Exile's Return

by Gayle Greeno

  “Think I like her,” he muttered, dipped his head under the afghan to check on the ghatten and used the opportunity to side-glance his grandfather. “Think she might even like me.” The warmth surged up his chest and neck, across his face to his hairline. No way she could ever like him, not ever, not when she knew about Kharm.

  “Love is strange, eh? Well, love is a lot like an afghan— amazing that something with so many holes in it can keep you toasty warm. Too solid and you’d have no space to breathe. Why, I remember when I courted your grandmother just after we’d landed, I used to shake and quiver, sweat and feel clammy all together, trip over my own oversized feet...” and the reminiscence wound on, safe and sane, secure and solid, no shifting ground of uncharted emotions to baffle him. The ghatten dozed, and the boy half-listened, wondering, wondering so many things.

  The ghatten strained backward, coarse twine loop chafing under chin, clawed feet splayed in the dirt, neck trapped by the length of twine tethering her to Matty’s hand. Eyes yellow-green as pine needles, circled by an edging of black, then pale buff, reproached, but Matty’s mind remained silent, his own. He tugged again and her neck elongated, ears folding forward where the loop had risen, threatening to slip over her head. Her body didn’t budge.

  Henryk squatted, pinned spectacles to his nose with a dirty finger, fiddled with the bow behind one ear. “I don’t think she likes it.” Red-pink eyes peered over the lenses. “Fact is, I kin tell she doesn’t like it, look at her ears.” He picked at his sling, tucked his free arm inside to comfort himself.

  Mouth slashing a parallel line with set, dark brows, Matty increased the tension on the twine. A contest of wills. “Granther said I couldn’t take her out unless I leashed her, said she’d upset people, dash around, get into trouble. Can’t afford that ”

  Utterly serious, Henryk’s bare heels dug divots as he pivoted from one polarity to the other, measuring their willpower. “Mayhap if you asked her? I mean, asked her to come, she would. Nobody likes being dragged along, not having any say.”

  “Come on, Ryk-Ryk. She’s an animal—and she’s got to learn obedience.” Still, despite his grandfather’s words in his ears, he couldn’t but wonder if Ryk traveled the right track while he floundered in the mud, mired by his own beliefs as to what was right and proper. Or what Granther deemed right and proper. Always the need for seemliness, propriety, especially as a Vandersma. Granther might not exhibit the taint, the oddities visited on his offspring, but Matty was all too aware of them. Not to mention the position encumbent upon him as grandson of the village mayor, purser from the Spacer Antigua, and Earth citizen. No wonder the village respected, looking up to, and even feared Granther at times.

  “Come on, little one, ”he encouraged, trying to talk to her as she talked to him, without speaking aloud, littering the sharp, early morning air with their sounds. “Please, I’ve got to show them there’s nothing to fear from you. Or from me, ”

  he continued pleading silently, not expecting her to pay any heed. “Make me proud, love. My perfect little striped Kharm-kitty. Act wild and they’ll think it’s true. ”

  “Silly!” the ghatten sneezed, sat down hard and began to scratch under her chin with a hind foot, digging at the loop around her neck. “Silly them! Silly you!” Rolling onto her back, she began to bat at the leash when it slackened above her head. “Asking better than ordering. Why fear me? Why fear you?”

  Backing off, he pulled lightly at the leash. “Then you’ll come along?” he asked inwardly, added a little tongue-clicking sound to entice her. “Let me show you off. Show them how good you are, how clever. ” An inspired pause. “And how beautiful. ”

  “May ... be,” she teased back but snapped to her feet, following at his heels as he began a slow, dignified walk down the dirt path that divided the village’s hovels in half. Ryk capered in circles as they approached the central well that served the community of seventy-four souls. Matty caught his breath. There, drawing a second bucket of water, stood Vatersnelle Houwaert, sturdy bare legs splashed and glistening, feet muddy, as she swung the leathern bucket to the well’s lip. Pressing the twine into Henryk’s good hand, he rushed to help Nelle wrestle it clear.

  With a jealous squawk at his desertion, the ghatten bounded after him, pulling the twine from Ryk’s lax fingers. Before Matty knew it, the ghatten was clambering up his pants leg, tiny claws digging through the material, pricking tender skin. Unsure what else to do, he scooped her onto the narrow shelf of his shoulder where she twisted, finding her balance before settling to survey the view. Her claws stung, and he wished for a shirt for protection, better yet, a leather vest.

  Nelle leaned near, nearer to Matty’s face than he’d ever had any right to dream, and cooed at the ghatten, traced a finger along Matty’s neck and shoulder, teasing her. The ghatten pounced, and Matty winced with pain, a pleasure since it provoked Nelle’s nearness. “She’s so cute! I heard you’d found one alive. Are you going to keep her? What’s her name?” she demanded. “I don’t see how anything as little and sweet as that could be bad luck!” Her indignant face pressed next to Matty’s. “You sweet thing, you,” she crooned, lips practically touching his ear. His knees shook.

  “Khar ... mmmm,” he breathed back, stretching the “m” into a hum of contentment before ending on a rising inflection. “Kharm—that’s her name.” He hadn’t told anyone else, not even his grandfather, not even Henryk.

  She .cocked her head, tried it out, working to elongate the last sound. “What does it mean?”

  And Matty found himself at a loss, had no idea what, if anything, it meant except that the ghatten had shared her name with him. Did it have a meaning? He wasn’t sure. But Henryk charged to his rescue. “It means ‘O beauteous beast whose stripings mimic the shifting shadows and sunbeams that dance across the forest floor.’ ” Pale, near-invisible eyebrows shot skyward, daring contradiction. And Matty didn’t, because somehow Henryk had the right of it, even if he hadn’t realized it before. He nodded beneficently, as if to confirm Henryk’s dutiful memorization.

  The larchcat now draped like a fur collar, soft paws dandling his chest, Matty groped to prolong their visit. “Help you carry the water home?”

  “No, I can ...” then she nodded, overwhelmed by shyness. “I’d like that. Mayhap I won’t slop so much and Mama won’t yell.”

  Intent on showing off his manliness, Matty caught up a bucket in each hand, sure his knees were going to buckle, his shoulders wrench out of their sockets. How could she manage this morning, noon, and night? But Nelle already stood beside him, large freckled hand clasped on the rope bail next to his, Henryk on his other side, his good arm trying to lift the other bucket. It helped—minimally. The three struggled, adjusting their strides, balancing the buckets level, and started down the main walkway, swinging wide to the right-angled path leading to the Houwaert hut.

  The third one back, farthest from the main path, almost solitary from the other huts, and none of them noticed when Rommel and Kuyper Killanin loomed in their path, Rommel’s ribs ringed with purplish-red and black bruises where the earth had snatched at him, nearly devoured him as it had Willem. That was why the hamlet felt so quiet this morning, drawn in upon itself, mourning one of their own, even if no one much cared for him. Later a collective sigh of pent-up relief might ruffle the air that one less Killanin existed, but for today, grief at the loss overrode pragmatism.

  Kharm trilled deep inside Matty’s head, a note of warning, not quite fear, that jerked his eyes from Nelle’s hand so close beside his. “Bad ones! Bad ones here!” How could he have forgotten the Killanins, forgotten that Willem lay dead?

  Kuyper fingered the lump on his head, legacy of Nelle’s rock, and stood well away, though he still eyed her, smacking his lips, eyes rolling suggestively. Rommel planted himself foursquare in their path, hands on hips. For once both boys looked reasonably clean and combed. “Pa said to remind yer granddad service’ll be at sunset. If he ain’t nothing better to do, Pa’d ’p
reciate him givin’ the words.” He hawked and spat, barely missing Matty’s foot. His face twisted, low brow knotting, mouth sour with the next words. “And Mam says I’m to thank you for helping save my life.” A sullen half-glance, as if to judge whether someone watched from the hovel that served as the Killanin home. His hand shot out, practically jabbing Matty in the stomach.

  Wonder of wonders, the hand was outstretched, not fisted, but the stiff fingers just missed spearing him beneath the ribs. Without breaking eye contact, Matty set down the buckets, brought his unwilling hand forward, and shook, debating what to say. Damned if it’d be, “Sorry about Willem,” when he wasn’t in the least, but some words of condolence, consolation were required. That was what being adult meant, swallowing the truth and saying the needful thing to keep the social fabric intact. “Know you’ll miss Willem, both of you. Hard to lose a brother like that.”

  Inside his head words rang, cruelly chiming, reverberating, “Hate ya! Hate ya! Gonna get ya! Hadn’t been for you and your stupid white-belly uncle taunting us at the river, none of this woulda happened! Crazy stupid Vandersmas spread trouble, disaster, wherever they go. Oughta run ya out of the village, not let your troubles, your craziness flood the rest of us! Well, beware! You’re in for it now, You’ll pay for Willem’s death!”

  Spine prickling, the larchcat heavy-warm around his neck, his mind jolted at the realization that Kharm plucked their internal thoughts and planted them inside his head, unmasking the truth behind the offered hand he clasped, the seemingly sorrowful face. The hairs on the back of his neck rose high enough to mow. Worse, his own piously neutral platitudes rang equally false. Starship shit! Kharm hadn’t told Rommel and Kuyper, had she? “No, no, no,” the voice wreathed itself inside his head. “Show you poison thoughts, fair outside, foul within. Kharm always knows the truth, helps you know the truth.”

  They towered over him, hands reaching, and Matty fought not to take an involuntary step backward, betray his fear as their hands dove at him. But to his amazement they each grabbed a bucket, water slopping, and trudged toward the Houwaert house with their burden. Kuyper swung back once, a crest of hair climbing down over his low forehead. “We’re even now. So beware.” Matty sought for Nelle’s and Ryk’s hands. Somehow Ryk was crammed between them, burrowed there for safety.

  As if they played crack the whip, Nelle pivoted, swinging Matty and Henryk around and away, voice urgent. “Come on, come on! No sense giving them another opportunity. ’Less you plan serving yourself to them on a platter.”

  “Platter-Matter! Matty on a platter!” Nerves high-pitched, Henryk crowed as he pulled Matty after him. “Gardens? Plenty of grown-ups there.” And because Henryk constantly searched out safe havens, Matty didn’t resist, the larchcat dangling around his neck, burdensome as the true thoughts of the Killanin brothers.

  They scuttled back to the square, ignoring those at the well, and dashed right on the cross path toward the communal fields planted between the town and the river. But there was one more danger to avoid, and clearly many other townsfolk had felt the same through the years, because a small, beaten path wound off the main trail and its final house, aloof from the rest of the village. The path swooped behind it, not a shortcut but a longer way, albeit a safer one for not passing by the front door.

  Henryk sought the path instinctively and with good reason, to Matty’s mind. Mad Margare inhabited the final house— trader in tattered, tatty odds and ends (“Trash or treasure,” she’d cackle, waving the object aloft), beer brewer, mad-woman, and sometime prostitute—though those reckless enough to pay to be bedded showed true desperation by seeking oblivion in Marg’s arms, safer to seek it in her beer—and finally, Henryk’s mother. Granther, he suspected but had never dared ask, hadn’t paid for Marg’s services. Had lain with her out of some strange, sorrowful compassion for her “touched” mind, her craving for comfort and consolation as great or greater than everyone else’s. Some said she’d gone mad because of the Plumbs, mind shaken lose of its moorings the day of her precipitate and early borning, induced by the explosion that had killed her parents. Others that she’d been touched by the strange, inexplicable longing afflicting so many of the planet’s firstborns: the searing knowledge of two perfect worlds lost—one far distant, the other here beneath their feet, taunting with childhood memories of before the Plumbs. One distant world they’d never see, not now, not with the Spacers gone, and a world they tentatively lived in, never sure if or when it could be put right. Why not give up, go crazy, or decide everyone else owed you a living?

  Although he’d been only seven, Matty distinctly remembered the morning Mad Marg had thrust her way into Granther’s house, pushing him aside as he’d opened the door. Her dark hair writhed and twisted around her shoulders, her face swollen with tears, nose dripping as she bawled and screamed like a mooncalf. Behind her she towed a makeshift child’s wagon, cobbled together from the odds and ends she’d found, liberated, or collected and traded. Balanced on the wagon was a willow basket, and inside that a tangle of rumpled sheeting, cast-off clothes. And against the dirty rags a whiteness unlike anything he’d ever seen, a white so pale he could almost stare through it, trace tiny threadings of deep blue and red. Worst of all then, the whiteness ghosted, shifted, opened a raw pink mouth to scream, then relaxed weakly, tiny eyes like pink carnelians popping open. A baby! A boy baby, the strangest he’d ever seen.

  Granther had dropped the biscuit pan, scooped the child into his arms. “Margy, Margy, are you all right?” he demanded, dandling the baby against his chest, narrow infant shoulders lost behind the span of his hand. “Is it ... he ... all right?”

  “Your fault! Yours!” Marg’s bare, dirty feet beat a tattoo on the floor as she spun round in a desperate dance of expiation. “Paler than death! All his hopes, all mine, washed out! Washed clean away! Told you not to make love under the light of all Her moons, but you said no, ’twas superstition! She brings all sorts of bad things—the Plumbs, this! All gone wrong! Again!” Her breath hooted in great gasps, sobs wrenching her body. “Just keep him far away from me!”

  And that was how Uncle Henryk had come to live with them. An icy ball bounded inside Matty’s belly as they scurried along the path, Henryk shielding himself behind them. Nelle stroked his fine, old-man’s hair, pulled the boy close to her sheltering side. And just as Matty thought they’d passed undetected, Mad Marg bustled out the back door, pan of wet clothes in hand, ready to hang them.

  Never be rude to Margare, never taunt her, never rile her. She is what she is, and she can’t help it. He’d heard Granther’s words, obeyed the rules, the ones that allowed both Marg and the townspeople a modicum of dignity in any daily converse they might have. She has her place in life, you have yours. He plastered a smile on his face, willed his feet faster, the larchcat perched on his shoulders, watching the world flash by. Not another confrontation, please! Weren’t the Killanins enough for one day?

  But Marg spied them through the canebrake she cultivated to protect her backyard from trespassers, bulling through as if the brambles didn’t scourge or sting her skin. What Matty vaguely recollected as a distant, disheveled beauty had long fled or lost itself in fat, loose flesh swinging from arms, unbound breasts momentously swaying beneath her loose dress. Mayhap, just mayhap, she hadn’t spotted Henryk yet. Mayhap the larchcat would distract her. “Hurry!” he hissed. “Get along! I’ll stay and talk with Marg!” But Henryk had already pulled Nelle into a trot, her youthful face distressed, unsure whether to stay or go.

  “Morning, Mistress Margare.” She stood, peering through the final layer of brambles, chewing reflectively on a split twig, one of her impromptu clothes-pegs. “Pleasant day, isn’t it?”

  A humming buzz arose from her throat, vibrated her lips. Please, he thought, don’t let this be one of those days when she’s forgotten how to talk. She hummed some more, then her mouth dropped open, the clothes-peg falling free.

  “One less Killanin scum.” Her face split in a sunny smile
. “Too bad the earth wasn’t hungrier for the other ones. Indigestion, mayhap.” She licked her lips to taste the thought “Evil reaches out to evil. Oh, yes, that’s why Marg’s always so good!” A finger the size of a sausage darted in his direction. “What’s that?” she shrilled, “What’s that around your neck? It’s alive, isn’t it? It caught you, oh, oh!” She plunged onto the path, brambles bending, snapping, brandishing her fists as if to sweep Kharm off his neck, stomp her into the ground, and dance on the bloody shreds.

  Unconcerned, Kharm jumped from his shoulder and he seized her in mid-flight, but she squirmed free and landed, a tiny ball of striped fur prancing toward Marg. And wonder of wonders, a bashful smile shimmered, her eyes seemed to clear, take on life, consciousness. Squatting, she dangled arms between ponderous thighs, urging Kharm forward with wiggling fingers.

  “Poor twisted mind, poor clouded mind. Such sadness, so much fear masking such goodness. Can’t help, oh, can’t help enough, just smooth her as she smooths me.” The ghatten let herself be cupped in those hands, cradled against Marg’s heart, and a wild purring broke forth, Marg ecstatically swaying as if to a lullaby.

  “Lost, alone, no Mama. Ah, I know how it is,” Marg crooned between the pointed ears. Afraid it might go on forever, Matty didn’t know what to do. Worst of all, he kept overhearing bits and pieces, stray thoughts that Kharm transmitted into his head from Marg’s. Starry spaceships, would he end mad as she? A wave of taunts flooded him, threatened to swamp him, echoed and reechoed, trapped in his head. What Marg endured on an almost daily basis, what he’d sometimes heard directed at himself at a distance or at Henryk closer up. How could she stand it? Wisps of conversation ... “Mad Marg, butt like a bullock, brain buzzed as a bee,” right to her face, as if she didn’t understand or care. How could he escape it all?

  As if sensing a kindred sympathy, Marg rose with ponderous dignity, gravely handed Kharm back, touched his cheek with a finger. “How’s my ... boy? My Henryk?” A tear startled loose, carved its way down her face. “Take good care of him for me.” And Matty backed away, nodding, smiling, more frightened of the new Marg than of the old one.