Moon Mirror (5 page)

I didn't think much of it, but I wasn't going to say so—not when Joboy had tight hold of my hand.

“Tam, are they really going to shoot us up into the sky?” he asked.

He didn't sound scared, as I thought he might be. He just looked interested when I glanced down at him. Joboy gets interested in things . . . likes to sit and study them. Back in the woods, he would watch bugs, for what seemed like hours, and then tell me what they were doing and why. Maybe he made it all up, but it sounded real. And he could chitter like a squirrel or whistle like a bird, until the animals would actually come to him.

“I don't know,” I said, but I had no reason to doubt that both El-Su and Raul
thought
they were telling the truth.

It seemed that they
were,
from what happened to us: After we had been there a couple of days, some Littles started processing us. That's what they called it—processing. We had to get scrubbed up, and they stuck us with needles. That hurt, but there was no getting back at them. Some of them had stunners, and even blasters, on us every minute. They never told us anything. That made it bad, because you kept thinking that something worse yet was waiting.

Then they divided the group. El-Su, Amay, and another girl, called Mara, Raul, Joboy, and me they kept together. I made up my mind that if they tried to take Joboy, stunner or no, I was
going to jump the nearest Little. Perhaps the Littles guessed they would have trouble if they tried to separate us.

Finally they marched us into a place where there were boxes on the floor and ordered each of us to get into one. I was afraid for Joboy, but he didn't cry or hold back. He had that interested look on his face, and he even smiled at me. It gave me a warm feeling that he wasn't scared. I was—plenty!

We got into the boxes and lay down, and then, almost immediately, we went to sleep. I don't remember much, and I never knew how long we were in those boxes. For a while I dreamed. I was in a place all sunny and full of flowers with nice smells and lots of other happy things. There was Joboy, and he was walking hand in hand (or
paw
in hand) with Teddi. In that place, Teddi was as big as Joboy, and he was alive, as I think Joboy always thought he was.

They were talking without sounds—like just in their heads —and I could hear them, too. I can't remember what they were saying, except that it was happy talk. And I felt light and free, a way I couldn't remember ever feeling before—as if, in this place, you didn't have to be afraid of Littles or their traps. Joboy turned to look back at me, with a big smile on his face.

“Teddi knows. Teddi
always
knows,” he said.

I hurt. I hurt all over. I hurt so bad I yelled; at least, somebody was yelling. I opened my eyes, and everything was all red, like fire, and that hurt, too—and so I woke up on a new world.

When we could walk (we were so stiff, it hurt to move at all),
the littles, four of them with blasters, herded us into another room, where the walls were logs of wood and the floor was dirt, tramped down hard. They made us take a bunch of pills, and we moved around, but there were no windows to see out of.

After a while, they came for us again and marched us out into the open. We knew then that we were on another world, all right.

The sky was
green,
not blue, and there were queer-looking trees and bushes. Right around the log-walled places, the ground had been burned off or dug up until it was typically ugly Little country. They had a couple of very small, light diggers and blasters, and they ran these around, trying to make the ugly part bigger.

We marched across to a place where there was just grass growing. There the Little chief lined us up and said this grass had to be dug out and cleared away so seeds could be planted, to test whether they could grow things from our world. He had tools (they must have been made for tweeners, at least, because they were all right for us): shovels, picks, hoes. He told us to get to work.

It was tough going. The grass roots ran deep, and we couldn't get much of the ground scraped as bare as he wanted it. They had to give us breaks for rest and food. I guess they didn't want to wear us out too fast.

While we weren't working, I took every chance to look around. Once you got used to the different colors of things, it wasn't so strange. There was one thing, I think, that the Littles
should have remembered better. We Nats had lived in the woods and wild places for a long time. We were used to trees and bushes. The Littles never liked to go very far into the wild places; they needed walls about them to feel safe and happy— if Littles could be happy.

So the wide bigness of this wild country must have scared the Littles. It bothered me, just because it was unfamiliar, but not as much as it bothered the Littles. I had a feeling that, if what lay beyond that big stand of trees was no worse than what was right here, there was no reason why we Nats couldn't take to the woods the first chance we got. Then let the Littles just try to find us! I chewed on that in my mind but didn't say it out loud—yet.

It was on the fifth day of working that Raul, Joboy, and I were sent, along with a small clearing machine, in the other direction—into the woods on the opposite side of that bare place. I noticed that Joboy kept turning his head in one direction. When our guard dropped back, he whispered to me.

“Tam, Teddi's here!”

I missed a step. Teddi! Teddi was a dirty rag! Was Joboy hurt in the head now? I was so scared that I could have yelled, but Joboy shook his head at me.

“Teddi says no. He'll come when it's time. He don't like the Littles. They make everything bad.”

They set us to piling up logs and tree branches. We could lift and carry bigger loads than any Little. I kept Joboy with me as much as I could, and away from Raul. I didn't want Raul to
know about Joboy and Teddi. As far as I was concerned, Raul still had some of the tweener look, and I never trusted him.

There was sticky sap oozing out of the wood, and it got all over us. At first I tried to wipe it off Joboy and myself, using leaves, but Joboy twisted away from me.

“Don't, Tam. Leave it on. It makes the bugs stay away.”

I had noticed that the Littles kept slapping at themselves and grunting. There were a lot of flies, and from the way the Littles acted, they could really bite. But the buzzers weren't bothering us, so I was willing to stay sticky, if that's what helped. The Littles acted as if the bites were getting worse. They moved away from us. Finally two of them went back to the log buildings, to get bug spray, I suppose, leaving only the one who drove the machine. He got into the small cab and closed the windows. I suppose he thought there was no chance of our running off into that strange wilderness.

Raul sat down to rest, but Joboy wandered close to the edge of the cut, and I followed to keep an eye on him. He squatted down near a bush, facing it The leaves were big and flat and had yellow veins. Joboy stared, as if they were windows he could see through.

I knelt beside him. “What is it, Joboy?”

“Teddi's there.” He pointed with his chin, not moving his scratched, dirty hands from his knees.

“Joboy—” I began, then stopped suddenly. In my head was something, not words but a feeling, like saying hello, except— Oh, I can never tell just how it was!

“Teddi,” Joboy said. His voice was like Da's, when I was no older than Joboy and there was a bad storm and Da was telling me not to be afraid.

What made that come into my mind? I stared at the bush. As I studied it now, I saw an opening between two of the leaves that
was
a window, enough for me to see—

Teddi! Well, perhaps not Teddi as Da had first brought him (and before Joboy wore him dirty and thin from much loving) but enough like him to make Joboy know. Only this was no stuffed toy; this was a live creature! And it was fully as large as Joboy himself, which was about as big as one of the Littles. Its bright eyes stared straight into mine.

Again I had that feeling of greeting, of meeting someone who meant no harm, who was glad to see me. I had no doubt that this was a friend. But—what was it’ The Littles hated wild things, especially
big
wild things. They would kill it! I glanced back at the one in the cab, almost sure I would see him aiming a blaster at the bush.

“Joboy,” I said as quietly as I could, “the Little will—”

Joboy smiled and shook his head. “The Little won't hurt Teddi, Tam. Teddi will help us; he likes us. He
thinks
to me how he likes us.”

“What you looking at, kid?” Raul called.

Joboy pointed to a leaf. “'The buzzer. See how big that one is?”

Sure enough, there was an extra-big one of the red buzzing flies sitting on the leaf, scraping its front legs together and looking as if it wanted a bite of someone. At that moment, I felt
Teddi leave, which made me happier, as I didn't have Joboy's confidence in Teddi's ability to defend himself against the Littles.

That was the beginning. Whenever we went near the woods, sooner or later Teddi would turn up in hiding. I seldom saw any part of him, but I always felt him come and go. Joboy seemed to be able to
think
with him and exchange information—until the day Teddi was caught.

The creature had always been so cautious that I had begun to believe that the Littles would never know about him. But suddenly he walked, on his hind legs, right into the open. Raul yelled and pointed, and the Little on guard used his stunner. Teddi dropped. At least, he hadn't been blasted, not that that would necessarily save him.

I expected Joboy to go wild, but he didn't. He went over with the rest of us to see Teddi, lying limp and yellow on mashed, sticky leaves where we had been taking off tree limbs. Joboy acted as if he didn't know a thing about him. That I could not understand.

Teddi was a little taller than Joboy. His round, furry head would just top my shoulder, and his body was plump and fur-covered all over. He had large, round ears, set near the top of his head, a muzzle that came to a point, and a dark brown button of a nose. Yes, he looked like an animal, but I was sure he was something far different.

Now he was just a stunned prisoner, and the Littles made us carry him over to the machine. Then they took us all back to camp. They dumped us in the lockup and took Teddi into
another hut. I know what Littles do to animals. They might— I only hoped Joboy couldn't imagine what the Littles might do to Teddi. I still didn't understand why he wasn't upset.

But when we were shut in, he took my hand. “Tam?"

I thought I knew what he was going to ask—that I help Teddi—and there was nothing I could do.

’Tam, listen—Teddi, he wanted to be caught. He did! He has a plan for us. It will work only if he gets real close to the Littles, so he had to be caught.”

"What does he mean?” El-Su demanded.

"The kid's mind-broke!” Raul burst out. “They knocked over some kind of an animal out there and—"

"Shut up!” I snapped at Raul. I had to know what Joboy meant, because it was plain that he believed what he was saying, and he knew far more about Teddi than I did.

"Teddi can do things with his head.” Joboy paid no attention to either El-Su or Raul, looking straight at me as if he must make me believe what he was saying.

Remembering for myself, I could agree in part. “I know—"

"He can make them—the Littles—feel bad inside. But we have to help.”

"How? We can't get out of here—"

"Not yet,” Joboy agreed. “But we have to help Teddi think—"

"Mind-broke!” Raul exploded and slouched away. But El-Su and the other two girls squatted down to listen.

"How do we help think?” She asked the question already on my tongue.

“You feel afraid. Remember all the bad things you are afraid of. And we hold hands in a circle to remember them—like bad dreams.” Joboy was plainly struggling to find words to make us understand.

“That's easy enough—to remember bad things,” El-Su agreed. “All right, we think. Come on, girls.” She took Amay's hand and Mara's. I took Mara's other hand, and Joboy took Amay's, so we were linked in a circle.

“Now"—Joboy spoke as sharply as any Little setting us to work—"think!”

We had plenty of bad things to remember: cold, hunger, fear. Once you started thinking and remembering, it all heaped up into a big black pile of bad things. I thought about every one of them—how Mom died, how Da was lost, and how—and how—and how....

I got so I didn't even see where we were or whose hands I held. I forgot all about the present; I just sat and remembered and remembered. It came true again in my mind, as if it were happening all over again, until I could hardly stand it. Yet once I had begun, I had to keep on.

Far off, there was a noise. Something inside me tried to push that noise away. I had to keep remembering, feeding a big black pile. Then suddenly the need for remembering was gone. I awakened from the nightmare.

I could hear someone crying. El-Su was facing me with tear streaks on her grimy face; the two little girls were bawling out loud. But Joboy wasn't crying. He stood up, looking at the door, though he still held on to our hands.

Then I looked in that direction. Raul crouched beside the door, hands to his head, moaning as if something hurt him bad. The door was opening—probably a Little, to find out why we were making all that noise.

Teddi stood there, with another Teddi behind him, looking over his shoulder. All the blackness was gone out of my head, as if I had rid myself of all the bad that had ever happened to me in my whole life. I felt so light and free and happy—as if I could flap my arms like wings and go flying off!

Outside, near where the Teddis stood, there was a Little crawling along the ground, holding on to his head the way Raul did. He didn't even see us as we walked past him. We saw two other Littles, one lying quiet, as if he were dead. Nobody tried to stop us or the Teddis. We just walked out of the bad old life together.

I don't know how long we walked before we came to an open place, and I thought,
This I remember, because it was in my dream.
Here were Joboy and Teddi, hand in paw. There was a Teddi with me, too, his furry paw in my hand, and from him the feeling was all good.