The Luck of Brin's Five Read online

  Before I left, Old Gwin came up with a basket of hot stones and three roasted graynuts that she had been saving. The stones went at Odd-Eye’s feet to warm him, and I had a warm pocketful of graynuts. I have had to laugh, since those days, when I have heard scholars in Rintoul swear that the “primitive Moruia” use no fire. Indeed we were chary of fire … our home was made of flaxen cloth pulled over a tree! I never saw a blaze or a flame in our glebe, but we certainly used fire in winter, and we warmed our food. A point in the scholars’ favor is this: we never spoke of fire or called a flame, a flame. We were superstitious. Old Gwin made us say instead “the kind one.”

  It was a weaver’s mile to the lakeside; but after the first rise outside the western gate, it was downhill all the way. The sled was light because Odd-Eye was nothing but skin and bone. I trudged through the snow numb with anxiety as much as cold. This journey was like stepping off the edge of the world; I felt that the worst was about to happen, that I was hard up against the cruelty of life and could do nothing to change it.

  I had a hard time hoisting the sled to our comfortable place under the burned tree. Then I checked to see if Odd-Eye was alive; his odd eyes blinked at me. I went down and warmed my hands and feet at the lake, then I came back to sit on the rock and eat my graynuts. There was no snow falling, and the winds were still. We saw Esto, the Great Sun, go down, a smear of orange in the distant west; it was the time of “runar,” the little darkness before the rising of the Far Sun. Trails of phosphorescence sprang up on the lake’s surface and overhead the stars blazed. I was dozing when Odd-Eye gave a thin cry.

  “Glider!”

  “What is it?” I was frightened, sure that he was dying, that his mind was wandering again.

  “A glider!” He was straining against the thongs that bound him to the sled. His voice was so weak that I had to put my ear close to his lips.

  “Look, Dorn … coming down over the lake …”

  I stared and saw what he meant, but it was no glider. It was more like a falling star, then blazing closer, like a fireball or meteor. I thought, in fact I hoped, that it would fall short, a long way from us, behind the peaks on the far bank of the lake. But Odd-Eye was whispering in my ear, and the fireball came closer, “A glider! A balloon! It will strike in the lake and your Luck is there, I know it! A great Luck is there!”

  The light from the fireball grew from white to orange to pinkish red; I was terrified now, for I could see that it would not fall short. I was sure it would crush us, right there under the burned tree. It came on and on, and I could not look away until it fell hissing and burning into the lake near the far bank. Then I saw two other things: a hunting party on that bank, near the dark peaks—city dwellers with banners and lances—and in the upper air floating towards our side, two little white tents on strings wafting down among the tendrils of steam.

  I left Odd-Eye without a word and ran back along the track. Halfway to the rise I cannoned into Brin and Harper Roy, coming to relieve me at my post, and blurted out my story.

  “We saw the fireball!” said Brin. “What’s this about a tent in the air?”

  “The Luck!” I gasped. “Don’t you see? It will land in the lake!”

  “Odd-Eye called it a glider?” asked Harper Roy.

  “Some vessel,” I said. “Some air ship. Oh please come … the Luck is in the lake by now …”

  They were coming along with me as I babbled, and we came in sight of the lake. The white tents floated in a tangle about fifty feet from the shore.

  “Something came down …” said Harper Roy.

  There were shouts and torchlights springing up on the far bank. The hunting party was trying the steamy water, to probe the place where the fireball struck. Suddenly there was a movement near us; I saw the tents and their cordage wrap against a heavy body, circling slowly in the wide whirlpool eddies of the warm lake.

  “Quickly!” said Brin, “reef in the cords … there is someone bound to them!”

  We waded into the warm water until I was swimming and dragged at the cords and fought with billowing heaps of warm, wet fabric, soft as silk. There was a grotesque figure floating in the water: ballooning legs, stiff arms, square head with one dark, glistening eye, big as a whole face. Then it came to rest on the shore, and we all saw what it was … a kind of body-shaped bag of fine metallic cloth. The dark eye was a piece of glass. Someone lived inside the bag, and we knew it must be our Luck.

  “Blood …” said Harper Roy, “… on the sleeve …” From within the helmet there came a feeble gasping cry, for all the world like that of a hidden child.

  Brin struggled with the square helmet while Harper Roy got to work with his knife on the strangling mess of cords. He reefed in the two white tents. I could see that Roy did not mean all that wealth of white silk to go to waste. Brin gave a soft cry; the helmet was off. There in the night, with no light but a radiance off the snow, we could just make out a face. A young face, with pale soft features and short hair; black hair, black as night. The eyes were open now, and a deep voice implored and questioned; we did not understand one word. We all replied at once in the most soothing tones we knew: You are safe. You are our dear Luck, come in answer to our prayers. We will help you. You have come to Brin’s Five. We are your Family, and we will love you.

  There was a confused shouting and splashing from the far bank.

  “Do you read that crest?” asked Harper Roy.

  “Star and spindle,” said Brin, peering through the mist at the torchlit banners. “Some grandee. But they will not have our Luck.”

  The Luck lay still now, eyes closed; I could not look away from that pale face. Then suddenly Harper Roy was beside me with our sled and coverings, gently rolling the Luck upon it, still in the body bag. I started up. “Odd-Eye!”

  But Brin pulled me down again into the shadow. “Odd-Eye has no need of these things any more.”

  Then I was filled with remorse and sadness and almost hated the new Luck because I had left Odd-Eye alone to die, by the burned tree.

  The hunting party had not seen us, but they were beginning to move around the head of the lake towards our beach. We took everything including the bales of white silk; the Harper dragged a branch over the places where we had been. We went quickly up the track, bent double, dragging the sled, and a light snow fell behind us, covering our traces as we bore the Luck safely home.

  II

  We were afraid of pursuit that same night, but it did not come. We sat in the dark, retelling the miracle to Old Gwin and Mamor and Narneen. Then Brin made a bold decision and lit two candlecones from Gwin’s secret store.

  “We must not lose the Luck now it is come!” said Harper Roy, in answer to Old Gwin’s protest. “Pray to the Kind One or whatever you like, but we must tend these wounds.”

  “A glider?” rumbled Mamor. “Burn us but it must be some rich grandee that will never stay with mountain folk!”

  “An air ship!” I insisted, “not a glider!”

  “You sure it ain’t some Hairywing, some goblin come through the void from Derrin?” teased Mamor again.

  Narneen whimpered.

  “Hush!” said Brin. “It is a person . . . a Moruian. Perhaps it is an Islander.”

  Old Gwin who had been wrestling with the shining body bag found the way to work the fastening and began to peel it off.

  “You see, Mamor?” I said. In the confined space we slid off the body bag and had it folded away quickly.

  “Not bad . . .” said Old Gwin. “Fetch clean snow in a basket. There’s a cut . . . oh poor dear . . . the Luck has a burn. The Luck’s poor dearest hand is burned.”

  “If it were perfect,” said Harper Roy, “we might not have a Luck.”

  While Old Gwin washed and dressed the burned hand and the cut head, we examined our new Luck. We saw a tall, strongly made figure, like our own and yet not like. The proportions were different: heavier muscles, especially on the shoulders, like a porter. Arms shorter, head more round, face rather
more flat, eyes more frontal and so on. This has all been detailed now and studied, but we were the first ones, so I believe, to make such observations.

  The hair we could not believe: black as night, soft and curly as fleece; we all touched it as the Luck lay there, breathing strongly. We compared it with our own hair, all straight, of course, and fine, from Old Gwin’s gray strands to the even brown of the grown-ups and the streaked blonde of myself and Narneen. Then the skin, paler than ours even in winter, pale and unmarked by the sun, the way grandees in Rintoul might be, if they took care and used sunshades.

  “An Islander?” asked Brin.

  The Luck wore a beautiful suit of rich, soft fabric, all in one like the body bag; a dark blue suit down to the feet, covered in white stockings after the heavy boots came off. Over the suit was a sleeveless vest covered with pockets and pouches, closed with that same interlocking fastening that had tried Old Gwin’s patience. We took off the vest and laid it aside, then Mamor worked the fastening on the beautiful blue suit and drew it down over the shoulders, drawing the burned hand carefully from the left sleeve. More clothes—a shirt and long trunk-hose in fine white woven stuff.

  “A quick look!” said Old Gwin. “We mustn’t freeze the Islander to death!”

  “It’s not cold,” said Harper Roy. “This is the Luck’s showing!”

  We laughed, and Brin stripped off the shirt; Old Gwin gave a sharp intake of breath.

  At first I saw only those tantalizing marks of difference—like and unlike all together. The stripping made the Luck more slender because the suit gave shape and padding. The rib cage was the same, the muscles heavy like an athlete or porter. The skin was utterly foreign in its pallor and the pattern of body hair, thick on the chest and descending onto the belly, was unlike a moruian.

  “I think the Luck could grow that hair on its face!” said Mamor.

  “So much?” said Harper Roy enviously, feeling the Luck’s smooth chin. “You’re right. It has hair scraped off right up to the ears.”

  Old Gwin was amazed at something else: two circular marks on the hairy chest.

  “Great North Wind!” whispered Harper Roy, “what sort of creature is this . . . to have teats on the chest?”

  “They’re not true nipples,” said Brin. “Could they be scars? Some kind of ritual cicatrice? Remember the legend of the Branding.”

  Old Gwin clucked and made some crude remark to Mamor, which he did not repeat. She made a sign to avert threads of evil and reefed off the Luck’s last garment. There was no doubt, the Luck was a male person, and below the waist his appearance was remarkably normal. There was a round, sunken scar in the center of the body, which we found puzzling, but the rest of him quite sound and well-formed. Gwin covered the Luck and put back the beautiful blue suit; Narneen, cheeky wretch, had slipped off a white sock and counted the Luck’s toes. Five of course, rather squashed and flattened from their tight covering.

  Gwin said: “Leave him be!”

  “Name the Luck!” I said. “He must have a name.”

  “It will tell us,” said Mamor. “Give the poor fellow time.”

  “No,” said Brin, “Dorn is right. A nickname would be our gift to the Luck. Roy?”

  The Harper ran a hand over the strings and pronounced first.

  “Nightbird.”

  “Starfall.”

  “Blackbird.”

  “Kind Star.”

  “Dark.”

  “Blueskin.”

  So it went round the circle until someone said “Diver . . .” and we knew this was the perfect name.

  A diver is a bird with blue plumage, the color of the Luck’s blue suit. Divers come to the Warm Lake for a while in spring, for the shrimp hatching. Diver! How we laughed!

  “Perfect!” said Brin. “It gives nothing away.” Narneen gave a squeak. We saw that the Luck—Diver—had opened his eyes, and they were blue. Not green or tawny or brown or hazel or any color but blue, bright piercing blue, an eye color unknown among the Moruia.

  We stared and Diver stared back, taking in slowly the recesses of the tent, the glowing candlecones, the ring of faces. I heard the sound of the wind, thrusting at the edges of the tent. Outside was the glebe and beyond its wall the forest, the mountainside. We were perched high on Hingstull, upon the round orb of Torin, a small bead woven into the network of two suns. But the mystery of the spinning universe had been caught and held, for a moment, right here in our tent. I stared, on his behalf, at my own family. What could Diver see?

  The looms that took up so much space, the brightly colored pieces of work drying or stretching up above us; the colony of spinners, all we had left, wintering in the fork of our tree. The wool sacks, the racks where Old Gwin kept food baskets. The hide bags for clothing, the sheafs of parchment and cypher threads and music skeins that Brin and Harper Roy had collected, Mamor’s weapons.

  Then the Family . . . the adults, who looked to me as well-worn and pleasant as the familiar objects we had made for our use every day. Thin brown faces, mainly hairless, though the Harper grew a lock on his chin. Heads of straight soft hair, plaited or tied, of a plain bear-brown; eyes widely spaced, long-lashed, all dark brown except Mamor, whose eyes, like my own, are hazel. Straight features, long upper lips, straight teeth . . . Old Gwin’s were almost gone.

  We were muffled in winter tunics and leggings and shawls, but Mamor’s build was noticeably the heaviest; he had a scar on his left cheek. Brin’s face was the noblest; she wore the vented robe and a copper amulet, very old, the only metal we carried in the house, besides four knives. Then the children, Narneen and myself, thin, straight and brown as the rest, our hair lighter.

  Diver looked hard and raised his head. Old Gwin clucked and gave him another pillow. Then we began to speak, reassuring him. He spoke, in that surprisingly strong, guttural voice; his words seemed harsh, well-formed, dropping hard as graynuts into the murmuring pool of our speech. His teeth were as straight as ours; he curved up his mouth . . . we all smiled back. Narneen laughed, and Brin, picking up Diver’s sound right hand, laced fingers in the sign that is called “Welcome.” She said the word; Diver easily repeated it, and that was the first word he learned in our speech. We all made the sign with his hand or our own and repeated the word to him.

  He greeted us, then became anxious; his words made us cringe a little. Harper Roy mimed the tale of the vessel landing in the lake and made zooming, splashing noises. Then we showed the Luck his body bag, the vest and the white tents that had supported him in the air. He was calmer. He took the vest, and from the first of those magic pockets dosed himself with two small orange globes of medicine. Then he opened another pocket and brought out a flat package of dark brown squares, wrapped in crackling metal paper. Old Gwin made an averting sign, not the first or the last; she was very superstitious. Anything to do with fire or metal frightened her.

  Diver broke off a dark brown square and ate it. Then he broke off other squares and held them out in front of us.

  “Go on,” said Brin, “it must be fit to eat.” She took a piece, then Narneen . . . always hungry . . . then the rest of us. It was indescribable. The sweetest thing I had tasted in my life to that moment was wild honeycomb, and not much of that. We devoured that first square of chocolate like Twirlers in ecstasy.

  Diver had other rations, but we refused them and ate our blackloaf; we were positive now that our luck had changed. It was difficult to speak with Diver; but very soon he took from his vest a small sheaf of paper and a little, hard blue pen. With these he began his drawings. He was very skillful at drawing all kinds of simple things, and he could draw faces . . . our faces, his own. His work was clever as a tapestry tale-weaver. At the very beginning of his life with us, something was said that rings in my mind still, because it is so strange.

  Diver listened to us very closely but he could scarcely repeat anything we said, at first, because our speech is fast and soft. But without prompting, he spoke up and said, “Moruia.” We agreed, pointing to ourse
lves, and he said again, “Moruia of Torin.” It could be argued that he caught the words from our speech or read our thoughts. This is not so. Diver had no magical powers in the true sense; he was “thought-blind” and could not use a Witness. I believe his explanation: that his ancestor spoke these names in a prophecy long ago, in the system of another star.

  Our luck had changed. We slept late; and when we awoke, Mamor and Harper Roy had been to the lake. They had performed funeral rites for Odd-Eye and buried his body. I often thought of Odd-Eye in the days that followed, and sometimes in dreams I spoke to him and told him how well we were doing. I wondered if his soul-bird had flown with the North Wind, our Great Mother, or if it still hovered near us, watching, as certain brave souls are permitted to do. But I was a child and could not mourn long.

  That morning my main interest was in food; Roy and Mamor had picked up a sack of mud-crabs, washed up on the lake shore out of season. Then on the way back Mamor shot a scrub deer. They saw certain other things and came back quickly to report. I left off threading the contrary little brute of a mat-loom and was unloading the mud-crabs.

  “There’s company!” said Mamor, jerking his head towards the lake.

  “A search?” asked Brin.

  “It will come to that.”

  “Armed vassals,” explained Harper Roy, “trying to drag up Diver’s ship in a net. It will go all the way to Rintoul.”

  “What was that crest again?” mused Brin. “Star and spindle. Do you know that, Mother?”

  Old Gwin snorted and went on skinning the deer with her own shell-knife. “A branch of Clan Galtroy. That crest was quartered on a hanging by Roneen Tarroyan . . . may her soul-bird fly far . . . Galtroy are southern grandees. City-folk.”

  Mamor shook his head. “That was not the only crest we saw.”

  “What else?” asked Old Gwin, catching something of his tension. “Out with it!”

  “Three knots,” said Mamor. “The armed vassals in the patrol all bore this device.” Brin looked for confirmation to the Harper, who struck three notes on his harp. I was filled with uneasiness.