gredya

"So you've made up your mind to bring the Wyr back to Crossroads?"

BJ could tell that Stein's mind hadn't been on their earlier subject, and she isn't surprised when he turns the conversation. "I'm going to reopen the road to that world, yes. And try to find B'Cu. If the Wyr come back I'm not going to turn them away. They're a Crossroads species as much as any of the others."

"We already have Wyr."

"Gredya and her children, yes. She agrees that the other Wyr should be able to come back, now that she's established a territory for her family."

"Mazel tov. --A faun came in the other day. He told me he had had to sell a sheep, to two young Wyr."

"Had to sell a sheep?"

"Yes. They were very insistent. Gave him some tools in exchange. I wonder where they got them?"

"Probably from--that other place. They're bright children, Stein. They learn fast."

"Oh, yes? And I wonder how long it will take them to invent Crossroads' first protection racket?"

BJ resisted the impulse to cross her arms defensively in front of her. "Have you spoken to--to the Inspector General?"

"I will when I see him."

"Stein...let me talk to Gredya first?"

"Maybe you should find her quick, then."

It's not so hard to get a gun. Karel had seen one in the barn, when they went to get the chickens.

(Their mother had said no to it. "Why not?" "Because guns are hard to use, and they need things. Bullets, ammunition." "So, why not get those things?" "Because--because I said so." "Why?" "Wyr have better ways to hunt and fight." From which Karel had concluded that Gredya had tried to use a gun and found it annoying, and dropped the whole idea as "something Wyr don't do." Well, so what?)

So he goes back to the farm with the chickens. He gets there a little before dawn and settles down to wait in a stand of trees near the house. The sun is still barely up when the door opens: a woman and a young dog. That's new. Ha. Maybe they got the dog to protect the house from chicken thieves. Good luck.

The puppy smells him, of course, and starts to bark. The woman takes him on a walk around the farm. Pretty thorough: she checks the doors of the various outbuildings, checks the chicken coop, walks around the edge of the place where the grass is cut short. The puppy goes mad when they get near him, but Karel sits tight. The woman goes back inside, leaving the dog tied on some kind of rope in the yard. Still barking.

Lights go on and off in the house. A young human comes out. She'd be about his age, if she were a Wyr, Karel thinks. She brings in the dog after arguing with the woman at the door. Karel waits. Some time later, a long yellow car or truck stops in front of the house: he sounds out the words on it. Ssss-chool bus. Shool bus. Chool bus. The girl was waiting; she gets on and a bigger boy runs after her, with food still in his mouth and his coat half off. More waiting. A man goes out of the house, gets into one of the cars next to it, just a little bit after the children leave. Another wait, longer, and the woman goes out of the house and gets into the truck. When she leaves there are no more cars and trucks near the house.

First he trots up to have a look at the place. Standing on his hind legs, front feet on the window, he can see into a kitchen. Probably a kitchen. It has many of the things the Milliways kitchen has. A wooden block with knife-handles sticking out. A refrigerator. An oven, a dishwasher. The puppy is in there too, shut up in some kind of cage, furious as soon as he notices Karel. Ha, ha.

How would you get in? People lock doors, Karel knows that. Maybe if he broke a window? Not going to try it now, though. Now is for the barn. The people have put a new kind of lock on the chicken coop, and on the barn door too. So he'll learn to break windows anyway.

Transformation is as painful as always, and he feels weak and shaky for a few minutes while he goes to find a rock. But it doesn't matter. He knocks through the glass, breaks the wooden pieces, takes a stick to clear the shards still clinging to the frame. It's a tight fit and he cuts himself when he gets to the floor. But that will heal.

The gun is where he remembers it. He'd gotten a book from the bar, puzzled over it. This looks like the pictures of rifles. And that is ammunition. See, Mom? Not so hard. He pulls down a big cloth that was hung on the wall, red and white stripes with a blue square, and wraps the gun into a bundle.

And then Karel takes a little time to explore. There are all kinds of tools here. People in Crossroads would trade for them. There's an old foot ball, and another one like it but orange. Big jugs that smell like cars. Wood, a lot of cut-up wood for fires. Big bags that smell like dirt, or chicken food, or cow dung. Boxes with old books in them, thin colorful paper books that say X MEN. He takes a few out, finds underneath them more thin books with pictures of women.

Well. There's only some of this worth taking. He adds some of the smaller tools to the bundle with the gun, some of the X MEN books, a few small fuzzy bright green-yellow balls. The bundle goes through the broken window, and then he does.

The only real surprise of the trip is finding Franchek waiting along his route back to Crossroads. He noses questioningly at Karel's haul. "Yeah, it's just some stuff I'm getting together. But it's a surprise, okay? So don't tell Mom or the girls?"

It's a good thing it's Franchek, and not Aksana: he looks doubtful, but Karel just stares at him until he drops his gaze and wags his tail. "It's cool. I'll show you where I'm putting the stuff. You can have a couple of books if you want. But like I said, it's a surprise."

Maybe Franchek will help him get a sheep.

Their mother is indoors, doing her indoor things. She's always telling them that Wyr don't live in houses, don't need furniture, don't use this or do that. They don't cook. They hunt their own food, or else they starve. They don't work for other animals: and really, all the other creatures are animals.

And then there she goes, putting meat in the kitchen room, reading in her book, talking on and on with the people she meets.

Aksana is finding less and less reason to listen to their mother. An hour ago Gredya went in to read or do whatever it is she likes to do there, and told the children to stay outside, and as soon as the doors closed on her Aksana had kicked the football away into a corner of the garden and strode off into the woods while her siblings ran to find it. When she'd heard Karel trotting along after her, soft on four feet, she'd been annoyed. But now--

Now she twines her fingers into the thick fur at her brother's shoulders and leans against him as he leans against her legs. The two of them take in the scent of blood and the sight of broken branches and trampled and torn undergrowth. It's a lot of blood. A lot of old blood and a lot of not-so-old blood.

It's a relief to be alone in the library, and in the not-quite-the-library, and then for the thirty seconds or so before the children catch her smell and come tumbling through the rooms of their home. And then it's a relief to see them. Five little round heads, five wagging tails, five pups jumping up at her and tugging at her hands and feet and sniffing sniffing sniffing. "Yes, your mother was in a new world. --Ah, Aksana, you are already weaned, I keep telling you that, you are weaned and you don't need to nurse, how will you ever grow up if you keep trying to be a baby? And now you're giving Franchek ideas…"

The conversation ends as it always does, with her sighing and calling them terrible vicious monsters, and then changing form. The blinding pain of transformation is as it always is, blinding and painful, and the children give her no time to catch her breath before they're climbing on her, suckling and jostling. Three of them are really all the way weaned, and the other two ought to be: all of them can eat solid food and all of them are learning at least the basic elements of hunting. But Aksana likes to be a baby still, and so does Franchek, and then they all want to nurse… She shouldn't put up with it. She can't make herself push them away.

They finish quickly, reassured of her solid presence and ready for other things: hungry for real food. Gredya yawns and indulges in a few more moments of lying down. But then, yes, she'll take them out. Out of the building, this time, to find something bigger than mice and snakes. There are herd animals here, small but big enough for one wolf and five pups, and not yet very wary of her. She's been careful to leave them alone near the den.

-

When they've all had a share of the gazelle the children start tumbling back to their den. Gredya calls them back close to her. Time to move. There's nothing to say goodbye to; she'd left her clothing hidden just outside the library in the new world, in the not-quite-the-library space. It's an odd road, but she's sure of it, even after talking to the woman with demon problems. (Everyone with problems.) Left the notebook and pen there as well. So they don't go back to the old empty building.

Crossroads is probably safe enough for them, almost certainly. It will do for tonight. Tomorrow--oh, tomorrow. Gredya licks Bozhana's face until they are both very sleepy. Tomorrow she will find another place for them, to put another remove between the children and the new world she found. Then a big hunt. The teacher priest doesn't want money or meat; Gredya doesn't want to feel anything like a debt; she will have to make trades, with people who don't like her (people: she's trying to be generous), until she comes up with something right.

It's very complicated.