Mothers & Other Monsters: Stories

by Maureen F. Mchugh

  II.

  The sound of the guns is like the cracking of whips. Like the snapping of bones. The outrunners for the Scathalos High-on came into Sckarline with a great deal of racket; brass clattering, the men singing and firing their guns into the air. It started the dogs barking and scared out stabros and brought everyone outside.

  Scathalos dyed the toes and ridgeline manes of their stabros kracken yellow. They hung brass clappers in the harnesses of their caravan animals and bits of milky blue glass from the harnesses of their dogs. On this sunny day everything winked. Only their milking does were plain, and that's only because even the will of a hunter can't make a doe stabros tractable.

  Veronique came out with me. "Who are they?" she asked.

  Even after just three days I could understand Veronique a lot better. "They are from a great clan, Scathalos, I said. "They come to buy whisak." We hoped they would buy it. Sometimes, when Scathalos outrunners came, they just took it.

  "They're another clan?" she asked. "Where are the women?"

  "They're outrunners," I said. "They go out and hunt and trade. Outrunners are not-married men."

  "They have a lot of guns," she said.

  They had more guns than I had ever seen. Usually when outrunners came they had one or two guns. Guns are hard to get. But it looked as if almost every outrunner had a gun.

  "Does Sckarline have guns?" Veronicjue asked.

  "No," I said.

  `They're not appropriate, right?"

  A lot of people said we should have guns, whether Ayudesh and Wanji thought they were appropriate or not. They had to buy the clips that go with them. Ayudesh said that the offworlders used the need of the clips to control the clans. He said that it wasn't appropriate because we couldn't maintain it ourselves.

  My da said that maybe some things we should buy. We bought things from other clans, that was trade. Maybe guns were trade, too.

  The dogs nipped at the doe stabros, turning them, making them stop until outrunners could slip hobbles on them. The stabros looked pretty good. They were mostly dun, and the males were heavy in the shoulders, with heads set low and forward on their necks. Better than most of our animals. The long hairs on their ears were braided with red and yellow threads. Handlers unhooked the sleds from the pack stabros.

  Two of them found the skimmer tracks beyond the schoolhouse. They stopped and looked around. They saw Veronique. Then another stared at her, measuring her.

  "Come with me," I said.

  Our dogs barked and their dogs barked. The outrunner men talked loudly. Sckarline people stood at the doors of their houses and didn't talk at all.

  "What's wrong?" Veronique asked.

  "Come help my mam and me," She would be under the gaze of them in the distillery, too, but I suspected she would be under their gaze anywhere. And this way Mam would be there.

  "Scathalos come here for whisak," I said to my mam, even though she could see for herself. Mam was at the door, shading her eyes and watching them settle in. Someone should have been telling them we had people in the guesthouse and offering to put their animals up, but no one was moving.

  "Tuuvin is in the back," Mam said, pointing with her chin. "Go back and help him."

  Tuuvin was hiding the oldest whisak, what was left of the three year old brass whisak. Scathalos had come for whisak two years ago and taken what they wanted and left us almost nothing but lame stabros. They said it was because we had favored Toolie Clan in trade. The only reason we had any three-year-old whisak left was because they couldn't tell what was what.

  So my da and some of the men had dug a cellar in the distillery. Tuuvin was standing in the cellar, taking kegs he had stacked at the edge and pulling them down. It wasn't very deep, not much over his chest, but the kegs were heavy. I started stacking more for him to hide.

  I wondered what the outrunners would do if they caught us at our work. I wondered if Tuuvin was thinking the same thing. We'd hidden some down there in the spring before the stabros went up to summer grazing but then we'd taken some of the oldest kegs to drink when the stabros came back down in the fall.

  "Hurry." Tuuvin said softly.

  My hands were slick. Veronique started taking kegs, too. She couldn't lift them, so she rolled them on their edge. Her hands were soft and pretty, not used to rough kegs. It seemed like it took a long time. Tuuvin's hands were rough and red. I'd never thought about how hard his hands were. Mine were like his, all red. My hands were ugly compared to Veronique's. Surely he was noticing that, too, since every time Veronique rolled a keg over, her hands were right there.

  And then the last keg was on the edge. Uukraith's eye looked at me, strangely unaffected. Or maybe amused. Or maybe angry. Da said that spirits do not feel the way we feel. The teachers never said anything at all about spirits, which was how we knew that they didn't listen to them. There was not much space in the cellar, just enough for Tuuvin to stand and maybe a little more.

  Tuuvin put his hands on the edge and boosted himself out of the cellar. In front of the store we heard the crack of the door on its hinges and we all three jumped.

  Tuuvin slid the wooden cover over the hole in the floor. "Move those," he said, pointing at empty kegs.

  I didn't hear voices.

  "Are you dome yet?" Mam said, startling us again.

  "Are they here?" I asked.

  "No," she said. "Not yet." She didn't seem afraid. I had seen my mam afraid, but not very often. "What is she doing here?" Mam asked, pointing at Veronique.

  "I thought she should be here, I mean, I was afraid to leave her by herself"

  "She's not a child," Mam said. But she said it mildly, so I knew she didn't really mind. Then Mam helped us stack kegs. We all tried to be quiet, but they thumped like hollow drums. They filled the space around us with noise. It seemed to me that the outrunners could hear us thumping away from outside. I kept looking at Mam, who was stacking kegs as if we hid whisak all the time. Tuuvin was nervous, too. His shoulders were tense. I almost said to him, "you're up around the ears, boy," the way the hunters did, but right now I didn't think it would make him smile.

  Mam scuffed the dirt around the kegs.

  "Will they find them?" I asked.

  Mam shrugged. "We'll see."

  There was a lot to do to get ready for the outrunners besides hiding the best whisak. Mam had us count the kegs, even Veronique. Then when we all three agreed on a number she wrote it in her tally hook. "So we know how much we sell," she said.

  We were just finishing counting when outrunners came with Ayudesh. They came into the front. First the wind like a wild dog sliding around the door and making the fires all sway. Then Ayudesh and then the outrunners. The outrunners looked short compared to Ayudesh. And they looked even harder than we did. Their cheeks were winter red. Their felts were all dark with dirt, like they'd been out for a long time.

  "She," said one of the men, seeing my mother. They all grinned. People always seemed surprised that they were going to trade with my mam. The outrunners already smelled of whisak so people had finally made them welcome. Or maybe someone had the sense to realize that if they gave them drink we'd have time to get things ready. Maybe my da.

  My mam stood as she always did, with her arms crossed, tall as any of them. Waiting them out.

  "What's this," said the man, looking around. "Eh? What's this? It stinks in here." The distillery always stank.

  They walked around, looked at the kegs, poked at the copper tubing and the still. One stuck his finger under the drip and tasted the raw stuff and grimaced. Ayudesh looked uncomfortable, but the teachers always said that the distillery was ours and they didn't interfere with how we ran it. Mam was in charge here.

  Mam just stood and let them walk around her. She didn't turn her head to watch them.

  They picked up the brand. "What's this?" the man said again.

  "We mark all our kegs with the eye of Uukraith," Mam said.

  "Woman's work," he said.

  He stopped
and looked at Veronique. He studied her for a moment, then frowned. "You're no boy," he said.

  Veronique looked at me, the whites of her eyes bright even in the dimness, but she didn't say anything.

  He grinned and laughed. The other two outrunners crowded close to her and fingered the slick fabric of her sleeve, touched her hair. Veronique pulled away.

  The first outrunner got bored and walked around the room some more.

  He tapped a keg. Not like Mam thumped them, listening, but just as if everything here were his. He had dirty brown hair on the backs of his hands. Everywhere I looked I was seeing people's hands. I didn't like the way he put his hands on things.

  Then he pointed to a keg, not the one he was tapping on, but a different one, and one of the other men picked it tip. "Is it good?" he asked.

  My mam shrugged.

  He didn't like that. He took two steps forward and hit her across the face. I looked at the black, packed dirt-floor.

  Ayudesh made a noise.

  "It's good," my mam said. I looked up and she had a red mark on the side of her face. Ayudesh looked as if he would speak, but he didn't.

  The outrunner grabbed her braid-she flinched as he reached past her face-and yanked her head. "It's good, woman?" he asked.

  "Yes," she said, her voice coming almost airless, like she could not breathe.

  He yanked her down to her knees. Then he let go and they all went out with the keg.

  Ayudesh said, "Are you all right?" Main stood back up again and touched her braid, then flipped it back over her neck. She didn't look at any of us.

  People were in the schoolhouse. Ayudesh sat on the table at the front and people were sitting on the floor talking as if it were a meeting. Veronique's teacher was sitting next to Ayudesh and Veronique started as if she was going to go sit with him. Then she looked around and sat down with Mani and Tuuvin and me.

  "So we should just let them take whatever they want?" Harup said. He wasn't clowning now, but talking as a senior hunter. He sat on his heels, the way hunters do when they're waiting.

  Ayudesh said, "Even if we could get guns, they're used to fighting and we aren't. What do you think would happen?"

  Veronique was very quiet.

  "If we don't stand up for ourselves, what will happen?" Harup said.

  "If you provoke them they'll destroy us," Ayudcsh said.

  "Teacher," Harup said, spreading his hands as if lie was telling a story. "Stabros are not hunting animals, ch. They are not sharp-toothed like haunds or dogs. Haunds are hunters, packs of hunters, who do nothing but hunt stabros. There are more stabros than all the haunds could eat, eh. So how do they choose? They don't kill the buck stabros with their hard toes and heads, they take the young, the old, the sick, the helpless. We do not want to be haunds, teacher. We just want the haunds to go elsewhere for easy prey."

  Wanji came in behind us, and the fire in the boxstove ducked and jumped in the draft. Wanji didn't sit down on the table, but, as was her custom, lowered herself to the floor. "Old hips," she muttered as if everyone in the room wasn't watching her. "Old women have old hips."

  When I thought of Kalky, the old woman who makes the souls of everything, I thought of her as looking like Wanji. Wanji had a little face and a big nose and deep lines down from her nose to her chin. "What happened to you, daughter?" she asked my mam.

  "The outrunners came to the distillery to take a keg," Mam said.

  I noticed that now the meeting had turned around, away from Ayudesh on the table towards us in the back. Wanji always said that Ayudesh was vain and liked to sit high. Sometimes she called him "Highon." "And so," Wanji said.

  My mother's face was still red from the blow, but it hadn't yet purpled. "I don't think the outrunners like to do business with me," Mam said.

  "One of them hit her," I said, because Mam wasn't going to. Mam never talked about it when my da hit her, either. Although he didn't do it as much as he used to when I was Bet's age.

  Mam looked at me, but I couldn't tell if she was angry with me or not.

  Harup spread his hands to say, "See?"

  Wanji clucked.

  "We got the three-year-old whisak in the cellar," Mam said.

  I was looking, but I didn't see my da.

  "What are they saving." Veronique asked.

  "They are talking," I said, and had to think how to say it, "about what we do, but they, eh, not, do not know? Do not know what is right. Harup want guns. Wants guns. Ayudesh says guns are bad."

  "Wanji," Tuuvin whispered, "Wanji she ask-eh," and then in our own tongue, "tell her she was asking your mam what happened."

  "Wanji ask my mother what is the matter," I said.

  Veronique looked at Tuuvin and then at me.

  "Guns are bad," Veronique said.

  Tuuvin scowled. "She doesn't understand," he said.

  "What?" Veronique said, but I just shook my head rather than tell her what Tuuvin had said.

  Some of the men were talking about guns. Wanji was listening without saying anything, resting her chin on her hand. Sometimes it seemed like Wanji didn't even blink, that she just turned into stone and you didn't know what she was thinking.

  Some of the other men were talking to Ayudesh about whisak. Yet, Harup's wife, got up and put water on the boxstove for the men to drink and Big Sherep went out the men's door in the hack of the schoolhouse, which meant that he was going to get whisak or beer.

  "Nothing will get done now," Tuuvin said, disgusted. "Let's go."

  He stood up and Veronique looked up at him, then scrambled to her feet.

  "Now they talk, talk, talk," I said in English. "Nothing to say, just talk, you know?"

  Outside there were outrunners. It seemed as if they were everywhere, even though there were really not that many of them. They watched Veronique.

  Tuuvin scowled at them and I looked at their guns. Long black guns slung over their backs. I had never seen a gun close. And there was my da, standing with three outrunners, holding a gun in his hands as if it were a fishing spear, admiring it. He was nodding and grinning, the way he did when someone told a good hunting story. Of course, he didn't know that one of these people had hit Mam.

  Still, it made me mad that he was being friendly.

  "We should go somewhere," Tuuvin said.

  "The distillery?" I asked.

  "No," he said, "they'll go back there." And he looked at Veronique. Having Veronique around was like having Bet, you always had to be thinking about her. "Take her to your house."

  "And do what?" I asked. A little angry at him because now he had decided he wasn't going back with us.

  "I don't know, teach her to sew or something," he said. He turned and walked across to where my da was standing.

  The outrunners took two more kegs of whisak and got loud. They stuck torches in the snow, so the dog's harnesses were all glittering and winking, and we gave them a stabros to slaughter and they roasted that. Some of the Sckarline men like my da- and even Haruki -sat with them and talked and sang. I didn't understand why Hat-tip was there, but there he was, laughing and telling stories about the time my da got dumped out of the boat fishing.

  Ayudesh was there, just listening. Veronique's grandfather was out there, too, even though he couldn't understand what they were saying.

  "When will they go?" Veronique asked.

  I shrugged.

  She asked something I didn't understand.

  "When you trade," she said, "trade?"

  '.-Trade,' I said, "trade whisak, yes?"

  "Yes," she said. "'When you trade whisak, men come? Are you afraid when you trade whisak?"

  "Afraid?" I asked. "When Scathalos come, yes."

  "When other people come, are you afraid?" she asked.

  "No," I said. "Just Scathalos."

  She sat on my furs.

  My mam was on the bed and Bet had gone to sleep. Mam watched its talk, sitting cross-legged and mending Bet's boots. She didn't understand any English. It felt wrong to
talk when Mam didn't understand, but Veronique couldn't understand when I talked to Mam, either.

  "I have to go back to my hut,' Veronique said. "Ian will come back and he'll worry about me."

  Outside the air was so cold and dry that the insides of our noses felt it.

  "Don't you get tired of being cold?" Veronique asked.

  The cold made people tired, I thought, yes. That was why people slept so much during winterdark. I didn't always know what to say when Veronique talked about the weather.

  "We tell your teacher, you sleep in our house, yes?" I offered.

  "Who?" she said. "You mean Ian? He isn't really my teacher like you mean it. He's my professor."

  I tried to think of what a professor might be, maybe the person who took you when your father died? It always seemed English didn't have enough words for different relatives, but now here was one I didn't know.

  The outrunners and the Sckarline hunters were singing about Fhidrhin the hunter and I looked up to see if I could make our the stars that formed him, but the sky had drifting clouds and I couldn't find the stars.

  I couldn't see well enough, the light from the bonfire made everyone else just shadows. I took Veronique's hand and started around the outside of the circle of singers, looking for Ayudesh and Veronique's teacher or whatever he was. Faces glanced up, spirit faces in the firelight. The smoke blew our way and then shifted, and I smelled the sweat smell that came from the men's clothes as they warmed by the fire. And whisak, of course. The stabros was mostly bones.

  "Janna," said my da. His face was strange, too, not human, like a mask. His eyes looked unnaturally light. "Go on back to your mother."

  "Veronique needs to tell the offworlder that she's staying with us."

  "Go on back to the house;' he said again. I could smell whisak on him, too. Whisak sometimes made him mean. My da used to drink a lot of whisak when I was young, but since Bet was born he didn't drink it very often at all. He said the mornings were too hard when you got old.