

BUTTERFLY



by M. C. A. Hogarth


Smashwords Edition 
Copyright 2010 M.C.A. Hogarth

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"I can't believe Father's actually gone," Geneviive murmured to her brother as their tollies long-walked shoulder to shoulder.
"Good riddance and Godspeed," Jared answered.
"Jared!"
The Hinichi glanced down at his sister, ears flicking back beneath their frost-guards. He could barely see her lupine face through the modesty veils the brittle summer wind snapped around her delicate face. "Oh, decherna, admit what is only the truth. We were a sathet household before Grandfather died, almost down to the last servant in the stables. It was our belief. When Father came, he only alienated people by preaching the pruscha sect. Dahrengard was never poured to be pruschani, whatever Father wanted."
"And now he's gone," Geneviive said again, ears sagging. She did not deny her brother; she never bothered when she knew he was right. "Now we are the Dahrengard-scain."
"Lord and lady of the Heights," Jared agreed, watching the empty wagon bobble over the uneven, frosted road. His eyes sought the shadowed streaks of the keep, black towers jutting from ragged cuts in the icy mountainside. A fitting home for the Hinichi wolfines. He licked his nose once. "Now we can set everything right."
The smaller woman started. Her voice dropped to a low hiss, barely trusting the wind to keep the words from the ears of unsuspecting relatives and servants walking before them. "Everything? Everything, Jared?"
He returned her gaze, eyes a blue somber as river stones. "Everything, decherna." His face turned in profile to hers, as he watched the approaching road. "I will send for her myself. It is past time."
Geneviive closed her eyes, rolling her lip between her teeth. It would not do to be seen crying when she had not wept a tear at the funeral. Instead, she held out her gloved hand and felt through the leather and fur as Jared clasped it in his. "A sister, Jared. Our sister."
He squeezed her hand.

#

The depths of summer had at last come to Hinichitii, and the stands of wildflowers that carpeted the lower hills of the Teeth streaked unexpected colors across the base of the mountain range: pale saffron and milky ivory, blue-violet. Jared reflected that there might even be butterflies as he scanned the brown grass on the edges of the tarmac. As children, he and Geneviive both had been entranced by those few that had braved the peaks, living flowers that danced on cold winds rife with pollen.
His sister pranced back from the control flat, still holding the bouquet of Heaven's Breath and bottlebrush she'd picked for this day. Her brown face glowed stronger than the weak sun, dark blue eyes sparkling.
"They say the shuttle just asked for clearance. It's on its way down now. No more than another twenty minutes."
"Twenty minutes," Jared mused. It had been warm enough to wear his summer's best, including the loam-brown velvet doublet he so infrequently had the opportunity to wear. "What will she be like, do you think, sister mine?"
"Oh, I hope she would be like us. She is kin," Geneviive answered, tugging her cobalt blue cloak over her shoulder as she scrutinized the sky.
"But kin that has not met us...or very nearly hasn't. Kin that hasn't stepped foot on Hinichitii since she was a babe too young for memories. Kin that might not even have been raised Hinichi...."
"Oh, Jared! To say such things! Some things are in the blood, sure as God is in every stone," Geneviive answered, ears flipping back in dismay.
Jared chuckled softly and touched his sister's cheek. Her veil had been draped across her throat today, as was proper for a lady in the company of brethren. "Ah, decherna. Do you know how much I love you?"
The Hinichi turned her face far enough to kiss his unfurred palm and smiled, leaning into his hand. "Only as much as I love you, chuniisu."
He pulled her close enough to embrace her, but not so tightly to crush the flowers, the purr in his throat a contented rumble.
"Look, oh!" Geneviive pointed at the silver wink in a crisp powder-blue sky. "That must be her. Oh, I so hope she will like it here. Jared, tell me it will be so. My heart will break if Noelle does not love us. I know I shall love her on sight."
"Ssssh, ssh," Jared said, kissing the top of her head and releasing her. "The tolly can't be saddled before it's bought. We can only be our best for her, and hope she does not find us wanting."
Their hands slipped together, hers gloved against the thin chill, his naked, and brother and sister watched the shuttle descend toward the only landing strip within three hundred lopehours. Geneviive had never seen anything like the sleek Alliance shuttle; by the time she'd been old enough to leave the keep, the small Alliance embassy nexus at the base of the Teeth had been dismantled. But Jared recalled the seemings of things outside their world from his brief visit to that nexus, and the friendly concern of the human doctor who had helped him so long ago and all unknowing, had a hand in the shape of events today.
The predator-shaped shuttle slid to the ground, the reflection of the weak sunlight becoming a brilliant shield against its stylized wings. The wind's whispers carried further than the hushed thrum of its engines as it powered down. A door gaped open in its flank, and several men hopped to the ground, waiting for the ramp to fully extend. As they off-loaded luggage and crates, another portal irised apart in the shuttle's shoulder. A leggy man in leathers against the cold swung down without waiting for the stairs to fully engage. He turned to offer his hands back into the shuttle.
The sudden pain of his new signet ring catching his partially-furred finger forced Jared to realize how hard he and Geneviive squeezed against their anxiety.
The pilot backed away, lending a gentlemanly grip to the figure that appeared at the top of the stairs.
A female figure.
Her face swept across the tarmac and snagged on them. She handed something to the pilot, stepped off the shuttle, and walked directly toward them.
"My God," Geneviive whispered.
She was tall as a needle-tower, her grace evident even through the heavy tunic and breeches. The wind teased the edges of her unlined cloak around her boots. Her oval face held a human's alien beauty, but her coloring owed everything to the Hinichisene, for she was one of the rare wolves-of-all-seasons. The colors of her face and hands and tail flowed like liquid paint from the crisp cool of winter's white through spring's ocher and yellow-brown to summer's deep browns and finally to the gray and black of autumn. Hoarfrost-pale, her eyes only slightly recalled the blue that had bred true through Dahrengard's last six generations... and her hair curling around her throat contested with the snow of the highest peaks and won purer to do justice to the equally white, black-tipped Mother Mary ears, a pattern acclaimed among the Hinichi for its loveliness.
Such a picture of poise and ethereal grace was their lost sister that Geneviive did not realize until minutes later that she wore pants! and an expression of such coolness to rival ice. "My God," she said again, more in herself.
"She looks like a pagan goddess," Jared murmured.
Geneviive gasped, "Jared! God will strike you down for that tongue. How could you--"
"Look at her," Jared said, his voice low and his eyes focused on the approaching wolfine female. "Would you say her beauty is like unto a saint's? An angel's? It's too earthly for that. It's like magic. She's not of our world, Geneviive."
"She's beautiful," Geneviive said wistfully, for the frost in those pale eyes did not bode well, "And I love her, just on looking upon her, as I said I would."
The woman paused, some fifteen armslengths away.
Jared stepped forward, his hand disengaging from Geneviive's. "Hale and God touch your head."
The stranger's molasses-smooth mezzoalto seemed poorly matched to her hesitation before answering. "You called me here."
"We did," Jared said. "I am Jared, the Lord of Dahrengard, and this is Geneviive, my Lady-sister." He drew Geneviive to his side.
She studied them both, half a head taller than Geneviive and only a ear's length shorter than Jared. "I'm Noelle."
"You are our sister, and rightful co-inheritor of Dahrengard Heights," Jared said.
Noelle's ears twitched. "Me?" she asked with cool disbelief.
"You," Jared agreed.
Geneviive stepped forward and offered the bouquet. "Noelle...welcome home."
The woman took the flowers only because, Jared thought, she didn't know what else to do with her hands. "I've never even heard of Dahrengard Heights."
"Then we shall make up for lost time," Geneviive said, smiling up at the taller woman. "Father did not fool with the laws of inheritance, and for us that means that the three eldest of the lord's progeny rule the land as a triad unless or until other circumstances prevent."
"What circumstances?" Noelle asked, her voice hardening.
"Like marriage into another barony," Jared offered, "Or renunciation."
"Then I renounce your...title. I don't know Dahrengard. I don't even know this planet. And I certainly don't know you!"
Geneviive's ears sagged and she said, "Oh, Noelle...please...."
"And you have something worthwhile to go back to?" Jared challenged. He stepped forward and wrapped his arm around Noelle's wrist. "Do you have a home elsewhere? Family? Friends? What do you have to lose?"
Noelle bared her teeth in a ludicrously gentle human mouth. Her canines were barely pointed. "My time."
"Think of the potential benefits," Jared continued, staring down the slight distance between his eyes and his lost sister's. "You can go back to your empty hearth...or be a ruler of wolves here. Why make a hasty decision?"
The perfect white and black ears flipped backward, but Noelle's voice had lost some of its predatory chill. "There is wisdom in careful decision-making."
"So there is," Jared said, stepping back. Geneviive stared at him, conveying her amazement by the tilt of her ears and the cocking of one hand. He indicated something with the butt of his chin. Geneviive followed it and pursed her lips.
Noelle had not loosed the bouquet.
"Come with us," Jared said. "Come see what we might offer you."
Noelle glanced from one to the other before nodding once.

#

"You actually live in a castle?" Noelle asked.
Jared glanced at the wolf-of-all-seasons; she hadn't uttered a word on the ride up the Teeth, and Geneviive's wilted ears and twitching tail betrayed the strain of the silence. He waited for the gate guards to wave an arm in salute before replying, "Where else would a Hinichi live?"
Noelle's eyes darted to his face, narrowing, before she inevitably turned her face back to the heights.
Broader, larger holdings could ostensibly be found on the northern continent. In his frequent outings with his father, Jared had beheld many, yet each and every one had lacked a brutal edge, the harsh quality of line and elevation that defined every needled tower and barbed gate of Jared and Geneviive's home. The six towers that sprang from the slant of the Furrowmount had the arrogance of spears, their conical roofs blackened as if fire-hardened. The half of the fort holding built out of the mountain side sported variegated rock in black and white -- winter and autumn's palette without the touch of spring or summer's warmth. Watchmen patrolled the thick walls of the battlements, where the drape of a fine net of powdered snow stressed how altitude prevailed over the season.
Seasons, Jared thought, were fleeting. The mountain snow was a truer symbol of the resolve of Dahrengard.
The gates trundled open for the three, the path leading to the keep cleared of the powdery ice. Jared took Geneviive's hand and gestured for Noelle to walk alongside. She stared at every man and woman who bowed to them as they passed.
"Do they always do that?"
"It is only proper," ventured Geneviive. "We are Dahrengard-scain."
"Skyne?"
"Dahrengard-scain," the smaller woman corrected. "Leaders can never be parted from their lands. You cannot have 'scain' without 'Dahrengard'."
"So it means leaders?" Noelle asked, shying from a kitchen-maid who had paused to curtsey, buckets and all.
Jared said, "Or 'nobles'."
Noelle frowned, ears tilting and eyes narrowing. "Did you learn Universal for my sake? Or am I expected to learn your tongue?"
"Our tongue," Geneviive said.
"We don't have one," Jared finished. "At least, not an entire one. If the Hinichi ever had a full language, all the evidence of it we have left is a relatively sparse vocabulary."
"Pretense," Noelle muttered.
"Heritage," Jared countered, and lifted an arm as the wardens opened the great black doors of the keep, each emblazoned with the jagged mountain sigil of the heights. "After you, dechernasen."
"What does that mean?" asked Noelle of Geneviive sotto voce.
"It means 'my sisters'."
Noelle's ears flicked back.
Jared stopped one of the guards passing through the anteroom. "Have Mariescha, Elijah, and Josephiat meet us in the audience chamber, please, Canton." He waved the women through the small room. "There'll be time for the two-breath tour later."
Noelle stepped away from the tapestry she'd been examining with obvious reluctance, boots thudding dully on the stone floor. "Where are we going now?"
"To the audience chamber so we can have the fealty ceremony."
The wolf-of-all-seasons stopped abruptly, her Mother Mary ears sealed to her skull and her tail a lance. "I haven't signed up for this yet, Jared. I haven't agreed!"
Geneviive worried at her sleeve, glancing from one of them to the other. The guards politely studied the wall-hangings. Jared, however, did not flit an ear-tuft.
"I know you didn't. But while you're here, I'll have you treated as you would be if you were staying. How else will you know what you're signing up for? It can be undone."
Geneviive bared her teeth at the near lie and stared at her brother with large eyes. He ignored her.
Delicate fingers the color of spring touched the flowers she'd tucked into the sash at her waist. Noelle's eyes traveled briefly over the tapestry of the birschot herders on the richly-colored lawns of a summer in the Throat. Her ears, tail, her shoulders all slowly bled their tension and she nodded. "You’re good, Jared. If I had to have a brother, I suppose I could have had a stupider one."
Jared forestalled his sister's outraged protest with one hand on her shoulder. He smiled at Noelle and said, "I've been called shrewd. It might breed true in the family. Please, follow us."
The strange wolf-of-all-seasons could barely keep her eyes to herself as Jared led her through the narrow greeting hall and into the courtyard, where the frosted blue of the sky's bowl offered a ceiling higher than the ones even in the needle-towers. The bubble of the tumbled rock fountain sounded crisply in the clear air. The shallow pool was rimmed in gray granite, its eastern edge interrupted by a mound of rough mountain stones. Noelle crouched beside its western edge, leaning over to touch the water and hissing softly.
"It's cold!" she exclaimed.
Geneviive smiled and said, "The courtyard fountain is cooled in summer before it reaches the pipes."
"Cooled?" Noelle asked, rocking slightly on the pads of her feet. Her chin lifted as she searched the mountain back of the holding. "You have hot springs?"
Jared lifted a brow ridge. "Good guess," he said. "Taste it."
Noelle dipped her head, sniffing her fingertips with her humanoid nose. Jared rolled his bottom lip between his teeth as her tongue flicked out against her nails. For a brief instant, her face slackened into a gentle curiosity, strands of white hair sifting the small breeze that circled inside the square courtyard. She had tasted without hesitating.
"No minerals," Noelle announced, then glanced up at brother and sister. Her thin black brows with their comma-shaped marks lifted. "It's filtered? You're hiding technology."
"We live in castles, but we're not savages," Jared said gently.
Noelle studied them with her hoarfrost eyes, her face again unguarded.
Geneviive said, "The courtyard fountain is just symbolic. There are filtered springs in the kitchens and the cleaners. Our hot springs are coveted throughout the northern continent."
"I see," Noelle said, her face gradually closing. She stood, wiping her hand on her thigh. "I'm ready."
Jared captured Geneviive's hand and led them further west, to the Life's Path doors. Set into the face of the mountain, they marked the entrance to the impregnable inner holding where the Dahrengard-scain and their staff and closest relatives made their dens. One door had been carved of white stone, the other of black. Along the rims of the doors, two designs had been repeated as edge decorations: on the white side, a set of branching lines within a circle, and on the black side, a simple horizontal bar bisecting a circle. Jared paused before signaling the door wardens. Noelle reached out to trace the reliefs with her fingertips, the nails releasing tiny puffs of ice crystals, and the Hinichi smiled even as he noticed her propensity for touching everything.
"The Life's Path doors," said Jared, anticipating her. "The growing branches of life, the sleep of death. A reminder that before we are given the light and leisure of Heaven, we have responsibilities on this world we are not allowed to throw off."
"Nice," was Noelle's sole, wry comment, but her fingers lingered on the reliefs until the wardens rolled the great rectangular doors into their pockets.
When their ancestor Dafid Dahrengard had carved the Heights out of Furrowmount's breast, he had not been searching for a comfortable abode. With holders to retain and rivals to contest, a fort suited him better than a palace. The interior doors leading into the deepest recesses of Dahrengard opened into the audience chamber, for Baron the First had no time to spare. He had intended to impress his visitors immediately and keep them malleable to his suggestions. No addition his successors contrived could stave off the stark majesty of the chamber beyond the Life's Path doors.
Thin windows added by Masard, Baron the Fourth of Dahrengard, let in a watery light from the rafters of the westward facing wall; glass being too much a concession to weakness, he had settled for sanding the walls as close to translucence as possible without physically excising the rock. The resulting illumination was both eerie and uncertain when contrasted with the butter-yellow light cast by a chandelier that hung so low it only accentuated the height of the room. The stone chair on the roughly-hewn dais at the end of the chamber cast an irregular set of layered shadows into the chamber's recesses.
Jared watched Noelle carefully as he led Geneviive inside. Though the wolf-of-all-seasons did not slow, a twitch at the corner of her eye betrayed her unease.
Mariescha, Elijah, and Josephiat waited as requested near the center of the long hall, their shadows flickering around them in translucent pools. Jared reassured them with a smile as he drew near, then canted his ears forward smartly and summoned his official voice, several notes deeper than his usual low tenor.
"Gentlewoman, Goodmen, I bring you greetings."
Their response echoed softly in a major third. "My lord, my lady."
"This is not something often done," Jared said, "But today I would ask you to stand for a fealty ceremony again." He saw the question in their eyes and held out an open hand, indicating Noelle. "Geneviive and I have brought home to Dahrengard our long lost sibling, Noelle."
Of the three, only Elijah betrayed no sign of surprise--the outlands master had been privy to young Jared's plan to defy his father--but none of them asked. They were sathet--they knew what pruschani did to infants like Noelle.
"Noelle, these are the heads of the commonfolk of Dahrengard. Gentlewoman Mariescha is the mistress of the personal and grounds staff. Goodman Elijah is the outlands master, who cares not only for the beasts but speaks for those living far outside our walls. Goodman Josephiat is the inland master, and speaks for those within our walls and the immediate perimeter of the keep." Jared smiled again and said, "If you would prepare yourselves for the ceremony, please."
Geneviive walked behind them to the traditional position of witness as the three slowly descended to one knee and tilted their heads back. Noelle stared at them.
"Now what do I do?" she asked to Jared in a low voice.
"Clasp their throats with your hand," he answered. "Tell them you accept their rightful subordination."
Noelle's ears sagged. "You're jesting."
"I'm not. Haven't you ever seen our wild brothers? This is a modification of what they do for the Alpha pair. We thought," and here Jared paused to smirk, "that it was more dignified than forcing them to roll over and offer their bare midriffs."
Her cheeks proved easy to read without the soft pelt of most Hinichi. Noelle blushed as she walked to Mariescha. Heavy bones had given the woman an appearance of solidity despite the lack of any extra fat. Her graying hair had been tied back in a perfunctory braid, wisps escaping to frame a summer-colored face. Yellow eyes stared politely up at the chandelier. Hesitantly, Noelle placed the flat of her hand across Mariescha's throat. She let her fingers down one by one until they snugly clasped most of the woman's neck.
Clearing her throat, Noelle said, "I accept your... rightful... subordination. Gentlewoman."
"Amen," they murmured, and the wolf-of-all-seasons started. She snatched her palm away.
Geneviive said softly, "It's an informal ceremony, Noelle. You do well thus far."
Elijah's hands engulfed his knee entirely where they rested on his leg. Standing, the outland master would have loomed over Noelle, as if God had left him his tall, gangling frame as a relic of adolescence, forgetting to smooth it into the polish of an adult. Only the worn lines around his mouth and solemn brown eyes, and the heavy cords on the backs of his hands and his exposed neck spoke of age. Noelle lightly touched one of those sinews before covering it with her palm and folding her fingers down.
"I accept your rightful subordination, Goodman," she said quickly.
"Amen."
Noelle backed away, reminding Jared of a skittish tolly. He nodded once to her, and she approached Josephiat. The inland master had been built like a short battering ram: broad shoulders, bulging arms each the size of two of Geneviive's legs. His blackened fingertips in concert with his build told eloquent tales of his blacksmithing. He wore a God-braid down the right side of his face, where an old fight had claimed half of his ear.
"I accept your rightful subordination, Goodman," Noelle said as she  covered his throat with her palm.
"Amen."
"Rise, all," Jared said. "And acknowledge your newest liege-lady."
"Lady," the three murmured, bowing to Noelle. Their voices layered over one another, pale echoes in the massive hall. "Welcome. Welcome-welcome. Welcome, Lady. Lady. Welcome Lady."
"Thank you," Noelle answered, tossing her head.
"You may return to the duties I interrupted so rudely," Jared said with a grin, winning back matching expressions. The three heads of household filtered into the corridors leading out of the audience chamber, leaving only Jared, Geneviive, and a wolf-of-all-seasons who fidgeted as much as her candlelit shadows.
"Would you like to see your rooms?" Geneviive asked. "There's time before Jared takes you out."
"Out?" Noelle glanced at him.
Jared folded his arms behind his back. "As second eldest, your duty within the triad is to speak for the people Dahrengard rules."
"I thought Goodman...Elijah? Did that."
Jared and Geneviive exchanged a look. Geneviive said, "Our father did not hold the same priorities we do. In the traditional way, one of the triad saw to the people who claimed Dahrengard as liege. He split those duties between Elijah and Josephiat instead. We would prefer to allow the goodmen to return to their original postings."
"Which were?"
"Master of stables and master of services."
Noelle looked from one to the other and said, "I see. So you are taking me to visit one of these...."
"Villages, yes," Jared said.
"How long will it take?"
"Maybe three hours. We'll be heading for the Throat. It's beautiful in summer."
Noelle's particolored tail lashed once. "I'd rather just go, then."
Jared smiled. "Then go we shall."

#

While Noelle's awkward seat betrayed her inexperience at riding tollies, she'd listened to instructions on guiding them and then followed them rigorously on the trail. She adjusted rapidly enough to their rolling walk. The intermittent breeze tousled her soft white hair and stung color to her cheeks. She'd insisted on riding astride, like a man.
"So where exactly are we going?"
"To the Throat," Jared answered, rubbing the reins absently in his right hand as the trail unfolded. "It's the most prosperous area that tithes to Dahrengard."
Butterflies chased one another across the sturdy azure blossoms of the wild goodlips and terrapretties. Noelle's eyes tracked them. "Isn't it a little cold for butterflies?"
"It doesn't get much warmer than this here. Some number always manage to fly up far enough to see us. There'll be more of them in the Throat."
Noelle rolled her lip between her teeth, a mannerism that took Jared aback in its similarity to one of Geneviive's. He could sense her discomfort building, but ignored it to let her frame her questions. The path to the Throat from Dahrengard proper was one of the more beauteous ones, where the teeth of the mountain range lost their points, and then their girths, and then at last subsided into the gumless vista of an old man's mouth. Soft milk- and cream-colored flowers spread through the hoarfrost, breaking it into glassy slivers.
"Jared..."
His body tightened and he forced his ears to remain normal, canted forward. Such a soft voice, almost strangled by the emotions she'd been hiding from them. "Yes?"
Her pause drew on too long. Jared knew when the question came that it would not be the one he'd been hoping for.
"Three hours. What's on the agenda afterwards?"
"Supper, and maybe a small dance and celebration."
Noelle's black-rimmed ears twisted, one flopping down and the other trying to turn completely off her head. Her obvious confusion would have been comic had it not been the marker of a greater tragedy. "A celebration?"
"Of course." Jared did not offer any more. She would have to come to the conclusion on her own.
"So tell me more about the... Throat. Is that the place in the tapestry?"
Jared glanced at her. "Yes, actually. The one in the entrance hall."
"With the herders," Noelle said carefully, meeting his gaze and then quickly looking away.
"Yes. The birschot herders. Good springy hair comes off the birschot. We make it into thread and dye it in the winter games."
Noelle wrinkled her delicate human nose, its underside just stiff enough to recall the thick nose-pad of a normal Hinichi. "Thread-dying is considered a game?"
Jared chuckled. "It's a festive time. We celebrate the colors of the seasons."
"Pardon?"
"The colors of the seasons," Jared said again, surprised. "You don't even know that, do you?"
"Maybe you hadn't noticed, but I didn't really grow up properly."
The bitterness in her voice almost stopped his reply before Jared realized how important it was to keep from acknowledging it. "Hinichi come in definite color schemes, you would say. Winter colors are white and ivory. Autumn is black and gray. Summer runs to the deep browns and reds, while spring claims the yellowish browns and the oranges." He touched his own black cheek ruff. "You would call me an autumn-son with winter rising since I'm mostly black with these few patches of white on my face and my chest, while Geneviive is entirely summer's daughter in her shades and shadows of brown."
"What am I, then?" Noelle asked dryly. "A freak?"
Jared reined the tolly in as his unease caused it to side-step. Too close to the truth, if not the right reasons. "Hinichi like you are rare and your coloration is prized. You are called a wolf-of-all-seasons, and they say that there is more of the Hinichisene in you than in the rest of us. Born at all times at once."
"What is the Hinichisene?"
Jared sighed and then grinned. "Ask me where God is, and I might have a readier answer. It's...what it means to be one of us. The heart of things and people Hinichi. The fount from which our identity and heritage springs. Our history helped to make it, but it's more than that. It's something God puts in all of us."
"How mystical."
Jared frowned slightly. His sister rode with slumped shoulders, her eyes focused on a point just between the tolly's oveate ears. "The Hinichisene is in you, Noelle. Stronger in you than in summer's daughter, or winter-rising autumn's son. You're one of the few wolves-of-all-seasons. Mark it well."
"I will," she murmured. "I only wonder who didn't."

#

"How did it go?" Geneviive whispered as Jared unpacked the wool sent by the village.
Jared's ears flipped back against his skull. "She can be difficult," he replied softly. "You never know when she's uncurling or if it's just your imaginings. And yet to see her... she has to touch everything, as if to make sure it's real." He shook his head. "Maybe you can do better with her than I have."
"Let me see," the smaller woman said, and then stepped away. "Noelle, come with me? I can take you to a nice bath before supper."
"I suppose it wouldn't be proper to be seen changing in mixed company," Noelle said, tail wafting to and fro.
Geneviive refused to blush. "Well, no," she replied.
Noelle chuckled. "Okay, then, 'sister'. I'm all for a bath."
"I know how it is. The rides are grueling. You think that because they're in the cold, you won't sweat, but somehow you do anyway." Geneviive smiled warmly at the taller woman and said, "It's this way." She slipped into a side corridor leading away from the audience chamber deeper and higher into the side of the mountain. Taking the fork on the right, she led her newfound sister into the small suite reserved for Dahrengard-scain.
"Nice living room," Noelle murmured, staring at the oval-shaped nest with its rounded walls and the translucent rock windows. The hearth slept, lit only in the evenings in the summer. Thick rugs thrown on the stone floor alleviated the cold, and tapestries on the walls took the place of true windows save on the back wall where a massive viewscreen, flat and thin as any modern model displayed an image from the courtyard. "What's this?"
Geneviive grinned, ears pricking up and tail almost curling. "It's real-time," she said. "Grandfather wanted all the latest gadgets, but Father wasn't really...interested. He scuttled most of them. Jared and I want to bring them back, and then some. We're hoping to get u-bank connections as soon as we finish winter-stocking."
"A connection," Noelle whispered. "With the Alliance? What kind?"
"The whole thing. Real-time u-bank access, automatic updates, string-links to all the other services on the Core worlds, registration as a thread, genie data stream access and Well-pushed commlinks."
The wolf-of-all-seasons stared at her as if she'd grown wings. Geneviive actually felt her shoulders when the stare wound on too long. "Noelle? Did I say something wrong?" She pursed her lips. She'd studied the portfolio as avidly as Jared had when the courier had dropped it off.
"I...no. It would be a wonderful thing for Dahrengard."
Geneviive nodded. "We think so. But there'll be time enough for that kind of thing later. Won't you come bathe? We haven't assigned a maidservant to you yet, but I'll be glad to assist you."
"A maidservant?" Noelle's mezzoalto faltered up the scale into a squeak. "I don't need help to bathe."
"It's different from what you're accustomed to," Geneviive said. "We don't have automated showers. Someone has to wash your back and hair." She touched her own pale blonde braid.
"I suppose...."
"Trust me," Geneviive said, smiling, and led the way up the small stairs set into the side of the chamber. She pushed the pocket door back, releasing a faint cloud of steam. "Be careful on these steps, they're slippery."
The steam thickened as she ascended, her ears reporting Noelle's footsteps behind her. The top of the stairs opened onto the smooth platform of a round chamber, the domed ceiling and its entire outward facing wall smoothed to milky translucence. The weak sun glowed, a brighter smudge against the very top of the chamber.
Noelle gasped, then cleared her throat and said, "I thought you told me it wasn't polite to change in mixed company...and now you want me to bathe in a gazebo?"
Geneviive laughed. "Oh, this is one of the top rooms in the keep... and even if you're in one of the needle-towers, you can't see through the stone on a clear day."
"I suppose it's like a privacy screen," Noelle said to herself, and chuckled. "Natural glass-frosting. It's nice."
A shallow, smooth oval had been cut into the flat floor, clear water bubbling in it and releasing the clouds of steam that had been beading on Geneviive's fur up the stairs. She shed her long skirts, bodice and over-tunic, leaving only her expensive floor-length cotton shift.
Noelle crouched beside the pool. "Do you pipe this all the way up from the hot springs? Ow! It's hot!"
Geneviive folded her arms under her breasts and waited.
The wolf-of-all-seasons laughed. "Okay. That was dumb."
Geneviive wondered if the blush was on account of the heat, or if Noelle was actually embarrassed. She was slow to peel off her boots. Her tunic and pants took even longer. Geneviive had almost decided to offer her aid when Noelle finally pulled off the last layer.
"Oh!"
Noelle froze, her shoulders curling inward.
Geneviive stepped closer, one hand outstretched. "Oh!" she said again, her throat round with wonder. "Noelle...Noelle, you're beautiful."
"W...what?"
She realized then that the hunched shoulders and folded ears were shame, not surprise. More firmly, she repeated, "You're beautiful. I didn't think...no fur! Almost anywhere. Smooth, like a human, but all the colors of the seasons, and...and a pattern to them...."
Noelle stared at her, lower lip dragging down from upper. "I didn't think you were cruel."
Remembering Jared, Geneviive reached out and grabbed Noelle's shoulders, gazing directly into her eyes. "I am not lying, by God's word, I'm not!"
"You think I'm beautiful?" Noelle whispered.
"Yes!"
"Not... not abnormal? Not a mutant?"
Geneviive's stomach twisted at the hunger and hopelessness in the twist of dark brows and hoarfrost eyes. "No!"
Noelle searched her face, and then shook Geneviive loose. She unfolded herself from her seat and stood... and pirouetted slowly, arms outstretched and tail lifted. A dark ridge of black ran down her spine to spill at her tail, and from this ridge other colors flowed, running over one another to wrap around her body like fragile petals. Geneviive remembered, briefly, her mother telling her how fine painters layered films of color one over the other to create a rich, textured surface complete with all the implied fragility of its building. Noelle reminded her of a painted flower, a living one.
Steam rose in arabesques around the wolf-of-all-seasons as she deliberately descended into the water, dispelling the magic of the moment. 
Geneviive took a deep breath. She hunted for soap crystals and a stiff brush. "I wish I had your ears," she said wistfully, to break the silence.
"My ears?" Noelle asked, mystified. She stiffened when Geneviive reached over and poured water down her white mane, but her shoulders relaxed as the brush began to work through its knots.
"Oh yes. Great-grandmother had Mother Mary ears, but she didn't see fit to bequeath them to me!"
The tension yoking Noelle's shoulder blades together bled slowly away. The wolf-of-all-seasons chuckled. "Should I even ask."
"The opaque white-furred insides, the pale backs and the black rims... they’re like the ears of the clan runt, Rebeka, that Mother Mary praised for her loveliness. That's why we call them so. You'll have no end of suitors if you stay here, with such beguiling ears."
Noelle rolled one of the soap crystals between her fingers until it broke, studying the resulting powdery granules. "Somehow I've never thought of people's ears being 'beguiling'," she said, bemused.
Geneviive laughed, running the brush through the long white hair. "Well, you'll learn."
"Geneviive, what are the braids? Do they mean something?"
"The braids?" Geneviive paused. "You mean the ones tied with beads? Here, take some more of those crystals. A little more rubbing'll yield a nice lather. You're talking about the braids like Goodman Josephiat's."
Noelle nodded, pulling a knot into the brush with the movement. "I've seen other people wearing them. Especially in the village. Is it just a fad?"
Pleased and surprised at her sister's facile eyes, Geneviive fumbled with the knot, picking it out with her fingers. She slipped her feet into the hot water on either side of Noelle's ribcage. "Those are Godbraids. The lowlanders call them 'prayer-plaits'. You braid them when you want to remind yourself and God of one of your prayers to Him. If it's a petition, you braid them with faceted crystals. If it's to show gratitude, then you bead them with cabochons. And if you're just remembering someone in your prayers, you use metal beads, and sometimes little decorations that remind you of that person."
Noelle paused, one soap-sudded hand rubbing her forearm. "So what if you're thanking God for a petition he granted for your best friend?"
Geneviive laughed. "Gratitude always takes precedence over petitions, and petitions over people when you're deciding how to decorate them. And you always take out a separate braid for each prayer."
"You're not wearing one for your father."
Geneviive's hand fumbled, dropping the brush into the water. She reached down to fish it off the current. "Well. Father isn't exactly the kind to look down out of Heaven and notice."
"You didn't like him much, did you?"
"Children owe their parents obedience. The Good Book never said anything about love." Geneviive walked to the bench on the side of the chamber. "We'll have to put your clothes to the wash. I'll go get something for you to borrow in the mean-time."
Noelle twisted in the waters, her hands clasping the edges of the pool. "No skirts, please! Or dresses. They're so..." She stopped at Geneviive's lifted brow. "I'm not used to them," she finished, ears sagging.
"It's not proper for woman to be seen in men's clothing."
"I'm not a proper Hinichi," Noelle said. "Geneviive...even if I stay, I might never be a proper Hinichi...."
"If?" Geneviive asked softly, then waved a hand. "Never mind, Noelle-sister. I'll get you some men's clothing... for now. We can discuss setting an example for the young ones later." She slipped into the stairwell before the wolf-of-all-seasons could reply, her lips pressed together in a hard line and the shape of her eyes reflecting her worry.

#

The scent of pricklelemon and fosfur seeds wafted from the kitchen into the dining hall. Preparations for supper neared completion, and the chaos in the hall might well have been choreographed, so flawlessly did the several score servants dance among the tables, setting places, hauling trays, flashes of colors earth-dark and winter-pale. Geneviive stood beside her brother, fussing with the thick wool of her purple skirts, her ears pinned to her head in her agitation.
"I just don't know, Jared. She's so hard to read. I think she's so near to us, though, so near. Just a little longer and we might get to her."
"I know it's evil to speak of the dead, but--"
"Jared..!"
"--But Father might as well have killed her, decherna! You know it's so. We might just be in time to save her."
"Jared!" Geneviive's eyes shone with startled tears. "How could you say such things?"
"What's an ugly truth spoken of the deceased when weighed against this reality?" Jared demanded in a low voice, ears sinking. "We should have all defied him. Me, Mother, the aunts and midwives who knew and didn't tell their husbands and children. Customs sometimes hurt people, Geneviive. Sometimes they kill people."
Geneviive covered her face. "Oh, Jared. I wish...I wish it had been different."
"Wishes and prayers, decherna," the Hinichi man said, sighing. "But at least, now, we have a chance. Where is she? They're already seating the old ones."
Geneviive scanned the crowd, separating the servants leading the thin-blooded Dahrengard elders to their seats, then stood on tip-toe. "There... by the entrance, looking bewildered. I'll fetch her. Noelle!" Waving, she pushed through the elaborate dance, cutting ragged holes in the rhythm. The wolf-of-all-seasons hugged herself in the shadow of the entrance, dressed in dark blue tunic and breeches of Hinichi cut. Her damp hair curled around her face where it didn't stick to her back.
As Geneviive approached, Noelle asked, "Is dinner always this big a commotion?"
"This is a commotion?" Geneviive asked, gently teasing. When the taller woman didn't smile, she said, "Yes, we always eat this way. The entire keep comes together, as God intends, to break our bread. Come sit with us."
Noelle followed, unresisting, allowing Geneviive to place her between herself and Jared. She sat with the others when the bells sounded, running her palms over the hard stone table.
Geneviive and Jared both tasted their supper with new palates, imagining they had never eaten in Dahrengard and glancing occasionally at their guest. The cooks had outdone themselves with the fowl, dressing and stuffing it with the fosfur's seeds and fibrous Saint's Foot herb, a tangy delicacy. The dry wine had a floral hint, just a touch of wood--imported from the lowlands in the shadows of the Teeth, where soil was less recalcitrant. By the time the aftersoups in their bread trenchers had been cleared from the table, Geneviive felt her confidence renewed. Noelle had eaten heartily, her reticence to rip at the food with her hands swiftly dissipating under the pressure of her tactile curiosity. She nursed the wine after the food vanished, fingers splayed across the lip of the heavy pewter goblet.
Goodman Elijah walked to the threshold before the table of the Dahrengard-scain and bowed, awaiting permission to speak. Jared glanced at Geneviive, who shrugged ever-so-slightly. He smiled, hiding his bewilderment.
"Goodman, pray you, tell us what brings you to our table?"
Elijah stretched his lanky frame upwards. "Master, me and mine want to toast the new one." He lifted his goblet in a bony hand, his action mimicked behind him by the servants standing respectfully at their tables. Elijah trained his eyes directly on Noelle and said, "We're glad to be having you back, milady. We'd be pleased if you would stay. You were missed."
Noelle's hands tightened on her cup. "Was I?" she managed, her voice a rasp.
"As it please the Lord, you were," Elijah confirmed. He lifted his cup and said, "To the young mistress."
"God's blessings." The benison rode up to the table like the summer wind.
Noelle stood, listing to one side. She twisted around and took one dignified step, then stumbled and ran from the hall. Jared and Geneviive sprang to their feet and pursued her, up corridors lit by sconces back to their rooms.
Noelle huddled by the fire on her knees, head bowed and hair spilling, white milk, against the flagstones of the hearth. Her shoulders leaped and shook, though she made no sound. Geneviive hastened to her side as Jared closed the portal.
"Noelle! Oh, Noelle, you're not...."
The wolf-of-all-seasons lifted her face. Firlit trails streaked her cheeks and dark spots on the stone testified to the length of her tears.
"Noelle, decherna," Jared said, his voice low.
"Stop it!" she cried. "Stop calling me that! How can you call me that! I don't understand!"
"Don't understand what?" Geneviive asked, trying to reach out and touch one of the jerking shoulders.
Noelle tossed her head, hair whipping around her chest. "You call me 'sister!' You say I'm ruler over your people! You say I belong here, that I'm beautiful, that I'm special and God-touched and even your servants toast me! Well, if I'm so God-cursed special, why did you abandon me in the first place?"
Sparks popped in the ensuing silence.
Jared walked forward and crouched in front of Noelle. Her breasts heaved as she swallowed past her sobs, dark brows pulled inward, the blood-shot whites of her eyes darker than her hoarfrost blue irises. "I will unriddle you that, Noelle. But you must trust my answer, and that Geneviive and I are not here to harm you."
Geneviive gently unsealed Noelle's hands from the hearth, receiving only one wild look of agonized uncertainty. Shaking, Noelle bowed her head, then looked up at Jared from beneath a trembling, ragged fall of white hair.
"You know by now that our father did not always see our ways," Jared said, waiting until the wolf-of-all-seasons nodded. "He was a follower of what we call the pruscha. Grandfather, Mother, Dahrengard in general has always been of the sathet sect, but Father... no one could gainsay him. When he became Lord of the holding, the pruscha was the law, no matter what we thought."
"What does that have to do with me?" Noelle asked, still quivering, her face, her heart finally vulnerable.
"The pruscha is a stricter sect than the sathet," Jared said, willing her to feel his sincerity. "They believe that pride is the worst of the seven deadly sins. They preach that there once lived a group of Hinichi called the Berena that wanted to be as great as the messiah. They began to breed among each other purposefully to reach a point where they were made in his image. Not as the messiah had made them--wolf-like with thoughts and the shapes of men--but as the messiah was."
He tipped up her chin in his finger, aware of Geneviive's brilliant eyes immediately to his right. "Human, Noelle. They wanted to be human."
A new tear rolled down her cheek as Noelle's eyes thinned and she drew in a sudden breath.
Jared said, "The pruschani believe babes born too human in seeming are demons sent to tempt the Hinichi into doing as the Berena did. They leave those infants to die in the cold. That's what Father forced Mother to do to you."
The whine that whispered out of Noelle's throat had no match in Jared's memory. He had never heard such a sound. He prayed he never did again.
"Because...of my face?"
"And your skin," Geneviive murmured, saddened.
"How did I... I should be dead!"
"Jared went after you."
Noelle looked sharply at Jared, eyes widening. "You...?"
"With Elijah's help," Jared said, letting one knee down to the floor and propping his free hand on the other. "I was newly seven years old, and Geneviive hadn't even been born. I found out from one of the midwives' children what had happened. Elijah advised me, but I told no one else what I planned. I followed the servants out to the hill and waited until they'd gone, then took you to the nexus of the Alliance embassy at the base of the Teeth. The doctor there promised me he would get you off-world, where you could have a chance to live."
"Then when Father died," Geneviive said, stroking Noelle's hand, "We sent for you right away. So you could come home."
"Why... why couldn't you...."
"Father was not a reasonable man," Jared said, his voice gentle. "If we had defied him, he would have killed you himself. It was the only way we could think of to save you."
Noelle slumped against Geneviive. "It's so much. I need time."
"You have all the time in this world," Jared said. "Sleep, take the days at your pace. This is your home."
Noelle glanced up at him, then nodded swiftly and stared at her folded legs. The fire cast a halo across her glossy hair. She said nothing for several minutes, then repeated the word, as if it were new, as if it were curious and uncomfortable and wondrous.
"Home."

#

Noelle clasped each of them to her with all the strength in her lithe frame. Geneviive found herself surprised at the hunger in the embrace; returning it, she barely missed smashing her nose against a ladyshoop, the bloom faded but still faintly scented.
"I hate to think that I've disappointed you," the wolf-of-all-seasons was saying, the wind tousling the fur collar of her tunic. "I promise whatever I decide I'll come back myself and tell you. You've earned that much. It's just that..."
"You don't need to explain," Jared said, gripping her shoulder and squeezing affectionately. "You've been out there all your life. You need to think in the quietude of the places that are familiar."
"Just remember that we'll be here for you always, whatever you decide," said Geneviive fervently.
"I know," Noelle said, sounding surprised. She picked up her bag and said, "I'll send back word. Be well!"
Jared grinned. "We will. God touch your head!"
Noelle's smile grew shyly in return. She turned and trotted toward the sleek shuttle hunkered on the tarmac, her shadow stretching eastward across the dark pavement.
Geneviive leaned against Jared as he waved. She sighed, watching the figure recede. "Oh, Jared. She came with the summer and is leaving with it. I had so hoped she would stay."
"She'll be back," Jared said, so firmly that Geneviive pulled away to look at his face. He was still grinning, his arm defining an arc in the air.
"How do you know?"
Jared only smiled. Geneviive turned her gaze toward the figure on the tarmac that was pausing at the shuttle’s stairs to wave. Summer's waning sunlight glowed in the metal beads that marked the two braids tangled in white, white hair.

***

About the author:

M.C.A. Hogarth has been many things--a web database architect, product manager, technical writer and massage therapist--but is currently a parent, artist, writer and anthropologist to aliens.

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