Many miles away, in the forest outside of the village of Pickaway, a young woman screamed. And screamed. And screamed. Holding a foreign hand, apparently her own, to her face, she screamed. Staring up at impossibly tall trees around her, she screamed. Moving without creaking, she screamed. She screamed at the pains in her joints, screamed at the relief when she unfurled herself from the fetal ball she’d curled into when the initial strangeness had ripped through her, when in the haze of confusion the old woman’s face had flashed before her. Rain pelted her naked body as she got to her feet, taking a stumbling first step.
Somehow, she staggered forward. Screaming. Through the rain, she could see light up ahead. Out of instinct, leaned toward it as her bloodied feet jerked forward.
Still screaming, each step was a new, wrong and terrible experience. She was cold and wet. Some comfort lay in that; she understood cold and wet. Mobility, a small, squishy, easily torn body, were outside her experience. But light was always good. Light could set everything right.
She staggered, her arms reaching out to the light, and continued to scream.
“You all hear that?” Orm asked, tucking his wild hair behind his ear, eyes narrowed in concentration.
“We all hear it,” Deliatus sighed. It was getting late, and she did not savor the idea of walking back to her rooms at Mrs. Machen's in the pouring rain. She couldn’t decide which she liked less: walking back alone, or asking Orm to accompany her. He wasn’t a bad dwarf. Gentlemanly, in his way, which was all Deliatus asked of her clients. Friends for so long, she wouldn’t, on a personal level, mind sleeping with him for free. Well, he’d need a bit of a scrubbing-up, first. Perhaps a rather thorough scrubbing up. But from fiscal standpoint, the Companions' Guild frowned on credit. Orm had a bar tab as long as her arm. Even if she didn’t actually sleep with him, everyone would assume she had. So infamous were his debts, she’d have no end of men begging for credit. And so, she waited. “We’re just waiting to see if it’s got anything to do with us, I suppose,” she said.
“Should we turn the lights out?” Orm asked, holding a hand over his ale, beginning to slide out of the stool Sam, the tavernkeep, had commissioned for him with little footholds. “It may be to do with...you know, Him.”
“Stay put, Orm. If it was the Lich, we'd be dead already,” Sam said, pulling Orm, mailshirt and all, back into his seat with one of her muscled arms.
“Don’t say his name,” Orm hissed , “you know he can hear! He’ll be down on us like fire!”
“Orm, we’ve gone over this a thousand times. There have been perhaps three magic handlers in living memory able to hear their names spoken at a distance and act upon it in a timely manner. The Lich is not one of them,” said Jie, Sam’s man-of-all-work, who at the moment had none and sat at the end of the bar reading. He troubled the hem of the narrow, rough-woven length of Sobian silk knotted at his throat. Bearing the much-mended seal of his clan, it was his single apparent concession to superstition. Fidgeting with it as he did betrayed the anxiety he heaped historical trivia and a calm voice upon, though only Sam recognized the tic.
“Alright, there, Jie?” Sam asked, eyebrow raised. Jie tended to be anxious about a great deal, but was, above all things, skeptical. If the wailing outside worried him, it worried Sam.
“Alright, there, lady-lord,” Jie flashed an unconvincing smile, returning to his lecture. “Of them, only Lady Ionia of Amissopolis and Magus Hooper of Oronlee are left.”
“I feel as if I’ve heard another name, an unusual one, perhaps Elvish?” Deliatus hummed. “Of Sugar Mountain?”
“Shelini of the Hills,” Jie answered. “I’ve heard tales of her, as well, but it is most likely the tales are just that. Tales. It’s said Queen Marilee recognized her name at a distance as well, but everything repeated about any of the more prominent magic handlers is all myth-making.” He frowned at a stray thread between his thumb and forefinger.
“You only think that on accounta you ain’t Vandalian. Great and good was Queen Marilee, may she rest and return,” Orm said, thumping a fist against his chest in the sign of the Stone Spirits. “Seen her funeral as a boy. Terrible sad, it was. But I thought Magus Hooper got hisself trapped in a barrow, or something?” Orm asked.
“I heard an oak steamer trunk,” Jie replied, licking his thumb to turn a page without looking up. “But trapped is trapped, not dead. I hope speaking his name hasn’t woken him from whatever magical hibernation he’s said to have put on himself until he can trick someone into letting him out, or his prison is chewed through by vermin. Oak is incorruptible, not indestructible, after all.”
“Shush, all of you,” Sam commanded, as another scream sounded through the night. Eyes fixed on the door, she reached for her blackjack--a fearsome log spiked with nails--from beneath the counter during a prolonged silence, the screams growing nearer.
“It’s gettin’ close, the screamin’,” Orm said. “Give me my ax, Sam.”
“Touch your nose,” Sam ordered.
Orm poked himself in the eye.
“Thought so. I’ll handle it, if something presents itself to handle. If it does, you look after Deliatus and Jie.”
Jie did not protest--while he was male, he was not a fighter. If any real danger presented itself, it would be better for all if he hid with Deliatus.
“Drunk dwarves fight better,” Orm argued.
Everyone groaned.
“Orm,we have discussed this several times, “ Jie began.
“Yeah, yeah, inambitions and repose time and debt perception. Load of philosopher trash. I know the dwarf berserker stories, why…”
“The Battle of Chopped Knee,” Deliatus and Sam chorused with Orm.
“‘Cisely. All I’m sayin’…”
Everyone leapt. The screaming had reached the tavern. Whatever was screaming, a woman, by the sound of it, did not pound for entry, but instead collided weakly against the Bronze Bough’s door. Sam jumped over the bar with the precision of a cat, standing in front of others. Sam pointed her blackjack at Orm.
“You stay put,” she snarled, “‘Latus, my heart, under the bar. You, too, Jie. If it looks like I need help, see that Orm gets his ax, will you?”
“Don’t open it,” Deliatus whispered, peeking above the bar. “It could be one of those ghastly Departeds from up North. I’ve heard the Lich made just loads of them.”
“Them only come in hordes,” Orm whispered back.
“Perhaps this one became lost? Far stranger things have come to pass,” Deliatus insisted.
“Ain’t how it works,” Orm hissed.
“Departeds are an intense piece of magic. Very resource consuming,” Jie said, his casual confidence not quite strong enough to hide the tension in his voice. “Making a lone, screaming one would be counterintuitive.”
“Mothers bless, shush the lot of you!” Sam commanded. “Friend or foe?” she shouted at the door, feeling silly before the words even left her mouth. The screaming subsided into hoarse moans. Steeling herself, Sam opened the door.
“Oh, Mothers and Sisters, the poor love! Cover your eyes!” Deliatus cried, leaping from her hiding spot behind the bar.
A naked, ochre-skinned girl with a mass of tangled, dark hair fell through the open door with a small, defeated cry. Sam caught her before she could hit the floor, surprised at the stranger’s leaden weight.
Orm pulled his helmet over his eyes as commanded while Jie rushed forward blindly, his apron in hand. He waved it in the direction he believed to be Deliatus.
“Just to cover her up, until we can get her into proper clothes.” Jie said.
“Stay put,” Sam said, “It looks like she might have need of you, Jie.”
Sam carried the girl to a chair, where Deliatus slipped Jie’s apron on her. Deliatus’s stomach sank. She had seen girls, usually independent companions, outside the protection of the guild, in similar states before; naked, raving and terrified. But the girl bore no bruises, only slashes to her legs, as if she’d waded through a glade of thorn bushes. She did not shrink from Jie; though, as men went, Jie was unlikely to inspire fear in even the most traumatized of women. Lengths of briar, thorns, splinters bore into the the girl’s legs and hung from her hair.
“You can open your eyes, boys,” Sam said, crouching next to the shivering girl. “And thank you, Jie, but I believe this young lady is a ways off from proper clothes. Orm, take your ax, get Lujain,” Sam ordered.
“Lujain is gone for the week, Sammy,” Deliatus said. “I’m told they have a nasty bit of pox in Alderson.”
Sam sighed. Not for the first time, she wished Pickaway possessed more than one medical professional; at the very least, one medical professional who wasn’t duty-bound to every settlement within a thirty mile radius.
“Then we’re down to you, Jie. You got this? She needs a good, hot bath, and some of these cuts will need seeing to, most likely.”
“I’ll run one upstairs,” Jie answered. “Deliatus...”
“Of course,” to Deliatus, the care of women who had met with unspeakable misfortune was sacrosanct.
The girl looked wildly around the room, eyes struggling to focus. She began to gibber, flapping her hands, clawing the air.
“Poor kid. Can’t even tell us what’s happened,” Sam said, attempting to smooth the girl’s hair. The girl turned and chattered at Sam, then Deliatus.
Far out of their depth, both cooed like pigeons, trying to soothe her. Neither were experienced in care for the hysterical. Sam usually just threw them out the door, Deliatus could at least speak with injured women.
“The bath is running. I put two heating charms in,” Jie said, skipping the last three stairs in his haste. “I tested it myself. It won’t burn her, but it is very hot. It should do well for those cuts.”
The girl’s arm darted to grab Jie by the wrist. She pulled him closer and babbled.
Jie listened, eyes closed in concentration. “Once more?,” he asked, kneeling to put his face level with her, his words slow, over-enunciated. “Slowly?”
The girl repeated herself.
He pushed his glasses up, his lips moving silently.
“Daraich?” he asked, pressing her knee as though stroking a bird’s wing.
“Daraich!” she shouted, pounding her chest.
“Jie,” he smiled, pounding his own.
She exhaled in relief, her eyes coming into focus.
“Daraich. Jie,” she closed both hands over his, then touched Sam and Deliatus’ faces.
“Oh. Sam,” he said, tapping Sam’s short, ruby-red hair, “Deliatus,” he reported, shaking Deliatus’ shoulder, avoiding Deliatus’ ornate braids.
He turned and pointed to the barstool “Orm.”
The girl’s eyes danced. “Orm?”
Orm, eyes still covered, tilted a nod of greeting in the girl’s general direction.
“Well met, Daraich,” he said.
The girl sighed, relaxing just a fraction.
“Deliatus will help you. Give you a bath, get you cleaned up, ok?” he said, motioning to Deliatus and miming washing.
“Ok,” the girl repeated.
Sam, and Deliatus exchanged looks of shock.
“Up with you, then, darling,” Deliatus said, steering the girl toward the stairs, using her own body to conceal the girl’s bare backside. “We’ll have you cleaned up and set right in no time at all.
“Orm, if I catch you looking at this poor girl’s hind bits, I’ll give you back your ax myself,” Sam warned.
“Not looking! Not looking!” Orm said, helmet pulled back over his eyes. “The minds of some people. Too short for me, by any account,” he muttered. “Were it just me, or did her hair look just a bit...purple? Violet, like? ”
“A bit,” Sam agreed, “but who knows what she’s gotten into? It looks like she’s walked miles through the woods, could’ve run into a patch of pokeberry?”
Jie clattered behind the counter, collecting the substantial medical kit he’d accumulated over the years as Sam’s man-of-all-work. They got all kinds in Pickaway, so far from the cities--Lujain, the town’s lone midwife, general medical practitioner and magic handler, couldn’t be expected to tend to everyone.
“Jie,” Sam asked, “How did you do that? Talk to her, I mean? She was rambling nonsense.”
Jie paused, still crouched under the bar, templing his fingers in front of his face, the way he did when trying to simplify what he believed to be a complex topic. Sam, an intelligent person even if she lacked Jie’s bottomless appetite for reading, hated the posture.
“I don’t need the Orm explanation!” Sam snapped, as Orm took an oblivious draw from his tankard.
Jie shrugged.
“She was not speaking nonsense, my lady-lord.”
“Then what language is she speaking?”
“There’s the problem,” Jie said. “She is speaking several languages, at what seems to be random, grammar be damned. I only recognized a couple.”
“Recognized?”
“Well, yes. Sort of. I took a guess at her name. She kept repeating ‘Daraich’, which seems a mouthful for an article or a conjunction or some other sort of small, essential grammar, does it not?”
Sam wondered what the Orm explanation may’ve sounded like.
“So, you don’t understand or speak any of what she was saying?”
“Well...yes and no. I recognized some Dwarvish and even what sounded a great deal like Kanglais.”
“That was not Kanglais,” Sam protested. “I couldn’t understand a word.”
“Never Dwarvish, neither, I’d’a at least recognized,” Orm protested.
“I am by far no expert, but that was Middle Kanglais, at the latest. I have never heard Old High Dwarvish spoken aloud, but I have read it. Some of it seemed to match what I believe it ought to sound like.”
“Don’ look to me,” Orm said, “I my Dwarvish is common as it comes. That Old High stuff’s like what the Mountain Kings spoke, back when they was in charge, yeah? Heard it a couple of times, may as well be Sobian, for all that I understood.”
“So she’s speaking Star Sisters know how many languages at the same time,” Sam said, “But from a few centuries back?”
“It sounds that way. But the strangest of it all,” Jie said, hesitating “I can’t be certain, but she appears to understand us.”
“She’s a trick! She’s some new terror sent to us by the Lich!” Orm shouted.
Jie shook his head, a strand raven-black hair falling into his eyes.
“No. Sam’s Sensitive, you’d have felt anything outright evil, yes?”.
Sam nodded, scratching her head.
“Would’ve at that, I suppose. I’m not as strong as you believe me to be, though, Jie.”
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“You sell yourself short, my lady-lord,” Jie said, “but I, too, have a difficult time believing our new friend is nothing more than a bedraggled girl,” Jie conceded, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose and tying his hair back.
“What else could she be?” Sam asked.
“A mystery,” Jie gave a weak smile, “though at present, a mystery in need of care.”
Jie did not tell the others about the long-dead languages he’d heard snippets of in the girl’s pleas. He couldn’t be sure, and anyway, there was no reason to worry everyone over nothing.
“Up we get,” Deliatus beckoned to Daraich, who stood rooted to the foot of the stairs. She tugged at the girl’s arms, receiving a soft babble in return. Had this girl never gone up stairs? “Look,” Deliatus pointed first at her own eyes, then at Daraich’s. The girl blinked, as Deliatus pointed down at her own leg, bent to climb the stairs. She pointed to Daraich’s leg, tapped her behind the knee. The girl nodded, moving her foot to the first stair.
“Good!” Deliatus clapped. “Now, this one,” she tapped Daraich’s other leg, watching in dismay as her eyes went unfocused. The girl mumbled, her breathing shallow. Deliatus’ heart bounced between the pit of her stomach and the back of her throat. What had happened to this girl? It didn’t matter, Deliatus told herself. Not really. Not yet. If the odd girl wanted to talk, she would. Until then, Deliatus would tend her wounds, however they might present.
“Here,” she said, stooping to pick the girl up, “Perhaps I could…” Dariach went limp as Deliatus collapsed under her weight.
“Mothers and Sisters!” Deliatus cried, “Sammy, a spot of assistance, if you would?”
Sam turned the corner to see the two women tangled on the stairs.
“Oh. Sorry about that, both of you,” she said, scooping Daraich up as if she weighed no more than a baby, “she is heavier than she looks…and no, we do not need help, Orm Quarrisen!” Sam shouted over her shoulder.
“Suspicious, I calls it, and racist, too! Din’t say nothin’ to Jie,” Orm groused from the other room.
“I didn’t hear Jie’s barstool move,“ Sam retorted.
Orm harrumphed. “Could be he’s quieter!”
“I didn’t move, though,” Jie said, without looking up from the book he had open on the bar. He flipped through pages with rapid, practiced skill, pausing every few moments to make a note on a rough pad of paper in tiny, curling handwriting.
“Jie, I tell you, I wonders about you, sometimes,” Orm grumbled. “A mostly bare girl, fine young thing, very nearly your own age, it looks to me, and you sit here a-studyin’. Do you like fellas or somethin’?”
“A valid conjecture, Orm, but you neglect a major flaw in your reasoning,” Jie said, jotting down another note. “If I preferred the company of men, as they say, how would I have controlled myself around you all these years?”
Orm blinked as the joke settled into his head. With a guffaw, he slapped Jie on the back.
On the stairs, Sam and Deliatus rolled their eyes.
“Should the menfolk be dismissed for the evening?” Deliatus asked, exasperated.
“Like as not, we’ll need Jie in a bit. And Orm? There’s no one spare to get him home safe, and he is a good scarecrow, should whoever hurt the girl show up looking to finish their work.”
Sam dunked her hand into the bathwater. Jie had taken care--it was very hot, but would not scald the girl.
“Oh, and what a dear heart Jie is,” Deliatus purred, holding a sachet of herbs to her face, inhaling deeply. “That’s lavender, witch hazel, chamomile,” she sniffed “Purple coneflower? This will do wonders for her poor skin.” She dropped the little sack into the hot bathwater. “What an absolute marvel he can be, when he wishes.”
“When he wishes,” Sam agreed.
“We’re putting you in the bath now, friend,” Sam said, lowering Daraich into the tub.
“Daraich,” the girl said. “Sam.”
“Oh course, forgive me. Daraich.”
For a moment the girl panicked, as if she’d never been in a bath before, clutching to the sides, but the hot water and Jie’s sachet won her.
“All right, she’s all yours,” Sam said, wiping her arms off on her apron. “Soap’s in the dish. I’ll see if I can’t root out some clothes for her.”
Deliatus shifted from knee to knee, smiling in what she felt was a soothing way to her charge.
“So, Daraich, dear Jie believes you can understand us, even though you aren’t speaking to us in ordinary Kanglais. How fascinating!”
Daraich prattled back, her cadence more relaxed. Deliatus relaxed with her.
“Why, listen to you! You’ll be a regular gossip in no time. What a relief that will be for me, to have a nice young lady to gossip with. Sammy’s not a bit of fun in that respect, Sisters bless her. But presently, let’s have you get nice and warm and clean, shall we?”
Deliatus was happy for the noises Dari made, even if she couldn’t understand them. The silence of shock cut deep, and Deliatus was pleased for its absence. She lifted Dariach’s arm and began to slather it with soap.
“Oh, do you smell that? Mint, unless I miss my guess,” Deliatus said, “Jie made this too-- The clever young man with glasses you spoke to. We are Mothers blessed he’s stayed with us so long. We all know he’s too intelligent by far to simply be a man-of-all-work, even if he is Sobian.” She scrubbed at Daraich’s fingernails with vengeance. Everybody in town, except for Deliatus and, with cajoling, Sam, always had dirt under their fingernails. She’d be damned if this girl bore the same burden. “Nothing wrong with Sobians, mind. Just those in Sharahala tended, of a time, to be very educated people, mages, doctors, teachers and the like. Before the Lich forced them into service, of course. Jie would be too young for any of that, I believe. He’s quite guarded about his past, but that is the habit of the age, is it not?” she trailed off.
Deliatus spoke to speak. It felt rude to bathe a stranger without attempting conversation.
She lifted Dariach’s leg and winced. The real damage of the cuts was apparent now, and much worse than she’d anticipated.
“Dari, my dear, may I call you Dari?” Deliatus asked.
“Dari,” Daraich repeated.
“Marvelous! You’ll be at court addressing Lady Ionia any day now, if you keep that up,” she said, tight-rope walking between condescension and encouragement. “But Dari, darling, this shall be a mite painful. When I was little, my mother sang to me when I was hurt. Would you like that?”
Daraich offered no response.
Deliatus sighed. “Ok, let’s give it a good try, shall we? It’s just an old woods-worship
song, nothing fashionable,” Deliatus had a good voice. It came with the job. She kept it low, quiet, as if she sang to a sick child or injured bird:
O,Blessed Star of Sharahala
I pray, gaze down upon me
See your little child filled with awe
Hold me fast and safe with thee
Bring up my heart, true, deep and wild
Teach my tongue to sing us free
Keep my hands gentle and mild
O, Blessed Star of Sharahala
I pray, gaze down upon me
Daraich stared, transfixed as Deliatus sang, recognition glittering like starlight in her eyes. She did not flinch or squirm as Deliatus disentangled an embedded briar from the girl’s calf.
Daraich surprised Deliatus, opening her mouth to sing:
Fall from the sky, light unfleeting
Come to me, stars, fill my eyes
Overflow my heart a-beating
With Magicks born of the sky.
Bless my sisters, those the stars prize
Spin my dreams from far above
Blessed night fall, blessed day rise
Bless us, Mothers, give us your love.
Dari’s voice was like a soft breeze, like clear water over smooth stones. Deliatus rocked back on her heels, mouth agape.
“Only my Nana ever sang that verse. It’s terribly old. Mother forgot it, I must believe, so I did as well. Dari, my dear, you are full of surprises. I am not an easy woman to surprise, either. I must tell you, I am just positive we’ll be great friends,” Deliatus praised.
Dari opened her mouth to speak, but only little half-croaks came out.
“Never mind, Dari, my dear, you’ll get the hang of it. Let’s have your lovely hair washed, little songbird,” Deliatus chirruped. It’s wonders, what a good bath could do for a person, she mused.
Daraich squirmed and tugged at Sam’s old nightgown.
“Sorry, girlie, I didn’t care for it much either, but that’s the only reason it’s half-way presentable for you. Solstice present from my Gran. She never did get the pants thing.”
“How odd. I could sooner imagine Orm in a dress,” Deliatus mused.
“Not sure how I ought to take that,” Sam said with a blush. “But it seemed easier for her, with how cut up her legs looked. I don’t envy the night ahead of her.”
Daraich, who had been watching the pair with interest, nodded, smiling.
“You think Jie is right? She understands but just can’t say?”
“I know Jie is right,” Deliatus said, giving Sam’s rosy cheek a playful push in Daraich’s direction “and for the last time, dear Dari isn’t furniture. Talk to her, not about her.”
“Mothers and Sisters, I’m sorry,” Sam said. “Even if you can’t tell what I’m sayin’, no excuse for rudeness. This isn’t exactly familiar territory. Usually, someone undressed and screaming gets a swift kick out the door, not a bath and a free room.”
“But you aren’t most people, are you, dear Dari? ” Deliatus lilted, petting the girl’s hair.
Daraich paid them no mind, gazing toward the hallway with a vague smile.
“Never mind. Let’s get those cuts seen to,” Sam said, and turned to shout for Jie, who already stood in the doorway.
“Mothers above, Jie, I hate it when you do that!”
“You will need to specify what ‘that’ is, my lady-lord,” Jie said.
“Sneaking up. And then...looming.”
“I did not intend to ‘loom’ or ‘sneak’. It seemed rude to interrupt,” Jie said. “Hello, Daraich. Did I hear Deliatus call you Dari? Is this a familiar name just for Deliatus, or a more general diminutive?” Jie offered a short, polite bow.
“You want her understanding Kanglais, and you go off prattling like a scholar. You’ll confuse her,” Same chided.
“Dari,” Daraich interrupted, tapping her chest and nodding. She lifted herself to pat Jie’s chest, “Jie. Deliatus, Sam,” she pointed, then searched the room. “Orm?”
“Orm is sleeping off several tankards under a table downstairs. He’ll be fine. I put a blanket on him,” Jie said with a reassuring grin.
“Orm,” Dari nodded and smiled, pleased with Jie’s report.
“How bad is it?” Jie asked Deliatus.
“Am I the only one here who was not raised in a barn? Talk to her,” Deliatus huffed.
“I was raised in a barn,” Sam answered. “Daddy converted it. Very practical.”
“I was not, but typically, when tending a patient experiencing trauma, it is best not to direct their attention to said trauma. Which is why I asked you, ‘Latus, as you have been her caretaker tonight.”
Deliatus puffed an escaped curl out of her face.
“Her legs appear quite tattered,” she muttered. “Dari, my dear, Jie is here to help you. Would you be so good as to show him your injuries?”
Sam’s rosy face went just a shade green as Jie knelt, lifting Dari’s wounded leg for closer inspection.
“Not as bad as I expected,” he said, standing and walking to the washbasin in the corner. “You did a good job cleaning these wounds, ‘Latus. But you need not observe, my lady-lord,” he said. “I know you can get squeamish.”
“Ha! As if I’d leave a man alone with such a helpless…” she stopped herself. Of course, Jie was a man. But he was more Jie than man.
“You need not worry. I tend to appreciate the trust extended to me that you typically withhold from other members of my less-fair sex.”
Deliatus and Sam scowled at each other, then turned on Jie.
“I trust any male nearly as far as I can throw them,” Sam said, hands on her hips.
“You are quite strong, and I imagine I am very aerodynamic,” Jie said with a dismissive chuckle. “For your peace of mind,” he extended a large, silver handbell to Daraich. She took it, startling at the light clang of metal. “An alarm as well as an arm. Please allow me to work alone. A standing audience tends to make patients nervous.”
“Sammy, darling,” Deliatus sighed, “It is only Jie. You’re not normally such a prude, at any rate.”
Sam didn’t answer, but allowed herself to be led into the hallway.
“What are you doing tonight, anyway?” she asked, just out of sight, “Mrs. Machen will have your hide if you go waking her up this late. Or has it gone all the way round to being early again? I don’t like the idea of you walking by yourself in the dark, especially given whatever happened to Dari.”
“Naturally, sweet Sammy, I’m sleeping with you,” Deliatus declared.
“Oh,” Sam said, her bold baritone turning soft and shy.
“Sleeping, Sammy, Sleeping!” Deliatus insisted with a wicked giggle.
Jie smiled and shook his head.
“Might I lift this leg? The right one,” he asked Dariach, tapping her knee. She nodded as he lifted her heel to her shoulder. “I ask your forgiveness at the start, Dari. Stitches from even an experienced surgeon are unpleasant, and I am no surgeon. But I will do my best.”
A strong smell of cloves permeated the room as he twisted off the cap of an old cosmetics pot.
“This should soothe a little,” he said “but I won’t lie, it will sting at first. You must be very still.”
He opened a few more strong-smelling pots and bent over, careful not to let Daraich see the needle or the thread he coaxed through its eye. With careful fingers, he massaged the aloe and clove paste around a briar gash.
Dari sucked her teeth in pain.
“Please, speak to me,” Jie said, “A distraction from your discomfort.”
Dari furrowed her brow and prattled off a list of indecipherable grumbles recognizable as insults.
“A more than fair reaction, dear lady,” Jie said, unphased, plucking splinters from her cut. “I can understand you a bit, you know. While I am not entirely sure what you just said about dear mother, may she rest and return, in Old Dwarvish, I am sure she does not deserve such abuse.”
“Understand?”
“A bit. You use too many languages, too many ages, for me to keep pace easily. I have always had a knack for language, though. I expect you did, too?”
Daraich mumbled under her breath.
“You don’t move as if you suffer from head trauma, but I have read about polyglots who flit between languages on waking up from a nasty thump. It’s actually a very good sign. All of the scholarship I’ve read points to multilingual patients recovering more functionality than those who only possess one tongue. Would you be so good as to follow my finger with your eyes?”
Jie held up a finger, passing it back and forth in front of Dari’s face, her eyes focused and following.
“If you had suffered head trauma, your eyes would not have followed so easily,” he said. “Are you in pain, other than in your legs?”
Dari shook her head.
“So I suppose we shall wait and watch over you?”
“We shall wait,” Dari parroted.
“I have no intention to pry,” Jie said with the tone of someone who very much intended to pry, “but I heard you singing. How do you know that song? It is very, very old.”
Dari gave Jie a gentle cuff to the ear with her free foot, babbling.
“I was not looking, I only heard. You have a lovely voice. Tell me about the song, but very slowly, if you can.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but again, a tangle of words fell out.
“Hmm. Could I ask you to sing for me, then? You can carry a Kanglais tune quite well.”
Dari mouthed a few words experimentally, then sang:
You are the sun, my only love
Your light warms and strengthens me
Sleep, our skin bathed by stars above
The dawn breaks, hear me entreat
Stay, share my body, share my mind
Come, love, let me kiss you sweet
Come, your hands gentle and heart kind
Stay, Love, rest the dawn with me
Jie sewed a neat row of stitches in silence, ducking his head to hide his flushed cheeks.
“Those lyrics are a bit more…fleshly than others I’ve heard set to the same meter. I have an ear for folk songs. Perhaps, more accurately, people see that I write, and pay me to write down their old folk songs. But I’ve never heard either of those verses. Are they older than ‘Latus’? Newer?”
Dari wanted to tell Jie there were thousands of verses to Deliatus’ old song--the faithful and the lovers and the mages kept stealing it back and forth, until a sort of cultural peace had been brokered, or they all just forgot, and the song could allow itself to just be. She did not know how she knew this, only that she did. She opened her mouth, an attempt to speak, and croaked out only:
“Many,” followed by a flood of confused languages.
Jie nodded. “It is a very old melody. It would make sense for many variants to exist.”
Dari looked down at the strange, thin man. Where her legs had been torn and bloodied, he had cleaned and stitched her wounds closed without so much as a sting from the needle.
“Distraction was not the only reason I encouraged keep singing,” he said, following her violet eyes. “You sing beautifully. Your voice has a restful quality to it. I could make a habit of it. Not to sound like the cad Sam insists on painting me, of course,” he backpedaled at top speed, his cheeks bright red as he began to wind strips of clean, white fabric around the worst of the girl’s injuries.
Dari tried to speak more slowly, still grasping wrong time, wrong place words.
Jie tapped his chin.
“So you can sing. But speaking in a way you can be easily understood is a challenge.”
Dari wibble-wobbled her head back and forth; yes, no, maybe so.
“For so long as you stay with us, I would be honored to assist you in your linguistic endeavors. Mind you, my offer is not as altruistic as it sounds,” Jie grinned. “Whenever we can settle on just one or two languages within a few hundred years of each other, I feel certain you have many interesting tales to tell.”
Dari smiled.
She did have interesting stories to tell.
Dariach laid awake for a long time, staring at the moon through the slats of the window. She was already forgetting the forest--the idea was too big to fit into the body she wore. A tiny little thing it was, this body. She couldn’t quite recall how she’d come by it. One moment, she was…something else. Then came a flash of blue light in the dark, a vision of an elderly woman’s stern face and long, white hair; and now, she was here.
At the corners of her memory, too ingrained to forget even in such a small body, she remembered people singing around her, to her. Dimly, she recalled a city full of people, with herself in the very center. But the city had been long ago. The memory felt like a dream.
She couldn’t remember being so close to people, having them speak and expect her to answer. They had touched her, but she could not remember such gentleness, such care.
The people, though, were not the only ones to speak to her. Whispers hummed, all through the place where she lay. She slipped out of bed, feet on the bare wooden floor, and felt the whispers climb her legs, beg her to hear.
She crouched as best she could, listening to the familiar ghosts’ requests.
Of course, she told them, speaking in the oldest language, the one seated at the center of her heart, stroking the rough wooden boards. I must heal. But very soon.
Climbing back into bed, careful of her mending legs, Daraich rolled to her side.
She pressed her face into the pillow, breathing in a scent like the slim, gentle man who understood her, who had mended her. She was glad she had found him. She was glad she found them all--the strong one who had carried her, the effusive woman who bathed her, who called her a new name, the short man with his gruff voice and raucous laugh.
“Dari,” she spoke into the silence, finding she liked the sound of the two simple syllables. “Dari,” she repeated, as if she tasted the name. Yes. A small name for her small body, a new name. Dari could no longer not recall who, or what, she had been. She was still a bit unclear as to what, or who, precisely, she was now.
“Dari,” she said with a smile, the third repetition putting the question to rest. She was only herself. Only Dari.