Chapter Four

Ma'am

"Be good," said Lindwen as she dragged me along. "People here don't like children who bite them."

"I only bite people who are mean to me," I said, "so if I bite them you may be sure they deserved it."

The people who worked for the grown-up who thought he was the king had found a childless couple who was willing to keep me fed and clothed until I was grown. We might even, they hoped, end up liking each other.

"Some have not deserved it," she said, and dragged me along faster, near tearing my arm out of my shoulder.

"Slow down!" I shouted. "Is the fashion here for children to have their arms ripped off?"

"Don't shout so," she said, "somebody might hear." But she did, at least, slow down.

"This kind of thing," I informed her, "is why I am considering biting you again. Are you so mean to everybody?"

"I am only mean to people who are a nuisance to me," she said mockingly, "so if I am mean to them you may be sure they deserved it."

"Whatever did I do to make myself a nuisance?" I asked, my nose getting hot with indignation.

"You were born," she said, "and then you were found in the forest, and then the guards took pity on you, and then the master of the healers took pity on you, so then she set me to the care of the most troublesome child in the world."

"None of that is my fault," I said.

She interrupted me. "And if you had not been born or found, then I would not have had to sit up seven days and seven nights waiting for you to wake up. And furthermore you would not have run away from me when I was only trying to help you, and you would not have bit me when I was only trying to take you back to your room. Or any of the times after that!"

"Well!" I said, and I would have told her why she was wrong, but she halted in front of a certain house's door and interrupted me again.

"Stop it," she said. "We are here, and if you do not make a good impression on these people you will be stuck with me for the foreseeable future, and I think neither of us would like that much."

I had even more to say about that, but she knocked on the door, and as much as I wanted to show her why she was wrong I wanted even more for these people to like me. I did not, as I am sure you will understand, want to be stuck with Lindwen.

A lady opened the door. She was shorter than Lindwen, and her face was thinner, but she had longer hair, and did not keep it in a braid like the healers usually did.

"Good morning, Gaeren," said Lindwen.

"Good morning," said the lady who must have been Gaeren. "Are you here from—" She stopped, and stared at the top of my head. "I suppose you are," she said absently.

"I hope your mind has not changed?"

"No, just…" She trailed off, still staring at me, but then looked back at Lindwen, her voice brightening. "Well! You must come in. I fear Naithion is not home, but his mind had not changed when he left this morning."

"Has harvest come early?" asked Lindwen, stepping into the house and pulling me with her. It was a small house, with a small main room, but when we were still outside I had seen signs that they had recently built another room onto the back.

"No," said Gaeren, "but we have had to replace some laborers, and have also had the good fortune to be able to hire more, so he thought it would be best to give our supervisors some help."

"That is glad news," said Lindwen, and she looked like she might have said more, but Gaeren said something before she had the chance.

"Does the child have a name?" she asked, periodically darting her eyes at the top of my head, and to the sides of it, but never at my eyes.

"Not yet," said Lindwen. "She remembers only an old pet-name, and we thought to leave the giving of new names to her caretakers."

"She is so quiet," said Gaeren. I bristled, and cast aside all my real parents' admonishments against interrupting, and would have proved her wrong but for Lindwen catching the direction of my thoughts and threatening silently to stomp on my foot.

"Yes," lied Lindwen, "and docile, too. You and Naithion should be able to handle her quite easily even without any experience in the matter."

Gaeren sighed at that last part. "That is good, I suppose— but wait. I had heard that she bit a caretaker of hers, soon after waking. To my ears, if you will forgive me, that speaks little of quietness, and even less of docility. No— it was more than once— but that is even worse—"

Lindwen forced out a laugh, drowning out the end of whatever Gaeren had been going to say. "Ah, children! You know how they are. Little better than animals when provoked, even by something that you or I would understand to be quite small."

"I beg your pardon!" I said, but the sheer amount of anger coursing through my veins turned it far too squeaky for anybody to take me seriously.

"We hardly mean it," said Gaeren, laughing a little. It sounded rather patronizing, or at least I thought so.

Lindwen laughed too, and asked, "Will all be well if I leave now? I have other duties, and must attend to them…" She had, I realized, been slowly edging toward the door for a good part of the conversation. Though she started out close enough to me that her threats of foot-stomping were clearly not vain, she now stood a good two paces away from me.

"Oh," said Gaeren. "Yes, yes. You can go."

She did, and hissed into the air as she left: "Good riddance," which I do not think I was supposed to hear.

"Hm," said Gaeren. "You are so quiet…"

"Oh," I said, "I was only being quiet because Lindwen was still around. She dislikes me, you see, though I have no idea why, and—"

"I will call you Tíniel," she said. "One name is as good as any other, I think, and Naithion thinks so too. And you had better have a name sooner rather than later."

"Would you not use it, please?" I asked. The name sat wrong, and the meaning sat wrong, and though I could not remember my real name I was sure it must have been better than this new one.

She frowned. "Perhaps you will like better the one my husband devises. But even if you are not truly a quiet girl I see no reason why you should dislike the name. My name means nothing to me, and Naithion's means nothing to him, and nobody here thinks anything of their names, really. They are nothing but ways to call people and not get the whole clearing."

"I think something of this name," I said. "Maybe your husband will come up with a better one. Even if you resort to shouting in my general direction I think I will get the idea, and if the other people around here do not understand then that will be their problem."

"You are not quiet at all," she said, frowning more, her forehead starting to fold in on itself. "But you will do well to get used to doing as you are told, and I will not change the name."

"It will never fit," I said.

"Then I suppose we are in some sort of agreement, at the least," she said, and the look on her face made it clear that she was not going to say any more about the matter.

"Where will I be staying?" I asked.

"Oh," she said, "follow me."

She walked to the back of the house and opened the door to the new room I had noticed. I ran up behind her and looked into it.

The walls were the pale yellow of unpainted wood, and the furniture was, too. There was a bed, and its green sheets were the only thing in the room that was not wood-colored.

"Were you planning to paint?" I asked.

"Varnish, perhaps," she said. "Who needs anything else?" I remembered with something just un-faint enough to be horror that everything inside the house had been stained various shades of shiny brown, and the outside had weathered to grey.

"Oh," I said, thinking about how she had acted when I had not liked the name. "Is paint more expensive than varnish, perhaps?"

"Paint is too heavy for farmers' walls," she said. "And if we want for color, we need only go outside, and look up at the green leaves."

"There are colors other than green," I said, as quietly as I could, because it did not seem like the sort of thing that should stay locked up in my thoughts.

"Look at your hair, then," said Gaeren, starting to leave. "It is the farthest thing possible from green."

"At least," I whispered to the empty room, "it is not the color of dirt."

"Did you say something?" asked Gaeren, stopping in the doorway and smiling sweetly.

I turned around and smiled back. "What should I call you? Will your name do?"

"You could call me mother, if you like—"

"No!"

"Well!" she said. "It was nothing but a suggestion. Call me ma'am, then, or my name if you must."

To be honest, I would probably have forgotten her name by the time I woke up the next morning anyway. "Ma'am, then," I said seriously. "I will remember."

She laughed a little, which, though it was understandable considering who I was, I did not like very much. "No promises there!" she said, and left me alone in the new yellow room.

Fin