Bitter Waters (4 page)

Mom Lara turned to look at him, the star shine pale on her blond hair. “That's so poetic. I'm so happy you finally managed to find yourself.”

Yes, he had found parts of his ancient past, but only at the cost of contaminating his present self. Magic Boy lived for nearly two hundred years, several lifetimes of joy and sorrow, rewards and frustrations. Ukiah felt like a child that put on his
father's clothing and stood before the mirror, lost in the skin he one day would grow into. Even though Ukiah had completely forgotten his childhood with his mother's people, much of Magic Boy's personality remained, seemingly a rock-solid base that could not be erased. In the overlarge memories, Ukiah could now see the roots of his own personality. Much of what he thought Mom Jo and Mom Lara taught him were only reinforcements of what his mother, Kicking Deer, laid down.

“But you really should have called instead of leaving Kittanning with Indigo,” Mom Lara said, continuing blithely, unaware of his turmoil. “I could have flown home and been here before you left.”

Unfortunately, all the similarities between Ukiah and Magic Boy only made judging the differences harder. Was it him or Magic Boy who bristled at Mom Lara's comment? “Indigo was happy to do it.”

“It wasn't fair to her,” Mom Lara said. “Letting her play mommy and then taking it all away from her.”

Indigo was listed as Kittanning's mother on his birth certificate, and Ukiah had every intention of marrying her, making her Kitt's mother in truth. Why couldn't his mothers accept that he knew what he wanted? If he was man enough to drive, drink, and carry a gun, surely he could marry a woman as good and strong as Indigo. Were their objections to Indigo based on the fact that she was only six years younger than they were? Or that she was part Hawaiian-Chinese?

Ukiah snapped his mouth shut on words that would have just led to more trouble, and instantly wondered. Was it truly
him
that was angry—or Magic Boy—and which part of him had the wisdom to keep silent? Certainly before he left for Oregon, they'd fought over Indigo; but now he saw his moms' actions in a more hostile light. It never occurred to him before that they might be bigoted or saw Indigo as an age-equal to themselves.

“I'm sorry, Mom,” he said instead of all the uncomfortable truths he could have spoken. “It's been a rough day. I'm going to pop into Kittanning's room, and then crash.”

“All right, honey,” Mom Lara accepted his tactical retreat.

“I told Mom Jo that I'll go shopping for you tomorrow if you give me a list of what you need.”

Even his moms didn't realize how well he saw in the dark once his eyes adjusted. She winced at his offer, but said brightly, “That will be a great help, honey. I'll work up a list and give it to you tomorrow morning. Good night, honey.”

 

He climbed the stairs wondering. His perfect memory told him that nothing had changed between his mothers and him, except his own point of view—or more correctly—the addition of Magic Boy to his point of view. What had been comforting now seemed restrictive.

A memory fragment from Magic Boy rose in Ukiah's mind.

He stood on the cliff edge, overlooking the Umatilla River, the wind coming off the prairie roaring in his ears, stinging his eyes nearly as much as the burning tears. He raised his arms up, wondering,
What if all I need is faith? Maybe if I leapt now, would I turn into something more than just a little boy?

He leaned against the wind, closing his eyes, trying to summon the courage to believe.

“Magic Boy,” his mother, Kicking Deer, said behind him. “What are you doing?”

He didn't turn to face her, see how old she had grown while he stayed the same. All his younger half brothers were men now, with wives and children of their own. Only he stayed the same. “I'm thinking about flying.”

“You have no wings, Magic Boy.”

“Perhaps while my feet are firmly on the ground, I need no wings. Maybe I need to be in the air to have wings.”

“Don't be foolish. You're too old for it.”

“Tell that to the old men of the tribe! Tell them I am too old to still be considered a child. Tell them that the baby at your breast when I went out the last time for my manhood rite had a son of his own today.”

“My son,” Kicking Deer said softly. “Every full moon I take a string out and measure you as you sleep. Years I have measured you from the top of your head to the back of your heels, and always you are the same. There is no gray in your hair and no lines on your face. Like the stone Coyote gave me to swallow, you are unchanging.”

“So I am unchanging! They made Five Crows a man yesterday. He has only seen eleven summers to my thirty, and tomorrow he might die if a bear struck him or a snake bit him. Am I, who is unchanging, any less a man than Five Crows, who might die without changing? He is shorter, and slower, and weaker than I, but they made him a man.”

Years of injustices fueled his anger, and he raged on bitterly. “And you know why? If I were a man, I would overshadow them even as I am. I am faster and stronger than all of them. So they keep me a child and order me about whenever they can.”

“Aiieee. My son. It is the spirits that keep you a child.”

“I am sick of being a child. I am sick of babies swaggering about the dance grounds, thinking they can tell me what to do because . . .”

“Because the spirits chose a different path for you. A longer path. Five Crows's journey is already half over, and yours has barely begun. Do not be angry because you do not see the same things along the path that he does; you are bound for different places.”

He sighed, turning away from the cliff. “Why is it that you are always so much wiser than me? You are not really that much older than I am.”

She tweaked his nose. “Because I'm always running to stay ahead of you.”

Magic Boy hadn't flung himself from that cliff face that day. Ironically, if he had, he would have aged. But his mother had been right, he had taken a long, twisting path before seeing his totem animal and becoming a man. A small niggling part of Ukiah pointed out that he still lived as a child in his mothers' house, but he had, for the most part, all that Magic Boy desired: a position in society as an adult, a woman, and a child.

Kittanning lay in his crib bed, a mobile of Mickey Mouse dancing over his head, dreaming of the day's anxiety.

Although Kittanning started as a stolen blood mouse, and had been all of three days old when Ukiah finally won him back, Ukiah hadn't been able to take Kittanning back. Not in the physical sense—no, Ukiah probably could have forced
the merger. But Kittanning was now a human infant. Whereas Ukiah's mice felt like lost pieces of the greater whole, always joyful at the prospect of returning, Kittanning had a sense of self, wholly separate of Ukiah. Perhaps Kittanning's individuality came from resisting Hex's will, perhaps it came automatic with the conscious mind of the human form, or maybe it was something more metaphysical, being gifted with a soul at the moment of his human transformation. Whatever it was, Ukiah had held the baby and known that Kittanning was no longer
his
as in the manner of fingers and toes, but
his
as in the manner of a son.

Prior to Ukiah's trip to Oregon, though, he had wondered at the truth of this, worried that he was mistaken. He had been ignorant of his mice nearly up to the day of Kittanning's “birth.” What if the personality he felt in Kittanning was merely a projection of his own?

Now, knowing he wasn't the child born to his mother, but a blood animal transformed himself, Ukiah recognized that Kittanning was also a true individual. The knowledge, as he gazed down at the sleeping baby, banished all of Ukiah's worries and left him with only love for his son.

Lifting Kittanning out of his crib, Ukiah cuddled his son to him, waking him.

Daddy!
Joy shimmered through Kittanning, and the tiny fists clutched tight at Ukiah. Between them, there was no need for words of love, it poured out unreserved. Tempered into the flow, though, was a sense of terrible sorrow as the weeks had passed with glacial slowness for the infant, and a faint terror that Kittanning would grow to forget his father.

“I'm home to stay,” Ukiah promised and kissed the soft black hair.

Evans City, Pennsylvania
Monday, September 13, 2004

“It's just I feel funny not telling anyone,” Mom Lara complained during the normal morning confusion, complicated by the addition of baby Kittanning to their family, and the recent start of school for Ukiah's sister, Cally. Lunch bags stood
half-filled on the counter, morning coffee scented the kitchen, and a baby bottle shimmered on the cooktop. “I have a doctorate in astronomy. I've written papers on all of my tiny, almost insignificant discoveries. Now, I know everything about the most important discovery of mankind since—since the invention of written language, and I can't say anything!”

“I'm sorry, Mom.” Ukiah rocked back and forth, patting Kittanning on the back. He still found it disorienting to cradle the infant to him. They were so identical that his senses could barely determine where his body stopped and his son's started. Ukiah could feel Kittanning's hunger as if it was his own.

“I'm hungry,”
Kittanning whimpered into his mind.

“I know, pumpkin.” Ukiah yawned. Kittanning's hunger had woken them up in the middle of the night. With typical baby self-centeredness, Kittanning had shown very little patience with Ukiah's late-night fumbling and needed a great deal of rocking to settle back to bed. In all, an hour had been stolen out of the heart of Ukiah's sleep. Normally this wouldn't leave Ukiah yawning; that it did was proof he hadn't recovered fully from the battering he took in Oregon. “Your bottle is almost ready.”

“Actually, it's not the scientific community that bothers me. Who would believe that ugly thing sat up there for two hundreds years or more, while a war between alien factions took place here on Earth, right under our noses? Only thirty-two percent of scientists polled believed that the ship posed a possible threat. Fourteen percent actually went so far as to say that interstellar conquest is an impossibility. No one is going to believe me if I try to claim that the alien ship was going to wipe out all life as we know it. I have no hard evidence.”

“You have me and Kittanning,” Ukiah murmured.

“Ukiah!” Mom Lara's hard look forbade him to even joke about the subject.

“Is his bottle ready?” Ukiah changed the subject.

“It should be.” Mom Lara lifted the bottle out of the water, and tested it on her wrist. Satisfied with the temperature, she handed it to Ukiah. “What bothers me are the kids at Cally's school.” Mom Lara did volunteer work at his five-year-old
sister's elementary school, teaching astronomy and running science fairs. “They're scared silly that an alien fleet will be invading tomorrow. I could reassure them that there's no danger, that there was only that one damaged ship, and that the Pack forced it to self-destruct. But I can't. I can't even tell Cally, at least until she's older. It wouldn't be fair to ask her to keep a secret of that importance.”

A clatter of little feet on the stairs announced the arrival of Cally, and they fell quiet. While born to Mom Lara, Cally had Mom Jo's dark curls and stormy nature, a result of in vitro fertilization. She paused at the doorway, frowning slightly at the feeding Kittanning. “Is he still here?”

“Honey.” Mom Lara sighed, tugging on Cally's dark curls. “We've told you, Indigo only took him for a little while.”

So things quickly turned to the second concern to the family: Cally was not taking well being suddenly supplanted as the baby. She pressed tight against Ukiah, frowning slightly at the feeding Kittanning.

“Why can't she keep him?”

“She might,” Ukiah said carefully, getting a surprised look from Mom Lara. “If Indigo and I get married, Kittanning and I will go live with her.”

“I don't want
you
to leave.”

“He's not,” Mom Lara said, setting out a cereal bowl for Cally. “He's too young to get married.”

“You know that I'm not,” Ukiah said.

Mom Lara pressed her mouth tight to keep from frowning. “You two barely know each other. Your Mom Jo and I dated all through college before deciding that we wanted to be together the rest of our lives.”

“That's different,” Ukiah protested. His mothers had been young when they first met, and by their own account, not even sure if they were homosexual or just horny. In the end, they decided that they were simply in love, and nothing else mattered.

“Not by much,” Mom Lara said. “We had to decide whether to marry someone that our families might like, but would never fully approve of. We had to decide that we could take the pressure to find a ‘more acceptable mate,' one that
conformed to society's mores of what is proper. We had to come to terms with the possibility of being ostracized by friends, family, and neighbors. It takes courage to fly into the face of normal. You're asking a lot of Indigo. You're not the same race, age, or religion.” With Cally listening intently, Mom Lara probably intentionally left out “species.” “Give her time. There's no reason to rush.”