“There are,” said Ram Odin. “But we’re not going to those places.”
“Those,” said Rigg, “are precisely the places where I want to go.”
“Because you like being depressed and angry,” said Ram Odin.
“Because if the Wall comes down, the danger to other wallfolds is likely to come from the people who aren’t happy and nice and kind to all living things.”
“Well, then,” said Ram Odin. “Let’s by all means find a bitter, suspicious village and invite them to prove me wrong about how they only exile the people who annoy them.”
In their own language, their name for the valley and the village was the same: “Good People’s Home.” Of course this rolled off the wallwalkers’ tongues as if it were in their native speech: Woox-taka-exu. This meant that simply speaking the name was praise and nostalgia and affection, even for people who had never lived there.
At Rigg’s insistence, they joined in with the work that was going on, which at present was beginning to move indoors, as the winds rose, the sky was slate, and snow flurries came often and unpredictably. Not hard winter yet, because the snow could pile up to rooftop level in those storms. But the promise of winter, the warning of it. Get your flocks in from the hills, make sure your hay is stored up high in the barn, slaughter the excess geese and sheep and goats, smoke or dry or salt or sausage away the meat, grind bones into fertilizer.
Gather fallen wood for fires—it took less than Rigg might have thought, because the fires were never very hot or bright. With houses insulated by snow and no one going outside most of the winter, body heat and small, steady fires kept people as warm as they needed or wanted to be. But woe to the family that ran out, because no one else would have very much to spare. Usually, instead of sharing their firewood, the neighbors would take in this or that family member for the rest of the winter, and then mock the householders mercilessly when spring came.
Rigg liked to work alongside people. Much better than being a judge—he didn’t like arriving with an office that kept him distant. He realized that Ram Odin might be right—Rigg didn’t need to talk to people, but he needed to be near them as they talked to each other. They saw that Rigg was trying to learn and that he worked hard—he certainly wasn’t accepted enough to marry one of their daughters, but they trusted him enough to talk in front of him.
Ram Odin, on the other hand, gravitated toward the old men who gathered in the Cave, which was not a cave, but rather a house-sized building with few interior walls. It served as town hall, church, court, and ballroom by turns. And it was the gathering place of the old men who got cold too easily and left all the last-minute winter preparation to younger folk. “I plan to die this winter,” said one of the men. “So what do I care if there’s firewood? I won’t be using it.”
“You say that every year,” another retorted.
“Not bending over to pick up sticks is why I didn’t die.”
Ram Odin soon joined in with a dry witticism or two, and after a while began discussing various philosophies with them, in a folksy way.
Rigg and Ram soon learned the same thing: why this village was a sad and suspicious place. A girl had been lost fifteen years ago, and not in winter—it was spring when she disappeared. No one saw her leave. She was simply gone at suppertime one day, and no one knew what happened to her.
All their children were known to all, and loved more or less according to their character. But this girl, Onishtu, was spoken of with reverence. Not only was she an extraordinarily beautiful girl—“Like the sun when she first comes warm in spring to melt the snow”—but she was also kind and generous, loved by all, and if any of the other children envied her, they kept it to themselves because no one wanted to hear ill of Onishtu.
“They took her,” said someone, and with each person there seemed a different idea of who “they” were. Mostly, though, the candidates were the people of this or that nearby village. “Took her, they did, and stuffed up her mouth so she couldn’t cry out, and carried her off.”
To be somebody’s wife. To be everybody’s wife. To be disfigured. To be kept in a cellar and fed as little as possible until she became scrawny and sour. “They’ll give her back to us then, when she’s an ugly hag, bitter and mean. Then they’ll say, ‘You were so proud of her, do you like her now?’”
And people would nod as if they agreed. Only they’d nod again at the next theory.
Rigg got the idea that they didn’t talk about Onishtu all that often—but it was a story so central to their lives these days that even after fifteen years, it was an open wound, and the arrival of a stranger meant that the tale had to be told, in all its details, from every angle.
When Rigg and Ram Odin were alone in the haybarn where they would spend the night, Ram Odin preempted any discussion by saying, “You’re not the finder of lost things here.”
“I’m the only person who can solve this mystery.”
“It’s not a mystery, it’s a tragedy.”
“It’s a tragedy that they can’t find the answer to the mystery.”
“It’s a tragedy that a beloved child was lost. It’s become a part of how they define themselves—we’re the people that someone envied so much that they did this to us. They’r
e actually quite proud of it. It sets them apart.”
“I think they’d rather have the girl back.”
“Would they?” asked Ram Odin. “Are you sure?”
“Do you think that if I asked them, any of them would say no?”
“Do you think that just because that’s what they say they want, what they believe they want, it must be what they really want?”
“Why do you have to fight me on something so obvious?” asked Rigg. “Aren’t you glad I went back and prevented your killing?”