Unnaturals

by Merrill, Lynna

  "And you"—Old Codes shook her broom at Meliora. "You watch her and learn, so that you don't repeat her follies. Not that you don't have follies that she, bless her, wouldn't even dream of having, even though she's a fatherless abomination. You aren't like her, but you aren't a proper girl, either—but what to do? Few are. Go see your mother now, if mother she can be called. Take the food to her now, I don't need to bless it in her stead today, like I would have. That silly girl Elizabeth at least took care of that."

  If mother she can be called? What did the old hag mean?

  Hag was another word for a witch, Mel remembered. She also remembered that witches used brooms to fly. Before leaving Lucasta, Mel had imagined brooms to be similar to flying bicycles.

  "I wonder if you can fly with that," Mel said softly. She grabbed the tray and slipped away through the door to Mom's bedroom before old Codes could smack her again.

  "Knock! You knock on a bedroom's door, girl!" an irritated old voice came from behind her. Mel swiftly closed the door an inch before old Codes' nose. Since privacy was so valued, she'd have some of it, too.

  "Oh, Mel, you should not do this. It is not polite at all. Go apologize to the nice woman, please."

  "This is not Lucasta, Mom!" Meliora snapped. "From what I gather, Lucasta is even evil here. One doesn't have to be polite here like a Lucastan, Mom!"

  Mom reached up from the bed with scratchy sheets and patted Mel's hand. Mom's hand seemed stronger than yesterday.

  "Oh, Mel, my love, please don't be so angry. We are all here now. We are, the three of us, together. Everything is fine now."

  "So where is he, then? My Dad. And why couldn't he be bothered to wait? Now my friend will work and go hungry because of him."

  Mom smiled. Her eyes were jumping around normally, and she was holding something in her hand, of a similar size to a computer. Rough, homemade soap. She was alternately waving it around or cradling it, just like she had waved and cradled her computer. At least she wasn't humming into it.

  "Oh, Mel, he had to go out early. He said it couldn't wait."

  "He said just that? And that was enough for you?" After all these years?

  "Of course it was enough for her. A man's word is enough for his wife," the nice, privacy-respecting old Codes said behind her back. Meliora hadn't even heard the door open.

  Mom smiled again. At least she looked better than yesterday, and she wasn't talking about going anywhere any more.

  Perhaps it had all worked. Perhaps Mel had done the right things. If Mom could stay here and be happy—if Mom could live here, what right had Meliora to be angry with old Codes, or with the temple with its broken computers, or with the father who hadn't waited to see her this morning?

  "This is your place now," old Codes said minutes later, after the two of them had helped Mom eat and Mom had fallen asleep again.

  "Can you see what is in others' minds?" Meliora risked asking, and old Codes' gnarled face gave the hint of a smile, while her hands were busy grinding something in a bowl on the kitchen table. It smelled like Stella's tea. Mel took another bowl with a grinder and started helping. Old Codes nodded in approval.

  "No," she said. "And"—she gave her a meaningful look—"I don't fly with brooms, though old Carlos heard you through the door and now he won't leave me alone about this for as long as I'm alive, silly girl. Anyway, I don't see inside the mind, but I am old, and I see a lot, and I help people talk to the gods."

  "The gods didn't talk to me today. Can you help?"

  "They might have." The old woman sighed. "They don't necessarily talk like people." Her eyes were focused on her bowl, her hands busy with her grinder. "Pray to them, and one day they will answer. Pray for your mother, they will care for her like they care for all of us. They will make her right."

  ***

  Mel didn't have much time for prayer. Old Codes put her to work, and she worked all day, stopping only to eat and check on Mom.

  Old Codes watched Mom more closely—and she chased Mel away.

  "It is the task of the healer to watch the sick, girl."

  "I am a doctor," Mel said.

  Old Codes gave Mel what Mel was coming to recognize as a startled look. It was specific to the world outside Lucasta. Lucastans could only look like this while sitting in the wonderful experiences chairs.

  "You're no doctor," old Codes said. "Whatever you were in that vile city of yours. Only one who hears the gods can be a doctor. Off you go. Work is waiting."

  It is all right, Mel told herself outside, in the big common kitchen. I don't have to be the one to heal her when she aches and no medstat is near. As long as someone does.

  Two other young women, Belinda and Mati, were showing Mel how to can tomatoes in jars.

  Both girls were quiet and soft—somehow soft despite the rough skin of their bare soles and the calluses on their hands. Bare feet and calluses were sometimes fashionable in Lucasta, but never when softness was fashionable. In Lucasta, bare soles and calluses came either with short, spiky hair and a wiry frame, or with hard muscles and square jaws.

  They boiled the jars in a big cauldron hanging over the fireplace. Then, later, they took the jars out of the bubbling water with long metal tongs and left them on a clean wooden table covered with cloth. Soon after that, the lids started giving popping sounds, and Mati smiled when Mel was startled by the first.

  "That's what they should do, Mel. It means they are becoming sealed well for winter. If they don't pop like this, the tomatoes will go bad."

  "Ah, it's the vacuum effect." Meliora knew that much from her Academy studies.

  Mati shrugged. "I don't know about that. Is vacuum something you have in the cities?"

  "Oh, Mati, why would you want to know about cities!" Belinda's voice was still soft, but she wore a facial expression that was uncommon, and impolite, in Lucasta. Exasperation. Belinda was older than Mati, perhaps older than Mel herself.

  Mati lowered her eyes. Her hands were busy with kneading bread for the harvesters' dinner.

  "Mati was born here," Belinda said. "A lucky girl. Many of us come from the cities."

  "Oh, Belle, but I know you came as a very small child! Your Dad had to carry you, you could barely walk yet. Ma told me all about it. You can't have brought much decay with you, now, can you? You were so small..."

  "Mati," Belle said sternly, "it doesn't matter how big or small one is." Then she smiled. "But the Village of Life's healing power is bigger than that. It comes from the gods themselves."

  "I can see the village's healing power is great," Meliora said, looking at them both. "You're as calm and beautiful as Mati, Belle."

  "It will heal you and your mom, too, you'll see, Mel." Both smiled at her. There was silence after that, and it felt peaceful.

  Then Belinda started humming as she cut potatoes into pieces. "Let's sing a song, how about that, little girls?" The humming turned into words, and Mati soon joined in. Meliora laid down the knife with which she was paring early-season apples.

  "You've never sung, have you?" Belinda looked at her with understanding. "You thought it was a job for those musicstat things? I remember them. Oh, Mel, nothing can sing like a person!"

  They taught her the words and the melody of the song. At first she didn't want to join. She was afraid that her city-rusted voice would only mar the sounds that were was so pure despite the fact that they didn't come from a musicstat.

  "Come on, Mel!"

  They had her sing with them, and in the evening, before dinner, had her sing with tens of other people. Mom was there, too. She was better. She could sing a bit and hold her spoon in her own hand.

  An old man winked at Mel as she brought a dish of soup to her mom. "Old Codes can fly with a broom, eh? And what can you fly with, pretty apple? Me thinks Codes might've found her match."

  Old Codes hit him with a spoon.

  That night, Meliora slept better, even though the only time she saw her dad was when he came home long after she was in bed. He opened the f
ront door quietly and walked through the kitchen too softly for a man his size. Mel remembered him thin, almost as thin as Mom. It must have been a fashion, though she didn't remember him caring about fashions much. Now, his shoulders were broad and his limbs large. He glanced towards her kitchen bed before the bedroom door closed softly behind him.

  Real World

  On Mel's second morning old Codes raised her from sleep long before the sun was up in the sky.

  "Work," she said. There was breakfast to be cooked, lunch to be packed for the woodsmen, tomatoes to be picked and canned, wheat to be harvested. Mel didn't see her dad all day and didn't feel much like singing in the evening.

  On the third day, the same—but this time Dad appeared for the songs. He didn't sing. He walked among the singers, nodding here, giving a half-smile there. People were happy to see him, but not Lucastan-happy. Perhaps happy wasn't even the word. Some of them weren't even smiling, yet the muscles on their faces were relaxed, and they were leaning over fallen tree trunks and big stones, singing as if they didn't have a care in the world.

  Mel had seen this, or similar, caused by pills and injections, but never by a person.

  However, when that person finally came to sit beside her, silent, giving her no more than a pat on the shoulder, it didn't make her feel like this.

  Because I am unnatural, she thought for the first time in the Village of Life. I want him to talk to me. I want him to hold my hand, like Mom sometimes does. Like he used to. Why doesn't he ask me about the feeds I've read or the monsters I've killed? What did I do wrong?

  She didn't ask him this. Not in front of the other people.

  She didn't ask him later, either, since he didn't return home for the night. Old Codes, coming to check on Mom, told them both that he'd spend the night alone in the temple.

  "A chief needs to stay there sometimes," she said, "or in the hunting cabin up on the hill two miles away from here. Julian well knows it."

  "But...today? He hasn't even seen Mom today!"

  "The gods tell him when," was old Codes' stern reply.

  Mom sighed, but soon she went to bed. She even smiled in her sleep.

  "I'll go to the temple, too," Mel said. "Or to that cabin."

  "You mad or what!? Women don't go out of the village just like this, especially at night! The monsters come out of the Gloomy Wood at night, girl! Why do you think only men hunt?"

  "I killed a monster!"

  "Yes. You did." Old Codes sighed. "On your way here. Never again. We'll never risk a woman's life like this."

  "But you'll risk a man's?"

  Old Codes nodded curtly. "To each, his or her own. To each, a responsibility. Yours has nothing to do with going out at night—even to the temple. You'll waste candles, at the very least."

  Mel didn't go to the temple but couldn't sleep, either.

  On the next day, she harvested jars, potatoes, and onions. It was the season of those, just like it was the season of wheat and tomatoes and pears.

  The field was behind a hill, invisible from the village. Lizzy, Belinda, and Mati took her there.

  "Unlike most other things, which grow from the ground or on trees," Lizzy told her, "these three, and some others, grow under the ground. We have to dig them out. Careful now, Mel, you don't want to break any of the crops. Especially the jars." She quieted her voice. "They leave very sharp pieces if you do, and not all of those even grow into new jars. Be careful with the lids, too. They don't break easily, but they bend and become useless."

  "Thanks, Lizzy, I'll be careful." Mel said in the same quiet voice. It wasn't the polite quietness of Lucasta. In Lucasta, often quietly and politely, you shared your news with the whole world, and the whole world promptly forgot it. This was the new quietness of telling something to a person and wanting to keep it from everyone else. The world remembered too much here. This morning, Mel had learned that Mati and Melanie, another girl who was born here, could not stand each other because of their grandmothers having quarreled once upon a time.

  Mel almost...missed Lucasta.

  Lucasta can't heal Mom! This village already has—look at her walking, look at the light in her eyes!

  Meliora applied herself to harvesting jars, then in the evening went with Lizzy to the temple, where Lizzy prayed to stop being an abomination.

  The singing outside was different when the two exited the building. The song was stronger, happier, and somehow disturbing.

  "It's the song of winning," Lizzy whispered. Lizzy didn't seem happy to hear it. "It is very old, written with text and music in the Book of the Gods itself. We can all read the text—at least, those of us who came from the cities can—but only some can read the music."

  "I can teach you, if you want." There was no way you could not read music if you worked on the hummie interfaces.

  "No!" Lizzy shouted, then clasped her hand to the mouth before the singers could hear her. Mel and Lizzy had almost reached them now. "Oh, Mel, it is enough that I can draw. I was an artist in Sylvanna, I drew advertisements. I was right in the middle of the decay. We don't do such things here, Mel. Drawing and music, and even writing, are making, putting things in the world. We don't do this."

  "But you want to draw, don't you?" Mel could tell. She was enough of a doctor for that. Besides, she wanted to write computer programs herself. She already missed her own decayed task of putting things into the world.

  "Don't talk about that, Mel!"

  "But old Codes makes clothes, we make bread."

  "The right things," Lizzy said. "We only make the right things."

  They reached the singing. It was stronger than before, and not only because of the different song. There were more people than before. There were more men with strong voices, and even a young woman Mel had never seen before.

  "Arisa." Lizzy had seen Mel's look. Lizzy's voice was suddenly filled with what Mel knew from the wonderful experiences as envy and longing. "Arisa is so advanced now," Lizzy said, "that she can no longer come to the fields. She's been unwell for the last few days, so she didn't come to the singing, either. But she's come to meet her husband and the other hunters, of course. It has been a good hunt. The song would tell us, if nothing else."

  It had been a good hunt. One didn't need a song to know. The bloody carcasses of animals big and small were eloquent enough. Meliora didn't even know the names of them all. Some were sprawled on the ground by the fire burning in its stone home, in the middle of what old Codes called the Village Green. Others hung from the two big trees nearby, skin already partly flayed.

  It was a good hunt. So good that it was almost all right for a girl just out of a city, unused to blood and to what she now recognized in the song as violence, to take a step back, press a hand to her mouth, and fight for breath and to keep her food in her stomach.

  They never knew it wasn't because of the blood. She'd seen and caused blood already; she'd sealed the feelings that blood used to bring somewhere deep inside her heart, out of reach. It was because of Arisa and because of the few other women, obviously less advanced, that she'd so far considered to be just fat.

  Women like sheep, bloated and helpless. "Wrong, wrong, wrong!" Doctor Jerome's voice screamed in her head. Women who would bring into the world babies for whom no one had planned and fixed the genes—babies with sickness, and with violence in their songs!

  "Oh, Mel, I dream of the day when I will have a husband and a blessing like Arisa's," Lizzy said softly before touching Mel's elbow and urging her forward.

  Forward, Meliora came face to face with Nicolas.

  Oh, he was older, of course, and taller. His hair, green and spiky before, was now light blond and shorter. Yet, she knew him, just like she'd known her father. He looked at her. His eyes had once been wild, fervent, yellow-colored by the lenses he wore. Now they were lense-free and blue—and cold.

  "You should rejoice with the success of the hunt, chief-daughter." His voice was cold, too. "The Village of Life is no place for those who faint at the si
ght of blood."

  He turned his back to her and walked away, as graceful and indifferent as the mountain lion Mel had seen from that boat, after fighting the snake monster.

  I didn't faint! she wanted to shout at him. What do you, fool, know about me—what do you know about anything!? I went to Annabella to find you. Perhaps I would have even come to find you here if Mom could have lived a long and happy life in Lucasta without me. You have no right to treat me like this! You and my dad, both—you bastards!

  She didn't shout. It was impolite for a Lucastan and not private enough for one of the Village of Life. She wanted to cry, but she didn't do that, either. Once, in a fairytale, there had been a princess who'd sworn that she'd never cry because of a man.

  I won't, either. For either of them.

  She was supposed to sing the song of violence with the rest of the people, but she only pretended.

  ***

  That night, Meliora went to the temple. She didn't need a candle. Clouds darkened the moon and stars, but she remembered where the temple was and could walk in the dark.

  The chief was sitting on the floor with his back to the wall of the gods. The table with food for the gods and the table for blessings rose on both his sides like fairy-tale guardians. His eyes were closed but snapped open the moment she stepped inside.

  "Hello, Dad. Could you really hear me enter? It was such a small noise. You'd never hear it in Lucasta. It would blend with people's humming, with the trains running—with everything."

  "Noise pollution," he said. "It's one of the cities' curses. There's light pollution, too—have you noticed how pale the sun and stars and moon are there?"

  "Brightlights and softlights," Meliora said. There was a difference.

  "The sun, moon, and stars," her father said firmly, "enhanced by the dome to shine brighter, so that people can see them at all. Yet they are not bright enough. Now, what are you doing here?" A moment ago his voice and eyes had been soft. Now they weren't.

  "I came so that Mom can be cured from young age." She returned the look and the voice. He'd asked what she was doing in the temple, of course. No one in the village asked why you came to the village, Lizzy had told her. "Don't you want me here, Dad?"