Disclaimer: All characters (except Ne'er-Do-Well) and settings belong to Tamora Pierce. I own nothing but this story.
Remember
"Lalasa, you ne'er-do-well, where are you going?"
"Just down to the river, Da, to wash some clothes. Mum said."
"Be back before supper. I don't want to have to wait again. You understand, girl?"
"Yes, Da."
.
Lalasa has a wonderful memory.
.
Lalasa remembers having a friend, when she was little. His name was Ne'er-Do-Well, and he was small and round and green as the grass on the banks of the Olorun.
He hadn't really existed, of course. She had made him up.
She was the only child her age in the village. The girls were coming to the time where they'd put up their hair, gossip and dream about having husbands and babies; the boys were bold and lanky, all leg and spit and swagger. Besides being too old, they were all too loud and rambunctious to Lalasa's eyes- quiet and tidy and timid as she was, she wondered at the unrestrained boisterousness of them sometimes, the way a visitor in a menagerie might gawk at the hyenas or the leopards.
Ne'er-Do-Well was not like them. He was calm and soft and liked to sing, and he never laughed at what she said, the way her mother did, or pulled her hair until tears pricked at her eyes, the way her sisters did, and he never ever pinched her bottom when she didn't want to be pinched, like her oldest brother did. She liked to pretend that he came from the land of Far Away and Long Ago, like in stories, although she didn't know if that was true or not.
Ne'er-Do-Well was what her father called her, sometimes with affection, more often with a clenched fist. Sometimes she felt mean for giving the name to her friend, but only when she lay still and thought about it for too long.
Ne'er-Do-Well was with her, that day in the woods.
"It is a fine day for a picnic," he observed, his eyes twinkling like lost emeralds in the murky sunlight.
Lalasa agreed. They were in a clearing barely big enough for the two of them- although Ne'er-Do-Well could fit very easily into very small spaces- and the air was green and gold and brown. "Perhaps we should call a Duchess," she said, "or the Man-In-The-Moon, to come down and have a luncheon with us. It's been a long time since we've talked to them."
However, there were no Duchesses and precious few Men-In-The-Moon to be found, and so she and Ne'er-Do-Well sat and dined on imaginary cakes and tea and sandwiches, crooking their pinkies and tucking invisible napkins underneath their chins.
It had really been months and months since Lalasa had had cakes, and the tea at her house was too bitter and strong without much milk and sugar, but it was nice to pretend.
"Lasie."
Lalasa jumped and turned and saw her oldest brother blocking the sunlight. Like the other boys in the village, he was tall and skinny and all over pimples and sweat; here, in this clearing, he seemed too big to fit into the world. In his shadow she felt very small.
He leant down before her- which he didn't often do, as he liked being taller than her so much- and looked her in the face, putting a hand on her knee. She didn't like that, she never did, but she knew that if she asked him to take it away he would either laugh or get angry, so she just lowered her eyes. "It's time for lunch," he said, his voice breaking a bit. "Mum sent me to get you."
She hated the way he said get you, and she looked around for Ne'er-Do-Well's help, but he was not there.
Her brother did not move his hand.
She did not move at all. Imaginary napkins and saucers and dainty china teapots fled her mind.
The brown-green-golden air was suddenly stifling and his fingernails dug into her arms, and she was desperately looking at everything but his horrible, twisted, shiny face. Bark on the trees, rough as his breathing; sun through the leaves, dappling a pattern in his black hair. His hands moving now, but not in the right way, and his sour-milk smell was all over her. He was touching her hair, her face, her neck.
"You always were such a pretty girl," he hissed, and she closed her eyes very tightly to stop from crying as he hurt her.
.
Lalasa remembers no one believing her.
She didn't understand it at the time- her mother disgusted and calling her a filthy little liar, her sisters smugly shocked and whispering behind their hands, her brother the picture of wounded innocence. Her father slapped her, hard, and sent her to her room without lunch- or supper- or breakfast the next morning.
Ne'er-Do-Well did not come back. She decided that he must have become lost in the woods that day; she never went out to find him.
.
Lalasa remembers going down to the river years later, alone and silent, with a woven basketful of clothes to wash. It was a gloomy grey day, with a smell of rain carried on the clouds.
She had grown up nicely, they said, dark and soft as a bit of shadow, and quiet as one too. (It was her own opinion that she had not grown up at all- she still felt very small and young.) She was beginning to get Looks from the men in the village, sometimes furtive little glances, sometimes outright, hungry stares. When her sisters got such Looks they giggled and blushed- even now that they were married with children- but Lalasa did not like them at all, and ducked away from them as if they were stones thrown at her face.
Sometimes she thought that they might well be, that if another man Looked at her she would end up bruised and bleeding.
She did not think about that by the river. She did not think at all. Her hands moved as though they were pulled by puppet-strings, wringing out breeches and tunics and smallclothes.
"It is a fine day for a picnic."
Her head jerked up.
"Ne'er-Do-Well?" she whispered, feeling the colour drain from her face.
Ne'er-Do-Well nodded courteously from the opposite bank, as green and roly-poly as she remembered him. He sat with his stubby legs dangling over the river, his pointed toes barely skimming the water. "Or perhaps not such a fine day," he amended, after looking upwards at the lowering sky. "It looks as though it may rain. Perhaps the clouds shall send us silver fish."
She did not quite know what to do.
He looked at her critically. "You ought to say something, you know. Perhaps 'Oh, no, it has not rained silver fish since the Queen of the Stars and the Night Sky Balloons came down to earth and supped with the Fire Spirits.' That would be proper."
"But you don't exist," said Lalasa, feeling a little foolish and a little afraid. "You're imaginary."
"There is a difference between the two," he opined. "Besides, that is no reason to be impolite." He looked past her, over the hills hiding her from the eyes of the village, and smiled. "They are there, you know. You must not go back."
That was when she smelled the smoke.
.
Lalasa remembers lying still by the river with her heart in her throat, afraid to move, afraid even to breathe. Over the swell of the hills the bandits burned her village; on the wind came screams, and the crackle of the fire, and the sound of restless horses being loaded with trinkets and tools. (And women, a part of her brain whispered; she tried not to imagine the women she knew being snatched up, hogtied, dragged away like so much loot.)
It rained in fits and starts, and by the time night fell and she found it safe enough to look over the hills she was soaked through. The blackened ruins of the village hissed and smoldered, and in places she saw bodies she recognized.
All she could do was look at them.
She did not cry. In some dark and twisted place beneath her fear she thought she was a little bit glad.
.
Lalasa remembers coming to Corus.
She had traveled there in a merchant train with her uncle Gower, winding north on a meandering trade route. Villages bigger than hers had surprised her; when she reached the city she couldn't stop staring. Buildings blocked out the sun and shadowed broken alleyways, light reflecting off of glass and metal. The cobbles on the streets were strewn with refuse, its smell mixing with those of perfume and spices and sweat. Jugglers, vendors, sailors, urchins, soldiers, fishermen, priests, musicians, all shouted and argued and jostled against each other. Pressed up against the back of the clattering merchant's cart, all Lalasa could do was swallow hard.
"Is it always like this?" she asked Gower, glancing nervously at the crowds brushing the sides of the cart.
He nodded, and held her hand very tightly.
A job at the Palace, cleaning cluttered nobles' rooms, mending clothes for people she didn't know, ducking Looks in hallways and on staircases. Moving in the shadows like a startled mouse- or like a shadow herself. Dark and soft and insubstantial. She didn't know if there was anything to herself, and she didn't want to know.
All of this was marked with bruises like fingerprints on her forearms, a story written in purple and blue letters. She kept them covered, but sometimes her uncle saw them by accident. He would hold her hand very tightly again, and give her sympathetic looks, but he said nothing. Nobles could not be fought by servants.
She had nightmares almost every night in which she could see her family burning alive. Her brother would come to her all alight, reaching out with his black-burnt hands and giving her a Look from within a fiery shroud. "Such a pretty little girl," he would croak, grinning as his skin melted away and left his yellow teeth bare.
She did not wake up screaming from those nightmares, because she shared a room with three other women, and if she woke them they would curse and kick her until she lay still and quiet as the dead.
.
Lalasa remembers the day she was sent to work for Lady Keladry. She had seen the girl before, although she had always thought she was a boy, being as how she was in a page's uniform and had her hair cropped short.
The girl, freckled and broad-shouldered and tall, who had given her a level gaze with the eyes of a dreamer. Had taught her how to stand, how to move, how to grip and pinch and pull. How to defend herself against the Looks.
Lalasa threw her into the door once. She was terrified that she would be dismissed for it, but Keladry only laughed and hugged her, for all the world as if she thought it was something good.
And when Lalasa woke from her nightmares she lay still and quiet in her new little room and remembered what Keladry had taught her about how to brace her feet against an attacker, how to break their noses with her hands, how to gouge with her fingers until they let her go. It helped.
She found herself emerging from the shadows, no longer cringing whenever someone Looked at her.
.
Lalasa remembers the first time she saw Tianine. It wasn't a grand, momentous occasion or anything to tell her children about (if she had intended to have children, and she did not); they just bumped into each other on the stairs.
A short, plump girl, hair blonde but not golden, strong shoulders, worked-roughened hands. She was not beautiful, she did not make people on the streets stop and stare. It was the eyes that caught Lalasa- they were brown, and soft, and melted her where she stood.
"Pardon," she said with a smile. Her voice was higher than Lalasa's and less precise. She moved aside to let her pass, and that was that.
Lalasa did not know why she stared after her, watched her hips move beneath her skirt and the way the light touched her fair skin.
They became friends long after that, after Tian had forgotten the meeting and Lalasa had stopped dwelling on it.
Tian had never been afraid of anything in her life, as far as Lalasa could tell. She was bold and quick-tongued, she laughed loudly, and she loved having nightmares.
And, sewing with her in a window one day, Lalasa realized exactly why she had watched her walk away that day, and why she watched her lips move when she talked, and why every touch of her fingertips made her insides turn to quicksilver. That was the day she first kissed Tian, gently and awkwardly, one hand on her soft cheek.
She had never done it before. To her surprise, it was the easiest thing in the world.
In dim candlelight, with Tian's hands on her and her eyes glimmering with heat and molten stars, Lalasa felt invincible and perfect.
.
Lalasa still has a wonderful memory. She often wonders if it's wonderful at all.
She has a shop of her own in the Lower City, and a way to make a living. She has a flock of sparrows living at her window. She has Tianine, warm and protective beside her, and Tian has her- her dark soft girl with the delicate smile and the pins in her mouth. She has her safety. She has her peace.
She still has nightmares, though. She thinks that maybe she always will.
She still thinks that she's small and insubstantial, too. Sometimes.
And sometimes all the self-defense, all the success, all the happiness in the world can't stop her from feeling afraid, or helpless, or as small as a child in her brother's shadow.
But every now and again she pretends that she sees Ne'er-Do-Well- or maybe she does see him, out of the corner of her eye- and he waves to her and says, "It is a fine day for a picnic."
And Lalasa nods to him, and smiles, and she goes on.
.
End