Califia's Daughters (22 page)

The child was silent for a moment longer, then blurted out, “How did you get those scars?” She pointed to the puckered skin on Dian's shoulder and the thin jagged line that ran down over her ribs, and rather belatedly Dian realized that perhaps she should have covered herself before inviting the child in. She wasn't even sure this person was a girl, after all. She reached casually for her shirt.

“A wild boar.” She looked at the expression on the small face, the lips forming an
o
, and burst out laughing. “Sounds exciting, doesn't it? Actually it was stupidity. Most injuries happen because of stupidity. It's true I was chasing a wild pig, but it wasn't the pig itself who did this. He doubled back quickly and my horse dodged and I fell off into a tree. The branches were sharp. I was fifteen, but I should have known better than to chase a pig through the brush. That's what the dogs are for,” she said, and gestured at Culum and Tomas. The ruse succeeded in distracting her examiner, whose disappointment at the lack of romance in Dian's story was patent. The curious black eyes studied the dogs, who in turn were watching her (him?) with equal interest. Another question was bubbling up, though this one burst without any nudging from Dian.

“May I touch your dogs?”

“I'm sure they'd love to say hello to you. In fact, would you like to take them downstairs and let them out for a while? Perhaps your grandmother would let you feed them too. She knows what they eat.”

Her offer was greeted with great enthusiasm, and the door closed carefully behind the wagging tails. Dian listened to their noisy progress down the stairs, but she was sure that even Tomas would take care not to knock into a person who weighed less than half what he did. The sounds of children's voices grew at the window and then faded as Jian showed off her—his?—living trophies to various small relatives.

She sat back against her luxurious pillows and laughed ruefully into the empty room. Ladies and gentlemen! She walks, she talks, she reads and writes and drinks from a cup. She even eats with chopsticks! Presenting, for your delight, the Wild Woman from Borneo! Dian sipped her tea with pinkie raised, to the acclaims of imaginary thousands, then went off to take what she suspected would be her last decent bath for a very long time.

Breakfast was, as usual, tea, fruit, and a simple, sustaining rice porridge, in marked (and necessary) contrast to the sumptuous evening near-banquets. After she had finished, she took her leave of Teacher Jung and found herself touched to damp eyes when the old woman kissed her as a daughter. Then, feeling faintly ridiculous, she went to find Willa, and although the child was more interested in her breakfast than saying good-bye to her rescuer, Dian picked her up when she came up for air and kissed her sweet-smelling, pleasingly rounding cheeks, then gave her back before her protests could develop.

“She is looking very beautiful,” she told the woman who was acting as wet nurse.

“She very big,” said the woman. “Very, so very big.”

“And getting bigger. Thank you.”

“Very big.”

         

Mai came for her and took her on a perfectly terrifying ride on the electrical train that ran, unseen and unsuspected, along the top of the wall. Mai bemoaned the lack of view, but Dian found the sheer walls an arm's length from the windows quite thrilling enough, and when they passed another train going in the opposite direction her heart nearly stopped. The wall fell away at irregular intervals, offering brief lightning flashes of life inside the wall that were more tantalizing than illuminating. Several held nothing more than groups of people, quickly glimpsed before the vision flicked off and the wall was back before her face. Once she glimpsed a concrete canyon strung with what looked like a thousand wash-lines, comforting in its homeliness; her next vision, so brief as to seem hallucinatory, was less reassuring: a courtyard filled with heavily armored vehicles, surmounted by three of the blue and gray dragonfly shapes that could indeed only be helicopters—her sighting along the Road hadn't been imaginary after all.

The dogs, oddly enough, were unfazed at this novel method of travel. Not until the end of the quarter-hour ride did Dian think to wonder if Simon was hidden in one of the other cars, but when she tottered out on uncertain legs he was there, saddled and waiting under a long shed roof on the ferry quay. She ran her hands over his familiar sides, let him snuffle hopefully into her cupped hand, and threw her saddlebags over his back. An official led him off through the wet morning to the livestock hold, after Mai assured her that her possessions were completely safe and guarded, then the two women went up to the snug cabin. There were tables there, with benches, but Dian went over to the rain-swept window, trying not to think how very dreary it was going to be to ride through the stuff. The ferry cast off for its short trip across the Gate, and she looked up in silence at the Remnant of the great bridge overhead, that magnificent reminder of the abilities of a race gone by, the patchy orange towers balancing what remained of the cables and roadway—and then Dian's eyes narrowed.

“Do I see people working on it?”

“Yes, didn't you know? Three years ago the Council decided to repair it. We should have it open in another ten years or so.” Her pride and her love for the bridge was apparent in her voice and eyes. “And look, this will also be new since you were here.”

Mai pointed across the cabin to the eastern side. “We are making a shrine out of the Rock.” The island's ugly concrete Remnants were gone; in their place lay a wide, flat stone platform centered in a green park, with a huge shapeless framework of beams and posts woven on top. “The workers are nearly ready to start covering the frame,” Mai told her. “It will be a Buddha, one hundred feet tall and covered in gold leaf. We've been collecting jewelry for twenty years!” she told Dian happily.

Dian pictured the impact of sailing in from the ocean, beneath the restored bridge, an immense golden Buddha in front and the austere walls of the city rising on the side. “It will be magnificent,” she agreed, and felt more of a barbarian than ever. Ah, well, perhaps Willa would drink in some culture during the next few weeks.

“Would you like to show me the route you propose to take?” Mai asked. A neatly folded map had appeared on the table, as an offer rather than a demand for information. Dian did not hesitate to join her to pore over it.

She traced her finger along the dotted line that indicated where the highway Remnant ran, noticing two bridges that her own map said were still standing but on this map were marked as down. She sighed, thinking of the additional scrambling and backtracking ahead. Mai leaned intently over her finger, giving bits of information such as, “That village is best avoided,” and, “The schoolteacher in this town is very helpful.” When they had finished, Dian folded the map and made to hand it back, but Mai shook her head.

“It's yours, if it is helpful.”

“Thank you.”

“I remember your mother,” Mai said unexpectedly.

“Do you? When did you meet her?”

“Nine, or was it ten years ago? I believe it was her last trip here. She was a fine woman.”

“She was.”

“She would not be happy at your venturing north.”

“You think not? She was happy enough to take first Judith and then me to Meijing, and that ninety miles is by all reports more hazardous than the two hundred ahead of me.”

Mai studied her, and smiled. “You're probably right. Too, she would not have encouraged timidity in her daughters. But still—you must promise me that you will go no farther into Oregon than your friend's small village.”

“I intend to turn right around and come back.”

“Good. There is . . . ugliness to the north.”

“Ashtown? Some people were talking about it.”

“And their allies. You do not want to be within their grasp.”

“I promise, I have no intention of sightseeing beyond Isaac's village.”

They were nearing the dock on the other side when Mai reached for her bag, drew out two small parcels, and handed the first one to Dian. “Grandmother asked me to give this to you.” Dian curiously unwrapped the parcel and held up a folded sheet of slick, thin, clothlike stuff. Her bewilderment must have showed as she thanked Mai, because the woman picked it out of her hands to shake it out and drop it over Dian's head.

“It's a rain poncho, from a waterproof cloth called nylon we've just started making. It seems to work very well, though we're not sure how many years it will last before the waterproofing wears off. At least three, anyway. It's both lighter and more dependable than the waxed cloth you wear.”

“And to think I was just dreading riding in this drizzle. Thank Jung Xiansheng for me, would you please?” She examined the odd cloth closely, then looked up to see Mai holding out the other package.

“And this is from me. I thought you might find it useful.” She watched Dian unfold an unadorned pale brown shirt, as lightweight as the raingear but far more elegant. “It's silk, and I know it feels delicate but it's really very strong, much tougher than cotton. And, it doesn't have any diaper stains on it yet.” She cut off Dian's protests with a friendly but firm look. “We cannot have it known that a guest was allowed to leave without the proper equipment, or even a clean shirt, now, can we? Bad for our image.”

Dian decided that it was at least partly a joke, so she chuckled. Mai smiled back at her.

“I know you feel you will have to repay us, but please don't. You are family, and families help each other. Perhaps, if you need to repay us, you could consider allowing one of us to come visit your home one day.”

“No need to consider, I'd love it. So long as it's you.”

“It would be a great privilege to be chosen. I have never been more than twenty miles from here.” Mai studied the runnels on the window wistfully. “I would like to see how free people live, before I am given so much responsibility that I am unable to leave.”

Mai's remark gave Dian much cause for thought as she joined the boat's exodus on the northern shore, and over the next days as well. On the whole, she eventually decided, given the choice, she'd rather be a barbarian.

         

Before the end of the first day, Dian had shaken off the remnants of civilization and cultivated farmland to disappear into the unfamiliar hills and woodlands north of Meijing. She soon grew into the dreamlike rhythms of moving through complete wilderness, of going a day, two days without seeing a creature that walked on less than four legs; she rediscovered the sensation of being the head of a corporate animal composed of herself, the large and powerful partner beneath her, and two sets of sensitive, roving eyes and noses around her, which at a gesture transformed themselves into jaws and teeth. She moved beneath the trees and the sky, she went hours, an entire day, without using speech, she forgot the words to Kirsten's songs. One night, awakened by the rip of a cougar's voice, she found herself wondering if the Valley really needed her back.

Whether it was the climate or a particularly bad dose of the epidemics, human beings had become nearly extinct along California's northern coastline. Villages clustered at the edges of what had been midsize towns, and although the inhabitants were gentle people, probably due to a combination of poor nutrition, ill health, and the depressing squalor of their surroundings, she found herself avoiding them. Cities had become villages, towns were inhabited only by ghosts, and after she saw a green sign with still-visible white letters saying
Welcome to Ukiah, pop. 15,297
being used as the roof of a communal henhouse surrounded by a group of a dozen tin shacks in the middle of a log palisade, she left the road entirely and took to the hills.

The first snow met her in Crescent City, and on a whim she stopped at an inn that reminded her of Jamilla's, neat and unpretentious. A barely legible sign was hung carefully beside the door, the original bed-and-breakfast sign, with the subscript:
est. 1987.

She stayed an indulgent two nights there, getting clean, eating absurd quantities of food, sleeping, and on the second afternoon walking down to the smithy and spending an enjoyable couple of hours there gossiping while Simon was being shod. When she left town in the morning the ground was white, and the dogs bit at the snow happily and Simon snorted and blew. They rode north awhile, crossed the river, and turned inland, making for the hills. She figured that, riding cautiously, they would come to Miriam's village in four, maybe five days.

She was wrong.

. . . SO VIOLENTLY THAT SHE WAS FORCED TO DROP ONE KNEE TO THE GROUND.

E
IGHTEEN

T
HE ATTACK CAME WITHOUT WARNING.
E
VEN THE
dogs were caught unawares, and Dian's growing sense of unease she had put to the threat in the sky. As the afternoon's first flakes began to fall, her mind was preoccupied with the question of where to hole up in strange terrain, and her eyes had been studying the cliff that rose from the frozen stream she was following, in hopes of seeing an overhang or cave. So it was that the silent arrow flew against the wind into their midst. An instant too late, a blinding alarm shrieked out in Dian's head and she threw herself to one side, so the arrow that was aimed at her belly sank instead deep into the side of her upper thigh. The combined zip of the passing arrow beside his nose and Dian's sharp move on his back startled the placid Simon into a shy, tumbling Dian headfirst and uncontrolled out of the saddle. The last thing she knew was a brief blur of dogs, Culum and Tomas launching themselves downwind with the roar of battle beginning to break from their chests; then the rocks rose up to meet her, and she knew no more.

She came back slowly, reluctantly, perhaps an hour later. Her first dim awareness was, ironically, one of comfort, of being warmed and protected from the elements. Gradually some less pleasant sensations intruded. The rock jabbing her left cheek brought her up closer to consciousness; as she began to stir, she became aware of the deep ache in all the parts of her that were not so warm, parts that were in fact deadly cold. Her eyes fluttered open and gazed in dull incomprehension at the tawny field that dominated her vision. Her eyes had no inclination to focus, but as she lay thinking muzzily about what her current state might mean, she eventually decided that what she was seeing was fur, light-brown fur dusted with flakes of snow. She lay with that fact for nearly a minute, incurious, before her sluggish brain dredged up a degree of awareness. This was Culum's neck. It was Culum nestled into her belly. There was also warmth and motion coming from her back. Something told her the warmth was unlikely to be Isaac. Tomas? Yes, Tomas was lying against her spine, his deep chest filling rhythmically with air and pressing regularly into the middle of her back. She thought of this, and a trickle of uneasiness entered her heart, a sense of wrongness that went beyond her lying on a cold, hard surface. Tomas's breath against her back. Culum's neck in front of her. Culum's still neck.

Realization exploded in her mind. The horror, the impossibility of Culum's stillness drove her to stand and look, to prove herself wrong, to pummel him back into breath and warmth, but at the first whisper of movement her thigh came awake. The breath was driven from her lungs, and her throat emitted, not the shriek that reverberated within her, but a queer breathy moan, oddly like the sounds Judith had made in the final stages of her labor. She lay very still, trembling, and the arrow in her leg grew and burned there until it felt like a firebrand being ground into her flesh. The pain pounded in her ears, made her dizzy, and then well-meaning Tomas stirred from his place along her spine and stood up. That added jostle pushed her over the edge, and she blacked out again.

This time she emerged more quickly and aware of where she was. The cold was penetrating, now that Tomas was gone from her back, although she could feel his nose and breath on the nape of her neck. Keeping her muscles absolutely lax, the arrow's burn was manageable, and she forced herself to think. The temptation to sleep was immense. Particularly when, after a few minutes, she knew what she would have to do in order to leave this place.

There was no shelter here. Therefore, she had to get on the horse. To get on the horse, the arrow would have to come out, or the moving point was going to mangle her until she either bled to death or would never walk normally again. If it was barbed—and by the looks of it, it would be—there were two ways to remove the thing. One was surgical, to slice her own flesh open with her knife, dig out the arrowhead, and bind the terrible wound—without passing out forever. The other was to treat it like a fishhook (and for a moment Ling was there, the black cap of her hair gleaming in the summer sun as she bent over the hook embedded in the web between Susanna's thumb and forefinger, Ling's voice in the mutter of the iced-in stream, saying, “Better an inch of clean cut than half an inch of carnage”). An exquisitely cautious exploration with her fingertips told her that the arrow was buried in the strong muscle along the back of the upper thigh, having caught her just as she threw herself sideways. It had missed major blood vessels and skimmed past the bone, but it felt to her well and truly sunk in. On the other hand, it was aimed at the back of her thigh, not toward bone or artery. No choice, then—but, oh, God, she wished Ling were here.

She pulled the heavy, razor-sharp hunting knife from its sheath with frigid fingers. Trying to jostle the shaft as little as possible, she set her thumb and the knife blade on opposite sides of the wood and squeezed. Her arm shook with the effort, but the sharp steel cut its way through the hard wood until it was nearly at her thumb. She slid the knife back in its sheath and reached down to break off the arrow, a small twinge that made her body go rigid from toe to scalp. Sweating freely now and panting with apprehension, she held out her arm until the callused palm was just brushing the splintered break, then lay completely motionless for a time, trying to brace herself against what was to come. Suddenly, with a cry and a sharp spasm, her hand slapped down flat against the front of her thigh, driving the vicious barb out of the back of her thigh. Thin, keening moans filled the creekbed, joined by the whines of Tomas. After another minute her shaking fingers crept around the bloody trouser leg until they encountered the protruding steel, and with exquisite care explored the object as if it might just fall out on its own. It did not. With a sob of anticipation, Dian arched her back, wrapped her hand around the shaft, and jerked. Blood flowed thickly from both ends of the arrow's path, and Dian leaned forward and vomited onto the ground in back of Culum's head.

For several minutes she could only lie there, sobbing freely. When the first insult of pain had retreated a fraction, she whispered into Culum's back, “Tomas.” His cold, worried nose removed itself from her neck, and she knew he would be watching her alertly, craving the reassurance of a command, any command. She cleared her throat. “Tomas, fetch the horse.” No movement came from behind her. She prayed silently and gave the command again, trying to summon a firm, clear voice as if this were only a training session, with all the time in the world. “Tomas, fetch the horse.”

He stood up. She heard his claws dig into the hard-frozen sand as he stretched luxuriously. He moved around into her view, sniffed once at Culum's dead ear, and wagged his long tail, looking down at her expectantly.

“Yes, you're a good dog, but I'm going to bleed to death here, boy. Tomas. Fetch the fucking horse!” She had to get her leg bound up, and the cloth she wanted was in her saddlebag. If he wouldn't bring it, she would have to remove her coat and sweater to get at her shirt.

She closed her eyes and snapped at him through gritted teeth. “Damn it, Tomas: fetch the horse!” And to her vast relief she heard him move away. She raised her head, and sure enough, he was trotting over to where Simon was trying to graze. The young dog seized the dangling reins between his teeth and backed up with them, tugging the horse along. Simon was amenable to the familiar exercise, and in a very short time Tomas stood before her proudly, tail wagging.

“Yes, you are a good and clever dog, Tomas, and if we're very lucky we may get me out of here alive.” She reached for the reins and looped them around her wrist, for the smell of her blood would make even Simon nervous and Dian knew that Tomas would never catch him if he actually bolted. The saddle looked a long, long way up from where she lay.

She made it upright as far as the saddlebags, where she found a bandage to bind around her thigh, then loosed the sleeping roll and tossed it over Simon's neck. She was then faced with the obstacle of actually getting up onto the horse. She was half-tempted to take off the saddle completely, both for the ease of getting onto the smooth back and because a small voice told her that it would be easier on the animal if he were not burdened with the saddle after his rider had fallen off and died. On the other hand, once up she could tie herself to the saddle, and that might give her a greater chance of finding help. Besides, the effort of going around and uncinching the girth was just too much. So, standing on the wrong side and scrabbling to hook her good left leg over the horse's back, biting back curses and cries of pain so the already agitated creature didn't bolt entirely, she somehow made it into the saddle and lay her swimming head against Simon's neck so she didn't faint again.

When the blackness had retreated, she took out her knife and hooked its point into the fabric of the precious sleeping bag, slitting the bag straight across the bottom and halfway up one side. Down cascaded across Simon's shoulders and onto the creek bank to mingle with the snow, but the chambered construction of the bag would keep most of the feathers in. She worked the resulting tube over her head and draped it across the top of her legs. The cold embrace of the storm retreated a step, and she blessed Susanna and the child's mother and aunt from the depths of her heart.

It took her a few more minutes to bind herself onto the saddle, hands clumsy with cold. By the time she had caught up the reins, cursing with the effort of leaning forward against Simon's neck, there was a small red icicle hanging from the corner of her stirrup, and the light was beginning to leave the sky. She could see Culum, though, all too clearly. In death, his huge body looked almost small, a limp pile of fur with an arrow sticking from its broad and noble chest.

“Thank you, my friend,” she whispered. “Go with God. I will come back and bury you if I can.”

She turned upstream again. There was no point in turning back—the nearest friendly people were two days behind her, and she had seen no likely places to take refuge along the way. In the unknown ahead of her there could be help, or at least an abandoned shell of a house. Her attacker, slumped in a heap with a broken neck, was obviously not from the area, judging by the amount of equipment her horses carried. She only hoped that the woman had been alone, and that the next face she saw asked questions before shooting.

Within the hour Dian knew vaguely that she had made a mistake, but by that time she was in no shape to do anything about it. Once darkness fell there was no way to see shelter unless she fell headlong into it, which was not likely with Simon and Tomas in charge. I should have taught him to fetch a house, thought Dian idiotically, and after that lost track of the world. There passed a time of darkness with great soft pieces of snow slapping against her face, and occasionally branches, and twice she would have been swept off but for being tied. Once she saw Tomas, or rather his outline, white and frosted against a piece of dark ground, and once a pale owl, startled from a low branch. Hours later she had a lucid patch and became aware that the stream had disappeared, that they were climbing now, through trees. Oddly, it seemed that Tomas was nipping at the heels of the tired horse, driving it up the hill. Dian knew then that she had to be dreaming, and laughed weakly. “You're not a herding breed,” she told Tomas mildly, and fell back onto Simon's neck.

It was pitch black and still snowing when Dian woke to realize that they were standing still. Tomas was barking, for some reason, though it didn't sound like his fighting bark, which confused her. It confused her even more when there came a sudden shaft of light from out of the darkness. Tomas went quiet. Something touched her knee, a pair of hands swam into her vision by the light of a lamp—Isaac's hands, strong and sure, accompanied by a face that both was and was not his; startled dark eyes on a level with hers where she lay; long, sleep-tousled hair over a plaid shirt and deerskin coat. She looked into the unfamiliar face and smiled. “Good dog,” she murmured, and let herself go into a whirlpool of darkness.

CALIFíA, DRESSED AS A WOMAN IN THE
VERY BEST OF EXOTIC RAIMENT . . .