Free My Sister's Song by Gail Carriger Page A

already
forming on her arm, “I certainly don’t want to!”
    She wore herself out and
collapsed dejectedly upon the bank. I sat next to her wringing out
my long warrior’s braid and looking not at all apologetic.
    “Did you, by any remote
chance, mark the type of spring we were having this year? If you
intend to become a Charmer you will have to know your bees better
than this. By the Deer-god’s horns, Arite, you have lived your
entire life in these parts, what possessed you to sing for honey
after a wet spring? I barely stopped you before you took a taste,
have you remembered nothing?”
    She gave me a
blank look. I plucked one of the deep pink rhododendron flowers from a bush and
waved it in front of her face. “Do you see any other flowers
blooming? Any amarantha or oliander ? No. Nothing but goatsbane
throughout this wood, and all the surrounding
countryside.”
    Arite lost
her angered adulthood and lapsed into frightened childhood. Had I
not reached her in time she might have eaten that honey. Both of us
were raised on the stories, both of us learned by experience - do
not eat honey after a wet spring. For when rains have continued
longer than they should flowers are knocked from other plants, only
the hearty rhododendron and her sister nerium survive to show glorious
faces to the early sun. The bees are forced to choose between those
two plants, goatsbane and dogsbane, each a deadly poison. The honey
they produce is equally toxic, so strong that a taste brings on
dreams and sickness, to children - death. When I first reached my
moon-time the Melissai fed me a fingertip full so I could see my
future. It was to be my only taste, unless of course my path was
that of a seer, like them. Arite, just five summers, had watched me
writhe and scream through the morning, and held my head as I lost
several past meals onto the grass.
    In my dreams, a spider wove
a net of light, a glorious pattern of gold which melted into honey
when I touched it. Then the spider leaped and turn into a black
wish-seed, and I knew that if I caught it I could have anything
that I desired. I chased it through the forest and over the Inner
Sea, its water black as coal. The seed settled there and was eaten
by a silver fish.
    The Melissai said that the
spider wove a net of war, and that I chased a wish of freedom
toward a weapon of black and silver. So my role among the
Heptakometes was determined. My dreams made me a warrior, but the
Melissai always twisted the dream toward the profession best suited
to the dreamer anyway. Arite would dream a song, or something that
could be interpreted as a song. No one ever doubted that I would be
a warrior, from the moment I walked – I ran, from the moment I
spoke – I yelled. Arite would be a Charmer for her walk had always
been a dance just as her words were always a song.
    “Come,” I said, lifting her
up from the bank and steering her back into the woods, “we have
mushrooms to pick.”
    Arite and I returned to the
village as the sky was darkening overhead. We had collected not
only mushrooms but a few early fern fronds as well. Father was
pleased with our provisions and we kept our encounter with the bees
to ourselves. Joheri, my scout leader, raised her eyebrows at my
stings, but asked no questions. I shrugged at her, days of silent
marching making words unnecessary among arms-mates.
    Our warrior’s training camp
was situated two hills over from the village proper. This was,
ostensibly, to keep the noise level down. We warriors are a raucous
bunch. After too much barley ale we are prone to barking songs
rather than singing them. The Charmers complain. Many summers ago
we moved, two hills over. Far enough for the yelling to be a faint
mummer in the village but close enough to run and aide - should we
be needed. I often felt that there was something else, a way in
which our very energy interfered with the practices of the Melissai
and the Charmers. Whatever the case it suited us all.
     
    The Melissai