There was an awkward silence, and then several of those present got up and left.
Will joined them.
Outside, the dwarf pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He offered one to Will and snick a second in the corner of his mouth. "I guess you ain't no fucking patriot, either."
Will shrugged. "It's just... I asked myself if I was running this camp, wouldn't I be sure to have an informer in a group like that?"
The dwarf snorted. He was a red dwarf, with the ginger hair and swarthy complexion of his kind. "You suspect our beloved Commandant of unethical methods? The Legless One would cry in his fucking beer if he could hear you say that."
"I just think he'd have somebody there." "Ha! There were ten in the tent. In my experience, that means at least two snitches. One for money and the other because he's a shit."
"You're a cynic."
"I've done time. Now that I'm out, I'm gonna keep my asshole clenched and my hand to the axe. Knawmean?" He turned away. "See ya, kid." Will ditched the cigarette — it was his first, and he was certain it was going to be his last as well — and went off in search of Esme.
Esme had adapted to the Displaced Persons Camp with an intense joy that was a marvel to behold. She was the leader of whatever gang of children she fell in with, every adult's pet. and every crone's plaything. She sang songs for the bedridden patients in the infirmary and took part in the amateur theatricals. Strangers gave her old kimonos, bell-bottoms, and farthingales so she could play at dress-up and shooed her back whenever she started down the road that led to the cliffs overlooking the Gorge. She could feed herself, a sweetmeat and a morsel at a time, just by hopping from tent to tent and poking her head in to see how everyone was doing. It made things easier for Will, knowing that she was being lovingly watched over by the entire camp. Now he followed the broken half-shilling he carried always in his pocket straight to its mate, which he'd hung on a cord about Esme's neck.
He found her playing with a dead rat.
From somewhere, Esme had scrounged up a paramedic's rowan wand that still held a fractional charge of vivifying energy and was trying to bring the rat back to life. Pointing the rod imperiously at the wee corpse, she cried, "Rise! Live!" Its legs twitched and scrabbled spasmodically at the ground.
The apple imp kneeling on the other side of the rat from her gasped. "How did you do that?" His eyes were like saucers.
"What I've done," Esme said, "is to enliven its archipallium or reptilian brain. This is the oldest and most primitive part of the central nervous system and controls muscles, balance, and autonomic functions. "She traced a circuit in the air above the rat's head. Jerkily, like a badly handled marionette, it lurched to its feet. "Now the warmth has spread to its paleopallium, which is concerned with emotions and instincts, fighting, fleeing, and sexual behavior. Note that the rat is physically aroused. Next I will access the amygdala, its fear center. This will—"
"Put that down, Esme." It was not Will who spoke. "You don't know where it's been. It might have germs."
The little girl blossomed into a smile and the rat collapsed in the dirt by her knee. "Mom-Mom!"
Mother Griet scowled down from her tent.
There were neighborhoods within the camp, each corresponding roughly to the locale of origin of its inhabitants, the camp officials having long ago given up on their rationalized plans for synthetic social organization. Will and Esme lived in Block G, wherein dwelt all those who belonged nowhere — else misfits and outcasts, loners and those who, like them, had been separated from their own kind. For them, Mother Griet served as a self-appointed mayor, scolding the indolent, praising those who did more than their share, a perpetual font of new projects to improve the common lot. Every third day she held a pie-powders court, where the "dusty-footed" could seek justice in such petty grievances as the Commandant deemed beneath his attention.
Now she gestured imperiously with her walking stick. "Get in here. We have things to discuss." Then, addressing Will, "You, too, grandchild."
"Me?"
"Not very quick on the uptake, are ye? Yes, you." He followed her within.
Mother Griet's tent was larger on the inside than it was on the outside, as Will discovered when he stepped through the flap and into its green shadows. At first, there seemed to be impossibly many tent poles. But as his eyes adjusted, the slim shapes revealed themselves to be not poles but the trunks of trees. A bird flew by. Others twittered in the underbrush. High above floated something that could not possibly be the moon.
A trail led them to a clearing.
"Sit," Mother Griet said. She took Esme in her lap. "When was the last time you brushed your hair, child? It's nothing but snarls and snail shells."
"I don't remember."
To Will, Mother Griet said. "So you're Esme's father. A bit younger than might be expected."
"I'm her brother, actually. Esme's easily confused."
"No kidding. I can't get a straight answer out of the brat." She pulled a hairbrush from her purse and applied it vigorously to Esme's hair. "Don't wriggle." Mother Griet turned to Will, her pale blue eyes astonishingly intense. "How old is she?" Then, when he hesitated, "Is she older than you are?"
"She... might be."
"Ah. Then I was right." Mother Griet bowed low over the child's head. The trees around them wavered and the air filled with the smell of hot canvas. Briefly it seemed they were sitting in a tent like any other with a wooden platform floor and six cots with a footlocker resting by each one. Then the forest restored itself. She looked up, tears running down her checks. "You're not her brother. Tell me how you met her."
As Will told his tale, Mother Griet dabbed away her tears with a tissue. "Let me tell you a story," she said when he was done. In her lap, Esme flopped over on her back and grinned up at her. The old crone gently stroked her cheek.
"I was born in Corpsecandle Green, a place of no particular distinction, save that it was under a curse. Or so it seemed to me, for nothing there endured. My father died and my mother ran off when I was an infant and so I was raised by 'the village,' as they say. I flitted from house to house, through an ever-changing pageant of inconstant sisters, brothers, tormentors, protectors, and friends. When I came of age, some of these turned to lovers and husbands, and they were inconstant, too. All was flux: Businesses failed, pipes hum, and creditors repossessed furniture. The only things I dared hope might endure were my children. Oh. such darlings they were! I loved them with every scrap of my being. And how do you imagine they repaid me for it?"
"I don't know."
"The little bastards grew up. Grew up, married, turned into strangers, and moved away. And because their fathers had all five wandered into the marshes and died — but that's another story, and one I doubt you'll ever hear — I was left alone again, too old to bear another child but wanting one nonetheless.
"So, foolish as I was, I bought a black goat, gilded its horns, and led it deep into the marshlands at midnight. There was a drowning-pool there, and I held it under until it stopped struggling, as a sacrifice to the genius loci, begging that puissant sprite for just one more child. Such a wail I set up then, in my need and desire, as would have scared away a dire wolf." She stopped. "Pay attention, boy. There might be a test afterward."
"I was paying attention."
"Yeah, right. Well, exactly at dawn there was a rustling in the reeds and this child emerged, this beautiful child right here." She tickled Esme, who squirmed and laughed. "She didn't know who she belonged to and she'd forgotten her name — not the first time she'd done so. I warrant — so I named her Iria. Do you remember any of this, little one?"