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

She smiled at herself in the mirror, a cold smile, and went slowly, with fearful anticipation, down into the smoke of the kitchen court to confront Gormier’s truculent stare.

    “Well?” he demanded. “She’s been told there’s been enough of this holding back, has she? Celebration for her this day and for me this night. I’ve won the draw.” And he grinned widely at her as he displayed the red-tipped stick he had drawn. “Time I had a little luck after too long of your dead body, old girl. Time we had some fresh blood behind the p’natti.”

    “She doesn’t want a celebration.” This in the very tone and substance of Handbright’s own voice, dull and without emotion. “She’s sick to her stomach. She’s up in my room, and you can go up there, come dark, but she’ll have no celebration.”

    “Well, and go up I will. And after me Wurstery, and after him Haribald, for that’s the way it falls.”

    Still in Handbright’s voice Mavin let her curiosity free to find the limits of the old ones’ abuse. “Couldn’t you have pity on her this night? Make it only one of you?”

    Wurstery had overheard this from his drying rack duties and intervened to make his own demands. “We’ve been days in the woods, old girl. Make a nice homecoming for us. Besides, best begin as we mean to go on.”

    “Well then,” Mavin said in Handbright’s voice, “she’ll have to bear it, I suppose.”

    “Let’s hope she bears better’n you’ve borne, old girl.” And they went back to their smoky work in a mood of general self-righteousness and satisfaction. Mavin went back into the keep, into a shadowy place, and leaned against the wall, weeping. When she had done, the Handbright shape had dropped away, and though she tried, she could not bring it back. She went to find Mertyn to tell the boy they would leave Danderbat keep that night.

    She went over it with him several times, though the boy understood well enough even at first. “The horse will come to the corner of the p’natti wall farthest toward the fire hills. You’ll have all your clothes and things in this sack, everything you treasure, lad, for you’ll not be back. And I will meet you on the road ...”

    “And I must not say anything about it to anyone,” he concluded for her, puzzled but willing. “Especially not to any of the Danderbats.”

    “That’s right. Especially not to the Danderbats. And you’re to wait. Even if it gets very late and scary, and you hear owls or fustigars howling. Promise.”

    “Promise.” He put his small hand in hers, cold but steady. “I’ll wait, Mavin. No matter how late.”

    She left him, trusting him. Then to the cellars for two more of the punishment baskets, thick with dust, hardly ever used. Except by shifters like Gormier, for Mavin had no doubt it had been his idea—to spice things a bit. Then to the kitchens for a sack of grain. Then to Handbright’s room. She would have to be ready by dark, and it would take that much time to gain the bulk she would need to become a horse—to become a horse, but first to become something else indeed, only a part of which would resemble Mavin.

    She did not know that what she was doing was impossible. She knew only that she would not rest and could not go until Gormier and Haribald and Wurstery knew what Handbright had known, the sureness of pain, the tightness of confinement. And another thing. One other thing. When they knew that, it would not matter that there were no Danderbat girls behind the p’natti in future.

    In the deep middle of the night her horse shape came to Mertyn, exactly where she had told him to be. She whinnied at him, pushing at him with a soft nose, letting him feel her ears and neck to reassure him that all was well. He scrambled clumsily onto the low wall, and from that to Mavin’s back, the sack of possessions balanced in a lump before him.

    “Nice horse,” he said doubtfully. “Are you going to take me to Mavin?”

    The horse’s