Ash Rising Page 6

  But Stepmother did not seem to notice this. She also did not ask the traveller who she was or what she wanted. She just stared in astonishment, her bright green eyes nearly popping out of her head. The traveller was staring at her too, although with a much less surprised expression on her face.

  Finally, Stepmother spoke. “Enrosa? Is that you? I did not see… I mean, I knew there were strained relations… Well. This is a surprise.”

  Ash stared back at the mysterious traveller. “You two know each other?”

  But both women were still watching each other. At last, ‘Enrosa’ broke the silence.

  “The Path guides us all, Jadene. To some it shows some things, to others a different view of the same. Besides, I wanted to see how you were keeping the place.”

  None of this was making sense. Ash turned back to the canvas in her hand and unrolled it.

  And gasped.

  There was her mother, in the pomp of court that no one had seen for so long. And there, beside her in similar array, was the coppery head of the traveller before her.

  “Your lady mother was my sister, my younger sister. When I became one of the royals’ Pathfinders, I forswore my right to inherit. And so Rhodopalais went to your parents, while I went north.

  “I’m your aunt, Ashlynne.”

  There was nothing but quiet in the previously warm kitchen. Each stared at the other, no one saying anything. Ash did not know what to think. She could not have been more surprised if someone had announced her queen.

  At last, one thought came, after minutes of tense silence. “Why have you never come? If you are my aunt, you are my only living relative, is that not so? Why have you not come before now, to see me?”

  The ‘aunt’ looked at Ash in mild surprise as though, bizarrely, she hadn’t expected this question. “I am a Pathfinder,” she explained patiently. “And years ago, I received instructions that on my Path I would meet my niece just once in this life, when I would give her a very important message that was to change the fate of our nation. Today our leader in this region confirmed it – confirmed it even with her dying breath.”

  “So, you, you knew about me, knew I was here, but you never came to see me, not after either of my parents died or after the Project, never… never even told me I had one blood relative alive, somewhere… because the Path told you so?”

  “Yes.”

  There was no sorry, there was no hesitation. It had all apparently been decided for her, years ago. Not by people, or at least any who cared for her, but by some unfeeling unhuman path.

  Ash could hear no more of this. She turned and walked out of the kitchen and into the night.

  Chapter Nine

  Bad Things Happen in Three’s

  Old Merta always said bad things happen in three’s.

  Ash was so angry, her head seemed to be filling with white rage that was expanding like steam and turning the whole world into a hot mess, blurring her vision. She sat down abruptly on the dry earth. If a carrior came, well, good. She couldn’t do this anymore.

  One: an invitation to die arrives from the palace. Two: a stranger arrives and it’s a Pathfinder. Three: your only surviving blood family never cared for you, Ash. She left you to think you were all alone in the world. Old Merta strikes again.

  On the one hand she has a point, Ash could see that. When she looked back on being a child now, she could see the three’s everywhere.

  One: half-kneeling and half-fidgeting as an eight-year-old, watching as her mother lay slowly dying. Two: the velvet swish of a fashionably bustled skirt as it exited the carriage attached to her ‘new mother’, who shook hands like a gentleman with a grip fiercer than a vice and met Ash’s gaze head-on with green eyes like cold steel. Three: the sickly crunch of her father’s skull hitting the ground, as the glossy flank of his fallen horse came down to meet it.

  Ash could see how that seemed reasonable, but it didn’t seem as simple as all that. One: within the smell of old sweat and fear, tangled up in the sullen bedsheets as Mother lay dying, she had made Ash promise to pray each day. And so, she had and had learned a kind of peace that became a gravity to her, in a time gone mad.

  Secondly, her stepmother had, for all her flaws, kept the household from the hunger and hysteria when most estates fell apart after the Expansion Project. Her steely gaze and her firm grip held on, when there was no lord and master to do so.

  And Father… Father. Still, the other two held true, especially the first.

  She sank down to the ground. Ash had only ever come to pray during the daylight hours before. The carrior owls were the most dangerous of all. But tonight, she didn’t care. If she stayed in that house with that woman she may well kill her – she’d rather be carrior food than a murderer. Even Pathfinder blood could stain the hands, she imagined.

  Ash was barely alone for five minutes before the soft sound of grounded footsteps came.

  “Ashling?”

  Old Merta. She never come outside. Ash sat up straight in the dark.

  The cook did look more than a little uneasy, Ash could see that now. But she had brought a lit candle with her – probably the only one she had left. Without quite meaning to, Ash lurched toward her as soon as Old Merta was close enough and clung to her like a child.

  The old woman just held her. “Sweet girl… it’s not done well, I give you, this whole business is not done well at all. But, this lady be your family and, well… family is hard to come by for all of us these days. Perhaps just go to her ball, just to be a good girl? What do you say to that?”

  Ash said nothing, but in spite of herself a few tears leaked out onto the fleshy arms that had once always been dusted to the elbows in soft flour. If Old Merta noticed, she was kind enough not to say anything.

  Too soon, Old Merta got up uncomfortably, looking fruitlessly up at the black sky. “I won’t stay longer, you know, because of them birds. But, just think on it Ashling.”

  Off went Old Merta, with the candle, back towards the kitchens. Taking all the light with her.

  Once she was out of sight, Ash felt like crumpling again. This time she knelt, pressing her forehead into the dry, unforgiving earth. Help me, help me, help me, she said to the ground. When she started to feel wet on her face, she realised she was crying again, but she could not stop. Help me help me…

  “Ash.”

  Derrick’s voice. Ash dried her eyes quickly, before he came any closer. Seeing her crying had always upset Derrick.

  He moved almost silently in the dark – not quite as nervous as Old Merta, but not oblivious to the dangers either. Ash looked at his outline in the gloom, watching her. She turned and looked away. The hazelnut tree looked sinister at night. Sitting this close to it, it’s twirling, curved branches looked like deranged talons.

  The wooden clunking sound of Derrick holding his crossbow was audible in the dark. Then she heard his voice, also sounding wooden, as he sat down next to her.

  “How are you?”

  She almost laughed. “How am I? Oh Derrick… I don’t know. I feel angry but also… also ashamed. Because we both know Stepmother. She’ll make Vanita go to that stupid ball come hell or high water, most likely hell. That should be reason enough for me to go but…”

  “But?”

  “I don’t want to die,” she whispered.

  “You’re not going to die, Ash. What’s our words?”

  “Only one of us is allowed to die.”

  “Right. And I’m coming with you, which is final by the way, if you do go, we’ll take all the crossbows, the daggers, the hooks and spikes. So, then it’s got to be me to die, isn’t it, because you still need to take care of Vanita and all. I’m not saying you should go, I’m just saying that if you do I will come with you.”

  “I know you would, I do.” And that’s part of the problem, she thought, but did not say.

  “Go inside, Derrick. I’ll be fine. Really. I just want a few moments alone. Then I’ll come in.”

  Only when he was finally
gone, did she let slip the hardness in her face and truly cry.

  The third time the footsteps were different, unrecognizable. The Pathfinder. Her family. Ash didn’t want to, but she found herself looking up anyway.

  There was no candle and yet something was making the Pathfinder’s hand glow like a dying ember, lighting up the desolate garden around her with some invisible illumination. Her silky orange robes looked almost molten and inexplicably Ash was reminded of the Expansion pumpkin. She felt dwarfed. She felt fear and she hated that.

  As soon as the Pathfinder got to where Ash was sitting, she somehow turned the light down to a gentler glow. She said nothing, merely stood in front of Ash.

  “I had heard that Pathfinders practised magick,” said Ash, when she trusted herself to speak.

  She started when the woman laughed, a high clear sound like crystal in the cooling night air.

  Instead of responding, the Pathfinder opened her hand and held out a strangely shaped glass orb, almost like a diviner’s ball, which the orange light seemed to be emanating from. “We practise self-contemplation and awareness. Through it, at necessary times, we can to an extent alter our surroundings slightly. Some call that magick and we let them. The more important role each Pathfinder has is to dedicate her life to the expansion of science and technology. Even more people call this magick and that I am not so fond of.”

  “So, you aren’t magical?”

  “Not at all. I have merely mastered some of the power of my mind through the lifelong training all Pathfinders who show gifting and aptitude receive. Most learn at their mothers’ knees. It has little to do with the religion that masses seem to have invented for us – believe it or not I am actually of the Christian faith by birth – but there you are.”

  “That makes sense. My mother was Christian.” The orange robes were less offensively bright now that the light was dimmed. They looked well with the Pathfinder’s coppery-red locks, making her seem alive even with worn face and a middle-aged body beginning to sag and soften. She must have been a beauty to rival Mother, once.

  “We use it when we need to.” She studied Ash again, then dropped down to sit cross-legged on the floor. Now that Ash knew who the woman reminded her of, the ghost of her mother’s features were constantly in the Pathfinder’s face. And seeing the image of her proper mother sitting on the floor shocked Ash like a slap in the face.

  “I must confess Ash, I was slightly nervous about this meeting. Even this, look at me, pulling tricks out from my sleeve like some hedge magician! This garden is – or rather was – as familiar to me as it probably is to you and I admit I did not truly need light to see the way. But I did need you to see what I am capable of, so that you can believe what I am saying is true.”

  “I know that what is true is that you left me abandoned, an orphan without family. You let me believe I had no blood relatives left. That is true to me.”

  The Pathfinder didn’t contradict Ash, nor did she apologise. She just sighed and sat in silence. Ash noticed that she didn’t cringe and look up at the sky, either, like the others had. It galled her to think that this woman was living without fear when the rest of them watched for their lives every second of every day.

  “Ashlynne, I know you don’t think so, but believe me I know you better than you think I do. Your mother was three years younger. We grew up at Rhodopalais, this home. And I was to inherit this home when I was called by the Path and I left the life of being a lady behind me.

  “Your mother, she was the younger one, the prettier one. She had hair like sunshine, everyone said so and eyes deep and black. I didn’t mind. Since she was followed around by an array of admirers, always, there was little pressure on me to marry for security, even though I was heir. Your father, he was the most smitten. Pathfinders may marry and inherit land, but those pledged to the crown may not. And so, when I ceded my titles to Rhodopalais and the family name, they married. Your father moved here to take up ownership, which was quite controversial. They didn’t care about the talk. They cared only for each other.”

  Ash had not realised how much she had missed hearing talk of her dead parents. In the current times talk of death was not for those gone in years past and she had not known just how hungry she was for this. But Ash was used to going hungry by now.

  “You think you know me, but you don’t.”

  “Very well and you think you know what is right from what is wrong in this situation. So, which of us is correct?”

  Ash had no response to this. “I think you should go,” she replied stiffly.

  “I think you should go,” the Pathfinder retorted.

  Ash turned to face her, not bothering to wipe the tears off her face. “You know, if you had ever bothered with me, if you had decided to even get to know your one niece, your only family, even a little bit, perhaps I would have gone to your stupid ball. Also, if you knew me, you would know this: I make my own path. Always have.” She looked the orange robes up and down. “And you would know that I hate your kind and that didn’t start with you waltzing in here today. I think you’re spineless, blaming things on some path instead of facing the fact that the way your life turns out is because of you. Maybe it’s not ‘the Path’s’ fault that you don’t know me, that you never knew me. Maybe it’s yours.”

  Ash stood up to go, but the Pathfinder stood too and was easily taller. She merely sighed, looking down at Ash, as if she had been expecting all this and it was but a minor inconvenience in her life. In her plan. “You must be, what, seventeen years old now? I cannot decide for you Ashlynne, nor sway you. I can see that you already have your own mind, just like I did and your mother and all the women in our family. But perhaps I can appeal to your sense of right. This may well be the end – of this country, this way of life, do you understand that? And who knows but that you going to the ball would mean a marriage to the prince – a happy marriage, of course – that would change the fate of this nation and save it? Would you not go for that?”

  “You are wrong, Aunt – if that’s what you are. The way of life you talk about has already ended.” With that, she pushed past the hateful woman. She wanted to be back in the kitchen, back with Old Merta and a life where people didn’t ask ridiculous things of her.

  A thin silhouette was in the doorway when she got to the servants’ entrance.

  “Oh great,” Ash muttered, not slowing her stride. What was her stepmother doing there? Since when did she use, or even know where, the service entrance was?

  The woman looked so much thinner than she had been, even in all her ruffles and bows. Despite herself, Ash did stop walking, just before barrelling into her stepmother. She did not flinch or move aside. She looked at Ash without blinking.

  “Are you going to go and take Vanita with you?”

  “Let me get inside.”

  “Are you going to go?”

  “Stepmother! There are owls out at this time of night, for those of us that live in the real world. Let me inside!”

  “Are. You. Going?”

  “No.”

  Rather than step aside, she squared her shoulders and Ash noticed she was holding a piece of paper. Ash hadn’t even known that they had had luxuries like paper lying around. No wonder people were trying to plunder them.

  Her stepmother held the piece of paper between them, almost like a talisman. “Then here,” she said brusquely, handing Ash the paper and finally stepped aside.

  ‘Notice of end of service’ the paper said on it in shaky handwriting.

  Ash stomped up to her stepmother, to stand on the step in the doorway and stare her down. They were almost touching. Ash could have reached out to strangle her.

  “You cannot be serious,” she near shouted, not bothering to read any further.

  Stepmother looked her full in the face. Her eyes glittered like jade, like shiny hard things. “Oh, can’t I? Let me ask you something Ashlynne. Do you really think Vanita I the only girl in this country who is being forced, tearful, into a ballgown? No. Perhap
s you are not a beauty to become a royal bride, like she is, but you have leadership in you. I see it. What about all the other Vanita’s out there? What will you do for them?

  “Besides, I think we can both agree that Vanita needs to be safe. Where would she be safer than at the palace? She cannot go alone across these plains, never has but you –”

  “I’ve never been across the plains either! No one has! It is death. I know you don’t care whether I live or die, but her?”

  “No, you’re wrong… you could protect her.”

  “Woman you are out of your mind! How can you not see that this is ridiculous! How can you just not think…?”

  “Oh, have I not thought? Do you not think that I have gone over this a thousand times in my head? Marriage into the highest places of power is the only way to protect and to survive longer than one day, one hour. The prince and king can protect her and you, while you are there, can find a way to help those other girls. Who would not want my Vanita?”

  “That is not the way things work anymore! Vanita cannot be protected by marriage of all things! The world has moved on since your generation – look around you! Which bride is safe? Which palace is safe?”

  “I did not ask for your opinion Ashlynne! Since you so gracelessly gave up your position in this household and want to be treated like a servant, I shall indeed treat you like one. I can force you out any time if you do not obey my wishes. So, you shall go to the ball.”

  Ash expected a slap, or a wave of verbal abuse from her stepmother, but instead, she took two steps forward and held Ash’s hands in hers. Which was much worse.

  “I know you think me a monster to even think about turning you out – that is not it. It is rather that I would do anything to get you to go and take Vanita with you. Anything. Without you, we would not survive and you know that better than I do. But if you do not go, we are dead anyway.”

  Stepmother’s voice warbled, then steadied. She took one more hard look at Ash, then turned and went inside without looking back.