Waiting to Begin
Jun. 23rd, 2010 11:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamcranverTitle: Waiting to Begin
Fandom: MSI, with some Hey Monday, a guest appearance from Cobra Starship and other assorted musician types.
Pairings: Kitty/Lyn-Z, with minor Lyn-Z/others and Kitty/Vicky-T--but mostly gen
Length: About 37,200 words
Rating/Warnings: I'd say NC-17 for sexual content and some fairly graphic violence, including minor character death.
Notes/Summary/Disclaimer: In a world where humans and fairies have been at war for generations, Kitty's spent most of her life in the Order of Order, trying to devote herself to rules and order. The problem is, she makes a lousy nun. What she really wants is an adventure, and when she leaves the nunnery to learn about both the world and herself, she certainly finds one, with the help of a mercenary army, a couple of woman warriors, and a pair of irate tree spirits.
Thank you to the friends who gave me encouragement while I was writing, especially Fred, who's been cheering me on about this for, like, a year, and gave it a read-through and let me bounce ideas off her; thanks very much to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
modillian for the wonderful mix here and alles_luege for the beautiful art here, and thanks to the Bandom Big Bang mods for organizing this hootenany.
And finally, although I know it might seem to go without saying, I feel obligated to say that I don't own or have any rights over the real people on whom the characters in this story are ever-so-loosely based, and am using names and traits of public personae without permission. No offense or attempt to profit is intended.
The first thing Kitty did when she got out of sight of the Order of Order was to duck into a waystation and change her clothes, taking off the musty gray habit and putting on one of the much-used dresses that had been gifted to the Order as a charitable donation.
Maybe it would have seemed a stupid act of rebellion, if anyone had witnessed it. After all, both the habit and the dress had been a gift from the Sisters, as well as a letter entreating its reader to offer Kitty whatever help she requested on the road. “If you won’t take our offer of a ride back to your father’s house,” Mother Phyllis had said, “at least you can take the protection of our order. No one will trouble a Sister of Order.”
Kitty had her doubts about that, but even if it had been true, there was nothing she wanted less than to bear the ugly and uncomfortable robes of a Sister of Order any longer than she had to. Besides, the Sisters certainly hadn’t wanted her protection. Why should she want theirs?
The second thing Kitty did was to take her hair out of its tight, severe bun. She was so used to the slight tugging at her scalp that when her hair was suddenly hanging in dark waves to her waist, she felt for a long moment as if something was completely wrong, like she was standing naked in front of a crowd of men or something. But that moment was gone in the space of two or three breaths, and then, without thinking overmuch about what it would look like when it was done, she took her knife from her belt and sawed off her hair, handful at a time, until she could pull a chunk of it forward and see it line up, more or less, with her chin. It didn’t matter if it looked terrible. All that mattered was that she didn’t look like Sister Jennifer anymore.
And then, well, then, she walked south. There wasn’t much of anywhere to go north, not unless she wanted to cross the border into Briopia, which she didn’t, and probably couldn’t anyway. And maybe spring had already come further south.
She wasn’t going back to her father’s house, that was for certain.
It was the cruelest sort of late winter day, the kind with a bright sun and a blue sky and a hint of something in the wind that promised spring even as it bit at your face and froze your fingers numb. Kitty didn’t really mind, though, as she ambled unhurriedly down the Queen’s West Road. This was the kind of wild, ridiculously illogical thing she had scarcely even let herself dream about doing—she had no roof over her head, no way to earn a living, no protector, nothing but some dry jerky and lumpy bread in her pack, and it felt wonderful.
She met few people on the road south. After all, who went north in the winter? Her hand flew to the stolen kitchen knife at her belt the few times she came across a small party of farmers making their way to the nearest village, but they simply gave her strange looks and left her alone.
Night, when it fell, was cold and damp, but having spent most of her youth and all of her adult life to date within the clammy walls of the Order of Order, Kitty was used to the cold. There weren’t many towns on the West Road—too close to the borders of Fairyland—but there was the odd cluster of houses, marking the places where a few stubborn clusters of landholders pushed at the frontier. Kitty picked a quiet one, with no hint of movement from the main house, and slid into its barn. The walls were thin, with cracks between the boards, but the stalls blocked almost all the wind and the body heat from half a dozen irritable farm horses warmed the straw enough that Kitty slept quite comfortably.
She woke before dawn, in the cold gray of early morning, for Morning Prayer. The smell of sweaty horse and dirty straw confused her, until she remembered where she was and breathed a prayer to the Rule Giver, hoping that she’d woken before the farmers. Stealing a few handfuls of cold water from the horses’ trough, she drank deeply and splashed a little on her face before wrapping her cloak around her and setting forth again.
Adventure gleamed a little less brightly that day. Kitty’s feet hurt, and the food in her pack was already starting to run out. She supposed the Sisters had assumed she would catch a wagon to her father’s house, but she still let herself resent their stinginess for a minute. As she chewed her way through the next-to-last piece of dried meat, she forced herself to look squarely at the problem: what was she to do?
Go back to her family, begging them to take her in until they sent her back to the Order with another bribe or worse, to some husband of her parents’ choosing who wasn’t picky about a dowry?
No. Not even an option.
Somehow live in the woods, like a hermit in the Book of Rule, far from any living souls?
Tempting, but how would she do it? What did she know about living in the woods? She knew most of the basic medicinal herbs, but you couldn’t live off of those—well, maybe you could, but Kitty certainly didn’t want to try.
She’d have to find some kind of job. A maid, maybe—she had the sewing skills, even if she didn’t have the manners. But nobody around here needed a maid, and besides, if she’d wanted to spend her days sewing and staring meekly at her feet, she could have stayed with the Sisters of Order.
Well, she’d have to find something to do. She vowed to stop at the next village, look as humble and polite as she could, and see if she could wrangle some food or maybe even a job out of someone.
The road was even quieter today. Trudging along the wide, even paved road by herself made Kitty nervous, raising a chill along the back of her neck that had nothing to do with the wind. She squinted at the pale gray sky and tried to work out in her head just how far the border was from here. It was hard, when she had only a vague idea of how far she’d traveled, but it seemed to her like the border had to be miles off, so that couldn’t explain the empty roads. Maybe folk around here just didn’t have anyplace exciting to be. It wasn’t as if the Sisters of Order travelled the Queen’s Roads that often, either.
At any rate, there didn’t seem to be any villages off the main road on this stretch of highway, so Kitty veered off towards a tree-lined side street slanting southwest. The overgrown shrubs along its dusty edges cut the wind somewhat, and its narrowness made it seem cozy in comparison to the desolate West Road. Maybe, Kitty thought, she would run across another cluster of stubborn homesteaders, or even a little village. Maybe she’d meet some desperate farm-wife who could use a strong girl like Kitty to milk her cows and sweep out her shed. One who had a warm meal and a soft bed she was willing to share with a stranger. Kitty began to wish she hadn’t cut her hair so thoughtlessly. A demure braid would’ve suited her purposes very nicely. Oh, well.
As it turned out, a braid couldn’t have helped her anyway, because there was no sign of life at all along the road. Kitty’s waterskin, which she hadn’t thought to refill in the horse trough, ran out part way through the afternoon, and she found her mouth grow dry even as her eyes and nose leaked in the cold. She tried chewing a waxy green leaf from one of the evergreen shrubs in hopes of getting some moisture from it, but it was so bitter she had to spit it out almost immediately.
“Pissing fuckrot,” she muttered. Even the knowledge that no one was going to slap her for cursing wasn’t comforting enough to brighten her mood. She’d done enough shifts of duty in the infirmary in the summer to know that you could die in a matter of days without water. Even if it was cold, water was still a necessity. Why couldn’t it have been a snowy winter? The thought that she couldn’t have a drink, if she wanted one, made her as thirsty as she’d ever been. Rot finding a village, Kitty needed to find a source of water as soon as she could.
She sat down to think, wedging a rock from the road and brushing the dust off it before putting it in her cheek. Didn’t heroes in the Book of Rule always do that in the desert, to keep the moisture in their mouths? It tasted awful, but she kept it there as she thought. Well, first things first—she needed to get off the side road. Maybe she’d get lost on her own, but the underbrush, which had gotten as tall as her head as she’d walked along, made it difficult for her to see anything on either side of her, and she couldn’t find water if she couldn’t see.
It’d probably make it easier to listen for running water away from the few rustling, dead leaves surrounding her, too. She stood up and pushed her way through the east side of the road. Shit. She really was in the middle of nowhere, she thought, gazing at the featureless expanse of grasses and bald patches of dirt that stretched out as far as she could see.
Now, how to find water? She certainly couldn’t see any. Standing still, she tried to listen.
This had been such a stupid idea. If the Mother of Order could see her now, she’d laugh. And then she’d drag Kitty over by her ear to the kitchen and make her scrub every inch of it as punishment for being such an idiot. What did Kitty know about living on her own? What did a new name mean if you didn’t have any new skills to go with it?
Wait. She thrust all thoughts of the Mother of Order out of her mind and focused on a sound—a swishing sound, but maybe a little different than the swishing of the grasses. Maybe. She thought of the creek on the edge of the Order’s lands, the constant little rush of water over rocks that followed you around whenever you were in the garden or the orchard, and decided that she was definitely hearing water somewhere.
Maybe.
She turned around a few times, trying to figure out where, exactly, she was hearing it. Walking east made the sound fainter; walking north or south didn’t make it seem any closer. Kitty was getting pretty thirsty by the time she poked back through the brush onto the other side of the road.
The sound was definitely louder on this side, echoing out over the low hills. The grass looked greener on this side, and a dark smudge of forest a short ways in the distance seemed to hem the grasslands in, as if it were a long and narrow cow field.
Kitty hadn’t realized that she was anywhere near a forest—there certainly hadn’t been any visible when she was on the Queen’s road. She paused and briefly wondered how far west the side road had taken her, but dismissed the thought after only a moment. She still had to be miles away from the borderlands, and besides, fairies or no, she really did need to find some water. She was starting to feel a little sick, and she sat down and rested for a few moments before getting up again to follow the rushing sound.
For once, the Giver’s luck seemed to favor her, and she hadn’t walked very long at all before coming across a small stream, bubbling over a bare streak of rocks stretching through the grass. She fell to her knees at its side and drank until her throat stopped feeling dry and her stomach started feeling full, and then she lay down until the world stopped spinning.
By the time she’d woken up—she must have drifted off at some point by the side of the stream—and filled her waterskin, the sun was hovering low on the horizon.
Rot and ruin, she was still in the middle of nowhere, with no empty barn or deserted stack of hay in sight. To top it all off, she was as hungry as she’d ever been, and there was nothing but a couple of withered old apples in her pack.
She would have stopped and eaten one, but there wasn’t time—there weren’t a lot of options for a girl out in the wilderness like this, and undoubtedly the temperature would drop after the sun did. She needed some kind of protection from the elements, and if the woods were the only shelter around, well, that’s just what the Giver gave, and anyway, she had her knife.
Maybe she paused on edge of the woods, staring into its shadowy depths before stepping inside, but there was no one to witness her cowardice, no one to mock it or to reproach her stupidity for entering an unknown forest in the first place. When she finally stepped in, dry sticks and crinkled leaves crunching underfoot, nothing greeted her at all but the raspy noise of the wind scraping over the bare trees. She stood a little straighter. She wasn’t afraid of an empty forest.
Still, it probably didn’t pay to go too deep into it, particularly when there didn’t seem to be a path. That wasn’t a very good sign, but it wasn’t necessarily a bad one, either—didn’t fairies use trails to lure people into their lands? Kitty paused and turned her head to look back. She could still see the stream and the grasslands through the trees, and as long as she could see her way out, she thought, she hadn’t gone too far.
The sun was setting in earnest now, leaving the light in the forest red and dim, so Kitty hastened to drag the biggest sticks she could find over to the nearest tree and leaned them up against its thick trunk. She cross-hatched the bigger sticks with smaller ones and then thatched the roof of her little lean-to with leaves. By the time she had finished, the thick blue dimness in the woods had deepened to the true darkness of a starless winter night, and the sweat she had worked up began to evaporate from her face and under her arms, leaving her shivering.
The lean-to was just big enough for her, and she wrapped her cloak around herself and ate one of her apples before the exhaustion of the day overtook her and she fell into sleep.
She dreamed that the clouds moved as swiftly across the sky as a curtain being drawn, revealing bright stars and a crescent moon that bathed the forest in silvery light. The sound of the wind in the trees was softer now, like a whisper, and around and above her, Kitty heard women’s voices.
“Mother Phyllis?” she asked. Maybe the past few days had been the real dream, and now she was back in the Order Infirmary.
A woman laughed, and then one of the voices said, “I am not your mother,” sounding irritated.
Kitty opened her eyes. In the dream, her lean-to had vanished, along with the tree it had been leaning against, and two women stood before her. One seemed almost as wide as she was tall, with dark hair piled in an imposing crown on her head; the other was thin and wiry, with blonde curls. The dark-haired woman was scowling regally at Kitty, her eyebrows drawn together and her mouth tight, while the blonde woman had a hint of a smile about the corners of her lips. The women looked much more alike than Kitty might have expected.
“Who are you?” Kitty asked.
“You’re trespassing on our land, sleeping at our feet,” said the blonde woman wryly. “I think we’ll ask the questions.”
“Your land?” asked Kitty unthinkingly.
The brown-haired woman breathed out angrily through her nose and said, “Yes, our land. I know you humans think that everything you can set foot on is yours, but this forest isn’t. If I’d known you’d take my courtesy as an invitation to move in, I’d have killed you the moment you took water from our stream.”
The last part of the woman’s words filtered only dimly through Kitty’s awareness; at the word “human,” she brought her hand up to wrap her fingers around the iron and silver charms at her neck and said, “You have no right to be here. The Fairyland border is miles away.”
The blonde woman’s—fairy’s-- smile faded at this, and she narrowed her eyes. The other fairy raised a hand, and suddenly roots, hard brown ones and thin white ones like worms, were wrapping around Kitty’s feet and legs and she found she couldn’t move an inch.
“Stupid rutting human,” said the fairy. “You think we’re fairies?” She walked over to Kitty and pulled the charms from Kitty’s hand, rubbing them between her fingers. Neither burned her skin. “Whatever the fairies may have agreed to,” she said, her voice growing deeper and louder and echoing off the trees, “no human king or queen banishes us from our own lands. Our mothers and grandmothers and their sisters have lived here for a thousand years—do you think we’ll leave because some thin-skinned spoiled child tells us to?”
A year ago, even a month ago, this would have been the sort of dream that sent Kitty jolting out of sleep, sweating and shaking in her bed at the Order, but she’d been frightened many a time since then, faced things that she’d thought would have her pissing herself and cowering in a corner. Now, some sort of angry not-fairy woman scarcely even rated. “What are you, then?”
“What?” asked the dark-haired woman, looking nonplussed.
“Sorry, that was rude, wasn’t it?” Kitty asked, feeling almost recklessly brave. “I do apologize for trespassing—I didn’t know this land belonged to anyone. But if you’re not fairies, and you’re not humans….”
“What are we?” the blonde woman asked, smiling again. “Well. You’re right. That is a rude question.” She stepped closer to Kitty and to the other woman, peering at Kitty with a sort of detached curiosity. “Suffice to say that the people in these parts know we’re here, even if they don’t know what we are, and they leave us in peace. Unlike you.”
“I didn’t mean to bother you,” said Kitty. “If you’d like, I can give you something for letting me stay here. I mean, I don’t have much money, but if there’s something you’d like me to do for you, perhaps I could earn my keep.”
“Earn your keep,” said the dark-haired woman with a snort. “You are a bold one, aren’t you? What do they call you?”
Well, they called her Sister Jennifer, but she was leaving that name behind. It was a shame that the first ones to hear her new name would be these dream-women, but then, beggars couldn’t be choosers. “My name is Kitty,” she said.
“Hmm. Kitty.” The woman seemed to ponder it. “And what brings you to our home, Kitty?”
“Wait,” Kitty objected. “It’s my turn to ask a question. Aren’t you going to tell me your names?”
She actually laughed at that. “Stars and ashes, the humans get more presumptuous every year, don’t they?”
The blonde woman nodded in affirmation, but she smiled at Kitty as she said, “You may call me Nancy, and my sister is known as Ann.”
Kitty wondered what their real names were—Nancy and Ann didn’t sound like very supernatural names—but she sensed that she had probably pushed the sisters far enough, and she didn’t want to see what happened when their amusement swung back to anger. “I’m honored,” she said, and Ann rolled her eyes.
“You are. Will you answer my question now, Kitty? Why have you come, and why should we let you leave again unharmed?” Her voice had lowered into a lulling rhythm, and Kitty found she couldn’t look away from her eyes.
“I came because…because I didn’t have anyplace else to go, and I needed shelter for the night.” It was the truth, but for some reason Kitty felt compelled to explain further, the words bubbling up as if against her will. “I came from a nunnery—the Order of Order, it’s where all the nobles and rich of the north send their daughters when they don’t want them. It’s where they take anything interesting and good about a woman and either wear it out of her with work or spoil it out of her with flattery. I saved them—I saved them—but a woman who fights apparently isn’t living by the Giver’s Rule, and they couldn’t have that. Didn’t want me there.” It was ridiculous, Kitty’d hated the Order, so there was no reason for her throat to be choked and her eyes to burn with tears.
“So,” said Nancy, and the roots around Kitty’s legs loosened. Ann frowned thoughtfully, but did not object. “They banished you, this Order of Order, and sent you to wander without a guide or a protector.”
That rankled. “I don’t need a protector,” said Kitty, as fiercely as she could manage.
Nancy laughed softly, just a puff of breath. “Some might disagree,” she said. “And you most certainly need a guide, if only to keep you from wandering uninvited into others’ lands. Not everyone is as kind as we are—there are those who would kill a human the moment she stepped out of her own people’s territory.”
“That’s terrible,” Kitty said. Nancy shrugged.
“Well, it’s no more than your folk would do to an imp or a werewolf or a centaur,” she said. “We are, after all, in the midst of a war.”
It was on the tip of Kitty’s tongue to say of course they’d kill an imp or a werewolf or a centaur—imps made your cattle ill and your crop fail, werewolves would eat you alive if they caught you, and centaurs went around raping women—but it occurred to her both that saying such things was hardly likely to win her favor with Ann and Nancy, and that she had never personally heard of an imp or a werewolf or a centaur doing anything outside of old fairy tales, which the Sisters of Order had always said were full of nonsense. Instead, she said, “I’m not fighting a war against anyone.”
Nancy laughed harshly. “Oh, neither am I. Perhaps we innocent bystanders ought to form an army of our own. Do you suppose many humans would join us? I’ve always thought--”
“Kitty,” Ann interrupted. Nancy sighed and shut her mouth, gesturing for her sister to go on. Ann ignored her and looked intently at Kitty. “You believe in a Rule.” Waiting for Kitty’s nod, she continued, “Do you believe in the First Rule?”
Kitty sighed and began to recite, “Unto the world the Giver hath Given a Rule, to govern each season and kind and creature, and each must obey--”
Ann waved that aside with an impatient gesture. “No. The First Rule, the one that human and fairy and tree spirit and all the races agreed on all those generations ago—‘Repay a kindness with a kindness, and an injustice with justice.’ Do you know that rule, Kitty? Do you believe in it?”
Kitty had never heard that one, but it sounded like a pretty good rule, so she nodded.
“Good,” said Ann seriously. “Then I will tell you this, human—your folk begin to forget us. You’re proof of it. Soon they’ll forget the promises they made, and they’ll come with fire and axes and they will burn us to the ground and plant wheat and oats in our ashes. We cannot keep them away forever. It is no longer so easy as it once was to call on our brothers and sisters for aid.” Under the anger in her voice was a terrible sadness, and a certainty—the kind of certainty the very old and sick had, the certainty that death was near.
“Now, my sister and I will do you three kindnesses, Kitty. First, we will forgive you for trespassing on our land, and let you sleep in peace under our branches. Second, we will offer you what weak protection we can. Wherever our word is good, you shall not be harmed. Third, we will help you to find your own people, so you can live in whatever way pleases you without having to make your home with us. In return….” Ann breathed in deeply, and shared a solemn look with Nancy. Her voice had risen from the lulling, persuasive rhythm of before; now, she was practically singing. “In return, you will do three kindnesses for us.”
“What kindesses?” asked Kitty, mesmerized.
“First,” sang Ann, “you will lead your people away from our home whenever they draw near. We will bring them to you, but you must take them away again, and not let them hunt our beasts or hack at our trees. Second, you will never, as long as you live, burn down our brother and sister forests so that a human settlement may be built there. Perhaps your king will sign another treaty with the Fairy Folk and your people will expand even further into our ancient homelands. I cannot stop this—but you will not help them. And third, remember this.” Her eyes met Kitty’s, dark and serious. “You may not remember the details. But remember that we have done you a kindness, and remember that, not so long ago, our folk were friends. And when the trees or the river or one of the Fairy Folk seeks an audience with you, grant it. I do not ask you to sympathize with our fight; only listen.” She settled back on her heels, looking exhausted.
Nancy stepped forward and laid a hand on her sister’s shoulder. “Well, Kitty?” she asked. “Do you agree?”
It was easy enough—if she didn’t agree, they’d probably kill her, and if she did, well, when had she ever wanted to start a farm on the frontier? When had a fairy ever wanted to talk to her? Never, and she couldn’t imagine that one ever would. “I agree,” she said.
The sisters smiled. “Very well,” said Ann. “We have struck a bargain, and we will hold you to it, as I would expect you to hold us. I bid you a good night, then, Kitty, and a long life.” They stepped back, then, and the roots binding Kitty’s legs receded entirely. The sisters reached out to clasp hands and looked up at the sky, looking as if they were drinking in the moonlight. And then, of all things, they began to sing, a rolling, slow song like a lullaby, Oh, my love, my darling….
The night closed in around Kitty like a thick, warm blanket.
Part 2
Fandom: MSI, with some Hey Monday, a guest appearance from Cobra Starship and other assorted musician types.
Pairings: Kitty/Lyn-Z, with minor Lyn-Z/others and Kitty/Vicky-T--but mostly gen
Length: About 37,200 words
Rating/Warnings: I'd say NC-17 for sexual content and some fairly graphic violence, including minor character death.
Notes/Summary/Disclaimer: In a world where humans and fairies have been at war for generations, Kitty's spent most of her life in the Order of Order, trying to devote herself to rules and order. The problem is, she makes a lousy nun. What she really wants is an adventure, and when she leaves the nunnery to learn about both the world and herself, she certainly finds one, with the help of a mercenary army, a couple of woman warriors, and a pair of irate tree spirits.
Thank you to the friends who gave me encouragement while I was writing, especially Fred, who's been cheering me on about this for, like, a year, and gave it a read-through and let me bounce ideas off her; thanks very much to
modillian for the wonderful mix here and alles_luege for the beautiful art here, and thanks to the Bandom Big Bang mods for organizing this hootenany.And finally, although I know it might seem to go without saying, I feel obligated to say that I don't own or have any rights over the real people on whom the characters in this story are ever-so-loosely based, and am using names and traits of public personae without permission. No offense or attempt to profit is intended.
The first thing Kitty did when she got out of sight of the Order of Order was to duck into a waystation and change her clothes, taking off the musty gray habit and putting on one of the much-used dresses that had been gifted to the Order as a charitable donation.
Maybe it would have seemed a stupid act of rebellion, if anyone had witnessed it. After all, both the habit and the dress had been a gift from the Sisters, as well as a letter entreating its reader to offer Kitty whatever help she requested on the road. “If you won’t take our offer of a ride back to your father’s house,” Mother Phyllis had said, “at least you can take the protection of our order. No one will trouble a Sister of Order.”
Kitty had her doubts about that, but even if it had been true, there was nothing she wanted less than to bear the ugly and uncomfortable robes of a Sister of Order any longer than she had to. Besides, the Sisters certainly hadn’t wanted her protection. Why should she want theirs?
The second thing Kitty did was to take her hair out of its tight, severe bun. She was so used to the slight tugging at her scalp that when her hair was suddenly hanging in dark waves to her waist, she felt for a long moment as if something was completely wrong, like she was standing naked in front of a crowd of men or something. But that moment was gone in the space of two or three breaths, and then, without thinking overmuch about what it would look like when it was done, she took her knife from her belt and sawed off her hair, handful at a time, until she could pull a chunk of it forward and see it line up, more or less, with her chin. It didn’t matter if it looked terrible. All that mattered was that she didn’t look like Sister Jennifer anymore.
And then, well, then, she walked south. There wasn’t much of anywhere to go north, not unless she wanted to cross the border into Briopia, which she didn’t, and probably couldn’t anyway. And maybe spring had already come further south.
She wasn’t going back to her father’s house, that was for certain.
It was the cruelest sort of late winter day, the kind with a bright sun and a blue sky and a hint of something in the wind that promised spring even as it bit at your face and froze your fingers numb. Kitty didn’t really mind, though, as she ambled unhurriedly down the Queen’s West Road. This was the kind of wild, ridiculously illogical thing she had scarcely even let herself dream about doing—she had no roof over her head, no way to earn a living, no protector, nothing but some dry jerky and lumpy bread in her pack, and it felt wonderful.
She met few people on the road south. After all, who went north in the winter? Her hand flew to the stolen kitchen knife at her belt the few times she came across a small party of farmers making their way to the nearest village, but they simply gave her strange looks and left her alone.
Night, when it fell, was cold and damp, but having spent most of her youth and all of her adult life to date within the clammy walls of the Order of Order, Kitty was used to the cold. There weren’t many towns on the West Road—too close to the borders of Fairyland—but there was the odd cluster of houses, marking the places where a few stubborn clusters of landholders pushed at the frontier. Kitty picked a quiet one, with no hint of movement from the main house, and slid into its barn. The walls were thin, with cracks between the boards, but the stalls blocked almost all the wind and the body heat from half a dozen irritable farm horses warmed the straw enough that Kitty slept quite comfortably.
She woke before dawn, in the cold gray of early morning, for Morning Prayer. The smell of sweaty horse and dirty straw confused her, until she remembered where she was and breathed a prayer to the Rule Giver, hoping that she’d woken before the farmers. Stealing a few handfuls of cold water from the horses’ trough, she drank deeply and splashed a little on her face before wrapping her cloak around her and setting forth again.
Adventure gleamed a little less brightly that day. Kitty’s feet hurt, and the food in her pack was already starting to run out. She supposed the Sisters had assumed she would catch a wagon to her father’s house, but she still let herself resent their stinginess for a minute. As she chewed her way through the next-to-last piece of dried meat, she forced herself to look squarely at the problem: what was she to do?
Go back to her family, begging them to take her in until they sent her back to the Order with another bribe or worse, to some husband of her parents’ choosing who wasn’t picky about a dowry?
No. Not even an option.
Somehow live in the woods, like a hermit in the Book of Rule, far from any living souls?
Tempting, but how would she do it? What did she know about living in the woods? She knew most of the basic medicinal herbs, but you couldn’t live off of those—well, maybe you could, but Kitty certainly didn’t want to try.
She’d have to find some kind of job. A maid, maybe—she had the sewing skills, even if she didn’t have the manners. But nobody around here needed a maid, and besides, if she’d wanted to spend her days sewing and staring meekly at her feet, she could have stayed with the Sisters of Order.
Well, she’d have to find something to do. She vowed to stop at the next village, look as humble and polite as she could, and see if she could wrangle some food or maybe even a job out of someone.
The road was even quieter today. Trudging along the wide, even paved road by herself made Kitty nervous, raising a chill along the back of her neck that had nothing to do with the wind. She squinted at the pale gray sky and tried to work out in her head just how far the border was from here. It was hard, when she had only a vague idea of how far she’d traveled, but it seemed to her like the border had to be miles off, so that couldn’t explain the empty roads. Maybe folk around here just didn’t have anyplace exciting to be. It wasn’t as if the Sisters of Order travelled the Queen’s Roads that often, either.
At any rate, there didn’t seem to be any villages off the main road on this stretch of highway, so Kitty veered off towards a tree-lined side street slanting southwest. The overgrown shrubs along its dusty edges cut the wind somewhat, and its narrowness made it seem cozy in comparison to the desolate West Road. Maybe, Kitty thought, she would run across another cluster of stubborn homesteaders, or even a little village. Maybe she’d meet some desperate farm-wife who could use a strong girl like Kitty to milk her cows and sweep out her shed. One who had a warm meal and a soft bed she was willing to share with a stranger. Kitty began to wish she hadn’t cut her hair so thoughtlessly. A demure braid would’ve suited her purposes very nicely. Oh, well.
As it turned out, a braid couldn’t have helped her anyway, because there was no sign of life at all along the road. Kitty’s waterskin, which she hadn’t thought to refill in the horse trough, ran out part way through the afternoon, and she found her mouth grow dry even as her eyes and nose leaked in the cold. She tried chewing a waxy green leaf from one of the evergreen shrubs in hopes of getting some moisture from it, but it was so bitter she had to spit it out almost immediately.
“Pissing fuckrot,” she muttered. Even the knowledge that no one was going to slap her for cursing wasn’t comforting enough to brighten her mood. She’d done enough shifts of duty in the infirmary in the summer to know that you could die in a matter of days without water. Even if it was cold, water was still a necessity. Why couldn’t it have been a snowy winter? The thought that she couldn’t have a drink, if she wanted one, made her as thirsty as she’d ever been. Rot finding a village, Kitty needed to find a source of water as soon as she could.
She sat down to think, wedging a rock from the road and brushing the dust off it before putting it in her cheek. Didn’t heroes in the Book of Rule always do that in the desert, to keep the moisture in their mouths? It tasted awful, but she kept it there as she thought. Well, first things first—she needed to get off the side road. Maybe she’d get lost on her own, but the underbrush, which had gotten as tall as her head as she’d walked along, made it difficult for her to see anything on either side of her, and she couldn’t find water if she couldn’t see.
It’d probably make it easier to listen for running water away from the few rustling, dead leaves surrounding her, too. She stood up and pushed her way through the east side of the road. Shit. She really was in the middle of nowhere, she thought, gazing at the featureless expanse of grasses and bald patches of dirt that stretched out as far as she could see.
Now, how to find water? She certainly couldn’t see any. Standing still, she tried to listen.
This had been such a stupid idea. If the Mother of Order could see her now, she’d laugh. And then she’d drag Kitty over by her ear to the kitchen and make her scrub every inch of it as punishment for being such an idiot. What did Kitty know about living on her own? What did a new name mean if you didn’t have any new skills to go with it?
Wait. She thrust all thoughts of the Mother of Order out of her mind and focused on a sound—a swishing sound, but maybe a little different than the swishing of the grasses. Maybe. She thought of the creek on the edge of the Order’s lands, the constant little rush of water over rocks that followed you around whenever you were in the garden or the orchard, and decided that she was definitely hearing water somewhere.
Maybe.
She turned around a few times, trying to figure out where, exactly, she was hearing it. Walking east made the sound fainter; walking north or south didn’t make it seem any closer. Kitty was getting pretty thirsty by the time she poked back through the brush onto the other side of the road.
The sound was definitely louder on this side, echoing out over the low hills. The grass looked greener on this side, and a dark smudge of forest a short ways in the distance seemed to hem the grasslands in, as if it were a long and narrow cow field.
Kitty hadn’t realized that she was anywhere near a forest—there certainly hadn’t been any visible when she was on the Queen’s road. She paused and briefly wondered how far west the side road had taken her, but dismissed the thought after only a moment. She still had to be miles away from the borderlands, and besides, fairies or no, she really did need to find some water. She was starting to feel a little sick, and she sat down and rested for a few moments before getting up again to follow the rushing sound.
For once, the Giver’s luck seemed to favor her, and she hadn’t walked very long at all before coming across a small stream, bubbling over a bare streak of rocks stretching through the grass. She fell to her knees at its side and drank until her throat stopped feeling dry and her stomach started feeling full, and then she lay down until the world stopped spinning.
By the time she’d woken up—she must have drifted off at some point by the side of the stream—and filled her waterskin, the sun was hovering low on the horizon.
Rot and ruin, she was still in the middle of nowhere, with no empty barn or deserted stack of hay in sight. To top it all off, she was as hungry as she’d ever been, and there was nothing but a couple of withered old apples in her pack.
She would have stopped and eaten one, but there wasn’t time—there weren’t a lot of options for a girl out in the wilderness like this, and undoubtedly the temperature would drop after the sun did. She needed some kind of protection from the elements, and if the woods were the only shelter around, well, that’s just what the Giver gave, and anyway, she had her knife.
Maybe she paused on edge of the woods, staring into its shadowy depths before stepping inside, but there was no one to witness her cowardice, no one to mock it or to reproach her stupidity for entering an unknown forest in the first place. When she finally stepped in, dry sticks and crinkled leaves crunching underfoot, nothing greeted her at all but the raspy noise of the wind scraping over the bare trees. She stood a little straighter. She wasn’t afraid of an empty forest.
Still, it probably didn’t pay to go too deep into it, particularly when there didn’t seem to be a path. That wasn’t a very good sign, but it wasn’t necessarily a bad one, either—didn’t fairies use trails to lure people into their lands? Kitty paused and turned her head to look back. She could still see the stream and the grasslands through the trees, and as long as she could see her way out, she thought, she hadn’t gone too far.
The sun was setting in earnest now, leaving the light in the forest red and dim, so Kitty hastened to drag the biggest sticks she could find over to the nearest tree and leaned them up against its thick trunk. She cross-hatched the bigger sticks with smaller ones and then thatched the roof of her little lean-to with leaves. By the time she had finished, the thick blue dimness in the woods had deepened to the true darkness of a starless winter night, and the sweat she had worked up began to evaporate from her face and under her arms, leaving her shivering.
The lean-to was just big enough for her, and she wrapped her cloak around herself and ate one of her apples before the exhaustion of the day overtook her and she fell into sleep.
She dreamed that the clouds moved as swiftly across the sky as a curtain being drawn, revealing bright stars and a crescent moon that bathed the forest in silvery light. The sound of the wind in the trees was softer now, like a whisper, and around and above her, Kitty heard women’s voices.
“Mother Phyllis?” she asked. Maybe the past few days had been the real dream, and now she was back in the Order Infirmary.
A woman laughed, and then one of the voices said, “I am not your mother,” sounding irritated.
Kitty opened her eyes. In the dream, her lean-to had vanished, along with the tree it had been leaning against, and two women stood before her. One seemed almost as wide as she was tall, with dark hair piled in an imposing crown on her head; the other was thin and wiry, with blonde curls. The dark-haired woman was scowling regally at Kitty, her eyebrows drawn together and her mouth tight, while the blonde woman had a hint of a smile about the corners of her lips. The women looked much more alike than Kitty might have expected.
“Who are you?” Kitty asked.
“You’re trespassing on our land, sleeping at our feet,” said the blonde woman wryly. “I think we’ll ask the questions.”
“Your land?” asked Kitty unthinkingly.
The brown-haired woman breathed out angrily through her nose and said, “Yes, our land. I know you humans think that everything you can set foot on is yours, but this forest isn’t. If I’d known you’d take my courtesy as an invitation to move in, I’d have killed you the moment you took water from our stream.”
The last part of the woman’s words filtered only dimly through Kitty’s awareness; at the word “human,” she brought her hand up to wrap her fingers around the iron and silver charms at her neck and said, “You have no right to be here. The Fairyland border is miles away.”
The blonde woman’s—fairy’s-- smile faded at this, and she narrowed her eyes. The other fairy raised a hand, and suddenly roots, hard brown ones and thin white ones like worms, were wrapping around Kitty’s feet and legs and she found she couldn’t move an inch.
“Stupid rutting human,” said the fairy. “You think we’re fairies?” She walked over to Kitty and pulled the charms from Kitty’s hand, rubbing them between her fingers. Neither burned her skin. “Whatever the fairies may have agreed to,” she said, her voice growing deeper and louder and echoing off the trees, “no human king or queen banishes us from our own lands. Our mothers and grandmothers and their sisters have lived here for a thousand years—do you think we’ll leave because some thin-skinned spoiled child tells us to?”
A year ago, even a month ago, this would have been the sort of dream that sent Kitty jolting out of sleep, sweating and shaking in her bed at the Order, but she’d been frightened many a time since then, faced things that she’d thought would have her pissing herself and cowering in a corner. Now, some sort of angry not-fairy woman scarcely even rated. “What are you, then?”
“What?” asked the dark-haired woman, looking nonplussed.
“Sorry, that was rude, wasn’t it?” Kitty asked, feeling almost recklessly brave. “I do apologize for trespassing—I didn’t know this land belonged to anyone. But if you’re not fairies, and you’re not humans….”
“What are we?” the blonde woman asked, smiling again. “Well. You’re right. That is a rude question.” She stepped closer to Kitty and to the other woman, peering at Kitty with a sort of detached curiosity. “Suffice to say that the people in these parts know we’re here, even if they don’t know what we are, and they leave us in peace. Unlike you.”
“I didn’t mean to bother you,” said Kitty. “If you’d like, I can give you something for letting me stay here. I mean, I don’t have much money, but if there’s something you’d like me to do for you, perhaps I could earn my keep.”
“Earn your keep,” said the dark-haired woman with a snort. “You are a bold one, aren’t you? What do they call you?”
Well, they called her Sister Jennifer, but she was leaving that name behind. It was a shame that the first ones to hear her new name would be these dream-women, but then, beggars couldn’t be choosers. “My name is Kitty,” she said.
“Hmm. Kitty.” The woman seemed to ponder it. “And what brings you to our home, Kitty?”
“Wait,” Kitty objected. “It’s my turn to ask a question. Aren’t you going to tell me your names?”
She actually laughed at that. “Stars and ashes, the humans get more presumptuous every year, don’t they?”
The blonde woman nodded in affirmation, but she smiled at Kitty as she said, “You may call me Nancy, and my sister is known as Ann.”
Kitty wondered what their real names were—Nancy and Ann didn’t sound like very supernatural names—but she sensed that she had probably pushed the sisters far enough, and she didn’t want to see what happened when their amusement swung back to anger. “I’m honored,” she said, and Ann rolled her eyes.
“You are. Will you answer my question now, Kitty? Why have you come, and why should we let you leave again unharmed?” Her voice had lowered into a lulling rhythm, and Kitty found she couldn’t look away from her eyes.
“I came because…because I didn’t have anyplace else to go, and I needed shelter for the night.” It was the truth, but for some reason Kitty felt compelled to explain further, the words bubbling up as if against her will. “I came from a nunnery—the Order of Order, it’s where all the nobles and rich of the north send their daughters when they don’t want them. It’s where they take anything interesting and good about a woman and either wear it out of her with work or spoil it out of her with flattery. I saved them—I saved them—but a woman who fights apparently isn’t living by the Giver’s Rule, and they couldn’t have that. Didn’t want me there.” It was ridiculous, Kitty’d hated the Order, so there was no reason for her throat to be choked and her eyes to burn with tears.
“So,” said Nancy, and the roots around Kitty’s legs loosened. Ann frowned thoughtfully, but did not object. “They banished you, this Order of Order, and sent you to wander without a guide or a protector.”
That rankled. “I don’t need a protector,” said Kitty, as fiercely as she could manage.
Nancy laughed softly, just a puff of breath. “Some might disagree,” she said. “And you most certainly need a guide, if only to keep you from wandering uninvited into others’ lands. Not everyone is as kind as we are—there are those who would kill a human the moment she stepped out of her own people’s territory.”
“That’s terrible,” Kitty said. Nancy shrugged.
“Well, it’s no more than your folk would do to an imp or a werewolf or a centaur,” she said. “We are, after all, in the midst of a war.”
It was on the tip of Kitty’s tongue to say of course they’d kill an imp or a werewolf or a centaur—imps made your cattle ill and your crop fail, werewolves would eat you alive if they caught you, and centaurs went around raping women—but it occurred to her both that saying such things was hardly likely to win her favor with Ann and Nancy, and that she had never personally heard of an imp or a werewolf or a centaur doing anything outside of old fairy tales, which the Sisters of Order had always said were full of nonsense. Instead, she said, “I’m not fighting a war against anyone.”
Nancy laughed harshly. “Oh, neither am I. Perhaps we innocent bystanders ought to form an army of our own. Do you suppose many humans would join us? I’ve always thought--”
“Kitty,” Ann interrupted. Nancy sighed and shut her mouth, gesturing for her sister to go on. Ann ignored her and looked intently at Kitty. “You believe in a Rule.” Waiting for Kitty’s nod, she continued, “Do you believe in the First Rule?”
Kitty sighed and began to recite, “Unto the world the Giver hath Given a Rule, to govern each season and kind and creature, and each must obey--”
Ann waved that aside with an impatient gesture. “No. The First Rule, the one that human and fairy and tree spirit and all the races agreed on all those generations ago—‘Repay a kindness with a kindness, and an injustice with justice.’ Do you know that rule, Kitty? Do you believe in it?”
Kitty had never heard that one, but it sounded like a pretty good rule, so she nodded.
“Good,” said Ann seriously. “Then I will tell you this, human—your folk begin to forget us. You’re proof of it. Soon they’ll forget the promises they made, and they’ll come with fire and axes and they will burn us to the ground and plant wheat and oats in our ashes. We cannot keep them away forever. It is no longer so easy as it once was to call on our brothers and sisters for aid.” Under the anger in her voice was a terrible sadness, and a certainty—the kind of certainty the very old and sick had, the certainty that death was near.
“Now, my sister and I will do you three kindnesses, Kitty. First, we will forgive you for trespassing on our land, and let you sleep in peace under our branches. Second, we will offer you what weak protection we can. Wherever our word is good, you shall not be harmed. Third, we will help you to find your own people, so you can live in whatever way pleases you without having to make your home with us. In return….” Ann breathed in deeply, and shared a solemn look with Nancy. Her voice had risen from the lulling, persuasive rhythm of before; now, she was practically singing. “In return, you will do three kindnesses for us.”
“What kindesses?” asked Kitty, mesmerized.
“First,” sang Ann, “you will lead your people away from our home whenever they draw near. We will bring them to you, but you must take them away again, and not let them hunt our beasts or hack at our trees. Second, you will never, as long as you live, burn down our brother and sister forests so that a human settlement may be built there. Perhaps your king will sign another treaty with the Fairy Folk and your people will expand even further into our ancient homelands. I cannot stop this—but you will not help them. And third, remember this.” Her eyes met Kitty’s, dark and serious. “You may not remember the details. But remember that we have done you a kindness, and remember that, not so long ago, our folk were friends. And when the trees or the river or one of the Fairy Folk seeks an audience with you, grant it. I do not ask you to sympathize with our fight; only listen.” She settled back on her heels, looking exhausted.
Nancy stepped forward and laid a hand on her sister’s shoulder. “Well, Kitty?” she asked. “Do you agree?”
It was easy enough—if she didn’t agree, they’d probably kill her, and if she did, well, when had she ever wanted to start a farm on the frontier? When had a fairy ever wanted to talk to her? Never, and she couldn’t imagine that one ever would. “I agree,” she said.
The sisters smiled. “Very well,” said Ann. “We have struck a bargain, and we will hold you to it, as I would expect you to hold us. I bid you a good night, then, Kitty, and a long life.” They stepped back, then, and the roots binding Kitty’s legs receded entirely. The sisters reached out to clasp hands and looked up at the sky, looking as if they were drinking in the moonlight. And then, of all things, they began to sing, a rolling, slow song like a lullaby, Oh, my love, my darling….
The night closed in around Kitty like a thick, warm blanket.
Part 2