And there were cookies. The trip cook, Brunny, had an affinity for children, and cookies seemed mysteriously to materialize whenever Miles toddled around the cook wagon after lunch or during the evening halts.
During the night there were the peaceful stars and sleep that was better than she had had at any time recently. During the day, there was Tripsinging and the glory of the Presences. She had not been afraid. Even considering how Lim had died, she had not been afraid. Her acceptance was almost fatalistic, she realized. If she died on this journey, she would at least have had this period of peace and sufficient food and a warm bed. And memories. Lots of memories.
Night before last, just at sunset, they had seen a red sparkle on the eastern horizon, twin spires of iridescent scarlet. ‘That’s the Enigma,’ the Tripmaster had announced. ‘Be nice if there was a trail that way. It’d cut off about fifty miles. As it is, we turn north up ahead a ways, go on up through Harmony and past the Black Tower. You can see the very tip of Old Blacky, sticking up there over that purple peak. Then Deepsoil Five, same day.’
Deepsoil Five. The feelings of peace fled, and Vivian became anxious once more. Why? She had accepted what Tasmin had told her. He hadn’t known, his mother hadn’t known. Much though she believed they should have known, she could not condemn them for something that had been between Lim and his father. Or, she could condemn them but chose not to. Chose, rather, to let baby Miles have a family – if only her mind could stop there, but it never did. It always went on, ‘let Miles have a family even though they betrayed his daddy and ended up killing him.’
No matter how often she told herself that she did not condemn them, she ended up by doing exactly that. Betrayal, she moaned. Killing. Violent accusations against absent people she didn’t even know. Each time she arrived at this point in her circular agony, she cried bitterly, then told herself all over again that they hadn’t really done it. Tasmin had been seven years old when it happened; he had been only sixteen or seventeen when Lim left. Could she really hold a seven-year-old boy responsible? And Thalia, Tasmin’s mother – she had been going blind even then. Perhaps that had been all the trauma she could handle. Her husband couldn’t have been any help to her. Perhaps she had been unable to see anything at all.
So, alternately accusing and exonerating, Vivian had spent the recent hours gradually working herself out of the emotional maelstrom and into something approaching calm. Now, with the end of the journey in sight, that calm was disrupted and all the feelings of pain and anger were stirred once more.
‘I have to stop this,’ she whispered half-aloud. ‘I have to stop it.’
‘ ’Top it,’ said Miles. ‘ ’ Top it, Mama.’
‘I will,’ she promised, laughing at him through teary eyes. ‘I will. Are you going to get some cookies from Mr Brun?’
‘Cookies,’ Miles verified with a nod of his head. ‘Yes. Cookies wit’ nuts.’
‘Where do you suppose Mr Brun gets nuts?’ she asked in pretend amazement.
‘Viggy nuts,’ crowed Miles, giggling. It was a story Brunny told him, about the viggies bringing nuts to trade for candy. Actually, there were no nuts on Jubal, and the sweet, hard nuggets in Brunny’s cookies were merely sugary chunks of baked proto-meal, but Miles loved the viggy story.
‘That’s right,’ She laughed with him, sitting up as the wagon slowed and stopped. ‘Supper time, almost.’ She was hungry tonight. She had noticed herself being a lot hungrier over the past week or so. That was good. She had lost a lot of weight in the fish market, lost a lot buying food only for Miles because there wasn’t enough money for food for them both. Lim wouldn’t have known her, she had become so haggard. She didn’t want Lim’s mother to see her that way.
‘But it doesn’t make any difference,’ she murmured to herself. Lim’s mother was blind. She couldn’t see. It didn’t matter.
‘All down. Mules to water,’ cried the Tripmaster.
‘Mools a wattah,’ echoed Miles. ’Awl down.’
‘All right, love. We’ll get down.’ She fumbled for her shoes and Miles’s, finding them between two crates, and she was busy fastening straps when the Tripmaster arrived at the rear of the wagon.
‘Everything all right, Mrs. Ferrence?’
‘Everything’s fine, Tripmaster.’
‘Brunny says to bring the baby on over for his evening treat.’ He regarded her curiously from pale, almost colorless eyes. He had known Lim Ferrence, he had told her, long ago, in school in Deepsoil Five. Without waiting for curious questions, she had told him what had happened to Lim when Lim was only a child. It was a kind of catharsis, telling it. The Tripmaster had said nothing more, nothing since, not about Lim, but he had been uniformly solicitous of her and the baby. ‘Only a couple days more, and we’ll arrive. You lookin’ forward to gettin’ there?’
‘I am, yes,’ she half lied. ‘I’ve never met Lim’s mother.’
‘She’s blind, you know.’
‘Yes, I know. Tasmin told me.’
‘Pity. I remember her, too, before she was blind, that is. One of the prettiest women I’d ever seen. Lim always bragged on her. You look like her, you know. Like she did then.’
She was shocked. ‘I didn’t know!’
‘Oh, yes. Same shape face. Same eyes and mouth. Same hair. You could be her daughter.’ He stumped off, leaving her behind with her mouth open.
‘Cookies,’ demanded Miles.
She got down from the wagon and walked toward the cook wagon, Miles’s sturdy legs bringing him steadily along at her heels. When he had received his cookies, she stood with him while he ate them, staring up at the long, dun-colored slopes around them. Open country. Groves of Jubal trees, turned to face the setting
