The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped (37 page)

They went out onto the avenue, still hand in hand, lost in the gentle music of Bottommost, to remember it always as magical and wonderful, more wonderful than any of the truly wonderful things which were to follow.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Lantern-eyed, fluff-winged she flew along the root wall, soft as down, observant as any owl in the dusk, peering at this, that, the other thing. There were many small creepies, many larger ones as well—claws gently waving, and things that came to the claws thinking they were something else; shelves of fungus in colours of amber and rose, washed into grays by the green light; other fungoid growths hanging upon the roots themselves in pendant fronds, projecting horns and antlers and mushroomy domes, pale as flesh, moist as frogs.

There was a chorus of smells, rich and fecund stenches, rot and mildew and earthy green slime. There were greens innumerable, bronzy green and amber green and the blue-green of far seas not remembered by the people in the chasm. The air was wet, wetter the lower she went, full of mist wraiths which seemed in any instant almost to have coherent shape. Her wings were wet and heavy, and she changed the structure of her feathers to shed the damp, bringing a clear set of membranes across her eyes at the same time.

Those who might have known her in the white bird shape would not have known her in her present form, and she took pleasure in this, in this renewed feeling of anonymity, of remoteness. Beedie was a good girl; Roges a treasure; the theoretician an interesting find; Mercald a necessary burden—and not good enough to be a partner for Handbright as she had been, though perhaps better than one could have expected for Handbright as she was now—but there was much to be said for solitude. There was time for contemplation, time for feeling the fabric of the place, time for memory.

There had been another place, not unlike the chasm in its watery light, a pool-laced forest, green under leaves, full shadowed in summer warmth and breathless with flowers. Mavin had come there in the guise of a sweet, swift beast, four-legged and lean, graceful a s the bending grass. It had been a shape designed for the place, needful for the place, and her body had responded to that need without thinking. So she had, unaware she was observed, wandered, unaware until she came one dawn to the shivering silver pool and saw her own image standing there, head regally high, crowned with a single spiraled horn like her own, male as she was female, unquestionably correct for that place, that time, without any requirement for explanation.

And there had been a summer then, without speech or thought or plan for the morrow; a summer which spun itself beneath the leaves and over the welcoming grass, sparkling with sun shards and bathed in dew. Morning had gone into evening, day into day, as feet raced upon the pleasant pastures and across the mysterious hills. And then a day, a day with him gone.

She had never named him in her mind, except to believe that whoever he was, he was Shifter like herself, for there was no such supernally graceful beast in the reality of this world, had never been, probably now would never be again. And when a certain number of days had gone without his return, she had shifted herself and left the place behind her, sorrowing that she would not know him again if she met him in a street of any town or upon the road to anywhere at all. Outside of that place, that stream-netted garden of gold-green light, what they had been together would have no reality.

It was the sight of Roges’ face that had made her think of this, Roges’ face as he brooded over Beedie who, though she was beside him, did not see the way he looked at her. In that silken passionate look which reverberated like soft thunder was what she had felt in the summer garden. And it made her think of something more, of that same expression seen fifteen years before on the face of the Wizard Himaggery. Twenty years, he had said. Return to him in twenty years. Over three-quarters of that time was gone. Well, she could not think of that now, not with Handbright’s child soon to be delivered, and Mavin soon to take it away to be safely reared as a Shifter’s child should be reared—not with the chasm to be explored—and all these lands beyond the sea.

She moved out into the chasm, away from the root wall, attracted by a hard-edged shape which spiraled down toward her. It was one of the rigid frameworks webbed with flopperskin which the Messengers used to fly between bridgetowns, gliding on the warm, u prising air to carry messages from Topbridge to Harvester’s. She flew close, wondering what brought a Messenger to these depths.

It was no Messenger. The kite held a young man’s body, shrouded in white upon the gliding frame, staring with unseeing eyes into the misty air. There were embroidered shoes upon his feet, a feathered cap upon his head, and his hands were tied together before him with a silken scarf. Someone had decked the beloved dead for this last flight. Someone had set dreams aside, love aside, to grieve over this youth, and in that grieving, had realized there would be no more time in which to dream.

She flew aside, eyes fixed upon those dead eyes, as though she might read something there, accompanying the body down as it fell, turn on wide turn into the narrowing depths. At last she let it go, watching as it twirled into the chasm, softly as a leaf fells, the bright feather upon the cap catching at her vision until it vanished in mist.

No more time in which to dream. Twenty years. The bird body could not hold the pain which struck at her then, a shiver of grief so great that she cried out, the sound echoing from root wall to root wall, over and over again, in a falling agony of sound. She did not often think of herself as mortal.

“I will return,” she promised herself. “I will return.”

And was Himaggery still alive in that world across the sea? Must be, her mind told her sternly. Must be. I would have known if anything had happened to him. I could not have failed to know.

There, in the chasm mists, the Mavin-bird sang its determination and decision, even while it sought for mystery in the chasm with wide eyes.

Back in the guest rooms of Bridgers House, Roges lay with his head in Beedie’s lap and read to her.

“ ‘In the time of the great builders, the outcaste Mirtylon (he whose name came from the ancient times above the chasm) took captive the maiden daughter of the designer of Firstbridge, the Great Engineer, she whom he called Lovewings after the love he bore her mother who had died. For the Great Engineer had forbidden his daughter to marry Mirtylon, though he had sought her in honor and in love, for the Great Engineer feared to lose her from his house.

“ ‘And Mirtylon fled from the wrath of the Great Engineer, into the bottomless depths of the chasm, root to root, with his f ollowers, losing themselves in the shadowy lands beneath the reach of the sun. Then it was the Great Engineer wept and foamed in his fury, for taken from him was what he held most dear in all his life, for Lovewings had gone with them. And he fell into despair. And in his despair he failed to set the watch upon the bridge, and in the night the great pombis came, lair upon lair of them out of the darkness, driving the people of Firstbridge down into the chasm to the half-built city of Secondbridge, called by some Nextdown. And though many came there for refuge, the Great Engineer was slain together with the Maintainers of his house.

“ ‘But unknowing of this was the outcaste Mirtylon and unknowing of this was Lovewings—who would have been greatly grieved, for she loved her father—so she married Mirtylon of her own will and lived with him in a cave at great depth upon the root wall while those who followed him drew great mainroots together for the establishment of the town of Watertight. In those depths the light was that found deep in river pools of their former lands, mysterious and shadowy. And in time the bridgetown of Watertight was built, and Bridgers were sent from it to build a stair along the morning-light wall which should reach from Watertight upward to the run of the chasm. And in time the Bridgers so sent met the Bridgers of Nextdown upon the root wall, and the news of the death of the Great Engineer, her father, came to Lovewings.

“ ‘Then did she feel great guilt and great despair, accounting herself responsible for what had occurred, for she well knew with what value her father had held her. And she went to Mirtylon and told him she would go away for a time, to expiate her guilt in loneliness after the manner of her religion, but he would not let her go.

“And by this time the stair which Mirtylon had ordered to be built stretched upward from the depths into the very midst of the chasm, to the new-built bridge of Bottommost. Forbidden to expiate her guilt Lovewings took herself to the highest point which had yet been built and threw herself into the depths so that none saw her more. This is the story told of her, for none knew the truth of it save that she had climbed the stair and came no more to Watertight.

“ ‘And Mirtylon despaired, ordering that the stair be shattered, that none might walk that way again. So it was broken, and all connection between Watertight and the other cities of the chasm was cut off.

“ ‘Still the Messengers flew between the bridges, and there was trade of a kind between them, with much gathering of gems and diamonds from the Bottom lands by those of Watertight, and much trading of this treasure for the foodstuffs which grew high above. And though people of the bridgetowns were curious as to the source of the treasure, the secret was well kept by the people of Watertight who would say only that the treasure was gathered at great danger to themselves from that which dwelt in the Bottomlands below.

“ ‘Until came a day the Messengers flew to Watertight to find it gone, its place empty, the roots severed, the people gone, all in one night, vanished as though taken by a Demon or devil of the depths.

“ ‘And of Mirtylon many songs are sung, and of Lovewings, and of the vanished bridge which is called Lostbridge, and of the shattered stair ...”

“And that,” Roges said, “is that. There’s another story here about Lovewings. You want to hear it?”

“No,” said Beedie definitely. “It’s depressing. All that guilt and foolishness and throwing themselves about. I would like to know where the bridge went, though.”

“So would Mavin,” said Roges. “And I doubt not she’ll find out, one way or another. Whatever she may be, she is very positive about things. I wonder who she is—what she is ...”

“I don’t know. She’s like the birdwoman. I mean, there are two of them, sisters. That’s all I know. What I think about how she came when I was caught on the root, dying in the smoke, I know I should be frightened of her. But I’m not. She’s just not scary.”

“I think she’s scary.” Roges was serious, worried. “Though I try not to show it. She knows things. That’s scary.”

“Oh, the theo ... theor ... the whatsit knows things, too. And I know things. And some are the same things, and some are different things. That’s all. It doesn’t matter to her.  It shouldn’t matter to you.”

Roges laughed, burrowed the back of his head into her lap, reached up to touch her face. “Beedie, you don’t have any doubts at all, do you?”

“Hardly any,” she agreed, in surprise that he should ask. “It seems an awful waste of time. You just do things, and if it doesn’t work, then you do something else next time. Sitting around having doubts is very wasteful. At least, it seems so to me.”

“Don’t you ever worry about whether things are right or wrong?”

“Daddy and mum taught me what wrongs are. I don’t do wrongs. I take care of my tools, and I don’t risk my neck on the roots, and I’m castely in my behavior—mostly—and polite to my elders. I don’t tell lies. What else would you like to know about me?”

“Are you religious?”

“Oh, foof, Roges. You know I’m not. Just enough to make sort of the right responses to noon prayers, and that’s about it. Are you?”

“Some,” he admitted. “I wonder about the Boundless a lot.”

“Maybe you should have been a Birder.”

“Maybe I was born a Birder. No one knows. I was found on the root wall, a foundling.”

“Oh, Roges. That’s very sad. Why, do you suppose?”

“I don’t know. Never knew. Tried not to wonder.”

“I’m sure I know,” she said, grinning at him, not letting him see she was beginning to tear up again. “You were so beautiful a baby that everyone looked at you all the time. Your aunt had an ugly baby no one ever looked at, and it made her so jealous that she stole you away from your mum and daddy and hid you on the root wall, giving out the slow-girules had carried you away. And ever since then they’ve been longing for you, unable to find you at all.”

“Not very likely,” he said. “They’d have found me by now.”

“That could be true. Well then, we’ll say they got very sick from their loss, and they both almost died from despair. And their elders told them they had to give the mourning up.”

“Now who’s making stories about guilt and despair?” he asked her in mock fury. “Beedie. You’re a crazy child.”

“I’m not a child,” she said, suddenly deciding it was time to prove it to him. “Not a child at all.”

They were interrupted by Mavin’s voice from the doorway, warm and amused. “I see I interrupt. Well, such is my fete. I have found the broken stairway, young ones.” They turned to her, a little dizzy and unaware, not believing her at first, faces questioning. “True! Surprisingly, it is still there. Nothing has eaten it. It hasn’t rotted. It is hatcheted away at the top end, but the rest of it goes down and down—overgrown a little, true—into the depths.”

Then they were both on their feet, the books—and other things—forgotten for the moment. “Did you go to the bottom? Have you seen it? Shall we go now?” asked Beedie, ready as ever for action.

“I saw only a little. The light is scant enough at this depth, and what is there is waning. I think we will go at first light tomorrow. While I saw no signs of the gray oozers on the morning-light wall, it should be easier to avoid them in light. So. Let us go in light, such as it is.” And she stretched herself upon the bed in the room. “Go on with whatever you were doing ...”

“Oh, Mavin,” Beedie growled. “You are not always very funny.”

“Not always,” agreed Roges in a wry voice. “I think it would be a good idea for all of us to get some rest and a good meal here at Bridgers House tonight.” He took up the books, placing them in a neat stack on the table beside Mavin’s bed.