by Gayle Greeno
Occasionally the Widow had let him spell her at the plow, and he’d realized how much bigger he’d grown, muscle to match the darker down decorating his upper lip, discovered one night in the sliver of mirror the Widow’d hung on the wall. He’d preened, admiring it without seeming to admire it, holding his hand across the down, quickly removing it to judge the contrast. As to the plowing, she’d allowed he’d managed credibly but that she still carried more bulk, the weight needed to drive the plow point deep and straight to match the other furrows.
She stopped now, dragging the reins from her neck and looping them around the plow handle, stretched extravagantly, bodice buttons close to popping. Squatting to work his hands around a particularly large and awkward rock, Matty thought she could almost blot out the sun. She grabbed for the water jug, tilted her head back, and drank so deeply he wondered how she breathed, then poured some over her head. Squinting down at his back and waist as he strained, she announced, “Pants. Tonight. Let’m out.”
Thunderstruck, he dipped his head, faltered. “But I haven’t got anything else to wear.” His shirt didn’t hang that long, oh, long enough, but the world was in for a sight if he bent over.
“Sack. Wrap yourself round. Bashful!”
By that evening the idea still lacked appeal as he huddled in a comer, burlap sack even skimpier than he’d realized when he’d cinched it round his waist. Kharm stared at him, candlelight reflecting in her eyes, inspecting him right below the waist, making him itchily self-conscious about the protuberance there. He wasn’t, he reassured himself, attracted to the Widow like that, but it always reared its head when he least expected it these days.
Kharm had been acting coyly skittish lately, edgy and flirtatious, making outrageous murraowing sounds, arching her back and rubbing anything in sight. Now, as he stood on one foot, then the other, scratchy and bothered, praying the Widow would concentrate on her sewing fast as she could and toss his trousers back to him, Kharm abruptly let out a seductive coo and dipped her forequarters, hindquarters high and swaying. “Kharm,” he begged, “stop acting the fool! Don’t make her notice me any more than she has to!”
But Kharm threw herself on the floor, arching, rolling on her back, digging in her shoulders, caught in some strange paroxysm of delight he couldn’t fathom. She rilled and cooed again, began a dainty screech. To his everlasting shame, the Widow rubbed her eyes and speared him with an appraising glance. Blood rushed to his face, his body flaming hot all over. “Gets silly sometimes, she does,” he allowed. “Sorry ’bout her antics.”
“Sorry?” The Widow snorted. “Why sorry? Spring. Everyone, everything feels it. Wish old Reinholt was alive.”
“What?” He clutched the sack closer, not sure he understood, left with a blank that needed filling in, expanding upon. Something he knew, or at least sensed but wasn’t catching. Then, for no reason at all, he became scared. “Is there something wrong with her, something making her act like that?”
Sharp teeth bit the thread and his trousers sailed through the air at him, entangled on his head since he didn’t dare let go of the sack to grab them. “Heat,” the Widow’s lips drew back, as if she’d nip him as she had the thread. When he still looked blank, she expanded, “In heat. Wanting a mate. Announcing she’s ready. Larchcats aplenty coming courting, fighting and screaming to win her.”
It dawned on him, sick certainty twisting his stomach, souring his mouth. Impossible to miss, so obvious! But not his little ghatten, his precious little one, his own. And now, now he’d lose her, she’d run off and mate, abandon him, revert to the wild, find one of her own to love. Just as it should be, just as it would have happened if he hadn’t rescued her, tried to civilize her.
He slunk behind the storeroom door and, sheltered, pulled on his trousers, Kharm following and rubbing against the door, threatening to open it and expose his nakedness to the Widow. “You’re going to leave me,” he accused. “You won’t want me any more, won’t want to share my thoughts, won’t have time for me. ” Unprepared for what the loss of her would be like, the wrenching ache it would leave—until now. Would even miss her thoughts stealing into his, telling him truths he didn’t want to know.
She rubbed and purred louder, stopped short. “Leave you? Why leave? Love!”
“You won’t need me if you have a mate and ghatten. They’ll take all your attention, nothing left to share with me. And that’s the way it should be, the way nature intended it. ” It frightened him; he sounded too much like Granther. Was his wisdom born of such equal pain? But his grandmother had left for an ideal greater than love and family, deserting husband and son, Matty’s father.
“No, no, no!” The ghatta wandered restlessly, paced, torn between the door outside and the room here with Matty. The Widow watched, attentive and aware, warmed by the wordless epic struggle of surging need. “Don’t want ghatten yet! Don’t want to leave you! Help me not to leave you! Help me!” Outside a hoarse merow racketed up and down the scale, a shivering, urgent wail, beckoningly seductive. The hair on the back of Matty’s neck rose and prickled. “Mine! You are mine, I am yours! So weak! Oh, that call! Help me!”
Frightened eyes entreating the Widow, he begged silently, mouthing unformed words, desperate to ask but not sure what to ask for, how to ask. Like a statue come to life she rose, checked the outer door was latched, the two windows closed tight. “Don’t want her pregnant, so young.” She hesitated. “Only one thing to do.”
“What?” Any hope, any hope at all he’d embrace, even the Widow—where had that thought come from? “Please, tell me. Is there something I can do? I don’t think she wants to, but nature’s awfully strong.”
“Aye. Lock’er up.” A deep breath as if girding herself, and she folded arms across her broad bosom to barricade herself inside. “Shed. Noisy, though.”
“Lock her. up,” he repeated obediently, still hazy on the ramifications of her advice. “Lock her up in the shed.”
“Aye. Day and night. Don’t let her loose, no matter the racket inside or out. Should calm in an oct or so. May drive us mad screaming to get free. Your choice. Her choice. Lucky no neighbors close.”
Bending, he stroked the quivering striped sides, hugged her to his knees, felt her pulling away against her will. “Kharm? Your choice, not mine. I can lock you in the shed, bring you food and water, sit with you when I can. Or you can go free, go back to your own. ”
She gave a scream and jumped for his shoulders, and he cursed the lack of the sheepskin. “Do it! Now! Oh, Truth! I long for what those cries promise but don’t want to leave you. Can’t suppress the urge. Must ignore it—just love me and our Bond! I’m not like other ghatti, I am Bonded—yours!”
With the Widow’s help he’d wrapped Kharm in his sheepskin, the Widow’s touch on his arm tingling all over, blood surging and swelling, the Widow equally affected, licking her lips, canting her hips. She’d run her hand down his neck, under his collar, only to snatch it away as if she’d been burned before she flung open the door, shoved him and his bundle outside. The slam of the door propelling him, he marched unsteadily into the dark, red and yellow eyes pulsating all around him in the torchlight, and deposited Kharm in the shed, checked doors and windows, loose boards, the stone foundation where the walls met. Hands over his ears to block her cries, he spun and rushed back to house. Found the door barred, stood there panting, aroused, and alone.
And that was only the beginning of his anguish.... As one day followed another, the ghatta still incarcerated for her own protection, Matty toiled harder than ever before, working with a passion as if physical labor would damp his own bodily desires, block his thoughts, Kharm’s cries savaging his brain as she fought to conquer her body’s biological urges. Teeth clenched, temples throbbing, questioning everything he knew, Matty pried rocks free, rolled or carried them into piles, worked the mattock so fiercely he almost chopped his own toes numerous times. Throughout it all, the Widow remained silent, but so, so achingly near that a carelessly outstretched
arm could graze breast or buttock as she hovered, watching him sweat and strain, still wordless, as if that night’s near-loquacity had bankrupted her of speech for the following days. Nights were no better as he spread his pallet in the shed to escape the Widow’s earthy, salt-slicked scent, her moistened lips, shared Kharm’s imprisonment, sleep broken and fragmented as his randied thoughts.
Pausing, Matty wiped his hands on his trousers, wished the Widow had shortened the legs the way Granther did each spring, but he’d rolled them as best he could. Digging fingers into the dirt, he burrowed to determine precisely how far down this particular rock reached, dug deeper, seeking the curve that would indicate he’d reached bottom, could sink the pry bar and lever it free. It seemed to extend forever, hiding deep in the ground, coupled with the planet’s very core. Buried and obscured—hidden. What was truth?
He gasped and dug harder, dirt flying. Was there always a genuine, original truth lying in wait to be discovered? Indisputable? Were there different kinds of truth? And how could Kharm possibly know them? How could she locate them in people’s minds when they didn’t seem aware that they held them?
Indisputable, huh? He rammed his hand and arm harder into the soil, fingers groping, snarling as a fingernail ripped. Like 1 + 1 = 2? Except Granther had explained a different sort of number code to him, numbers that formed the tiniest basis for the computers, those strange, sentient machines that had made the spacecraft function. To those machines, Granther had said, 1 + 1 = 10. Binary system? Base Two? Something like that. If they were both true, did they represent different facets of the same truth, expressed in different ways? Binary—the Widow was binary. Stop it, fool! Dig! Think harder, puzzle it out!
Yes—at last, a bottom to the rock, deeper than any he’d ever before encountered. Have to dig more before jamming in the pry bar, find something—another, smaller stone—for a fulcrum. Question: If a person says he’s a coward—knows it from past experience, past actions—that’s true, but does that truth always hold in the future? Once a coward, always a coward? Or was that a finite truth and future truth still to be written? How much could you change yourself, or were you always what you were inside? A true kernel of yourself that you never really became acquainted with. And did he want to? Maybe that was Naked Truth?
Worse than pulling a tooth, heaving this rock free from the middle of the field. Why bother? The Widow insisted it had always been there, that she plowed around it every year, just as her late husband had. Sunk too deep to remove. So why try?
And if there was truth, what was a lie? Did you always lie on purpose? Or could you lie through ignorance, misunderstanding? He rammed the pry bar home at an angle, sinking it deeper into the earth, boring toward what he believed was the bottom of the rock. But what he believed could be false—couldn’t it? So did that make it a lie? What the Widow believed—that this rock would remain here for the ages—could be equally false. But what about those who lied on purpose? The Killanin boys’d throw a lie at you as readily as a rock. Different ways or kinds of lying? He sank in his heels, flexed his knees and began pulling the bar toward his chest. You could ... umph! ... distort, twist the truth. Umph! ... evade it or ... umph! ... fabricate it. What was the expression, “made it up out of whole cloth”? Cut it to your fancy?
The muscles on his back and arms bulged as he swung around on top of the bar to put his shoulders into it, leaning his weight on it. Movement? Had the rock shifted, heaved a little before settling back? The strain ridged his neck, shot down through the muscles of his gut. Mis ... represent? Conceal something, refuse to admit it? Or totally deny it to yourself? Everything swam before his eyes, black and red spots floating thick as midges, breath whistling in harsh, burning gasps from distended nostrils.
A squalling cry from the shed, a clawing and scratching at planks, desperate sounds. “Truth is everywhere! If you want it, if you don’t lie to yourself.” Another cry, coaxing, seductive. “In the air, in the earth, in everything—not knowing, not acknowledging is blindness!”
Yellow spangles wriggled like maggots, joined the black and red swarming dots. Blindness—not such a bad idea, mindblindness, that is. Simply Matty as Matty, not the vessel into which Kharm poured her knowledge of the world’s perfidies. How did she do that? He spat on his hands, grabbed again, knuckles bulging white with strain, the cords on his neck popping. An unexpected bulk joined his on the pry bar and heaved with him, the Widow adding her considerable strength to his puny efforts. And with rising excitement he felt the rock yielding and shifting, reluctantly rising, erupting above the earth, tumbling on its side. Free at last, not immovable, permanently planted for the ages!
“Done it, boy! Ye had faith. Reinholt didn’t, I didn’t. Always trusted him. You didn’t believe me without testing my words.” She slapped him on the back; the blow stung his aching, moist flesh, made him tingle all over. Pride that he’d persevered, conquered something, even if only a stone.
“Conquered! Truth found!” Kharm’s mindvoice plangent through the sticky afternoon air, ripe with unshed rain. “Wanted to mate ... but wanted you more! Need you, and you need me!”
The Widow shoved her personal water jug into his trembling hands, not making him traipse for his bucket and dipper, impossibly distant in the shade at the field’s edge. He gasped as the sweet water poured into his mouth, down his throat, wondered if he could drink forever, throat working convulsively. The cold water hit his stomach fist-hard, cramping in shock. He lowered the jug, gasping, one arm clutched across his gut at the new pain. Straightening with care he returned the jug, and the Widow raised it in a little salute before she drank.
“I think,” he dug toes into the cool, damp soil, peered into the gaping socket of earth where the stone had rested, “that we let the ox haul this. Don’t think I can roll it to the side.” He tried, experimentally, critical of his efforts, “But then, maybe I could. Just don’t know.” Truth was like trying—you couldn’t know until you tried.
“Ox it is, boy. Set your mind to it, ye could. But lack the liniment you’d need.” He grinned for the first time in days. Grinned harder as he realized that the yowls from the shed had tapered off, peace descending on his ears and in his brain. Kharm was sleeping, relaxed, lust slowly fading from her body. And the Widow just looked like a nice, large widow-lady, no longer an object of desire. “Aye, another day or so and she’s safe to be let out.”
PART FOUR
Doyce squirmed to resettle her back pillows against the cedar bench tucked in the grape arbor behind the house. Most of the leaves were withered, crisped with autumn, and they clattered in the occasional breezes. A few small overripe bunches of unpicked grapes remained, shriveled and brown, but exuding a resinous, winy smell. Absently she plucked one, squeezed it between her fingers, licked at the oozing trickle of thick juice.
“Well?” Khar sniffed the grape, inspected it from all angles—feh, musky, not to her liking. “How did it go? Did you enter Matty’s and Kharm’s world?”
“Thought you’d know that. Weren’t you monitoring me?” Had she been left to trespass alone through another age, cross invisible boundaries with Khar absent, not sharing the journey? She clutched the tattered diary, leather sticky against her hand’s rising heat-fear, the grape juice. “Weren’t you?”
“Of course,” Khar soothed. “But how much can you remember, how much do you remember? It’s not a fantasy land to avoid the here and now.” A white paw grazed her knuckles. “Besides, what I see and hear through you may not carry the same weight. I’m more tuned to Kharm than to Matty.”
Despite herself, Doyce winked at Khar. “Sex, eh? Does it every time. The wanting, the longing...” and stopped, physical longing for Jenret leaving her hollow with unfulfilled desire.
Huffy, the ghatta snapped, “I’ve had enough of that recently, thank you very much. And so have you. Both of us from the looks of things.” A reminiscent look filtered her amber eyes. “But it was nice, wasn’t it?” They both sat, silent, savoring the memories, their
s, rather than poor Kharm’s unrequited longing and lust.
“All right, I’ll check the diary. See if I remember more details, more flavor than Matty’s entries reveal. This second time should prove whether I’m succeeding on my own. ” Opening the diary she licked a finger, paged through until she found the right entry.
I think Kharm is louzing the urge two mate. She is so strong. But i m stronger two. I moved a rok that the Widder sayed couldn’t be moved, but i didn’t believe her. She wassnot li-ing but she did not no the truth. I found the truth. But it hurt. Thair r all kinds of truth and all kinds of lize. Well, not re-lee all kinds of truth, but different faces two it. Kharm iz helping me read behind the faces. 1 + 1 = 2. 1 + 1 = 10.
“Don’t think I’ll need it any more, do you? Our reaction proves it. ”
“Oh, oh,” Khar warned, “I think another kind of truth is heading our way.” Looking up, Doyce saw Francie approaching, canes probing ahead like an insect’s feelers, testing and tasting the path she navigated. Her sewing basket was slung over her shoulder, strands of embroidery floss and gold thread spilling free, trailing behind.
“Want company?” she called and halted, waiting. In truth, Doyce didn’t; that was why she and Khar had escaped to the grape arbor, hemmed in inside the compact house, new habits conflicting with ingrained ones, Davvy’s and Cady’s eager voices jumbling the dynamics of expectations, personalities. Best to be flexible, too much candor and frankness wouldn’t help anyone right now, would dismantle what she so tentatively rebuilt with her family.