“Glory be to Creation,” she breathed, “you’re beautiful, me bucko!”
The garm vanished back onto its domain. Caitlin sighed and continued along her route.
He spurns the turf that once he paced.
His arm throws a glowing
Around her waist,
And whirled across the world, she sees
Him light as the wind and
More tall than the trees.
Go gladly up- She broke off. A man had stepped into sight, rounding a huge rock behind the fence ahead of her. Equally surprised, after an instant he raised a hand and cried a greeting. Caitlin jogged toward him. He was young, too, she saw, stocky, blond. Clad in coveralls, he bore a horn made from a tordener’s tusk wherewith to call his cows home.
“Good day, my girl,” he said in his lilting accent when she reached him.
Hereabouts that was courteous. “How goes it for you?”
“Very well. I thank you, sir, and wish the top of the day to you,” she replied in the soft English of her homeland, which long since had taken unto itself the speech of its conquerors and made that its own.
“Can I ask where you fare?”
“To Trollberg for Midsummer.”
His eyes widened. “Ah. That I guessed. You are Cathleen, true? I’d call yoùMiz’ like a gentleman ought, but ken not your last name. Nobody seems to use it.”
She tolerated his pronunciation. Few Sassenachs or squareheads knew any better. “Aye, for I’m only here at the turning of the sun, when all the province is one great shebeen. It’s a fine country you have, and dear people, but there’s too much else of the planet to be traveling in. Who might you be, now?” –
“Elias Daukantas. Of Vilnyus Farm.” He jerked a thumb backward. Above a windbreak of poplars rose what must be chimney smoke. Shyly: “I’ve heard much about you, and wish Trollberg was in my neighborhood. Or, leastwise, that I’d had hap to see you come by afore. Uh. . . walk you always?”
She nodded. “What for would I be driving, and never knowing through what I passed?”
“But where stay you the nights over? I’ve heard nil talk of your visiting our scant inns, though more than two landlords tell how they’d pay you well for an evening’s entertainment.”
She smiled to show she took no offense as she replied, “Bards sing not for gain, Freeholder Daukantas, and a bard I reckon myself to be, if scarcely any Brian Merriman. We may receive gifts, but we sing for love or hospitality. I stay where they give me welcome, else spread my sack on the lodix.”
In his awkwardness he exclaimed, “But what live you on?” and then burned in the cheeks at his gaucherie.
“Are you embarrassed, now?” she said cheerfully, with a pat for his hand where it clenched the rail. “Why, they all ask me that.” She shifted on purpose into flat Eopolitan. “I’m medically trained, though no physician. Winters, I work in the city and its hinterland, out of St. Enoch Hospital. The doctor shortage pretty well lets me set whatever terms I want. Of course, were I a decent person, I’d work full time. But when my lifespan won’t reach to exploring Demeter-” She tautened. “And when I have to see people hurting-” She broke off, shivered the tension out, and laughed. “Mercy alive, but I’ve talked about myself, right enough! Shall we be speaking of you?”
“There’s naught to tell, my lady. This is my father’s stead, and I his third son.”
She cocked her head. “You’re a bachelor, then?”
Side 21
Anderson, Poul – Avatar, The
He nodded. “Tja, you know our custom in the uplands. When I am married, we can stay in the big house as partners, or we can get help to clear land and raise a dwelling for ourselves. I, I think I’ll pick that. The new start.”
“And you’ve no girl to tell you her wishes in the matter?”
“No. Someday-But this is a scoopful about me, uh, uh, Cathleen,” he said in a rush. “Will you spend the night with us? I promise the whole gang will be delighted.”
She glanced west. Though shadows were getting long and the mountains turning purple, Phoebus had an hour or better before the horizon captured it. “I thank you and I thank your kin,” she answered. “But I should be at Trollberg inside three days, and my plan was for keeping on past sunset, since Persephone will be rising full, big and bright as Luna over Earth.” Erion, half that apparent size, was already up, its curve ivory upon indigo.