Califia's Daughters (13 page)

She rose and looked down at Judith's stricken face.

“You think about it. If you need to give him up, do it soon, child, before he becomes a habit.”

Before she went out of the room, Kirsten turned and looked back at the figures on the bed. As she watched, her granddaughter's tears began to come, her arms rising to curl around the small figure of her sleeping son. Now, Kirsten thought, they would stay there. She closed the door quietly with a curious expression on her face, a mixture of triumph and self-contempt, and picked her cautious way down the stairs for her breakfast.

SEEING HERSELF SO AFFLICTED, SHE REALIZED THAT, IF SHE SOJOURNED THERE ANY LONGER, MORE DIFFICULTIES MIGHT DAMAGE HER GREAT FAME AS A MANLY KNIGHT, WHICH SHE HAD WON BY OVERCOMING SO MUCH PERIL AND TRAVAIL.

E
LEVEN

T
HE THREE DAYS FOLLOWING
J
UDITH
'
S BIRTH WERE A
strange time for Dian, when the mad rush of last-minute preparations alternated with leisurely visits to Judith, Kirsten, and Isaac, with no transition between the two states. The rest of the Valley still thought she was simply going to Meijing, but Isaac now knew the truth. She'd told him the morning after the birth; he'd taken the news quietly, and although Dian could see it was troubling him, she really had no time to spare for his feelings. One minute she would be in her rooms, searching her drawers for socks without holes while throwing Isaac tips on dog care, making notes for Jeri about winter defense and lists of things that her pack of supplies was missing, when suddenly she would remember that she had told Judith she'd join her for lunch. Off she would run, sloshing through the storm to the main house and into a world of new mothers and old women, a world dominated by the need for quiet rest and a rapt attention to minutiae. She would sit in this atmosphere, eating an unhurried and undemanding meal and making gentle conversation, then eventually step out the door remembering that she had to tell Isaac what to do if Rosie came into heat early and that Jeri should be asked to check the list of ammunition Dian might bring back from Meijing and also be reminded about the family of foxes that had moved in over the hill.

On the afternoon of the second day she staggered into Ling's front-room clinic, deposited her dripping rain gear at the door, and dropped into a chair amidst the jars of herbs and the sterile tools.

“If I think of one more thing to remind anyone of, my head will burst,” she declared. Ling took off her glasses and looked at her dubiously. Dian sighed, sat up, and said more calmly, “You had some things you wanted me to bring back from Meijing?” The last trading trip had been just months before, with packloads of scavenged valuables, intricate winter needlework, and tanned furs exchanged for medicines and manufactured goods, but a trip Outside would never be wasted on one purpose.

“You do look tired,” Ling said affectionately. “I think you'll find the trip itself more restful than the preparations, when you finally get away.”

“If I ever get away.”

“You will. Thank you for sparing me the time,” she added, and reached over to the central drawer of her rolltop desk for two envelopes. She handed the smaller, unsealed one to Dian. “This is your introduction, so you don't have to convince them who you are. I've asked my relatives in Meijing to give you hospitality and help you with your shopping list. I made a copy of the list in English for you—yes, go ahead and take it out. As you see, the top part is urgent, all small, mostly medical and laboratory supplies but also an assortment of things like violin strings and pieces for the photovoltaics. The second section is bulkier necessities that you can bring if you don't mind burdening your horse. The last part is up to you, if you feel like bringing back a packhorse. Anything you can't carry this time, they'll hold for us, and we'll get it in the spring. Give the list to whomever you're staying with on the way north; they'll have it waiting when you come back through.”

“How on earth do I pay for all this?” Looking through the list, she saw a number of rare and therefore expensive items, goods that had not been manufactured since Kirsten was a girl. And although she would be taking some small goods and a parcel of completed needlework, it was only a summer's worth of trade.

“No need to pay, we have a lot to our credit with them, from my last trip there.” Ling's expression was a bit too bland, but Dian shrugged.

“If you say so—but this amounts to a hell of a lot of furs and embroidery.”

“I know, but you'll have no problem. And this,” she said, holding the thicker envelope out, “if you'd give it to the same person. Sorry about the weight; it's notes and the results of a project I'm working on with one of the healers in the City.” Dian took it curiously. It was more of a parcel than a letter, a bulky rectangle encircled with ribbon and sealed with red wax bearing Ling's chop.

“Look,” said Ling before Dian had a chance to comment, “you must be cold. I was just going to make myself a cup of tea. Do you have the time? Good.” Dian followed her into the kitchen and planted her backside against the stove while Ling bustled about with sticks for the fire and water for the kettle.

“Ling, I'd like a traveling kit from you. The usual first-aid stuff, a couple of water-purification tablets if there are any left, that sort of thing. I won't need a snakebite kit this time of year, but I would like some internal tampons, if you could make me up a dozen. There are times in the woods when it's best not to give off any blood smell.”

“Happy to; I'll bring it all by in the morning.” Ling turned to the cupboard and took down the pot and a tea caddy. She bent over the leaves with unnecessary concentration, to speak over her shoulder. “I should tell you, one of the things in that letter concerns you. I told my friend that you might want the Meijing specialists to examine you as to your fertility, and I suggested areas they might explore. If you don't want it mentioned, I can remove it from the letter without difficulty.” She turned with the pot in her hands and looked at Dian, who was studying her own long fingers intently. “I just thought, with Isaac, you might be interested.”

“That's good of you, Ling, very thoughtful. I doubt that I'll want to do anything about it, but leave it in anyway. I may change my mind.” Ling nodded, seeming relieved at Dian's easy response.

They drank their tea and talked of this and that, of Teddy and Judith and Sonja. Ling listened to Dian's description of breakfast with Judith and her baby and suggested that Judith's acceptance of her son was due to Kirsten, who had spent a fair amount of that first morning with Judith, but whoever was responsible, it was a blessing, both agreed.

They were interrupted by a noisy entrance and stepped out into the hallway to see one of Carmen's sisters being helped out of a rain cape, her face pinched and white and one finger jutting out at a very wrong angle. Dian gathered her things to leave.

“Thanks for the tea.”

“Anytime. I'll bring the kit by tomorrow. Oh, here—I wanted to give you this.” Ling paused in the act of settling her patient into a chair to fetch an object from her desk. It was a waterproof neck bag made of heavy plastic, only mended once; she slid the letter and list inside and worked the fastener, dropping the cord over Dian's neck. “That will keep your papers dry even if you go swimming.”

“Which, from the looks of it, I may,” Dian said with a glance at the window. Ling laughed and waved her out, and turned to speak soothing words. Dian shrugged into her stiff, clammy waxed-cloth raincoat and closed the door on comfort, to splash away into the dark afternoon, her mind already racing ahead.

         

The following day, the last before she rode north, Dian took Isaac out of the Valley. The storm had cleared during the night and left behind it a day of intoxicating freshness and clarity, when even the autumn-dark leaves of the orchard took on a final sheen of beauty before falling victim to frost. They trotted down the puddled road with five of the dogs, crossing the bridge and passing the sheds, hearing ghostly whispers of that August night when the wagons had come. They were nearly to the Gates before Dian had Isaac dismount, and they led the horses down a narrow track toward a steady, growing thunder.

The trees fell away abruptly, leaving them standing on a sandy bank looking up at a thick sheet of brownish water that shot out of the hillside fifty feet away to plunge into one end of a pool, which was at the moment the color and probably the consistency of thin mud. Isaac stared, openmouthed.

“Well, there's your waterfall.” Dian had to shout into his ear to be heard. “Fancy a swim?”

His answer came as a loud hoot and an assortment of clothing flying into the air. He raced naked across the narrow strip of sand and plunged into the deep, cold pool, and came up gasping for breath and bellowing at the top of his lungs.

“God, it's cold! My God, it's cold! Come on, Dian—it's perfect! Oh, God, it's freezing!”

The row of dogs stared aghast at the man's swift and inexplicable lapse into madness; when Dian saw their expressions she began to giggle. She looped the reins over a branch, took off her clothes, and folded them into a neat pile in a relatively dry spot out of the reach of hoof and paw, then walked up to the water, steeled herself, and dove cleanly in, coming to the surface halfway to the center of the pond. With a tremendous effort she did not scream at the shock of it but instead shook the liquid mud out of her eyes and trod water, and controlled her chattering teeth long enough to bellow at Isaac, “What's wrong? Too cold for you? I guess they make them soft up in Oregon. Why, you think this is cold—I've swum here when you had to break the ice to get in. I've swum here when the snow—” Isaac came after her with a roar of mock anger, and she slid away from him to swim, invisible, over to where the falling water boiled back up from below. The noise was deafening. She looked around for Isaac's blue, drowned-looking face and mouthed, “Coming?” Without waiting for an answer she clambered up the rocks and around to the not-so-secret niche behind the wall of water and sat in the little cave, shivering hard and hunched over her knees.

In a few minutes Isaac ducked through the sheeting water, hair, beard, and body hair plastered down and one knee bleeding from a gash. He sat down beside her.

“Warm enough?” he shouted politely.

“I could be warmer,” she admitted. “I don't think I've ever been this blue before.”

Isaac turned his attention from the sheet of water in front of them to examine her skin.

“It's a very attractive color,” he said. “However shall we warm you?”

“Oh, I can think of one way,” she replied.

It was some time before either of them noticed the cold again, but eventually they burst out of the hidden cave and began leaping about vigorously. The dogs, who had more sense than to venture into any such inhospitable body of water if they did not have to, lay on the far bank and watched them grimly: the man's insanity was obviously contagious. The two humans ran along the edge of the pond, splashed through the outgoing stream at the far end, and ran back to their horses and the wary dogs. They dressed quickly, or, rather, Dian did. Isaac put on various odd bits of clothing as he found them, but it was a good quarter of an hour before they discovered his second shoe in the branches of a tree.

They climbed back to the road, mounted, and continued out through the Gates. The shoulder of Isaac's jacket, which had come to rest in a puddle, steamed gently in the warm sun. The dogs flushed a hare out of cover, but Dian called them back, partly because a hunt would change the tone of the outing, but mostly because she didn't want to give Isaac any ideas about hunting that he might decide to follow up after she had left. They rode for half an hour, to the top of a rise overlooking the stream where it joined another, larger creek, and there they sat and ate sandwiches and drank cider beer, and talked. They decided that Crazy Isaiah had a lot of sense after all, for this place where Miriam proposed to build a new town was a good one, easily irrigated and not impossible to defend. They decided that Isaac should choose three or four of the most promising boys and work on their skills with the bow and arrow. They decided that white clouds were a perfect complement to sky that particular color of blue. They talked of things unimportant and of things vital, and for a while they lay back on the damp hillside and talked of nothing. Isaac broke the silence.

“Why dogs?” he asked.

“Sorry?” He might as well have asked,
Why air?

“It's just, when you and Teddy are together with the dogs, I sometimes feel like I'm tone-deaf, or color- blind. I mean, I like dogs, and I can certainly see how useful these of yours are, but it almost seems like they're more . . . real to you than half the people around you.”

“They are more real. They're my life. They're my partners, my friends; they make me laugh, they challenge me. They keep me honest. Training a dog is like growing a new limb, one that you weren't born with. Before you grow it you couldn't imagine much use for it, but after you have it, you can't imagine doing without. When I train a dog, part of what I'm doing is training myself to listen to that dog, to understand its own individual way of looking at the world, what that dog needs to enable it to come into full awareness of itself as my partner. When you partner a dog, you become that dog, and it becomes you. Otherwise it's all bullying and bribery. You can force a dog to obey by bullying and bribery, but there's no honor in it, and that dog will almost never give you its all.”

Dian dug a smooth stone from the ground at her feet and rubbed it around in her hands. She called Culum and let him see it, then flipped it off down the hill into the grass. He plunged happily after it. She went on talking.

“That's why I wanted Teddy to get involved with dogs. Not only does he have that amazing rapport with them, but he badly needed to get outside himself.” Culum arrived back with the correct rock, which he dropped into her hand. Dian thanked him and threw it again. He plunged off into the brush after it, with a fraction less enthusiasm this time, it seemed to Isaac. “I didn't think it all out that first day, not so clearly, but it just felt right then, and still does. Something about the way he looked, really looked at Culum was different from the way he looked at anybody else, except you. He was paying attention to Culum.” The dog returned, this time depositing the rock at her feet, but still within the acceptable limits of “fetch.” Dian, immersed in her thoughts, absently reached for it and threw it off again down the hill.