by Robin Owens
It is a relief.
There is no baking to be done while we travel.
Divination cards have always worked for me, and I need something to keep my mind and hands busy on this journey, so I have decided to make some. I would prefer flexiplastic, but I don’t have the resources of the Ship.
I think I will always miss Lugh’s Spear.
“See if she mentions a map.” T’Cherry shifted restlessly in his chair. When Raz’s mother continued to scan the pages, he tapped it, said, “Find the word map.”
“This volume is four hundred years old. Surely you don’t think . . .” Raz’s mother started, but the pages flipped.
“Some of her descendants read it, bespelled it. There were Flair security shields on the box and books.” He craned to see, shook his head, and muttered, “Still can’t understand it.”
“I can,” his wife said smugly. She ran a finger down the page, then read.
Every night when we gather around after dinner, he-who-was-Captain shows us a map of where we have been and where we are going and the progress that has been made. It is not like the only other map I have ever seen which was the inside of our lost Lugh’s Spear. Like most everything else about this strange journey, the few who were in the cryonic tubes of Lugh’s Spear have an easier time reading the map, though I study it. It is a top-o-graph-ic map.
I want to learn. I don’t want to be stupid.
Stupidity has taken a toll on this trip, people have died or wandered away and never been seen again.
Those who were in the tubes and Hoku-who-was-Captain say we are lucky that it is summer. Again, it is something the rest of us do not understand, though our leader has patiently explained it more than once, a season is when the temperature and plants around us vary.
I try hard to learn, because not to learn will be to die.
“Cheerful,” his sister said with a shiver.
“We can’t possibly understand what they went through.” D’Cherry patted her daughter’s shoulder.
“The captain had a map.” T’Cherry scowled. He rubbed his cheek. “What happened to it?”
Del shrugged. “Who knows? Do we even know what Family name he took?”
They all stared at each other. “ResidenceLibrary, are there any notations in any of your archives as to what Family name the Lugh’s Spear Captain chose? He would have been a FirstFamily, wouldn’t he?”
“No record,” said the ResidenceLibrary’s light female voice that sounded a lot like D’Cherry. “The Captain of Lugh’s Spear was offered membership in the FirstFamilies, of course, but he declined.”
“He declined!” Raz’s sister sounded astonished.
“Hard to believe,” T’Cherry said.
“The entry regarding him states he was very tired of leadership after Lugh’s Spear and the responsibility of bringing the colonists from the landing site to Druida City.”
“He was a great man,” Raz’s sister’s HeartMate said.
“Yes.” More lines dug into T’Cherry’s forehead. “The original settlement, those who stayed near Lugh’s Spear, died out, right?”
“History has it that the settlement was moved several times from the original location, then, yes, after a couple of generations the people were gone . . . dead or migrated to Gael City or Druida City.”
“Sad,” Raz’s sister said.
“Yes,” Raz said. “Celta is still a hard planet on her human inhabitants, and for new colonists . . .”
“Fatal to many,” Del said.
“But not Mona Tabacin,” D’Cherry said. “Not her. Let me read the final page . . .”
So I am finally settled in Druida. It isn’t what I expected, but I have a fine stone house and a man and am happily pregnant. I have a Family.
Life is better for me than it was on Lugh’s Spear. There I would never have been more than a minor crew member working in the kitchens. Here, I bake better than anyone else in the city.
I don’t shake much anymore, the journey got so tiring that I had no energy to do so, and I am happier, have accepted this new life and new ways.
I am no longer Mona Tabacin. I am Cerasa, Dame Cherry.
“Yes, she lived and prospered,” T’Cherry said. He poured more caff and cocoa all around, lifted his mug. “To Cerasa D’Cherry.”
They toasted.
“To us!” Raz proposed, his fingers twining with Del’s.
“To us!”
Hope spun through the room, strongly enough that Raz just felt the emotion and didn’t question that things would turn out all right with his HeartMate.
Thirty-three
That night, Del slept in his arms in his own room in the Family Residence. Raz’s mind swirled with odd thoughts—everything from knowing that two other HeartMate couples—both HeartBound—slept in the Residence; concern about the Residence itself and knowledge that his father and sister would be visiting the HouseHeart, reassuring it; and at the outreaches of his brain the tiny notion that if the play Heart and Sword was a hit, maybe he could interest another playwright, maybe even Amberose, in a story based on the diaries.
Most of all, though, he twined around Del and tried not to wonder about his future with her.
The next morning, Del woke to kittens jumping on her and the scent of baking bread. The sun was bright in the room.
Raz wasn’t in the bed, and she sensed he was back down in the breakfast room with his Family. Last night, a page-by-page perusal of the books showed absolutely no maps, and more quick peeks didn’t show any exact directions—except for baking. Recipes. Some of them made her mouth water to think about, ancient treats that no one had revived in years. From the gleam in Raz’s mother’s eyes and a new spring in her step, Del saw another Cherry business about to be born.
Real cherry pies, even. Now that the great greensward of Nuada’s Sword was available for use, there might be true Earthan cherry trees there . . . certainly would be DNA.
Rosemary bit her ear. Time for breakfast.
“Haven’t you already had yours?”
Yes, but the people have locked Us out of the breakfast room. If We go with you, We get back in, the FamKitten belonging to Raz’s sister said.
Del grunted. “Guess I’ll eat in the kitchen then. Probably food there.”
YES! Rosemary kitten said. But WE want in the breakfast room!
“What you don’t want is a Residence mad at you. Can you both promise not to put a pad or paw or tongue or claw in the journals?”
They both plopped their butts down in front of her and gave her big-eyed stares.
YES!
Yes.
Del still didn’t think so. There was such a thing as overwhelming temptation. Del had never thought she’d spend a night in Raz’s bed in the Cherry Residence. But the whole Family had appeared shocked after the discovery of the journals, needing comfort from wherever they could draw it, including from her.
With a Word, Del opened the door. Run along now. I’ll be down after a waterfall.
The kittens eyed her, then the more trusting one, the one who lived here, trotted out. Rosemary appeared torn as to whether to stay or go, but when the other kitten squeaked Fooood, Raz’s cat left.
In the waterfall, Del shifted from foot to foot with concern. Finally she spoke. “Residence, are you all right?”
“I am very well, D’Elecampane.” The Residence’s deep voice had returned. “You are the first to ask this morning.”
“I’ve been spending a lot of time in houses with stones barely aware, ready to become Residences or sink back into dull rock. You have been blessed, Residence, with a long and caring and lively Family.”
She hadn’t put scent in the holder over the fall, but sweet herbs wafted around her. “Thank you,” she said to the Residence.
Thank you, D’Elecampane. None of my folk will ever harm me.
“No. They love you.” She ordered the waterfall off, dried herself with a whisking breeze, and went back in to look at the clothes she’d reluctantly
hung in the closet. The wrinkles were gone, of course, but she was tired of wearing each and every tunic and trous, even her leathers. She put on her best and hesitated with her hand on the door latch, finally understanding that one of the reasons she didn’t want to join the others was because two other couples were HeartBonded and she and Raz weren’t.
A hum came from her duffle and her calendarsphere appeared. Septhour before your holo portrait sitting with Doolee for T’Apple.
She could grab some food here, poke her head in to the Family—the one who belonged in this Residence—gathered in the breakfast room reading their ancestress’s journals—and wave good-bye to them, kiss Raz, then take off for her own house. Her house that she knew would never be her home, but that she’d come to have a fondness for.
Yes, she’d take the quick and cowardly way out for once.
Everyone was pleased with the portrait session. Straif was gone from the city, actually trusting Del to get the thing done. Both she and Doolee held landscape globes. Doolee played with hers, which didn’t show a place, but her Family . . . Straif and Mitchella and the other two Blackthorn children. Doolee would shake it and beam as the figures would take up different positions . . . sometimes Doolee was being held by a parent, Straif sometimes wrestling with his boys. Del thought once she’d seen the children jumping on the couch in the playroom. So Doolee’s “home” was her relationship with these people. Something Del hadn’t considered before, but it sounded fine to her.
She stared out the playhouse windows at the gardens around her. She was fine with leaving the estate to Doolee.
Del had returned to ten messages from T’Anise about charity work and social gatherings and Bloom Noble Group rituals that Del should do. Invitations to this afternoon meeting, that dinner, some other working breakfast.
“Expression, Del,” T’Apple reminded her. He smiled. “Squeeze Doolee.”
That usually worked to cheer her up, and it did now. The toddler had fallen asleep for a few minutes and was limp in her lap. Del smiled back at the artist and thought of Doolee, which apparently gave her the expression he wanted to capture. This time.
The man had threatened to do one of her in her leathers, with that “distant, cartographer’s expression,” the “frontier woman.” As one of his studies of her. She suppressed a snort.
“Can you shake your landscape globe again?” T’Apple asked.
Del tilted the oval-domed globe T’Apple had chosen from her workroom. Del thought it was because it had a great many bits of found city items, but maybe it was the shape. She glanced down at it and her eyes widened as she saw a fleeting image of what might come—the property in Verde Valley, the pretty white house with the large, multipaned round sunroom, the larger square of the hotel, the building that could be a theater.
“Expression, Del,” T’Apple said again, this time absently, his fingers weaving light in glimmers and flashes and splashes, adding color that nearly had her mouth dropping. Again. It was wonderful to watch him.
“Expression!”
So Del composed her face and shifted the child, thought of Doolee. The girl would have changed her life even if Del hadn’t gone looking for Raz.
“Yes! That hint of a strong woman in love. Perfect! One of the other studies I want to do is with more of that expression . . . but not . . . just . . . now.”
He bent light, tinted it, and it flowed. Del strove to think of Doolee and how the child played in the HouseHeart, this playhouse, ran as fast as her toddler’s legs could go along a corridor glorying in the freedom of being home. With her Family, in her very own house. Would the landscape globe later show this place? Del hoped so.
“You are a very challenging woman,” T’Apple said.
“No,” Del said.
“Don’t try to deceive an old man,” T’Apple said. He was old, but he radiated health and vitality, sheer pleasure in his work. An artist—would Raz be like that in the far future? “You’re a challenge. Good thing I’ve lived long enough to know what to do with a woman like you.”
“Do? What?”
He met her eyes, fingers still working. “Appreciate you. From a distance.”
Several days passed for Del with an increasing tension between her and Raz, and when she was clearheaded enough once during loving she understood why. He knew he was her HeartMate.
But he was fighting the knowledge.
That hurt.
He was sometimes “too busy” for her, and that hurt even more. But as the week went on and possibilities grew in her mind, she came to understand what to do. Discreetly she inquired about the estate in the valley near the new glider route.
Despite the fact that she told the Family who owned it that the stones in the house were becoming intelligent and of the new gliderway through the valley, the owners were uncaring. Their Family had taken a huge loss on the property two generations ago when they’d built a resort. Since then they’d decided nothing of any interest existed outside of Druida City.
Since her parents had felt that way, Del was familiar with the attitude. She offered an insultingly low figure for the estate and the bid was accepted so quickly doubts assailed her. But she’d seen the place herself. The buildings were sound.
Raz had liked the house, as she had. He’d thought the valley pretty, she was sure he’d said something like that. He’d acted in that one building. It could become a theater, couldn’t it?
Wouldn’t Raz enjoy owning a theater, choosing the plays to put on, acting in them?
She could only hope so, but her gut pitched acid. Every day here in the city began to itch more under her skin.
Concentrating on rehabilitating the property, she called people in Gael City who had worked on the Cherry’s house. On one of Raz’s matinee and evening performance days, she squeezed in a quick express airship trip down to Gael City, hired Trillia to look around the “theater.” The actress grinned with approval, nearly bounced with every step as she considered the space, went to a spot and belted out a song, surprising Del.
Trillia approved and dropped the information that she’d told Raz that Del was his HeartMate. Trillia approved of Del, too. They could become friends. If all went well.
Del had an awful feeling that all would not go well. She was putting plans in place for them to live together, love together, but really didn’t know if he would accept them. Soon she would have to confront him.
Raz carried anxiety around with him like a cold fog that had sunk deeply into his bones. Del was restless. She’d left the city and hadn’t told him. He’d learned from newssheets that her job mapping the old Downwind area was finished. He’d heard from his parents that T’Anise, the antiquarian and head of Bloom Noble Circle, continued to remind Del that she had “responsibilities” for molding the city and the culture by attending rituals. Something Raz couldn’t imagine her doing.
He couldn’t visualize much of a long-term nature with Del . . . except her moving out of his life down a road with a stridebeast and Shunuk. Walking away from him.
She wouldn’t live in Druida, he knew that in that cold marrow of his.
He couldn’t pursue his career the way he wanted to outside Druida. He needed top-notch productions and shows to fulfill himself, his destiny.
He yearned for Del, for a life with her, but still the taste of ambition lay on his tongue and he couldn’t give that up.
He tried not to think that they were HeartMates, denied it as he had denied it for so long.
As he denied that he loved her.
She wasn’t a woman who would compromise. Every time he withdrew, she stepped back even more.
He used the busyness of the week to dull his anxiety. Lily had been wretched to work with from the moment he got back, had demanded more rehearsals since he “was no longer fresh.” It was easier to go along with her than fight and imbue the theater with more negativity.
His Family had wanted to read the diaries aloud and study them and wanted him near, and he couldn’t object to that, eit
her, though Del didn’t always come with him. He and his father had visited Nuada’s Sword and gone to D’Ash after a FoxFam kit had been left at T’Cherry Residence.
Straif T’Blackthorn had left Druida, too, following a lead back south to Gael City.
So Raz decided to think about the HeartMate thing much later.
An eightday after they’d left Gael City, Del nervously prepared for the New Twinmoons ritual. Mitchella D’Blackthorn had invited her and Raz to attend the FirstFamily ceremony. A big deal. Good for Raz to attract attention for his career, but also underscoring that she should be participating more in noble stuff, maybe even FirstFamilies stuff, that she’d never wanted.
She’d decided that she would claim Raz as her HeartMate after the ritual. He’d had her HeartGift for an eightday and a half. Since before they’d traveled to Gael City.
Legally, she figured she could claim him as her husband and HeartMate. But she wasn’t fool enough to do so in public, not when she didn’t know how he would react—not when she feared how he would react.
She curled her lip at the thought of publicly announcing he was legally her HeartMate. Force. She wouldn’t do that to him or her own pride.
But she couldn’t go on this way, with all this tension between them. Better to get everything out in the open, work through their problems, their options.
