Gratuitous Epilogue : Touchstone Extras (11 page)

Sen was mainly just
shocked to start with, but then found that her arm really hurt when
she moved it and burst into tears. And Ys zoomed down from the top
patio – literally: she levitated – and snatched her up and I (a
little too far away to have done any snatching) fully expected her
to turn a total basilisk glare on Deal, but instead she just said
sternly: "They're not going to stop wanting you, no matter what
anyone else does. Stop being so afraid," and lifted herself and Sen
over to me and Kaoren.

We did some hugging and
found a numbing salve to put on Sen's elbow, and then we had an
interesting talk with Ys about the fact that her levitation talent
isn't strong enough for her to lift herself, let alone herself and
Sen. Seems Ys worked out how to expand her connection to the Ena
shortly after touching me when I had my senses fully extended, but
decided not to mention it in case we expected her to spend more
time training her talents – or trying to train other people to
expand their connections – which would cut down on her reading
time. She'd tried teaching Rye, and since he hadn't managed it, had
kept quiet about it. "Rye is too interested in bits and pieces of
what's nearby," she said, shrugging. "It stops him from looking at
it all at once."

This was a very
interesting development from the Setari's point of view, because Ys
is the only person without a strong Sight talent who has managed to
make the expansion, and she can also obviously do it very quickly,
which is what the Taren and Kolaren Setari who have achieved it
have been working on. We held off on interrogating her too much
during the party, but she got to have a long conversation with
Kaoren, Tsur Selkie and Maze a few days later. I was actually more
interested in what she'd said to Deal and told her quietly, after
Ketz had brought Deal to apologise, and Kaoren had taken Sen off to
fly up to the very tops of the trees, that she had reminded me of
Isten Notra. This is a huge compliment to Ys, so of course she
didn't believe me, but I explained that while she'd said it a lot
more bluntly than Isten Notra might have, it was the same sort of
clear-sighted response. Then I threw her further off-balance by
telling her how much I envied her for being able to
levitate.

Maze and Alay's house
wasn't quite ready in time for the wedding, but they'll be moving
in soon. It's on the top of one of the small hills on Siriath, and
Maze has endless plans for a kind of rock garden and lawn and all
sorts of trees and things made of stone. I showed him some pictures
of Mount Tomah, back near Sydney, and he was very pleased and
inspired by that, and has stolen some idea from it for The Wedding
Garden as well.

It feels strange not
working while the inquiry is on. I was used to the routine of it
all. I still get physical training, and the kids get to train with
me now, instead of at the school, but it's a different kind of
routine, and I feel very shut in at times. Fortunately it's warming
up, and the drifts are melting, and the early flowers should be
poking through soon. I've been burying myself in subtitling the
last few days. Ages back now I projected a TV and DVD-player and a
bunch of DVDs and did my best to make them last a long while, and
the technicians have been trying to untangle the DVD coding ever
since. We could make the machines run easily enough, but what we
wanted was, instead of me spending hours projecting Earth
documentaries really slowly, that I just project a DVD and we copy
the data off it and then voila! And that meant not just being able
to get to the data on the DVD (apparently not too hard – Tarens
went through a similar technology stage) but translating the DVD
coding. That's taken an age, but they finally did it. I projected
and copied
Blue Planet
and
The Life of Mammals
and
that sort of thing to start with, and then a whole bunch of DVDs
for my own entertainment – so
nice
to watch some of my
favourite movies again. I'm slowly going to subtitle these for the
kids' benefit, but aren't really planning to turn myself into a
film industry, so I'm setting them so they can't be spread
about.

I've been working on
Spirited Away
first, running it in Japanese, with English
subtitles, and adding Taren subtitles underneath that. I chose it
partly because Ys is still pushing through on learning English (but
very annoyed at how illogical it is) and also because the lead
character is called Sen. Sen will love it when I'm done, no matter
how little she understands.

I've also realised I
can project DVDs of movies I haven't even seen, which will be
pretty cool.

Twelfth is finally
going to be posted here soon. It's been so long. Zan and I write
occasionally, and she seems okay, but I want to see her to be
sure.

November

Kiddie-palooza

Siame and Rye's
birthday this month. Siame went home to Tare briefly for hers
(proving a point, I think, though Kaoren didn't try and stop
her).

Rye's twelfth birthday
was a few days ago (in Earth-time it will be a little later each
year, which is very confusing to me), and we had our first party on
Arcadia since everything got really snowy. Arcadia's been nicely
de-snowed and everything's all over with flowers or buds on trees
and it's very nice in the middle of the day, though still nippy at
night. Rye wanted a swimming party, much like his first one, except
with all his new friends involved, and I'd decided to make it a
relatively large party. Lots of kids, First, Second and Fourth –
and Third and Twelfth who have finally been rostered here (some of
them have moved their families here, but unlike the senior squads
they can't choose a permanent Muina assignment just
yet).

It was a big guest
list, and I'd decided to do a hangi and was rather anxious about
how it would turn out. Uncle Steve (Aunt Bet's husband) had
introduced hangis to our family and it had become a holiday
tradition, but I'd never actually done any of the technical stuff
myself. I'd visualised myself a manual (I very tediously have to
ask permission to do the smallest thing now), and Kaoren helped me
experiment with finding the right sort of rocks, and we'd prepared
a small pit a week beforehand for a mini test run, and that had
worked out quite nicely (Siame stopped looking at me as if I was
insane after we'd sampled the small amount of food I'd cooked,
anyway, and Zan and Kiste who were my guards for the day were very
complimentary about the flavour). Kaoren – pretty much everybody –
was fascinated by the idea of burying your food to cook it, though
most everyone's initial reaction was total incredulity, which was
very funny. After hearing about it, an awful lot of our guests
wanted to come over early to see us assemble the larger pit, and so
Rye ended up having something of a party for breakfast as well as
for lunch. Thankfully it all worked very well, with that real 'fall
apart' texture for the food, and a delicious smoky touch. Of course
it made the news, though not immediately, which suggests that none
of the people who attended is a direct news source. I got quite a
few fascinated queries via KOTIS from cooks wanting to know how to
do this, so I've given them a translation of the manual.

I had an interesting
time sourcing food close to what I've known used in hangis in the
past. KOTIS makes sure that vat-grown food production keeps ahead
of immigration, but the population has been increasing far faster
than farm output can currently manage – and sparking lots of debate
about opening up the platforms to use them for freight and casual
day-tripping rather than making people wait for air-ship transport.
I managed to get a pile of patta (yam-things that taste a lot like
sweet potato but are more purply in colour) and this weird fruit
the greysuits had recommended for cultivation which looks a bit
like a zucchini the size of a coconut, and is rock-solid inside,
but really delicious like a mix between mashed potato and bread
when it's baked. And also purple carrots, and some varieties of
onion, and also pretty much a whole lamb, and two pigsies (the
pint-sized striped brown pigs which are so common everywhere –
another of the animals where the name I call them has become common
usage) and some spicy sausages. And I had quite a few volunteers to
make side-dishes and desserts among those dropping by at
breakfast.

We'd done most of the
preparation beforehand – scooped out the pit and assembled the
firewood and soaked the closest approximation I could find to
Hessian sacks and had the food all ready to go (raiding Rye's herb
terrarium) – and Kaoren had gone down just before dawn with Par and
Glade and set the fire so that by the time we were done with
breakfast it was about time to bury everything. Maze and Alay were
early arrivals, and were enjoying themselves making a fuss of Rye,
when Zee, Ketz, Mara and Jeh arrived all in a group, carrying
various food offerings. Sen, busy trying to peek under the cover of
the dish Maze and Alay had brought, froze at the sight of them and
then it was like she lifted herself up on strings – coming totally
alive and bouncing on the seat of the chair she'd been kneeling on
and inhaling in this incredibly excited way as if working up to an
explosion of joy. And then she caught herself, and stood there
looking like she'd been found with her hand in the cookie jar, all
frozen and guilty and yet still bubbling with excitement. She very
abruptly hopped off her chair and dashed to where I was stacking
the dishwasher from breakfast, pulled me down and whispered: "Is it
a secret?" urgently into my ear.

I managed to resist
saying: "Not any more" – all the senior Setari know by now how Sen
had announced Alay's pregnancy. I also knew that Ketzaren had been
talking about trying for a baby and I wished I could find a way to
get Sen to think before she acts when she's excited. She at least
had
tried
, though, so I patted her head and said: "I don't
know. Maybe you should go somewhere private and ask?"

Sen immediately dashed
around to where everyone was putting their dishes down and to my
complete surprise grabbed Zee's hand, but Sen wasn't finished and
hauled Zee across and told her "Zee talk Cassandra now," and then
gleefully insisted that Jeh, Ketz and Mara come look at the canopy
we'd put up over her bed. Ketzaren told me later that she'd then
hauled each of them separately into her bathroom and demanded: "Is
baby a secret?" All three of them were looking pretty stunned when
they came back, but so happy – Mara disappeared off to find Lohn,
and Jeh and Ketz came to laugh about it with me and Zee. I was a
bit surprised about Jeh, since I gather she's 100% only into girls,
but I guess maybe Grif found a turkey baster for her or something –
I've never enquired too deeply into the exact complexities of their
relationship. They were apparently all only a few days along and
didn't know they'd conceived. Zee's reaction had been the best –
for a moment there Sen really had her wondering if her
contraception had failed. Sen spent the rest of the day pouncing on
Alay, Jeh, Ketz and Mara at random intervals, hugging them and
going "Happy baby!" Except with Mara she kept going "Happy baby
baby baby!" so I eventually asked Kaoren if Mara was having
triplets and he nodded. Mara figured this out and asked Kaoren as
well and he told her it's two boys and a girl and after that she
and Lohn went pretty quiet. Even happier, though, I
think.

Sen is a tremendously
transparent Macchiavelli. But she's going to be scary once she has
some vague ability to be subtle.

Baby excitements
distracted everyone thoroughly while Kaoren and I were assembling
the hangi, but that was a good thing in my eyes anyway, and soon we
had a faintly-steaming piece of ground and everyone went away to
calm down. Kaoren and I had another little talk with Sen, but not a
very stern one since she did try not to give away anyone's secrets.
I did get a chance to talk to Mara just before they were heading
back and gave her a hug and told her that she always does things
so
thoroughly. She tweaked my nose.

Later that day when all
the kids came across for the party, Shar seemed pleased for them
both, but Fein fairly subdued and both Enna and Deal showed signs
of being upset and trying to hide it. Deal reverted to clinging to
Zar. I'm glad I'll have had my four a good long time before any
question of being pregnant myself comes up.

Rye's birthday was also
our cautious introduction to two new Setari adoptees. Maze and
Alay, now that they've moved into their house, had decided to adopt
a boy and a girl, but only after having a few discussions with me,
and me having a very careful discussion with Ys and Rye. The
problem was mainly Lianzrenar, who is one of the few other
survivors from House Renar – the only one at the talent
school.

The important part was
how Ys and Rye felt about Lianz. Maze and Alay like him, and wanted
to take care of him, but there were other kids they liked and Ys
and Rye are far too important to them for them to adopt someone who
had been directly or indirectly involved in traumatising my kids. I
think if they'd asked a year ago, back around when the talent
school was first established, having anything to do with Lianz on a
social basis would have been too distressing for Ys and Rye. But
I'm very pleased with how they reacted – a bit of startled
discomfort, but then one or two positive comments about Lianz
generally. The removal of the scars on their backs made a huge
difference to Ys and Rye's attitude toward Nurans. They don't
automatically like or trust anyone from Nuri, but they no longer
have the weight of a shameful secret to hide. And so the
possibility that Lianz might know is no longer is a bogeyman to
them. From what I saw of him during the party, he's a shy sort of
kid, super-obedient and inclined to blush and be anxious and avoid
the spotlight. I'm willing to bet that he didn't have too great a
time in House Renar either – no-one in a household run by a sadist
would be likely to.