Water Rites (23 page)

“My mother?”

“Uh-huh. Back before she and your dad were even married. Maria loved music. She had a beautiful voice, too.”

“I didn’t know that.” Nita looked down at the glass in her hand, trying to imagine her mother singing.

“She quit taking lessons when Alberto was born. She said she was too tired, and I guess she was, with the farm to work and all.” Sandy shook her head. “You don’t hear music so much anymore — not even in church. Art, music, poetry — what’s happened to it? I asked Sam that one time. He said we’d had it too easy. We thought we could fix anything, that we had it all under control with our science and such. When we couldn’t fix this drought, it broke something in us — our spirits, maybe. I don’t know. Sometimes I think our souls are dying out with the land.” Sandy shook her head, forced a smile. “You look like your dad,” she said. “Did anyone ever tell you that?”

“Yes.” Nita crumbled the last of her scone between her fingers. “Look, I don’t remember . . . my father.” How many times was she going to have to say this? Nita met the older woman’s eyes. “Life was hard for us after he died. That’s all I know.”

“You sound a little like Maria.”

“I don’t blame him, if that’s what you mean.” Nita pressed her lips together. “Everyone wants to tell me about him. They all expect me to think of him as some kind of hero and I don’t. Is that wrong?”

“Wrong?” Sandy sighed. “Maria was right in a way. Sam did put the community ahead of his own life, ahead of his family. He used to say we wouldn’t make it — any of us — unless we stuck together.” She poured more water into Nita’s glass. “He wasn’t a hero,” she said, “And you’re not wrong. He was just a quiet man who saw what needed to be done. He was perceptive, Sam Montoya. Sometimes you could swear he knew what you were thinking.”

Dan had said that he had . . . insight. Nita’s checks went hot, then cold. “I have to go.” She got quickly to her feet. “I have to get back. Thank you for the water and the scones.”

She drove back through The Dalles automatically, her eyes registering the road, her brain churning. Rachel fussed irritably on the seat beside her.
You could swear he know what you were thinking.
Sandy Corbett had said it so casually. “Did you do this to me?” she whispered. A mutation, David had said. In her. But what if he’d been wrong? Nita touched her squirming daughter lightly. Father to daughter to granddaughter? “No,” She whispered, but the word sounded so feeble.

When they reached the turnoff to the Corps base, Nita swung the truck suddenly onto the road. The guard at the ugly gate watched her as she parked the truck. He carried a rifle and his lust and hostility pricked at her.

“I don’t see your name on the list,” he said when she asked for Carter. “I’ll see if I can contact the colonel.”

Rachel started to cry. Teething? Or reacting to the guard? Teething, Nita told herself. She hadn’t been fussy until lately.

Nita squatted in the shadow of the truck, holding her daughter tightly. “I don’t want you to be like me,” Nita whispered. She pulled out Rachel’s string of wooden beads and dangled it above her daughter’s groping fists. She would feel the anger, the lust, the broken bones. One day she would look into a lover’s eyes and feel his fear. She looked like David, more like him every day. Nita blinked back tears, jumped at the clang of the gate. Carter. Nita got slowly to her feet.

“What do you want?”

“You can be angry at me.” Nita straightened her shoulders. “Maybe I deserve it. But you’re angry at Dan. And you shouldn’t be.”

“You don’t know how I feel.”

A thread of hurt lurked beneath his anger. “Will you come for a walk with me?” She spoke to that hurting. “Please, Carter? I need to tell you . . . about why I left.”

“I can give you a few minutes.” He was struggling inside, wanting to hear her, wanting to hurt her with his anger at the same time.

Nita tilted her head, hearing a hum of contentment on the hot breeze. Bees! “Here.” She shoved Rachael suddenly into Carter’s arms and walked away from him, following the gentle note of the nest.

A rock outcrop sheltered it in a cool crevice. Nita hummed the comfort-song to the swarm as the bees swirled up around her head. She could just get her hand into the space. Carefully she broke off a bit of sticky comb, feeling to make sure she wasn’t killing brood.

“Nita, what are you doing?”

Carter’s voice, and there was fear in it. Fear for her, in spite of his anger? Pain clenched in her belly and the bees felt it, their song rising and sharpening.
Gently.
She hummed it to them as she got to her feet. Calmed by her song, they trailed away as she walked back to the road. By the time she reached Carter and Rachel, only a few stragglers clung to her shirt and hair. Absently she brushed them away.

“Are you all right?” Carter jumped as a confused worker circled his head. “My God, half these wild bees are killers, Nita.”

“I can tell killers from honeybees. Here.” She broke off a piece of golden comb, handed it to Carter. “I only took a little. It’s not a very big nest. Chew it.” She lifted Rachel from his arms. “Spit out the wax when the honey’s gone. The bees will find it and take it back.”

Hesitantly, still angry, Carter bit into the dense, sticky chunk.

“I miss the bees.” Nita dabbed a bit of honey on her daughter’s lips, smiling at Rachel’s chuckle of surprise and pleasure. “When the rains come, everything blooms in the hills. You have to look for the flowers, but they’re there — down in the crevices where the rocks protect them, at the bottom of the old streambeds. I was like the flowers.” She looked up at Carter. “I hid down in the cracks, wounded, afraid of the world. I was fourteen when I met David. I hadn’t talked since I was five, and my family thought I was retarded. It was David who found me,” she said softly. “He gave me space and time to grow up, to find myself. He sheltered me and . . . he loved me. It wouldn’t matter, if I didn’t care about you.” Her voice trembled, and she shook her head. “It wouldn’t even matter that I was sleeping with you. But . . . I
do
care, Carter. Don’t you see? And I love David and I owe him for my life, and I don’t know what happened to him. I have to find out, Carter. I need to know for sure if he’s dead . . . or alive. I didn’t betray you, Carter. I didn’t.”

“I never said you did.” Carter’s voice was unsteady and his anguish clouded the air.

“I didn’t know Dan until a few days ago. I’m not sleeping with him.” She winced at Carter’s reaction. “He really is trying to help you. Don’t mess things up just because I hurt you. Dan’s not part of that.”

“I didn’t ask you if you were sleeping with him.” Carter looked away, all muddy and mixed up inside. “I’d like to trust Dan, but there are a lot of men and women living on this base. They’re the ones who are going to pay if I make a mistake. How well do you know Dan Greely, Nita? You’ve known him what — a few days?”

“He’s on your side. Carter, he is.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.” He looked back at the gate, giving in to his need to escape her. “I’ve got to get back. I’m sorry.” His eyes avoided hers. “About the misunderstanding.”

“Carter?” She closed her lips tightly. He wasn’t really hearing her. He was trapped by his responsibilities, just as Dan was trapped by her father’s ghost. He was walking away from her, back to his gate and the crushing weight of that place.

She could call him back. She could tell him how she knew that Dan wasn’t an enemy.

Rachel started to cry, and she turned her back on the gate. I’m trapped, too, Nita thought bitterly. In her sling, Rachel kicked and fussed. “You don’t feel me.” Nita scooped her into her arms as the walked back to the truck. “You’re David’s daughter, sweetheart. He’ll get here sooner or later and it’ll be all right. We’ll leave, go somewhere else.” The words brought no comfort, none at all.

They had almost reached the truck. Nita gasped as the dusty ground suddenly shimmered. Something was wrong. She clung to Rachel as colors brightened around her. Grass? Stunned, Nita stared at the vivid green blades beneath her feet. Tiny droplets of water glinted on their tips, and the fuzzy yellow flowers swayed in the gentle wind. Spindly young trees scattered white petals across the grass and more yellow flowers swayed on long stems. Nita had seen pictures of flowers like that, tried to recall their name but she couldn’t She clutched Rachel, frozen with terror and awe.

Beyond the grass and the yellow flowers, water filled the riverbed.

There wasn’t that much water in the whole world. There couldn’t be. Nita took a stumbling step toward it. It stretched away from her in a wrinkled gray sheet, streaked with white. The hills on the far side looked miles away and the water foamed at the foot of the dam. She saw no sign of the base.

“Carter,” she cried in terror. They would be dying, all of them, buried under that gray water,
drowning
, for God’s sake. She tried to run, but the access road had inexplicably moved and the ground wasn’t where her eyes told her it was. Unseen humps and hollows jarred her. She stumbled, fell, twisting desperately to protect Rachel, ground slamming the breath from her body, bruising her hip. Her face was full of invisible dust and Rachel was screaming, her terror a beating wing in Nita’s head. Breathless, Nita hid her face against her daughter’s struggling body, surrounded by grass and flowers, wondering if she was going crazy, wondering if the world was going crazy.

Footsteps thudded on the ground. “Hey, are you all right?”

Worry pricked Nita and hands touched her shoulders.

“Are you hurt?” The hands had shifted to Rachel, as if to take her from Nita’s arms.

“I . . . I’m all right.” Nita forced her eyes open, then shuddered at the sight of the green grass. “No, I’ve got her.” She clutched Rachel to her.

A man bent over her. A tail of blond hair hung down over his shoulder and his vivid blue eyes reflected his concern. Nita shook her head, not trusting her voice, wishing he would go away and leave her alone. She stretched out her hand. The grass stems didn’t bend or flatten and she felt only dust and sharp gravel beneath her palm. She clenched her trembling fingers into a fist.”

“Oh, shit,” the man said softly.

Slowly the green landscape faded, thinning away like smoke from a smothered fire. Nita clutched the hiccoughing Rachel to her, watching the buildings of the riverbed base reappear. She looked up at the blond man. “What did you do?” she said numbly.

“Listen, I’m sorry.” He squatted beside her, radiating anxiety. “It’s just . . . a fancy holo projector. I was testing it. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You’re lying.” Nita scrambled to her feet, hearing hysteria in her voice. “You made it happen. You made me see water in the riverbed. It was so . . . huge.”

“No.” His distress flowered in Nita’s head. “It’s just a holo. I’ll show you how it works.” He held out a small gray box.

“That’s all right,” she said quickly. Because he was afraid. “I won’t tell anyone,” she answered his fear. “It’s all right. Really. How did you do that?”

He opened his mouth to protest, then shrugged. “I’m . . . not sure.” His eyes were sharp and wary on her face. “I think . . . it’s a vision of the past. I just see it. Sometimes other people see it, too.”

“It was so real,” Nita whispered. “All those flowers, and the water . . . it looked miles across.”

“You saw that much?” His eyes narrowed. “Most people just catch a glimpse, and that’s if I’m standing right beside them. I was clear over near the culvert when you started running.” He gave her a wary, measuring smile. “I’m Jeremy Barlow.”

“I’m Nita Montoya. This is Rachel.” His wariness rubbed at her. Remembering Seth, she nodded, understanding suddenly. “It really is all right. I don’t think you’re a freak or a demon or whatever people guess when you scare them. And I really won’t tell anyone.”

“I’m relieved,” he said wryly.

He didn’t particularly believe her. “How can you see the past?” she asked softly. “How can that be?”

“I don’t know. Here.” He offered a hand to help her up.

His hand was crippled, the joints thick and ugly. She noticed the stick he had dropped on the ground. His knees hurt him, now that the fear had faded. He was looking at her thoughtfully, deciding whether or not she was a serious threat.

“I could always make things appear,” he said, probably deciding that it was too late to matter. “Like this.” He held out his palm and a brilliant green insect blinked into life above it, settling delicately onto his fingers. “The . . . visions came later.” He shrugged. “I do magic shows at local markets.”

“Were you in Tygh Valley?” Nita’s eyes widened. “This farmer told me about someone who did magic. He said it was a fake.”

“Tygh Valley.” The wariness had come back, stronger than before. “Yeah, I went through there. They weren’t a very good crowd.”

“They hate anything strange.” Nita shivered with the memory of Seth’s thin, molten ugliness. Rachel whimpered and she hugged her close. “They hate anything they don’t understand, like the boy they stoned. You’re right to be scared of them.” She jumped as Jeremy’s had closed hard on her wrist.

“You
know
I’m scared of them, don’t you?” His voice was hushed, but excitement blazed behind his eyes. “You’re reading my thoughts. That’s how you knew I was lying about the projector. That’s why you saw the river like that. You’re a telepath.”

“No. I don’t know.” His intensity frightened her and his fingers were bruising her arm. “I — I know what you’re feeling,” she faltered. “Scared, or angry, or whatever. I don’t know what you’re thinking.”

“An empath. That’s the word for it.” He looked down at his hand and let go of her abruptly. “Sorry. It just surprised me . . . meeting someone else who’s different.”

Nita rubbed the marks his fingers had left. He wasn’t dark inside the way the trader had been dark. His excitement had a desperate feel, like someone lost in the Dry who had finally sighted a house. A feel like thirst and hope balled up in a knot.

“I didn’t hear any gossip about empaths at the market.” He was watching her face. “You don’t tell people, either. Do you?”

“No.” Nita shook her head, trying to banish Carter from her thoughts. “I don’t. Doesn’t it bother you?” she asked bitterly. “That I knew you were afraid? That I know you’re excited now?”