Children of the Wolves (11 page)

“What are you doing?”

Jelena glanced up with a start. Michael stood on the other side of the arena fence, his face tight with anger, his hands clenched on the topmost rail. She could see his white knuckle tension from here.

“I'm riding,” she said.

“You don't ride.” Michael leapt lightly over the fence and strode toward her, reaching for the reins. Without even realizing that she was guiding the horse, she encouraged it to dance out of his reach. Michael stopped. “You could get hurt,” he said. “You should have told me.”

“Michael,” Jelena said, her voice soft, a little sad. “I don't need a protector anymore.” With a fine dramatic flair, she wheeled the bay to the right and cantered off. Well, she could be as theatrical as he.

Michael stood just inside the fence, watching after her, his arms crossed over his chest. She could almost see the unpleasant thoughts of wringing her neck filling his mind. She sat her saddle, upright but loose, like the riders. The horse veered toward the edge of the arena where overhanging branches brushed at Jelena. Smoothly, she twisted her upper body out of the way, the branches sliding by her. The horse, tiring of that game, loped out to the middle of the field, then began picking up speed. Jelena responded, leaning low over the stallion's neck as he raced across the field, then stopped short and reared.

When the horse threw its head back, Jelena's thighs clamped hard against the bay's body and she held her saddle, her hands loosely handling the reins. The horse bucked and reared again. Jelena held her place, her thighs burning and sweat streaking her brow. She began to laugh. She had done this before.
She had done it.
If she just let the memories come — surely the memories would come —

The horse wheeled, then thundered down the field, coming to a halt just next to Michael. This time when he put his hand up to grab the bridle, the stallion did not dance away, merely stood sweat-slick and blowing hard.

“Apparently you can ride.”

“Yes,” Jelena said. The memories hadn't come. “But it doesn't mean anything to me. I don't care about this horse, I don't feel a connection with it. I wasn't an equestrienne who won medals at the races.” She inhaled and frowned. “It's meaningless. I can ride a horse.” She stared down at Michael, her jaw clamped tight against the frustration. She could do many things but none of them revealed who she was. Who she had been.

Michael looked up into her eyes. “There are a couple of bottles of wine left and the celebration is still going strong. Join us.”

The ghost of a smile crossed her face. “I'd be delighted,” she said after a while. “It's just that I don't know how to get
off
this damned horse.”

• • •

They rubbed the big bay down after Michael patiently showed Jelena the strategy used to dismount a horse. “You're thinking too hard,” he coached. “It's a long way down when you think too hard.”

The teasing note was back in his voice, to Jelena's relief. She didn't want him to be angry and upset with her actions. He knew how much she wanted to find her place. Without thinking, she hooked her arm in his as they crossed the courtyard, and the years fell away, and it was as it had been in the beginning, full of hope and joy.

The physician came out of the infirmary as they neared. Michael slowed his steps and Jelena released his arm. The physician's face was lined with fatigue. He stopped when he saw them and waited for them to approach.

“It is done,” he said simply.

Michael nodded, all expression of happiness leaving his face. He turned toward the infirmary. Jelena knew he would sit with the little girl, Lissa, for a while, though she had already gone beyond self.

At least this they couldn't blame on the wolves. Then she chastised herself for such frivolous thinking at a moment like this.

“I'll inform her parents,” the physician said.

“Thank you,” Michael said.

Something in Jelena balked at accompanying him on his duty; sitting with the dead didn't appeal to her at all.

“Shall I tell Bertha and the others?” she offered. “There will have to be another funeral.”

Another funeral, so close on the heels of the trader's. Sometimes it seemed as if the grief would always outweigh the joy.

“That would be a help,” Michael said. He hesitated, and she knew it was because he didn't like to leave her unprotected.

“I'll be fine,” she said, squeezing his arm and turning to follow the physician into the main hall.

She went directly to the kitchen where Bertha supervised the cleanup. The older woman glanced at Jelena's face, gave a final instruction to a helper, then motioned Jelena over to a small table in the corner.

“It is done?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Poor child,” Bertha said with a shake of her head. “That poor child and her parents. They thought the sun rose and set on that little girl.”

A stab of pain in Jelena's heart. She remembered the pendant Michael had given her, with an etching of a mother and child. Had she had a beautiful child, too, in her pastself, and had she believed the sun rose and set on that child?

Then she remembered Lissa's caretaker. “What about Kallie?”

“She is gone,” Bertha said, a shadow crossing her face. Jelena sucked a breath in.
Gone
. She wouldn't survive long outside the protection of the trees, beyond the fence.

“Poor Kallie,” Jelena said. It all seemed so wasteful; an unawakened life, valued so little; a moment's inattention, a single action that anyone might do — and then this.

Bertha patted her shoulder and rose from the table. “A summer of mourning,” she said. “A season of grief. It turns and turns. That is the Way.”

“At least Teresa has awakened,” Jelena said, though she felt no joy at the knowledge. It would be good for the people, though; it always was. Bertha gave her a shrewd look and a quick nod.

“Ay,” she said.

Even so, Jelena happened to agree with Bertha: a summer of mourning, a season of grief.

• • •

Though it was early morning, the sun blazed down already as the people gathered in the courtyard again, this time for the funeral of the little trueborn girl. This time Jelena stood next to Amy and didn't look at Viktor so that she would hear no more lectures from Michael.

As he turned toward the assembled villagers and began to speak, a voice called his name from across the distance. Michael stopped and narrowed his eyes to see who summoned him. Jelena turned to look.

The runner lifted a hand. “Michael,” he called again. “Quickly, quickly. Another is about to be newlyborn.”

Michael's face went ashen. He glanced at the assembled crowd and waved Cara forward to finish the funeral service. He reached for Jelena's hand. “Come along,” he said, heading in the direction of the caves.

“Michael,” Jelena said, pulling on his hand. “Hold on. Who will be its protector? Shouldn't that person come with us?”

Michael stopped suddenly enough to rock back on his heels. “Jeremiah! Jeremiah, stop!” he called to the runner. The runner obeyed, stood panting as they caught up to him. “Go back, summon Teresa,” Michael said.

“Teresa?” Jelena questioned, shocked at his choice.

“No one else who has been newlyborn in the last few years has awakened yet,” Michael said crossly. “Charmaine has just finished her service and wants to partner with Rufus.” Jelena realized that Teresa was not his first choice but that she would have to do. He turned back to the track that led down to the caves. Jelena stilled him with a hand on his arm. He wheeled impatiently but she spoke before he could get a word out.

“Michael, you're supposed to be this one's protector, aren't you?” she said, the knowledge dawning with a wrench. “That's why you didn't stop to think, or to ask the elders, whom to bring.” Here, now, proof of the burden of her selfishness.

“Jelena,” Michael interrupted. “I am
your
protector. One newlyborn, one protector. That's the way it works, that's the way it has always worked.”

“But I don't need — ”

“I haven't been released from my obligation yet,” Michael said curtly. “Now come on.”

The words struck like a fist to her stomach. If she hadn't been so selfish. If she hadn't been afraid that Michael would partner with someone else as soon as he was released of his obligation to her.

She was crying freely by the time they reached the approach to the caves. Michael gave her a glance but said nothing as he ducked into the entrance. A tall woman in white robes stood just outside, awaiting them. Something about her shimmered with nerves. If the woman hadn't been schooled to appear serene, Jelena would bet that she'd have been wringing her hands.

“By all that's good, you're here,” the caretaker breathed. “This way.” She lifted a lantern from a bracket on the stone wall, turned and led them down a narrow passageway. The walls glistened wetly; the ground was slippery under their feet. Jelena barely remembered being newlyborn here, brought through the stone passages into the light. She remembered a whirl of color and movement and sound, nothing that made much sense, either now or at the time.

The chilled air smelled dank with the musty stench of rotting things. She shivered as she made her way down the passage in Michael's wake. The tunnel branched and the caretaker plunged down the western passage. Hurrying now, hardly able to contain herself, the caretaker reached the end of the tunnel two steps ahead of Michael and flung open a steel door. Jelena gasped as she saw the smooth steel interior of the room, the endless rows of glass enclosed cubes bathed with yellow light. On one of the cubes, a light pulsed green. In here, the air was less cloying but just as cool. A metallic tang hung in the air. Jelena gradually became aware of a low hum of energy sources.

As Jelena walked down the main aisle between the rows, she saw that within each cube a person slept. The cubes stretched far into the darkness of the steel-clad cave. The caretaker stopped at the cube with the pulsing green light. Jelena assumed the pulsing green light meant the inhabitant was about to be newlyborn. Those in cubes bathed in yellow light still slumbered. She caught her breath as she realized that the makers had probably intended for the saved to be newlyborn all at once — or at least within a short period of time of one another. Because there could be nothing haphazard about this collection of saved. How carefully organized and well-equipped the room was. It was only their newbirthing over years that didn't make sense. Something had gone wrong with the technology and they hadn't been newlyborn according to the makers' plan. The thought felt like heresy but it also excited her. It explained so much.

Maybe they had
all
been meant to remember, just as the rememberer did. Maybe the need to be awakened had not been anticipated by the makers. That would explain even more. Jelena looked at the rows of cubes, more than she could easily count. What if some of them never stirred from their slumbers? It had never occurred to her that some of the saved might die before they could be newlyborn.

“Here,” the caretaker said softly. Despite the fact that she spoke under her breath, her words jolted Jelena back to the present moment. The caretaker lifted the lantern high to shed light on the cube, then placed the lantern on a hook on the wall.

A slender blonde man lay naked on a pallet enclosed in the glass cube. He shifted in his sleep and flung an arm out. Jelena shied back and cast a glance over her shoulder. The people in the other glass cubes remained still and unmoving. The caretaker went to a cabinet against the wall and extracted a woven robe and a thick blanket. She gave these to Jelena, then hurried down the aisle back to the entrance.

Michael looked at Jelena. “You've never seen a newbirth before, have you?”

“No,” she said. She remembered the ice cold, the nauseating fear, the disorientation, the weakness and the pain, oh the pain —

Michael moved forward and clicked a switch on the cube. The glass top slid back noiselessly. Obviously the mechanic had had nothing to do with these cubes. His loud, noisy works banged and belched black smoke; the louder and dirtier, the better he seemed to like it.

The blonde man seemed to feel the change in atmosphere because he clenched and jerked violently on the pallet, as if he had cramps all over his body.

“Here she is!” the caretaker said happily, bringing Teresa into the room. Teresa's eyes were wide and she had a sheen of perspiration on her upper lip from hurrying. The runner appeared behind her, breathing heavily and bearing a tray with a pitcher, a mug, a bowl, and a linen towel.

“Here, dear,” the caretaker said, taking the robe and blanket from Jelena's hands and giving them to Teresa, beaming at her.

The blonde man stirred again. Michael stepped back, allowing Teresa to take his place. She hesitated, looking down at the man, then took a step forward and sat next to him on the raised pallet, setting the robe and blanket across her knees. Suddenly, the man shot to a sitting position, reeling. The caretaker slapped at the lantern, pulling its shield down and dimming its brightness. The man screamed in pain, as if being burned alive. Hackles rose on Jelena's neck.

The man screamed again and retched. Teresa grabbed the bowl off the tray, and held his shoulders as he vomited a clear viscous liquid repeatedly into the bowl. With a low moan, he flopped back onto the pallet. With no trace of distaste, Teresa cleaned her hands, moistened the towel with water from the pitcher, and wiped the man's mouth.

“No!” the man cried. “No!” He thrashed on the pallet, an arm flailing. Teresa ducked it with expertise, as if she had done this before, and said mildly, “I am here to guide you. I am here to protect you.”

Jelena's hand crept to her heart. She remembered hearing those words when Michael had said them to her in a low loving tone. She had clung to his voice and his body as he guided her birth. She bit down on a knuckle, checking the low sound that tried to escape her throat. Here was the reason for the bond they shared, the reason they walked together and knew instinctively what the other left unsaid, or when one needed the other.