Raging Star

Them ain’t fer tradin, she says. She don’t even bother to look, she jest keeps on scribblin.

As I go to drop ’em back, she says, They’re yers, meant fer you, kept fer you, put ’em on.

I pause. Cast a frown at her back. Crazy old coot. Then, Thanks, I says. I slip the jerkin over my head, slide on the armbands an do up the buckles. A perfect fit. All of it.

Emmi’s bin silent this whole time. She’s knelt by a table, starin in wonderment at a birdcage that sits on top. It’s tiny. The size of my two fists together. Such dainty metalwork you wouldn’t think possible. Vines twine the bars, burstin with leaf an fruit an flower. Inside, there’s a metal finch perched on a swing. Scabs of colour tell of its painted beauty, once upon a long ago. What kinda person in what kinda world had time or cause to make somethin like this?

Nero flaps onto the table. He peers at the bird, his head tipped this way, that way. He croaks. Taps the bars gently with his beak.

Nero, don’t, says Em. It’s sleepin.

Wake it up, says Peg. The key, the key is the key to a song. She throws down the chalk an comes over, swipin her hands on her britches. Her crabby old fingers wind a key hid low on one side. There’s a whisper of a clank. Then the tinkle of ancient spiderweb music. The finch’s beak opens an shuts. It tips forwards an backwards, flickin its tail. As the song ends, it sits back on the perch. Its beak slowly closes. Frozen till the next turn of the key.

Oh, breathes Emmi. Make it sing agin!

Please, I says.

Sorry … please, she says.

Peg waves consent. Em winds the key an the song tiptoes through the dustbeams once more.

Them birds out there in the cages, I says. You should let ’em go. Birds need to fly.

Soon, girlie, soon. Me an them, says Peg.

A shadow falls over us. Tommo stands in the doorway. Slim’s jest pullin in, he says.

Slim gives me a morsel of news on the quiet. He made three stops on his way here. One to pull the tooth at Willowbrook, one to lance a neck boil an one to treat a private complaint so gruesome his toes curl at the thought. He starts to regale me, but I hold him in check an the gist of it is this.

At each place he stopped, they told him the same. They heard from their neighbour who heard from his that the Angel of Death haunts New Eden. That her ghost comes each night with the starfall. She was seen last night. An the night before that. She’s ridin the roads with her wolfdog an crow, seekin vengeance fer her death from any who cross her path. They’re all unsettled. Worried what it means. Fearin it portends trouble soon to come.

I don’t ever ride the roads. Nobody’s seen me. In starfall season folks see haunts where there ain’t none. I’ll tell Jack about this when I see him tonight.

Luckily, there’s more than jest junk at Starlight Lanes. There’s a little coldwater washpond too. Round the back, through a woodland garden patch, an a nut glade an a stand of cottonwood. We find Moses an Hermes an Bean there, nibblin at the bark. Hermes would put up with anybody fer cottonbark. Even a foul tempered camel.

I’m amazed Peg could give us direction to the pond. From that ripe smell she trails, I took her to be a stranger to water.

Now with a ring of pale skin where her slave collar was—Peg had it off in a jiff, like Slim said she would—Mercy strips off her ragged hemp tunic. A shawl of thin whip scars shrouds her shoulders. She folds the tunic with care.

I’d of thought you’d wanna burn that thing, I says.

The day there ain’t no slaves in New Eden, she says, I’ll build a pyre an watch it burn.

She wades in fer a swim an a wash. I toss her my soap-bundle. I don’t look at her direct. I cain’t bear to. That Mercy should be brought so low. The sight of her naked body, so scarred an gaunt, stabs my gut with red anger. This is DeMalo. I gotta remember that behind his clever words this is who he is. Mercy, jest one slave among many such as her. Like Slim’s friend, Billy Six. His hard-worked land stolen an him spiked through the throat, nailed to a post like a trophy rat. Maev, dead. Bram, dead. The Free Hawks an Raiders, all dead.

You kill people to git what you want.

So do you. You’ve just done it again. Any violence is regrettable, but it’s a means to an end. Did you weep when you destroyed Hopetown? Did you lose sleep over any scum that might have burned in its flames? No. We are so alike, Saba.

Me, like DeMalo. I gotta shut out his voice. It’s runnin through my head all the time. Confusin me. Twistin my thoughts. I can feel the heat rise to my cheeks. Mercy sees—not much escapes her notice—but she don’t remark on it.

You comin in? she says.

I bathe on my own, no offence, I says.

She takes that in, too, without comment. While she scrubs the dirt of slavery from her skin, I splash my hot face. Try to cool my hot mind. Drink down handfuls of water to calm the sick anger that roils my belly.

Once she’s outta the water an rubbin herself dry with a clean sack, Mercy says, So, what is it you want to talk about?

Would you say love makes you weak? I says. That’s what Lugh believes. Becuz of Pa, how he went after Ma died.

Mercy don’t answer right away. Then she says, That’s Lugh. What about you? Tell me what you believe.

I stare at my boots as I speak. As I think my way through each word. I seen both sides, I says. Not jest other people, I know it in myself too. I know how strong it made me when I was searchin fer Lugh. I couldn’t of done what I did, I couldn’t of endured if my tie to him hadn’t of bin so strong. But I bin made weak by it too. I made some bad choices. On the whole, though? I’d say I’m stronger fer love, not weaker.

I couldn’t of said it better myself, says Mercy. She sits down beside me, wrapped in the sack.

I raise my head to meet her eyes. I remember somethin you told me at Crosscreek, I says. You said my pa looked to the stars fer answers, but you look at what’s here, in front of you, around you. I need you to tell me what you see, Mercy. Whaddya make of this place? Of New Eden?

Huh! She gives a little laugh. You sure do got big questions on your mind these days, she says. What do I make of New Eden. She thinks fer a bit, then she says, Things ain’t always what they seem to be. People neether.

That ain’t new, I says.

She says, Somehow … New Eden don’t seem entirely real.

Them scars of yers look real enough, I says.

Of course, but, for instance, she says, them girls I tended at the babyhouse. Imagine that’s you. Your family’s driven away or killed—maybe right in front of you—but you’re not. You get to live becuz you’re one of the Pathfinder’s Chosen ones. You’re a Steward of the Earth now. You’re dazzled by him. Convinced by him. The power, the violence, they keep you in fear.

Yes, I says.

Mercy goes on. You’re paired with a boy you don’t know. Sent off with this stranger to work the land an make healthy babies for New Eden. Before you know it, if you’re lucky, you’re pregnant to him. Maybe you cain’t abide him, but you got no say in it. What do you think? How do you feel about it all?

My remembrance goes to the Stewards we killed. Buried in a shallow grave on the road to the Lost Cause. Eli an RiverLee. His dislike of her. Her fear of him. Her desperation to have a child. Knowin if she didn’t, she’d be slaved. I think of RiverLee’s precious silver necklace. Family reminders forbidden in New Eden, but she kept it, hidden, a secret. To remind her who she was, where she’d come from.