She was horribly weak, it frightened her how weak she was. The frail weight slid off and Yaril rolled over twice, lay face down on the grass beside the rutted dirt road, very pale, almost transparent. Jaril was colorless too, though he had more substance to him. Brann looked down at herself. She’d lost almost all her flesh, her skin was hanging on her bones. Her hands were shaking and she felt an all-over nausea; chills ran through her body. “What…”
Jaril clicked his tongue impatiently. “No time for that. There’s the horse, Brann, feed us before we go to stone, Yaril’s hanging on a thread. The horse. You can reach it, come on, stand up, I can’t carry you. Hurry, I don’t know how long…”
Trembling and uncertain, Brann hoisted herself onto her feet. Stiff with blood, feces and urine, too big for her now, her skirt fell off her, nearly tripped her; grunting with disgust she dragged her feet free, tottered down to the grazing horse. He started to shy away, but froze when her hand brushed against his flank. She edged closer, set her other hand on his back by the spine, hating what she was doing since she was fond of horses, but she was a lot fonder of the children so she drew the horse’s cool life into herself, easing down beside him as he collapsed, sucking out the last trickle of energy.
Jaril drifted over, dropped to his knees beside her. “We brought some rAhargoats,” he said. “They’re around somewhere, when we saw you down like that we forgot about them. I’ll chase them over in a while. Horse won’t be enough.” He leaned against her, fragile and weightless as a dessicated leaf.
Brann straightened, twisted around, touched the tips of her fingers to his face, let him draw energy from her. Color flowed across him, pastel pinks and ivories and golds, ash gray spread through his wispy shirt and trousers, from transparent he turned translucent. He made a faint humming sound filled with pleasure, grinned his delight. Brann smiled too, got to her feet. “Get your goats,” she said and started walking heavily up the grassy rise, heading for the road and Yaril. Jaril shifted to his mastiff form, went off to round up the goats.
Yaril lay on the grass, a frail girichild sculpted in glass, naked (she hadn’t bothered to form clothing out of her substance though she clung to the bipedal form and hadn’t retreated to the glimrnersphere that was her baseshape, Brann didn’t know why, the children didn’t talk all that much about themselves) and vulnerable, flickering and fading. Frowning, worried, Brann knelt beside her, stretched out hands that looked grossly vigorous in spite of the skin hanging in folds about the bone, and rested them gently on a body that was more smoke than flesh, letting the remnant of the horse’s energy trickle into it.
The changechild’s substance thickened and her color began returning, at first more guessed at than seen like inks thinned with much water, but gradually stronger as Brann continued to feed energy into her. When a dog barked and goats blatted, Yaril’s eyes opened. She blinked, slow deliberate movements of her eyelids, managed a faint smile.
Jaril-Mastiff herded the goats over to her. Brann fed their energy to him and Yaril until they lost their frailty, then used the last of it to readjust herself, rebuilding some of the muscle, tightening her skin, shedding the appearance of age until her body was much what it had been when she and Harra Hazani had played Slya’s games so long ago. The changechildren had grown her from eleven to her mid-twenties over a single night back then and all her hair fell out. Remembering that, she shook her head vigorously; most of her hair flew off; she wiped away the rest of it. Bald as an egg. She rubbed her hand over skin smooth as polished marble. Ah well, maybe it’ll grow back as fast this time as it did that. She looked down at the dead boy, stooped, grunting with the effort and took the knife from his body, straightened with another grunt, held it up. A strange knife, might have been made of ice from the look of it. As she turned it over, examining it in the dim light from the moon, it melted into air. She whistled with surprise.
Jaril nodded. “The one that was in you did the same thing.”
Braun laughed, wiped her hand on her blouse. “They weren’t souvenirs I wanted to keep.” She started for the house. “Shuh, I need a bath.” A sniff and a grimace. “Several baths. And I’m hollow enough to eat those goats raw what’s left of them.” Another laugh. “I didn’t know how hungry it makes you-dying, I mean. It’s not every day I die.”
“You weren’t actually dead,” Jaril said seriously. “If you were dead, we couldn’t bring you back.”
“Was a joke, Jay.”
He made a face. “Not much of a joke for us, Bramble. Starving to death is no fun.”
“You made me, you could find someone else and change them.”
“We made you with a lot of help from Slya, Brann, we didn’t do it on our own. I doubt she’d bother another time.”
“Mmm. Well, I’m not dead and you’re not going to starve. Uh…” She clutched at herself, started to turn back.
Yaril caught her arm, stopped her. “This what you want?” She held out a small bloodstained packet. “I found it lying beside me. You think it’s important?”
“Seems to me this is what got the boy killed and me…” she smiled at Jaril, “… nearly.” She closed her fingers about the packet. “It stinks of magic, kids. Makes me nervous. Somebody called up tigermen and whipped them here to make sure I didn’t open it. I don’t like mixing with sorcerors and such.”
“Who?”
Brann tossed the packet up, caught it, weighed it thoughtfully. “Heavy. Hmm. No doubt the answer’s in here. While I’m stoking up the fire under the bathtub and scrubbing off my stink, the two of you might take a look at this thing.’ She held out the packet and Yaril took it. “And I wouldn’t mind if you fixed me a bit of dinner.”
Jaril chuckled. “Return the favor, hmm?”
After scrubbing off the worst of her body’s reaction to its own violent death, cold water making her shiver, and adding more wood to the fire under the brick tub, Brann climbed to the attic and pulled the gummed paper off the chest that held her old clothes. When she stopped wandering nearly a century ago and moved into the shed behind the house, she had to bow to Dayan Acsic’s prejudices and pack her trousers away. She was a woman. Women in Jade Torat wore skirts. His one concession was this chest. When she came back with the proper clothing, he let her put her shirts and trousers and the rest of her gear in the chest, gave her aromatics to keep moths and other nuisances away and gummed paper to seal the cracks, then he shouldered the chest and carried it to the attic, tough old root of a man, and that was that.
She turned back the lid, wrinkled her nose at the smell; it was powerful and peculiar. She excavated a shirt and a pair of trousers, then some underclothing. The blouse was yellowed and weakened by age, the black of the trousers had the greenish patina of decades of mildew. “Ah well, they only need to cover me till I reach Jade Halirnm.” She hung the clothing in the window so it would air out and with a little luck lose some of the smell, retied the sash to her robe and climbed back down.
The water was hot. She raked out the firebox, tipped the coals, ash and unburned wood into an iron brazier and climbed into the water.
When she padded into the kitchen, sleepy, filled with well-being, the changechildren had salad and rice and goat stew ready for her and a pot of tea steaming on the stand. Jaril had dug out Brann’s bottle of plum brandy; he and Yaril were sitting on stools and sipping at the rich golden liquid. The parchment was unfolded, sitting crumpled on the table, held down with a triangular bit of bronze.
Brann raised a brow, sat and began eating. Time passed. Warm odorous time. Finally she sighed, wiped her mouth, poured a bowl of tea and slumped back in her chair. “So. What’s that about?” She smiled. “If you’re sober enough to see straight.”
Yaril patted a yawn with delicate grace; since she didn’t breathe, the gesture was a touch sarcastic. She set her glass down, licked sticky fingers, brushed aside the chunk of metal and lifted the parchment. “First thing, these are Cheonea glyphs.”