by Gayle Greeno
“Ye been cheatin’ on me, Robey? Cheatin’ on me all this time? Equal partners you always swore. Share and share alike. Seemed like goods cost too dear. Wondered sometimes why I could nose out a bargain and you swore it was dumb luck. Why, Robey, why?” he pleaded. “Your da served under my mum when the Spacers landed. She stood for you on your naming day. We’ve known each other all our lives, grew up together. You stood beside me at my wedding.”
Backing as far as he could until the press of bodies hemmed him in, the heat of Jurgen’s sorrowing anger burning before him, the crowd’s heated expectancy behind him, Robey finally halted, unsure whether appeal or defiance would work. “You niver understood, Jurgen. Wheel, deal, that’s the way it’s done. Nothing has but one price. We don’t charge our customers just what that beef cost us when we serve up a steak, a bowl of stew. Everything gains in value if you improve it. You deny me my value keeping me out back. Up front I’d make everyone easy, laugh more, drink more, jolly them along. Spend more! But you have to gimlet-eye everyone, not lose your control. Well, I just wanted the extra value I deserved now.” Pale with rage, Jurgen sprang across the counter, thrusting the cash box in Matty’s hands.
“But it’s me you’re cheating! Me! Fair charge on the beef and we’d botha made more on the meals. Why’d you have to skim it off the top?” His fists were clenched. “Is there a reason, Robey? ’Cause if there was one, a good one, I’d have loaned you money if you needed it, even though I’m saving to get help for Tasha.”
“Just wanted it,” Robey swaggered with forced bravado, glaring at the smaller man. “Deserved it and wanted it. So I took it.”
Jurgen launched himself at the larger man with a vengeful scream, practically foaming at the mouth, pummeling him. Wrath endowing him with strength far beyond his size, Jurgen swept Robey off his feet, the two rolling on the floor, fists pounding, kicking, biting, gouging. The crowd dodged, hemmed them tight, intent on every blow, crude chaffing and cheers, yells of encouragement for one or the other, wagers being laid.
Breathless, Matty crouched on the counter, unsure when he’d taken refuge there, clutching the cash box, the hard corner jammed in his ribs. Kharm had dashed rafterward, clear of the fray, he hoped. He’d started it, all his fault, again. He’d spoken without thinking, without weighing the consequences. He gasped as Robey grabbed a knife, the blade pressing closer and closer to Jurgen’s neck. Unable to lever the arm back, Jurgen did the only thing he could do—sank his teeth into Robey’s wrist, hanging on like a snapping turtle. Robey screamed and cursed as teeth ground deeper into flesh.
How to stop it, how? No one else would willingly, no one cared, applauding and shouting at the entertainment. Shout that he’d lied, that the price truly had been seven? Not good enough, Robey had already acknowledged his guilt. He threw the cash box with all his might, hitting Robey on the back of the head, the box splitting open, coins, dials, wire bits scattering, decorating the crowd’s feet. The money melted like snow on a hot griddle, vanishing as greedy hands grabbed, some retrieving it for its rightful owners, others intent on their own rewards.
With screams and oaths Jurgen and Robey separated, Jurgen spitting blood, and both men crawled about, united in collecting their money, shoving feet aside, scraping at the dirt, rooting under tables. Jurgen rose unsteadily, cash box cradled against his skinny chest, stuffing his random gatherings inside as Robey added his own contributions. “You little troublemaker!” he snarled. “You be out of here by morning! Don’t need your kind here, you and that damn larchcat of yours!” Speculation dawned in both men’s eyes, a strange, growing surmise not to be credited. “How does he know what he knows? Always something about him that discomforts you—if not him, it’s that damn cat staring at you.”
But Matty hadn’t waited, had already scooted loftward, tumbling his belongings together, checking for his own pouch of hard-earned coin.
“Going now?” Kharm slithered out of the shadows. “Best we do, I think. Spring’s coming.”
Now she scratched against the little dormer window, shuttered tight against the cold. He could hear shouts below, bellows of complaint, camaraderie, stamps and cries for more ale. Things progressing toward normal and business booming, to boot. Whether they’d ever again look on him as part of the normality was questionable.
He scraped out the window, waited for Kharm to leap on his shoulder as he steadied himself on the window frame below. From there to the back door’s overhang, then slide down the post. Awkward with the ghatta and the tote sack, but he did it. Down the road now, jog-trot quick as possible before anyone left the tavern, wondered where he’d gone. Where he was going.
Where was he going? He didn’t know but made his feet move faster, strangely exhilarated. Up the river, not-the Vaalck, but the Kuelper. As he trotted along the beaten down track beside the river, he heard a sudden growl and crushing crunch, a pregnant silence, then another rumble. His face lit with joy. No, not a Plumb, but spring, the frozen river was breaking up, heaving itself into new life!
She lounged in the back of the surrey, eyes downcast on the floorboards, her feet, content to ignore the countryside changing around her, becoming more and more familiar. Each farmstead, patchworked rolling hill, crossroad, the clustered houses of the village brought a pang of recognition. Had she been the only one to change? “It shouldn’t hurt so much to come home, ” she mindwhispered, “I didn’t think it would be like this.” Ever since they’d left the inn this morning she’d refused to take more than a covert interest in her surroundings, as if denying their presence repudiated their reality. Now she swore the surrey’s wheels revolved faster, hurtling her into the past, Cady and Davvy innocently and unwittingly conducting her backward to another life.
“Think about Matty and Kharm, where they’ll go after Gilboa,” Khar urged as she met F’een’s aware eyes looking back at them. She wasn’t sure how much the ghatt understood, still so young, so untried in the Spirals, but his empathy poured over her, striving to ease her distress.
Doyce swung her foot up, let her heel thunk down on the boards, Davvy startling in surprise. “Don’t want to. I’ve got other things on my mind right now!”
“I know.” Khar was wearying, tired of playing the game of distraction she’d played all morning and into the afternoon, including convincing Doyce to eat their hurried picnic lunch. A reminder of an inescapable truth: she was hungry again. Worth a try? “I’m hungry,” she announced, half-crouched to flee under the front seat in case she’d guessed wrong.
“You’re always hungry!” Doyce groused. “I swear being pregnant has made you hungrier than before, if such a thing’s possible.” She reflected on it for a moment. “It is possible, I know. Sorry. A hand slipped from the coat pocket where it had been hiding, tightly jammed, for most of the afternoon. Cradled in it was a crinkled, oiled paper packet, and a variety of smells assailed Khar’s nose, made her lick her chops at two of the smells. The briny, garlicky scent she ignored, hoping it hadn’t permeated the other tantalizing odors—cheese and, yes, nutter-butter! Unwrapping the package, Doyce began to munch the pickle, pried two sandwiched crackers apart so Khar could lick the nutter-butter and cheese. The ghatta did so, enthusiastically. And aware, as well, that she’d distracted Doyce a bit longer, diverted her from noticing the scene ahead.
A mantis-thin figure propped on two canes like vestigial limbs stood silhouetted on the rise to their right. A hitch and a shift, and the figure hung one cane over the crook of her arm, shadowed her eyes with her free hand to stare in their direction, into the setting sun behind them.
“Hello, the wagon!” The voice rose high, pitched to carry, and two shy mourning doves burst from cover, wings clattering their dismay. “Doyce! Is it you? Is it really you?” Clambering onto her knees on the seat, Doyce strained upward as much as possible without hitting the surrey’s roof. She jammed the last of the pickle into her mouth to muffle an inarticulate cry—of happiness, of distress, Khar couldn’t decide. Neither, apparently, could Da
vvy or Cady as she brought the team to a halt, both of them looking over their shoulders.
The figure bolted down the rise, hunching and bobbing clumsily yet making good time, sure-footed despite her appearance. As she neared, Khar observed one hand jammed into a leather sheath that secured her grip on the cane. The leg on that same side acted equally recalcitrant, dragging, then swinging in an unbroken line as if braced from ankle to thigh. “Francie? Francie!” And Doyce had jumped from the surrey, running equally awkwardly toward the advancing figure. They collided in an embrace so tight that Khar cringed, thinking of her own swollen belly.
With Davvy’s and Cady’s help they boosted Francie into the surrey, leaving the braced leg angled out, resting on the sideboard. “Straight ahead until you reach the elm,” Francie instructed belatedly, “then follow the wagon ruts. Sorry it isn’t worn smoother, but we don’t get out much.” All her attention was directed on Doyce. Khar studied this new person, this person with so much of the same makeup as Doyce and pondered what she saw.
The hair a darker brown, fewer red highlights than Doyce’s, as if the sun had had little chance to burnish it, but grayer, chronic low-grade pain leaching the color from it. The oval face thinner, much thinner, cheeks sunken, a thin neck and deep hollows at the collarbones peeking from the open neck of her jacket. But the eyes, the same level hazel ones the ghatta knew so well, yet etched with an equal but different sort of suffering, cross-hatched with humor lines at the corners. All in all, a good human being, Khar decided, and as flexibly tough as a piece of old, well-cured leather if need should arise.
Nervous, Francie babbled, her faulty hand freed of the leather cane support, waving and gesturing, Doyce wincing, drawing inward each time she focused on it. “Are you really staying for a while? And the others as well? We’ve already decided how you’ll sleep. Tight quarters, but glad to have the place full again. We’ve been bustling ever since we received your letter.”
“How’s Mother?” Doyce ventured at last, twisting uncomfortably away from the hand.
“Better than she has a right to be. Gave us both a scare, me more than her, I think,” then stopped, suddenly. “I ... you’ll see the changes... of old age, if nothing more. I suppose I see them, but they register on me differently, more gradually since I’m with her every day. Seeing her after all this time, well, don’t be shocked. It happens to all of us.” Her good hand stroked Doyce’s arm to comfort.
Doyce’s face tightened; she rubbed at her forehead as if it pained her. “We’ve all grown up, grown older, Francie. What I meant was how’s Mother taking it that I’m finally returning after all these years?”
Francesca Marbon was not a stupid woman, nor an unsympathetic one. “It was a shock—at first. But a good one,” she emphasized. “I think the stroke panicked her, made her really think about her life, not just her fear of failing me. Your coming home gave her the will to fight the fear of another stroke, and that fear can be as lethal, as debilitating as a stroke. She sat there the night the letter came and rocked back and forth all evening, clutching the letter. Sometimes she’d list every task, big or small, we had to do to get ready, other times she’d just stare into the distance.” Francie plowed ahead, anxious to explain, “She’s happy you’re coming, you know. We both are. She only saw you for such a short time when you were ill last new year, staying with the Wycherleys. She swore you didn’t recognize her, didn’t know she was there, and it ate at her heart. She wanted to stay and nurse you, but she was torn—didn’t dare leave me alone. No convincing her I can cope without her. But she was so afraid for you.
“And now this!” Francie reverently cupped Doyce’s stomach. “It’s as if you’ve gained everything, finally, everything she wanted for you, prayed for so much. That we’ve both prayed for you.” Keen eyes assessed Khar as well, and the hand shifted, held palm down, fingers curled inward, for sniffing. “And not the only one pregnant, I see. This is the first I’ve met Khar. Greetings, beauteous ghatta.” Khar purred her welcome, nudged the hand. Did Francie like nutter-butter, would she share it?
And now they arrived, the old house standing weathered and slumped from the years, no longer quite as tall and strong and proud as she’d remembered. And smaller as well from an adult perspective. One and a half stories, deceptive because half the interior opened straight to the roof to accommodate the largest loom, its upper windows shedding light straight down on it. Otherwise there was only a combined kitchen/sitting room downstairs and two snug bedrooms upstairs—one that she’d shared with Francie, the other her parents’.
“You’ll need a shoehorn to make us all fit!” she grinned, aware it was lopsided, uncertain but desperate to postpone the inevitable meeting with her mother.
Francie gestured back, beyond the house. “We’ve been dusting and cleaning Father’s old work shed. Got two neighbors in to help. Not perfect, but it’s tidy and warm, even scoured the woodstove, soot aplenty and three birds’ nests in the chimney pipe!”
She nodded, strangely numb, hearing but not hearing, relieved at least one thing had been neatly settled without argument. Where was she? Where was Mother? Doyce kept staring toward the house, and it stared blankly back at her. Simply enter as she always had, as if she’d never left? Or did she require an invitation to do so?
How she could have missed the eyes boring into her from the side opposite the house, she never knew. Should have registered their intensity and nearness immediately, their yearning as she’d pivoted to stare at the house. “Ma’am,” Cady said politely, and Doyce whirled around.
Even with Francie’s warning, her mother’s altered appearance shocked Doyce to the marrow, the tiny figure dwindled away, small as a child’s oversized doll. But arms and hands made strong and wiry by years of loom-work reached for her, spilled her sideways into a fierce hug. Maybe, just maybe, it would be all right. And she began to cry with relieved joy against the familiar bosom.
Talk flooded the old kitchen that night, talk that battered and eroded, nearly foundered her with waves of conversation she hadn’t journeyed here to have. Better to wait, let them come naturally over time, or let them crest now even if they swamped her?
“Force it and everyone may drown—yourself included.” Khar dabbed a paw into the nutter-butter crock, now empty, except for the smears she licked off pink toe pads with gusto.
“I’d rather let the storms rage, have it done with, know where I stand. ” Stubbornly, she glared at the ghatta, at the smear on her nose where she’d tried to jam her head into the crock. Wooden scraper in hand, her mother bent laboriously and reclaimed the crock, Khar mewling in disbelief until she scooped around the insides with the flat blade and wiped the residue on the rim for Khar’s tongue to reach.
“Thank her for me!” Khar almost groaned with delight but her tongue was too busy. Despite her rapid progress, she aimed a final mindthought Doyce’s way. “There’s something you should discuss with her and Francie. Davvy, you know.”
For a moment all her own private demons of loss and regret paled in comparison. The enormity of her lapse of judgment, what she’d sequestered here in this isolated hamlet made her doubt her own sanity. Yes, she owed Swan, and, yes, she owed Davvy the chance to live in safety. But was there safety here? Safety anywhere? Or merely an illusion of security, a lulling danger that could threaten them all? Worst of all, Davvy lacked savviness, like a wild animal reared in captivity, gentle and without fear, sure everyone would always nurture him, only to be abruptly returned to the wild, unsure how to protect himself, blithely unaware of who or what presented a danger to his welfare. And she’d brought this innocent into the middle of her own home, perhaps placed them all in jeopardy because of his presence.
Davvy and Cady now slept in the workshop, the Novie Seeker scarcely older than the boy, and both exhilarated and exhausted by the journey and the new environment. Would Cady know what to do if rumors of Davvy’s presence reached the wrong ears?
Using the bench to lever herself up, her mother rose slowl
y from Khar’s side, seemed aware where her younger daughter’s thoughts wended. “No stranger, no traveler, has ever been stinted by the Marbons—whatever food we could spare, shelter, whatever needful that we could supply.” She swallowed hard, her throat constricting, “But I got to know for certain, Doyce, satisfy my own mind, what we’re harboring here. Is he ... what I’m thinking he is?”
Francie stirred, smothered a sharp exclamation as the needle pricked her finger. She glanced between them, assessing the situation, the two figures poised on the verge of speech but both curbing their tongues, but then, both of them were near phobic about openness. Their mother finally continued, “Inez, I said when I read the letter, the girl’s tiptoeing round, wanting but not quite willing to say it straight out. Always that way, hugging her secrets to herself as if saying them aloud would shatter them.” An almost baleful look in Doyce’s direction. “Just like ye never could ’fess up right till the end that ye yearned to be a eumedico. Had to rub my face in the fact that you’d snuck off and gotten accepted, won scholarship money as if you didn’t need me or my help!”
Oh, Blessed Lady, it was swelling now, poised to break over her, pent-up years of anger pouring like a millrace, things she’d wondered about, dared not acknowledge, submerging the hurt inside. Pacing the kitchen, fists tight, head jutting forward, Doyce claimed her place in the fray. “You’d never have let me go! You always swore you needed me to partner in the weaving after Da died, or you and Francie couldn’t earn enough to live on! You always rubbed my nose in it, how much you depended on me, how much you needed me. But I wanted something else out of life, and for once I wasn’t about to let you leech it from me! Not feel guilty anymore about Francie, about you, about this life!” Defiant tears streamed, while the child inside her kicked and pounded in tempo with her throbbing temples.