The Constant Tower. Carole McDonnell
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aren’t supposed to like him, though. Some ancient grudge or other.”
Ephan reached for the walking stick, but instead, she swung it like a club, dashing across the room battling an invisible warrior and overturning the baskets and jars in her path. After an extensive battle with the unseen-yet-now-conquered warrior, she said to Psal, “Old Jion says our warriors take herbs to make them lose their minds when they fight. It must be wonderful to lose one’s mind and fight with all one’s heart, recklessly, cruelly.” Again, she swung the staff. This time much too near Psal’s head. “Is that what that is? A brew to make one cruel? Old Jion says the Wheel Clan has become a victim of its own concoctions. Is that true?”
Psal stood up. Immediately she stood at his side, her arm around his waist. “If you used your staff, you wouldn’t be in such pain. Your staff must carry you, not you it.” She pointed to the concoction in his hand. “I will not move until you drink.”
He quickly finished the drink, then pushed her toward the door. “Leave now.”
She did not leave. She watched as he put on a pair of strange-looking boots. “Where is your hospitality?” she asked. “Show your sister your granaries and your animals. Everything! I wish to see everything.”
Ephan said something in the Wheel Clan tongue and Psal nodded. Maharai walked into the hallway and peeked into the adjoining room. It contained twelve large poles like lamp stands.
“Ah!” she said, “This is what a keening room should look like! Old Jion always told me…but to see the crystals all lit! What new things this day brings!”
“Girlie,” Psal said, rising. “We have.…”
“Ah, yes! I know! You have to join the warriors. Let them wait. The third moon is not yet high. Or will you stay here to keen the women? But Old Jion says Wheel Clan women can keen towers without men.” She grasped his hand tightly, looked into his eyes the way she always did whenever she wanted something from her doting grandfather, smiled. She studied Psal’s face; Ephan’s agitated sighing proved she had caught Psal’s will and could bend it however she wished. I will be able to command Ephan soon enough.
“Yes,” Psal said. “I suppose the moon is not yet high.”
“Tell me about keening, then.”
“Keening involves much.” Psal began explaining keening in so leisurely and intricate manner that Ephan started pacing.
“Ephan,” Maharai said, “Adopted Brother. Don’t be so worried. The feast will wait. There will be boar meat and fruits for all.”
Ephan laughed.
“One has to know how to shape the crystals,” Psal said, “to know their symmetries and counterparts, the angles and positions of the sockets, the carats, how to make different tones, and how to receive music. It isn’t a thing easily learned.”
“I’d like to enter. May I?” Maharai asked, then stepped into the keening room.
Psal followed after her and pointed toward the tower base. “That’s our tower. Inside are the twelve keening trees. The ones outside are spares. For longhouses we encounter. They like to be lit, too. Just to be involved. Sometimes they help us perform very complicated keens.”
“Even from here?”
“Oh, they don’t mind. They’re near to the tower, even in here. They know how cramped it gets under the tower stairs with all those branches, trees, crystals, and parchments inside. But when there’s a council meeting, we return them inside to the base of the tower.”
Ephan was laughing and looking at Psal with his mouth opened.
“Don’t worry”—Maharai walked toward the tower’s base—“I won’t hurt the crystals.”
A sharp whistle sounded outside the keening room window, like that of a large waterfowl. Ephan took Psal’s arm, pulling him. Psal yanked his hand free and led Maharai into the base of the tower. However, as she entered, a little girl dressed very much like herself approached from a small inner room. Maharai extended her hand toward the girl who extended hers also. But unexpectedly, the girl stopped at the tiny doorway. Maharai approached the room, but found she was separated from the girl by a clear impenetrable invisible door. The strange girl looked as perturbed as Maharai felt. It was apparent the tiny little thing was trapped inside.
“Let her out,” Maharai pleaded, and pounded the impenetrable doorway. “Whatever she’s done, she’s sorry to have done it.”
“Look behind it.” Psal pointed at the shiny door.
Maharai looked behind the tiny door. “There is no behind it. Where is she?” She faced the tiny doorway again and peered into it. The trapped girl had returned. “Is it a window to some other place?” she asked.
“It’s a crystal,” Psal said. “A very large one. Polished and placed in a wooden box. When we keen, we often use it to set the lights of the crystals. We must look into the mirrors to see the image of the Greater Light.”
“And the girl?”
“An image of yourself.”
“An image? You’ve trapped my soul?” Suddenly afraid, she ran toward the studiers and attempted to push past them. “Why did you take it?” she yelled.
Psal pushed her toward the trapped soul. As he did this, his own soul also appeared in the crystal, as trapped as she was. He lifted his hand and the Psal inside the stone mimicked his gesture.
Maharai stood there long, staring at the other Maharai and the other Psal. “Why did you trap your soul with mine?” she asked. “Who can free us now?”
“This is no magic,” Ephan called out from where he stood in the hallway. “You’ve seen lakes, have you not? This is what we call a ‘mirror.’ In addition to helping us keen, it shows us how others see us.”
She had seen herself in lakes before; but never this clearly. So this is what I look like? she thought, and smiled at her beauty and how kind her face was. She would have stayed there a very long while except that Ephan grasped her by the hand and led her back into the hallway.
Again, he whispered something in the Wheel Clan language, his gestures even more urgent. Once more, Psal ignored his adopted brother. This time, however, his face was calmer, as if the former anxiety no longer oppressed him.
“This passageway is called the chief’s hallway.” Psal smiled at Ephan as if daring his friend to challenge him. “Here, we have the keening room, the three studier rooms, the chief’s chambers, the chief’s family’s room, the storage rooms, the sick rooms, the pharma rooms, the granaries, the weapons, and on the other side, our horses.” He slapped Ephan playfully on the back and pointed toward the hearth. “The other passageway is called the residential hallway. Warriors and their wives and families sleep down there. Three hundred rooms. Usually two warriors and a woman for each room. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Depending on rescues. The children sleep in their own rooms. Do you want to see that hallway as well?”
They walked past the gathering room to the other side of the longhouse into the residential hallway, passing room after room, of differing sizes, containing one, two, or more beds. They walked past the squatting places with their wooden bottomless toilets to the hall’s end where some eighteen women lived, separated into five rooms. Most appeared malformed, bent and frail, or sickly. One or two had bruised faces as if they had been beaten. Some had pale skin with pale hair like Ephan’s. The women lay in beds or sat on chairs, or on the floor staring out past Maharai with sunken and morose eyes. Three held small children. One child—a pale boy with pale white hair—approached Psal with his head bowed. Maharai listened as Psal whispered something in the Wheel Clan language which elicited a smile from the boy who returned to the woman’s lap.
“Who are these?” Maharai asked Psal.
“Comfort women.”
“Whom do they comfort?”