“Thank you,” she whispered, hugging him briefly. “Now, you had better get back inside before you freeze.”
“Tell me where you are staying,” the judge whispered. “I have friends who were in the resistance. They will know best how to help you stay hidden.”
Gallen told him where to find them, and then they headed back toward the inn. They had not gone two blocks before two burly gentlemen in dark cloaks stepped out of a doorway, their warm breath making a cloud of fog around their faces. One of them whispered, “We’re friends.”
He walked up ahead, taking point, and looked at each cross street, then waved them along. Maggie had felt secure for weeks, but her guardians’ behavior unnerved her. For the next four kilometers, they found themselves under such guard, and when they reached the hotel, no less than a dozen such men could be seen loafing at the street comers, watching from roofs.
When they got to their room, Gallen took off his cold winter cloak and hung it in the closet. “It sounds as if we’re hotter on this world than we’d anticipated,” Gallen said, trying to sound nonchalant.
He went and looked out the window, to the lights burning in the buildings, the snow falling, and Orick went and stood looking out with him.
“Eight days. Eight days from today is Christmas day here on this world, you know,” Orick said. “I figured it up on their calendar.”
“No one here will be celebrating it,” Gallen said. “There are no Catholics here.”
“I will be celebrating it,” Orick muttered.
“We all will,” Maggie said. “That is the day that Tallea is reborn … if we’re lucky.”
“Ah, that would be grand,” Gallen said. “But don’t get your hopes up.”
And so, that following week they spent some time searching for gifts for one another in the shops of the City of Life. The shops carried no fantastic goods, like the near-magical items one might find on Fale. Instead, there were only good woolen coats dyed with bright colors, shoes that would last. Fine cheeses from all comers of the world.
On Christmas Eve, in the kitchens at the inn, Maggie cooked a ham and made rolls and Christmas pies all filled with red cherries and topped with white sugared cream. It was a huge feast, fit for a bear, and by the end of it, Orick’s snout was plastered with jam and cream.
Early on Christmas day, they exchanged gifts. Gallen got fine new scabbards for his knives from Orick, and Maggie and Gallen had scrounged together to find Orick a handsome new leather-covered copy of the Bible, for Orick had been obliged, in his haste to escape Tihrglas, to leave his Bible at home.
“Where did you get this?” Orick exclaimed, and Gallen said, “I told you that there were no Catholics on this world. I didn’t say that it completely lacked Christians.”
“But Ceravanne had never heard of them,” Orick said. “How is it she never heard of them?”
“We found the Bible at the spaceport,” Maggie finally said, unwilling to keep the bear in suspense. “Travelers from many far worlds come through there. One of them had sold it to a man who trades in … curiosities.”
Orick and Gallen then gave Maggie their gifts-a light perfume of exotic flavor, and a green silk nightgown. Both of them were fine, indeed. When they were done, Orick asked, “All right, Maggie, don’t keep us hanging at your elbow. What did you get for Gallen?”
“Oh, nothing much,” she said honestly. “It’s a small gift.”
She presented him with a little package’ wrapped in bright red paper with a white bow.
He opened it. Inside was a pair of booties and a receiving blanket. Orick looked up, his eyes wide with surprise.
“I got sick on the ocean, all right,” Maggie said, “but I never did really stop feeling queasy. I checked with the doctors here. It will be a boy.”
Gallen grinned, and looked away wistfully. “No blood kin left,” he whispered, “so you’ll make your own.”
“I will,” Maggie said, “with your help. And I’ll have a dozen of them if I want.”
Gallen grabbed her and kissed her roughly, and Orick smiled and left them alone.
It was a pleasant day, with cold suns rising up through the clouds, and a sky filled with streams of light. Later that day, Orick sat Gallen and Maggie down and read to them from his new Bible about the birth of Jesus in ancient Jerusalem, with King Herod seeking the lives of infants, and angels announcing the birth of the King of Heaven.
That afternoon, there came an insistent pounding at the door. Maggie answered it, and one of the guards stood outside. “You’ll want to be leaving the city tonight,” he said softly. “The dronon are back.”
“We can’t leave yet,” Maggie begged. “We’re waiting for a friend to get out of the rebirthing vats.”
“I checked on it,” the guard said. “They’re taking her out early. Her body will be a little younger than she wanted, but they’re downloading her memories now.”
“We can be there right away,” Maggie said. She didn’t need to tell Gallen and Orick the news. Both of them were already racing around the spacious room, grabbing clothes to pack.
This will have to be a hasty farewell, Maggie realized, and she fretted for Tallea, a young girl who would be traveling alone through the winter, heading south.
In a matter of minutes, they were hurrying through the dark streets. A chill wind had picked up, and it blew frozen snow through the air. Clouds were moving in from the south, a horrendous dark storm.
They reached the great halls, which were closed for the night, just as the snow began to fall. One of the judges had come out to meet them. He was appropriately dressed in a long gray cloak and a sagging peaked hat with a broad brim.
“There you are!” he called as he saw them running up the broad stone steps from the street. “Your friend is reborn, and she awaits you!”
He waved up toward a darkened doorway, and Maggie saw movement behind the thick glass. The door opened a crack, and something hairy moved in the darkness.
Maggie had expected to see a young woman covered with the soft reddish-brown fur of the Roamers, as she remembered them from previous lives. But this creature was more heavily furred than she’d imagined, and its pelt was far darker.
Tallea lowered to all fours, and Maggie heard Orick gulp in astonishment.
“She’s a bear!” Gallen said.
“Yes,” the judge said. “When we read her memories, we found that at the last moments of her life, she had a change of heart. So we made her the body she desired.”
The young black bear was small, and appeared to be only about a year old. She walked down the steps carefully, as if unsure of herself.
But when she was within twenty meters, she suddenly hunkered down and ran toward them at great speed, hit Orick full tilt and knocked the bigger bear over on his side. He grunted, and she jumped up on him playfully, and bit his ear. “Orick! Orick!” she shouted. “Being a bear is great! Why, you’re strong as an ox and all dressed in leather!”
“Well, I’ve never minded it,” Orick grunted, not quite sure what to think.
Tallea hugged his neck, wrapping her paws around him, and licked his face. He licked her back shyly, and Tallea growled in his ear, her voice husky with desire. “Ah, Orick, you and I will have a grand time. That is, if you’ll have me?”
The little she-bear looked up at him with big brown eyes, and Orick glanced at Maggie and Gallen imploringly, as if they would tell him what to say.
“Do it,” Maggie said.
“She’s not like the she-bears on your world,” the judge told Orick. “She loves you as fiercely as any Caldurian can, and she will stay by your side always.”
Orick got up on all fours, then very gently, very passionately; licked the young she-bear’s muzzle with his long tongue, softly at first, then more fiercely, and Maggie found herself vaguely disturbed at how sensual a bear’s tongue could be.
And after the bears exchanged long, sweet kisses, the guard came through the dark and stood at the foot of the steps. “The dronon are coming,” he urged. “We must hurry away.”