Chap. 200 Homestead changes
“Now you be careful with that pie, Glyena, my dear,” Hariko, the weyr’s headwoman said, “and tell your mum I wish I could come and witness, but…”
K’ndar’s sister gingerly cradled the basket containing a pie. It would have to be carried-it was too large and unwieldy to fit in one of the cargo baskets and the crate lashed to Raventh’s sides. Strange little sounds were emanating from the crate. Siskin immediately took notice.
“Yes’m,” Glyena said, smiling down from her perch atop Raventh. The scent of the pie tickled her nostrils and she wondered if she should just try and give it a little taste?
The headwoman saw it.
“Don’t you dare, Glyena!”
Glyena giggled.
K’ndar checked her harness a second time. Siskin hopped onto the top of the crate, sticking his nose through the small separations between the crates slats. He sniffed deeply, his eyes turning an excited green.
“Siskin, leave it be,” he said, but the blue fire lizard ignored him. He began to scratch at the wooden slats.
Raventh, please tell Siskin to leave the crate alone.
He probably won’t listen, but I’ll try
Siskin eeped and flew to Raventh’s withers.
Good. That did it.
I told him I had an itch between my shoulders. We should go while he’s..oh, I AM itchy there.
He turned his attention to Hariko.
“Ma’am, I could come back for you, it would be easy,” he said.
Hariko shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe next time, K’ndar. I feel guilty about not coming. It’s not often that one’s childhood friend marries. But the weyrleaders are up North, and who’s to run the weyr?”
K’ndar gave the woman a quick hug.
“Ma’am, everyone knows you run it whether or not the Weyrleaders are here,” he said.
She smiled. “Get on with you, lad. Even so, she’s got a good man in Fland, she does. Be sure to give her my love. Now get on your handsome Raventh before your sister takes a taste of that pie!” ________________________________________________________________________
His landing was extremely gentle, without so much as a bump.
Well done!
Thank you. I know that your sister is holding something …soft?
Delicate. It’s food for humans. Easily broken, although that’s not the right word. No matter, I’m sure it’s unharmed.
What is in the crate that had Siskin so interested? It is moving and making noises.
Chicks. Hatchling birds. A gift for my mother from Hariko
To eat?
K’ndar laughed out loud.
No. At least not these. Once they grow up and lay eggs, maybe then they’ll eat the eggs.
Make sure they’re safely out of reach, then. Siskin is still insistent on getting into that crate.
“What’s so funny?” Glyena asked, then forgot her question as their family ran to greet them.
“I’ll tell you later. Here comes everybody!! K’ndar said.
__________________________________________________________________________
He reflected on how happy his mother looked. She’d lost ten years, he thought, and gained a few kilos. Fland was more relaxed than he’d ever seen. His brothers and their wives were laughing. Glyena had been joined by several of the hands children close to her in age, and was playing with her young cousins.
He thought of how wonderful this family get together was. Even better, Lizard, Sandriss’s trading partner, was there. Their four fire lizards had greeted Siskin, distracting him from his determined effort to get at the chicks.
Lord Dorn had sent Singing Water’s harper to wed his mother and now stepfather? Well, yes, but Fland had always been a better father figure to him than his blood sire. This was merely making it official. It wasn’t even technically necessary…people could wed or not, it made no difference in Pern’s culture.
The hands-there were several families living at their cothold now-were cleaning up after the celebratory meal. The menfolk had slaughtered a steer earlier in the week and roasted it to perfection. The women refused to allow Daryat into her own kitchen.
“It’s not right, ma’am, you cleaning up on your special day? Go on with you, your children are all here. By the egg, Glyena has grown so tall, not to mention your boy K’ndar!! He’s turned out right handsome, he has! My sister, you know, she’s got a nice young girl who’d do him just right as a weyrmate,” one said.
Daryat laughed. Things were so much better at the cothold, now. The evil reign of Hanliss was as dead as he was. His abuse, his miserly ways, his mistreatment of the hired hands, his readiness to mete out punishment with a fist or a strap, and most frightening of all, his risking everything by cheating Lord Dorn out of his rightful tithe-it was all a bad dream, now long gone. Their hands had returned and had built their own cottages. It’s like a miniature Hold, all on it’s own, she thought.
“I’ll let him know, but you’ll have to warn her what taking up with a dragonrider entails,” she said.
The woman laughed. “Aye, and it means living with his dragon, what? And look at the size of it! Now you go join the family, you leave the clean up to us,” she said.
Daryat smiled at the woman’s matchmaking. But she was worried. Why hadn’t K’ndar taken a weyrmate yet?
She’d taken K’ndar aside to ask him, then lost her courage to interfere with his private life. She steered it instead to asking about Glyena.
“I felt so guilty, K’ndar, when Glyena opted to stay at the weyr and be fostered. At the time, it was the best thing, to get her away from her father, but now? I would love to have her back here,” she’d said, wringing her hands.
He embraced her, so happy for her new life, and wanting to dispel her worry.
“Mum, she’s fine. She’s blossomed. Remember, back then, she had no one to play with here, no friends save me and Mardriss, and we weren’t good play companions for a little girl. You know how Hanliss was,(he could no longer bring himself to refer to Hanliss as his father) he was furious when you taught her to read and write, what kind of noise is that? A man doesn’t beat on a kid, a man doesn’t call his children names. For that matter, a man doesn’t beat ANYBODY. She had to do something to survive, Mum. You saw it yourself, how she was turning into him, out of self defense.
She made the decision, Mum, and we talk about it sometimes. Honestly, we’re both so busy, sometimes I’ll go a couple weeks before seeing her. Shirae keeps me up to date on her, and so far, it’s all been good. She says she’s often asked Gly about coming back here, and Gly has a dozen reasons why she wants to stay at the weyr. She’s grown, Mum, she’s doing well in school, she eats up her studies like a starving dragon. She has half a dozen hobbies. She wants to be a race rider, and a Runner, and work with dolphins, and wants to make horse tack, she’s got this sharp mind that seems to have no limit.
She’s even developing an interest in boys. It worried me, Mum…she was so…um, infatuated with a boy named Harve. She was starry eyed about him, but then, every girl in the weyr was, too. I felt so ..um, protective, my baby sister? Hot for a boy?” he laughed, and saw her eyes begin to soften with humor. “That’s when I realized, she’s..well, she’s not a baby anymore. Actually, it was Raventh, Mum, who said, she’s not a baby anymore.
Ask her, Mum, and if she wants to stay here, I’ll bring all her stuff back. But I have a feeling she’ll say she loves you but she’s happy at the weyr,” he said.
He could see the tension leave her. “I believe you, K’ndar, and I’m grateful you’re there to keep an eye on her. She-well, I feel almost as if I’d abandoned her. She’s my last chick, I knew back then that letting her be fostered was the best for her at the time. I’ve worried since then that, maybe, I was wrong.”
It felt strange,to be reassuring his mother. Me? This is turn about, she was always protecting me, explaining the why of things. Now I’m doing it to her? I expect it of Fland, and even Mardriss, but me? I’m just K’ndar. Her kid. Just one of her chicks.
And yet she was treating not as her youngest son, but as a grown man. It was a new feeling, one of responsibilty and protectiveness.
He hugged her. “No. You weren’t wrong, you saved her. You were like a woman whose last act was to throw her child out of a burning cottage to a rescuer. You were prepared to leave Hanliss, wondering how you would live, but you weren’t going to leave her there for him to vent on. That was the right thing to do.”
She heaved a sigh and nodded. Their were tears in her eyes.
Where was he getting this clarity, he wondered, this heady feeling of understanding the whole picture, everything clicking into place, like the last piece of a puzzle? He hadn’t had it moments ago.
“Mum, she turned around like THAT,” he said, snapping his fingers. “She’s like you, a lot. She’s strong. She’s smart. She knows who she is and what she wants, and I’m betting my best boots, if she changes her mind and wants to come home, she’ll do it. And I’ll bring her here as fast as Raventh can bring us.”
She smiled and kissed him on the cheek.
———————————————————————————————————————
“Wow. You’ve been busy,” he said, amazed at the changes in the cothold.
K’ndar was with the menfolk. Lizard, his brothers Mardriss and Sandriss, along with Fland, were taking him on a tour of the cothold.
“It’s gotten so big,” he said, trying to understand the odd combination of strangeness and familiarity. He’d grown up here, but had he? It had never occurred to him that life went on, day by day, here, as well as at the Weyr. He’d subconciously expected the homestead to be exactly as it had been when he’d left. And of course, most of it was, yet there were changes, some so subtle he couldn’t define exactly what they were.
His memory had gaps, now. As he looked around, it said, ‘there used to be something here’ but he couldn’t remember what. I grew up here, he thought, why do I feel like a stranger? The hand’s cottages were obviously new, but what had been there before? Wasn’t that the spot where the big tree had been, the one they’d all climbed like quorls? Why hadn’t I noticed these changes when we staged out of here doing the steppe survey? Had they been made then? Or was it, we’d arrive at dusk, eat, clean up, sleep, and then head out at dawn? He felt lost.
“I bet you feel out of place, K’ndar. We did most of this building just this past summer,” Mardriss said, “put up cottages for my and Sand’s family, a guest cottage, where you’ll bunk tonight, along with Lizard, and the hands all have their little cottages now. We were going to build an entire new one for Mum, but she won’t have anything to do with that. So we built a new barn, instead.”
“What happened to the tree, the big one?”
There was a circle of bricks surrounding a small sapling where the tree had stood.
Sandriss said, “Lightning, K’ndar. One night, everyone had turned in when a thunderstorm blew in. My fire lizards had just enough time to wake me up to warn me, when BLAM! It was deafening. That was when, Mardriss, last summer? Right after you left with your survey team. It was strange, K’ndar, it’d been hot, like today, we didn’t expect a storm. Rain, yes, we needed the rain. One half of the tree was burning. We managed to put it out before it caught everything on fire. Poor thing, such a magnificent tree. We had no idea it was hollow hearted. I think, had it been younger, it would have withstood the strike but as it was, it was the end of it. The wood was still good. That’s what we used to build most of the cottages. It was a grand old tree, it was.”
K’ndar touched the sapling, gently. It was obviously well cared for.
“We took a cutting off the tree, from the part that hadn’t been burned, planted it right where she’d stood. You can see, it’s taken root. I doubt we’ll be alive to see it get as big as it’s mum had been, but with luck, our kids will,” he said.
After several reflective moments, Mardriss said, “Let’s show you the new barn.”
The new barn had been cunningly engineered to form an addition to the large cavern that before had housed their riding horses. Now it was filled with fresh mown hay, safe from the rains of winter and surreptitious nibbles from the various herbivores on the cothold. The addition had been built solely for the livestock. There were airy and bright box stalls for their own horses as well as those of visitors. A calving pen had been built for the cow that might have problems calving. A chicken coop had been carefully designed to keep cats, tunnel snakes and even fire lizards out. Hariko’s chicks were in it now, already happily adapted to it. K’ndar hoped Siskin wouldn’t teleport inside it.
“Sand, how..how do you keep your fire lizards from attacking the chickens? My Siskin wanted nothing more than to get at them.”
Sandriss laughed. “Lizard will tell you that!”
He turned to the trader.
Lizard grinned.
“The trick isn’t a trick at all. It’s a process called aversion training. Remember, Sandriss’s and my fire lizards are all from the same clutch. We were traders at the time, we were somewhere up North, at a Gather. I’d sold all but four eggs. They hatched and we eached impressed two. We’d been there, oh, a few days, when the hatchlings began exploring. They saw the Holder’s chickens and went for them. The cock, though, was having nothing to do with a handful of baby fire lizards, no sir!!” He and Sandriss both laughed.
“I’ll say! That cock was twice their size and mean as a wet wherry. He took one look at them and attacked them, sending all four into between. Probably the first time they’d ever done it and I’m amazed they found their way back. They reappeared in the basket they’d hatched in! They’ve not dared look at a chicken since!” Sandriss said.
“I think, given that Siskin is a fairly small blue, you might find an equally aggressive cock to teach him to leave his hens and chicks alone.”
“Not too difficult, I think all cocks are possessive,” Sandriss added.
“Mum’s cock is where? I haven’t seen it,” K’ndar said.
“Dead. That’s why she’s so grateful Hariko sent her a basket full of chicks. Bound to be a cock in the batch. New blood, too.”
At the moment, the box stalls were empty, as all the livestock were out grazing. They made their way to the paddocks. A small herd of horses came racing to the stone fenceline. Among the riding horses were several draft horses.
“You’re raising draft horses now?” he asked Mardriss.
“That I am. Oxen, too. There’s a need for ’em. A lot of folk are moving to the steppe and need draft beasts,” his elder brother said.
The thought of his beloved steppe filling up dismayed him.
The men gave the horses scritches.
He recognized two of them.
“These draft horses, he said to Mardriss, “they look familiar.”
“Good eye on you,” Lizard said, “They used to be mine.”
“USED to be?”
“Aye, they’re your brother’s, now. Mardriss gave me a good deal on a new pair, five year olds. I know some folks who would have fed the old ones to their dragon or watch wher, but not me. They’ve earned their retirement,” Lizard said.
“Huh. My dad would have butchered them without a qualm,” K’ndar said, bitterly. “”Can’t have nothing here that doesn’t earn its keep,”” he said in a angry tone, mimicking his dead father.
“Or spiffed them up and tried to sell ’em as young ones, ” Mardriss said, “but even retired horses can prove valuable. They’re training new teams, like the one I gave Lizard.”
A very large stallion thundered up, shaking his mane and whinnying. He went right to Lizard.
“Ah, you’re daft, you are,” Lizard said, and from somewhere on his person produced a carrot.
The stallion nickered and took it, gently.
K’ndar was awe struck.
“What…who …”
Mardriss laughed. Lizard crooned gently to the stallion.
“By the egg, he’s beautiful…and BIG. Where in the world did you get him?”
Sandriss spoke up. “Lizard brought him. He’s got an eye for a horse, he does,”
K’ndar nodded, still astounded. “Don’t I know it! Lizard, where did you find this beast?”
Lizard, his hand idly scritching the stallion’s neck, said, “You know my background with Wanderers, K’ndar. They’re the best breeders on Pern for draft horses. I’m in good stead with them. I was on Northern, and when Sandriss sent me a message saying they were looking for a good stallion, I was able to procure this lovely one without too much dickering. The woman who bred him made me swear he’d go to a good home. He was a pet, you know, but she needed to introduce fresh blood into her band, just like your mother needing fresh blood in her chicken flock.
The hardest part was getting him aboard a ship. Not that he was afraid of being aboard, he wanted nothing to do with being below decks. He wasn’t afraid, no sir, he wanted to be on deck, probably wanting to actually pilot the ship!” he laughed.
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