The girl broke off another green branch of the wizened tree as I walked towards her. It left a ragged wound in the trunk, and I frowned. How long had it taken the tree to grow, out here where water was a blessing?
She twisted the fresh stick into a noose, tightening and tightening it until it snapped.
I pushed away my sympathy for the tree and said, "Hello?"
I couldn't tell if she had heard me. I'd never been good at guessing how far voices carry. She kept shredding stringy green bark off her victim branch. Her gray calsounds were too short and tight for her gangly legs, flashing a glimpse of ankle that made me blush.
I slipped closer, clasping my hands at my waist. What were the odds she would understand sign? I couldn't imagine they were good. Then again, maybe she hadn't responded because she, too, was deaf.
The thought gave me courage. I'd never met anyone else like me. Perhaps that was why the Great Unknowns had directed me to her.
I marched straight up to the girl and crouched next to her tree. "Hello."
Her hands paused on the branch. Her head lifted, and our eyes locked. Her mouth moved. "Hello yourself. What do you want?"
She hadn't been looking when I spoke. She must have heard me. I swallowed my disappointment and said, "I'm Zisha Ferimei. I just came to camp, and I'm looking to join a troupe. Can you tell me which one you're in?"
The girl's head tilted. "I can barely understand you. What's wrong with you?"
The question took me aback. But I supposed everyone out here had something wrong with them, as the perfectas saw things. Perhaps that question was as commonplace as introductions. "I'm deaf. What's wrong with you?"
Her green eyes narrowed. "Rude much?"
"Rude? You asked first."
"Yeah. I guess I did." Her gaze dropped. "I'm not in a troupe or whatever you call those groups of misfits. I just got dumped here last month."
"Mother told me everyone joined troupes outside the walls. How do you earn your meals?"
"Yeah? Did she have a lot of experience being a disgraced exile before she popped you out?"
"No. My grandmother does."
"Oh." She frowned. "The pilgrims dump food off on you if you're willing to listen to them talk. It keeps you alive." Alive, but not much else. I could see her bones.
It dawned on me that I'd read every word she said to me. Her face moved with such familiarity that I felt like I'd known her forever, like Mother and Father. I could read her lips without missing a word. The realization made the hair rise on my arms. What had the vision given me?
"You speak pretty well for a deaf person," she said, as though she had had the same revelation.
I jumped a little. "I've had a lot of practice. But I prefer sign, or writing. Do you know either?"
Her nose wrinkled. "Sign? I don't know what that is. As for writing, do I look old enough to have passed my revelation trials and started school?"
I flushed. "Your parents could've taught you. Mine did."
She folded her arms. "Well, we aren't all special."
I wanted to jump up and storm away. She was unpleasant, angry and bitter. She had maimed that poor tree and buried a bunch of innocent ants. But the Unknowns had to have shown me her for a reason. They had to. I gritted my teeth. "What's your name?"
She stared at me like I'd pulled a snake out of my camise. I realized, to my embarrassment, that I had signed it.
I tried again, with my voice this time. "What's your name?"
"What was that?" she said. "That hand-waving? Some kind of prayer? Are you another of those crazy pilgrims? You shouldn't waste your time appealing to Holy Efra. They'll never let you back in the walls."
"That was sign. It's my language. You're avoiding the question."
"Thesil."
"Thesil. I'm Zisha Ferimei."
"You said. No one uses mother-names out here. You might as well drop yours."
I tried to maintain my smile. "What did the Justry throw you out for?"
She stared at me, her gaze flat as the desert around us. "They caught me tumbling another girl, and were jealous they weren't invited."
I started. "What? You can't get cast out just for being a lesbian."
Thesil was still for so long I thought I'd spoken too quickly and was no more understandable to her than a squawking goose. Then she said, "How would you know?"
"My parents told me," I said.
I had been only fourteen when Father caught me leaning out the arched windows of our third-floor suite to watch the boys and girls playing square fox in the street outside. They had just undergone their revelations, and they wore no hoods, no masks. Their silk garments outlined their wiry chests and legs, the curve of budding breasts, with an embarrassing clarity. I was not allowed to go among them – I'd never been allowed to interact with anyone but Mother and Father – but the beautiful sight of them stirred in me uncomfortable longing. Both the agile young men and the newly adult women. Mother and Father, the only couple I knew, were a man and a woman. Did that make what I wanted wrong?
"It's fine, little bird," Father signed when I at last admitted the source of my discomfort. "In the Plenary Cities, no one will judge you by what your heart longs for. Your mother and I know many women who live together and call each other wives."
"No one minds?
He smiled at me. "Not as long as they pay their taxes."
I pushed thoughts of Father and my bisexuality away. I finished, "Anyway, liking someone of the same sex can't be a sign of death-palsy. Holy Efra wouldn't have ordered anyone banished for that."
Thesil scowled at me. "It was a justa's daughter. Maybe he made an exception." Then she spun away, and if she said anything else, I couldn't see it.
I sat next to the tree, instead, and pulled off my pack. Sefi nipped my fingertips as I freed her basket and undid the latch. When I lifted the lid, she erupted like a geyser of water shooting from a broken clay pipe. I barely caught the edge of her harness before she waddled out of reach.
Her head shot towards me, beak gaping.
I ignored her fuss and clipped on her leash. Sefi rewarded me with a wing-smack to the ankles. It didn't hurt much; her breeder had pinioned her before Mother and Father bought her, and her wings were weak since she had never flown.
Something tapped me on the shoulder. It was the pale-faced girl – Thesil, I reminded myself. She said, "Can you make your duck shut up? It's giving me a headache."
I stared at her. "Sefi is a thousand-egg goose, not a duck." A particularly omnivorous breed, which was the only reason I dared hope she wouldn’t starve out here in the wastes.
Thesil frowned back at me. "Goose, duck, whatever. She's making a racket. You're lucky you can't hear it."
Lucky. I was momentarily speechless. I tied Sefi's leash to my belt and let her loose. She milled about my feet. Her beak still gaped open, but Thesil's shoulders relaxed, so I assumed the noise had stopped.
Not that it mattered to me.
I leaned back against the tree trunk and looked at the amulet Father had given me. What good would it do me if no one could read the words I wrote?
A bit of bark bounced off my knee. Thesil, again. "Do they really lay a thousand eggs?"
I blinked at her. "No. One a day."
"You must love to eat eggs if you're hauling livestock around."
"She's a pet." I said. I never ate Sefi's eggs. They went into my paints, every one.
"Big for a pet. And stinky."
I stiffened, offended for Sefi's sake. She didn't stink. She smelled like weeds and feathers and dirt. "What kind of person knows what a duck is but has never seen a goose?"
"Me."
"Geese are everywhere in the farms and apartments. Ducks... I've only ever seen a duck in books. You'd have to be rich to have one."
Thesil snapped another branch off the tree. "I had three."
Three ducks. I couldn't imagine the wealth required to import three. I shook my head. "Is that why you haven't joined a troupe?"
She looked at me blankly.
"Is that why you haven't joined a troupe?" I repeated. My face flushed. I hated having to repeat myself because of my voice. It made me feel helpless. Unable to communicate.
"I heard you the first time. What did you mean by it? I haven't joined a troupe because of ducks?"
My cheeks burned now. "I thought perhaps your family was still supporting you, if you're that rich." The night before, my parents had discussed sending goods and letters to me outside the city, but apparently it was exorbitantly expensive – and often the messenger took the package and the money and disappeared with both.
The puzzled light in Thesil's eyes died, replaced by ice. "I'm an imperfecta. I'm not rich, and I don't have a family. Not now."
I felt suddenly sorry for her. We might be both cast out, but at least I still had people who missed and supported me. I didn't know what to say to her, so I said the first thing I thought. "Do you miss your ducks much?"
She frowned at me like I was crazy. But then the frown eased. "Yeah. I guess I do."
We both sat quietly for some time. There didn't seem to be much more to say about waterfowl. I petted Sefi and watched her pick bugs out of the dirt.
Finally, the girl tapped my shoulder again. When I looked at her, she said, "When you asked which troupe I was in, what did you mean?"
I explained what Mother had told me of surviving outside of the cities, and of the troupes that travelled between them. I did have to repeat myself several times for clarity, but Thesil listened carefully, a frown on her stub-nosed face.
At the end of my explanation, I asked her, "Didn't anyone tell you this before dropping you at the camp?"
"No one told me anything, except that I could bow and scrape for a corner of bread with the rest of the pilgrims."
I nodded. "Do you want to look for a troupe together?"
"Why should I?"
"You'll need to find one sooner or later."
"Your voice is nasal and high-pitched and breathy. It gives me a headache. I don't even like you."
That hurt like a slap. But something in her eyes didn't match her words. "You're trying to drive me away. Why?"
She stiffened. Her lips pressed tight together. "I don't belong out here. I don't want any friends."
I felt pity. She had clearly grown up rich and privileged, the daughter of some justa or lawmaker. She didn't look obviously disabled. Perhaps her eyesight was poor, or she had some problem that only manifested itself part of the time. It must have been a true shock to be declared imperfecta and thrown out with nothing at all.
I said carefully, "Are you a pilgrim?"
"Are you kidding? I'm not cutting my nose off."
Since that had been my exact reaction to meeting Amaz, it made me smile. "I don't think they all do that. But I thought you might be like them in that you hope, if you pray hard enough, someone will heal you and let you go back home."
Her eyes dropped. "I... Maybe."
"If that's what you want, you still have to stay alive long enough for it to happen." I shrugged on my pack, stood with Sefi's leash wrapped around my fist, and offered her my other hand. "Come on. Let's go find a troupe."
#
The troupe-leader handed my message slate back to me. She had written, "We don't need another mouth to feed. You're bringing in a goose, so you can stay. But not the other one."
I frowned at her, but her expression was unyielding. She was middle-aged, her skin dark as clay, her curly gold hair kissed with orange, and she held her chalk with strong, assured fingers. A single ivory stud pierced her lip. She had told me her name was Abursa. It suited her.
Thesil leaned against a tree nearby, her arms folded tight across her thin chest. Her foot scuffed the ground at regular intervals.
I wiped out the troupe-leader's message and wrote my own. "I assumed we would be working for our meals in some way. My goose won't be our only contribution."
Abursa shook her head when she read the tablet. She scribbled and shoved it back at me. The motion startled the tiny white ass that pulled her cart, and it flicked its ears forward. "I've seen your friend's type before. Convinced she's here by mistake. She'll lie down and die before she learns a useful trade. Tell your friend to shut up. I hate whiners."
I started and glanced at Thesil. I hadn't realized she was speaking. I called, "Thesil. Please be patient."
Abursa made a face, and I wondered what Thesil had said in response. I wrote, "I have skills. I can read and write, as you see. I have able arms and legs." I hesitated and added, "I'm a painter."
Her eyes lit up when she saw my message. "Painter? Silk-painter?"
"Tempera, on wood."
She grinned as she wrote. "You should've said to start with. You are welcome to join my troupe. I have a spare tent for you, even."
I swallowed my astonishment. Mother had told me no one outside the cities could afford art. But I wasn't going to question my luck. "And Thesil?"
She frowned. "The whiner? Why are you helping her? Why do you care?"
I wish I knew. But what I wrote was, "I'm not joining without her."
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