Lovestory

Two

Silmien was proud of his scrap. “Tevul,” he corrected himself, cupping the name he had given her on his tongue. He was so proud that losing her mother almost didn’t matter anymore. He spotted her and some of her friends splashing in the pond across the bone garden. She was so quick, so carefree, so beautiful in the chill, blue light of the mothermoon.

“What?” Mam had stopped to smell the sweetbind that wound through the skeleton of someone’s long dead ancestor; she hurried over to him. “What?”

He pointed. Mam was already nearsighted from spending so much time indoors, the curse of the nursery. Distance seemed to confuse her. “She hasn’t seen us yet,” he said.

“The scrap?”

“The tween,” said Silmien. “Tevul.”

Silmien was proud of Mam, too. She had been a good parent, considering everything that had happened. After all, Tevul was their firstborn. Silmien knew just how lonely the long rainy season had been for Mam, especially since she didn’t exactly understand about Valun and the aliens.

But that wasn’t right. Silmien was always surprised at how much Mam understood, even though she did not follow the news or query the tell. She engaged the world by means that were mysterious to him. If she did not always reach for the complex, her grasp of essentials was firm. Silmien drew strength from her trust in him—and her patience. Even though it was a burden on her not to be nursing a scrap, she had never once nagged him to start looking for a mother to take Valun’s place.

“I’m glad you came tonight, Mam.” He wanted to put an arm around her, but he knew that would make her uncomfortable. She was a mam, not a mother. Instead, he stooped and picked a pink buttonbright and offered it to her. She accepted it solemnly and tucked it behind her ear.

There was something about visiting the gardens that revived Silmien, burned troubles away like morning mist. It was not only nostalgia for that simple time when Valun had chosen him and he had found Mam. It was the scent of the flowers and ponds, of mulch and moss, of the golden musk of old parents, the sharp, hormone-laden perfume of tweens and the round, honest stink of chickens. It was the fathermoon chasing the mothermoon across an enormous sky, the family obelisks pointing like fingers toward the stars. Valun always used to tease him about being such a romantic, but wasn’t that a father’s job, to dream, to give shape to the mud? The garden was the place where families began and ended, where futures were spun, lives honored.

“Over here!” Tevul had finally caught sight of them. “Come meet my friends!”

Silmien waved back. “More introductions,” he whispered to Mam. “I don’t recognize a single face in this batch.” It was only his second visit of the dry season, but he was already having trouble keeping them all straight. Although he was glad Tevul was popular, he supposed he resented these fortunate tweens for stealing his little scrap away from him. Tevul, he reminded himself again, Tevul. At home, he and Mam still called her the scrap. “Come along, Mam. Just a long smile and short bow and we’ll have her to ourselves.”

“Not me,” said Mam. “You.”

Silmien blinked in surprise. There was that odd smell again, a dusty staleness, like the corner of an empty closet. If Valun had been here, she would have known immediately what to do, but then, if she were here, Mam wouldn’t be. “Nonsense,” said Silmien. “We’re her family.”

Mam crouched abruptly, making herself as small as possible. “Doesn’t matter.” She smoothed the sagging pouch to her belly self-consciously.

“Why did you come then,” said Silmien, “if not to see Tevul?”

“You wanted me.”

“Mam, the scrap wants you too.”

“I’m not here.” Mam was staring at her feet.

They had to stop arguing then, because a clutch of old parents entered the garden, giggling and stroking the bones. One, a father with thin, cement-colored fur, noticed the buttonbright behind Mam’s ear and bent to pick one for himself. His companions teased him good-naturedly about acting his age. Then a shriveled mam popped one of the flowers into her mouth, chewed a few times and spat it at the father. Everyone laughed except Silmien and Mam. Ordinarily, he enjoyed the loopy antics of the old, but now he chafed at the interruption.

“I’ll bring Tevul to you,” he whispered to Mam. “Is that what you want?”

She made no reply. She curled her long toes into the damp soil as if she were growing roots.

Silmien grunted and left her. Mam was not getting any easier to live with. She was moody and stubborn and often reeked of self-loathing. Yet he had stuck by her, given her every consideration. Not once, since he had first told her about Valun, had he let his true feelings show. It struck him that he ought to be proud of himself, too. It was small comfort, but without a mate to share his life, all he had were glimmers and wisps.

“Pa-pa-pa.” Tevul hauled herself partly out of the pond and perched on the grassy bank. “My father, Silmien.” Her glistening coat clung to her body, making her as streamlined as a rocket. She must have grown four or five centimeters since the solstice. “Here is Mika. Tilantree. Kujalla. Karmi. Jotan. And Putket.” Tevul indicated each of her friends by splashing with her foot in their direction. Karmi and Jotan and Putket were standing in the shallows and acknowledged him with polite but not particularly warm bows. Kujalla—or was it Tilantree?—was treading water in the deep; she just stared at him. Only Mika clambered up the bank of the pond to greet him properly.

“Silmien,” said Mika as they crossed hands. “It is truly an honor to meet you.”

“It is you who honor me,” Silmien murmured. The tween’s effusiveness embarrassed him.

“Tevul tells us that you write stories.”

Silmien shot Tevul a glance; she returned his gaze innocently. “I write many things,” he said. “Mostly histories.”

“Lovestories?” said Mika.

Tilantree’s head disappeared beneath the surface of the pond.

“I wouldn’t call them lovestories, exactly,” Silmien said. “I don’t like sentiment. But I do write about families sometimes, yes.”

Tilantree surfaced abruptly, splashing about and making rude, blustery sounds. The three standing tweens smirked at her.

“Silmien has been on the tell,” said Tevul. “Write, bright, show me the light.”

“My mam was on the tell last year,” said one of the standing tweens, “and she’s a stupid old log.”

“Even aliens get on the tell now,” said another.

“Have you written any lovestories about aliens?” Mika was smirking too.

With a sick lurch, Silmien realized what was going on. The tweens were making fun of him—and Tevul. Only his trusting little scrap didn’t get it. He wondered if the reason she was always in the middle of a crowd was not because she was popular, but because she was a freak.

“Can’t write lovestories about aliens.” Tilantree rolled onto her back.

“Why not?” said Tevul.

She did not reply. Instead, she sucked in a mouthful of pond water and then spat it straight up in the air. The three standing tweens spoke for her.

“Their mothers are mams.”

“Perverts.”

“Two, few, haven’t a clue. Isn’t that right, Tevul?”

The air was suddenly vinegary with tween scorn. Tevul seemed taken aback by the turn of the conversation. She drew her knees to her chest and looked to Silmien, as if he could control things here in the gardens the way he had at home.

“No,” he said, coming around the pond to Tevul. “I haven’t written about the aliens yet.” His voice rose from the deepest part of him. “But I’ve thought a lot about them.” He could feel his scent glands swell with anger and imagined his stink sticking its claw into them. “Unlike you, Tilantree.” He singled out the floating tween as the leader of this cruel little gang. “Maybe you should try it.” He reached Tevul, tugged her to her feet, and pulled her to him. “You see, they’re our future. They’re calling us to grow up and join the universe, all of us, tweens and families and outs and the old. If they really are perverts as you say, then that’s what we will be, someday. I suppose that’s a big thought to fit into a small mind.” He looked down at his scrap. “What do you say, Tevul?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her eyes were huge as the mothermoon.

“Then maybe we should discuss this further.” He bowed to the others. “Luck always.” He nudged Tevul toward the bone garden.

Silmien heard the tweens snickering behind him. Tevul heard it too; her gait stiffened, as if she had sand in her joints. He wondered if the next time he visited her, she might be like them. Tilantree and her friends had the next four years to twist his scrap to their shallow thinking. The family had made her a tween, but the garden would make her into a mother. Silmien felt removed from himself as they passed the wall built of skulls that marked the boundary of the bone garden. No Tevul. No Valun. Mam a stranger. He could not believe that he had defended the aliens to the tweens. That was Valun talking, not him. He hated the aliens for luring her away from him. It was almost as if they had seduced her. He shivered; maybe they were perverted. Besides, he must have sounded the pompous fool. Who was he to be speaking of small minds? He was as ordinary as a spoon.

“Well?” said Tevul.

“Well what?”

“Pa-pa, you embarrassed me, pa.”

He sighed. “I suppose I did.”

“Is this the way you’re going to be?” said Tevul. “Because if it is…”

“No, I’ll mind.” He licked two fingers and rubbed them on her cheekbone. “But are you sure they’re your friends?”

“Silmien!”

“I just thought I’d ask.”

“If they’re not, it’s your fault.” She skipped ahead down the path and then turned on him, blocking his way. “Why do you always have to bring Mam?”

“What do you mean, always?” He looked over her shoulder. The old parents had doddered off, but Mam had not moved. Even though she was still a good thirty meters away, he lowered his voice. “It’s only been three times, and she wanted to see you.”

“Why can’t she wait until I come home for a visit? Besides, I don’t have anything to say to her. What am I supposed to do, play a game of fish and snakes? Climb into her fruity old pouch? I’m not a scrap anymore!”

“She’s unhappy, Tevul. She feels unwanted, useless.”

“Don’t use my name, because there’s nothing I can do about that.” Tevul’s ears went flat against her head. “It’s strange, you two here together. When the others have visitors, they get their mothers and fathers. She’s not my mother.”

“No,” he said, “she’s not.”

Tevul’s stem facade crumbled then and she broke down, quietly but completely, just as her mother had on the night she had left him. And he hadn’t seen it coming; Silmien cursed himself for having stones up his nose and knotholes for eyes. Tevul’s body was wracked by sobs and she keened into his chest so that Mam wouldn’t hear. “They say such mean things. They say that Mam picked my name, not you, and that she named me after a character in a stupid lovestory. I try to joke along with them so they won’t make a joke of me, but then they start in about my mother, they say that because she’s a doctor… that the aliens…”

She turned a scared face up to him, her scent was bitter and smoky. “What happened to the baby, pa-pa? Is he still in her? I want to know. It’s not fair that I never got to see you pull him from mother and bring him to Mam, that’s what’s supposed to happen, isn’t it, not all the disgusting things they keep saying, and I’m supposed to be there, only I wasn’t because she went to the aliens, it’s not my fault, I’m tired of being different, I want to be the same, in a real family like Tilantree, the same.” She caught her breath, sniffed and then rubbed her face into thestubby fur on his chest. “No blame, no shame,” she said. “The same.” She shuddered, and the hysterics passed, as cleanly as a summer squall.

He bent down and licked the top of her head. “Are you unhappy here, my beautiful little Tevul?”

She thought about it, then sniffed and straightened her dignity. “This is the world,” she said. “There is nowhere else.”

The orange fathermoon was up now, resuming his futile chase of the mothermoon. It was the brightest part of the night, when the two parent moons and their billion star scraps cast a light like spilled milk. A stirring along a hedge of bunchbead, where a farmbot was harvesting the dangling clusters of fruit, distracted Silmien momentarily.

“I am proud of you,” he said. It wasn’t what he wanted to say, but he couldn’t think of anything better. When the robot passed them, he dipped into its hopper, pulled out a handful of bunchbead and offered them to Tevul. She took some and smiled. Silence slid between them. Somewhere in the distance, the chickens were singing.

Tevul watched the stars as she ate. “Where is Mars?” she said at last.

“It’s too far away.” Silmien looked up. “We can’t see it.”

“I know that, but where is it?”

“Kadut showed me their star last week.” He came up behind her and, resting his elbow on her shoulder, pointed so that she could sight along his forearm. “It’s in The Mask, there.”

“Why did they come, the aliens?”

“They want to help, I guess. That’s what they say.”

“I have to get back soon,” said Tevul. “Let’s go see Mam.”

Tevul was very polite to Mam and Silmien could see that the visit cheered Mam up. Mam insisted on waiting while Silmien walked Tevul back to her burrow, but he finally understood that this was what both of them wanted. Back at the burrow, Tevul showed him a lifestory she was working on. It was about Ollut, the scientist who had first identified estrophins, the hormones that determined which females became mothers and which mams. Silmien was impressed by Tevul’s writing and how much she had absorbed from the teaching tells in just one season. She was quick, like her mother. Tevul promised to copy her working draft onto the tell, so he could follow along with her research. As he was getting ready to leave, her roommate Laivan came in. To his relief, Silmien remembered her name. They chatted briefly. Silmien was on his guard for any sign of mockery, but there wasn’t any. Laivan seemed to like Tevul, and for her sake, tolerated his intrusion into their privacy.

“Luck always,” he said. “To both of you.” And then he left.

It was only later that his anger caught up with him. Mam had fallen asleep, lulled by the whoosh of the go-to through the tunnels, so there was no one to notice when he began to wring his hands and squirm on his seat. First he was angry at himself, then at Tilantree, then at Tevul’s teachers, then at himself again, until finally his outrage settled on Valun.

She had been the leader of their family. Where she jumped, they followed, even if they landed in mud. It had been her idea to move to the paddies, where the air was thick and the water tasted of the swamp. Farmers needed doctors, too, she said. She had been the one who healed the family’s wounds as well, the one they all talked to.

Yet when she left them, she wouldn’t say exactly why she was going, only that there was something important she had to find out from the aliens. Valun had ripped his life apart, left him incomplete, but he had tried not to hurt her the way she had hurt him. Speakers from the tell had interviewed him about Valun and about his life now. In all his statements, he had protected her. Her work with the aliens was important, he said, and he supported it, as all the families must. There were so many diseases to be cured, so much pain to be eased. It was an honor that she had been chosen. If he had followed a different path, it was because he was a different person, not a better one. He had done all this, he realized now, not because it was the right thing to do, but because he still loved her.

Only Silmien had not realized how much she had hurt Tevul. Valun hadn’t visited the gardens, hadn’t even copied a message to the tell. Silmien had long since decided that Valun had left the family because she had been bored with him, and maybe he could understand that. But no mother ought to be bored with her own tween! For an hour, his thoughts were as blinding as the noonday sun.

Eventually, Silmien had to calm himself. Their stop was coming up and he’d have to rouse Mam soon. What was it Tevul had said? This was the world. What did he have to give to it? A new family? The truth was, he couldn’t imagine some poor out taking Valun’s place. But life was too short, twenty years from pouch to bone garden. A new family then—and afterward, he’d give the world his story. He would need to get some distance from Valun; he could see that. But eventually he would write of how she had hurt him and Mam and Tevul. He would tell how he had borne the pain, like a mam carries a scrap. He paused, admiring the image. No, not a lovestory—the story of how he had suffered. Because of her.

Because of Valun and the aliens.