Moonscatter (33 page)

“It's time you let him go,” Rane said.

Tuli gouged repeatedly at the soil with her bit of twig, brushed the broken earth away. “I don't see why.”

“You aren't children any more.”

“He wasn't just my brother, he was my friend.”

“Was, Tuli?”

“Is.”

“You don't have many friends, do you?”

“That's not my fault. Can I help it if they're too stupid to care about real things, not just gossip and giggling? There's no one I can talk to, not really, not like Teras. No one understands.” She looked at the twig. “They're boring. Besides, they don't want me around, they laugh at me.” She broke the twig in half with a quick vicious twist of her hands and flung the pieces away from her. “Fayd came up from the mijloc a couple days after Teras left.”

“Fayd?”

“A friend, at least I thought he was; he used to run around with Teras and me, we had a lot of fun then.…”

“Eh-Tutu.”

Tuli dropped the stone block she was carrying and wheeled at the sound of the familiar voice, a grin threatening to split her face in half. “Eh-Fada,” she cried and held out her hands.

Fayd slid from his weary macai and caught hold of her hands. His brows rose—very bushy and so blond they looked like small straw stacks sitting over his dark blue eyes. “What've you been doing to yourself?” He drew his thumbs over rough, abraded palms grey-white with stone dust.

“Working, you nit.” She pulled her hands free and stooped for the stone, straightened, cradling the awkward mass in the curve of her arm. “You just wait, you'll be hauling too once the council knows you're here.” She began to stroll not too quickly toward the wall. “What happened? And how'd you find us?”

He walked beside her, leading the macai. “Saw Teras—well, he saw me, told me where to come.”

Tuli glanced at him, saw he was waiting for her to ask about Teras. She looked away from him and walked stiffly along without saying anything.

“What happened? Eh-Tutu, you know my father, what he's like. He caught me.…” He stopped. His brilliant blue eyes narrowed a little, slid slyly toward her. He wore the too cultivated look of rueful deviltry that gave him the air of a naughty sprite, a look that had too often helped him to slide unscathed out of trouble. Tuli didn't like it much. “Anyway,” he said, “he disowned me, foaming at the mouth with righteous rage over my iniquities as he called them, was going to have me hauled off to the House of Repentance. I didn't wait around for that. Adin's heir now.”

“I'm sorry, Fayd. I knew you and your Da didn't get along too good but I didn't think he'd do something like that.”

“Eh-Tutu, it's not so bad, just Soäreh junk, folks getting tired of their ranting already, it can't last that much longer. I admit it sent Father off his head but he never was any too.…” He broke off when he saw the distaste in Tuli's face. “What's Teras doing below?”

“Looking around.” She started to explain but found herself oddly reluctant to say anything more about it to Fayd. “Look, Fayd, you'd better go check in with Da. He's up along there somewhere.” She waved her hand toward the creek. “He don't like folks wandering about without him or the council knowing.”

“Council? That's the second time.…”

“Da 'ull tell you.” She grinned at him. “I know you, lazy, you want to lie around in the sun all day. Hah! You'll be groaning louder than the creek tomorrow. We got lots and lots of work to do to get ready for winter.”

“Work,” he moaned. Though he still smiled, there was strong dislike in the glance he gave the stone she hugged to her side. With a laugh and a wave he swung into the saddle and rode off.

Tuli looked thoughtfully at her hands, then at the stone; with a discontented sigh she straightened her back and started for the wall.

Rane lifted her flute, looked at it briefly, raised it to her lips and blew a few experimental notes. She lowered it again, a question in her eyes. “There's more, isn't there.”

Tuli nodded. Her lips were pressed so hard together they disappeared; a hectic flush reddened her cheeks.

“You don't have to tell me.” Rane started playing very softly, coaxing a breathy, near inaudible tune from the lowest notes of the flute, a strange soothing rise and fall that blended with the brisk rustle of the stiff grey-green leaves of the vachbrush. Tuli relaxed gradually. She pressed her thighs together, moved her hips restlessly back and forth across the crusted earth. She was embarrassed, ashamed, afraid, most of all afraid and unsure. She listened to the flute music, glanced at Rane's long gaunt face, envied the tranquility she saw in both face and body. She rocked her pelvis against the ground, scrubbed her thumb hard against the grooves she'd scratched in front of her. She closed her hands into fists, rubbed the back of her fist across her mouth. “I … I missed Teras a lot,” she said suddenly. Panic rushed her into speech again when Rane stopped playing and turned to look at her. “Don't look at me or I can't.”

Rane nodded, shook saliva from the flute, began playing again, the same slow drifting melody, the same low singing notes.

Tuli slipped from her blankets late on the second night after Fayd showed up. She wriggled under the heavy canvas, dragging boots, jacket, tunic and trousers with her. Gibbous TheDom was hanging low in the west almost sitting on the points of the Teeth and the night air was dry ice against her skin. She ran shivering to a clump of brush, pulled off her sleeping smock and dressed as quickly and quietly as she could, suppressing the chattering of her teeth, hampered by the cold-induced clumsiness of her hands. She pulled on her old jacket, thrust a hand into her pocket, felt the leather straps of her sling coiled in the bottom and began to relax for the first time in days, all those people around, people she didn't know, people who didn't want to know her, she couldn't get away from them. She stamped her feet down in her boots and prowled off along the creek crossing to the far side on the stepping stones, taking care not to wake any of the sleepers in the camps, flitting like a shadow along the valley toward the wall, shedding as she moved more of her tensions and constraints until she was having a hard time keeping her laughter inside. It was like old times, all she lacked was Teras at her side but she wouldn't think about that, at least there was Fayd. She grinned at the moon. Good ol' Fayd. She swung her arms vigorously, hopped a few steps every few strides, her soul expanding with the night her eyes soothed by the familiar black and white and multiple greys. There were no kankas up here to fill the night with their flutings and their wavering kill-cries, but another sort of passar occupied the same niche, a slimmer flier with long pointed wings, smaller gasbags and a piping song almost too high to hear. Small furry predators, long and lithe with a humping, bounding run, flitted from shadow to shadow, pounced on smaller rodents and fled with their prey as Tuli ran past them. There was no guard on the half-finished wall, not yet, no point to it; she circled around through the gap where the gate would be and came back to the creek bank, trotted along it until she came to the lone brellim growing among the scattered conifers, an aged gnarled tree whose lower limbs were so heavy with years that their outer ends rested on the ground creating a cavern of darkness even in the daylight. Fayd had promised to meet her there.

She put her hand on one of the low limbs, felt it creak under her palm. There was a knot in her stomach suddenly, a vague foreboding that rather spoiled her pleasure in the icy beautiful night. Angrily she flung out a hand as if she pushed the feeling away from her. “Fayd,” she called. “You here?”

“Eh-Tuli.” The answering whisper came from the shadow under the brellim.

“Come on, I brought my sling, let's go.” She was impatient, refusing to share the nonsense of whispers out here where there was no one to hear them.

“Come in here first, got something to show you.”

“Fayd?” Still impatient, still refusing to acknowledge the coldness inside her that had nothing to do with the bite in the night air, she pushed into darkness that even her nightsight was unable to penetrate. “Where in zhag are you?”

He laughed, a nervous kind of sound almost like a giggle but too excited and too something else she had no name for to be a giggle. He bumped against her. His arms went around her. She began to feel trapped. His breathing was hoarse and ragged as he rubbed his body hard against hers. She was horribly uncomfortable, but she didn't move, sensing that if she pushed him away as she wanted, she'd lose him too and she couldn't bear that. She stood stiff and unresponsive, waiting for him to finish whatever it was he thought he was doing. “Relax, relax,” he whispered, “you want to do it, you know you do, you came, didn't you.” He moved a little away so he could slide a hand between them and knead at her breasts. It hurt. She tried easing herself back from him, but he wouldn't let her go. “Don't be like that, Tutu, you want it, I saw you looking at me, you want it, relax, I'm not going to hurt you.” He hooked his foot behind hers and pulled them out from under her, catching her as she toppled and lowering her to the ground, doing it gently enough that she wasn't shocked into a panic. There was a blanket on the ground.
He planned this
, she thought,
he knew all the time what he was going to do, Ay Maiden help me
.

“Fayd,” she said, her voice breaking over the lump in her throat. “I don't want to do this.”

In the darkness she could hear the slide of cloth then he was down beside her. He laughed, that same strained breathy laugh that had disturbed her before. “You haven't done it before, that's all, Tutu, you'll like it.” He kept talking in that husky coaxing whisper as he eased her tunic up until it was rucked up under her arms, leaving her breasts exposed.

“Fada,” she said, pleading with him, using his pet name to try to remind him of old times not now. “Fada, don't.”

“You're being silly, Tutu,” he whispered, he bent over her and took her nipple in his mouth. She gasped and wriggled on the blanket as heat very unlike her anger heat shot through her body. “See, see, you like it.” His breath was hot against her skin. He kept on and on until all she felt was a growing pain and a feeling of nausea at his touch and the knowledge that he wasn't going to stop, he was going to do what he wanted no matter what she wanted.

“Fayd, stop,” she said sharply. “I won't.…”

He didn't answer, didn't even seem to hear her, was too busy with the lacings on her trousers to pay attention to anything she said. He got up on his knees to ease her trousers down over her hips then he was on top of her.
It hurts, oh Maiden help me, it hurts, I don't want this, I'm not ready for this, oh let it end, let it end, please let it end
. She bucked and writhed under him trying to throw him off her, but he was too heavy, too much bigger, she was helpless, she screamed and cursed and clawed at him, it meant nothing to him, made no difference to what he was doing. He groaned and shuddered on her, then rolled off, got to his feet and laughed, he laughed at her.

Tuli lay back, colder inside than she'd ever been in her life. For the first time, she wanted to be angry, wanted to have that fire in her head that blanked out everything but the need to hurt. She lay on the blanket, cold and nauseated, empty.

“Little sicamar.” There was an awful kind of triumph in his voice as he pulled up his trousers and tied the laces. “You drew blood, you know that? Whee-oh, what a ride you give, Tutu. Told you you'd like it, didn't know how much, did I?” He didn't understand anything, he thought—oh, Maiden bless—he thought she was pleased, he didn't have the faintest idea she wanted most of all to tear him into bloody shreds, how stupid he was, how stupid I was to think I wanted him for a friend, to let him even get started in this. “You better get back before someone misses you.” She could hear his feet kicking through the dead leaves on the ground as he walked toward the outer circle of hanging limbs. “Eh-Tutu, don't forget to roll up the blanket, tuck it in the hollow on the backside of the trunk, we'll need it next time.” The leaves rustled as he pushed through to the outside. She could hear him whistling as he strolled off.

Tuli sat up, slowly, painfully. She still hurt but more than that she felt soiled inside. “Next time,” she said. She pulled her tunic down with trembling hands, grateful for the slight increase in warmth. “Stupid,” she said. She got painfully to her feet and started to pull her trousers up, changed her mind, pushed them down over her boots and kicked out of them. “Stupid.” Standing first on one foot, then on the other, she tugged her boots off and threw them on the blanket. “Never.” She bent and felt about for her trousers, then her boots, carried them out into the moonlight. “Not with him.” She dropped her clothing on the greasy creek bank and plunged into the water, shouting involuntarily as the liquid ice closed around her reaching to her waist. She waded to shallower water, scooped up a handful of sand and scrubbed vigorously at herself, ignoring the pain, scrubbing away the feel of him, wishing she could scrub the memory of him from her mind, until she felt cleaner though she didn't know if she'd ever feel clean again, not really. She ran from the water when she was finished, rolled on the grass to dry herself a little, then scrambled back into her clothes, her skin tingling, the blood racing in her veins. “I won't let him spoil this,” she said. “I won't let him steal the night from me,” she shouted to the moons, shouted futilely, she knew that. Her sureness was gone, she couldn't get it back, that sense of invulnerability when she ran the night. Nothing would ever be the same again, the change that she'd rebelled against before was almost complete now. Nothing would ever be the same.

Rane kept playing the flute even though Tuli stopped talking. Tuli gathered courage and lay watching her, taking pleasure after a while in the neatly chiselled features of her stenda face, in the unconsidered grace of her lanky body, in the sense of control she got whenever she looked at the ex-meie. Rape's calm helped her reduce the thing with Fayd from the monstrous horror it had grown to in her mind to a mere unpleasant and uncomfortable episode. Tuli dropped her chin onto her fists and listened, smiling inside, to the slow, sighing music from the flute. Far down the slope the noises of the work continued unabated, but that all seemed terribly remote from this patch of grassy brush-free mountainside, sheltered from the wind, warmed by the late afternoon sun. Tuli yawned lazily, her eyelids dropping. Rane finished her song, shook out the flute, set it on her thighs, reached out and brushed a straying lock of hair off Tuli's face. “He wasted no time boasting about the two of you?”