Six moons before mating, p.17
Six Moons Before Mating, page 17
Stepping to the front of the desk, Stan turned on the computer with one hand while motioning for Abigail to approach with the other. A happy face appeared on the screen, and Abigail giggled.
She rolled to the desk. As arranged, her wheelchair was just the right height for her to reach the keyboard readily. She looked so serious, her tiny fingers pressing gently.
She didn’t get far before the happy face was replaced by stark letters:
RESTORE PREVIOUS SESSION? Y/N
Uncertain, she looked up to her daddy, who mouthed the word “Yes.”
Abigail pressed a key, and the computer died. Not even a click, just darkness on the screen, and a faint smell of smoke.
Stan sniffed, looking to the computer and the wires behind to make sure no serious frying had commenced. Nope.
“Another two-stroke computer,” he quipped.
Another? What was the other?
“I told you so,” came a voice of wisdom from the doorway.
“I’m throwing this out,” Stan told her. “I’m not even going to try to have it repaired. It’s from Medieval times, anyway.”
“What is mid-evil?” Abigail asked quietly.
“Not small evil or grand evil, but medium evil,” her father explained with a huge grin.
“You can be funny,” Abigail said, trying to appear serious. “Not big, not little. Medium.”
As the girl and her father laughed together, the mother retreated. She could be funny, too, but that had ended in Medieval times.
“Really, Abigail, I’ll tell you about the Medieval era. That was very long ago, before electricity; so they didn’t have computers or phones or refrigerators.”
“Or TV?” Abigail asked, pointing to a small television in the corner.
Stan walked there and turned it on.
“No TV’s either,” he said as a quiet image appeared. The program was a sewing show where a lady attached buttons to a cotte with a hissing industrial sewing machine. It might have been pneumatic, or steam.
“TV’s are magical,” Stan told his daughter. “They allow one to view into the world beyond one’s bedroom.”
“You’re smart on purpose, Daddy,” she laughed.
“It doesn’t count if it’s an accident,” he lied.
“Did they have sewing machines in mid-evil times?” Abigail wondered.
“Good question. The first sewing machines didn’t run on electricity. You made the needle go up and down by pressing a big flat pedal with your feet.”
She shook her head.
“I couldn’t do that.”
“No, sweetheart, but you could use an electrical one.”
“That’s the kind I have!” she beamed. “I’ll show you one day. But you have to tell me more about mid-evil first.”
“I will. Back in those days, religion was even more important than it is now, and people died for their beliefs, but that still happens, but even worse then, and there were a lot of monks running the churches.”
After all that talking, Abigail had to nod her head, absorbing it, looking closely to her daddy. Finally, she came up with a reply:
“I have a monkey.”
“In a cage?”
“In my toy box. It’s stuffed. A monkey is a tiny monk.”
Despite her self-satisfied chortling, Stan didn’t grab and hug her. They were talking serious, sort of.
“All right. I just gave you a hint, so now you can tell me what a monk is for real.”
“They cook things.”
“They do?”
“Yes, they’re friers. Not cupcakes, maybe doughnuts.”
That look she gave him…. No one could be that young and that droll.
Though Stan had to smile, he managed not to laugh outright.
“All right,” he said, “let’s see your monkey.”
Immediately the girl whirled around in her chair—proving herself mistress of the U-turn—and headed for her toy box. A big chest suitable for a Medieval castle, the box had a lid requiring a grunt from the girl, but Stan didn’t have to help her. He sat beside her on the carpet, ready to share the experience. The stench.
“This carpet smells like pee,” he told her. “You don’t have a cat all of a sudden, do you?”
“No, I am…lergic to them. But I don’t know what that means.”
“‘Allergic’ means if you’re near them, your eyes water and you have to blow your nose.”
Came a snotty sound from the door:
“Stan, are you through?” Vanessa asked, her voice less than charming. “I don’t want you to stay too long, like you did last time.”
He didn’t remember staying too long at any time, and wasn’t going to mention it.
“I won’t,” he said.
As Vanessa again retreated, Stan and Abigail shared a look like two kids just trying to have fun and now they had to put a timer on it?
Returning his attention to the chest, Stan saw many stuffed toys inside, some he recognized, some still in boxes. Abigail lifted the topmost: a yellow and green and red parrot.
“I have this, Daddy,” she said.
As soon as she held it up, one wing flopped loose, barely attached.
“What happened to its wing?” Stan wondered.
“The birdie guards my toy box and had to chase away the monkey. It was not really really mean, it was mid-evil.”
“I’ll get you another,” Stan told her.
She held it close to her chest.
“I love my birdie.”
“Right. You can’t replace everything that gets hurt. I’m sure we can fix this. We’ll pretend to be monks working in their infirmary.”
“I have to ask what that means!”
“An infirmary is like a hospital, from the old days.”
“Did they have parrots back then?”
“Uh, they had eagles for sure.”
Stan reached for the parrot. Abigail held it out, but wouldn’t let go.
“We could sew it back on,” he suggested. “Can you sew?”
She had to think about that.
“Mid-evil.”
He nodded wisely.
“Sewing machine in closet,” Abigail told her father.
“We can’t really use a sewing machine,” he said. “We need some needle and thread.”
She pointed to the closet.
“Sewing things on top shelf I can’t reach so I won’t poke myself.”
Stan nodded.
“I’ll get it.”
On his way to the closet, he had to step around a hanging pot with an ugly green plastic plant, a vine all wrapped in a circle, the beginning and end indistinguishable.
Reaching for the closet door, he stopped. Stan didn’t understand why he was reluctant to grab the handle, feeling that it would break at his touch. Of course, it didn’t as he opened the door. The first sight almost broke his heart.
No touching. He just looked at that photograph in the cracked frame. He didn’t want to see more.
Abigail rolled right over, reaching in past Stan to take the photo.
“This is my grandmum,” Abby said. “She likes me to call her Grandmum.”
He only glanced at the picture. A woman stern from face to physique, permanently formal.
Stan knelt beside his daughter.
“Sweetheart, that lady is my mother. You never met her. She died before you were born.”
Abigail had to think about that, had to think about what she felt.
“I still want to call her Grandmum,” she determined.
“I still love her, Abby, even though she’s not with us.”
More thinking, more fine feeling came from the girl.
“She’s with us like this,” Abigail said, holding out the photograph. “When we think of her.”
In that moment, Stan wanted to cry. Yes, yes, he still loved his mum.
Abby set down the photo and reached out to throw her arms around her father’s neck.
“Allergy,” she said intensely. “You have to blow your nose.”
He patted her back. In that moment, he needed nothing but her hug.
“Thanks for fixing me,” he told her. “Now let’s fix your birdie.”
After finding the sewing kit, Stan let Abigail thread the needle. She had the eyes of an eagle and the touch of a Medieval brain surgeon.
No red thread, so they used yellow. After one stitch, Abigail poked her finger.
Instead of looking down to her hand, she looked up to her daddy.
“Ouch,” she said, her sound almost a question.
He took a look, but didn’t see much.
“It’s not bad, no blood. I have a worse wound—want to see?”
“Is it blood? I don’t like that.”
“Neither do I,” he told her. “Especially from the skull.”
Then he turned his neck to show her the sore spot on the back of his head. She tapped it once with a non-injured finger.
“Is that from dreaming too hard?” she wondered.
“Maybe thinking too hard.”
“Well, I have it, too,” she said, then turned and pulled her hair so Stan could see the same area on her head.
He knew without looking.
“That’s called a birthmark, Abby.”
“I can’t see it, way back there.”
She was serious again, because this was medicine, holding her head just so, parting her hair.
“I’ll tell you how it looks,” Stan said. “It’s like a star with many points and the points are rounded and so are the spaces between them.”
The girl then looked him eye to eye.
“Daddy, you don’t have to talk like me. I don’t talk like you.”
He pinched her nose, and they went back to sewing. The parrot was not even remotely in a flyable state when Abby poked herself again. A good one this time.
No ouching as she turned to her daddy with that sad sad face and began crying.
More pain then arrived at the doorway.
“Did you hurt her again?!” Vanessa yapped, glaring at her weeping daughter.
“Shut up, geez, we’re sewing her stuffed bird and she stuck herself.”
Overcome by a sense of danger, Vanessa turned furious, stepping closer to stare at a scene of jeopardy that didn’t exist. Not at that time.
“First those horrible plants, and now you’re doing vivisection?!” she shouted.
“This would go a lot better if you just took a nap,” Stan stated mildly, again holding Abigail’s hand. The ongoing argument did not improve her spirits.
“You’re the one who needs to be unconscious,” Vanessa growled, sounding animalistic now.
After another step inside the room, she reached for that potted plant, grabbing it and rearing back to smash Stan with it.
Though startled by the assault, he managed to dodge the blow and push Vanessa away. She fell to the bed, not immediately leaping up to continue her attack.
“I told you to take a nap,” Stan snapped.
Turning to his daughter to alleviate her emotional injury, Stan tripped on that plastic vine Vanessa had dropped. Seeing only his daughter’s face rushing up to meet his own, he crashed violently against the girl and her wheelchair.
He picked himself up.
Chapter 20
The Most Terrible Magic
Rising, he took a deep breath as he stepped to the door. How foolish. On his way to the viewing plate that would allow him to see into the exterior world, he had tripped on a feather. They were sizable. He would have Abigail collect it later. It was her bird.
After adjusting the optics, Stan was able to see far far down the public road before his residence. There came a messenger hurrying on a three-wheel cart, one each of rubber and wood and stone. Stan recognized the man: young, perfectly pointy pate without a lick of hair, narrow eyes that seemed stretched, lips that had difficulty holding those teeth back. Jom must have had something important to say, considering he traveled beyond the rate of normal progress. Aided by the ensorcelled viewing plate, Stan observed to a charmed degree:
Jom held his hat with one hand and the steering tiller with the other as the small cart pulled him up the hill. Rapidly he passed hired horses snorting about their low fee and weighty fare, while the human clients they carried wondered of that wagon of good joinery and no motive engine, neither steam nor animal. Beneath the cart’s stiff axles, the dirt road changed to the streets of the city’s outskirts, petrified lumber laid in creaseless seams, a thoroughfare whose craftsmanship suggested furniture. Though the wind created by his unnatural passage widened his eyes, Jom scarcely noticed the walls of cemented stone and knit trees he passed, signifying the borders of fine residences. All of his effort went into cautious movements of the tiller, intense staring at the street beyond, and acceptance of the experience of artificial wind and swift movement as the world was pulled past him by the excruciating experience of rolling flight.
Around a gentle bend made tight by his velocity, Jom felt himself sliding sideways in the unpadded interior of polished wood: slick, hard, but never dangerous before. He recognized the Curve of FineLandLane. Just beyond lay his goal, that eastern gateway, his heart beating hard lumps in his chest as he reached for the brake lever, gently pulling.
The cart stopped instantaneously, Jom thrown out in a flurry of arms and legs twirling flatly about his abdomen’s axis explaining to him the meaning of the term “cartwheel.” Surprising himself by landing on his feet and continuing in a run, Jom was flung forward by a rate too rapid for human legs, coming to rest by smacking his body and palms against the gateboard of that residence his goal, pressing the guest bell with his forehead as though attempting to crack his skull nut.
Seeing everything from inside, Stan said:
“Welcome, Jom.”
Jom recognized the voice replying along the speaking tube. Regaining his breath, he looked up from his half-folded position.
The opaque gate of calcified vines, thick as a swine’s thorax, eased open with the sound of hedges growing magnificently. Jom passed through, head down, unable to think, barely seeing, his feet moving on their own, as though influenced in locomotion by that wondrous, terrible cart. Jom knew his recuperation came slowly when he found himself inside a building with that gentleman his goal.
“Remember to breathe,” Squire Stan told him.
Jom’s perceptions came like Stan’s curt words. Raised foyer. Multiple walls extended beyond. Superlative plaster. Flowing ceiling lines, rich fixtures. In the adjacent room, a woman whose face and form induced attention from men stood on the soft flooring. Not a move seen from her. Arms extended as though reaching. Face caught between expressions. Her chest did not expand from respiration. Static legs. Living eyes with no blinking, no shifting gaze.
Not exactly.
A girl approached the stiff woman, speaking with a smile. The two fems shared identical chins and necks and hairlines. Above these fems perched an eagle of pure yellow and deep red and bright green. Opening and closing its great, curved beak, clenching its claws, the eagle glared at Jom from its roost, a freestanding bone the length of a growing girl. It seemed to be missing a feather.
“Jom, tell me of the living that went into the spell.”
Still needing to recuperate, Jom felt that his special flight and abrupt end had separated his position from his vantage. He had to determine who he was and when. Yes, there he stood with a known person. This man’s shirting, waistcoat, and knickers seemed to have grown from his flesh, fitting as naturally as hair. The face displayed less beauty than security of expression, an unimpeachable demeanor. Not near, but not far, stood a tall and slender man with a jutting chin, irises of the palest brown with a colorless, murky cast.
“Living, Mr. Stan?”
“The magian who assisted you, had he complete vision?”
“Aye, sir, both his eyes.”
“And every limb?”
“All four that I could see. His head was attached most secure.”
“And did that attached head speak, Jom?” Stan wondered.
“Ah, and I say no, squire. This particular magian lacked a voice.”
Stan looked intently at the younger man, providing his own message.
“Magic’s mathematics equates its energies, Mr. Jom. The force of that rapid cart must be returned to the world in an alternate form of living power. Did you, the magian, or any living creature bleed or decay during the generation of this spell?”
“Ah, and the magian did perspire heavily, and cough.”
Stan turned from the youth, now speaking firmly:
“Malbad, out with him at once. Remove the potential of his payment from my family.”
Malbad hurried into the foyer, lifting Jom as though handling a shrub vase of no value. After opening the door, he ran through with his load.
Following, Stan continued speaking as the overseer carried Jom out of doors:
“Magians of the Dark Quarter reside there due to untoward application of their skills. You must tell me of your need for magic with a rapidity equal to that spellbound rush.”
“Why, squire, I have found a venture for you!”
“My great thanks I give you, Jom, for your excellent service.”
Malbad set the younger man upright on a large lawn leaf, then stepped from the veining, reaching to press Stan’s chest.
“Step, step, remember those legs.”
“Oh, yes,” Stan mused, retreating from Jom two reverse strides.
“Master Jom,” Stan continued, “you must tell me at once of this venture.”
“Foreigners, sir, with most colorful faces.”
“Their business?”
“Why, they seek wondrous plant life!”
“You approached?”
“Speak with them I did, Mr. Stan. And tell them I did that I was the very emissary of the king, and that they should wait for his governor of trade, one Squire Stan, to join them hastily with unique growing items!”
“Utterly excellent,” Stan smiled convincingly. “I cannot tell you of my pride in you. I can tell you, however, that you should not have applied so harsh a spell merely to gain one day’s travel.”
