Wallace was up at the first light of dawn, eager to
go in search of Melanie and quench his thirst. Sasha rolled to her feet,
brushed sand from her body, and started to follow.
Wallace nodded toward her discarded clothing. "Forget something?"
Sasha had adapted the unsettling tendency to hold
steady eye contact, reminding Wallace that there had been as many
psychological changes in her blending with Qualin as external ones. "No,
I didn't forget anything," she said.
His first thought was that Melanie would object. Clearly their sense of convention had broken down during the onslaught of
their adventures together. He glanced at her feet, convinced that shoes
would offer protection at the very least, then wondered for how much
longer her shoes would fit the strange new configuration of her toes
regardless.
He glanced back up into her eyes. Regardless of what
she had become, she was lithe and graceful and beautiful by any human
standard. He threw her a satisfied smile and led the way along the ridge
toward the distant roar of the waterfall.
They wove their way through a clear golden morning in
the conifer forest and emerged onto a grassland carpeted in flowers of
every imaginable hue. Color battled for dominion in this world, colorful
plants and colorful insects. The cats paced them on both sides, their
musculature undulating as they maintained the slow pace of their bipedal
visitors. Off in the distance, Wallace saw kittens romping, contained by
wary females openly eyeing the interlopers with distrust.
They followed the cliff overlooking the second half
of their world stretched out far below. The scene was hazed by a mist so
early in the morning. Only the line of the mountains clearly delineated
the horizon along a strange, aqua-colored skyline. The large white birds
flew overhead and began to circle, singing slow, haunting melodies on the
unseen thermals.
By early afternoon, the sun was in a perfect position to
erect enormous circular rainbows against the cloud of moisture rising from
the waterfall. The stream was too deep and fast-moving to cross without
being carried away, so Wallace guessed that Melanie was somewhere upstream
a ways.
Wallace then ventured closer to the cliff's edge
where the water roaring through its bed of rounded boulders plunged off
into open space. He could see that the modest waterfall drifted off as a
mist over the landscape rather than holding together for the long fall to
the plain three thousand feet or more below. Sasha joined him and
surveyed the awesome beauty of the scene with her eyes bright and a smile
on her lips. Then they started upstream in search of the third member of
their threesome.
They found Melanie a half mile upstream accompanied
by her own group of cats. The two groups of cats trailing the newcomers
intermingled and conversed in their guttural whinings and growlings.
Melanie's clothes were wet from a recent washing in
the stream. Her boots dried on a nearby rock. She had tied her wet hair
back in a pony tail, and she eyed Sasha's nudity in astonishment as the
two appeared to view.
"How convenient."
Melanie turned away to an impressive pile of ten foot
birch saplings. Wallace could see that she was in the process of weaving
them together to form four walls of what was destined to become a
shelter. "Where did you learn to do that?" he asked.
She gave him a sullen shrug.
"It's not going to be very big."
"Watch how I build it, then go do one of your own. I
hope you're a quick learner because I think it rains a lot here. The soil
is moist and the plants are subtropical."
Wallace noticed evidence of a fire, of devoured
rabbit carcasses, and a pile of a half dozen fresh kills. A cat was
napping nearby. Wallace suspected the nature of Melanie's association
with the animals. "You cook meat for the old ones and the others provide
the rabbits."
Melanie glanced back at the cats. "There's about a
half dozen old cats. Some aren't in very good shape. I think the whole
lot of them belong to a family group. I've seen others snooping about,
although they don't seem to be too territorial. There's lots of food
about, and I suspect it's managed intelligently. I rather suspect that
everything that lives in this world is especially smart."
"You going to include all of this in your report to
the ASG when you get back?"
Melanie frowned at him. "If I get back, who the hell
would believe any of it?"
Melanie turned back to her work. Sasha squatted
nearby and watched Melanie bind the makeshift walls together. She used a
ground vine as a binding material. "This stuff will probably rot," she
said. "I'm going to retie everything with rabbit gut, or maybe leather
straps as soon as I can remember how to tan hide."
She used the sharp edge of what looked to be a piece
of obsidian glass to skin the larger birch trees. She bound overlapping
shingles of bark to the hut framework. Wallace watched her work for
another hour or two. Then, with a number of improvements in mind, Wallace
led Sasha upstream a half mile and selected an area among the trees to try
his own hand at building a shelter.
Their respective projects took three days to
complete. They returned to the overhang to make a campfire and sleep on
the dry sand at night and during the periods of gentle rain. Only the
convenience of living near water drove them back to complete their
shelters.
Wallace's roof leaked. Melanie fixed it for him on a
sunny morning, even-tempered, but still unhappy with her lot in life. "We'll get scurvy if we don't fit some vegetables into our diet. And
we've got fruits growing about as well. I'll give you all the meat you
want if you go find fruits and vegetables fit to eat."
"How do I determine what will prevent scurvy and what
might eat a hole in my stomach?" Wallace asked of her.
"Trial and error. If it tastes good, let me know. If it kills you, I'll probably have to send your body over the waterfall."
"How long are you going to be angry with me?"
Melanie sighed and paused long enough to give him her
full attention. "I feel awkward, and I'm really lonely, Wallace. We'll
give it time and see what happens."
Wallace wondered if he was being unfair, but
suspected it was just his years with Aunt Bernice that made it difficult
to ponder the possibility of a three-way relationship. He returned to his
own hut feeling inadequate and clumsy.
Sasha was waiting for him, squatting before a small
fire she kept going throughout most of the day for additional warmth. She
could tell by his mood that he had quarreled with Melanie again. "We need
to work things out between us," she said. "We shouldn't have to live so
far apart."
"You know what she wants."
"She wants you. I just get in the way."
"No, Sasha. There's more to it than that. She's
afraid of you."
Sasha stared at him uncomprehendingly.
"You've changed," he reminded her.
"Would my father and my mother know me?" she said
with a raised eyebrow.
Wallace didn't have the energy to lie. "You'd scare
the bejesus out of them. But we have to live with what we got. If things
had gone any differently, we'd probably all be dead by now."
Sasha dipped her head. "Qualin misses her world. She knows it's all gone by now. She's just a left-over ghost. We both
are. This isn't her world or her body. It’s not my world or my body
either."
Wallace knelt in front of her and tilted her chin up
with a finger. "Your body is beautiful. Qualin is beautiful. This world
is beautiful."
Sasha gave him a fierce hug. "Okay. As long as
nothing bad happens. As long as the Carn is dead."
Novels by
William G. Tedford