Marion Zimmer Bradley Super Pack

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  I yelped, “Godamighty!” ‘Scuse me, Rev’rend, but I was so blame upset that’s just what I did say, “Godamighty, man, you mean there’s a baby in that there dingfol contraption?” He just moaned so after spreadin’ my coat around the man a little bit I just plunged in that there river again.

  Rev’rend, I heard tell once about some tomfool idiot going over Niagary in a barrel, and I tell you it was like that when I tried crossin’ that freshet to reach the contraption.

  I went under and down, and was whacked by floating sticks and whirled around in the freshet. But somehow, I d’no how except by the pure grace of God, I got across that raging torrent and clumb up to where the crazy dingfol machine was sitting.

  Ship, he’d called it. But that were no ship, Rev’rend, it was some flying dragon kind of thing. It was a real scarey lookin’ thing but I clumb up to the little door and hauled myself inside it. And, sure enough, there was other people in the cabin, only they was all dead.

  There was a lady and a man and some kind of an animal looked like a bobcat only smaller, with a funny-shaped rooster-comb thing on its head. They all—even the cat-thing—was wearing those shiny, stretchy clo’es. And they all was so battered and smashed I didn’t even bother to hunt for their heartbeats. I could see by a look they was dead as a doornail.

  Then I heard a funny little whimper, like a kitten, and in a funny, rubber-cushioned thing there’s a little boy baby, looked about six months old. He was howling lusty enough, and when I lifted him out of the cradle kind of thing, I saw why. That boy baby, he was wet, and his little arm was twisted under him. That there flying contraption must have smashed down awful hard, but that rubber hammock was so soft and cushiony all it did to him was jolt him good.

  I looked around but I couldn’t find anything to wrap him in. And the baby didn’t have a stitch on him except a sort of spongy paper diaper, wet as sin. So I finally lifted up the lady, who had a long cape thing around her, and I took the cape off her real gentle. I knew she was dead and she wouldn’t be needin’ it, and that boy baby would catch his death if I took him out bare-naked like that. She was probably the baby’s Ma; a right pretty woman she was but smashed up something shameful.

  So anyhow, to make a long story short, I got that baby boy back across that Niagary falls somehow, and laid him down by his Pa. The man opened his eyes kind, and said in a choky voice, “Take care—baby.”

  I told him I would, and said I’d try to get him up to the house where Marthy could doctor him. The man told me not to bother. “I dying,” he says. “We come from planet—star up there—crash here—” His voice trailed off into a language I couldn’t understand, and he looked like he was praying.

  I bent over him and held his head on my knees real easy, and I said, “Don’t worry, mister, I’ll take care of your little fellow until your folks come after him. Before God I will.”

  So the man closed his eyes and I said, Our Father which art in Heaven, and when I got through he was dead.

  I got him up on Kate, but he was cruel heavy for all he was such a tall skinny fellow. Then I wrapped that there baby up in the cape thing and took him home and give him to Marthy. And the next day I buried the fellow in the south medder and next meetin’ day we had the baby baptized Matthew Daniel Emmett, and brung him up just like our own kids. That’s all.

  All? Mr. Emmett, didn’t you ever find out where that ship really came from?

  Why, Rev’rend, he said it come from a star. Dying men don’t lie, you know that. I asked the Teacher about them planets he mentioned and she says that on one of the planets—can’t rightly remember the name, March or Mark or something like that—she says some big scientist feller with a telescope saw canals on that planet, and they’d hev to be pretty near as big as this-here Erie canal to see them so far off. And if they could build canals on that planet I d’no why they couldn’t build a flying machine.

  I went back the next day when the water was down a little, to see if I couldn’t get the rest of them folks and bury them, but the flying machine had broke up and washed down the crick.

  Marthy’s still got the cape thing. She’s a powerful saving woman. We never did tell Matt, though. Might make him feel funny to think he didn’t really b’long to us.

  But—but—Mr. Emmett, didn’t anybody ask questions about the baby—where you got it?

  Well, now, I’ll ‘low they was curious, because Marthy hadn’t been in the family way and they knew it. But up here folks minds their own business pretty well, and I jest let them wonder. I told Liza Grace I’d found her new little brother in the back pasture, and o’course it was the truth. When Liza Grace growed up she thought it was jest one of those yarns old folks tell the little shavers.

  And has Matthew ever shown any differences from the other children that you could see?

  Well, Rev’rend, not so’s you could notice it. He’s powerful smart, but his real Pa and Ma must have been right smart too to build a flying contraption that could come so far.

  O’course, when he were about twelve years old he started reading folks’ minds, which didn’t seem exactly right. He’d tell Marthy what I was thinkin’ and things like that. He was just at the pesky age. Liza Grace and Minnie were both a-courtin’ then, and he’d drive their boy friends crazy telling them what Liza Grace and Minnie were a-thinking and tease the gals by telling them what the boys were thinking about.

  There weren’t no harm in the boy, though, it was all teasing. But it just weren’t decent, somehow. So I tuk him out behind the woodshed and give his britches a good dusting just to remind him that that kind of thing weren’t polite nohow. And Rev’rend Doane, he ain’t never done it sence.

  The Wild One

  This is a story that they tell on the solitary farms on the borders of the Catskill mountains, where I grew up. It is a mistake to think that country is settled and modern, just because the big highways stretch from city to city, and the factories hold out clean jobs that pay better than the scratch-the-soil farming on shale rock. For between every farm is a stretch of woodland, and every farm has its own woods, and by night there are deer and rabbits and even wolves and the big lynxes that prowl south of Canada in a hungry season. And every now and again, to some lonely farm-girl who roams the edges and center of the deep woods by night, a child will be born like Helma Lassiter . . .

  Roger Lassiter lifted his hands abruptly from the keys of die piano, and stared across the room at his sobbing young wife.

  “Helma, dear!” he said contritely, “If I’d known—I didn’t hear you come in, dear. Please forgive me?”

  “Of course!” Helma wiped away her tears, and her strange, hesitant smile flickered for an instant on the wet face, “If I’d known you wanted to play, I wouldn’t have come back so early.” She crossed the room, and Roger held out his arms to stop her as she passed and hold her, for a moment, close to him. “Did you and Nell Connor have a good time?”

  She dropped her eyes. “I didn’t go to see Nell, Roger, it was too lovely hi the woods. And—and there’ll be a full moon tonight. ...”

  He slid his arm around the girl’s waist. “You’re the wildest child of nature I ever knew,” he murmured, halfway between exasperation and indulgence, and from the piano bench he twisted to look out the window at the deep stretch of dark woodland, oaks and maple and birch, that surrounded their house; then he turned back to rest his eyes on Helma.

  She was good to look at; a tawny blonde girl, slight, delicately but strongly made, with creamy skin and dark-gray eyes that lightened to amber or an odd gold-flecked green when she was angry or excited, and so incredibly supple that he often wondered if she had been a ballet dancer. He did not know what she had been; she never talked about her childhood, and he knew only that she had run away from a farm in the Adirondacks when she was only fourteen years old. She had been twenty-three when they met, a chance acquaintance, almost a pick-up, at the swimming pool in Albany. Roger, escorting a pair of frisky nephews, had been attracted, then charmed,
by her unbelievable grace in the water, her swift clean beauty; a seal-woman of the legends could have shown herself no more at home in the sea. He had been shocked at the change which had come over her when she had run back to the dressing-rooms and reappeared in a cheap skirt and blouse, her hair brushed down and her legs encased in lumpy socks and shoes. It was as if rust had suddenly covered a bright coin. But he had not been able to forget the laughing, glowing nymph of the pool. And he had never forgotten. It had not taken him long to discover how she revived in the woods, in the country. After their marriage, they had built this small house at the edge of the forest; a necessity, not a luxury, for Helma drooped and wilted in an apartment. They had built the house with their own hands, camping in the woods while it rose from the foundations, sleeping at night in a tent; and day by day a visible radiance had crept over Helma until she seemed alive with an inner, glowing beauty. Still, on the first night they had slept in their new home, she had murmured “I think I liked the tent better!” Even now, for choice, she slept on the open porch when she could.

  He smiled now into her half-closed eyes and murmured what he had said many times, “I think you’re half wood-cat, Helma!”

  “Oh, I am,” she returned, as always, “I am. Didn’t you know?”

  “And say, I used to have a dog who howled just like that when I played the piano. It’s not what you’d call a compliment to my playing!”

  She colored . . . even after four years of marriage, she was very sensitive about this. “I can’t help it,” she whispered for the hundredth time, “It hurts my ears so much—”

  He patted her shoulder gently. “Well, never mind, honey, I try not to play when you’re around,” he told her, “but seriously, I’m beginning to wonder if you ought to go so far into the woods alone. Bob Connor told me he’s heard wolves, and the other day he shot a lynx. Perhaps it’s all right in broad daylight, but I wish you’d stay out of the woods at night, Helma.”

  He was not a countryman by habit; born and reared in cities, it had thrown him into a panic, the first time that he had waked in the night and found himself alone in bed. He had hunted the house through and found it empty; in a growing apprehension, mounting to absolute terror, he had searched the woods with a lantern, shouting, panicked, until he had finally found Henna, snuggled into a hollow of summer grass, sleeping, a rabbit bolting from her side as he came near.

  After a few months he had come to take it for granted; Helma was almost physically incapable of staying out of the woods when they were so near, night or day. Sometimes Roger wondered if he had been wise to bring her so far from the cities and the plowed farms on the highways; she might have been unhappy, but she might have been less wild.

  He murmured, “Perhaps if we had a child—”

  He had spoken almost under his breath, but her body stiffened in the curve of his arm and she pulled away from him. “Roger,” she murmured, “You know I can’t—”

  He said, low-voiced, “We haven’t talked much about this, because it always makes you so unhappy. Now I think we must. How do you know you can’t have children? Perhaps we could see Doctor demons when we go into town this Saturday. Perhaps—”

  Helma jerked away from him furiously, taut, her head flung back, even the short sleek tawny hair seeming electric and alive, and her eyes flared green. The small blunt hands were flexed into claws. “I won’t!” she spat at him, “I won’t be mauled about and stared at by some doctor. ...”

  “Helma! Roger’s sharp voice cut through her hysteria; she relaxed a little, but went on in a low angry voice, “I’ve never told you much about me, have I? I know that. I can’t have your child, such a child as I could have, you wouldn’t want, I—” She slumped down on a corner of the divan and buried her face in her arms despondently. After a long time she raised her face. “Would it make you so happy if I had a baby, Roger?” she asked pitifully.

  The man could not bear it. He stood up and went to her, seating himself on the divan at her side and pulling the blonde head down on his shoulder. “Not if you don’t want to, Helma,” he said, in a gentle voice, “Maybe you’re right, maybe—”

  Her wide eyes burned tearlessly in the twilight. “You think I’m wild, you think I’m a crazy woman who might be normal if I had a baby to tie me down a little bit. You want me to be like your friends’ wives, like Nell Connor, sleep in my bed nights and never step out further than the chicken house!” Her voice fell steadily, accusing. She pushed him away from her, stood up and backed away toward the door, a low menace, not quite a word, in her throat. Before her green glare his own eyes fell.

  “Well, damn it, Helma,” he muttered, “I’d appreciate it if you’d try, at least, to act like a normal adult human being! There are times when you’re like a wild animal!”

  “I am,” she said huskily, and swiftly turned and went out of the room. Half rising, the man saw through the window the quick bound with which she crossed the porch and lawn, watched her bend, with that amazing suppleness, and unfasten first one sandal, then the other. She kicked her feet free and ran toward the back gate; with a single lissome movement she was up and over it, and Roger saw the pale gold of her hair and the green-and-brown plaid of her house dress melt into the forest like a shadow, and there was a tight breathlessness in his throat as he watched her slide away and vanish in the leaves. But she was back before morning, slipping silently, barefoot, through the doors, and sliding into bed beside him, as noiselessly as a cat. Roger, who had not closed his eyes all night, felt her presence and moved toward her, but she shoved him away. Roger shrugged and sighed; he was used to this, too. Helma could be as violent and passionate as a young lioness when aroused, but she was curiously cold at other times, and would push or cuff him away if he touched her when she was not in the mood. Roger had reflected that civilized man alone, of all animals, is not cyclic in desire, and that Hernia’s odd wildness was probably nothing more than a reversion to an earlier, possibly a cleaner day. Since in spite of occasional exasperations, Roger loved his wife devotedly, he respected her moods; it was as well that he did, for once, in the first year of their marriage—before he had learned how deep this was ingrained into Helma’s whole nature—he had been less tolerant, and had once—only once—attempted to take her by force. There was still a tiny white line across his cheek where her wild hands had raked bone-deep. She had sobbed frenzied apologies afterward, but Roger had never risked it again. All women, he knew, were periodic to some extent; and it was true that she was altogether satisfying when her nature allowed her to be compliant.

  In the days and weeks that followed, Helma was unusually quiet, subdued and docile. Summer lazed to a close; the crisp leaves of September drifted from helpless branches and the twanging winds of autumn played mournful threnodies in the deserted woods. Helma haunted the leaf-deep paths by day, but not once did she run off by night, and Roger Lassiter began to wonder if she was actually settling down. Surely it was time, after four years of marriage, that Helma should take on a look of sleekness and content, and for her body to soften a little from its hard angularity. She worked around the house happily—it was always neat and clean, but now it positively shone with soap and wax and polished floors, and Helma herself seemed as smooth and clean as a well-kept cat. Even her quick dancing walk seemed, although just as graceful, a trifle firmer and more subdued. And sometimes in the evenings when Roger returned home ... he worked days, in a chemical factory ... he would hear Helma singing, a curious contralto croon, almost toneless, but rising and falling in smooth, well-defined rhythmic cadences that were sweetly resonant. She never told him, in so many words, that she was pregnant. Roger, although he guessed it as early as September, kept aloof from asking, thinking that perhaps she wanted to tell him herself, when she chose; but she never did, and finally he asked her only “When?” “Early in the spring,” she said, and her greeny eyes glanced, half-sorrowful, at his glad face. He told her gently, “You see, you were wrong, Helma. Aren’t you happy about this?”

 
; She did not answer, but put down her book and came to curl up on the rug at his feet, putting her head of thick short straight hair into his lap. He stroked it without speaking, and she shut her eyes, leaning against his knee. After a time she began the odd rough contralto crooning, and he smiled. “What kind of witch-chant is that, Helma? I never heard you sing before. I didn’t know you knew one note from another.”

  “I don’t,” her smile was a gamin, enigmatic thing. “I don’t know, I remember hearing my mother sing like this when I was very small.”

  “What was your mother like?” he asked, and Helma laughed softly.

  “Like me.”

  “I’d like to have seen that! What was your father like?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps—someone like you. Perhaps he was—different. Perhaps I never had a father, I can’t remember.”

  Roger persisted “Did your mother never tell you?”

  Helma suddenly drew her head away from her husband’s stroking hands, looking up at him slantwise through her hair. “You would have called my mother mad,” she said evenly, “She said my father was a lynx—a wildcat she called it.”

  Roger abruptly shivered as if a freezing wind had blown out the cozy fire. “Don’t talk rubbish, Helma.” She shrugged. “You asked me. It’s what my mother used to say. She was mad, madder than I am. She lived on a farm away up in the mountains, with only her grandfather and a little sister. She used to listen to hunters’ stories about men and women who turned into wolves and wildcats when the moon was full, and ran in the woods at night. I’ve heard old men howl like the gray timber-wolf, when the moon lit up the snow like daylight, and seen them slink through the shadows with red eyes. ...”

  “Hell! You’re morbid tonight!”

  “No. Why? When I was a little girl I used to run around the hunters’ huts. I could walk along a path and a wildcat would walk along the limb of a tree right over me and never even snarl, and I could pick up rabbits with my bare hands. I still can.” Her smile was frankly malicious now. “You don’t believe those old stories, do you? Till she died, my mother used to run out in the woods every full moon. She said my father was a lynx, I didn’t. Do you believe I’ll turn into a wildcat some night and rip out your throat? A silver bullet isn’t any good, you know. That’s just an old wife’s tale. Just an iron knife, a knife of cold iron will kill a turn skin animal. That’s what they say. Iron, or lead. Are you afraid of me?” She laughed, and Roger felt his goose fleshed arms stiffen and crawl. “For Godsake, cut it out!” he almost shouted.