by Gayle Greeno
He wanted to protest that he couldn’t influence the river’s direction, but dimly realized that wasn’t her point. “I thank you for the food, for the advice.” He already knew enough not to go to Marchmont, why journey to a land of outcasts? He swallowed, longing to beg one further thing, a favor, but it wasn’t wise to rile her. Regardless, he opened his mouth to ask, and she put a finger to his lips.
“Yes, I’ll see he gets home safe.” The word “he” was more of a grunt and a chin thrust beyond, behind him.
Half-turning, he captured Henryk in a headlock, the bristly white hair stiff as he pressed his lips to the crown of the boy’s head. “Be good, Ryk-Ryk. Be well and,” he whispered the last few words, “be brave. I’ll be back someday. Take care of Nelle for me. Promise!”
Henryk’s grip around his waist eased, the boy dropping back behind him. “Promise,” came the echo.
“Don’t look back, just go. There’s nothing more to say.” Marg ceremoniously placed the ghatta in his arms, and he set her on her feet, began walking faster and faster until he was running. Don’t look back, don’t look back! But he broke his vow once, thought he was distant enough that one final glimpse wouldn’t matter, couldn’t hurt, and saw two backs: one large and one small, each on opposite sides of the roadway, as separate from each other as they could be yet still somehow remain linked. The tears started in earnest, his feet stumbled, but he continued running. Running from Coventry where he’d been born, but where would he be buried? What far town or city, what distant place? Alone? Unloved? Unmourned?
“Better live first, then die.”
Matty leaped for the pier, caught the hawser that Solange threw to him, snubbed it around a piling. By the time he’d finished the hitch and done the same with the stem rope, Kharm had paraded halfway down the pier, drawing glances and comments from the dockers on the adjoining landings who were repairing cracked pilings and splintered boards. Tail high, sauntering along as if she owned the pier, she stopped to sniff here and there, exploring canvas-draped boxes and bales, hitching a claw into a loose flap to see what lurked underneath.
Busy double-checking the ropes, sliding the plank walkway out to the raft, Matty lanced a mindthought in Kharm’s direction. “Easy, easy! Wait up and don’t go exploring until I’ve finished here. You know the rules. ” Oh, she knew the “rules,” but sometimes they seemed to float right out of her head, curiosity conquering common sense.
“Aren’t my rules,” Kharm countered, “they’re your rules. Didn’t ask me when you made them.”
“And if I had?” he huffed, sliding the planking farther until the crossbar on the underside butted against a similar crossbar on the pier. Absurdly pleased with the ease with which he’d accomplished it, at his gain in strength in just two octants on the river, he preened and flexed, proud of his hard-earned muscles. But the vision of the ghatta wandering alone, viewed by strangers as dangerous, wild, spoiled his private posturing. “Kharm, we don’t know anyone here and they don’t know us. We need to winter over someplace, river’s about ready to freeze, and Gilboa’s as good a place as any. If you don’t muck things up, ” he added dark-humoredly.
Carrying on simultaneous conversations, one internal, one external, and not entrapping himself in either one to the exclusion of the other was still an ordeal. Mostly if someone noticed his conversation fading or faltering, it was viewed as distraction or woolgathering, hardly unusual in a teenaged boy. It almost happened now, but he was already bouncing along the walkway when Gheorghe shouted, “Ye need an invite, Matty-lad? Let’s git unloaded.”
Without paying any overt attention to the ghatta, he shot a parting admonition her way. “Now, just sit and wait for me. ” He didn’t bother watching Kharm plunk herself on the pier, tail wrapped around toes, its tip flickering, her mouth prim. She was close to full grown now, weighed nearly ten kilos, but was still prone to exhibit the actions and reactions of a ghatten as she referred to herself, more often than not.
So they’d both grown. Not a bad two octants, all in all, other than the continually increasing cold and ever-dampness of the river gnawing at his fingers and toes, chapping his cheeks. Some early mornings with gray scum ice webbing their moorings, he’d thought his fingers might crack off as he hammered ice loose. No sense waiting for the sun to melt it when the work always warmed his fingers enough to flex. Good thing.
He’d journeyed southeast that first runaway night, following the stream that flowed into the River Vaalck, had continued tracing the river course until he’d found a likely spot on the bank for a raft tie-up. Nothing for it but to sit and wait, shivering with nerves and the dampness of exertion. A light rain began to fall, dripping off his nose, slithering down his collar. Sat with Kharm draped across his lap, wondering if his granther or anyone followed him. Didn’t know if he’d be glad or sad to be found, forced to return home. Kharm’s silence matched his, but her purring soothed, convinced him he’d done the right thing. Only once had she spoken, “Right thing, wrong reason?” but he’d refused to be drawn into that discussion. And after a long, rainy day of lonely waiting, at dusk he’d sighted a raft sliding down the river, its stately progress broken as it was poled diagonally to coast bankward. A grating thump as it nosed the mudbank, and he wiped a damp sleeve across his eyes to see better.
Solange and Gheorghe Aadestok had been reluctant to take him on, but Gheorghe’s accident had made it necessary, his right hand cocooned in bandages, smashed when he’d tripped and fallen while skip-footing across a boom, his hand jamming deep between two logs as they’d shifted and resettled. Ultimately Solange had insisted Gheorghe take him on. “Pay?” he’d inquired in his best adult voice, concerned about his earning power.
Brown eyes hooded, Solange had pouched her lower lip, thrust it out as she studied him and he’d studied her back, daunting to bargain with a woman who looked as hard and as solid as the sweep oar on which she negligently leaned. First salvo to her, “No pay. Food and shelter, more clothes if ye need’em. Works out, a bonus at the end when we tie up for the winter. Assumin’ trade’s been good.” Did that mean it hadn’t been good thus far?
“No pay?” Incredulity and a sinking heart. Food, shelter, additional clothing were blessings not to be denied, but how could he put money aside for lean times? Not that much money circulated in Canderis, most things were bartered, traded. Truth be told, he’d seen little money, actual coinage, in his life, but the concept appealed to him, the idea of earning it, saving it, counting it, buying what he wanted. Well, he and Kharm would survive, one way or another.
“No pay,” Solange repeated. “Think to be bringing that larchcat along with you, too?”
A bargaining chip he hadn’t counted on, and one to her advantage, not his. “Well, of course!” he’d almost squeaked in indignation. “She goes where I go!”
Gheorghe fiddled with the wrappings on his hand, long black hair falling over his forehead to hide his expression. “Another mouth to feed, boy. And a useless one at that. Mayhap even worse than useless, destructive, belike. Clawing at bales, scratching at cargo, who knows what else? Wild creature like that can’t be trusted, has its own ways. Raft’s no place for a larchcat.”
He’d sensed his chances slipping from between his grasping fingers. Yet again he digested the bitterness of what it meant to be saddled with Kharm-rejected, outcast-and they didn’t have an inkling about her mindpowers. Spurn her? Cast her off? Impossible! He squared his shoulders, wet jacket clinging, molding to him. No sense whining, pleading, he had to convince on rational grounds.
“First, she’ll eat a share of what I get, and I won’t beg or steal more for either of us. Second, she can hunt for herself when we tie up each night. Third, if she destroys anything, claws and damages something,” he took a deep breath, because Kharm did enjoy clawing things, and even the logs of the raft itself presented a temptation, “I’ll go without food the next day.” His belly growled at the thought; he’d been cautious about eating too greedily from the limited supplie
s Marg had given him, not sure how long they’d have to last him. “Finally, I’m small, neither of us will take up that much space, but I’m strong.” A slight exaggeration, but not too great a one, he’d hoped. He’d do what he had to do, learn how, no matter what. Besides, hadn’t Granther always said, “Work smarter, not harder.”
Gheorghe had mulled it over. “A more immediate saving than saying ’take it from a bonus’ you may or may not receive.” He’d grinned, showing twisted, gaping teeth. “An bein’ small has its advantages. Ye planning on growing much?” .
It took Matty several heartbeats to realize it was a joke. “Ah, let ‘em come, Gheorghe,” Solange relented. “Worst can happen is we try’em for a few days, kick’em ashore or into the river if’n they deserve it.”
Now Matty’s worries blossomed. Should he, could he trust them? They were hard-bitten, strong, implacably adult in the way Granther was but his da had never managed. The decision had been tossed back into his lap. But Kharm had decided for him, springing aboard, shaking damp fur as if she were a dog. “They’re good, they’re true. Think I’ll even eat leftovers, scraps.” With a deep breath, he’d stepped aboard as the raft rocked against the shore, had shaken hands, wondering what he’d gotten himself into, but content to wait and find out.
It hadn’t been so bad, Matty reflected. Kharm had behaved herself and he’d learned as well: how to read the river, its snags and deadheads, its currents, how to spot the ragged, flapping flags that signaled cargo to be shipped. And cargo consisted of most anything, from livestock to salted fish to iron kettles. For the most part they floated down the Vaalck, the current doing the work, although three times they’d poled like the possessed against it, retracing their route to deliver something of importance upstream for double pay. Medicine it had been once, though they’d done that trip gratis.
And once, one night just two days past, he’d been scared witless when the Vaalck reared up and ran backward, lifting them willy-nilly, heaving them upstream as if a giant watery hand refused to let nature take its course. Distant thunder preceded the watery shock wave, yet the night sky was clear, the moons bright. A deep rumble, then a chain of sympathetic answering rumbles as he’d watched the waves reverse their lapping, race toward them. “Tide tripper!” Gheorghe had screamed, “Unlash the stern lines, Matty!” while Solange had run for the bow, not waiting to untie the mooring ropes but severing them with an ax. He’d whipped out his knife and sawed away at the lashings, Solange thrusting him aside, ax striking hard at the pitiful fraying he’d accomplished.
The raft floating free, they’d ridden the reverse tide nearly a kilometer, the raft dipping and plunging, bobbing like a wood chip. Clinging to each other, to anything they could grasp, at last they slowed, the raft beginning to drift back, retracing its normal course as if nothing had happened. Unsteadily, the three managed to pole and paddle the raft around so its minimal prow faced the right way. “What was that?” he’d asked, concentrating on pushing debris away with his pole.
Balancing her own pole in its rest, Solange had looked somber, afraid. “Plumbs, lad. I’d say a string of them popped jest above where the Vaalck merges into the Kuelper, jest afore they runs into the sea. When the earth shifts and heaves, the water backs up, the ocean surges in, runs in ways it shouldn’t, sometimes floods the banks if it’s bad enough.”
“Wonder where it hit, how much damage it did,” Gheorghe mused from the rudder sweep. “‘Bove or below Gilboa, d’ye think, Solly?”
“Below, I think. But no doubt Gilboa’s damaged. Piers are rickety enough, the town not much better.”
“Thinking we should winter in the middle of a pile of tossed toothpicks, woman?” Gheorghe spat into the river.
“I’m thinking if that many Plumbs went off, belike they won’t have any more ‘sploding for a while. Be needing hands to repair the damage. Why not us? Matty here? Kin live in the raft hut if’n we have to, though it’ll be mighty cold once the river freezes and the wind whips ’cross that ice. Or mayhap find a hut on land. Nice to be on land again.”
“Least till spring comes and you get the itch again, eh, woman?”
That, Matty reflected as he helped Gheorghe roll barrels across the walkway, emptying the raft of cargo, was how they’d decided to winter in Gilboa.
And how, as the sunset came and the wind picked up, gulls screaming in salt marshes, hovering over the tidal flats, he found himself with money in his pocket. Not much, but some, plus some bartering goods in his sack, and Kharm by his side, walking down the pier, waving good-bye to Gheorghe and Solange, striding off into the world again. “Toes cold,” Kharm complained. “Hungry.”
“Well, you napped all afternoon, nice and snug under that canvas. I saw the lump you made.” His own fingers throbbed, cold, stiff, and bruised; one foot ached where he’d inadvertently rolled a barrel over it in his haste to unload. “We’ll find someplace for dinner.” Where, he couldn’t say, but a place as big as Gilboa, so much larger than Coventry where he’d grown up, had to boast a place to eat. Not that he’d ever been inside such an establishment, but he’d heard about them.
“Rather stay snug with Solange in the hut. Pea soup tonight.”
The thought of pea soup, of the stuffy, companionable warmth, did sound inviting, more so than he wanted to admit, and he shivered, not from cold but from the unknown. Instead, he tucked his scarf tighter around his throat. “Come on, Kharm. It’s an adventure. No one knows us here, knows what you can do. And I want it kept that way, do you hear? Don’t tell me what I don’t need to know!” His mindvoice snapped and stung more cruelly than he’d meant, but he had to impress the need on her. Had to have a chance to be his own person, his own, not Kharm’s. Mayhap even fit in here, find a new home.
The ghatta sulked, lagged behind. “Only tell you what you need to know. Afraid of the truth?”
“Sometimes.” He clutched the sack tighter, unsure what awaited him. “Yes, sometimes, truly.” Especially when he wasn’t worthy of knowing it, didn’t know why he’d been entrusted with it. A burden, one heavier than his sack, and his shoulders sagged under the load.
“I’m hungry. We’ve missed dinner, I hope you realize.”
“Wha ... ?” Doyce’s head tossed almost wildly, confused as to where the comment came from. Why, in the name of the havens, was she sitting on a bench in the burial grounds? Dark out, too, and she flexed her hands, fingers swollen and cold, callused and rough as if she’d been pressed into heavy manual labor in the raw wind and damp. “Khar, what are we doing out here?”
A white paw patted at her hands, convinced her they belonged to her again, warm, well-cared for, a hint of callus where she’d hold the reins, nothing more. Well, the swelling still persisted, and her feet pinched, tight in her boots. Hardly an unusual occurrence, given her pregnancy. At least she wasn’t suffering from terminal bloat; it only felt like it sometimes. The paw tapped again, insistent, on her hand, then feet on her shoulder, a warm nose, tickling whiskers scrubbed her face. A tongue rasp under her nose brought her fully awake. “Ooh, sandpaper! Khar, don’t do that! You know I hate having my nose licked!”
Her brain clutched scattered facts, the expedition with Parse and, most of all, with Maize. Their visit to the burial grounds where Maize’s Bondmate An’g had been laid to rest. Her own detour by Oriel’s grave, and apparently she hadn’t journeyed any farther—but to daydream for so long? And why did Khar remain balanced like that, eyes interlocked with her own?
“We missed dinner, did we?” No doubt about it, her empty stomach agreed. “I take it no one missed us?”
“Why should they? Sometimes we eat at Headquarters, sometimes we don’t. You aren’t very predictable-about meals anymore,” and Khar concealed her deeper worry at Doyce’s newfound protean ability about when and where and how she could imagine Matty’s life. It had to be Khar’s fault, failing Doyce, failing the Elders. Wasn’t she controlling things properly? Or had Matty’s past assumed a life of its own, relived through Doyce? Nei
ther possibility made sense, but at least Doyce hadn’t suffered from the experience.
Sliding her forearm under Khar’s forelegs, Doyce tilted the abstracted ghatta from her shoulder. “Well, if you’d let go, I could get up, see about doing something about dinner—for both of us. I feel incredibly hungry, as if I’d been doing stevedore work all day! Nothing like heavy dock work to make you famished. And I definitely have to go to the bathroom now!” Rising, she smoothed her overvest, began to move cautiously through the dark, dim white shapes hovering phantasmagorically in the periphery of her vision. Over there a small, frightened boy, here an implacable, bulky woman, and there the striped afterimage of a ghatta.
Too real, too similar, Khar moaned inwardly, one life blending with another! Distract her, find an excuse, make her fixate on Now, on us! “Of course, wheeling Maize and that chair through this jungle wilderness might have something to do with it, especially after Parse insisted on leaving the path and heading cross-country!”
“True, all too true!” Doyce hesitated, waiting for Khar to lead the way as always. “Dinner at the mess must be done, but I’m sure we can snag some bread and meat, some fruit, from the kitchens. Eat it there? Or take it back to the house?” The thought of the Headquarters kitchen, bright with lantern light, fires, the muted rattle of clean up, sloshing dishwater, and setting up for tomorrow’s breakfast, appealed. Surely someone would have time to chat. Other Seekers, especially Novies, were prone to slip in for snacks. Going home to the empty house, their final quarrel still resounding from the walls, was too painful to contemplate. Which one of them was more stubborn? Well, Magnus and Crolius hadn’t resolved their differences either, not exactly a comforting thought.
