Dies the Fire

The chubby little Australian and his tall gangling blond wife had pushed Eric out of position with the Huttons' help, and they were warming up on their instruments- accordion and tuba. Oom-pa-oom-pa split the night, already familiar from the trip back; Josh and A

"Do-si-do, turn your partner," Havel said. "Not only an Aussie with an accordion, but an Aussie who's obsessed with polkas!"

"He's from the Barossa valley in South Australia, and it was settled by Germans," Larsson said defensively. "And Angelica likes it."

"She's Tejano," Havel said. "San Antonio and the Hill Country used to be lousy with krauts. The oom-pa-pa beat spread like the clap. Put Zeppelt and Astrid together, and in a generation we'll all be wearing lederhosen to go with the pointed ears. the Tubas of Elfland, going oom-pa, oom-pa."

"C'mon," Pamela said; she'd been quiet that evening. "Let's dance, oh fianc?Mike's in one of his grumbling moods. Signe and the dog have to listen but we don't."

They wandered over to where couples were prancing to the lively beat. Signe sipped at her own whiskey; her cheeks were a little flushed. For a moment they leaned shoulder-to-shoulder; then Louhi crawled between them, licking at hands and faces.

"All right, that settles it. I christen thee Louhi, and you can start learning ma

Signe smiled, tousling the young hound's ears. "I'd have figured you for a dog sort of guy, Mike."

He shrugged. "I was, when I was a kid. Had this German shepherd called Max-very original, hey? From the time I was eight until just before I graduated high school."

He smiled, looking into the flames: "He used to sleep on the foot of my bed, bad breath and gas and all, and I even took him hunting."

"It's odd to take a dog hunting?"

"Max? Yeah, sort of like taking along a brass band. He saved a lot of deer from death. My dad couldn't stand it- the mines were always laying people off with about a week's warning, and there were four of us kids, so a lot of the time we needed that venison. But Max, he'd howl something awful if you tied him up when you got in the canoe."

"Canoe?"

"Yeah, we had this creek that went by our place, and ran through some marshland-man, when I remember what my mom could do with wild rice and duck-then into a little lake with some pretty good hunting woods. Even better if you took a day or two and portaged a bit. White pine country before the loggers got there; lots of silver birch, and maple. We had a good sugarbush on our land, in the back of the woodlot."

"It sounds lovely," she said. "In fact, it sounds like Sweden-we visited there a couple of times, Smaland, where our family came from originally."

Havel's mouth turned up. "Yeah, the Iron Range country is the grimmer parts of Scandahoofia come again-it's even more like Finland. Makes you wonder if our ancestors had any brains at all-those of present company excepted, of course."

"Que?" Signe said.

That was one of Angelica's verbal ticks, and a lot of people had picked it up while he was gone.

Havel mimed wonder: "Like, did they say to themselves: Ooooh, rocks and swamps, crappy soil, mosquitoes bigger than pigeons, blackflies like crows, and nine months of frozen winter blackness! Just like what we left. To hell with pushing on to golden, mellow California-let's settle here!"

Signe laughed and wrinkled her nose: "I saw the Larsson home in Smaland, and you could grow a great crop of rocks around it. Oregon probably looked really good by comparison. I mean, Sweden's a pretty nice place to live now-or was before the Change, you know what I mean-but back in the old days, you could starve to death there."

"And in 1895 the Upper Peninsula of Michigan didn't have a lot of Russians trying to draft you into fighting for the Czar, yeah, point taken. Anyway, Max, he would have starved to death if he'd had to hunt on his own-what the shrinks call poor impulse control. He got his nose frostbit a couple of times trying to track down field mice in winter; he'd go galloping across the fields with his muzzle making like a snowplow. I was too young myself to train him properly when he was a pup."

Louhi crawled further up, stuck her nose into Mike's armpit and promptly went to sleep.

"I'll do better with Louhi here. Hounds scent-hunt anyway."

Signe considered him for a while, head on one side: "What happened to Max?"

"Besides scaring the bejayzus out of deer and squirrel, getting into pissing matches with skunks, and shoving his face into a porcupine's quills once a year? He used to get into the maple-sap buckets in the spring, too, pretty regular. Ever tried to get that stuff out of the fur of a hundred and ten pounds of reluctant Alsatian?"

"In the end, I meant."

"In the end? Got run over a little while before I graduated high school," Havel said. "Broke his back; I found him trying to crawl home. I had to put him down."

And he kept expecting me to make it better, Havel remembered. Right up to the second I pulled the trigger.

"That must have been terrible," Signe said, laying a hand on his.

He turned his over, and they linked fingers. "Yeah, I missed him."

To himself: I couldn 't have proven in a court who did it, but then, I didn’t have to.

A flicker of grim pleasure at a memory of cartilage crumbling under his knuckles: Beating me out with Shirley was one thing, but killing my dog…

"Is that why you didn't get another dog?"

"Nan, didn't have the time, and it's not fair on the animal if you don't-they're not like cats," Havel said. "Now things are different."

Signe nodded, and looked over to the open space; it was square-dancing now.

"That fiance thing seems to be breaking out all over," she said. A pause: "You… you've been sort of quiet since you got back, Mike. I… there wasn't anything with this Juniper woman, was there? Eric won't talk about it at all."

"Just giving things a rest," he said, sitting up and resting his free arm on his knees. "And yeah, I won't deny there was a sort of mutual attraction, pretty strong for short acquaintance. She had a lot of character."

Signe froze, her hand clenching on his, and he went on: "But we decided we both had commitments elsewhere; she had her kid to look after, and her people. I do have commitments here, don't I?"

Signe nodded, flushing redder. "Ummm… I hope so. Nice night for a walk out?"

Havel uncoiled to his feet, pulling her up. "Walking's nice, but we can do that any night. Right now, why don't we dance?"

She smiled, a brilliant grin that made her eyes like turquoise in the firelight.

"I'll dance your feet right off, mister!" she said.

A room on the new second floor of the Chief's Hall held the clinic. Juniper Mackenzie swung her feet down from the stirrups and over the edge of the table; her voice was almost a squeak: "I'm what?" she said.

"Pregnant."

"Are you sure?"

The room was still a bit bare; glass-fronted cabinets, rows of medicines and instruments and herbal simples, anatomical diagrams, and a well-laden bookshelf. It smelled of antiseptic and musky dried wildflowers and fresh sappy pine. Judy finished washing her hands-the stainless-steel sinks had come from the kitchen of a Howard Johnson's ten miles northwest-and turned, leaning back against the counter as she dried her hands on a towel and spoke tartly: "Look, Juney, I'm not a doctor and I've felt inadequate often enough trying to do a doctor's job here, but I am a trained midwife and I can recognize a pregnancy when I see one!"