“Over here!” Tevul had finally caught sight of them. “Come meet my friends!”
Silmien waved back. “More introductions,” he whispered to Mam. “I don’t recognize a single face in this batch.” It was only his second visit of the dry season, but he was already having trouble keeping them all straight. Although he was glad Tevul was popular, he supposed he resented these fortunate tweens for stealing his little scrap away from him. Tevul, he reminded himself again, Tevul. At home, he and Mam still called her the scrap. “Come along, Mam. Just a long smile and short bow and we’ll have her to ourselves.”
“Not me,” said Mam. “You.”
Silmien blinked in surprise. There was that odd smell again, a dusty staleness, like the corner of an empty closet. If Valun had been here, she would have known immediately what to do, but then, if she were here, Mam wouldn’t be. “Nonsense,” said Silmien. “We’re her family.”
Mam crouched abruptly, making herself as small as possible. “Doesn’t matter.” She smoothed the sagging pouch to her belly self-consciously.
“Why did you come then,” said Silmien, “if not to see Tevul?”
“You wanted me.”
“Mam, the scrap wants you too.”
“I’m not here.” Mam was staring at her feet.
They had to stop arguing then, because a clutch of old parents entered the garden, giggling and stroking the bones. One, a father with thin, cement-colored fur, noticed the buttonbright behind Mam’s ear and bent to pick one for himself. His companions teased him good-naturedly about acting his age. Then a shriveled mam popped one of the flowers into her mouth, chewed a few times and spat it at the father. Everyone laughed except Silmien and Mam. Ordinarily, he enjoyed the loopy antics of the old, but now he chafed at the interruption.
“I’ll bring Tevul to you,” he whispered to Mam. “Is that what you want?”
She made no reply. She curled her long toes into the damp soil as if she were growing roots.
Silmien grunted and left her. Mam was not getting any easier to live with. She was moody and stubborn and often reeked of self-loathing. Yet he had stuck by her, given her every consideration. Not once, since he had first told her about Valun, had he let his true feelings show. It struck him that he ought to be proud of himself, too. It was small comfort, but without a mate to share his life, all he had were glimmers and wisps.
“Pa-pa-pa.” Tevul hauled herself partly out of the pond and perched on the grassy bank. “My father, Silmien.” Her glistening coat clung to her body, making her as streamlined as a rocket. She must have grown four or five centimeters since the solstice. “Here is Mika. Tilantree. Kujalla. Karmi. Jotan. And Putket.” Tevul indicated each of her friends by splashing with her foot in their direction. Karmi and Jotan and Putket were standing in the shallows and acknowledged him with polite but not particularly warm bows. Kujalla—or was it Tilantree?—was treading water in the deep; she just stared at him. Only Mika clambered up the bank of the pond to greet him properly.
“Silmien,” said Mika as they crossed hands. “It is truly an honor to meet you.”
“It is you who honor me,” Silmien murmured. The tween’s effusiveness embarrassed him.
“Tevul tells us that you write stories.”
Silmien shot Tevul a glance; she returned his gaze innocently. “I write many things,” he said. “Mostly histories.”
“Lovestories?” said Mika.
Tilantree’s head disappeared beneath the surface of the pond.
“I wouldn’t call them lovestories, exactly,” Silmien said. “I don’t like sentiment. But I do write about families sometimes, yes.”
Tilantree surfaced abruptly, splashing about and making rude, blustery sounds. The three standing tweens smirked at her.
“Silmien has been on the tell,” said Tevul. “Write, bright, show me the light.”
“My mam was on the tell last year,” said one of the standing tweens, “and she’s a stupid old log.”
“Even aliens get on the tell now,” said another.
“Have you written any lovestories about aliens?” Mika was smirking too.
With a sick lurch, Silmien realized what was going on. The tweens were making fun of him—and Tevul. Only his trusting little scrap didn’t get it. He wondered if the reason she was always in the middle of a crowd was not because she was popular, but because she was a freak.
“Can’t write lovestories about aliens.” Tilantree rolled onto her back.
“Why not?” said Tevul.
She did not reply. Instead, she sucked in a mouthful of pond water and then spat it straight up in the air. The three standing tweens spoke for her.
“Their mothers are mams.”
“Perverts.”
“Two, few, haven’t a clue. Isn’t that right, Tevul?”
The air was suddenly vinegary with tween scorn. Tevul seemed taken aback by the turn of the conversation. She drew her knees to her chest and looked to Silmien, as if he could control things here in the gardens the way he had at home.
“No,” he said, coming around the pond to Tevul. “I haven’t written about the aliens yet.” His voice rose from the deepest part of him. “But I’ve thought a lot about them.” He could feel his scent glands swell with anger and imagined his stink sticking its claw into them. “Unlike you, Tilantree.” He singled out the floating tween as the leader of this cruel little gang. “Maybe you should try it.” He reached Tevul, tugged her to her feet, and pulled her to him. “You see, they’re our future. They’re calling us to grow up and join the universe, all of us, tweens and families and outs and the old. If they really are perverts as you say, then that’s what we will be, someday. I suppose that’s a big thought to fit into a small mind.” He looked down at his scrap. “What do you say, Tevul?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her eyes were huge as the mothermoon.
“Then maybe we should discuss this further.” He bowed to the others. “Luck always.” He nudged Tevul toward the bone garden.
Silmien heard the tweens snickering behind him. Tevul heard it too; her gait stiffened, as if she had sand in her joints. He wondered if the next time he visited her, she might be like them. Tilantree and her friends had the next four years to twist his scrap to their shallow thinking. The family had made her a tween, but the garden would make her into a mother. Silmien felt removed from himself as they passed the wall built of skulls that marked the boundary of the bone garden. No Tevul. No Valun. Mam a stranger. He could not believe that he had defended the aliens to the tweens. That was Valun talking, not him. He hated the aliens for luring her away from him. It was almost as if they had seduced her. He shivered; maybe they were perverted. Besides, he must have sounded the pompous fool. Who was he to be speaking of small minds? He was as ordinary as a spoon.
“Well?” said Tevul.
“Well what?”
“Pa-pa, you embarrassed me, pa.”
He sighed. “I suppose I did.”
“Is this the way you’re going to be?” said Tevul. “Because if it is…”
“No, I’ll mind.” He licked two fingers and rubbed them on her cheekbone. “But are you sure they’re your friends?”
“Silmien!”
“I just thought I’d ask.”
“If they’re not, it’s your fault.” She skipped ahead down the path and then turned on him, blocking his way. “Why do you always have to bring Mam?”