THE DAUMAN MARCHES
That morning, from the top of the hill, she looked down into a little valley and in the midst of the green trees was smoke and the smoke came from a narrow chimney, and the chimney came from a little stone house.
You will be safe there. That house is the safest house in the world for you, daughter.
Theone knew it beyond the shadow of a doubt, and so she rode down to it. She disappeared into the woods on her roan, knowing that when she came out of the greenery she would be at the house and someone would be there to greet her.
“Why are you like that?”
Theone did not answer immediately. Though, of course, she was the only other person in the room, she was always sure he was speaking to someone else.
“I don’t know what you mean?”
“That first time you were frozen because you were nervous. But now, everytime…” Gimble said, “I feel when you are about to open up to me. And then you close. I feel when you are about to let go, to enjoy, to let it be more than a service—”
“But it is a service.”
“Thinking of it that way, holding onto your pride, won’t make you one bit freer one bit sooner,” Gimble told her. “You know that, don’t you?”
When she said nothing, he added, “This… your refusing to feel, this you having a name… This pride… this is a symptom of you coming from the Outside. The man who got you on that Woman—”
“He was my father.”
“Women don’t have fathers,” he said, evenly. “Neither do Hands. Hands have mothers. That man did you a great disservice, Theone.”
“What was your mother like?” she asked Gimble one afternoon when they had finished. Gimble was apparently important enough to receive a woman in the middle of the day, at least occasionally.
“She is like,” Gimble corrected, “a very lovely Woman who raised me in the House of Mothers until I was five. Of course, all the Women there are Mothers. They are not like the Women who come to us at night.”
“Of course they are,” Theone said, amazed by this piece of stupidity. “That’s exactly what they were in order to become the Mothers of Hands, and had they had a girl, possibly your own sister, then they’d be sent right back to doing what I’m doing with you.”
Gimble frowned at her and said, “You think you know so much, Theone.”
Well, she knew that, at least. Any respect she had for Gimble went when she realized he could be so sentimental about his mother and have no idea what her life must have truly been.
“Wouldn’t you like to become a Mother? Wouldn’t you?” he asked her. He looked so young. He was flat faced, and flat featured, determined. “And you have only lain with me recently? If I got you with child do you know how special you would be? Because they would know the father. That is so rare. I have no father. Most of us don’t. Can’t you see why I’m keeping you with me? You’ll be free if we have a son together. Come on, Theone.”
She understood that this was the closest thing Gimble had felt to love. If it wasn’t love outright.
That night, for the first time, when she lay under him she was aware of him. His mouth open, his eyes closed, his face slack, his thin body trembling with a thin gloss of sweat, murmuring things to himself. He loved her. He was trying to make a child with her. He was, in a way, like her father must have been. He was sweet. As sweet as a Hand could be. And pressed under him, in his bed, she let him place her hands on his back and hold him, and she let herself care for him, and be touched by him. And she was startled when her body trembled and with him, she came.
The sun was past its midpoint in the sky when the roan broke through the wood, and the shadows of trees lined the gold lit grass. She dismounted, embracing the mare around her great neck, and then, leading it by the reins, she went toward the brick house. But as she did, the front door opened, and out came two women, one with wheat colored hair and golden skin, the second, dark skinned in blue, black haired.
“She is here,” the wheat haired woman said.
The dark haired woman in blue replied, “It’s about time.”.
When Theone blinked at her, the black haired woman spoke.
“We were told you would come,” she said to Theone, . “And you will stay here this night, and none shall come into this valley that can harm you. This is my friend, Birch, and I am Yarrow, Woman of this Wood. Be welcome.”
Remembering the power of this one, simple sentence, the girl nodded and said: “I am Theone.”
THEONE
“That was the first real sleep I’ve had in a long time,” Theone told Yarrow the next morning.
“And it will not be the last,” she said. “But I know you have to go.”
Theone did have to leave. She would have liked to stay forever, and part of her had hoped that Yarrow would offer, if not forever, then perhaps the next day, now that she was in a safe place.
“I’ve been running a long while,” Theone said.
“Yesterday, before you came,” Yarrow said, “Birch said you would come, and pointed in the direction which you should go. And I know that direction will keep you safe. And what is more, I have reason to believe that if you stay here much longer, then somehow it will not be safe. Not for you. Theone. I am sure that you must move on, and move quickly.”
Theone looked out of the window, and in the glade the red horse was grazing.
“I had hoped to somehow send that lovely mare back to her family.”
Yarrow shook her head, “Not today. Today you must be moving on.”
Gimble had kept her only two months, and then she was off to other men. She was off to several. After her third, she realized just how kind Gimble had been to her. Once, while she was coming out of the room of one of the Hands, someone reached out to touch her, and she saw it was Gimble. In the hall.
He whispered to her: “I am trying to get you back. They don’t often deny me, but you had to be with other men before they would send you to me again.”
Theone nodded and she colored at this. She was just a Woman now, sent off to be with Other Men. Now it was all too real to her, the thing that had been dim in her future, that was being something not quite a whore. There was no payment for her, and no option. The best she could hope for was Gimble, who was good in his own way. Until then she had to learn what she was, not even a slave or a concubine, because she wasn’t the property of one man.
Every other night was the pattern because she was young. Anonymous men, most of them not terribly rough, some young and some old, none thinking of her. It almost made her feel innocent because she knew she wasn’t really there. He would mount her and close his eyes and shuttle up and down her, losing all composure. In time they had no faces. It was a thing to be done, and when it wasn’t done, she was now in the House of the Women.
Number Sixteen said, “At least no more of those little girls. No more of the children,” But Theone missed the children, and her heart was sad because she knew the children would be like her. There was the thought that one might be a boy, but then they might be like the endless line of interchangeable men who mounted her and shot out their need inside of her, heedless but halfway hoping they had made a child.
Then a month passed, and nothing happened. She didn’t know what that was all about. Hyrax, who was the only other woman who had a name, and Hyrax wasn’t even a name, but a title, sent Theone down to the dungeons with water and bread.
“Take a torch down and feed the new prisoner,” she said.
Theone had never been to the dungeons. Her black robes skirted along the worn, cold, shallow stairs that slowly spiraled down. The red flame of her torch licked the walls dully to reveal their stones, and she felt the heavy weight of this whole house above her. Except for occasional excursions to the gardens, she never saw anything of the outdoors. The gardens were, of course, all courtyards. From them she could see the few windows looking out of the heavy, streaked, grey stones.
“This is an unhappy place,” she thought. “I have no idea why I exist or why any of us is here. But we are all prisoners.”
“Hello, there!”
A voice interrupted her thoughts, and Theone looked into the long corridor whispering: “Are you the new prisoner? I have brought you food. Water. Bread.”
“We are all prisoners in this hell hole,” he said, and when he said her thoughs, she shuddered. She approached the cell and set the torch in a wall sconce.
“Here,” she said, pushing the jug of water and wrapped bread through the bars.
She was afraid he’d snatch at them, but he was civil despite being dirty.
She had never seen anyone like him. His hair was reddish brown. All she knew was black hair. In the light his eyes were peat green and he needed shaving.
“Your eyes,” she began.
He bit into the bread and then took a swig of the water.
“And your eyes too,” he said. He belched. “Excuse it. Even the pit of hell’s made better by manners.” He put his hand through the door and said, “I am Ethan.”
“And I am Theone,” she said, taking it.
Ethan blinked at her.
“Theone? The daughter of Heli?”
“That was my father’s name,” Theone looked at him, cautiously.
“And still is.”
“How do you know this?” Theone said.
“Because his wife was called Esnarra in this country, and she was a great lady of my land. She was a kinsman. Kinswoman.”
Theone sat on her haunches. “I don’t understand. I…”
“Your mother came into this land for one purpose. She was taken and later, when she was free, she remained in these lands, ashamed of the things that happened to her, vowing never to come back to Chyr until she had found that for which she had come. But it is the same reason I am here too, and perhaps the same reason as you.”
“What do you?”
But Hyrax was calling, “Theone, are you there? Theone, come up here!”
She was about to ask Ethan again, but he said, “Go! I’ll talk to you when… when we can. We’ll meet again.”
Theone nodded, smoothing her skirts and then headed up the steps with one last salute.
When she had reached the top of the stair, Hyrax, wrapped in her black cloak, said, “You are the one for willfulness. I’ve got no more time to be calling you. I’ve got summons and you yourself have been summoned. Gimble has won you. You must go to him at once.”
And then Hyrax added, with something like admiration, “You must have put quite a spell on him. He’s determined to make you a mother or die trying.”
