The Margarets (39 page)

“Right,” said Bamber Joy. “Through that gate! Maybe we could even close the gate behind us. Glory and I’ll come along to keep you company.”

“Glory, and you, and I,” I said. “Unless Falija would be safer going alone.”

“Grandma,” said Falija, “there’s no time to explain now. They’re looking for me, yes, but they’re also looking for anyone who helped me, and that includes all three of you. I wouldn’t be safer alone, and I’d have failed my duty.”

Glory said, “They were asking for scent-hounds to be brought in…”

Falija said, “In that case, they’ll find me or anyone I’ve been with or anyplace I’ve been lately…”

“Should we take Lou Ellen?” Glory asked, sounding worried. I started to say something, then bit my lip.

Falija gave Glory a troubled look. “Glory, Lou Ellen will be all right. She’ll either meet us on the way or she can visit her other friends, and they’ll keep her safe.”

A few more words bubbled up among us, and we confused each other for a few minutes with ifs and buts, but the upshot was that I wrote a note saying I had the notion to go camping up the river over the next few days, and I was taking Glory and Bamber Joy along to fetch and carry. Glory took the note down to her house, put it on the kitchen table, dumped her books and stowed a few things in her backpack, grabbed her bedroll and jacket, and rejoined Bamber and me, who were making up a couple of packs and bedrolls ourselves.

I said, “Spare socks? Underwear?”

Glory said, “I brought some of Til’s clothes for Bamber, since he didn’t have time to collect anything.”

I locked my door behind us but left the curtains open so anybody could look in and see nobody was home. Just about that time, Bamber saw two cars coming along the road from the bridge. If they got to the Judson house, they’d see the note, but since we weren’t really going where the note said we were going, it didn’t matter much if Ned and Walter followed the false lead.

We went uphill, walking on rocks so as not to leave a visible trail. Bamber came last to be sure no one had made any marks or dropped
anything. We reached the spire of black rock, and from there we could hear men yelling down the hill. Glory climbed halfway up the rock to get a better view and reported there were two cars in the driveway as well as her daddy’s buggy, her parents, and Jeff, along with several other people.

When we got to the slit rock, Falija told us to help her make a rock pile right beside it. Bamber and Glory fetched some bigger ones while I gathered small ones. Glory went into the slit in the rock, took my hand, and helped me over the pile. Falija and Bamber came through and reached back to arrange the stones into a teetery heap that looked as if it had fallen that way, a perfect place to break a leg. They topped it off with a few broken, dried branches that pretty well filled the crack between the stones.

This time we went straight through the watery tunnel and out the other end onto the ledge. It was daytime, and the nyzeemi weren’t there. When we looked back, a black pool filled the whole width of the ledge behind us.

Falija said, “Get up on top of the railing stones.”

“On top?” I said, shocked. We were quite high enough already.

“It’s the only way down,” said Falija, climbing onto a stone herself.

Bamber and Glory climbed up, each took hold of one of my arms and pulled me up between them. Falija said to shut our eyes and jump, and that’s what Bamber and Glory did, dragging me off the ledge with them. I thought of screaming, but by the time I’d decided on it, we were floating. We landed soft as featherweed floss. Bamber and Glory let go, and I stood there trembling. After I decided I was all in one piece I took a deep breath and asked Falija, “What was that?”

“My people put a kind of elevator there. It isn’t magic. It’s just a force field. They sometimes put them in places like this where the way-gates end up in difficult places. I knew the field was there. I could feel it.”

“The people can’t follow us?”

Falija shook her head. “Not unless they know precisely where this way-gate is, because if they are what we think they are, they can’t smell it or see it, the way my people can. Each gate creates an aversion field so nonsensors walk on past it without even noticing.”

“Well,” I remarked, with a glance at the ledge we’d jumped from,
“we probably shouldn’t go too far. We might get lost, and we’ll want to be able to go back…”

Falija was shaking her head. “Grandma, I’m sorry, I thought you understood that the gates go only one way. There are ways to get back to Tercis, but the closest is five worlds away from here.”

I felt my face go dead. All my blood drained to someplace below my feet. For a moment I tottered there, feeling lost and out of place. I thought about fainting and decided not to. As I’d learned so long ago on Phobos, what was, was. All fainting did was delay dealing with the inevitable. “Well then, just in case you’re not totally correct about their coming after us, let’s get out of the foyer of this place and into some part that’s not quite so exposed from above.”

That seemed sensible to everyone, so we moved off quietly under the trees, hearing nothing at all from behind us or even around us. A few bird sounds. A tiny breeze. That was all. After a time we came to a trail and turned left along it, simply because leftward ran downhill and it seemed easier. I was breathing very hard.

“Are we moving too fast?” Falija asked, concerned.

“It’s not the walk, it’s the…what, Glory?” I asked her.

“The difference,” Glory said. “The strangeness. The not knowing whether they’ll catch up to us and what they’ll do.”

Falija said, “I’m certain they won’t catch up to us. Not now. Not today. Not here.” She took my hand and caressed it. “Nobody expected us to come here, so we don’t need to worry about dangers coming after us, just the ones we may happen on.”

“Which isn’t likely,” said Gloriana quickly. “Is it?”

Falija shook her head. “Not around here, no.”

When we had gone about a mile down the trail, we heard voices coming in our direction, people singing, a clinking noise, a strange sound halfway between a whinny and a moo, then the crunch of wheels. We left the trail and went back into the trees to lie down and peek out without being seen. In a few minutes a wagon appeared, hitched to two large creatures covered with close, curly hair like a sheep’s. Their tails arched forward over their backs and head, the long, silky hair making a parasol over the entire animal. They had horns like cows, single hooves like horses, plus long, silky ears that extended almost to the ground.

The people in the wagon looked rather human, if one could accept green humans somewhere between Falija size and human size. Those with ribbons tying up their dark green hair were on one side of the wagon, and those with kerchiefs around their necks were on the other.

“Let’s try that last chorus again,” said the right-hand animal, speaking perfectly intelligible Earthian. “One, two…” and they all began to sing, girls high, boys medium, the team of animals, baritone and bass.

 

“The right time of day

For raiding hay

Is three o’clock in the mornin’.

The world is asleep

and the birds don’t peep

so the farmer has no warnin’.

We can cut, we can bale

with a sharp toenail

and an energy that’s unflaggin’,

And the entire crop

fits under the top

of our ‘inside-out’ hay wagon…”

 

“What are those people?” whispered Bamber.

“The team are umoxen,” said Falija thoughtfully. “And the people are hayfolk. All winter they let their toenails grow. By summer they’re as long as scythes, then they hitch up their wagons and go dance through the hayfields at night, cutting enough hay to get them through the winter.”

“What do they do with it?” Gloriana asked.

“Eat it,” she said. “That’s why they’re green. They call themselves hayraiders, but they only take the first cutting, so the farmer doesn’t lose everything.”

“Except the fruits of his labors,” said I disapprovingly.

“Not exactly,” Falija told me. “The farmer depends on the hayraiders to do the second and third cutting for him, and there’s some other kind of arrangement as well. It’s fair to both.”

“Then why are they called raiders?” I asked, outraged.

“Because they like it. It makes them sound adventurous and bold. It’s a lot more fun to dance in the moonlight than it is to work in the noonday sun, especially if it’s illicit.”

“What’s an inside-out hay wagon?” asked Bamber.

“One that seems bigger on the inside than it seems on the outside.”

Glory asked, “Why do they speak Earthian?”

Falija said, “A surprising number of worlds do, particularly worlds where Gentherans have been. Gentherans call human language one of the two great gifts from Earth. Earthian is a lot easier to read, write, and speak than most languages, as well as having an enormous vocabulary. So, whenever you find several races living together, chances are they’ll speak Earthian. The hayfolk and the umoxen also have their own languages, of course. Shall we ask them for a ride?”

I shook my head doubtfully. The wagon did look filled to overflowing with creatures. Suddenly, however, the left-hand umox called, “Who’s out there? I hear you thinking! Come out now, before they come slishing and slashing after you!”

Falija led us out onto the road as the hayfolk came down from the wagon. Their toenails were longer than my forearm, gently curving out to the sides. I supposed they had to curve that way, or they’d have to walk with their feet far apart. The biggest one came forward, stopping far enough away that he wasn’t threatening to cut anyone off at the ankles.

“Well, Gibbekotkin, and where did you pop from?”

“Here and there,” said Falija. “Is there room in the wagon for passengers?”

“Depends on who’s asking,” said the nigh umox.

“And where they’re coming from,” said the off umox.

“And where they’re going,” said the largest raider.

“Falija is asking,” she said, “for her friends, who are coming from danger and going toward refuge, so far as is possible.”

“Who’s after you?” asked the nigh umox suspiciously.

“Don’t know,” she said. “Just know they are. Human-type men…”

“Who sound like robots,” Glory offered.

“Lurking and lying,” said Bamber.

“Up to no good,” I supplied.

“The unmentionable’s creatures,” said the largest raider, nodding vigorously. “We’ve seen ’em here and there in their great, smelly wagons. Very good description. Climb up on the driver’s seat, you two ladies. Gibbekotkin in lap, brother in back. My name’s Howkel, by the by.”

Glory and I climbed onto the seat, and Falija settled across both laps while Bamber Joy squeezed himself among the raiders. When the wagon started to move, I thought Bamber probably had the best of it, because the hay was soft but the seat certainly wasn’t.

The banks of green moss on either side of the road were so clean they looked freshly vacuumed. The only fallen leaves in evidence were brightly colored, unbroken, and set out in artistic arrangements. Now and then the wagon passed a little pile of twigs and branches set by the trail, as though waiting to be picked up by something.

“Have you any new stories?” one of the girl hayraiders asked. “We usually tell stories on long rides.”

“I have one you might like to hear,” said Falija. “It’s about a villager who talked to a fish.”

“Oh, tell it please,” said the Hayfolk.

And as we rolled along, Falija told a strange tale about a fish who helped a man out of his difficulties by directing him to the Keeper of all information. It was interesting, but rather complicated. I’m afraid I dozed a little, waking up just as Falija said, “And so, since that day, whenever the man has a difficulty, he has walked seven roads at once, for only in that way can he find the Keeper again…”

I said to Falija. “If that whole thing was in your memory, Falija, maybe it’s important.”

“Some stories are very important,” said Howkel. “Specially in the summer grasslands of Fajnard.”

“This is Fajnard?” I cried. “Fajnard is under the rule of the Frossians. This isn’t a good place to be!”

Howkel snorted. “The Frossians think they run the world, but they actually only occupy about a tenth of it, around the lowland cities. They’re used to rampaging onto a world, digging up the ore, cutting down the trees, moving on. They have a chant, ‘Move in, dig up,
cut down, move on.’ No ore here. Trees are poisonous to ’em. The wealth here’s in grass after it’s fed to umoxen to make wool, but that’s slow work, year after year. Frossians aren’t used to patience. They’re already getting itchy and neglectful. Pretty soon they’ll decide they’d rather be somewhere else. While there’s Frossians here, hayfolk have nothing to do with them! We stay far from the cities, up here in the highlands.”

“Wind coming,” said the off umox.

They stopped the wagon, all the hayfolk got off and went into the woods. The long-haired umoxen lay down and tied their ears under their chins with the four stubby fingers in the middle of their hooves. When the fingers were folded up, the hoof part hit the ground, but when they wanted to, the umoxen could use those fingers almost like hands.

Very shortly we heard the wind, and we all lay down as well. It came louder and closer, then it came down the trail, a whirlwind that went past us like a train going full speed, and when it was gone, so were all the little twig piles along the road.

So the moss beds had been vacuumed.

“What kind of world is this again?” Glory asked Falija, who was grooming her whiskers back into shape.

“A natural world,” she said. “One where certain creatures are embodiments.”

“Embodiments do vacuuming?” Glory asked.

“The embodiment of order might, or the embodiment of beauty.”