“There's a haunt; do you make away with it, you'll have sweet supper and soft bed.”

“A haunt?” Kazmina asked, dismayed.

“A phantasm, a ghost?” the woman said. “In the barn yonder.”

Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes

by Trismegistus Shandy

Part 3 of 22

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Feel free to repost or mirror it on any noncommercial site or list. You can also create derivative works, including adaptations to other media, or new stories using the same setting, characters and so forth, as long as you mention and point to the original story.

An earlier version of this novel was serialized on the tg_fiction mailing list from December 2010 to March 2011. Thanks to the people who posted comments on that draft.

The full novel is already available from Lulu.com. I'm serializing it here in twenty-two parts, at least one chapter per week if I can manage it.

After many hours of flying, with a couple of pauses to descend and forage, the tiny flock descended onto a mill-pond. They swam ashore, and changed into men. Near the mill was a house, several barns and other outbuildings, and extensive fields planted in a variety of grain and vegetable crops.

A small boy who had evidently seen them transform cried out, “Thaumaticals!,” and ran toward the house.

“Oh dear,” said Kazmina. “Let's get dressed before he brings his parents out to welcome us.” He looked around and gathered some dirty straw from the ground nearby, muttering words over it to turn it into a couple of long robes, one in green and one in red; he handed the green one to Launuru. Once dressed, they walked toward the house the boy had run into. Before they got there, the boy rushed out again, followed at a more sedate pace by an adult man and woman and several other children of both sexes.

“Y'are thaumaticals, says m'boy?” said the man of the house — a tall fellow with long red hair.

“Seen 'em, I did!” the boy insisted. “Geese into men, momently!”

“I don't quite understand,” Kazmina said. Launuru was somewhat relieved that he wasn't the only one. The locals here spoke a dialect of Tuaznu strange to him — and apparently to Kazmina as well.

“Thaumatical? Y'are sorcerers, wonderworkers?”

“Oh,” Kazmina said, “Wizards.” Launuru recognized that word, in standard Tuaznu; and now he recognized too the word “thaumatical,” a mutated borrowing from the Ksarafra word for wizard. Probably they were close to Harafra now — or even in Harafra; who spoke what languages where was not so sharp a matter as the map on the wall of Master Tsekaunsu's classroom would have it. “Well, my companion isn't a wizard, but I am,” Kazmina continued after a moment.

“Seen 'em both, I says!” the boy interjected.

“We've been traveling in the form of geese, and stopped here for the night to ask for shelter.”

“Y'need help of us?” the man asked. “What way? Is there fighting near?”

“No, I don't think the war's spread this far,” Kazmina said, “at least I haven't seen any signs of battle from the air, in the area northeast of here we just flew over. I'm a wizard — an enchanter, to be exact — and I can pay for our supper and beds for the night in any number of ways...”

“A show!” cried the small boy, and several of the other children, apparently his siblings, echoed him enthusiastically. But the woman said: “There's a haunt; do you make away with it, you'll have sweet supper and soft bed.”

“A haunt?” Kazmina asked, dismayed.

“A phantasm, a ghost?” the woman said. “In the barn yonder.” She pointed to an unpainted wooden barn with a thatch roof in slight disrepair. “Tramp hanged hisself there, three year ago in the eighth month. He haunts the place now, the barn so bad we can stable no beasts there; even the house, sometime.”

“Aye,” the man put in; “that's the thing. Do you make the dead one go off, we'll reward you how we may.”

“I'm afraid I can't help with that,” Kazmina said; “I'm an enchanter. What you need is a necromancer or exorcist.”

But the woman said again, “Do you away with the haunt, we'll fill your belly and shelter your head.”

“I don't do that kind of magic,” Kazmina said, apparently at a loss to make himself understood. “I don't know how.”

Launuru suggested, “Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to take a look at the barn?”

“All right,” Kazmina said, looking annoyed. “Show us.”

The man told his wife and children to return to the house, and led Kazmina and Launuru to the barn his wife had pointed out. He opened the door and revealed a mostly empty structure, containing some bales of hay and a few tools, mostly broken or rusted, but no animals.

“Where did the man hang himself?” Kazmina asked. The man walked a little way into the barn and pointed to a loft on their right. “Tied the rope there, and jumped, he did. M'poor Gisha found him stiff and stinking, what time she came out to milk the kine.”

Kazmina nodded. “How often have you or other members of your family seen the ghost?”

“What time we still use the barn, someone saw or heard it every four, five days. Two year now, we use not the barn; the phantasm haunts the house or fields three, four times in the month.”

“Well,” Kazmina said, “I can't guarantee results — I told you this isn't the kind of magic I specialize in — but leave us alone here for a while and I'll do what I can.”

“Thank'ee.” The man withdrew hastily. Kazmina shut the door behind him, leaving them mostly in darkness, with narrow beams of sunset light coming in through chinks in the walls.

“What are you going to do?” Launuru asked.

“Nothing,” Kazmina replied in a low voice. “We'll wait here for half an hour, then go back to the house.”

“What? But you said...”

“I said I'd do what I can. And I also said there was nothing I could do about this. It's not my fault if they didn't believe me or understand me. Besides, it's quite possible this will take care of their problem anyway.”

“How...?”

“Most supposed ghosts aren't really spirits of the dead; they're just local superstitions that grow up around a place where someone died in a picturesque way. If that's all this is, then maybe just having me arrive, do something mysterious, and then go away will reassure them that the ghost is gone, and they'll stop imagining they see it.”

“But what if it isn't?”

Kazmina shrugged, apparently, though it was hard to be sure in the dim light. “I promised no results. But so-called necromancers would do nothing more, though they'd promise more and charge a higher fee. They're charlatans who have no real magic, or ordinary wizards who ascribe their powers to the spirits of the dead to make people afraid of them. I said most ghosts are only local superstitions — that's certainly true, but if you want my opinion, substitute 'all' for 'most'.”

Launuru shook his head, saddened but not greatly surprised; Kazmina wasn't the first wizard he'd met who didn't believe in ghosts. “Not all,” he said. “I've seen one myself.”

“Have you?” Kazmina asked skeptically; he forgot for a moment to keep his voice down.

“Hush! What if they're spying on us?” Launuru said, in a lower whisper than before. “The children, especially?”

“Oh, good point. I'd better put on a show for whoever might be watching or listening.” The enchanter spoke in a much louder tone, in a wizardly language; he went on for several minutes. After a minute, sparkling colored lights appeared in the air above his head. Launuru listened inattentively to the spell-chant and watched the lights.

After a few minutes of this, though, he caught some motion out of the corner of his eye, and turned to look. Nothing. Probably rats.

Again, a few minutes later. But he was sure this time that whatever he'd seen moving was much larger than a rat. “What was that?” he asked Kazmina. “Part of your spell?”

The wizard didn't answer instantly, but continued the chant for a few heartbeats, then fell silent. The lights disappeared; between the decrease in sunlight coming through the chinks in the wall and the loss of their eyes' adjustment to the dark, it seemed pitch dark. “What was what?” Kazmina asked quietly.

“I saw something moving — ”

“I saw a couple of rats earlier. I can make them go away if they bother you. Actually, that would be a far better payment for our lodging and supper than a fake exorcism; I'll do that anyway.”

“No, this was definitely larger than a rat; maybe as big as a man — ”

“It's probably your imagination. I'll leave off the sparkly light spell and start working on the rats.”

“What should I be looking for now?”

“You might hear increased activity from the rats for a few minutes, as they leave the barn. Nothing else; you probably won't see them.”

He began another spell-chant, not so loud as the last. Launuru's eyes adjusted to the darkness again, but he still couldn't see much, only the barest outline of Kazmina standing a few feet from him and gesturing.

After a time he became aware of rustlings in the hay, probably the rats. He shifted his footing uncomfortably, afraid some of them might run across his feet on their way out. Then he became gradually aware of another voice. He wasn't sure he heard it, at first, but after a little while he was sure it was coming from behind him, was deeper than Kazmina's, and was speaking another language — the local dialect of Tuaznu, apparently, though he could only catch a few words here and there.

He turned around, slowly, facing away from Kazmina. About the same distance from him as the enchanter, but between him and the door, he saw (or thought he saw; it was so dark it was hard to be sure) the outline of a man taller than himself. He yelped, and rapidly backed up, stumbling into Kazmina.

The enchanter broke off his spell-chant and said angrily, “What's wrong with you? Interrupting a wizard's spell — that could have been dangerous if it had been something more powerful than a simple banishing of rats!”

For a long moment he couldn't get his voice to work. “There,” he said finally. “What?” Kazmina asked. He started another spell-chant, and moments later the sparkling lights appeared again. They were alone in the barn.

“I saw him,” Launuru said; “first I heard him whispering behind me, and I turned and there he was...” But he was no longer as sure as he had been in the dark.

The lights disappeared again as Kazmina stopped the spell-chant and said, “Well, never mind. Let's go back to the house; it's been long enough.” He walked to the barn door and pushed it open. It was full night now, and they stumbled a few times on their way back to the house, but Launuru heard no more of the uncanny whispering.

Kazmina knocked at the door, and a girl not much younger than Tsavila opened it. “I have done what I could,” Kazmina said. “I think that the ghost will not trouble you again.”

“Thank'ee,” the girl said, and ushered them in.

The room they entered could not have been more than a quarter of the size of the whole house, which was in turn larger than many other farmhouses Launuru had seen in his travels; that suggested a fair degree of wealth by peasant standards. The man and woman and the other children were sitting around a large table, eating; but on seeing their guests at the door, they all stood up.

“Did you make away with the haunt?” the man asked.

“I saw no sign of it after I completed my spells,” Kazmina said. They seemed satisfied with that. Launuru wondered if he should say something — but what? If Kazmina hadn't been able to make them understand that he didn't know how to exorcise ghosts, any attempt by Launuru to warn them that the ghost might still be there could be just as futile, only serving to make an enemy of the wizard whose help he needed to reach Tsavila in time.

“You have our thanks, and your meed,” the man said. The woman gave rapid orders, speaking too fast for Launuru to understand, to her children; the two oldest left the room with their mother through one door, while the younger ones left through the other door. “Sit you,” the man said, gesturing, and Kazmina and Launuru joined him at the table. “I am named Davas the miller; m'wife, Zhnali. Ask the names of m'childer or ancestors, if such will not be tedious, or tell me of your own, if you think me fit to hear.”

“We are honored to meet you,” Kazmina said. “I am Kazmina son of Znembalan, of Vmanashi. My companion is Launuru son of Rusaulan, of Niluri. We would be pleased to hear of your children and ancestors.”

So their host began listing his children, from Gisha, the oldest, already betrothed to the son of a farmer living not two kilometers off, to Vmelo, the boy who had espied Kazmina and Launuru's descent and transformation, and Luambi, a girl of about two. He had barely started listing his own and his wife's grandparents when his wife and the oldest children, Gisha and her brother Ngesin, returned bearing fresh trays and plates of food, which they set before the guests.

It was better food than Launuru had tasted in months; Kazmina's cooking was competent, but not varied, and in the last months of his journey on foot he'd never had money to pay for a really good meal, or leisure to stay for it. There were chicken and goose (which Launuru skipped; he noticed that Kazmina ate none of the chicken either), three different kinds of bread, and four kinds of vegetables.

After supper, Kazmina offered to give the children a show of magic; Davas thought for a moment and assented, then called in younger children from the other room. In rapid succession Kazmina became mirror images of each of the children, then of their parents, from youngest to oldest, and then transformed into a series of small animals; he let the smaller children chase him around the room as a kitten, a green lizard, and a mouse, finally scurrying under his crumpled robe and resuming human form.

“That's the end of the show,” he said, bowing. “If you rise early tomorrow like good children, you may see me and my assistant change into geese and fly away.”

“To bed, childer,” Zhnali said. “All of you sleep with father and me this night. Come!” She, with Gisha's help, ushered all the younger ones out through the door to the kitchen, perhaps through that room to another. Davas rose from his chair and said: “I'll show you what place you'll sleep, lord thaumatical.” He led Kazmina and Launuru into the other adjoining room, which held a large feather bed, big enough for all seven children and more than ample for Launuru and Kazmina.

“Here see the dung-bowl,” he said, nudging a ceramic pot, only faintly malodorous, which stood by one of the bedposts. “Put out the lamp on the table there as soon as you may. We others sleep in yonder room,” with a gesture toward a door in the right-hand wall through which they could hear the chatter of the children.

“We shall, goodman. Dream well,” said Kazmina. Davas opened the door, revealing another room of the same size and layout with a similar bed, on which some of the children were bouncing as their mother scolded them and their eldest sister bathed the youngest in a washbasin.

The moment this glimpse of domestic harmony was ended by Davas closing the door behind him, Kazmina burst into giggles. “That was the most fun I've had in months!”

“It was fun to watch too,” Launuru said. “I think the goodwife was upset to see you taking the appearance of her husband and herself, though.”

“Sorry. Well, to bed.” The wizard pulled his gown over his head, rolled it up, and set it on the floor next to the chamber-pot. “You'd best do the same — the robes will be unmade by morning, and the straw they were made from was none too clean; we don't want to dirty their bedclothes more than necessary.”

“All right,” Launuru said reluctantly. He'd shared a bed with his brothers at home, and with Verentsu and other students at school, and of course back home it was too hot to wear clothes in bed most of the year; but with Kazmina? That seemed different, since he was really a woman, in some sense... But he was too obviously a man at the moment. Perhaps it was all right.

Once they were horizontal, he was too tired for any possible impropriety to bother him; he fell asleep not long after he first heard Kazmina's gentle snores.

Launuru woke to find a bright, narrow sliver of sunlight coming through the edge of the paper screen over the window and into his eyes. He sat up. Kazmina was still sound asleep, his mouth open. There were sounds of conversation and clattering dishes from the next room.

Launuru got out of bed, opened the screen a bit wider to give better light, and looked around for the chamber pot. He found it on Kazmina's side of the bed, next to the pile of dirty straw to which their robes had reverted. After peeing, he sat back down on the bed, uncertain what to do next. He couldn't get dressed until Kazmina conjured more clothes, and he didn't want to leave the room naked or wrapped in a bedsheet, or, for that matter, wake Kazmina unnecessarily soon. But after a few minutes, impatience got the better of him, and he shook Kazmina awake.

“Hnnh?” Kazmina mumbled, rubbing his eyes. “What's wrong...?”

“We've got no clothes, breakfast is getting cold, and we need to get to Nilepsan before the wedding.”

“Right.” Kazmina sat up, stared into space blearily for a minute or two, then got out of bed. Launuru looked away when Kazmina threw the sheet off. He heard the splatter of piss in the chamber pot, then the low mutter of a spell-chant, and felt something soft hit him on the shoulder. He turned around.

“There you go,” Kazmina said, pulling on a red robe like the one he'd worn the previous evening. A green one was lying at Launuru's feet; he knelt, picked it up and drew it over his head.

By the time they opened the door into the dining room, Zhnali had already cleared away all the breakfast dishes, except for two plates of cooling but still warm cornbread. Davas and the older children were gone; only the youngest two were still in the house.

“See there, your meal,” Zhnali said. “You may be gone after you eat, if you please.”

“Thank you,” Kazmina said. They sat down at the table and started eating. Vmelo watched them for a moment, until his mother shooed him out of the room ahead of her, returning to the kitchen.

Their hostess said nothing more to them, and stayed out of the dining room. “I think she's afraid of you,” Launuru said to Kazmina in a low voice. “Or perhaps angry.”

“We'll leave quickly, then.” As soon as they finished eating, they stood up. Kazmina stepped over to the open doorway and said, “Our thanks again to you and goodman Davas, goodwife Zhnali. We will be on our way. Is there anything else we may do to repay you for your hospitality?”

“Nay, you need do no more,” Zhnali said, looking at them and holding Vmelo and Luambi by the shoulders.

“Very well. Good-bye.”

They walked out the front door, unescorted. In the distance, they could see Davas and some, maybe all, of his older children working in one of their fields, harvesting late corn.

“Are you ready?” Kazmina asked, walking toward the pond.

“I expect so,” Launuru said. The wizard pulled off his robe and looked expectantly at Launuru; he did the same. They dropped the robes, and Launuru felt the sudden, momentarily but intensely painful twisting and stretching of his body and limbs. He followed the flock leader into the air.

They flew for hours, then descended to a lake to forage and rest. Just as they took off again, and before they had attained much altitude, there came flying at them out of the sun something bright-winged, fierce and screaming. Launuru veered off from the flock leader, panicking and trying to gain altitude as fast as his wings would take him. But the scream abruptly cut off. He looked around, and there was the flock leader, with another bird of their own kind following. He rejoined the flock; they continued to rise, reached a steady altitude and tranquilly went on.

When they descended again, through a layer of clouds extending as far as they could see in all directions, they found a steady drizzling rain. The rain didn't bother them while they descended to the surface of a large lake and swam ashore, but when Launuru became aware of himself again, standing next to a naked Kazmina and a confused, frightened goose, the rain was suddenly a real annoyance. Kazmina didn't remark on it at first, though.

“What shall we do about her, poor thing?” Kazmina asked. The goose backed away from them, hissing.

“Where did it come from?” Launuru rejoined. “I have a vague memory that it's been flying with us for a while now... when did it join us?”

“When it attacked us, and I turned it into another ngava goose. Don't you remember that?”

“Oh. Now that makes sense.” It was like when one forgets a dream immediately on waking, only to be reminded of some vivid incident from it half an hour later by something one's schoolfellow says at breakfast. He remembered the bird of prey attacking, himself fleeing, then realizing the danger was past and rejoining the flock, not questioning the fact that there were now three of them.

“Do we need to do anything about it? What about clothes and shelter?” Launuru shivered in the cold rain, torn between wanting to hug his shoulders for warmth and cover his privates for — well, privacy.

“I should do something before she gets out of range,” Kazmina said, oblivious to his own nudity and Launuru's embarrassment. “One goose by herself, with no magic to protect her, isn't safe to migrate. I could turn her into a mbekivu eagle again, but... no, I'll make her something native to this lake. Hmm...” He looked around at the lake on whose shore they stood. “Aha!” He turned and walked slowly toward the goose, which had stopped twenty or thirty yards off to eat some grass or insects hiding among the grass, or perhaps both. (Launuru felt a momentary twinge of nausea at his own recent diet.)

The goose hissed and flapped its wings, flying a short distance away again. But as soon as it landed, it transformed, its wings extending and shrinking into paws while furry forelegs grew out between them and the body. It croaked loudly, the avian squawk becoming a mammalian squeal; moments later an otter looked around in confusion, then dived into the lake.

“There,” Kazmina said. “She should be as well off here as any other otter.”

“Good,” Launuru said, still shivering. “What about us? Where are we going to sleep — under those trees yonder, or...?”

“I saw a village over toward that end of the lake,” Kazmina said, plucking some grass to conjure clothes from. “Let's see if we can get a bed and some human food.”

Kazmina conjured a couple of hooded robes for them, which were soon soaked, though they helped for a few minutes. In the village, they found a small inn; the people here in western Harafra mainly spoke Gnerris, but the innkeeper and a few others spoke Ksarafra as well, which Launuru knew. He interpreted for Kazmina, and she healed the innkeeper, his wife, and his daughter of pox scars in exchange for a couple of meals and a night's lodging for them.

Next morning, they left the village and flew south again.