Chapter 2

I never learned the doctor's name, just as I never learned my mother's. It did not matter; all he was good for was his knowledge, just as all she was good for was her body.

He taught me about time. He was the only person in my village who kept track of it. So he knew the stars and the time of year when I was born. He knew because he had known my mother when I was new. I was born in the Third Era, in the year 408, upon the nineteenth of Frostfall, beneath the sign of the Tower. No longer was I a beast, to creep about without any knowledge of my age.

For eight years, I did everything he ordered: I kept his house clean and made him supper. I slept on a pad by the fire. Every day I went out hunting like a man, sometimes fighting my own brothers for the fattest pigs and biggest fish. The useless apprentice sat beside the doctor at mealtime and went with him on every call. When there was no one to heal, the apprentice was lazy and lolled around the house crying about boredom.

"Stop your whining," I told him one day, when I had come into the house with a basket of roots for poultices and a string of fish over my shoulder. "You have twenty good books here and outside there are plants to study."

Then he called me a bastard and something else, but I forgot. That night I only made meat for the doctor and myself. He learned to stop talking to me. I liked that fine.

I do not like people or healing, but I needed to know what the doctor knew, so I begged to go on trips with him. Sometimes they took me with them, but I had to insist strongly and threaten not to feed them. Finally, the doctor said he would take me on visits twice a week.

The people of my clan did not like it when he brought me. They thought I was dirty, even though I no longer covered my face in mud. Later I realized it was because of my mother. Blood is important. According to many books in the Black Marsh, the woman gives of her flesh to the hatchling, and the father gives the spirit. The women pass their blood through the eggs while they are in the body and give this to their children. So I decided I would bleed all her blood out of me, like they do for illness in the soft-skin cities of Cyrodiil.

I spent a long time over the book on anatomy, which said how much a female Argonian weighs, and how much blood they have. This is where I learned the word "vivisection." It means, "to operate upon while alive." The soft-skin who wrote it was a Dark Elf and this is only one more reason we must hate them. But the death of my marsh-sister is not for nothing. Thanks to it, I knew how much blood I would need to lose to rid myself of my mother.

I could not bleed everything out at once, or I would die. So I decided to bleed a bowl of blood every week until I bled all of my mother's blood out. When I went hunting, I took my flint knife, and would kneel out in the marshes and pray to the gods of the earth. I bled extra to be sure she was gone from me. It took many months. When I was finally done, I felt a rushing lightness and was free. That is why I am now clean and my own person.

I did not only study the doctor's books. I studied the plants while I hunted, and learned when they took root, flowered, and died. I still tended a garden, although I had moved my plants from behind my mother's hut to a new, safer place, in a hollow a half-mile from town. I brought samples of various flora back to the doctor's house and asked him what they were and what they were used for. An hour every day, he would teach me about plants and how to take care of the body. I memorized all of his books and said them like prayers wherever I went. The people of the village would say to their hatchlings, "That is Mud-on-Her-Face, and she is crazy."

When I was sixteen, the doctor began to repeat himself, and I could treat wounds and illness passably. So I left. I walked out onto the road with a long stick I had sharpened, my flint knife, and a bag made of pig-hide. Inside of my bag, I kept a long roll of waxy water-proof paper, which I wrote on with water-fast ink made from a root. I wandered through the Black Marsh looking at all of the plants and keeping good notes. This is when I made my mistake.

I was just seventeen when I decided to stay the cool season near a stream, to study a kind of lily growing there. When I broke the stem a strange yellow sap came out which made the tongue tingle. So I decided I would take a while to study the lily. At this time I was very close to the border with Morrowind. I did not know this. Even had I known, I would not have cared. The doctor had told me that soft-skins hated the Black Marshes and the Black Marshes hated the soft-skins, so I didn't think they were any concern of mine.

I was a fool.

The slavers took me while I was sleeping. I woke to a flash of torches and strange people with flat faces and soft skin, all of whom were speaking in a language I did not know. Their eyes were red in the firelight and they had black hair as wiry as a horse's. They bared their teeth, which were white and flat. How I hate those teeth! They are unnatural. Bloodthirsty things should not have such flat teeth.

"Gods! Gods!" I said. "Save your servant!" When they jerked me to my feet and clapped irons on my ankles, I tore into them. I bit every man I could. I tore a soft-skin's hand off and took chunks out of a man's leg. There was so much blood in my mouth that I gagged on it. In exchange, they beat me with staffs until I nearly died. I do not remember the trip to Morrowind or what happened to my pig-skin bag and notes.

I do remember when I woke up. I remember a wagon swaying and bumping on every stone and pothole, and through the bars I saw soft-skin buildings rising into the sky. When I raised my head, I saw that I lay in the back of a wooden wagon with barred windows, which was drawn by two horses. My head lay in the lap of a golden-furred Khajiit with only one ear. She wore many bandages, stained rust-red with her blood.

"Can you hear us?" she said in my tongue.

"Yes," I said.

"Then listen closely," she said. "We are entering the city of Vivar, which is on the coast of Morrowind."

"Gods!" I said, and puffed up my throat. "Morrowind!"

"We are sorry to tell you this. We wish we did not have to. But we must tell you or you won't be ready. These slavers speak of selling us to Vvardenfell."

"And what is that?"

"An island, part of Morrowind. It is just across the Inner Sea. Once you are sold there, it is almost impossible to get back. There are terrible diseases there, and the slaves are treated worse than dogs. It is a terrible place."

"I have been told that much." I squinted at her. My eyes were still bleary. "Who are you, that you care for a stranger?"

"Our name is Moon-under-Stars," she said, "and what we are doing is the creed of my tribe. Do not trust the hairless ones, with one exception: you can trust the lizards from the Black Marsh. They are your allies."

"My father taught me the same for your people," I said.

"Then we are friends," she said.

"Yes," I said. We pressed our palms together and were sisters.

Vivar is a coastal town, and many Dunmer live there. There are great ships in the harbor. You can smell the wind off of the ocean and the stink of fish, and hear the men shout and ring bells and blow whistles. There is a marketplace full of colorful tents and stands where soft-skins sell bright fruits and fresh fish, and where some of them play music and perform acrobatics for coins. If I were free I would have liked to walk on the docks to see these strange things, even if they are of soft-skins.

Those who had captured us took us to a market in a big building with locked doors and no windows. Many guards watched the doors. For a long time I thought it was to keep slaves under control. Later I would find out that slavery was outlawed in all of Tamriel, but the emperor was weak and did not demand anything of the Dunmer because he was worried how they might feel. This was a good lesson: soft-skins are weak-willed, and will always work for each other first.

I was so weak at this time that they could not sell me right away. They left Moon-under-Stars with me because she had resisted when they took her, so she was very hurt too. They gave us medicine and let us sleep and eat. While we rested and became well, Moon-under-Stars taught me a little of the Dunmer and Imperial tongues. It was very hard. My people's mouths are made to hiss and click and grunt, and our words flow seamlessly, like a river. There are stops and starts in soft-skin tongues. At first I grew tired of the teaching. I told Moon-under-Stars that I did not care. I did not like the soft-skins and their language; it was ugly, like the barking of bullfrogs.

"They are all devils, to be sure," she said, "but it is wise to know what a devil says. If he thinks you do not understand him, he will tell you everything."

This is wisdom.

Before I was completely better, they took her and sold her. This is when I decided that I should not fight yet. I would wait and I would watch and I would learn all about the soft-skins so I would never fall prey to them again. After I learned their ways I would find where they sold Moon-under-Stars and I would set her free.