The Pillars of Creation tsot-7 Read online

  Oba didn’t set the chicken back down.

  He grinned as he lifted it closer to his face, watching its head twist from side to side, its beak open and close, open and close. He put his own lips close, so the beak was touching his lips, then, with all his might, he blew in the chicken’s open mouth.

  The chicken squawked and flapped, madly trying to escape the viselike fist. A deep laugh rolled up from Oba’s throat.

  “Oba! Oba, where are you!”

  When he heard his mother hollering for him, Oba plopped the chicken back on its nest. His mother’s voice had come from the nearby barn. Squawking its terror, the chicken fled the henhouse. Oba followed it out of the coop and then trotted toward the door to the barn.

  The week before, they had had a rare winter downpour. By the following day, the standing water had frozen and the rain had turned to snow. Windswept snow now hid the ice, making for treacherous footing. Despite his size, Oba negotiated the icy conditions without much difficulty. Oba prided himself on being light on his feet.

  It was important for a person not to let their body or mind become and dull. Oba believed it was important to learn new things. He believed it was important to grow. He thought it was important for a to use what they had learned. That was how people grew.

  The barn and house were one small structure made of wattle and woven branches covered with a mixture of clay, straw, and dung. The house and barn were separated by a stone wall. After he’d built house, Oba had made the wall inside by stacking flat gray rocks from the field. He had learned the technique from observing a neighbor stack mocks at the side of his field. The wall was a luxury most homes didn’t have.

  Hearing his mother yell his name again, he tried to think of what he could have done wrong. As he perused his mental list of the chores she’s told him to do, he couldn’t recall one in the barn that he’d failed to do. Oba wasn’t forgetful, and besides, they were chores he did often. There shouldn’t be anything in the barn to have set her off.

  True as all that was, none of it shielded him from incurring his mother’s ire. She could think of things that needed doing that had never before needed doing.

  “Oba! Oba! How many times do I need to call for you!”

  In his mind’s eye, he could see her mean little mouth all pinched up as she said his name, expecting him to appear the instant she screeched for him. The woman had a voice that could unwind a good rope.

  Oba turned sideways to fit his shoulders through the small side door into the barn. Rats squeaked and scurried away at his feet. The barn, with a hayloft above, housed their milk cow, two hogs, and two oxen. The cow was still in the barn. The hogs had been turned loose in the oak stand to rut for acorns under the snow. Oba could see the hind ends of both oxen through the larger barn door out to the yard on the other side.

  His mother stood on the low hill of frozen muck, hands on her hips, the cold smoke of her breath rising from her nostrils like a dragon’s fiery snort.

  Mother was a big-boned woman, broad in the shoulders and hips. Broad everywhere. Even her forehead was broad. He had heard people say that when his mother was younger she had been a handsome woman, and indeed, when he had been a boy, she had had a number of suitors. Year by year, though, the struggles of life had worn away her looks, leaving behind deeply etched lines and sagging folds of flesh. The suitors had long ago stopped coming around.

  Oba made his way across the black, icy ground inside the barn and stood before her, hands in his pockets. She walloped the side of his shoulder with a stout stick. “Oba.” He flinched when she whacked him three times more, each swat punctuating his name. “Oba. Oba. Oba.”

  When he had been young, such a thrashing would have left him black and blue. He was too big and strong, now, for her stick to hurt him. That made her angry, too.

  While he wasn’t bothered much by the stick now that he was grown, the condemnation in her voice whenever she spoke his name still made his ears burn. She reminded him of a spider with a mean little mouth. A black widow spider.

  He hunched, trying not to look so big. “What is it, Mama?”

  “Where are you loafing when your mother calls?” Her face screwed up, a plum long ago turned to a prune. “Oba the ox. Oba the dimwit. Oba the oaf. Where were you!”

  Oba lifted his arm defensively as she cracked him with the stick again. “I was getting the eggs, Mama. Getting the eggs.”

  “Look at this mess! Don’t it ever occur to you to do anything round here unless someone with brains tells you to?”

  Oba looked around, but didn’t see what needed doing—other than the regular work—that would have set her off so. There was always work to do. Rats stuck their noses out from under boards in the stalls, whiskers twitching as they sniffed, watching with beady black eyes, listening with little rat ears.

  He looked back at his mother, but had no answer. None would suit her, anyway.

  She pointed at the ground. “Look at this place! Don’t you ever think to scoop out the muck? Soon as it thaws it’ll be running under the wall and into the house where I sleep. Do you think I feed you for nothing? Don’t you think you have to earn your keep, you lazy oaf? Oba the oaf.”

  She had already used the last invective. Oba was surprised, sometimes, that she wasn’t more creative, didn’t learn new things. When he had been little she had seemed to him a mind reader of inscrutable ability, with a talented tongue that could cut him with knowing lashes. Now that he had grown so much larger than her, he sometimes wondered if other aspects of his mother were less formidable than he had once feared, wondered if her power over him wasn’t somehow . . . artificial. An illusion. A scarecrow with a mean little mouth.

  Yet she still had a way about her that could cut him down to nothing.

  And she was his mother. A person was supposed to mind their mother. That was the most important thing a person could do. She had taught him that lesson well.

  Oba didn’t think he could do much more to earn his keep. He worked from sunup to sundown. He prided himself on not being lazy. Oba was a man of action. He was strong, and worked as hard as any two men. He could best any man he knew. Men didn’t give him any trouble. Women, though, stymied him. He never knew what to do around women. Big as he was, women had a way of making him feel puny.

  He scuffed his boot against the dark, rippled, slick mound underfoot, assessing the rock-hard mass. The animals added to it continually, much of it freezing before it could all be scooped out, allowing it to build in layers throughout the long, cold winter. Periodically, Oba scattered straw over the top for better footing. He’d not want his mother to slip and fall. It wasn’t long, though, before the layer of straw became slicked over and it was time for another.

  “But Mama, the ground’s all frozen.”

  In the past, he had always scooped it out as it thawed and could be worked. In the spring, when it got warmer and the flies filled the barn with their constant buzzing, it would come off in layers where the straw was. But not now. Now, it was welded together into a solid mass.

  “Always an excuse. Isn’t that right, Oba? Always an excuse for your mother. You worthless bastard boy.”

  She folded her arms, glowering at him. He couldn’t hide from the truth, couldn’t pretend, and she knew it.

  Oba peered around in the dark barn and saw the heavy steel scoop shovel leaning against the wall.

  “I’ll scoop it, Mama. You go back to your spinning, and I’ll scoop the barn good.”

  He didn’t exactly know how he was going to scoop the solid frozen muck, only that he had to.

  “Get started now,” she huffed. “Use what light is left of the day. When it gets dark, then I want you to go to town to get me some medicine from Lathea.”

  Now he knew why she had come to the barn looking for him.

  “My knees is aching me again,” she complained, as if she wanted to cut off any objection he might voice, even though he never did. He thought it, though. She always seemed to know what he was thinking. �
��Today you can get started in the barn, and tomorrow you can go back to scraping the muck all the way down until you clean it all out. Before the day wears on, though, I want you to go get my medicine.”

  Oba pulled on his ear as he cast his gaze toward the ground. He didn’t like going to see Lathea, the woman with the cures. He didn’t like her. She always looked at him like he was a worm. She was mean as rake. Worse, she was a sorceress.

  If Lathea didn’t like someone, they suffered for it. Everybody was afraid of Lathea, so Oba didn’t feel so singled out. Still, though, he didn’t like going to see her.

  “I will, Mama. I’ll fetch your medicine. And don’t you worry, I’ll get to work at scraping the muck out, just like you said.”

  “I have to tell you every little thing, don’t I, Oba?” Her glare burned into him. “I don’t know why I bothered raising such a worthless bastard boy,” she added under her breath. “Should have done what Lathea told me, in the beginning.”

  Oba heard her say this often, when she was feeling sorry for herself, sorry that no suitors came around anymore, sorry that none had wanted to marry her. Oba was a curse she bore with bitter regret. A bastard child who’d brought her trouble from the first. If not for Oba, maybe she would have gotten herself a husband to provide for her.

  “And don’t you be staying in town with any foolishness.”

  “I won’t, Mama. I’m sorry that your knees are bad today.”

  She whacked him with the stick. “They wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have to follow around a big dumb ox seeing that he does what he should already be doing.”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Did you get the eggs?”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  She eyed him suspiciously, then pulled a coin from her flaxen apron. “Tell Lathea to make up a remedy for you, too, along with my medicine. Maybe we can yet rid you of the Keeper’s evil. If we could get the evil out of you, maybe you wouldn’t be so worthless.”

  His mother, from time to time, sought to purge him of what she believed to be his evil nature. She tried all sorts of potions. When he was little she had often forced him to drink burning powder she mixed with soapy water; then she would lock him in a pen in the barn, hoping the otherworldly evil wouldn’t like being burned and locked up both, and would flee his restrained earthly body.

  His pen didn’t have slats, like the pens for the animals did. It was made of solid boards. In the summer it was an oven. When she made him take burning powder and then dragged him by the arm and locked him in the pen, he near to died of terror that she’d never let him out, or never let him have a drink of water. He welcomed the beatings she would give him to try to silence his screams, just to be let out.

  “You buy my medicine from Lathea, and a remedy for you.” His mother held up the small silver coin as her eyes narrowed into a spiteful squint. “And don’t you go wasting any of this on women.”

  Oba felt his ears heating. Each time his mother sent him to buy something, whether medicine or leather work or pottery or supplies, she always admonished him not to waste the money on women.

  He knew that when she told him not to waste it on women, she was mocking him.

  Oba didn’t have the courage to say much of anything to women. He always bought what his mother said to buy. He never once wasted it on anything—he feared his mother’s wrath.

  He hated that she always told him not to waste the money when he never did. It made him feel like she thought he was intending to do wrong even though he wasn’t. It made him guilty even though he had done no wrong. It made what was in his thoughts, even if he didn’t have them, a crime.

  He tugged on a burning ear. “I won’t waste it, Mama.”

  “And dress respectable, not like some dumb ox. You already reflect badly enough on me.”

  “I will, Mama. You’ll see.”

  Oba ran around to the house and fetched his felt cap and brown woolen jacket for his journey to Gretton, a couple miles northwest. She watched him carefully hang them on a peg, where they would stay clean until he was ready to go to town.

  With the scoop shovel, he started in on the rock-hard muck. The steel shovel rang like a bell each time he rammed it at the frozen ground. He grunted with each mighty blow. Chips of black ice burst forth, splattering his trousers. Each was but an infinitesimal speck from the dark mountain of muck. It was going to take a long time and a lot of work. He didn’t mind hard work, though. Time he had in abundance.

  Mother watched from the doorway of the barn for a few minutes to make sure he was working up a sweat as he chipped away at the frozen mound. When she was satisfied, she vanished from the doorway to go back to her own work, leaving him to think about his coming visit to Lathea.

  Oba.

  Oba paused. The rats, back in the small places, stilled. Their little black rat eyes watched him watching them. The rats went back to their search for food. Oba listened for the familiar voice. He heard the door to the house close. Mother, a spinster, was going back to spinning her wool. Mr. Tuchmann brought her wool, which she spun into thread for him to use on his loom. The meager pay helped support her and her bastard son.

  Oba.

  Oba knew the voice well. He’d heard it ever since he could remember. He never told his mother about it. She would be angry and think that it was the Keeper’s evil calling to him. She would want to force him to swallow even more potions and cures. He was too big to be locked in the pen anymore. But he wasn’t too big to drink Lathea’s cures.

  When one of the fat rats scurried past, Oba stepped on its tail, trapping it.

  Oba.

  The rat squeaked a little rat squeak. Little rat legs scrambled, trying to get away. Little rat claws scratched against the black ice.

  Oba reached down and seized the fat furry body. He peered at the whiskered face. The head twisted futilely. Beady black eyes watched him.

  Those eyes were filled with fear.

  Surrender.

  Oba thought it was vitally important to learn new things.

  Quick as a fox, he bit off the rat’s head.

  Chapter 8

  From what seemed to her the least troublesome corner of the room, Jennsen kept an eye on the door as well as the boisterous crowd. Half a room away, Sebastian leaned on the thick wooden plank counter, speaking to the innkeeper. She was a big woman, and with a forbidding scowl that made her look like she was as used to trouble as she was prepared to deal with it.

  The roomful of people, mostly men, were a jovial lot. Some of the men played at dice or other table games. Some arm-wrestled. Most were drinking and telling jokes that would set tables of them off in peals of fist-pounding laughter.

  Laughter sounded obscene to Jennsen. There was no joy in her world. There could be none.

  The past week was a blur. Or was it more than a week? She couldn’t recall exactly how long they had been traveling. What did it matter? What did anything matter?

  Jennsen was unaccustomed to people. People had always represented danger to her. Groups of them made her nervous—people at an inn, drinking and gambling, even more so.

  When men noticed her standing at the end of the counter near the wall, they forgot the jokes, or paused at their dice, and lingered on the sight of her. Meeting their gazes, she pushed the hood of her cloak back, letting her thick rings of red hair fall over the front of her shoulders. That was enough to turn their eyes back to their own business, Jennsen’s red hair spooked people, especially those who were superstitious. Red hair was uncommon enough that it raised suspicion. It gave people a worry that she might be gifted, or perhaps that she might even be a witch. Jennsen, by boldly meeting their gazes, played on such fears. It had in the past helped protect her, oftentimes better than a knife could have.

  Back at her house, it hadn’t helped one little bit.

  After the men turned away from her and went back to their dice and drinks, Jennsen looked back down the counter. The stout innkeeper was staring at her, at her red hair. When Jennsen met h
er gaze, the woman quickly turned her attention back to Sebastian. He asked her another question. She bent closer as she spoke to him. Jennsen couldn’t hear them over the roar of all the talking, joking, betting, cheering, cursing, and laughing. Sebastian nodded to the woman’s words spoken close to his ear. She pointed off over the heads of her customers, apparently giving directions.

  Sebastian straightened and pulled a coin from his pocket, then slid it across the counter toward the woman. After taking the coin, she traded it for a key from a box behind her. Sebastian scooped the key off the counter worn smooth by countless mugs and hands. He picked up his own mug, and bid the woman a good day.

  When he reached the end of the counter, he leaned close to Jennsen so she could hear him and gestured with his mug. “You sure you wouldn’t like a drink?”

  Jennsen shook her head.

  He kept an eye on the roomful of people. They were all once again engaged in their own business. “It was a good thing you pushed your hood back. Until the woman of the house saw that red hair of yours, she was playing dumb. After that, her tongue loosened.”

  “The woman knows her? She is still living here in Gretton, as my mother said? The innkeeper is sure?”

  Sebastian took a long drink, watching a roll of dice bring a cheer for the winner. “She gave me directions.”

  “And you got us rooms?”

  “Only one room.” As he took another swig, he saw her reaction. “Better to be together in case of trouble. I thought it would be safer with us both in one room.”

  “I’d rather sleep with Betty.” Realizing how that must have sounded, she looked away in embarrassment and added, “Than in an inn, I mean. I’d rather be by myself than where there are so many people so close all around. I’d feel safer in the woods than closed in a room, here. I didn’t mean—”

  “I know what you meant.” Sebastian’s blue eyes took up his smile. “It will do you good to sleep inside—it’s going to be a bitter night. And Betty will be better sheltered at the stable.”