Dies the Fire

"I simply can't believe I'm… " Juniper said, letting the sentence trail off weakly.

"Pregnant," Judy said with sardonic patience. "Preggers. Knocked up. Expecting. Enceinte. In the family way. Have a bun in the oven. Providing a home for someone back from the Summerlands-"

"I'm familiar with the concept! I thought I was just missing a period because I'd lost weight-how could this have happened?"

Judy's voice dropped into a sugary singsong she never actually used with children: "Sometimes, little girl, when the Goddess and the God fill a man and woman's hearts, so that they love each other very much, they show their love by-"

"Oh, shut up, you she-quack! What am I going to do about it?"

"You want a D and C? Pretty straightforward at this stage."

"No," she said, firmly and at once, surprising herself a little; her mind had apparently made itself up without telling her. "No, I'm definitely keeping it."

She looked around the room. It was bright and cheery, morning sun bright on fresh-sawn wood and paint, but the only personal touch so far was a watercolor Eilir had done for Judy back before the Change. It showed the Goddess as the Maiden of Stars; the features were done in a naif schoolgirl style, but held an enormous benevolence.

I never thought there would be any child but Eilir, she thought. But it seems You had other ideas…

"Not much doubt about who the father is," Judy said. "Not unless there's been a miracle-and you're not a virgin, not Jewish, and that legend's from the wrong mythos anyway."

"No," Juniper said. "No doubt at all. But let's not be spreading the parentage abroad, shall we? It could be… awkward down the line."

"Well," Judy said, briskly practical, starting a new page in the file on the table. "It isn't your first time; that's good. How did Eilir go-apart from the measles, that is?"

"She was premature, eight months and a bit, but otherwise fine; seven pounds and no problems, no anesthesia and no epidural, three hour delivery. No morning sickness, even. I was just sixteen, and didn't realize what was happening until about three months in."

Judy's brows went up. "Well, that's an old-fashioned Catholic upbringing for you."

"Speaking of my mother, now that I think back on it, I remember her saying that I was easy, but a bit early, too."

"Likely to be a genetic factor with the premature birth, then," she said. "Have to check carefully later."

"I'll just have to make him feel welcome, I suppose," Juniper said, smiling a little and putting a hand on her stomach.

"He?"

"Suddenly… I've got a feeling."

Judy wrote again: "Now, we'll put you on the special diet and the supplements-thank the Mother-of-All and the Harvest Lord we aren't quite as short of food as we were! Apart from that, pregnancy isn't an illness and a first-trimester fetus is extremely well cushioned, so there probably won't be any problems; you won't have to start being really careful until the fourth, fifth month unless something unusual happens. Report any spotting, excessive nausea-"

Juniper nodded, listening… but half her mind was drifting over the mountains eastward.

Mike, Mike, we didn't plan on this! How are you faring?

Twenty-two

"Something's happened here," Michael Havel said thoughtfully, lowering the binoculars and looking at the rising smoke in the distance.

The June wind stroked his face; it was that perfect early-summer temperature that caresses the skin the way a newly laundered pillowcase does at night.

Even better if I didn’t have to wear this damned ironmongery and padding, he mused absently-in truth, he'd gotten so used to it that he only noticed it when he consciously thought about it.

"Pretty country otherwise," Signe said. "Lovely colors."

He nodded. Acres of blue flowers nodded among the rippling tall grass along the fringe where hills gave way to flatland, sprinkled with yellow field-daisies; this area of upland plain in western Idaho had been called the Camas Prairie once, when it was the hunting ground of the Nez Perce bands.

His horse shifted its weight from hoof to hoof, tossing its head and jingling the metal bits of its bridle, eager to be off and doing.

"Quiet, Gustav," he murmured, stroking a gauntlet down the arch of muscle that made its neck.

Most of the rolling lands southwestward were green with wheat or barley rippling in the breeze, with field peas or clover, save where a patch of fallow showed the rich black soil. Distant blue mountains surrounded the plain on all sides, giving it the feel of a valley; small blue lakes and little farm reservoirs added to the impression, but there were occasional gullies or creekbeds below the general level. He couldn't see any cattle from here, but a herd of pronghorns ran through a wheatfield, bounding along at better than fifty miles an hour with their white rumps fluffed-something had spooked them.

He handed the glasses to Signe and leaned his hands on the saddle horn, cocking his head slightly to one side. There was a rustling chink of chain mail as his helmet's rear aventail slid across the shoulders of his hauberk. He had good distance sight, but hers was about the best he'd ever run across. To the naked eye the pillar of smoke was distant, and the cluster of buildings at its base barely visible where they nestled under a south-facing hill.

"I can't see anyone moving either," Signe said at last. "I'm not sure I can see people at all. They should be out fighting the fire, if there's anyone there at all. But… I don't like those crows and buzzards. See the clumps?"

That could mean plague, he thought. Trying to burn the bodies, and then the last survivors crawling away to die… but I doubt it. That's a farm, not a town; they wouldn't have enough people for that.

"We'd better scout it, cautiously," Havel said.

With people so afraid of sickness, news spread even more slowly than it had right after the Change. It was doubly difficult to keep informed, and doubly needful.

"Lua

They were still the best riders, bar Will, and they rode light; it was unlikely anyone could catch them. Plus Astrid was still their nearest approach to a good mounted archer… and it was his observation that when girls were told to go take a look at something and come back, they were less likely to get themselves into u

"I wouldn't send them together," Signe said.

There was a smile in her voice. Havel looked over at her, and there it was, framed by the round helmet with its bar-nasal in front and curtain of chain mail to the rear.

"I thought Astrid thought Lua

"She did," Signe said; now she was gri

"Que?"

"Astrid caught her making out with Eric behind the chuckwagon two nights ago, which was disgusting-and I see her point, you know? The thought of someone making out with Eric… that is disgusting. Anyway, then Lua

Havel made a strangled sound. "I don't know if she's worse when she's pretending to be an elf, or when she's relapsed into being a real human teenager. I do know-"

The young woman finished his sentence for him: "-that Gu

"We'll do the scout ourselves, then. Get Will."

"You're the bossman."

She reined around and cantered off. Havel looked after her briefly; the rest of the outfit were waiting a quarter mile back, wagons-there were a lot more of them now- stopped on alternate sides of the narrow ribbon of road, with outriders on the edge of sight, others working at the horse and cattle herds to keep them bunched, and some folk on foot by the vehicles.