Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes

by Trismegistus Shandy

Part 1 of 22

The man had evidently been traveling on foot for a long time. His clothes were rags that barely covered his nakedness, and his cheekbones, ribs, and hips stood out against flesh from which all the fat and too much of the muscle had been burned off some time ago.

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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.

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The man had evidently been traveling on foot for a long time. His clothes were rags that barely covered his nakedness, and his cheekbones, ribs, and hips stood out against flesh from which all the fat and too much of the muscle had been burned off some time ago. There were traces of what had once been good shoes strung about his feet, but all that protected them now were a deep layer of calluses. He crossed a ridge and caught sight of a high stone wall with an iron gate, running along the top of the next ridge; the narrow unpaved road he was on led directly to this gate, after crossing a stream on a narrow wooden bridge.

He paused at the stream, kneeling to scoop water in his hands and drink, then returned to the road, crossed the bridge, and ascended the ridge to the gate. He puzzled out the text on the bronze plate affixed to the gate, the same name (presumably) written in four different scripts, two of which he could read; a shadow of fear passed over his emaciated face. He reached for the bell and rang it.

Some minutes passed with no response. The man sat down before the gate on his haunches. He turned his eyes back toward the stream, but didn't return for more water.

At last he saw through the gate a figure approaching, and stood up. As it grew nearer, he discerned a woman in a long gown. When she got nearer still, he saw she was a young woman, about his own age -- though a hidden observer might have thought her younger than he, for the hardship of travel had aged him.

Without unlocking the gate, she asked him, “Who are you? What happened to you?”

“My name is Launuru son of Rusaulan,” he said. “I am under a geas. I bring a message from Psavian of Nilepsan, which I must tell to Znembalan as soon as possible.”

The young woman frowned as she unlocked the gate, admitted him, and then locked it behind them. “My father is away with the army,” she said. “He has left all his affairs in my hands; you can tell me the message yourself.”

“Oh, no,” the man said. “I would like nothing better, but I'm not sure if I can... Can you tell me where to find your father?”

“The geas, of course. I never liked Psavian. How could he do this to you? He could have gotten a message to my father in any of seven ways faster than sending you, under a geas that apparently didn't let you stop to eat or rest more often than absolutely necessary...” She led the way toward a house, not large but beautifully made of the same polished white stone as the wall around the estate. Two rows of water-oaks around seventy or eighty years old lined the path from the gate to the house.

After a minute's silence the man said, “I'm sorry. I find I can't tell you the message. If you tell me where to find your father, the geas will probably push me to go after him. Otherwise it will make me wait here for him, and you'll probably need strong magic to eject me -- I can't turn back of my own will without delivering the message.”

“I can't make you go tramping straight into a war zone under such a geas!” she said, leading the way up a short flight of stone steps to the front door and opening it. “You would surely be killed.”

“The geas allows me some flexibility,” he said; “I haven't been forced to take the shortest possible route, so I've managed to avoid the worst of the fighting. But it might become less flexible as I get close to your father...”

“If you wait a bit, I can put you in communication with my father magically and you can tell your message to him that way. We will see if that breaks the geas, or if it requires you to go to him in person...” She led him down a long hall running down the center of the house, past various doors and stairways on either side, to a door opening onto a lush garden. At first, he thought they were outside; then he realized they were in a sort of large porch completely walled in glass. He looked around in awe, never having seen so much glass in one place before.

The moment he stepped past her, she closed the door to the main part of the house behind them. It was warmer in this glass-walled porch than in the hallway or outdoors. There were butterflies fluttering from flower to flower, and a few birds, mostly of kinds he had never seen, or at least never noticed. The woman said to him, “Wait here,” and walked slowly toward a small tree on whose branches a bird the size of a man's fist with bright green and blue feathers was perched. It hopped away from her as she approached, onto a further branch. She paused, said something he couldn't hear clearly, and approached again. Then she said something louder, in a language he didn't know. There was a sudden chill in the air, and the bird flapped its wings and fluttered close to her. Then it spoke.

“What's wrong, Zmina?” Its voice was raucously inhuman, but the words were clear enough.

“There's a man here—come over here, you!—who is under a geas; he has to deliver a message to you from Psavian.”

“I already got the message, in a dream. Psavian is merely punishing the man by making him deliver it redundantly. You should have told him where to find me and sent him away, not wasted one of our znasha birds!”

“He might be killed if he walked onto a battlefield under the geas...!” the woman—Zmina?—said; but having realized that the bird was linked to Znembalan, speaking for him and apparently seeing and hearing for him as well, the man found he had no choice but to speak up, interrupting her. “Wise and terrible Znembalan, I, Launuru son of Rusaulan, bring a message from your old friend Psavian.” Here the man paused for a moment, and his voice changed, becoming slightly deeper.

“'As I mentioned to you some time ago, I caught this young wretch I am sending to you in a dalliance with my daughter Tsavila, plotting to elope with her in contravention of my plan to wed her to Itsulanu son of Omutsanu. The long journey on foot, and the dread of what he will find at its end, is the first stage of his punishment; the next stage of his punishment I leave in your capable and imaginative hands. You will have had at least three or four months to think about it, depending on how fast he is able to travel under the conditions of the geas. I know your love for your own daughter and the loathing you would feel for any young man who trifles with her affections. If for any reason you find it inconvenient to punish him as we discussed, tell him 'Go' when he reaches the end of this message, and he will leave your house, seek out the nearest slave merchant, and sell himself. If you wish to use him for your experiments or for any other purpose, tell him 'Stay' and the geas will break.'” The man fell silent. He felt suddenly weak; he leaned against a tree, then slumped to the ground.

The bird croaked out, “Stay. Do whatever my daughter tells you.”

Launuru scarcely felt he had the energy to do anything other than stay just where he was. In a daze, he heard the bird suddenly croak again, louder and wordlessly; then it fell from its perch to the ground and lay still.

The woman picked it up. Blood dripped from its beak.

“I hope you appreciate this,” she said to him; “I have only one of these birds left, to speak with my father once more for as long as the war lasts.” She was weeping, he realized.

He tried to express his thanks, but his voice was weak and he doubted that she heard him clearly. Moments later, he lost consciousness.

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Launuru woke lying on something softer and warmer than the mulch he had collapsed onto after fulfilling the geas. He opened his eyes and looked around. He was in a bed in a small room with a large window; the shutters were open, and indirect sunlight came through it. He sat up and put off the blanket, finding that he was naked under it. Hanging on a clothes-horse near the bed were a green tunic and trousers. He rose and put them on; they were of wool, and too large for him, but he managed to keep them from falling off with a sash and belt. A pitcher of water was sitting on a small table by the bed, along with a loaf of bread and several apples and pears. He drank and ate.

While he was on his third apple, the door opened and the woman entered.

“Are you feeling better?” she asked. “I am sorry, things happened so fast yesterday, because of your geas, that I neglected to tell you my name. I am Kazmina daughter of Znembalan.”

“I am Launuru son of Rusaulan,” the man said. “I think I said that yesterday, didn't I?” He found time to be grateful that she spoke a dialect close to the standard Tuaznu he had learned in school; he'd encountered too many areas in his travels where no one spoke anything he could make himself understood in.

“You did,” she said. “I heard your message. Oh, that horrible man! Poor Tsavila! When you are well rested you must tell me about her. I haven't seen her since we were children.”

“Tsavila,” he said. “What is the year and day?”

“It's the thirteenth year of King Sundavu, or would be if he were still king—some people are saying the first year of King Mbavalash, some the first year of the Republic—anyway, the forty-third day of the fourth month. I suppose you were too obsessed with travel to pay attention to the calendar, while you were under the geas...?”

“With travel, yes, but not by the quickest route: I had to detour through every town and city within a hundred kilometers of my route and warn everyone who would listen not to trifle with wizards... What is that in the Niluri calendar, please?”

She thought for a few moments. “The year three thousand eighty-nine, I think? And the ninety-fourth day of Summer. I could check the calendar tables in Father's library to be sure, but I think that's right.”

He buried his head in his hands. “Tsavila will wed Itsulanu in fourteen days. I don't know the significance of the date, Psavian and Omutsanu figured out would be astrologically propitious for their future grandchildren, but I know they planned for their children to wed on the twelfth day of Autumn this year.”

“Well! That gives us just enough time, I think. If you've had enough of apples, you can join me for my morning meal, and we can plan our strategy.”

He looked up at her, hope starting to smolder in his heart again. “Strategy?”

“For you and Tsavila to elope, of course! Assuming that's still what she wants. We need for you to recover your strength, and me to finish some business here so I can absent myself for a time, and then we need to travel to Niluri as fast as possible. Come.” She left the room and he followed her into a larger room, where a table was laid for breakfast.

“Tell me everything,” Kazmina said. “How did you meet Tsavila? What is she like now? I think I said I haven't seen her since we were children -- she was probably seven or eight years old, I was nine. Is she learning her father's magic, as I have done? What about this Itsulanu—what kind of man is he?”

Launuru found himself answering these questions and a dozen others in no particular order; Kazmina frequently interrupted him and herself with more questions as she happened to think of them, and with reminiscences of the summer she spent with Tsavila when she and her father came to stay with Znembalan during the decennial conclave of wizards, held in nearby Vmanashi that year.

After the meal, Kazmina told him to rest, and said she had business to attend to; she then left the house. He returned to the bedroom he had awoken in and laid down, dozing intermittently, and rising after some hours to eat the rest of the bread and fruit she had left in his room. He stayed in the room, afraid of what might happen if he explored an enchantress's house. He did not see her again until suppertime.

“I got a map of Niluri while I was in town,” she said. “You will have to show me where Psavian lives.”

She asked him more questions during supper; afterward, she invited him into the library, a large room containing a table, two chairs, and three large shelves containing a fantastic number of books—there must be nearly fifty codexes, he thought, and as many or more scrolls. She spread a large map on the table, after clearing it of scrolls, codexes, and loose parchments. “So where are we going?” she asked him.

He studied the map, and realized that the captions were in a script strange to him. “I can't read this,” he said. “Is this squiggly line the River Genzan?”

“Yes,” she said, leaning closer to read the map.

“Well, one of these cities should be Nilepsan, where Psavian has a house, and about twenty kilometers southwest of there he has a country estate near the village of Tialem. That village may be too small to be on this map...”

“No, it's not. I see it here.”

“Good. Well, I think the wedding is supposed to be at his country estate, but if we arrive early enough we may find them in the city.”

“Will Tsavila be with her father most of the time, then?”

“Yes; she usually travels with him.”

“Have you been to both of these houses?”

“No, only the house in the city.”

“Well, I'll try to get us there before they leave for the country. You need to recover your strength before we set out, so be sure to rest, and to eat enough. You can help yourself to whatever you find in the kitchen while I'm away.”

“Ah... where else in the house or grounds may I go in your absence?”

After a moment's thought, she said: “Anywhere on this storey of the house, and anywhere in the gardens, but not upstairs or in the forest. And in the library, stay away from books in languages you can't read and the locked cabinets, and you should be safe.”

“Thank you.”

If she worked any healing magic on him, it was not done where he could see it; but he recovered strength and put on flesh much faster than he expected, so perhaps she was helping things along. She would generally leave the house shortly after breakfast, and return in the afternoon or even later. He found that only a few of the books in the library were in a script and a language he could read, and after reading one of them, he found himself sufficiently recovered to spend most of his time walking around the gardens, which were extensive, overgrown, and labyrinthine; after once getting lost in them for the greater part of a day, he learned to take a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine with him on future excursions. There were traces of what had apparently been shrubberies trimmed into the shapes of people and animals, but they were unkempt and their former shapes could barely be discerned. Many of the flower beds, too, were overgrown with weeds.

He asked Kazmina about that at supper.

“Father used to own slaves who would trim the shrubbery and weed the flower beds,” she said, “but he freed them several years ago. One of them stayed on as a free servant for a while, but he joined the army at the same time Father did.”

“Oh,” he said. “Is your mother still living...?” He immediately regretted asking this, seeing the look on Kazmina's face.

“I don't know,” she said. “I don't think so. I never knew her, and Father never talks about her.”

They remained silent for the rest of the meal, and Kazmina disappeared into her upstairs sanctuary immediately after clearing away the dishes.

Next morning, the second day of Autumn, Launuru asked her during breakfast when they would set out for Niluri.

“Soon,” she said. “I have attended to all my business here for the next month, and you have recovered your strength; now it is a matter of training you for the journey. We will begin after breakfast.”

And after clearing away the dishes, she led him into the garden, and said, “Take off your clothes.” She was already untying her own belt; a moment later she lifted her gown over her head and hung it over a wooden bench.

Launuru hesitated before obeying. “Why?” he said.

“Your wings would get tangled in the tunic,” she said, as she removed her bandeau and knelt to pull off her shoes and stockings, “and your legs would be too encumbered by your trousers and stockings to get off the ground.”

“Oh,” he said, and began to comply, trying to avoid staring at her as she removed her final garment.

“Now,” she said, “I'll change us. Don't try to fly just yet; get some practice walking around in your new form first. Follow my lead.”

The first time, he was too distracted by the changes to himself to be fully conscious of what was happening to her. The change to his vision was the first sign, all the colors fading and nearby objects, including his hostess, becoming slightly blurry. The twisting changes to his neck, arms and legs were almost but not quite too fast to be painful; he was aware of his arms shrinking almost to nothing while his hands swelled up tremendously, the fingers splaying hugely from his shoulders. He looked at himself and became aware that his neck was twisting in a way that would have been fatal if he'd still been human; he saw dark grey wings and a light grey lower body, with nothing visible between the legs. Of course, male birds hid away their secret parts except when mating... His legs and webbed feet were skinny and black. He turned to look at his hostess. She was another bird of the same species; on her he could see the long neck, narrow head and bill. Her feathers seemed to be in more colors than his own, though they were all shades of grey now.

Following her lead, as she'd instructed him, he walked through the garden, from the bench on which they'd hung their clothes to the small pond. She waded into the water and then swam across; he followed. She suddenly ducked her head under the water and came up with a small fish in her mouth, which she swallowed. He started looking down into the water, and, spying a fish, he attempted the same feat. On his third try, he succeeded. The fish tasted much better than he expected, as did, still more surprisingly, the grass and insects he ate after they swam to the bank and walked ashore again.

He was conscious all the while of a vague unease, related to a new sense whose meaning and nature he was unsure of. There was a direction which was different from the others; he felt slightly better when facing that way, and felt a desire to go that way, but also felt that he could not go yet. The time wasn't right, or the signal hadn't come... he could not put it into words. By now, he could not put anything into words. He followed the leader of the flock. That bothered him too, that there were only the two of them; it was too small a flock, it would be dangerous... but there was no help for it.

Suddenly the leader took off, dashing forward, flapping her wings, and rising into the air. He followed joyously. They rose above the trees surrounding the garden, seeing the pond, the garden surrounding it, the stream flowing through the forest and garden, the stone wall surrounding the estate, the forest beyond... They were heading in the direction they needed to go! The flock was still too small, he felt uneasy about that, but it was time to go.

But then, wrenchingly, the flock leader flew in a narrow arc and descended onto the surface of the pond. He was torn between following the leader and going in the direction he needed to go, but the instinct to follow the leader was stronger. He followed her down to the pond, splash-landed, and swam to shore.

As soon as they waded ashore, the flock leader suddenly changed, stretching and growing and turning all one shade of grey, except for her head feathers, which remained black while fluffing out far more than feathers should when not molting. He had hardly time to be terrified at this when he felt his own body twisting, stretching, and squeezing and his thoughts regaining the clarity of human reason. He found himself prone on his hands and knees, naked, by the bank of the pond. He looked up and saw Kazmina walking toward the bench where she'd left her clothes. As she started getting dressed, she looked back at him in concern, then ran back toward him.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “Perhaps I should have let you rest more before I transformed you for the first time, or perhaps we should have remained in that form for a shorter time at first...”

“I'm all right,” he said, covering his secret parts with his hands as he stood up. “It was a shock, that's all. I wish you had warned me about how it would feel.”

“I'm sorry,” she said. “Well, get dressed and get some rest. We'll practice again this evening.”

They got dressed in silence, then returned to the house. He didn't feel hungry after the fish, worms, insects and grass, but she insisted that he eat a little bread. “It will help you remember what you really are,” she said. “It will be more important still during our journey, when we're spending ten or twelve hours a day as ngava geese. That is, finding ways to remind ourselves that we're human, when we stop for the night and and return to human form. Eating human food won't always be possible, but we can do other things—tell stories, for instance, and find other humans to talk to.”

“Why ngava geese?” he asked, after a couple of mouthfuls of bread.

“Well, now is the time of year for them to migrate to their winter home, which is the delta of the River Genzan. So we can just follow our navigational sense and we'll be going in about the right direction. Once we get near Nilepsan, we'll need to travel in other forms, or our navigational sense will be leading us away from the city. Unlike most geese, they mate in their winter grounds, so we'll be migrating faster than if we were, say, tevmunu geese, which are in less of a hurry during their autumn migration than in the spring. They've got a strong flocking instinct, so there's little chance of you getting distracted and flying off on your own; you'll feel you need to stay with me, and I have enough experience with transforming into various kinds of animals to retain human rationality in that form. Ngava geese are big and tough enough, and fly high, so most birds of prey won't bother us. And they're a sacred bird in Harafra, so while we're crossing that country, at least, hunters won't try to kill us.”

“I guess it helps that they're matriarchal, too, or whatever the term is,” he said, remembering his instinctive need to follow her lead while in goose form. She looked amused, and opened her mouth, but didn't say anything for a moment. When she did, it seemed a non sequitur.

“Tell me again how you met Tsavila,” she said. “I know you told me before, but I was interrupting you with too many questions...”

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Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes is also available from Amazon and Smashwords. It will continue to be available for free here on BigCloset, but the Kindle and EPUB editions have a map, a Cast of Characters, and some other supplementary material that is not in the free serial version.