He left the stake where it was because it likely had pierced a lung: breathing would be bad for awhile once the stake was removed. Smell told him vamps were nearby: at least two. Indicating the stake with a movement of fingers, he asked, “Miss?” on as little breath as possible.
“Reconsidered,” said Wolf.
Bitter said, “To us, they’re a meal, food eaten and forgotten. To you, they’re the future and survival. That takes precedence.”
And Wolf said, “He made me see it, that we didn’t have to end that way—over a feed for the fledges. We had to put the fledges down to enforce it, but there are always more fledges. And always will be, if you’re right. So we defer to the eldest of us. Go your ways, Michael. Be tame and farm your people, if that’s your conviction, and we’ll be wild and take our tithe.”
“In case you’re right,” Bitter added quietly, meditatively.
Motion: a pale arm reaching, a hand grasping the stake and yanking it out.
Farmer didn’t quite lose consciousness but was absorbed enough in holding onto it that it was awhile before he could notice anything else.
He roused to the sensation of burning: terrible heat everywhere, like being cast into an imagined hell. He groped and crawled and rolled until he found a gully and tumbled into its shade. He blindly pulled loose dirt down from the gully’s walls until he was covered and protected.
Even the dim sun was too much when all his resources were taken up with healing.
When he moved again, the sudden dark had come. Rolling onto his knees, he rested against the side of the gully, waiting to be reconciled to being awake and upright. The chest wound still hurt, but it had sealed. In serious blood debt from the injuries and the healing, he was very hungry.
He was acutely aware of the direction and distance to the nearest food. Clambering out of the gully, he stopped to find the sword, then slowly went the way his awareness drew him.
* * * *
They were there, all three of them: the girl, the boy, and the crone. True to their word, Wolf and Bitter had let them be. Farmer found them back at the first stopping place, grubbing at the ground with sticks. The sweet stench of death all around. The bodies of the three dead Fanshaws laid out, side by side. The survivors were digging a grave. Not much progress, considering they’d had the whole day to work at it. Farmer was angry at the stupidity, delay, and wasted effort.
The dun noticed him first, stamping and whuffing, looking in his direction as he approached. The three humans left their task to grab up stakes, though they hadn’t had the sense to make up a fire. Sometimes Farmer wondered why he bothered with such.
Recognizing him, the boy let the stake go and came to meet him, wide-eyed and admiring, saying, “You saved us!”
Breathing to talk would have been too much trouble, so Farmer said nothing, passing by to catch up the dun’s reins, looking around for something to tether the horse to while trying to ignore how much the grubby boy smelled like food. Finally led the horse back to the cottonwood grove, tied it up, and took a feed from its throat: not all he needed, but not enough to weaken it too much for travel, either. The dun tried to bite him back a couple of times, but that was only the usual and they were both accustomed to how that went.
Returning, Farmer continued to avoid the humans, leading the dun a ways off, keeping it and the mule apart while he remade the travois and then collected the scattered goods, whatever hadn’t been broken beyond use. No point having a fuss before he was ready to move.
Found the loom, pretty much intact as best he could tell, and tied it down carefully.
Though he was a bit creaky and sore for bending and lifting, that grew less with the fresh blood he could feel working in him. After several considering glances, he took a feed from the surprised mule, as well. It flung its head about, hee-hawing loudly and shaking all over when he was done. Maybe keep it calmed down, attending to its proper work.
Not what he wanted. Not what he was still hungry for. But enough that he could deal with the humans now, he thought.
Leading the animals to where the humans were still making a pitiful job of digging—they’d got down maybe another two inches—he directed curtly, “Get on. Leaving.” His hand went to his chest to contain the pain.
They straightened, looking at him, to the corpses, then back to him as though they thought he’d gone crazy.
Lily, the Grandma, put her hands on her hips. “Not till we’ve buried our own.”
Farmer was very much aware he was confronting them in demon aspect. Couldn’t put it away with the confused intensity of what he now felt toward them. Pressing his chest harder, he said, “Still two, three days travel to shelter. Nothing’s safe out here.”
The old woman reiterated stubbornly, “We bury our own,” and wouldn’t budge.
So he took the boy and heaved him up on the mule, but Dicken was down and off the other side the second Farmer turned loose, and both Marianna and Lily faced him with stakes when he would have tried to do the like to them, and the unwashed bloodsmell was still so strong on the girl that he was doubtful he could touch her and still turn loose.
And it was so stupid, their defying him, since dusting him would leave them unprotected and unguided in the wilderness, trying to find a destination none of them had ever seen, and the dun wouldn’t mind anybody but him and not even him, all the time.
Glaring, frustrated and yellow-eyed, he would have liked nothing better than to eat them all and thus be done with them and the idiocy of life in willing thrall to death. Leaning on the dun’s withers, one arm slung around the top of a travois pole, he shut his eyes until he could open them changed, something like calm again.
If they wouldn’t budge, he had to. Those without scruples had to give way to those with scruples, dammit, which was why he was still upright and painfully breathing.
These flatlands were crisscrossed with gullies, all dry in this season. Farmer took up the dead boy and, trailed by the watchful humans, walked out until he came to one such and laid the corpse in the bottom and went back for the next. The humans waited while he finished the carrying and began the covering. Then they pitched in, caving in the gully’s sides and covering the bodies.
Wouldn’t hold past the first of the rains, but it was all symbolic anyway and nothing could be buried deep enough that the coydogs wouldn’t get at it. Nothing could truly be removed from the cycle of birth and death. One way or another, the bodies would feed other life. No use pretending otherwise.
Farmer managed to keep patience while the three humans joined hands and said their say over the place where their dead were now concealed. Then they came toward him, Lily mentioning, “It’s our way. We keep faith with our dead.”
It wasn’t Farmer’s way, but that was no news. To him, a dead body was completely useless: he felt nothing toward it. But when urgency wasn’t battering away at him, he respected the humans’ right to think and do different than he was inclined to. Wasn’t any way to change it, short of death, anyway, and he’d decided against that and held to his own ways, too.
Not to turn Wilder, though he was tempted sometimes. To let the people be what they were and would be and abide the differences, as he did with the dun. To accept the partnership, however difficult, for the sake of what was to come, and because there was no alternative he could accept.
When they were all aboard the one travois or the other, he led the animals out. After a time, behind him, the girl began singing, a low mournful song but tuneful, as well. Walking alongside the mule, the boy joined in with his high, sweet voice, singing wavering harmony on top of the melody line, and the old lady chimed in on the chorus, led along slow through the dark.
The dun tried to bite his shoulder and he whacked it absently.
There was another song, and then tired silence except for the fall of the animals’ hooves and the occasional creak and bump of the pair of travois drawn behind. The night all quiet, nothing dangerous stirring nearby that he could tell. No stars, of course,
or moonlight. He hadn’t sighted them in a century or more. Nothing to steer by but his senses and his memory, but they’d always been enough.
The boy, Dicken, hustled level to Farmer’s left, nervously glancing up and then pulling back into himself several times before he finally spit it out: “Are you mad with us?”
“Not to speak of. Different ways, is all. I’ll see you safe where you’re going.”
“Not what I meant.”
“What’d you mean, then?” Farmer prompted with the patience of indifference.
“Marianna, she can be a terrible trial. Bossy, mean as a goose, sometimes. But Pa always says, we got to make allowances. On account of men, they pass and are gone like the dust, but womenfolks, they’re the future. On account of they birth the babies,” Dicken stated earnestly. “So don’t be mad that she yelled and hit on you like she done, when you didn’t take more’n a little taste of her and bit the horse instead, when you could have had us all. She was just upset.”
“Expect she was,” Farmer allowed gravely, amused.
Satisfied he’d educated their protector about the innate right of human females to be selfish, screeching bitches, the boy fell behind and presently curled to sleep in his Grandmother’s arms.
Farmer considered the dun, in which the meanness of the entire equine race was concentrated. A good companion and a fierce fighter. Then he considered the recollection of Marianna flinging about with the brand in her two hands, putting the righteous fear of fire into anything within her furious reach. Brave and bright against the darkness.
Slowing, he slid fingers under the dun’s headstall—only prudent when within biting distance—and attended for a few paces. By breathing and heart rate, the girl wasn’t sleeping. Shifting aspect, he saw that her eyes were open, watching him—maybe thinking he’d come back for seconds. No smell of fear, though.
She still smelled very fine—even better for the injuries, though they’d heal. Just made her seem approachable: like she could be touched and not break. Not that he meant to touch her anytime soon. But he felt as though he might.
In a quiet, nighttime voice, he mentioned, “Called ‘Farmer,’ like I said. But my true name, that’s Michael.”
Marianna’s murmur repeated it: confirming that she’d heard, trying out the feel of the name in her mouth. Spoken on warm breath, the sound was different, somehow, than it had been from Wolf or Bitter. Then she settled her shoulder different among the baggage, drew the blanket to her chin, and surrendered alertness into sleep. Trusting him that far, anyway. Which, he supposed, was something.
Releasing the headstall, he moved out again, taking up the slack of the reins.
He’d saved what could be saved and that had to be enough because that was all there was.
At the Center, he’d check in with his fledge, resolve any disputes and rest a day or two. Get the Fanshaws settled, see they’d be looked after. Connected, the way humans did, a lattice of hands forever reaching…. Get that begun, then come out again into the wilderness hunting the smell of smoke. Maybe find another isolated family, another set of possibilities to add to the growing whole. What might be a town or even a city, someday, in the strengthening sun.
Hubs. They were calling them Hubs now. Couldn’t seem to keep that in his mind. Try to keep too much in memory, it would try to force the new things out. Farmer preferred to stay open to the new, the possibilities.
Might be nice to be Michael again for awhile. He’d consider on it.
About Nan Dibble
(On a sad note Nan Dibble passed away before publication.)
Nan Dibble has been writing speculative fiction for nearly fifty years. Her five book sci-fi series, The Rule of One, was internationally published. Her book on the nuts-and-bolts of fiction writing, Plot, has sold over a million copies worldwide, in six languages. Both were written under her former pseudonym, Ansen Dibell; she doesn’t use a pseudonym anymore. More than a dozen books of Nan’s fiction and nonfiction have been published.
Nan has been active in fan writing for over ten years, beginning with two authorized novelizations based on the TV series Beauty and the Beast. She also produced over twenty fanzines based on that series—original work and anthologies. She has recently written four novels based on the Jossverse—Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, the Series—focused on the character Spike.
Holding both Master of Fine Arts and Ph. D. degrees, Nan taught fiction writing on the college level for over twelve years and still coaches/mentors beginning writers as the opportunity arises. For seven years, she was a Senior Editor with Writers’ Digest Books in Cincinnati, her chosen home, where she lives with her two imperious cats, William and Edward.
SALE SEASON, by Ellie Fleming
Matt knew that the rules of how to behave varied from place to place—he had, after all, successfully negotiated the bridge from poor Brooklyn boy to moneyed Manhattan man with minimal commotion and considerable sartorial improvement. Any Master-of-the-Universe-in-training could cope with two months of being the only American in an Italian bank’s brokerage firm, and living out of a suitcase. He could definitely deal with being trapped with a beautiful woman between the electronic doors leading to the Last Supper. He really could, even if there was the faintest wisp of smoke rising from under her huge hat.
She was, after all, hardly the only beautiful woman he’d seen in Milan. The city was full of them, flocking in a feeding frenzy of conspicuous consumption, lured out by the signs that announced it to be Sale Season. Even the waiting area around him was well supplied with masterpieces of the feminine form. Smokin’ Hot or the girl with the heart-shaped face swathed head to foot in enough furs to quite possibly kill him with allergens—it was hard to choose which girl was hotter.
Though the choice was made considerably harder by them both leaving him behind without a backwards glance as soon as the electronic door opened. Fur Girl headed out to the back, seemingly more interested in taking in the emptiness of most of the room and observing the crowd heading for the main event than in worshipping at the shrine of Leonardo. Smoking Girl, on the other hand, had somehow stopped with the smoke, taken off her hat to see better and stood, transfixed, in front of the painting.
Matt knew that he would fail the oral from the art fiend in the legal department on Monday morning. He knew his mother—the woman who put aside her dreams of a Fine Arts major to raise two kids—would haunt him for not paying attention to the painting she’d loved most of all. But the closer he got to the painting, the more he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the girl. The delicate sweep of her neck mirrored the fragile strength of the Beloved Disciple figure, but was unbroken by age. Light brown hair glowed with auburn lowlights painted by a maestro worthy of the master on the wall, setting off the soft skin and strong features of a Baroque Judith.
He was doomed. No self-respecting bond salesman could ever admit to being speechless, but the moment he opened his mouth, his Brooklyn tinted Italian would reveal the peasant boy masquerading in an Armani coat to the Lombard Princess. However, faint heart never won fair bonus and it most certainly wasn’t about to stop Matt from winning fair lady.
But he did have to admit to epic levels of relief that she spoke first, and in English—very British English. The British never noticed who was from where in anyone but each other. Matt could be himself, not the jumped up kid from Brooklyn, or the foreigner in the office. He could talk to her in the language he thought in. The thought was almost as appealing as the fullness of her lips.
Though it had to be said that those lips quivered for the painting, not for him. “It’s a ghost of itself. Shadows of glory.” Brown eyes shone with the sadness of bitter experience. “I’d heard there was little left of what was, but I couldn’t help hoping.”
She wasn’t the only one. “That the restoration made it shiny and new again?”
She nodded. “I hate being right.”
Matt was surprised by the honest caring in his own voice, but it somehow felt important,
even vital, to make her smile, smile at him, however sadly. “It happens often?”
It worked. It was a sad smile, heading the league in sad smiles, but it was hers and given freely to him. “All the time.”
It was also all too soon lost in the rush to the exit as time limits and electronic doors wait for no man, nor women. They were soon both trapped in the time-sensitive corridor of exiting the irreplaceable; her back against the wall, and Matt trapped between the Queen of Furs and an old lady in something equally furry, and dangerously close to his nose.
Not wanting to blow his chances or his cool, Matt raised the collar of his coat against the fur and the bone-freezing damp of Milan in January. The girl flipped up the collar of her ankle length, heavy wool number as he worked out how to pitch his request for her number, and even more importantly, her name.
Matt had to avoid sneezing and wheezing through his next move. If he did it right, the object of his affections would say a glorious “yes” to his invitation for a post-Great Artworks coffee. Though as she pushed her hat back down firmly on her head, it was clear that his window of opportunity was closing fast. He stepped back to let the old lady go on ahead so he was strategically placed to close the deal.
He opened his mouth to deliver an invitation that would not only sell refrigerators to Eskimos but have them begging for freezer units, only to find his face full of fur wrap, courtesy of Fur Girl. Her attempt to swathe herself with thousands of Euros worth of allergens produced a wicked grin from the girl of his dreams, as she made a rush for the door.
Once he’d finished sneezing, he and the culprit were left alone. Matt risked opening his mouth again to try the “please be careful with the allergens” speech, but she wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes were all that were visible amid the fur, and if brown eyes could be ashen, these were. She was ghost-frozen on where his girl had been and now wasn’t. He’d never seen anyone’s life visibly passing in front of their eyes before, but he recognized it instantly.
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