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Twenty
"For the road is wide-
and the sky is tall
And before I die, I will see it all!"
Juniper Mackenzie broke off at the chorus as three armed figures stepped into the roadway. She stopped her bicycle and leaned one foot on the dirt road and called a greeting, putting a hand up to shade her eyes against the bright spring sun. Judy Barstow stopped likewise, and Vince and Steve waved hellos of their own; the rest of their party stopped as well, uncertain.
They'd all relaxed now that they were well into the clan's land-past the Fairfax place, and just where the county road turned north along Artemis Butte Creek-and they'd been singing from sheer thankfulness, despite the bone-deep ache of exhaustion.
Homecoming was sweet almost beyond bearing.
"Hi, Alex, Sam," Juniper shouted, returning their waves of greeting as she swung her other foot down and started pushing the bicycle towards them. "Merry meet again!"
Alex had his bow over his back, a buckler in one hand and a spear in the other; six feet of ashwood, with a foot-long head made from a piece of automobile leaf spring. He leaned the spear against a tree to put a horn to his lips-it was the genuine article, formerly gracing the head of a cow-and blew one long blast and three short ones, a blat-ting huuuu noise not like any sound metal had ever made.
Then he gri
And a kilt, by Cernu
"Glad to see you've got them alert, Sam," she said to the Englishman. "That's the second time I've been stopped!"
Because one guard post at the border isn't enough, curse the expense and lost work of it!
The other archer was a lanky blond girl in her late teens, and definitely not a member of coven or clan that Juniper remembered, despite the Mackenzie sigil on her jack-the crescent moon between elk antlers.
"Cynthia?" Juniper said. What's a Carson doing on sentry-go for us? "Does your family know you're here?"
"My folks are up at the Hall, Lady Juniper; it's Cynthia Carson Mackenzie now," the girl replied with self-conscious dignity.
Juniper felt herself flush slightly, and Alex gave her a wink as he leaned on his spear, gri
Goddess, it's embarrassing when people call me that!
So was the growing practice of calling her cabin the Chief's Hall. De
"De
Juniper wasn't in a jack herself. She wore a thigh-length, short-sleeved tunic of gray-brown chain mail.
"Corvallis; and these are three of my coveners-made it out of Eugene after the Change and were on their way here, and a couple of-but you'll all get the full tale of our travels at di
"Pass then, Lady Juniper," Alex said formally, rapping his spear on his buckler and stepping aside; Cynthia and Aylward tapped their helmets again.
The travelers pushed their bicycles upslope. Judy Barstow leaned over and whispered in her ear: "Maybe you should have taken a horse anyway, Lady Juniper," she said. "More dignified, for the exalted chieftain of the Clan Mackenzie… "
"Oh, go soak your head, you she-quack," Juniper grumbled, sweating as they pushed their bicycles up the slope.
"Just what I was hoping to do," Judy said. "I hope they're stoking the boiler in the bathhouse right now." Then her smile faded. "And we need to do it, just in case. I'm pretty sure we're all still clean of infection and that the fleabane worked and that we scrubbed down enough, but… "
Juniper shrugged, lightening her mood with an effort of will: "And horses are far too conspicuous and edible to take into the valley. And too valuable."
The creekside road wasn't very steep, but the chain mail shirt and the padding beneath were hot on the fine late-spring afternoon, besides weighing a good quarter of her body weight. She had her quiver, buckler, helmet and other gear slung to racks behind the seat, and the bow across her handlebars, but she still had to push the weight uphill; and none of them had eaten much for the past full day, or very well over the last ten.
She could smell her own sweat, strong under the green growing scents; the faint cool spray from the stream tumbling down the hillside in its bed of polished rocks was very welcome. They were deep in shade now too, big oaks meeting overhead, and flowers showing white and crimson and blue through the grass and reeds and shoulder-high sword ferns. The other side of the water was a steep hillside, covered in tall Douglas fir.
"It's the Mackenzie!" someone shouted as they came out of the woods into the meadowland. "The Mackenzie herself!"
A crowd of adults and more children were waving and ru
And yes… every third adult was in a kilt now, and half the children.
"It's herself herself!" he caroled, waving on the cheers as more people ran in from the fields.
"Will you stop doing that, you loon!" Juniper called, laughing. "You'll have them all clog dancing and painting their faces blue next!"
"There can be only One," he said, making his voice solemn and portentous.
"How about the One throttles you with your fake kilt?" she said. Then louder to the crowd, holding up her hands: "Slainte chulg na fir agus go maire na mna’ go deo!" she said, laughing: "Health to the men and may the women live forever! I said I'd be back by Beltane, didn't I?"
That was the spring quarter-day festival, not long off now, a time of new begi
And my, things have been happening here, too!
There was more than one face she didn't recognize; evidently her lectures about sharing when you could had born fruit. She did know Dorothy Rose, who was not only in a kilt but wore a plaid improvised out of one of the same batch of blankets and a flat Scots bo
She pumped up the bellows of her bagpipes and then lead off the procession, stepping out with a fine swirl and squeal, not spoiled in the least by half a dozen dogs going into hysterics around her-Cuchulain was throwing himself into the air like a hairy porpoise breaching, wiggling in ecstasy. The rest of the people crowded around her and her companions, taking their baggage. and then suddenly seizing her and carrying her along behind the pipes, whooping and laughing as they tossed her overhead on a sea of hands.
"Put me down!" she cried, laughing herself. "Is this how you treat your Chief, returned from a quest?"
"Damn right it is!" De
She felt a huge load lift from her chest at the cheerful expressions; obviously nothing too dreadful could have happened while she was gone-dreadful by the standards of the first year of the Change, that was. De
But mostly it's playacting. Well, people need play and dreams. In bad times more than good, and there are no bad-der times than these, surely?