The Book of a Thousand Days (9 page)

I guess singing the parting songs to my mama was the hardest thing I've ever done. I would've rather had her ghost haunting my every footstep than be alone. But I felt proud after I did it. And now she'll be waiting in the Ancestors' Realm, ready to sing me in.

We were camped a long way from the city that summer, so far it made my legs hurt just to think of the distance. I took apart the gher and loaded as much as I could on Weedflower's back and the rest on my own. I had to leave the gher's heavy winter

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coverings behind, cast off to rot on the ground. It wasn't easy to do. Mama and I had pressed the wool ourselves to make the felt --aching work, longtime work. But what could I do? The load was already heavy enough to make me stagger.

As I walked toward the summer pastures, I offered Weedflower as a gift to everyone I met. None robbed me, thank the Ancestors, but none accepted my gift. If they had, it'd be the same as consenting to make me a member of their family and agreeing to one day find me a husband. It'd been a hard winter. None wanted another mouth to feed. Maybe if I were prettier. Maybe if I didn't have the red blotches on my face and arm, the sign of an ill-fated life.

I always thought I'd be a mucker bride, become a mama like my own one day. It's only now, as my brush touches this page, that I'm realizing I never will. I wish My Lord the cat were curled up in my lap and purring.

Eventually I found a clan headed toward the city, and I exchanged my gher for a place in their Long Walk. It was summer, so I could sleep on the ground. I had Weedflower's milk to drink, and I hunted for roots and birds and rodents when I could, and traded milk for a bowl of food from other people's pots. I'd never been around so many folk before, and yet it

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was the loneliest I ever felt. Is that strange? Well, the loneliest except for now in this tower.

I miss Weedflower, whom I had to sell in order to buy myself employment and lodging at the house of chiefs. I miss myself, how I used to be. How I used to feel under the sky. I miss the time when I could believe I'd die old with my own husband beside me, one who wouldn't think of me as a mouth to feed or leave after a standing-death winter.

I just looked at the dump hole and saw light outside. Morning? Did I write all night? Time is a wind that keeps blowing in my face and mumbling words that don't make sense.

My lady's calling. She says she's hungry.

She's always hungry.

Day 795

There's an odor about my lady, like a dung heap on a hot day. If my script looks ill, it's because I closed my eyes as I wrote that. I shouldn't even think it. But she does---my lady does smell like hot dung.

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Day 812

It's my honor to serve. It's my honor, I know it is, and yet... Ancestors, don't read this, but I begin to wonder, is it right? The lady is jailed for neglecting her duty, but I'm jailed for fulfilling mine.

I miss My Lord. The cat.

Day 834

Under, god of tricks, keeps thinking of new ways to bully us. I cooked our meal from a new sack of grain, one that was buried under crates and the rats hadn't yet touched. My stomach wasn't feeling round and open, so I only nibbled, but my lady ate any quantity of flat bread. She grumbles as she eats, like a beast feeding on short grass. Ancestors bless her.

After dinner, I noticed how colors seemed to wave around me, so intense I thought it was real. The bricks were orange and moved like fire, though there was no heat. Strangely, I didn't feel worried till my lady screamed and pointed up, where I only saw the wooden ceiling and darkness.

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"It's coming down," she screamed. "It's falling in!"

"What is? What?"

Then she turned to the hole in the wall, screaming anew. "A wolf! A wolf eats through our wall!" There was nothing there.

I held her and sang to her while she screamed and vomited. By the time my eyes no longer saw orange fire rippling over the bricks, my lady had collapsed into a soggy, though quiet, mess.

Bad grain. My mama warned me once that if eating stored grain makes you see things that aren't really there, then it's gone bad, touched by Under, god of tricks.

I suppose I should be grateful the bread didn't kill us, though it near killed me to have to dump the entire bag of grain out our hole.

Day 852

Sometimes I spend several hours by our hole calling to the guards. There's been no answer since the night the wolf howled. If Lord Khasar did kill them, why didn't my lady's father send others?

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[Image: Picture of Rats]

Day 912

I can hear the rats squeaking madly down there. When I'm half asleep, it sounds as though they're holding a party just to laugh at me. I can't sleep in the cellar again tonight. Though the smells from outside speak of spring, it still gets mighty cold, and my limbs are frozen by half, my jaw sore from chattering.

There are so many rats, I can't think what to do. I can't think much. I'm so cold from sleeping in the cellar, my head feels like ice, and I imagine that all the worry is cracking it. It's only been two years and a half. I call outside, shouting of how we've not much time and to send more food or please break us free. I have to think that no one's there. Maybe my lady's family doesn't care if we die, or even remember us at all.

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Later

I've moved most of the remaining food up to our ground floor. It'll spoil faster out of the cold cellar, but at least the rats won't get it as easily. I've counted and measured, and we can't live four years on what the rats left behind. If I'm not too cold and tower-addled to do my figures, then we don't have enough to last a month.

I won't tell my lady. I don't think she'd understand. She barely speaks of late, barely notices me at all, even when I'm singing to her unknown ailment. Besides, I don't have the patience to hear her cry again.

Day 918

I've decided. We're going to live. It's such a relief! I begin to feel more my mucker self just to settle my mind on it. A mucker survives. No matter that we've not enough food. We'll find a way.

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Day 920

Yesterday morning, I sat scraping at the mortar between two bricks. I didn't make breakfast. I didn't do the washing. I just scraped, scraped, scraped. I broke our kitchen knife. It never was a good knife, but now we've got none at all. Today I tried a wooden spoon and grated the handle down to its bowl. I'll keep trying everything till the wall breaks or my fingers do. So what if the guards are ordered to kill us on sight? They may not even be out there, and that death isn't as sure as the starving death awaiting us.

Just now, rat meat sounds as tasty as winter antelope.

Day 921

Rat meat is

not

tasty.

I managed to beat one senseless with my broom. I cut it up and served the stringy meat boiled. It's all right for a mucker to hunt rats when the yak stops giving milk enough for cheese, but no gentry should, Ancestors forgive me. The rat tasted dull and bitter,

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as if it had been eating mud, but my lady just chewed and chewed and swallowed. How could she not ask where the fresh meat came from? Sometimes I wonder if her brain was set upside down.

Day 925

Under, god of tricks, must love rats. They remember me and won't let my broom near. Over the past two days, I've hit myself more times than I've come close to a rat. I wish I had a bow and arrow to hunt with, but I left all those mucker tools behind.

You know something odd? Even though their appetites are killing us, I actually like those rats. It makes me smile to think of how brilliant they are at surviving. I think her khan would laugh with me about this.

Day 928

If my script wiggles, it's because my hand won't be steady. This is what I've been hearing, echoing into our tower through the broken hole.

"It was a lookout tower that doesn't look out anymore." A man's voice. "See here? Steps lead to

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nothing, and these bricks aren't as old as the rest. The door's been bricked up just like the windows."

"And who told you there's a lady inside?"

"Who didn't tell me? That's been the rumor for years."

Some laughter. "Then she's waiting for us, isn't she? Just ripe for the picking."

"I get first go." A muffled thump.

"Don't use your shoulder, you yak head. That's solid bricking. Here, help me with that log. Mongke, Delger, come lend a hand!"

Later

It's been an hour I suppose, though it feels like days. The horrible knocking goes on, and I feel bruised just for hearing it. They move around the tower, testing the bricks, banging, trying to find a weak spot. Ancestors, after all my calling and praying, these are the men you send to break us out? Perhaps only Under heard me.

Forgive the wet marks here. I don't know if it comes from sweat or tears. My lady heard the banging and came to see what's happening. I didn't tell her what I heard the men say, but she guesses it's not

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her father come to beg pardon, guesses it's not her khan at rescue. I've set her in the cellar. She's a ball of trembling, the rats chittering around her. I told her to put her face in her knees when she cries so the men won't hear.

If they've come for a lady, they'll search the tower till she's found, I'd warrant. But maybe if they find me, they won't look too hard for another. Maybe they'll mistake me for the lady and leave when they're done. Carthen, goddess of strength, how I try to be brave! But I want to lock myself in the cellar, too. I want to run away. I don't want to see those men, I don't want what they'll do to me.

I make myself laugh, though silently, just thinking how I'll scratch them first. How I'll bite and tear at their eyes. I'll be more dangerous than a mad rat, and I'll fight just as hard to survive. I'm holding the shard of the kitchen knife in my left hand, a rag wrapped around one end so I can grip it fast. I will find their pig parts and cut them out before they touch me!

[Image: Picture of a Knife in a Scabbard]

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It was silent for minutes while I sketched. Now the battering again. I'm having trouble holding the brush.

Day 929

The wall still holds. How odd it is that, just now, that's a blessing.

Silence slumped against our door after the cold told us it was sundown. We slept with no fire, my lady and I tight together on the same mattress, too scared to climb back into the cellar because the ladder squeaks. In the tar black dark she begged me for a fire, but if the men see smoke in the chimney they'll know we're here, they won't give up then. I know why she begged, though it might've meant death. Even though we've spent three years in near dark, the total black scared me more than the thought of mud fever or even Lord Khasar. The total black filled my eyes and nostrils and throat and felt like forever.

Now, daylight noses through the broken hole, around the last bag of dried peas I jammed in front of it. I warmed ink and water in my hands enough to write. I have naught to say. I'm just looking for comfort in words.

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I wish I had a cat curled up in my lap, his sleep purr singing that everything is all right.

Another thought spins and spins in my head. If those men couldn't break our wall, what chance have we?

Day 930

A silent day. No fire. We chewed dried peas and drank water. Every moment I expect to hear another knock. I wonder if those men are crouching nearby, waiting to pounce at our first sound.

Day 931

The men haven't returned, or else they're removed from our tower, waiting for us to appear. It doesn't matter. We have to get out.

I spent the day chipping at the mortar around the dump hole, hoping that area was weaker than others. I used our pot lid, as the knife is now useless. No more voices, except the squeak of rats and my own scrape, scrape, scrape. The barrels are nearly empty, the last of the salted meat is reeking

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with rot. Even without rats and my lady's appetite, we wouldn't have lasted seven years unless her honored father had brought us fresh food. Now, we have just days left.