The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped by Sheri S. Tepper Read Free Book Online

had to tell them.”

    “Of course.” Soothing, kindly, hypocritical, Mavin led her to the kitchen. “Handbright, listen to me. I want you to go to Battlefox keep in the Bright Day demesne. Our thalan, Plandybast Ogbone, wants you to come. Promise me?”

    Handbright shook her head, a frantic denial. “Mertyn. Mertyn needs me.”

    Mavin thought it was only habit and a weary inertia which made Handbright speak so. “He doesn’t need you, Handbright. He’s fine. The youngest child in the nursery is five years old, and you’ve spent long enough taking care of them. You should know by now you’re not going to conceive, and you’d have been long gone if you had conceived. So you must go. There are lots of Danderbats can come in to take care of the childer. Besides, I’ll be here.”

    “But ... alone. It’s so hard alone ... and Mertyn ...”

    “You did it alone. After you have some rest, you can come back and help me if you like. But I want you to go, Handbright. Either to Plandybast, or to the sea, as you once said you would do. Today.” She bent all her concentration upon her sister, willed her to respond. “Now, Handbright.”

    “Now?” Hope bloomed on her face as though this had been the secret word of release; but there was a wild look in her eyes. “Now?” 

    Mavin wondered what had happened to make the woman respond in this way. It could not be her own pleading, for she had pled before and nothing had happened. No. Something else had happened. She did not take time to worry about what it might have been.

    “Now. Become a white bird, Handbright! Fly from the tallest tower. From your bedroom, up there in the heights. Nothing carried, nothing needed—to Battlefox. Or to the sea.”

    Handbright rose, a look almost of madness in her face, eyes darting, hands patting at herself. “Now. Mavin. Now. I’ll go. Someday, I’ll... you’ll come. Mertyn’s all right. He’s a big boy. He’ll be fine. Now.” And she fled away up the stairs, Mavin close behind but unseen, as though she had been a ghost.

    Clothes fell on the stone floor. Handbright stood in the window, naked. From the doorway Mavin gasped, seeing bruises and bloody stripes on the naked form which changed, shifted, wavered in outline to stand where it had stood but feathered, long neck curled on white back, beak turned toward Mavin, eyes still wild and seeking.

    “Fly, sister,” she commanded, fixing the maddened eyes with her own. “Fly, Handbright. Go.”

    The wings unfurled slowly, the neck stretched out tentatively, cautiously, then all at once darted forward as the wings thrust down, once, twice, and the great bird launched itself into the air, falling, falling, catching itself upon those wide wings at the last possible moment to soar up, out, out, away toward the west.

    Mavin found herself crying. She flung herself down on Handbright’s narrow bed, aware for the first time of the basket in the corner, the ropes, the little whip carelessly thrown down upon the stones. It was a punishment basket, the only true punishment for a shifter, to be confined, close confined, unable to move, to speak, to change into any other shape. The baskets were woven in Kyquo, tightly woven, tightly lidded. And this one had been used on Handbright, or she had been threatened with it.

    So. Threatened or used; what did it matter. Handbright was gone. Mavin wiped her face in a cold, unreasoning fury and without knowing how she did it, or even that she had done it, took on the very face and features of Handbright; the well known expression, the tumbled hair, the tall, slender form bent with work and abuse, the eyes dark-ringed with pain to look upon herself reflected there—Handbright’s own form and face.

    “Everyone knows,” she whispered, “that it is impossible for a shifter to take the form of another living person. Everyone knows that it lies outside our nature, that it is forbidden. Everyone knows that. But—but, someone has done it.”