CHOOSINGDAY
Hermia inspected the Commonroom with a critical eye. Everything had to be perfect. Years and years of planning had culminated in this moment and she was not going to tolerate sloppiness or half hearted performances from anyone. Not today, of all days. The future of all the Highland tribes hung in the balance.
The village had done an admirable job with the preparations. Over the past week, the husbands had come in from their hunting forays with bags stuffed full of brook trout, tree rats and grouse. The Packs, their adolescent energies heightened by the promise of the first feast day after a long hard winter, had been enlisted in the gathering efforts, returning from their daily exercises with packs full of the new greens only now emerging from underneath the rapidly receding snow pack. Even the smaller children had contributed by gathering wild spring flowers just outside the village barrier shields for garlands and bouquets for the tables.
The wives had been cooking for days. The trestle tables that filled the room groaned under the weight of heaping platters and bowls full of greenhouse vegetables and the remains of last season’s roots, pickles and preserves. It was going to be an epic feast befitting the Choosingday of her heir, just as Hermia had intended.
Nothing about Hermia’s pregnancy had been left to chance. Timing had been everything. She had envisioned this day, down to the last flower garland, three years before, when she had finally had herself inseminated. Amabelle had called her fool for carrying the child herself, when one of the younger wives would have gladly volunteered as surrogate, but Hermia had been willing to risk herself and her unborn child, knowing that people would respect a natal daughter more when the time came to pass on the reins of power.
Hermia smoothed her skirt over the curve of her hip. At least she had gotten her figure back, thank the gods. A First Mother had to make so many sacrifices for the welfare of the people she mothered.
A commotion at the far entrance caught her attention. A group of men rolled a large beer cask through the door and heaved it up onto its waiting cradle. It was her one concession to the husbands. Hopefully Arden would keep their exuberance in check until after the Council did their business. Choosingday was the exclusive domain of the wives. A few of the other villages still did not allow the husbands admittance, clinging to the old ways. Hermia understood the husbands’ need for the numbing quality of spirits and had not denied them this pleasure. It was hard watching one’s children being judged. Men were softhearted that way. They wanted every birth to live and thrive and succeed, a thing that was just not possible.
“You look like a shingxen leopard who just ate a durffa,” Amabelle growled sourly at her elbow. “You are First Mother. Try to have the good grace not to gloat.”
“You should talk,” Hermia said, eying the scowling Second Mother serenely. “You are the one who cooked this whole scheme up.”
“I love how you describe the precise and exacting nature of my work as mere cookery. I am a geneticist of the highest order. Show some respect.”
“You are my grumpy old Second. I love you beyond all others and I will be forever grateful that you gave me my successor.”
“Your little rug crawler has not yet passed this test. You know what they say; genetics cannot hold back the wind, if the wind is wanting in.”
“Hsst,” Hermia exclaimed softly, “Do not jinx this day with your pessimism, I beg you, Amabelle!”
Amabelle took Hermia’s hand in her own and bent her head to brush Hermia’s cheek with her lips, a familiar greeting appropriate for old lovers.
“You put too much hope in one frail little vessel, Hermia, my love,” Amabelle said softly, “Where is the contingency plan if this child is unable to bear the weight of the burden you’ve bequeathed her? It has always been your failing. You set yourself impossibly high standards and then expect everyone else to live up to them as well. Grant her the same mercy as any other child. She is only human, after all.”
“What mercy did you or I get, growing up, eh?” Hermia said, pressing her lips together in a forbidding frown. “None. I will not raise a soft and coddled child. She needs to be as strong as I can make her. Menolly has read the runes over and over, yet still the answer is the same. The Highlands’ only hope is a daughter of my own Making.”
“Menolly is a…. Ah, speak of the devil,” Amabelle said, nodding towards the great doors, “I see Berta has managed to pry our lovely priestess away from her smoke and prayers.”
Hermia smiled as Menolly and Berta crossed the room to join them.
“Good. The Council is almost complete. Go tell Sybille we are ready to begin. She has Cheobawn sequestered in the bell tower antechamber, upstairs.”
“What? You didn’t,” Amabelle said softly, a conspiratorial grin on her face. “What is Sybille doing? Coaching her? Sly little raven, have you rigged the test, after all?”
“Please. Cheobawn is barely verbal,” Hermia snorted, trying to keep the guilty look off her face. Amabelle shook her head in mock disgust. She was not fooled.
“Are we talking about Cheobawn?” Berta asked brightly as she joined them. “I remember the day she was born like it was yesterday. She came out all quiet and I thought there was something wrong with her, ’cause she wouldn’t cry. But then I looked into her eyes. Deep eyes. Knowing eyes. Like staring into the night sky and I knew she understood about the pain of being born and forgave us for hurting her,” she said dreamily.
“Yes, yes. Then I thumped her on her foot and she wailed like a banshee,” Amabelle said impatiently.
“She has never forgiven you for that, I fear. Perhaps that is why you two don’t get along,” Berta said.
Hermia and Amabelle exchanged long suffering looks. Berta immersed herself in her duties as village midwife and loved the children she brought into the world to the point of fanciful distraction. Unfortunately, that immersion made her seem as childlike as her charges. Amabelle, avoiding the usual argument, excused herself hastily, and left the room in search of the guest of honor. Menolly watched her go, a concerned look on her face and then turned back toward Hermia.
“I want you to promise me something, Hermia,” Menolly said, glancing fearfully towards the dais at the end of the hall. Two large Choosingday presents sat on a table, there.
“I have already had this conversation with Amabelle,” Hermia sighed, patience wearing thin.
“Amabelle is a scientist. She thinks emotions are a sign of weakness and avoids all conversations about affairs of the heart,” Menolly said, undeterred. “Promise me. No matter what happens today, you must trust your own Makings. You did not err. You created what was intended. It is the intent you must question.”
Hermia stared at her friend and co-council member, wondering what her oracles had been telling her. As usual, the advice was as vague as the smoke that delivered them.
“Yes, thank you, Menolly. Your advice is, as always, food for thought. Excuse me, I need to consult with Arden about the testing.”
Hermia caught Arden’s eye and nodding towards the gift table. Her Prime detached himself from the other husbands around the cask and crossed the room to meet her there. The dais was the one place in the room that was not filled with running children and chattering women. They all feared what lay hidden under the wrapping paper and bows.
“I can assume that the hunt went without incident?” Hermia asked.
“The traps were full. We picked the healthiest and killed the others. The winter did not kill off enough of them, to my thinking. We may have to mount a few extermination hunts before spring is through,” Arden said, staring somberly at the two identical boxes in the center of the table.
Both were covered in brightly printed paper and ribbons. Inside one, lay a beautiful porcelain doll, resplendent in lace and spider silk, dyed pink using the obscenely precious powder from a dried liver of a mature bhotta lizard. As was required, Hermia had slept with it under her pillow for the last week, the hope being that she would imbibe the toy with the psychic scent of all her motherly love. The other box contained a teddly bear, the same size and weight as the doll, temporarily drugged into insensibility. The formula and dosage were very precise, perfected through centuries of use, handed down from mother to mother since the time of the first colony. When the time of choosing began, the teddly would be awake, ravenous and viciously unhappy.
They were mindless little killing machines, teddlies. They roamed the Highlands in large plagues that ate everything in their path and were the bane of every Highlander’s existence. Hermia suspected the first colonists had not eradicated them solely because of their usefulness in the Choosingday ceremonies.
She studied Arden. He refused to meet her eyes. Instead, he stared off into the distance, his jaw clenched, the muscles in his face quivering with some barely suppressed emotion.
“Do you know which box is which?” Hermia asked, curious at how far she had stretched his loyalties; probing when good sense said silence would be kinder.
Arden met her eyes at last, obviously offended. He adored Cheobawn, even though he knew Amabelle had not used his DNA to inseminate Hermia’s highly modified egg. But, conflicted as he was, nothing could make him go against his training. As always, the honor of a Husband overruled all matters of the heart.
“It is a triple blind, as is the tradition,” Arden said coolly. “The persons packing the boxes were not the persons wrapping the boxes and the persons transporting them here were not allowed to touch them, as is ordained by our teachings. There will be no psychic taint in the room when Cheobawn chooses her future.”
Hermia reached out and touched his cheek with a fingertip.
“Amabelle is a brilliant geneticist. She made sure Cheobawn is gifted beyond measure, Arden,” she said softly, using her undervoice to soothe her lover’s sharply spiked psychic signature. “She has known for days that something was going to happen here today. Trust your daughter’s Gift, if you cannot trust the Council of Mothers.”
Arden pressed his lips together, having already said all there was to say to his wife in the days past. Instead, he bowed his head, submitting to her touch. It was not his place, after all, to question the wisdom of the First Mother and her Council. The worry lines deepening across his brow, nonetheless.
*
For days now, the world had been becoming more and more sharp edged, slicing inexorably away at Cheobawn’s little bubble of happiness, and no matter how hard she tried, the pieces of it would not go back together again. Exhausted and frustrated, she gave up and instead, clung to the certain knowing that just beyond this day lay a long period of quiet peace; a time when her mother’s incomprehensible neediness no longer pressed at her mind. It made the interminable unpleasantness of the feast more bearable but only just. Eating had been impossible under the constant critical glare of her mother and all her friends.
The Mothers were so very hard to please. Amabelle did not like her and scowled at her all the time. Menolly could not look at her without turning into smoke inside. Sybille was offended by her baby words and her baby voice and would only use hand speak to talk to her, yet Berta adored her for those same failings. As a combined force, the Mothers were a storm of formidable confusion.
Excused at last while the wives cleared the tables, Cheobawn went hunting good feelings. She found them at the far end of the hall. She joined the other babies her own age who were busy playing hide and seek among the forest of legs standing around the pungent beer cask. Cheobawn became the seeker. She was always the seeker, because she always knew where everyone lay hidden. The innocent joy of the other kids infused her mind, distracting her from the heaviness of the room.
But not for long. Pain stabbed into the space between her ears. They were looking for her. She ran to the nearest hiding place and crouched down to make herself as small as possible. Covering her ears with her hands, she closed her eyes tight. They would never see her in all this darkness.
Arden found her there, under a trestle table and pulled her out, brushing invisible specks of dust off her new party dress.
“Da,” whispered Cheobawn, caressing his rough cheek.
“Che-che, you get your mama and me all worried when we can’t find you.”
“Shorry,” she lisped, moving her little hand over her chest in a circle to emphasize her word. Adults were hard of hearing. You had to repeat yourself a lot to get understood, using hand speak, as well as mouth speak, when mind speak failed, which it invariably did.
Arden curled his face up in pain and looked away, the hard edge of his unhappiness scouring her heart. Things must be very bad, indeed, to make her Arden this sad. She took pity on him and quenched her rebellious inclinations, letting him lead her back towards her mother, where she stood next to the table with the brightly colored packages. It was time. The thing in the big box was going to be hers at last.
But not quite yet. Mama talked a bit. Mama liked talking. She liked curling her will around people and drawing them into her web of Makings, even when they didn’t want to be caught. This made Mama a little bit frightening, sometimes. The scariest times were when she turned her mind towards Cheobawn, like now. Mama needed her to do something, but the thoughts behind that need were dark and angry and full of death and Cheobawn refused to go into her mother’s mind in search of answers.
Her mother recited the ritual to the crowd. Cheobawn did not listen. Sybille had already explained it. There were two very special birthday presents in two separate boxes. Cheobawn could only have one. One that she could keep forever and never have to share with all the other babies. One you could snuggle and cuddle and hold. One that was lovely and soft. Don’t pick the sharp toothed and hungry one. Pick the cuddly one, Cheobawn, Sybille had said.
That seemed simple enough. Cheobawn studied the two boxes. She had been listening to the little animal’s dreams all day. It had come in past the barriers last night, all alone, frightened, angry at being separated from its friends, bereft without the comfort and closeness of the hive mind. Cheobawn’s own heart had pounded in her chest when she heard its song for the first time. Humming seemed to quiet it. She had hummed at dinner and earned an angry rebuke from Mama for daydreaming instead of eating. Later, she had fallen asleep, humming softly, listening to the little furry mind across the village compound.
This morning she woke from a dream of a deep, dark den full of warm, furry bodies, all snuggled up together, and she had been comforted by the closeness. Listening for the furry mind, she found the animal had been oddly quieted.
But now it was awake again. Cheobawn began to hum softly, thinking happy thoughts. The furry heard her and echoed her song, adding his own bits to the harmony. It sang of hot, bloody meat bounding away on four legs and giant crunchy hoppers hidden in the grasses. Cheobawn felt hungry. She imagined running out of the village, the furry tucked into her apron. It seemed interested. She imagined hiding in the gardens and hunting bugs together. They both licked their lips, the furry quieting, content in its dark place, having found a mind to replace the hive it had lost.
Over Cheobawn’s head, her mother and her friends fell silent at last.
“Choose your life, daughter,” Hermia commanded, her voice filling the large room. The other mothers pushed her towards the two presents.
“Remember what I told you,” Sybille whispered in her ear as she faced the table.
Yes. Don’t pick the sharp toothed and hungry one. Cheobawn remembered. But both boxes contained sharp and painful things. The furry had sharp teeth and sharp claws but the toy carried the full weight of her mother’s wishes and wants and needs. Cheobawn shuddered at the idea of having to live with that gift forever.
She had made promises to the furry. Could she apologize for not picking it? It did not understand that mother’s loved you only when you were good. It understood simple things. Things Cheobawn understood. Eating when you were hungry. Sleeping when you were tired. Laughing when you played with your friends.
Cheobawn knew which box she was supposed to pick. The minds of everyone in the room pressed at her, telling her so. But Sybille had been very insistent. Cheobawn just wanted her headache to go away. Closing her eyes, she let her fingers find the box that stood like a wall between her and the pain.
She pulled the box towards her, slid the ribbon off and threw it on the floor. The printed paper followed. A wooden box with a simple wooden finger lock remained. Cheobawn knew about finger locks. Her toys were kept in a similar box. She slid her finger into the hole and released the catch. The panel popped open and Cheobawn pushed it wide and reached inside. She did not make a sound when the furry bit into her finger. This was the way of teddlies. Tasting her blood just once, it would know her as sister, from this moment on.
*
Hermia had her belt knife in her hand, as was required, but her grip was loose, her stance ill placed, and her mind unfocused. The fantasy she had built in her head around this day had not included her using the knife at the end. She froze at the sight of the teddly, her face a rictus mask, the knife forgotten. No, no, by all the gods, she thought, this is not possible.
As if they were of one mind, everyone in the room gasped in horror. Hermia looked up into Amabelle’s eyes, a bitter accusation on her lips. Amabelle raised a sardonic eyebrow and gave her head an imperceptible shake, a warning that Hermia should take care what she said in such a public place. She and Sybille had their knives out, as well, but neither moved to make the killing strike, waiting for Hermia’s cue to tell them what to do next. The teddly needed immediate killing, of course, but Hermia, as First Mother, had every right to kill the child as well; it having proved itself an Omega, therefore useless to the village.
Hermia felt sick as she gazed down at the soft flesh of her daughter’s throat, her fingers tightening on the hilt of her knife. All that preparation, all that planning, gone to dust and ashes and all she had to show for it was this misbegotten seed. A mother had to be strong for her people. She lifted her arm.
Arden shoved her roughly aside and swatted the wooden box out of the way. The teddly released their daughter’s finger and charged him, snarling fiercely. Arden’s reflexes, honed by a lifetime spent in the dark forests of the Highlands, were instantaneous and precise. He buried the blade of his hunting knife in the center of the little beast’s skull, driving it in with so much force the tip became embedded in the tabletop. The teddly convulsed once, claws scrabbling at the wooden surface, as its heart’s blood pooled under its shattered skull.
A guttural squeak escaped Cheobawn’s lips, as if the knife had found a purchase in her own brain. She turned on her father, snarling, and began tearing at him with her tiny fists. Arden scooped her up and imprisoned her hands. The child fought him, screaming like a wild thing, too furious to know she could not win against the strength of her father, willing to hurt herself in order to be free so that she might hurt him as he had hurt her.
Arden met Hermia’s eyes over the top of Cheobawn’s violently tossing head, a look as cold as death in his eyes.
“I think our daughter has had enough excitement for one day. She will be sleeping with me in the Husband’s Barracks, tonight,” Arden said, over the ear splitting noise coming out of his tiny child.
This was not a request. Every nuance of his psychic aura told her that if she said anything to stop him, he would cease to be her Prime, cease to be her husband and destroy for all time, the peace in this village, between the House of Husbands and the realms of power of the First Mother.
Hermia nodded and turned away. When next she looked up, Arden and the child were gone. She looked out into the Commonroom. The people of the village slipped by twos and threes out the exits, their heads bowed, their moods sober, politely leaving her to stew in her embarrassing failure. Soon only the Council of Mothers remained.
Hermia looked around, expecting recrimination.
“That went well,” Amabelle said, wryly. “Shall I send a contingent of wives down to the barracks tonight to collect the brat?”
“No. Leave Arden be. He will not be parted from her easily.”
“She is not a puppy, Hermia,” Sybille chided her. “He cannot raise a girl in the men’s barracks.”
“She should not be raised at all.” Amabelle snapped. “The child is cursed. It would be kinder to end her suffering now, then to let it drag on. A Pack will never choose her. She will become a dead weight, dragging the rest of us down. The village will not tolerate this for long, and rightly so.”
“No, Amabelle,” Berta exclaimed, “you go too far. She is special. Her gift is special. We just have not figured out what that Gift might be. Give her a chance. Some kids take longer than others to find their footing.”
Amabelle shook her head at Berta’s fanciful wishes and pinned Hermia with her gaze.
“Let me try again. We will plant the egg in Sorrell’s womb. Her youngest is almost a year old and she should be ready to gestate in a month or two.”
Hermia could feel her life slipping out of control, an unfamiliar and highly unpleasant sensation. She turned to the one mother who had yet to speak her mind.
“Well? What say you, now?” Hermia asked, watching Menolly’s face for signs of hope.
“I have already said it,” Menolly said gently. “Cheobawn is everything you intended. You doubt your Luck while Amabelle questions her skills, and both of you are wrong to do so. She is a weapon created to strike at the heart of our enemies. Trust that is so and stay out of her way lest she mistake you for those whom you would destroy.”
Hermia nodded and turned away. She studied the dead teddly while her mind churned, considering and then discarding every option open to her. At last, she turned back to her sister wives.
“This day did not happen. I will send her to be raised with all the other children. That means she is neither cursed nor blessed by this event. But if no Pack has adopted her by her seventh birthday, we will set her outside the barriers and let the land take her. I have spoken.”
The mothers nodded, satisfied. Berta grinned and hugged Menolly, a testament to how strongly she believed in serendipitous Luck. Amabelle snorted but said nothing more. Perhaps she was content in knowing she had a handful of Hermia’s eggs frozen for safe keeping back in her lab. Sybille nodded. Hermia broke no rule of law, nor trampled any social convention. Sybille was satisfied with that kind of ending.
Hermia turned her back on her sisters and crossed to the gift table. She pulled the knife out of the table. It took a bit of effort. Arden was a strong man when his blood was up. She retrieved the ribbon from the floor and used it to clean the blade.
She knew what they would all think. From the outside, her decision seemed ruthlessly pragmatic. A moment of mercy granted just to try for a remote chance at strategical success. It was considered extremely cruel, this postponing the inevitable euthanasia to a time when the child would be more keenly aware of what was being done to it.
Hermia slipped the knife into her belt and stepped off the dais. Arden would need to know of her decision and she wanted to be the one to tell him. Perhaps, after his anger had cooled, he might forgive her enough to return to her bed. If she worked very diligently, eventually he might begin to trust her again.
He would resist her, at first, but in the end, his duty to the village would turn the tide. What kind of First Mother could she be, without a Prime to remind her she had a heart?
