IGMS Issue 29 (10 page)

The reason I can do this job is not because I'm brave. Or talented, or smart. I do this because I am afraid.

I stare at the spinning black hole. It seems to call at me. Not like music, but something deeper, an emotional yearning, or a sense of unity.

I fear my wife, Lenore, will leave me.

It's not that we don't have a "loving" relationship, but I am afraid she'll realize that I'm incapable of filling the void inside her -- her own internal rift-bomb.

Hers is a pure love. A simple love. She loves me because I seem to love her. She sees how much effort and care I put into the flowers I bring her before each mission. She believes the little notes I leave on her bedpost. The romantic dinners and the scented baths. She thinks our relationship is the perfect relationship. But I only do these things because each and every waking moment, I worry that some other man will meet her and be the man that will love her better than I can. I'm not romantic because I love, I'm romantic because I have to be.

I might die today, as I think I will, staring at this device from another dimension, sent by a terrorist or alien child I will never meet. Never know. Never understand.

He will make me a hero. I will die a heroic death. And my wife --

Wife to a hero.

He will save me because then it wouldn't be my fault when Lenore finds someone else. It won't be because I failed her, or because there was someone better for her.

That's why my hand doesn't shake as I reach out to touch this rift-bomb with no box, structure, or container. Merely a black, empty space, floating in front of my eyes. It shouldn't be able to exist without sucking the entire universe into it. How is it held together?

Something is, something has to be. But I can't defuse what I cannot detect.

So I will touch it to find out how it's being stored. You aren't supposed to touch rift-bombs without knowing how their shell works and how to disarm them, especially with the way this one makes me feel. But it insists that I touch it, protocol be damned. It tells me that if I do touch it, the world will believe I'm not a coward, my wife was a devoted wife, our relationship was bliss.

So I touch it. As my matter touches the rift-bomb, I realize it is not a bomb at all . . .

. . . it is my own construct. It is a gateway for me to come through and switch realities and switch bodies.

And it worked.

This is what all of the rift-gateways are. Unsatisfied people with nothing to lose by leaving their own reality, hoping their twins in another dimension might feel the same and offer to switch places with them. Fishing, we call it.

I stare at the fingers of the hands that once belonged to my other self. The rift-gateway is gone, the transfer between us immediate and undetectable.

I realize that in this reality, Lenore might still be with me. Maybe she didn't commit suicide when I had an affair.

I leave the shield zone and tell my boss I'm quitting, then rush home, filled with hope.

I find her. She's alive. She loves me, and she has these flowers I never bought her.

When I see her, I tell her how much I've missed her and how I'll never leave her again. And when she replies, telling me I've only been gone a few hours, I begin to cry.

The wind slaps at me as soon as I open the door. It's bitter cold in the predawn grayness, especially after the warmth of the cabin, but Mama's been out hunting and she always leaves the meat outside the door. It keeps best in the cold.

It's a deer this time, or most of one, what's left after Mama takes her share. She's skinned it neatly for us, jointed and cleaned it and bled it off, and it steams a little in the dry cold air. I heave a haunch of venison onto my shoulder, turn, and duck back through the door into the firelight.

J.R.'s still sleeping, just a lump of quilts unmoving in the big bed. She needs the sleep.

Mama would have said, once, that J.R.'s growing and needs the rest for her bones to stretch. My bones are all done stretching, so I wake up early.

Some of the venison goes into the stewpot; some gets cut into strips, to dry on the rack in front of the fire. The rest will go into the cold cellar, to keep until spring.

By the time I'm done with the venison, J.R. is stirring. Once she's up and dressed, teeth cleaned and hair braided, I send her out to check the curse nets. She grumbles, though it's been her job every morning for going on three years now. I promise her hot porridge by the time she's done, and that gets her moving.

The porridge doesn't take long, and I find myself with a moment to steal before J.R. comes back. I pull a book off Mama's shelf, and sit down to read.

The book falls open to my favorite poem, the way it always does. I smooth a hand over the faded page, my eyes trailing over the words. Before I get very far, though, the door swings open and J.R. tromps back in, trailing snow over the floor. And then the day is started, and there's too much to do, and I have no time for poetry.

There's wood to chop and food to cook and venison to carry to the cold cellar; there's J.R.'s lessons and my own; and there's laundry and sewing and darning and spinning. There's spells to make up, of course, and a new curse net to weave. Installing it in the high bare branches of the oak outside the house takes up precious hours.

It's a long day, and we don't see Mama at all. By the time the light is fading I'm bone tired, and J.R. is yawning. The two of us change into our nightdresses, brush out our hair, and climb under the heap of old quilts that Mama made for us, once upon a time. I'm half-asleep before I hear the heavy tread on the porch, and the knock-knock-knock at the door.

Mama doesn't come in, of course, but the knock is enough. She's all right. Reassured, I fall asleep between one breath and the next.

The next day goes similar, and the next. It's the deepest part of winter, and J.R.'s and my world narrows to the cabin and the few yards clear of snow around it. Sometimes we bicker, the way sisters do, but this is our third winter on our own, and we're pretty well used to it. After a particularly nasty fight, one that leaves J.R. in tears, I use some of our precious store of bought flour to bake her a little cake, filling it with jam we put up last summer. She takes it for the peace offering it is, and I don't turn her down when she offers me a bite.

Things change when the man comes from town to buy a spell. He comes by snowshoe, tossing up a cloud of powder with each careful step. When he hammers at the door, I am in the midst of washing dishes and the sound makes me startle and drop the heavy ceramic mixing bowl into the stone sink. Thankfully, it doesn't break.

The man is fair-haired and bearded, his cheeks and nose pink with cold, and he carefully stamps his boots clean of snow before he comes into the house. This endears him to me, just a little - so few people take the right kind of care when they come to a witch's house. Ordinary politeness is all that's called for, really, but we don't often get it.

He looks around the cabin while he pulls off his heavy coat and muffler, his hat and rabbit-skin mittens, and I can see that his pale eyes are sharp, missing nothing. They linger on J.R. for just a moment, but jerk back to me when I clear my throat at him.

"Sorry," he says, a little abashed. "Never been out here before. I'm here to see the witch-woman."

"Well, here we are," I say, just a little tartly. "What do you need?" Folks aren't expecting two girls well shy of twenty when they come here, that's fair enough, but there's no need to assume we don't know what we're doing.

He takes the rebuke for what it is and acts mannerly again. "It's my wife," he says. "She's in a delicate way, and I want to be sure the birth is easy. We weren't expecting this one - thought we were too old for another - and the last one near killed her. I don't want my children motherless."

I nod, because this of all things is a commendable reason to go to a witch-woman. "I've got some herbs that will ease the labor," I say, "and I can weave you a curse net to hang from the bedstead. Have you got a midwife who knows her trade?"

"She lives in town," he says, and names a village two days' walk from here. He must love his wife, I think. "Don't know if she'll make it out to the homestead in time, come the day."

"I'll teach you what I can," I say. "We've got some books and I've attended a few difficult births." I don't mention that I was twelve last time I did it, not even J.R.'s age, and only watching over Mama' shoulder. "Now, we ought to talk payment."

He nods. "I've got a little cash, and eight yards of calico, and I brought a few jars of honey from our bees. That sound fair to you?"

J.R. had nearly outgrown her summer dresses by the time fall set in this year, and I haven't had a new dress since I stopped growing. It's downright generous, is what it is, but I'm not going to argue.

The bearded man, who gives his name as Tom Miller, helps me set up J.R.'s old truckle bed in front of the fire so he'll have a place to sleep tonight. He'll be scrunched up some, but I'm already sacrificing some of the quilts from J.R.'s and my pile, and not feeling more charitable than that. He offers to bring in some firewood and I let him, because that will give me time to weave his curse net.

Mama's big chest of little drawers holds all sorts of things. Packets of herbs, sea glass carried far inland, bits of colored stone, twigs from rare trees. And commoner things, too: scraps of paper clipped from almanacs and catalogues, acorns, iron nails and eggshells.

"What do you think, J.R.?" I ask her, and she tips her head to one side, considering. We make our selections carefully, thinking of the child to come.

When Miller comes back in with the first load of firewood, I am sitting in Mama's rocking chair, my hands a tangle. J.R. is sitting on the truckle bed, sewing. "You didn't bring a lock of your wife's hair, by any chance, did you?" I ask. His hand goes to his chest, as if by instinct. "Got it in a locket, then? Or a luck pouch? Good. I only need a few strands, and some of yours. It's good to have both parents in the net - better protection."

So far the net has leaves of chamomile and sage to ease the mother's pain, raspberry leaf and thistle for a quick and easy birth. There's a few bells, to jingle a warning if something's going wrong, and pictures of healthy children for encouragement. It looks like a crooked spiderweb in my hands, one with bits and pieces carefully knotted into it in place of flies.

Miller fumbles with a leather cord around his neck and pulls a little leather bag out from under his layers of clothes. A luck pouch, then: backcountry magic, the kind of thing a wife puts together to keep her husband's fingers free of stray axes and his feet on the marked paths. He pulls out a lock of reddish-blonde hair and teases a few strands free. J.R. hands him her little sewing scissors to clip a few of his own. He thanks her, but she only blushes and stares at the ground.

"J.R. doesn't talk to strangers," I say.

He gives her an odd look, but doesn't say anything, just hands me the hair and watches me weave it into the fabric of the net. I yank a strand of my own hair out - there's power in a little pain - and knot it in last of all, adding my own power to what's worked into the net already.