Dian found no relief in the violence, no satisfaction in the blood that had begun to flow freely down Sonja’s chin and into her mouth. Each sting across her open palm served only to deepen her fury, each jolt along her arm fed the frustration and rage she hadn’t known was there; by the time Sonja had been rendered to a swaying figure trying only to keep her arms in front of her face, all Dian wanted was to reduce her to a pulp. One final, brutal backhand dumped the woman to the ground, and Dian stepped forward.
“Dian!”
The shocked exclamation hit her like a bucket of cold water, and the half-begun movement of Dian’s foot stuttered to a halt. She pivoted, and there stood Judith in her night robe, huge of belly, huger of eyes, her mouth pulled back in a grimace of disbelief, her head shaking a slow and jerky denial: disapproval personified. She held Dian with her eyes for a long and breathless minute, Dian slowly becoming aware of others looking on as well. She closed her eyes briefly and a hard shudder ran through her; when her eyes opened she had regained control. Chest heaving with exertion, she drew her hunting knife from its sheath and dropped to one knee beside the half-stunned Sonja.
“Dian,” Judith demanded, but this time Dian ignored her sister. She placed the honed point of her knife under Sonja’s chin and forced the woman to raise her head, to meet Dian’s eyes through her own single unswollen one. A new rivulet of blood started down the woman’s rigid throat. Neither of them noticed.
“Do I have your attention now, you stupid bitch?” said Dian in a voice like Culum’s growl, low, focused, and crawling with threat. Sonja blinked her white-surrounded eye in affirmative, did not move her head. “It’s decision time. Not next week, not tomorrow, now. What will it be: go, or stay?”
A faint motion of the lower lip bared Sonja’s teeth a fraction, but even without this slight movement Dian could read the answer in the woman’s eye. She was taken aback but hesitated only an instant before bringing her face down so close she could feel Sonja’s breath.
“Stay it is. But you hear me, bitch, and I’m only saying this once. I’m here, I’m gone, it doesn’t matter. I will always, always,” she repeated, poking the knife a fraction in emphasis so that the trickle of blood thickened, “be back. And if I find out that you’ve stepped one inch out of line—one inch—I’m going to cut off your fucking head.” She waited to see the yes in the woman’s eyes before she withdrew the knife. She stood over Sonja, wiping the knife on her trousers and fighting the urge to kick the woman. Instead, she retrieved her jacket and necktie and walked away into the night.
Once away and safely hidden by the dark, she stopped by the horse trough, trembling. It seemed a very long time before the reaction passed, and when it did it left her feeling ill and so tired she wanted to weep. She bent down to wash the blood off her face, oozing from a blow to her eyebrow. She took out her handkerchief and pressed it to the cut and sat on the edge of the trough. After a few minutes she became aware that there was someone in the darkness behind her. Yes; she had expected her sister to come.
“I’m sorry they woke you up,” she said. There was no answer.
She turned and saw, not Judith, but Teddy, small and solitary behind a post of the Hall’s porch. Half of his face was visible in the lamplight from the window behind; it looked as empty as a marble statue. As empty as it had the first days after his arrival. She turned back deliberately to the trough and washed her face again, ran her fingers through her hair, and went to sit on the other side of the post from where the child stood. Blood continued to seep down next to her eye, and she held the handkerchief back up to her face. She couldn’t see him, hidden on the other side of the massive post, but a minute later a feather touch brushed across her damp hair, then retreated.
“Nobody got hurt, Teddy,” she said into the night. “Laine will be fine in a day or two, Sonja’s bruises will be all gone in a week, and my cut barely hurts at all. Faces bleed easily, it’s nothing to worry about. I’m afraid I spoiled the shirt, though.” She leaned back to look around the post at him, taking the cloth from her face for a minute to reassure him. “See?” He seemed to have lost his words, and Dian cursed herself furiously.
“You saw it all, didn’t you?” He nodded. “It’s scary when grown-ups get really angry, isn’t it?”
Ah, yes, that was the crux of it. He looked away, looked back, studied the dark stains down her white shirtfront.
“Oh, Christ. Teddy, I’m sorry. You’re right. I was mad at Sonja because she hurt two of my friends. They’re two people the Valley depends on when I’m gone, but it was wrong of me to hurt her in return. Tomorrow I will go and apologize to her. I promise. Is that better?”
He nodded, and then to her astonishment he stepped around the post and put his arms around her. She folded herself about him and held him close. Many long minutes later, she looked up, and saw Judith and Isaac standing in a patch of light spilling from the Hall, watching. After a long moment, she nodded ruefully at their wordless comments, and stood up with Teddy in her arms to join them.
LAINE
The next day the Valley was restless and ill-humored and generally hung over, and chores were tackled with grim determination. Dian went to the clinic three times to check on Laine before she found her at the door, arguing with Ling, an argument Laine won by the simple expedient of walking down the steps and away. When Dian fell in beside her, Laine glanced down at Dian’s knee, which looked naked without Culum attached to it.
“How’s the head?” she asked Laine.
“It’s been better.”
“Eyes focusing okay?”
“They’ve been better, too. What do you want, Dian?”
“We’ve got to have a little talk.”
“Last time we had a little talk, you ended up kicking me out of your bed.”
“I didn’t kick you—”
“Di, my head feels like crap. What do you want to talk about that can’t wait?”
“I wanted to say I was sorry.”
“For what? You didn’t knock me silly.”
“For riding your ass like I do.”
Laine had no comeback for that.
“Laine, you’re good, and you work like the devil, and I never tell you how much I appreciate that. Half the time I treat you like some raw beginner. You’ve got every right to stand up to me.”
“I know I do,” Laine replied, but the assertion was more automatic than heartfelt. “Was that all?”
“No. About Sonja.”
“What’s left of her.” She bristled again.
“Oh, come on, Laine, I didn’t hurt her that bad.”
“You would’ve, if it hadn’t been for Judith.”
“Yeah, okay, I was pissed at her.”
“Hey, I’m the one she hit! I’m the one who should’ve been pissed.”
“So why weren’t you?”
“Because I was unconscious, for shit’s sake!”
The two woman stared at each other; Dian’s eyebrows rose, making her look so remarkably like Culum that Laine began to laugh. Dian joined in, but Laine stopped, putting her hand to her forehead.
“Jeez, that hurts.”
“Sorry. Laine, honest, what’s going on with you two?”
“What do you think?”
“Are you in love with her?”
“She’s been here for five minutes, Dian.”
“Yeah. So, are you in love with her?”
“In lust, sure. And I like her.”
“She’s dangerous.”
“Not to me. Not to anyone else in the Valley.”
“Just to me, you mean?” Dian’s voice was sarcastic.
“Well, probably, yes.”
Dian narrowed her eyes. “Does she know about us?”
“I told her, sure.”
Dian’s gaze went far away, as if she was trying to fit together the pieces of a mental puzzle. Laine gently massaged her temples, trying to shift the ache, until Dian stirred. “You’re saying this whole thing is jealousy?”
“Dian, let’s say things just got a little out of hand. I mean, put yourself in her shoes—she’s scared to death what might be happening to her people without her; she hates that she’s left behind. She was important there and is less than nothing here, and you’ve made sure she knows it. And she’s never been surrounded by strangers before, never. She overreacted. And, maybe she’s showing off, just a little.”
“To you?”
“Why not?”
“I can think of a lot of reasons why not.”
“She got drunk, she blew off steam, end of story. Just because you never let off any steam . . .”
“Not like that I don’t.”
“Not like anything. Hell, even in bed you’re always thinking about where your damned dogs are.”
“Yeah, and the one time I don’t think about where they are, my partner finds a cold nose up her ass.”
Laine’s eyes snapped open in surprise and she erupted in laughter, then clutched her head, moaning. “God, don’t make me do that. Christ, I’d forgotten—what a shock that was. Oh, that hurts.”
“I had to scrape you off the ceiling.” Dian grinned at the memory.
“You nearly had to scrape Culum off the floor. Talk about rude awakenings.”
“Laine, look, I have to tell you something, but you can’t pass it on to Sonja, not yet.”
“Trust being your strong point. If this is going to take much longer, can we sit down?”
They climbed gingerly onto the low split-rail fence surrounding the cornfield, well experienced with splinters.
“Laine, I mean it, you can’t tell her. This is about security, not about you and me.”
“What is it?”
“This trip I’m taking as soon as Judith’s given birth? It’s not just to Meijing for supplies. I’m headed to Oregon. I didn’t think it was a good idea to wait until spring.”
Dian explained: her reasoning, the arguments put by Judith and Kirsten, the decision. Laine listened without comment until Dian had finished, then asked, “Jude and Kirsten are the only ones who know?”
“And Ling. And now you.”
“Not Isaac?”
“So far, Isaac thinks I’ll be back in a week with Ling’s medicines. I’ll tell him just before I go.”
Laine raised her eyes to Dian’s without hesitation. “Okay, I won’t tell Sonja until you leave. But I swear to God, you can trust her.”
“I’m going to hold you to that, Laine. But you’ve got to watch her. She could do a lot of harm here.”
“Does Judith feel that way too?”
“Jude’s undecided. She’s more willing to wait and see.”
“Well, since you’re going to ask me, then no, Sonja hasn’t said anything about any secret they’re hiding.”
“Would she have?”
Laine had to think about that for a minute. “That I honestly don’t know. If it was something she’d sworn to keep silent about, then probably not.”
“Still loyal to Miriam.”
“Wouldn’t you be?”
Dian didn’t answer. She didn’t really have to. “You’ll consult with Judith, all the time?”
“Dian . . . Ah, hell. I’ve been a bitch. I’m sorry. It’s just, you just have a way of getting under my skin. But you have to believe, I would never do anything that put anyone here in danger. And all right, that includes taking my eyes off Sonja. You can go off to Oregon without worrying. I give you my word.”
And it seemed that Dian was satisfied. When she left a short time later, Laine pondered the meaning of that: Dian trusted her. Who’d have thought it? Maybe they’d just been too young. Or she had been—Dian was six years older, she should have known to keep an infatuated kid at arm’s length.
But that was years ago, and Dian wasn’t as exciting as she’d thought. Sonja, on the other hand . . .
Judith and Kirsten were strolling arm in arm back from the high orchard when they saw two women meet in the middle of the millpond bridge: Dian, heading downhill with three young dogs bouncing merrily in front and Culum fixed to his mistress’s side, and Sonja, coming the other way. Sonja hesitated for an instant when she noticed Dian, then squared her shoulders and came on. When their paths intersected, Dian nodded briefly, Sonja responded with an equally curt phrase, and they continued on their ways, Dian’s left hand coming out to soothe the fur on Culum’s ruff. Kirsten shook her head and started walking again.
“Too many alpha females around this place,” she said as if to herself.
“Dian came to see me early this morning,” Judith told her. “To say she thought she shouldn’t go north, that we needed her here.”
“And you said?”
“To tell you the truth, I was torn. Watching her with Isaac yesterday, I couldn’t stand the thought of breaking them up so soon. Did you see the way she was laughing? God, I haven’t seen that since—”
“You didn’t tell her that?” Kirsten said sharply.
“Almost, but in the end, no, I didn’t. You sound like you think I shouldn’t have.”
“It would have been a great mistake. The only reason Dian is allowing herself to be with Isaac is because she’s convinced it’s temporary. And she’s right—when she comes back, even if they stay together, it will not be at all the same.”
“Why not? There are others coming, and if one of the women wants a baby by Isaac, artificial insemination is easy enough.”
“Which is what they may decide to do, but it will still be different, for Dian. So what did you tell her?”
“I told her not to be a fool, that the best thing for everyone was for her to get out of the way for a little while. To let Laine try out her leadership wings on her own, without Dian to second-guess her.”
“Hard words,” said Kirsten calmly.
“I tried to soften it. I’m worried about Dian. She takes too much on herself, tries to do everything on her own, and then blows up when she finds someone slacking off. She doesn’t lose her temper often, but when she does—God, last night I thought . . . She could have hurt Sonja badly.”
“She intended to: Sonja was a catalyst, although it remains to be seen what the results of that reaction might be. I wish we knew something about your sister’s biological parents,” the old woman said, not for the first time. “There’s a vein almost of madness running through the girl. But even without the genetics, you can see where her pressures come from. She started life knowing that her mother considered her unfit to live, but she was raised here, lavished with love and respect, by people who saw her quirk as a gift and not a sign of being nonhuman—trust and betrayal, love and abandonment. Everything to Dian is Us-and-Them, and when she sees a threat to her people, she goes wild.”
“She was telling me a while back about raising dogs, how if you beat a dog, it learns not to trust. But if you take a beaten dog young enough, and offer it affection and protection, it’s your slave for life, blind to your faults. When I thought about it later, it seemed to me she wasn’t really talking about the dogs.”
“I think you’re right.”
“But, Grans, I don’t think Dian’s happy here anymore. I think . . . Sometimes I get the feeling that what she really wants is to pull up roots and become a Traveler.” It clearly hurt Judith to say this, but she pressed on. “That if it wasn’t for thinking that she’d be abandoning us, she’d take off in a flash.”
“Her compulsion to loyalty is indeed excessive. It blinds her. I fear someday it may get her into real trouble.”
“As far as the rest of us are concerned, it’s been a blessing.”
“I hope the poor child realizes that, while she’s beating herself up.”
“I made a point of telling her.”
“Wouldn’t hurt to tell her again,” the old woman said.
Later that afternoon Dian came looking for Judith and found her on the veranda piecing a quilt. She sat down, shaking her head at Judith’s offer of a drink, and watched her sister’s hands at work. One of the snippets of fabric she recogniz
ed from a length of cotton their mother had bought from a trader just inside the gates of Meijing, fourteen years before.
“How are you feeling, Jude?”
“Bloated. Stretched. Tired. And yourself?”
“Like a damned fool.”
“And hung over.”
“Is that what it is? I suppose so. I had a talk with Laine,” she said abruptly, and got up to peer out the screen at nothing in particular.
“And?”
“I apologized.”
“To Laine? Why to her?”
“For riding her. I come down on her too hard, too often. It’s no wonder she gets so wild. I told her that. And, it seems that she and Sonja are together.”
“I know.”
“Did you? I didn’t. It’s too bad, in a way.”
“What way?”
“She should get pregnant—Laine, I mean. It might slow her down a bit. Teach her caution.”
Judith dropped her work into her lap and laughed. “That one, cautious? She’d be climbing a rock face during the contractions, don’t kid yourself. She’s just like you.”
Dian turned around, surprised. “Like me? Old stick-in-the-mud? Old—what was it—keep-things-tidy?”
“It’s been forced on you.”
“Well, maybe a bit of responsibility will force it on that girl too,” Dian grumbled, overlooking the fact that Laine was only half a dozen years younger. She ran her fingers through her hair, and for once neither twigs nor hay fell out. “I told her that if she’s going to be in a position where the Valley depends on her, she’s going to have to watch what she’s doing, not to be so utterly careless of herself. I told her that she wasn’t immortal. You know, I don’t think she had the faintest idea what I was talking about. I swear,” she said with a sigh, “she makes me feel positively circumspect.”
“She makes me feel old,” said Judith.
IF THEY BORE A FEMALE, THEY KEPT
HER, BUT IF THEY BORE A MALE . . .
TEN
JUDITH’S LABOR BEGAN A WEEK AFTER HARVEST DAY, on what proved to be the last day of the year’s Indian summer. She came awake long before the dawn, restless despite the cool night, to lie staring up into the silent house, feeling the carefully constructed walls of her own defenses beginning to crumble, to bulge and crack with the force of the horrors the next months could hold. Again. Dear God, she prayed without hope, let this baby be a girl, a safe, dull, uneventful girl baby, so my biggest worries will be diaper rash and colic and teething pains. Even now her mind’s barriers would not let Judith squarely confront the terrors a boy baby could bring, the fear at every cry and the gut ache of tension over the months and years of greatest vulnerability, when every runny nose could be followed by death, when every quiet night might be the last. The fear which could not be faced battered and pried at her until, in a spasm of claustrophobia, she flung aside her blankets, threw on some clothes, and scurried barefoot down the stairs toward the back door and air.
Califia's Daughters Page 12