The Margarets

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “I can’t understand how you kept all this quiet,” said Bamber. “That many conjoined twins would have been on everyone’s tongue.”

  I said, “If my husband hadn’t been a very fine doctor, if he hadn’t had a few advanced medical devices that he really shouldn’t have had in Rueful, and if he hadn’t had me to help out, it would have been a circus. But Billy Ray’s farm is away from everyone, and so is Jimmy Joe’s. We never allowed anyone to see the babies until they were apart. Later, when they went to school and played with other children who saw the scars, we had stories to explain what happened. With Til and Jeff, it was an accident in an old barn. With Maybelle and Mayleen, the scars were small anyhow, just at the back of their heads, mostly covered by their hair, and we just told them they were born that way…”

  “How did you keep Mayleen quiet?” Glory cried. “When she started having twins, she’d have screamed about it.”

  “Not Mayleen. You know what the folks in Rueful would have thought about it and said about it. She didn’t want that. She’d have died before she’d have admitted it, and Billy Ray likewise.”

  Everyone was still. I was watching Glory, thinking she’d break out any minute with tears, howls, accusations, but she seemed more…interested, or troubled than outraged.

  “I don’t know what this means,” Glory complained. “I feel like I’m lost. Not…not orphaned, exactly. I know that Mama and Daddy love me and that you do, too, Grandma. But I feel like there’s part of me floating free, like a wood chip going down the river, turning around and around, with no idea where it’s going…”

  “Which means the umoxen were right,” said Falija. “Glory and Bamber are a different sort. What did the woman look like, the one who gave up Glory?”

  I wiped my eyes with the wet hanky. “I never saw her. She sent an old woman to bring Glory to us, a very old woman. Budness or Bodness, she said her name was. She said the mother was too broken up to do it. Well, I understand that. No woman gives up a child unless things are terrible for her. As for Glory, well, even as a baby she had dark, dark hair and brown skin, and when I commented on it, the old woman said the baby’s father was very tall, and very dark. I asked her what had happened to the father, wondering, you know, why the mother was giving up her child, and the old woman said he had disappeared and the mother couldn’t raise her little girl alone.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell Mama the babies died?” Glory asked, still in that curious, almost uninvolved voice.

  “Because your mama has a heart condition, Glory. You’ve heard us mention it. She almost died when Til and Jeff were born. And she almost died again when she saw them, and again when they were operated on. And she’s fretted herself for years over the fact that they aren’t…equally endowed. Grandpa Doc didn’t realize how serious your mother’s condition until after the Til and Jeff were born, but after that, he just couldn’t let her go through all that again.”

  Glory turned to stare at Bamber, her eyes moving from his hair to his eyes to his height. Like hers, all of them. He had an arching nose and a wide mouth, like hers, one that always looked like it had too many teeth in it. Dark, vital, lean, and fit. I felt soft compared to both of them. I could have howled.

  “I knew we were alike,” Glory said very softly. “More like family. I never looked like the Mackeys or the Judsons. Do you think we have the same parents?”

  He thought about this, troubled, as she was, but not angry. “It’s possible,” he said at last. “I don’t remember what my mother looked like. I don’t remember anybody before we came here to Rueful. It would explain her leaving me with Abe Johnson, because she might have wanted us to grow up near one another…”

  I was listening to this with continuing amazement. I had known about Gloriana’s birth mother! Why hadn’t it occurred to me that Bamber might have had the same one?

  “What about when Til, and Jeff, and Trish, and all of the rest of Mayleen’s children start having babies?” Glory demanded.

  “Grandpa Doc fixed them all, before he died, even Emmaline, when she was just a baby. We had quite a plague of appendicitis among the girls and hernias among the boys, but none of them will have children, not even the nice ones, and that’s another reason why your cousin Ella May joined the Siblinghood. She and Joe Bob were old enough and sensible enough that Grandpa told them the truth. Oh, Glory, it was such a burden for your grandfather. I know he felt he’d been cursed. I felt I was a curse to him….”

  Glory murmured, “Then I’m glad I wasn’t Mama’s baby, really, but I’m glad I’m her child.”

  I broke down then and cried, while Bamber and Glory tried to comfort me, though every now and then Glory would mutter that it would have made so much more sense if we’d just admitted it to one another instead of trying to keep it secret. Perhaps later I could explain that both Grandpa Doc and I had been from an older time on Earth, when things like that couldn’t be talked about at all. Maybe he had been ashamed of it. I had been ashamed of it. Maybe he’d had dreams of his family going on, down the generations, and he just couldn’t admit to the world that they wouldn’t. And then, too, I knew Bryan hadn’t struggled to keep life in some of those babies, when he’d seen how awful their lives would be. Like Lou Ellen. That poor baby had whispered to me that she prayed to die, so the pain could stop. Glory had just been so generously accepting that she’d never realized how dreadful Lou Ellen’s life really was…

  Glory stood up, her jaw set. “I think I’ve had about all the emotions I can take for one day.” She took a deep breath and helped me get to my feet. “If we’re going to find someplace to sleep by sundown, we’d better get started.”

  I Am Margaret, with Hayraiders on Fajnard

  We reached the gate of the Howkel Farm at nightfall. While Falija and I waited at the gate, Glory and Bamber went to the door and knocked politely. Dame Howkel answered the knock.

  “So you’ve arrived!” she said. “Good enough. I always say to Lafaniel, that’s my husband, Lafaniel, that he truckles too much to them umoxen. Nice creature, true, polite in their habits, but set on having their way! Beckon your folk in, now, and we’ll see about supper.”

  The two beckoned as instructed, I thinking meanwhile that I’d never imagined anyone quite so round, green, and cheerful as Dame Howkel. Once inside, however, I forgot about the probability of eating hay, for the aroma was of something very savory. Dame Howkel bobbed a curtsy toward Falija.

  “Welcome, ma’am and Gibbekotkin. Howkel’l be along shortly. Our young have had their supper, us oldsters waited for you.”

  She showed us the way out back, where a washbowl sat on a table next to the well beside a stack of towels and a steaming kettle. Once back inside, we were given mugs of fragrant green tea, and by the time Lafaniel Howkel showed up, we were deep in conversation with the Dame concerning the plight of Fajnard.

  “I was speaking of the Frossians,” said the Dame to her husband. “I was telling how the Gibbekot planted those acid trees all along the valleys to stop the Frossians coming.”

  “I would’ve warned you of the same,” Howkel said, pouring himself a mug of tea. “They smell very pungent, so they’re easy to avoid. You’d think the Frossians’d learn to look at the trees to see which ones do it to ’em, but they never do.”

  He turned toward me and said pointedly, with a sidelong glance at Falija, “Since you’re Ghoss, you’ll be going to the Gibbekot, won’t you? They’ll be wondering where that child is, wanderin’ off and findin’ the comp’ny of strangers.”

  “I’m not from Fajnard, and they’re not Ghoss,” said Falija, in a lofty tone. “We came through a way-gate from Tercis.”

  “Not Ghoss? Then what are they?” demanded Howkel.

  “Same race,” said Falija. “Not the same…talents.”

  “You say a way-gate,” breathed the Dame. “I didn’t know we had a way-gate anywhere near here.”

  “Never seen fit to mention it to you,” Howkel said, fixing Falija with a doubtful eye. “
We have a pair of ’em, one that comes in from Tercis, and one that goes out to Thairy. And right now, there’s gizzardiles lyin’ both ways like sentries!”

  “We saw one,” said Bamber. “Very ugly.”

  “Supper,” said Dame Howkel in a peremptory tone. “Let’s not upset ourselfs with gizzardiles right afore supper.”

  We sat down at the long, wide table, the Dame at one end, Howkel at the other, his feet neatly crossed so his toenails curved inward before him, making floor space for the feet of those at his sides. Each place held a large bowl of stew, which had a certain verdant leafiness about it, but also bits that crunched or melted. We talked about food, the Dame ticking off many kinds of nuts and roots and seeds that made up hayfolk meals. “Along with hay,” she said, listing the kinds of hay, each with its own taste and texture.

  “Have you always been hayraiders?” Gloriana asked.

  “Hayfolk,” said Howkel. “Not raiders ’til the umoxen came, and they was brought from the plains below by the Gibbekot. They was the ones started cuttin’ hay from the grasslands, not knowin’ we was countin’ on it for winter food for ourselfs. Generally nice folk, the Gibbekot. We told ’em we needed it, and they worked it out right away. We get first cut. After that, we cut hay for the umoxen, and we get umox wool from the Gibbekot in return. Hayraidin’s just doin’ what we always did.”

  “You always cut the hay at night?” asked Bamber Joy.

  “Oh, sure. Nicer, cooler at night, and there’s usually a moon, since Fajnard has five of ’em.”

  “Did you always have those remarkable toenails?” I asked.

  “Our people say we always did,” said Dame Howkel. “Course, I cut mine, now I’m past dancin’ the hay, and we all cut ’em off after the hay’s in for the season and sell ’em in the market for sickle blades. No better edge nowhere than Hayfolk toenails. Besides, it’s warmer in the winter if you can keep your feet under the blanket ’stead of lettin’ ’em hang out the foot of the bed. Now, suppose you tell us where you’re headed. We can tell you the safest roads, depending on where you’re going.”

  Falija, who had been rather quiet since Grandma’s revelations on the road, made a little annunciatory noise, then: “My duty is to guide these folk in walking the seven roads of the Keeper. It is a task I was given by my people.”

  All of us turned to her in amazement, Bamber and Glory with their eyes wide, the Howkels with their mouths wide, me with both eyes and lips shut tight, afraid to say the wrong thing.

  “When did you decide that?” cried Glory.

  “It came to me while I was thinking of the fish story,” Falija said. “You remember what I told you about my language and my mother-mind. I said you sometimes have to hear a word in context before you can understand what it really means. I had the seven roads in my mother-memory. It’s my job to help the walker walk the seven roads. I knew the story of the fish, but it didn’t connect to anything in my mind until just a few hours ago. All seven roads are one, and they must be walked simultaneously by one person.” Her voice faltered. “There’s nothing in my mind about how that’s to be done.”

  “What is it, a riddle?” asked Bamber.

  Falija shook her head. “All I know is, we just have to keep going.”

  “On this road?” I demanded. “In front of the house?”

  Falija dropped her head, shaking it slightly, saying in a sorrowful voice, “I don’t know.”

  “Road you came by was a way-gate road,” said Howkel, pushing his chair back and honing his toenails together with a sound like steel on whetstone. “That road out front just goes to Gibbekotika by way of the mountains, that’s all. So, likely it’s a way-gate road that’s meant.”

  “And there’s one that goes on to Thairy,” murmured Bamber Joy. “You said.”

  “Well, yes,” mused Howkel. “A way-gate road as well.”

  “That’s two roads that are one road,” said Glory.

  I took a deep breath. “Are all the way-gates one-way roads?”

  “One way,” Falija murmured. “I remember that someone long ago invented a machine to reverse them; but when they’re let alone, they’re always one way.”

  “My oh my,” the Dame said, shaking her head. “That’s a lot of confusion and supposition, that is. Seems to me you’d be better off finishing your supper, having a good night’s sleep, then deciding what you’re going to do next.”

  “Dame’s right,” said Howkel. “Never make plans when you’re weary, and I’m weary. Been cuttin’ hay the last eleven nights.”

  “There, that’s so,” the Dame said, nodding to her husband. “No more talk of roads tonight.”

  Glory and Bamber agreed, though Falija looked slightly mutinous. I reached out and petted her between the ears. Falija sighed and settled to her supper.

  “There, now,” said the Dame. “That’s better. You’re a dutiful Gibbekotkin, the more credit to you, but even the dutiful have to eat and rest.” She turned to her own bowl, raising her spoon with a little moue of discomfort.

  I saw that her arm was bruised. “What have you done to yourself there?” I asked. “That looks painful!”

  “And so it is,” said Howkel. “And it’s gettin’ no better, neither. It’s a summer bruise, and it’s been there a time now.”

  “Let me see,” I said, taking the Dame’s arm in my hands. Indeed, there was a darkness, like a bruise, except that on the green flesh it looked more like a crushed place, one that was not healing. “Tell me,” I said, after some thought. “When you are ill, does your body get hot? Do you run a fever?”

  “A fever? And what is a fever?” asked the Dame. “When our people are ill, they get cold.”

  “But this place on your arm is not cold. The tissue there is ruined. It needs to die and fall away, so the good tissue underneath can heal. Isn’t that what usually happens?”

  “Oh, aye, it does,” said Howkel. “When Maniacal’s toes were cut to pieces on the sharp rocks, they got cold and fell off, and the new ones grew. Thankful it was wintertime, we were.”

  I nodded. “But in summer, warm as it is, it would be hard for a bruised place to get cold enough to fall away. Well then, I would put ice on this. Is there any ice about?”

  “Close enough,” said Howkel. “And where did you learn such thinking out, ma’am?”

  “My husband was a doctor,” I said. “He always said, find out what the body does for itself and help it along.”

  “Think of that,” said the Dame. “Just think of that, Howkel.” And, with a smile of great sweetness, she reached up and kissed me on the cheek.

  I Am M’urgi, with Fernwold on B’yurngrad

  Once we were in Ferni’s flier, I demanded to know what he meant when he said he was taking me somewhere safe.

  “I overheard something,” he said. “Perhaps meaningless, perhaps not. It made me believe you might be in danger.”

  “From whom?” I demanded.

  He shrugged. “From someone who wants you dead, my love.”

  I laughed. “That’s fairly indefinite.”

  “M’urgi. Listen to me. I was in a crowded place, waiting to take a ship from one place to another. Somewhere close to me a deep voice says, ‘The word came down, all the way from the top. The orders are she’s got to be killed, soon.’ Second voice asks, ‘Why some smoke-flavored old hag from the steppes…’”

  “Old hag!” I interrupted angrily. “I am not an old hag!”

  He said harshly. “I’m not finished! The first voice says, ‘No hag, she’s young yet.’ Now, you tell me. Is there anyone else working here on B’yurngrad that answers that description? ‘Smoke-flavored, steppes, young yet,’ says you to me.”

  I couldn’t answer. The words described me, and me only. “Who?” I said finally. “Who wants me dead?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t find the speakers. I stayed there listening for a long time, no luck. I have no idea who or what they were. What enemies have you made while here?”

  “Enemies ma
de as whom? As the night flier, the shaman’s girl? As the shaman herself after the old woman died? Since then, being a ghyrm-hunter? That last one we can answer. The ghyrm distributor probably wants all hunters off the job.”

  “There are a dozen hunters, at least. You’re the only one fitting the description. Why only you?”

  I shook my head at him. “I’m baffled, Ferni. If I’ve learned anything on this job, however, it’s that a workman never knows how the work looks to people who see it from the outside. We carry ghyrm. That makes us devils to some. You saw how that oasthall emptied out when I was there.”

  “I imagined as much. That’s why I said I was taking you someplace safer. Everyone around here knows who you are, what you are. They’ll talk: ‘Yes, the woman was here, she went off in that direction.’ That’s why I’ve gone five directions since taking off. If anybody’s watching, we’ll hope we lost them.”

  “And what is there, where we’re going?”

  “A lake. A forest. A waterfall. A little inn, where the Siblinghood sends people who need a long rest. A view over the grasslands. Horses.”

  “Horses?” I said doubtfully.

  “Yes. The innkeeper keeps horses, for people to ride.”

  “That’s new!”

  “It is new, yes. Five or six years new. The Siblinghood brought in the original stock from Tercis, where they had too many. The grasslands are perfect for them. They actually eat plants the umoxen don’t like, so they fit.”

  “Can I ride one?” I asked wonderingly.

  “I should think so,” he said, grinning at me.

  I turned from him to look out the window of the flier. Below, the grasslands extended beyond the range of vision, a wave-rippled ocean of green, blue, silver, and almost yellow, with here and there a patch of vivid red and once in a while a copse of towering trees. I felt tears in my eyes and wondered why. It came to me after a while. Death threats or no death threats, I couldn’t remember ever being this gloriously, miraculously happy.