Mulberry Wands (26 page)

She had to carry the orange in front of her
to get through the tunnel, and it was awkward, but not as heavy as
it should have felt. She felt, ironically, stronger now that she
was small. She could carry things that weighed almost as much as
she did, like a large piece of fruit.

When the tunnel ended, she looked up and
gasped. Spiny prickly pear pads arched overhead, with red fruit
overripe and wrinkling outlined against a perfectly clear sky. The
wide stump of a palm tree protruded a few inches above the dirt,
and on this fibrous stage they were piling enormous amounts of
food.

Reela stood on the stump and shouted to get
the children to quiet enough so she could be heard. Then she spoke
briefly, while the children fidgeted and the women gossiped a
little quieter. Finally she gestured to the food and said something
that was probably “let’s eat” by the way they all cheered.

The food was delicious. The pigeon sausages
were smoky and salty and spicy all at once, and they’d made a
pomegranate chutney that complemented them perfectly. They had
plenty of oranges (though it was a little early for lemons and
grapefruits) and the mesquite-pod flatbread, and sauteed mustard
greens that were so fresh the cooks’ hands were still green. She
and the adults stuffed themselves, though the children held out
until they served slices of prickly-pear fruit preserved in honey.
She’d actually never eaten prickly-pear fruit before, except once
as jam in a tourist shop, and she quite liked it. The children ate
so much that their hands were sticky to the elbow, and their faces
were pink and glistening except around the mouth where they’d
licked their lips clean.

After all the food had been eaten, Susan
helped Viiene and the girl from the men’s group move an earthenware
cup filled with water to the top of the fire. There were no dishes
to clean, as they’d eaten off of leaves, but when the water grew
warm, they lined the children up and wiped them off as best as they
could. Then they used the dirty water to extinguish the fire and
sat with the other adults, drinking something fruity and fermented.
They gossiped and told stories and sang, sometimes remembering to
use English for her sake but mostly forgetting.

There were few things Susan liked as much as
a big party with lots of food outside when the weather was cool and
sunny and the sky was a rare pollution-free blue. If she hadn’t
been a prisoner, worried sick about what was going to happen to her
when Tuusit got back from the court (assuming that’s where he was)
she would have counted it among one of the most pleasant days of
her life.

“Susan, this is my sister Aiine and her
husband Yuun,” Reela said.

Aiine was between Reela and Tuusit in age,
though her husband was much older. He even had gray hair, which
Susan hadn’t seen among any of the translators.

“So you’re the human our brother is trying to
save,” Aiine said. She looked at Susan’s breast, then stomach. “I
hope he’s not foolish enough to marry you. I’d wager you’re barren.
It’s suspicious that you’re so old and haven’t been pregnant.”

“How do you know I haven’t?”

Aiine pointed at Susan’s stomach.

Susan glanced at Aiine’s own stomach, which
was was covered in smooth stripes, stretch marks like brocade. She
sniffed. “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

Reela’s smile faltered, and she looked
uncomfortable. Yuun patted his wife’s shoulder, leaning away, like
he wanted to support her but didn’t want a fight and couldn’t quite
make up his mind how to reconcile these.

Reela cleared her throat. “Susan. I’m glad to
see you enjoyed the food. It’s good to see you eating more. You
lost a lot of weight when you were recovering from the cat
scratches.”

“Cat scratches?” Yuun asked. “I haven’t heard
about that.”

Reela smiled at her brother-in-law, like
she’d passed him a ball and he’d been clever enough to catch it.
Susan turned towards him, like she was going to have a polite
conversation even if Aiine was determined to find something to
insult her about. Barren. What kind of person said that to a
woman?

“Yes,” Reela continued. “The scratches got
infected, and we worried that she wasn’t going to make it. But
you’re feeling better now, aren’t you, Susan?”

“She does look wan and sickly,” Aiine said.
“She might still die.”

“No, she looks plump enough to me,” Yuun
said. He even patted her belly. “Like a healthy baby. Nice and
chubby.”

He said it cheerfully, like it was a
compliment, but it hit Susan in exactly the wrong way. Her defenses
crumbled, as all the repressed anxiety she had from worrying about
how she was going to get home again bubbled to the surface. She
felt tears prick her eyes.

By the time she’d run through the cactus
tunnel and back to the cinderblock warren, she was crying so hard
she could barely see, and her sobs had started her coughing
again.

***

Tuusit came back that evening. She’d been
lying on top of the cinderblock wall, staring at the contrails in
the sky, thinking about flying in a plane and other human things.
The wall had grown warm during the day, but now that the sun had
set and twilight was darkening the sky, it chilled off in a hurry.
She shivered, but she didn’t move, because she didn’t really want
to talk to anyone.

She knew the moment Tuusit came back, because
conversations filtered up through the wall to her ear. It wasn’t
that she could understand their language, but their intonation made
sense to her now, and she could pick out certain phrases, like the
phrase they used when someone had been gone away from the
cinderblock warren for more than a day. He asked about her, she
heard her name, and the answer he got was hesitant. She imagined
that someone knew where she was; you couldn’t keep secrets in a
house like this. Everyone lived on top of one another, and they all
knew one another’s business. Most of the time she liked it. It made
her happy to always have people around.

But she was realizing how much she missed her
privacy.

Tuusit got on top of the wall the same way
she did, by scaling the outside. Translators weighed so little that
it was as easy for them to climb as it was for a lizard. She heard
him hoist himself over the top, and felt warmth near her feet as he
sat down on the wall next to her. She didn’t greet him, or sit up
even, just kept staring at the sky. A jet soared overhead, close
enough that she could make out the lighted oval windows. Maybe if
she ever got back she could fly someplace, go on a trip. Visit her
little sister maybe. She hadn’t seen Julie in a year. She missed
her. How was that for homesick? She even missed Julie.

Tuusit cleared his throat. “The judicial
council reached its conclusion.”

“You should have taken me with you,” she
said. “I have the right to be at my own trial.”

“That is not our way,” he said. “You must
trust that I had your best interests in mind.”

She didn’t say anything. She was pissed off,
but not in the mood to argue.

“Susan?”

“I’m listening.”

“The council decreed that the cat is the real
murderer. Any cat is dangerous. A cat that can see the fey, and can
also appear out of nowhere is especially deadly,” he said. “You
must help us disable your beast so that it can’t hunt us
again.”

She propped herself up so she could see him.
He was sitting crosslegged, with his hands laid across his knees
like a sage. There was an unhappiness about him.

“Is there more?”

“You must be part of the party that confronts
it.”

“Yeah, of course.” She frowned, confused by
his expression. “You don’t seem happy with that.”

“I admire your bravery, but I don’t want the
beast to kill you.”

“Sphinx won’t kill me.” She started making a
plan. She’d have to get into the house again, but that’s what she
wanted to do anyway. If they let her go, moreover, if they helped
her, she was sure she could do it.

They’d have to get into her room and boot up
her computer, assuming that the room was still more or less intact.
She could shut the door and keep the cat out long enough to read
the spell. It would take at least a few hours to tinker with it,
unless for some reason Ruby stepped in, which she doubted. Ruby
wasn’t an on-call kind of goddess.

“You are strong, Susan, but you are not a
warrior.”

She glanced at Tuusit. There was more he
wasn’t saying.

“After we disable the cat, the judicial
council will make me big again, right?”

He didn’t answer her question, which was as
good as confirming her suspicions. They couldn’t, or wouldn’t, make
her big again. He wouldn’t look at her, which probably meant that
he felt ashamed that he had to break his promise. Well, no matter.
Between her and Maggie, they could figure it out.

“You did say disable, right?”

“We can use javelins to wound it. Killing it
outright is too difficult.”

“I have a better idea. How about we just
avoid her long enough to get into the house, and then I’ll look up
a spell that will make it so that Sphinx can no longer see the
fey.”

“You want to spare its life?”

“Zoë loves that cat,” she said. “And it would
be safer, wouldn’t it?”

Tuusit grunted in grudging agreement. “I’m
unwilling to lose any more friends to that beast. Garaant was a
good warrior.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said, gently, then
continued in a more resentful voice. “It wasn’t the first time one
of our people has been killed working for the Sunwards.”

“You work for them?”

“We must,” he said, like that was obvious.
“We have a treaty.”

“A treaty?”

“We translate for them, and in return, they
don’t kill us.” He shifted his seat so that his legs were dangling
over the side of the wall, and stared off across the dark parking
lot, as though he were staring meditatively into the ocean.

“That’s not a treaty, that’s extortion.”

“It keeps us alive.”

She moved closer to him, using his body as a
windbreak, and dangled her legs over the side. It was chilly, and
the air was crisply dry.

“I was dating one of the Sunwards.”

“You were dating an owl?” Tuusit asked,
aghast. The cold didn’t seem to bother him.

“No!” she spluttered. “He’s a guy. A human
guy.”

“Oh. Him.”

“He’s the one who came to visit.” Her teeth
started chattering, but she’d rather freeze than go inside. This
was the first truly private conversation she’d had since she came
here. “You knew he was a Sunward?”

“We know everything about the Sunwards. We
translate for them, so we know their secrets, and they have power
over us, so it behooves us to know what is happening in their
society.” He picked her up and set her in front of him so that his
chest was against her back. She would have been impressed by how
easily he was able to lift her, except that she was proportionally
strong too. He crossed his arms in front of her and rested his chin
against her head. She felt instantly warmer. “We know more about
the Sunwards than they do about each other, because owls do not
gossip. It’s only by the grace of their goddess that they have any
society at all. True owls are solitary creatures.”

“Paul doesn’t like owls.”

“None of the human Sunwards like the
owls.”

“There are others?” she asked, half turning
to see his face. “Paul didn’t mention any.”

“He likely doesn’t know. We might tell him
someday, if he has something we need to bargain for.” Tuusit held
her tighter. “Susan, don’t marry him. You can’t trust
Sunwards.”

“I just dated him a few times. We’re nowhere
near the talking about marriage point. And it’s—”

“None of my business what you do with your
private life. I know,” he said. “But I care for you, and I don’t
want you to get hurt.”

She felt his warm chest against her back, and
was reminded again that they were both naked. The translators were
pretty touchy-feely, but not often across gender lines. She’d seen
women hug and hold hands, but men didn’t flirt with women or vice
versa. If Tuusit had been touching anything other than her arms,
she would have figured this hug was a warm-up to sex. But he didn’t
touch anything other than her arms, and he didn’t kiss her. He
didn’t even have an erection, which was either a relief or an
insult, (she couldn’t decide which). As far as she could tell, he
was as uninterested in her naked body as her bath towel was.

“Why were the Sunwards investigating me? Why
do they care about the rumblers? Are they big on animal rights?
Rumblers are cute and all, but surely they’re not worth killing a
person over.”

“No, of course not. They don’t value human
life, or any life except their own. They eat the rumblers. They’re
guarding their territory so others don’t take the food.”

“Are there Sunwards all over?”

“Their lady shines everywhere but the deepest
caves and darkest oceans. The owls are her eyes in the darkness.
She knows all.”

“Maybe that’s the real reason that mages
don’t make wands. Maybe it’s not that it’s impossible, but that any
time someone figures it out, the Sunwards take them down.”

“They like to kill.”

“You sound like you hate them.”

“We fear them,” he said.

“Have they killed you guys before? I mean,
since you guys made your arrangement with them?”

“Yes. Once one of us, not related to me, but
one of our people who live north of the river, said that he didn’t
like the treaty. He was known as “Chain” because he wore a length
of human-made chain around his neck. He was quite famous, as he was
something of a traveler and storyteller. He said that his brother
had been injured when an owl dropped him, and that he renounced the
treaty we have with the Sunwards. He openly refused to translate
anymore. He was even brave enough to tell the owls this.”