Tales of Downfall and Rebirth (64 page)

Felicita nodded. “I'll carry Ignacio with me. That leaves Puff—the horse that threw Jerome—to carry the gear. He's still jumpy. I don't trust him with a rider.”

Brett agreed. He left them to finish their arrangements while he collected Timpani and Xenophon, calculating their route back as he did so.

If Brett had still believed in any sort of beneficent deity, he might have thought the Creator was watching over them that day. The skies grew heavier and darker—reminding Brett that New Mexico had been notorious for deaths and injuries caused by lightning, back when people had the leisure to keep track of such things. Maybe the posse remembered this, too, because they saw neither hide nor hair of any other humans. When the rain came down, it fell in sheets. If it hadn't been for Xenophon's absolute certainty as to their trail, even Brett might have gotten lost. But the hound kept on point, his upright stick of a tail guiding them right up to the hidden entry into the kipuka.

The rain was letting up as Brett emerged from the tube that led to what had been his sanctuary from the world. He whistled to Fida and Rover, reassuring them that all was well.

“It's like a dollhouse!” exclaimed Rosamaria, looking with wonder around the still-dripping meadow. “I mean, not a dollhouse, but those little landscapes they make in boxes. It's so cute!”

Brett had not yet exchanged more than four words with this girl, since she had stayed on watch until they were ready to depart. Rosamaria Gallardo wasn't pretty, caught between coltish gawkiness and a young woman's figure she didn't know how to handle. Like her parents, she had brown hair and dark eyes, though her hair showed reddish highlights that time had dimmed in theirs.

However, he'd had ample opportunity to observe Rosamaria as she tenaciously kept her chestnut gelding in line. The chestnut—unimaginatively named Star, for the large white splash on his forehead—seemed offended by having to carry two riders. Maybe, as horses will, he realized that Jerome's seat was anything but sound and wanted him off. Rosamaria was having none of this. Star gave her trouble for the first mile, but by the second he was behaving, and by the third he had resigned himself to the fact that this featherweight was in charge. Better, Rosamaria had managed this feat without a crop or thudding of her heels into the horse's flanks. She'd simply met stubbornness with stubbornness.

Brett was irresistibly reminded of his and Leo's reaction to the hidden meadow what seemed like lifetimes ago. Swinging down from Timpani's saddle, he set about getting everyone—human and equine alike—settled. Despite ample and willing help, this wasn't a fast job. Twilight had turned to full dark by the time everyone had been fed, watered, and bedded down. The stable—not used this time of year except for its connection to the back thirty acres—was swept out and enlisted as a dormitory. Brett's bunk was given to Winna. A raised bed was constructed for Jerome by placing planks between chairs and padding the lot with the tents and one of Brett's rugs.

Overwhelmed by so much company—more than he'd had for over three years, for even on his visits to Acoma, Brett had tended to camp on the fringes of the lower village—Brett stepped outside. He was scratching the nanny goat between her horns when Felicita Gallardo came out, baby Ignacio gently fussing in her arms.

“Thank you, Brett,” she said, “for everything you have done for us today. You haven't asked, but do you wish to know why we were running from La Padrona's ranch?”

“I did wonder,” Brett admitted. “You'd lived there a long while, even, well . . . before.”

Felicita nodded, rummaged in the pockets of her skirt, and came up with a bottle, which she gave to Ignacio. “Yes, we had—since Rosamaria was little. Emilio started as a rider, became a wrangler, then was assistant to the farrier. He was interested in smithing, and Drew encouraged him to learn, even set up a proper forge. When the first farrier got tired of living nowhere, Emilio was given the job.”

“And you?”

Felicita flashed a warm smile. “I liked living there. Before we went to the Double A, I had a little business making alterations to garments and making custom dresses. After we moved, I continued doing the fancy work. With that, with Emilio, with our children, I was very happy.

“Even after the Change, we did very well. Emilio's skills were in great demand. He trained others to do much of the shoeing, because suddenly there were no stores where you could order hinges or latches or a hundred and one other things you never think about until they are gone. My skills as a seamstress were much in demand. Annabella Andersen was not going to stop looking good, even after—maybe especially after—Drew died.”

Felicita's expression grew somber. “It was not all good. There was a sickness—maybe a flu—in the second year. Most of the adults who caught it lived, but Rosamaria's little brother and sister both died.”

“I . . . I'm very sorry.”

In the moonlight, Brett saw the fierce shake of her head. “We have all had losses. I am not asking for your pity. I tell you to explain why we left. Rosamaria is our only remaining child. I do not seem to be able to have any more. Ignacio is an orphan we took. Winna tried, but she could not save his mother. Valerie was too young and he was a large baby. Many things we took for granted—like mothers surviving childbirth—are gone now. Emilio and I took the child. But having Ignacio does not mean that we no longer cared for our Rosamaria. When . . .”

Her voice trailed off. Brett waited, uneasy but knowing he wanted to hear. Yet, when Felicita began to speak again, he wondered if she'd forgotten what she'd been talking about.

“Annabella took Drew's death hard. She had her children—the boy, Andrew, and two younger girls—but she has always been a woman who lives for the admiration and control of men. Now she had lost her man—and in losing her man, she had lost all men. Do you understand?”

“Not really.”

“Annabella wanted to keep the Double A, for her, for her Andy when he was man enough to hold it. To do this, she must play the men off each other.”

“Like Queen Elizabeth,” Brett said, “the first one, I mean. Everyone wanted her to marry, but she wouldn't give control over to a man.”

“Like that,” Felicita agreed. “Maybe Elizabeth really was a virgin queen. Maybe she was sterile. Maybe she was just lucky. But Annabella knew she was not sterile. For a woman who had access to reliable birth control all her life, to suddenly be so vulnerable was agony. I know this, because she consulted Winna and Winna told me. So Annabella Andersen, who liked men very much, and who probably had lovers even when her husband was alive, was suddenly forced to celibacy. I think this is why, when Andy grew old enough to be, as they joke, ‘randy' she did not discourage him.”

“She was living through him?” Brett asked. “Like that. For sex?”

He was glad there was only moonlight, because he knew he was blushing.

“That is so,” Felicita agreed coolly. “But for both of them, sex is bound up with power. Within the last year, Andy has developed a taste not so much for virgins, but for ‘deflowering.'”

Brett saw where this was heading and cut in to spare Felicita the pain of explaining. “Rosamaria.”

“Yes. He was waiting until she turned fifteen because, in Spanish culture, fifteen is when a girl is considered a woman.”

“There's a celebration for that, isn't there?” Brett said. “I remember some of the girls in my school talking about it. Fancy dresses, like prom dresses, and a big party. But I thought that just meant they were allowed to start dating?”

“That's how many families interpreted the custom. A fifteen-year-old girl is often not strong enough to bear a child and live.” She bounced the baby in her arms. “Ignacio's mother was fifteen when she became pregnant.”

“Oh . . .”

“Emilio and I decided we must get Rosamaria away from there. Emilio worked closely with Jerome. Before the Change, Jerome was a mechanic. Although internal combustion engines have stopped working, there is still a demand for his skills.”

“For mills,” Brett thought aloud. “Clockwork of any sort. Even simple things like lifts would work better if someone who understood bracings and such was involved.”

“More,” Felicita said. “There has been talk about things like crossbows and catapults. I often worked in the big house, and overheard a great deal.”

“And Jerome wanted nothing to do with that?”

“Nothing. What tipped the balance was when Winna overheard some jokes about ‘darkies,' including a reference to her as an ‘Aunt Jemima' and another very cruel routine that ended with ‘But I don't know nothing about birthin' no babies.' Given that this was soon after she lost Ignacio's mother . . .”

Brett's fists tightened. “Grandfather Nathan hinted that La Padrona was beginning to think of people as her property. No easier place to start than with black folk. Move to darker Spanish and Indians, then . . . After a while, there wouldn't be a need to make excuses.”

“Slavery has been reborn elsewhere,” Felicita said, “or so we hear, without the excuse of race, only with power. Jerome realized that his scruples would mean nothing with Winna and the children as hostages. He asked Emilio for advice and Emilio—with my full enthusiasm—suggested they run away with us.”

“Ah . . .”

There was a long silence, then Felicita said softly, “And you? How did you come to help us? You said something about Nathan Tso of Acoma. This is the same as the Grandfather Nathan you mentioned? Are you also of Acoma? Tso is a Navajo name, but you do not look Navajo, either.”

“My best friend, Leo, was Nathan Tso's grandson. Nathan had a Navajo father, Acoma mother. His daughter married an Acoma man, and eventually Nathan settled with his Acoma family. That's how I met Nathan. He taught me—and Leo—a lot. Anyhow, by chance, I was in Acoma trading for supplies soon after riders from Double A had been through asking after you. Grandfather Nathan told me and he mentioned Emilio.”

“Good chance for us,” Felicita said. “Without you, we probably would have been found.”

“Almost certainly,” Brett said. “Once they learned you folks hadn't shown up anywhere, they'd have figured like I did and started looking closer in. Even if you got Jerome up on a horse, he wouldn't have been able to ride point and find you a good route like he'd been.”

“Then God was looking out for us,” Felicita said.

Long buried anger surged up, anger Brett hadn't admitted to for years. His hands wrapped around the top rail of the goat enclosure so tightly that he felt the wood creak.

“God looking out for you! How can you say that? You lost two children to an illness that would have kept them in bed a few days before. If they caught something really bad, they could have gone to the hospital, been put on fluids. You'd still have them . . .”

“Maybe,” Felicita said, carefully, as if she were trying to convince herself. “Maybe not. We cannot read the future. Maybe humanity needed to learn a lesson.”

Brett heard her pain, but his bottled-up anger had a life of its own. “What about all the nonhumans who died? I worked part-time in a pet shop, before. Do you know what happens to tropical fish when the power fails and the back-up generators don't come on? Even goldfish can't live once the pumps are off too long. March gets damn cold here, especially at night. Do you know what happens to little animals that don't have heat? Do you know what happens to animals that need a special diet? They start dying, slowly and painfully. Do you know what we had to do when we realized that the power wasn't coming back?”

Even in the moonlight, he could see Felicita's eyes widen and knew that she did. He didn't spare her—or maybe he wasn't sparing himself.

“We killed them. All those little creatures who trusted us, who looked up with big eyes when we came over because we were the ones who fed them and fussed over them. We killed them. And what did they ever do to deserve that?”

“You gave them mercy.”

“I killed them. Me, because I knew how to do it cleanly. I sang the songs Grandfather Nathan had taught us, but still, I killed them. Birds, chinchillas, hedgehogs, guinea pigs, sugar gliders, exotic reptiles, all the creatures who couldn't hope to live because it was cold and the food they needed would never arrive. We waited a week, a week too long. They were already beginning to suffer.”

“Oh, Brett . . .” The pity was real. So was the wisdom in her dark eyes. “But that wasn't all, was it?”

“I'd worked part-time at the pet store. My other job was at my family's business: the Cloverleaf, a restaurant and Irish tavern.”

He laughed, a hard, barking sound. “It actually did pretty well. Lots of tourists get sick of everything with green chili and tortillas. My parents didn't believe that things wouldn't get ‘right' again. I tried to tell them, tried to get them away, but they kept talking about this blackout or that storm. Never mind that planes didn't fall out of the sky during those. Never mind that every engine didn't stop working.

“My parents weren't dumb. They knew that any place with liquor would attract looters. So they brought people in to help hold the building. They used their supplies—they had extra because this all happened on Saint Patrick's Day—to set up a sort of soup kitchen, feeding people in return for wood or additional food. They fed a lot of people who didn't bring anything.

“The day after the pet store . . . closed, I left to go pick up some donations. Sacks of beans, I think. I got back after dark. The place was still—and it was never that way. Even at night, someone was up cooking or keeping watch. I went in the back way, lit a candle . . . They'd all been murdered: Mom and Dad, my younger brother and sister, my older sister and her kids, who had come back to be ‘safe.' Her husband. Old man Seamus, who'd bartended for as long as anyone could remember, was behind the bar. Someone had slashed his throat. They'd walked on his body to break down the door to the liquor cellar.