The Space Between (4 page)

"Yes. I believe you have
woken everyone." Meledrin glanced over her shoulder and saw a dozen
more elves almost upon them. "Pardon? Dwarf?" She turned back to
the stranger and lowered her bow. She had suspected he was a dwarf,
but she had never seen one up close and would never have assumed.
But he thought
she
was a dwarf?

"Work starts at dawn. That's the rule. Every
dwarf knows that. And you dwives should know it too, if you're
going to help."

"I'm sure. Perhaps you might have thought of
some quieter work?" Meledrin thought it strange, chatting with a
dwarf while the sun was still struggling to lift its weight above
the horizon, but what else was she to do?

The ugly little man shrugged. "This is what
needed doing. Winter's coming and if we can't dry meat properly we
might have problems."

"Undoubtedly." The residents of Grovely had
eaten mainly fruit and vegetables in recent years. The men trekked
to the human markets and traded highly sought after elfish craft
products for whatever else they required. The smoking shed had not
been used for a long time.

But the dwarf nodded as if pleased she could
see the sense of it. "Keeble's the name. Pleased to meet you. I
asked to be reassigned to your work gang. You don't have a center
punch, do you? These nails just don't look right."

She examined the nails, considering what
might be the correct aesthetic for such things — Palsamon would
know — before shaking her head. "My name is Meledrin." She wondered
what else she might say. Manners dictated that she talked to him,
but she really wanted to be somewhere else. She could smell the
sweat on him. And Keeble was obviously having problems she could
not comprehend.

Others finally started to arrive, all with
arrows nocked and ready.

"What is happening?" Takande asked as she
came to a halt beside Meledrin. Her long blonde hair was loose and
she wore only a sleeping robe that failed to cover her knees, but
her bow was ready.

"They breed dwarves to look like trees out
here, do they? Or is it just the dwives?"

Meledrin gestured vaguely. "Takande, Keeble
is repairing the smoking shed."

"So I see. He is a dwarf, is he not?"

"Yes."

Takande nodded as if that explained
everything. Meledrin decided that quite possibly it did.

"Why is he repairing the smoking shed?"
someone asked. It was a young man, and he was not looking at the
dwarf, but rather at Takande's legs.

"It is what dwarves do," Delfrana explained,
moving towards the front of the group. "Go and get dressed,
Takande. That is not decent." She poked the younger elf with the
stick as she continued forward. Without the support she wavered
dangerously and a Warder rushed forward to steady her. "Lacking
work and community, dwarves go batty: it is a documented fact. From
what this individual did out in the forest, I would say he is well
on the way."

"What did he do?"

"Started things that he failed to
complete."

The dwarf rose to his feet, his face set. It
appeared he would say something, but his eyes glazed over and he
turned instead to examine his handiwork. "Done," he said
eventually, with a small, teeth-clenching smile. "No smoke will get
out of there." He turned back for another look. Whatever had been
troubling him a moment before was forgotten. "If we had some mud,
we could do some daub to really make sure."

"No. That will not be necessary."

"Well, I guess I'll get started on one of
the other buildings then. I saw some loose shutters earlier.
Hanging terrible, they were."

"No. That will not be necessary either."

"Oh."

Delfrana hobbled forward to get a better
look at the dwarf with her bad eyes. The old woman wrinkled her
nose in concentration. Or maybe she had noticed his stench as well
and was unable to hide her disgust. Meledrin felt several women
tense, ready to leap to the High Warder's protection.

"What crime did you commit?"

"What? None." Keeble fiddled with some of
the wheels on his mechanical hand, winding the two pronged forks
closer together then further apart.

"Oh, do not take me for a fool, boy. You are
a Wanderer, are you not? No other dwarf would leave the mountains
of his own accord. What did you do?"

The dwarf hesitated. He examined the nails
in his hand.

"What?"

"I failed the Singing Test. But I'm not a
Wanderer. They gave me a choice. Change gangs or leave."

"Oh, I see." Delfrana grunted, relenting
slightly. "Why did you try if you were unable to do it? That is the
thing that always confuses me."

"I could do it, though."

Delfrana grunted again. "Obviously."

Meledrin was confused. Dwarves valued
singing so highly they would cast out one of their own who could
not do it? That did not seem right. It did not fit with what she
knew of the uncouth, uncivilized people.

"So, what would you like me to do then?"
Keeble asked. "If you don't want me to fix the shutters? If you
have a center punch I could finish this job properly."

"I think, actually, that you should
leave."

"Leave?"

"We cannot have you waking up decent people
at all hours of the night with your hammering. Go home, lad. Die
with your family."

"But they will not take me back." He
scratched at the turf with his boot. "I was assigned to this work
gang."

"It is not possible for you to stay
here."

Meledrin did not like Keeble with his dark,
messy hair and heavy lidded eyes, but if he would die if left on
his own, she did not feel it was civilized to send him away.
"Delfrana," she said, almost taking a step back when the old woman
rounded on her. "If all he needs is community and work, we can
offer both, surely."

"Do you like rising before
dawn, Meledrin? Do you wish to do that every day? And for a dwarf,
being near people is not enough. He will need almost constant
interaction. Talking, talking, talking, every hour of the day.
Probably talks in his sleep. He will say more in an hour than you
will say in an entire day. In two days. Elves like to talk,
Meledrin, but all our talk has a purpose. A dwarf will make inane
chatter all day while he thinks of something he
really
wants to say."

Meledrin dreaded the thought of listening to
Keeble's rough, deep voice all day but could not condemn him to
death on that basis alone. "It cannot be that bad, surely."

There was muttering from among the
group.

"Are you questioning me?"

"No, High Warder, but surely you cannot wish
for him to die."

"I do not wish for him to die, Meledrin, but
whatever he is to do, I wish for him to do it in some other
location."

Meledrin wanted to say more, drew a breath
to do it, but forestalled.

Delfrana noticed and gave her a solid poke
with her walking stick. "Very well, Warder, the dwarf can stay."
She smiled coldly. "But he is your responsibility, every moment of
every day."

Meledrin gasped and tried to order her
thoughts. "I am to be with him all the time, or I am to be held
accountable?"

"You are to be accountable. You can let him
do whatever he wishes, but if he does something I do not like, you
will pay the same price as he." Delfrana's smile grew. "Either
that, or we send him on his way."

Meledrin chewed on her bottom lip as she
thought. She did not want the dwarf dead, but she hardly wanted to
be his nursemaid either when he may well be completely insane. He
certainly did not look complete, standing bemused but smiling while
his future was decided. And she did not want to spend her days in
his company. Meledrin almost told Delfrana to send him on his way —
how would she get any reading done if he were constantly talking —
but she felt a hand grip hers. She did not have to look to know
that it belonged to Palsamon. She would know his hand anywhere: the
strong fingers, the callous on the heel of his thumb. His hand
squeezed hers slightly, and she knew, suddenly, that she could not
back down. Delfrana would never forget her small rebellion either
way, but the others would only forget if Meledrin was proven to be
correct. And for her to be correct, the dwarf had to stay.

"Very well, Delfrana. I shall be the dwarf's
mother." The child she was not sure she wanted to have.

Delfrana laughed at that and shook her head,
but Meledrin saw the sneer that crossed her face first. "Very well,
Meledrin, Warder of dwarves, but I shall be watching."

"I am sure you will," Meledrin muttered when
the old woman had turned away.

"Takande," Delfrana said as she started to
make her slow way back to her home, "I thought I instructed you to
get dressed." She thumped the younger elf with her stick. "Do not
come complaining to me when some dirty saveigni touches you."

"Was that wise?" Palsamon asked quietly,
when the others had walked away.

Meledrin sighed and turned to look at the
dwarf. "You told me to do it."

Palsamon laughed. "Did I? Well, yes, perhaps
I did, but only right at the end. You got to that end by
yourself."

"Wise or not, it is done and cannot be
undone."

"You don't have a center punch, do you?"
Keeble asked.

"Do you think I was correct?"

Palsamon turned her to face him. "Of course
I do, but perhaps we are a little bit different from everyone
else."

Meledrin knew her
relationship with Palsamon was strange but had never thought
that
she
was
strange. She looked at the retreating elves and took a deep breath.
"Perhaps we are."

"These nails just don't look right. Where do
you dwarves keep all your tools? I'll see if I can find a center
punch." Keeble started to stride away towards the houses and
Meledrin was forced to rush to catch up. Palsamon stayed by her
side.

"Do you think he would bathe if we suggested
it?" Meledrin asked.

3: Builder

Keeble put down his borrowed hammer and rose
to his feet. Normally he wouldn't have laid a hammer on the grass,
but the tool was already terribly rusted. In the two days he'd been
in Grovely, none of the other dwarves had shown any concern about
the state of their equipment.

"A bit more rust won't even be noticed."

Turning around, he strained his senses as he
fiddled nervously with the gears on his mechanical hand.

"What is it, Keeble?"

Keeble had almost forgotten Meledrin was
there. It felt as if he were talking to himself half of the time.
She'd done some archery earlier but for most of the morning she had
been reading, leaning back against a tree, long legs stretched out
on the grass before her. He thought it strange that a dwarf would
sit all day when there was work to be done, but he didn't mind. It
just meant there was more for him. There was also a nagging thought
about women.

"Shhh. Can't you hear it?" He scratched his
chin with his fake hand. The gears caught in his beard, horribly
short though it was, and he winced as he freed himself.

"Hear what?"

'Hear' wasn't exactly the right term. He
turned to the east, peering through the trees as if he might be
able to see what he couldn't exactly hear. But for all of his
looking and listening, Keeble couldn't decide the origin of the
feeling that had gripped him. "Don't know where it's coming from,"
he said.

He realized, standing in the shade as the
sun dipped down towards the horizon, that the sensation had been
present for a long time. "Been there for a while. Don't know how
long, but I finally realized what it is." Or what it almost was. Or
what it might be. He grunted in disgust. "Should've worked it out
ages ago."

"Am I able to hear what?" Meledrin repeated.
Rising to her feet and waving her hands in one of her silly little
ceremonies, she followed his gaze through the trees.

"Singing," Keeble said. He looked around.
"Where's my multi-tool." He'd found it in a shed and claimed it as
his own but was forever forgetting where he put it. With an axe on
one side and a sledgehammer on the other, it was extremely useful.
When he saw it lying on the ground nearby he stooped to collect it
then took a few steps forward. He thought perhaps he should finish
the gate before he left. He turned back to look at the gate that
kept the three sheep in the pen. The fence had obviously been
repaired recently as well. "Timber's such a horrible medium," he
said. "Who'd want to make anything from timber?" He shrugged. "It's
only a gate."

"Singing?" Meledrin asked.

"I don't like singing much," Keeble said.
"You dwarves sing way too much. Must be all the timber, I
reckon."

"You said you were able to hear
singing."

He cocked his head to listen. "You're
right," he said, once he'd caught the faint tickle of it in his
mind. He was surprised Meledrin had noticed. "It sounds almost like
the magical part of Rock Singing, but not quite." He couldn't hear
the magic, of course, but he could feel the power of it, the
rhythms and melodies waltzing in his mind.

"I hear nothing."

"But you just said..." Keeble grunted in
disgust. Looking around for the source of the Singing, he
discovered that someone had left a gate half repaired. He shook his
head. "Very lazy." He would've finished the job himself but he
didn't have time. Making a guess, he strode away through the trees.
Meledrin, muttering under her breath, collected her book and bow,
and hurried after him, covering the ground one step to his two.

After several minutes of walking Keeble
stopped to look. He turned a full circle. "This way," he said,
picking a new direction and starting forward again. The feeling was
growing within him, flowing into the cracks and fissures of his
mind.