CHAPTER 7
Ouska glanced down at the sleeping baby on the pallet.
“It’s a mercy she didn’t wake up through all this,” she said. “Babes can sleep through anything, sometimes, and then wake up at the slightest thing at others. Make yourself comfortable, if you can stand the rocker again.” She brought a stoppered brown pottery flask out of her satchel, then went to the shelf and came back with two of the cups. She poured out a small amount of a dark amber liquid and brought one of the cups over to where Cat was wrapping herself in the woollen blanket.
Cat’s feet were freezing from being barefoot on the wooden floor most of the night. She settled herself into the rocking chair, tucked her feet under her, and awkwardly tried to stuff the blanket in around the edges with her left hand. Surprisingly, the rocker felt quite as comfortable on her back as it had the first time she sat down in it; her body seemed to have forgiven it for being stuck in it all night long.
“This’ll warm you,” said Ouska, putting the cup in Cat’s hand. The drink smelled of apples, tart and sweet and very alcoholic.
“What is it?”
“Applejack.” The older woman brought over the kitchen chair to the foot of the bed and settled herself with her cup of the drink. “Careful, though, it’s strong.”
Cat took a cautious sip and nearly choked—she was not used to hard alcohol. The drink burned its way down her throat, but then a lovely warmth spread through her body. The lump in Cat’s throat had dissolved, and her toes were no longer icy.
“Hmm, good!” she said, surprised, and ventured another sip.
“Like I said, girl, take it easy. Uncle’s applejack has clout, more than most. But then, you’re not one to get drunk, are you? And you can use the warmth.”
“Okay,” said Cat, squaring her shoulders resolutely. She was getting tired of being told by this woman who she was and what she did or did not do or feel. Never mind that Ouska was right on every count. “How do you know all that?”
Ouska lips twitched; Cat guessed, slightly annoyed, that she knew exactly what Cat was thinking. “It’s nothing to do with you, particularly; I’m an Unissima. So was that wife of his,” she pointed her chin at the man on the bed, “but she misused it, more fool her. I think perhaps you are, too?”
“An Ooni-what?”
“Unissima. Only daughter of an only daughter. We know things. Don’t they have that where you come from, in your world?”
“That’s another thing—my world. Am I in a different world? What is this place? It’s not England in 1066 or something, is it?”
“Is that what your home is called, Ingaland? No, this is Samach. Or more to the point, the Wald of Ruph.”
“Samach. That’s the country? Or the world? Or the town?”
“We’re in the Wald—I guess you might call it the Forest—of Ruph, in the county of Samach. The village is called Ruph as well. We’re the most remote county, a bit cut off from the rest of Isachang, but we manage quite well on our own. So, what brought you here? You never planned this, did you?”
“Well, there was this bowl—no, there was this guy—well, it all started because of my boyfriend, really!”
Ouska raised her eyebrows, but she kept quiet, waiting for Cat to continue.
“Ryan and I were going out for, oh, almost half a year, I think. Nicky—Monica, really, she’s my best friend—she always said he was a rat. Well, she didn’t say so, not at first, but she never liked him, I knew that—you can tell, can’t you? But I didn’t want to listen to her. I mean, she’s had, I don’t know, half a dozen boyfriends—she’s fun, and pretty, not like me; those guys at her medieval re-enactors’ group fall for her in droves—but Ryan was the only man who had been interested in me in years.
“Turns out he only asked me out in the first place because he thought I was something important. We met at a Chamber of Commerce meeting; I was there representing the library in organising the carnival—it’s a big deal in Greenward Falls. He’d just moved to town with ambitions to make big money, and he figured it’d give him a better chance for business success to be connected with someone in an ‘official capacity.’ And once he figured out how unimportant an assistant librarian really is in that town, I suppose he kept me on a string because he figured I’d become head librarian real soon and be influential then. Good grief, as if I’d want to take Joan’s job away from her! She won’t be retiring for years.” Cat had practically forgotten whom she was speaking to; the words spilled out almost involuntarily.
“Anyway, so eventually it dawned on him that I wasn’t who he thought I was—no, really, he said so. Verbatim.” She lowered her voice to a mock male timbre. “‘I thought you were more ambitious and success-minded!’ Well, not in the way he thought I was, I’m not. So he dumped me. And I probably shouldn’t have taken it so hard, but then again, maybe it was just as well. Really, it was the last straw, on all fronts. I mean, I liked my job well enough, but I’ve been at it for six years, and I got tired of it, and with this—well, I quit. Handed in my resignation, gave notice on my apartment, got rid of the furniture, packed the rest of my stuff in boxes, and put them in Nicky’s spare bedroom. I was going to get a ticket to somewhere new, and different, and exciting—I dunno, San Francisco, New York, Timbuktu—except I didn’t really have any one place I wanted to go to in particular, and someplace new, well, it’s kind of scary, isn’t it? Yeah, I know, the joke’s on me.
“So then, today—no, yesterday—I was meant to meet Nicky at the museum downtown, the Sammelhauser. I’ve lived in Greenward Falls for six and a half years, and I’ve never actually been inside the place. Nicky is always hassling me about it. We were supposed to check out the exhibits, and have coffee, and then maybe go to some travel agencies and look at brochures and then go home to her place and book my flight to exotic destinations. Except when I got to the museum, there was this bowl, and I looked at it and everything went swirly and weird, and then…”
Ouska, who had listened to Cat’s recital without interruption, sat up at this.
“What did it look like, this bowl?”
“Well, it was about so big”—she gestured with her hands—“kind of straight up and then curved in at the top”—she made a cupping motion—“like so. And it was the most amazing colour; I’ve never seen any other glaze that looked like that. A bit like that Egyptian pottery, or is it Chinese? I think that colour is called celadon, but this was much more vibrant, deeper—like their eyes, Bibby’s and—and his.” She looked at the man on the bed. “What is his name, anyway?”
“We call him Guy,” replied the older woman.
As if he had heard his name, the man stirred and drew a laboured breath. Ouska put down her cup and leaned forward to touch his hand.
“Hmm,” she said, “seems a little better. Think you can cope with him and the babe for another hour or so? I’m going to get Uncle; we need a man to help here.”