KIRITH, third fragment
Kay hesitated, as Gadge had, while Tam muttered disapprovingly in the background about filling children’s heads with notions that did them no good. “Would you not have him warned, then?” said Kay with an odd vehemence; Tam shook her head, but as yes or not the boy could not tell.
Kay spoke nervously, as Gadge had not, but she did tell him a little more. Kelar was something the royals had, sol and sola, and sometimes other City folk. The Algiav may or may not have it, but the Algiav saw visions, and were all mad. There were other people, something like the Algiav, who lived in other bits of Damar, who may or may not have it as well, on the same terms as the Algiav, that is, whether they did or not, they were mad. Farm folk did not have it, and if they did it would, in some way not specified, but presumably having to do with their going mad too, disagree with them.
This was at least as infuriating as it was informative, and it made the boy careless. The next time he was foolish enough to bring the question up while Bar was within hearing, whereupon he was sent to his room without supper, and Tam crossed her arms firmly over her stomach as if she were keeping something in, or out, and Jafe and Seler, who habitually wore slightly absent smiles, looked tense and unhappy; and everyone but Bar and Gadge made the warding sign.
Even Gadge did not lay his will against Bar’s idly, although Gadge was the elder and, the boy knew, had once stood in the old king’s army, and as a result had a different attitude toward things of the king than did the rest of the family. The boy didn’t dare breach Bar’s warning never to say the word kelar again, even to Gadge. This was horribly frustrating, and he often thought himself a coward for it; but he was young, and hungry all the time, and disliked above all things being obliged to miss a meal.
Alel never said the dreaded word again in the boy’s hearing. Gadge did occasionally mention it when it came up in his stories–most often perhaps in stories about the mage Luthe, who lived somewhere in the eastern Hills, and who sounded like kelar was the least of his powers–but only once did he stop for further explanations, probably in response to the expression on the boy’s face.
“Listen,” he said. “Kelar isn’t for folk like us. Bar’s right that far. Kelar’s like picking up fire in your bare hands. Leave it to the kings and mages. Leave it. I know that sounds hard, and I remember what it was like, hearing the stories for the first time, when I was a boy like you. First time I ever told a lot of ‘em over was to Bar, who was that much younger’n me, and he listened like you do . . . oh yes,” he said, to the boy’s look of astonishment. “Bar. Our grandmother used to tell us . . .” But Gadge stopped abruptly. “And I’d stop trying to learn the warding sign if I were you. It’ll only go on making your hand hurt.”
The boy attempted to resign himself.
There were, over months and then years, a growing number of stories about the wild Algiav girl, Kirith. There were ones about how she disrupted every classroom she was put in, for the dlor demanded its students to study philosophy as well as haghiliariar, the correct relationship between a horse and its human. Disruption by its nature was always of some interest to the boy, although there were no classrooms on the farm. The most spectacular story, and the boy’s favourite, was of how she’d stolen the soghur’s favourite horse one night, to settle a bet with several of the older ftha. And of how, when she wasn’t caught in the act, she’d polished the tack as if for a parade, conspicuous even in that world of flawlessly clean tack, and threaded ribboned plaits in the favourite horse’s mane and tail.
This was even more conspicuous when coupled with the horse’s unnatural weariness when he was taken out for exercise the following day; whereupon a search was made, and questions were asked, and hoofprints found where she had leaped him over a wall that no horse should be asked to leap over, particularly in the dark, and a story was eventually heard of a public house, two villages beyond Herth, and half a night’s hard riding for the swiftest ghiliah, where someone wearing the dlor second-year badge had spent a goodly span of time cooling a particularly magnificent bay horse, rubbing him down, walking him, checking his legs for heat or swelling, giving him a little water and a little hay and a little more water before disappearing in the small hours of the morning. The incident had stuck in the publican’s mind, because he knew a little about horses himself, and it had occurred to him to wonder what a mere second-year was doing with such a flower of the ghiliah.
The boy told himself this story at night sometimes, when he couldn’t get to sleep. He imagined the wind in his own face, strong as a storm from its speed, as the soghur’s favourite horse galloped, the landscape hurtling past, full of shadows and mysteries. The fastest he’d ever been was probably on his own two feet, running; the big plough horses never got above a walk if they could help it, and the farm’s cart-horse believed that a discreet jog was the most that was ever desirable.
He thought of the silky mane against his hands–he supposed that a soghur’s favourite horse would have a silky mane, not like the farm horses’ manes which were about as soft as straw, and not good straw either, but the harsh prickly stuff with a lot of thick stems in it–and the heaving of the great deep breaths, the red nostril and dark eye he would catch glimpses of, the sharp sure thud of hoofs.
He also wondered what it would be like, to be the member of a community which might be expected to send messengers carrying urgent news secretly in the nighttime; that the reason such a horse and rider should stay in the mind of a publican was not because they were there at all, but only because the rider was not wearing the right token.
“They didn’t throw her out for that,” said Alel, “because they could find no hair lying wrong, no scratch on the soghur’s horse; that, and because the publican was so sure about what good care the rider had taken, and how she had ordered nothing for herself.”
“No money to spare,” said Seler lugubriously. “She’s had her wages stopped from the time she threw a bucket of water over the head of one of the fourth-years–and a second-year barely gets anything you could call a wage to begin with.”
“Stopping her wages for that wasn’t fair,” said Alel. “The fourth-year had –”
”Alel, the boy,” said Kay.
The boy sighed. Some of the stories (especially the rule-breaking ones) he could figure out himself, even when the adults stopped in the middle of the exciting part. But this one was beyond him.
But he could tell that they all (except Bar, who was interested only in farming) wanted both to like and not to like her. She made them uncomfortable, but she pulled at their thoughts. He began to imagine her: she would be very tall and very beautiful, and have a lot of black hair, and fire in her eyes, and any horse she rode would dance and neigh for the splendour of having her on its back.
Yeeep
We’re going away for the weekend. Tomorrow. With hellhounds. Yeeeeeeep.
It’s not my idea! I don’t want to go!* And I haven’t mentioned it here before because I’ve been In Denial!
This is the make-up visit to the wodge of Peter’s family that lives in Gloucestershire. We were supposed to go last December, for another of these command-performance 80th birthday parties*, this time for Peter’s elder brother’s** wife, which I, in my usual fashion*** cancelled attending at the last minute: that was when the hellhounds had their stomach bug on top of chronic diarrhea and I was well past coping, certainly with any additional challenges like long drives in the car and strange accommodations.† When we cancelled last December, Peter said we’d try again in the spring.
It’s spring. Oops.
It’s a beautiful part of the country! Gloucestershire–or anyway that part of Gloucestershire which is the only part I know–is arguably more beautiful than Hampshire. I prefer Hampshire, but that’s because it’s mine. Gloucestershire is more dramatic, and it also has that golden Cotswold stone.†† It has Kiftsgate!††† It has Hidcote!‡
I want to stay hooooome!
It’s funny. I was a fiend for travelling when I was younger. I’ve told you this: I was a Navy brat, so we moved on every year or so when I was a kid, and as a young adult–I mean over eighteen and out in the world earning a living, not ‘YA’ as the library classification goes–I kept moving on because it just felt like the thing you do. After BEAUTY came out, I started receiving invitations to go Be an Author in different places, and that was great. Well, sort of great. Seeing new landscapes‡‡ was great. The Being an Author was variable. I could have done without that part altogether, but nobody wanted to pay my travelling expenses if all I was going to do was come and hang out.
But I’ve got stodgier and stodgier as I’ve got older. Creeping middle age was manifesting even before I left Maine: I was already staying home more and travelling less.‡‡‡ And when I first moved over here we drove around a lot of England (and not nearly enough Scotland and hardly any Wales) and it was all gorgeous and glorious§ and I loved it.§§ But there were three dogs now, and the most amazing garden at home, and . . . remind me why I would want to go away? We did sometimes take the dogs with us, but it wasn’t their favourite thing either.§§§
And now . . . well, my garden is less amazing, but it’s extremely labour intensive,¤ and there’s bell ringing¤¤ and piano playing ¤¤¤ and . . . hellhounds. Who have never been away overnight. Well, they wouldn’t, would they? Chronic diarrhea is a very effective damper [sic] on frivolous holidaying. But I’ve been telling Peter for two and a half years that we’d go somewhere with hellhounds . . . as soon as we had this little canine digestive irregularity sorted. As petard hoisting goes, I’d much rather be hoisted than not in this case but . . .
And have I mentioned yet that Computer Men were here for over three hours today and I now have even less idea how to use the new gizmo than I did before? And none of us can figure out how to use the new organ music software.+ And the first thing that happened after they left is that this laptop froze and crashed. . . .
And our hired cottage in Gloucestershire does not have internet access.
Now because I am a Wonderful Human Being++ I’m about to rip off another 1000 words of KIRITH for you, and Blogmom will post it tomorrow night.+++ Saturday night . . . well, I may conceivably miss a night.~ If I get an entry written, and can glom onto one of Peter’s relatives’ internet connections, Blogmom will post it too. If not . . . I’m not sure what the sounds of blog withdrawal are, but if they’re interesting, I can tell you all about it on Sunday. Or maybe you can tell me.
Whimper.
* * *
* Peter, some of you will remember, had his December before last, which I, having spent dozens of hours and thousands of pounds on it, almost missed, because Chaos was so ill. It’s true, the hellhounds do kind of get in the way a lot. ECIAC.^
^Especially Chaos, It’s Always Chaos. I should start a blog glossary.
** There are four brothers–Peter is second oldest–and twelve first cousins who all grew up together, and they all have families and . . . major family gatherings are terrifying.
*** Sigh
† And all for a party? I party like Nick Bottom sings.
†† Hampshire has brick and flint. –Ignore me. I’m partial.
††† http://www.kiftsgate.co.uk/ ‘Home of the largest rose in England’ Ahem.
‡ http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-hidcotemanorgarden.htm
‡‡ and visiting new bookstores
‡‡‡ Having developed a whippet with catastrophic separation anxiety my last two years in the States aggravated this process a trifle.
§ We picked the good bits, obviously.
§§ Especially the fact that I lived here.
§§§ Although I’m sure they preferred it to being put in kennels.
¤ We’re going away tomorrow, so of course I had three boxes of little plantlings arrive in the post today. Three. I haven’t had any in something like a fortnight. I was going to finish getting the dahlias in today. And instead I was out there on my knees muttering evil words and stabbing tiny plants in tiny pots. Which will now dry out while we’re gone. My hydrangea needs watering twice a day. Yes, I have some of that Guaranteed to Remain Soggy Tray Liner stuff, and I’m using it but . . .
¤¤ I’m missing Friday practise! Waaah! I’m missing Sunday service ring! Chorus of slightly panicky ‘waaah’ from those I’m leaving bereft of what might be a crucial pair of hands! I’m also missing ringing a wedding on Saturday! That’s £15 toward The Next Piece of Self Indulgent Jewellery I won’t be putting in the jar! –The yearly ‘tower lunch’ is also on Sunday, to which all of us are supposed to bring spouses and significant relations^, and our regular tower visitors and their spouses and significant relations are invited, and it’s all too tragically social, and reminds me of a Buckingham Palace garden party only without the hats, not that I’ve ever been to one^^, but how I imagine it. I go to the tower lunch rather the way I get out of bed on Sunday mornings: loyal and groaning. Peter goes because I go: our percentile readings on the sociometer are similar^^^. At least the lunch is only once a year. And this happened to be the weekend that works for the Gloucestershire folk we’re supposed to be visiting and that the hired cottage that takes dogs was available.
^ Hellhounds are inexplicably not included
^^Peter has
^^^ Fail
¤¤¤ And I’m missing my piano lesson tomorrow!
+ Sigh. I will pursue this next week.
++ Not to say a neurotic obsessive who can’t let go
+++ Blogmom said, when I asked her if she’d do this: you know, you could just take the weekend off. –I what?
~ I know. The end of the world as we have come to know it in the last year and a half.
More baby things
Too cute or what. 
And as anyone who has ever tried to photo the little frellers will know, they swim like the very devil, hurtling around in a manner that would not bring shame to a hellhound.
And in all directions at once, so you’re also lucky to get more than one of them in a shot. They leave wakes like powerboats, unlike the more sedate adults. I assume all this manic activity is a predator avoidance technique, but that plus growing, they must have to eat their own weight about once an hour. The tiny ones also have no neck yet, and with that and the speed at which those little legs churn the water, they plough along as if they’re going downhill.
These two photos were taken however at a plant nursery I . . . ahem . . . frequent. Ahem.
I left the ducklings behind but I came home with a rusty-red yarrow with a gold centre, and another iris. Only two? you’re saying. Well, I do still have 1,000,0000 dahlias to plant up.
Now find the hidden blackbird nest.
I had noticed that there was a male blackbird around an awful lot, but then there usually is. Blackbirds are cheeky, and the town ones seem to be born half tame, like robins.* Like robins, they are very interested in you when you’re messing in the dirt,** and if you turn around quickly there will probably be a sudden flurry of wings. I didn’t twig [sic] there was anything else going on till one day when I was potting on right under the apple tree, I saw the quick flash of black wings diving in among the whatever-it-is growing into the apple tree, an immediate chorus of memememememememe, give ME the worm! burst out, my head snapped up like Darkness sighting a pheasant, and I thought, Yah! Babies! –waited for Dad to depart on his business, and went questing.
I don’t know if there’s a system–like mum robin may start a new nest elsewhere while dad finishes off the old brood–but I seemed only to see the male before I discovered the nest, and the female since.
Mum giving me the hairy eyeball.
And let me tell you I sweated to get this photo. 
All that standing on a flagpole with a torch between your teeth***–the dratted camera refused to focus without a spotlight–and furthermore trying to do it at a bit of a distance so mum didn’t have apoplexy: as you see, the nestlings couldn’t care less. This is a few days ago, and you see they’re pretty much fully fledged: and we’re now into the Little Rustling Things in the Shrubbery phase. They still yell mememememe when mum flies in however, and the shrubbery briefly rustles violently. There is this to be said for a small garden: the Little Rustling Things in the Shrubbery phase is a lot more exciting. It’s too spread out to make good theatre in a big garden.
And hey. How about another lamb. Or two. (Or three.) Lambs are always good.
*No robin nest in the greenhouse this year. Sob. Maybe they’ll rediscover me later in the season. I’ve seen him–or her–around, but maybe the blackbird is the current chief garden administrator.
** Oh gods, she’s using that damn bagged stuff again. There’s never anything worth eating in a plastic bag!^
^ [irony alert]
*** Electric torch, ie flashlight. This is not a remake of SPARTACUS.
Lambs, etc
I have millions of photos of lambs. Nearly. But there are so many lambs. 
It’s not easy taking photos of lambs in the company of hellhounds, however. The lambs themselves are occasionally willing to overlook predator breath, but the mums aren’t.
To give hellhounds credit, which they rarely deserve, they are (mostly) 
surprisingly good about being tied to a fence-post or a tree-stump while I take photos. They’ll be less patient with my megrims later in the season when the lambs are running around more.
Okay, so, this one is more about the landscape than the lambs. Have I mentioned lately how much I love this countryside?
At the moment the lambs mostly totter, furiously drink milk–still photos won’t show you the madly whirling tails and the violent way they thump their mums’ udders with their skulls: mums with twins will sometimes have their hind ends jolted clean off the ground–and then slump to the ground in tiny woolly heaps. 
I would kill* for a good photo of a lamb leaping straight up into the air, the way they will all be doing in a week or two. One of these years, maybe, if the photo fairy smiles on me. A few of the bigger lambs are beginning to try out the moves now. Calves and foals leap and buck, but they don’t jump straight up, like a bounced ball, the way lambs–and fawns–do.**
And a few piglets. 
Piglets are a completely different kind of hoot when they run. You can see the bobbing bums here, and the little legs go at an amazing speed while the backs stay almost flat: and they grunt as they run: oof! Oof! Oof! Oof! Mum comes along behind on an extended deep grooooooooan.
Yep. I see you too.
* Depending on what was for the chop. Morons in dented white vans, definitely.
** I assume some of this is just weight. An average lamb may weigh ten pounds at birth. An average foal may weigh over a hundred. And some baby things are bouncier than others.
Authority
Another of those sitting-on-the-electric-fence WOW, life-passing-before-your-eyes ZOT moments today, coming back from the morning hurtle in Wolfgang. It’s been another gorgeous day, blue and clear and not quite warm, except in the bottom of a valley in the sun, when you’d be fanning yourself if you didn’t need both hands for hellhound leads, and you’re hoping that your summer t-shirts weren’t stolen by fairies over the winter when you weren’t looking* because you may go home and put one on now.**
I may have been thinking about t-shirts*** on the way back but I was also paying attention to what I was doing . . . which is a very good thing because as we came round a blind corner surrounded by hedgerows there was a truck in the middle of the road. ‘Frell’ does not cover this instance. £”=$%^&*(+}]#@-!!!!! I screamed, standing on the brakes and yanking the wheel over. Fortunately there was a little hollow in the hedge–possibly from someone else coming round exactly that same corner to exactly the same prospect of immediate death–and with a cloud of dust, a neck-snapping weave, a stink of burning rubber, and a scream almost as anguished as mine from both brakes and tyres,† we eluded Nemesis. Nemesis, I might add, had also pulled his wheel over sharply, or I probably wouldn’t be writing this entry.††
I almost turned around and followed him†††, to get his number plate and frelling report him to the frelling police. I didn’t. In the first place I was shaking so badly from adrenaline‡ I was having trouble driving at all, and I was also having that shocky thing when you want to go home and hide. And then there isn’t a good place to turn around for quite some distance at that point, it being a narrow road with hedgerows on either side and prone to blind corners–did I mention the hedgerows and the blind corners?–and I was seriously not in the mood for a high-speed chase after the beggar.
And supposing I caught up with him, then what? I had about two-thirds of an adrenaline-crazed second in which I wanted to drag him out of the cab and stomp him. It only lasted two-thirds of a second–not only because I was wearing All-Stars which probably wouldn’t make much impression.‡‡ Confronting him wasn’t going to do me any good: morons who drive in the middle of the road around blind corners don’t listen to the hysterical middle-aged women they’ve almost flattened.‡‡‡ And supposing I got his number plate and took it to the police . . . the police would write it down, politely, say ‘yes madam’, politely, and wait for me to go away. A particularly young, eager, enterprising policeman might tell me there wasn’t any point to writing it down; there wasn’t anything the police could do about it.
I didn’t even have to refer to the ‘coward’ option; I had plenty of excuses to drop it, do nothing, and go on. Which is what I did.§ But it did make me–is making me think about authority, and about not having any. I can do a good rant, and nobody tells me how to write my books§§, but authority? I can’t even get Chaos to eat his dinner.§§§
I can’t even get my husband to write me another guest blog. But yesterday he did offer me a poem. Which is rather on topic, even if Peter calls it:
Will power
“Abracadabra!” I said to my aunt
Because she said I must when I told her I shan’t.
She learnt then that miracles truly don’t cease,
For now I was her uncle and she was my niece.
But she eyed me in all-too-familiar a way
And told me I must, and so I said “okay.”
* * *
* Or nested in by squirrels. This happened once. I lost several really good t-shirts. Have I told you this story? It was all part of the protracted business of moving into my little house in Maine. Why do I keep insisting that I’ve never done major house construction work before Third House? Possibly because I’m trying not to remember.
** I’ve also been taking photos like a mad thing. Brace yourselves for an Extended Tour of Certain Small Bits of Hampshire in Spring.
*** I wasn’t. I was thinking about tiles.
† And a small anxious squeak from lying down hellhounds. I’m not monomaniacal about too many things besides writing, tower bell ringing, handbell ringing, piano playing, composing, gardening, roses, weight-bearing attic floors, homeopathy, and Green & Black’s chocolate, but dogs that lie down in the car is one of them.
†† I would be saying to the nurses and doctors at the hospital, no, no, you don’t understand, I have to have my laptop and an internet connection, I have a blog to write, I do it every day,^ my arms aren’t that broken, are they? I can still wiggle my fingers out of the ends of the plaster.
^ Because I am insane. Which is a different department than the crunched-by-lorries department.
††† Yep. I’m assuming him. It was a beat-up, dented^ white thing with a lot of grappling gear in the truck bed.
^ I wonder why
‡ What an exciting life I lead, out here in the back woods of Hampshire. It was less than a week ago, I think, that I was not quite throwing up in the bushes from the adrenaline of meeting the Hound of the Baskervilles on another sunny morning. That time however I didn’t have to check Wolfgang’s paintwork after.
‡‡ He would either bounce me around like a ping-pong ball or sue me for assault. Neither of these appeals to me much.
‡‡‡ I suppose I could’ve tried tucking a hellhound under each arm before I stomped him, which would at least make me weigh enough to be a little scary. The All-Stars were pink, however. Has anyone ever been frightened of someone wearing pink All-Stars?^
^ I think I might be frightened of someone carrying hellhounds under both arms.
§ I went on to Third House in search of the builder, who wasn’t there, of course, waving a sheaf of printed-off pages^ of wall tiles from way too much time spent on the internet the last two days.^^ But while I was there anyway I had another look at the old bathroom and its extent of tiling, and I was thinking, really, that’s not a huuuge lot of tile, maybe I could . . . but somebody else is going to have to do the maths. I am not risking my rapidly diminishing bank balance on my ability to calculate surface area.
^ I was waving the pages, not the builder who wasn’t there. I suppose he might have been waving a sheaf of pages, wherever he was . . . sorry, the aftermath of a bad jag of adrenaline makes me even sillier than usual.
^^ And bumping bruisingly against the shortcomings of google. There is still an awful lot of stuff out there you can only locate by luck or connivance.
§§ No, I am not fun to edit, but I meant it in the larger sense. It’s been an unusually bad few weeks for SUNSHINE sequel demands, and I’ve been pondering another entry on the subject. Some evening when I’m feeling strong perhaps.
§§§ Speaking of things to write entries about on evenings when I’m feeling strong: the Food Fetishes and Baffling Ritual Behaviours of Hellhounds.
But they do lie down in the car.