Dies the Fire

"Lad knows his business as far as the moves go," Ayl-ward said thoughtfully. "Hope he doesn't freeze up when the red wine's served for true, though."

Juniper shivered slightly and changed the subject. "You've settled in better than most, Sam," she said. "I'd have thought it would be harder for you, being so far from home."

For a moment the square, good-humored Saxon face went bleak. "It'll be worse back there," he said. "Sixty million people in one little island? It doesn't bear thinking of, and at least I don't have to watch it."

Juniper winced slightly and swallowed. Any more than I do Los Angeles or New York, she thought. Or Mexico City or Tokyo or…

He shook his shoulders. "Besides, I've no near kin to home, no wife or child, and even before the Change… it's not really the place I grew up in, not anymore it isn't- wasn't. Full of commuters, bought all the old cottages up and gussified them, they did. And the local farmers were all for ripping out hedges and trees and getting rid of their livestock and making the place look like bloody Canada; fat lot of good their combines and thousand-acre fields of hybrid barley will be to them now, eh?"

He shook his head. "I'd just been playing, fossicking about with this and that, since I mustered out of the SAS. Traveling, making bows, doing a little hunting."

"They must have a generous pension plan," Juniper said teasingly.

"Not bloody likely!" he said with a grin. "But my da had a bit put by-from selling the farm about the time my mother died and I went for a soldier, you see. Left it to me; fair knackered I was, when I found out, since he'd done naught but live in a cheap flat in Portsmouth and haunt the pubs. Thought he'd drunk it up years ago… "

Then he looked at her with his head slightly to one side: "You've a gift for getting people talking, don't you, Lady?"

Juniper gri

"That it did." A shrug. "Play's all very well, but a man's life is his work; I've got a real job of work to do here."

Well, that's more than Mr. Strong and Silent's said before, she thought, giving him a genial slap on the shoulder; it was like hitting an oak beam. Lord and Lady be thanked for sending him our way!

Everyone headed for the trestle-tables and the fires with the soup cauldrons; on a day like this, it was a relief to do things out-of-doors. Juniper shed her battle gear-they had two-by-four racks set up for it-and got in line. Diana gri

"You know, Juney, one of the things I enjoyed most about ru

Juniper laughed out loud, despite the rumbling of her stomach. "And what's on the menu today, Di?"

"Eternal Soup, Eternal Soup, or today's extra-special dish: delicious zuppa di eterno."

"Eternal Soup!" Juniper made her eyes go wide. "What a surprise! Still, I think I'll have something from the dessert tray instead, and some nice organic hazelnut coffee."

Diana gave a sour laugh and plopped her ladle into Juniper's bowl. Her husband, Andy, gave her a platter of wild-greens salad, half a hard-boiled egg, and one precious baking-powder biscuit.

There was also a great jug of rich Jersey milk fresh from their-single-milking cow. But that was for the children and Dorothy Rose, who was pregnant; birth control was already getting more difficult, and there would be a couple of babies before Yule.

Juniper's nose twitched as she carried the big bowl of soup over to her table. It actually smelled pretty good today, probably because they'd been getting in a little game and wild herbs-dandelion roots, fireweed shoots-plus Andy had thrown in some more of the soup barley and miso stock from their restaurant-store's inventory, plus a little pasta from the Fairfax storehouse.

They were always talking about butchering one of the steers or sheep, and always kept putting it off until absolutely necessary-everyone was worried about the gap between the preserved foods and the first harvest, with the way their numbers had grown. They had plenty of grass to keep the beasts hale, courtesy of the Willamette's mild climate and the way foragers had swept it bare of livestock.

"Mmmm," she said appreciatively as she hunted down the last barleycorn in her bowl with an eager spoon.

I crave starch. In fact, I crave starch and fat and meat and sugar….

Then she went for the salad; dandelion greens and henbit shoots and various other crunchy green things from the meadows and woods, about half of which she recognized; and some ca

In fact, I crave everything except dandelion greens.

Judy Barstow licked her spoon: "You know, if there were a few more calories, this would be an ideal, healthy diet."

"Oh, shut up, you she-quack," Juniper grumbled, seconded by a few others.

Their nurse-midwife gri

For a while there was only the clinking of spoons and the crunch of greenery between busy jaws. Then-

"Hamburgers," Diana said hollowly, looking at her own empty bowl.

"Shut up, Di," her husband said. "Please."

"Cheeseburgers with sauteed onions and maple-cured bacon. French fries-big, greasy home-fries with lots of salt. Pork chops, with the fat brown and crispy at the edge and collard greens on the side. Thai shrimp curry with bas-mati rice. Steamed snow peas. Fried eggplant with grated cheese. Barbecued ribs. Pasta with homemade tomato sauce and Parmesan melting on top. Mashed garlic potatoes with butter and chives. Bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwiches, the tomatoes just out of the garden and still sun-warm, dripping with mayo."

"Shut up!" It was several voices together now.

"Slabs of MoonDance fresh whole-wheat bread, brown and crusty, still steaming when you cut it, with organic butter melting into the surface. And jam, wild blueberry jam, and honey. German chocolate cake with coconut sprinkles on the frosting. Good Costa Rican coffee in a big mug with thick cream, while you eat a ci

"Shut up!" they all screamed in chorus; the children giggled, but nobody else was laughing.

Someone broke down and started that sort of drooling food-porn every second meal on average. It drove everyone else crazy; they would have thrown food if there had been any to spare.

Juniper used a dandelion leaf to wipe out the inside of her soup bowl, then sighed as her i

… and there I go thinking about food again!

It turned out to be a scale model. Juniper looked at it in bemusement as De

"Is that a kilt you're wearing, De

He gri