Califia's Daughters (39 page)

T
HIRTY-ONE

A
UGUST, AGAIN.
H
EAT LAY ON THE
V
ALLEY, CHILDREN
shouted and shrieked from the millpond. In the fields, the orchards, the barns, women and men labored. The harvest was under way, and although it was not a bounty such as last year's, it would be adequate, with care, to hold them through the winter. God was good.

Judith was working her way down the row of bush beans with her hoe. In a few minutes she would be at the fence and could start up the next row, and so it had gone all morning. She liked hard physical labor. The mind had no place in it, just grit and stamina, very satisfying and incongruously restful.

She reached the end, walked over to the shade under the young mulberry tree where she'd left her water bottle, drank, walked back, and began the next row. She and Isaac had chosen to do the entire field themselves, although he was up at the house at the moment. They often worked together, pulled into each other by the vacuum of Dian's absence. He was a good partner. He didn't insist on making conversation. That was restful too. Back up the row, the uneven rhythm of chop, scuffle, pull, chop, pull, scuffle, chop, leaving drifts of wilting weeds in her wake where she had freed the beans of their competition, mindless and necessary work.

What would Dian have thought, told of her sister's uncharacteristic affection for brute labor? She wondered, as never a day passed without wondering, if she would ever know what had happened to her sister. She'd left a note in the snow for Miriam to find, a maddening little note saying only,
Dian was here,
and then nothing. The world was just too big, and the expansion of this Valley into the land beyond the waterfall was only another symptom of its uncontrollability.

She increased her pace and was soon soaked in sweat. Her mind's jabber retreated.

Up the row, turn the corner, back down to the fence, stop to swallow some lukewarm water, up the next row, turn the corner, back down. Soon it would be time for lunch, her breasts told her, though she would like to keep on with this until darkness came and she could fall exhausted into bed, or until the earth came up around her legs and swallowed her up. Chop, scuffle, chop, pull, scuffle.

What?

It took her a moment to realize that Isaac was shouting at her. She straightened her back painfully, and then the bell's clamor rang out and she looked, startled, up the hill and saw women running toward the houses, and beyond them men—David and Salvador, Peter with Jon on his hip—sprinting up for the high meadow with a woman behind—Consuela?—urging them on. Hanna went pounding by up the road with two dripping children in her arms and three more at her heels, shouting unintelligible words while Carmen bellowed for
Laine!
—who would be sleeping after her night watch, Judith thought, but not Sonja because she'd gone out with a scavenging group—but Laine had heard the bell and burst out of her house at the run, half-dressed and a rifle in one hand as she pelted barefoot down the dusty road toward the bridge—all this in an instant, and Judith let the hoe drop and was moving fast in the direction of the mulberry before her head had finished turning to see what was coming at them. As Judith scrambled over the fence without seeing it, Laine passed her, shoving her shirttails one-handed into her waistband, shouting an order to Judith to get to the caves, accelerating into the turn of the road with her rifle at the ready. Then between one step and the next, all urgency left her, as her shoulders came up and she decelerated to a flat-footed halt in the space of five strides. Judith glanced toward the tree and trotted into the center of the road to see what Laine was looking at, with her rifle barrel pointing so casually off to the side. The road's bend and the height of the corn kept Judith from seeing, but she could hear hooves, a lot of them, crossing the mill bridge, hoofbeats her mind insisted were coming at an easy, nonthreatening walk. Judith came up beside the armed woman standing openly in the middle of the road, watching the approach of:

Jeri, grinning fit to split her face, escorting what looked at first glance like:

A hundred ebony-haired, green-uniformed, armed and mounted Meijing guards, at whose head was:

A tall Chinese woman balancing an absurdly pale white-blond toddler on her left thigh with great aplomb, and riding beside her:

A man, stocky and dark-skinned, a tiny infant tucked to his chest, and gamboling amid his horse's hooves:

Two ungainly, huge-footed, long-tailed puppies, one brindled, the other jet black. Beside them, on the outside where she had just come into view—or where Judith's eyes had finally acknowledged her:

Dian. No Culum, no Tomas, but with another tiny baby strapped to her chest.

The leading Meijing soldier put her right hand into the air and the entire black-haired cavalcade drifted to a stop, except for Dian, who rode forward, dismounted, and walked the remaining distance until she stood in front of her sister.

“Hello, Jude.”

“My God,” Judith finally forced out of her throat. “My God, we thought you were dead.”

“I know. I couldn't get a message to you until five weeks ago, and then nobody would bring it here because of the hill tribes, and that's why half of these technicians are here, to set up a communications system—oh, sweet Jesus, Jude, I never thought I'd get home again,” and then the sisters were in each other's arms, crying and laughing and hugging until the mite on Dian's chest bleated in protest, and Judith stood away with a question in her eyes. Dian edged the sling away from the flat face, revealing a shock of thick black hair on the small head.

“Your nephew, Jude. My son.” She half turned and held out her hand to the man, who dismounted and walked up to them. “My sister, Judith,” she said to him. “Jude, this is my friend Robin. And the one he's carrying is your niece. My daughter.”

“What? Dian, what is this?” Judith was torn between laughter and disbelief as she touched first one black head, then the other.

“Twins. I never believed in doing things halfway. Oh, and that's Willa, on Mai's lap.” She pointed at the pale toddler. “She's mine too, in a roundabout sort of way. She was named for Will. Jude, I'm sorry.” She reached out to touch her sister's arm, but her motion was arrested by the sight of a very dirty naked little boy baby who was trying to crawl onto the road from the shade of the mulberry tree, to be thwarted by the lowest rail of the fence. Realizing his failure, he pulled himself upright and bellowed. Judith shook her head, went over to retrieve the child and his shed diaper, and brought him back on her hip.

“Will,” she said, “this is your aunt Dian. What's wrong?” she asked, seeing her sister's face change.

“I thought . . . I dreamed.” She stopped, and her eyes rose involuntarily to the empty attic window in the big house. “Kirsten.”

“Dian, I'm sorry. She died, just before Christmas. In her sleep one night. She told me she'd had a dream about you, a couple of weeks before. She would have been so happy to see you.”

Death came when I grew old enough to understand what it took to make a life. . . .

“Yes. Yes, I dreamed about her too.” She turned her back sharply on the house, thus missing the figure who stepped off the veranda, slowly, as if unsure of his vision. “Judith, this is Mai; she came as a friend, and as an official Meijing representative. Do you think we can find them something to drink? We won't have to house them, they'll bivouac down by the bridge, but a stab at hospitality would be a good start. I thought I'd ask Ling to put Robin up for a few days, until he decides where to go.”

Judith cast an eye on the invaders, who actually numbered fewer than thirty, and began to call out to the others, asking Lenore to organize beer and lemonade and maybe some ice, sending one of the girls to retrieve those who had sprinted for the caves at the sound of the bell, catching Susanna's eye and sending her off to summon up quantities of food from across the Valley. She looked back and found Dian watching her, eyes sparkling. She grinned in return.

“What are their names?” she asked.

“I didn't name them yet. I thought, since Isaac missed everything else, the least I could do was to let him—” Her eyes went past Judith up the road, to the burly, bearded figure slowly approaching. When Judith turned back, she saw all the emotions flood into her sister's face, the yearning and the joy and the hope and the fear that he, that they . . . Dian hesitated, and Judith gave her the answer.

“God, he's missed you, Dian.”

Wordlessly, Robin handed Dian her daughter, and watched as the two figures met on the road, the man's hand trembling as it touched her face, his tears visible from here. Yes, Robin thought, this man is worthy of her.

Judith led her unexpected guests up the hill to her home, and when Laine turned to follow the last jingling, polished horse and its rider, Dian and Isaac were still bent over, huddled together, blind and deaf to anything outside of themselves, and their children.

E
PILOGUE

From a distance, there was nothing on the hillside, nothing but the dry grasses of late summer and the encroaching scrub trees of the Northern California forest.

The turkey vulture had spotted him some time ago and begun to glide in lowering arcs. She remembered this place, if birds can be said to have a memory, where one bright, hot morning earlier in the season she had circled down over a positive mountain of food, only to have two parts of it stir, rise to their feet, and walk away. One of them had moved slowly and the other with the awkward gait of an animal about to give birth, but despite these hopeful signs they did not seem in any immediate hurry to provide her importunate fledglings with breakfast. The horse they left behind, however, was more than adequate.

Now there was another meal waiting at precisely the same spot, stretched out among the long-cleaned bones and the scattering of cloth and metal objects that the two figures had abandoned and the grass had not yet covered. It was certainly skinnier than the horse had been; still, even the bony ones had their tasty bits. She dropped down lower yet, eyeing the figure cautiously. Doesn't do to hurry, not with these kind that had teeth and a temper: she had a scar on her left wing to remind her of that.

By the time she decided that the corpse was going nowhere, she had half a dozen companions. Ever philosophical, the vulture knew that the object below would feed them all, but she was becoming impatient and dropped down to land, first in the snag of a dead tree, then on a tall Remnant of a chimney, and finally to bounce along the ground toward this tawny, bony, toothy lump of meat. She paused, spread her wings slightly, and hopped up onto the log beside the dry bones—and then she was flapping frantically for height when the tawny corpse came back to life and snapped at her. She retreated with dignity to her perch in the dead apple tree and, folding her wings, settled herself with the others to wait. From the looks of it, it would not be long.

The day wore on, the shadows shortened and then grew long again, and still the animal snarled and snapped whenever one of them approached, once coming away with a mouthful of feathers. There were now eleven patient vultures in the tree, murmuring encouragements to one another and outwaiting the dog.

Finally, when the shadows of the hill had begun to swallow up the objects below, their potential breakfast struggled to its feet—stiffly, with only three of his paws touching the ground, but nonetheless standing. The front of his chest was a mess of scabs and scars where the infection from the bullet was still fading, his left ear dangled and oozed from a fight with a coyote two days before, and the bones of his noble spine and hips poked up into the matted, brittle drape of his fur, but he was on his feet, limping slowly away to the south. Inside his chest the great heart beat on, unflagging, as Tomas followed the long-ago footsteps and faded scent of his own, his beloved. His Dian.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

L
EIGH
R
ICHARDS
is a third-generation native of California, born, raised, and now living in the same area that
Califia's Daughters
is set. She is better known as
New York Times
bestselling mystery writer Laurie R. King. Her most recent acclaimed mystery novel is
The Game
.