Outcast

I

Her basket on her arm, Miriara Ilsari strode up the beaten-dirt path muddied by spring rains, trying to keep her temper in check. She dearly wished she could take off the sweat-soaked kerchief that hid away her hair, but contented herself with staring brazenly at the trees that made up Healer’s Copse.

As usual, the Torments, Joryn Ryani, Tyra Jonri, and Hetty Thomri had intercepted her as she walked home from Morry Samra’s smithy. Miri had carefully kept her eyes on the floor and her hair beneath her kerchief, and survived the veiled looks and subtle comments of the smith, but the Torments’ blatant insults made her blood boil.

“Landless Lady-child. Miri Mothers-name. Miri Ilsari.” Their snarled statements echoed even now in her ears. Only one thought had consoled her, and had kept her from charging them with fists swinging, risking that the red locks, not the gold, would escape her headscarf: They never had seen her eyes. They never had seen her hair. And if Lady Rain and Lord Earth permitted… they never would.

“It’s not my fault I don’t know who my father is,” she muttered. Whenever she asked, Ilsa would skitter and dance around the subject, until Miri finally gave up and stopped trying to find out. All she could get from her mother is that she indeed had been a Lady-child, conceived on Lady Rain’s festival by a Mandragora (what Ilsa called the dragon-people).

Miri’s mother, the town’s healer Ilsa Peteri, was waiting at the door. Seeing Miri’s expression, she sighed gustily, her rather large bosom rising and falling. “The Torments again?” Ilsa had readily taken to her daughter’s nickname for the trio. In that way, she’s more my friend than my mother, Miri thought wryly.

“Yes. Those blighted kleresi,” Miri growled.

Now Ilsa was clearly the mother. “Miriara!” Miri had forgotten yet again, and used the forbidden language outside the house. Ilsa hurried Miri inside, looking down the path to make sure that nobody had heard.

Once the door closed, Ilsa rounded on her daughter. “Those three girls, no matter how unpleasant they are, are no excuse to throw away caution! What if somebody had been behind you? It would have caused questions, questions neither you nor I can answer!”

Then why did you teach me that tongue? Miri bowed her head, no more contrite than usual. Ilsa had taught her basics of a foreign, liquid language for some reason she never explained. Whenever Miri asked where she had learned the unknown words, Ilsa’s eyes took on a faraway, saddened look, and if Miri stayed up, she would hear Ilsa weeping long into the night. But the one lesson that never stuck long in Miri’s head was never to use the words except when mother and daughter were entirely alone.

Ilsa sighed again, and told her, “You can take off that wet kerchief now. Is it warm outside, or did the Torments dump a bucket on you?”

Miri didn’t answer, merely pulled off her kerchief and re-braided her long hair, entwining the hanks of crimson, thickly streaked with gold like a field of wheat; her dark scarlet eyes, thankfully mistaken for brown at first glance, were fixed on the polished silver mirror. Miri’s height, nearly a head taller than most people in the town, made some suspicious of her parentage—but where did the forbidden tongue come from, since the dragons and their controllers communicated in hisses and screeches? Why did Ilsa teach it to Miri, and where had she learned it? Why was Miriara named “mirror-gold” in that tongue? Why were there always gifts of silver, like small coins or the mirror she was looking into now, on Lady Rain’s day, mysteriously showing up on the doorstep? More questions, never answered.

Later, Miri was helping Ilsa clean the tiny three-room Healer’s cottage when the councilors came. One of the grim-faced elders knocked politely on the door, and stepped back when Ilsa opened it. She dropped a curtsy to the councilors. Miri, back in the corner, noted with bitter humor the hidden glances some of the councilors took of her mother’s curvaceous form. “Lady Rain be gentle to you, Councilors,” Ilsa murmured demurely.

“And to you, Mistress Ilsa,” the eldest of the group, Alec Branra, replied courteously. “Your presence, and that of your daughter, are requested at the Council Hall.”

Miri choked silently. How, her mind screeched. How did they find out? She unobtrusively checked her headscarf, just in case. Ilsa showed no emotion whatsoever. Both mother and daughter untied their long cleaning aprons, deposited them in a small basket, and followed the delegation out the door and down the muddy path.

XX

Miri stood alone before all the brown; brown homespun clothes, brown eyes, brown hair, sun-browned skin. Perversely, it had been out of spite that Tyra Loreni had reported Miri to the Council as a Curse-marked. Tyra hadn’t actually known what Miri was. Miri toyed with her gold-streaked auburn braid, scarlet eyes flicking from dark-eyed stare to dark-eyed stare, looking for some shred of sympathy. There was none. Only cold, unfeeling gazes.

Aaron Lukera, the Mediator of the Orchard Hill Council for over twenty years, stood squinting nearsightedly at the girl. “Miriara Ilsari, you are clearly marked with the curse-red of eye and hair. Therefore, you are no longer one of us. We, the Orchard Hill Provincial Council, in the name of the High Council of Stonegard Valley, name you Outcast before one and all.”

Two men of the village escorted Miri to the door of the Council Hall. Someone placed a black bundle of clothes in her hands: black shirt, black skirt, black stockings, black boots, and black headscarf. When she didn't respond, still numb from the verdict, Miri was stripped naked before the entire town, and dressed like a recalcitrant child in Outcast black. Looking out at all the staring eyes, she flushed heavily, noting the hungry glances of young men. Any nearly naked female will do for them, she thought, disgusted. She ran home to pack all she could carry that was hers—which wasn’t much—before it was destroyed, to dispel the “curse” on her community. Ilsa helped.

Miri bit her lip watching her mother carefully fold clothes and a packet of food into a pack. Ilsa would likely be beaten and then forcibly married to any bachelor or widower the Council gave her to. She turned away to adjust the leather shoulder-strap on her canteen, blinking away a rush of tears. When she faced Ilsa again, Ilsa drew her hand quickly out of the pack, as if putting something in behind Miri’s back. When mother and daughter embraced for the last time, Ilsa whispered against Miri’s jaw, “Ievas’ha al’hizhi, Miri.” Fly to the sky.

Then the silent Valley-men and –women drove her toward the Battle Pass. Miri never looked back as the Torments shot a final salvo.

“Imagine! Miri Mothers-name, a curse-red!” Joryn remarked aloud, unthinking.

“Who?” the other two girls chorused dutifully.

The Outcast of Stonegard Valley, already forgotten in the place of her birth, strode off into the mountains known as the Dragons’ Teeth, toward the cursed Dragonlands.

Ievas'he al'hizhi!

Casey