A Dribble of Ink

I remember that it was midmorning.

Gardening was my favorite task of the day. I’d had to fight for it, because my mother’s terraces were famous throughout the territory and she didn’t quite trust me with them. I couldn’t really blame her; my father still laughed over whatever I’d done to the laundry that one time I tried.

“Oree,” she would say, whenever I sought to prove my independence, “it’s all right to need help. All of us have things we can’t do alone.”

Gardening, however, was not one of those things. It was the weeding that my mother feared, because many of the weeds that grew in Nimaro were similar in form to her most prized herbs. Fakefern had a fan-shaped frond just like sweet ire; running may was spiky and stung the fingers, same as ocherine. But the weeds and the herbs didn’t smell anything alike, so I never understood why she had such trouble with them. On the rare occasions that both scent and feel stumped me, all I had to do was touch a leaf-edge to my lips, or brush my hand through the leaves to hear the way they settled into place, and I would know. Eventually Mama had to admit that I hadn’t tossed out a single good plant all season. I was planning to ask for my own terrace the following year.

I usually lost myself in the gardens for hours, but one morning something was different. I noticed it almost the moment I left the house: a strange, tinny flatness to the air. A pent-breath tension. By the time the storms began, I had forgotten the weeds and sat up, instinctively orienting on the sky.

And I could see.

“Tunny.”

“Uh?” He opened one eye and the sun stabbed him directly in the brains. “Uh!” He snapped it shut again, wormed his tongue around his sore mouth. It tasted like slow death and old rot. “Uh.” He tried his other eye, just a crack, trained it on the dark shape hovering above him. It loomed closer, sun making glittering daggers down its edges.

“Tunny!”

“I hear you, damn it!” He tried to sit and the world tossed like a ship in a storm. “Gah!” He became aware he was in a hammock. He tried to rip his feet clear, got them tangled in the netting, almost tipped himself over in his efforts to get free, somehow ended up somewhere near sitting, swallowing the overwhelming urge to vomit. “First Sergeant Forest. What a delight. What time is it?”

“Past time you were working. Where did you get those boots?”

Tunny peered down, puzzled. He was wearing a pair of superbly polished black cavalry boots with gilded accoutrements. The reflection of the sun in the toes was so bright it was painful to look at. “Ah.” He grinned through the agony, some of the details of last night starting to leak from the shadowy crannies of his mind. “Won ’em . . . from an officer . . . called . . .” He squinted up into the branches of the tree his hammock was tied to. “No. It’s gone.”

Forest shook his head in amazement. “There’s still someone in the division stupid enough to play cards with you?”

“Well, this is one of the many fine things about wartime, Sergeant. Lots of folks leaving the division.” Their regiment had left two score in sick tents over the last couple of weeks alone. “That means lots of new card-players arriving, don’t it?”

“Yes it does, Tunny, yes it does.” Forest had that mocking little grin on his scarred face.

“Oh, no,” said Tunny.

“Oh, yes.”

“No, no, no!”

“Yes. Up you come, lads!”