Gwendolen has always lived in the town of Bilois on the outskirts of the Nahashin Marshes at the western edge of the Orelsian Empire. Her name is not Orlesian. She is named for her father's mother, who came back to Orlais with her father's father when he returned from the war with Ferelden. Her mother died a few years ago from the pox (an illness, I think), because no one could bring a mage in time to save her. Her father Bernard is a smith. Her brother Henri helps their father in the smithy. She usually stays home and tends to the chores and to Grandpère (he does not have any other name, at least not that they will tell me), but recently her friend Marie had a baby and needed someone to watch her sheep. She likes tending sheep. She is not pleased that Bernard has decided to give the job to me, instead.
It takes days for me to learn this information. I did not expect to have days, but once they decide I am not going to rob them in their sleep (I do not know what this means, but I smile when Grandpère says it, and this seems to satisfy them) the Fabre family is open to keeping me in their house. I think I ought to be going to Val Foret, but I have found a town, which is at least part of what Mother wanted. And Grandpère is teaching me how to speak Orleisan, and they say that if I work for them they will pay me in Orlesian coin, so that I might survive when I reach Val Foret.
And I enjoy being a shepherd. For the first few days Gwendolen comes with me, a reluctant storm cloud in the sunny field that belongs to Marie's husband's family, sullenly acting out my duties so that I may watch her and copy her motions. I am afraid that it is me she does not like, but at dinner she always speaks nicely to me, if too fast for me to understand. My confusion makes her smile. I do not mind. I do not mind sitting in a field, watching for wolves or foxes who may try to take one of my bleating sheep. They are noisy animals, unlike any I have ever observed, but they too have their patterns. There are chickens, too, and a mule near the smithy. I feel more comfortable in their presence than I do in the village square on market day, surrounded by people considering their neighbors' wares with murmurs of approval or disapproval. Their voices make my head hurt.
There are other people our age, boys and girls, and Henri encourages me to play with them. I do not know what it means to play, but they explain to me the names and rules and then stand back and laugh as I break the rules and consequently lose. Losing seems to mean that they have a right to laugh at me more. Henri tells me they are not serious, but I do not mind. Their rules have some sense to them, but they lack a foundation. The change of the seasons, the underlying hum of the earth—these are the rules by which I live my life. But if others find the games fun, then perhaps I will as well.
Gwendolen plays with us sometimes. She laughs especially hard at me, and her laughter is the only kind that makes my cheeks heat with the feeling that perhaps I have done wrong. The other boys and girls—especially the girls—seem to think she is very interesting. They talk to her and point at me. They treat her as though she knows things they do not, but I am not sure what those things might be. They have all lived together in the village for their entire lives; they all know its rhythms and rules without speaking. I am the ignorant one.
It rains, sometimes, and today it is raining so hard that Bernard tells me to leave the sheep in their shelter. No one plays games when the rain muddies the dirt in the village square. Gwendolen refuses to allow me to mend shirts or cook, and so I sit by the window and watch her bend her head over the cloth in her hand. She hums tunelessly, but I am listening to the sound of the raindrops on the window glass. It is unlike the wet thwips of rain on a broad, glossy leaf, or the plunk of a large drip on a still pond; there is a hint of a twinkle in the sound, ringing where rain on the ground merely plops. Gwendolen raises her head and says, "Morrin, you're staring."
Her voice is a different sort of twinkle, light with teasing, hard with annoyance. It is rain on steel. "I'm sorry," I say. "I was listening to the rain."
She closes her eyes and sighs. She sets the cloth aside and crosses her arms and says, "I simply can't work with you watching me all the time. Go bother Henri."
Her eyes are closed and her face has no expression. Her cheeks are pink, but the firelight flickers on her face. I have no way of understanding how she thinks. "Where is Henri?" I ask.
"In the smithy, with Father. Now go," she says, and she opens her eyes and picks up her cloth and bends her head again. I walk by her towards the door, and she giggles. I keep walking. My cheeks heat.
The smithy is several lengths away from the house. Whenever Bernard is at work there is a huge cloud of smoke coming from the chimney, and today is no different. The raindrops fall through the smoke and turn thick and black, and I watch them slide down the roof and down to the ground. The puddles are black. I have never seen this before. I stop and crouch and watch as the thick black drops splash into the puddles, testing the water with my finger. The water slides off my skin, leaving black speckles like soot. I look for patterns in the speckles, following the song of the rain in my mind.
"Morrin?"
Henri stands over me. I do not know how long he has been there. He is staring at me. I realize my hair is clinging to my forehead and my clothes are wrinkling as they hang heavy from my limbs. I have not paid attention, and I am soaked through.
"Gwendolen sent me to look for you," I tell him, standing stiffly, the rain creaking my joints. "Are you still working in the smithy?"
"Father's just working on one last thing," he says, still staring at me, though now he must look up, as I am taller. He blinks and opens his mouth, then closes it. This is usually a sign that people do not know what to say in response to me, as though I have somehow failed to behave according to their rules. I sigh. "Come," he says, "you might as well dry yourself off."
I have looked into the smithy before—the large doors are open whenever Bernard is working, and I have seen the chimney and the strange metal shapes hanging from the ceiling—but this is the first time I have walked into it. The floor under my bare feet is hardpacked dirt and the roof over my head is wood and everywhere there is metal. In Mother's house we had the cookpot and its handle and a cauldron, and a few other things Mother had acquired in her travels for which I did not know the name. Here there are U-shaped twists and S-shaped hooks holding more hooks and long bars for which I do not know the purpose. There is a large, heavy thing—
"You've never been in here, have you?" Henri says. "That's the anvil—step back—"
Bernard—I had not seen him—turns quickly, holding metal tongs which hold a yellow-orange-white glowing thing, and in a moment he sets it on the anvil and brings down a hammer in his other hand. The clang rings through the room and sparks fly and I turn my face away to avoid a burn, the heat rippling through my wet clothes and warming my skin. There are more clangs as Bernard continues to hammer, ringing and ringing until the sounds become one long note filling my ears, and below it I hear the crackle of a fire burning. It is a quiet comforting murmur beneath the cacophony, and without thinking I look for its source. There is Bernard and his hammer and his muted red thing—that must be the metal—and behind him I see the light of the fire.
The hammering stops and the roar of the fire takes it place—Bernard yells at Henri, le soufflet, a word I do not understand—and Henri leaves my side to pull one of the many pieces of metal hanging from the ceiling. This one—I watch the pure machinery of pulleys and levers from his hand to the large triangular thing on the floor. It opens and closes as he pulls the handle, and the fire roars in response. Bernard takes his now-dark, curled metal and thrusts it into the fire. Henri keeps pumping the fire. I look and see a place against the wall that is not covered with a half-made plow or fire poker, and I move there, pressing my back against the comforting wood and watching the fascinating battle before me. Bernard beats his metal and Henri desperately tries to keep the fire hot enough, but I can see on Bernard's face a building frustration.
"Arrête," he says finally, and Henri releases the handle, wincing and rubbing his arm. I realize their arms are thick and muscular from this work; my arms are skinny shepherd's arms, formed from playing in puddles. "I have no plan," he says to the unfinished steel on the anvil.
"What are you making?" I ask, and the two Orlesians turn with surprise on their faces. My voice is small in the warmth of the room.
"Morrin," Bernard says. He always says my name as though he cannot decide if he wants to talk to me or not. "Why are you wet?"
"I was outside," I say. I have learned not to elaborate. "What are you making?"
I do not have to understand all the words Henri says in order to know that he is telling his father he found me in a puddle. Bernard's expression does not change, but I feel the confused judgment in the room. My cheeks heat again. I miss Mother.
"A gate," Bernard says finally, "for Madame Marchande, the widow. Her old wooden gate has broken and she has asked for a new one of iron, but I have no design."
"Oh," I say. The word "design" echoes in my head—not my head, in the deep emptiness I have learned to ignore. It echoes off the crystal wall and rings into the endlessness and my hands twitch against my sides. I am still I am thinking I am ringing I—
"I have an idea," my mouth moves, words coming eagerly, pictures rising unbidden in my mind with nowhere to go. I have knelt to the ground and started drawing in the dirt with my finger, and I am babbling about lattices and crossing and the best sort of iron to use (and there are oceans and symphonies and paintings, Morrin, the paintings, and the tapestries, and the wall is ringing and ringing and it is worse than any blacksmith's hammer for it strikes against my soul).
"Calm down," Bernard says. He has crouched down across from me, and Henri hovers over his shoulder. "Morrin, what are you—"
"Lattice," I say, finishing the drawing. "A lattice design, for her gate."
I lift my finger from the dirt and rock back on my heels, and suddenly I am stillness, empty once again. I am Morrin, nothing more.
"You're shaking," Henri points out. I do not tell him I am frightened. I wait for it to pass.
Bernard hums like his daughter, his finger hovering over my design (not my design; I catalogue patterns, I do not create) as he traces an outline in the air. "This will work," he says. "I have seen this before, in the larger cities."
He looks up at me and all I can do is shiver, sick with silence. I realize he thinks I have lied about visiting cities, but I do not care. "'Tis an idea," I say, "nothing more."
They stare at me and I realize I have spoken in Fereldan and I do not care. I hear Mother's voice in my mind, pragmatic and soothing (I see her mouth form the words "Old God" and I refuse to listen). "It's nothing," I say in Orlesian, and I stand up, stiff again. "Thank you for letting me watch you work. I'm going to..."
"Change clothes," Bernard suggests, still crouching, watching me. I nod and try not to sway with the motion. Neither follows me as I leave out the open doors and make my way back to the house. The rain has lessened, but the path is wet, and I barely have the strength to lift my feet from the mud as it squishes between my toes (familiar), each raindrop burning my skin (an imposter's skin). I enter the house.
"Morrin, you are tracking mud—Morrin?"
I stop at the unfamiliar sound. It is Gwendolen's voice, speaking Orelsian words. That is the same. It is Gwendolen's voice, saying my name. I do not know why it is different.
"Morrin?" she says again, and her hand is on my shoulder.
I feel as though my head whips to look at her, and yet it is slowly, so slowly, that she comes into my sight, standing behind me with the cloth she embroiders on her other arm. It is meant for some market festival. Her hand is on my shoulder, my wet, dripping shoulder, her hand her hair is golden with sunshine, her eyes—I cannot look. I focus on the embroidery.
"Your pattern is wrong," I say, and the faintest chime of rain on crystal sounds within me.
"What?" she asks, and I point with a wet hand, careful not to drip on her work.
"The leaves," I say. "You haven't spaced them evenly. And the flowers should be yellow, not white, and their petals should be pointed, not round, and I don't know why you're doing flowers, you should be embroidering sheep, or birds—I think you'd make lovely birds, flying against blue, you need blue cloth to bring out your eyes, I think the blue would make the green lovely, I think—" I am speaking Fereldan and I look into her blue-green eyes which are wide with confusion and worry and the words slip, unbidden, not from emptiness but warmth—"you're lovely."
She stares at me, and then says, very slowly, "Je ne te comprends pas."
"Blue," I say in Orlesian, pointing at the cloth. "Birds," I say, pointing at the embroidery. "Flying," I add, because of the picture in my mind (and it is my picture, from my childhood). I shake my head. "Not flowers."
"I didn't ask you," she says, drawing her hand away, but I am tired and wet and cold and it only makes me colder.
"No," I say, "but I'll draw you a pattern. After I sleep." As the word passes between my lips I feel my eyes droop. "Sleep."
Gwendolen looks confused. I am also confused, most of all by how lovely she looks even in confusion. "Put on dry clothes," she says at last. "I'll wake you for dinner."
"Thank you," I say, and I go to Henri's room and let my wet clothes fall to the floor and put on dry ones and lay my wet head on his pillow, for which he will yell at me later, but it is a small thing compared to the muffled sounds coming through the door, the sounds of Gwendolen demanding to know what exactly her brother and father have done to me. The rain patters a rhythmic accompaniment. I sleep.
