“One each evening and each noon? Through the forest?”
She considered former journeys and forced marches that had been off-road, through woods. “Yes, noon and evening. The device should be able to jump you a half day’s journey each time with no problem.”
He frowned. One had to picture a destination clearly in order for the device to move one to that place. One destination could be easy, but a whole line of them . . . “I don’t know if I can remember . . .”
“I know, I can’t either! That’s always been the problem with the thing!” She laughed. “It’s easy enough to go from the gates of a city to a temple on the hill, and from there to the ship at the shore. But on a desert? Going from one clump of cactus to a very slightly different clump of cactus half a day’s journey away? I could never do it more than one jump. I couldn’t even do it twice. Even Precious Wind told me she had trouble with more than two.
“So, around the time I was in Tingawa having the babies and you were there being bewildered by fatherhood, the Tingawan technicians were modifying the xaolats.”
“I wasn’t exactly bewildered . . .”
“You looked bewildered at the time. For days and days. I told Father we couldn’t possibly travel until you stopped looking that way. I was afraid you’d fall overboard in your bemusement.”
He rubbed his stubbled face, wearily fighting laughter. His grandfather had had a saying about wives: Any man who’s been married more than once gets into heaven automatically, ’cause he’s already fully accustomed to hell. He was not going to explain that to Xulai! He put his arms around her instead, trying rather vainly to focus his own thoughts. “Xulai, are you now, amid intermittent and lengthy circumlocutions, telling me that your ‘thing master’ has been modified so that remembering destinations is not necessary?”
“Yes, it has been so modified.” She relaxed against him. “Now it takes hardly any brain at all.”
“Oh, good! Imagine what Willum would do with an ul xaolat!”
She shuddered and stepped away. “We haven’t used it on this trip except to provide passive protection for us and the wagon and horses, and I honestly hadn’t thought about using it as a mover. I didn’t even use it as a weapon when those . . . giants came after us.”
“For good reason.”
Xulai went on: “Well, yes. But, I didn’t think about ul xaolat’s other functions until those men captured Kim, and that reminded me I could jump to Saltgosh. However! I do have one of the modified ones that will take an imprint of the selected locations on the way, and when you want to return, ul xaolat will automatically jump from location to location in reverse.”
“Is it very complicated?” At the moment he did not believe he could manage anything more complicated than . . . his razor. If that. Maybe.
“They made it as simple as they could. I’ll show you how. And, if you’re going to take the thing master, you’ll also have a weapon.”
Abasio shook his head. “No, Xulai, you’ll need to keep that!”
“I don’t plan on killing anything this morning! Precious Wind will be here very soon, and she has at least one ul xaolat with her, complete with the same offensive capabilities this one has. I can move the wagon and the horses and all our clutter farther back into the woods before you leave. We’ll wait for Precious Wind to arrive before we come out of hiding. She says she’s coming with a good group of people from Artemisia!”
He could think of no argument to that. Certainly he couldn’t move Sun-wings by himself. What would it take to move a beast that size? Not counting the wings. He’d need a wagon with at least six sets of wheels; the wagon would weigh more than the load, and it would take at least four teams to haul it! And a decent road! No such wagon, no such teams, no such road. No way of getting any.
He put his arms around Xulai and held her very close. When young, he had longed for adventure and travel. He had since learned that adventure and travel usually meant leaving loved ones, and leaving them was often a dangerous thing to do. He hated being separated from Xulai, from the babies! Olly’s departure had taught him that separations can be forever. The thought left him shaking. When he did think of Olly, the memory made him feel . . . like some goblet of very thin glass that reverberated to particular sounds and was likely to shatter from its own empathetic echo.
As with Xulai! When Xulai fretted, he fretted. When she feared, he feared for her. He had absurd notions of somehow keeping their vibrations from touching one another, because if she were in danger, he might be immobilized by his own fear for her. And it didn’t stop there: Willum and Needly had somehow been grafted into his protective . . . area. He hadn’t even realized it until now.
He could actually understand those lone men of the north. It was more comfortable to be alone, with no one at risk but himself. None of that terrible fear of separation . . . Yet, no matter what Xulai was up to at any given time, he preferred to be where she was. Even if what she was doing at the time was fuming at him. Fuming was as natural to Xulai as it was to a volcano. One simply learned to ignore the scent of sulfur and the heat. Unless, of course, the heat was . . . ah!
Here she was, her face nestled into his neck, her lips moving. She held him closely for a long, silent moment, feeling the thud of his heart, the breath moving in his lungs. At one time she had tried to disdain her feelings for Abasio, whatever they were, because she was annoyed that he and she had been meant for each other, meant in the sense of livestock, bred for the purpose. Sometimes, like now, she had to admit those who had done it had done it wonderfully well.
When she could forget her annoyance at being fiddled with, she could take a good deal of pleasure in life—or in those infrequent bits of it not totally taken up with the task that took virtually every instant of their time and effort. Enjoyment in those infrequent bits was a rare and marvelous thing. She kissed his neck again. Such a kiss would ordinarily be a prelude to lovemaking and they had no time for that!
She pushed him away with a final touch of their lips and said in a not-quite-calm voice: “I’ll make up a packet of things to take with you. If the creature is wounded, you’ll need some things to stop bleeding, to ease pain, to sew wounds closed if they’re not too deep.”
Such things might be helpful in treating Sun-wings, though the word “wounded” was not specific enough to describe the extent of injuries. How could one splint the leg of something that size? When Xulai had put a packet together from among their supplies, she took ul xaolat from the secure cubby where she kept it and went over its workings with Abasio.
“In the pack I made up for you, there’s a complete set of directions for using the thing master. If you need some of the things it’s the master of—the hunter, the defender, the collector, and so forth—the directions are there: pages of them. You should need only the ax master on this trip. You need it to make clearings—”
“To make clearings?”
“Clearings, Abasio. We’ve done this before. On your way back you don’t want to land on top of a bunch of pine trees, or with your body half inside one of them! As you go you need to make . . . landing sites, clearings, every half-day journey, big enough for all of you and Sun-wings. They are the places you will hop to on your return journey, one right after the other.
“This is the new, improved ul xaolat. It will simply do what you tell it to. Tell it you’re going to start a series and give the series a name. We’ll call it ‘Finding Sun-wings.’ ” The device made a beep, and a mechanical little voice said, “Recorded.”
Xulai said, “That name is your code word for this particular journey. The first thing you do is clear a landing site and tell the device to record the site as Site One in Finding Sun-wings. When you stop each noon and evening, make another space and record it as Site Two, Site Three, and so on until you get there. If you forget the number, ask the device. When the first site is the right size, tell the devi
ce to make each succeeding site that same size. It has to be big enough for the whole assemblage: you, the children, the baby Griffin, the mother Griffin, and all the creatures you’re traveling with.
“When you return, you have some choices. One of you could probably do the whole trip in one jump. Moving all of you at once, you’ll need to make shorter jumps. You’re limited by available power. So, to bring everyone back, you say, ‘Finding Sun-wings, series return.’ It’ll jump you back in short hops, through the series, but you’ll need to push the red button or say ‘continue’ at each site. It will not run the whole series.”
“Why not?”
“If someone was waiting at Site Four to tell you Site Three was an ambush, you would not like to land in the middle of it. If you heard, for example, that someone was waiting to ambush you at Site Three, you could skip over that site.”
“If there was enough power.”
“You can always reduce the load: only half of you make the jump from Site Four to Site Two; then you jump back and bring the other half. If you wanted to make notes about each site, you do that by merely asking the device to record what you’re saying about it. Then some time in the future, when you might be traveling alone, you could go to any one of them by number.”
“By saying, ‘Finding Sun-wings Site Three,’ for instance.”
“Exactly. Or ask the device to remind you what you said about each site. Now listen carefully. Bear says Sun-wings is more or less in the middle of a clearing. When you get there, record the site immediately as ‘Finding Sun-wings, end.’ That way, if you see a dangerous situation or need to back off and regroup, or if someone was left behind, you could go back.
“Also, if you push the button and you don’t move immediately, it’s because the device can’t find sufficient power. Don’t move around once you’ve pushed the button. Tell everyone with you so they’re prepared to stay quiet and in touch. Whoever is touching you is being touched by other people, and so on. It should take only a minute or so—though I admit that’s a wild guess, since I’ve never tried to move a Griffin. If you simply sit there and sit there and don’t move, after a while you can say ‘cancel this move.’ Then try again in a few minutes. It’s better than someone moving impatiently and getting left behind.”
While Xulai moved the wagon and other things and creatures, he went through the routine several times. He wrote it down and put the paper in his pocket. He packed one change of clothing in case what he was wearing got soaked or ruined. Blankets, too. In case the children didn’t have any. Bear could carry a pack without even noticing it. While Xulai watched, he directed the device to call up one of its “things” to make a sizable clearing, slightly up the hill and well hidden from the road. He thought of his previous use of the thing as having happened decades ago. Actually, it had only been a couple of years, and it came back to him as soon as the shimmering “thing” appeared under the trees.
One had only to tell the various devices what to do, which he did. “Make a clearing here large enough to hold a big Griffin, one little Griffin, two horses, a bear, a coyote, and three or four people.”
He heard Xulai scream, but it was too late. A tree came down so close to her face that she was almost brushed by one of the smaller branches. He had said “here” instead of “there, around that rock” as he had intended to do. The device had not only cut the trees, it had removed them to the edges and arranged them as a border around the empty space, the fallen logs neatly trimmed of side branches.
Xulai said, in a very chilly voice, “Next time please specify something in the middle of the space, Abasio. Tell it to make a clearing around the rock. It’s programmed not to hurt any sentient creature, but it can certainly give this one a heart attack!”
“I forgot that part.” He was snarling at himself. This whole thing would have been easier if they hadn’t wakened him in the middle of the night . . .
They were soon assembled. Xulai stepped well away from them while Abasio recorded the location they were starting from. They had already said good-bye, and Xulai watched wordlessly as Abasio and the horses walked off into the darkness, following their guides through the woods in a direction that Bear had described as “a little bit that-way from that-way.” He had waved his his front paws to illustrate a little south of west.
She comforted herself with the idea that Bear and Coyote had traveled for the equivalent of two travel days to get here; that they should find Sun-wings by tomorrow evening; that they should find the children shortly after that; that they would return quickly by the same route and would not end up any farther from Artemisia than they were now. When they were out of hearing distance, however, she went into the wagon, where she let herself cry quietly without disturbing her sea-children at all. Since they had stopped needing to be fed during the night, they slept all night, every night, like perfect angels. No. More like hibernating bears! Hibernating . . . dolphins? Right now she found herself resenting it, regardless of how silly it was. They could at least wake up and distract her a little!
Finally, knowing sleep was impossible, she made tea for herself and Kim. He had spent enough time with Xulai that he did not attempt to comfort her. Precious Wind herself had sat down with him over a glass of wine to tell him about young mothers. Precious Wind had never been a mother, and Kim had had the temerity to wonder what made her the expert. Her advice had been simple and useful, however, and he had followed it.
Precious Wind had said young mothers are frequently under a lot of stress, usually because they are tired. In traditional surroundings, with older women to cluck and cuddle, the mother did not get so tired, but sometimes such helpers were lacking. Therefore, young mothers should be helped in whatever way possible, but not lectured or argued with.
Kim had no intention of arguing, and throughout the trip he had remained fully alert to provide help whenever he saw a chance. He was grateful this morning (though the sun had not yet risen) to find that nothing was required except to build up the fire and sit silently beside it with a mug of tea, sip, sip, sip, sigh, murmuring assents or negations as seemed required by the monologue Xulai was uttering, and refilling their mugs occasionally. Sip, sigh, refill, nod in agreement, sip again, until the sun rose.
As soon as it was light enough to see what they were doing, and after checking any visible portion of the road up the mountain to be sure they were unobserved, they made the wagon even less visible. The wagon itself was a tree-bark brown. With the shutters closed over the window, it faded into the background of trees. A sapling or two draped over the top hid it from the sky. Ever since their visits from the Griffin, they had been very conscious of being visible from the sky.
The final step was to obliterate the wagon tracks and picket the horses even farther from the road. They were somewhat handicapped by not having Blue and Rags available to help. The horses they had “rescued” were willing, but they had to be led instead of told. Finally they scattered the ashes from their fire and covered their own and the horses’ tracks before setting themselves to “keeping busy,” in order, as Xulai announced, to avoid useless fretting. Kim had such complete faith in Abasio that he hadn’t been fretting, but keeping busy was always a good idea.
All three of the human adults on this journey had become experts at busy-ness. There were always small things that hadn’t been done because there had been no time. Mending a pair of Abasio’s trousers where he had snagged them on a thorny tree was not done because they smelled like him or felt like him, of course not, merely because they needed doing, as did fixing new spokes into the broken wagon wheel that they had replaced with a spare, and replacing the iron tires and greasing the axles. Since they would not build up the fire, as they did not want to be located by the smoke, they ate cold bread and cheese from the stores, followed by chewy slices of dried apple. Bailai and Gailai had applesauce and eggs that had been boiled well before dawn, before the fire was drowned.
Everything was done in bits and pieces, between sessions of tending babies, but none of it served to make them any less alert than they already were. Whenever they went out on the road to look eastward, however, they found it empty; its only traffic the mad darting of ubiquitous long-eared hares who seemingly had no homes and were always on their way somewhere else. One found their babies under sagebrush, as long as one’s finger, fully furred and open-eyed, silent and virtually invisible, where Mama had left them to await her return. Xulai always wondered if the hare had an ul xaolat in her brain, one that could tell one particular sagebrush from every other possible sagebrush, one’s own hare-baby from any other possible hare-baby.
Xulai hoped she and Kim and the children were themselves invisible, though they could not achieve silence. All day the trees resounded to “Dada? Willum? Eedy? Mama . . .” Yet again, Xulai remembered with regret those not-long-gone days when they could not speak at all. Of course, even then they could scream.
She and Kim had agreed that if they spotted someone inimical approaching, the babies would go into their baskets, into the wagon, under the bed, with all available bedding draped over the bed to muffle their noise. With Xulai close beside, of course, to keep them company. Xulai prayed it would not be necessary. She also had some drops to put in their mouths that would put them to sleep, but Precious Wind had said they were for emergencies only, not something that should be routinely used.
“You got any beer?” asked Kim when she mentioned this to him.