CHAPTER TWO
Despite what Xerak kept assuring them had been an amazing job of combined attack and defense—especially since of the four who had been using magic, only Vereez could even be considered a novice; Teg and Kaj weren’t even that—the Slicewind’s crew had not escaped without injury.
Kaj and Xerak were the least injured, having been protected by Grunwold. Grunwold, however, had numerous shiny marks in the sleek hair of his stag’s head where bean seeds had hit. Additionally, he had a nasty welt across the bridge of his nose where a tendril had wrapped around his muzzle before he’d chopped through its softball-sized source.
Although Teg had kept the basketball-sized beti-teneh from reaching Peg, several baseball-sized ones had jetted through the defenses when Teg had been diverted to help Vereez. Fortunately, most of these had seemed unable to tell the difference between the ship’s pilot and the wheel. Nonetheless, a few had hit Peg hard enough that she’d been bruised even through her jacket. Vereez’s injuries were mostly due to her having—as was typical for her—overdone, but Teg’s intervention had kept her from collapsing.
In the aftermath of the battle, Teg was surprised to discover several nicks and cuts, including one at the edge of her right eyebrow that was trickling blood. When she saw Heru, though, she counted herself lucky. The xuxu’s leathery green wings were scored with countless small nicks, and his tough hide showed evidence of numerous lashes and cuts. Based on his behavior, though, Heru felt that whatever injuries he had taken were balanced by his pride in having defended his companions.
After Heru, Meg was the most spectacularly battered of the lot, for despite Heru’s gallant defense, and her own able use of pruning shears and spear, her delicate skin had been badly bruised by bean seeds released by the smallest beti-teneh.
“At least I was wearing a hat,” Meg said, examining her bruises ruefully in her pocket mirror. “Even so, I look a horror. I hope Vereez has something in her box of ointments that will help these to fade more quickly. Otherwise, I may need to duck home and refill my supply of arnica gel.”
As Vereez moved promptly to get a first-aid kit out of one of the stern bench lockers, her pointed ears flickered back. Much of what she knew about medications and ointments she had learned from her mother, Inehem. To say the two were “estranged” was an understatement. But for all that she could be very emotional, Vereez also had inherited a solid streak of practicality from her parents. Now she popped open the kit and pulled out a ceramic jar.
“Try this, Meg-toh. Just a little at first, to make certain you don’t have a reaction.”
“Thank you, dear,” Meg said, dabbing ointment on a bruise on one side of her neck. “Your ointments often work so much better than mine, and I really don’t think this is a good time for me to go home.”
Xerak, who had been bolstering himself with a few pulls from his flask, made a grunt of agreement. “The mana wellspring might cause eddies that would interfere with your gate. If you can wait, that would be better.”
“How long until we can continue our approach?” Peg asked.
“Let’s make sure everyone is patched up, and has something in the way of refreshments,” Grunwold said. “Xerak, are you too drunk to tell if those raiders will be back anytime soon?”
Xerak ignored the jibe, flicking his long tail in feline satisfaction as he looked to where the storm that he and Kaj had created was fading.
“They won’t be back unless they have a reserve fleet, and that’s unlikely,” Xerak replied. “The damage we took from their bean seeds was nothing to what they took from our hail. The disadvantage to breeding the beti-teneh for intelligence is that they can have pretty firm opinions about going into danger. Oddly, or maybe not so oddly, they’re more likely to be afraid of storms than they would be of a flight of arrows.”
“Maybe,” Kaj ventured, “because the fear of storm and wind would be instinctive, while the other would need to be learned. I get that.”
“Will they be likely to come after us when we leave with Grace?” Peg asked.
“We certainly can’t dismiss that as an option,” Xerak said, “but I don’t think they will. Remember, they’ll know that all of us who can use magic will have been in an ideal location to recharge whatever mana we used—and that we’re prepared for their style of attack. The beti-teneh have many advantages, but all of them work best if they can be combined with an element of surprise.”
“I wonder,” Teg said, “how long they’ve had this place staked out? This mountain range seemed deserted when we came through before.”
“Because of Grace,” Xerak reminded her, “and, more precisely because of sick Grace. My guess is that the pirates were accustomed to coming into this area to recharge at a distance. When they did the last time, they realized that the odor of the ‘horrific monster’ was reduced, and they took advantage.”
Peg froze in the act of putting away one of the first-aid kits. “I hope they didn’t hurt Grace!”
Xerak looked uneasy. “Me, too. Seems to me we’ll all be able to relax better once we’re through the vortex of winds and have assured ourselves that Grace is unharmed. When we get back to civilization, I’ll contact Zisurru University and make sure someone knows what we encountered.”
Teg wanted to keep speculating—not only about these raiders, but about how the mesa and its mana wellspring might be defended in the future. After all, the heart of archeology was speculations, but she understood this was not the time or place. She made a mental note to ask someone, Grunwold, maybe, about how such valuable resources were administered, then set herself to helping Meg apply her remaining arnica gel to injuries she couldn’t quite reach.
Grunwold had turned the wheel over to Peg, and was checking over the lines and sails, making chuffing noises as he noted the dings to his paint, as well as the slimy sap on his decks and rails. Nonetheless, he seemed pleased.
“Since none of the larger beti-teneh got off a barrage, the sail is in good shape. Rigging looks sound, too. Let’s go in after Grace.”
A short while later, Peg blew a sharp whistle on her fingers, drawing everyone’s attention.
“We’re approaching the vortex,” she called. “Everyone to their stations!”
“Excuse me,” Meg said politely. She tucked her journal into a pocket of her coat, then climbed, albeit a bit stiffly, back to the crow’s nest. Teg thought about offering to take her place, then kept her peace.
Meg would have asked for someone to take her place if she didn’t think she could do it. She’s old enough to know when to ask for help.
As Grunwold guided Slicewind along the increasingly tight spirals of the whirlwind that protected the mesa, the twists and turns became rollercoaster exciting. This time Slicewind’s crew was spared the increasingly nauseating odors, as well as the shrill shrieks akin to a bagpipe in which every pipe was out of tune with every other. As before, since they were riding with the wind, there was almost no sound that wasn’t generated by the ship herself or the muttered comments of Grunwold at the wheel.
I wonder if he’s talking to himself or to Slicewind? Teg thought. During their journey to the Roots of the World, they had learned that what Vereez’s swords were to her or, even, maybe, possibly, the sun spider amulet to Teg, Slicewind was to Grunwold: a means of channeling and focusing a newly discovered, as yet barely examined, magical ability.
“All right, all right, all right, you can do it!” Grunwold was chanting when Slicewind burst out of the enshrouding clouds, over the sandy top of the mesa. Overhead, the sky was blue, with no trace of the whirlwind without. A burst of incongruously familiar music burst forth as the mesa’s one resident recognized Slicewind.
Running to lean over the side, Peg gave words to the music, “Amazing Grace...How sweet the sound...”
She turned to face them, beaming in pure delight. “She remembers us!”
Vereez gave a shrill, yipping bark of laughter. “I thought she would. Oothynn are very smart. I’m glad Grace remembers us, and fondly so it seems. That’s going to make getting her into the harness a lot easier.”
Peg’s smile dimmed. “I hope she cooperates. I’ve had my share of pets, and even a crate-trained dog can be a pain if it doesn’t want to be locked up. In fact, the smarter the pets, the more loopholes they seem to find in the rules.”
“Vereez and I have been making plans for getting Grace into the harness,” Xerak assured Peg, “as well as contingency plans for however Grace decides to express her unwillingness to go for a ride. It’s a good thing that Vereez had a pet oothynn when she was small.”
“Mine,” Vereez reminded him, “was about this big”—she made an oval about the size of a golf ball with her fingers—“and the worst its claws could do was pinch. Grace could probably cut me in half.”
After Grunwold brought Slicewind to anchor about twelve feet over the sandy mesa top, Teg let loose the line she’d been holding. Stripping off her gloves, she moved over to the port rail to get a look at the creature they had come to rescue.
At the moment, the oothynn didn’t look like much more than an array of large pipes and four eyes on stalks poking out of the sand. Then, with a motion somewhere between a scuttle and a heave, Grace shoved her entire body above the sand. This revealed an ovoid, silvery-grey carapace about five meters from end to end, and three meters at its widest point. At each end, one to either side, positioned where the backfin would be on a blue crab, were two impressively large pinchers, not unlike those of a lobster. The eyestalks were anchored closer to the center of the shell, a pair at each end, so the oothynn had a wide range of vision.
Teg had seen for herself that Grace could use those eyes independently, for example employing a couple of eyes to keep track of what the claws were doing, while leaving the other two free to direct locomotion and keep watch for other dangers. Underneath the carapace were her legs, too numerous to count, like those of a centipede, and apparently capable of moving the oothynn any direction with ease.
And in addition to the claws, Grace has the pipes, with which she can make an alarming array of sounds, loud enough to cripple attackers, even those at a distance.
Teg sighed and Kaj looked over at her, his pointed ears flicking back in concern.
“What’s wrong, Teg?”
She laughed. “In my world, just about every human culture prides itself that the human form is the pinnacle of creation. In many legends, humans are made in the image of the divine itself. Looking at Grace, I find myself wondering. Especially when you get to be my age, you start feeling the consequences of making your way around the world as a biped—with consequent damage to feet and knees and hips. We can only see in front of us, have minimal ability to defend ourselves, and, frankly, given the trouble our various inventions have gotten our world into, well, even our much-vaunted intellect seems questionable.”
From her perch on the mast, Meg called down, “Ah...The assumption of human superiority is not all that universal, Teg. Remember all those legends about how kind deities like Prometheus stole fire and gave it to humanity to make up for the design flaws?”
Kaj wrinkled his nose and brow in canine confusion. “Fire as compensation? That most unpredictable of elements?”
“On our world,” Teg explained, “the general belief is that all animals, except humans, are afraid of fire.”
“Then,” Kaj said with finality, “to me that seems proof that all the animals are smarter than humans.”
“You may have a point,” Teg admitted.
Vereez interrupted, “Not that this isn’t fascinating, Teg, but Peg is eager to head down to see Grace. We suggested that she wait until Xerak and I were in better shape to provide magical backup, but she’s impatient. Can you—and Kaj, if he is up to it—go with her?”
“I’m fully recovered from the spell we did,” Kaj assured her. “Xerak did all the heavy lifting. I was basically his shortcut to tapping the water and building the storm clouds.”
Although he spoke dismissively of his own role, his tone overflowed with admiration for Xerak. Vereez’s ears flickered back for a moment, before resuming their upright posture. Teg couldn’t tell what this meant.
Is Vereez jealous? Or worried that Kaj is going to play Xerak as he played her? Some of the above? All of the above? None of the above?
Teg swallowed another sigh and walked over to where Peg was waiting by the rail. Kaj inserted himself between Peg and the ladder to the ground.
“I’m going down first,” Kaj said firmly. “That way I can brace the ladder for you two ladies.”
And you’ll also be far faster climbing back aboard if Grace is just pretending to be happy to see us, Teg added silently. Ah, well, at least Kaj is used to looking after crazy ladies. Compared to his mom, we’re positively rock solid.
Despite Teg’s apprehension, Grace not only remembered them, she was delighted to see them. One of the first songs Peg had taught her was the “doe a deer” song from The Sound of Music, and as Kaj clambered down the ladder, the oothynn fluted away, showing off her scales. They sounded much clearer now, so the damage Grace had taken to her pipes seemed to be healing.
Even with Kaj steadying it, the long rope-sided ladder bounced as Teg climbed down to the sound of Peg, who had gone down first, joining Grace in midphrase.
Peg could have waited for Grunwold to bring Slicewind down, Teg thought, feeling a twinge in one of her archeologically abused knees as she felt for the next rung, and then we could have put the steps over the side. But, Tessa my dear, she mock scolded herself as she had done much of her life, that’s thinking like an old lady. If Peg can make the climb, so can you.
When Teg reached the ground, Grace fluted a short motif, but otherwise seemed completely absorbed with the treats Peg had set out for her. These were disks about the size of a three-layer cake and smelled like deep-fried shrimp, green chile, onion, and vanilla, as much as they smelled like anything from Earth. Peg had made them by crushing commercial oothynn kibbles, mixing them with water, and reshaping them into thick patties so their enormous friend could grip them in her claws.
“All seems well here,” Kaj called up to the hovering ship. “You can bring Slicewind on down.”
Grunwold did so, hovering with the hull just over the sandy mesa top, then extending the legs that could serve as a short-term docking cradle. (They could also be fitted with skis or wheels, although Teg had never seen this done.) When the ship was down, the steps were put over the side, and the remaining crew debarked. Grace fluted a different short phrase for each one, so Teg decided that she was either counting or had given them names or descriptive phrases.
Since the translation spell isn’t translating them, maybe they’re not words as such. Or maybe the spell is limited to what languages it can handle. It managed whatever language it is that our inquisitors speak, as well as the language used in the Creator’s Visage Isles on the other side of the world. But while it lets us humans read, there are limits. The fancier the script, the less likely we can manage it.
Teg put her questions about languages aside until some future date when she was on night watch with one of the inquisitors. Xerak and Vereez were motioning everyone over, and they probably wouldn’t appreciate the meeting being hijacked by a discussion of magic and linguistics.
“I know our initial plan was to see about getting Grace loaded up and heading back to the Library right away,” Xerak began, “but that was before we had to deal with pirates. Grunwold would like a chance to go over Slicewind and make certain her damage really is superficial. I wouldn’t mind a chance to rest, just in case the pirates are dumber than I think they are and come back for another engagement. It occurred to me that I could also use this as an opportunity to teach my three apprentices”—he said this last with a mixture of pride and defensiveness, as if he expected to be teased—“how to tap a mana wellspring.”
Since neither Vereez nor Grunwold cut into this little speech, they evidently agreed. Meg was already fishing her journal out and moving to the shade cast by Slicewind’s hull. Peg nodded happily.
“I think that’s an excellent idea. Grace may remember us, and even fondly, but this will give me a chance to work with her. I thought I’d teach her some more music, and use that to distract her from my looking her over and making sure she doesn’t have any sore spots before we take her up.”
“I’ll help if you want,” Meg said, “or assist Grunwold.”
“I help Grun,” Heru said importantly, hooting a series of notes that Grace imitated, to the xuxu’s mingled consternation and delight.
“Lunch first?” Kaj suggested. “I’m not certain I can concentrate on an empty stomach. And some of us are still battered. A rest and maybe more ointment wouldn’t do any harm.”
“Good idea,” Vereez said. “Let’s picnic down here. Heru, if you come over here, I’ll put more ointment on your wings.”
“Stinky goop,” Heru protested, but at a stern look from Grunwold, he went.
Peg bolted her food, then went over to distract Grace, who was showing too much interest in the picnic. After bribing the oothynn with another kibble patty, Peg started her music lesson, choosing selections from the best of the works of the band Jefferson Airplane.
“White Rabbit,” with its strong reliance on drums and bass, worked better than expected, with the deeper pipes taking up the bass line. “Somebody to Love” went over even better, at least as far as Grace was concerned. For Teg, who worried about the impact of the unresolved romances—Grunwold’s crush on Vereez; Vereez’s mixture of resentment and attraction toward Kaj; Xerak’s frankly sexual gazes at Kaj; Kaj’s quiet and deliberate detachment from it all—on their little group, the song seemed a poor choice, especially when Peg bellowed out the lyrics as if she was still the early teenaged runaway who’d left some undefined part of her heart in Haight-Ashbury.
Nevertheless, it was to the backdrop of some of Grace Slick’s greatest hits that Xerak set out to teach his three students how to tap a mana wellspring.
“Once you have the hang of it,” Xerak said, “it should be a lot faster and easier than using ambient mana. Can you locate the source of the mana? Close your eyes if that helps.” He did so. “To me it looks a bit like a fountain coming out of the center of the mesa.”
Teg closed her eyes and tried to see, but all she saw was the darkness inside her eyelids, where a few floaters drifted. She let her hand fall to the sun spider amulet and imagined that she was seeing not with her senses, but with its. This worked better, and she felt rather than saw the rich upwelling, as well as the sun spider’s desire to suck it in.
“Got it?” Xerak continued, his voice causing Teg to jump and open her eyes. He went on, “Now, after all the mana we used, all of you should have an empty space that needs filling. I want you to do that, but slowly. If you aren’t careful, you’ll overflow and lose mana.”
“Would we lose it all, or just the extra?” Kaj asked.
“All,” Xerak clarified. “Think of your internal mana reservoir as a balloon...”
Vereez quipped, “After the beti-teneh, I’d rather not.”
“Hush up, Sharp Nose,” Xerak said. “I chose that image for a reason. Like a balloon, your internal mana reserve can stretch, but stretch it too far or too fast, and it will burst.”
“How about like a soap bubble, then?” Vereez said. “I think that’s the image my tutor used.”
“Maybe, although I think a balloon is a better image,” Xerak replied, something in the cant of his ears showing what he thought of Vereez’s previous teacher. “It’s sturdier for one, but if you can work with a soap bubble, then use that.”
“Sorry,” Vereez said. “I’m getting in the way of your answering Kaj’s question.”
And I wonder if that was deliberate, Teg thought, a little showing off to remind Kaj that for all she tends to go to extremes, she has studied magic.
Xerak continued, “So, too much, too fast, you lose everything. Overfill too often, and you’ll risk damaging your mana reserve, possibly permanently. Now that I think about it, maybe that’s why Vereez’s tutor chose the soap bubble for his image. He wanted to restrict the chance that his students would injure themselves.”
Where his painted dog head met his neck, Kaj’s short hackles rose. “I’m glad that when I tapped Qes Wen, I was letting the mana out as fast as I could take it in. I had no idea how dangerous that was.”
“The risk you took was necessary,” Xerak said. “I certainly didn’t have leisure to tell you then just how big of a one you were taking.”
“Well,” Kaj said, “we all took risks then. We’d be dead if we hadn’t. I’m just saying that, now that I know, I want this lesson even more. How do we start?”
“Focus on however you see the wellspring,” Xerak said. “Then create a mental image of yourself tapping it.”
“Like using a bucket?” Kaj asked. “Or a hose?”
“Whatever best enables you to control the flow and bring it into yourself,” Xerak said.
Teg closed her eyes, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t find a way to bring that rich upwelling into herself. There was a period of silence, then Vereez said quietly: “I’m full. I don’t want to push further.”
Xerak must have done something to check, because he said, “Looks good. Let the mana sit there. Get used to feeling that ‘full.’ Right now, it’s like you’ve had a bit too much for dinner and need to keep it down.”
“Right.”
Okay. Don’t feel so bad. Vereez has the most formal training of us three apprentices.
However, when Kaj also announced he had filled his reserves, Teg felt distinctly frustrated. She wasn’t used to being at the bottom of any class she took.
She kept trying, even after she heard Vereez, then Kaj move away to join the others.
Eventually, Xerak said with supreme gentleness, “Tell me what’s happening, Teg.”
“I’m not finding gathering mana this way easier,” she said. “This is harder.”
“Open your eyes,” Xerak said. “Relax and tell me about it.”
Confirming that the two of them were alone, except for Meg who was sitting some distance away, absorbed in writing in her journal, Teg groped in her pocket for her pipe and started fussing with it. Xerak nodded permission for her to smoke, shifted upwind, then looked at her from his golden lion’s eyes while she sought the right words.
“Tapping mana from the font isn’t easier,” Teg said slowly. “Gathering ambient mana, well, that’s like hanging out in a hot tub after a hard day’s digging. You feel yourself soaking in both moisture and heat through every pore and aching muscle fiber but this, whether I think of a bucket or a hose or even cupping my hands and drinking, it just doesn’t work.”
“Did you try using the sun spider amulet as a focus?” Xerak asked.
“I did, but it didn’t work any better. The mana just dropped through the webbing.”
Xerak tapped his chin with one finger, but as the claw tip wasn’t extended, Teg knew he wasn’t annoyed, just thinking.
“You have a very literal mind in some ways,” he said.
“Despite what many people think,” Teg retorted, “archeology is a scientific discipline.”
“But I don’t think it’s that literal mind that’s getting in your way this time,” Xerak said. “Remember what you told me about being commitment shy? About how you’re too careful about letting anyone inside your ‘space’? I wonder if this is part of that. You haven’t had any trouble when you’ve been channeling mana to someone else. You give, but you’re really scared of taking.” Xerak twitched his whiskers. “Think about it.”
Teg did for a long time, staring at the smoke wreathing up from her pipe.
He’s, what, maybe twenty-four? Who is he to lecture me about what I’m scared of? On the other hand...He’s right at the age when thinking about how you fit in with other people is almost always on your mind. Maybe he has a point.
She looked at the pipe, which was beginning to gutter out. Thought about how the smoke kept people just that little bit away.
Okay, maybe he’s right.
She took out the sun spider amulet. All right, thingie, she thought, then interrupted herself.
“That,” she said aloud, “is incredibly rude.”
“Pardon?” Meg said, looking up from her journal.
“I realized I’ve been really rude to this amulet.” She had both Meg and Xerak’s attention now. “I don’t know if it’s a person or not, but when I use it, I talk to it as if it is. And I haven’t even been polite enough to give it a name.”
“You aren’t required to...” Xerak began...but Teg waved him down.
“I want to. I’ve even thought of a good name: Petros. In one of the languages from our world, that means ‘rock,’ and this amulet has a bit of meteorite as a center.” She turned her gaze on the sun spider amulet, looking at the tiny jewels that were its eyes. “Would you like to be called Petros?”
The delighted giggle wasn’t her imagination. At least she didn’t think so. And Xerak’s pleased expression wasn’t either.
Yeah, kid. Maybe you’re right.
Later that afternoon, when they put Operation Airlift Grace into action, Grace proved to be remarkably cooperative. Indeed, the gigantic oothynn was so pathetically happy when she realized she wasn’t going to be left behind, that Teg felt glad all over again that they’d come for her. The only adaptation they had to make in their initial plans was to create a stretcher-style platform from sail cloth and some spare spars for her many legs to rest on, once it became obvious that there was no comfortable gap between her many, many legs for the harness straps to fit. The lift harness straps went under the stretcher. When Peg stood on the platform and started to sing “Come Together,” Grace scuttled to join her.
“That’s a good girl,” Peg crooned as she tossed the straps of a sort of “seatbelt” over Grace’s shell, then scurried to the other side to knot these to the edge of the platform. “Now, I’m going back up”—she pointed to the hull of the hovering sky sailer, and broke into song—“an’ donchu you worry ’bout a thing.”
Grace tootled an echo of the line as she folded her legs under her.
We’d have more trouble getting Grace off there than keeping her in place, Teg thought. She stood by on the ground with the wizards as Grunwold brought Slicewind slowly aloft, just in case Grace panicked. However, instead of getting nervous, the oothynn settled down and piped a drowsy melody that for some reason reminded Teg of a cat purring.
“All aboard,” Peg called, hanging over the side rail. “Next stop, Library of the Sapphire Wind!”
During runs for water and to discharge sewage, Grunwold had discovered that it was far easier to sail out of the whirlwind than in. However, since Grace’s platform hung below Slicewind, some of Grunwold’s visibility was blocked. Over the day they had rested and prepared, Heru had grown fond of Grace, and so was very willing to fly down and ride with the oothynn. This both kept her company and made the xuxu available as a backup navigation aid. Heru even offered to carry down a basket containing various goodies for Grace.
Following a course calculated to keep them from passing over any major population center, Slicewind set sail for the Library of the Sapphire Wind. Late one night, Teg woke, needing to pee, and decided to go up on deck for a rare cigarette. Most of the time, she smoked the pipe Xerak had given her, because the rest found it less offensive.
As she was climbing up the ladder from the lounge to the upper deck, she heard Vereez say, “Peg-toh, you’ve been married a lot, right?”
“Three times married. Three times divorced,” came the laconic reply.
“My parents only married the once. Same with most of the people I knew well. I guess that’s why I thought, with Kaj and all, when you fell in love, it was for real and for always.”
Teg debated going back to bed, but her curiosity had the better of her. She continued her climb up the ladder. Vereez was in the wheelhouse, where she could keep an eye on Slicewind’s headings. The sky sailer had the equivalent of autopilot and could send out alerts, but with Grace riding below, there was always the chance the ship wouldn’t “see” something until they were right on top of it.
Peg was sitting on one of the stern benches, knitting what looked like a hat. She smiled as Teg emerged onto the deck.
“Sounded like a serious chat,” Teg said. “I can take my cigarette to the bow and cover my ears. But, I admit, I’m interested.”
“It’s okay, Teg-toh,” Vereez said.
Peg smiled. “You can even smoke one of your cigarettes. Just go where we don’t need to inhale with you.” She knitted a few stitches, then paused. “I’ve thought about ‘for real and for always’ a lot. Not just for me, but as my kids and stepkids get old enough to get into serious relationships. I think the problem with ‘for real and for always’ is that for that to work, either there has to be a lot of willingness to accept change...” She paused and waggled a finger. “Or no change at all.”
Vereez flicked her ears sideways and wrinkled her nose. “That doesn’t make sense.”
Teg laughed. “It does, actually, at least to me. Peg, you’re the expert, go on.”
Peg started knitting again. “My first husband, Don, and I met when I was still a minor. We fell in love with...being in love and love, especially sex, being forbidden. It was hot, it was heady, and when I turned eighteen and we could get married without anybody getting in our way, we couldn’t get it done fast enough. And then it turned out that Don, and maybe me, too, was more in love with the forbidden. Once I was just his ‘old lady,’ his ‘ball and chain,’ all those ‘affectionate’ terms for a wife, he started getting his thrills elsewhere. And there I was, pregnant, dealing with morning sickness and...”
Vereez’s ears were drooping, as if this was all too familiar, and Peg was looking uncharacteristically depressed. Teg rushed to the rescue.
“We get it. You broke up. So, was this changing or not changing?”
Peg bit into her lower lip, then said, “He didn’t change. I did, especially since I was the one with the baby bump, not wanting to get stoned or drunk or stay up all night. He wouldn’t change with me. Done.”
Teg decided to save Peg from relating more marital failures. Besides, she had thought of an example of a relationship that hadn’t changed, and so was successful, that would reach Vereez better than any examples Peg could come up with.
“Your parents,” Teg said, “Inehem and Zarrq, they’re a great example of a relationship that has survived because it never changed. They started out with Zarrq protecting Inehem, being the thug, so she could do the magic. That hasn’t changed. We saw it when they came after Brunni. They’ve changed their arena from ‘extractions’ to high finance, but it’s the same.”
Vereez nodded. “As a kid, I never felt I meant as much to them as they did to each other. They didn’t change to be parents. They just added an element in their relationship.”
Peg had recovered some of her usual pluck. “I don’t know if people do this here, but in our world, ‘liking’ someone often starts with the superficial: I like blond hair and blue eyes, or I like big breasts or no body hair or whatever.”
“It’s like that here,” Vereez said, “different in some ways, but sure...Physical attraction.”
“Well, I always tell my kids, and some of the grands, now,” Peg went on, “to remember those physical attributes will change with time. Mister Tall, Dark, and Handsome, will probably become stooped, greying, and, if you’re lucky, ‘distinguished.’ What I’m trying to get them to think about is what else might change. If you’re in love with the star of the college football team, what’s he going to be like when he can’t play ball? What else does he base his sense of self-worth on? Is he going to be forever caught in the past or can he move into the future?”
Her gaze unfocused as she looked at something that they couldn’t see. “That’s what happened with Nash, my second husband. He was a pretty good musician, even belonged to a couple of bands that got gigs as opening acts. But after a while, Nash realized that bar band was about the best he’d ever be. I tried to get him to use his music in other ways, but once his dream broke, so did he. I got steps Samantha and Wilson out of it, as well as our Esmerelda, so no regrets, but Nash...”
She shook her head. “We split. He pretty much vanished, even from his kids’ lives, a few years later. Not good. Really not good. By then I was starting to see I was attracted to the ‘wild type,’ the ‘free spirit.’ So next time, I decided I’d go for stable, solid, dependable. Did Irving change? I thought so, but maybe now, after a lot of thinking...Maybe he just kept going in the direction he’d been all along, a direction that called for me to be Corporate Wife.”
“You?” Teg laughed.
Vereez said, “You mean, like married to the business? My parents have friends like that. I guess it’s in my parents’ favor that I always felt that if it was the business or each other, they’d choose each other.”
“That’s about it,” Peg agreed. “I tried a lot longer than I should have, probably, but in the end, I couldn’t take the expectations that I dress a certain way, do only certain things. The kids were growing up by then, and I was never meant to be one of the ‘ladies who lunch.’ Irving did me the favor of falling for a secretary and wanting a divorce, so I got out with a really nice financial package, and the sympathy of all the kids.”
Silence fell, long enough that Teg finished her cigarette and was beginning to feel sleepy. Peg continued knitting. Teg was about to make her excuses and go below, when Vereez cleared her throat.
“Peg, was there ever anyone you thought would change with you?”
Peg sighed. “Oh, honey, I always did, except when I thought we’d never change.” She looked suddenly vulnerable, and oddly, somehow, much, much younger. “There was one. I met him post-Don, pre-Nash. I was still hanging out with the more or less hippy set. They were a lot of help with Diego and Tabitha, even before I gave up on Don. I met Jackal that way.”
“Jackal?” Teg said. “Was that his real name?”
“Probably not,” Peg said, but she didn’t laugh. “A lot of us didn’t use our given names then. I went by Pesky for a while. One of the older hippies—probably all of nineteen—called me that and it stuck. I liked it. Peg was so ‘last generation.’ Jackal was probably John or Jack, but he insisted everyone call him Jackal, so we did. Funny, I was thinking about him just the other day. He always claimed that he was two people in one head, that he could do magic. But he was sweet, loved to talk about existential things, the nature of the real, all that. He’d hold Diego while I nursed Tabitha, and we’d talk about what was real and how did we know. A stoner, I guess, but I really liked him, and, unlike Don, he seemed to like the kids and, well, the square, routine stuff, that having kids was making me do more and more of.”
“What happened?” Vereez asked.
“He died,” Peg said, not bothering to hide her tears. “That two people in one head thing...It sounds cool, but there were times he was all over the place. They found him dead one morning, down under a bridge near a river. I’m not sure if it was suicide or an overdose. I have always hoped it was an overdose, a dumb mistake, because I’d have hated to fail a friend.”
“Peg,” Teg said, sliding onto the bench next to her and putting an arm around her shoulders. “You can’t save everyone. Really, you can’t save anyone. Best you can manage is saving yourself, and you’ve done that, and even managed to keep smiling.”
Vereez sniffled back her own tears. “I’m sorry, bringing up old pain. I’m so selfish. You ladies, you all seem so cool, so together. I forget.”
Peg forced a wobbly grin. “Well, maybe we are cool and together now, but it’s been a hard road getting here.”
“Don’t fool yourself,” Teg put in. “I’ll settle for cool. I know I’m not in the least ‘together.’”