Wild Magic

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She brought out the wedge of honeycomb she’d taken from the kitchen, unwrapped it, and tossed to River-man. While he ate, she leaned back against the stones and watched the little people gather.

“I don’t understand what’s happening to me,” she said finally. “There’s… there’s…” she groped at air in crippled, aborted gestures as if even her body was stumbling in its efforts to express what was in her, “… there’s too… too MUCH! It’s like I’m going to explode, barn barn splat, bits of me all over the place… and… oh… I don’t know…

The Riverman drew his tiny gnarled hand across his mouth, then sat cradling the oozing comb. “Be specific,” he said. “Elucidate.” He brought the comb up to his mouth again and licked honey from one of the cells, but never took his black beady eyes off her.

Faan scowled past him at the head of a water elemental thrust up like a faceted lump of mountain stream in the midst of the muddy River. When it merged with the River and vanished, she said, “Last night… Tai and Areia One-eye were off to a clandestine rite in one of the Biashar towers as soon as they finished supper… they’re gonna be sent to the mines if they get caught, they don’t care… I get so worried… makes it so easy to… blow up… I’ve got a horrible temper… sometimes I want to kill… I can’t let myself think like that or… things… happen… You remember first time I came here… I nearly burned down the school… and me… ah! diyo diyo, River-man, I know. Stick to the subject. Reyna and Jea and Dawa, they did the evensong, then they left… I can’t help it, I HATE what he does… how he can… he’s not LIKE that, he’s… Mamay… oh, I know he’s not my mother… he’s a man… sort of… um… one time when I was crying because Utsapisha’s granddaughters teased me when they heard me calling him Mamay, he told me: I can’t be your Mamay in body, but I am in my heart. Never forget that. That’s what he’s like, not… but he goes and does… what he does… when I’m around him, when he says ANYTHING, I feel like I’m going to explode… I’m afraid for him… I’m ashamed… he loves me, but he tries to make me into… I don’t know… a perfect child… I’m not like that… I want… I want… I don’t know… it’s like there’s a hole in me that says WANT WANT WANT and it nor nothing else Will tell me what it is I do want.” She laid her hands on her knees, palms up, grimaced at the damp green stains from the moss.

Slowly, painfully, she told Riverman about the quarrel last night.

. that’s it,” she said. “That’s it. I got some sleep. Hour or so I suppose. Came here soon’s it was light. I’m afraid, Riverman, I don’t understand what’s happening…”

Riverman listened with all his tiny body-said ah at the proper places, uh huh, go on. He had no advice for her-what did he know of family and its terrors? He was sui generis, unique. But he let her talk and he listened, interested in this strange thing. Not like the Sibyl who seemed to know it all already.

A short while later she slipped from under the gatt and made her way to the Beehouse through the morning throngs of Verakay Lane, nothing resolved, but the storm in her blood blown away for a while.