The Stowaway

Rachel dug her fingernails into her palms and tried to contain the rage building inside as her mother, sisters and various other female relatives continued to fuss over her. Primping and curling her hair, painting her nails and smoothing out the lines of her bonding dress. It was all slowly but surely pushing her over the edge—eating away at the last tattered threads of her control until she wanted to scream.

The need to shout, “Back off! You’re suffocating me!” bubbled up in her throat, but she ruthlessly swallowed it down. It wasn’t as if it would make a difference anyway. Her kinswomen were on a mission—they weren’t going to be put off by a minor thing like Rachel not being able to breathe.

Her stomach twisting in angry, frustrated knots, Rachel turned her head to stare out of the cramped private waiting room’s single observation window. But even the sight of the bustling spaceport couldn’t distract her today. Normally, on those rare occasions she got to come to town with her family, she was glued to the viewports that overlooked the main dock. She loved watching the dazzling array of space-going vessels coming and going. The strangers in their bright, alien clothes heading out for distant star systems. The dock workers hurrying about preparing the ships for their journeys. She even enjoyed watching the other Thebia farmers going about their business—trying to imagine how visitors to their world might see them. It was fascinating.

But none of it could divert her today. Today—possibly the worst day of her twenty-three-solar-year existence—completely stifled her usual interest. She had too many other things on her mind.

The whole situation was just so infuriating. How could her family think this was a good idea? That it was perfectly all right to bond her off to a pair of brothers from Thebia she’d never even met. Hell, she hadn’t even had an opportunity to speak to them yet.

It was traditional in their sparsely populated solar system. A way of matching hard-working farmers with appropriate mates that could tend house and produce off-spring where there were thousands of clicks of solgram fields and not much else. But she felt like an object. A thing. A marionette being manipulated and hoisted into position.

A brightly painted, very false and unwilling marionette—done up to be something she wasn’t. She didn’t want to be a blushing bond-mate. She didn’t want to be the essence of grace and fertility or whatever the hell the thousands of beads and hundreds of loops of goldilum thread on her gown were supposed to represent. She had absolutely no desire to bond and settle down to raising a family and continuing the cycle of Thebian life.

It wasn’t who she was. It wasn’t who she wanted to be.

A sharp tug at her waist finally snapped her control.

“Please, Mother. Just…stop.”

All things considered, she thought she sounded surprisingly reasonable—even if her voice was a little sharp for speaking to the house matriarch.

“Don’t be silly, dear. If we don’t get these tucks just right it’ll spoil the whole effect,” Mother Sorrtell replied, still pulling at the errant fabric.

“Do you really think they’ll care? Or even notice? They’re men, Mother.”

“Of course they’ll notice. You’re going to be their bond-mate, the mother of their young. Besides, they’re not the ones we need to impress, my dear. It’s your new kinswomen you need to look your best for.”

Rachel fought hard against the urge to grind her teeth.

“I hardly think they’re going to care much, either, Mother. They’re more interested in how many loaves of bread I can produce in an hour or how fast I can mend a seam.”

“Time for all that later. We’re talking about first impressions here, Rachel. Very important.”

“Oh, of course. Silly me.”

“Don’t be snippy,” Mother chided. “That tongue of yours is going to land you in a whole mess of trouble in your new home if you’re not careful, my girl. Don’t think the matriarch there is going to be as lenient as I am.”

Rachel took hold of her mother’s hand, stilling the restless fingers and finally getting her attention. With her mother’s eyes finally really seeing her, Rachel lifted the long red skirt of her bonding day dress, desperately trying one last time to make her mother understand.

“I don’t want this.”

Mother’s eyes narrowed, a familiar temper entering them that most people in the household knew better than to provoke.

“Would you mind giving us a minute, ladies?” Mother asked carefully.

The other women took one look at Mother Sorrtell’s expression and headed for the door in a flurry of rustling callocko and ruffles.

Traitors.

Sisters, cousins, aunts—none of them hung around to offer her even a glance of support. Then again, none of them understood why she was railing against something they not only considered inevitable, but a wonderful occasion in her life. Bonding days were something to be celebrated.

Unless, of course, you actually wanted to have a life.

Mother’s no-nonsense gaze swung back to Rachel as soon as the door slid shut behind the other women of the family. “Your kinswomen spent months helping you to finish this gown in time for your bonding. The least you could do is be grateful. If not, is it too much to ask that you hold still long enough for us to get it on you properly?”

Gazing down at the intricate folds, layers and hand-stitched embellishments that had taken the women of her line hundreds of hours of work, usually after long days of tending to the household and helping in the fields, Rachel felt a stab of guilt. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t think of it as anything more than a slave’s costume they were all helping to stitch her into.

It was supposed to represent her dedication to hard work and the richness she brought to her new family. It was her kinswomen’s attempt to show her in her best possible light so she would be admired and accepted into her new family. All it did was make Rachel feel trapped. And angry.

She wasn’t some present that needed to be wrapped and tied up with a neat little bow before handing over on Midwinter’s Day. She had bigger dreams than this. She wanted to be free, not caged by expectations and traditions. She wanted…adventure.

Rachel pressed her lips together tightly—silently fuming beneath her mother’s disapproving gaze. It was no use. She had gone over it a thousand times with her various female relatives—begged, pleaded, reasoned and railed, but it didn’t make any difference. They all told her the same thing. This bonding was expected. It was the way things were and she better get used to it. After a few years, when she had young to care for, she would hardly remember these feelings of restlessness and rebellion, they all told her. It was natural to feel nervous and insecure, but once she was bonded, everything would work out. She would see.

She hadn’t known what to say to any of them six months ago when her mother had announced that the bonding had been arranged and she didn’t know what to say now. Eventually she had got sick of hearing the platitudes and condescension. She remained silent, and directed her energy elsewhere.

Suddenly Mother sighed. “It’s my fault. I should never have let you gallivant around the farm with your brothers when you were growing up.”

“But I love being out in the fields with my brothers. I would have been miserable staying home.”

Mother gave a very uncharacteristic snort. “You mean you would have caused no end of trouble at home.”

“I just wanted to…explore.”

“I know. I know. You were always a wild one.” Mother reached up and brushed a stray curl back from Rachel’s forehead tenderly. “But it left you with unrealistic expectations.”

Unrealistic expectations. How could she fight a statement like that? Wanting her own life, to be free and to see something beyond food processor units and the mending room, was unrealistic?

Apparently it was in her mother’s eyes. And there really wasn’t anywhere else to go after that. No point in further discussion. It was quite obvious her mother just didn’t understand. And probably never would.

“I’m really sorry things didn’t work out between you and Luke,” Mother continued, tweaking an errant curl into place. “I had high hopes for the two of you and that handsome cousin of his from Orthos Minor.”

Rachel fought a blush. Luke had been fun. Actually, he’d been hung like a Purillien horz and taught her quite a lot in the couple of years they’d been ‘stepping out together’. But it had never been anything serious. When Luke had left to join his cousin and bond with a girl on Orthos Minor she’d been sad to loss his friendship—and of course the hot benefits that went with it—but she hadn’t been heartbroken or anything.

“You need to settle down, Rachel. I just want to see you happy and bonded with a family. This really is for the best.”

Rachel bowed her head. Her mother simply couldn’t imagine a woman being happy outside an arranged marriage and enough young to form a vectorball team. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t who she was, and in that way she would always be a disappointment to her mother.