Authors: Jane Lindskold
“When we found her, Mabel wasn’t pregnant, but not for lack of trying on the part of those who’d taken her. Winnie’s being too modest when she says we got her away. If it hadn’t been for Winnie, we never would have gotten into the place where Mabel was being held. With her help, we got Mabel out and one other who was in ‘training.’ We couldn’t even get near the pregnant ladies. They were too carefully watched, but we stole a few others away—including Winnie and Ring.
“From what I’d figured out when tracking our girl, I realized that my employers must have at least turned a blind eye to the faked accident and kidnapping. So Hal and I gathered up our family and fled. I won’t bother you with the details, but we ended up here—and not by accident. I’d noted this place when I lived with you and Mary those years ago, Bruin. You’d kept Adara from the Old One, so I thought you might have suspected him and protected her. Looking at you now, though…”
Bruin shook his shaggy head. “I didn’t suspect. Now, even now, it’s hard…” He held out an apologetic hand toward Winnie. “I don’t doubt you. Not a word. It’s just so hard … Why would the Old One do such a terrible thing? He said he wanted to raise children who would not be stigmatized for being adapted, but this? This stinks of something far worse.”
Terrell spoke, “Those terms—brood mare, stud book, training, Stablekeeper—Winnie, are those your own or are they ones you learned in that place?”
“I learned them there. The Stablekeeper herself claimed that title. I had a feeling she’d a long history with the Old One. Sometimes I even wondered if she might have been a retired brood mare, one who the training broke so that the only way she could love herself was to accept that this treatment was somehow ‘right.’”
Terrell continued shaping his thoughts aloud. “So the Old One was breeding—or trying to breed—those with adaptations, or at least from those known to carry adapted genes. He wanted to be sure to raise them himself. But why? The adapted aren’t common, but they aren’t unheard of either. Surely if the Old One wanted simply to change social attitudes he could have chosen a less drastic route.”
“And,” Adara said, her gut quivering at the idea that she might have found herself kidnapped and taken to that place if the Old One had such a fancy, “what happened to the children raised there? Does anyone know?”
“Only the littlest bit,” Lynn said, “and what we know is from Ring, who is not exactly easy to understand.”
“Ring?” Bruin spoke heavily, as if drugged or drunk. “You’ve mentioned him before. Isn’t he the man who thought tying Fred to a tree was a good idea? I’m thinking we need to meet him.”
* * *
Griffin Dane’s thoughts swirled in a confusion of conflicting impulses. From what he had heard, Spirit Bay was where he needed to go if he was to have any hope of making contact with his orbiting ship. Yet this Old One sounded like a horror. If he treated his own people like this, how might he treat a real “seegnur”? With respect? Or perhaps either a threat or a source of information? Or even, Griffin mused sourly, as a source of new genes for his program?
Then, in good conscience, could Griffin let Adara go to Spirit Bay? What if the Old One took a fancy to her? Apparently, he hadn’t seen her since she was a feisty child of eight. She’d grown into something extraordinary … How could the Old One not fancy her? If Griffin let Adara go to Spirit Bay, he’d have taken her into danger!
Take her?
came the ironical voice of his thoughts.
Adara would be taking you, never forget that. You couldn’t travel a day’s journey without help. Of course, there’s Terrell, but wouldn’t he also be at risk? He doesn’t show obvious adaptations, but everyone speaks of these “factotums” as among the professions. Maybe Terrell would find himself turned to stud service.
What they have told me passes for local government would certainly not intervene—not if the Old One is accorded even a fragment of the respect Bruin accords him.
He thought of his own family then, of the respect accorded the family’s old name and the deeds associated with it. His parents had taken care to make certain that any who encountered them would be reminded that this was a family who did great things. They had even named each of their ten children for heroes, first for those of legend and history, later for those from the family line. Griffin was named for Griffin of LiDow, a military commander from his mother’s side of the family.
Griffin’s thoughts swirled down another course, as they so often did.
The men’s role in the Old One’s plans is an interesting part of the puzzle … Are the men volunteers? Do they know what they are doing? It’s often been said men can be led by their little heads, but still …
Griffin’s conjectures were interrupted when the cabin’s front door opened and a big, bald man shambled into the room. The newcomer was tall and heavily built, although softer and more fleshy than was usual among the people Griffin had encountered on Artemis. The man’s skin was unusually pale, as if he had been ill and his skin had not regained its natural coloring.
But none of these things were what made the man seem odd. There was something peculiar about his manner of progress. He shuffled and held his head bent down. His right hand frequently drifted up to shadow his eyes, although the room was far from brightly lit.
Griffin wondered if the man was an albino. Then he realized the truth was stranger still. Although the man had perfectly functional eyes—there was no doubt that their brilliant blue saw everything—he kept closing them, as if not only didn’t he need them in order to see, but that somehow they kept him from seeing.
“This,” Lynn said, as Hal went to guide the newcomer forward, “is Ring.” She went on to introduce each of the visitors while Ring continued his shuffling progress, ending by plopping heavily down onto one of the vacant benches.
Ring raised his head. With that horrible sense of effort, he opened his eyes. He looked carefully at each one of them, ending with Bruin. Then he dragged his right hand over his eyes, closing the lids. Hand still over his eyes, Ring shaped a thick-lipped smile and spoke in a deep, guttural voice.
“So the bear followed the fish. We caught the fish. I saw.”
Lynn nodded. “As you saw. This is the bear. He has come for the fish.”
“That is good. The fish will swim well in the bear’s wake, as long as the bear does not go to the bay. I see the knobby man lived. The wolves did not eat him.”
Although Ring had not opened his eyes, he turned to face Fred. Griffin’s flesh crept. He realized he’d half expected to see eyes on the back of that hand.
Ring continued, “I sorrow for the pain, but death is worse than pain, or so I was taught. Sometimes, I am not sure.”
Fred replied uneasily. “I don’t suppose you could have taken me with you. It didn’t feel very good hanging there.”
“No. It was not the time. The bear must follow the fish. The fish must swim among the fort. That is the only good vision. All the others led to worse than pain.”
Fred made a small noncommittal noise. Ring turned his self-blinded gaze to inspect the visitors but, although his thick lips moved, no words came forth. Eventually, he settled his hands into his lap. Although his eyes remained shut, he said, “I have seen.”
Lynn apparently took this for an indication she should speak. “Winnie said we rescued her but, as I said, she helped us as much as we her. The one who assisted all of us was Ring. Ring is—as best we can guess—one of the children raised by the Old One. Without him, none of us would have escaped.”
Ring said, “Or you me, me you. All is intertwisted. You, me, Hal, poor sad Mabel, Winnie. Fred, Kipper, Bruin, singing Adara, Griffin, Terrell. Dead horses. Hungry wolves. Metal spiders. Little tiny spores. All. One must sometimes wait, sometimes dig.”
Griffin let this nonsense wash over him. He guessed that Ring had been abused as a child and was perhaps mentally deficient as well. Then two words startled him from his complacency.
“Metal spiders?”
Lynn laughed, but there was unease in the laughter. “Ring sees things differently from the rest of us. You can’t imagine how long it took us to figure out that when he said the fish would bring the bear, he meant Kipper was what would bring Bruin to us. We didn’t know what this fish was, but we had been discussing how we could consult Bruin without giving too much away. At last, Ring said he could show us what fish and—well, based on his past advice, we decided to trust him.”
Hal spoke for the first time. “When we found out the boy was called ‘Kipper’ and that he was to be Bruin’s student, it all made sense, enough so that when Ring told us to make Fred an ornament on the hickory tree, well, we did it.”
He sounded both apologetic and defiant. “And I’m sorry you were harmed, Fred, but too much rests on us getting things right.”
Fred wagged his head, not so much refusing the apology as to show his own confusion. “Well, I’m alive. Mind, I’d have preferred to do my job and be left out of it. But I’ll accept that you folks have different ways of doing things.”
“How do you know Ring is one of these children raised by the Old One?” Adara asked.
Lynn replied, “From things he has said, mostly. He has no memory of any other place than that facility, but that didn’t make a sheep of him. He wanted out. Apparently there was something in the combination of our hunting for Mabel and Winnie’s desperation that let Ring know this was his chance.”
“This is a lot to take in,” Bruin said. “We need to talk—just those of us who came after Kipper. You understand, Lynn?”
“I do. You are not our prisoners. Even if you leave, we trust you not to betray us. Dinner will be good. We shot a bunch of waterfowl, still fat from wherever they wintered. We hope you’ll join us over the table.”
Interlude: 1—1–OO
Fragments of purpose
Of porpoise
Re-porpoised
Dive into salt, wet, fresh
Swim, broken-finned, lopsided
Seek
+
(you shall)
=
Find
Seek. Find. Activate. Subvert.
Re-por-
Poised to strike.
11
The Unspoken
“We may not be prisoners,” Bruin said as they walked out through the gates and ambled over the cleared ground toward an inviting patch of sunlight, “but it’s likely Lynn will learn something of whatever we say. I can’t make out that Ring. How did he know about the spider?”
“You heard him say that, too?” Griffin asked. “Good. I thought I might be imagining it. I sometimes lose words in the accent.”
“That means something to you?” Fred said. Adara thought it interesting that he had reacted more calmly to assault than he had to Lynn’s revelation. No wonder. The Old One was legendary—and very little of what Lynn had said fit the legend. “Meant less than the rest of all that craziness to me.”
“It sounded,” Adara said, trying be soothing, “like a reference to something that happened in Shepherd’s Call before we left, that’s all. We didn’t think anyone could have carried the story before us.”
“If they did, they didn’t pass me on the road,” Fred said, rubbing the ears of Scout and Shout, “or, if they did, they chose to pass me by and I don’t see that happening. You folks from Shepherd’s Call are decent sorts.”
“Thank you,” Terrell said. “But this Old One, if we’re to believe what Lynn said, he’s not the decent sort we’d all imagined. Maybe what we imagine is not to be trusted.”
As they sat in silence, Honeychild and Sand Shadow came to join them. Sand Shadow began to play with her earrings, but Honeychild snuggled up to Bruin as if to warm him.
“I’ve just one question,” Fred said. “Bruin, are you taking charge of Kipper?”
“I am, if the boy will have me.”
Fred laughed. “That won’t be a problem. Well, then, I’d be happy to have an escort as far as Blue Meadow. Then I’ll be making my way back to reassure Kipper’s folks all is well. It will be, won’t it?”
“For Kipper,” Bruin assured him, “most certainly. Even that Ring seemed to think so.”
Adara was relieved to see that this, at least, cheered her mentor.
“Good, then.” Fred rubbed his jaw. “I’m feeling my aches. If you folks don’t mind, I’ll just mosey back into the fort and see if I can find a corner to roll up in and rest before supper.”
“That’s fine,” Bruin said. “You might ask after your and Kipper’s horses. I think you’ll find Lynn will be returning them, and I’ll get you as far as Blue Meadow, no problem.”
“Right, then,” Fred said. With more alacrity than was reasonable, he hurried back toward the fort.
Adara reached and tickled Sand Shadow at the base of her tail. “Fred’s afraid of us. He wasn’t before but now, what with all Lynn said, he’s scared.”
Terrell nodded. “And Fred’s not dumb.”
Silence held for a moment, a silence in which Adara imagined each of the humans were, in one way or another, reshaping the world as they had known it. All but one of them.
Griffin Dane broke the silence.
“Until Lynn described the place where this Old One lives, I hadn’t realized that the facility as much as the man might be what I need. No matter what we’ve learned, still, I’ve got to go there.”
Terrell laughed. “Well, my first impulse is to say that’s crazy. My second, too. Then I remember that metal spider. If such things are going to keep turning up, then exactly how is the Old One more dangerous? If we play dumb, don’t let on what we learned from Lynn, the Old One will probably be just fine.”
Adara nodded. “There’s sense in that.”
Bruin said heavily, “Then you believe all of that? All that about captive women and breeding adapted children?”
“I do,” Adara said. “There’s no reason for Lynn to lie. She never struck me as a storyteller. Do you think she’s lying?”
Bruin shook his head. “I don’t. I can even put together the pieces she didn’t spell out. She wanted to talk with me because I’ve always welcomed adapted children as students. Maybe she wanted to find out if any of my students came from the Old One—they haven’t, by the way. Maybe she wanted to find out if any of them have vanished. That will be harder to learn, but I can do some checking once I get back, write some letters.”