ain't done such a bad job here. Better'n some dirty squatter."
Pater chewed the biscuit and swallowed the last of his tea.
"Your sister, the older one...?"
"Porkchop."
"Yeah. She's gotta be near turned, right?"
"Near enough."
Alone in the house, Mixer took off the beaver and wool coat, laid down on Titania’s bed and drew part of the coat over his legs. Outside the window, he could see Porkchop wandering in the back field, her head bent down, watching her feet. Pater continued to snore.
If the Constable was smart enough to know the law, Mixer thought, if he was smart enough to convince a crazy old coot like Pater to hand over his property to him, then he was smart enough to keep a copy of Pater's will and still had the legal right to the farm. That could have been a snag in his plans had Titania not revealed the Constable's feelings for Porkchop. Pater's rhythmic snoring made Mixer's eyelids feel heavy. As he fell asleep, new plans circulated through his brain.
___
Porkchop squelched through the back fields. It was still too wet to plant but they couldn't afford to wait any longer; Forest had said that the rain would stay a while longer but that hotter temperatures were on their way. If they waited too long, the roots wouldn’t establish. The key had been drainage.
Narrow had proposed digging out the ditch that ran along one edge of the field, to draw off the excess water and channel it towards the reed beds. Porkchop and her brothers had spent an entire day digging; the clay bed beneath the topsoil was heavy and they had been so tired and filthy by the end of it that they had all jumped into the freezing cold creek, fully clothed, as much to wake up as to wash off the muck. But it had been worth it; the ditches were working, slowly siphoning the water off the furrows and into the cattail marsh.
She stared at the mud and thought of the future, the bone dry future. She had brought up the subject over dinner one night weeks ago.
"The marsh will retain enough for the fields and there’s the creek," said Forest.
"The clay will help, too," Jelly added.
"It’s the drinking water I’m worried about," said Porkchop. "If there was a way to store all this rainwater...what we could really use are some fermentation vats."
Narrow devised a solution. He borrowed pine resin from Jelly and coated the inside of an empty crate with it then laid cattail leaves over top of the sticky mix. It leaked at first but Jelly added a bit of goose fat and some charcoal to the resin, making it stronger. The next attempt worked. A dozen waterproof crates now lined the northeast side of the barn and each day they emptied the excess rainwater from the cisterns into them. More crates were inside the barn in various stages of completion.
Tomorrow at dawn the hard work would begin. With Titania taking care of Mixer, the rest of the family would spend the next several days planting.
Porkchop came to the ditch and was pleased to see water flowing slowly but steadily into the swamp. Some of last year's cattails still stood, their brown flowers exploded in soft, puffy strands. One of the green flowers on a new plant suddenly bobbed up and down as the rain began again. She took one last look around, scanning the horizon and the top of the hill in the distance, and then returned to the barn.
___
Hap took to the bicycle as though he'd been riding one all his life and easily kept pace with the Landlord's two black horses, although he stayed far enough behind to avoid detection. They rode until nightfall when the Landlord arrived at a small hunting cabin and pulled into the yard.
"We'll stay here tonight," he told Marvellous.
He left her tied to the cart while he fed and watered the horses then led Marvellous to the cabin, his hand tight around her bicep.
Hap saw them disappear inside. He found a clearing in the woods across the road from the cabin, wrapped the blanket and Rank's oilskin coat around him and bedded down for the night. He couldn't risk a campfire.
Other than a few minutes snatched here and there, though, sleep eluded him. He knew that Marvellous was strong and could take care of herself but he couldn't stop thinking about what the Landlord might be doing to his sister inside the cabin.
___
"So that's what you'll be doing," said the Landlord.
He'd explained the workings of the orchard to Marvellous over a cold dinner of pork and biscuits. They ate with their fingers while sitting on benches that lined two of the walls of the small cabin.
"I can hire some day boys to help you get the place up and running," he said.
"I doubt I’ll need any help," Marvellous said quietly.
"Ha! It’s a big place. Lots to do," said the Landlord.
He drained his flask and got up to look around the cabin for more.
Marvellous reached into her jacket and withdrew a goatskin bag. Still seated, she offered it to him.
"Try mine," she said. The Landlord walked over to her and looked down, first at her then at the bag.
"Tell you what," he said, taking it from her, "I’ll give you a trial period, let’s say a week? If I don’t like what I see, I’ll do what’s best."
He took a swig, gave a nod of approval, and tossed more back. He sat down beside her but was only able to paw at her hair a few times before he passed out.
She could so easily kill him right now but she didn't. She still needed him to guide her and Hap to the orchard; without being physically on the land any claim she might have would be gone. But there were other things she could do, as she'd done that night. The herbs she'd added to the wineskin wouldn't hurt him; just put him into a deep sleep. And make him piss a lot the next day, she smiled to herself.
She thought about what her mother had trained her not to do. She might have to use some of those defects. She didn't care about the word. She didn't take many things personally. She could do things that others couldn't; it was as simple as that. Some defects, like knowing all about plants, was something anyone could do, given some training. Marvellous knew this but had always kept that opinion to herself. But her other defects were not things many people could do. She could reach great speeds and could look in on someone's thoughts while masking her own.
And then there was her ability to change. With intense concentration, Marvellous could change her appearance. Her grandmother had had it but not her great grandmother, Marvellous' mother had told her after the first and last time Marvellous changed. She hadn't told her seven-year old daughter that her grandmother had been beaten to death by a town mob and then thrown to the crab beds just off the coast.
"You can't let people know what you can do, Marvellous," she'd said. "People will be afraid of you."
"Why?" Marvellous had asked. She had only changed her hair colour and her height a bit; she didn't know why her mother was making such a fuss.
"It's like what I told you about your speed, do you remember? People are stupid. They think that anything they can't explain is a defect and that somehow it's going to hurt them. They are afraid of what they don't understand. It's maddening! What they think of as defects are often perfectly normal skills!" her mother had said all in a rush. She had paused then and her shoulders relaxed. "You can't blame them, I suppose. If they weren't taught, you can't expect them to know any better."
As she had grown up, Marvellous had often wondered how her mother could ever have had any sympathy for people. In Marvellous' experiences growing up in the port town, it wasn't just some of the people who were terrified of their own shadows it was virtually all of them. And of the few who weren't, she could never be sure they wouldn't turn her in just to shift the attention from themselves. She'd learned quickly not to trust anyone or to let herself be trusted. Until now. The sad little man who had followed her all the way here trusted her.
She pictured Hap in her head but couldn't find his thoughts. Still, she believed he was out there somewhere close by. If she had to use her defects to protect her future, and his, that's what she would do. Her days of running were, she hoped, coming to an end
.
___
PC Pierre's week at the cabin was up and now he was heading back into Battery. He needed supplies for the summer and had already waited through several days of non-stop rain at the cabin until he gave up. He pushed Josephine as fast as she would go in the sheeting rain. Rain or no rain, he had to get to town.
The rain was coming down in fat drops as Josephine pulled a soggy Constable and an empty cart to the stall at the back of Baker’s Yard. PC Pierre jumped down from the cart and ran to open the shed doors to let in Josephine. Chester whinnied in his stall when he opened the doors. Josephine stopped midway through and refused to move. The front half of her was in the dry inside while rain poured down from the roof onto the Constable who eventually gave up trying to pull her inside and was now splayed across her rear end fiddling to get her harness undone.
"Thanks a heap, Josie," said PC Pierre as he wheeled the cart into one half of the stall. Josephine shook her head and stepped into her stall in the back corner. She looked at Chester, who nodded at her.
He dashed through the rain and onto the porch of Baker’s Yard. PC Pierre opened one of the front double doors and stepped inside onto a straw mat. A brass bell clanged above him. He wiped his boots clean.
Two wall lamps had been lit inside. A wooden counter ran three-quarters of the length of the front room and in the middle of it was a hinged pass-through. A swinging back door with a window cut into it led to the