I don't need to—let hir sleep through as much of the hangover and the crash and the anxieties of generalship as e can.  Learning the disposition or the timing of the coming army couldn't change a detail of how I need to set up our fort here, within these never-to-be-sacred walls.  No one faces the truth but me: we have nowhere else to make our stand.  Blood will spill here, and it will never get to be a chapel.

* * *

(Sir.  He called me Sir.  Forget about it—it means nothing; our language has no respectful term for me, that's all, and not everyone has yet picked up on Deirdre’s Tilianach import.  Bury your head in the pillow, convince yourself that you're asleep.  But...he could've said Ma'am.  He could have said General.  He said Sir.  Malcolm perceives me as male.

Ai, Cyran, what use?  They all see you as a man, down to the least child, no matter what you feel.  Because you march, because you have to kill now and then, because you wear the trousers most convenient for your fated work, because you rarely have the chance anymore to heap on all the jewelry and the makeup that you love.

Will somebody please shut that damn bird up?  Don't tell me that that high-pitched shriek is some kind of mating call—if I were a lady-bird I'd kill such a mate and let the breed die out.  If Malcolm hadn't confiscated my weapons I'd shoot it dead right here and now—or else myself, if I couldn't silence it.  Dear ol' Malcolm, wise of you to take my guns—you'd never do me harm.  Except to call me "Sir".

How many of them see the woman in my breast, side by side with the man?  How many guess that if I had to pick, if God would finally do as E meant to all along and split me into one thing or another, it's the woman I would choose?

All those children in the ranks.  They need a father, a stern father to teach them how to shoot, how to spit in the devil's eye, how to live on bugs and weeds and angry laughter—a father to yell them back onto their feet, make them keep on going when it all seems so sickeningly hopeless that we'd just rather crawl on home and starve than spend another day trying to fix the world that has always been what it is, even on that other planet that died of what it couldn't change.

But it takes the mother in me to care enough to try anyway.)

* * *

We've got enough rocks and timbers to turn some of the existing walls into real battlements.  Snow falls as we work, and we have to keep brushing it away to make secure purchases, but we almost don’t mind as still more snow comes down upon our heads, because it looks so soft, so pure and light—a relief from the burning thoughts of battle to come.  Almost don’t mind—it’s still as cold as virtue, falling indifferently from heaven, interfering with our preparations to kill.

Aziz tries out some of the weapon-fire chinks for use by slings; he and the other mosquitoes will need larger, more dangerous windows for their work.  We build in platforms for the various sizes among our troop.  We add steps to take us to strategic heights, careful not to slip on the snow that carpets them as fast as they take form.  We guard all sides, because Aliso engulfs, we all know that.  Even knowing it as we do, she wins a little bit, because it takes extra manpower (childpower, whatever) to prepare for her onslaught.

Hard work, but I want to stretch this moment out as long as I can.  I want the army never to arrive, and some part of me hopes that if I just keep piling stick upon stone, they never will.  I would gladly spend the rest of my life building defenses against an absent foe.

On my way to check out the observation/sniper platform built in what we have of a bell-tower, I see the back of a teenage blonde.  "Alysha," I say, "You're supposed to be rest..." then she turns and I see her purpling face.

"Hide me," she says, "Before Cyran sees.  E'll..."

"E'll what?"  Cyran comes up behind me to her.  "This?"  E slams her against a wall, tears in hir eyes.  "You let him do it to you again!  You fornicatin' let him do it to you again!"

I pull hir off and send hir sprawling to the ground.  "She doesn't need you to beat her up twice," I say, while Alysha babbles, "It was the wine and the leaf on top of that.  He couldn't help it.  It was my fault.  I got pushy, talking weddings to him—Damien and Kanarik gave me big ideas and I needed brought down to size.  It was nobody's fault.  It just happened.  It just..."  The tears spill down from two bruised eyes, across her swollen cheeks.

I help Cyran back to hir feet.  "Sorry, Memsir.  You'd be hating yourself pretty badly right now if I hadn't stepped in."

E glares at me, saying, "Will you please allow me at least an hour to resent you before I have to acknowledge that you're right?"  Dusting off snow with exaggerated vanity, e says, "And when will you learn never to apologize for acting as commanding officer?  Women!"

But now e glares at Alysha, who still sobs against the wall, run out of words.  "You're never going to command troops again, Alysha, you realize this.  Nobody respects you anymore."  She only whines and presses her sore face against the stones.  "All those brains and you've got no use for them."  E shakes hir head over her.  "I'd rather put Aichi in charge—at least she does her best with what she's got."

I have to say something.  "I'll arrange for Marduk's punishment—something that'll leave him fit for combat when the time comes, but something he'll remember."  She wails and runs away; I know that I can only make things worse, but nothing better comes to mind.

Half rations, I decide, until we sight approaching troops—that should chasten him.  That, at least, will weaken Marduk for awhile, what with the general ration already cut before it gets to him.

* * *

(They don’t understand—even the Tilián woman doesn’t understand, and you’d think she’d know better than anybody.  Love conquers all.  I can cure him.  I know I can.  I’ve done it before.

I shiver under the cold compresses that the fat man lays on my face, so he tucks another blanket around me after warming it at the fireplace.  Stupid ol’ fat man—doesn’t he realize that I deserve to suffer?  Who is he to interfere?  But it feels so soothing...I’ll lie here just a little longer.  Here, indoors, where the sick people go.

I’ve done it before.  I was born with a kind of magic power that way.  Didn’t I change my grandmother’s hard heart?  All I had to do was persevere.  I called her Gramma no matter how she punished me for it, the shocked, sudden lashings out, the kicks, the slaps, the venom-words.  I wept and hugged her anyway, again and again, even when she used her fists, so desperate, the frail old fists, the knuckles bled so easily.  I remember kissing those poor, bleeding knuckles, like my mother would've kissed my own skinned knees.

I would persist, day after day.  I would smile at her, bring her wildflowers, reach out to her with gentle touches until one day she took my hand into her soft, dry one, suddenly squeezed my fingers and then she wept, not me.  This time when I hugged her I consoled her, I let her cry on my shoulder.  And I felt so wise, so beautiful, so big!

After that she took an interest in me, laughed when I laughed, shared moments with me, and taught me things from books.  She marveled that I could learn to read so young, and I thrived in her praise.  She treated my mother better, too—she even made my father treat my mother better, called her “Mother of your child” to his face.  Treats sometimes waited for me by the kitchen’s back door.  Sometimes I could stop my little child-chores to see a new colt or a pretty sunrise.  And then there were the books that I’d hide in my blanket in the servant’s quarters.

Once my grandmother even invited me upstairs—very quietly, very discreetly—to spy out of her bedroom window into the branches of a tree, where she’d discovered a bird’s nest just that morning; I couldn't have seen the nest from any other place, all the little bitty chicks cheeping with their mouths wide open.  The two of us just stood there watching for the longest time, there amid all the handmade lace and the scent of lavender.  I will never, ever forget it: the most magical moment of my entire life.

Ah, power!  I had so much power to do good in those days.  Just by loving I created a family.  Where did it all go?

I didn’t mean to whimper, but Malcolm heard me.  He brings me that bitter tea that eases the pain, but it only reaches as far as my face; the pain inside just gets bigger and bigger.

Something happened.  I lost the power.  No matter how charming I tried to be, how compliant with every request, how devoted in the face of rejection, my father married a highborn lady anyway.  I tried, oh dear ghost of my mother, I did try to get the power back and save you, but father beat me for my efforts, and then he beat you, too, and then he sent us both away.  He didn’t even tell us, himself—he sent his new wife, smiling viciously, to say that a house of their stature could not tolerate unwed mothers on the staff.

And then you beat me, too, dear mother, of course you did, just as I deserved for letting you down.  You said that I made him send us away.  Of course I did.  I failed to change his heart.  I promised that I wouldn’t fail ever again, but you hit me for saying that, too.  Of course.

And so we had to go to that other village, the doomed village—Tensei.  But I didn’t fail again.  I persevered.  I heard you, Mother.  I heard you screaming in the fire, but I heard you shape your scream with your last breath into the words, “I love you!” right before the priest led me away, his hands as bloody as Christ’s.  I knew that I had made you love me again.

          So I know that I can do it.  I’ve got the power in me.  But it wasn’t enough, that last time—I took too long to change your heart, Mother.  I lost you too soon.  This time I’ll do it better.  I can reach Marduk, no matter what anybody else says, and do it long before he dies and leaves me.  This time I’ll make it right for good.)