The Pattern Scars (3 page)

“Why do rich men come to you?” I asked Yigranzi one day. It was autumn; three of the tree’s leaves were scarlet, one was yellow, and the rest had already fallen.

“For the same two reasons all men come,” she replied, “and women, too. Two reasons; you’ll learn this. To hear what they think they already know about what the Pattern holds for them, or to be surprised.”

“What if they don’t like what you see?”

She smiled her smile of holes and took the mirror from my lap. (She had not let me look for a vision in it since that first day—and I had not wanted to—but she said I should get used to the feel of it.)

“Many don’t. Many bluster and stamp, and some grab hold of you and shake you until you’re dizzy. So you have to learn calm. To wait for their anger to pass, if it’s all-of-a-sudden anger, or to speak quietly before it can grow. You have to tell them:
The Pattern is not set. I see the truth of
you
, before and now, and the maybe of your future. But nothing is set; it is only waiting.
”

I shook my head. “No—the Pattern
is
set—that’s what everyone says.”

Yigranzi was silent for a bit, as she folded the mirror into a square blue cloth stitched with golden spirals. When she was done she placed the bundle inside the tree, then turned back to me.

“In Sarsenay they think this, yes. Not where I come from. There we know that what seers find in men is truth, but also that it does not have to be.”

I shook my head again and must have scowled, because Yigranzi laughed and said, “You’ll grasp it someday, Sarsenayan or not,” which only made me scowl more.

Most of the things she said to me were simple. “You must eat well before you use your Othersight—but nothing rich or heavy, because sometimes the strength of your vision will make you vomit. As you’ve already found out, no?” (She had never asked me to tell her about my first vision, though with Bardrem it had become a half-jest: “Tell me now. No? Very well—now? Or maybe now?”)

“In times of great difficulty for all—wars or plagues or famines—people want to know about their children. At other times they mostly want to know about themselves.”

“When your monthly bleeding begins, your Otherseeing will grow stronger, especially when you have visions for other women. Blood gives power.”

Although she did not allow me to use her mirror again, in those first months, she did teach me different ways to Othersee. There was wax, melted and poured into a bowl of cold water, and kitchen scraps (Bardrem brought them and sulked when he was not permitted to stay): crumbled-up stale bread and chicken bones, thrown into wind. “Once someone has asked you to Othersee for them, anything that forms a pattern will help you. Each way has a different strength, and each seer reacts differently to them.”

“And when will I try these ways?” I asked, wriggling on the brightly patterned hide stool by her bed.

“Later,” she said, “when you have learned more.”

“But I want to try now—the wax one, because it’s pretty.”

“No, Nola. Not yet.”

“Teldaru went to the castle two days after he found out he had the Othersight! The king didn’t make
him
wait. All you do is show me. You don’t let me
do
anything!”

She gazed at me with her eyes that were always black-and-pearl. She had not told me what it was like to see normally, with these eyes, even though I had asked. She had told me so little—only the simple things, the ones I probably would have found out on my own anyway. I glared back at her, not fidgeting any more.

“Two months ago,” she said slowly, in a strange voice that had nothing of Sarsenay in it; only depth and lilt that sounded wild and very old, “you were living in filth. Two months ago you were eight years old and likely to die of sickness or at your own mother’s hand—eight years old and lucky if you saw nine. And now here you sit, forgetting your ‘before’ and even your ‘now’ because you’re as tempted by your ‘later’ as anyone else who walks into this courtyard to find me.”

I felt my lip wobbling and bit it to keep it still. I didn’t want her to notice but of course she did.

“Nola. Child.” Her usual voice, and a smile. “I was fifteen when I came to Sarsenay. A strange land and stranger people, and me alone. I remember what it is to want and to need, and to forget everything else.” She rose from her bed and then bent to touch my cheek. She had never touched me before. I think now that no one had ever done so with any tenderness—and that was partly why I flinched away from her hand. As she went to the other side of the room, I stared at her carpets, which were small, nubbly with wool ends, and woven in every colour, even ones I couldn’t name.

“Be patient,” she said. I heard water pouring into a cup—probably her ceramic one, which was short and squat and had an orange background with a black crab painted on it. I liked this one because the crab’s claws looked like they were lifting off the pottery; like they might pinch your lips or your nose. “The Othersight is difficult to have, and you are still young, and there will be time to do, after you have learned. Be patient, Nola, yes?”

I lifted my eyes from the rugs and looked at her. “Yes,” I said, and I believe that I meant it. I believe that I did intend to try for patience, restraint, obedience.

I was young, though, and I failed.

It began with a poem.

A girl lives here who needs your eye

To look at her and then to scry

So tell me yes and I’ll tell her

No one will have to know.

It took me several minutes to read this poem, because I was simply slow (my father had taught me to read a little, years ago; my mother laughed at us and then got angry), and because it was written in tiny letters on a piece of paper that fit in my palm. Also, it was smoky in the kitchen, even though the window shutters and door were open to the autumn air.

I had just finished squinting at this scrap of paper when Bardrem dropped another one into my lap. I glared at him but he was already gone, whirling from countertop to cookpot with trays of carrots and potatoes while Rudicol yelled, “My granddam moves faster than you, boy, and I don’t even have to flog her!”

The words on this second bit of paper were not a poem. They said: “My poems are usually very serious. That one was like a joke—but what it
said
was real. Wait for me after. Bardrem.”

I peered again at the poem, frowning. I thought I understood it, except that it didn’t seem possible. (My heart was already beating faster than usual, in a place that felt very high up, closer to my throat than to my chest.)

“Who is she?” I asked him later. It was about midnight; my room was dark except for the flickering of a single candle. I had fallen asleep waiting for him and was now trying to shake the heaviness from my head and limbs without seeming to.

He shrugged. “Just a girl. I think she’s fifteen.”

“Why doesn’t she want to go to Yigranzi?”

Another shrug, and eyes cast toward the ceiling from beneath a swatch of fair hair. “Because . . . I don’t know. I think she might not like her. Because of where she’s from, what she looks like. Something like that.”

“Oh.” I blinked and ran the back of my hand across my eyes, trying to make it look as though I was itchy rather than tired. Bardrem had begun pacing from one end of the room to the other, whirling at each turn as if he were still in the kitchen.

“I shouldn’t. Yigranzi’s told me not to. I don’t know enough—I haven’t practised since that time with you, and the mirror was so strong—”

“So don’t use the mirror. Try another way. You know some, don’t you?”

My heartbeat was so close to my throat that I thought I might not be able to speak—but I did, said, “Wax on water . . .”

“Good.” He was already at the door. “I’ll go get some for you. And I’ll get her, too.”

“No—wait—” But he was already gone, and it was too late.

The wax was wine-coloured and the girl looked young.
Fifteen?
I thought, staring at her blond plaits (rows of them, all tied at the ends with blue ribbons), and at her scowl.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she said. Her voice was a surprise: low and dark. “You’re not Otherseeing yet, are you?”

“No.” I tried to keep my own voice calm, as Yigranzi had told me to. “But I need to look at you, before. I need to see you with my own eyes first.” I felt silly saying these words, because I hadn’t thought of them and because I didn’t really believe them. All I saw now was a girl with squinty green eyes and thinned-out lips and a sleeping gown that was too big for her.

“Ready,” Bardrem said. He was at the washstand; the pitcher was on the floor, though the bowl was still where it usually was, full, waiting to serve this new purpose. I went to stand beside him. He was holding a little clay pot above the candle flame. The pot was swimming with wax.

“Stand here,” I said. The girl obeyed. I was not sure whether I wanted to smile or tremble. I took the pot from Bardrem, who stepped away, out of my sight. I tipped, poured; the wax fell in slow, fat drops that darkened and spread as soon as they touched the water.

“Now,” I heard Bardrem hiss, and the girl cleared her throat.

“Tell . . .” she began, then faltered. “Tell me my future”—louder, almost angrily.

Words, wax, water—and my vision staining wine at the edges.

The girl is there—her shadow in the wax-blotched water, but also her Otherself, solid and see-through. She is naked. Her nipples are very dark; I think,
Wax
, but then see how wet the darkness is. One drip, and another, and I think, knowing
this
is truth:
Blood
. The belly beneath her breasts is swollen in a way I recognize. Blood spatters onto flesh, making new patterns, lines like snakes. There are snakes everywhere, suddenly: crimson ones emerging scale by scale from the girl’s distended bellybutton. Their tongues fork fresh blood, which sprays toward me. I hear myself cry out once, and again as I wrench my gaze away from the bowl.

I was on the floor, my legs twisted beneath me. The girl—the real one—was gaping down at me. “What?” Bardrem’s voice, but I could not see him. All I saw were the girl’s wide eyes and the cream-coloured, lace-trimmed cloth that had slipped off her shoulder.

“Snakes.” I didn’t wait to breathe or think; just spoke the words that were as thick as my tongue in my mouth. “You’re having a baby but instead it’s snakes and you’re bleeding from everywhere, especially where the milk should be—”

The girl screamed. She screamed only once, but it was piercing and pure—almost like music—and moments later there were footsteps in the corridor outside.

Yigranzi was wearing a long, shapeless robe with splotches of rainbow colour on it. The girls gathering behind her were wearing their own night clothes: dresses cut to mid-thigh; dresses made of long strips of cloth that whispered apart to reveal kohl-patterned skin. I saw all these things with a clarity that hurt me like a headache.

“Go. All of you.”

There were no more girls, after Yigranzi said this—except for the one, of course, who had wrapped her arms around herself. She was shaking so violently that her sleeping gown slipped all the way off her shoulders. I could see her nipples through the knot of her arms. They were dark but did not look anything like blood.

“I said
go
.” This to Bardrem, who was still standing by the washstand. The jug on the floor by his feet had fallen over. He glanced from Yigranzi to me and Yigranzi stepped toward him, her arm raised, her hand a fist. He left in a flurry of limbs and hair, and then there were only three of us left in the room.

“Child.” Yigranzi had turned to the shivering girl. She reached out her dark, round-knuckled hand and put it gently on the girl’s bare shoulder. The girl made a low, ragged, animal sound. She clawed at Yigranzi’s hand with both of her own, which were white and slender, and I couldn’t tell whether she was trying to clutch or to push away.

“Sit, child,” Yigranzi said in a quiet voice I had never heard before. “Sit and talk to me. I will pour you some wine, and there is a blanket there—”