Again Deidre thought back to the gram she’d watched in her sanctum. It had talked of war. Was that the reason the Orchard Keeper wore his uniform? Why he was agitated? Had he been up all night, relaying messages back and forth, from estate to estate, getting news of doom and killing and approaching soldiers?
In single file, the girls, their father, and Lady all descended the spiral stairs of the southwest tower to come out blinking in the light that yellowed the gravel lip of the front courtyard. A hard-packed road wound from Elegia’s stately portals and out into the environs via a great black gate. Clusters of distant huts were set against rolling verdant hills.
Far above, the dome of the sky was a clear but faded blue. Deidre looked at the sun once more, but the glare was too much.
Several footmen in red uniforms stood by the gate, brandishing poleaxes. At the sight of their boss, one of them ran forward a few steps, stopped, looked back at his comrades. These men were used to casual days, inaction, games of cards and crude jokes in the guardhouse. Days spent trying to get Voluminia and Estelle to pay them some attention. Now that something real was happening, they were clearly unsure how to proceed.
With a shock, Deidre suddenly realized it was not the gold carriage waiting, as she’d imagined — with its four dun quarter horses, each brushed and dressed and noble; instead, the covered market cart squatted ugly on the gravel, dirty and rickety and as grey as a shadow. She stopped short. From a rent in the chamois cover her mother peeked, managing a tiny wave and a brave face.
The Orchard Keeper heartily returned the wave, as if everything were fine, a mere drive in the country.
Miranda dashed, ungainly, loping across the courtyard towards the cart.
The big hand of her father fell on Deidre’s shoulder. “Come on there, D, hurry up, get in. Your mother’s waiting.”
And the older girls held back.
Deidre turned slowly. Blood had drained from her cheeks. “You’re not coming with us.” This was not a question.
The Orchard Keeper blinked, started to say something, closed his mouth. Now Estelle and Voluminia were walking across the courtyard — Miranda was already inside the cart, her thin wail drifting on the hot afternoon air. Their father crouched down. His eyes searched Deidre’s. They were moist and she saw red veins mapping them like small, sanguine rivers.
“No, sweetie,” he said, quietly. “I’m not coming with you. But I
will
catch up in a few days.” He waited, perhaps to give Deidre a chance to speak, but Deidre did not say anything so he wiped at his mouth with his hand and fiddled with his Orchard Keeper’s ring. “I, uh . . . Take care of our precious Mir. And take care of your mother, and Voluminia, too, for that matter. And Estelle, of course. You’re the most sensible one of all, D. You’re the voice of reason in our little family.”
Deidre did not smile. “Is it war?” she asked. “Are we going to war again, father? Why won’t you tell me?”
He was shocked, or at least appeared so. “
War
? When were we ever at war, sweetie? The last war was long before I was even born.”
She repeated her question.
“I don’t know where you get your ideas from, D. You must have your Aunt’s imagination. Now go, Pumpkin, please. Get in with your mother and sisters. Trust me. I will see you again soon.”
To her surprise, Deidre felt a growing anger. More anger inside her than fright or sadness. Her father had not answered at all. He was
deserting
his family. She stared at the Orchard Keeper — for that was how she thought of him right then, not as
father
, but as
Orchard Keeper
— stared for a moment longer, until he was forced to exhale and look away, and then she turned toward the grey market cart. She walked, her back held straight, though the heat on her shoulders was oppressive. The thick fabric of the servant’s clothes was a shroud. She did not want to turn around, did not want to see the Orchard Keeper again. Her cheeks also burned. She kept thinking,
this is not fair, this is not fair . . .
But she would not cry.
No stairs on the cart, no lowered ramp, no staff to help her up. Deidre scrambled up over the tailgate and immediately stopped in the musty interior, panting. Her sisters sat on benches, Voluminia and Estelle together, Miranda opposite them, curled in on herself, sniffling. Mother knelt on the floor. She turned toward Deidre now.
“Sweet pea.” Her face was sad. “Come here, give me a hug.”
“Why are we leaving? And why are we dressed like this? Father would not even . . .”
The words died in her mouth: her mother also wore a soiled shift, crude and patched. But her hair, once luxurious, long and red, had been cut unevenly, hacked off, as if by a knife. Heart in her mouth, Deidre looked at Miranda — who did not meet her gaze — and back at her mother.
Voluminia hissed, “We all look ridiculous.”
“Stupid,” Estelle said. “
This
is all so stupid.”
“Girls, don’t make this harder than it is. We have to be strong. For each other.”
Deidre sat down on the hard plank next to Miranda. The market cart rocked suddenly; Lady had taken her place on the driver’s bench. Deidre saw the servant’s broad back through the aperture of the cover. The world seemed to buzz with heat. She could not think straight. Now Lady peered over her shoulder, squinting, her upper lip pulled back over her great teeth as if this homely expression might help her see within the gloom of the cart. “Ready, ma’am?”
“We are,” mother said.
The engine started with a rumble. Backfiring loudly, backfiring again, the cart went noisily into gear and lurched forward. Gravel spat out from behind. Lady shifted as if she had already lost control or had forgotten how to drive altogether; at the wheel, the servant always gave this impression.
So they left the courtyard. Simple as that. Drove right through the gates. Deidre looked out the back but her father was not watching. He was nowhere to be seen.
Elegia’s trees, the path, her beloved estate: all fell behind.
“We’re going to stay in a seasonal residence,” mother said. “One your father and I used to stay in, when we first met.”
Across from Deidre, Voluminia pursed her lips, showing her disdain; Estelle, turning her head away, muttered something unclear.
Elegia looked like a doll’s house. And the huge tent-like structure covering the mouth of the lift shaft, descending to the plantations and beyond, also appeared, to Deidre, as a child’s toy.
Footmen pushed the receding gates shut. They stood in miniature to watch the cart dwindle.
“Before he was elected to the position of Orchard Keeper, your father worked in the private sector. We lived in a place called Timberline. He was so handsome, with eyes like yours, Miranda, and hair the same colour as yours, Vole.” Their mother pushed herself back until she leaned against the rear of the driver’s bench. A breeze came through the cart but it was still muggy and close underneath the chamois. Over her mother’s right shoulder, Lady fought the wheel. The cart rumbled on.
“He used to work very long days, interpreting research for his supervisor. A project trying to improve the general labourer, biological tweaks to a digging model. I was attending Timberline Academy. I was only nineteen. We didn’t get to see much of each other. I worked at the library on weekends and sometimes he would be coming in and I would be going out — ”
“Mother,” Deidre interrupted. “Is there going to be another war? Won’t you at least answer me? Is that why we’re being taken from Elegia?”
Her mother’s nostalgic smile faded. Looking at her four daughters, almost radiating the concern she obviously felt, her body appeared to shrink, and Deidre regretted her question. When her mother finally did respond, it was in a quieter voice. She said she hoped war would never scar the world again but that some people and the machines they had made were mean and hateful, and would humanity never be able to live together, in peace, in a million years? Would they never learn how to do
that
?
Voluminia kicked Deidre when their mother lowered her head to wipe covertly at the corners of her eyes. Deidre felt awful. She wished she had heard the end of the story. She wished she had let her mother talk.
Over the next hour, the mood did manage to brighten again, somewhat, considering the sweltering circumstances, though Deidre’s mother did not continue with her story of the cabin they were heading toward, despite Deidre’s periodic prompting to do so.
Aside from the occasional, muttered complaint about the hardness of the benches or about the heat in the covered cart, the girls and their mother progressed throughout the late morning and into the early afternoon in a dazed sort of torpor. The rumbling and shaking, the transmission’s roar, the intense heat and stale smell of the cart, all seemed to lull the family like a soporific. The girls rocked from side to side, side to side, side to side —
Though Deidre and her family had moved into Elegia only a few years ago, when Deidre was eight, she could not recall what it was like to live elsewhere, beyond the boundaries of the estate. The roadside landscape they passed was lush and vibrant, the small towns that fell behind active, alive, and boisterous; Deidre realized she had expected both people and surroundings out here to be forlorn.
Occasional pedestrians, going about their business, carried food or water or strolled the edges of the road in small groups. Most paid the cart little heed, glancing at it with mild curiosity as it rumbled by. Several children chased behind for a short while, and a group of unseen animals commented loudly and catcalled rudely from the ditch.
Once, they had to pull over to let pass a tiny old crone sitting atop a massive wagon that was being drawn by a beast Deidre had never seen before, a creature twice as high as a man with long shaggy fur and great fleshy feet. The face, when it turned to look Deidre’s way, was vaguely human, but in a most grotesque fashion. The creature emanated a blast of pathos toward her like a gust of cold air.
At last it was teatime. Bidding the request of the girls’ mother, Lady took the cart off the road and stopped it under the shade of a great willow tree. A brook ran under an arched culvert.
The servant jumped from the bench and busied herself setting out a blanket. Emerging, one by one, blinking, the four girls stretched and looked about the glade, tense, lean, healthy.
Deidre’s mother unpacked sweet rolls and sandwiches and tiny sausages. It was much cooler here, under the willow. Water from the brook was refreshing. The suns were dimming. Overcast conditions prevailed. Filling her cup for a second time, Deidre searched the pebbled bottom for caddis fly larvae or diving beetles, or perhaps a minnow, but the ecosystem out here had no place for these creatures and the stream was sterile; the local supervisor had not, apparently, seen fit to stock the water with anything from its archives.
Seated on the blanket, Voluminia and Estelle ate their lunch, talking hoarsely, laughing, hitting one another. A fair distance from them, Miranda gazed at the grass poking up between her knobby knees and did not eat or even pay the food the slightest attention. On the bench of the market cart, Lady munched noisily and messily, staring out over the fields. Thusly, a modicum of equilibrium — despite the adventure — had returned to Deidre’s life. Mother buttered a slice of bread. Talked to Miranda. Trying to get her to eat, no doubt.
A sudden stab of regret at how she had treated her father, when the family had left Elegia, stung Deidre. She vowed to herself that she’d apologize when she next laid eyes on him — for he
would
come to the cabin, surely, as he had promised. They would all be reunited soon. She smiled, and sipped the clean water.
How quickly hardships could be smoothed out, how adaptable we are —
Beyond the willow, soaring, several shapes rode currents so high they appeared to touch the scaffolding that lined the sky and from which the suns hung. Deidre stared for a while but could not imagine what these were. Machines? Or real birds brought to life? Lab-born creations?
Approaching the blanket, she continued to idly watch these forms, deciding at last that they were creatures.
But, as the beasts soared closer, their shapes were clearly bigger than she had at first guessed.
Much
bigger.
She stopped walking.
“Mom?” Her voice came out thin and reedy. Her cup fell to the grass and cold water soaked her foot. “
Mom
!”
“What is it, Sweet Pea?” Her mother looked but turned quickly, toward the sky, alarmed by the expression she’d seen on her youngest daughter’s face. Staring, mouth open, she said nothing. The glade had gone preternaturally still.
Even from this distance, Deidre distinguished two trailing legs, very much like her own, and faces, on these aviators. No, certainly not machines. Not redbirds or blue. These were men, flying men, and they were as strange and unsettling to her mother as they were to Deidre.
“Uh, girls,” their mother finally said, clapping the lid down on a mayonnaise jar. “You see what wonders one can witness in the, in the world at large?”
“
What
are they?” Deidre asked quietly.
“Lady?” Mother addressed the servant. “Have you seen these, er, specimens previously?”
“No, ma’am,” Lady answered, still chewing, her face also turned skyward. “I reckon they might be angels.”
“Angels?” Voluminia laughed. “There’s no such thing.”
“Angels,” Lady repeated, nodding. “Angels are a sign of luck, they say. A blessing. They’re ’posed to appear. When we pure enough to ascend.”
“Ascend? What are you talking about?”
“Some of us believe that. Ma’am.”
“Some of
who
?”
“Us.” Lady shrugged. “Or they might be rocs. Or even harpies.”
Mother laughed nervously. “Tell the girls you’re kidding, Lady.”
Lady looked blankly at the girls.
“Tell the girls there are no such things as rocs. Or nonsense about ascension.”
Lady shrugged and turned her attention back to her lunch. She popped a small potato in her mouth.