Dapple: A Hwarhath Historical Romance Read online

  Dapple: A Hwarhath Historical Romance

  Eleanor Arnason

  Dapple is the story of a woman in the Hwarhath society, where women are forbidden to perform certain jobs. One of them being an actor. Helwar Ahl’s (a.k.a. Dapple) family apprentices her to a sailor. After several years as a sailor, she sneaks off the ship to apprentice herself to a lowly acting troupe. Set upon by bandits, she must fend for herself and face her desire to break the prescribed ways, and force those around her to face her desires as well.

  Dapple: a hwarhath historical romance

  ELEANOR ARNASON

  Critically acclaimed author Eleanor Arnason published her first novel, The Sword Smith, in 1978, and followed it with novels such as Daughter of the Bear King and To the Resurrection Station. In 1991, she published her best-known novel, one of the strongest novels of the ‘90s, A Woman of the Iron People, a complex and substantial novel which won the prestigious James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award. Her short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & science Fiction, Amazing, Orbit, Xanadu, and elsewhere. Her most recent novel is Ring of Swords, set in the same evocative fictional universe as is the bulk of her short fiction, including the story that follows.

  In this story she takes us to a distant planet inhabited by the alien hwarhath, and along with a brave and determined young girl who defies her family and sets off on a perilous adventure that takes her into uncharted territory of several sorts—into wild, lawless country inhabited by bandits and remorseless killers, and, perhaps even more dangerously, into a new social territory as well, as she assumes roles Forbidden to Women since time immemorial.. .

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  here was a girl named Helwar Ahl. Her family lived on an island north and east of the Second Continent, which was known in those days as the Great Southern Continent. (Now, of course, we know that an even larger expanse of land lies farther south, touching the pole. In Ahl’s time, however, no one knew about this land except its inhabitants.)

  A polar current ran up the continent’s east coast and curled around Helwar Island, so its climate was cool and rainy. Thick forests covered the mountains. The Helwar built ships from the wood. They were famous shipwrights, prosperous enough to have a good-sized harbor town.

  Ahl grew up in this town. Her home was the kind of great house typical of the region: a series of two-story buildings linked together. The outer walls were mostly blank. Inside were courtyards, balconies, and large windows provided with the modem wonder, glass. Granted, the panes were small and flawed. But some ingenious artificer had found a way to fit many panes together, using strips of lead. Now the women of the house had light, even in the coldest weather.

  As a child, Ahl played with her cousins in the courtyards and common rooms, all of them naked except for their fog-grey fur. Later, in a kilt, she ran in the town streets and visited the harbor. Her favorite uncle was a fisherman, who went out in morning darkness, before most people woke. In the late afternoon, he returned. If he’d been lucky, he tied up and cleaned his catch, while Ahl sat watching on the dock.

  “I want to be a fisherman,” she said one day.

  “You can’t, darling. Fishing is men’s work.”

  “Why?”

  He was busy gutting fish. He stopped for a moment, frowning, a bloody knife still in his hand. “Look at this situation! Do you want to stand like me, knee deep in dead fish? It’s hard, nasty work and can be dangerous. The things that women do well — negotiation, for example, and the forming of alliances — are no use at all, when dealing with fish. What’s needed here,” he waved the knife, “is violence. Also, it helps if you can piss off the side of a boat.”

  For a while after that Ahl worked at aiming her urine. She could do it, if she spread her legs and tilted her pelvis in just the right fashion. But would she be able to manage on a pitching boat? Or in a wind? In addition, there was the problem of violence. Did she really want to be a killer of many small animals?

  One of the courtyards in her house had a basin, which held ornamental fish. Ahl caught one and cut off its head. A senior female cousin caught her before she was finished, though the fish was past help.

  “What are you doing?” the matron asked.

  Ahl explained.

  “These are fish to feed, not fish to eat,” her cousin said and demonstrated this by throwing a graincake into the basin.

  Fish surged to the surface in a swirl of red fins, green backs, and blue-green tails. A moment later, the cake was gone. The fish returned to their usual behavior: a slow swimming back and forth.

  “It’s hardly fair to kill something this tame —in your own house, too. Guests should be treated with respect. In addition, these fish have an uninteresting flavor and are full of tiny bones. If you ate one, it would be like eating a cloth full of needles.”

  Ahl lost interest in fishing after that. Her uncle was right about killing. It was a nasty activity. All that quickness and grace, gone in a moment. The bright colors faded. She was left with nothing except a feeling of disgust.

  Maybe she’d be a weaver, like her mother, Leweli. Or the captain of a far-traveling ocean-trader, like her aunt Ki. Then she could bring treasures home: transparent glass, soft and durable lead.

  When she was ten, she saw her first play. She knew the actors, of course. They were old friends of her family and came to Helwar often, usually staying in Ahl’s house. The older one —Perig—was quiet and friendly, always courteous to the household children, but not a favorite with them. The favorite was Cholkwa, who juggled and pulled candy out of ears. He knew lots of funny stories, mostly about animals such as the tli, a famous troublemaker and trickster. According to the house’s adults, he was a comedian, who performed in plays too rude for children to see. Perig acted in hero plays, though it was hard to imagine him as a hero. The two men were lovers, but didn’t usually work together. This was due to the difference in their styles and to their habit of quarreling. They had, the women of Ahl’s house said, a difficult relationship.

  This time they came together, and Perig brought his company. They put on a play in the main square, both of them acting, though Cholkwa almost never did dark work.

  The play was about two lovers—both of them warriors—whose families quarreled. How could they turn against one another? How could they refuse their relatives’ pleas for help? Each was the best warrior in his family. Though she hadn’t seen a play before, Ahl knew how this was going to end. The two men met in battle. It was more like a dance than anything else, both of them splendidly costumed and moving with slow reluctant, grace. Finally, after several speeches, Perig tricked Cholkwa into striking. The blow was fatal. Perig went down in a gold and scarlet heap. Casting his sword away, Cholkwa knelt beside him. A minor player in drab armor crept up and killed Cholkwa as he mourned.

  Ahl was transfixed, though also puzzled. “Wasn’t there any way out?” she asked the actors later, when they were back in her house, drinking halin and listening to her family’s compliments.

  “In a comedy, yes,” said Cholkwa. “Which is why I do bright plays. But Perig likes plays that end with everyone dead, and always over some ethical problem that’s hardly ever encountered in real life.”

  The older man was lying on a bench, holding his halin cup on his chest. He glanced at Cholkwa briefly, then looked back at the ceiling. “Is what you do more true to reality? Rude plays about animals? I’d rather be a hero in red and gold armor than a man in a tli costume.”

  “I’d rather be a clever tli than someone who kills his lover.”

  “What else could they do?” asked Perig, referring to the characters in the play.

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bsp; “Run off,” said Cholkwa. “Become actors. Leave their stupid relatives to fight their stupid war unaided.”

  It was one of those adult conversations where everything really important was left unspoken. Ahl could tell that. Bored, she said, “I’d like to be an actor.”

  They both looked at her.

  “You can’t,” said Perig.

  This sounded familiar. “Why not?”

  “In part, its custom,” Cholkwa said. “But there’s at least one good reason. Actors travel and live among unkin; and often the places we visit are not safe. I go south a lot. The people there love comedy, but in every other way they’re louts and savages. At times I’ve wondered if I’d make it back alive, or would someone have to bring my ashes in an urn to Perig?”

  “Better to stay here,” said Perig. “Or travel the way your aunt Ki does, in a ship full of relatives.”

  No point in arguing. When adults started to give advice, they were never reasonable. But the play stayed with her. She imagined stories about people in fine clothing, faced with impossible choices; and she acted them out, going so far as to make a wooden sword, which she kept hidden in a hayloft. Her female relatives had an entire kitchen full of knives and cleavers and axes, all sharp and dangerous. But the noise they would have made, if they’d seen her weapon!

  Sometimes she was male and a warrior. At other times, she was a sailor like Ki, fighting the kinds of monsters found at the edges of maps. Surely, Ahl thought, it was permissible for women to use swords when attacked by monsters, rising out of the water with fangs that dripped poison and long curving claws?

  Below her in the barn, her family’s tsina ate and excreted. Their animal aroma rose to her, combining with the scent of hay. Later she said this was the scent of drama: dry, aging hay and new-dropped excrement.

  The next year Cholkwa came alone and brought his company. They did a decent comedy, suitable for children, about a noble sul who was tricked and humiliated by a tli.The trickster was exposed at the play’s end. The sul’s honor was restored. The good animals did a dance of triumph, while the tli cowered and begged.

  Cholkwa was the tli. Strange that a man so handsome and friendly could portray a sly coward.

  Ahl asked about this. Cholkwa said, “I can’t talk about other men, but I have that kind of person inside me: a cheat and liar, who would like to run away from everything. I don’t run, of course. Perig would disapprove, and I’d rather be admired than despised.”

  “But you played a hero last year.”

  “That was more difficult. Perig understands nobility, and I studied with him a long time. I do as he tells me. Most people are tricked and think I know what I’m doing. But that person—the hero —doesn’t speak in my mind.”

  Ahl moved forward to the play’s other problem. “The sul was noble, but a fool. The tli was clever and funny, but immoral. There was no one in the play I could really like.”

  Cholkwa gave her a considering gaze, which was permissible, since she was still a child. Would she like it, when men like Cholkwa —unkin, but old friends — had to glance away? “Most people, even adults, wouldn’t have seen that. It has two causes. I wrote the sul’s lines, and, as I’ve told you, I don’t understand nobility. The other problem is my second actor. He isn’t good enough. If Perig had been here, he would have made the sul likable —in part by rewriting the lines, but mostly because he could play a stone and make it seem likable.”

  Ahl thought about this idea. An image came to her: Perig in a grey robe, sitting quietly on a stage, his face unmasked and grey, looking calm and friendly. A likable rock. It could be done. Why bother? In spite of her question, the image remained, somehow comforting.

  Several days later, Cholkwa did a play for adults. This event took place at night in the town hall, which was used for meetings and ceremonies, also to store trade goods in transit. This time the back half was full of cloth, big bales that smelled of fresh dye, southern blue and the famous Sorg red.

  Ahl snuck out of her house after dark and went in a back door, which she’d unlocked earlier. Climbing atop the bales, she settled to watch the play.

  Most of it was past her understanding, though the audience gasped, groaned, clapped, and made hissing noises. Clearly, they knew what was going on.

  The costumes were ugly, in her opinion; the animals had huge sexual parts and grimacing faces. They hit each other with padded swords and clubs, tumbled and tossed each other, spoke lines that were — as far as she could tell — full of insults, some sly and others so obvious that even she made sense of them. This time the sul was an arrogant braggart with a long narrow head and a penis of almost equal size and shape. The tli, much less well endowed, was clever and funny, a coward because he had to be. Most of his companions were large, dangerous, and unjust.

  It was the tli’s play. Mocking and tricking, he won over all the rest, ending with the sul’s precious ancestral sword, which he carried off in triumph to his mother, a venerable female tli, while the sul howled in grief.

  The Sword Recovered or The Revenge of the Tli. That was the name of the play. There was something in back of it, which Ahl could not figure out. Somehow the sul had harmed the tli’s family in the past. Maybe the harm had been sexual, though this didn’t seem likely. Sulin and tli did not interbreed. Puzzled, she climbed down from the bales and went home. The night was foggy, and she almost lost her way in streets she’d known her entire life.

  She couldn’t ask Cholkwa to explain. He would have told her relatives that she’d seen the play.

  After this, she added comedy to her repertoire, mixing it with the stories about heroes and women like her aunt, far-travelers who did not have to die over some kind of unusual ethical dilemma.

  The result was a long, acted-out epic tale about a hero, a woman sailor, a clever tli, and a magical stone that accompanied the other three on their journey. The hero was noble, the sailor resourceful, and the tli funny, while the stone remained calm and friendly, no matter what was going on. There wasn’t any sex. Ahl was too young, and the adult comedy had disgusted her. It’s often a bad idea to see things that are forbidden, especially if one is young.

  In the end, one of her cousins —a sneak worse than Cholkwa in the children’s play—found out what she was doing and told her senior female relatives. “Clearly you have too much free time,” they said, and assigned her work in the house’s big weaving room. The sword was destroyed, along with the bits of armor she’d made. But her relatives decided the tli mask, constructed of bark paper over a frame of twigs, was good enough to keep. It was hung on the weaving room wall, where it stared down at her. Gradually, the straw whiskers disappeared, and large eyes —drawn in ink —faded.

  Don’t think that Ahl was too unhappy, or that her relatives had been unjust. Every child has to learn duty; and she’d gotten bored with her solitary play, as well as increasingly uncomfortable with hiding her props. Better to work at a loom and have ideas in her mind. No sneaking cousin could discover these, and everything she imagined was large and bright and well-made, the swords of real steel, sharp and polished, as bright as the best glass.

  Two years passed. She became an adequate plain weaver, but nothing more. “We thought you might have a gift for beauty,” said her mother. “The mask suggested this. But it’s obvious that you lack the ability to concentrate, which is absolutely necessary in any kind of art. Anything worth doing is likely to be slow, difficult, and boring. This is not an invariable rule, but it works in most situations.”

  “Give her to me,” said Ki. “Maybe she’d be happier in a more active life.”

  Ahl went to sea. At first, it was not an enjoyable experience, though she had little problem with motion sickness. Her difficulty lay in the same region as always: she spent too much time thinking about her stories. As a result, she was forgetful and careless. These are not good traits in an apprentice sailor; and Ki, who had always seemed pleasant and friendly at home in Helwar, turned out to be a harsh captain.

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p; At first the punishment she gave to Ahl was work. Every ship is full of nasty jobs. Ahl did most of them and did them more than once. This didn’t bother her. She wasn’t lazy, and jobs—though nasty—required little thought. She could make up stories while she did them.

  Her habit of inattention continued. Growing angry, Ki turned to violence. On several occasions, she stuck Ahl: hard slaps across the face. This also had no effect. The girl simply did not want to give up her stories. Finally, Ki beat her, using a knotted rope.

  Most likely this shocks you. Nowadays we like to believe that our female ancestors never did harm to one another. It’s men who are violent. Women have always used reason.

  Remember this was a sailing ship in the days before radio and engines. Weather satellites did not warn sailors of approaching storms. Computers did not monitor the ship’s condition and send automatic signals to the Navigation Service. Sailors had to rely on their own skill and discipline.

  It was one thing to be forgetful in a weaving room. If you fail to tie off a piece of yarn, what can happen? At most, a length of cloth will be damaged. Now, imagine what happens if the same person fails to tie a rope on board a ship. Or forgets to fasten a hatch in stormy weather.