Califia's Daughters (15 page)

“How's my favorite niece?” asked Dian fondly. “Your mother said you wanted to see me.”

Susanna's eyes sparkled as she twirled and went eagerly to her closet to pull a cloth bundle down from the shelf.

“We made this for you, Mom and Aunt Lenore and I. I collected the feathers—Teddy and I did, didn't we, Teds?—and helped spin the lining, Aunt Lenore wove it, and Mom and I sewed it. Do you like it?”

There was no need to feign enthusiasm.

“Sweetheart, it's beautiful!” And it was, one of the finest sleeping bags Dian had ever seen. The outer cloth was as tightly woven as anything Lenore had ever made, and Lenore was the best weaver in the Valley. The inside material was softer but also tight, and the down filling was thick, yet the whole pushed into a relatively small roll, as Susanna demonstrated. She and Teddy transformed it several times, from fluffy tube to taut roll, before Susanna tightened the drawstring and placed it in Dian's hands.

“It was going to be your Christmas present, but you might not get back in time, and Mom figured you could use it on your trip.”

“I sure can. My old one was getting pretty flat.” She took the child into her arms, kissing the top of her head in a rare display of affection, and released her. “I'm not going to be able to look down at you for long, the rate you're growing. Thank you so much, Susanna. It's a lovely gift, one of the nicest I've ever had. I'll think of you every night when I climb into it.” Teddy was watching her uncertainly, so she sat down on the bed and gathered him up too and gave them both a hard squeeze. “And you too, Teddy Bear. You two are going to be so busy while I'm gone, taking care of Teddy's dad and Susanna's mom, and each other as well. To say nothing of the dogs. I'm sorry to leave you with my jobs on top of your own, but I'll be back as soon as I can. I love you both. I'll miss you very much.”

It was as much as she could stand. Once downstairs she opted for cowardice and avoided the still-crowded family room, creeping out through the veranda and closing the screened door quietly behind her.

. . . BUT IF THEY BORE A MALE,
HE WAS IMMEDIATELY KILLED.

T
WELVE

S
O IT WAS THAT FOUR DAYS AFTER LITTLE
W
ILL
'
S BIRTH,
Dian left on her trip north. She slipped out long before first light, with the stars still sharp in the cold black sky and most of the Valley's buildings invisible in the dark. The milking shed glowed with the light of lanterns, but the women there had their heads up against the warm flanks of the cows and saw nothing. Four people alone watched her go.

Isaac was the first. He rose with her, cooked her a breakfast, and went with her to saddle her horse, saying little all the while. When all was ready, he wrapped hard arms around her, his thoughts a turmoil of exasperation: longing and affection riding on a powerful undercurrent of guilt tinged with apprehension, all the contradictions of his life here coming together but finding expression only in the fervency of his embrace. Dian read an entirely different message in the strong grip that held her a few moments longer than necessary, and put her toe into the stirrup with something close to relief. Isaac rested his hand on her booted leg, then stood away and let her ride off.

Old Kirsten, awake at her attic window, was the second witness. She heard the muffled sound of a horse's hooves on the damp road and leaned forward to see. As Dian paused in the dim shaft of light thrown down by the old woman's lamp, Kirsten pressed a thin hand against the cold window pane, a gesture of farewell whose intensity did not penetrate the glass. Dian waved a casual hand and rode on.

And at the base of the Valley, her last greeting party waited. As she approached the narrow passage known as the Gates, Dian wasn't altogether surprised to hear Culum's brief warning grumble, indicator of a person nearby who wasn't a clear threat. She reined in, and said into the darkness, “Couldn't wait to see me go, huh?”

Laine answered by striking a light and setting it to a small lantern. She was sitting on one of the rocks brought to reinforce the natural outcrop, the butt of her rifle resting on the ground, but beside her stood Sonja, rifle half-raised, clearly startled at Dian's appearance.

“I see you didn't tell her,” Dian said.

“I told you I wouldn't.”

“Tell me what?” demanded Sonja.

“The little trip Dian's been getting ready for? It's going to be a bit longer than some of us thought. She'll be gone at least a couple of months.”

Sonja frowned, taking in Dian's laden pack and the two dogs at her feet; then slowly she began to smile. She said nothing, simply lowered the butt of the gun onto the ground and stood there, as if claiming possession of the rocks on which she stood.

“I meant what I said, on Harvest Night,” Dian told Sonja, in a voice that made Culum stir with unease. The woman's sure smile faltered, but so, yet again, did Dian's resolution. Maybe she was wrong to go. She'd felt this woman as a threat; yes, those feelings had faded, but what did that mean? And sure, Judith had sworn she would watch Sonja, but Judith's concerns were elsewhere, and Kirsten was too old, and Ling not strongly enough attached to the Valley's security. And as for Laine, where did her loyalties really lie? Maybe she should turn the horse back to the barn and put this off until she was absolutely certain. Sonja was hiding something—as Isaac was, she realized, and maybe it was the same something.

Which gave her two options: she could get down and pull the Valley's three newcomers apart until she found out, or she could go to the source. Forcing a showdown would be very ugly. Dian might get her answers, but there was no doubt in her mind that Laine would leave the Valley as a result, and she would take others with her, not the least of whom would be Isaac. And Teddy would be torn from the dogs.

What did she have to go by, anyway, that couldn't be explained by her dislike for this woman? Normally, Dian would have trusted her feelings; now she trusted those of Judith, Laine, Kirsten, and everyone else.

She took up the reins and urged the horse forward, out of the Valley.

By midmorning the sun had taken the frost from the leaves and the horse's breath no longer came in clouds. Dian stopped at a small stream and let him loose to graze on the greenery along the water's edge. The grass on the hillsides had not had time to sprout up after the rains, although the sere brown of summer seemed softer somehow. The dogs splashed into the cold water to drink, then flopped down in the sun. She glanced over at them as she fished out the makings for tea and breakfast from her bags, and decided that she had made a good choice. She had originally thought to bring Culum and his mate, Rosie, because they worked together so well, but had reluctantly discarded that idea for a number of reasons, not the least being that Rosie was due to come into heat in about two months and Dian really didn't want to deal with every pack of wild dogs for miles. The other was the temptation a mated pair of hounds might be to the packs of human scavengers. She didn't imagine that two of her trained dogs could be taken against her will, but she also didn't want to present an irresistible temptation. And then there was the undeniable fact that Rosie worked well with Laine, two contrary personalities that recognized something in the other. That alone would not have had her leave the female dog behind, but it nudged her over into decision.

So she had brought Culum's son, Tomas, instead, despite his youth and incomplete training. Culum liked Tomas, he worked well with him. The older dog would provide the experience, and Tomas would grow into his half of the partnership rapidly. She hoped. It was a bit of a gamble, but even though he was barely out of puppyhood Dian could feel his potential. Dogs, like people, rose to meet the demands made on them. She could only trust that the demands made on Tomas during the trip would not outpace his capacity to grow into his new role.

Her horse pleased her as well. She had managed to talk Carmen into giving her Simon, fully recovered without harm from her cruel use of him on that long-ago summer's morning and as big of heart as ever. He was not the fastest thing on four legs, and he was extraordinarily ugly, but he had intelligence and stamina, and those were things of greater value on a trip of this sort than looks and speed.

And with each mile she had ridden that morning, Dian had grown more reconciled to the decision made before the Gates.

She found her pan and went to the stream for water. On the way back she kicked Culum gently in the ribs. “Hey there,” she said. He opened one eye and peered out at her. “Go get yourselves some breakfast,” and at her whistled command for the hunt, Tomas leaped to his feet. Culum thought about it for a minute, then stood up, stretched, shook himself, and trotted off into the field with Tomas at his heels.

The pot came to a boil, and just as Dian took it from the fire and reached for the tea herbs, the two dogs reappeared, each carrying a large hare, which they dropped at her feet. “Oh, well, done, gentlemen,” she told them, and they sat expectantly as she pulled her knife from her belt and swiftly cleaned each carcass of fur and bones. Her dogs never ate uncleaned kill. Not only was such a thing contrary to the principles of the partnership they had with their human, it was also just asking for a perforated intestine.

Dian let them have the bulk of their meat, holding back two of the legs to grill over the coals for herself. She went over to the pack and fished out the two extras she had allowed herself to bring. One was an ancient steel thermal jug with a new wooden stopper, carved complete with threads by Isaac. It was ridiculously heavy and covered with dents and scrapes, but its marvelous efficiency enabled her to have a hot drink without having to stop and build a fire. The other luxury was a large chunk of crystallized honey, to be sucked or put into hot tea when she felt the need for fast energy. She took the jug now and filled it carefully from the hot pan, straining out the majority of floating leaves with a twig. She started to screw in the top, then stopped, reached over and broke off a small piece of the honey, and dropped it into the tea.

“What the hell,” she said to the dogs. “If we had some of Judith's glasses to drink from, we could have a real party.” Her companions licked their chops and did not comment.

The exhilaration of being out under the open sky persisted throughout the day, and as darkness fell she chose a spot hidden from view and collected wood for a fire. Wrapped in the thick down bag that her family had made, she fell asleep thinking of the prayers they were saying for her and slept dreamlessly, as she had not for many months.

The portion of her trip from the Valley to Meijing would take four days, three of which would be in the hills. It was the longest she had been away from people and houses for over a year, and when she awoke the following morning the ropes that bound her to the Valley seemed but gossamer, dispersed on the faint breeze that moved against her face. Her heart sang. She burst out of her sleeping bag with a roar and pounced on Culum, who scrambled to his feet and bounded away, then bounced back and responded with mock roars of his own. The two of them wrestled as Tomas stood barking violently and the horse snorted nervously, until finally Dian collapsed panting on the frost-rimed grass. Culum came to her and shoved his head hard into her chest, and she seized his ears as handles and shook his massive head back and forth vigorously.

“God, isn't this fine?” she asked him, and seriously he agreed that, yes, it was.

Her breakfast was a stale sweet roll and some of last night's tea from the flask, and it filled her mouth with more flavor than anything she'd eaten for a long, long time. She packed her things away with automatic precision, mounted up, and rode off in the first slanting rays of sun through the trees, singing under her breath one of Kirsten's old songs about black being the color of her true love's hair. The dogs trotted and sniffed and held their tails high as they investigated the bushes. Squirrels chattered at their passing, jays gossiped cheerfully, a hummingbird flashed past Dian's nose. Even the normally phlegmatic Simon picked up his shaggy feet with more bounce than usual.

All that morning they followed the ridge of the hills, riding a wide circle around the village whose arrows had wounded Miriam's people two months before. By the time they entered the small road, little more than a pair of tracks worn by the wheels of wagons and carts, the dawn's exhilaration had settled into a quieter, more businesslike satisfaction. They were more alert now that the possibility of meeting someone was greater, and when a rabbit burst across their path she let Culum take it but put it into her catch-bag rather than stopping to feed the dogs.

By the late afternoon, Dian was just beginning to relax, knowing that they were unlikely to meet other travelers now, when suddenly Culum stopped dead twenty yards ahead of her, ears pricked and tail rigid in his concentration. Tomas slowed, then he, too, came to a halt with his head up, listening. Dian immediately slid off Simon and led him into the bushes. She tied him to a secure branch, slid her rifle from its scabbard, and silently signaled the dogs to her. Well off the road, they made their stealthy way forward through the undergrowth.

In a very few minutes the sound the dogs had heard reached her ears as well, a sound for all the world like the cries of a small baby. Culum whined softly in his throat. Dian put Tomas on a “down, stay,” and went ahead with Culum to a point where she could see the road.

Just ahead lay a crossroads, where the cart track she'd been following met a larger road that had once been paved. The crossroads was marked, as usual, by a herm, in this case an upended slab of concrete, ragged on this side and with dried tufts of fern fronds growing out of its cracks. The sound came once again from the other side of the herm, then stopped. Nothing moved.

She and Culum picked their way in a cautious circle around the crossroads, but the only signs of life were drying horse droppings several hours old. Culum gave no indication of any waiting humans. It was not a trap. She stepped onto her original road and walked forward to the standing stone, which remained silent. The stone was taller than she was, buried deep into the ground, with a crude ithyphallic figure gouged into its surface. She gestured Culum to a halt behind her, and as she moved around to the back side of the herm, small bones crunched beneath her boots. She put her head around the stone, and looked down at a sleeping baby.

It was a girl baby with white-blond wisps of hair, lying naked on a small rag of faded yellow blanket as if to protect her delicate skin from the hard ground until her end came for her. Dian had been exposed like this, not because of any physical abnormality, but due to her strange and unnatural closeness with a dog. In this child's case, however, it was immediately apparent why she had been left: both feet had six toes. She was less than a week old, for her cord, though dry, was still firmly in place.

Dian's first impulse, immediate and shameful, was to walk away. No one would know, no one would criticize—except Mother: that look of withering disappointment that made a person instantly want to do better. Except Dian herself: the infant might be her.

Less than two seconds of hesitation, then self-contempt washed over her and sent her forward to kneel at the infant's side. The tiny chest rose and fell, the translucent eyelids twitched.

“Okay, Culum,” she said quietly, so as not to wake the child. He came forward to stand beside her; the big dog, father of several litters, looked worried, and she muttered, “What are we going to do about this, huh? We can't leave her here, especially not if her feet are all that's wrong with her. She's a pretty little thing, aside from those. I might persuade someone along the Meijing Road to take her; they're not so damned paranoid closer in to Meijing. Maybe in Meijing itself? They might not keep her—there's sure as hell no Chinese blood in that head of hair—but surely they'd care for her while I'm up north, if I agreed to take her away with me when I come back down. Jesus, I can just hear Judith—my first trip to civilization in fourteen years and I have to bring home a baby. What do you think; shall we take the thing to Meijing with us?” Culum wagged his tail in agreement with whatever she said. She studied the blue-veined eyelids, the pursed pink lips. With a pang she noticed the tiny blister at the point of the upper lip: the baby had been suckled. With the scrap of blanket, evidence pointed to a mother who had hoped the verdict would not go against her new daughter. “I wonder,” she mused, “how difficult it can be for Meijing healers to remove a toe? If they could do that, nobody would ever need to know, would they?”