by Gayle Greeno
Swinging west out of Taunton, partially cheered by the news, Doyce squeezed her knees against Lokka and eased her into a gentle trot for a few dozen rods just to manufacture the pretense of a breeze. The late afternoon sun pounded almost as molten-heavy as it had at high noon; autumn might well be on its way, but the blazing sun hadn’t accepted the season’s verdict yet. Khar balanced nonchalantly on the pommel platform, then settled down to nap through the ride. Doyce felt sorry for her and Lokka, but they’d be in the shade soon, once they hit the main road running into Cyanberry. She dragged her sleeve across her sweaty forehead and finger-raked the clinging tendrils of hair off the back of her neck. Prickly heat rash if this kept up. The mere thought made her itch, want to scratch under her damp waistband. At least the inn at Cyanberry was good—not up to Myllard’s standards—but a comfortable, clean place. Maybe there’d be time to get her clothes washed. And better yet, dried. One clean change left in her bags, and the thought of sliding them over a freshly scrubbed, talc-soothed body made her tingle.
More travelers headed back to Taunton than journeyed on to Cyanberry, but traffic flowed light in both directions. She tapped her heels against Lokka to speed her up and pass an oxcart loaded with green ears of un-husked corn tasseled with dried brown silk and children looking ready to spill over the sides at the least jounce. Two waved, and she returned the salute, easing Lokka to a slower pace once they had a fair lead on the rumbling cart and its dust plume. A welcoming line of shade and the smell of moisture wafted toward her, telling her nose that a stream rushed by farther ahead, parallel to the giant elms overarching the road.
She drew an idle finger around the edge of the pommel platform. Khar, eyes slitted, reached out and tagged her with a lightning paw.
“One,” she ’spoke, face smug.
“Oh, you’re going to be like that, are you? Keeping score?” An old and favorite game, and no matter their age, there wasn’t a ghatt, ghatta, or ghatten who didn’t love it. “Want to make a wager on it?”
“Fresh fish tonight?” The ghatta dissembled a look of boredom, but her tail tip waggled, giving her away. “Three of my taps to one of yours?”
Doyce laughed. “Generous odds, and foolish. I feel lucky, despite the heat. And if I win, you have to walk Lokka until she’s cooled off. And watch the stableboy to make sure she’s properly brushed and curried.”
“Done! But I’ll eat fish while you’re supervising the stableboy.”
They played on and off as they rode. Doyce set herself to wait until the ghatta appeared to be asleep and then tried side maneuvers. Or watched until a passing rider distracted Khar before she tried once more. But the ghatta anticipated each move, tagged her first again and again.
“Twelve, me. Two, you.”
“And the commonfolk say ghatti can’t count! Wouldn’t they be surprised.” Doyce felt disgruntled; she didn’t really expect to win, she rarely did, but the score usually came closer to even. The ghatta was routing her. “We’ve still a few leagues to go, so look out!”
They continued playing, and Doyce concentrated, knowing that in theory she had the advantage: only she could attack, the ghatta could only defend. Whether it was because she was now wholly involved in it, or for some other reason, the score began to climb in Doyce’s favor. The ghatta’s moves came slower, each defense more perfunctory than the last. Another three tags and they’d be tied. Doyce considered that a victory.
She momentarily dangled the ends of the reins in front of Khar’s nose to distract her. All’s fair in love and war. Her right hand swooped from under the edge of the platform and she snapped the ghatta on a white paw. Tag! Emboldened, she essayed the same move again, sure that Khar would never expect she’d try it so very soon. A blur of white as the ghatta scored, and one flashing claw lanced the ball of her thumb.
“Ouch! Khar, no claws! No fair!” A fat drop of blood welled from the puncture, and she shoved her thumb under the ghatta’s nose. “Look at that,” she snapped.
A small feathering of a sigh floated inside her head before the ghatta answered. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to, didn’t mean to hurt. Just hot and tired.”
“Well, so am I! Just because I was winning!”
“Sorry. I’ll fix.” And a pink tongue licked across her hand, the burrs on the tongue rasping, but not unpleasantly so, across her thumb. The ghatta examined it. “Better?” She licked again.
The images flickered in Doyce’s mind, paralleling the ones in Khar’s thoughts. Colors quivering, sensations, emotions, kaleidoscoping into patterns. She laid her trembling hand on Khar’s neck and traced down her spine. Her throat constricted. “Do you remember?”
The mindspeech hesitant, interrupted by Khar’s breath, as if she were a child, falling asleep and struggling against it. “Yes ... no ... I was little, tittle ... tell me ... tell me again.” A deep longing welled within the ghatta ... not a Major Tale, not a Minor Tale, but hers, hers alone ... and Doyce’s. Just theirs.
Continuing to stroke Khar’s back, Doyce began to order the events in her mind.
A delight of a late spring day, balmy, cloudless, every hue of earth and sky so vivid they might have been freshly mordanted by the dawn, the sun enlivening rather than fading them. Varon’s sister Glenna pulled Doyce, protesting, to the door. “Come on, it’ll do you good. Look at it, how can you resist such a day? If Lytton can agree to take time off, even suggest it, how can you refuse?” For an instant the role of matron and mother disappeared as she dance-stepped beside Doyce, who regarded her dispiritedly.
Despite her mother’s and sister’s pleas that she at last return home where she belonged, her refusal had been instinctive and adamant. She could not go back—and she could not go forward, not yet, so she had chosen to stay with Glenna and her husband Lytton and their children since the fire, since the deaths of Varon and Briony and Vesey. Not a moment when the enormity of her loss didn’t pierce through her heart, chilling her, making a glorious spring day as drear and lifeless as the frozen gray-white winter. Even her part-time work as ledger didn’t arouse her mind, make her think of other things. She penned the entries, cross-listed them, sent monthly summaries to the capital. Each mark of her nib, each stroke of ink on paper made her aware she tallied human lives, crossing them out one by one, again and again.
“Glenna, I’ve work to do.” Hard-won patience in her tone.
“Nothing that can’t wait a day. To all be out together, going somewhere new, it’s a treat. The whole family together!” Glenna cajoled, sliding an arm around her waist. “It’s something we’ve never done before, something we’ve never had the chance to see. Please, Doyce, think of it, seeing a ghatta with her ghatten! The children will never forget it! Neither will I!”
That was the last thing Doyce wanted to see, the memory of the Seeker and his ghatt Bondmate questioning her, querying her about the fire and the deaths. The ghatt’s eyes on her ... and she trembled despite the warmth of the day, drew comfort from the circling arm around her.
The reverse of it was that Glenna and Lytton had offered her such kindness and concern, asking nothing from her she wasn’t ready to give, making space for her in their lives as well as in their house, treating her with unstinting kindness. Maybe that was part of the problem—everything they did was so discernibly conscious and conscientious. Given her grayness of spirit, her unexpected outbursts of tears and moping, she wondered how many others would have continued to try to include her in their lives. Glenna’s request was so spontaneous, so generous, that an effort must be made to reciprocate, and she would.
With a small but genuine smile on her lips, Doyce turned. “Well, we’d better not keep Lytton and the children waiting, then, had we?” Glenna linked a sisterly arm with hers and, laughing, tugged Doyce toward the wagon where Lytton sat, the three children piled in the back on fresh-smelling straw.
“Doyce, welcome!” Lytton’s deep voice rang out. “Up with you both.” Doyce shook her head and boosted Glenna onto the high seat.
“I’ll sit in the back with the children. More space for everyone.”
Lytton clucked to the heavily built, gray workhorses and they plodded off, harness bells jingling a raucous tune. Glenna squirmed round in her seat, talking over her shoulder at Doyce. “Isn’t it wonderful? Just think, if Lytton hadn’t met that man—what’s his name, Lytton?— in town yesterday and done him that favor, we never would have had the chance.”
“Dexton Phelps,” Lytton answered the prompting. “I had some extra seedlings, his didn’t come on so well. No need to charge for what you plan to cull.” A sunburned arm came back automatically and forced the six-year-old to a sitting position in the rear of the wagon. “Down, Marek, don’t stand and bounce. You’ll bounce out on your head.”
Marek, blessed with his father’s sturdy build and his mother’s dark coloring and inquisitiveness, pulled himself upright again to lean precariously over the wagon side and watch the wheels turning. Doyce snagged his waistband and dragged him back. “Do you know him well?” she asked, trying to think of something to contribute to keep the usually shy Lytton talking.
“No. Seen him around since he and the ghatta finished their service and came back to take over the farm. Knew his cousin when we were boys.”
“Just think, coming back to run the farm, just like anyone else, and him having been a Seeker and everything.” Glenna was plainly awed. Most people had limited contact with Seeker-Bond pairs; meetings were likely to be on a formal basis, rather than an informal one, and many lived out their lives with no need to consult the Seekers.
“They all have to retire sometime,” Doyce commented. Although she had had but one experience with a Seeker, she knew more about them and their ways from her stint as a eumedico. The Seeker-Bond mental communications had fascinated the eumedicos although they had little hard data to support their hypotheses. Not until she had left the eumedicos had she understood the fascination and the urgency behind their inquiries. She had read what records existed in the eumedico archives and later transcribed the Chief Conciliator’s case reports in town during her stint as a ledger before and after Varon’s death. “They have lives to live for years after their Seeker days are done.”
“Well, he’s the only Seeker our town’s ever had. That’s quite an honor.”
“Can’t be more’n thirty-five,” Lytton added, with a surprising turn of loquaciousness. “O‘course he was unusual in that he’d just started a family before he was Chosen. Married real young—in a burning hurry, if you catch my drift. Little boy, and a little girl on the way when the ghatta picked him, and him scarce eighteen. His cousin said Dexton didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when it happened, nor his wife either. But once a ghatt’s ’Printed, there’s no going back and saying, ‘Sorry, I can’t.’ ”
“What happened with his wife and children?” Glenna tugged his arm, scandalized by the thought of a man deserting his wife and family.
“They stayed behind at the farm, got a hired hand, and Dexton visited them when he had leave.” Lytton’s grin stretched toward his ears. “Couldn’t have been too bad, had another two children. One more than we’ve managed!” His sunburned neck went redder, ears crimson, as he threw his free arm around Glenna’s still slim waist. “Though not through want of trying!”
Doyce clasped her arms around her knees, embarrassed at overhearing Glenna’s and Lytton’s easy intimacy, and she watched the children tumble like puppies over each other, burrowing in the straw and popping out. The sound of the wheels and the steady plodding of the horses’ hooves counterpointed by the bells soothed her. She thought she spied a blue-black satin cloak by the edge of the road, undulating in the faint breeze. Barn swallows; she realized on closer inspection, two score or more, daubing at a puddle of mud left from last night’s brief shower. They busily packed mud in their beaks and then flew off to mortar their nests. One sailed over, its white throat and buff waistcoat, its elegant V-shaped tail knifing the air. The wheels sang, “Going to see the ghatta, going to see the ghatta.” She dozed and sank, buoyed back to the surface by sounds of chatter from the children, deeper adult voices in harmony.
“Come on, Doyce, we’re here.” Glenna’s voice cut through her pleasant drifting, silver knife slicing the golden cord of sleep. Unfair, so long since she had slept really well, without dreams or memories. “Doyce!” And the children tumbled over her to run across the yard while the youngest waited patiently, thumb in mouth, for an adult to lift her down to touch the ground.
Hallos rang back and forth across the yard as Dexton and his elder son, a boy in his late teens, came out of the barn. Twins, a boy and girl of about ten, burst from the house toward their father, while a girl of perhaps sixteen, carnation-colored dress casting a splash of color against the white of the house, raised her hand in a wave and continued inside with her bucket of water.
Wiping his hands against his trousers, Dexton walked toward the wagon, shook hands with Lytton. “So you made it, decided to make a day of it? Chores have to wait on a day like this. Your visit’s a bona fide excuse.” He smiled all around, nodding pleasantly. A rich, well-modulated voice, a typical Seeker-trained voice. “This is my eldest, Piet, and the twins are Marya and Martin. You’ll meet my wife and elder girl at lunch, if you’ll stay.”
Leaning against the wagon tailgate, Doyce drank in the freshness of the scene. The twins warily circled her nephews and niece, herding them together as if they feared them to be recalcitrant sheep, ready to break and run in any direction. Knowing the children, especially Marek, she had to admit it was a distinct possibility.
“So, come into the barn and see the ghatten. Sischa is still a little excitable and overzealous about watching them, so move slow and easylike. Don’t try to touch them, only myself or Piet, here, can.” He led the way into the barn, sliding a wide door open on its track to admit more light.
“How many ghatten are there?” Glenna wanted to know.
“Two, and both seem strong and healthy. A husky tiger male and a smaller female, but she’s got the perfectly matched stripes, and wee white feet with a dab of white on her face and more on her chest and belly.”
“Only two?” Lytton sounded doubtful. “Any barn cat can drop six without blinking. And have them in with your shoes the next morning.”
The farmer threw his head back, crowed with delight. “Don’t let Sischa hear you say that! She wanted the wife’s blanket chest in the worst way. And no matter who I pleased, someone was bound to be upset.” The boy’s face darkened, scandalized at comparing a ghatta to a barn cat. “Ghattas don’t breed as well or as easily as their cousins. A litter of three is rare, and to have more than one in a litter live gives luck to us all. This is Sischa’s second and most likely final litter. We’re blessed to have two survive this long.”
“What do they seem to die of, then?” Doyce’s medical training reasserted itself. Any eumedico needed some familiarity with animal illnesses, both as to how they might affect humans, and sometimes because, like it or not, eumedicos were the only trained personnel nearby to treat an animal in an emergency.
“Don’t rightly know,” Phelps confessed. “It’s not necessarily that one seems weaker than its littermate and dies, or that some illness sweeps through the countryside. You just get up one morning and go out to check, and one’s dead, and the poor mother crouched over it, mourning.”
Hazed darkness inside the barn, duskiness made darker by the square of light from the door, until their eyes adjusted to the dimness. The smells of dust and hay, fresh milk, warm cattle, flats of seedlings waiting to be set out. A chicken scratched busily near the door, and Marek darted after it until one of the twins, the girl Marya, pulled him back into the group.
“There, in the stall to the right. Now go gentle and quiet-like, children, just as if it were your mama with a new baby.” Dexton swung the smallest of his visitors, Tess, up into his arms for a better view.
The ghatta Sischa had molded a compact nest for herself in the straw. Stretched indolently on h
er side, the ghatten nuzzling at her, she raised a wary head, one front paw flexing, claws flashing in and out. She was white, with irregular patches of butterscotch yellow in mosaic clusters around her body, her eyes a spring apple green ready to swallow Doyce with their awareness. She didn’t think she was being probed, her mind searched, but those eyes engulfed her, as if deeply concerned as to what sort of person stood before her. Doyce considered the question and felt herself wanting to please the wide green eyes rather than be found a disappointment in some obscure way. What a silly thought, to want to please an animal.
She squatted for a better look, amazed by the ghatta’s size and look of confident power. Sischa turned her head away and swatted lazily at the male, impatient to nurse more, then licked the smaller female.
“What are their names?” Glenna whispered.
The boy, husky voiced but not quite at full manhood, answered, scornful of such ignorance. “They don’t have names yet. We can’t name them, they name themselves when they ’Print.”
Rounded belly swaying, stiff-legged with indignation, the little male rushed at his sister, butting her with his head. His spiky tail quivered with the injustice of not being allowed to nurse any longer. The female squeaked, her small, milky gray-blue eyes wide with betrayal at the unjustified attack, but held her ground, uttered a baby growl. The male ghatten might be bigger, stronger, but in a contest of wills, the little female had no intention of yielding.