Chloë

by Marcus LaGrone

  “Now the fun part is, the weapons themselves are just a projection, their mass and other material properties are variable. Thus it is possible to change the mass, momentum and even the kinetic energy in real time. Very handy.”

  “Dad has tossed grav tanks at people before!” beamed Heather.

  “Ultimately, it is all just a projection into our existence and one need not invoke the weapon. One skilled enough can just focus on the desired results and not on any particular manifestation of a physical device.”

  “You have to be five flavors of awesome to pull that off,” interrupted Heather. “Dad, however, is seven flavors of awesome!”

  Llewellyn laughed and tousled Heather’s hair, “My own minister of propaganda here! Anyway, to lick the fur the other way, Live Steel is a projection of one’s mental image of weapons and armor that materializes on our plane.”

  “And armor?” asked Chloë, bright eyed and curious.

  “Armor up, girl!” beamed Llewellyn to Heather.

  “Dad!” came a quintet of voices from downstairs, “Fourth Mother is looking for you!”

  Llewellyn’s eyes went wide and his grin threatened to engulf his face, “Sorry, girls, I need to go. We’ll talk about it later.” He turned to leave and made it all of one step down the hall before he turned back to face Chloë. He pulled a doll out of one of his long pockets and held it out to Chloë, “Gavin found this when tracing your path. I do believe it belongs to you.”

  Chloë’s fur stood on end as she laughed with a single tear in her eye, “Yes, I thought I had lost that for good!”

  Llewellyn stepped forward, handing Chloë the doll before kissing her on the head.

  “It’s kinda stupid, still having a doll around at my age, but it is all I have to remember my mother by,” remarked Chloë as she tried to maintain composure.

  “Hey! It’s okay!” beamed Heather as she hugged Chloë. “I’ve got my own doll collection that I won’t let go of. That one was special to you; why shouldn’t you keep it?”

  Chloë’s eyes flashed with worry, “Um, is it bugged, like my clothes were?”

  “It was, past tense. We took care of that,” replied Llewellyn with a fatherly smile. “I’ve got to go, take care you two!” With that he spun and skipped down the hall toward the stair landing.

  Chloë hugged the doll and sighed deeply before neatly setting it on the pillow of her bed, “Some of the stupidest things get you worked up the most…”

  “So you grew up without your mother? That seems terribly sad,” offered Heather.

  Chloë smiled at Heather as she sat on the bed and looked up at her. Sincere, concerned, supportive, Heather was all of those things and more so. Chloë was so used to the happy/silly side of Heather she kept forgetting she was so much more of a person. Just the person Chloë needed, “When I was around six, something happened between my parents, I never found out what. But she was packed up and moved out of the…well…”

  “Palace?” offered Heather.

  Chloë tried to smile, “Yes, palace. I wanted to say house, but it was never a house. A house becomes a home. This place is most definitely a home. The palace never was. It never had that warmth or liveliness, that extra bit of depth that made it feel… alive.”

  “Well, liveliness we have here in spades,” offered Heather as she tried to lighten the mood.

  Chloë finally smiled again, “Yes, yes you do!” She brightened as she finally managed a laugh, “Okay, enough of this. Where is that other dress?”

  8

  Chloë came down for breakfast only to find Heather missing. Gwen and the mob of younger teenagers were already busily devouring the morning fare but Heather was nowhere to be seen.

  “If you are looking for Heather,” began Lilac (or was it Violet?). “She is in the library,” finished Violet (or was it… argh! Twins!) with a grin.

  Chloë bobbed politely as she turned and started for the library; it was just barely down the hall on the right. Just before the Great Hall. A few quick skips and she found herself at the library, but paused before going in. She could hear voices and they weren’t nearly as happy as the previous few mornings.

  “Heather,” came Maria’s voice from the library, “you are sixteen years old. You have gone through three apprenticeships in the last six months. That is unseemly. You don’t help Gwen with the younger children, so I’m still working under the assumption that you aren’t wanting to be a Second Mother. That’s fine, but you need to pick something!”

  “Mom, I tried! Okay maybe not so hard with the first two, but with Annette, I did try hard. Remember, she dumped me, not the other way around this time. It wasn’t my fault she was a lousy teacher. I’ve already taken over two of her classes. That’s progress, isn’t it?”

  “It is a start,” agreed Maria, “but only just barely. You can’t make a living teaching two dance classes a week. You need to comb your fur, straighten your ears, and get out there and look for what you want to do for work. You need to find out what your calling is and embrace it. With that in mind…”

  “Oh, crap…”

  “Yes, Heather? Did you have something to say?”

  “No, Mother,” sighed Heather, “I’m sorry I interrupted.”

  “Very well then. As I was saying: your cousin Ellis has agreed to take you in for two weeks or so at her inn there in Edmundshire. It is a much larger town than here and there would be a lot more opportunities to find another teacher or someone to apprentice with.”

  “Two weeks?” asked a truly flustered Heather.

  “With as much idle time as you’ve had lately, I should imagine the time will fly by,” replied Maria with just a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

  “I know I need to be looking harder, but Edmundshire?”

  “It’s only a half day travel, you’ll do fine.”

  “It’s not the travel…,” murmured Heather. “What of Chloë?” she asked as she looked for an out. “I mean the poor girl’s just gotten here; it wouldn’t be right just to go off and leave her at this point.”

  “I could go with you,” offered Chloë as she stepped into the threshold of the room. She caught Maria’s eyes and apologized, “I’m sorry to have been listening in, ma’am. I was just trying to find Heather and I didn’t want to interrupt.”

  Maria smiled broadly, “No, that’s fine. I’m just glad you are willing to stick up for Heather.”

  “That’s what friends do, ma’am,” replied Chloë evenly.

  “Ugh, stop with the ‘ma’am’ already,” grinned Maria. “Both of you, go, back to the kitchen and eat breakfast. We’ll talk more of this once you two have eaten.”

  Heather, happy for the release, bolted from the room grabbing Chloë’s hand as she rushed past. “Girl, you didn’t have to do that. I’m pretty sure I could have talked Dad into letting me stay here.”

  “Uh, no,” laughed Chloë. “At this point I think your father’s entire attention span is devoted to Moira.”

  “Males,” groused Heather melodramatically before she grinned back. “Yeah, but you are probably right. That and I guess I am just prolonging the inevitable.”

  “Is Edmundshire that bad?” asked Chloë.

  “Nah. It’s a fun place to visit. It’s just the idea of looking for a new teacher to apprentice under that just makes me want to paint my fur blue.”

  “And you have such a lovely coat! Wouldn’t want that!” laughed Chloë. “Oh my word!” blurted Chloë suddenly. “I just realized that not only did I volunteer myself, I also imposed on your cousin Ellis.”

  “Oop! I didn’t think about that either,” remarked Heather. “Maybe…”

  “Maybe Ellis won’t mind since it is the slow season and we are picking up the tab for your meals anyway,” interjected Maria over their shoulders. “You will have to work harder than that to escape!”

  9

  Chloë giggled as she tried on her backpack, “I’ve never gone on a trip like this before. So it is a half day trip to Edmundshire?
It looked pretty far on the map.”

  “Well it is about a two hour walk to the river. From there we catch a barge and float the rest of the way down to the city. The good part is that it means we will only have to lug these packs for those first few hours,” replied Heather.

  “I thought the river flowed south?” asked Chloë a little confused.

  “It does,” grinned Heather cryptically.

  “And Edmundshire is to the north… So are we skipping out and going to another town?” asked Chloë fairly bewildered.

  Heather laughed, “No, not really. There is a Gatehouse in the town to the south that connects directly to Edmundshire there in the north. Thus we can either walk six hours north over rough terrain, or take a casual float south for an hour and a half or two and then take the Gate back north.”

  “So what is with these gatehouses?” Chloë was now completely lost.

  Heather knitted her brow, “Um, seriously, you’ve never heard about the Highland Gatehouses? Maybe you are used to them being called the barbicans…”

  Chloë’s blank look spoke volumes.

  “Oh!” replied Heather, actually mildly embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I figured you would have heard of them; they are one of the Highland’s unique features.”

  Chloë shook her head and laughed, “Sorry, no. It’s only by accident that I even learned your language. Back on Bervik III, the Highlands only ever came up from a historical perspective.”

  “Bervik III?” asked Heather suddenly. “That is where you are from?”

  Chloë nodded, “I didn’t really want it to get around, but you know so much about me already. So you’ve heard of it before?”

  Heather had an evil grin but was busting her gut to maintain control; she didn’t make it and broke out laughing, “Oh, I wonder if Dad knows that…” She then broke into a laughing fit so hard she started to cry and hyperventilate both.

  “Calm down girl! It’s not that big of a deal,” Chloë offered as she tried to help stabilize Heather.

  “Oh… I’m sorry about that,” gasped Heather. “Where were we before I lost it?”

  “Gatehouses?” replied Chloë suddenly slightly worried about Heather’s emotional stability.

  “Right, Gatehouses,” replied Heather as she calmed her breathing. “The Gatehouses have portals that connect from one to another. The science types refer to them as stabilized wormholes.”

  “Wormholes? As in like what starships use?” gasped Chloë as she started to understand the utility and uniqueness of the situation. “So we just go from one gate house and instantly pop out of the other a hundred miles away?”

  “Pretty much. What is really awesome is watching them pull these barges and small boats out of the water, put them on rollers and then run them through the wormholes. Those same craft are always flowing downstream between those two towns.”

  “Well that certainly beats having to drag them backwards upstream or just throwing them away.”

  “Exactly. So, now does it all make good sense?” asked Heather with a broad grin.

  “Yep, float south, take the wormhole-gate thingy north, and we’re there!”

  “Exactly!” beamed Heather.

  “So what was the whole thing about Bervik III?” asked Chloë carefully.

  Heather broke into a fit of laughing, “Oh… my… um, just ask me on another day.”

  Chloë shrugged with some resignation, “Okay, I’ll ask later. Don’t think I’ll forget!”

  “Gotcha! Come on, let’s fill up and head out!”

  “Girls?” called Ivy from the hall.

  “Yes, First Mother?” replied Heather as she poked her head into the hall. “What’s up? Need us to hang around for a few more days?”

  Ivy laughed, “No. I think Maria’s plan is wonderful. I just thought you’d like to know that April and May will be joining you in the evening two days from now. They’ve been asked to play at a wedding reception.”

  Heather grinned, “And I know what that means!”

  “What?” asked Chloë.

  “Dancing!” beamed Heather.

  Chloë laughed, “You do like your dancing don’t you.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  10

  It was a pleasant enough walk. Heaven knows Chloë had walked further just a few days earlier in the cold and biting rain, but walking the sylvan path with Heather was a wonderful change from that earlier traveling. Her pack full of clothes and just a light snack was fairly heavy. Well, not really that heavy, but it was the heaviest thing she had ever had to carry such a distance. Always before, someone else, a servant, would have carried such a heavy thing for her. But Chloë enjoyed the honest work of doing things for herself. The entire concept of being self-reliant was alien to her upbringing and she loved the contrast. Here was Heather, her friend of just a few days, off looking for an apprenticeship while she was just tagging along. Ultimately she was going to have to think about continuing her education in a more practical direction. She wasn’t going to be someone’s trophy wife, some broodmare to be passed along as a political favor.

  Chloë marveled at Heather and her independence: she had a part time job and was now traveling a hundred miles from home with no escort, male, parent or otherwise and both Heather and her parents were comfortable with the arrangement. Chloë greatly enjoyed her company and was struck by the thought that if Chloë hadn’t showed up, Heather would probably be making this same journey regardless but alone! Traveling so far from home with a friend is one thing, but to do it alone? Heather had a level of discipline and independence that Chloë had never even imagined for herself.

  Trophy wife. Now there was a concept that seemed to be alien to these people. Chloë still giggled at the thought of Ivy, First Mother, as running the house. And then there was Maggie, Lady Mayor of the town. That was such a change from the palace. If a woman had spoken up there, she’d be sent to her room. Here, the women ran most of the politics. Well, there were four times as many of them as well. It was all very odd. Even the relationship between Ivy and Llewellyn was different than what she would have expected in a straight role reversal. Ivy was head of the house, but Llewellyn certainly wasn’t subservient. Heck, none of the other mothers were really subservient, more that each had a job to do and they did it. It was an exotic symbiosis that she hadn’t expected.

  “Heather,” prodded Chloë, “how normal is your family?”

  Heather laughed immediately, “Um, not very! It’s huge for one and everyone there is such a wonderful live wire.”

  Chloë smiled, “Yes, they are all quite unique and strong people. But I was more asking about their relationships between each other.”

  “Well, Dad is kinda glued to Moira right now because she is… well… that is still quite odd, but he is,” Heather laughed, “Dad is strange any way you look at him.”

  “Hmm. Well, I only have your family to compare to so let me ask this a different way: the social order and precedence. You family appears to be a unit rather than First Mother and her minions, if that makes any sense.”

  “Minions,” laughed Heather, “That’s rich. I think we kids would constitute the minions.” Heather thought a bit before continuing, “I’m not sure if you would say our family is typical in that regard, but we are close to the ideal, I guess. Did that make sense? A good family is a unit, not a First Mother and her supporters.” Heather laughed, she did that a lot, “Something else you may not have caught onto: the parents will all but tie their tails in knots to not pay attention to the biological mother of a given child. A good mother treats all the children like her own, even when it is kind of obvious. Ivy and me for example; you don’t end up with this much red hair by accident. But if you ask any of my mothers, I am her child.”

  “I confess I had been trying to figure out which kids went with which biological mother. I guess that is actually bad form.”

  “Yep. I wouldn’t do that; it is very impolite. That is one of the fun parts of twins―there is an immedi
ate level of ambiguity!”

  Chloë grinned, “Well, now knowing, I’ll try to avoid that little social faux pas. It is pretty wild watching how much the twins, young and old, enjoy the confusion they cause.”

  “Oh, oh yes! Then there are those evil triplets. I swear they swap names.”

  “I’ve never seen any twin males up here.”

  “Neither have I,” replied Heather with a shrug. “What’s it like in the lowlands?”

  “Oof! If I think back to biology class, fraternal twins are one in fifty and identical twins are one in two hundred. Male or female. Triplets are screaming rare.”

  “That’s one thing we have in common at least!”

  “Um, can I ask another question?” asked Chloë timidly.

  “We’ve still got most of the day to travel, so sure! It helps pass the time.”

  “Have you really thought about what you want to do for a living, and can you make any suggestions for someone with a formal, but utterly worthless education?”

  “Oh, if I only knew…”

  11

  The next leg of the trip went pretty much as Heather had described. After a long, but pleasant, two hour hike, they arrived at a small village of just a handful of buildings. It operated as a simple dock and ferry service for people and goods traversing the river. They hopped onto a covered barge along with two other people and started floating down the river at a gentle pace.

  “The ferry is free?” Chloë asked somewhat surprised.

  “People can take a barge for free if there is room available. If you want to guarantee a spot or take a sail or paddle boat, then that costs.”

  “It seems that they would be losing money letting people ride for free.”

  “Well, it’s the people who are paying for the bulk cargo that make the rules. The guys guiding the barges just do the same thing regardless. The merchant’s point of view is if you get to a market town with more money in your pockets, you’re more likely to spend it at the town and everyone gets a share.”