Hybie
| Species | Stoat |
|---|---|
| Affiliation | The women of The Hollowed Shadow |
| Home | Varaar |
| Status | Alive |
| First appearance | A Sacred Tale Collection |
Hybie is the youngest of the women held as dancers at the Hollowed Shadow in Varaar, a stoat who could not have been more than fourteen on the night the club burned.[1] It was Hybie who raised the hole in the wall the dancers used to slip in and out after their shifts, and the hole is how every one of them got out of the building alive.[1] Years later she is still living in the ruin with Fawn and Ayala, and Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened calls her "the youngest and most spirited despite her circumstance".[2]
Appearance
Hybie is "a flailing pip-squeak of a stoat", half the size of Ayala beside her, with golden hair down to her hips that she flips over her shoulder hard enough to catch Ayala in the face.[1]
Years on, Tab finds her changed. The baby face has hardened into a chiselled jawline, the hopeful gaze Tab always admired is gone from her eyes, and Tab's reading of it is that somewhere along the line she had lost her youth.[2]
Personality
She is the cheerful one, and stays cheerful in a building she is not allowed to leave. Scolded on the dance floor, she laughed and went on dancing; standing on a rooftop watching the place she had been held in go up in smoke, she saluted the column of it with "Good riddance!".[1]
She is also the first of the women to reach for a fight. Told that the bear on the front door stood between them and the street, her proposal was that they take him down together, because she had turned up a couple of old bows and a few arrows scavenging the streets the week before. Tab refused, on the grounds that another death under her name was the last thing any of them needed.[1]
She is also the one who reaches for the bandages. She is found with Fawn's head in her lap and a bandage in her hands after Fawn is beaten, and years later she has hot water, soap and bandages ready for a stranger's wounds before anyone thinks to ask her for them.[1][3]
Background
Hybie was one of the young women Burkhan kept at the Hollowed Shadow to dance for the highest-ranking members of the city's gangs. She lived in a three-bed room up a corridor behind the club's red door, and for many moons the velvet walls of the Shadow were all she had known.[1]
The hole was the dancers' one secret. Hybie's explanation of it is that they needed some way to sneak in and out after their shifts without anyone knowing, and Ayala's is that as far as they knew it had been kept between the girls.[1]
Story
The Way Shadows Live
Tab first sees Hybie dancing on a stool beside Ayala, flipping her hair back over her shoulder and into Ayala's face.[1]
After Tab killed Burkhan and set the club alight, Ayala pulled her up through a window of the dancers' quarters, where Hybie was sitting on a bed cradling Fawn and tying a bandage around her forehead. Told that Burkhan was dead, Hybie looked up as though Tab had just announced that the fabled Eyearke Stone had been found.[1]
She noticed the smoke coming under the door, raised the problem of Kayloo the bear on the front door, offered to fight him, and, when that was refused, said "I guess there's the hole, then".[1] She was sent to wake the rest of the girls, gave a thumbs up and went out into the smoky hallway, and came back to the supply closet with two silver-haired twins to help move the barrel that hid the opening.[1]
When Kayloo knocked Tab's dagger out of her hand, Hybie dove across the floor for it, scooped it up and threw it back to her.[1] She went out through the hole after the twins and Ayala, onto the roof of the neighbouring building, and was still saluting the smoke when Ayala put an arm round her and told her they could celebrate later.[1]
Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened
Hybie, Ayala and Fawn moved back into the burnt-out basement once the gangs had abandoned it. Her account of how that happened is that after Tab set it to flame the gangs never touched the place again, that they had no money and no way to make any, and that it is theirs now, because "We aren't the dancers we used to be".[2]
She was sitting crisscrossed by the fire when Tab let herself back in, and leaned forward squinting into the dark to ask whether it was really her.[2] A fourth seat in the circle was taken by a stuffed wolf named Goose, which Tab did not recognise and guessed she had picked up in the years between; asked whether she could have the chair, Hybie told her "Goose is sitting there" and left her the floor.[2]
The question she puts to Tab is the hardest one in the room. Close to tears, she asked her why she had left them, and told her "I kept the door unlocked for you every night". Tab never came, and after a few moons the others made her lock it.[2]
When Fawn brought Reagan Hideaway and a badly wounded Aero Ellisvat back to the Shadow, Hybie stayed where she was, watching the room, until she registered how bad he was. She ran for bandages and hot water, came back with a steaming bucket and a cloth, warned him that she had put a little soap in and it might sting, and left the bandages on the weapons table for Reagan.[3]
The last the books show of her is Tab staying behind in Varaar to get Hybie, Ayala and Fawn out of the city before the gangs came after them.[3]
Relationships
Ayala is the closest thing Hybie has to a mother, and the pairing runs through both books: Ayala scolds her on the dance floor, sends her for the other girls in the fire, and holds her under one arm on the roof afterwards.[1]
Fawn was held at the Shadow with her, was nursed by her after the beating that ended The Way Shadows Live, and lives in the basement with her now.[1][2]
Tabitha Glowdish made Hybie a promise before she disappeared and did not keep it. Tab's own regret is that she was not there for the girl the way she had said she would be, and Hybie's unlocked door is the measure of how long she waited.[2]
Behind the scenes
Hybie is listed in the pronunciation guide of A Sacred Tale Collection, among the cast of The Way Shadows Live, and again in the guide at the back of Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened. Both guides give the name as High-bee.[4][5] No surname is recorded. She is the only one of the three women of the Shadow whose species the books state.