Shattered Bonds (continued)

Tuha watched as Dami gathered hoja berries from the brambles down near the stream. The fruit was still young, but a fog storm was approaching and they might begin to rot before it was safe to harvest them again. Tuha had come to collect grains to grind for porridge and breads, along with some thin reeds with which to weave baskets while the village waited for the storm to pass. He had expected to be alone, as others had their tasks in other places.

Dami seemed intent on her task, taking no notice of him, picking through the berries to find the ripest ones. Tuha nodded with approval. Too unripe and they would sour whatever they were added to. As a child, he had spent many cycles near that same stream, and others nearby like it, performing the very same task. There was another stream, a short distance to the north, which he had always believed produced sweeter berries. He might tell her, he decided, so that she could gather more.

He studied her in the sunlight, trying to remember.

She has lived now . . . twelve—or was it thirteen—cycles? She could be Choosing soon.

Having lived forty cycles, he had been taken in Bond long ago. Ohai, who had Chosen him, had lived two cycles less, but the passage of the days had not been as kind to her. On many sunrises, such as today, she was unable to rise from their bed without great difficulty. Tuha reminded himself once more to gather a few sprigs of alacast shoots before returning home. Brewed into a tea, it could lessen many kinds of pain. He would need to visit the field to the west for that. He hoped that it would help to ease Ohai’s discomfort, as it had in the past. He also planned to visit the healer on his way, hoping that she too might be able to offer something more.

Tuha checked his woven sacks, deciding that he had collected enough. He looked toward the stream once more to see that Dami had moved further down its narrow bank. He resolved to tell her of the berries to the north before making his way back to the village.

Trudging through the brush, he made no effort to quiet his approach. A small nest of field gnats swarmed at his incursion, their tiny wings humming their irritation, but otherwise left him alone. Dami looked up as he came near, dipping her head at a slight angle in deferential respect. Tuha peered at her basket, seeing that it was only about halfway filled.

“Good morning, Dami.”

Good morning, aha Tuha,” Dami replied demurely.

She stared up at him with wide, shining eyes. On her expression, he saw the trace of a smile . . . or was it uncertainty?

“You’re gathering berries for your mother?”

Dami nodded, her eyes shifting from Tuha’s face to the ground, and now to her basket.

“You’ve done well.”

Dami smiled, but it was tentative. She still seemed uncomfortable.

“They are not very sweet.”

Tuha nodded. “It is early for them,” he agreed. “But I know your mother will make many good things from them.”

This made Dami’s smile widen.

“Do you know where the clearing is to the north? Where the dark trees have fallen?”

Dami looked thoughtful for a moment and then nodded.

Tuha smiled distantly, remembering. “There is a stream there, about twenty paces to the west. Do you know yet?”

Dami shook her head.

His smile brightening, Tuha’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Not many do,” he said. “The berries there, I picked them as a child, are the sweetest in this valley. You may some there today.”

Dami looked dubious.

“It is a short walk from here,” Tuha reassured her. “You will still be home for the high day meal.” He could see the young girl relax with the knowledge. “I can take you there, if you like.”

After considering this for a moment, Dami straightened and replied confidently, “I can find it.”

Tuha chuckled. “I’m sure you can.” He placed a hand lightly on her shoulder, feeling the still feather-soft fur against his wrinkled palm. “Just follow the plants with the blue leaves back to the village,” he told her. “It is a shorter way.”

Dami smiled brightly at him. “Thank you, aha.”

“Be swift,” he said, removing his hand taking a firmer grip on his own bundles. “But save me some.”

Dami laughed, meeting his eyes with her own bright ones. She smiled and then turned away, heading off in the direction he had indicated.

Tuha watched her go, puzzled by the strange sensations stirring deep within his body. He could remember feeling them before, long ago, when Ohai had Bonded him.

It cannot be.

He tried to ignore them, a task made easier as Dami was hidden by the foliage. Despite his efforts, he found himself staring at the place where she had been, long after she was gone. As he adjusted the packs across his back, he wondered whether he should mention it to the healer. Before he had made his way clear of the field, and back on the path to the village, he had forgotten about it entirely.

#

Shalene awoke. For her, it was more a transition from a dream state into full mental awareness than anything else. Some mornings it lingered; on others it came swiftly. This was one in which it did former when she wished for the latter. It had been a good dream, a nice dream. He had come to her again. He had come to her and . . .

She sighed as the emotions and sensations evaporated before her, no matter how she wished to cling to them. Long ago, she had learned that the harder she tried to clutch at them, the more quickly they faded. So, she remained still, breathing slowly, just . . . observing as the last of them dissolved like mist in her mind. She released a final, deep sigh and pushed the blankets aside.

Sliding her feet into her slippers, she made her way to the door, opened it, and moved out into the hallway. She paused for a moment and then smiled. Her parents remained asleep. She heard the steady, deep nasal inhalations of her father. In quiet counterpoint, she made out the softer, slightly faster breathes that came from her mother. Unless disturbed, they would probably remain so for at least another hour. She would have the house quiet and to herself until that time, knowing her brother would never awaken this early.

Making her way into the kitchen, she found her mug where she always left it. As she did every morning, she cautiously dipped her fingers inside it, tracing its interior, just in case her brother had decided to leave her an unpleasant surprise. He had done it only once. Her retaliation she had been far worse than the punishment their parents had meted out—with the added advantage that she knew that he could never tell them about it. Still, it never hurt to be sure.

Reaching up into the cabinet above the stovetop, she counted from the left with her fingers until she located the container that she wanted. She lowered it, unsealed it, and withdrew a single teabag. Instantly, she knew she had chosen the correct one. She breathed in the sweet and floral scents with a contented smile and dropped the teabag into her mug. After filling the mug with hot water, she closed the container and returned it to its place in cabinet.

Carrying the mug while the tea steeped, she moved toward the large window at the back of the house. She slid the pane open, just enough to allow a slight draft of outside air to enter. It felt cool against her face, not yet warmed by the sun. There was slightly more moisture than usual, more than there had been the day before.

Fog storm, she thought. Tomorrow perhaps.

Shalene frowned. She did not like the storms. They made everything damp and muted the sounds outside, making it more difficult for her to travel.

It’s still more than a day off, though, she consoled herself with.

She sipped at her tea, relishing the sensation of its warm vapors against her nostrils. Someone was disturbing the chickens at the livestock pens. It was too late to be gathering eggs for breakfast.

Someone’s having chicken for dinner . . .

Shalene knew that it would not be her. Her family generally followed a vegetarian diet; she being the most strict of the four of them. Her brother, she knew, would sneak meals with meat when he dined at other homes. She suspected that her parents must know, but they had never chastised him over it in her presence.

The breeze, what little there was of one, came from the north, carrying most of the aromas from the livestock pens away from the house. There was the faint odor of grease, of something mechanical, coming from the west. She guessed that one of the windmills needed maintenance again.

Sipping again at her tea, she wondered which schoolwork she should tackle that day. She continued to struggle with mathematics, not yet able to wrap her thinking around the trigonometric concepts. Geometry she had finally understood, although she hated doing the proofs. She was more than willing to accept that the theorems were true without feeling the need to work through their logic herself. Most of her friends were already well into calculus. She refused to feel either demoralized or motivated by that, having so far found little practical use for that particular branch of mathematics.

History?

She pondered that for a moment. Although she had worked her way to the political landscape of the early twenty-first century—finding it generally tedious and, more often, unbelievably ridiculous—she really wanted to back and study the Renaissance and Reformation periods in more depth. There were aspects to those relatively primitive ages that tantalized and fascinated her. Back on Earth, apparently, there were groups of people who reenacted those periods for recreation. The notion appealed to her, although she doubted that such an idea would be widely accepted here. Many of the colony’s resources, cloth among them, were generally still too scarce to be used for such a seemingly frivolous purpose.

Victorian Gothic literature?

Shalene pondered that. While she found herself currently drawn to Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, she had been surprised to discover that she also appreciated the existential works of Camus. The Urd colony had not yet produced any works like those. In fact, she noted, it had not produced much work at all, aside from scholarly dissertations forced upon the students in order to earn university degree equivalents. The tolerance of most colonists toward artisans, at least toward those who did not also contribute pragmatically to the ongoing maintenance and growth of the colony, was quite low.