Crimson, p.2
Crimson, page 2
“I never fall, Mom. Never.”
“Such pride. Such confidence. Both are good, but wariness is better.” Lin kissed her daughter’s forehead. “You are more than Fen.” Her mother said this every morning and it always made Fen shiver, for her mother was referring to Fen’s secret name. The one they hid from the Queen. Her father had written it in their old language on a piece of vellum and stashed it under the floorboards. May had her own secret name too. Along with her mother and father.
Xi, her father, was the last of their family line to be able to read the old language, and he’d never spoken it aloud, in case the Queen heard him. He’d promised to teach it to Fen when she was older but had taken that language with him to his grave. If there were other villagers who could write or read in the old tongue, they never mentioned it. All the old languages in all the five hundred villages had been banned for over a thousand years. The Queen had declared that the only language to be used was Illish. It would unify the land. Other languages—other learning—had led to countless wars and the destruction of the nine cities. The citizens in Regentium were taught to write, but the villagers were not. The only thing Fen could write out were her numbers, which were needed in the market.
“And you are more than Lin,” Fen said.
Her mother nodded and left, closing the slat door behind her.
Fen swallowed the last of her congee and went into her mother and sister’s room. May was curled up on her bamboo sleeping mat, her head buried in her yellow pillow—their mother had sewn it in the shape of a cat. How May was able to fall back asleep after the Queen had awakened her, Fen would never know.
She poked her sister’s shoulder. “Get up! Or I’ll kick your porky hindquarters.” It was how her father had greeted her every morning. It felt as if he were still home when she used his words.
“I am up,” May growled without opening her eyes. “I’m just resting.”
“Well, I could leave now and let the shirkers get you. They gobble up little girls.” Fen knew May still believed that shirkers, the goblin-like creatures that served Mansren, actually existed. Even though she was eight summers old and should know better. Mentioning them was always a clever way to motivate her.
“There are no shirkers,” May declared. Her confidence surprised Fen. “The Queen killed them all.”
“She left a few alive. Just to chomp on lazy girls like you.”
“I’m not lazy!” May stood slowly and dressed slowly, yawning the whole time, and then she shuffled to the table and ate her congee at such an abysmally slow pace Fen was tempted to clap her on the side of the head.
“Hurry! The sun will be up and we’ll be late to the market.”
Fen grabbed two baskets and pushed May out the door. Even then her sister walked with the speed of a sun-drenched turtle.
But May wormed her hand into Fen’s and whatever irritation she’d felt faded. May was good at that. Worming her way into Fen’s heart. Plus, she had such warm hands.
They walked past the town square. The executioner’s block stood in the very centre. There was one in every village. Fen held her stump to her side as if to protect it. She could still see the Queen’s guard clearly, the way his face had reflected the Queen’s, the way the blade had caught the sunlight. Any whiff of smoke reminded her of the smell of her own flesh burning. Losing a hand hadn’t seemed a fair penalty for stealing a glass butterfly.
Fen was old enough to be working in the mines, but one-handed thieves were not allowed near the magical red dust. Nor was it possible to harvest rice, as you needed to hold the stalks of rice in one hand and swing the sickle with the other. So the jobs no one wanted fell to her. She spent her hours sifting through the refuse pile for buttons or bits of cloth her mother could sew onto shirts, or helping the fishmongers scale fish. Some days she would conceal her father’s small crossbow in her knapsack and hunt squirrels. At night, if there was need, she’d help her mother mend wounds or sell soothing ointments.
“Will I get to eat any berries?” May asked.
“Only the spoiled ones. The rest are for the market.”
They turned a corner and came to the last row of bamboo huts. Fen saw a familiar face. Bay, the son of a fishmonger, was sitting in a chair, several large redfish on a table in front of him. He was scaling a particularly large fish by scraping the blade from tail to head. He jumped to his feet when he saw them. A cloud of fish scales drifted from his pants and shirt. “Fen-May! Fen-May!” He had a habit of repeating names and words. “Where are you off-off to today?” He was eleven summers old. By next year he’d be at work in the mines. “Where-where?”
“Picking sunberries,” Fen said.
“Sunberries! I love-love sunberries!” Bay was slow-minded, but not so slow the Queen’s Guard would come and take him away. Fen had seen that happen with a girl child a few years earlier. Her parents could only watch quietly. To resist would mean death. “I have to scale fish-fish today. But tomorrow, will you show me the best-best sunberry trees? The very best-best?”
“Yes, of course!” She clapped his shoulder and then rubbed the scales off her hand with her stump. “Tomorrow, we’ll climb! I’ll meet you here at sunrise.”
“Good-good! Bye, Fen! Bye, May! Bye-bye!”
The sisters kept walking. “He talks funny,” May said when they were out of earshot.
“He has a kind heart. So you should be kind to him.”
“I am.” May sounded a bit perturbed. “The other kids poke him—with words and sticks—and he doesn’t get mad.”
“You tell me who does that and I’ll poke them, hard.”
May kept silent. She’d always been good at holding in secrets.
They walked along the winding Vilia River and then climbed the green hill that was called Grandfather’s Nose, stopping at a line of sunberry trees. The trees were tall, and the best berries grew at the very top.
“You stay here, May.” She gave her a basket, and then tied her own to her belt. “Pick the berries from the ground that still look good.”
“I know what to do!”
“And don’t eat any unless they’re broken!”
May put her hands on her hips. “I can climb with you.”
“Not until you’re older. You need longer arms.”
“You only have one hand!”
Fen bit back the first reply that came to mind. It was a mean one. “But two strong arms and good tree-sense. Now do as I say.”
Fen grabbed a bough with her left hand, climbed up a few feet and then curled her stump around a branch. Once she was partway up the tree, she set her feet, plucked a fist-sized orange berry and dropped it into the basket.
She ascended a little farther. The rising sun cast light across Village Twenty-One, outlining the huts and making the river glitter like a silver snake that had curled around one corner of the village. No, not a snake, Fen thought. A dragon. Her father had told her the river dragon was friendly and brought good luck. She knew dragons weren’t real but hoped the luck they brought was.
On the western edge of the village was the vast pit of the red earth mines. A haze floated up from the layers of earth that had been stripped away, shovelful by shovelful. The miners marched in and out, little dolls from this distance, breathing that dust, their faces covered with flimsy flaps of silk.
Across from the mines was a collection of small obelisks marking the ashes of the dead—they cremated any who had worked there. There were legends that the red dust had brought ancestors back to life as demons, so it was better to be certain they stayed dead.
Her father was in that graveyard under a smooth green stone etched with a dragon. He’d come home one evening five years ago with the red cough and died by morning. He was cremated at once and buried. Her mother had burned a paper dragon in their fireplace that evening, but when Fen asked why, her mother told her to be silent. “Do the same when I die,” she said. “Promise me.” Fen promised, even though she didn’t know what any of it meant.
Fen climbed ever higher in the tree, picking berries as she went. She’d step right into the air itself to get a better berry. She had a clear view of the small green Grandfathers’ Mountains that crouched over the village. Many of the grain and rice crops were grown in their folds. The spirits of the elders went to those mountains when they died.
All around them were the other villages, each with their tasks for the queendom. In the centre of Illium were the wheat growers. In the north, the metal miners. There were villages, she was told, where people had black skin, and other villages where the people were white-, brown- or pink-skinned. She longed to see those places. But travel was only for the merchants and the officials or soldiers of the Queen. Fen would never have any reason to explore.
Whether there were actually five hundred villages, she didn’t know. There were rumours that some villages had rebelled against Queen Servilia and been burned to the ground by her Queen’s Guard.
Fen could not see the ocean from here. It was many, many leagues away in all directions. Illium was an island queendom. She had no idea if other lands existed across the water.
Fen’s basket was nearly full—a dream haul. Her mother would kiss both her cheeks. And they would purchase meat—auroch or deer—with the coins the berries brought. She licked her lips, thinking of how much better her mother’s noodles would taste with something other than squirrel meat.
She spotted a trio of plump berries on one of the uppermost branchlets. It was good luck to find things in threes. She clambered higher and clamped her stump around a thin branch.
The three sunberries were the biggest she’d ever seen! They might each fetch a crown. She set her feet and stretched. The first was so round and juicy she was tempted to taste it, but she set it softly in the basket instead. Then she laid the second beside it.
When she reached for the third berry, the branch beneath her feet snapped without even the slightest warning and she tumbled downward, casting out with her left hand and finding nothing to grab. She closed her eyes to slits to avoid having them poked out. She managed to catch a branch but slipped and, by instinct, reached out with her stump.
Useless! Totally useless! But something in that place where her hand had been grabbed a branch as though a ghostly version of her fingers were still there. Her fall slowed, the branch bent and then, before she could look up to see how this was even possible, it broke.
Fen dropped straight down and smacked the ground with her back. Her breath whumped out of her body. An eon later, she breathed in a hard, hurting breath.
Her hearing returned. Her eyes were not working properly—she saw only the brightest white light. Then, a small shadow.
“Are you dead?” May asked.
“Not yet,” Fen said. She wasn’t certain if she could move. A cripple with a broken back and a missing hand was more than useless; the Queen’s Guard would take her away for sure. She lifted her one hand and shook her arm. Nothing was broken.
“Do you hurt?” May asked. “I mean bad. You must hurt.”
“I hurt. Now, help me up.”
May grabbed her hand. Fen sat up, her back creaking the whole way. The berries were scattered about her, squashed and split, their fleshy pulp looking like orange blood. Even her basket had smashed open.
“Stupid! Stupid!” Fen said. “Utterly stupid!”
“You mean yourself, don’t you?” May asked.
“Of course! I should’ve tested that branch.”
“Your tree-sense wasn’t very good.”
Fen spat a gob, expecting to see blood. “No. It wasn’t.”
“We can pick more.”
The sun was lighting up the morning sky. The merchants would soon be in the town square. “There’s not enough time. We’ll have to come back tomorrow.”
Fen looked up at how tall the sunberry tree was. She’d fallen from the very top. She should be dead. If not for the branches slowing her and—
It had seemed as if her right hand, her missing hand, had grabbed a branch. But that was impossible. And yet, she had felt contact. Not of her fingers so much, but something else that was invisible and attached to her arm.
She lifted her right arm. Her sleeve was torn, revealing her stump. Fen ran her hand across the scarred, mottled skin. On her second pass, she found a rough, dark patch and upon closer examination, she saw that something was sticking out. At first she thought it was a big green sliver, but she pulled on it to discover a vine. She gave it a good yank.
It was a part of her.
It was her.
“No,” she whispered. She pulled again and it separated from her flesh—a short vine with small leaves. But it had grown out of her arm.
“What is it?” May asked. “Do you have slivers?”
Fen covered up her stump. “It’s nothing. It has to be nothing.” It was her imagination. The vine had been lodged in her arm. “Just help me pick up what’s left of the berries.” Fen gathered a handful. “At least we’ll have something to eat.”
Chapter Two
A Sudden Burst of Crimson
THAT NIGHT FEN DREAMED ABOUT REACHING UP AND plucking a golden star from the sky. The fingers on her right hand—her long-missing hand—grew warm with the power of the heavens. She was whole. Her body complete. Her feet were anchored to the earth as if she’d grown roots.
Then, as Fen stared at the glowing orb, the Queen drifted into the dark space. Her face was impassive and extraordinarily faultless. It was such a familiar countenance—as familiar as Fen’s mother’s or sister’s. Fen saw it on coins, in paintings and it awoke her every morning. The Queen watched Fen silently.
“You are having a star dream,” Queen Servilia said finally.
Fen, in all her years, couldn’t remember ever talking to the Queen in a dream.
“Yes, I am,” she said. “A star dream.” The power of the star was coursing through her. Her bravery was rising from the ground.
“What’s your name?” the Queen asked.
Fen looked from the star in her hand to the Queen.
“Am I really talking to you?”
“Tell me your name. That is a royal command.” The glint of hardness in Queen Servilia’s eyes made Fen tremble.
“I—I don’t know my real name.” It felt like the truth. And a safe answer.
The Queen pointed at her. Her long nails had been painted black.
“What village do you live in?” she asked. “Tell me.”
“My village doesn’t have a name either,” Fen said. That, too, was truth. She wouldn’t lie to her monarch. “It only has a number. The number you gave it.”
“Which number is it? ” the Queen hissed. “I command you to tell me! ” With each word, the fabric of the dream tore at the edges. “Tell me now!”
The star vanished. Fen’s hand vanished. And, finally, so did the Queen.
Fen opened her eyes. Her heart was beating rabbit-fast. She would not have been surprised to see Queen Servilia standing right over her sleeping mat.
How horrible! Had she been speaking directly to the Queen? Her body said yes. But she wasn’t certain that was possible. The Queen visited her every morning, but that was a message sent to every citizen at once. This had been a conversation.
If it had been real at all, that is.
Fen reached to rub away the sleep from her eyes, but a sharp pain stopped her. Her neck, shoulders and back ached with stiffness. The fall from the tree had tried its best to break every bone. Despite an afternoon of scaling fish and pulling a rice cart, she hadn’t loosened those muscles. Sleep had only made them tighter.
Fen sat up slowly. Small pieces of bark littered the bed. She brushed at them and then, in a panic, grabbed her stump. Even in the dim light, she could see the skin had turned a hue of green. Is it septic? She rubbed where her wrist used to be and discovered more short vines. Touching them produced a tickling sensation. When she pinched one, intending to pull it out, it was as if she were tearing at her own skin.
“What is this?” she whispered.
“Get out of bed, Fen!” her mother said from the kitchen. “You need to be first at the market to get the best fish!” Lin pushed open the slat door. “Oh, dear Zaoshen!”
The fear on her mother’s face stopped Fen from spouting off about her privacy. Lin had just spoken the name of one of the old gods aloud. To even mention a god was a crime punishable by ten lashes.
“What!” Fen asked. “What is it?”
“Your hair!” Lin grabbed a handful and held it so Fen could see.
Red. Red. Red!
Her hair had gone crimson. Every strand had changed from dark black to red overnight. The dye should have lasted at least a day! She touched the traitorous hair. It felt thicker and glowed in the semi-dark.
“We must cut it.” Her mother’s voice was frail. “Right to the scalp. Quick! Get up!” She slammed the door. “We don’t want your sister to see it.”
“May wouldn’t betray me,” Fen said as she stood.
“One slip of her tongue and you’d be dead. Any who turned you in would dine for a year on that gold.” She dug in the cupboard and came up with a pair of iron scissors. “Hold still.”
“Mama!” Fen put up her left hand. “I don’t want to be bald.”
“You can say you had lice.”
“Lice! Never!”
“Would you rather lose your head?” Lin grabbed Fen’s hair so tightly that it hurt and snipped at a handful with the scissors. “It won’t cut! Old gods! Why this? Why now?”
“Stop talking about the gods!” Fen took the scissors and tried a smaller clump, but she couldn’t slice through one strand. How could it be so strong? She yanked and not a single hair came loose.
“Mama.” Fen’s voice trembled. “What’s happening?”
“The worst! The very worst! You’ll bring death to the family. Maybe even the whole village. Oh, Zaoshen save us!”
“Stop naming the gods!” Fen hissed.
Her mother took a deep breath. “You’re right.” She reached down and picked up a piece of bark from the sleeping mat. “What’s this?”
