GROUNDLING

by ardavenport

- - - Part 1

For once, Onie Thatcher had the kitchen to herself. The washing girl, Margo, was in the yard, taking the scraps out to the pigs. Esie Axehead was out front, serving the customers in The Ox and Cart's main room, and keeping her husband, Druin from sampling too much ale and getting lax with collecting payment for it. Even better, the last of the bread was out of the ovens, the bin full.

Wham! The kitchen door slammed open, letting in the raucous sounds of the crowd in the main room. "Three mutton stews and a bowl of beans!" Shanni called out as she unloaded a full clattering tray of dirty bowls and mugs onto the sideboard. Onie had the new bowls ready for her on the serving table. She expertly slid them onto her tray with one sweep of her arm, added four loaves from the bin and went back to the melee again, kicking the door latch out of the way as she went. The door swinging back cut down the roar of laughing and voices as it closed. It was dinnertime and they had a full house.

There were two trader caravans passing through town, plus a minor festival at the Star Lady's Temple that involved a lot of summer flowers. So even though the Ox and Cart had Fair Fields' second best ale (everyone seemed to agree that the Wolf's Head had the best) it was good enough, and they were busy. Onie wiped a little spilled stew with a rag, and then her own brow with a clean end, pushing back the wet strands of brown hair clinging to her forehead. Sweat soaked her dress, ran down her back and front. The heat from the cook fire and the ovens were a blessing in the cold of winter, but a savory-scented semi-hell in summer.

The cook pots were still half full over the low fire (they only had two choices on the menu, beans and stew) and there was a stack of cleaned bowls ready, but the dirty pile on the sideboard was getting high again. Onie went to scrape off the leavings from the bowls and toss them into the tub for Margo to clean. Fortunately, it looked like everyone had a fair appetite; there wasn't much left. The mugs were drained as well. Onie frowned down into one. Something was wrong . . . .

Her head whirled to the side, her wide eyes going to the door into the main room. The noise was gone. It was quiet out there. What had happened?

She heard a solemn step outside, and a little jingle of bells, getting louder. Someone big and heavy on the wooden floor and . . . not human. A horse. Some idiot brought a horse inside . . . ?

The steps and bells stopped right outside the door. Frozen in place, Onie stared at the wooden double-door. They started to open.

A head whiter than the finest milled flour pushed through the doors. A snowy forelock, mane and curved neck followed, bowed under the door frame.

Clop. Jingle. Clop. Jingle. Clop. Jingle.

With each step, the sound grew louder and louder in the eerie silence, the Companion seeming to glow brighter, getting closer and closer. It was really . . . . . a Companion, in blue tack with silver bells and no rider. Blue eyes, like sapphires . . . .

:I am Lillis and I Choose you, Onie. You are my heart's own for now and always.:

Onie gasped, the long slow inhale seeming to be the only sound in the silence. The room around them, the world, dimmed, fading away from their moment. Slowly, she raised her hands. Lillis muzzled them, her breath warm on Onie's palms.

"Aaaaah!" She threw herself on the Companion's neck. Lillis stayed steady as a rock. Tears ran down her cheeks. Every pity-filled look from her father, every traveler's leering promise, every anxious night for the past ten years that she had spent awake wondering if she was too cautious or if she should just accept the next offer from the least offensive, passable farmer vanished into joy. She had a new life and it filled her heart past overflowing.

She gratefully pressed her face into the soft fur on Lillis's neck. She understood; they completed each other in ways that they had yet to discover.

Lillis's warm breath touched the back of her leg and Onie turned to look into one of her very blue eyes that seemed to gleam with the radiance of a smile.

"Where have ye been?" Onie asked with wonder. It wasn't a serious question; she really didn't care that Lillis had waited until she was an old maid of twenty-seven to come Choose her. Lillis burrr-ed an amused huff back and Onie agreed with her; the only thing that mattered was that she was there now. They were together.

She caressed the perfectly white neck, smoothed the long mane, Onie's eyes going down Lillis body past the blue leather saddle. . . .

Her teeth clinched. Of course, she would have to ride. . . .

"I'm sorry. I can' na ride," she apologized. Lillis looked crossly back.

"I'm sorry," she apologized again. "I know yer not a horse. But I'm a terrible rider. Ere's no one worst in tha whole town. Last time I got on a horse, tha poor animal was as sore as I was afters." It had been more than ten years ago when Miros Greenleaf's son, Miron had briefly courted her. She and her brother had a little work at the stable in town after the boy they hired took another job with a caravan and left town with no notice. It was her first real work outside her father's house and she was good with caring for the horses. She was good with all animals; she understood them and they understood her, and Miron had offered to show her how to ride. It had been a disaster. She had been a sack of grain in the saddle and felt ill and queasy the whole time. Worse, she had no idea what the horse wanted or what she needed to do, which had never, ever happened before. She couldn't get the horse to understand what she wanted and very quickly it ignored her as if she were waving at it from a distance. It had been even worse than when her father tried to show her how to drive a cart. Miron had started courting Saras Firesmith soon after that.

One blue eye narrowed, Lillis grunted her impatience, a low horse sound, but Onie immediately thought of her niece stamping her foot and giving her a high pitched, 'Come on.'

"Well . . . . I kin try." Onie reached up and grabbed the saddle. All she had to do was put her foot in the stirrup and push herself up. Easy.

Teeth clinched, she dragged her leg up over Lillis's back. Her homespun blue dress and white apron dragged and bunched under her as she sat up. Then she barely avoided hitting her head on the ceiling. Feeling like she was losing her balance, she grabbed the saddle tightly, fearfully looking at how far down the floor was. The stirrups weren't the right length for her legs, hanging next to her shins.

She was now higher than the kitchen's top shelves. She and Essie always got Druin to get the pots stored up there. Heart racing, she took a deep breath, telling herself that this was Lillis. She was only shaped like a horse. Onie tightened her grip when Lillis suddenly took a step. Not liking the feeling of movement under her at all, she looked all around and behind them.

"Uh, Lillis? How ya gonna get outta here?"

Grunting, she nodded her head, up and down.

"Uh, that there door only opens in. Ye hav'ta hit the latch fer it ta stay open."

Lillis turned one surprised blue eye toward her. Onie's nerves suddenly drained down into the impracticality of the situation; the colors in the room lost their magical hue of imagination and returned to the mundane fire and lamplight of the kitchen. She was sitting on a big, horse-shaped Companion who hadn't thought through what she was going to do next. The back door was too small. They were boxed in with the sideboard and serving table on either side with the woodpile and kegs of ale and wine blocking them in front and not enough room to turn around.

Onie looked again down at the floor far below. Of course, Lillis would never let her fall - -

"Aaaaaaaaiiiiii!" A high-pitched fifteen year-old scream cut through the air. Buckets fell, water splashing all over the floor. Margo put her hands to her gaping mouth. Behind them, one side of the door into the main room pushed inward and a gray head poked around it.

"Margo? Onie? Oh my!" Essie Axehead gaped. Onie was quiet sure that a Companion, seen from the tail end, was not nearly as impressive as the view from the front.

"Essie!" Onie frantically pointed. "Get tha door open."

She only stayed frozen for a second. Onie had seen her throw drunks twice her size out of The Ox And Cart when they got too boisterous. She hustled inside, pushing first one door, then the other, turning her plump body sideways to get around Lillis's flanks. The latches clicked.

Onie leaned over her Companion's neck. "Now, go."

Lillis carefully backed up, her big white horse's ass re-entering the main room first. Onie ducked low over her neck under the doorframe. Essie had a big smile on her face, her hands clasped over her stained white apron.

Jingle. Clop. Jingle. Clop. Jingle. Clop.

Head low, Onie looked behind them. Every chair was full. At the bar, at every table, everyone gaped over their mugs and bowls. Onie's short eyesight couldn't see more than a few tables back, but she could mostly tell what they were doing. People in the back craned their necks and stood on chairs to see. Both Serving girls, Shanni and Maggi stood with their big serving trays clutched to their chests.

"Onie?" Druin Axehead stepped from behind the bar, his eyes wide, his gray stubbled chin slack. Broad shouldered and still well muscled for a man of his years, he stood taller than nearly everyone else there. "Ya get Chosen, did ya girl?"

With a weak smile, she held up a hand. "Uh, guess I won' be able ta finish up in the kitchen tonight, Druin." It was a ridiculous understatement, but she couldn't think of anything else. Lillis nickered.

Druin looked her and the Companion up and down again, then whirled around. "Dun! Get yerself off over ta Lonie and Honie's house, right now! Tell'em what's happened!"

At the bar, the scrawny blond kid with the seriously blemished chin who worked at the stable now gaped back until Druin shouted him out of his shock and out the door at a run.

Suddenly the spell of silence was broken and everyone started talking. Druin, Shanni, Maggi rushed forward, along with other people she knew from town. Ber, one of Druin's sons. Noni the seamstress and her husband. Stulin, the carpenter and his brother and others. Still looking stunned, Margo emerged from the kitchen to stare. And there were Star Lady pilgrims with necklaces of white flowers hanging around their necks and traders from the road she didn't know at all, but they heartily joined in the good wishes. Onie accepted their congratulations, but she grew increasingly concerned about getting out of the tavern. She could feel Lillis balancing her weight carefully on a few ominously creaking floorboards.

"Thank-ee, thank-ee. Could ya please step back?" But the excited people blocking them from behind didn't seem to hear.

Lillis's long white tail suddenly swished out, sweeping over them. The people jumped back bumping into tables and chairs. Lillis backed up again and this time the chattering crowd made enough space for her to move. Harness bells jingling with each step, she delicately made her way past the awed patrons at the bar to the entrance. The doors were open and they emerged onto the porch into the dusk. A crowd had gathered in the street in the dusky light outside and they cheered as Lillis emerged and stepped down in their midst. Onie was sure that horses could not climb down stairs, but Lillis wasn't a horse after all, and there was only one step.

The sun had gone down and it was getting dark. The people arriving to join the crowd carried lanterns. A clump of more Starry Lady pilgrims, all with candles, joined the group and spewed a flurry of white flower petals. Onie saw blurs of red carrying lanterns join the crowd as well. Bards. She knew there were bards in town. They came in with the traders. But they had been over at the Wolf's Head, with the better beer and ale.

Onie knew what was supposed to happen next. Lillis would take her to Haven to become a Hearld. She would train and travel the whole country on the Queen's errands. But at the moment, she couldn't even get out of the street.

"Quiet! Quiet now!" Thorn Hoorer, the head of Fair Fields' town council raised his hands high to silence the excited crowd. He was tall like Druin, but thin, bald and bony. And his voice was high and the people around them ignored his entreaties and kept on chatting. Somewhere in the back of the crowd, Onie heard someone strumming a harp.

"Onie! Onie!" Her mother's call drew everyone's attention. Onie saw her mother's shape hurrying toward them, her father and the rest of her family right behind her. They only came into passable focus when they got to Thorn Hoorer. The crowd parted for them, with some help from her mother's elbows.

"Oh! Oh!" Honie Thatcher clasped her hands together, happily smiling up at her. Her father, Lonie Thatcher the elder, had his hands pressed tightly into his pockets, his eyes brimming, his whole body radiating pride. Behind them, Lonie Thather the younger, her oldest brother, stared up with bewilderment.

"Congratulations Honie!" Thorn Hoorer patted her father on the back. "We're all so proud of your daughter. A Herald from our our humble village! We'll all be mighty proud to get her properly provisioned for the trip to Haven!"

And make sure Fair Fields got its half taxes next time they were due. Hoorer's motives were obvious, but practical. Onie couldn't fault him for that. Several people were already shouting out things that they could give her for the trip. Onie took a deep breath, quickly swung her leg and skirts up and over the saddle to land safely on the ground in one motion.

"Thank-ee, Councilman Hoorer. We're mighty grateful fer yer help. From all a ya. But could ye bring everything tomorrow mornin'? I got ta get home ta pack." And say good-bye.

"Yes." Her mother nodded, taking charge. "Tomorrow mornin'. First candlemark after sunup." She held her hands up. "We'll all give our Onie a good send off then!" The crowd responded with a disorganized cheer. People standing on the porch of The Ox and Cart went back inside.

Lillis made a throaty 'hmmm'ing noise and turned to look at them. She was eager to leave that night. Onie gave her a look of surprise, her meaning equally clear. It was already twilight. They were not leaving until morning and they were going back to her parents' home for the night. Lillis tossed her head, but accepted the plan.

Her mother hugged her tightly. "Yer Pa and I're so proud," she spoke into her ear. Her father mumbled something similar, and scowled at the press of people. Their neighbors in town, local farmers and their families, traders, a couple of old suitors who had gone on to marry others, total strangers, everyone who seemed to be within hearing distance had showed up to share the good news.

A pair of skinny elbows pushed their way past her father. A scrawny, dark-haired boy, her usually shy and reserved nephew, Sami, stared up in wonder at Lillis. Slowly, he raised his arm, his grubby fingertips extended to touch her pristine white shoulder. Ears flicking back and forth, Lillis turned her head, one blue eye narrowed toward him. Even with the press of bodies and noise, the rest of the crowd still managed to stay a respectful arm's length away from the Companion.

"Whhhooaaa," Sami breathed, oblivious to anything else around him. His fingertips went up and down twice before he dropped his arm and gulped, his eyes still wide.

People kept shouting out promises of provision to donate to Onie's journey to Haven, but the crowd was beginning to thin.

"Come on, let's get ye home afore it's too dark ta see." Honie Thatcher put her arm around her daughter's shoulder and started to lead the way. Onie was happy to let her. There was going to be an improptu family gathering and she would be stuck in the middle of it. Suddenly Lillis's idea of leaving right away didn't sound so crazy after all. But Onie couldn't just disappear in the night. People left Fair Fields all the time. For better work, marriage, to go to war. And they always got a proper send off that was just as much for people staying behind as it was for the ones leaving. Onie would not deny them that.

- - - End Part 1