The Margarets

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Glory’s eyes flew wide, and she forgot about the crawdad, which hung twitching on her finger while she stared at the impossible people. To me they looked to be partly silver and partly blue, as though extremely cold people were contained inside coats of clear ice, but they didn’t look at all frozen. Their eyes and arms and feet moved, their huge, furry ears twitched back and forward, and their little pink triangle noses wrinkled at the corners, just like cats. They had that same sort of upper lip, too, split just below the nose and curving up on either side to make a rounded W shape. If cats could smile ingratiatingly, that’s what these people were doing.

  Glory said something like How do you do, or Hello there.

  Lou Ellen said, “Who you talking to?”

  Glory looked down where Lou Ellen was sitting at the end of the pier and said, “Them.”

  Lou Ellen looked all around. “Who’s them?”

  Glory turned toward the smaller cat-person, and said angrily, “Now, that’s not fair! You’re going to get me locked up again, everybody thinking I’m crazy, and that’s not a nice thing to do. You let Lou Ellen see you, too.”

  The bigger one remarked, “Of course. How thoughtless of us,” and he cast his eyes over toward Lou Ellen, who immediately screeched and grabbed at Glory, getting the crawdad’s other claw instead. It pinched her, and she howled.

  “What is it your intention to do with these creatures?” asked the bigger one.

  Glory said, “We’d planned on eating them.”

  “Are they edible?” the smaller one asked. “They seem to be quite barky and fibrous.”

  “The tail meat inside the shell is very nice,” Glory said, self-consciously shifting herself into politeness mode. This meant doing what I had told her, over and over. Concentrate on good grammar, speak quietly, without expletives—even silly ones, like “Ballygaggle” instead of her daddy’s “Balls!”

  “Then you’re carnivores,” said the bigger cat-person.

  “No, we’re Judsons,” Glory said. “Gloriana and Lou Ellen Judson.”

  “A judson is…” said the smaller one, leaving it hanging like it was something she didn’t know what to do about.

  “A family,” Glory told them. “It’s a family. Like, we’re related. Lou Ellen and me, we’re cousins. Her daddy and my daddy are half brothers, Billy Ray and Jimmy Joe Judson, and her mama and my mama are twin sisters, Mayleen and Maybelle Mackey.”

  “Sisters who are very like one another, perhaps?” asked the smaller one, her eyes glowing.

  Glory took a long breath before she said, “Not all that much, no. Aunt Mayleen thinks my mama’s cornered the market on selfishness, and my mama thinks Mayleen’s too lazy to breathe on her own, but it makes no nevermind because Lou Ellen and I are best friends, no matter what.”

  “It’s good to have friends,” said the smaller one to the bigger one. “No matter what kind they are…”

  “Besides,” Glory interjected, “I didn’t catch on to your asking about carnivores right at first, because I was thinking of the Conovers, the folks on one of the farms down the road. But I do know what a carnivore is, and we’re not quite. There’s another word for what we are…”

  “Omnivores,” said the smaller one in a satisfied voice, like she’d been planning a dinner and had been worrying what to serve. “No, we’re omnivores, too, so I wasn’t worried about our having a meal together. My companion’s name is Prrr Prrrpm by the way. I am Mrrrw Lrrrpa, and since you have called your cousin Lou Ellen, you must be Glorrrr-iana.”

  In my dream I said their names, over and over, the r ’s rolled like an engine running, and when they used Gloriana’s name, her jaw dropped, and it took a minute before she could say, “I’m Gloriana, but how come you know that?”

  “We were given directions,” said the larger one. “We were told to find Gloriana Judson at this river, by this pier, early summer, period two, day ten, at twelve-forty-nine in the afternoon local time. We have a locator.” He removed a gadget from his belt and held it out: an egg-shaped, translucent blue thing with a silver handle.

  “What does it say?” she asked.

  “It says you are…who you are.”

  “And why does it say that,” Glory demanded.

  “Because,” said the littler one more softly, “you, no other person, are the optimum person to help us with our task.”

  Gloriana considered this. She looked baffled. They just stood there, as though they expected her to do something, and in the dream, I could see her considering what might be proper.

  “We were about to have our lunch. You’re welcome to share it, if you like. We’ve got enough crawdad tails for five each and enough potatoes and bacon and apples for everybody.”

  “What fun,” said the smaller one. “What can we contribute?”

  “There’s that roast pleckle leg,” he said. “And a whole basket of whalp berries. And those preserved grum stalks the trader gave us when we visited on…somewhere.”

  Or something similar. The two cat-people walked up onshore as if it was all decided, shedding their ice coats as they came, and almost immediately the two of them had a fire going, the groceries out of their bags, and water boiling a lot faster than water ever behaved for me when I was in a hurry!

  Glory wrapped the potatoes. “We’ll prob’ly have to have ’em for dessert,” she said, as she buried them in the fire. “They’ll take a lot longer to bake than the crawdads will to boil.”

  The food the cat-people had taken out of the bags seemed more voluminous than the bags themselves, but Glory didn’t comment on that, which was dreamily appropriate. When the crawdads were cooked, the four of them took the shells off and ate a bit of them and a bit of grum stalk, which Glory said was spicy and tart and a little peppery, and then a whalp berry or two, very sweet, then a bite of apple, and then some more of this or that while the little wind sent wavelets clucking around the splintery lopsided pier and terci-crows cussed at each other in the trees.

  The two cat-people were full of questions about the Judsons and the farms and what they raised and what did best, like turnips, and what didn’t do so good, like anything fancy they might get more than fifty cents for. Glory waded out into the pool to get the jar of kinda-lemonade she kept there, where it stayed cool, and when she came back, they passed the drink around, and along about the third drink, the smaller one wiped her mouth on one paw—it did look like a paw, but it had fingers like a hand—and looked Glory straight in the face.

  “Gloriana Judson, could you find the goodness in your heart to do us a favor?”

  Glory looked suddenly skeptical, and I knew she was thinking of Bobby Duane Hansen’s Crusade of Help. Bobby Duane lived over in Repentance, but he was always crisscrossing The Valley in a wagon, suggesting very strongly that people find it in their hearts to help him out. Pastor Grievy thought Preacher Hansen was a poor excuse for a Ruer since Ruers weren’t allowed to connect their religion to money, and it was usually cash money Bobby Duane was asking people to help him out with.

  “What’s the catch?” Glory asked.

  They looked confused, so she said, “Usually, when somebody asks you to find it in your heart to do something, it means the heart’s going to find heartache right soon in the doing. At least that’s what my daddy says.”

  “Heartache?” said the smaller one to the big one.

  “Displeasure,” he said, trying it out. “Pain, suffering. No, no. No suffering, no expense, no pain or adversity.”

  Lou Ellen was looking at Glory sadly, as though Glory had done something really unpleasant, slapped a baby, or kicked a puppy.

  “It’s no nevermind,” Glory said, catching sight of Lou Ellen’s face. “I’m just shooting off my mouth. Grandma says I give the wrong impression because I do that all the time, and it’s a defense mechanism from being teased for being a mutant, and it’s one I should grow out of. You go ahead and ask your favor, and I’ll let you know can I do it.”

  The two cat-people exchanged looks, the
n the larger one asked, “Why are you suspected of being a mutant?”

  “Oh, because I’m taller than any girl my age, and I’ve got this hair so black it sometimes looks blue, and my eyes are a weird color. I don’t look like any of the Judsons, not any of ’em.”

  “I believe you are within the range of human variation,” said the smaller person. “I, personally, know several people much like you, and it is unlikely you are a mutant.”

  The larger one was silent for a moment, nodding quietly, as though to affirm his companion’s judgment. Then he stood up very straight and said, “We have a girl-child, very young. Though she is scarcely more than a baby, a great mission is foreordained for her, a duty to perform when she is a little older. Others, our enemies, will seek to prevent her doing this. Since our child must be old enough to walk and talk, at least, before she can undertake this great duty, she needs an unlikely place of safety and warmth in the care of an improbable custodian.”

  Glory looked at Lou Ellen, who whispered, “Why didn’t they leave this baby with her grandma?”

  Soft-spoken as she was, they heard her fine. “Our enemies would think first of that. She would not be safe anywhere our people are known to live or in any district where we are known to visit. This is a place we have never been before and may never come again, and this will assure she is well hidden.”

  “Isn’t there anybody else to do this thing you’re talking about her having to do?” asked Glory.

  The little one reached out for the big one’s hand and held it tightly. “When a task is unequivocally assigned by great wisdom, there is no point in complaint or argument. It will be done by our child, Falija, or it will not be done at all. We hope only that she will be staunch-hearted and that we can return to help her when the time has ripened.”

  This was said with terrible sadness.

  “You’re going away?” Glory asked. “You’re leaving her?”

  “We must. To protect her, by leading our enemies away,” said the littler one, with a strange, choked sob.

  Lou Ellen whispered: “How old’s the baby? Is it weaned yet? Is it potty-trained?”

  Her question made perfect sense. Glory’s brothers, Till and Jeff, were sixteen, so she’d never had any experience with potty-training or baby feeding, but after Lou Ellen there’d been Orvie John and little Emmaline plus several babies in between who’d lived a little while before they died. Lou Ellen knew all about babies.

  “Weaned?” said the smaller one. “Oh. Mammalian feeding of infants, yes, no, that is, Falija is old enough to eat food such as we have just eaten. She is also omnivorous. She can drink water from a cup. She can digest milk, but she prefers meat or vegetable things. She is still very little, not yet knowing how to…read? Write? Or speak very much. Our babies are…potty-trained almost from birth, and we use a low sandbox for the purpose.”

  “How long you figure you’ll be gone?” Glory asked.

  The bigger one shook his head. “We cannot see the future.”

  “And what if you don’t come back?”

  “What we can do, we will do, and if all goes well, we will return in time. Will you keep her for us?” The larger one sighed. In my dream, for it was a dream, the sound came to me half through my ears and half through my heart, like the grieving wind of late autumn that pulls the last leaves down, or the dark breath that gasps at the light when a deep old cellar is opened. The sigh fluttered wearily inside me, finding no rest, and Glory’s face held an expression that must have been like my own. She couldn’t say no.

  “You know,” she said, “some people don’t like anything that’s any different from what they’re used to. I’ve got some personal experience with that, and I wouldn’t want this little one to come to any harm…”

  The smaller one whispered, “If you will love her, and keep her warm, and feed her, and clothe her and teach her as she grows, she will be able to keep from harm. Our people have their own ways.”

  “Feeding people isn’t always easy,” Lou Ellen commented. “Last winter, my folks didn’t eat all that regular…”

  The cat-people nodded, like they’d already figured that out. The bigger one took a little pouch from his pocket and handed it to Glory. She opened it and looked at what was inside. All I could see was a vagrant sparkle. “This is a connection to something like…a bank,” said the big one. “When you need money for Falija, for her food, or clothing, or whatever she may need, you speak the need into the bag. Then set the bag down and leave it for a time, and when you come back, you will find what you need beside it.”

  “Well,” said Gloriana. “That’s something.”

  The smaller one whispered, “It will not provide forever. It is tied to us, and what happens to it, we feel. It can be broken, and we with it, so hide it away from anyone greedy or wicked or silly. It is better kept a secret thing.”

  Glory ducked her head. I knew she was thinking, of course it would have to be hidden away because Jeff couldn’t keep anything from Til, and Til ruined everything he was a part of, and next thing I knew, they reached up into the air and pulled the baby out of nowhere as though she had been there the whole time, in an invisible crib, just floating along behind them.

  She looked like the pictures I had loved in my children’s books, so long ago on Phobos. She was definitely a kitten, but the size of a biggish cat, like the pictures of Earthian tiger or lion cubs, only more slender and delicate. She had big eyes, tall, tufted ears, and a triangular face pointed at the chin. She looked fragile, like something made of glass and covered with satiny golden fur, with the same curved mouth and the same pink nose as her parents. She yawned, showing elegant fangs in front and a line of chewing teeth at the sides.

  Glory reached out to take her. The cat-baby looked up at her doubtfully, but when Glory cuddled her, one of the little paw hands came up to pat her nose, and Glory looked down at her in absolute adoration.

  Lou Ellen said, “You’re holding her wrong. You should support her head.”

  “It’s all right,” said the little cat-person. “Falija is already very strong. You don’t need to worry about her neck or bones or muscles. Just…treat her gently and lovingly, will you, please?”

  Evidently their kind of people didn’t cry, because from all the sadness I could feel emanating from them, if the smaller cat-person could have cried, she’d have flooded the place.

  “One more thing,” the littler cat-person said, taking a little green book out of her pocket. “When Falija begins to speak, read this book to her aloud, several times. It is the key to her learning. Promise?”

  “I promise,” Glory said, reaching out for the book without taking her eyes from the baby.

  “Good-bye,” they said, and they were gone, just like that.

  Later, I woke up, still under the tree, thinking what a lovely, silly dream that had been. I was stiff from sitting on the ground so long, but the remembered dream resonated happily all the way home.

  Next morning I went down to get a few eggs from the chicken house, pick up my milk and paper, and maybe have a cup of tea with Maybelle while she got ready for work. I heard her moving around upstairs, and when she came down she was shaking her head the way she did when Gloriana did something weird.

  “What now?” I asked

  “That silly child has promised some woman she’d take care of the woman’s cat while the woman is on some kind of pilgrimage to the Shrine of Sorrow over in Deep Shameful. Says the woman gave her money to do it.”

  I’m sure I looked at her witlessly. A cat. “When did you find this out?”

  “Just now! I went in to wake her, and here in the bed is this cat. Big one, and not full-grown yet. She’d already made it a little sandbox by the door, so I can’t get angry about it.”

  All I could think of was the strange dream I’d had the day before. “It wasn’t dressed up, was it?”

  “What wasn’t?”

  “The cat?”

  “The cat was in its fur, like all cats are. What’s
the matter with you, Mother!”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I guess I’m not awake yet.”

  Glory came into the kitchen as her parents were getting into the carriage, plopped herself down across from me, and asked, “Anything interesting in the paper?”

  “Some tragedy, some comedy, nothing that’ll matter in a hundred years,” I said. “I understand you’ve got a cat.”

  “It’s not mine. I’m just taking care of it for somebody.”

  “So your mother said. Why don’t you come on up to my house and be my company for breakfast?”

  “I’ll have to get the cat.”

  “Well, get it. Bring it with you.”

  Glory got the cat. Without clothes on it, I couldn’t tell, really, whether it was like my dream cat or some other cat. We walked up the hill to my house. Billy Ray and Mayleen always fussed about my living where I did. I had told them, “Joseph built the little house for me, Billy Ray. You build a similar house over on your side of the river, I’ll split my time fifty-fifty.”

  “I’m safe,” I told Maybelle. “I told him that five years ago, and Billy Ray’s still working on the plans.”

  When we got into my house, I got the kettle started on the wood cookstove. My little kitchen was squeezed in between the big cookstove and the sink, just big enough to turn around in, a one-person-only space. The rule was if I cooked, Glory cleaned up, and vice versa. The only other rooms were the bedroom and bathroom at the back, next to the warm closet behind the stove that held the big water tank. James pumped it full each morning, and the cookstove chimney went up through a smaller tank to make hot water.

  When I put our forks and mugs on the table, I asked, “What’s the cat’s name?”

  “Falija,” Glory said.

  I couldn’t remember whether that name had been in my dream or not, and it didn’t bear worrying about. I said, “It’s time for strawberry jam. Are you going to pick for me this year?”