by Alma Boykin
“Mgrf?” Anna asked before choking on the biscuit. Rada turned her a little and patted Anna’s back until she coughed up the offending crumb, then wiped her snotty nose.
«I don’t know. I’d think a human toddler would make a very effective anti-mugging device. You could threaten to make the mugger change her clothes after she eats redroot.» Zabet sent a mental image of Anna’s one and only encounter with the brightly colored food. «How long before it wore off?»
“Almost two weeks,” Rada sighed.
“Mrgf? ’Ink. Wan’ ink!” Anna brandished the remains of her snack and the two adults ducked out of the way.
Two weeks later Rada signed Anna into the day crèche in St. Elizabeth, Kansas. “Does Anna have any allergies, Mrs. Van Gadren?” the minder asked.
“None that I know of. She’s eaten peanuts, wheat, strawberries, oranges, and dairy products without problems. However, Anna likes to bolt her food, so I serve her small amounts at a time,” Rada, now called Rowena van Gadren, cautioned.
“Thank you for telling me. And how much English does she speak?”
“Less than she understands,” Rada sighed. “I try to speak to her in Dutch and English at home, but things have been stressful since her father’s death, and,” Rada shrugged.
The woman’s mouth made an “o” of surprise. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Van Gadren.”
“Thank you. Anna understands English and I’d prefer to have her learn more.”
After more discussion and paperwork, Rada eased out of the building, half-expecting to hear an ear-splitting wail. Nothing. She smiled with giddy relief as she hurried off to meet with her new employer.
Mr. Matt Gochenaur studied his new paramedic. “I must admit that I’m surprised that you have U.S. certification, Mrs. Van Gadren.”
She shrugged. “I was given the option of dual certifications and decided it might be worth the extra effort since I already spoke English.” She glanced away, as if trying to control herself before adding, “I had no idea it would become so necessary, I assure you, sir.”
The blond shift supervisor nodded. “I understand.” Rada relaxed a bit. If he accepted her story, than everyone else should. “Well, let’s start getting you familiarized with our set-up and local protocols.” He got up and led the way into the main work and waiting area.
When Rada collected Anna that evening, she couldn’t help smiling. The brown-eyed girl saw Rada coming and staggered to her feet, calling, “Mum! Mum!” Rada scooped her up and cuddled her, ignoring the sticky on Anna’s fingers and face.
“Hello love,” she said in Trader, then switched to English, “have you been a good girl today?”
Energetic nodding answered the question and Anna snuggled closer. “Wuv Mum.”
A few days later, Rowena and Anna van Gadren attended the family mass at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. Anna stayed somewhat quiet, content to stand on Rada’s lap and look around. Afterward, Rada introduced herself to Father Patrick Moore, asking, “Is there a time when I could speak with you about Anna’s religious education?”
“Certainly, Mrs. Van Gadren. Tuesday mornings I’m free.”
That Tuesday Rowena van Gadren enrolled Anna in the parish pre-school and Sunday School. “Her late father was Catholic,” Rada explained. “I’m not really a believer, but Anna’s father wanted her raised in the faith.”
“Certainly, Mrs. Van Gadren. Do you by any chance have Anna’s baptismal certificate with you?” the priest inquired.
Rada started, then stopped and swallowed hard. “It and many other family papers were lost at the same time that Geert died, Father Patrick.” She shook her head, her expression terribly sad. “I know that she was baptized, but because of difficulties I had at that time, I don’t recall which parish it was in. Geert and I never discussed it. I assumed that he would always be here.” Every word, aside from the man’s name, was the pure truth.
Rada risked lowering her shields to read the priest. She felt sympathy and understanding, and his decision not to press matters. He assumed that her husband had died in the terrible storms and flooding that had literally decimated the Netherlands the previous year. There was no need to upset the grieving widow, Fr. Patrick thought. Rada withdrew with a silent apology for the invasion of his privacy. “You are aware of our parish school, Mrs. Van Gadren?”
“Yes. When the time comes I will enroll Anna there if circumstances permit,” Rada assured him.
Rada left the church with a list of books and information sites about Catholicism, and an invitation to join the parish mothers’ group. She had just enough time to get to work before her shift started, and Rada smiled, then frowned. Things seemed to be going too well.
Two months later the proverbial shoe dropped. “Rowena!” Clark called from across the workroom, his hand on the telecom mute switch. “Lady from the crèche for you.”
“Hello. This is Rowena van Gadren.”
“Mrs. Van Gadren, you need to take Anna home. She’s running a fever and has spots.”
Indeed, when Rowena arrived to collect her daughter, Anna sported a very impressive set of brilliant red polka dots. Miss Helmland apologized profusely. “I’m terribly sorry, Rowena. Irwin Biffle sent Cliff here last week after he’d been playing with a child in their neighborhood with cowpox.”
Oh well, Rada thought. Better cowpox than smallpox. She dosed Anna with a mild painkiller, gave her a bath in warm water with bicarbonate of soda, and put her to bed in damp pajamas to help her cool off. Rada hoped that she would not catch the disease herself! That would be awkward, she snorted, shaking her head as she called in to see who could cover for her for the next few days.
“Rowena, are you sure there’s no one who can watch Anna?” Marcy begged. “We’re so short-handed right now, and with the end of the budget year Mr. Gochenaur doesn’t want any overtime.”
“Look, I know, believe me, Marcy. I’ve tried four sitters and a lady from church, but no one can come in and watch Anna until she stops being contagious.” Rada ran a hand over her hair as she peeked in on her daughter. “I suppose I could bring her in and just tuck her into that unused equipment cubby in...”
“No! No, no,” Rada smiled at the vehement interruption. “I’ll call Andi and I think Preston said that he’d be willing to fill in if we were short.” Marcy had three children at home, none of whom had gotten cowpox yet, Rada remembered after finishing the call.
Rada considered Healing Anna, but decided against it. She wanted to, especially as the fever rose that evening and the little girl began coughing. “It never rains but it pours,” Rada sighed, quoting Clark from work. She set up a vaporizer to help humidify Anna’s room and then rocked her, humming a lullaby after giving her a dab of cough syrup. “I’m sorry, lovey,” Rada apologized in a whisper. “I do not have the energy and you need the immune system boost.” And Rada had specialized in trauma and emergency medicine, not pediatrics. She could too easily cause as much harm as good. Once Anna fell back to sleep, Rada tucked her daughter back into bed and lay down to nap on a pallet on the floor by the door.
Oh, Rada wanted help. She dearly wished that she had someone who could take a turn watching Anna and who she could talk to about the little girl. And about other things as well. A man’s face floated up from Rada’s memory and she heard friendly laughter in her mind’s ear. Yori would know what to do, Rada recalled. He had three siblings, and how many cousins? And he liked being around children. Well, even a HalfDragon couldn’t live forever, and he’d be, what? She tried to recall. At least three hundred years old, well past the lifespan of HalfDragons, and Rada felt a shiver of sorrow at the thought. Oh, stop that, she scolded herself. He’s long gone and you know damn well that you’re courting disaster as it is, by staying in one place for this long. With that firm reminder, she dozed off.
She shot bolt upright when she heard Anna choking. Rada grabbed Anna and tipped her forward, pounding her back until the girl coughed up a plug of mucus. Rada moved to a seat in front of the v
aporizer, sitting the girl upright to help drain more mucus from her airway. “This is not just cowpox,” Rada whispered, now truly scared as Anna coughed, choked, and whimpered, clinging to her. Exhaustion be damned, she reached out with her Gift, adding her energy to Anna’s own immune system response, speeding up what would have taken another day. At the same time she tipped the girl forward, patting her back and helping her cough up some of the phlegm in her lungs. I don’t know what Your name is, other than god, the alien prayed to the Catholic deity. But Your little one really needs Your help right now. The priest says that You especially love children, and this one is in trouble. Help her, please.
For the rest of the night Rada held Anna, rocking her. The fever broke just after dawn, leaving Anna drenched with sweat, her hair plastered to her head, pajamas soaked through, but sleeping soundly. Rada laid the girl down again and, bone-weary but relieved and grateful, fell asleep on the floor.
Four years later Rada thought back on that night as she watched her daughter, now clad in a white dress, white shoes, and little white veil, walk down the aisle of St. Joseph’s church, her new rosary held firmly in her folded hands. Father Adam smiled at the cluster of children gathered for Confirmation and First Communion. Rada smiled too. You’ve kept an eye on her thus far, she told Anna’s god. I hope You are ready for the next few years, because she’s going to be a handful for both of us.
Rada still was not certain how she and Anna had survived the “why” phase. And having to explain to Anna that, even if one’s mum did occasionally sport fur, cat-ears, and a tail, one did not inform the rest of the kindergarten of this little fact. Nor did one talk about Aunt Zabet’s scales and talons. And then there was the well-meaning lady at the parish school who insisted on trying to spoil Anna out of pity for the “poor orphan.” Since the “poor orphan” had been caught a few hours earlier trying to climb out of an office window that she’d pried open and climbed through while she was supposed to be at recess, Mrs. Van Gadren had been less than patient with the dear old soul. Which only made the lady try harder, Rada sighed. It had been an educational four years.
To Rada’s astonishment, Anna van Gadren grew up to be as normal as one could expect of a girl raised by a Wanderer and with a True-dragon aunt. “Gee, Mum,” Anna sighed ten years later, rolling her eyes as she and Rada followed Zabet through a market on Delphi 2. “Of course I’m normal. You never gave me a chance to be strange.”
There just might be a hint of truth in that, Rada thought. She’d encouraged Anna to spend as much time as possible with her friends’ parents, seeing how relationships worked and what marriage could be like.
“Speaking of strange,” Rada replied aloud, cutting off another exposition on why strange was cooler than normal. “Am I correct in understanding that you want to go to art school?” Anna had finished the required education courses earlier than usual for her cohort.
“Yes. I found one in New Mexico that has sculpture and ceramics as well as painting and computer art and that stuff,” she waved her hand.
“And I assume you cannot take a sculpture course over the computer,” Rada observed.
“Of course not, Mum. Be real.” Another eye roll.
I wonder if I was like this at that age, Rada mused. No. Because I’d have been floated out the airlock. She shivered, imagining what the Traders would have done with a free spirit like Anna had turned out to be.
“And they are offering me a really good scholarship,” Anna mentioned as an afterthought.
Zabet looked over her shoulder without breaking stride. «Sounds promising. I could use a fine-arts appraiser. There are not many outside the auctions and big Marts who do sculpture,» she reminded Rada.
“See, Mum, Aunt Zabet thinks it’s a good idea,” and the young woman leaned against Rada before dropping back to make room for a Berpart pushing a large, square something on an anti-grav pad.
“I can’t win, can I?”
Two voices, one silent and one a laughing soprano, replied, “No!” Then all three women laughed, Rada shaking her head at the strangeness of it all.
7: Drak’s Café
“Come on, Mum,” Anna fussed, dragging Rada Ni Drako by the arm, or trying to. Anna’s last growth spurt left her taller than her adoptive mother but not as strong.
Rada braced against the pull. “Young lady, just what is your hurry? It is only 1700.” She did not have to be at work until 2000.
“If you want to get a table, we need to get there early,” Anna insisted. She pushed part of her hair out of her eyes. “Everyone is eating at the new place and you have to try it.”
“Very well.” Truth be told, Rada just wanted to go home and prop her leg up for an hour or two before going on duty. She’d been on her feet most of the day already and her bad knee throbbed. Rada followed Anna down the block and around a corner to what had once been a very nice house. Rada thought she remembered one of the other paramedics reading about the house in the local news feed and asked Anna, “Isn’t this the house that required all the permits and the zoning change?”
“Yeah. Someone thought it was a real original Queen Ann and not one of the replicas.” Anna snorted, sounding very much like her Aunt Zabet. “As if anyone with an eye couldn’t see the differences.” Architecture was Anna’s current fixation and she’d begun hinting that Rada’s rented house failed to meet her new aesthetic standards. Rada liked the garish red, white, and hunter green colors of the place, but wondered just what one needed with a tower built into the structure.
“From what I understand of the preservation board, anything old-looking comes under their purview, or so they believe.” Rada leaned on the handrail as she followed Anna up the steps leading to the front door.
A young man opened the door from inside. He smiled, “Welcome! Table for two?”
“Yes, please,” Anna agreed, and the ladies followed a hostess to a table near the kitchen door.
“We’re expecting a very large party at six, so this is all I have right now, unless you want to eat on the terrace.”
“No, this is fine,” Rada told her, accepting a menu card.
“Great! If you need translations, there’s a reader in the table, along with the ordering software. Mike will be your waiter.”
Rada and Anna slid their menu cards over the discreet scanners. A complete translation and ingredient list appeared on the tabletop and Rada hurried past the vegetarian selections and the pasta to find something with meat. “Beef curry, medium,” she decided. “And Thai iced tea.” She looked at Anna. “Do you want something before the main course?”
“Yes, please, Mum. They have those little skewers of roasted meat,” and Anna scrolled up to the item. Rada ordered two servings. Then she took a good look at the menu card.
The little pictures along the top seemed familiar and Rada pulled her loupe out of its pouch and studied the designs. “Hmmm.” They looked like sigils. There were Houses in central North America, and perhaps one had provided the seed money for the restaurant. Rada shrugged and put away her loupe. The patterns could also be decorative devices with no meaning at all.
As the ladies waited, Anna launched into a description of her school day. Rada pulled her House signet on its chain out of her collar and played with it. “And then Sister Scholastica forgot to log out of the instructor mode and so we could see all the test answers along with the questions.”
“Oh dear. So do you get any credit for the quiz?”
Anna flopped back against the padded bench and gave a loud sigh. “No. We have to take a make-up quiz. Sister Scholastica is no fun.”
“Thai iced tea?” A man asked. Rada raised her hand and the waiter, Mike according to his nametag, set a large glass of milky-looking tea in front of her. “Water?” Anna nodded, studying the dark-haired young man intently. “And two satays, with sauce.”
Rada thanked him and he bustled off to another table. “How are you doing in your other class?”
“I’m sooooo frustrated,” Anna threw her
arms open and almost drowned the satay when she back-handed her water glass. “Oops, sorry,” she caught the glass as Rada snatched the meat out of harm’s way.
Rada gave Anna a stern look. “You know better than that, Miss Anna.”
“Yes, Mum.” A more subdued teenager gnawed one of the satay sticks, dipping it in the peanut sauce between bites. “Anyway, I hate drafting.”
“I thought you liked it last week?”
A gusty sigh followed and Anna started brandishing the skewer. She caught herself before disaster ensued and set the sharp stick down. “That was before we started drawing parts and pieces. There’s nothing creative about drafting. I can’t add any details and the instructor is soooooo picky. Besides,” she added, “everything drafting is done on computer now.”
“Beef curry, medium hot?” Mike set the plate in front of Rada. “And here’s a pitcher of water.”
Rada laughed. “I don’t think I’ll need that, thanks.”
As he slid Anna’s mild vegetable-coconut noodle curry to her, Mike asked, “Have you eaten here before, Ma’am?”
“No, but I’m used to spicy food.”
Mike straightened up and smiled. Rada caught a flash of amber colored eyes with slit pupils. “You might be surprised, Ma’am.”
Rada waited until he’d left before taking a bite of the golden curry. Warm flavors bloomed on her tongue and she chewed carefully. When nothing untoward happened she swallowed and took a larger bite. Not until she’d begun the third bite did the full power of the curry strike her. She felt her face flushing as every muscle in her esophagus ignited, her tongue began to smoke, and the lining of her sinuses commenced throbbing. She could still taste the complexity of the sauce, but fire joined the flavors in her mouth and nose.