Comet Fall (Wine of the Gods) (10 page)

"That, plus Havi said you needed this." He walked around his horse and unslung a wagon wheel.

"Excellent. He promised to get all the wheels the same size, so if I make a rim that will fit this one, it'll fit all of them."

Dydit crossed his arms and frowned down at her.
"And you need to be more alert. I rode right up to camp without you noticing."

"I can't meditate and work metal while paranoid."

"Heh. Don't ever let Nil hear you say that."

She rolled her eyes.

"And your brother is taking advantage of you. You should be at home being coddled, not living out here like a savage."

"If I was at home, I'd still be washing diapers and cooking. Probably spinning wool for Mother and keeping an eye on Topaz while minding the
baby." She shook her head at her father. "That may be more 'ladylike' than magically purifying and forming iron, but it isn't less work, and I prefer this."

"Rustle . . .
I thought you'd get sick and tired of this, quickly. I thought you'd come back home."

"
Sorry, Dad. But, if you want to ease my burden, take the Terrible Twins home, so my grass lasts longer."

"But then you'll be stuck here," he protested.

"No, the wagon will be stuck here. I can always hop on Junk and be home in two days. Well, three, maybe."

H
e grumbled, and produced dinner; fresh bread and a good sized ham, tubers that she roasted in the coals of her fire, and fresh fruit. "Your mother said she'd bet you left without any fruit at all."

He admired Phantom, played with Xen when he woke, and in the morning took the Twins and her bearings away.

She started on wheel rims, and used the smaller leftover iron for harness rings and buckles.

The days got longer, and Xen grew steadily and started crawling. Which added mobility to the challenges he already presented.

The Auld Wulf was her second visitor, and he came on a bad day, when a fussy baby had kept her up all night and the wash wasn't even started.

He simply held out his hands for the baby. "Sleep. Washing diapers will be good for my soul."

She slept most of the day, and rousted herself out only because she felt so hungry.

How he washed the diapers
she couldn't imagine. They were brilliantly clean, fluffy and smelled of some odd perfume. He'd washed
everything
and produced dinner and a relaxed and happy baby. "Look, a tooth."

"Ah, is
that
what the problem was?" She was relieved. "I thought I was doing something wrong. Besides having a son, instead of a daughter."

"No you're doing everything right. I'm afraid teeth happen." He smiled down at the boy. "It's just a matter of fooling with a witch's immune system, to let her have sons. I really
wouldn't have done this to you, if I'd been alert enough to be
thinking
. But I was half dreaming and making a baby god with you seemed a wonderful idea."

"How many babies have you raised?"

"Oh, none of my own. For a man who's over a thousand years old, I've remarkably few children. But anyone who spends any time around Harry pretty much has to learn."

"Most likely.
" She studied him. "A thousand years?"

"
Fourteen hundred, give or take a decade. I suspect I skipped a great deal of it. You get to where there's just been too many people who . . . aren't there any more, too many years, too many odd expectations pulling you apart. You just stop keeping track of time, go hide in the wilderness."

"Is that how you dealt with the dark ages after
the comet?"

"
When the comet fell . . . there was so little warning, we charted its course, we knew it would be close, that the Moon might affect it, but that we couldn't calculate, and we had so little time. We tried to move it, you see, but it was too far away for us to touch it, and then it came so fast we didn't have time. We shoved the pieces as far north as we could, we thought since it was aimed north of the equator and with the biggest cities in the south, or the southern parts of the northern hemisphere . . . Then we all rolled ourselves up in our shields and wondered if we would survive. No, I was very alert then. Inside the bubbles little time passed, we'd look out frequently, watched the world slowly recover. Some of the other gods slept, though. Or locked themselves up so tight, in so many layers, they aren't aware of the time passing at all. One by one they've been stirring, waking up and looking out to see if anything is left."

He stared at the
twilight sky a long time. "Gisele saved the biggest town in Scoone—that was later known as High Top, where your father was born. We remember the whole of the Dark Ages. I remember the Groillian Wizards, and the Tyrant Wizards of Scoone, the colonization of the West. Chance says he woke up nine hundred years ago, and that Peace can't have been awake more than forty years or so before him. And Romeau has lost close to a thousand years, waking up fifteen years ago."

He stroked the silky hair of the baby in his arms. "We argue regularly about whether we might need more gods, or at least more very powerful magic users. If another big comet came, you see? Perhaps we should have left those wizards in Scoone alone, not added more magical genes to their vicious playgr
ound. Yet look at Nil and your father. Look now, at you. Incredibly powerful." He looked down and shifted his feet a bit. "The wine was probably a bad idea though. The True God laughing at our hubris, perhaps."

She chuckled. "When you're playing at breeding wizards and witches, the players tend to move themselves. And I'm glad to be alive."

"It's nearly the Solstice, do you need me to take Xen for a day? Or rather a night?"

"Umm," she touched aching breasts. "I suspect a whole day would be painful, but yes, I would like very much to go, and . . . without worrying about Xen all through the night's celebration."

"Then I will meet you on the path, in the afternoon, and be back there in the morning."

"Thank you."

He smiled a bit crookedly, kissed the baby's head, and then handed him to her and faded away.

"So, little one. What sort of child does a god have, anyway?"

"Gah?"

"So you don't know either? Well, let me dust off my genetics, which I have neglected lately . . ." She sat down on the step up to the back of the wagon and focused her mental perceptions down to look at the insides of a cell. She searched for a cell that was dividing and had all the chromosomes curled up and easy to sort through. ". . . and I see that you have all the usual genes . . . and the Mage gene on your Y chromosome, which is to be expected. And on the X you ought to have either my witch gene or my wizard . . . " She rubbed her eyes and looked again, focused her mental attention down to tiny . . . "Or you might have both of them tucked in together. Oh. My.
Gods
have two power genes. What will you do with three? One of each?"

Xen didn't seem to care.

"I guess we'll see in fifteen years or so." She shrugged it away and carried the boy inside.

A
new sword belt was hanging from a hook on the wall of the wagon beside her pots and pans. Complete with sword. It was small, her size, with a pouch and a dagger. She slid the sword out of the sheathe and admired its watermarked pattern. The knife blade was similar, a long, serious, knife. The haft fitted her hand, and the pouch was full of . . . or perhaps empty of . . .  some odd sort of magical potential. She found time, here and there to practice her forms.

She rode back to Ash
two weeks later, and left Rusty and Phantom there. Her father and Nil promised to watch him very, very closely.

Her mother hugged her.
"Miss Independent! How's is Xen?"

"We have survived his first tooth, and are not anticipating with joy the thought of all the rest of them coming in."

"Oh. Teething. Hmm, how quickly we forget the joys of babyhood."

Obsidian
and Topaz took turns holding Xen, and Obsidian even carried him a good part of the hike into the village. From there it was a solid two week hike through the mountains to the crest of the volcano.

On the trek upward,
the witches organized themselves, the Dark Crescents in the lead. Some of the older witches cast frowns back. But Never followed the witches who were definitely in the Waning Half—the grandmothers—even if she was ahead of all the Full Moons. Which group she claimed membership in was a bit ambiguous, and certainly none of the younger witches of the Full Moon challenged her.

Rustle's attempt to do the same was loudly declaimed by the chorus of Tromp, Zenith and Cost.

"Get behind us. You're a disgrace." Tromp smirked.

"You don't have a daughter, you don't count."
Zenith chanted.

"Half Moon my ass. You're not even properly a witch."
Cost shrugged a dismissive shoulder at her.

Answer stomped back angrily. "Rustle, if you're going to cause trouble, get behind the Cres
cent Moons with the rest of the children."

T
he old witch turned and walked away. Tromped shoved past Rustle, followed by her entourage. The other Crescent Moons walked by quickly, none crowding Rustle, but none showing any sympathy.

Rustle took a deep breath and followed several steps behind.

The little powerless girls, Mica, Jasper and Neptunite whispered among themselves and brought up the rear. Obsidian, being under nine, was supposed to stay with her mother. She ventured back to hug Rustle only once, obviously distressed as the Black Triad jeered her as she passed.

Xen was the only bab
y, and Answer set a fast pace. Surely not deliberately. Rustle got good at nursing while walking, and changed diapers fast. And got less sleep, washing them out, downstream of their camps.

On the last day, as t
hey tackled the final slopes, Rustle handed Xen to a shadow that faded away.

"Handy, that," her grandmother growled. "Didn't see any of that seventeen years ago.
Not that
we
needed any help."

"Odd how circumstances change," Rustle said. "
It must have been a slow, grueling hike, with so many babies, those first few years."

"Slow? Don't be absurd." Curious
exchanged smirks with her granddaughter, Tromp, before she turned to march on.

Never sighed. "Well, the way you've always tagged along after that man, we ought to have guessed who you went
to, at need. I hope it worked."

They climbed the last leg, settling the younger children around an unlit pile of firewood, then ascending to the spire in the twilight
, the fat moon already above the horizon in the deep blue sky.

At the base Mica raised her hands and lights winked between her fingers. Mostly burst into tears, and hugged her, then climbed to the level of the Full Moon. More sparks and a grinning Likely was joining her, to complete the second triad of Full Moons.

At the top, Answer led the sisters in the song of the Moon.

Rustle
stepped up alone on the third tier and sang the Song of the Half Moon about the joy of motherhood. Ignoring the voices from below singing the Crescent Moon song at the top of their voices, to drown her out. Above her, Justice gestured Never higher, and she sang the song of the Grandmother with the others. Rustle rejoiced that no one was challenging her mother's advancement to the Waning Half, despite the gender of her grandchild.

Then she put it all out of her mind and felt the forces of gravity while she sang.
The power flowed through her, down from the Moon and up from the Mountain, and she suddenly knew that she would always know the feel of this place, could find this mountain from anywhere in the World.