“Why, thank you, Jethro,” Gar said with a smile. “It’s nice to be given my due.”
“He’s a giant!” a little girl said.
“So’s she!” A ten-year-old pointed to Alea.
“Molly,” Aunt Martha said severely, “it’s not polite to point.” Molly stuck her hands behind her back but kept staring. Alea smiled. “Don’t worry, little one. You’re not the first to say it.” She tried to ignore the bitterness of the memories. “That’s enough, now,” Aunt Martha said. “You leave the guests alone till they’ve had a chance to wash up and rest a little.” She turned one of the boys around and gave him a little push. “Go tell Great Grandma, now, and the others.”
“Sure, Gammy!” the boy cried, and took off. The juvenile score ran howling behind him to spread the word to their contemporaries.
“They wander far,” Alea said.
“Not so far as all that.” Gammy beckoned and walked onward. They went down the road another rod and turned into a lane. Alea stared; the roadside thicket had hidden a four-foot-high wall of fieldstone. A gate of oak sheathed with brass closed the lane, but it was open and a clansman stood by it grinning, his rifle pointing at the ground. “Good hunting, folks?”
“Only these, Hiram.” Uncle Isaac held up a brace of partridge. Another held up a pair of rabbits and a third several more partridges. “And these.” He nodded toward Gar and Alea.
“Big game indeed!” the gatekeeper said, grinning wider. “The tads told me you were bringing a giant, but I didn’t believe them.”
“I prefer to think of myself as a bonus,” Gar said.
“A bonus to any clan that has you, I’d say. Can you shoot?” Gar shrugged. “Well enough, I suppose, but I’d rather fight hand to hand.”
“Well, then, I hope you don’t meet any bears!” Hiram grinned and waved as they went on through.
Alea halted with a gasp of surprise. “It’s a manor house! I’d never have known it was here.”
“Of course not,” Gammy said. “We wouldn’t want the Belinkuns to be able to see at a glance how many were home, would we?”
The clan’s house was a great rambling three-story structure with wings added on at each side, then at right angles, and finally forming a square, as generations had toiled to make more living space. Even so, they had finally outgrown the ancestral mansion, because smaller houses formed a semicircle in front of the big one. The ground between was a luxuriant lawn landscaped with concentric beds of flowers separated by graveled walks. Wherever the clan fought its battles, it had managed to keep them away from home.
Their hosts led Gar and Alea up the widest gravel walk to the massive front door of the mansion.
A blood-curdling shriek pierced the air.
3
Alea whirled to see a dozen children of various ages come hurtling around the corner of the house. Another band sprang howling from the shade of a great old willow. “Belinkuns!” several voices shouted. “Get ‘em!”
The children leveled wooden rifles and shouted “Bang! Boom!” and other assorted noises. Some spun about with harrowing cries and fell in very theatrical death scenes. In two minutes, only two children were left standing on each side.
“No fair, Clay!” one girl called. “I shot you!”
“Can’t have, Lizzy!” a boy called back. “Farlands always win, you know that.”
Lizzy pouted but dutifully sank down and threw herself about in very loud death throes. So did her compatriot. “Battle’s over,” one of the survivors declared.
The corpses jumped up, and Lizzy called, “I want to be a Farland this time!”
“Yeah, Clay!” a boy called. “Your turn to be a Belinkun!”
“Turnabout is fair, Clay,” Jethro called.
Clay heaved a massive sigh and lifted his toy rifle. “Okay, I’m Hezekiah Belinkun!”
“No, I’m Hezekiah,” a tall girl said. “I’m the oldest.”
“Hezekiah’s a man, though,” Clay objected.
“Well then, I’ll be Great Gran Belinkun,” the girl stated. “Okay, Hezekiah, call up the clan! The sentries are telling us them Farlands are attacking!”
Alea stared, then exchanged a quick glance with Gar and saw the same horror in his eyes as she felt in her heart. “Welcome to our house,” Gammy said formally.
“Thank you,” Gar said, his face a smooth mask again. He turned and scraped his boot across a dull blade set beside the door, then scraped the other and went into the house. Alea imitated his actions, wondering how he had known about the boot-scraper, and followed him in.
The first thing that struck Alea was the number of children running around the place. She would have thought that the mock battle she’d seen included all of the younger generation, but there were at least that many more playing intricate games with balls and tiny hoops, setting plates and forks on the long table in the center of the hall, or roughhousing with a great old patient sheepdog who lay near the hearth. Her amazement subsided a little and she had time to notice the room itself. It was huge, with a ten-foot ceiling and wainscoting of a golden wood. Between wainscot and ceiling, the plaster was whitewashed and hung with a dozen or more pictures, portraits, and landscapes done with varying degrees of skill, but all warm in tone and expressing a feeling of safety.
Alea realized that the clansfolk had fashioned a refuge, a retreat to give them the feeling of a security they might not have had in real life.
“Jeb will take you out back to the pump,” Gammy said. “When you’ve freshened up a bit, we’ll introduce you to Great Grandma.”
“We’ll look forward to it,” Alea said, then turned to follow a young man across the great room to a door in the hearth wall.
Behind it was a bathroom, which was to say, a room for taking a bath. A great tub of gray metal stood at one end, and beside it was a stove with a huge kettle hanging from a stout boom. Alea realized that the stove shared the chimney with the fireplace in the main room. At the other end of the chamber was a row of windows. Beneath them stood a counter with a large basin, a small pump perched beside it.
Alea frowned, recognizing the machine from her reading. She went forward and worked the handle warily, but sure enough, gouts of water sprang from the spout into the basin. “You too, traveler,” she called to Gar. “Take off a layer of dust or two.”
Gar laid his hat on the counter and came up beside her to splash water on his face. Jeb handed them each a towel. Drying her face, Alea looked out the window before her and saw four small outbuildings in a row. She remembered more reading and recognized them as privies.
Jeb took her towel and hung it on a nearby rack. “How about a slice of bread and a hunk of cheese, with some cider to wash it down?”
Alea was suddenly aware that she was hungry. “That would be good, but isn’t it nearly dinnertime? It smells wonderful.”
“Almost ready,” Jeb agreed.
“We’d just be in the way in the kitchen, then,” Alea told him. “I think we’re ready to meet Great Grandma—if she’s ready for us.”
Jeb glanced questioningly at Gar, but he nodded, so Jeb said, “I reckon she’s ready. Let’s go.”
He led them out the door and down the length of the room. Alea saw that the table was fully set now, with a loaf of bread near each end. In the massive chair at the table’s head sat an ancient woman, bony and spare of frame, face lined and cheeks sunken with age, but the eyes that met Alea’s were bright with intelligence and lively with curiosity. She sat erect as a pine and wore a dark blue dress with a white lace collar and cuffs. Uncle Isaac stood near her, shifting his weight from side to side and frowning with concern.