In the Fall (c) copr all rights reserved 1995 by T.J.Hardman, Jr.

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The groups parted ways in the woods, and while the other Men seemed a bit put out by Wilson's decision to take the female with them, they deferred to his authority and allowed them to take her. They had trophies enough of their own. The heads of five ogre would carry much weight with the women in their camps.

Once removed from the sight and hearing of the others, the female began to speak. Her questions were endless.

"How come you all can talk? Where we goin? Who are you?" Boy ignored her as best he might, considering that he was in charge of her leash. Wilson ignored her as well, with the exception of an occasional rearward glare. The teenster ignored his glares. Evidently she was used to standing up to a lot worse. Boy was rather beside himself with curiousity, but he followed Wilson's lead.

Finally, about halfway to Home, Wilson finally called a rest to the march by the side of a brook. Boy knew from experience that Wilson could have marched all day and all night without stopping for rest, but Boy was rather glad of it. The female gratefully plopped to the ground when they stopped, and when they unbound her wrists, began to massage her legs.

"I hope you don't expect us to talk to you very much," said Wilson. "You're very lucky to be alive. Don't press your luck."

"Well, what I do?" she retorted, and Wilson scowled again, and said, "For starters, it's not so much what you've done, though that's plenty, but who and what you are. Um. I guess you have a name?"

"I's call Trouble."

"How appropriate."

"Whatchu mean?"

"You'll definitely be trouble for us from here on in. Look, have you ever stopped to consider that some people might not like you eating their babies?"

"Well, I wa'nt the one what caught 'em!" She looked at the ground, and began to poke at a slug which was crawling near her.

"I didn't figure it to be you. That's why you're not dead. But I bet you did eat them."

"Well, thar wa'nt nothin else t'eat. Sides, evvybody else was eatin' em."

"Yup, guess you can't help how you were raised. But let's get this straight before we go any further... those days are gone forever."

"I don't mind. They's too cute for me to like it."

"Well then. Would you like something to eat?"

"What do you eat?"

"We eat deer, and pigs if we can kill them, and whatever else we can get."

"How do you get deer? You trappers?"

"No, we hunt them."

"Cain't nobody hunt deer. Deer hear ye."

"We're smaller, and don't weigh so much. We can walk quiet and sneak up on them. Like we snuck up on you."

"Oh." She tired of fiddling with the slug and began to fidget pointlessly. She had this habit of opening and closing her legs as she sat there which was driving Boy slowly mad. Wilson evidently noticed. "Boy," he said, "Feel up to getting us a deer? Or should we just eat some jerky?"

"Jerky. I saw some tracks a ways back, but they were pretty old." Boy dug into his pack and brought forth some jerky, wrapped in cured skin. He passed it around, and they dug in. Trouble made short work of hers. Her teeth were very strong. Boy watched her wolf down the jerky with a certain amount of queasiness as he gnawed through his own. She just bit cleanly through it, and chewed a few times and gulped it down. When it was gone, she grinned at them, and said, "That was sure good. I ha'nt had meat for awhile."

Wilson paused in his chewing and said, "Don't remind us." Her smile vanished. That was okay with Boy. Her teeth had bits of jerky stuck to them, not surprising due to their jumbled irregularity. She had terrible teeth, though they were white and all there. The canines on the bottom were outsized, and all of her teeth had tiny serrations along the edges. "Sorry," she said.

Wilson swallowed his mouthful and passed her his canteen. "You better be. Or you'll be sorrier still. Look, where we're going, our home, there's usually a lot of food. I doubt you'll go hungry often. But one thing you had better keep in mind, no matter how hungry you might be, if it walks on two legs, you just don't eat it. And don't you ever pick up a child that's not your own, you hear me?"

"I hears ya. I promise I won't."

"Keep in mind also: you forget that promise only one time. Then your life is over."

"I unnerstand."

"Good. Now let's get you cleaned up."

"What you mean?"

"I mean, take a bath. There. In the brook."

"Oh, do I have to?" She fidgeted mightily.

"You bet you do. We're going to have enough of a problem getting you into camp without you getting killed, and if you stink of fish and cooked babies, you won't have a chance. Now strip and wash." Wilson rummaged around in his own pack, and pulled out some soap. He tossed it to her, and she smelled it, and tried an experimental nibble. She spat, and favored him with a wounded look.

"What's this stuff?"

"Soap. You make it from fireplace ashes and fat."

"What's it for? Tastes awful."

"You wash with it. Strip."

"I don't unnerstand." She began to pull off her grimy rags. Her skin was as grimy as the rags were. Boy forced himself to look away.

"You get wet, and you run the soap all over you, and it makes the dirt come off real easy. You can get every bit of dirt off with it, and grease too. And you can even get your clothes clean."

"But why?"

"Let's see. Okay, one reason you can't get any deer is because you stink. The wind changes and the deer know something that eats meat is around. Another reason is clean is pretty. You want to be pretty don't you?"

"Clean? What means clean? You keep sayin it."

"Clean is what you are after you get wet and rub soap all over you. Clean means you don't smell. And clean is pretty, and stinky dirt is not."

"I is so pretty. All of the boys wants me." She fluttered her eyelashes. With all of the dirt, it was not quite effective. "Ol Bitsy hadda keep a eye on me all of th' time, 'cause I's not ol' enough."

"Well, Ol' Bitsy ain't around to keep an eye on you any more, and we got different ideas about what is pretty. So stop sitting there all dressed in dirt and get over to that stream and take that soap with you and get wet, and rub that soap everywhere except your eyes. Boy, you get on over there and wash them rags. Um, Trouble, don't you get any ideas about running off, we can run faster than you, and we also have food to share."

Trouble rose to her feet. "Everythin I know you done kilt. I gots noplace to go 'cept to follow you. I ain't even got a fire to go home to... and you want me to get all wet and rub this nasty stuff all over me." She quivered. If one ignored the dirt it was almost fetching in a piteous sort of way. Boy rose too. Trouble stepped into the brook, and shivered a bit in the cold calf-deep water. She began to squeak as she splashed the water over herself. Boy grimaced as he picked up her clothing. It was piss-tanned skins, of small animals such as rabbit. The stitching was haphazard, and the fur had been mostly rubbed off. It smelled of spoiled fish, and other things, unsavory things.

"How come I get all of the fun jobs, Wilson?"

"Just wash it, Boy. It's not going to kill you."

Trouble said, "How do you hold onto this stuff? It's slick!"

Boy groaned. Where the water she'd splashed on herself had loosened the dirt, she was an appealing healthy pink. The image was marred by the muddy drips that runnelled down her legs. Besides, the clean extended only from her knees down. He grabbed the soap from the bottom of the creek, and began to rub it on the rags, whose stink had increased orders of magnitude the moment they got wet. The soap reduced the stink a little bit. He soaped the rags to a lather, and dropped them on the bank.

"Here," he said, and began to wash her knees, above which he refused to look. The soap was of fair quality, and lathered fairly well. He scrubbed at her knee and calf while she watched him with a bovinely critical eye. He set the soap down, and splashed water on the leg, and watched as most of the dirt came off. Definitely pink. "Don't stop there," she said. He rolled his eyes to see Wilson grinning, and rolled his eyes again, and handed her the soap. "Just like that," he said. She managed to hold onto the soap, and began scrubbing the other knee. He returned to scrubbing the rags. He couldn't believe the color of the soapy water that dripped from them as he pounded them against a rock. When he looked up from his task, she was mostly covered with lather, and was delicately soaping her breasts. He rinsed the rags, and then told Trouble to pass him the soap. He re-soaped the rags as she squatted down and splashed water over herself, and most of the dirt was gone. She stood again, a very healthy pink from the neck down, with little glints of sunlight caught in the drops of water clinging to her pubic hair. Boy dropped the soap in the brook and had to fish it out, and he tried not to stare as she took the soap from him again.

"Don't get it in your eyes," said Wilson. "Just keep your eyes shut when you do your face and hair. I think you ought to do your hair three times. Just put a lot of soap on it and rub it in and then rinse it out three times." Boy rinsed her rags, and they came almost clean. They'd do for clothing anyways. He hung them across a tree branch which protruded through a shaft of slanting late- afternoon sun. He returned to sit across from Wilson, who was laying a small fire.

"Guess we'll be camping here tonight, eh?"

Wilson nodded. "I reckon so." They sat and watched Trouble soaping and rinsing her hair. She seemed to be almost enjoying herself, despite the goosebumps brought by the mountain-fed stream. Wilson called, "Trouble. When I said everywhere, I meant everywhere. Under your arms, everywhere."

Trouble began scrubbing under her arms, and then between her legs, front and back. Boy looked away, and Wilson said, "You got to break yourself of that habit, Boy. If you get all modest and she sees you look away like that all of the time, you might look back after gettin' modest and not see her anymore. Or you might take a permanent nap. So keep your eyes out."

Boy forced himself to look at Trouble, who was getting herself very clean indeed. She saw them watching her, and she said through an almost crafty grin, "I could get used to this."

Wilson said, "You'll have to. Everyday, unless there's a really good reason for you to not do it, like freezing weather. But that's clean enough for now. Come on back."

"Awright. Um, am I pretty now?"

"You're pretty now," said Wilson, and she was. She glistened pinkly as she stepped almost daintily from the brook. She shook her head and droplets flew, and her full breasts bobbled, and Boy forced himself to stare as she walked the short distance to the circle of stones that Wilson had laid around the sticks to which he was striking flint. She hunkered down between Wilson and Boy, and wrapped her arms around herself, and shivered. "I'm cold," she said.

Wilson doffed his jacket, and offered it to her. It fit well, as Wilson was a little bigger than was she, and Boy was a bit smaller. She hunkered down again, somewhat more covered by the jacket, and held her hands out to the flames of the smallish fire, which Wilson had finally struck to light. "Thass better," she sighed. Boy tried to ignore her. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to hate her or not; Wilson was providing little lead to follow, being an odd mixture of disgust and something else, something that Boy couldn't quite recognize as compassion for the damned. He turned about and began preparing his bedroll. He'd cleared an area of the nuts and smallish twigs that covered this clearing, and unrolled the ancient well-tended sleeping bag, which was made of some Before People material that didn't rot like skins, and was very warm for the weight. He felt a soft touch on his back, and turned to see Trouble withdrawing her hand. "What do you want?" he said, snappishly.

The glade was darkening quickly. Wilson had unrolled his own bag on the far side of the fire. Boy consciously noticed for the first time that Wilson had the ability to stare backwards over his shoulders without turning his head much, and while Boy had been surprised by Trouble's touch, Wilson had probably never taken his eye off of her for a second. "You're in charge of Trouble," he said to Boy, and rose to cross the stream and began gathering more twigs.

"Where'm I gonna sleep?" asked Trouble, and Boy himself wondered about this. "Um," he said, "We weren't expecting... um, to take any prisoners. I guess you can sleep in this here bag."

"Where you gonna sleep, then?" she asked. She shifted her weight from one leg to the other, and Wilson's jacket shifted, and the flickering of the firelight cast shadows across the gap in the front of the jacket and the flesh within. Wilson's watchful eye still followed them both as he continued to prepare his own side of camp, gathering the ubiquitous beechnut shells and small twiglets into a pile to scatter over their campsite in the morning, to help mask their presence after they left. "I, um, I guess I won't be sleeping for awhile, Trouble. I've got to stand watch, you know."

Trouble looked vaguely displeased, but not surprised, of course. She was after all their prisoner. Boy looked away. He decided that he could better ignore her attempts to be personable if he had something to do, and he began to gather her rags from the stick where he'd laid them and brought them closer to the fire. Trouble followed him. He looked at her over his shoulder. He didn't like her behind him, so he told her: "Look, be useful, okay, and take these. Guess you'll have to learn to do laundry someday anyway." She held her arms out, and he began to drape them over her arms. She sniffed at them. They had lost most of their stink, and that smell was overlaid with the harsh lye smell of the raw soap they used. "So thass clean, huh?"

Boy nodded. "I like it," said Trouble. It was getting chilly, and she shivered as he draped the rags over her arms. "Um, hold 'em out away from you so you don't get that jacket wet, okay?" She complied, and then followed him back to the fireside. He broke some sticks off of a tree along the way, and she stood there watching him as he built a rack by the fire, and laid a few of the rags on it. They'd probably be dry by morning, and besides, he expected it to be another clear day tomorrow, judging by the clear yellow of the sunset. He tossed another few twigs on the fire. In the darkening sky, Venus emerged from behind the veil of the day, confirming his expectation. Even if her rags weren't completely dry, the morning's march would dry them quickly.

"I like watching you work," said Trouble. "You got good hands. None of our men coulda done that so quick. Some of 'em couldna done it't'all." He took the last rag from her, and draped it atop the rack.

"Good hands, huh?"

Trouble squatted down next to him, much too close. Clean, she smelled of Wilson's sweaty old jacket and feminity, more than he wanted to smell. It reminded him of those few times when he and Hope had been getting along, not at each other's throats as usual, and at such times, they had generally found themselves staring at each other at a loss for words until Hope's quick prankster tongue would spite him. Once, he'd squatted next to her, as Trouble was now doing, and had almost worked up enough nerve to try to touch Hope, and Hope had knocked him on his butt, and run away laughing, but Hope's smell had lingered a little, and he had really noticed it for the first time. Hope didn't smell quite like a little kid anymore, though she was probably not quite eleven. Trouble had that smell, lots of it, and it made him very uncomfortable. He glanced over his shoulder, and saw Wilson watching them carefully.

"Good hands, yup. Lookee," Trouble said. She held out her hands, and Boy noted the long powerful thumbs, and the unbreakably thick nails, and held out his own, with the thin ragged nails that had to be chewed free of snags almost daily. Trouble took his hand, and folded his fingers a time or two, and she said, "They bend so easy! Easy to do small works. You mus' be lucky, alla youse."

"Not really, Trouble," he said, not trying to pull free of her clasp, "Most of us can't talk, and have to live almost like you all did... with differences," and now he did pull free. Trouble looked very hurt. "I mean, Wilson's tribe, my own tribe, we have it good, but that's because of Wilson, he knows so much, helps us so much. He's told me of other tribes, they just live day to day with anything that they can hunt up. I think that you probably would be better at that sort of life, mostly, than they are. You're a big strong girl, you've got better hands for that sort of life, I guess, you're like a better animal..." Trouble looked very hurt indeed, and Boy trailed off.

"I ain't an animal," she said. "I ain't! I'se always brung up to think that you people was the animals, the p'inciple diff'ence bein' that we'uns could talk, and y'all couldna. And you's weak, and we's not, and they's so damn many of you'uns t'waren't as if we was gonna wipe you'alls out if we took one of you'uns babies now an then, you just gonna have some more right quick. 'Sides, twas Bitsy allus brung 'em back. I din't like it, and most of the males din't like it, but when you's starvin' you ain't too pa'ticular, 'special when you's goin have a baby of y'own! We don't have many kids, and the ones we do have usual die too soon. Most ain't born right."

"Trouble, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to that to insult you... But it's our babies you people killed, how would you like it if we killed your babies?"

Trouble sat back hard on the ground, but her eyes blazed and she almost hissed: "I 'spect I'd do what you'uns done. But those were my people! Mine! And they'll never harm one 'o your babies again!"

"Damned right they won't," muttered Wilson, across the fire.

Boy caught his tongue in time, and didn't ask her the obvious question: Would she? But he did think, and asked her, "Can you understand that we did what we had to do? Only 'cause we had to do it?"

Trouble almost slumped. "Can you un'stand the same thing?"

I reckon I can, thought Boy, but I don't have to like it. "Those days are behind you now, forever, Trouble. And if you can forget what you were, I can try to do the same."

"And what was I? 'Sides a person who could talk, with all you animals around us, huntin' alla us for one o' us huntin' some o' you?"

"Wilson says you're an ogre."

"What's an ogre?"

Wilson's voice carried across the fire again, this time clearly addressing them both. "Long story."

"I don't got nowheres to go. Got lots of time," said Trouble.

"Okay," said Wilson, sitting cross legged across the fire from them, the light playing its shadow-chasing game across his face, him feeding the fire for a moment, watching it flare slightly, to drive away the shadows that crowded close as the stars came out, "Once upon a time..."

"There was a world very much like this one, and in fact it was this world, in a time before ours, in the time before the people who left these ruins which surround us. These people lived much as we live, though all of them could speak. And speaking, they told tales, tales like this one we now tell.

"This was a harsh time, a time of great suffering, for a disease had crossed from one end of the earth to the other, and out of 20 who were bitten by certain fleas, 17 died. Their land was preserved, as is most of our land, but the people who lived were scattered far and wide, and could not bring themselves to gather in their towns and villages, which would for years stink of the rotting dead, who lay where they had fallen. So they wandered the land, and when they found other living persons, they formed small new towns, which they built themselves, and married and raised their children.

"The land where these people lived was nearly cleansed of humanity, and so their children were very precious to them, for there were other sicknesses that killed them as well as the Plague they had survived, and there were not enough people to work the land so as to feed them well. To live as they had lived before, they must raise five or more children to replace themselves.

"There were those who had survived the plague when they were tiny children, and who had become like wild things. They lived off of anything they could catch, and berries and nuts, and they were pretty successful, as they had never learned building, nor farming, and so didn't do any work, only hunting, and fighting. They fought any of their own wild kind they saw. And when they grew up, and were set in their ways, they came upon the children of the other people, and saw them not as friends, but as easy prey. They attacked mothers, and stole their children, and as precious as those children were, as needed as they were, lest all should fall back to that state of wildness, the people hated the wild ones, and hunted and killed them, and the name they gave these wild unspeaking people was 'ogre'. Eventually, over perhaps more than a hundred years, all of the wild ones were killed, and the other people prospered, and became the Before People, whose ruins surround us."

Trouble was the first to break the silence. "But, mos'ly, it's you'uns who don't talk, it's you'uns that's animals!"

"Trouble, we might not talk, but we don't eat babies. That's what we-all think of as being an animal, and since we had to fight so hard at one time to keep all of the babies alive, it's an instinct in us, a very powerful natural thing of the heart, to never hurt (much less kill and eat) children. You should be glad, because it's mostly your age that has saved you. Child."

Boy spoke up. "You mean, before the Before People had their war and plague, there was another one?"

Wilson nodded. "For a long time, there's been this cycle of plague and recovery. The last one was so bad because they had medicines to prevent plagues, and the population got up way high, and you know, the bigger they are the harder they fall. The last plagues were made, not natural, but still... there were so many people that there was no place to run to get away from the sickness."

Trouble huddled a little closer to the fire, and seemed for a moment to be lost within the steam beginning to rise from her drying rags. "I got a story to tell," she said.

"So tell it," said Wilson "It may be that the more we understand you, the less we'll hate you."

"When I was a little girl," [Trouble began, sitting back on her haunches and wrapping her arms around her knees, her face oddly shadowed in the flickering light of the fire] "well, really, before then, we lived down South, down in Flo'da. Flo'da's nice an warm in the winter, but they's lots of bugs and stuff, and gators and ba'ar and pigs. We'uns used ta trap the ba'ar and the gators you could kill with a club if you was quick 'nough to stay out their way; them things is fast. An I guess ev'body knows 'bout pigs. Thing is, it gets awful hot durin the summer, and where we'uns lived, you jes couldn stan it come summer. We'uns use ta live in a trailerpark, in th' trailers ya know? (Boy was mystified by this, but Wilson nodded and so he said nothing:) and during the summer it's jes' too hot t' stay in th trailers and if you went outside, th bugs goin eat you 'live. But they's lotsa fish and you can live right well. Momma tol me 'fore she died givin birth ta my dead sister that they'd allus lived down ta Flo'da, they'd allus done good down there, wa'ant rich but they done good. But the war came, she said, and ev'ythin changed. Po' momma, she's too old to be havin any kids, and my deadborn sister kilt her awful.

"But anyhow, she I mean momma said: Fust off, 'bout everybody done went crazy, one way or 'nother, and 'bout half of 'em went stone crazy; kilt anythin' that moved. Mos of th rest of 'em jes couldn't talk, couldn't do nothin, 'cause mosta them was eddicated and couldn't do nothin' 'cept what they been schooled in, couldna fish na hunt na trap. We'uns (I wa'ant borned yet, momma was real young when this happent; jes' a girl) was livin in a trailerpark near a old dead town call Ocala, had a big ol forest nearby, lots a fishin and huntin, so we got by; but momma said that they hadda kill a lot of folks what couldn't talk. We'uns never did stop talkin, not mos' of us. Momma said that was 'cause right befo' the war, she'd been down to Pens'cola where they'd had some kinda prison for fo'ners, at a airbase, and some a them fo'ners busted loose, and they done somethin' to a lot o' people, somethin' that Changed people. Momma an her folks got Changed, an when they changed and they saw how other folks who wasn't changed was goin' crazy, whilst they'uns was jes' gettin... diff'rent, they done hunted down summa them fo'ners, and foun out how they changed people like they did, and they took that somethin' back t' Ocala, changed th' whole damn trailerpark 'cause them'uns was alla their friends an neighbors. Momma said they done this right 'fore all the sick folks lef' th cities for good, lef 'em burnin' an' run off inna the countryside, where things wasn't much bettah.

"Momma tol' me that they was all jes' getting over the worst parts of the Change (makes you really sick ya know, then you's diff'rent) when alla these folks come out from Tampa an tried to take th' trailerpark, an they had guns and stuff they done got from one a th Army bases, an they pizzn't th water, kilt 'bout half th' trailerpark. We fought 'em off, but we couldna live there no mo'. So we'uns lef' ev'thin' behint us, headed north. (I was borned in Car'lina, myself.)

"Long 'bout when I was four, five, I reckon, our l'il group met up with some others like us. We allus stayed 'way from Men, 'cause they's not too frien'ly to folks like us, seein's how we look so diff'ent an all... but this group was pretty wild. Seems they got changed 'bout th same way we did, 'cept in their case it was fo'ners studdyin at some school back in th' hills. Same thin', mos'ly. But they's led by some crazy ol' coot an his young wife Bitsy, an' he was some sorta preacher-man, an' she was prett' crazy in her own right. They was more o' them'uns than they was of us'ns, so we jes' sorta fell on in. Now momma tol' me she di'nt nevah pay no mind t' th ol preacher-man, but he was allus goin' on 'bout how the millennya had come an' gone an' the retabooshun of th' lord was at hand or somethin' like that, and most o' th' folks was r'ligious an' they started to b'lieve th ol guy. Guess he had them-all about half-crazy by th' time we'uns got up 'round V'jinnya way, and up in th' mountains, they's caught in a terr'ble snowstorm. They like to froze to death, didn't have no food, couldna get no game, dint have nothin' but wood to burn. They found some ol' house with a fireplace, and moved on in, an they was warm 'nough, but they's starvin'. An' damn if some buncha Men dint try to take that house 'way from them, and we done shot an kilt 'em all... and since't we was starvin' and they's dead already, th' ol' preacher-man starts goin' on 'bout how the lord gave man dominion over everything on this earth, and what lay dead outside was just damned soulless unshriven animals wasn't good for nothin' but eatin, and l'il ol' baby me an evvybody else ain't starvin' no more."

Wilson glowered intensely, the firelight making of his face a rather hideous mask, like some animal crouched snarling atop a ledge by a trail. Boy didn't know what to say, and so said nothing. Finally Wilson spoke: "I figured it would be something like that. Out in the west, I've seen the packs of Men that roam wild in the mountains near Denver. They don't even try to be Men any more; they might as well be wolves. They prefer to eat each other, members of other packs, anyway. They barely have fire, and wear untanned skins until they rot. They're almost useful in a way, they attack elves on sight when they come into the passes, and usually outnumber then ten to one. Which is good, 'cause the elves are pretty good at fighting if you don't know what to expect of them... but Trouble, you talk like there used to be a lot more of you."

"I wasn't finished yet," said Trouble. "They's allus been somethin' jes' plain wrong with Bitsy, now mind you. She never had no kids, dint like 'em much, maybe couldn't have them, I guess. Momma tol me she was one of th' last'uns to eat that starvin' winter, 'bout starved herself I guess, and when she finally did break down and eat, all that was left was a baby they found froze in th snow down the mountain, froze to death with a few other kids and a l'il ol gal they'uns lef' behind to mind th' babies whilst they'uns a-tacksed ta us'ns up in th' house. So Bitsy finally does get down to eatin' again, and it's a baby. She gets her health back a little, but she were def'nitly not right in th' head after that. Well, we moved down into th valley when th' winter let up, tried to do some farmin' but none a th men knew much 'bout it, couldn't get nothin to grow. Fishin' was good, though, and they was able to trap, and they gaint some weight an got healthy an all... and then one day comes the Men again. We kilt 'em, cause they was more o' us than there was o' them, but we los' 'bout half o' our'n in that fight. An' later we come t' find out that Bitsy been sneakin' out an' gettin' Men's babies t'eat. I knowed it all along, 'cause Bitsy been feedin'em t'us kids. Ol' preacher-man, he comes in an raises hell, I guess, but when he done said his piece, ol' Bitsy done stuck him in th' back. So we'uns think, us youngins. But dint nobody see it, we jes' heard him givin' her th' what-fer... She chopped him up an' fed him to us kids. Mos'a us was too young to know anythin' 'cept we was eatin' meat, an we was allus glad t' have sumpin 'sides fish an greens. Meat's meat; we l'il uns dint nevah ask what it was. Some a' th' older boys must of figured it out, was gonna tell or somethin' cause Bitsy killed about half of 'em whilst they slept, and when the other half woke up and seen that, they got to fightin', kilt about halfa each other. 'Bout half of what's left kilt themselves. So now we only got a few a us'ns left, and ol' Bitsy sorta gathers us all up and tells us head north, quiet in th night. I don't know what happened to all th' grown-up men, they might still be back there for all I know, wonderin' what ever did happen to us. But we been headin' north all along, 'bout ten years... and all along, ol' Bitsy been fuckin' up an stealin' babies, and then we gots to move on. But them days is, as you said, all over now. Bitsy is gone, so's th' boys, and th' girls... When I was little, they was mebbe fifty of us, and now, ain't nothin' left but me."

Wilson spoke again, to the top of Trouble's hung-down head. "I guess this means that you don't have some instinct to eat children, it's all ol' dead Bitsy's fault, huh. Still, Trouble, do us all a favor, and live in the present, live for tomorrow, and if we all work together, it's pretty sure that you'll never see such days again. Forget that past, and should you ever meet anyone who talks besides myself and the boy here, I suggest that you not tell them that story. Ogre is as ogre does, I guess, and if you don't eat babies, you're just a big ol gal with bad teeth. The boy here will follow my lead for now, I suppose, won'tcha boy? (Boy nodded) but most people, could they understand such a story, will not comprehend. As for me, I've seen that, and worse things... I was there for The Fall itself."

Trouble's head snapped upright. "You mean, really you saw the war?"

"I was there. I was really there. Most of that war happened too fast to see, and parts of it took place where human eyes can't see, but I lived through the time when it happened..."

Boy took up the thread where Wilson trailed off. "... And he won't say anything about it. He'll tell you some stories about how things were, but the Old Man won't tell you any of his stories."

"Boy, I always figured you were too young to hear such tales, but since Trouble here has broken you in, so to speak, I guess I can tell you what happened to me."

"I am a lot older than I look," (Wilson began, settling back out of the firelight until he appeared to be merely a set of legs attached to what might as well be a talking bush) "and the reason I am not dead, nor Speechless, is that I was, much like your mother, Trouble, modified. Changed, as you call it. The changes I went through were designed to be different from the changes your family got... yours were designed to make you into something different from what you were, an attempt by an enemy to divide a single people into many kinds, some of which were destined to become a slave underclass, made for strength and stupidity. That plan mostly failed, for they are not here now, are they? This enemy, the Rivals of the Before People, developed a vast power over the tiniest parts of what makes us what we are, the plans by which Nature builds us from within, and the Before People, of which I was one, had heard of this skill, and tried to develop ways to combat it. I was one of the people upon whom they tested this defense, and here I am, young and alive to this day. I am an old man, well over a hundred years. There are others who were changed as I am (a hundred or more), but they are widely scattered across this immense land, and most of us never knew who the others might have been. They may be alive or dead, I cannot say. Of the two whom I have known personally, one is myself. The other... what has made me live so long could not help her as it has helped me. She had already been Changed once, and that change affected the other. Where I have not died, and have stayed young, she simply has not died; where I can still speak, she was struck dumb. It is a cruelty to me that I must see her most days, and that she must so often see me, young and speaking, must be a greater cruelty to her, who was once so articulate and beautiful. Still, we cannot abandon each other, for long ago, we made a pact...

"Just go, dammit!" The beam pinning Harry's legs was not massive in itself; but one end was covered with most of the weight of a slumped building.

"I can't, we've got to get you out of there." Roberta cast about for something to improvise as a lever, but anything of a useful size was a part of the rubble that pinned the beam. If she tried to pull anything out of the mass of plasteel and brick, it might bring the entire huge pile down on both of them. She found nothing to help her. She heard the sound of running feet, and picked up Harry's dropped sidearm, and handed it to him, and then she slunk into a corner behind one of the remaining walls, drawing her own flamer. The feet skidded to a stop outside the shattered doorway, and she heard a quick trill of whistled tune. "Wilson," she breathed. He heard her, and came through the door. From outside, through gaps in the rubble, came stroboscopic flarings of actinic light, like a desert sun being flicked on and off. Where skin was exposed to that light, flashes of warmth lingered to combat the growing chill of the coming fall. "Wilson! Help me get him out. He's pinned."

"Forget me," said Harry. His face was white with shock and pain. Wilson looked closer at his legs, and saw that the fallen beam lay atop Harry's right leg, which had been nearly pinched off below the knee. He glimpsed red welling quickly into a stream that was as quickly absorbed within the pile of scrap. "I'm a goner." One glance at Wilson's face told him that his estimation was indeed correct.

Roberta was not the sort to give up easily. "Harry, we'll get you out if we have to do a field amputation. You don't mind do you?"

Harry grinned bleakly beneath the white grimace of intense shock. "Oh, no problem. But where will you get ten gallons of blood for transfusion? That's the bloodbank wall that's sitting on my leg." It was. They had come to the hospital looking for broad-spectrum antibiotics, and antivirals such as amantadine, and Harry had suggested that as long as they were there, they might as well get on down to the basement and collect some freeze-dried whole blood and Ringer's lactate. Outside, someone or something somewhere had shot something fairly massive out of the sky, and it had crashed into the side of the hospital. No warning, just a sudden spray of brick and plasteel that had pinned Harry to the floor, and knocked Roberta flat on her ass.

"We'll deal with that later," she said. She rummaged in her utility pack, and pulled out a portable laser cutter and some spare charges. "You might not need that much. This will cauterize as it cuts." She flicked it on, and adjusted it. The air near the tip began to shimmer as the invisible beam reached operating temperature. "Hold on a minute," said Harry. He beckoned to Wilson.

Wilson knelt close to Harry, and Harry pulled from within his shirt a small device, about the size of a calculator and pressed it into Wilson's hand. He whispered to Wilson, whose eyebrows rose in surprise. Wilson took out his knife, and sawed at the thong about Harry's neck which had for these many troubled months held it close. The device was freed in a moment, and Harry held out his hand. Wilson gave the device back to him, and Harry spoke into it for a few moments. "Give it your codes," he said to Wilson. Wilson took it up for a moment, feeling something like an electric shock as it passed from Harry's hand to his own, and Wilson keyed it to receive voice, and gave it his codes. Harry took the device back again, and spoke into it again, and asked Roberta to give it her codes. She did, and then continued speaking as she handed the device to Wilson.

"Harry, it's now or never. You've lost too much blood." Harry nodded. Wilson handed a styrette of orthendorphin to Roberta, who expertly applied it to Harry's neck. Harry was out in three seconds, and Roberta went to work.

As expertly as Roberta worked, Harry survived the operation by perhaps five minutes. At the top of the stairs, as Roberta surveyed the wreckage outside, looking for the best way back to the tunnels they'd taken here, she heard Wilson's voice break as he told her Harry was gone, and then they were fighting for their lives only as Wilson set Harry's corpse against a wall to have his hands free against the rush of starveling men-turned-animals that confronted them. After he burned down the last of them, he burned Harry too.

That night as they lay huddled for warmth in the basement of a burned-out house in the hills above Pittsburgh, she woke him from his uneasy sleep. The moon rode high in the darkness, partially obscured by a drift of smoke from some burning block, and it cast more shadows than light across the elegant planes of Roberta's dirty face. Thinking it was time for his watch to begin, he started to unwrap himself from her, and she held him tight, and with her dark intense stare she asked of him, "Wilson, don't ever leave me, okay? Don't ever leave me to die on my own. I knew we could never save Harry, he'd lost too much blood, but I had to try, you see? I had to try. I couldn't shoot him, and I couldn't leave him, not alive. So don't leave me, shoot me if you have to, but don't let me die alone in some horrible place."

"Roberta, you know I won't," he said still trying to gather his thoughts from the place where they went when dreams filled the mind in sleep. "Whatever it takes, I'll get you out. I can't guarantee that I'll succeed, but I will certainly do my best. Best of friends, you know? Who can we rely on now? Only us; the rest of the world is reduced to animality or monstrosity now. It's just the two of us so far as we know. So we're in this together, always."

"And I'll do the same for you." Still, her dark stare held him. "Always. Til Death do us part."

Wilson, shocked, was not quite speechless. "Are you proposing marriage?"

"What else would you call it? The two of us alone against a hostile world, man and woman guarding each others' backs? You need, and I need. Each other. We're all there is. Just us. The rest are animals, or might as well be. The world has changed beyond comprehension, and all we have is each other. So yes, let's consider ourself one person, two parts, each needing and feeding and healing the other. I need you, don't you need me?"

"I need you. Look around at this mess. You could just be my compadre, my friend, still I'd need you."

"We're going to be together for a long time, Wilson. Who knows for how long? I could almost stand being friends, we already are of course, and we've battled and won together, and we've shared losses... Harry... damn." She fell silent for a moment, and Wilson knew not what to say. "But Wilson, there are times when friendships fall apart, no matter the commonalities or experiences shared, and there are classic ties that bind. Keep your friendship for later, when that might be all that we'll share, that and memories. Let's learn now to love, and that will give us strength beyond what we have alone."

"But can we learn to love each other, who are so different? I still don't really know where you come from, and whatever you know about me can't be that flattering. Is this really 'cause we're the last two 'real people' left that we know of? Would you or I run off with the first other 'real people' that we meet? I don't know about you, but I don't give my heart easily. Long ago, I learned-" She cut him off with a warm finger across his lips.

"I learned that too, a long time ago, and since then, I've been dead, really dead to love. It made me into what I was, before, more than anything else, I guess. And look where it got me. Maybe I'm better off... but that was a functional outlook in a time when relationships were unimportant, when if someone dumped you, both of you could find something as good or better just around the next corner... For now, you're Adam, and I'm Eve, so far as we know. And aren't we already pretty close?"

"I don't think we could get much closer," he said, truthfully. They lay entwined within a sleeping bag made from two zipped together, and she somehow picked up on that thought. "If we were in separate bags, we'd be pretty chilled, but together, we're comfortable. This might be a good way to look at the situation we're in. And as long as we're this close, and going to be as close in the forseeable future, why not make it official?"

"I guess," said Wilson, and though dogtired, he rose to the occasion.

Later, naked and drowsing and tangled in sweat, their eyes suddenly snapped open, to find each other's gazes, and Wilson remembered her hoarse cries mingled with his own, and he held her a little closer, and she wormed her way in tighter, and she whispered to him, "Don't ever think, because of this, that I'm a weak little woman, Wilson: you know better... and please. Don't ever leave me to die alone."

"I won't," he said, and it was as solemn as were the other vows they'd worked out and exchanged. "Never."

In the end, though, it was not he who left her, nor she who left him; she was carried away by the savages who had struck in the storms one night, beaten him unconscious, and left him for dead, taking with them the prize of a beauty, though she bore another man's child... and later, o so very much later, when he at last found her wandering Unspeaking with her grown daughter and some other friends, she led the defection into the band of well-fed healthy strangers whose furs were new, well-tanned and spotless, whose arms were strong and well-oiled, to give her daughter to the young man who was presented by another man, not young, whom she knew of old, and other than occasional excursions into the forest on just such a mission as left him now telling stories at campfireside, he never did leave her.

"Wow..." breathed the young ogress. "That's soooo..." Her vocabulary failed her.

Boy sort of shook his head, blinking. "You mean, Granny's your wife?"

"And you're my grandson. Now get some sleep, the both of you. I'll sit the night watches... I thought I'd almost managed to forget those days, but I guess I didn't: I won't be getting any sleep tonight anyways." Two small glints alone reflected light from where Wilson's face otherwise remained hidden in the shadows, and as Boy watched, those glints dripped downwards. Somehow almost ashamedly, Boy turned away to fluff his sleeping bag. Trouble watched him for a moment, and then followed suit.

In the early morning, Wilson was still sitting by the fireside, heating water to make his strange tea that he called coffee. He had a huge stockpile of it back at Home, sealed in cans. Nobody else could stand it. It smelled wonderful, but the taste was foul. Wilson alone used it, and seemed to like it that way. Boy rolled over and stretched, and Trouble stirred herself and woke a bit. She jumped and became tangled in her bag for a moment as she reached wakefulness, and then memory kicked in and she calmed down. Wilson grinned sourly and poured his hot water through his strainer. The aroma of coffee filled the clearing.

"What is that?" Trouble asked, clambering out of the bag. Wilson's grin grew even more sour, and Boy nudged Trouble, and whispered, "Don't even try to talk to him until he's drank some, he's a real bear in the mornings."

"That's right," said Wilson. "And put your clothes on. They ought to be dry by now." Trouble checked her clothes, and began to dress. Boy watched with some fascination. Wilson sipped loudly. Boy dug some jerky out of his pack, and passed it around. Trouble demolished her portion, and Wilson nodded when Boy looked to him after she begged seconds. Boy had seconds himself.

Trouble edged over to Wilson and asked about the coffee again. "Oh, 'ts coffee. Here, try some. Careful, it's hot." He passed her the cup. She sipped.

"It's wonderful!" she breathed. Wilson favored her with a rather disgusted grimace, and poured more of his powder into his strainer, and poured more hot water over it. In a minute, Trouble was sipping away.

"Trouble, you're not used to dealing with Men, are you."

"Nope," she said.

"Well, look. The rest of the trip in, Boy and I are going to run silent. You'll have a chance to learn the basics of not talking. Just you remember, don't ever talk around Men, unless you're spoken to first... and even then, make sure that there's nobody else around. What I mean is, mostly: just don't talk. We're going to have enough suspicion from bringing you into camp, and we don't need the extra problems that we'll have if we bring a Speaker into camp. The people at Home have had a few dealings with Speakers, and those were all bad. Elves. The Home folks hear you speaking, and there's gonna be hell to pay, for sure. Understand?"

"I get it," said Trouble. "But what if it's real important?"

"That's why we're going to run silent. You watch us, and try to learn. There's a whole language we use, sort of, but it's not spoken aloud; most Men can't speak. But you can point at something, and you can imitate something, and there's a very few conventions that pass beyond the wall of silence."

"Conventions?"

"Things everybody does the same, usually 'cause they always have done it that way."

"Oh. So I just follow your lead?"

"Exactly."

Trouble, Boy and Wilson were sighted fairly far from camp. Predictably, it was Boy's father. He hooted amiably, and picked his way through the bushes towards them. He paused when he saw Trouble, and then resumed his approach. They met, and he pointed at Trouble and gave Wilson an inquiring look, and Wilson pointed at Boy, and pantomimed tackling and tieing. Boy's father looked at Wilson, and looked at Boy and looked at Trouble (who was, after all, a few inches bigger than Boy and outweighed him by maybe ten pounds), blinked a few times and began laughing. Boy turned beet red, and Trouble stepped in and put her arm around his waist and began simpering at him. Boy's color deepened a few shades and his father nearly fell to the ground with laughter, and the sound of many footsteps heralded the arrival of most of the village. Things being what they were, of course one of the first arrivals was fleet ten-year-old Hope. She skidded to a stop, and actually almost spoke. She shut her mouth with a snap, and glared at Boy in a manner betokening Boy's future to be better unlived, and then she stamped away loudly, even as the rest of the camp arrived. The men immediately corralled Wilson and Boy, and required of them the story. They'd seen most of it before, from the group that had preceded the three home from the ogre-hunt, but they wanted Wilson's version. The women of the camp were gathering around Trouble, mostly giving her amazingly evil looks. They did this to all visiting females, but in Trouble's case, this was different, and Boy suddenly realized that it was very likely that the women had seen the tale danced by the other hunters when they came home. Trouble might well be in for it. Hope's mother was giving her a nasty sneer, and some of the other women were lining up behind her, and Boy moved quickly. Wilson, finishing his dance, caught on and started to follow.

Hope's mother, who was pretty much the leader of the younger women at Home, swung a stick at Trouble. The stick broke on Trouble's arm and Trouble looked baffled. A woman behind Hope's Mom grabbed up a rock, and threw it. Trouble batted it aside, and then the men were among the gathered women, disarming them and generally getting fairly well-bashed in the process; these women were serious. They did not like Trouble. The men pulled the women back, but they hissed at her still, and Boy looked to Wilson for some leadership. Wilson looked blankly back at him, as if to say, you're on your own, boy. Boy clapped loudly for attention, and a row of hateful faces turned to stare at him.

He assumed the posture of himself, and then removed a few paces, and imitated a child, and then stood between the place of the imitated child and Trouble; and he turned to face Trouble, and he drew his knife. Trouble's look of fear was quite genuine, and when Boy motioned her to move to one side, she did so quickly. Boy moved between her and the place of the imaginary baby, and waved his knife again. A nod of his head sent Trouble circling to the left, and he again played interceptor. He turned to look at the women, who had stopped struggling enough to be released by their men, and most of them seemed to understand. He stepped to one side, no longer between Trouble and the imaginary infant, and beckoned Trouble to move to where he had portrayed the child and as she did, he sprang back again, brandishing the knife. Trouble jumped back, and he searched the faces of the crowd, and they seemed to understand; he was taking responsibility for Trouble's upkeep and training. Hope's Mom (who had a new baby this year) stepped forward and confronted him, and her stare was close, deeply measuring, and as serious as all damnation. She walked close to Trouble, gave her a chilling stare, and then pounced onto the imaginary child, and then stood staring at Boy, giving the sign for query. Boy was not quite sure he understood, and turned his head away for an instant, and when he turned it back, Hope's mom was silently there with a knife at his throat. She smiled at him, not sweetly at all, and cocked her head waiting for him to let her know that he understood. He gulped, and her smile became grimmer as she walked away sheathing her blade, as silently as she had sprung. The other women echoed her grim smile, and as they turned and left, making scarcely a sound. Boy looked at Trouble, who had gone dead white. He realized he was shaking. The men simply stared a moment longer, looked at each other every one, and then nodded. This was just, and as it should be. They turned and began to return Home, and Wilson, Boy, and Trouble followed.

The days passed uneventfully for a spell, as Wilson gave a room in one of the houses to Boy. Trouble lived there with him, not without some friction. He kept waking up in the middle of the night, with the girl sleeping practically at his feet, or sometimes at his side. Each time this happened, he somehow thought of Hope's mom, and some part of his mind equated this girl sleeping next to him with a knife at his throat. But she was just trying to get warm, he guessed, or maybe she had finally accepted his rejection. At any rate, as the season passed from spring into summer, they woke as they had slept, on opposite sides of the room.

As part of the process of familiarizing her to the place and people of Home, Boy had to take her into the woods a few times to teach her the surrounding terrain; Wilson had mentioned that this might be a good thing to do. The problem was, Trouble was boy- crazy. She couldn't be much more than Boy's age, and she was quite the hormone victim, but one thing she did have going for her: She was probably smarter than Boy, and they both knew it. She learned to pick up her feet and be more quiet than any of her dead people, though she could not match Boy's stalking silence, and came nowhere close to the silence of the women of Home. She was very good at setting traps, making her own from available materials instead of using the carefully-maintained relics of the Before People. She absolutely did not speak, aware somehow of the watching eyes that Boy could not feel but which he knew must there. His experience with Hope's mom had greatly raised his estimation of women's skills and intelligence, and he realized for the first time in his life that like any intelligent being, they were constantly involved in assessment of their surroundings, and such a threat as they believed Trouble to be would not for a moment go unwatched. Certainly Hope herself was watching; for occasionally he would hear a muffled grunt as a stick snapped, and would whip his head around in time to catch a glimpse of Hope becoming a part of the underbrush, already a better stalker than was he, and her but a womanchild with no training. He amended that thought to "no training he was aware of", and filed this thought for considerable future rumination.

Trouble, as usual, stood much too close when he was showing her something, unable to speak under the imagined-but-really-there watchful eyes. He wished that she wouldn't stand so close, as he was, being somewhere between thirteen and fourteen, himself more than a tad girl-crazy. But he had seen how the women of the camp had hated her, heard their hisses (which usually preceded deathmatches between enraged matrons; a rare spectacle generally more fatal and much more bloodily so than men's fights), and he had no wish to bring mayhem upon himself by romancing this girl. Besides, pain- in-the-neck that she was, Hope was the girl for him, he knew: they'd always been meant for each other. Wilson had always made that quite clear, and presumably had told Hope as much. But how could he make that clear to Trouble?

Seated on a warm sunny rock by the side of a brook that ran down to the lower lands, with Trouble seated much too close, and squirming ever closer as she flyfished for brown trout, Boy came up with an idea. As soon as she was seated thigh pressed to thigh, he leaned back and planted both hand on her back and pushed her in. The brook was quite cold, and as she went in, she sputtered, and shrieked, and then stood and pulled him in. She was quite strong, and Boy was after all just a skinny kid. The cold didn't seem to bother her all that much, but it surely took the wind out of Boy, and he leapt out, gasping, and then Trouble pounced out of the brook on top of him. It was the exact reverse of the situation where he had captured her, and suddenly he knew that the only reason he'd stayed on top was because she had been still stunned from Wilson's blow to the head, and he'd had the advantage of surprise, and the fact that he'd been on top, and perhaps that Trouble had seen a wall of men closing in to surround them. Trouble was winning this rematch quite handily. She lay atop him for a few moments, savoring her victory, staring him down. He would not look away, and her stare was not really a challenge anyway, it was more of a study, and indeed an invitation, and he realized that to her, he must appear to be studying her as well... and would she consider this an invitation? He himself was not at all sure how to react. At this moment, the warm rock reversed the chill the brook had imparted, and a rush of girl-craziness took him over, and Trouble felt it, and as he tried to give her (as was the custom among the people of Home) a peck on the cheek to apologize for dumping her in the brook, she laughed a little laugh as she rolled off of him and let him up, with him trying to hide his boner. It was embarrassing as all hell, and he wasn't the only one to think so. Hope's giggle appeared out of thin air behind him, and he almost jumped out of his skin.

Blushing, he turned to face her. Hope and Trouble exchanged glances, and as he looked at Trouble, trying to read her too- innocent face, out of the corner of his eye he saw Hope pointing surreptitiously at his crotch, and as he turned to stare at her, outraged, he saw some answering sign pass from Trouble back to Hope, an odd little smile of a kind he'd never before seen.

"You fool," Hope said. "Shut up!" he whispered. "Oh, who's gonna hear us?" retorted Hope, and Boy pointed at Trouble.

"And who's she gonna tell?"

"Nobody," said Trouble.

"Eek!" said Hope. "She can talk?"

"Funny," said Boy, using the desperate shorthand required when the Unspeaking might be listening.

"It's okay, really, I'm the only one here. So you can talk," said Hope, addressing Trouble directly. "How come a baby-eater can talk and most of us can't?"

"Wilson shoulda told you that by now," said Boy. "Doesn't he tell you anything?"

"Taught me how to talk and read, but other than that, he doesn't say much to me."

"I wonder why, you're such an annoyance," said Boy. Trouble dimpled and Hope saw it and declined to mention it - at least not in front of Boy.

Ignoring Trouble, or pretending to, Hope continued, "I asked him, mister big man, and he said it was because he doesn't want me to get a bunch of men's ideas. Then he told me to go home to mom." Boy blinked. He had been realizing that the women did indeed have their own ways, but he had taken it for granted, he guessed, that this was from being Unspeaking, and being different from men, and not being able to share ideas.

"Uh, okay. So why don't you?"

"I couldn't leave you all alone out here with her, dummy. And as for you, are you going to answer my question?"

Trouble had been watching this exchange with fascination. "It's 'cause I'm Changed."

"Yah," jeered Hope, "Like the elves."

"What's these elves y'all keep talkin' bout anyhow?"

Hope scowled as she pondered. "I've never seen 'em myself," she admitted, "But Wilson told me all about them. They're mostly like Men, but they can talk, all of them, and they're mean and they're tricky and they think we're animals and they hate us."

"That's what Wilson says," added Boy.

"Y'all can talk," said Trouble, "but you's Men aintcha?"

"Well, me and Boy and a few others, yah, we're Men and we talk. So how come you can talk? Changed huh? Into a baby-eater?"

Trouble had tear ducts, functional ones, it appeared. "Changed big. Changed strong. The rest was all craziness... I'm glad it's over. It was all I ever knew, and now I'm here with y'all, eatin' good, eatin' right dammit - for the first time. Bitsy was th' one who done took babies, an she's dead now, an I don't miss her none. Use ta beat me sumpin fierce alla time... but I likes babies, I seen too many die 'mongst us, an I wants one o' my own."

"Well, where you gonna get one? Adam here?"

"I'se thinkin 'bout it." Boy blinked.

"You'd best think again. He's mine," stated Hope.

"You ain't but a l'il gal," declared Trouble, her tears drying. Boy jumped in with both feet and said, "I'll decide whose I am," and Hope and Trouble both giggled at him.

Something changed over the next few days. The women scowled less when Trouble passed. Granny, who alone had not participated in the viciousness of the females, was almost friendly. Granny was, by nature, more than a bit aloof; her absorption in her witcheries was usually complete. She allowed Trouble to watch her as she prepared cold-remedy. This was pretty-much unheard of, as her recipe was a trade secret. Anyone could make sassafras and boil it down, but Granny knew of shrubs and roots that sweetened the syrup to the point where it could be taken without revulsion. Hope managed to drag her mother and her new sister past Trouble without Hope's mom doing much more than spitting. Wilson looked on with some dour amusement. Hope broke off to give an apple to Trouble, who ate it though it was green. Hope's mother looked a bit less hateful then, though her eyes never strayed from the teen.

In the woods on excursion with Boy, checking the traplines, Wilson inquired as to how things were working out with him, Trouble and Hope.

"How do you mean?" asked Boy, somewhat confused by this out-of- the-blue-approach. He had been about to bring it up himself, and once again, the Old Man had earned his name and reputation of knowing everything.

"I mean, you aren't but, what, fourteen? and you already have your own woman."

"She's not my woman," said Boy.

"Well, she's not anyone else's..." Wilson grinned at him.

"Well, what do you expect? children already? She's only been here three months."

"Hope says you haven't done anything with her."

"How the heck would she know..." Boy thought back to the last few weeks and came to a realization. "That little..." Boy was furious.

"The word you want is bitch," said Wilson. Boy goggled at him. "What's a bitch?" he wondered, afraid that he already knew.

"Um. Never mind. Okay, Hope knows she's intended for you, and she knows she's supposedly too young to be interesting, or interested for that matter, and she knows that it bothers you when she brings all of that to your attention. Ahem, but anyway, she brought it to my attention that you and Trouble are not acting like man and woman."

"So what does she want?"

"(The eternal question", muttered Wilson") Ahem, that's for you to find out. I expect that Hope has some sort of plans for you. What they might be, only Hope knows, and at her age, I sort of expect that she herself isn't exactly sure what her plans are. But if Hope is trying to get you and Trouble to actually be the pair that you two appear to be, I can only suspect that there's some good reason, like maybe Hope intends that Trouble be busy with a child in arms when Hope comes of age for the women's trial."

"Oh," said Boy. The women's trial was some mysterious thing that the women all did whenever a girl-child had her first bleeding. Boy assumed that it was very much like the mens' trial, which he'd been through last fall. The mens' trial basically consisted of some odd dances that he could never quite figure out, though they had stuck in his mind somehow, as he had been nearly unconscious on a mixture of Wilson's foul coffee and moonshine. After the dances were done, and he had almost recovered from that strange sensation, odd mixture of dizziness and heightened awareness, the men had all faced outwards in a circle, and placed him outside of it, motioning him to bring home some game.

For the next two days he'd hunted, and finally brought home a deer, no great thing since he'd been reliably knocking down game since he was about ten, but immense ceremony had been made of the mighty hunter's return, and almost everyone in camp had gotten extremely drunk on moonshine. All sorts of annoying pranks were played on anyone who sat still long enough to become a victim, and that was the end of it. Boy was thereafter entitled to sit in on the more ceremonious dances, which he generally found deadly dull, stylized as they were.

The women's trial, however, was a great secret. A girl bled for the first time, and when she ran to her mother or auntie, she generally got slapped, and this would bring all of the women running, and they would all gather certain possessions (nobody knew exactly what) and then they would exit the camp. Days later, often a week or more, they would all return... sometimes.

Occasionally, a boy would fail to return as a man from the men's ceremonies, and on such occasions, many men would drop their present affairs, and search the woods, usually returning with a dead boy. When a girl did not return from the women's trials, however, the women made no search, and would not allow men to band to look for the lost one. Boy shivered as he thought about it; it seemed to him almost as if the women knew exactly where the body was - and intensely desired that no man should ever find it - nor discover the tales always told by the remains of human dead. As few boys as failed to return from the men's trial, as few did return from the women's trial. As many more females were born than were males, this had a somewhat useful balancing effect, but Boy shivered again as he wondered exactly what were the criteria by which the women selected those whom they would deign allow to join the ranks of the matrons.

"Oh," said Boy again. "Why would she want that?"

"I guess maybe she just wants to see if a child of yours will speak. You really don't know her that well, do you?"

"She doesn't really give me much of a chance to know. She just comes and she goes, and usually she just says something mean and then she's gone."

Wilson looked at him closely, and said: "Perhaps you should try to get to know her better. You'll be together most of your lives, if you're lucky. She's very lonely. There aren't many people for her to talk to, really just you and me and a few tiny babies, and now, she can talk to Trouble too... though I am not really very sure how many of her ideas I want her picking up from Trouble. So spend more time with Hope if you can. She's flighty, I'll grant you, but you yourself aren't all grown up yet, either. She's just reached the age where she's not just thinking, but is thinking about thinking, an important stage in a person's life. She's not going to talk anything but baby-talk to the babies that talk, and I guess I'm too imposing a figure, now that she's aware of just how much I know that she doesn't. So that leaves only you and Trouble."

Wilson did have a tendency to wander when he was trying to be fatherly. "What's your point?" Boy asked.

"That it's very very important to her that her children, or that your children, or that anybody's children can speak. Boy, you should know that for as young as she is, she's far ahead of you in her reading ability, and she speaks at nearly an adult level. She's in love with The Word, with stories, with knowledge. When I finally let you into the Library, I'll let you both go in together. Sort of like Adam and Eve being let into the Garden" (Huh? said Boy to himself, my name is Adam, but who's Eve?), "instead of expelled..."

"I still don't get it."

"Hope, of course, is not sure exactly what it is that happens in the women's trial, but she seems quite convinced that she will not pass. So she's placing all of her hopes for the future on you. And if Trouble can bear you a talking child, she'll go to her trial with a lot less worry on her mind, because she won't have this feeling of guilt, like the fate of the speaking world is riding on her shoulders should she fail."

"Oh," said Boy, feeling rather stupid.

"Give you enough to think about for one day, did I, Boy?" Wilson said it jokingly, but his face was purely serious.

"More than I wanted," said Boy, and they rose to finish checking the traplines.

They were almost done, back on the fringes of the land they called Home, when the boy stopped, and puzzled, asked Wilson: "But Trouble is Changed. I'm not... can we be together, and have a child?"

Wilson thought for just a moment, and said, "You know, I once wondered that myself, since Roberta, Granny to you, had been Changed not once, but twice, and I had been Changed only once. Actually, perhaps I was never changed, but prevented from changing... and perhaps your Granny was Changed only once. Whatever. But we did have a child. And you have shown that the child of that child is a true Man, though unlike the rest of the true Men, you speak, as do Hope and the rest of the Talking Kids. But the parents, your father, and his father's father, and your grandmother, my daughter... and her daughter. They are Unspeaking. Bewildered. Originally, this was caused by a virus, and perhaps the virus has grown weak with time, or perhaps you are yourself Changed, but in a way that is not obvious, other than protecting you from the virus. Each of the people who have sorted out into the various Kinds have adapted in their own ways, or merely suffered, from the changes the Rivals brought upon us. Trouble's people are what they are, and the elves, for all of their intelligence have no compassion, no remorse, nothing of what makes the human humane - to me they are not only mad, but despicably criminal in their madness, and they consider such things as decency or honor to be Manly weaknesses, foolishness, stupidity, and if one of them feels such things, the elves speedily kill them. But never mind that. Are you Changed, as is Trouble? Are we all in our way Changed? How can we tell? And what is the worst change, the changes that we've seen, we who have not changed - not changed for so many years - we have seen - (Wilson was nearly in tears, and choked down something nameless to Boy), or the Changes that have made all of these new people to be what they are, living as they now do, camped next to a perfect road built to last half an age, upon which they're all afraid to walk..."

Wilson sat down hard. Boy knew not what to say, for he'd never seen this before. A man close to a breakdown was something utterly new. Rage he'd seen, but not this black depression that made a near-god (as Boy saw him, though Boy knew not of the word nor concept `god') collapse to weep inconsolably. "Wilson, grandfather, what's wrong?"

And Wilson could only hold his head in his hands, feebly trying to push Boy away. Boy refused to go, and remained there, watching the forests for game or intruders. After some time, Wilson spoke.

"I'm just old, boy. That is all. Though this body stays young and strong, I am old beyond man's time. I've seen a lot, and done a lot, and sometimes, when I'm thinking that things are going along okay, memories will come back. I'll be comfortable, living this life, which mostly is the life of which I was raised to dream-of as an unattainable goal, the reward of the very rich... and suddenly, I'll remember how this world came to be, and I mourn for the old world, as if that could bring it back. And would I want to bring it back? Now I'm somebody, I'm the Old Man. Before I was nothing, just another replaceable part in a grand mad machine, a machine that was eating the world. And through simple chance, nothing else, I wound up in this position of being the only man among animals, going on forever, trying to be a good shepard to my flock. And what do I get out of this? Nothing, nothing, I just feel better about being left untouched by this plague that reduced men to animals, that killed the old society, and the people whose lives I can touch now live a little longer, a little better. And I adjust to this, and it goes on, and on, longer than I ever thought it might, and then you come along."

"Me, Wilson? How can it be me doing this to you?"

Wilson looked up at Boy, and shook his head. "It's not you Boy, it's what you represent." Wilson did this to Boy now and then. Boy had always just taken it as a given that some things that Wilson might say would beggar understanding (him being the Old Man, after all), but some of the recent events had brought to him the concept that things were not always as they seemed, that an accepted meaning could hide another layer, more subtle, more complex. Boy had reached the age when metaphor and analogy become as important as considerations as were the concretes, though of course he had never really heard of any those exact terms.

"What do I ... represent, then?"

"Am I talking over your head?"

"I think so."

"There's an old, old story, Boy, in a book I've never let you read, because it is one of the greatest books in the world, and I don't think that you should read it until you're fully grown, and can tell the difference between what people say, what they mean, and what they intend you to believe. In this book, it talks about the beginnings of the world. It's all really allegory, which is a way of telling a story about one thing that has less to do with that story than with the stories we have within us, the stories through which we view the world, that color our world like those pink sunglasses color your vision. Are you following me?"

Secrets, at last! thought Boy. "Sort of..."

"Haven't you ever wondered what I had in mind for you, when you've grown to be fully a man?"

"Well... I guess I always thought that I'd take a woman, and raise kids, and just live like always, like everybody... I guess I really didn't think about it much."

Wilson grimaced. "And this may be where I have failed. I withheld from you the dreams we fed to our children in the old world, for I did not want the next world to become a shadow of the former days. And without dreams, what can you ever be? Just a copy of your parents, leading only the life you've known. Well, listen up. In this old book, it speaks of the creator of the world being a supreme being, a powerful force which created the world in a few days, and one day made a man and a woman from the dust of the earth. And this supreme being had a rival, and this rival decided to anger the supreme being by ruining his work, by corrupting his creations.

"He gave to the two innocents (who lived in a warm perfect garden where all food was abundant and good) the knowledge of good and evil. Before, the innocents had been much as are the Unspeaking, do you see? But now with language, with the ability to know one thing from another, they sought the meaning of things. They lived in a world that was too complex for them to understand, and the supreme being cast them out of the garden, for with language, they would search for knowledge, and knowledge would bring more questions which would bring more knowledge, until finally they would approach the power of the supreme being, who had enough problems already with his rival."

"But that's not how the world came to be, you told me different yourself," Boy said, almost reproachfully. Was Wilson telling him he had lied to him all of this time?"

"As I told you before boy, so it was, as best I ever knew. See? This is a story about ways of looking at the world... not how the world really is, just a way to look at it... this is a very old story, it's called `the fall from grace'. Do you get the point yet?"

"No," said Boy.

"Well, think about it. After being sent away from the perfect garden, where everything was wonderful, those two became the parents of the world."

"So, do you mean that this is the garden? This isn't a perfect world! We freeze in the winter, sometimes game is scarce, we get sick, we die. You told me that in the Before Time they had ways to grow food in metal ponds and feed a thousand where we can feed one, and they could cure almost any sickness, and you yourself live on long after any man -"

"And have I never told you the prices that were paid, or by whom... The price of the old world was the old world, and the old world paid. Where is it now? All around us, and all gone. Knowledge has its price, boy, that's what I am saying. That's why I'm crying, because a time I've waited for, for nearly a century, that time is near."

"What time is that, Wilson?" Boy was feeling quite lost. Half of the words Wilson was using were ones he had not heard before, though some he had read, and most of these concepts were new to him.

"Boy, I've had a certain amount of knowledge. Back in the Before Time, I was not a wise man. I was one of the lowest people there was. I had little schooling, but after The Fall, I had a long time to think, and I have thought plenty. What little knowledge I had was enough for me to tend to the needs of these people here at Home, and they've prospered, compared to other people elsewhere. You've got to learn all of the things I know, as Hope needs to learn the things that Granny knows. I've had this crushing responsibility, to take care of my people as best I might, and I haven't really been up to the job. I hope you'll do better. I've waited these many years, beyond hope, simply to have someone to talk to, and now you're here, and you can speak almost well enough for me to tell you the many things I have to say.

"As those two of whom I spoke were the parents of the old world, you and Hope must be the parents of the new. But they had no one to guide them, and you have me. I've told you all that I felt I could, that I dared, about the way things were, but there's so many things I had to leave out, because I didn't want you to be molded by the way things were, I didn't want the past to affect the future, as it has always done. Do you understand me now?"

Boy thought for a minute, and finally said, "Not really."

"If you're lucky," said Wilson, "Perhaps you never will."

"But you talk as if you're going away, like I'll be left in charge or something," Boy said. "Are you leaving?"

"Boy, I'm a relic, like those photovoltaic cells, or the old weapons, or the very Road. My presence here in the world is a fluke, a freak chance, an accident. This is your world, not mine. Do you think I'll live forever?"

"I... I guess I thought so," Boy said, truthfully. Wilson had always been there, and would he not be there always? Wilson was telling him that this was not so, he thought.

"I'll tell you a secret, boy, I might... this terrifies me, as much as death terrifies me. I have no desire to die, and for the longest time, I had little desire to live, other than the reflex of avoiding death... I'd lost my true love, do you see? Roberta, taken from me in the storm, by a band of animals. And she outlived them all, but we were to be the parents of the new world, and when we at last found each other, she had been too long from the medicines we had learned to make from the tools in the wreckage, and where I had been able to avoid infection, she had been... [ Wilson put his head in his hands again, and was for a moment silent. The boy waited patiently for him to again speak. ] By the time we met, she was too old for us to be the parents of the tribe. My own agelessness results from a great many special sicknesses working together to combat other ills, but in her case, her sicknesses had been finally overwhelmed by the ills of the animals who had taken her, and she had become almost as they. So all I could do was watch her grow slowly old, and take care of her as best I could, as I had promised. I'll not let her die alone... and now here you are, Adam, the first of the new world, and Hope can be your wife, and the two of you may be the parents of the new world where Roberta and I were not. I didn't feed you any dreams before, boy, but this dream, this is my dream for you. Take it. It's grown too heavy for me to carry alone any longer."

"But what are you saying?"

~ "What I've always said, I guess. You've got a lot of growing up to do. Maybe I'm just trying to give you some idea of exactly how big you can grow, and you can maybe decide how much of that growth you want to aim for."

"Father of the world? Is that what you mean? With Hope as its mother? Me? That's too big a job for me, Wilson! I can't do that!"

"Neither could I, boy, but look. The world is a huge place, I can't - you can't - do anything really to change the whole thing, not change what is, but like a tiny pebble falling to start a rockslide, what I have done, what you will do, may have effects in the future that you cannot imagine now. Or perhaps you can imagine them, and perhaps you can aim that pebble to the point where the rocks will slide where you want them to go. You and Hope are such pebbles, each of you. The rest of these, the Unspeaking, they are like the dust of the hills, the rocks that will slide when struck by the pebbles you aim. Whether it's the fact that your father, my grandson, is the sire of most of the Talking Kids (but not all!), or as I say, maybe the virus has weakened or the world has adapted to it, who can say? But the fact is, The Word is returning to the world, and when people begin again to speak, whoever brings The Word to those who can speak, but do not, will have the most incredible influence on what is to come."

"And you want me to have all of this power."

"You already have it. You, and I, and all of the Talking Kids. You had it when you first spoke those two words: I AM."

Go on to Part Nine.

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