Part 15 (1/2)
”What have you done, Captain Greene?” Yana asked, resuming her military att.i.tude.
”Nothing, Major sir, to bother your head about.” He laid a finger alongside his nose and winked at her. But for all the amus.e.m.e.nt in his eyes, his expression told her she'd get no more out of him and to let the matter be.
She nodded. ”Something which will no doubt please me in days to come?”
”I devoutly hope so, considering the effort I've put into it. Now, since I've had my bath, food, sleep, and more food, let's load up. Nanook wants you south, he gets you south. Ah, and you're coming along with us, are you, Nanook?” The black and white track-cat had strolled up to the copter and was peering inside it. ”He doesn't much like flying, you know,” Johnny added. ”Looking won't change the flight process, pal.”
Nanook crawled under the second row of pa.s.senger seats, tucked his tail tight against his body, and laid his head on his paws. His whole att.i.tude was one of patient resignation to an inevitable fate.
”Well, he's stowed. Get yourselves aboard.” Johnny gestured for Bunny and Diego to sit over Nanook, while Yana took the other front seat. Then he handed around headphones so they could all communicate during the long journey south They knew something was wrong the moment Loncie carne to the door.
”Luzon?” Johnny asked simply, and got a stream of Andean invective that was both colorful and inventive, the gist of it being that the son of a scabrous tarantula had stolen La Pobrecita. Pointed inquiry around Sierra Padre by the entire Ondelacy/Chompas clan had brought forth the information that the vomitus spewings of an excrement-devouring long extinct reptile which would eat its own mother without shame or serious second contemplation had taken the only snocle in all of Sierra Padre, Lhasa, or any place this side of Bogota, which was, as Juanito knew, a very long journey, especially at this uncertain time of year.
”When did all this happen?” Johnny asked quickly.
”The day after you left, Juanito. I thought she would be safe playing with my own ninos! I was a fool! A fool!”
Johnny was too angry to say anything more. Mostly he was angry at himself. He should have known Luzon would stop at nothing. At least the man hadn't hurt Loncie or one of her family in the kidnapping-not that they'd ever be able to prove it was a kidnapping. He nearly, but not quite, regretted the two days he had taken to make his private arrangements. One thing was certain: They'd have to move, and move fast, if they were to get the girl away again. This time he was leaving her nowhere near Luzon.
”Didn't she scream? Or-or anything?” Bunny asked, pus.h.i.+ng herself out from behind Johnny's back.
”She went willingly, from what my children know of it,” Loncie said. ”She feared the man, one could see that, but he was the sort she would follow because he is what she is used to, what she has been taught to love. Well, perhaps not love, but someone who acts as she expects people to act. She cannot imagine anything else and so allows him to return her.”
”She didn't accept it, though, did she?” Bunny demanded, not just of Loncie but of all the adults and Diego. ”She ran away, didn't she? We've got to help her!”
Yana put her arm rea.s.suringly around the girl's shoulders. ”That's what we're here to do, Rourke. All the lady is saying is that the poor kid had been so brainwashed, she rejected happiness because the concept was so unfamiliar that it was scary.”
”Ah!” And Lonciana nodded vigorous1y. ”You have said it. But, come, enter. The evening meal is prepared and you must eat. You will never find this secret place from which she comes in the darkness. Also, you must tell us all that is happening to bring such a planet-defiling dung-sucking leech as this Luzon to our world, and we must sing together.”
”Our timing's great, kids,” Yana said, trying to inject a little bravado into the currently demoralizing state of affairs. ”We may have a song or two to pa.s.s along ourselves. Was anyone from this village at Bremport?”
Loncie's eyes brimmed suddenly, and Yana understood the term ”dolorous” as she never had before. The woman's chins trembled and her mouth contorted with sudden grief. Yana would have touched her arm, but Pablo was there already, his small frame supporting his wife's larger one like steel scaffolding.
”Our second son, Alejandro.”
To Yana's count that made the last of those from Petaybee who had died in that incident. She heaved a sigh of relief and allowed herself to be escorted into the house.
”Hey, a guitar!” The exclamation burst from Diego's lips and then he flushed, realizing that his excitement was not quite suitable following mention of those who died at Bremport.
”You like guitar?” Lonciana asked, her whole expression brightening.
”Do I like guitar? I've been trying to make one.” Diego reached into his backpack and brought out the neck he had been so patiently shaping.
”Que hombre!” Lonciana embraced him as if he were a long-lost friend. Diego, momentarily engulfed by her, grinned-more with acceptance of her enthusiasm than embarra.s.sment.
They ate first, of course, and various young Ondelacy-Chompases were sent to inform the entire village that there would be a special singing this evening: too late to make it a latchkay, but certainly there would be blurry and a bite or two to go down with it.
”I thought blurry was Clodagh's specialty,” Yana commented as she washed up before dinner.
Johnny grinned. ”The north doesn't have a corner on the market of all good things, Yana. Had you come up from the ranks as I did, instead of training at an officer's academy with so few Petaybean candidates, you'd have learned something of the joys of comparative Petaybean blurry drinking. Every time Loncie returned from leave, she used to bring back a stash: Old Armadillo is what we nicknamed her recipe, because it armors you so well against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. The spice she uses gives it a little more kick than the mulled-cider kinda thing you get up north.”
Bunny, who was watching Pablo demonstrate to an enraptured Diego first the techniques of playing the guitar and then the sound made by the bagpipes, said, ”They have more than a few things down here that we don't have up north.''
Lonciana did something with a mess of beans that Yana, sensitive now to such subtleties, would have given her right big toe to discover. It was tasty and filling, satisfying even their hearty appet.i.tes.
Immediately afterward, the table was dismantled and taken out of the main room, and chairs, benches, stools, and odd crates were placed about the room. The guitar came off the wall again, and Yana identified one round object with jingling bits fastened in its lip as a tambourine.
Lonciana was busy in the kitchen end of the house, mixing the blurry with the help of her eldest daughters, while Pablo, Johnny, and the older Ondelacy boys began to greet the visitors as they began to pour in.
Once again Yana wondered at the way a small Petaybean house could seem to expand infinitely to contain so many people. Eventually there was only a small s.p.a.ce around the high stool that had been placed in the center of the room for the singers-of which Yana was one, and probably the first. Bunny and Johnny both kept her mug as well as Diego's full of blurry once Diego announced that he had his song, too.
Yana missed Sean desperately, but Johnny took her to the stool and settled her on it, taking the mug when she drained the last of the blurry.
”This is Major Yana Maddock, who was at Bremport and who is now one of us,” Johnny began simply. ”She has a song for you.”
Silence has different qualities, Yana knew, from the absolute one she'd not heard on her few s.p.a.ce walks to that of expectancy, either a hopeful or happy one, or a mean and miserable show-us-your-stuff kind. This was expectant and almost reverent. That startled her so much that she began to sing to stop what her ears weren't hearing.
After the first few lines got past her teeth, she actually began to enjoy the act of singing, not that she would ever truly enjoy the song that she must sing. Maybe one day soon, as Sean had suggested, she'd find joy in making a song.
”I was sent here to die, too, here where the snows live, The waters live, the animals and trees live.
And you And now I live.”
The last words came out before she realized she had added them to the song.
Then Lonciana and Pablo made their way to her and took her hands, holding them to their cheeks, their tears moistening the backs of her fingers. Each of the Ondelacy children, smiling shyly with their misty eyes, touched her hands. too.
Other voices lifted in appreciation of her song and she was able to get down off the stool without any help.
Bunny led Diego to the stool. There was a purpose in the young man's eye now, Yana noticed, that hadn't been there before. He was growing into his true manhood, and what had happened at McGee's Pa.s.s had tempered him.
”This is Diego Metaxos, who was with me at McGee's Pa.s.s and risked his life to save me,” Bunny said, giving Diego's hand a squeeze before she released it. ”He has a song that all must hear.”
Diego tipped his head back, closed his eyes to slits, and rested his hands on his thighs with his feet hooked on the lower stretcher of the stool.
”Deep is the place of communion Where mist and ice and stone are warm With what is more than friends.h.i.+p, More than father or mother love, With nurturing and understanding.
We all treasure this place of communion.
It is our place, our place, our place.”
His voice, now firmly baritone, raised to the top of his range and intensified as he repeated the phrase. Then his tone altered to that of a story teller who is forced to relate truths that disturb him.
”There are others who do not believe that our place Is ours and has been since men and women came here.
They were once of us, and knew of communion.