“Well,” I remarked, with a glance at the ledge we’d jumped from, “we probably shouldn’t go too far. We might get lost, and we’ll want to be able to go back…”
Falija was shaking her head. “Grandma, I’m sorry, I thought you understood that the gates go only one way. There are ways to get back to Tercis, but the closest is five worlds away from here.”
I felt my face go dead. All my blood drained to someplace below my feet. For a moment I tottered there, feeling lost and out of place. I thought about fainting and decided not to. As I’d learned so long ago on Phobos, what was, was. All fainting did was delay dealing with the inevitable. “Well then, just in case you’re not totally correct about their coming after us, let’s get out of the foyer of this place and into some part that’s not quite so exposed from above.”
That seemed sensible to everyone, so we moved off quietly under the trees, hearing nothing at all from behind us or even around us. A few bird sounds. A tiny breeze. That was all. After a time we came to a trail and turned left along it, simply because leftward ran downhill and it seemed easier. I was breathing very hard.
“Are we moving too fast?” Falija asked, concerned.
“It’s not the walk, it’s the…what, Glory?” I asked her.
“The difference,” Glory said. “The strangeness. The not knowing whether they’ll catch up to us and what they’ll do.”
Falija said, “I’m certain they won’t catch up to us. Not now. Not today. Not here.” She took my hand and caressed it. “Nobody expected us to come here, so we don’t need to worry about dangers coming after us, just the ones we may happen on.”
“Which isn’t likely,” said Gloriana quickly. “Is it?”
Falija shook her head. “Not around here, no.”
When we had gone about a mile down the trail, we heard voices coming in our direction, people singing, a clinking noise, a strange sound halfway between a whinny and a moo, then the crunch of wheels. We left the trail and went back into the trees to lie down and peek out without being seen. In a few minutes a wagon appeared, hitched to two large creatures covered with close, curly hair like a sheep’s. Their tails arched forward over their backs and head, the long, silky hair making a parasol over the entire animal. They had horns like cows, single hooves like horses, plus long, silky ears that extended almost to the ground.
The people in the wagon looked rather human, if one could accept green humans somewhere between Falija size and human size. Those with ribbons tying up their dark green hair were on one side of the wagon, and those with kerchiefs around their necks were on the other.
“Let’s try that last chorus again,” said the right-hand animal, speaking perfectly intelligible Earthian. “One, two…” and they all began to sing, girls high, boys medium, the team of animals, baritone and bass.
“The right time of day
For raiding hay
Is three o’clock in the mornin’.
The world is asleep
and the birds don’t peep
so the farmer has no warnin’.
We can cut, we can bale
with a sharp toenail
and an energy that’s unflaggin’,
And the entire crop
fits under the top
of our ‘inside-out’ hay wagon…”
“What are those people?” whispered Bamber.
“The team are umoxen,” said Falija thoughtfully. “And the people are hayfolk. All winter they let their toenails grow. By summer they’re as long as scythes, then they hitch up their wagons and go dance through the hayfields at night, cutting enough hay to get them through the winter.”
“What do they do with it?” Gloriana asked.
“Eat it,” she said. “That’s why they’re green. They call themselves hayraiders, but they only take the first cutting, so the farmer doesn’t lose everything.”
“Except the fruits of his labors,” said I disapprovingly.
“Not exactly,” Falija told me. “The farmer depends on the hayraiders to do the second and third cutting for him, and there’s some other kind of arrangement as well. It’s fair to both.”
“Then why are they called raiders?” I asked, outraged.
“Because they like it. It makes them sound adventurous and bold. It’s a lot more fun to dance in the moonlight than it is to work in the noonday sun, especially if it’s illicit.”
“What’s an inside-out hay wagon?” asked Bamber.
“One that seems bigger on the inside than it seems on the outside.”
Glory asked, “Why do they speak Earthian?”
Falija said, “A surprising number of worlds do, particularly worlds where Gentherans have been. Gentherans call human language one of the two great gifts from Earth. Earthian is a lot easier to read, write, and speak than most languages, as well as having an enormous vocabulary. So, whenever you find several races living together, chances are they’ll speak Earthian. The hayfolk and the umoxen also have their own languages, of course. Shall we ask them for a ride?”
I shook my head doubtfully. The wagon did look filled to overflowing with creatures. Suddenly, however, the left-hand umox called, “Who’s out there? I hear you thinking! Come out now, before they come slishing and slashing after you!”
Falija led us out onto the road as the hayfolk came down from the wagon. Their toenails were longer than my forearm, gently curving out to the sides. I supposed they had to curve that way, or they’d have to walk with their feet far apart. The biggest one came forward, stopping far enough away that he wasn’t threatening to cut anyone off at the ankles.
“Well, Gibbekotkin, and where did you pop from?”
“Here and there,” said Falija. “Is there room in the wagon for passengers?”
“Depends on who’s asking,” said the nigh umox.
“And where they’re coming from,” said the off umox.
“And where they’re going,” said the largest raider.
“Falija is asking,” she said, “for her friends, who are coming from danger and going toward refuge, so far as is possible.”
“Who’s after you?” asked the nigh umox suspiciously.
“Don’t know,” she said. “Just know they are. Human-type men…”
“Who sound like robots,” Glory offered.
“Lurking and lying,” said Bamber.
“Up to no good,” I supplied.
“The unmentionable’s creatures,” said the largest raider, nodding vigorously. “We’ve seen ’em here and there in their great, smelly wagons. Very good description. Climb up on the driver’s seat, you two ladies. Gibbekotkin in lap, brother in back. My name’s Howkel, by the by.”
Glory and I climbed onto the seat, and Falija settled across both laps while Bamber Joy squeezed himself among the raiders. When the wagon started to move, I thought Bamber probably had the best of it, because the hay was soft but the seat certainly wasn’t.
The banks of green moss on either side of the road were so clean they looked freshly vacuumed. The only fallen leaves in evidence were brightly colored, unbroken, and set out in artistic arrangements. Now and then the wagon passed a little pile of twigs and branches set by the trail, as though waiting to be picked up by something.
“Have you any new stories?” one of the girl hayraiders asked. “We usually tell stories on long rides.”
“I have one you might like to hear,” said Falija. “It’s about a villager who talked to a fish.”
“Oh, tell it please,” said the Hayfolk.
And as we rolled along, Falija told a strange tale about a fish who helped a man out of his difficulties by directing him to the Keeper of all information. It was interesting, but rather complicated. I’m afraid I dozed a little, waking up just as Falija said, “And so, since that day, whenever the man has a difficulty, he has walked seven roads at once, for only in that way can he find the Keeper again…”
I said to Falija. “If that whole thing was in your memory, Falija, maybe it’s importan
t.”
“Some stories are very important,” said Howkel. “Specially in the summer grasslands of Fajnard.”
“This is Fajnard?” I cried. “Fajnard is under the rule of the Frossians. This isn’t a good place to be!”
Howkel snorted. “The Frossians think they run the world, but they actually only occupy about a tenth of it, around the lowland cities. They’re used to rampaging onto a world, digging up the ore, cutting down the trees, moving on. They have a chant, ‘Move in, dig up, cut down, move on.’ No ore here. Trees are poisonous to ’em. The wealth here’s in grass after it’s fed to umoxen to make wool, but that’s slow work, year after year. Frossians aren’t used to patience. They’re already getting itchy and neglectful. Pretty soon they’ll decide they’d rather be somewhere else. While there’s Frossians here, hayfolk have nothing to do with them! We stay far from the cities, up here in the highlands.”
“Wind coming,” said the off umox.
They stopped the wagon, all the hayfolk got off and went into the woods. The long-haired umoxen lay down and tied their ears under their chins with the four stubby fingers in the middle of their hooves. When the fingers were folded up, the hoof part hit the ground, but when they wanted to, the umoxen could use those fingers almost like hands.
Very shortly we heard the wind, and we all lay down as well. It came louder and closer, then it came down the trail, a whirlwind that went past us like a train going full speed, and when it was gone, so were all the little twig piles along the road.
So the moss beds had been vacuumed.
“What kind of world is this again?” Glory asked Falija, who was grooming her whiskers back into shape.
“A natural world,” she said. “One where certain creatures are embodiments.”
“Embodiments do vacuuming?” Glory asked.
“The embodiment of order might, or the embodiment of beauty.”
“Is this where your people live?”
She shook her head. “Some of them, yes, but I don’t know what direction they might be in. I do have an anticipatory feeling, though. As though enlightenment may be around the next corner.”
Glory sneaked a look at me. I was chewing my lip.
“You know, Grandma,” Glory said, “you might as well tell us now. There’s something bothering you.”
I shook my head, then looked at Falija, then looked up at the sky. Maybe I was asking God for a sign.
“She will,” said Falija. “But not now, not with all these hayfolk about.”
The hayfolk came out of the woods as the umoxen untied their ears and got to their feet, making harrumph, harrumph sounds. “Where are you headed?” Falija asked the nigh umox.
“The Howkel Farm. Just outside the woods. Dallydance is just down the road, if you’re looking for a town.”
“Are there humans there?” Glory asked the umox.
“Like you? No. A few of the ordinary sort, though. Like her,” and he pointed at me with one leg.
Glory tried to sort that out. “She’s my grandmother. We’re the same kind of people.”
“Humph,” said the off umox. “Tell that to the gizzardile. You don’t even smell alike.”
“That’s enough of that,” said Falija in a commanding tone. “We don’t discuss how people smell, and umoxen aren’t the best judge of odors, anyhow.”
It was true they had a decidedly barnyard smell, which all of us present were more or less used to, but the umoxen took it as an insult.
“Oh, isn’t it a commanding Gibbekotkin! Doesn’t it have qualities of leadership! Pardon us, your royal sagacity, but those two, the boy and the girl, are alike, and that one, the old woman, is something else again. And anyone who says different is blind as a battle-bat, smell or no smell.”
“Here, here, what’s this,” said Howkel, who was the last to emerge from the woods. “Controversy? Argument? On such a lovely day? What are you umoxen up to?”
“Harrumph,” said the nigh umox. “Nothing at all. Except having my intelligence insulted and my fragrance referred to in a tone of derogation.”
“Tsk,” said Howkel. “Well, folk, you’ve lost your ride for sure. I never ask the umoxen to haul anyone who’s insulted them. If you get so far as our farm, though, do drop in for a meal and a bed. Dame Howkel is a fine cook, if I do say so myself.”
And with that, he and his tribe leapt upon the wagon, dumped our backpacks onto the road, and trundled off, leaving us standing there with our mouths open. I felt I’d done nothing but gape for weeks.
“Now what?” I asked, simmering.
“Now,” said Falija very softly, “now that our curious hayraiders have departed, it’s time Gloriana knew the truth.”
I could feel myself turning red, then white, then gray before my legs went out from under me and I was suddenly sitting on the grass, not knowing how I got there. Glory got her water bottle out of her pack and moistened a clean hanky to make a coolness for my forehead.
Finally, I murmured, “It was twins, Glory. All those twins.”
“What was?” Glory asked. “What about it. I’m not one!”
“I know. I know. I married your Grandpa Doc, and I had twins. Conjoined twins. They died almost as soon as they were born. And we thought, well, it’s probably for the best, it happens sometimes, next time will be normal. Then I had your mother and your aunt Mayleen, and they were joined, too. Grandpa Doc had to cut them apart because they were joined at the back of the head. That was the end of having babies, so far as I was concerned. We figured, it was just me, you know. Some mutation that happened on our way to Tercis. Years went by. Then Mayleen…
“Mayleen was only seventeen when she had Billy Wayne and Joe Bob, and they were joined, but Grandpa Doc separated them all right except for the terrible scars. After them, two or three sets died, then it was Ella May and Janice Ruth. Then Benny Paul and his brother who died. And more dead ones in between before Trish survived. Then Sue Elaine and Lou Ellen. We’d already realized, by then, that every time Grandpa separated twins, one of them was…wrong, somehow.
“Your mother, Maybelle, is sweetness itself, but Mayleen…And Joe Bob is a sensible, kind person, but it’s good Billy Wayne went into the army, because he’s as bad as Benny Paul. It was the same with Ella May and Janine Ruth. Ella May applied to the Siblinghood because she couldn’t stand it that her sister was a really vicious person. It was as though only one out of each pair had any goodness. Trish is like an empty bottle. Nothing there at all but babble and bubbles. And it went on and on, sometimes one lived, sometimes neither, five times both. And you know what happened to poor Lou Ellen after she and Sue Elaine…”
I saw Glory’s face change, saw it convulsed with fury, and suddenly she was screaming, “It wasn’t fair letting Sue Elaine have legs and not letting Lou Ellen have any!” Then there was a vast quiet, as though the whole world was waiting for her answer.
I whispered, “The nerves to the legs were connected to Sue Elaine’s brain, not to Lou Ellen’s. There were only two legs, only one spine attached at the pelvis. Actually, Lou Ellen didn’t have any legs, Glory. You know that. Grandpa Doc had to separate them. He waited until they were three. You used to play with her on the bed for hours, and you knew…”
“She got well. She does too have legs now,” Glory said. “She does. She goes everywhere with me!”
Falija put her paw on Glory’s hand and let the claws out, just a tiny bit. “Glory, Glory, Lou Ellen is dead. You know that. You saw her dancing with all her selves. You know she isn’t really alive. In your heart you know that.”
Glory’s hands went to her throat, as though she were choking, but still she cried out, “Bamber’s seen her! Tell them, Bamber!”
“Well,” he said in a sad voice, “I’ve seen her ghost, Glory. But then, I can see people’s ghosts, and I guess you can, too.”
“She’s buried in the cemetery,” I said. “I know you wouldn’t go to her funeral or even into the graveyard to see the stone, but her grave is there, Gl
ory. Really.”
Glory looked around, trying to find something else to prove Lou Ellen was still alive. “You make her sandwiches,” she said frantically. “You say hello to her.”
“Just to keep you contented, Glory, so you won’t go back into the state you went into when she died. You end up eating the sandwiches yourself. And nobody says hello to Lou Ellen until you look at her and show us where you think she is. Except Falija says you really can see her, and now Bamber says he can, so you’re not…you know, what we thought you were…”
“You all thought I was crazy. Mama and Daddy and you!”
“Well,” I cried, “I beg your forgiveness for that, but there was just no end to the tragedy and the loss and the pain. And when your mama had Til and Jeff, it was the same thing. Jeff is a wonderful boy, but Til…Til’s another one like Benny Paul. When your mother got pregnant the second time, Grandpa Doc knew the babies wouldn’t live, because a friend of his had sneaked across the Walled-Off to lend him some other medical machine that The Valley doesn’t have.
“I…I went up to Contrition City and I went to the refuge there, the one for pregnant women who want to give up their babies for adoption. Women sometimes come to Rueful just for that reason, you know. I asked for a woman who would have a baby about that same time Maybelle would; Grandpa arranged for a private place for the birthing. Maybelle’s babies were born dead, all scrambled together. We never told her. When she woke up, you were there, and she and your daddy have always thought you were theirs. Nobody knew you weren’t except Grandpa Doc and me and the real mother.”
“And Mama got her tubes tied,” Glory said in a dull voice. “But Aunt Mayleen didn’t.”
“Not right then. She and Billy Ray were dead set against it, but Grandpa did it the year before he died. He told her she had an infection he had to clear up, but what he really cleared up was her having any more babies. He just said it was the infection did it, and that’s what he told Billy Ray.”
The Margarets Page 38