by J. D. Lakey
“What did you just say?” Connor asked. Cheobawn blinked, his voice shaking her free from her thoughts.
“Huh? What did I say?” she asked. She looked down at the map under her hands. It would not stay still in her head anymore, but insisted on shifting and heaving, like a living thing that wanted to roll over and offer its belly up for scratching. It had been weeks and weeks since she had been able to listen to the ambient without feeling ill. She closed her eyes and her mind to the intrusive energies and began building geometry proofs in her head. It seemed to help; her connection to the ambient faded but it made her feel more alone, cut off from the familiar press of land-sense she had known all her life.
“You said a storm was coming. Did the bennelk tell you that? We should tell Phillius.” Connor said, worry in his voice. Cheobawn turned her face away from the table before she opened her eyes.
“The Watch Ears have their long distance array,” she said with a careless shrug. The bloodstones inside the sensor-spheres dotted the high places. The main stone in the Temple was never left untended. There was always someone listening to the sky over the Dragons Spine. “They will know in time to bring the patrols in. Stop being a worrywart. All the animals were brought into the long houses months ago. There is nothing the storms can damage that has not already been destroyed.”
Connor looked at her oddly. “The long houses are running out of fodder. Vinara took some of the herds out to the unharvested meadows just beyond the orchards two days ago,” he said carefully.
“What? Why did she do that? Oh, by all that ….” Cheobawn looked off into the unseen distance, a worried frown between her brows.
“How can this be a surprise?” he asked, accusation in his voice. “You are the best Ear in under the dome. Why is it that I am the one telling you something you should already know?”
“What are you talking about?” She tried not to sound guilty but failed miserably. Lying was not her best skill. “It’s not my job to track the comings and goings of every little piglet.”
“What’s going on with you?” Connor asked. “You haven’t touched the map table in over a month. Are you still drawing your maps in the dust of the playground?”
“No. I … nothing is wrong.” Cheobawn insisted.
“Then look at that map and tell me where the nearest fox den is,” he said. It was a command, not a request. Connor had become a little too autocratic of late, she thought, starting to feel a little annoyed.
Cheobawn glared at him, not bothering to hide her mounting anger. “I am not a minstrel. I do not perform on command.”
A worried frown creased his forehead. ”You can’t even look at the map, can you? What’s going on? Is your psi going dark?” It was not unheard of for an Ear to lose her ability. Age and hormones could play havoc with a Mother’s psionic skills.
“Leave me alone,” she said, folding her arms over her chest. If Connor kept pushing for a fight she would happily oblige him, she thought.
“How can you tell me what the bennelk are thinking but you don’t know where the dome herds are? Something is wrong. Don’t lie.” Connor threw back his shoulders, straightened himself up to his full height, and deepened his voice, adding, “Tam isn’t here so that makes me the Pack’s senior member. Tell me what I need to know so I can help you.”
“Stop it! Nothing is wrong with my psi abilities.” Her voice rose in volume until she found herself shouting at him. “I wish to the Goddess that there was.”
Connor stared at her. She looked away, uncomfortable under his inspection.
“I guess you’re gonna have to explain that, because I don’t understand you sometimes,” he said softly.
Cheobawn ran her fingers through her hair. He was Pack. He deserved an explanation but she didn’t want to talk about her feelings of being overwhelmed and out of control, especially not with Connor who would want to fix it. She looked up into his worried eyes. Hurting Connor more was the last thing she wanted to do.
“It’s like a water hose. Off is off but so is on. There are no settings in between that will deliver just a trickle.”
Connor groaned, pressing the palms of his hands against his temples. “Have mercy on a slow brain. Say that again in words that I can understand,” he said. Cheobawn sighed in frustration and wandered away from the offending map table to peer unseeing into the overladen lockers and bookshelves that lined the far wall. Connor waited patiently.
“When I was little I thought I knew everything there was to know and then I got older and found out I was wrong,” she said.
Connor gestured impatiently. She was stalling and he knew it.
“When I was little I thought that everything I could see was all there was. Then I got older. What I thought was everything was just the stuff that floated to the surface, like the scum on a stagnant pond. There I was, floating around on the surface, thinking I was the master of the pond even though I could not see underwater. What kind of mastery is that, to leave things unexplored? So I dove into that pond and found out it is so deep it might go on forever and that I was just one small speck in a pond as infinite as the ocean of stars overhead. You can’t go back from that. You can’t erase stuff out of your head,” she said. “And even if I could go back to just floating around on the surface, I can’t because things are all stirred up now. The world is full of whirlpools and I am swimming as fast as I can to stay out of them.”
She looked up into Connor’s eyes, hoping against hope that he understood that. She wasn’t sure if she understood it herself. She could tell that the cogs inside his head were working overtime by the pained look on his scrunched up face. It was a handsome face, she decided. Not as beautiful as Tam’s, but rougher boned, promising much as he grew into manhood. She found herself smiling gently at the thought of growing old with Connor.
“What does that mean? Too much information?” Connor asked. “You are having a hard time sorting the data input? Good data versus useless background noise? You gotta think like a data mining program. Just figure out what you want to know and ignore the rest,” Connor said, nodding like an oldpa dispensing sage advice.
Cheobawn laughed at the crystal-brain analogy, as if a human brain could be programmed and then ignored. It was such a boy’s way of looking at the world. If only the problem was so simple or the solution so obvious, she thought.
“Maybe it is just that simple,” she said, choking down her amusement, “Ignore the bad and wait for the good to make itself obvious.”
“See. You get it. You just have to be patient.” Connor nodded like an oldpa dispensing nuggets of old-timey wisdom.
“What good advice,” she said, acid dripping from every word. “Oh, wait. Isn’t that what I said I was already doing?”
“No,” Connor yelled in annoyance. “You wanted to solve the problem by ignoring everything, the good along with the bad.”
“That’s not fair,” she said, matching his passion with her own. “You have no …“
“Goddess! There is that word again,” he said, cutting her protest off half uttered. “Did you tell anyone else about your problem? Did you ask for help? No. You let us all go on believing you were keeping track of things. Am I right that you have not been reading the map for weeks now?”
“Well, yes, but …”
“Did you think the problem would go away if you ignored it?”
“Sometimes that is a good strat …“
“Hah!” His bark cut her off. He was obviously on a roll and not to be diverted from the point he was trying to make. “Name me one time a problem ever went away all by itself. You can’t. Because it never happens. You gotta face ….”
“OK! I get it,” she yelled. “You seem to know everything. Tell me, oh wise one, what should I do?”
Connor opened his mouth and then closed it again. He scrubbed his face with his hands. He blew a couple of long, slow breaths. Finally he looked up at her.
“I don’t think we have any other choice. The dome can’t afford to lose
anymore animals. We need to tell Vinara that the herds in the orchard meadows are in jeopardy. Don’t you agree?”
Chapter Two
Vinara stood in the center of her domain and rocked back and forth on her heels as she solemnly considered the two children in front of her. Cheobawn did her best to look innocently earnest despite the rising anxiety that made her want to dance around the head drover like a bennelk anxious to be out and running. Perhaps what she felt was not her own anxiety. If felt suspiciously like the bennelk storm sense - like fire running along her nerve endings. Her efforts at keeping the psi world out of her head failed the closer she came to the bennelk, who felt everything and now stamped nervously in their stalls.
“The Watch Ears have given no indication of an impending storm,” the Elder Mother said doubtfully, her words becoming clouds in front of her face in the bitter cold air.
“The bennelk seem sure,” Connor said with utter confidence. Vinara raised an eyebrow and looked at Cheobawn.
“Perhaps, Young Father, if I had a more concise report from your Ear, I might be better able to give direction about your warnings,” Vinara said.
Protocol? Just like an Elder to make them follow the rules of protocol when dire things were coming down the road at them. Cheobawn stamped her feet in frustration and not a few bennelk trumpeted in sympathetic agreement, their calls a muffled echo behind the closed doors of the barns.
“Do not rile my animals, Little Mother,” Vinara said evenly, her own emotions hidden deep down inside her where no one could see. “It exhausts them before they have stepped even one foot out of the stalls. I think you mistake my intentions. I do not doubt that you think you know something, but I will have it presented in a coherent manner so that I do not look the fool when I take your case to the Fathers or the Coven.”
Cheobawn blew out a great puff of air, like a nervous bennelk on the verge of panic. “Their coats get all prickly,” Cheobawn said as she tried to scratch her ribs with her mittened hands but was stymied by the thick layers of parka and duster, “especially when the hard cold settles down in the deep valleys north of the Spine. They always know when the grimstorms are coming.”
It was more complicated than that but Cheobawn did not have the mental focus to explain the meteorology of the Dragon Spine’s most dangerous kind of storm and she was certain Vinara knew more than she did about the subject. The cold was only part of the problem. Things got ugly when the winds shifted and blew north out of Orson’s Sea - the warm, shallow ocean a thousand leagues to the south. Heavy with moisture and drawn like a magnet to the massive, slow spirals of cold air that slid south off the pack ice at the northern pole, they collided above the spires of the mountains to produce continent-sized cyclones of snow and wind that scoured the high meadows down to bare earth and deposited immense drifts of snow in the forests at the base of the Spine, enough to bury even the tallest of trees in places.
Was it real or her imagination that she thought she could smell the ocean on the still air under the stable dome? Cheobawn chased that fancy out of her head and tried to shut out the mind-chatter coming from the bennelk herd as well. She wanted to be annoyed with them - thinking perhaps that she could use her anger to shore up the walls around her mind - but thought better of it. She could not fault them their anxiety. This winter had been hard for Connor and her but it had been harder on the bennelk. There was something about the grimstorms that spooked the herd, and there had been more of them this winter than any other winter that the Elders could remember.
Vinara wanted information but there were secrets not even she could bring herself to speak of. Herd Mother thought there were ice demons in the clouds. She could not dissuade the dominant bennelk from that conviction despite all that Cheobawn tried to tell her otherwise.
It is just the air, Cheobawn had insisted. It is so cold it turns dry and then it cracks any soft tissue it touches and it is this that makes your skin itch and the bones inside your head hurt.
The sky gods are causing trouble in the high places on purpose and nothing good will come of it, Herd Mother had warned, unconvinced. The outlandishness of that statement had so overwhelmed Cheobawn at the time that she had not found words to counter it.
Vinara bent down and touched Cheobawn’s cold cheek with the tip of her mittened fingers. Cheobawn blinked, pulling herself back into the moment.
“Herd Mother talks too much,” Vinara said, making Cheobawn’s heart jump. Did Vinara read minds or had she said something aloud to betray her inner thoughts? “Shut her out for a moment, child,” the head drover continued. “Look into my eyes and tell me what I need to know to keep this dome alive until the spring lambs are born.”
Cheobawn felt the words spill out of her mouth almost of their own volition. “There is a storm hanging just behind the White Dragon like an invisible soap bubble waiting to be popped. The sun will set and the cold air will fall off the lip of the Escarpment, creating a vortex that will suck the ocean winds north. You have until tomorrow afternoon, maybe tomorrow evening at the latest. This will not be small like the other storms. The Northern Wastes have been growing progressively colder for the last few months and the southern latitudes are warming with an early spring. The two forces will battle for domination of the skies and anything that is caught in the open will die.” This was getting to be a bad habit, this talking without any forethought, she thought remotely. How had she let her gifts get so out of control?
Vinara grunted as she straightened her spine and rose to her full height. It was the sound of someone carrying an extraordinarily heavy burden. Facing north, her eyes probed the distance but it was not the dome she was trying to see. “So. Sending the herds to graze on the unharvested hayfields, while clever and pragmatic, has turned into yet another dome threatening mistake,” she muttered bitterly to herself. She looked down at Connor and Cheobawn, her mouth suddenly gone thin in grim determination.
“How fast can you two get dressed for a bennelk patrol?” the head drover asked abruptly.
“Us?” The word was no more than a squeak. This sudden twisty turn of events alarmed her.
“As you said, Little Mother, the bennelk are acting spooky. I do not know that I can convince them to leave the stable and I think that perhaps you can help.”
“You don’t need us both, do you?” Connor asked, not liking this at all. He was a mediocre rider on his best days, finding the bennelk far too full of fits of temper for his liking. She suspected his experiences riding to the Meetpoint Camp two summers ago had not been a good way to initiate a novice rider. It seemed to have forever soured him towards anything with four legs.
Vinara sighed patiently. “An Ear needs her Pack. Who else but you can ride at this Little Mother’s back and keep her safe? Now be off with you and tell whoever is in the security station on the South Gate to send out a Level Three emergency alert on my post.”
Cheobawn and Connor exchanged alarmed glances.
Vinara shouted at them, shooing them off. “Go! Is that your idea of fast? We’ve got five hours of solid daylight left and I’ve got a score of bennelk to saddle. Move!“
Connor grabbed Cheobawn by the hand and jerked her into motion as Vinara began bellowing orders at the top of her voice. Her apprentices popped out of a dozen doorways and began dashing madly about, throwing open gear lockers and barn doors.
“This isn’t exactly how I imagined I would be spending my Restday,” Connor said sourly as he pressed his palm onto the security scanner under the South Gate’s com unit.
“Hmm, who was it that wanted to act the hero and not wait for the Watch report?” Cheobawn asked as she smiled sweetly up at the camera. “Smile for Gudu.”
Connor scowled up at the camera and made a gesture that was less than polite. Cheobawn groaned. Being Finn’s apprentice, Gudu had long been familiar with the personalities and their dynamics inside Blackwind Pack, having seen them at work in the Finn’s workshop. The journeyman machinist had a perverse sense of humor, If he thought h
e could goad Connor into an emotional outburst he could very well make them stand outside for hours while they performed acrobatic tricks for his pleasure.
“Now, that wasn’t nice, Blackwind pipsqueak,” Gudu said over the comunit. “Show me your red tag.”
Cheobawn sighed. They had come through the gate not fifteen minutes before and she was fairly certain they had been in full view of Gudu’s cameras the whole time, but Gudu was well within his rights to demand to see the token.
“Just open the door, Gudu,” Connor yelled. “We have things to do.”
“I think you should show a little more respect for the authority of my office, little omega,” Gudu said with an offended sniff. “Why is Vinara shouting like that? Have you been messing with her animals again, Little Mother?”
“I’ll show you respect ….” Connor sputtered, insulted to the core by the reference to his low rank in the Pack.
“I am sorry if Connor is being rude, Gudu, but we have just cause. Vinara says she has a level three emergency. She wanted us to tell you that,” Cheobawn said as she put a hand on Connors shoulder to silence him. “We have to get in, get equipped and get back to ride with the patrol. Please open the doors.”
“By all that is holy. Why didn’t you say that in the first place? Get a move on.” Gudu’s order had not yet found its way out of the speaker before the doors began to swing open. Cheobawn did not wait. She pressed her body through the widening crack and dragged Connor through behind her.
“Do you know what the emergency is about?” asked the journeyman as he returned their yellow token in exchange for the red one that Connor fished out of his pocket.
