Califia's Daughters

by Leigh Richards

  Yet another point of similarity with Isaac.

  It turned out that Dian could indeed make it to the barn on crutches. It was a lot smaller than the Valley’s huge building, more of a work shed with a stall in the back—one stall and a makeshift pen to hold the three newcomers. Four horses where Robin usually had one made the interior nearly cozy, but the stack of hay overhead looked woefully inadequate to Dian; Robin would have to find a buyer for the dead woman’s pair, or else turn them loose to fend for themselves.

  Shelves below the hayloft explained Robin’s collection of herbs. Dried branches, pots, and a hundred baskets looked like some pretty serious medicinal “dabbling” to Dian. On the other wall Robin had hung the stretched rabbit skins accumulated over recent days, and Dian went to check their condition, one at a time. Some she thought too coarse, or in too patchy a condition, to be used for anything but lining boots, but even without those, Robin would have a fine bedcover. When she had finished looking the skins over, she gave Simon’s shaggy sides a thorough brush and did the same for the others, then sat down for a while, gritting her teeth until the protest in her leg had settled down.

  When she let herself out of the barn, her eye caught on the chopping block near the snow-shrouded woodpile. The heavier logs and the big ax would be beyond her, but surely kindling . . . She found the cedar logs, tested the blade of the hatchet, and set about reducing a tree round into a heap of thumb-size sticks. Then came the problem of hauling the kindling to the cabin. The crutches got in the way, and even when she improvised a sling, the weight of it banging her crutch nearly had her down twice and left a trail of cleanly split sticks across the snow, but she refused to leave the fetching to Robin. The third trip over, and the third load lost, she threw the left-hand crutch in the direction of the porch and hobbled the rest of the way on the right one. To her surprise, it was more satisfactory. More painful as well, but the tidy pile of firewood was well worth the price of a few hard twinges.

  She wrestled the wood through the door and arranged it in a neatly ostentatious pile near the fire, then collapsed, shaking with exhaustion, onto her bed. She didn’t stir until Robin woke her for dinner; neither of them mentioned Ashtown again.

  The following day, Dian conceived the idea of running a deer past the cabin porch and picking it off with an arrow. It took three days for her to coax, cajole, bully, and flatter Tomas into rounding up a small herd and flushing it in her direction, by which time her leg was nearly good enough to have done it herself, but when it actually happened, when Tomas got the idea and pounded off in the direction of the creek, the venison was no longer the point. Between them, woman and dog, they did it, and in a manner that, Dian knew, Culum himself could not have done much better.

  That venison tasted sweeter than anything Dian had eaten for a long time.

  A day or two later, Dian was sitting in front of the fire working her way through a pile of some local bark that Robin said would be best for tanning the rabbit skins. The bark chunks were hard as rocks and had to be shaved down finely with her knife into the basket in her lap—mindless work, conducive to thought, and, as usual, Dian’s inner gaze turned south. Baby Will would be smiling now—assuming her dream had been just the fever—charming all. And in Meijing, Dian’s white-blond foundling, Willa, would be freed of her extra toes, firmly on the road to a normal life.

  And Sonja. Dian was not much of one for prayer, but she hoped Someone was watching over the woman, keeping her from doing too much damage. Laine . . . Yes, she realized, I trust Laine. She irritates the hell out of me, but I know her, and she will make the right decisions. I was right to leave her.

  Ah, but Isaac. Even more fervent were her wishes for protection over him. Which was funny, when she thought of it, because he was one of the strongest men she knew, and not only physically. Fragile, perhaps, but with Teddy there to need him, Isaac would stand firm.

  She missed him—missed them all—but not as much as she had anticipated. He was too distant, and in sadness, Dian knew that she did not expect him to be there for her again when she returned. As a friend, yes, but possibly nothing more.

  Was that why Robin reminded her of Isaac? Dian was not in the least attracted to the woman, but then, Isaac seemed to be shifting in her heart as well, from lover to something less intense. A brother, perhaps, as Robin was sister.

  The warmth and the musings and the dull job proved too soporific. The knife slowed, jerked once or twice as she dragged herself back from the edge, then her hands were resting on the soft pile of shavings as she drifted away.

  She only half-woke when Robin came in, hung her jacket on its hook, and walked into the kitchen to fix lunch. Watching her movements through sleep-clouded eyes, Dian’s thoughts looped back to where they had been before she fell asleep: onto Isaac, onto Robin. Idly, she watched as Robin stretched to the shelf for a pair of mugs, as she took the bowl of greens from the sink, then came over to stir the venison stew; as Robin moved around the cabin, going about actions she performed a dozen times a day, Dian’s gaze slowly sharpened, coming awake in a way it had not before. Her eyes locked onto the shape of the woman’s shoulder; when Robin stood and turned toward the table, the throat that rose from the open neck of her shirt seemed to travel slowly past Dian’s vision. Memory stirred, sensations from the time of fever: the feel of Robin’s body, the power behind those lifting arms, the very smell of her when she came inside from a session cutting wood . . . Dian’s breath caught, and she came upright, staring in fascination at the way Robin’s spine and hips merged.

  Robin turned to set a loaf of bread onto the table and glanced up into Dian’s eyes. Time froze for an interminable instant, until Dian tore her gaze away and cast it toward the fire, a fire that was by no means close enough to account for the burn rising in her cheeks. Tomas, on the hearth rug with his head between his paws, cocked one bushy eyebrow at her. Dian sat stiffly and tried to breathe normally, but she heard Robin lay down the bread knife, then walk over to sit on the stool that functioned as a second chair.

  “Go on, ask your question.” Robin’s voice was calm as always, but was that an undertone of humor?

  Dian looked up guiltily into Robin’s face; she saw apprehension there, but also, yes, a degree of amusement. Dian opened her mouth, couldn’t think what to say, and shut it again.

  Robin’s broad face relaxed into a wry grin. “I can see I don’t need to wear my vest indoors anymore,” she said, and to Dian’s amazement stood up to unbutton the plaid shirt and tug it out of the waistband of her trousers. Beneath it she wore a snugly fitting vest; this she also unbuttoned, removed, and tossed onto the kitchen table. With it went her breasts.

  The Robin standing in front of Dian was now, without a doubt, not a she. This Robin was a stocky, smoothly muscled man, who stood scratching his ribs through a thin undershirt. What had once been a husky female voice was now that of a man, frankly laughing and saying, “Ah, Dian, your face is priceless. I really didn’t know my sex change was so believable, but I was beginning to wonder.” He walked over and flicked the curtains shut across the two windows, then hung the padded vest on a hook between the deerskin jacket and the revolver.

  “Jesus Christ!” Dian finally got out. “Why?”

  “Why the act? Or why the act with you?” He smiled gently, shaking his head as if she were a disappointingly slow child. “Surely you can’t imagine that a sane and healthy man would be allowed to live out by himself in the woods? I do have the occasional visitor, you know, especially during the summer. There’s even one or two who know who I really am—one girl in the village you’re heading for, in fact. She came across me in the woods without my shirt, stupid of me, and blackmailed me into teaching her everything I know about tracking. But if word got out that I wasn’t just a crazy old woman living off by herself, I’d be locked away in some town in no time. I’ve had that. I would honestly rather be dead.” Even through her astonishment, Dian heard the lack of bitterness in Robin’s voice and body, simply a matter-
of-fact acceptance of the way things unfortunately were.

  “But . . . how could you keep it up all this time? With me here, I mean? How could you stand it? You must have wanted to throw me out into the snow!”

  “Well, no. Actually it was kind of fun.” He stood up and went back to the table, taking up the knife to slice the bread, paying close attention to the precision of the act. Dian heard surprise and a bit of wistfulness creep into his voice. “I found that I really enjoyed being a friend, being another woman who didn’t make you feel uncomfortable when I put you in the bath or brushed your hair. I’m sorry, in a way, that you realized the truth, because now you’re going to feel uncomfortable around me.”

  And he was right. The thought of the routine intimacies he had performed on her body during the illness made Dian feel—uncomfortable was a vast understatement. Appalled, perhaps. Even more so, the realization that she was in a cabin, an isolated cabin, with someone who had been suddenly transformed into a strange man—the thought and her reaction to it confused her, flustered her, so that she plucked the first thing that came to mind and threw it out.

  “Did my monthly period come while I was sick?” The thought was intolerable, she did not want to think about it, wanted to snatch back the question.

  “No. And it won’t for some time either.” Again that amusement beneath the calm voice—was he laughing at her discomfort? If so, this person’s change of persona was not limited to the merely physical, but he did seem to be enjoying her confusion. She seized desperately onto a discussion—any discussion, to give her mind a chance to settle.

  “Because of the injury, you mean, shock and blood loss. I remember the last time I was injured this bad, it took about six weeks for it to come back.”

  “Oh, I think you’ll find it takes somewhat longer this time,” he said, his voice muffled from where he was rummaging in the bin under the sink for an onion.

  “Do you? How long, then?”

  “I’d say about another eight lunar months.” His head reappeared, and Dian wondered how she could ever have mistaken those crinkling eyes for a woman’s.

  “Eight—but why?”

  “Because, my dear, you’re about seven weeks pregnant.”

  Stunned as a bird against glass, Dian stared openmouthed at her companion for so long his amusement faded and began to be replaced by concern.

  “It is all right, Dian. Babies are great.”

  Seven weeks. Mid-October. When she and Isaac—and for a moment, her thoughts froze: Would the child have Asian folds over its eyes? Surely not. Oh, why hadn’t she allowed the Meijing doctors to do the physical exams Ling had suggested?

  “I’m sterile,” she protested numbly.

  “I assure you, you are not sterile.” He was dead serious now, and starting to look worried.

  She did not doubt him, not for a minute. Now that he had told her, her body shouted its agreement. She hadn’t thought about her periods, and since the accident she had been too ill to notice the telltale signs of tender breasts and occasional queasiness, but now she could even feel the presence of another human being within her. And that knowledge contradicted everything she was.

  She stood up and stumbled to the door, oblivious of the pain in her leg. Then Robin was by her side, supporting her. She would have fallen down the two front steps, one wood, the other raw stone, if he hadn’t held on to her with hands that were both welcome and utterly repellent. She pushed away from him and walked out into the knee-deep snow, thinking of Isaac until the bright snow faded in her eyes and she collapsed.

  She woke hours later, the cabin lit only by the fretful light of the fire, her bed warm and safe and her leg hurting abominably. She shifted to ease it, and Robin’s voice came from nearby.

  “If you need something for the pain I’ll give it to you, but I’d rather not carry it on too long, because of the baby.”

  “Pain isn’t the only thing I’m going to have to put up with,” she said, a bit grimly.

  “Is the baby not wanted, then?” he asked, without any trace of criticism.

  “It’s not that,” she said. She shifted again, and winced. “No, it’s not that it’s unwanted. It’s just that, on top of everything else, it was a shock. Not even a bad shock, just a big one. And I’m not really feeling up to any more, please?”

  “No more shocks today, no,” Robin promised. Silence filled the cabin, broken only by the fire and little huffs and whimpers from Tomas, dreaming by the fire.

  “I left home sterile, and I’ll return with one baby in my arms and another one in the works.” She shook her head. “Lord Almighty, as Kirsten would say.”

  Robin stood up, smiling to himself a little sadly as he went to assemble dinner. She had taken both pieces of news well. This was a fine woman. If he’d known one like her twenty years ago he might never have moved out here. Not by himself, anyway. He hoped this man Isaac was a worthy partner for her.

  If Dian had been told that she would be living in close proximity to a strange man and think nothing of it, she would have laughed in disbelief: she’d known so few adult males in her life—the number she’d lived with could be counted on her fingers—that a new one was not something she could simply overlook. That Robin was a man she did not doubt—she had met a few eunuchs, wandering as Pilgrims or sheltered inside Meijing, and Robin was not one of those. Yet as the days passed, she did indeed simply think less and less about it.

  He was, in effect, the brother she had never known. Once she thought of him as such, their relationship fell into place, and she thought no more about it.

  She did, after much deliberation, bring up the possibility that he might go back with her to the Valley. His vehemence was all she had expected.

  “Absolutely not. I’ll miss you when you leave, Dian, and I’m sure your family are all lovely people, but I can’t be locked up. It makes me go crazy. Thanks anyway.”

  “Robin, look, I wouldn’t want to leave here either, if I were you. But, please, just think about it—think about three things. One, you wouldn’t be locked up. There’s a lot of space there, and nobody would force you to come in if you didn’t want to. I give you my word. And two, down there, with Meijing’s backing, what you call ‘dabbling’ with herbs could go far. I’ve heard you grumbling about not being able to tell precisely what this leaf and that mold do—well, our healer would love to give you a microscope and glass dishes and books and anything else you need and let you get on with it. And third, to be realistic, you may be forced to make a move within the next few years anyway. Even if the radiation poisoning or whatever it is doesn’t spread into this watershed, Queen Bess will. And you can’t count on her missing the fact that you’re a man living alone. You’ll be inside one of her towns before you can blink.”

  “Not for long,” he said grimly.

  “Robin, please, think about it?”

  His jaw worked as he stared out at the snow, and then nodded curtly. “I’ll think about it. But I’ll tell you now, I won’t go. As you said, this is my home.” It was all she could do, and she let it go.

  December wore on, and she began to venture further out into the woods, began to run the nearer trap lines herself, then all of them. The stack of rough-cured skins grew. They ate very well. And she was much taken aback one day when Robin asked how much longer she was thinking of putting off her trip to the village.

  “Oh. Well, I don’t know, I still don’t have much stamina. . . .”

  “Nonsense, you’ve been out for five hours today, and you’re barely limping. You have plenty of stamina for four days on the horse and a couple miles’ hike.” He looked more closely at her face. “You don’t think I’m trying to push you out, do you? Hell, I’m not letting you go until I get my rabbit-skin blanket. I just thought, if you went fairly soon, maybe you could be back in time for Christmas dinner.”

  “I AND MY FORCES SHALL TAKE THE

  VANGUARD IN THIS BATTLE.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  SO DIAN SET OFF ON THE FINAL MI
LES OF HER JOURNEY, five weeks late and with her troop diminished by one dog and a load of strength on the part of its leader. Simon was in great shape, and Tomas was ecstatic to be on the road again, but Dian’s thigh did not like being in the saddle, and she was not looking forward to the demands of even this short trip. She did not look back at the cabin, since she would feel silly if Robin had already gone back inside, and even sillier if she found him standing on the porch to wave good-bye. She told herself firmly that everything would be fine; she’d be back in less than a week and they would stuff themselves to a stupor with Christmas cheer. And after that she would keep at him until he gave in and decided to give the Valley a try, and they would go south together, and she would be home long before Easter.

  On the second day out from Robin’s cabin, Dian became aware of a familiar itchy sensation, like the restless onset of a fever but accompanied by vivid images: the slaughtered Smithy village; an arrow flashing at her out of the snow; the back of Culum’s lifeless neck. She had never put as much store in what Judith called her “Feelings” as others seemed to, but she did know that when she felt this way, something was wrong somewhere. She kept Tomas upwind of her and watched closely the ground on the other side, but the hours passed and she saw nothing, heard nothing. By noon on the third day, her skin was crawling and she twitched at every small and natural noise, and still nothing had happened.

  She found a sheltered grove near a frozen stream and there she unsaddled Simon, feeding him and fastening a blanket over his back. She shared some dried meat with Tomas, broke the ice on the stream so the animals could get at water without too much difficulty, and left Tomas guarding the horse. He whined a protest; she repeated her order and limped briskly away.

  Initially, she had intended to hike the last ten miles to the village, wary of the fox-faced Syl’s reconnaissance skills. Now, however, she’d be lucky to manage five miles without having her leg seize up on her. She had brought snowshoes but only needed them from time to time when the drifts grew deep. Finally, at three in the afternoon, she caught her first whiff of wood fires, and she stopped to rest, eating handfuls of dried fruit and venison, drinking still-warm tea from the vacuum flask, and rubbing at the burning muscles in her thigh. The minute she stopped moving, the nerviness was back in force, urging her to hurry up, not to bother with doing this from hiding—what did it matter? Just walk up and say hello, let me see your secrets. . . .