Earth Logic el-2

by J. Laurie Marks

  That day, she finally mastered the snowshoer’s leg-swinging waddle. The sledge seemed almost weightless as she guided it down the hillside, and even when they reached the flat, she was amazed at her own speed. Davi rode behind her, complaining once of thirst, but subsiding when Clement explained that the water had frozen solid in its jug. But Clement became aware of her own thirst now. Dry-mouthed, she could not swallow the sweetened oatcakes in her pockets. Snow-blind, she could not see the passing countryside. A tugging at the harness brought her out of her daze.

  Davi pointed, it seemed, into the sky, which was, Clement noted giddily, a gorgeous color: winter twilight. Across it lay the faintest smear of smoke.

  “Ah!” Clement turned them down the hillside, where she could not see a wagon track, and in a last burst of blind energy got them practically to the farmhouse door before she fell for the first time that day, and was too tired to get up.

  “Haven’t got your snow legs yet?” A farmer in woolen clothing redolent, though not unpleasantly, with cow manure, hauled her to her feet and undid the harness buckles. “I saw you coming,” she added. “So we’ve put the kettle on. Snow took you by surprise?”

  “Not really,” Clement gasped. “I planned to travel home before autumn mud. But the child took sick.”

  “Bad luck.” An angular woman Clement’s age or older, she made light work of lifting the sledge to the shelter of the porch, while Clement stood in dumb tiredness with Davi in her arms. She had concocted a much more elaborate explanatory tale for herself, but the farmer didn’t ask for it. The farmer said, “We’ve got an empty bed. Two of the children married out this year. Twins. Went to the same household so they could still be in the same family. Come in, come in.”

  In the kitchen, a half dozen people looked up from chopping vegetables to chorus a distracted welcome. The angular farmer collected a tea tray and led the way to an equally crowded parlor. Clement sank into an empty chair and was plied with hot tea and generously buttered bread as Davi drank a mug of hot milk, sitting in her lap. The angular farmer waved away Clement’s thanks, saying obliquely, “It’s been a good year. Good milk, healthy calves.”

  And if it hadn’t been a good year, Clement wondered vaguely, what would the farmer say instead? That there was always enough to go around, or that what is given comes back eventually? Davi got down from her lap and joined some other children on the floor, who moved over to let her watch their game. The angular farmer, Mariseth, Seth to her friends, refilled Clement’s teacup, cut her some cheese, and sat knee-to-knee with her. Clement recognized the cheese, which was even better here, where it had been made. The fear in her slowly came undone, like an old, stiff knot. Seth’s knee was warmer than the heat from the fire as she recounted bits and pieces of information that might interest a traveler, and Clement asked questions, expressed surprise, uttered an occasional cautious comment. There was not much she needed to do; the farmer’s incurious friendliness was like a path she needed only follow.

  During the raucous supper, some twenty-two people ate willy-nilly, sitting or standing wherever there was space, all talking at once about cows and cheese and distant news from far-off places. Seth had status here, Clement noted, a lieutenant in her way, risen to that unacknowledged position over many years. Davi circled back to Clement’s lap again, and ate obediently from her spoon. “I didn’t tell!” she whispered.

  “Good girl.” Clement fed her some cheese, but Davi didn’t like it, and the farmer offered a bowl of curds instead, which Davi emptied happily. Then the child fell asleep, and Seth, who had not been out of conversation distance all evening, commented, “A smart girl you’ve got there. But serious for her age. What is she, three?”

  Clement nodded vaguely. “I wonder if I should have given her longer to recover from her illness. But I needed to go home.”

  “She’s a bit too pale and quiet. But maybe she’s a quiet kid? Those thinkers often are, like you.”

  “Me?” Clement gave a laugh.

  “Thinking hurts, doesn’t it? Too much, maybe. I’ll show you where you’ll sleep.”

  In a bare cubby of a room, heated by a stove tiny as a kettle, someone had brought the contents of the sledge and hung everything that was damp to dry. With the farmer there, Clement had cause to be grateful for her recent sick nursing, for she undressed Davi and put her to bed without any obvious display of inexperience. Seth lit a little lamp that she put on a high shelf, out of child’s reach. She set out a chamber pot, and folded Davi’s clothes. Clement felt a rising warmth, as though that muscular leg still pressed hers.

  Seth said, “You’re not so tired as you looked when you first arrived.”

  “It was food and drink I needed. Tomorrow, I’ll have Davi hug the water jug to keep it from freezing.”

  “Oh, we’ll send you on your way with a foot warmer full of coals. That’ll do the job, and keep your girl from getting chilled if the wind starts to blow. Some of that cheese, too, since you liked it so much. How about a nip?” she added.

  Clement followed Seth down the hall to her own room, where apparently she slept in grand solitude beneath brightly colored scrap quilts, beside a small stove that she swiftly lit and stoked, then poured Clement a little cup of brandy from a long husbanded bottle. Clement sipped very cautiously, thinking to preserve at least some of her fleeting wits. “I feel a bit like a cow you’re herding,” she said.

  Seth gave a wide, startling grin. “If you were a cow, I could force you into the barn.”

  “Oh, I’ll let you herd me in. But why—?”

  Seth sat beside her on the settle, thigh to thigh. “You’ve seen some things worth seeing, and I like the way it’s marked you. But you don’t want me asking.”

  Clement thought, this woman istoo smart to be a cowherd!And she knew she ought to be afraid, or at least more cautious than she was. She said, “While you were having a good year I’ve been having an awful one. I want to forget. To pretend, maybe, that my life isn’t mine.”

  The farmer said, “No questions, then. So …” She gestured, palm up, as though requesting the gods to fill her empty hand. “What? What do we do?”

  Clement kissed her. That worked very well, so she kissed her again. After that came an extremely pleasant and quite long-lasting and stunningly satisfying confusion.

  Clement dreamed a very strange dream in which she was a cowherd, but the cattle paid her no heed, and kept wandering away and getting eaten by wolves. When there were no beasts left, she stood alone in an empty field under an empty sky, with nothing to do but ponder her own incompetence. “Your girl’s calling you,” the angular farmer said blurrily. So Clement awoke from emptiness to surprise: a cozy bed, a warm shoulder against her cheek, the lingering memory of an extremely memorable night.

  Davi’s voice came very faintly down the hall.

  “It’s dawn,” Clement mumbled. “Well, almost dawn. I think I’ll get on my way. Long journey ahead.”

  “Stay,” said the farmer quietly.

  Clement swallowed surprise. “I don’t know a thing about cows.”

  “Not much to know. You’ll come to hate milking and mucking as much as we do. It doesn’t take long!”

  “Davi’s father—”

  “I’d say he’s not much of a husband. Neglectful.”

  Clement let that sink in. Had she acted neglected? She had indeed. “A good father, though,” she said.

  “But what have yougot to go home to? Stay the winter. Send him a letter. My family won’t mind.”

  Seth’s hands were good, and for a little while Clement didn’t try to escape them. Davi subsided, back into sleep. But eventually, Clement got out from under the warm quilts, put on her clothes, and got underway. The angular farmer stood on the porch and watched her leave, but when Clement looked back, she was gone, to the cow barn, no doubt, to start the milking, or to the dairy, to check on the cheese.

  These things happen, Clement told herself.

  Bittersweet regret followed her all the way
to Watfield. Nine days later, blistered and frostbitten, she unwound her muffler in the middle of a blinding snowstorm so the gate captain could recognize her face. Later still, with Davi big-eyed and frightened in her arms, she endured the wrath of Cadmar. She had been gone twice as long as she had promised, and had taken untoward risks, and had abandoned her soldiers. She admitted all that, and did not argue with his anger. Still later, with Davi asleep in Clement’s bed, she sat with Gilly while his nighttime pain draught was taking hold, and told him about the blinding white days, the one bewildering storm that did its best to kill her, the nights in cold barns on straw beds with only pauper’s bread to eat, the nights of sharing hearty meals at family tables and sleeping in a bed hospitably vacated for her and Davi. And she told him about Seth.

  Gilly did not laugh at her. After a long silence, he said, “If you become Shaftali—”

  “What?”

  “Oh, don’t be dishonest with me. If you become Shaftali, I couldn’t endure my life. And with both of us gone, Cadmar would fall like a house without a center beam, and maybe the Sainnites would fall with him.”

  Clement said, after a stunned silence, “My face is known. I’m the notorious baby thief of Watfield. I can never escape that. I never even thought to try.”

  “Stop playing these dangerous games, then. Be what you are.”

  The next day, Clement was back in uniform. Her hair was trimmed, her buttons polished, her feet, though they ached with frostbite, were jammed into her newly blacked boots. Davi found her attire fearsome, and cried. She refused to eat her porridge, fought the bath, huddled under the blankets in Clement’s bed, and was generally defiant and exasperating. “I want to go home!” she whined. “You promised!”

  “I see you’re feeling much better. Well enough to accuse a lieutenant-general of being a liar. You’ve got a lot of courage, little girl, but not much sense.”

  Davi glared at her: sturdy, angry, not much intimidated. “You promised!”

  Unable to leave Davi unattended, Clement had paper and ink delivered to her room, and she tried to work on the task Cadmar had set her, but even without the distracting child it would have been impossible. He had refused to accept the closure of any garrison and demanded alternatives. She wrote an extremely irritable list of impractical and intolerable solutions:

  1. Go back to the homeland and recruit a few thousand mercenaries to join us in exile.

  2. People the garrisons with straw dummies.

  3. Command each soldier to kidnap and personally raise two children, while also fulfilling all other duties.

  4. Take a thousand Shaftali women prisoner, impregnate them all, and force them to raise the resulting children as Sainnites.

  5. Require the female soldiers, myself among them to bear and raise children. (Though I am too old, probably.)

  She snorted. She didn’t have to look beyond the child glowering at her from the bed to see why her people were childless. What would she do, if Davi were hers? After a year of pregnancy and a year of nursing, two years off the battlefield, if she survived childbirth and did not suffer any of the terrible injuries birthing women were subject to, would she then carry Davi on her back into war? Or leave the child behind to be inevitably orphaned? And who would raise her then?

  “Lieutenant-General?” A hesitant tap on her door. “Davi?”

  Davi came out from under the covers, big-eyed. “You should have trusted me,” said Clement sourly, and went to open the door.

  The steady, quiet father of this sturdy girl came in, pushed past Clement, and snatched up the child. “Oh, blessed day! Davi! You’re so thin! Oh, my sweet girl!”

  Davi clung to him, and cried, and then declared that she had been very brave, though she had been in a scary place, and that Clemmie—she had forgotten that she hated her, apparently—had taken her home across the snow.

  “So much adventure for such a little girl.” The man gave Clement a look and added dryly, “I thought you Sainnites were cowards about snow.”

  “Your information had better be worth what I’ve been through.” Strange that it hadn’t occurred to her until now to wonder if this man were telling the truth. But the Shaftali were an honest people, a quality that was, according to Gilly, embedded in the culture by the once ubiquitous Truthkens. In most of her dealings with the Shaftali, when they agreed to speak at all, they spoke the truth.

  Davi’s father had brushed most of the snow from his clothing. His skis and ski poles were slung across his back, and an empty sling for Davi to ride home in. He set all this gear down and sat reluctantly, with Davi clinging to his neck.

  “These people, Death-and-Life,” he said. “They’re going to rescue the children. But they aren’t going to send the Watfield children home, not right away, because they think you Sainnites would blame their families, and the people of Watfield have suffered too much already, so maybe Davi would have been safe anyway. But I’d never see her again. And I couldn’t bear it.”

  “I didn’t tell anybody Clemmie was a soldier,” announced Davi. “And I didn’t cry.”

  Her father said, “All your mothers and fathers will be so proud of you.”

  Clement, while gathering up Davi’s warm clothing, had noticed a loose button and sat down to sew it on. The man gave her a surprised look, and she glared at him, saying, “I suppose you feel required to explain to me now how badly you feel, but I wish you wouldn’t. Tell me: nobody knows where the Watfield children are. So how are they to be rescued?”

  “Not just the Watfield children. All of them.”

  She looked up again from her stitching, genuinely surprised now, and even more dismayed.

  The farmer said, “I suppose you thought it was a secret that you’ve got a garrison full of children. But those people knew you Sainnites had to be keeping your children somewhere! And your children aren’t in the garrisons, because no one’s ever seen one, and a child’s not easy to hide. So the rebels have been looking around, and asking questions, and they’ve found your secret place, and they know the Watfield children are there. They wouldn’t say exactly where that place was, though. I guess they feared the Watfield parents might go there and wreck their surprise. And I wouldhave gone, too, if I had known. In fact, my husband wasn’t supposed to tell anything at all, even to his family, but he did because he was so sick. And my husband was sure those Death-and-Life people knew exactly where the children were.”

  “They planned to steal our children? All of them?”

  “To liberatethem. Because they’re all Shaftali children, they say. You Sainnites don’t bear children, so every last child you’ve got is a stolen child. But that’s not true, is it?”

  “It’s not true,” she said, outraged.

  He seemed relieved. Bad enough that he was allowing nearly forty of his neighbor’s children to remain imprisoned while his was rescued. No wonder his family had abandoned their farmstead rather than endure the public shame! And no wonder he clutched his girl so tightly now that she protested, and then complained that she was hungry.

  “She wouldn’t eat her porridge,” Clement explained. “She wanted milk, but we don’t have any.”

  “Have you been fussy, love?” The man produced a neat packet of oat cakes from his pocket, and Davi was as contented with these as Clement had ever seen her. “You haven’t fed her right,” he said.

  “She’s been very sick. I nursed her back—she would have died otherwise. So don’t complain.” Clement bit the thread and tested the button. “When are these kids to be ‘liberated’? And how?”

  “On Long Night. The people of Death-and-Life figure that by midwinter, the children will be so isolated by weather that when the initial battle is over, they’ll have a couple of months to haul the kids away to their new homes, at households scattered all over Shaftal. A surprise attack, at night, sure to succeed. The children aren’t well guarded, they believe. And Long Night’s an important holiday to us, you know.”

  Clement said nothing, but she did not d
oubt that with enough attackers the plan he described would probably succeed. The only weapons at the children’s garrison were carried by the seven soldiers she had abandoned there. Unless one counted the practice weapons the children used.

  “That’s all I know,” the man said. “Shaftal forgive me! Can I go?”

  “Tell no one what you’ve told me.”

  “You think I would? I’m a traitor to my people, now.” “Maybe you might try to clear your conscience by alerting Death-and-Life that their secret ambush isn’t a secret anymore.”

  The man said stiffly, thoroughly offended now, “Those people? You think I owe them something? There’s nothing to admire in them, no more than there is in you.” He stood up with some effort, and said to Davi, “Let’s get you into your jacket and hat. It’s time to go.”

  Clement helped bundle her up. “What’s going to happen to her, come spring?” She did not want to say in front of Davi that her father was dying, but he knew what she referred to.

  “I’ve got a plan. I don’t have to tell you what it is.”

  As Clement tied Davi’s cap strings, Davi blinked at her. “Aren’t you coming, Clemmie?”

  “No.” She couldn’t manage to say more.

  “But Daddy,” Davi protested, as her father picked her up again, “why isn’t Clemmie coming?”

  “She isn’t in our family,” he said. And they were gone.

  Part 4

  What’s Inside The Buffalo

  “You are slow and stupid,” the grasslion said to his friend the buffalo one day. They always shared the shade on hot summer days and were lying together, the buffalo chewing her cud and the grasslion licking the blood from his paws. “I wonder sometimes why I don’t just eat you.”

  The buffalo looked up at her friend and coughed up another lump of cud. “Who would dig the water hole for you?” she said.