The Nothing Within Read online

  You know why we tell stories? We tell them because they’re about something.

  Maybe you’ll think I’m telling this story to entertain you. That it’s about mighty shepherds and raging chimeras and the mysterious Hidden Folk, and about fear and fights and escapes. And sure, it’s got those things.

  But that’s not what it’s about.

  This story is about choices. It’s about the choices we make, and why we make them, and how they touch the lives of others. And the reason I’m telling you this story is that we still have important choices to make. We do. You’ll see.

  I’m not such a prideful fool as to think my story stands alone, neither. So very many stories came before mine. I’ll share some of them with you. Not just the good-old stories and rhymes folks have told one another for generations. I’ll read you words written by Shepherd Gabriel, who saw my story happen, but who saw his own side of it. I’ll read you ancient words from the Reckoning, so very long ago—words from Ruth Troyer herself, who suffered through that awful time.

  And if we take all these stories into our hearts? And if we learn their lessons, and make choices that are wise and true? Well, then, we can hope that more stories will come after these. We can hope that any folks are left to tell them.

  Anyhow, we’ll never get to the story’s end unless I start it, now will we?

  Let’s see.

  Guess I’ll start where it starts, with the first thing I can recall, back when I was just a little nubbin like some of you are.

  Candler Heddie didn’t like me.

  That wasn’t unusual. Few folks in Surecreek did. They all thought there was something awful wrong with me. I didn’t listen. I didn’t agree. I asked why. The wrongness went much deeper than that, of course, though none of us knew it back then. But Candler Heddie’s dislike was different. As though I’d done something awful to her and she was going to make me pay for it without crossing my ma too bad.

  My very first memory is of Candler Heddie leaning down and putting her face right up close to mine, the smell of beeswax wafting around her. Even her breath smelled of beeswax, like she not only made those candles but ate them. Her breath touched my face and tickled ‘crost the top of my smooth-shaved head as she said the words I’d hear so often. The words that’d follow me for all my years in Surecreek, til Surecreek finally died.

  She leaned down, or crouched down, I couldn’t tell which, but she got her face up close to mine and she said, “Your problem, Little Weaver, is the Nothing within you.” Then she stood and spat and walked away with her skirt rustling. To this day when I smell beeswax, I hear the hate as she said those words.

  The Nothing within me.

  I had no idea what I’d done to set Candler Heddie growling in my face. Had I broken something, or spoken back to her, or asked a question no decent person ought to ask? Years later I learned why she hated me so, but back then it was a hurtful mystery.

  It would be pure cruel and unkind to hope somebody would burn to death in the Goodafter Pit. For all my great many faults, I’m neither cruel nor unkind. But Candler Heddie made me wish I was cruel and unkind so that I could hope she’d go to the Pit.

  Ma must not have been with us that day, or Candler Heddie would never have dared to speak so harsh, though in later years folks got bolder. How much harder might my life in Surecreek have been if I weren’t the village weaver’s daughter?

  Oh, now. There I go, showing proud with my misfortune.

  Some folks in Surecreek got on with me fine. I guess a few even liked me. Mender Vernie. Woodsmith Abram. Leeleh. Her mother. Runner Zeekl was kind to me almost ‘til the end. Others, too. Sometimes I recall things being harsher than they were. There were good and joyful things, too. Many of them!

  And back then, when I was so young I can scarce recall it, I suppose my greatest joy was my time at Learning.

  3

  Learning

  It distressed me plenty when I realized I’d have to walk past Candler Heddie’s every day on the way to Learning, what with her house being right beside the Common hall. I swept past her house quick as I could, holding my breath from worry and also to keep out the beeswax smell. For all I knew she watched me every morning with poison churning inside her.

  Once I was in the Common hall, though, things were better, even if I did still smell Heddie’s candlemaking when the wind was wrong. Learner Ned was patient with me, and I sure don’t know why. Grandmother Root must have stood with her hand on his shoulder all day long, whispering patience and kindness into his heart. He had little reason to be kind, because I exercised his patience more than I did most folks’. And that’s saying something. Truly it is.

  Learner Ned was a short man with a kind voice and an easy laugh that reached all the way inside you. He noticed the wonderful things we did even when they weren’t so wonderful, and if he noticed our failings, he kept them to hisself. We loved him.

  Leeleh told me that when her ma was a little girl, Learner Ned’s pa (also named Learner Ned) taught in the Common hall. Elder Learner Ned was nothing like our Learner Ned. He was poor of patience and thin of good cheer, and he scolded the children cruelly. In his later years he turned so cruel that Surecreek had to burn him in the Goodafter Pit. Folks said Elder Learner Ned had the Nothing within him too. Just like me.

  But anyhow. However Learner Ned ended up so kind after fruiting from such a twisted branch, we were awful glad he was our learner and not some other.

  One day—I know I was seven since it was my first week at Learning—Learner Ned was teaching us of the Reckoning and what came after it, sitting with us in a small corner of the great, echoey Common hall. The first thing, as always, was to recite the names of all the villages that had died. Greenhill, Goodbrook, Hoverplatz, New Erie, Sussgrasser…well, there’s nearly twenty and you’ve heard the names, too, so I won’t recite them for you. All those villages had questioned too much and sought too far and tried to remake the World That Is, so Grandmother Root guided the Wrathful Spirits to wipe away their wrongness. So we thought.

  That was the greatest sin when I was young. To do something in a new way. To create a thing like none that had come before. To remake the World That Is instead of living in it like it was meant to be.

  Mender mends,

  Drover tends,

  Mason shapes,

  Tanner scrapes,

  Cobbler laces,

  Runner races,

  Baker bakes.

  None remakes.

  Or at least that’s what Learner Ned said, because it’s what everybody said, because it’s what we all believed in that long-agone time.

  The most recent village to die was Greenhill. It died not long before I was born. Greenhill’s miller found a faster way to get words on paper, or at least that’s what Settie heard from her pa, Runner Aimis, whose trade took him all over the World That Is. We had no idea what it meant to get words on paper faster, though today you’d call it a printing press. But that’s about when Greenhill died, so we figured that’s why it died. The sin of remaking. After Greenhill died, folks were careful to put words on paper real slow indeed.

  When we finished reciting the names of dead villages, Learner Ned moved on to more joyful parts, leading us in some good-old rhymes and stories. First off was a Rover Jon story, one of so many we loved because they made us laugh. You must know this one. It ends:

  Whither, whither, Rover Jon?

  Seeking things past where his reach is.

  Callow, callow, Rover Jon, might

  Seek the stars yet lose his breeches.

  Why now, why now, Rover Jon?

  Out there yonder, what’s to find?

  Foolish, foolish, Rover Jon

  Gains nothing but a cold behind.

  Of course, there could be no such person named Rover Jon, because there was no trade called roving. Roving would serve no purpose, or so we thought back then. You might as well have laughing or dreaming as your trade. I suppose that’s part of what made his stories so funny.
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  Next, Learner Ned taught us a good-old rhyme I didn’t know yet. The other children recited it along with him, smiles in their voices, while I sat still and listened for the first time:

  The World That Is, is safe and round.

  The World That Is, has sun and rain,

  The World That Was, it has no end,

  The World That Was, has bitter pain.

  “Well recited, well recited children!” Learner Ned tapped his feet in appreciation. “Shall we say another?” The girls and boys nodded quietly, I suppose. Leeleh reached over and took my hand, hers cool and damp and thin, and squeezed with secret joy. Saying good-old rhymes instead of the usual recitations was a treat.

  If I were a good girl, I would have been excited, too. But I wasn’t, so I wasn’t. Because I hadn’t finished with the first rhyme yet. “Learner Ned?”

  The room went quiet with the hush of little boys and girls who’d stopped breathing like dead’uns. I figured everybody was just listening to me real careful. The daughter of the village weaver might expect as much, and I did.

  “I, ah…yes, I wonder whether Young Root might have said something?”

  “Learner Ned,” I said, “is that rhyme about the world beyond the Edge, across the Void?” Leeleh’s hand startled. It let go of mine. “Root,” she whispered so soft I doubted nobody else could hear it.

  Learner Ned made a chuckle that sounded uncomfortable, though I couldn’t imagine why. “Ah…yes, Young Root. It’s about the World That Was.”

  “Who poisoned it?”

  “Poisoned?”

  Of all the things I knew at that age, which was probably less than half of what I thought I knew, most was about rootcraft. And I’ll confess it now: I was proud of what I knew. “Of course, Learner Ned,” I lectured. “Because some things that’s bitter is good for you, and some things that’s bitter is bad for you, but only the very worst ones of all give you pain.”

  Learner Ned chuckled again, though not so uncomfortable now. “Young Root, I see what you’re thinking, and I see why you’re thinking it. The good-old rhyme mentions bitter pain in the World That Was. And though Gebohra Muerta did give the People poison gifts so very long ago, the rhyme doesn’t mean bitter as a taste. Bitter pain means suffering. Endless torment.”

  “But not from poison?”

  “Not from the poison of rootcraft. From the poison of pride and seeking! The World That Was, Young Root, is the world of light without heat. Of heat without light. A world created by wicked folks who stood too proud and sought too much and wished to remake all things.” Whatever had made him uncomfortable before, he was warming up to it now. “The World That Was is a place we cannot go, and a place we would not want to! It’s the endless village of Gebohra Muerta and her children, the chimeras. Grandmother Root set us apart here in the World That Is, to protect us all from the downfall of those wicked folk in the World That Was.

  “The World That Is, is safe and round!” he called out, a smile in his voice. The other children, apparently breathing again, took up the chant, though a little unsteady-like. “The World That Is, has sun and rain. The World That Was—”

  “But Learner Ned…”

  Somebody gasped. The others stumbled to a halt.

  “Young Root,” said Ned with kindness, “you are new to Learning, so—”

  “But Learner Ned, how do we know?” An older child behind me—Sadie, by the sound of her voice—whimpered, though again I couldn’t imagine why.

  Learner Ned’s voice sounded like a bull hog bumping at the pen, frantic to get out. “We know because the rhyme says so, Young Root. We know because we’ve been told, by our parents and our weavers and the shepherds. Now, as I was saying, you are new to—”

  “But what if there’s something useful across the Void? What if we ought to go there? What if the rhyme’s wrong?”

  The room was still for maybe three heartbeats. Then from behind me came the sound of an older child weeping softly. And from my right came a trickling sound and the smell of somebody’s bladder loosing itself.

  A moment later, Learner Ned took my hand and pulled me real gentle from my chair. “Young Root, you…you’re new to…ah, we…” As he stammered, he breathed faster than folks usually do. Finally he managed to say, “Please, for today, please go to your house and tell your ma, tell Weaver Root what’s happened here. She…she’ll know the best thing for…for this…”

  Then he was drawing me to the door, his hand in the middle of my back, pressing me toward home.

  4

  Little Weaver

  Weavers sort out folks’ disputes. They guide the village Elders. They teach what’s proper. They use their rootcraft to help their village. They pilgrimage to holy places. They judge who needs to visit the Goodafter Pit.

  But my ma didn’t weave. In all my years I’ve never known a weaver who did.

  So I had no idea why weavers were called weavers. I know now, but back then I didn’t. Nobody did, not even the weavers themselves. Once I asked Ma and she said, “Because my ma called herself a weaver.”

  Almost every weaver I’ve known was a decent and compassionate person. Kind, in their own way. Even so, I suppose a weaver is the scariest person in a village between what they’re able to do, what they must do, and their hardness of body and will from doing it.

  There’s no greater symbol of that hardness than the shepherd’s staff. Runners have their clubs and slings to protect them on the roads, and folks who must go beyond the village wall carry such things as well. But the shepherd’s staff was for weavers and shepherds alone. Hickory, hardened, and head-high, they use it to walk rugged paths in the wild, and when they swing it in the Shepherd’s Dance it can keep them alive among all the awfulness that lurks out there.

  The Shepherd’s Dance is a beautiful and wondrous thing, a thing given us by the shepherds, a thing with the sound of the wind and joy of leaping and a feeling like warm water running slow down your back. Maybe the most beautiful thing there is for all I know.

  Beyond the village wall, a weaver has her daughter take up the staff as a child. That’s just good sense. All year-round, the weaver visits holy places as she must, and she goes out there with no protection but her staff and her earnest hope that Grandmother Root’s smiling on her. And once her daughter’s old enough to come along, they’re on pilgrimage together. So the weaver gives her daughter a little staff to protect herself, too.

  You might not think swinging a tiny staff would make much difference for a babe in the woods if she’s set upon by, say, a razorback or a wolf. But I’ll tell you this: A poke in the eye feels pretty much the same to a wolf as it would to you. And unless it’s well beyond hungry, it’s awful easy to convince your typical wolf that it’s better off chasing rabbits or squirrels or some other critters that won’t poke it in the eye with a stick.

  But even though most weavers’ daughters take up the staff real young when they’re on pilgrimage, they most certainly do not carry it around in public til they’re done apprenticing and become worthy weavers.

  Because some things just ain’t done.

  I wasn’t quite two years old when I started carrying a little staff around Surecreek. That wasn’t from miraculous skill, nor even from pure cussed stubbornness, of which I had plenty. I just needed it to get around.

  The good folks of Surecreek could see the sense in that, and it didn’t raise so much as a single hackle on a single neck. But they didn’t comment on it, neither. Because on the one hand, everybody knew you didn’t carry the staff unless you were a weaver or a shepherd. But on the other hand, since I couldn’t see, they knew it kept me from tripping over things all day long. But back on the first hand again, that sort of thing really. Was. Just. Not. Done.

  Well, when something both must happen and mustn’t happen, anybody with good sense just ignores it and notices the weather instead. And if the good folks of Surecreek had nothing else, it was an abundance of good sense and plenty of weather to notice.

  S
o I went around our village with my tiny staff, swaying it back and forth in front of me to know what was coming, and everybody in Surecreek earnestly pretended I wasn’t doing no such thing.

  Til our shepherds visited.

  Because shepherds weren’t cautious about what shouldn’t be noticed. They were shepherds after all. If they hadn’t done unusual things, I suppose all the People’d be dead by now. So when our shepherds, Rachel and Lydia, saw this little nubbin walking around Surecreek with a toy shepherd’s staff, they didn’t pretend to notice the weather like all the deeply sensible folk of Surecreek did.

  They laughed and called me “Little Weaver.”

  And somehow that made it all right for everybody else to relax a touch, and maybe even to notice a little bit that I wasn’t able to see. So that’s how I came to be called Little Weaver before I so much as knew what a weaver was.

  I often wondered whether that staff of mine, tiny though it was, helped folks to put up with me a little more than they would have otherwise. Because whatever the size, a shepherd’s staff meant authority, even though I’d earned no such thing.

  I also wondered whether that staff pushed all the other children of Surecreek just a little further from me. But I didn’t fret about that overmuch. Because when you can’t stop asking questions that no decent person ought to ask, and you’re stubborn, and you can’t see, and your head’s shaved smooth, as is the practice with weavers and their daughters—well, since so many things set me apart from the good folks of Surecreek, I doubted one little staff made very much difference at all.

  5

  News from Market

  The day Runners Aimis and Zeekl heard at Market that Shepherd Gabriel was making Festival rounds, word spread through Surecreek.