The Artifact of Foex (17 page)

Night settled as they hiked. Cars
occasionally passed them. A few slowed down but Knife waved them
on, smiling and bantering with forced cheer. They turned off the
gravel byway for a dirt road. Chet hoped Knife and Journey knew
where they were going, as there were no signs. Fenimore found a
fallen branch and trimmed it with his hunting knife as they crossed
through a wood lot, whittling a walking stick. Chet was chaffing
and hungy, but at least it wasn’t cold in summertime.

Chet gaped as they broke through the trees.
The stars overhead were brighter than he’d ever seen in his life.
Elderbeth hadn’t yet risen on the horizon to drown out the night
sky in green light. “We really are in the country, aren’t we?” Chet
said after a while.

“Yep,” Knife said. “Our colleague, Othnielia,
likes it that way.”

“At least it isn’t threatening rain," Journey
murmured.

“That’s true. We’re being framed for murder
with half the police force of Wetshul after us, we’re bound to an
ancient, blood-soaked magical relic, and separated from our luggage
and transportation, but at least we won’t burn to death
tonight.”

Chet scowled. “Hey, you didn’t just see your
professor’s dead body bloody on the floor.”

“Or wake up three-hundred years in the
future,” Fenimore added.

“Yes, I suppose there’s that.” Journey
sounded like she wanted to cry, but was holding herself together.
“Though now that I think about it, being pushed into lucid mud
would be the most horrible of fates. I wouldn’t want to wake up in
the future not knowing what had happened between times. Centuries
or even millennia, gone. Just like that. Or you might not ever wake
up again, and you’d never
know
it.”

“I went into lucid mud, once, and I woke up
again," Knife said, sounding amused in the dark.

“
That
was under controlled
circumstances, as I recall.”

“Hey, my plan worked, didn’t it?” Knife
sounded hurt. “And the Watering Times could hardly be called
‘controlled circumstances.’”

Chet frowned critically. “Wouldn’t lucid mud
burn you to dea—ah. Not water based, right.” He was growing
stupider by the minute to forget what he’d learned only last
semester. “Knife, why did you go into lucid mud?”

Knife obliged. The story was followed by
others; they took turns spinning tales, though Chet didn’t have
much life experience to draw on.

The stories stopped when they arrived at what
turned out to be a farm. There were no exterior lights on the
property, but by that time Elderbeth had risen. The gas giant
dominated a quarter of the night sky. Without light pollution, Chet
could see swirling details on the planet’s surface, plus a
scattering of silhouetted moons. More importantly, by Elderbeth’s
light Chet could see a large barn, exterior buildings and a cozy
house surrounded by fields and rolling farmland. It looked like a
calendar picture. He could smell wood-fire smoke and the odor of
farm animals like the past come to life. No sounds of traffic. The
front window was illuminated by an oil lantern, the others covered
by gingham curtains; there was flickering light inside, as if from
fire rather than electricity.

Journey knocked on the door. After a moment
it was opened by an overweight, middle-aged, flaxen-skinned woman
wearing what seemed to be a homemade dress and apron. Chet’s heart
froze: were they at the wrong place? Her graying hair seemed
real.

The woman looked over her shoulder and
called, “’Lia, they’re here.”

A gaunt man with a wrinkled, deeply tanned
face appeared behind her. He had a distinct belly sticking out,
though he wasn’t fat. It was only by his wrinkled bald head that
Chet would have ever guessed the guy was Flame. He didn’t
look
Flame. Why would a shapeshifter want to appear so
ugly? Yet he grinned toothily—he was missing an incisor—as Journey
leapt into his arms.

“Othnielia!” she cried out.
Now
Journey was crying as she buried her face in his chest. “Oh,
Pantheon, everything’s turned to shit.”

“There, now, lovely one. Come in and tell me
all about it.” The guy—Flame—held her tenderly. “Masie, get the
fire built up? And let’s heat some supper. I assume you haven’t
eaten yet.”

“No, not yet,” Knife said.

Knife was hanging back, Chet realized. He
seemed vaguely uncomfortable. Chet noticed that Knife had changed
back in his usual bistre-skinned, tall-and-skinny shape. The messy
wig
looked
like a wig, out of context next to his skin
tone.

“Well, come on in. Don’t dangle on my
doorstep and let mosquitoes inside.”

Chet gulped and obeyed. The house didn’t have
any electric lights—instead oil lamps burned on the hewn dining
room table and sitting room, which also had a fire in the grate. A
younger woman attended to it as Masie moved around the kitchen,
getting down plates and stirring a real cook-stove fire. Othnielia
had his hands full with Journey. He crooned softly as she wept all
over him. Chet wondered whether the Flame would help in the kitchen
otherwise, if the division of labor was fairer in this house than
with a real man and woman.
Or, um, women.

Fenimore breathed in deeply beside him. “At
last, a
real
place,” he said. “I was starting to wonder if
there was any normalcy left on Uos.”

Chet found himself oddly in agreement with
Fenimore. Despite its strangeness, this house seemed very real to
him, too.

“Othnielia and his family are rare,” Knife
murmured. “At least they have glass windows rather than oiled cloth
or rice paper, as if we still lived in the Cobalt Era.”

The young woman who’d been building up the
fire came over and shyly introduced herself as Saemion. Chet
wondered how she fit into the picture. Was Othnielia involved with
one woman or both? She couldn’t be his daughter, after all. His
curiosity fled as soon as the table was set and a pot of thick,
bubbling stew placed on a trivet in the middle. It smelled
alluringly of doedicu meat and vegetables. Pickled sides of all
sorts were placed around it in little dishes. Fresh baked bread
joined the rest, a rounded scoop of white butter placed beside the
loaf. Chet’s mouth watered unabashedly. When the older woman,
Masie, finally invited them to sit and dig in, Chet nearly
scrambled to his place at the table.

“I’ll clean up afterwards, much as I’m able.
You two go on to bed,” Othnielia told Masie, hugging her tenderly.
They finished with a loving kiss. Othnielia offered the same to
Saemion, who accepted readily.

It didn’t look like Othnielia had a platonic
relationship with either of them. Were they... a threesome? Strange
threesome, if true. Masie seemed to be in her late forties, Saemion
maybe a few years older than Chet. Othnielia—who knew? Hadn’t Oak
said that Flame could live up to a hundred and forty years? Maybe
he chose to appear as an old man because he was, in fact, old.

Othnielia listened to Journey and Knife
explain as they ate. After they finished talking, he sighed. “Well,
I can’t do much about the mess you’re in.”

“You shouldn’t have to,” Journey said, her
face darkening with emotion. “I have no wish to bring trouble upon
you and yours.”

“As it may be. Both of you are welcome to
bathe in my hearth and bunk down in the front room. You boys can
sleep in the barn,” Othnielia said, regarding Chet and Fenimore
with neutral eyes. “The hay loft is cozy enough in summertime.”

Knife cleared his throat. “Othnielia, do you
have a vehicle we can use?”

“No, sorry. I still stick to the old ways
around here; the most I have with is a tractor, and that’s forty
years old. Picked it up after the war for almost nothing,
old-fashioned as it is.”

“It’s so quiet,” Journey murmured. “Ah! I
know what’s missing. ’Lia, where are the children?”

Children?
Chet jerked in surprise
then glanced around surreptitiously. Hadn’t Journey said that Flame
were sterile?

Othnielia took in Chet’s obvious
bewilderment.“I generally have four or five orphans that I’m
raising at any given time. That’s what I do. I farm the land, breed
animals and raise unwanted children. That’s what I’ve done every
lifetime I’ve ever lived when given a choice in the matter.”

“Are they in bed?” Journey persisted.

“No, we have none at the moment. There’s a
lot of anti-Flame feeling just now, as you are aware—officials
think we’re perverts and abusers. It trickles down to the local
level. You both know I don’t go in for wigs or hiding my nature;
I’d rather be burned to death, and of course I have been. When I
take in orphans these days, a social worker from the providence
shows up at my doorstep, soon as people notice. I’ve stopped
trying.”

Knife frowned at this. “You were the first
among us to start that tradition. Why should you bow to such
blatant ignorance? You could sue.”

“Sue my neighbors and friends? Last time we
had the social worker in for supper when she came by to cart
another kid away. I figure, give them about twenty years or so. The
pendulum’ll swing our way again. Some horrible new disease will
kill a lot of parents and taint a lot of kids, and they’ll be
stuffed into overfilled trains again, shipped out to rural regions.
It happens. I’ll go and sit in on town hall meetings and voice my
opinion, as usual. They know me. Eventually they’ll let me do it
again.” Othnielia chuckled. “Masie says we should take some of
these new foster-parent classes to appease social services. I’ll
take the classes, but don’t think they can teach me anything about
raising orphans I don’t already know.”

Chet felt himself swaying as he finished the
last of his stew and bread. Everything he’d thought he’d known
about Flame was wrong. For mercurial shapeshifters, they sure were
a mixed lot. Cunning as he was, Knife had kept the same face and
figure for centuries, only changing when he needed to. Oak studied
hard and tolerated administrative prejudice to finish her
professional degree. Othnielia was the strangest of all: a craggy,
ugly individual dedicated to only three things in life... or lives.
Of all of them, Journey was the most stereotypically Flame, with
her feminine tendencies and bi-sexed nature. Yet even Journey
defied surface impressions. The way she’d fled into Othnielia’s
arms spoke of a long-term relationship.
Not a sexual
relationship, either,
Chet thought. More like a child seeking
comfort from a parent, which was bizarre, given that Journey was
thousands of years old.

Othnielia retrieved an oil lamp and blankets,
leading Chet and Fenimore out to the barn. Sleepy ceroses poked
their heads out of stalls. Chet avoided them, wary of their horns,
though they snuffled at him curiously. A pen near the back of the
barn smelled distinctly of palaeoth, though nothing stirred in that
direction.

Othnielia climbed up the loft ladder and Chet
followed, Fenimore at his heels. “I’ll be up before dawn to do the
chores. It’s best if you boys sleep in that corner rather than near
the drop off, because I’ll be forking down hay to ceroses in the
morning.”

“Okay,” Chet murmured. He wanted to go to
sleep as soon as possible but Othnielia seemed to be watching them
with a measured, knowing gaze.

“I understand you’ve lost your luggage. If
you boys have need, there’s a grease bucket behind the barn. It
shouldn’t be rancid; just slaughtered a doedicu a few weeks
ago.”

“Um. Thank you?” Chet rubbed his arms and
took the offered blankets gingerly.

Fenimore smiled far more sincerely and
thanked Othnielia using flowery, old-fashioned wording. Were these
his courtly manners? Othnielia grinned toothily and answered with
the proper responses, though his accent in the Tache language was
terrible—worse than Chet’s.

Othnielia left, taking the light with him.
Chet burrowed down into the hay and draped the blankets over
himself and Fenimore, feeling vulnerable and decidedly strange. The
hay smelled good, though it was scratchy. Fenimore spooned him, his
body warm.

Just before Chet dropped to sleep he heard
Fenimore murmur, “Grease, eh? Guess that one’s Flame after
all.”

It rained the next morning, and Knife and
Journey stayed in the house. Was it part of the plan to take things
slow, or just necessity? Othnielia didn’t seem inconvenienced,
anyway; he wore bright yellow slickers and an enormous cone-shaped
hat to do his chores. He’d covered every part of his body,
including his face.

Later during breakfast, Journey confirmed
Chet’s assessment by saying, “We’re not going anywhere right now.
Think of it as a rest day.” Knife grunted agreement, looking
trapped and uncomfortable.

Chet could use a rest day but missed his
books intensely. Saemion offered up her collection of lurid pulp
romance novels for his perusal. There were several set in historic
time periods—Chet studied their covers doubtfully before selecting
one and retreating to the barn. He gave up around chapter three,
grumpy at the historically inaccurate details.