Califia's Daughters (16 page)

Culum wagged vigorously at the decision in her voice, and the baby jerked back into screaming awakeness.

“But Mother of God, what will I feed it until I can get some milk?”

By the time Dian had cleaned the infant with an unsoiled corner of the rag and taken off her own warm sweater to wrap it in, the child had cried itself back into exhaustion. She mounted up gently, with the light bundle tucked into the crook of her left arm, and rode away from the crossroads for nearly an hour before the baby roused again. Half a mile farther on, Dian spotted a cluster of boulders, among which a small fire would be invisible from the road. She set some water to boil with a chunk of the honey and a pinch of salt. It took forever to boil, during which time she plugged the cries with a reasonably clean finger. The mixture took even longer to cool, but she could trust neither the water nor the raw honey in the system of an already weak infant, so she blew at the steaming liquid and walked the screaming baby up and down in a fruitless attempt to soothe.

Finally, the sweet mixture was cool enough to offer, and Dian dug a square of sterile bandage cloth from Ling's first-aid kit and dipped it into the warm honey water. To her vast relief, little Sixtoes sucked at it greedily. Mother's milk it wasn't, but it had calories and it would keep her alive for a day or two until Dian could get something better. The infant took the better half of a cupful, burped loudly, and twitched off to sleep. Dian emptied the warm pan of honey water into her thermos flask and let the fire die out.

Her own dinner was a cold one, eaten by feel. The stars were hard and bright and normal to the west, yet nearly invisible to the east, where an eerie glow rose from the sleepless Meijing Road—as if some enormous forge had been banked up for the night. Or as if the land there was radioactive, poisonous, and foul. How had people Before lived under that endless light? No wonder they went mad.

The baby slept with her, inside the warm bag, and woke three times during the night to be fed. The second time Dian came abruptly awake from a dream about warm rain to realize that what went in must also come out and that a baby couldn't go too many hours wrapped in the same sweater without creating a flood. She jerked the dripping little body out of the beautiful new sleeping bag, and the sudden movement with the shock of the night air had the obvious result: the miniature lungs burst forth in outraged shrieks that echoed through the trees and brought both dogs to their feet, growling.

“Oh, God, shut up!” Dian whispered desperately, searching in the dark for the wide-stretched mouth to put her finger into. This time the baby was too upset to fall for that ruse, however, and her screams became even louder. “Sweet Jesus,” she hissed, “you'll have everyone in ten miles at our necks!” In desperation she yanked up her shirt and pushed the rigid, wailing, sopping-wet infant up to her breast. The result was nothing short of miraculous. The earsplitting yells immediately cut off, turning into little searching grunts and then hiccups of satisfaction as the mouth latched on. It did not seem to matter that there was no milk, because after a minute of suckling the child gave a deep, shuddering sigh and relaxed. Dian did the same, her ears ringing in the silence. The dogs lay back down. The night sounds gradually came back.

With the baby still attached, Dian felt around for the thermal jug and cup, and when the cloth was wet she worked it into the join of mouth and breast. The child latched on to it without hesitation. Dian fed her and changed the wet sweater for the shirt off her back and sometime later drifted off into a fitful sleep, the child cuddled to her chest, the sleeping bag's cold wet patch under her shoulder, her heart filled with a profound sympathy for her own mother.

THE BEAUTIFUL BLACK DAMSEL, WHO WAS
VERY MAGNIFICENTLY ATTIRED . . .

T
HIRTEEN

B
Y THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON
D
IAN WAS GROWING
desperate. Her nipples were chafed raw by the baby's fruitless comfort-suckling, her cake of honey was nearly gone, and she had nothing else to use as swaddling clothes. Two rinsed shirts were draped over her saddlebags, drying slowly in the chill air, both of them decorated with unsavory and apparently indelible stains—she had briefly eyed the bundle on the back of her saddle, but firmly decided that her shirts were a more reasonable sacrifice than Lenore's fine weaving or Kirsten's intricate embroidery. The tied-together legs of her long woolen underwear made a sling, to leave her hands free for riding, and every time the baby peeped she put something in its mouth to forestall noise. She hadn't really slept the night before and now twitched nervously at the slightest noise from the woods. The baby was fine—warm, dry, fed after a fashion, and rocked by the horse's motions—but Dian was a wreck. The two dogs kept their distance and would not meet her eyes. They looked distinctly embarrassed.

She was glad for their sakes that they met no one along the way, not even when their ridge track dropped into the larger road that connected the ocean with the Meijing Road. This east–west road was fairly well kept up, though its use was largely seasonal, mainly by vacationers and pilgrims heading for the sea or the healing springs at the foot of the hills. She, however, was going east, where in about three hours she should reach the Road and an inn for the night and, please God, milk (human or otherwise) for Sixtoes.

The baby woke as they reached the base of the hills, so she stopped near the long shadow of a Remnant to feed her. As the baby sucked at the wetted rag, Dian's eyes followed the tremendous sweep of roadway that curved gracefully off the hillside behind her and swung around in a powerful arc far above her head, only to end in a truncated tangle of concrete chunks and frayed metal rods. Suddenly she realized that she had sat at this precise spot before, with her mother, on their trip to the City when Dian was fourteen. Dian alternately dipped and fed, and she was visited by the ghost of that good woman who had rescued her, describing the purpose of the roadway over their heads, the immense speed of the cars being so great that these massive artifacts had come into being just to save the machines from having to slow down as they changed direction. There were not too many of these raised roadways left, Dian remembered her saying. The explosion that had reduced the end of this overpass to rubble had apparently also killed a number of the people setting it, so this section had been left standing by default. Dian didn't know which was harder to understand—the people who had built this magnificent piece of basically useless architecture, or the people who had come along later and destroyed it. Compulsive construction followed by compulsive destruction. It was all rather hard to believe.

Sighing, Dian looked down at her trousers, wet yet again with a combination of spilled honey water and leaked urine. Little Sixtoes slept happily through a change of shirt-diaper, and Dian grimly stuffed the old one into the bag she used for game the dogs killed on the way. She would need to buy a complete change of clothing in the Meijing markets. Fitting the baby back into her makeshift sling, she mounted Simon and rode tiredly down the hill toward the Road.

It was almost dark when she came upon the first cluster of inns, little more than shacks. She rode past those, giving wide berth to a larger one with a drunk and violent party that had begun to spill out onto the road. The buildings grew more substantial, the businesses around them more securely established, and she slowed to examine them hopefully. One inn she rejected because it was too big, another because its painful neatness did not seem to bode well for her peculiar needs, and a third she rode past for some vague and indefinable reason. Finally she was nearly onto the Road, and there she looked up to see a sign declaring this to be
The Black and Beautiful.
The inn's name was picked out in fresh gold letters beneath an imaginative depiction of the lovers from the Song of Solomon. Electrical lights shone out of the windows, the door was set in a wide porch scattered with comfortable-looking chairs, and the whole place appeared well cared for without being fussy. Dian dismounted and ordered the dogs to guard the horse, then she settled Sixtoes in her sling, squared her shoulders, and went up the steps.

Anticlimactically, the desk just inside the door was unoccupied, although there was a great deal of activity going on. A pair of dining rooms opened off the entranceway, each with its own fire, its complement of happy but well-behaved diners, and its serving women scurrying in and out. One of these came out of a pair of swinging doors with a laden tray, nodded at Dian before disappearing into one of the dining rooms. In a minute she reappeared with the empty tray tucked under an arm. She betrayed no emotion at Dian's looks, just a professional welcome.

“Are you wanting dinner?” she asked.

“And a room, if you have one. Are you the innkeeper?”

“I'll get her, if you'll wait just a minute.” She went back through the double doors, and after several more tray-laden women had scuttled through, the doors opened to emit the tallest, blackest human being Dian had ever seen, drying her hands on a flowered apron. The woman's liquid black eyes went immediately to Dian and Sixtoes, but as she moved toward them she also took in the progress of the diners, the fact that a lightbulb was burnt out over one of the tables, and that a woman at a table next to the front window was missing a spoon. She stopped one of her women with a raised finger and pointed out these flaws, then came up to Dian.

Dian was nearly six feet tall herself, but she had to look up into this woman's eyes, dark and proud over high cheekbones. Her willowy frame was both flexible and hard, her skin exactly the color of the polished ebony carving on a shelf in Ling's clinic, in this case topped with a magnificent head-wrap of gold and black cloth. The woman politely overlooked Dian's derelict state—stained clothing, makeshift sling and shirt-wrapped baby, uncombed hair and unwashed smell—and spoke in a deep voice that managed to be both warm and businesslike.

“What can we do for you this evening?” she asked.

“Pretty much everything,” Dian blurted out. The woman raised her eyebrows at the thin note of desperation and relief, and ran her eyes across Dian, withholding judgment.

“Looks to me like you could use some help with your baby.”

“Well, that's the problem,” said Dian carefully. “She's not mine. If she were, I could at least feed her, but I found her at a crossroads in the hills and I don't have anything but honey water to give her, and I've run out of things I can use as diapers.”

The innkeeper stifled an automatic step away, her eyes flicking in the direction of the nearby tables. “What's wrong with her?” The key word in what Dian had told her was
crossroads
: nobody would abandon a whole, healthy child at such a place.

“As far as I can see, the only thing wrong is an extra toe on each foot. She's not sick, and there's certainly nothing wrong with her appetite—or her lungs.” Dian smiled at her feeble joke, but the woman was not distracted and stood eyeing the bundle on Dian's chest. A sudden waft of air brought the most delicious odors to Dian, onions and meat and yeast bread that caused her stomach to cramp in desire. She swallowed, and met the woman's eyes. “I couldn't see that her having twelve toes rather than ten was a good enough reason to leave her for the coyotes. I'm taking her to friends in Meijing,” she added, to serve notice of her disguised respectability—anyone who could claim friends in Meijing was a person to be reckoned with. “I won't be there until tomorrow, though, and she needs food now. I could try cow's milk, or goat's, or if you know anyone with a baby who would be willing to feed her up. I can pay,” she hastened to add.

The impenetrable brown eyes studied the baby, and Dian braced herself for a refusal. However, the innkeeper said only, “Unwrap her.”

Dian laid her burden down on the floor and peeled back the various pieces of wet cloth. Once naked, the baby reacted with the closed-fisted arching typical of the very young infant and began to cry. When Dian looked up she noticed several small dark faces peering at her from the break in the swing doors. She squatted next to Sixtoes, resting her hand on the infant's thin belly, and waited. Most people would have nothing to do with a baby once she had been exposed at a crossroads, and an innkeeper was vulnerable to the opinions of her clients. The woman stood and looked down at the squalling mite with the queer feet, and made up her mind.

“Yes, she deserves a chance. Damn these superstitions, anyway.” Dian exhaled gustily and started to gather up her charge, but the woman's powerful arms came past her to scoop up the baby with a practiced ease. To Dian's surprise she loosened her shirt and put the child to her own breast before she turned to the doorway, pausing to kick the sodden and soiled remnants of Dian's wardrobe to one side with her foot. The faces in the doorway vanished.

“Come on in here,” she threw over her shoulder. Dian obediently followed her toward the door which led to the kitchen. She glanced at the table of diners closest to the door and was relieved to see them smile at her in a friendly fashion. She wouldn't have wanted to hurt this woman's business any, but these customers didn't seem to mind having an exposed baby brought in.

The kitchen was a big bright room with a long plank table running down one side, the wood pale and soft from frequent scrubbing. Five used plates were clustered at one end, where the children had abandoned their nearly finished meal. One place was still occupied, by a toddler who looked up interestedly at Dian, absently massaging a fistful of unidentifiable food into the wispy black tendrils that stood out on its head. The occupants of the other four places stood watching their mother expectantly. The innkeeper removed a pan one-handed from the stove and turned to the children, who were lined up in front of her like four steps.

“Wilama, you run and fetch me a diaper and one of Aisha's nighties. There are some soakers on the line in the boiler room—bring me one of those too. Mbeke, set a bath to heating for this lady, and then go next door and borrow one of Fayola's shirts and a pair of trousers—she's closer to this lady's size than I am. Omo, you show the lady the stables for her horse. And, Chinua, you can lay a place for her in here. Is that okay with you? And what's your name? I'm Jamilla.”

Dian, watching children scatter with clear purpose in various directions, realized belatedly that this last was directed at her. She hastily introduced herself and agreed with everything, and was fascinated to see the woman, with Sixtoes at her breast gulping greedily, turn to the sideboard and use her free hand to dish out several large servings of a fragrant apple crumble. She plunked a large pitcher of thick cream down next to the bowls and without apparent effort picked up the heavy tray with one hand and thrust it into the hands of one of the women who came through the door.

One of the children had moved to the door leading outside, where she stood waiting with exaggerated patience for Dian to take notice of her. Eventually Dian did so and, tearing herself away from the intoxicating smells and the flurry of activity, followed Omo out the door to the stables, where she settled Simon on clean straw, gave him hay and water, and closed Culum and Tomas in with him for the time being. Back at the house she was given over to the care of ten-year-old Mbeke, who handed Dian a pile of clothing and a large towel with her eyes cast down to the floorboards, escorted her to the bathroom, and carried away Dian's own clothes, held well away from her body. Dian felt they really should be burned, but Mbeke glanced into her eyes for a brief instant and pronounced with all seriousness her judgment that they would be clean in the morning. Dian had her doubts, but the shirts and trousers that were given her the next day, while not exactly pristine, at least were no cause of embarrassment to the dogs.

It was one of the most satisfying baths she had ever climbed into, and it washed away much more than mere dirt. When she walked downstairs in the borrowed clothing—short in the leg and tight in the shoulders—she felt truly herself for the first time since Culum had heard the cries at the crossroad. Only yesterday?

The daughter who had been sent scurrying for a diaper was sitting at the foot of the stairs, playing with a kitten while waiting for Dian. She looked to be about six, and despite her deep skin color she reminded Dian of Susanna at that age. Unlike her older sister, this one was not in the least bit shy and chattered at Dian with Susanna's liveliness and that same twinkle of mischief hiding in the back of her too-innocent brown eyes.

“I gave your dogs some food, but they ate it awfully fast, so maybe they want some more, but Mama said I should ask you first. They sure are big. What are their names? Can you ride them? Do you want some supper? Is that your baby?”

Dian gravely answered the barrage of questions on the way back to the kitchen, which population had increased by two dogs, a mountain of dishes, several more children, and three adults, one of them a man, all of them darker of skin than anyone in the Valley. The man was sitting with a completely limp Sixtoes cradled to his chest: she looked as pale as Dian felt, although no one else seemed too concerned about skin tones. Introductions were made all around, and a laden plate was slapped down in front of Dian.

Dian dove into the food that she'd been smelling for what seemed like hours and said not a word for the next fifteen minutes, by which time the mountain of dishes had been transformed into so many neat stacks of clean plates and the voices from the dining rooms had all but disappeared. She came up for air to accept a third helping of sweet, cream-drenched apple, and then blushed mildly when she saw the expressions on the gathering of small faces across the table from her. She ate the last dessert anyway, and enjoyed it, before finally pushing back from her plate.