Autumn

I was plowing when the appearance of three figures in the distance made my heart pound and my palms sweat. This isn’t to say that my heart wasn’t already pounding and my whole body, including my hands, wasn’t already sweaty. Plowing is hard work and I’m not really suited to it. I had never been outside a dome before the day I was turfed. It was not as dramatic an event as it sounds. I was too stunned to struggle when they came for me. Now I have been outside for four seasons, which is, trust me, much more dramatic than it sounds. A Torquere Press Chaser - 1

This place was all but dead when I came to it. I stopped here because it seemed slightly less dead than the places I had crossed as I walked through all of that searing summer, the sun a bright malevolence, the rain poison. I stopped here because when I came to the sluggish river I found I could not readily ford it, and I was tired. As I sat on the ragged bank and considered whether I was tired enough to die, I noticed there were fields to the south of me, weedy and sick, with a crop of beans almost ready to harvest. There was a house of sorts, dug into a berm near the river, with four of everything except people -- four clay cups, four wooden plates, four dented spoons, and four empty bolsters slumped listlessly on two sleeping platforms. There were three knives, two tangles of tack and one plow. I had never known people could live outside the domes, and through my long walking summer I learned that not many did. When I happened upon the dwelling and field, I decided whence some had gone, I would stay. Soon a man came, and at first I thought it was the landholder come back to defend his claim but no, this was a neighbor, my only one by the man’s account. “I come for the crop,” the man said. He looked me over appraisingly. “I weren’t expecting nobody.” He looked at me as if to say his suspicion had been confirmed. “This is my place now. I’ll bring in the crop,” I assured him, though I had no idea how to accomplish such a task. I stood as tall as I could and wished I had one or two of the several knives decorating my neighbor. “I’ll be back come spring, then. See if you live.” It was said without menace, but not without malice. And the man went away again. I picked beans until my fingernails were stained green and then pulled up the stalks until my palms were bloody. I didn’t know to reserve seed for next year, and I didn’t think to use the dry plants for kindling. I had never felt a winter’s cold, but when it bit and blew I learned how to make a fire and hunched before it and cursed myself for a fool. When I wasn’t trying to keep warm, I was trying to find new ways to eat beans and pining for clean and familiar things; in other words, for things I had no reason to expect to see ever again. I knew the spring thaw had arrived when the river rose alarmingly high and coughed up all sorts of debris, and my neighbor -- his name was Varas, or so he said -- came again from his place a day’s walk over the river. He never did tell me how he forded the swollen river. Given how lonesome I had been all winter, how bored and scared, I was happy to see him. An hour’s conversation dulled the bloom on the rose of our new acquaintance, and while Varas would never be a friend, I managed to learn some things from him. I learned the fate of the previous landholders (nothing good) and Varas’s version of the ways of the crops and land and weather in this place (nothing easy, nothing sure). Varas told me that there were beans, red ones, that could grow in winter, and I determined to plant such beans. Two harvests, however mean, must surely be better than one. If I say so myself, I have a mathematical turn of mind. A Torquere Press Chaser - 2

I don’t know why Varas didn’t simply kill me. Maybe it was because of the roof. One day he told me he needed a new one and I offered to help in exchange for some beans to plant and help getting them in the ground. I knew better than to offer Varas anything without bartering, and after all, we weren’t friends. I never did tell Varas how I came by my knowledge of building trades, not that he asked. In return for a snug, sturdy roof, Varas lent me a fractious beast with a hollow leg for a week and a sack of seed loosely sealed with Varas’s word for its viability. Varas called the beast a mule, but it didn’t look like the ones I’d seen in books; it had an awfully long neck. Yes, books. I like old things. Well, I used to like them, when I was surrounded by new, spare, efficient things. Books were my favorite. So bulky and impractical when you think about it, but so full of delights. My colleagues used to tease that my antiquarian streak was eccentric, but it deflected their attention from other eccentricities, so I didn’t mind. I don’t have colleagues anymore, unless one counts Varas, which I would prefer not to. After the height of summer, Varas left with a full cart and a promise. That had been two months ago, as closely as I could reckon (the moon had been fat twice). He was to sell my summer crop (minus what I would need to eat that winter and seed for the following spring -- I do learn from my mistakes) in the settlement two weeks’ walk across the border. I couldn’t go on my own behalf; that would have been tantamount to suicide. Varas was to bring me some of the red winter beans I coveted and a draft beast of my own. I should have noticed that he left without getting his own land ready to plant, as if he had no intention of returning. For the first weeks of Varas’ absence, I didn’t spare him much thought. An overland trek to the cross-border trading settlement routinely took a month or more, according to him, and I imagined much that could conspire to delay a traveler for good or ill. After the time came and passed when Varas should have returned, I stopped looking for him as actively. I was forced to conclude I’d been gulled. How hopelessly young and stupid I seemed, even to myself! Even so, I resolved to prepare my land; I would plant some of the green beans and find out for myself if they couldn’t produce in winter. I looked back down the uneven furrow I’d just completed, and felt as pleased as a man could who’d pulled his own plow all morning. My nose and brow were sunburned and stinging with sweat. I’d borrowed my head covering to pad the traces of the plow, but was forced to conclude that had been a bad bargain for negligible relief to my raw, sore shoulders. Still, pulling the plow was a sight better than pushing it. I’d tried that the day before, and all I had to show for that was a bruised chest and a sheepish memory of myself shouting at an imaginary traction animal to pull harder. Sometimes being the only sentient being within walking distance is not so bad a thing. Now, here came strangers. Three of them, with who knew what evil intent? After a year scratching at this miserable plot, my native curiosity was as dead as the land around me, that is, nearly so. My suspicion, with so much to fertilize it, had flourished apace, like a weed. Perhaps these trespassers brought news of the town, or of Varas himself, though I thought that unlikely.

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I slipped the traces, pulling the canteen of water from the basket of river stones weighting the handle of the plow and sipping tentatively; water seldom benefited from close confinement, especially not the rain water I collected and boiled. It was warm and dusty as my sweat. I didn’t want to meet three strangers while bound and grunting, so I left the traces lying in the uncut earth and waited. I rubbed my eyelids and winced as my roughened thumb grated against my sore nose. I remembered a time when I’d been proud of my hands for their clean cleverness, and vain -- I can admit it now -- of my looks. Could it have been just a year ago? I wasn’t what I had been, that was for sure, so I figured it was just as well I didn’t look as I had, either. I would have shrugged if my shoulders hadn’t ached so. I leaned on the handles of the plow and checked my knives, two little ones at my belt, the longer, flat xyrra laid across the beam of the plow. I was better at bean farming than self-defense, but only just, and I was aware I was no bean farmer. Still, no need for my visitors to know my blades had tasted plant sap to the complete exclusion of lifeblood. Since the Hostilities, the rules of hospitality had been swept away except in the domes and, as with food, I made my own now. Faced with three strangers and armed with three knives (symmetrical to tell about, yes, but I didn’t fool myself that my three knives evened up a fight), I couldn’t help but wish for my neighbor’s presence, his quick way with words, whatever fighting skill he might possess (as shifty and selfish as he was, I suspected he could hold his own in a brawl). I suppressed the urge to walk forward to meet the newcomers. I needn’t have worried. As the figures closed in on my position, the tallest one hailed me in a sharp voice I recognized. “Edor!” “Varas,” I muttered, then repeated it so the man would know he’d been heard. I did not greet the men who flanked Varas, but reached slowly for my xyrra, and inched my free hand toward the smaller tumi at my belt. I felt it only prudent to keep the plow between myself and them. Varas noticed. “Showing us the long and the short of it, ain’t’cha, Edor lad?” “Only until I know you come in peace, neighbor.” Varas’s whiskers cracked like dirt, showing muddy skin and teeth in something very distant indeed from a friendly smile. “And here I’d’a thought you’d be happy to see me, back safe and with everything I promised.” He nudged the smaller man next to him, who stumbled forward and unslung a fat pack basket, setting it in front of the plow. From near the ground, the man flashed shadowed blue eyes up at me. I made to speak, but he cast his eyes down quickly and shuffled back to stand beside Varas. “Your winter seed, just like I promised.” I had no idea if it was enough, or any good. I nodded toward the man who’d been carrying it.

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“And the rest of our bargain? That’s no draft beast,” I nodded at one of Varas’ silent companions, then the other. My voice sounded as raw as my shoulders felt. “Har!” Varas barked. “Pretty observant for a dome-dweller, ain’tcha, Edor?” Anger flared in my belly, but what could I say, really? “Offer us poor travelers a drink and a bite and I’ll tell you all about your beast.” Varas and his cohorts outnumbered me so I thought it better not to protest or make any demands. Also, I admit, I was curious. I was curious about what had delayed Varas, about the men with him, and about the wary blue gaze the small man had leveled upon me, so I hefted the seed sack and canteen and waved the xyrra so Varas and the others would walk ahead of me. I left the plow where it was. Nobody said a word as we trudged over the fallows, Varas leading the way, his two companions between us, stumbling slightly. The two clasped hands, not casually, but tightly as if they were afraid. My curiosity about the two men sparked. I was not used to having people afraid of me, didn’t much relish it, but knew it was practical. I kept up my silence, and my xyrra, and wondered what the hand-clasp meant. It couldn’t possibly mean what such a thing meant in the domes. Could it? When we reached my sod house, I didn’t invite my guests inside. I was disinclined to offer any but the slimmest hospitality, first of all, and part of me was just too embarrassed to have anyone inside the dark, damp dwelling. Keeping a dirt house clean struck me as a contradiction in terms in theory and a paradox in reality. Recent rain had made matters worse, driving mud and critters in (on six legs and eight legs and no legs at all) and all comfort out. Varas’ studied nonobservance of my rudeness made me feel petty and childish until he nonchalantly dipped himself a cup of water from the cistern, slurping at my own cup (it was very hard for me to hold me tongue on that one) and tossing the dipper to his two companions, who were squatting in my dooryard, still holding hands, looking from Varas to me to each other with wide eyes. “It’s good seed, you know. I wouldn’t cheat you.” “Not on this smaller part of our bargain, perhaps. What about the beast? Or the balance of my profit from the beans, if there is no beast?” “Well, now, friend, you’re looking at it.” I gritted my teeth loudly enough that the men on the ground looked up. “I’ll bite, Varas. Am I looking at the beast or the profit?” “Both.” Varas’ wet little eyes slid towards the pair on the ground. “Why’nt you sit, Edor.” “Don’t invite me to sit in my own yard, Varas. Just talk.” “Maybe you won’t be so growly when I tell you the Salters have crossed the border.”

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My pulse flipped and marched backward uncomfortably. “That’s impossible. They’re a Northern phenomenon.” “No, sir. They was there, sure as I’m here now. They commandeered all the beasts, mount and burden and draft. They showed a mighty keen interest in old Ruki, I’ll tell you that. I barely got him out with me.” Varas’ affection for the knock-kneed “mule” was the only evidence I’d yet seen of a heart in the man. “But you did?” I owed the animal a lot, too, and wouldn’t have wished him ill, even for spite of his slippery master. “Barely,” Varas repeated and curled his lip. After a few more sips of water, Varas appeared to have finished talking, so I swallowed my pride and prompted, “Speak, man. You have information for me, not to mention a season’s profit.” And my chance of surviving the winter, I almost added. “Them Salters rolled through, emptying out the academies and temples and brothels, same as everywhere. Selling off the Nonproductives for labor, billeting everywhere, confiscating goods and stock left and right. If I’d’a known, I’d’a never gone in. Not much of a place, not for them. No dome or nothin’.” There was an oily note in Varas’ voice that made me wish, not for the first time, that I’d never told Varas where I’d come from. Suddenly, I thought I understood. “So what am I looking at here, Varas? Professors or priests or catamites?” I had a feeling I already knew the answer. Varas leered. “They’re a little young for professors, eh? A little pretty for priests?” “So. You took twenty baskets of pod-beans and brought me one basket of red bean and two bumboys?” I kicked the pack basket, but gently. It wouldn’t do for my anger to end my chances here. My head hurt with the effort to cover my embarrassment. “They’ll work.” Varas sneered. “If you make ‘em.” I feared Varas would see too much in my face, so I turned my attention to the two men before us. They were young, and slight, with wheaten hair and blue eyes and brown skin. “What are your names?” They blinked at me, one after the other. Something in their eyes made my heart gasp. “I don’t suppose you speak Almen. Varas? What are their names?” “Don’t know. The slaver didn’t know. I call ‘em Gee and Haw.” He rasped a laugh. “They’re not animals, Varas! You’re the beast, you know. Don’t they have identity papers or something?” “Do you?”

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I couldn’t control my wince, nor the reflexive way my fingers covered the keloided scar on the

back of my hand. I knew what Varas was implying: no Nonproductives had papers.

“Best get on.” Varas stood and brushed off the seat of his pants. “Guess I’ll see you after the

thaw. We’ll have to take our crops to Kenvro, at the closest, maybe Diabarzh, if the Salters keep

moving over winter.”

I didn’t want to think about Salters. I’d thought I’d left behind that menace, at least, when I was

turfed. I reluctantly shook Varas’ hand. “Say hello to Ruki for me. Have a good winter.” I meant

the first, and suspected the second was an impossibility.

I watched until Varas cleared the berm, headed over and down to the river. I wanted to be sure

he’d gone, but I wasn’t sure what to do next. Bewildered with my guests, I fell back on old

habits. “You’d best come to the kitchen, I imagine you’re hungry,” I said.

“Thank you,” said one.

“You are kind,” said the other.

“You do speak Alman!”

“Not to beasts.” A slim hand waved dismissively in the direction Varas had taken.

“And not smoothly.” A second, slightly broader, hand waved dismissively between the two.

“Well, thank you for speaking to me.” Though I wondered to myself how I, newly minted

slaveholder, could be less of an animal than Varas. “I am called Edor.” It was the name I had used since leaving the dome, my professional title. Sometimes I wondered if I even recalled my true name. “He is Lys. I am Tywyll.”

“We are Novigi.”

“That must be far.” I had never heard of it.

The one called Lys tilted his head. “Not... far. Brother?”

Tywyll nodded. “Distant, perhaps. Not far.”

“You’re brothers?” Poor things, to be whores so young.

“A way of saying, only,” said Tywyll. “Not blood, but still brothers, you see?”

Not really. My life before hadn’t bred close friendships and my life since, well, hadn’t merited

them. “Come, you can wash while I fix supper. You’ve had a long walk.”

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The two Novigi followed me to the lean-to that held the pump and kitchen. I supposed “kitchen” made the semi-permanent hearth sound rather grand. I stirred up the smothered coals and laid on more fuel; the local peat was free and burned hot, if not brightly or fragrantly. I kept my body and face turned away from where the two not-brothers had stripped to the waist and begun washing in the sun-warmed water from the pump; there was no privacy beyond simple courtesy. I had rigged a hanging basket fed by a reed pipe connected to the cistern. If I couldn’t have a true bath, I had determined that I would at least have clean rinse-water. I hadn’t shown my guests how to use it, but they seemed to have figured it out, if their little exclamations of surprise were anything to judge by. After a few minutes, the happy sounds changed to hisses and muffled yelps of pain and I forgot their modesty. “What is it? Is something wrong?” Lys and Tywyll turned to look at me, their eyes slitted and their shoulders hunched to protect their bodies. They didn’t answer. “Are you injured? Let me see.” If Varas had done something to them.... I took a step forward and the two closed ranks, Tywyll stepping in front of Lys and putting his hand out to stall my approach. Lys put a quelling hand on Tywyll’s arm and they had a rapid, quietly urgent conversation in a very foreign language. Tywyll drooped in defeat at the end of it and Lys stepped past him to stand before me, a defiant look in his bright eyes. “These will not heal. There is pain.” “What won’t...?” I began. Lys’ brown cheeks colored and he looked down his own body. I followed his glance to his nipples and would have continued, dangerously, but for what I saw there. One was brown as a late-summer berry, the other cruelly distended and swollen around a thick metal ring. “Who did this?” “No papers,” Lys’ voice was very soft. In a sick flash, I understood. This was the slaver’s mark, now the mark of my ownership. “It should have healed by now. Varas... bought you,” I felt my gorge rise on the word, “over a month ago. It doesn’t look infected.” Tywyll turned and revealed a similar injury. “This metal is poison. We are Novigi.” I had heard of diseases that struck only members of certain races. Perhaps this was some sort of allergy peculiar to Lys and Tywyll’s people. “Then they must come out.” This was easier said than done, and the failing light was no help. I boiled water and let Lys and Tywyll clean each other’s ringed nipples, which they did with infinite gentleness. While Lys sat A Torquere Press Chaser - 8

with his back to Tywyll’s chest, I tried to find the join in the ring. There was none. “It’s iron,” I said, with some surprise -- the old ores were rare now. “It would heat fast and I could cut it off,” I ventured. My manipulation of the ring was careful as could be, but Lys’ eyes were screwed shut against the pain. Tywyll said, “This iron, it shares heat like other metals?” Of course! I stammered through my embarrassment. The conductivity of the metal would sear Lys’ flesh before I ever got the metal soft enough to cut. “I have a file, for sharpening knives. I’ll get that. I’m amazed you didn’t just rip it out when the pain and swelling got bad.” Lys muttered tightly, “We are Novigi. We do not maim ourselves.” As I made my way to the shed I’d built from driftwood and debris in anticipation of my traction beast I wondered about my guests’ strange behavior: surely a self-inflicted torn nipple would eventually heal and thus be preferable to the constant pain and swelling the slavers’ rings inflicted. With a mental shrug, I located the file and hurried back to the lean-to. How ironic, I thought, a little hysterically, that this file I’d traded with Varas for would be the tool to manumit the slaves he’d bought. I drew a deep breath and went back to Lys and Tywyll. “This might pull a little,” I warned with what I hoped was a reassuring smile. Lys nodded and reached his hands up to clasp Tywyll’s, resting his face in the curve of his friend’s neck. Tywyll didn’t hide; he fixed his eyes on Lys’ chest and, when I didn’t begin immediately, darted me a challenging blue glare. I nodded tersely and began. The sound of metal rasping metal was ugly, and the sound of Lys’ whimpers was pitiful. My jaw ached and Tywyll’s eyes were leaking tears by the time I sawed through the iron, prized it open with a grunt, and slid it out of Lys’ nipple, releasing a pink trickle of blood and lymph. Lys panted and sagged against his friend, and I was more than a little surprised to feel the man’s shaking hand squeeze my own. I threw the bent ring into the fire. I could probably find a use for such rare metal, but at that moment I wanted it far away, destroyed. “Ready?” I asked Tywyll. It was almost worse, that second time. My voice quavered as I apologized for the lack of medicine or bandages. Neither of my guests wanted food afterward, and though they looked awfully skinny, I understood they might not have much appetite after our little operation. As for me, my day in the fields had caught up with me and none of the various excitements of the afternoon and evening had dampened it, so I fixed myself some beans (what else?) that had been soaking since morning and made tea from the bitter grass that grew by the river. My patients -- for they weren’t exactly guests, and were no longer slaves -- watched me and shared a cup of tea when I offered it. As I scrubbed out my bowl, Lys said something softly to Tywyll. “May we sleep, now?” Tywyll asked. I showed them into the turvy and gave them the unused sleeping platform and my own blanket. There was no fire in the underground dwelling -- it was too hot for one, and in summer the

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smokiness of the peat fire was unbearable because there was no real chimney, only a crude hole in the sod of the roof. “Thank you.” “You are welcome.” I was uncomfortably aware that my meager home offered scant welcome. I left the two alone and went to bank the kitchen fire and close up the shed. I washed at the pump shower, biting back groans as my abused skin tightened under the trickle, then walked back to my little house, carrying the blanket I’d patched together from rags and scraps for the hoped-for draft animal. I rolled up in the blanket not for warmth but for protection from the crawly things, and lay on my platform with my back to the door. There was little light in the turvy, but I trained my eyes toward my guests. We were not off to the brightest of beginnings, I admitted to myself, but there was a giddy feeling of expectation I couldn’t deny and chose to nurture instead. Slowly, as sleep eluded me, I became aware of wet sucking sounds and realized the lads were still awake, licking each other’s wounds. I could just make them out, curved into each other’s bodies, soothing each other’s hurts. For the first time since losing the protection of my Dome, I felt the flicker of a desire unconnected to loss. *** Mornings were dim and misty at this time of year, and I came awake slowly. It took a few blinky moments to realize I was alone in the turvy. I shouldn’t have been surprised that, freed from their physical bonds, my strange guests had left. I sagged for a moment under a feeling of bereavement, feeling stupid even as I struggled to tamp down my disappointment. Brief ablutions and a briefer breakfast of beans, munched as I trudged to the plow, were cold comfort as the mist burned off and the land steamed weakly. I tore the animal-blanket I’d slept in into strips -- wouldn’t need it now, would I? -- and wrapped the plow’s traces. I lifted the basket of river rocks onto their sling between the handles, and girded myself for another bout of plowing. The day was starting so much like the day before I wanted to scream. Just like the day before, this one was hard, and hot, and by the time the sun settled my shoulders felt like they were permanently grooved from the traces. I drank the last of my water on the way back to my steading, trailing the blanket fragments behind me; I’d rinse out the blood and sweat, let them dry overnight. As I cleared the small rise that protected the turvy from wind and weather I started to run, tucking the blanket into my trousers and drawing my knives as I did. Smoke was rising from the turvy and the kitchen. I pounded into the dooryard and stopped dead. “Edor!” Two voices greeted me. I was speechless. “I thought you’d gone.” Well, not completely speechless.

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“We went. Now we are here again.”

I was back to speechless.

“Your house was bad, wet, buggy. Now it’s better.” I peered at Lys, who stood in the doorway,

plowshare cheekbones shadowing a broadly smiling mouth.

“You look better.”

“Tywyll found... medicine?”

“An herb to help us heal,” Tywyll filled in as he beckoned from the kitchen. Something

smelled... good. Not like beans.

“You came back.”

“We are here now.”

“Will you stay?” I folded my lips between my teeth and bit them. I had no right to ask that.

Neither answered, and Lys shooed me over to the pump to wash. Feeling stiff and self-conscious, I left my shirt off as I came to sit, embarrassed at how eagerly my hands reached for the wooden plate of not-just-beans that Tywyll offered me. There were bitter greens and something that looked like turnip. Where had these things come from, in this dead land? Lys and Tywyll ate, too, with apparent relish, but in relative silence, and when they were finished I stacked the plates and fixed tea. Silently, I passed steaming cups to Lys and Tywyll, still boggled by their return. Lys set his cup in the dirt at my feet and jumped up. It was like watching a completely different person to the listless, haunted boy of yesterday. “Wait! Look!” He brought a reed-wrapped package over to the bench and opened it carefully, holding it close to my face. It smelled like-“Honey!” Lys was bouncing like a storybook puppy. “Only a little, so don’t be greedy.”

“Lys!” Tywyll shrugged apologetically, his narrow, solemn face lightened by a smile. “Have as

much as you want, Edor.”

“I’ve never seen honey like this. Where I come from, it’s in a glass jar.”

Lys wrinkled his little nose. “Bees don’t have jars. They build this. Put in the... from the flower...

Brother?”

“Nectar,” Tywyll offered.

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“I understand,” I said. “But how do I use it?”

Tywyll reached over and broke off a piece of the waxy comb, naming it for me and dropping the

whole thing into my tea. He licked his fingers delicately, then his lips. I couldn’t help but watch,

remembering the way that tongue had offered comfort to Lys the night before. It took effort, but

I forced myself to concentrate on my tea. “Sweet,” I murmured into the cup. Lys beamed.

“Your shoulders look bad,” Tywyll observed.

“I pulled the plow all day. They’re sore.”

“The poultice I made for our...” Tywyll drifted off, his hand cupped protectively over his breast.

“It might help.”

“So would honey,” Lys piped up.

“Herb first, honey next,” Tywyll declared.

I was dubious. The only medicine I knew was prescribed by a medcomp and delivered in sterile

bottles. I had read about infection, but never suffered one. Horror stories about life outside the domes were full of rampant, killing contagions, and the creeping, invisible ones were worst of all. “If you think it will help, I will try.” I trusted these two, though I knew I shouldn’t. I was too credulous, I knew. Just look at Varas and how easily he was able to take every advantage of me. Now that I thought about it, I figured Varas might have done me a favor after all. I remembered what had had me running so desperately to my house. “So what have you done

that made my house smoke so?”

“Dried it out.”

“It’s a good house, just too...”

“Wet?”

“Buggy! Good they are here, bad in the house.”

“It’s dry now, and the roof is fixed.”

“I didn’t know it was broken. I don’t know much about living underground.”

“Come see.” So I did. The walls and the floor, even the roof, were dry, smelling of peat rather

than river and rot. I had never thought of smoking the place dry.

“That’s something. Thank you.”

“We’ll sleep better. I’ll fix more tomorrow.”

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“I’m glad you’re staying.” “Would you like me to suck you now, Edor?” “What did you say?” It was easily the most confident, articulate thing Lys had said since his arrival, but I couldn’t credit what I’d heard. Lys looked flustered. “The... procurer... in the town. That’s what he said would please...” He trailed off. “What did I say, Edor? I wanted to be good, make you happy.” He looked so distressed, so childlike in that moment that I patted his shoulder roughly. “You are good as you are. I’m going to sleep now.” I took the two pieces of my blanket to the animal shed and lay down right on the dirt floor. I had surely hurt Lys’ feelings. Why had Lys thought I expected that? I didn’t. Did not. Did Lys still think of himself as bound to me? As my property? Back in the Dome, I had never had a relationship with a man because it was prohibited. To be caught would have meant designation as Nonproductive and turfing. Then the Salters came and it hadn’t mattered anyway. How had Lys sussed the truth about me? Did my... wry nature mean the same among the Novigi as it did among the Alm? Tywyll and Lys were close; were they lovers? The idea made my heart trip. I shook off the notion, refused to look at it. They were of the same people, they had been held as whores together, sold into slavery together; there must be a bond that arose from those experiences. They could be close -- hadn’t they said they were like brothers? -- without being lovers. I wasn’t sure how I’d face Lys tomorrow, and what would Tywyll say? He seemed protective of Lys; if they were lovers, I supposed I should expect jealousy as well as the indignation of a brother. I had known these two strange men for one day, and already I cringed at the thought that my clumsy behavior might have ruined the delicate infant sympathy between us. I wanted them to stay, to talk to me, to bring more greens and honey. I couldn’t be angry at Lys for what he had said, but there in the dark, my muscles already cramping as I lay on the floor, I wished very hard for it to be unsaid. I was a fool, I already knew that, but this reminder was agonizing. Thoughts, none of them soothing, chased around and around in my head until a day yoked to the plow asserted itself and dragged my body into slumber. *** As it happened, I didn’t have to face Lys the next morning, but it was a near thing. I stirred up the fire in the kitchen and set the pot of water boiling for tea. Despite, or perhaps because of, the bitter way the evening had ended, I was looking forward to more of the honey. I went to the house to fetch a clean (well, a less filthy) shirt. The sight that greeted me sped my pulse and dried my mouth. Lys and Tywyll moved upon the sleeping platform, heads at each other’s groins, in a way I had read about but dismissed as fancy. Neither looked my way, so I let fall the woven reed mat that covered the door and left. My thoughts were a shocked, inchoate jumble.

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I bolted some tea -- bugger the honey -- and dragged on my stiff and smelly shirt from the day before. I didn’t feel much like eating, but I filled a bowl with beans so I wouldn’t have to come back before dusk. As I made my way to my sorry furrows I counseled myself that I should feel relieved that my guests appeared to be staying on. It was as close as I would let my mind venture to thoughts of the night before and the sights of the morning. When I was turfed, I’d been labeled and shamed by others, but that morning I called myself a coward and found no way to defend myself. At midmorning I released myself from the plow to move the rocks I’d unearthed to one side of the plot. It was tedious work, but it made a change and gave my shoulders a rest. “I’ve come to help, if help I’d be.” It was Tywyll, and I stared, not knowing how to respond. I settled on the obvious and grunted my assent. I hadn’t used to be so laconic, but a year of my own company and my discomfiture at the loving I’d witnessed at dawn leached away my words. Tywyll quietly, efficiently, gathered stones with me. I soon forgot about trying to make conversation, or amends, and worked alongside him. I could carry more, but Tywyll was quicker, and without obvious effort built of the stones an elaborate pile in one corner of the field. After a water break, we moved to the plow, still not speaking, just quietly working together. Tywyll needed help removing the weight basket from the plow handles, and Tywyll emptied it, carrying the smooth river stones to the cairn he had made. Without a word, I shrugged into the traces and Tywyll grasped the handles in dusty brown hands, and we began. I was soon forced to admit that the pulling was easier with a sentient being driving. After an hour or so, breaking again for water, I was stunned to see that we’d prepared at least double the ground as I’d managed alone in the same interval. The furrows were straighter, too, which mattered not at all to the beans but satisfied the artist in me. I’d thought he was dead, the man I’d used to be. I was pleased with the work we’d done, but it was the unlooked-for awakening of the self, the sensibility I had spent a year trying to forget had ever drawn breath, that fractured my silence. “Seems I’ve got a traction beast after all. Will you call me Gee or Haw?” “Never, Edor. Someday you will share your true name with us.” I started and felt my face heat almost painfully -- I was already overheated and no doubt red from sun and strain. “What’s Lys doing today?” I wondered why they had separated. “He thought you needed company. He fears he offended you.” “Last night? No. I was... what he said was... unexpected. I’m no whoremaster.” “And Lys is no whore.” “Now I’ve offended.”

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“You don’t understand. We came to that place, that settlement, seeking our new home. What we did there was to survive. We had a choice. We were waiting.” “Waiting for the Salters? Waiting to make the leap from whore to slave?” “Am I a slave?” “You were.” “I never was.” “Varas bought you.” “For you. Am I your slave?” “No, Tywyll, you are not. I am your servant.” “And I am yours.” Tywyll made a small, graceful bow as he said it; I essayed one in return, but it felt awkward and exaggerated. We smiled at each other. It was more talking than I had done with anyone in over a year, and I had no idea what any of it meant. We worked until it was dark enough that I couldn’t avoid stubbing my toes on subterranean stones. We didn’t speak as we trudged through the gloaming, but I grunted my appreciation when Tywyll relieved me of the bowl, canteen, and blanket shreds, putting them all in the basket and carrying the basket on his head. If I hadn’t been so exhausted, I’d have laughed. Lys hallooed from the steading and Tywyll broke away to meet him. When I caught up they were standing hip to hip with their arms around each other, talking animatedly in their soft, chittering language. I didn’t know where to look or what to say, so I tromped past them to get cleaned up. There was a modesty panel woven of river reed fibers that hadn’t been there this morning -- this had to be Lys’ handiwork -- and as I stripped off and washed I noticed other evidence of how Lys had occupied himself while Tywyll and I were afield. Lys had cut an impressive amount of peat and stacked it to dry on the riverside berm. Handy as that was for cooking and heating, it wasn’t nearly as interesting as the change closer to me. The kitchen hearth, no more than utilitarian when I had left that morning, had been enlarged with a petalled array of flat stones. Over it hung my one pot, the one I used to cook my beans, and under it was a sizzling bundle of wide-bladed river grass. I finished rinsing, sighing in relief as the water’s stream stopped torturing my shoulders and resolved to ask for some of the poultice I’d never gotten the night before. Tywyll approached as I finished pulling on my dusty pants. I’d have to wash them soon, but would wait until I had the privacy to let them dry; I had only the one pair. “You should have some supper. Lys has tickled supper.”

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Honestly, I despaired of ever understanding what the man was talking about.

“Come, Edor. There’s fish,” Lys called.

“There’s never!”

Lys brought me a plate of the inevitable beans, those funny tubers from the night before, and yes,

fish, steaming and flaking off delicate bones.

“Where did you get it?”

“It fell from the sky.”

I must have gaped just like a landed fish. Lys laughed, a low soughing sound like warm breezes

through tall grass. “No, silly, the fish live in the river.”

“I’ve never seen one.”

“You never dove for one.” For all Lys spoke Alman less fluently than Tywyll, I understood him

better.

“No, that is true. This is very good. You’ve been busy today.”

“I must. There isn’t much time.”

“Until winter, you mean.”

“Yes.” But something in the wistful way he said it and the look he shared with Tywyll gave me

the feeling he meant more than that.

After supper, Lys and Tywyll worked together to doctor my shoulders. I feared infection if the

skin didn’t heal quickly, and said as much. I knew an infection could kill me, because before I’d left the dome I’d never been exposed to anything that could cause one. “If it festers,” Tywyll opined in his solemn way, “that will be bad. The poultice will help, and so will tea from the same plant. There are not too many more days of plowing. That is good. Then you will heal properly.” I supposed that was true. “I’ll be glad to get the beans in the ground.” I thought fleetingly of the draft animal I could have had. I looked at my companions. I had never seen anyone with their coloring: brown skin and golden hair twisted in elf-knots framed sharp blue eyes. Their coloring was so identical it was a surprise, seeing them side by side, how different they were. Tywyll was lean where Lys was slight, and Lys’ face was broad where Tywyll’s was slender. Looking at them made my middle clench, so I stopped.

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“I would pull the plow if I could, Edor.” “We could pull together, brother!” Tywyll’s mouth quirked. “Like a team of oxen. But no, you have your work here, brother. There isn’t much time.” For the first time since I had removed the slaver’s ring in Lys’ nipple, the boy looked worried. “I know.” The poultice helped, though I grimaced when Lys chewed the herb in his mouth and blushed when he pressed it onto the sores with his tongue. By the time they finished with me it was full dark and I stood and made for the shed. Lys said something to Tywyll that contained a note of protest. He grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the house. “I...” I started, instantly silenced by my memories of Lys’ behavior the night before and my strange conversation with Tywyll in the bean field. “He is not ready, love.” It was something Tywyll could as easily have said in Novigi, but clearly he wished me to understand. “You must sleep in your house, Edor. You may pull a plow by day, but at night you should be a man.” Lys nodded energetically. “Not sleep in the shed, Edor.” I looked from one to the other, their two heads nodding. Tywyll’s injunction to be a man scared me, thrilled me somewhere I had only recently discovered to exist. I told myself Tywyll meant for me only to sleep like a man, under a roof, not... perform as one. But I was starting to wonder. I feared I might be starting to hope. The Novigi didn’t do anything to make me feel uncomfortable that night, but in the morning their intimately twined bodies, lax in sleep, told me they had merely waited for me to fall asleep before finding each other in the dark. *** For the next few days, Tywyll came with me to the field and we harvested rocks and planted beans until my shoulders were raw from pulling and Tywyll’s hands were blistered from guiding the plow. Each evening, Lys tended to our hurts with the sticky green poultice and presented us with some new wonder. The first evening it was a small cache of nuts, roasted and cracked open and eaten so fast we burned our tongues.

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The second evening it was slender pale onions Lys said grew near the river. Their tops were seedy but their flesh was so sweet I wept. I claimed onions always made my eyes tear, but it was a lie. The third evening, Lys unwrapped a lumpy bundle of river reeds with a huge grin stretching his

wide mouth.

“Clay,” Tywyll said.

“From the riverbank?” I asked.

“We can make an oven,” Lys said. “And other things. There is much clay.”

He was awfully excited over something we couldn’t eat, but I found I liked seeing him happy. It

put some distance between us and the awkward offer he had made; I was relieved to have

something to focus on besides clearing that up.

I sat and sipped tea and listened to Lys and Tywyll speak in rapid Novigi about a stove and chimney. Perhaps we could look forward to a warmer, less smoky winter than I had suffered before they arrived. On the fourth day, Tywyll and I finished putting the beans in the ground before midday and sat

together passing the water jug back and forth.

“We must start to bring water,” Tywyll said. “There won’t be enough rain.”

“Even in winter?” I asked. How could he know what the climate was like here?

“Was last winter wet?”

“No,” I admitted. “Just cold and windy.”

“Before hard frost, we must harvest. So we must help the beans to grow fast. We will bring

water.”

“How do you know so much?” He was new to these parts, and very young. I am ashamed to admit it, but the truth was I couldn’t imagine how a boy whore had learned the finer points of agronomy. Arrogant, I know. Tywyll seemed indifferent to my skepticism. All of a sudden, he sat up straighter and pointed. “Look!” Something moved behind the nearest

pile of rocks we had plowed up and piled at the corners of the field.

“What is it?”

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“A cudo! Er, a hare! He must have got word of your beans!”

“We have to make sure he doesn’t get at the seed, or the shoots.” I was alarmed. “We’ll have to

do something!” I finished, glaring at Tywyll as if he’d summoned the hare himself. Tywyll

smiled back as if he had.

Our exclamations had frightened away the hare, which barreled away flinging clods of newly-

turned soil.

I tried to explain myself. “I have no idea what a winter yield will be, or whether it will feed

three.”

“There will not be three to feed.”

My breath stopped. “You will leave?”

“No.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will.”

“What if more rabbits come?”

“Hares. I hope they do. What other animals have you seen in this place?”

I thought about it. “Only those crawlies that invaded my house.” I was starting to understand.

“Before the other night, I would have said there were no fish in the river. There are no creatures of consequence around here. The land is mostly dead.” “Yet you came here.”

“It is the only place for people like me,” I replied, absently rubbing the scar where my tattoo had

been.

Tywyll smiled his soft, secret smile again. “Just so.”

***

In the days that followed Lys set Tywyll and me to various tasks around the turvy and the

riverbank each morning, and we all three carried water to the beans in the afternoons. We accomplished this using the plow. I took the pointed share off the front and affixed a sling, sacrificing one set of traces to fashion it. Onto this we hefted the water cask and I hauled it to the river to fill. The water cask made the wheels sink into the earth, so I pulled two planks off the shed to use as levers or tracks as required.

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The days were still warm, but the nights were cooler, and longer by the time delicate white

shoots with fuzzy green heads pushed their way through the soil.

That day we saw two hares twitching at the edge of the field. Lys froze with excitement and

grabbed my arm.

“Oh, brother!” he breathed, low and reverent.

“They’ll eat the beans. There’s nothing else,” I groused. I couldn’t understand why Lys and

Tywyll greeted these long-eared thieves so joyfully.

“So they shall.” Tywyll seemed to agree with me, though his tone was light. “We will ask them

to limit themselves to one small area, yes? Their beans, and ours will be all the rest.”

Lys knelt in the dirt, his arms wide as if to embrace the interlopers, smiling at them and speaking

in an even more cadenced version of his sing-song language.

I watched in horror as the hares lollopped past the farthest cairn and nibbled at a shoot or two,

rolling their eyes in our direction before hopping away as if they had nothing to fear. The way Tywyll was beaming at Lys and the way Lys grasped Tywyll’s hands triumphantly, I was forced to admit the furry little buggers were right. Still, I couldn’t stop myself from grumbling, “Bet rabbit stew tastes better than bean.” Lys whirled to face me. “Edor! Bad Edor! Cudo is our brother. Cudo shares the beans. Cudo...

belongs!”

I laughed uncomfortably as Lys gripped my arms and shook me. “Tywyll, help!”

Tywyll hugged Lys from behind, trapping his arms. “Edor is joking, Lys. He will not hurt

Brother Cudo.” He shot me a very pointed look. “Will you, Edor?”

Chastened, I shook my head.

Lys wriggled out of Tywyll’s hold and hugged me. He pressed his warm body tightly to mine

and looked up into my face, his blue-blue eyes shining.

“It is good that Cudo is here. And better that you protect him. Good, Edor.”

Lys pulled away awkwardly, stroking my arms a couple of times as if to soothe any hurt he had

caused. How could he know his embrace had torn me apart more than any rough treatment could

have done? No one had ever hugged me. Not once.

I walked away, leaving Tywyll and Lys to finish watering. I walked until I reached the river,

stripped, and dived into the water, swimming strongly against the current. I swam until my

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shaking was because of muscle fatigue and not terror. I pulled myself out of the river and lay panting and naked on the bank. Leaning up on my elbows, I watched the river. Water trickled down my neck and body, catching in the hair at my chest and armpits and groin, tickling. Thinking of Lys’ arms around me, I hugged my own middle, sliding one hand up my ribs to cup my shoulder, the other down to my hip, my prick, my balls. I hugged myself and touched myself and closed my eyes and came, for the first time since Lys and Tywyll had arrived, for the first time with an image in mind and not as a biological necessity. This, touching myself, was new since having my tattoo sliced away with the implant it had covered. Blinking away tears of effort and emotion, I rolled to my side and dozed until cooler afternoon breezes warned me it was time to move along homeward. I looked around and realized the sluggish current had allowed me to swim further upriver than I ever had before. The lengthening shade I lay in came from a stand of trees such as I had never seen. Slender segmented trunks put out knife-shaped leaves at regular intervals. I stood up to investigate. Only the circumference of my wrist at their thickest, the trees rose taller than Lys, Tywyll, and me together. Some of the poles had fallen and I wondered if these might make better firewood than the peat we used. I gathered an armload of them -- they were dry and light -- and floated them downriver, lazily paddling with my arms draped over them, sleepily delighted at their buoyancy. When I pulled myself out of the water, I left the poles in a pile, and retrieved my clothes. Reluctant as I was to see Lys, unsure as I was what to say to him and Tywyll about my abrupt departure, I walked to the turvy with lighter steps than had carried me away. Just like the last time I had made an ass of myself, Lys said nothing. He served me a supper of fish stew thickened with bean paste and flavored with onions. It was delicious and when I told him so, Lys smiled eagerly and brought me tea. It appeared I was forgiven. Until, “Walk with me a moment,” Tywyll commanded in his quiet way. Cradling my mug of tea, I walked up the berm with him, thinking I might show him my poles. “Lys doesn’t understand why you are cold to him. He has a warm heart. I told him you have never known love. He has determined to teach you.” He slid a glance my way. As usual I couldn’t read it. “Fondness dictated I warn you.” “Tywyll, I...” I wanted to defend myself, but he had spoken the truth, so I subsided. “I don’t want to hurt Lys.” “He is like a child, for all that he will be a man.” “Where I come from, there is no love,” I said. At least not for people like me. Tywyll nodded. I bent down by the pile of wood poles. “Look what I found today. Do you think it will burn?” “It will burn, but it is better for other things.” Tywyll pulled the rod from my hands and ran headlong down the berm calling for Lys.

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“Volo! Lys! Come see what our Edor has found!”

“Volo?” When I caught up, Lys was holding the length of wood, turning it about, testing it

against his knee. “Show Edor, Tywyll.”

“Volo is good for burning, and for building things. But it is best for something else.”

Tywyll plunged the wood into the cistern and held it there for a few moments, all the while

grinning between me and Lys. What could be so marvelous?

When he lifted it out of the water and held the pole at an angle, a small trickle of water issued

from within the wood. I was starting to see what all the excitement was about.

“It works like a sponge?” I asked.

“It works like a man with a water cask on his plow.” I despaired of ever understanding what

Tywyll was talking about. I looked at Lys.

His shy look back at me squeezed my heart.

“It will water our beans,” he said simply.

“If it could, that would be a wonderful thing,” I said carefully, not wanting to puncture his

delight with my lack of faith.

“Oh, brother! We might be ready for winter after all.” Lys’ voice was quivery -- he put an awful

lot of stock in preparing for the change in seasons.

Tywyll looked at Lys, then at me, then at the sky as if it held answers to watering the beans and

cutting enough fuel to last out the cold. “Sun crossing is upon us. This is a boon.”

I shook my head. Then, very deliberately, giving me plenty of time to pull away, Tywyll leaned

up and kissed my cheek. Light and quick, before I had a chance to react, Lys did the same.

“Thank you, Edor.”

I shook my head again. What a strange day!

Tywyll patted my arm. “The volo will make every difference. Perhaps sometimes it is not a bad

thing to run away.”

“I’m going to bed,” I muttered, trying to soften my gruff tone with a smile. Perhaps the smile

would hide the real reason for my throatiness.

I lay on my platform and listened to the muted noises of cleanup, smiling at the light chatter and

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occasional laugh I heard. My middle tingled with pleasure that something I’d done made the Novigi happy. I feigned sleep when they came into the turvy. I tried to breathe deeply and evenly like a sleeping man when the murmurs and gasps reached me from across the room. I rolled over and faced the wall as the sounds grew desperate and ended in muffled moans, subsided into clicks and murmurs, and finally stopped. ***

The next morning, after breakfast, Tywyll showed me how it was possible to use a burning

branch to very slowly burn out the fibrous pulp of the volo, leaving a long cylinder for water to flow through. The part of my mind that had been trained to build things saw the possibilities. “If we could attach them together...” I began, getting excited. “We could conduct water from the river to the field!”

Tywyll gave me one of his very patient looks.

“Does water flow up hill in your domes, Edor?”

I blushed. It did, actually, but I didn’t feel up to explaining hydraulics just then. And of course,

as usual Tywyll had gone right to the heart of the matter. There was no way to get enough

pressure behind the water to drive it over the berm. Unless...

“I could build a pump,” I ventured.

“Could you? That would be wonderful.”

“We’d need some sort of reservoir to hold water at the river.” I shook my head. There was no

way we could dig even a small catchment pond in time to benefit this season’s crop.

“You are thinking of holding water to feed the pump?”

I nodded.

“And you are thinking the job is impossible before winter?”

I nodded again.

“Come. You must see what Lys is doing.”

We walked up over the berm and downriver to the place where Lys had found the clay.

He was squatting in it, sunk in past his shins.

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“Well, brother,” Tywyll called. “Is it enough?” Lys looked up, the morning sun glancing off his eyes, making them paler than the early-morning sky. “There is a lot. Enough to begin, I think.” “Edor can make a pump.” At that, Lys grinned like a child and squelched up the side of the shallow depression. So far he had only used clay to make a sort of covered bowl he called an oven. It didn’t look like any oven I had ever seen, but it did bake fish that wasn’t all covered with ash. It didn’t even crack in the heat; I’d forgotten to ask him how he managed that. “We need a way to catch enough water, yes, Edor?” He looked up at me expectantly. I nodded. “Would this work?” he squatted on the drier ground and took up a stick. He drew a wavy line, then a big circle, then a series of smaller circles connected by straight lines. I saw immediately what he was thinking. The wavy line was the river, the big circle was my pump, and the series of smaller circles was... a really good idea. “You can make small cisterns to hold the water we pump? That way we won’t have to dig a catchment pond before winter. We will need lots more volo, though.” I wondered if there was enough in the stand I had discovered. But it didn’t solve the main obstacle, which was getting water to flow up over the berm. I said as much. Lys and Tywyll looked pensive for a moment, and Lys scrubbed out his sketch impatiently. I thought he was it destroying out of frustration and made a move to stop him, but he held out his hand to stall me while he scribbled a new scheme. “See, Edor? If you can make one big pump you can make many little ones, yes?” I did see. We could use our current plow arrangement to carry water to fill small cisterns placed throughout the field, then conduct water through volo to the beans. It could work, and it could be done quickly. We’d still have to carry water, but could avoid the laborious work of watering the plants by hand. I reflected that I seemed to have been infected with the Novigi’s sense of urgency about the coming winter, and every day saw preparations go undone in the interest of watering the beans. I stayed in the clay pit to help Lys excavate as much as we could, and Tywyll jogged back to the turvy to burn out more poles.

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***

Within a few days the first leaves had opened on the bean plants. Their green darkened to a

reddish tinge near the stems. They seemed to be growing faster than the anemic plants I had

husbanded through the summer.

When I said as much to Tywyll, he replied in his usual cryptic way, “Friends help.”

“You and Lys are good friends,” I ventured, knowing from my short experience that Tywyll

meant more than himself and Lys when he said “friends,” and that there was more to the two of

them than friendship alone.

Predictably, Tywyll shook his head, and pointed with his sharp chin toward the corner of the

field where we’d seen the hare. Now there were two of them.

“Brother Cudo has found a mate!” Tywyll seemed immensely gratified, as if he had played matchmaker. I grumbled that two ate more than one and we still didn’t know these beans’ yield. I stomped off, deliberately startling the hares as I dumped water on “their” plot. “Edor!” Tywyll’s voice was indignant. “There will be enough to share.”

“How can you be so sure?” I asked. I turned to look at him.

Tywyll looked... different.

“Edor?”

“You look different.”

He only nodded.

I studied him more openly. It was true.

For all our many days in the sun, his hair was, if anything, darker than it had been when he’d

first arrived. His skin, on the other hand, was paler, the color in his cheeks high. I was about to

ask if he was sick when I noticed his eyes.

They were green. Not a blue-green that could have been a trick of the light, but a deep green.

“Your eyes are green,” I said, stunned.

How could I not have noticed? I tried to tell myself that the change must have been gradual, that

being with Tywyll every day in bright sunlight I hadn’t noticed incremental changes.

Tywyll seemed unconcerned by my revelation; in fact, he had wandered over to the water cask

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and was dipping out more water to carry to the beans.

I must be imagining things, I thought, chagrined.

But if I was, why wasn’t Tywyll denying the changes?

Later that evening, as the three of us sipped tea and worked on hollowing out more volo poles, I

examined Lys from under my lashes.

“You’re different, too!” I blurted.

Lys looked at me solemnly, something new for him. “The longest night approaches.”

I shook my head at the comment, far more used to such comments from Tywyll. “But you’ve...

faded!”

He had. The summer-brightness of Lys’ hair was dulled, and his bright blue eyes appeared watered down. His skin had the mottled appearance of one whose summer tan faded unevenly. If I hadn’t already been on the ground pushing burning brands into the volo, I would have sat down, hard. “I’m going crazy.”

“Edor, you are not well?” Lys was all gentle concern.

“Lys, people don’t just... change color like you two have. I must be imagining things.” I started,

helplessly, to laugh.

Tywyll shook my shoulder. “That is not a happy sound. You will scare Lys. He is already

worried enough about what is to come.”

“Will the two of you please explain what is happening?” I tried and failed to keep the pleading

note from my voice. “Because people don’t simply...” I flapped my hand impotently between

their two impossibly-transformed bodies.

“We are Novigi,” Lys interrupted. He scooted on his bum to sit next to me, tugging Tywyll’s

hand to make him come closer, as well. When they were close on either side of me, Lys looked

into my eyes and began, in his halting way, to speak.

“Tywyll and I are amichus. It means, we are born together.”

“Twins?”

Tywyll shook his head. “No. We have different parents. Let him tell you, Edor.”

As usual, Tywyll’s words raised more questions than they answered, but I subsided.

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Lys continued. “We have... purpose. To be together, to make our place a good place, that is all. With the samana, this is a wise person of the Novigi, we studied and practiced. We were almost ready for a place for us only. Our place, to know and to tend. But the samana died, and when we traveled to find another, to finish preparing, we were taken.” He looked angry for a moment, but Tywyll made a soothing noise in the back of his throat. Lys took a deep breath and started again. “You know how we came here. We didn’t understand, but we knew this was our place, so we stayed. It is better, yes?” The hopeful, uncertain look in his pale blue eyes made me speak without thinking. “Yes, Lys. Everything is better since you came. The beans are growing well, the house is much stronger. My life...” And then something dawned on me. “The things that have been happening! The rabbits and fish and honey and clay. You made these things happen?” I held my breath. Tywyll answered. “We do not make these things happen, but we know how to learn a place, how to take care of that place. We know--” “Is it magic?” “No.” Lys seemed content to let his brother take over. “The Novigi have knowledge others have lost. We have learned these things and we go forth, we amichus, to practice these things in our special places.” He hesitated a moment. “With our special people.” Tywyll paused as if expecting me to say something. I kept mum. “Go on, brother. You tell it better than I,” Lys encouraged. “Each season, we have things to do. I am strongest, I do the most work, in winter. Lys is strong in summer. We work together, but are different, you see?” I didn’t see, not at all, but I nodded so he would keep talking. “When the longest night comes, Lys will be weak. He will need me. He will need you, Edor, for I will have much to do.” “We didn’t expect to find another when we found our place,” Lys broke in. “The samana, she never spoke of such a thing. I am glad, though.” He smiled at me, shyly. I tried to smile back. “So you see, Edor, the changes you see are simply the seasons, moving through us.” I looked at Tywyll. “You’re telling me you and Lys were born to be bound to some unknown tract of land, that you do things for that land that make things grow and live, that your hair and eyes change with the seasons. And you’re telling me it’s not magic?” I heard my voice shrill and

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pressed my lips together to stop it.

Lys nudged me gently with his elbow, smiling more boldly now. “Maybe it is a little bit magic.”

I turned to Tywyll. “What happens on the longest night?”

“Lys will sleep, for the first time. It is the turning of the seasons.”

“Does it happen to you, too?”

“At midsummer, it happened. My first time.” Tywyll’s green eyes unfocused for a moment. “It

was awful.”

Lys made a pained sound and crawled past me to wrap his arms around Tywyll. He stroked the

dark hair and cooed in Novigi.

With an impatient shrug, Tywyll faced me again. “When midsummer came we were in the...

place we were before. No one understood. And we were not in our place.”

“He drifted, Edor. For days. I was all alone and so scared. The procurer, he wanted to take

Tywyll away.”

“He thought I was sick.”

“I wouldn’t let them take him. They yelled and hit and tried. But I was brave.”

Tywyll smiled grimly. “You were fierce, vjellja. It will be better for you. We have this land now,

we are safe.”

“And I am here.” I was so astonished to hear my own words that I gasped.

Lys moved as if to fling himself at me, but Tywyll quelled him with a hand on his leg. He

beamed instead.

I smiled back, part of me grateful to Tywyll for holding Lys back. But part of me, the part that was curious rather than unsettled by affection and contact, that part wished he hadn’t done it. We burned through a few more volo poles and made plans to tow more from upriver the next day.

As I waited for sleep, Lys and Tywyll touched and murmured more openly than they ever had

before. I snugged my blanket tighter around myself and the glow from the peat fire showed me

green eyes looking right at me. I rolled to face the wall and tried to think of other things.

***

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“Edor? What do you know of the Salters?” Tywyll’s question brought me up short. We were walking to the volo grove, having left Lys back at the steading experimenting with ways to temper the clay for the irrigation cisterns. My new awareness that he was in some sort of decline made it easier to see; his movements were precise and deliberate, as if they required unwonted concentration, and his coloring was leaching away. Strangely, instead of looking ill or wasted, he was as appealing as ever, with his pale eyes and mottled skin. Lys had declared he would rather not make the trek upriver, there being so much to do at home, but I suspected he was tired from his exertions in the clay pit the day before. Lys’ exhaustion aside, it was shaping up to be a lovely day. There was a novel lightness in my steps, a physical manifestation of my delight at being taken into the confidence of my two exotic friends. Worries for the harvest, the winter, Lys’ decline, all were overshadowed; I had friends. And now Tywyll was asking about Salters. He couldn’t know the riot of emotions his question stirred. I hoped he would be content with bare facts, but this was Tywyll, so I doubted it. “The Salters are militias from outside the domes. They raid, sometimes, for goods and supplies. It has been so all my life, at least.” Tywyll angled a sharp green look in my direction. “Your Varas was surprised to see them in a settlement that wasn’t a dome.” “Not my Varas,” I muttered. We walked a while longer, but I felt Tywyll’s curiosity like a held breath. I shrugged. “Such settlements are not known for abundance. I’d have thought them beneath Salters’ notice, too.” I didn’t say that until I’d seen one with my own eyes I never believed such a settlement could exist at all, much less contain anything to attract the attention of a Salter detachment. “But?” “But the Salters have become bolder in recent years. They no longer simply raid and leave. They sometimes approach the managers, threaten or extort or seduce them into alliances. They use the domes’ resources and technology to become stronger.” “Those in the domes, they do not resist?” I winced. I did not want to have this conversation. “Why are you so interested?” “I was thinking, if this place is good, the way it will be, these Salters might notice.” “You think if they were a month’s walk away a month ago, we should prepare.” “Yes. As we are now, we could not fight them.” “Even if we tried, they would take what they want,” I agreed. “They would destroy us.”

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“Then we must remain beneath their notice. We will discuss this with Lys.” I got the feeling Tywyll’s “we” included more than himself and me, but I was grateful to let the matter drop. Further talk about the Salters would spark questions about why I no longer lived in a dome. I wasn’t ready for my friends to know my shame. I walked in silence for a time, Tywyll looking all around, darting off here and there after who knew what, easily taking three steps for my every one. I watched my feet and, when I thought I could do so unobserved, I watched Tywyll. I was distracted by the very brightness of him, the ruddy hair, the green eyes, the pale skin, the deeply red lips, when my foot slipped on something and I went down fast. “Edor!” I braced for a hard landing. And sank into wetness. I panicked and flailed as my head submerged for an instant, then came up gasping as my rear end hit bottom. Tywyll was beside me, hip-deep in... not water, not mud... “What is this?” I gasped as I tried to disentangle my feet and stand. I was surrounded by unpleasant sensations of cold and lumpiness. I shuddered and tried to stand, but my feet had tangled in something rough and prickly. That was when I heard Tywyll laughing, not Lys’ gentle-breeze laugh, but his own, bright and tinkling. I glared at him and realized immediately he wasn’t laughing at me. But neither was he helping me up -- he wasn’t even looking at me. I grumbled and struggled to my knees, then my feet. Swearing, I pulled them free of the viney things I had fallen into. As I tried to make my way back up the short incline, my hands dragged through the cold lumps. Fearing they were leeches or something equally horrible, I scrambled clumsily up to drier ground. Panting, I turned to help Tywyll, who was still laughing and making no move to save himself. Alarmed, I cried, “Tywyll! Get out of there! Take my hand.” He held up his hands, cupped around a pile of the lumpy things from the bog. Out of the dark water, the things glowed red in the sunlight. Not bugs or leeches, for they didn’t move. Berries? “They’re probably poison! Tywyll!” He ignored me, gathering more of the stuff into the apron of his shirt, only making his way up the incline when it could hold no more. He emptied his shirt carefully beside me, and then wiped his eyes, still hiccupping with laughter. “Oh, Edor! How funny! You fell, and you yelled, and you thought these were poison!” And he was off again, laughter pealing. He tossed a berry at me and it bounced off my forehead. I glowered, my face hot. “We can eat these?”

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Tywyll nodded, making a clear effort to control his mirth. “Fine!” Exasperated, I popped one into my mouth and bit down, spitting it out instantly. That had Tywyll rolling on his back. “It’s bitter!” Tywyll sat up, belly quivering under his wet shirt. “Edor! These are gaeren. You have to cook them first.” “How was I supposed to know that?” I grumbled. “Lys will be so pleased!” Why that simple statement made my belly flutter was not something I wanted to examine too closely, so I wrung out my shirt as best I could without taking it off and led the way toward the volo grove. Once there, Tywyll and I worked quickly to gather as many fallen volo poles as we could, not bothering to strip off the spiky leaves. Tywyll insisted we leave the standing volo to mature for another season. “More will fall when we need them,” he assured me. After our discussion of the night before, I saw no reason to argue or question. The problem was that we had so many volo we couldn’t control them all in the water, even in the unhurried river current. We tried pulling up river plants to lash them together, but they were too short to wrap around even a few poles, and too slippery to twine together into some sort of rope. “We could use my shirt,” I offered. Tywyll nodded. His shirt was bundled around the gaeren berries. I pulled the shirt off over my head and crouched to tie the sleeves around the few dozen poles. The tips of the poles floated apart in the water, but the center held. It would do. As I made to stand, I felt a ghost of a caress across the back of my neck. I stood quickly and turned to see Tywyll, his hand still raised in my direction. “Edor,” was all he said. He stepped toward me, his hand out in a supplicating gesture, and passed his fingertips over the skin of my belly, which jumped at the touch. My prick gave a vigorous wake-up stretch. Alarmed, I looked at the sky to avoid looking into Tywyll's impossible green eyes. My prick subsided, reluctantly.

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This... arousal was new, as I said, but in the presence of another? It was nigh unbearable. “We should go. Get home before dark. Lys will worry.” I clambered into the water, wrapped my hand around the knot in my shirt, and began to swim one-armed, towing the poles with me. I didn’t look back to see if Tywyll followed. But of course he did. The bundle of berries floated beside me and Tywyll dove and splashed now ahead, now behind. He was so gleeful and looked so free. I wondered what that kind of freedom felt like to one such as he who had been so badly used. For the first time I dared wonder what it might feel like for me. The next time Tywyll streaked past me I set my thumbnail lightly to the sole of his foot, letting it drag as he swam by. He surfaced with a yelp, shaking river water off his hair in a bright shower that speckled my face. He scrunched his face, trying to look fierce, but I could tell he was trying not to laugh. He made a scoop of his two hands and shoved a wave of water towards me, soaking me and making me splutter. Now he did laugh and dove under the water, so deep I couldn’t see him. He surfaced and submerged, over and over, close enough for me to feel the ripples, close enough to splash me, but far enough to pretend it was inadvertent. How could he know so unerringly that my modest overture and his playful response had rattled me? I was so far beyond the boundary of my experience I needed the rest of the swim to come to grips with it. We didn’t speak much as we hauled the volo out onto the riverbank and spread them out to dry. The sun was beginning to set and we both shivered as we made our way to the turvy. As we crested the berm Tywyll gasped and held out a hand to stop my progress. It was all I could do not to lay my hand atop his, to keep that warmth right there. Then I saw what he saw. Birds. Dozens of them, small and brown, twittering on the roof, in the dooryard. And in the middle of them sat Lys, crosslegged, his head flung back and his arms wide. He spotted us above him and cried, “Vjellja! Look who has come. They are traveling and needed a little rest. I gave them a snack. They like bean meal!” I’ll bet they do, I grumbled inwardly. I was learning better than to naysay these two when it came to sharing our resources. Tywyll’s hand still hovered near my belly, so I stayed put, watching, shivering, until the birds launched as one into the air, wheeling and turning like one great body. They moved toward the river and away south and we three watched, bespelled, until they were out of sight. Lys grinned at us as we approached. With a sly look in my direction, he raked his gaze down Tywyll’s body, over his bare chest -- his nipples were almost as brightly red as his lips -- and

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clinging trousers.

“Such a good day, vjellja,” he murmured.

“Vjellja?” I asked, fixing on the part of the exchange that had me curious, but not uncomfortably

so.

“Our word. For our amichu.”

I wondered why they had never used the word before; it wasn’t like I would have known what it

meant before they explained their unique relationship. I would have asked, but Lys started fussing. “You’re both cold!” Lys towed Tywyll and me over to the shower. “See? I warmed water!”

Tywyll nudged me to go first, and I did. It was bliss, warm water on chilled skin. My dry shirt

and blanket were waiting for me when I was done.

As Tywyll took his place in the shower, he called to me, “Show Lys what you found today.”

“What I found? Oh!” He meant the berries, and I blushed to remember the manner of my

discovery.

I carried the bulging shirt to where Lys crouched, poking at something in his special oven dish.

Worrying at the wet knot holding the shirt closed over our prize, I said, “I wouldn’t have known these were good for eating if Tywyll hadn’t been with me.” I opened the shirt and showed him what was inside. “Gaeren! Oh! Are there more?”

“Lots.”

“All floating?”

“Yes. There’s a bog near the volo grove.”

“Then they’re ripe!”

Lys reached to gather the bundle of berries into his hands and as he did, he stretched up and

kissed me, right on the cheek. I fumbled for a response.

“They’re very bitter,” was the best I could do.

“We can save them, keep them... vjellja?”

“Preserve them,” Tywyll supplied.

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“Yes! With honey. Some in jars, some dry. Gaeren! Mmmm.” Lys’ characteristic broad smile

was filled with a new emotion. Pride in my discovery?

I decided, whether I liked gaeren, with or without honey, I would seek another opportunity to put

that look on Lys’ face. The kiss, I would ponder later. I could still feel the warm press of it on

my face.

I smiled back.

As we ate fish baked in a paste of beans and onions, Lys showed us his experiments with the clay

for the cisterns. Clay alone would be too heavy and too fragile for our purposes. But clay

tempered with moss from the river could work.

“It sweats,” Lys said with a frown as he passed us the mug-sized prototype.

“But we don’t need it for long-term storage,” I argued, waving toward the cistern. “We’ll be

hauling water every day, and pumping it right away.”

I had some ideas about a more permanent system, but those would have to wait until spring. In

the meantime, I showed Lys and Tywyll how to drill small holes along the length of hollowed-

out volo.

“Now every pole can water many plants without flooding any of them.”

“You are a good builder, Edor,” Tywyll said. “We are fortunate in you.”

I ducked my head. “I could say the same.”

A long swim, a good meal, new discoveries, and more affection in one day than I’d ever had, all

conspired to make me mellow and sleepy. Better hie off to bed before I embarrassed myself

further.

Lys kissed me goodnight.

Before I could react, Tywyll did, too.

If I stumbled a bit on my way to my cot, who can blame me?

***

With the equinox weeks behind us, the nights grew appreciably longer and colder. The day the

first fuzzy pods appeared on the bean plants, pushing the crinkled yellow flowers to the ground,

Tywyll insisted we bring Lys out to see.

Lys’ activity, measured and careful though it appeared, was a frenzy of preparation, there being a

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little more than a month until midwinter. Now, with the appearance of the beans, harvesting would begin within a couple of weeks. Tywyll assured me there would be enough beans to eat our fill of fresh ones, and then Lys would preserve as many as we could pick while they were still tender. Those that stayed on the vine, we hoped, would dry without rotting and carry us through the spring bean harvest. We had no idea when the killing frost might come, nor how closely snow might follow. I recalled my days of working under project deadlines, and wagged my head at that past self. How little he had known! We found Lys cutting mumps of peat; later Tywyll and I would drag them to the storage shed (the former animal shed) to dry.

Having refilled the cisterns, we rolled them to the field with minimal sloshing along the

relatively smooth path worn by repeated trips. As we reached the near cairn I stopped short.

Something was in amongst the beans. Eating.

“Oi!” I ran forward, flapping my arms and shouting, and the creature cantered away on four

spindly legs.

I spun on Lys and Tywyll, who were watching the thing’s departure with frank excitement.

“What was that? It looked a bit like Varas’ Ruki.”

“It was a deer... goat... llama...? Our word is avala.”

“Whatever it is, it eats beans. The cudos were bad enough.” Though if I were completely honest,

I would have admitted the hares had kept scrupulously to their little assigned plot. Still, I was

appalled at the possibility of all our hard work ending up in some ruminant’s belly.

Lys and Tywyll had a lightning exchange in Novigi and faced me, matching stern expressions on

their now very distinct faces.

Lys said, “We will ask Sister Avala to keep to a small part of the field, yes?”

“What if she leads more here?”

“If she does, it will be time to hunt,” Tywyll said pensively.

“For meat?” I asked. That would be something.

“For many things,” he replied.

“If she is here,” Lys broke in gently, “it is good. This place is healing if avala can live here.”

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Tywyll nodded, gazing along the path the deer-thing had taken. “Have you ever hunted before, Tywyll?” He shook his head. “I was taught the way of it, though. I never thought I’d be called upon for that task.” “I’ll help,” I assured him, surprising myself. Tywyll seemed troubled, brows drawn and lips tight, and I wanted to offer comfort. But truly, the idea of a hunt, of real meat, excited me. Lys, evidently as eager to soothe Tywyll as I was, stroked his arm and said, “Let us see what comes, yes, vjellja?” Tywyll nodded shortly and moved to exchange the empty cisterns for the full ones. The full ones required both our efforts, and Lys followed, re-attaching the volo poles and setting the little pumps working. I spared a moment to admire the two tiny windmills I had devised to displace the water from the cisterns to the pipes. I had sacrificed much of the planking from the animal shed for the purpose, but the system worked well enough that I didn’t count the cost. All we needed over our winter stores of peat and food was a roof, anyway. As it happened, more shaggy ruminants did come, and though they stayed, miraculously, in their designated plot, Tywyll decided there were enough of them to hunt one. One morning, when the beans were as long as my little finger, he stood in the dooryard with Lys, a bundle of slender sharpened volo propped on one shoulder. Lys’ arms were twined around his neck, fingers in his hair, now a riotous mix of reds and golds and browns. They were kissing. This was something they did in my sight more and more often, but it always unsettled me. I felt I was intruding on a private moment, but I was helpless to budge, so I stood, partially concealed, and drank in the sight. Their tongues played, catching the slanted dawn light like fish in a pool. Their eyes were open, and the low sounds from their throats reached me in the darkened doorway. I dug my fingers into the jamb to stop myself charging over and joining them. With a look of regret and longing, Tywyll turned and strode away. Lys watched him go, fingers touching his mouth and the other hand absently stroking his thigh. I waited until he had gone to stir up the fire before slipping back into the turvy, my hand hard around my prick, biting my knuckles to keep quiet. The suddenness and violence of my body’s reactions was still a surprise; still bemusing was my compulsion to release. When I had ground the evidence of my need into the dust by my bed, I joined Lys for breakfast. Looking at him in those days was like seeing him through smoke, all hazy edges and blurred lines. He was unusually quiet. “He’s hunting?” I asked Lys over tea.

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“He hates it. Not like fishing.” I stopped myself voicing my desire to participate, to kill, to provide. Instead I patted Lys’ hand. Affection was coming easier to me, though studying them that morning had reminded me that a touch on the hand was but the thin edge of such warmth. After seeing to the morning’s irrigation, I returned to help Lys fashion more clay jars to hold our winter stores. They were clever things, heavy clay around frames made from pieces of volo too slender for use in the fields. Lys also had a store of beeswax which he intended to use for sealing the wooden lids I cut from scraps of planking. It was quiet, companionable work, and we didn’t speak except about jars and shelving and the weather. Even waning, as Lys called his decline, he could be counted upon to chatter and play, but not that morning. It made me tense enough to break two lids in a row. Lys and I were just finishing lunch when Tywyll returned. There was blood on his shirt and in symmetrical lines on his face. He dropped a ragged fleece at Lys’ feet and sank to his knees. Lys was on him in an instant and to my everlasting surprise, so was I. Tywyll was muttering in Novigi against Lys’ neck, tears distorting the stripes on his cheeks. I rested my hand lightly on his back and rubbed gently, feeling hot sweat and tremors. Lys looked up at me around Tywyll's gaudy hair, and switched to Almen, his voice low and rough. “So brave you are, vjellja. So brave and strong. You did right. What you must. My brave, strong one.” He went on and on in that vein until Tywyll stopped shaking. He sat back and looked at us. “The... carcass is south. We must go. I could not carry it.” I stood and offered him my hand. I kept hold of it after he was on his feet, wanting to offer comfort of my own. “It will be good to have meat. I’ve never had real meat before, you know.” Tywyll’s eyebrows raised. “No? The meat is the least of Uncle Avala’s gifts.” Lys slung a pack basket onto his back, nodding. “There will be shoes for us, Edor. And maybe tools, yes, brother?” I looked down at the matted, bloodstained fleece on the ground. “Perhaps warm clothing?” I ventured. I recalled my old books and their casual descriptions of clothing made from plants and animal hair. Lys squinted his soft, pale eyes, and I waited for the stream of ideas that I had come to associate with that gesture.

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“We could felt the wool, I suppose. Or spin it, even.” Tywyll led us unerringly to the spot where the shorn animal hung, its belly slit, from a low t r e

e branch. The pool of blood in the dirt below was wide, and I wasn’t the only one who avoided stepping in it as we cut the carcass down. Lys had brought all our knives, and Tywyll directed our butchering. It was ghastly work, during which I reconsidered my desire to hunt with Tywyll.

We walked home, gritty and reeking, carrying most of the meat and the skin. After washing and

eating (just beans and greens, thank you), Tywyll and I returned to the site of his kill with the

plow. As we loaded the bones onto the platform, I asked him the question I’d bitten back all

afternoon.

“What was it like?”

Tywyll looked at me briefly. “It was my choice, and the animal was old, and I followed all the

rites.”

“Rites?”

“I thanked Uncle Avala for his sacrifice. It was a clean kill.” He swept his hands down his face,

tracing the dried blood still flecking his cheeks. “I bear his marks with respect.”

“But what was it like, to choose that particular animal? To follow it, to kill it.”

“It broke my heart.”

“If it was old, it might not have survived winter,” I reasoned. Perhaps Tywyll could find a

measure of comfort in that.

Nodding, Tywyll said, “The others will have a better chance. So will we. I am... proud to provide

in this way.”

“But you don’t like doing it?”

“Knowing I am capable of hunting, this is good. But I prefer to help things to live.”

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“Perhaps you will teach me the way of it.” Here was a burden I could carry. I had not been reared to protect anything. Tywyll’s hand fell on my shoulder. He looked into my eyes, studying, far longer than I was comfortable with. With a single, slow nod, he agreed. “It will be a long winter. There is much I can teach you.” “Perhaps I can teach you something in return,” I offered with a smile, trying to lighten the mood. He smiled back, his thin, red lips bright amid the rusty dried blood. “You can try,” he said, and I’d have sworn he was teasing. The days that followed were my busiest since arriving two summers ago, and the first extended period all three of us had worked together. We watered the beans in the early mornings, and Lys and Tywyll organized the drying of meat on racks woven from volo, the rendering of fat in one of the irrigation cisterns over a huge fire of peat and deadfall, the tanning of the hide in the wetter end of the peat bog. Any dearth of livestock notwithstanding, it was no wonder the domes provided only synthetic protein -- the real thing was labor intensive, and inefficient with it. One afternoon, while we turned the drying meat on the frames, I explained to Tywyll various ideas about how to use the bones of the avala to make tools, utensils. He nodded thoughtfully, saying something about, “if the bones are strong enough,” and then rummaged around in the storage shed, bringing forth a knotty chunk of wood the size of his two fists. “Do you think you could carve a spindle for Lys?” At my blank look, he squatted near the low, smoky fire and patiently explained, with much explanatory drawing in the ashes, what a spindle was and how it worked. I nodded my understanding when he looked up. “This will be a marvelous opaja for Lys. You will make it for me, yes?” “I will try.” For which acquiescence I received a kiss on the cheek and a warm smile. “Opaja?” “Gift. For the longest night. We give them for the longest day, as well.” I took the piece of wood and a knife with me when I went to check on the beans, the thought of another gift for Lys, something to complement the spindle, taking shape in my mind as I walked. We had lost two sections to the animals, but no more. I wondered at how easily I had come to accept my amichus’ power and knowledge in such things. My amichus. Yes, if only to myself, mine. *** On the first day of the bean harvest, the three of us were returning from the field, laden and exuberant. Our joy vaporized as we approached the dooryard. There, gnawing at a strip of dried meat, was

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Varas. A few steps away Ruki, shaggy winter coat growing in unevenly, was nosing about in the

storage shed, his jaws working sideways.

“Oi! Ruki! Get away!” I shouted.

“Don’t get yer trousers in a twist, friend. Looks to me you’ve got bounty to spare.” Varas clicked

his tongue and Ruki ambled over to him, grunting contentedly when Varas offered him a handful

of dried gaeren.

“Why are you here?” Tywyll was standing very straight, his green eyes boring right into Varas’s.

I had never seen him look angrier.

“I see you done taught yer mule to talk, eh, Edor lad?” Varas’ eyes flicked between us and he

smiled a filthy smile. “I always heard, best way to learn a new tongue was on yer back. Pillow

talk, an’ all.”

“You offend us both, Varas. You will not speak that way to my--”

“Yer what, Edor? Slave, bumboy, donkey, makes no difference.”

I could see Tywyll’s pale skin flushing, his hands furled tightly.

“Apologize.”

I was surprised to hear Lys’ soft voice from behind me. He held a short volo pole tipped with a

bone point, one of my experiments.

“Lys,” I warned.

Varas stood, his hands crossing his skinny chest and coming up with two wicked-looking knives.

“Call off yer pet, Edor. I just come to trade, not be insulted by yer doxies.”

“You are the one throwing insults, Varas. Now apologize, before Lys gets angrier.” I had no idea

if my threat had teeth.

In the time it took me to form that thought, two things happened.

Lys threw his spear, hitting Varas in the chest and, to my dismay, shattering harmlessly.

And Tywyll gave a hideous shriek before falling to the ground, clutching his shoulder.

“You bastard!” I screamed, and launched myself at Varas. I was bigger and heavier, but he was a

more skilled fighter, so we rolled and flailed in the dirt for what felt a very long time. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lys’ figure dart to Tywyll’s side.

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I had never fought anyone, not even when dome security came to turf me. Varas punched and bit and tried to roll on top of me. I was distracted by every blow, and desperate to know if Tywyll was all right. I don’t know if my body would have managed it, but my mind had no compunction, in those moments, about killing Varas. Varas got his thumb under my jaw and pressed against my throat. That brought blossoms of light and dark to my eyes, and I panicked. I lashed out desperately, aiming for the stench of Varas’s breath, for my vision returned only gradually. I must have landed a lucky blow or two because suddenly, with a shout and a final kick that caught me painfully in the lower back, I felt myself briefly airborne, then painfully earthbound, Lys’ arms like a band pinning my arms to my chest. His voice was a harsh whisper in my ear. “No, Edor. He is not worth your trouble.” “Tywyll?” I tried to get my eyes to focus, but they rolled, uncontrollably, chasing the lingering

spots. I groaned.

“He is fine. A scratch.”

“Varas?”

“Varas,” came the aggrieved voice from where Tywyll had him immobilized as Lys had me,

“didn’t come here to get gang-banged by some loser domer and his boy-toys.”

Lys’ arms tightened around me as if he thought I would lunge again. “Why did you come,

Varas?” I asked.

The man shrugged as far as he was able in Tywyll’s grasp. “Saw smoke, didn’t I? Came to see if

you needed help.”

“He lies.” Lys’ whisper tickled my ear.

“You came to see if we were burned out, to scavenge, to take what you could.”

Varas shrugged again, not bothering to deny my accusation.

“I thought you could do with some trade, and some news, if you were still here.”

“We wouldn’t trade with you if you were the last--”

“Oho! ‘We,’ is it? Seems I was right after all.”

“It’s nothing to do with you, Varas.” I patted Lys’ hands and he let me go. Tywyll loosened his

hold on Varas, who rotated his shoulders elaborately and glared balefully.

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“You look pretty well set up here, Edor lad. Better’n me, after what I been through.” “And what’s that, Varas?” I was so wary of him, I could almost hear my muscles creak with the tension. I wanted him gone. Varas scrubbed a filthy hand over his face. “I had visitors, few days back. Salters.” He peered at me through swelling eyes, letting the word sink in like a sickness.

I felt Lys tense behind me. I didn’t say anything.

“They took half my harvest, in trade, so they said. Even took some of my gear. Left me Ruki,

though. Didn’t need him. They rolled through in an armored transport.”

“Where were they going?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.

“West.” Away from here. Lys relaxed fractionally, and I dared a small touch to his wrist, trying

to reassure. Varas sneered.

“You said they traded? What did they leave you?”

“Well now, that might interest you. They left this.” He stood and limped over to Ruki,

rummaging in his pack baskets. He came back with his hands full of what looked like grey

gravel.

“Know what that is, domer boy?”

Before I could profess my ignorance, Tywyll said quietly, “It is salt.”

“They been to the coast. There’s more of them traveling, using the domes and towns as bases.

Ain’t nothing they don’t have a hand in now.”

“The Salters gave you salt?” It shouldn’t have been funny, but I was laughing. Even I heard the

hysterical edge in it.

“They didn’t even Salt my land. Said they’d be back.”

Tywyll asked, “Why didn’t they kill you?”

Varas gave Tywyll the same look he might have if Ruki opened his mouth and spoke. “Well

now, Haw, I reckon they might find more use for me alive.”

I found that doubtful, and from his expression so did Tywyll, but neither of us said a word.

“What do you want for the salt?” I turned sharply at Lys' abrupt question.

“We don’t need anything--”

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“Edor,” Lys said in that patient tone I associated with Tywyll, “salt preserves. We can use it for the beans, for meat.” He shrugged, but I couldn’t miss the eager look on Lys’ face. “Well?” I barked at Varas.

“Well, now, friend. I surely do like the look of that meat. How’d you get it, anyway?” His eyes

narrowed.

“I hunted an avala.” That was Tywyll, almost snarling.

“A what?”

“Something like Ruki,” I said, cruelly.

Varas shot me an tetchy look. “Ain’t seen nothing like that on my land.”

“You wouldn’t,” said Tywyll. His smile was a little cruel, too. I experienced a glow of fellow-

feeling.

“You gonna trade me some for the salt or not?”

“It’s not my choice.” I glanced at Tywyll. Varas, for all he was crass and boorish, caught it.

“Oh, I see now. The mule’s riding the master, eh boy?”

“I told you once, Varas. Don’t insult any of us. Not if you want to trade.” Observant he might be,

but he was surely stupid with it. I clenched and relaxed my hands, trying to control my temper

until the man took himself away.

Speaking of observant, there was Lys, curing his fingers around my fist, stroking my knuckles.

Varas didn’t see. I sagged fractionally and watched as Tywyll negotiated for the sack of salt.

By the time they were finished, Varas had a basket of fresh beans, a thick packet of nearly-dried meat, and another handful of dried gaeren for Ruki. Tywyll seemed satisfied, and I could almost feel Lys’ grin fighting its way out. We watched as Varas and Ruki headed south, and then up over the berm to ford the river. As soon as they were out of sight, Lys and Tywyll started laughing.

“That could have gone worse,” I grumbled, confused.

“Don’t you see, Edor? We bested him!” Tywyll spoke as if his conclusion were obvious. It

wasn’t, at least not to me.

“Edor,” Lys said, taking my hand and swinging it gently, “we have salt, and information, and

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still plenty of everything else.”

“You think he could have taken more?”

“He has knives, and skill with them,” said Tywyll, anticipating my thought.

I nodded. “And our spear broke.”

Tywyll nodded back, his eyes solemn. “That is something to consider.”

“Perhaps we should spend some of our winter time learning to fight?” I asked, trying to guess his

thoughts.

“Perhaps. Perhaps we should spend some time preparing to defend what is ours.”

The way he said it brought back some of the warm feeling I’d had while Lys stroked my fingers.

“I don’t want anyone to threaten us,” I agreed, slowly.

“I don’t want anyone to take us,” Lys put in. That was when I understood. The warm feeling

turned hot, and I hugged him to me before I could think to stop.

He was trembling a little, and he squeezed me around the middle, hard, until I huffed and begged for breath. He loosened his grasp a little bit, but didn’t let go of me. “The... place we were before?” Tywyll waited for my nod. “It was very hard on Lys. To be taken back, to be taken anywhere, would be very bad.”

“No one will take you,” I promised.

Lys peered up at me, his eyes soft. “You could take me.”

I stared. “You’re teasing,” was all I could manage to say.

He kept looking into my eyes, smiling gently while he shook his head.

I tried to pull away, horrified by the reaction of my body, which included shallow breathing and

blushing and an embarrassing show of interest from inside my trousers.

“I’m... sorry,” I stammered. I tried again to wriggle free, a terrible idea in view of the friction it

created. My... interest was becoming more than obvious.

Lys still didn’t say anything, just kept looking at me with those eyes.

“Lys, I--”

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“Vjellja, you are making our Edor uncomfortable.”

“Am I, Edor?” Immediately, uncomfortably, I was reminded of Lys’ former occupation, and of

the offer he had made when he and Tywyll had first arrived.

“Yes,” I said, mimicking Tywyll’s tendency to understatement.

With a murmur of protest, Lys let me go. He took a step backward and opened his mouth. I

didn’t think I could bear it if he apologized, so I cut him off.

“It’s just that I’ve never... I mean, how could you want to, after... Well, you and Tywyll are...

lovers, of course, but you were born for each other and I’m just... confused,” I babbled lamely to

a stop. I bowed my head so my hair would cover my face.

“Edor!” Lys, who had watched me with a quizzical frown during my limping outburst, looked

horrified. “Vjellja?” he pleaded, turning to Tywyll as he did whenever his Almen skills weren’t

up to a challenge.

Tywyll beckoned me to sit by him on the kitchen bench, and after a moment Lys joined us with a

handful of gaeren. I was surprised to find I was hungry.

“Edor, listen. What we did in the... place? That was because we had to. The men who came, it was like they were ashamed. That was awful for us. Loving Lys, Lys loving me, that’s not shameful. It will not be shameful to love you. Do you understand?” “I don’t know.”

“If you don’t want us, we will understand,” Tywyll said, but Lys made a little outraged noise.

“Vjellja,” he warned, and Lys subsided, but their exchange had given me time to think.

“What if I am ashamed?”

“Are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Perhaps you are not ready?”

“Perhaps.”

“Then we won’t say any more about it for now. Just know that... we are here. Do you understand

that?”

“I think so.”

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“Good.” Tywyll stood up and set about tidying the kitchen.

“Tywyll? Lys?” I had their attention instantly.

“My name. It is Mèco.”

“Good,” Tywyll said again, and this time it sounded like a benediction.

“Mèco,” said Lys, and it sounded like a kiss.

End of Part 1. Autumn

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Servant of the Seasons 1: Autumn Copyright © 2008 by Lee Benoit ISBN: 978-1-60370-324-6, 1-60370-324-1 All rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Torquere Press, Inc., PO Box 2545, Round Rock, TX 78680 Printed in the United States of America. Torquere Press, Inc.: Single Shot electronic edition / March 2008 Torquere Press eBooks are published by Torquere Press, Inc., PO Box 2545, Round Rock, TX 78680

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