Young Warriors (11 page)

The tales are all now too well established for a little thing like truth to unseat them. My brothers, mortal and divine, saved me from Theseus, who was driven mad by my great beauty. The suitors hear the tales and come flocking like sheep to see me. I sit between my royal parents and receive them all most graciously, as befits a princess.

But under my gown I always wear a small bronze knife, under my bed I keep a battered helmet and a stolen sword, and in my heart I hold the knowledge that I am Helen: I make my own fate, my own choices, in my own time. I hold the blood of gods, the thunderbolt's inheritance, and I alone am master of the heavenly fire that is my freedom.

ESTHER FRIESNER

NEBULA AWARD WINNER Esther M. Friesner (the “M.” is optional) has published thirty novels and over one hundred short works in addition to editing seven anthologies, including the popular Chicks in Chainmail series. Her works have been published in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Russia, France, and Italy. She is also a published poet and a playwright and once wrote an advice column, “Ask Auntie Esther.” Besides winning two Nebula Awards for Best Short Story (in 1995 and 1996), she has been a Nebula finalist three times and a Hugo finalist once.

Esther loves looking at familiar characters in ways that are new but that actually make sense if you stop and
think
about it. For example, Helen of Troy was born a Spartan. Spartans gave both their sons
and
their daughters hard physical training. There's also evidence that Helen was the independent queen of Sparta. (This perspective also turns stereotypes and natural prejudices on their head, and who doesn't love that?)

Esther lives in Connecticut and has the regulation husband, two children, and author's cats, as well as an optional and fluctuating population of hamsters. Check out Esther's Web site for more hamster humor at
www.sff.net/people/e.friesner
.

DEVIL WIND

India Edghill

The thorns which I have reap'd are of the tree
I planted: they have torn me, and I bleed:
I should have known what fruit
would spring from such a seed.

—Byron,
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,
Canto IV, stanza 10

OUR LIVES ARE SHADOWS flung upon the world by a careless fire; dust blown by a cruel wind. But if we deal justly, and with honor, in this life, the gods will reward us in the next. So we are told. So I believed.

My mistress believed differently. To her mind, those who lived a good life in this world gleaned eternal favor of their single god. When first I heard this, it seemed to me that the English heaven must be full of English angels.

For if one need live only one good life, how hard could that be to achieve? And if one knew one had but a single life in which to obtain salvation, would not one tread lightly, speaking only fair words and giving lavish alms, lest one spoil a Christian's only chance to win heaven?

Well, however many lives we live, in each we are all young and credulous once. I soon understood that however many English souls basked in the glory of their god's radiance in their heaven, the Christian hell claimed even more of them.

Impatient fools.

In my last life, I had been good enough to be reborn human; bad enough to be born a girl. In compensation for being reincarnated female, I was granted beauty, and a father just rich enough to give me to a good, honest man at the proper time.

As was suitable, my husband was twice my age, old enough to be settled in his trade and to know how to treat a wife well. The man himself was handsome and kind, with a good job working for a rich English family. And he was alone, for some years ago cholera had killed all his family between one sunrise and another; being away in the Hills with his employers, he had escaped the dread sickness.

So I would be the only woman in his house. When I heard that, I went to the little shrine to Parvati I kept in my room and knelt before the goddess's image to give thanks. I gave the goddess a dozen new glass bangles, too. No mother-in-law to make my wedded life misery! What joy!

“So this is your new bride, Manoj. She is very pretty—and very young.” The English mem smiled at me; I ducked my head modestly, while keeping my slanted gaze fixed upon her face. This was the first time I had been close to an English-woman, and I was amazed by her skin's pallor. She looked as cool as new ivory.

But although her skin looked cold, her smile was warm as the sun that bright March day. “Welcome, my dear. I hope you will be happy with us.”

“For heaven's sake, Maud, don't be an idiot; the chit can't understand a word you say.” Her husband shifted, plainly restless and eager to be gone. “Very good, Manoj, and I suppose you'll expect a raise in your wages now. Well, I won't be held to ransom just because you've chosen to marry, and so I tell you. You'll get another twenty rupees a quarter and that's the limit.”

My husband heard this grudging offer placidly. “You are kind, sahib.” Manoj bowed; I wondered what he truly thought, but of course I could not speak now.

“That's done, then.”The English sahib nodded abruptly. “Maud, I'm off—don't expect me back until late.”

“Of course not, Gerald.” The lady's voice was soft and low; her smile never wavered—at least not until her husband had left the verandah.

Then she sighed, softly, so that only someone listening as closely as I would hear it. “Thank you, Manoj,” she said. “You may show your wife to your quarters now. And if she would like, she may act as ayah to the miss-sahiba. That will mean extra money, of course.”

“The memsahib is kind,” my husband said, and this time sounded as if he meant his words. Then, to my surprise, he spoke directly to me, in our own tongue. “You, too, should thank her, wife.”

Amazed to be addressed directly before another, I managed to whisper, “I thank you, memsahib.” Those badly spoken words used up half the English I had so painstakingly learned when I was told whom I was to marry, but my new mistress's face lit up.

“You speak English! How delightful! Well, then, you will be the perfect ayah for Estella; she chatters away like a little magpie in Hindustani and I can hardly understand a word she says. Now you can act as go-between for us.”

While I understood more English than I spoke, I barely grasped half a dozen words of this—but the memsahib's tone was warm, and she smiled, so I assumed she was pleased. Daring, I smiled back.

“That's all settled, then,” my new mistress said, and my husband bowed again and led me away to start my new life as his wife and as Miss Estella Humbolt's ayah.

I soon learned that Mrs. Humbolt had given me the position of ayah more to grant my husband increased income than because she thought me a suitable guardian for her daughter. For one thing, the miss-sahiba already had an ayah, a round, jolly-looking Muslim woman who had cared for Estella since the child was born.

When I met Fatima-ayah, I feared she would be jealous and torment me out of spite. But again I was favored by my goddess, for despite her affable, easygoing appearance, Fatima-ayah was a stickler for rules and for order.

Children are destroyers of both, so once she learned I knew my place and would not try to undermine her authority, Fatima-ayah was glad enough to have an assistant. For one thing, it added to her own importance. And for another, Fatima-ayah was no longer young. To have me to entertain and play with the miss-sahiba was a great relief to her.

Miss Estella was already past thirteen, and by English custom should have been sent over the black water to England itself at least half a dozen years ago. But as I learned, Gerald Humbolt spent lavishly upon himself but grew tight-pursed when it came to his womenfolk. Despite his wife's pleading, he had steadfastly refused to pay the money for Estella's passage and for her board and keep at an English school.

“Ai,
that was a time,” Fatima-ayah said. “The memsahib wept and called him child-killer, and claimed the right to use her own money to send Missy-baba away. But it came to nothing, for we were stationed far to the northwest then, in the High Hills, and what was our memsahib to do? So Missy-baba stayed—and still lives. She was born under a fortunate star.”

Fortunate indeed; it was known that India's air was deadly to English children once they passed their sixth year. That was why their mothers, weeping, sent their sons and daughters into exile.

“Would the sahib have sent a son to Belait, did he have one?” I asked.

Fatima-ayah shrugged in eloquent disparagement.

“Oh, aye, perhaps. But he loves his money, that one— more than he loves even himself, I think. And his wife's money he loves better still.”

I think Fatima-ayah was right. What else could explain Humbolt-sahib's anger at all the world save that he lacked all love, even of self? Why else could he not live peaceably with a good-tempered wife and a pretty daughter?

“Because he's a beast, Taravati, that's why.” That was Miss-baba Estella's answer to that riddle. Estella loved her father as little as he loved her; she rarely saw him, and all her affection was bestowed upon her mother and her ayah—and upon me, in time. For we became friends the moment our eyes met—nay, more than that. Sisters.

And that was the second reason our memsahib had granted me rank and status as Fatima-ayah's assistant. Miss-baba Estella led a lonely life; she was the only English child of her age in the station. Although I was a married woman, I was not yet twelve; less than two years separated us.

In truth, my job was not servant, but companion.

This suited both Estella and me perfectly. My wifely duties were hardly arduous. Many men would have claimed me as a true wife although I was barely past childhood, but Manoj did not. “The memsahib thinks you too young yet to be a wife,” my husband told me, “and so do I. We will wait.”

And just as I was too young to be a wife, Estella was far too old to be under the care of a baba-ayah.

So we spent our days together. In lieu of a governess, Mrs. Humbolt taught her daughter in the mornings. When she saw me watching the lessons from the corner, she invited me to be her student as well. “A well-tended mind is as important as a well-tended body,” Mrs. Humbolt said.

I begged my husband's permission for this, which he granted without even a grumble on the folly of teaching women. “Take what pleasure you can now,” he said, “for your life will be a wheel of work soon enough.” Yes, he was a good man, my husband; better than I deserved. Better than the fate he found.

So our mornings were given over to scholarship. During the heat of the day, we were supposed to rest within the bungalow, out of the deadly sun. The memsahib herself retreated to her own room, there to remove her clothing and lie in her chemise upon her bed. “Stay indoors, shun the sun,” English wisdom ran. “It will drive you mad, kill you, if you venture forth.”

Well, and so it would, had Estella and I been fool enough to venture forth clad in corsets and crinolines and half a dozen petticoats beneath a garment that covered us like a heavy skin. But when we claimed the afternoons for our own, we dressed in Punjabi garb; in cotton shalvar-kameez, with large veils to shield our heads from the sun, and our faces from curious eyes.

So clad, we explored the bazaar and the temples, the Moghul gardens and the riverbank. We ventured into places neither Miss Estella Humbolt nor Taravati, wife of Manoj, should have set her feet.

That was how we met the
jadu—
the witch.

Estella and I first heard rumors of this
jadu
in the bazaar as we shopped for jellabies. As we nibbled the sticky sweets— we dared not carry them home, for they would be instantly confiscated as unclean—a crowd of young men wandered past, aimless and seeking amusement.

The bazaar seemed, to their bored eyes, to offer a treasure trove for mischief. One of the youths snatched an embroidered slipper up from a row of footwear and brandished it. “What is this made of? I vow it's leather”—a terrible accusation to fling at a good Hindu merchant, and besides, the shoe was clearly velvet sewn with gold thread. The youth was trying only to start a quarrel, for excitement's sake.

But the merchants had no desire to lose a day's business for idle young men's pleasure. “Set that down, lout.” The slipper
-wallah
's neighbor, who offered cotton cloth goods, came to his fellow merchant's defense. “Off with you, or I shall summon a constable.”

“Summon—summon away—some day you'll summon in vain!” chanted the slipper-snatcher. “Some day a wind will rise and blow you all away, you and the English—some day soon—”

One of his fellows grabbed him and hauled him away before he could finish. Another yanked the embroidered slipper out of his hand and tossed it back to the slipper-merchant.

“Some day,” the sweet-maker mumbled, stirring boiling fat and preparing to drop another length of dough into the seething golden liquid. “Some day, some day—them and their some days. That old witch should watch what she says, or some day the English will come and blow
her
away!”

“What witch?” Estella asked.

“The old
jadu—
you don't want to see her, Miss-sahiba.” Although Estella liked to pretend she passed as an Indian girl, all the station-folk knew better. Except the English, of course.

“Why not?” The Miss-sahiba was nothing if not persistent.

“Because she's a
jadu.
” The sweet-man dropped dough into the sizzling fat and we watched as it turned into a jellaby before our eyes.
“Hai,
mind your fingers,
chota-mem.
They will burn.” He plucked the jellaby out of the fat and laid it atop the pile he had already cooked.

“Where does the
jadu
live? If I'm to avoid her, I must know where to not go.” Estella smiled; a charm which always worked.

“Then do not walk down by the bend of the river, by the old burning-ghat.” He folded a handful of jellabies into a length of brown paper and handed it to me. “Six
pice,
” he said.

“Two,” I said instantly.

“You willful girls will bankrupt me. I am a poor man. Five.”

In the end, I gave him three, and left him satisfied. Estella and I walked along slowly, nibbling jellabies, knowing we must wash carefully before either Mrs. Humbolt or Fatima-ayah spotted us. Jellabies are not a tidy food.

At the end of the bazaar street, I began to turn left, toward the bungalows, only to realize Estella had turned right. “Oh no,” I said.

“Oh yes,” Estella responded. “Don't you want to see a real
jadu
?”

“No,” I said promptly.

“Well, I do. She can tell our fortunes.”

“So can I, if we're found out!”

But it never did me any good to argue with Estella. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened had we gone straight home, that afternoon in early May. Most things would have fallen out just as they did, of course. But some would have died who lived, and some would have lived who died.

And some of those who died would not have rested easy, for there would have been no avenger to free their mourning ghosts.

When Estella and I approached the
jadu
's hut, the sun was high overhead and all about us was silence, save for the endless murmur of the muddy river. I had ample time on the walk there to think of all the punishments both Mrs. Humbolt and my husband might mete out if this escapade were discovered.

“She's not here.” My relief was plain in my voice.

“Don't be silly, Tara—where else would she be?”

“Getting water from the river,” said a voice like a silver bell, and Estella and I gasped in guilt and fear as we whirled to face the witch.

She stood no taller than we did ourselves, although she was plainly a woman grown. She wore only a length of worn silk tucked around her hips as a skirt; her head and arms and breasts were bare. A necklace of little skulls hung about her neck, and iron bangles adorned each wrist. Her hair fell down her back in long cords and knots to her knees. Her hands were stained crimson to the wrist.