An Ale for a Story

[Rance]

They had left the evening bustle of the Broken Dagger with haste -- or rather, with as much haste as could be found between the two of them. One of the pair was a withered old woman, feeling along with her cane, and the other was the seamstress who led her, their arms locked at the elbow. In Gloria's free hand, the one covered by a thin, black leather, there was a foaming mug of dark ale, a payment.

When she led Grawnya to the porch's bench, whose wood was as weather and gray as the storyteller's hair, the seamstress helped her sit. "Your ale, Greatlady," the girl said, before taking her own patchwork cloak -- the thing she had convinced the hook-nosed undertaker to give to her, from a dead man's belongings -- and draping it around the elderly woman's shoulders. "I had a dream," she admitted, sitting not at Grawnya's side, but at her feet, stretching threadbare skirts over the wooden soles of her shoes. "It was a terrible one. Awful. The kind that makes you sweat hunks of molten lead, and you cannot help but feel like a prisoner and watch."

She kneaded at her dress with her palms, the bare hand working wrinkles into the already-damaged fabric, saying nothing about the matters within the dream, except for a very insistent, "My friends would not shoot crossbows at one another. That is not how they would comport themselves. It is not, Greatlady," all while worrying at a particularly dark stain near her knee. She took in a breath, reasoned with herself, and then found Grawnya's eyes with her own.

"I would like to hear the story you offered, Greatlady. If you do not mind?"

An attentive girl, one who was used to stories being told when all seemed frightening, who clamored for Grawnya's wisdom when the dream -- Catch leveling a crossbow in his long, shaking arms, grinning that grin that smiled but did not smile, shooting past her (iron and wood both screaming, moaning, like they knew they were doing something wrong), the quarrel punching through invisible armor and into Cherny's little chest -- turned her away from Jerno confidence, and toward worry.

[Dulcie]

The porch bench seemed to be a welcome sight for the old woman as she immediately reached out for it, her old withered hands groping for the arm of the wooden structure, carefully using it to lower herself into a seated position. The cloak would warm her and the ale would be pressed into her hands after she had found a home for her walking stick beside her.

"Ah lass, yer a good one ye are." She'd give Gloria a smile, taking the mug of ale and taking a drink from it first. "Ye should try the drink lass, better here than in some o' the villages I've wandered to an ye have it from me that ye must take advantage o' a good drink when ye find it."

The request for the story was made and Grawnya nodded her head, lowering the mug to her lap, closing her eyes for a moment so that she could recall the story properly. When they opened there was something of a twinkle to them, and she began the tale, her accent fading away, giving over to a bold, clear story telling voice.

"It was many many years ago, longer ago than I or any Great Lady had lived. Perhaps three of our lifetimes ago." The oldness of the story could whirl about in the listener's mind, painting a picture of a culture long dead, surrounded with buildings made of stone and sand. "The people of this time had many Gods, and they viewed them as beings that could come to them when they were needed. They were constantly at war with their brothers in other cities and they prayed daily for advantage. They were tired of their buildings being destroyed, their women raped and their children murdered in their beds." She paused, taking another drink of ale to wet her lips.

"It was their leader who was the most pious of them all. He threw himself at the Priests feet and implored the Gods for some sort of aide. Perhaps if one among them could see into the future, know what was to come, they could hold the advantage over the barbarians of the North. The Gods heard his prayer and that night the Oracle was born."

[Rance]

Yer a good one ye are. Words that held such high praise from the Greatlady, or so the girl believed -- for the wise and elderly, in Jernoah, lived years no one else could fathom.

She graciously accepted the advice about the ale, but could not even think of drinking the bitter stuff again -- at least not until Murrukh better showed her how it must be done so it did not all come right back up, as it had the morning after. The seamstress had eyes for nothing else except the Greatlady. She tried to keep her shoulders from shuddering in the cold as she listened -- the story was more important than warmth, and preserving the Greatlady's comfort for the tale, that was essential to her.

Yet, as Grawnya started in on the story -- she had a voice for telling stories, the girl realized, a voice whose purpose entirely necessitated oratory -- she forgot the cold, even closed her eyes to listen as directly as she could.

The place Grawnya spoke of, it sounded familiar. It sounded of a place she knew quite well, where the sand was hot and bit like glass in the burning wind. Yet, there, women and children were not allowed to cover their faces from the grains; the skin would not grow hard and resilient without the pain. There, stahl and stalsi gave their lives to the Nameless when their terms in politics were done. They fought in tiny skirmishes with neighboring cities, as if one expanse of sand was more important than another.

The people of that time, she said, had many Gods. The Nameless.

That land sounded like Jernoah, like home.

She was invested, trying to force her mind away from images of what she knew to things more fantastical, as if the city described should not be her own. Her bare hand was a white-knuckled monkey-knot against her skirts, while the gloved one came up to wipe away tarsweat from above her brow, perspiring despite the sharpness of the cold seeping through the thready holes in her clothes.

"Was the Oracle a girl, or was she a boy, Greatlady?" she asked, leaning forward.

[Dulcie]

She told the story and the girl watched her, but she was being watched in return. Grawnya saw the light in the girl's eyes, the way she seemed to think and remember, and then she had that look that people so often got when they were trying to push something away and Grawnya would smile gently, moving to try to touch a hand of hers to the back of Gloria's.

"If the story is takin' ye somewhere lass, just let it take ye there aye? No point in forcin' a thing." She'd smile warmly, even going so far as to leave her hand there if Gloria would let her.

"It was a girl child, a tiny little helpless babe that borne unto a poor widow who had lost her husband while she was still with child. With no man to claim the babe it made it easy for the Gods to claim her as their own. She was named Narkissa and she grew up in the loving care of her mother. The Gods had not made it easy for the leader of the people to find his Oracle however. They told him only that it had been done, and that the Oracle would have visions in her sleep that would lead his people to salvation. The leader knew little of how old the Oracle might be, or whether she would be aware of her visions or not."

She paused for a drink of her ale then, watching Gloria's face before she continued. "As you might imagine, the first thing the great leader did was trying to find out who the Oracle was. He asked his people to find all the women of the city who experienced visions in their sleep and to bring them to him, so that he might determine which among them was the Oracle. Hundreds of women were brought to the leader and for days he listened to the tales of their dreams. Some were strange and difficult to determine what they meant if anything at all, others seemed foreboding, but all the while little baby Narkissa slept at her mother's side."

[Rance]

Just let it take ye there, the Greatlady said. So Gloria did.

She shifted on the porch, closer to Grawnya, settling her shoulder against the Greatlady's legs. The seamstress huddled at her feet as if she were a little child, even going so far as to rest her cheek upon the old woman's knee.

She saw, in her head, all of it: the naming of the little girl Narkissa; the Gods working the mind of the babe to be that of an Oracle, forging her little brain with their fingertips; the leader praying to them, on bent knee, to know the whereabouts of this Oracle he requested.

She saw the lines upon lines of poor women -- all Jernos, to Gloria -- wrapped in their sweaty rags, their torn dresses, and any of those under ten completely naked, as was custom, standing in a winding line about the stahl's residence. He listened to them talk about their dreams. Some were frightened. Some were proud. Some embellished. Others downplayed the vividness of their dreams.

And yet, little baby Narkissa slept.

She lifted her chin from Grawnya's knee only so long as to look up at her, and ask: "Would they know, Greatlady, if a baby were the Oracle? Would they see it in her eyes," the girl asked, "and know that her eyes could see prophecies? The listening to so many dreams -- it sounds tiring, and exhausting, and how could he know who was telling the truth, or who was trying to seek fame as a false Oracle?"

They were honest questions, not meant to interrupt the story, but to better attain a grasp on it. The girl's gloved fingers clutched to Grawnya's skirts, watching and listening without desire to pay her attention to anything else but the Greatlady.

[Dulcie]

She smiled at Gloria's questions, and the way the girl grasped at her raggedy skirt, the garment made entirely of patches from different colors and textures of fabric. Grawnya would even extend a gnarled hand to try to rest along the side of the girl's head, old fingers against the young woman's greasy hair.

"Well that's the question isn't it? Would ye know if any of the folk here were Oracles, or if they were merely spinnin' stories. It was the same struggle for the great leader. But no, there was no glimmer in the little babe's eyes, no clues that she could tell the future of things, but the child did sleep a tremendous amount, though that is not uncommon for infants after all."

She licked her lips then, readying herself to continue her tale. "So the great leader had spent many nights listening to the dreams of the women of the city and still nothing seemed to give him any reason to believe that one was an Oracle and the other was not. At least not until one young woman, a girl from a very poor family came forward and claimed that she was the Oracle, that the Gods had spoken to her and to her only.

The leader seemed relieved that his search for the Oracle had ended so quickly, but he had to know that there was truth behind the girl's words. He asked her for a sign of faith and dutifully the girl recited that she had seen what his next day would be, detailing everything from the food that he would eat to break his fast to the duties and people he would attend to the next day. She asked only that he wait until the following day to determine if it was true.

The leader did of course wait, waking the next morning to find that his foot was delivered just as the young woman had described it, and all through the next day he found everything was going exactly the way that she had said that it would, from the people that had come to his door to beg his aide, to the schedule of his routine. The leader was convinced that this young woman had been touched by the Gods and called for her immediately to come live within his great manor, so that he could keep her near at all times, to be sure that he would know his enemies plans."

She looked towards Gloria then, giving a pause, for she was sure that the girl would have questions or comments now.

[Rance]

"Does that mean -- does that mean that I could be an Oracle," she said, with childish inquiry. "Does that mean that I could know what might come?"

The dream had been so real, so vivid. Catch had had his frosty hair, that snotty rim beneath his nose and the mountainous height; Cherny had been so small, waddling like a duck in his winter clothes, his words bright but unsure as always.

She thought she felt that arrow hitting like a hammer, breaking bones, punching through lungs and heart and spine. Ending friends.

She did not want to be an Oracle at all.

She responded to Grawnya's touch by tilting her head against it, as if the wrinkles on the old woman's knotty-knuckled fingers might bring her insight. She clutched to the patchwork skirts, and was moved to measure them with her eyes, all so she might remember to make the Greatlady something wondrous to wear.

In Jernoah, that was the way: to rain gifts upon the elderly, to give them crafts and objects of trade to praise their beautiful, long lives. Grown men and women huddled at the feet of crippled elders, whose minds were so rancid with blightmilk and other hallucinogens -- to keep them as far away from the brutality of reality as possible -- that they sputtered words that made no sense. Those words, however, were more truthful than any, more revered, more trusted. Grawnya, however, was not a Jerno. She had a clarity in her tongue that the young seamstress could not help but hold in the greatest esteem.

In her thoughts, she traced the stitches on Grawnya's knee with a plump finger, and once the story was paused, said in a whisper: "Maybe -- maybe you are the Oracle, Greatlady.

"And maybe that means we are both touched by the Nameless," she said, as she splayed her gloved hand out across one of Grawnya's knees.

Faith. The hallmark of a proper Jernoan life.

Of any life.

"Please, tell me more," the seamstress said.

[Dulcie]

She considered Gloria's question carefully, looking thoughtful for a moment or two. "I suppose it be possible lass. It'd be near impossible to know what the Gods have planned for ye. I imagine you would have to wait and see if any truth came out o' yer dreams."

At the comment about Grawnya herself being an Oracle she started laughing, a warm soft laugh, not to make fun at Gloria, but a true laugh, amused by the idea of such a thing.

"Ah lass, I promise ye, I'm not Oracle." She smiled good naturedly then, continuing to rake her fingers through the girl's hair while she continued the story.

"So as we can both assume, no good could come of the poor girl who claimed to be the Oracle while baby Narkissa was dreaming her dreams of the future. You see that young woman was driven by her state of poverty, and despite her lack of participation in schooling she was quite bright. She had studied the ways of the leader, and talked to people so that she could make his schedule come true in the way that she had described it. Unfortunately for the girl however, she had not thought through her deception and a few days was all that her lies lasted. It was easy to predict simple routines, but it was not long before the leader wanted answers about his enemies and their locations. The girl did her best, trying to steal away the information from others when she could, but not all information can be bought or traded, and when she told the Leader that there would be no attacks on his city for a fortnight he believed her and had slept soundly. At least until the alarms were rang the next night.

It was a slaughter so great that it was a miracle that the leader and some of his soldiers had survived. The city was weakened, and the girl's falsehoods were revealed. The Leader had her executed the very next day for her lies. And all through the turmoil and the strife, little Narkissa slept and slept."

[Rance]

"I refuse for my dreams to come true," she whispered. "Not dreams like those."

Her fingers had gone cold and numb some time before, but she never complained of the chilling temperatures. She was satisfied to listen to each and every word, feeling the Greatlady's gnarled fingers stroke through her hair, as if with those touches, the Nameless enlightened the seamstress more than any dream could.

Stories told truths. Through stories, lessons became life.

The story of the deceitful girl taken in by the noble, it drove her memory back, back, to things she heard as a child, whispers in Jernoah that she still did not understand--

--little choir girl in a red dress, eating sand with the other choir girls and boys, until they were sick, until their guts felt filled with broken glass and their feces glittered like sandstone, long before she was a seamstress, long before she knew a needle, and she begged of the Sister who watched over them

why do you make us eat this sand, why must my belly hurt so much

and the Sister said, that is what we must do little glour'eya, that is what little children like you must do to pay for our past crimes, it is a holy rite, yes

but i feel sick and i am scared

i know but that is what we must do

why must we, may i go to sleep

several years before you were born, a bad slave came to us, made the stahls and stalsi believe in magic that was not like that of the Nameless, we cut him and lashed him with thorny canes and he grew back many many parts

the growing rat'vak, choir-girl glour'eya said, they called him that, memma called him that--

yes that was him, he deceived us, he distracted us from the Nameless, and now we atone for our crimes, you atone for our crimes -- now now, eat this holy sand and pray

it hurts so much

it will always hurt little glour'eya--

A monumental slaughter. A crippled city. Falsehoods revealed. All those things in Grawnya's story, they had happened in Jernoah, too. Hadn't they?

The seamstress was crying. She was on her knees in front of Grawnya, holding onto the elderly woman's legs more like a begging urchin and less like a young woman who had a trade. She dripped dark sweat. Her bonnet sagged back, revealing the knots of black hair on her scalp. Her hands clutched to the old woman's patchwork garments, and she whispered, "Is this a story from Jernoah," she said, her voice rattling, needing to know. "Is this a story from my home, Greatlady?

"And the little baby -- the little baby," she questioned, with some insistence, searching the old woman's wrinkled face for an answer, any answer, "did they ever find out that she was the Oracle?"

[Dulcie]

"Oh well, the story of little Narkissa is an interesting tale. You see, with the leader in the depths of despair at the poor girl's deceit he knew that he would never again trust any woman who came forward claiming to be the Oracle. Many did come of course, tempting him with words that sounded so truthful, and though some attempted to trick him as that first woman had, they met a similar fate, none lasting longer than a few weeks. In time the leader gave up on finding the Oracle, cursing the Gods for their trickery."

She paused, looking over at Gloria a moment, seeing the look in her eyes, that far away thoughtful look and then she would continue.

"Narkissa grew up, day by day in her mother's gentle care. But from the time Narkissa learned to speak her mother knew that there was something wrong with her. Narkissa would bolt awake from her dreams and speak in a tongue hardly befitting of a child, knowing things that she shouldn't know, and speaking of things that happened not far off in the future. It was eerie, and Narkissa's mother was hesitant to let her daughter see the world, refusing to let her play with other children or attend the teachings of the sages.

Narkissa did grow however, from a babe to a child, and a child to a young woman. But as her mother feared, nothing was ever to be right with her. She had always been a sleepy child, something her mother blamed on her night terrors, but once she reached the age of womanhood Narkissa did little else but sleep and awake spouting off truths that were to come. On a good day her mother was able to hurry food into her mouth, and maybe even get her to stumble about their home a little, to keep her from growing frail, but it was a terrifying process and Narkissa's mother's heart broke a little more every day. Eventually she called for a litter to help her carry Narkissa's sleeping body to the leader of the city, to ask him to pray to the Gods for her healing.

Now of course many years had passed, wars had come and wars had gone, and many people had been lost in the process. The city hung by the threads of poverty and despair, and the leader who was once so young was now nearing the end of his life. Narkissa was the last to be seen in his busy day, though when she was presented to him and shot upright and started speaking in such a strange voice and telling whomever might be listening that a great storm was coming, the leader knew instantly that this was the Oracle that he had been waiting for.

That night the people were all urged to take shelter, with Narkissa and her mother safe in the Leader's manor. Indeed that night the sands spun and flew about the streets, worrying away wood and stone with the strengths of the winds. A person caught out in it would not have survived, and Narkissa had saved them all. The leader assured Narkissa's mother that she would be cared for to the greatest that his healers could manage it, but that her state of sleeping could not be altered by the will of the Gods.

Unfortunately however it was the next day that the leader died. A wasted life of searching for truths that could have been known with a little hard work, and the life of a girl wasted to years of sleep and truth saying. Other leaders came, and while they benefited from Narkissa's visions for but a few short years it was not long until the Oracle passed as well.

Let it not be said that the Gods do not deliver. It is perhaps the prayer which might concern us more."

The story was ended then, that much was obvious from the tone that the old woman took and the pause of her fingers in the woman's hair.

"Be cautious o' yer dreams lass. It's always hard to tell what might come true, it' difficult to tell what we are wishin' for when it's in our sleep."

[Rance]

It was a story of death. The leader died. The Oracle died. The girl's silent tears dried in streaks through the dirt on her cheeks. She tried to read the old woman's wrinkles for several moments after, as if there might have been secrets in them, but they were just veins to the story.

Let it not be said that the Gods do not deliver.

When the story was done, she lingered in the presence of the Greatlady for several long moments, digesting the final words, the lesson, the very reason for the story. She worked at the corners of her eyes with her black-gloved palm, and stood, as if trying to ignore the tears she had shed. "Greatlady," the girl whispered, with reverence, as she tried to take up one of the old woman's bony hands in her own and squeeze warmth into it. "I know -- I know -- that in my soul, I wish for none of these things! I would never wish harm upon Master Cherny. He is like a brother to me, a t'oddah, and if harm ever came to him greater than what already has, I--..."

The sentence did not finish. But it did not need to. The moral had been implanted; the words became like stone in the creases inside her mind.

Be cautious o' yer dreams lass. It's always hard to tell what might come true, it' difficult to tell what we are wishin' for when it's in our sleep.

She raised the Greatlady's wrinkled knuckles to her lips, placing one, two gentle kisses upon them, revering her, sowing gratitude for her generosity, her wisdom, her very presence itself.

"I will hold your story close to me. I promise," she said, a thankful seamstress who in those moments with the Greatlady, was little more than a teenaged girl in an oversized bonnet. "It reminds me so much of my home -- my Jernoah -- so much that in my bones, it hurts. I will pray to the Nameless that I am not like Narkissa, that maybe my dreams are just little weaknesses in my dreaming-brain, and nothing more. For Ser Catch. For Master Cherny.

"Shall we go inside, Greatlady? It grows cold, and maybe a fire will do us right."

That night, she did not pray to the fire; she did not say the glass words, or ask her wishes to be carried upon the smoke into the sky, and on to the Nameless, because it is perhaps the prayer which might concern us more, and she feared her prayers turning into dreams. Turning into weapons.

She held close to the Greatlady's hand. It would take some convincing to tell her to let it go.

[Dulcie]

She sat quiet in the long minutes that lingered after the story was told and the girl at her knees wrestled with her emotions. Those bent, wrinkled fingers continued to rake through Gloria's hair slowly, gently, a comforting action. When finally the girl would look up and speak again she would smile to her softly.

"I'd like to hear about this Jernoah of yours. I'm sure ye have many a story that others would like to hear some day. " They were powerful stories that the seamstress had locked up in her head, that much Grawnya was sure of.

"Aye, let's go in and enjoy the fireside lass. Once I get a cold in these old bones it's hard to shake it." And she'd return to the tavern with the young seamstress, letting her hold her hand for as long as she liked. Every the grandmother to her, comforting her when she worried or seemed anxious.