Sheri S. Tepper - The Song of Mavin Manyshaped

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THE SONG OF MAVIN MANYSHAPED - Sheri S. Tepper

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THE SONG OF MAVIN MANYSHAPED

Sheri S. Tepper

Around the inner maze of Danderbat keep—with its hidden places for the elders, its sleeping chambers,

kitchens and nurseries—lay the vaster labyrinth of the outer p'natti: slything walls interrupted by square-

form doors, an endless array of narrowing pillars, climbing ups and slithering downs, launch platforms so

low as to require only leaping legs and others so high that wings would be the only guarantee of no

injury.

Through the p'natti the shifters of all the Xhindi clans came each year at Assembly time, processions of

them, stiff selves marching into the outer avenues only to melt into liquid serpentines which poured

through the holes in the slything walls; into tall wands of flesh sliding through the narrowing doors; into

pneumatic billows bounding over the platforms and up onto the heights; all in a flurry of wings, feathers,

hides, scales, conceits and frenzies which dazzled the eyes and the senses so that the children became

hysterical with it and hopped about on the citadel roof as though an act of will could force them all at

once and beforetime into that Talent they wanted more than any other. Every year the family Danderbat

changed the p'natti; new shaped obstacles were invented; new requirements placed upon the shifting flesh

which would pass through it to the inner maze, and every year at Assembly the shifters came, foaming at

the outer reaches like surf, then plunging through the reefs and cliffs of the p'natti to the shore of the

keep, the central place where there were none who were not shifters—save those younglings who were

not sure yet what it was they were.

Among these was Mavin, a daughter of the shape-wise Xhindi, form-family of Danderbat the Old

Shuffle, a girl of some twelve or fourteen years. She was a forty-season child, and expected to show

something pretty soon, for shifters came to it young and she was already older than some. There were

those who had begun to doubt she would ever come through the p'natti along the she-road reserved for

females not yet at or through their child-bearing time. Progeny of the shifters who turned out not to have

the Talent were sent away to be fostered elsewhere as soon as that lack was known, and the possibility of

such a journey was beginning to be rumored for Mavin.

She had grown up as shifter children do when raised in a shifter place, full of wild images and fluttering

dreams of the things she would become when her Talent flowered. As it happened, Mavin was the only

girl child behind the p'natti during that decade, for Handbright Ogbone, her sister, was a full decade older

and in possession of her Talent before Mavin was seven. There were boys aplenty and overmuch, some

saying with voices of dire prophecy that it was a plague of males they had, but the Ogbone daughters

were the only females born to be reared behind the Danderbat p'natti since Throsset of Dowes, and

Throsset had fled the keep as long as four years before. Since there were no other girls, the dreams which

Mavin shared were boyish dreams. Handbright no longer dreamed, or if she did, she did not speak of it.

Mavin's own mother, Abrara Ogbone, had died bearing the boy child, Mertyn—caught by the shift-devil,

some said, because she had experimented with forbidden shapes while she was pregnant. No one was so

heartless as to say this to Mavin directly, but she had overheard it without in the least understanding it

several times during her early years. Now at an age where her own physical maturity was imminent, she

understood better what they had been speaking of, but she had not yet made the jump of intuition which

applied this knowledge to herself. She had a kind of stubborn naivete about her which resisted learning

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THE SONG OF MAVIN MANYSHAPED - Sheri S. Tepper

some of the things which other girls got with their mother's milk. It was an Ogbone trait, though she did

not know it. She had not before now understood flirting, for example, or the reasons why the men were

always the winners of the processional competitions, or why Handbright so often cried in corners or was

so weary and sharp-tongued. It wasn't that she could not have understood these things, but more that she

was so busy apprehending everything in the world that she had not had time before to make the

connections among them.

She might have been enlightened by overhearing a conversation between two hangers-on of the Old

Shuffle—two of the guards cum hunters known as "the Danderbats" after Theobald Danderbat, forefather

and tribal god, direct line descendent, so it was said, from Thandbar, the forefather of all shifters—who

kept themselves around the keep to watch it, they said, and look after its provisioning. So much time was

actually spent in the provisioning of their drinking and lechery that little enough energy was left for else.

"Every time I flex a little, I feel eyes," Cormier Graywing was saying. "She's everwhere. Anytime I've a

mind to shift my fingers to get a better grip on something, there she is with her eyes on my hands and,

like as not, her hand on mine to feel how the change goes. If there's such a thing as a' everwhere shifter

child, it's this she-child, Mavin." Cormier was a virile, salacious old man thing, father of a half-dozen

non-shifter whelps and three true-bred members of the clan. He ran a boneless ripple now, down from

shoulders through fingers, a single tentacle wriggle before coming back to bone shape in order to explain

how he felt. Some of the Danderbats would carry on whole conversations in muscle talk without ever

opening their mouths. "Still, there's never a sign she knows she's female and I'm male, her not noticing

she gives me a bit of tickle."

"Tisn't child flirtiness." The other speaker was Haribald Halfmad, so named in his years in Schlaizy

Noithn and never, to his own satisfaction, renamed. "There's no sexy mockery there. Just that wide-eyed

kind of oh-my look what you'd get from a baby with its first noisy toy. She hasn't changed that look since

she was a nursling, and that's what's discomfiting about her. When she was a toddler, there was some

wonder if she was all there in the brain net, and she was taken out to a Healer when she was six or so,

just to see."

"I didn't know that! Well then, it must have been taken serious; we Old Shuffle Xhindi don't seek Healers

for naught."

"We Danderbats don't seek Healers at all, Graywing, as you well know, old ox. It was her sister

Handbright took her, for they're both Ogbones, daughter of Abrara Ogbone—she that has a brother up

Battlefox way. But that was soon after the childer's mother died, so it was forgiven as a kind of upset,

though normally the Elders would have had Handbright in a basket for it. Handbright brought her back

saying the Healer found nothing wrong with the child save sadness, which would go away of itself with

time. Since then the thought's been that she's a mite slow but otherwise tribal as the rest of us. I wish

she'd get on with it, for I've a mind to try her soon as her Talent's set." And he licked his lips, nudging his

fellow with a lubricious elbow. "If she doesn't get on with it, I may hurry things a bit."

The object of this conversation was sitting at the foot of a slything column in the p'natti, in full sight of

the two old man things but as unconscious of them as though she had been on another world. Mavin had

just discovered that she could change the length of her toes.

The feeling was rather but not entirely like pain. There was a kind of itchy delight in it as well, not unlike

the delight which could be evoked by stroking and manipulating certain body parts, but without that

restless urgency. There was something in it, as well, of the fear of falling, a kind of breathless gap at the

center of things as though a misstep might bring sudden misfortune. Despite all this, Mavin went on with

what she was doing, which was to grow her toes a hand's-width longer and then make them shorter again,

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THE SONG OF MAVIN MANYSHAPED - Sheri S. Tepper

all hidden in the shadow of her skirts. She had a horrible suspicion that this bending and extending of

them might make them fall off, and in her head she could see them wriggling away like so many worms,

blind and headless, burrowing themselves down into the ground at the bottom of the column, to be found

there a century hence, still squirming, unmistakably Mavin's toes. After a long time of this, she brought

her toes back to a length which would fit her shoes and put them on, standing up to smooth her apron and

noticing for the first time the distant surveillance offered by the two granders on the citadel high porch.

She made a little face, as she had seen Handbright do, remotely aware of what the two old things usually

chatted about but still not making any connection between that and herself. She was off to tell

Handbright about her toes, and there was room for nothing else in her head at the moment, though she

knew at the edges of her consciousness the oldsters had been talking man-woman stuff.

But then everyone was into man-woman stuff that year. Some years it was fur, and some years it was

feathers. Some years it was vegetable-seeming which was the fad, and other years no one cared for

anything except jewels. This year was sex form changing, and it was somewhat titillating for the

children, seeing their elder relatives twisting themselves into odd contorted shapes with nerve ends

pushed out or tucked in in all sorts of original ways. Despite the fact that shifters had no feeling of shame

over certain parts—those parts being changed day to day in suchwise that little of the original topography

could still be attached to them—the younglings who had not become shifters yet were tied to old, non-

shifter forebear emotions which had to do with the intimate connections between things excretory and

things erotic. It could not be helped. It was in the body shape they were born with and in the language

and in the old stories children were told, and in the things all children did and thought and said, ancient

as apes and true as time. So the children, looking upon all this changing about, found a kind of giggly

prurience in it despite the fact that they were shifter children every one, or hoped they were soon to be.

All this lewd, itchy stuff to do with man and woman made Mavin uncomfortable in a deep troublesome

way. It was by no means maidenly modesty, which at one time it would have been called. It was a deeper

thing than that—a feeling that something indecent was being done. The same feeling she had when she

saw boys pulling the wings off zip-birds and taunting them as they flopped in the dust, trying, trying,

trying to fly. It was that same sick feeling, and since it seemed to be part and parcel of being shifter,

Mavin decided she wouldn't tell anyone except Handbright she was shifter, not just yet.

Instead, she smoothed her apron, pointedly ignored the speculative stares of old Graywing and Haribald,

and walked around the line of slything pillars to a she-door. At noon would be a catechism class, and

though Mavin made it a practice to avoid many things which went on in Danderbat keep, it was not wise

to avoid those. Particularly inasmuch as Handbright was teaching it and Mavin's absence could not pass

unnoticed. Since she was the only girl, it would not pass unnoticed no matter who was teaching, but she

did not need to remind herself of that.

Almost everyone was there when she arrived, so she slipped into a seat at the side of the room, attracting

little attention. Some of the boys were beginning to practice shifter sign, vying with one another who

could grow the most hair on the backs of their hands and arms, who could give the best boneless wriggle

in the manner of the Danderbats. Handbright told them once to pay attention, then struck hard at the

offending arms with her rod, at which all recoiled but Tolerable Tit-dance, who had grown shell over his

arms in the split second it had taken Handbright to hit at him. He laughed in delight, and Handbright

smiled a tired little smile at him. It was always good to see a boy so quick, and she ruffled his hair and

whispered in his ear to make him blush red and settle down.

"I'm nye finished with you bunch," said Handbright, making her hair stand out from her head in a tangly

bush which wriggled like a million little vines. "You're all coming along in one talent or another. I have

to tell you today that it looks like Leggy Bartiban will be going off to Schooltown to be fostered. Seems

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he's showing signs of being Tragamor. Not unexpected, eh Leggy?"

The boy ducked his head, tried to smile through what were suspiciously like tears. True, it wasn't

unexpected. His father had been a Tragamor, able to move great boulders or pull down mountains by just

looking at them, but it was still hard for him to accept that he must forget the shifters, forget the

Danderbat citadel, go off to a strange place and become something else again when all he knew was

shifter. He could take comfort from the fact that he wouldn't grieve. He wouldn't even remember a week

hence when the Forgetters had done with him. Still, looking at it from this end, it must seem dreadful.

Mavin ducked her head to hide her own tears, feeling for him. It could have been her. She might not have

been shifter, either. No one knew she was, not yet.

"All right, childer. I'm not keeping you long today. Elder Garbat Grimsby is coming in for a minute, just

to ask a few simple questions, see how you're coming. Since two of you are off to Schlaizy Noithn in the

morning, he'll just review two or three little shifter things and let you all go. Sit up straight and don't go

boneless at the Elder, it isn't considered polite. Remember, to show politeness to elders and honored

guests, you hold your own shape hard. Keep that in mind … " She broke off, turning to the door as she

heard the whirring hum of something coming.

It came into the room like a huge top, spinning, full of colors and sounds, screaming its way across the

room, bumping chairs away, full of its own force, circling to stop before them all and slowly, slowly,

change into old Garbat, hugely satisfied with himself, fixing them all with his shifter eyes to see if they

were impressed. All of them were. It was a new trick to Mavin, and when reared in a shifter stronghold

those were few and seldom, with every shifter challenging every other to think of new things day on day.

The Elders came infrequently out of their secret place deep within the keep, or at least so it was said.

Mavin thought that if she were an Elder, she would be around the keep all day every day, as a bit of rock

wall, a chair, a table in some dusty corner, watching what went on, hearing what was said. It was this

thought which kept her behavior moderately circumspect, and she looked hard at the Elder now. He

might have been the very pillar she had sat under to shift her toes. She shivered, crouching a little so as

not to make him look at her.

Handbright managed some words of welcome. Old Garbat folded his hands on his fat stomach and fixed

his eyes on Janjiver. "What about you, Janjiver. You tell me what shapes shifters can take, and when."

The boy Janjiver was a lazy lout, most thought, with a long, strong body and a good Talent which went

largely unused. There were those who said he would never come out of Schlaizy Noithn, and indeed

there were some young shifters who never did. If one wanted to take the shape of a pombi or a great owl

or some other thing which could live well off the land, one might live in Schlaizy Noithn for all one's life

without turning a hand. "A shifter worth his net," said Janjiver in his lazy voice, "can take any shape at

all. He can bulk himself up to twenty times bigger, given a little time, or more if the shape is fairly

simple. He can conserve bulk and take shape a quarter size, though it takes practice. The shape he cannot

take is the shape of another real person."

"And why can't he do that, Janjiver?"

"Because it's not in our nature, Elder. The wicked Mirrormen may mock mankind but we shifters do not.

All the Danderbats back to the time of Xhindi forbid it."

"And you, Thrillfoot. What is the shifter's honor?"

"It is a shifter's honor to brook no stay, be stopped by no barrier, halted by no wall, enclosed by no fence.

A shifter goes where a shifter will." Thrillfoot threw his hair back with a toss of his head, grinning

broadly. He was looking forward to Schlaizy Noithn. In the citadel he was befamilied to death, and the

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desire for freedom was hot in him. He rejoiced to answer, knowing it was the last answering he would do

for many a year.

"And what is a shifter to the rest of the world, Jan-jiver?"

"A shifter to the rest of the world, Elder, is what a shifter says he is, and a shifter always says less than he

is."

"Always," agreed Thrillfoot, smiling.

This was just good sense and was taught to every shifter child from the time he was weaned. The shapes

a shifter could take and the shapes he would let the outside world think he could take were two different

things. Shifters were too sly to let all they could do become general knowledge, for in that shiftiness lay

the shifters' safety. One wouldn't look for a tree-shaped shifter if one thought shifters couldn't shift into

trees. So it was that most of the world had been led to believe shifters could become pombis or fustigars

or owls, and nothing much more than that. Indeed for some shifters it was true. It was possible to fall in

love with a special shape and ever after be able to take only that shape besides one's true one—or for a

few, only that shape forever. It had been known to happen. Shifter childer were warned about it, and

those who indulged themselves by staying pombis or fustigars for a whole season or more were pointed

out as horrible examples. So now in the classroom everyone nodded in agreement.

Garbat manifested himself as pleased, gave each of the boys who were off to Schlaizy Noithn a

handmade Danderbat token—at which they showed considerable pleasure, intricate handmade things

being the only things shifters ever bothered to carry—and then took himself away, soon followed by

most of the others.

Leggy Bartiban did not go out with them. He had tears running down his cheeks openly now. "That's a

shifter secret, teacher, not letting the world know what shapes we can do. How do you know for sure I

won't tell all the shifter secrets when I'm gone away from you?"

"Ah, lad," Handbright came to hug him, drawing him tight into the circle of her arms. "You'll not

remember. Truly. I have never lied to you, Leggy, and I'll not lie now. It is sad for you to go, and sad for

us to lose you, but you will not suffer it. We have contract with the good Forgetter, Methlees of Glen,

who has been our Forgetter for more seasons than anyone remembers. You'll go to her house, and the

people from the school will be there, and she'll take your hand, like this, and you'll know the people, and

remember them, and will forget us like a dream. And that's the way of it, Leggy, the whole way of it.

You'll be a Tragamor child born, always friendly to the shifters, but not grieving over them a bit."

"Do they need to forget me my mother?" The boy was crying openly now.

"Shush. What silliness. Of course they'll not forget you your mother. You'll remember her name and face

and the sound of her voice, and you'll welcome her happily to visit you at Festival. You'll see her as often

as you do now, and most of the other boys at school will be the same, except for those who came to the

School-houses as infants and do not know their mothers at all. Now go along. Go ask anyone if that isn't

so, and if anyone tells you otherwise, send them to me. Go on, now, and stop crying. I've got things to

do."

Then all had gone but Mavin, who sat in her seat and was still, watching the back of Handbright's head

until Handbright turned to see those keen eyes looking into her as though she had been a well of water.

"Well, little sister, and you still here?"

"It was a lie, wasn't it, Handbright, about his mother?" Her voice was not accusing.

Handbright started to deny it, then stopped, fixed by that birdlike gaze. "It was and it wasn't, she-child.

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He will remember her name, and her face, and the sound of her voice. He'll welcome her at Festival, if

she chooses to visit him. But all the detail, the little memories, the places and times surrounding the two

of them will be gone, so there'll be little loving feeling left. Now that may build again, and I've seen it

happen time after time."

"And you've seen the other, too. Where no one cares, after."

After a long weary silence, Handbright said, "Yes, I can't deny it, Mavin. I've seen that, too. But he

doesn't see his mother now but once or twice a year, at Assembly time. So it's not such a great loss."

"So why can't he stay here, with us. I like Leggy."

"We all like him, child. But he's not shifter. He has to learn how to use his own Talent or he'll be a zip-

bird with wings off, all life long, flopping in the dust and trying to fly. That'd be hateful, s1 rely, and not

something you'd wish for him?"

Mavin twirled hair around one finger, shook her head from side to side, thinking, then laid her hand upon

Handbright's own and made her fingers curl bonelessly around Handbright's wrist. Handbright stiffened

in acknowledgement, her face showing gladness mixed with something so like shame that Mavin did not

understand it and drew her hand away.

"Lords, child! How long?"

Mavin shrugged. "A little while."

"How marvelous. Wonderful." Handbright's voice did not rejoice; it was oddly flat and without

enthusiasm. "I have to tell the Elders so we can plan your Talent party … "

"No!" It came out firmly, a command, in a voice almost adult. "No, Handbright. I'm not ready for you to

do that. It hasn't been long enough yet … to get used to the idea. Give me … some time yet, please,

sister. Don't do me like Leggy, throwing me into something all unprepared for it." She laughed,

unsteadily, keeping her eyes pleading and saying not half of the things she was feeling.

"Well … " Handbright was acquiescent, doubtful, seeming of two minds. "You know the Elders like to

know as soon as one of us shows Talent, Mavin. They've been worried about you. I've been worried

about you. It isn't a thing one can hide for very long. As your Talent gets stronger, any shifter will be able

to tell."

"Not hide. Not exactly. Just have time to get used to the ideas. A few days to think about it is all. It won't

make any difference to anyone." And she saw the dull flush mounting on Handbright's cheeks, taking this

to mean that yes, it did make a difference, but not understanding just what that difference might be.

"All right. I won't tell anyone yet. But everyone will have to know soon. You tell me when you're ready,

but it can't be long, Mavin. Really. Not long." She leaned forward to hug the younger girl, then turned

away to the corridor as though more deeply troubled than Mavin could account for. Mavin remained a

long time in the room thinking of what had happened there that day.

The tears of Leggy, sent away to forget.

The words of Janjiver, in answer to the question of the Elder, what is a shifter, to the world?

"A shifter to the rest of the world, Elder, is what a shifter says he is, and a shifter always says less than he

is."

"I, too," she said to herself, "could be wise to follow the words of the catechism. I could say less than I

am."

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She went out into the day, back to the alleys of the p'natti, fairly sure that though Handbright would be

upset and worried for a time, she would say nothing about Mavin's Talent until Mavin told her yes. And

Mavin had begun to feel that perhaps she did not want to tell her yes. Not today. Not tomorrow. Perhaps,

though she did not know why, not ever.

Had it not been for the fact that Assembly time was only days away, Handbright would have worried

more over Mavin, would have been more insistent that the Elders be told that Mavin had shown Talent,

was indeed shifter, might now be admitted to full membership in the clan Danderbat and begin to relieve

some of the endless demands made upon Handbright for the past half-dozen years. Though she was fond

of Mavin—and of eight-year-old Mertyn, too, if it came to that—it did not occur to her that Mavin knew

no more than Mertyn did about what would be expected of a new shifter girl by Cormier and Haribald,

and by the others. Though Handbright had never told Mavin any of the facts of life of shifter girl

existence, she assumed that Mavin had picked it up somewhere, perhaps as she herself had done, from

another young she-person. In making the assumption, she forgot that there were no other shifter girls to

have giggled with Mavin in the corners, that Handbright could have been the only source of this

information unless one of the old crones had seen fit to enlighten the child, an unlikely possibility.

Indeed, if she had had time to think about it, she would have known that Mavin was as innocent as her

little brother of any knowledge of what would happen when it became known she was shifter. Who could

she have observed in that role except Handbright herself? Who else was there behind the p'natti to share

responsibility or provide company? Had there been a dozen or so girls growing up together, as there

should be in a clan the size of Danderbat, Handbright herself would have been far less weary and put

upon for she would have been sought out by the old man things no more often than she could have found

bearable. Part of the problem, of course, was that she had not conceived. If she had been pregnant, now,

or had a child at the breast … Or better yet, if she had borne three or four, then she could have gone

away, have left the keep and fled to Schlaizy Noithn or out into the world. Any such realization made her

uncomfortable. It was easier simply not to think of it, so she did not consider Mavin's ignorance, did not

consider the matter at all except to think without thinking that with Mavin coming to a proper age, the

demands on herself might be less.

When Handbright had been a forty-season child there had been others near in age. Throsset of Dowes.

The twin daughters of old Cormier, Zabatine and Sambeline. At least three or four others. But the twins

had soon had twin children, two sets of sons, had left them in the nursery and fled. And Throsset had

simply gone, with a word to no one and no one knowing where. And all the others had had their children

and gone into the world, one by one, so that for four years Handbright had been alone behind the

p'natti—alone except for a few crones and homebound types who were too lazy to do else than linger in

the keep, and the Danderbat granders who were there to keep watch. That was all except for peripatetic

clan members who visited from time to time. Well, at least the last of the babies was now out of

loincloths and into trowsies. And Mertyn was eight. And Mavin now would be available to help … help.

So she thought, in the back of her head, not taking time to worry it because Assembly was so near and

there was so much to do. Of course more hands were assembled to do it, too, for the Danderbat were

beginning to gather. The kitchens were getting hot from fires kept burning under the ovens. Foods were

being brought by wagon from as far away as Zebit and Betand. All during the year shifters might eat

grass in the fields or meat off the bone, but at Assembly time they wanted cookery and were even willing

to hire to get it done. That was the true sign that Assembly was near, when the cooks arrived by wagon

from Hawsport, all wide-eyed at being surrounded by shifters. Of course the kitchens were underground

and there were guards on them from morn to night so they didn't see what non-shifters shouldn't see, but

the gold they were paid was good gold and more of it than a pawnish chef might make in a season

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otherwise.

Mavin, aware that Handbright was distracted by all this flutter, decided it would be best to lose herself in

the confusion. She knew a half-hundred places in the keep in which one might crouch or lie totally

unobserved and watch what went on. Now with the Danderbat gathering from all the world, and sensible

that it was a time of great change for herself whether she wished to change or no, she took to hiding

herself, watching, staring, learning from a distance rather than being ever present and handy as old

Cormier had noticed her being. But he was now so mightily enthralled by gossip from a hundred places

in a hundred voices, so distracted by the clan members gathering in their beast-headed cloaks of fur, full

of tall tales and babble, that he forgot about Mavin or any intentions he may have had toward her. Mavin,

however, had merely exchanged ubiquity for invisibility, hiding herself in any available cubby to see

what it was that went on as the Danderbat clansmen came home. As Cormier was a man of restless,

lecherous energy, full of talk, a good one to watch if one wanted to learn things, she followed him about

as she had done for years, peering down on him from odd corners above rafters or from rain spouts. It

was thuswise she finally lost her stubborn naivete.

Cormier and Haribald were helping unload a wagon of vegetables which had been hauled all the way

from Zebit up the River Haws and the windy trail to the top of the table mountain on which the keep sat,

just east of the range of firehills which separated it from Schlaizy Noithn. As they were about this

business, they heard a drumming noise and looked out through the p'natti to see a vast brown ball,

leathery hard, with arms at either edge, cudgeling itself to make a thunder roar. They set up a hail which

Mavin heard, hid as she was under the edge of the keep roof in a gutter, and the drum ceased pounding

upon itself to make a trial run at the p'natti. It assaulted the launching ramps, rolling upward at increasing

speed, propelling itself by hand pushes along its circumference, to take projectile form as it left the ramp,

then a winged form which snagged the top of a slything pillar with a hooked talon only to change again

into a fluid serpent which slythed down the pillar before launching upward once more in a flurry of

bright veils which floated upon the sky, the veils forming a brilliant parachute against the blue. Even

Mavin gasped, and the granders made drum chests for themselves, beating with their arms, an answering

thunder of applause. So the falling parachute, making itself into a neat bundle as it dropped, became a

shifter man on the ground before them, the parachute veils gathering in and disappearing into the general

hard shape. Mavin recognized him then as Wurstery Wimpole, for he had won the tournament in a

previous year and been much glorified then by the Danderbat.

"Damfine, Wurstery. Damfine. Like that parachute thingy, soft as down." Cormier, pounding him on his

hard shape back, shaking his hand in sudden pain as Wurstery made a shell back there to take the blows.

"Haribald was just saying he hadn't seen veils used so—or such a color!—in a dozen years. Amblevail

Dassnt used to do some parachute thing, but his was pale stuff beside yours. You going to use that

coming in during procession?"

"Oh, might, might. Have another trick or two I've been practicing. Might use them instead. Anyhow,

that's days away and there's days between! I've been bringing myself eager cross country thinking of the

drink and the cookery and the Danderbat girls."

Cormier shook his head, sadly, Mavin peering down on him from the height and hearing him breathe.

"No girls, Wurstery. Not a one save Handbright, and she's tired of it. Hardly worth the effort. She doesn't

make it enjoyable. I've been at her bed this past two, three years, and Haribald, too, seeing she's of

breeding age, but there's no good of it at all."

"You don't mean it! Only one girl shifter behind the p'natti? Lords, lords, what are the Danderbat coming

to. Last time I was here, there were a dozen—two dozen."

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THE SONG OF MAVIN MANYSHAPED - Sheri S. Tepper

"Naa. Last time you was here was four years—twelve seasons ago, and there weren't all that many.

Throsset was here then. And my daughters, but they were just weaning the twins, one set each. And there

was a flock of visitors, of course, but right after Assembly they left. After that there wasn't another

girlchild behind the p'natti save Mavin, and she's only now maybe coming of age or maybe not. Lately

the Danderbats've borne nothing but boys. Who would have thought there could be too many boys!

There's talk among the Elders that the Danderbats may be done, Wurstery. Talk of that, or of bringing

back the women who've gone out, whether they're willing or no … "

"So how come Handbright's stayed so long? What is she, twenty-four or so? "

"She doesn't bear. Never been pregnant once, so far as we know. One of these days, she'll give up hope

and take off for Schlaizy Noithn, I doubt not. She's thought of it before, but we've discouraged her,

Haribald and me." Cormier gave his head a ponderous shake at the pity of it all. "So if you're looking for

female flesh, best ask a friend to shift for you, old Wurstery, or visit some other keep of some other clan,

for there's naught here for you save one old girl not worth the trouble and one new one not come to it

yet."

And it was in this wise that Mavin realized what Handbright's flushed face had meant and why it was that

Mavin's being a shifter would make a difference. The truth of it came to her all at once, a complete

picture, in vivid detail and coloring. She went inside to the privy and lost her lunch.

There was no time to steam over it then, for Wurstery had been only one of the latest batch of Danderbats

who were flowing in from all directions, laughing and shouting in the Assembly rooms downstairs,

drifting up and down to the cellars to see what the cooks were preparing and whether the wine was in

proper supply, taking their chances on the lottery which told them off into food service crews day by day

during Assembly. Mavin, no longer invisible, was hugged, kissed, hauled about by the shoulders,

congratulated on her growth, questioned as to her Talent, and sent on a thousand errands. It was

impossible to escape. There were eyes everywhere, Danderbats, every where, both grown ones and

childer ones, for some Danderbat shes chose to take their childer with them rather than leave them in the

nurseries of the keep. And a good thing, too, thought Mavin exhaustedly as she counted their numbers

and went for the twentieth time escorting a small one to the privy. It was only that night, long after

darkness had come and the keep had fallen into an almost quiet that she went to find Handbright, waking

her from an exhausted drowse.

"Mavin? What's wrong? What do you want?"

"Sister. I need to ask things."

"Oh, Mavin, not now! I've been standing on my own feet since before dawn, and weariness has me by the

throat. You've asked questions since you were born, and I can't imagine what's left to ask!" Handbright

pulled a shawl around her shoulders and sat up in her narrow bed. This room at the top of the keep was

her own, seldom visited, mostly undisturbed, and it was rare for anyone, Mavin included, to come there.

Hand-bright herself usually slept near the nurseries, and she had sought this cubby now only because

there were visitors aplenty to care for the children.

Mavin, slightly ashamed but undeterred, drifted to the window of the room and looked out across the

p'natti to the line of fire hills upon the western horizon. Beyond them was Schlaizy Noithn, the ground of

freedom where her schoolmates had gone to try their Talent and learn their way. Of course, she ones

could go there too, if they liked, after they had had a lot of childer, or when they knew they could not.

This had never been important before. She had known that fact as well as she knew her own name, or the

sight of Handbright's face, or the feel of a fellow shifter through a changed hide, knowing this was shifter

kin even though he looked or smelled nothing like himself. But it had never really meant anything to her

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THE SONG OF MAVIN MANYSHAPED - Sheri S. Tepper

until now.

"Handbright, I want to go to Schlaizy Noithn." And she waited to hear the proof of all her assumptions.

"You can't do that, child. You're a she-child. Danderbat womb keepers don't go. You know that."

"Of course I know it. But I said, I want to go to Schlaizy Noithn. I want to go regardless of what the

Danderbats say. Suppose I go to a Healer in the Outside and ask her to take my womb away."

"She wouldn't do it. If she did, the Elders would kill her."

"Suppose I changed me, so that I don't have a womb at all."

Handbright made the ward of evil sign, her face turning hard and wooden at the thought. Her voice was

no longer kindly when she replied. "That's a disgusting thought. How could you think such a thing?"

"Ah. Well, as to that, sister, answer me this. If I have my Talent party in a day or so, or say right after

Assembly, when the visitors are gone, how long before I have to do man-woman stuff with old Cormier?

Or Haribald? Or maybe old Garbat himself?"

The older girl turned away, face pale. "Ah, Mavin. I don't want to talk about it. You'll learn to manage.

It's part of being a shifter girl, that's all. You'll live through it. Besides, you've known all about

that … you've known … " Seeing Mavin's face, she stopped, reddening. "You didn't know?"

"No. I didn't know. Not until this morning. I should have known, maybe, but I didn't. I need to

understand all this, Handbright. I have to know what this change is going to mean to me. Suddenly it's

me the old Dander-bats are leching for. Now if I'd been Tragamor, you'd have turned me over to the

Forgetter to take all my memories and send me out in a minute. Wouldn't you?"

"Yes. It's necessary. We always do that."

"Even if I was a she-child Tragamor, you'd do the same. Womb or no womb, you'd turn a Tragamor she-

child away to Schooltown in a minute."

Handbright nodded, stiffly, seeing where the argument was going;

"But because I'm shifter, a she-child shifter, the Elders have said I have to womb-carry for them. I can

shift my legs and arms, grow fur or feathers, make me wings for my shoulders, but I can't fly or leap or

turn into any other thing, for it might change womb and make it unfavorable for carrying baby shifters. If

I'm biddable, though, after I've had three or four or so, or once I can't have any more, they'll let me to to

Schlaizy Noithn. Or out into the world. Isn't that right?"

"You know it is. You've known those who went."

"Oh, yes. I've seen them when they went, Hand-bright, and I've seen them when they come back. They

say Throsset fled, and there's a penalty on her if she comes back. She's gone away far, and none have

seen her."

"Throsset was in love with a Demon, and he took her with him into the Western Sea. That's what's said."

"She went. That's what I mean. She didn't stay here in the keep and carry babies for the Elders."

"The word is she couldn't. She had no proper parts to do it."

"Then maybe I'm not the first to think of disposing of the proper parts," Mavin said angrily. "Handbright,

remember how you used to tell me you'd shift into a great sea bird when you had your Talent? You'd be a

great white bird, you said, and explore all the reaches of the western sea. You used to say that. But here

you are, teaching, baby watching, cooking and carrying for the Elders, and I know for a fact that there's

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