by Rinelle Grey
Marlee stared at him for a few moments then nodded. “Thank you,” she said softly as she slipped her arm through his.
The barn was right next to Marlee’s home, so the walk was short. “This was one of the first buildings we built,” Marlee explained. “It’s easier to keep the animals all together and share their care rather than look after them individually. In the middle of winter, we take turns feeding them.”
Tyris nodded. That made sense.
Despite the shawl, he was glad to get inside, where firelight from several lamps cast a welcoming glow. The building was large, dwarfing Marlee’s small dwelling. Wooden railings and posts divided it into four sections. Immediately inside the door to the left were large stacks of hay, wooden crates, and firewood. To the right, a dozen or so small animals with horns, goats maybe, or were they sheep? No, sheep were in the corner diagonally opposite, so those must be goats. The final corner held chickens.
The barn was so large that the roof of each section was held up by its own central pole, as though they were all structurally separate, but joined together without walls. “I can’t believe all this was built by hand!” Tyris said in amazement.
He wrinkled his nose at the smell, though it was not as unpleasant as he had expected. A slightly musty aroma with a hint of hay.
Marlee smiled and picked up a small woven basket sitting on one of the crates. She dipped it into a box full of grain then called softly to the goats. “Benati.” Her sing-song voice echoed through the barn as she coaxed the animal closer. A small brown and white goat with floppy ears broke away from the herd and nuzzled her hand, and Marlee opened the gate to let it out into the walkway between the sections. When she put the basket on the ground, the goat stuck its nose in, eating greedily. Pulling up a three legged stool, she sat down beside the goat, patting it fondly on its rump. She put the bucket underneath it and began milking.
Tyris watched with interest, no compulsion at all to try this skill. But when Marlee turned to him with a smile and asked, “Do you want to try?” he somehow couldn’t say no. He found himself sitting on the tiny stool, reaching his hands under a goat, and listening to Marlee’s instructions. “Grip with your thumb and forefinger first, to trap the milk in the teat, then close each finger around it and pull down gently, squeezing the milk out.”
Tyris tried several times, but there was no milk. It seemed like an impossible task. Marlee knelt down in the straw next to him and put her hands around his. “Like this, you need to force the milk down to the end of the teat.”
After several attempts, Tyris managed to get a single stream of milk spurting down into the half full bucket and felt an inordinate sense of pride. “I did it!”
Marlee smiled. “Of course you did.”
Tyris tried a few more times with mixed success, and since the goat’s back feet began to shift restlessly, Marlee took over again, squirting the milk into the bucket rapidly. She made it look so easy.
“Good morning, Marlee, Tyris,” he heard a voice behind him say. Turning, he saw Nerris coming into the barn with a basket.
Tyris returned his greeting politely. Marlee stood up and handed him the bucket, three quarters full of foaming warm milk. “Hi, Nerris,” she said cheerfully.
Nerris faced Tyris, leaning back on the fence as Marlee led the goat back into its pen. “We were all so concerned for you and Marlee last night that I forgot to ask, how is the ship?”
Marlee slipped past him and down to the area with the chickens. Tyris suspected she didn’t want to hear him repeat the news any more than he felt like saying it. “Not good,” he admitted. “Even if the rocket booster hadn’t been damaged, the anysogen fuel tank was punctured, and I lost all the fuel. You were right, the Hylista isn’t going anywhere.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, son.” Nerris looked at Tyris thoughtfully for a few moments, then said casually, “Oh well, you probably won’t be stuck here for too long. I’m sure the Colonies will send someone else looking for the anysogen when you don’t return. After all, they know full well it’s here.”
So Yasmyn had told him why he was here. “Actually, I’m not sure they do,” Tyris said. “I mean, obviously someone does, but it’s well hidden.”
“But they sent you after it?” Nerris asked. When Tyris raised an eyebrow, he said, “Come on, I wasn’t born yesterday. I recognise a Space Force ship when I see one.”
“Of course,” Tyris said, wondering what Nerris hoped to gain by this conversation. “But I’m not here on Colonial orders. In fact, I am... was... on leave. I’m here entirely on my own initiative, and no one knows where I am. On top of that, this planet isn’t mentioned in any of the history on anysogen and has been deleted from all the star maps.”
“Deleted from the star maps?” The shock in Nerris’s voice was obvious. “Why would they have done that? No wonder we never saw a rescue ship.”
“I have no idea why it was deleted, obviously something was going on. But even so, they can’t possibly have known there was anyone here to rescue,” Tyris pointed out.
“Do you really believe that?” Nerris said pointedly. “I mean, if there was no one here, why bother to delete the planet from the star maps? Especially one that contained such a valuable resource.”
Tyris struggled to work out what he implied. The villagers had escaped Semala against all odds, how could anyone guess that they had survived? And yet, Nerris had a point. Planets just weren’t removed from the star maps. Before he could even come up with a coherent response, Nerris nodded to him and walked towards the back of the barn.
Marlee came up behind him with her apron full of eggs. “Is everything okay?”
He looked down at her for a moment, then taking her elbow, shepherded her out of the barn. “Marlee, what actually happened on Semala?”
Marlee looked at him as though he had asked a strange question. “What do you mean?”
“When you left. What happened?” Tyris clarified.
“Well, I wasn’t born, so I only know what I’ve overheard,” Marlee explained. “There was a meteor shower. The Colonies said it was harmless, but it wasn’t. A couple of larger meteors made it through the atmosphere. One hit close to the settlement, but didn’t do much damage. That was when the Colonial ship left. The other one hit in the middle of the settlement. We left right before it hit.”
Suddenly, Nerris’s assertion that the Colonies must have known people had survived made more sense. “The Colonies would have known people would escape from Semala in the Tenacity. But why didn’t they use it and choose who got in it?” There was so much about this whole scenario that didn’t make any sense.
Marlee shook her head. “The Tenacity didn’t exist when they left. It was a shell, one they used in some sort of testing. It didn’t even have any engines. Nerris rigged up an engine to make it fly somehow, but it wasn’t going to go any real distance.”
Tyris’s eyes widened. “Nerris managed to turn a shell into something that would fly, in what? A couple of weeks?” The man must indeed have been a damn good engineer.
Marlee nodded solemnly. “That’s how it got its name. Everyone said that the only thing that would get them off the planet was Nerris’s tenacity.”
Tyris gave a half smile at her story. Somehow, it didn’t surprise him. “But none of this happened until after the colony ship left, right?” he clarified.
Marlee screwed up her face in thought. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”
“Why did you expect to be rescued then? The Colonies would have assumed everyone on Semala was killed in the meteor impact. They didn’t know you escaped. They didn’t know there was anyone here to rescue.”
“I guess everyone thought they’d come back for the anysogen. I don’t know. Doesn’t matter though; no one ever came. Except you.” She looked up at him then, giving him a little smile that made his heart jump. The way she said it gave the impression that she thought he was someone special, would do something special. When in reality, he was anything but.
Marlee thought for a moment, then said, “Mother and Weiss used to argue about it. Late at night when they thought I was asleep. I was only little, so I don’t really remember much.”
“Let me guess, Weiss thought no one was ever going to rescue you?” Tyris guessed. Weiss didn’t exactly seem like the optimistic type.
“Actually, no, it was the other way around,” Marlee said. “Weiss was sure they were coming back, but Mother told him he was dreaming.” She was silent then, her face closing up, as though the memory wasn’t a pleasant one.
Tyris didn’t push her any further. It was plain she didn’t know much more, but he was intrigued. There was more going on here. And he was determined to get to the bottom of it. Maybe it would distract him from the fact that he could never leave.
Chapter 12
Tyris thought that with the goat milked and the eggs collected there would be little else to do for the day. The snow outside prevented any outdoor activities, and Marlee’s house seemed so bare that he couldn’t imagine anything else that needed to be done inside. But even though she limped a little more heavily by the time they got back to the house, she didn’t stop or sit down.
She collected together bottles, knives, and a sack of sugar then limped towards a wooden crate of apples standing near the door. Tyris jumped up. “Here, let me get that.”
Marlee threw him a grateful look and settled herself on the stool at the table. Tyris put the crate in front of her, and she pulled an apple out and cut the peel off it with the knife. Tyris pulled the other stool out opposite her. “What are you doing?”
“Preserving these apples so they won’t go bad. That way we can eat them over winter.” She cut the apples into slices as she talked, dropping them into a bowl of water in the middle of the table.
“Why are you putting them in water?”
“To stop them going brown.”
“Do you have another knife?”
Marlee pointed to the drawer, and after fetching the knife, Tyris tried to copy her. Instead of peeling off a thin layer of skin, he took half the apple with it, and his final apple pieces were nowhere near as neat as Marlee’s.
This life was so much harder than he had expected. He put the knife down. “I think your goat could do a better job of chopping these,” he joked. “I’d better stop, or you’ll end up with no apples to eat over winter.”
Marlee smiled across at him. “It doesn’t matter what they look like. They’ll taste the same no matter how they’re cut. You’ll get better the more you do,” she encouraged.
That was true, so Tyris picked up the knife again and continued to cut. They worked steadily for a while, until Marlee deemed they had enough apples for the first batch. She reached for the glass jars and filled them neatly with apple slices.
“Why are we putting them in bottles?” Tyris asked, copying her.
“Because they’ll be sealed off from bacteria, meaning they’ll last longer.”
“How do we seal them?” Tyris asked. “Don’t you need some sort of machine for that?”
Marlee laughed. “No, no big machines necessary. We boil them in hot water, and as it heats, the water expands. When it cools again, it shrinks, creating a vacuum, and sealing the lid on tightly.”
Tyris’s eyes widened. Her simple explanation of physics rules he had not thought of since school surprised him. It shouldn’t have. The village seemed to be populated by people who had been highly qualified before the disaster, but it still seemed at such odds with the primitive surroundings. “How did you learn all this?”
Marlee shrugged. “Mother, Nerris, and the others had some warning about the meteor that hit Semala, they printed off a lot of information on survival skills before they left. And I guess they must have known some of this stuff anyway. Even before we were cut off, ships from the Colonies were infrequent. People on Semala needed these skills to survive.”
“So I suppose you brought all this equipment with you too?” Tyris waved to include the jars sitting on the bench, and the plastic lids and rubber rings sitting in a bowl of water.
Marlee nodded, as she filled each jar with a mixture of dark, lumpy sugar and water that had been boiling on the stove, then put a rubber ring and lid on each, clipping them on tightly. “We’re running short on a lot of supplies by now of course. These rubber rings are specially made, and are good for twenty years, probably for a few more, but some are starting to fail now. After the bottles cool, we’ll need to check that they’ve all sealed properly. If any haven’t, we’ll throw those rings away, and eat the food in the next week.” She arranged the bottles carefully in a large pot and added water until they were all covered.
“What will you do when you have no more rings left?” Tyris asked. She sounded so matter of fact about it, but to him, it sounded like a disaster. He hadn’t even thought about where the villagers kept food to last the winter. He was used to vacuum sealed packages, refrigerators, and food being shipped from all over the galaxy.
“We have other ways to store food,” Marlee said calmly. “We dry a lot of food during summer, while it’s still hot. And we store a lot buried in the ice, where it stays frozen. Can you hang the pot over the fire, on that hook?” She pointed.
Tyris did as he’d been asked, feeling a little reassured. He was as dependent on their food storage methods as they were and was far less knowledgeable. “What do you do with them once they’re done?”
Marlee limped over to a curtain on the wall and pulled it aside. On the shelves behind it were an impressive number of bottles in several different colours. “We keep them here, and we can have fruit over the winter, when nothing will grow.”
“Yes, but what do you do with them? Just eat them out of the jar?”
“Sometimes, but usually you make an apple pie or apple crumble, or use them as toppings for cakes and biscuits,” Marlee explained. “Where do you get apples for apple pie?”
“Um, I don’t think I’ve ever had apple pie,” Tyris admitted, “although I have seen some in the frozen aisle in the supermarket.”
Marlee wrinkled up her nose. “They sell frozen apples at the supermarket?”
“Not frozen apples, frozen apple pies,” Tyris corrected.
“You mean you can just go along and get a pie that someone else has made?”
“Well, yes. You put it in your trolley, pay for it on your way out, and heat it up at home. Easy as pie.” He laughed at his own pun.
“Amazing,” Marlee shook her head, as though she couldn’t quite believe it.
It was amazing, Tyris realised. He had always taken it for granted, the ability to buy food already prepared or to order something if he was in a rush. In fact, he didn’t even really give food much thought. It had never occurred to him to stop and be grateful for its existence. It was just there.
“Do you want to help me get the next batch ready?”
Tyris nodded, and they spent a few hours bottling the apples. Then they sat quietly by the fire. Marlee asked him to read to her and handed him an obviously prized, tattered old book. It was a story he had read in childhood, tales of adventure and excitement, something he would have dismissed as childish had he been home. But somehow, as he read it to Marlee, watching her eyes light up with enjoyment, it was anything but boring.
While he read, Marlee picked up two thin wooden sticks with wool wound around them, and began moving them together rapidly.
After he finished reading the story, he watched her, spellbound by the confidence with which she moved. Her knitting was almost hypnotic to watch. “Don’t you ever just sit and do nothing?” he asked curiously.
She looked up at him in surprise and her hands kept moving as she answered, almost as if they were working under their own violation. “Rarely. There is so much to do, especially coming up to winter. Idleness is a luxury we just can’t afford.”
Tyris thought back on his life, replete with idleness,
and felt a touch of guilt. “What are you making?” he asked to cover up the uncomfortable feeling. The thick wool made a knobbly fabric in what appeared to be a square shape.
“Slippers.”
For a moment, he wondered what she meant. Then his grandmother came to his rescue again, with an image of the horrid pink, fluffy shoes she wore only inside the house. Glancing down at Marlee’s feet, he saw she wore soft flexible shoes, their knobbly texture exactly like the item she knitted, and he understood.
“You’ll need them if you’re going to be here for the winter,” she continued. “They were supposed to be Nelor’s, but he’s...” She broke off suddenly as she glanced up at him.
In all his life, no one had ever made him anything before. Not with their own two hands. Sure, he’d received lots of presents, but none with this much effort put into them. He felt strangely touched... Until he realised they had originally been for Nelor. He was only getting them by default. Still, the feeling lingered, not entirely unpleasant. Marlee looked back to her knitting, so he opened the book and began to read the next story.
Once all the bottles were sitting on the kitchen table to cool and Marlee had put all of the apple peel and cores into a bucket to feed to the animals, it seemed that the day’s work was done. Or almost done.
“While we’re thinking of it, we should pull out that pallet and make it up,” Tyris suggested.
But for some reason, Marlee hesitated. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” she said.
“Why not?” Despite her earlier comments to the contrary, maybe she did have plans to try to convince him to give her a baby.
“If anyone comes to visit and sees the pallet set up, they’re not going to believe that we’re really involved,” Marlee explained.
