Worlds That Weren't

Aydwah had a big place, two shake-roofed log cabins linked by a covered dogtrot, several barns besides the one she slept in, loomhouse where the women of the family spun and wove, slatted corncrib of poles, toolsheds, smokehouse and more. Several poorer kin and hired workers lived with him, too, sleeping in attics and lofts, and a single Kumanch slave taken prisoner from a band raiding the westernmost of the Seven Tribes, beaten into meekness and sold east. It was a prosperous yeoman’s spread, no wealthy Jefe’s farm, but two steps up from her father’s place.

Cooking smells came from the house, and Aydwah’s wife came out to beat a long ladle against an iron triangle hanging by the cabin door. Sonjuh’s belly rumbled as she sat with the others at the long trestle-table set out in the dogtrot, where everyone ate in good weather. Breakfast was samp-mush, with sorghum syrup and warm-fresh milk poured on, and she bent over her bowl with the wooden spoon busy.

Her uncle had the family hair, gray streaking bright fox red in his case, but he was heavier set than her father, slower of mind and words. His voice was a deep rumble as he spoke from the head of the table: “We’ve the last of the flax to plant today, ’n’ the goobers to lift. Sonjuh, you’ll-”

“I’ve got business of my own today, Uncle,” she said, trying for respectful firmness and suspecting it came out as sullen. “I cleaned out the workstock barn.”

Aydwah flushed; it showed easily, despite forty years’ weathering of his fair freckled skin. “You’ll do as you’re told, girl, ’n’ no back talk! I took you in-”

“’N’ you’re well paid for it,” Sonjuh said. “This milk’s from my folk’s milch cow, isn’t it? All that stock’s mine, not yours-that’s the law! You’re getting more than I’d pay in Dannulsford for tavern-keep.”

Her uncle’s flush went deeper; that was the truth, and he knew it and that the Jefe would uphold her.

Her aunt-by-marriage was shriller: “’N’ the stock ’n’ gear might get you a husband, if you didn’t gallivant around like some shameless hussy!”

Sonjuh restrained herself, not throwing the contents of her bowl in the older woman’s face. Instead she set it down on the puncheon floor, where Slasher gave the huffing grunt that meant don’t mind if I do in dog and went to it with lapping tongue and slurping sounds. He was used to yelling.

“I made an oath ’fore God, ’n’ I can’t make it good sitting in the loomhouse, or married off to some crofter you bribe to take spoiled goods with my kin’s stock,” she shouted back. “What’s worse luck ’n oath-breaking to God?”

“Fighting is man’s work, ’n’ so are oaths ’fore the Lord o’ Sky,” her aunt screamed, shaking her fist at Sonjuh; several of the younger children around the table began to cry, and most of the adults were looking at their feet, or the rafters. “You’re a hex-bearer, ’n’ you’ll bring His anger down on us all.”

“Lord o’ Sky saved us all in the Hungry Years, didn’t he? Brought back the sun after Olsaytan ate it? Leastways, that’s what the Jefe says come midsummer ’n’ midwinter day when he kills cows for God; you telling me he’s lying? Lord o’ Sky hears an oath, don’t matter who says the say.”

Aydwah’s head had been turning back and forth like a man watching a handball game. Now he rose to his feet and roared at her: “You speak to your aunt with respect, missie, or I’ll take my belt to your backside-that’s the law, too, me being your eldest male kin. Or have you forgot that part?”

“You could try!” Sonjuh yelled, all caution cast aside.

Her uncle’s roar was wordless as he started a lunge for her. Sonjuh jumped backward from the bench, cat-lithe, looking around for something to grab and hit with-never hit a man with your bare hand unless you were naked and had your feet nailed to the floor, her father had told her. An ax handle someone had been whittling from a billet of hickory was close by, and she snatched it up and held it two-handed.

That wasn’t needful; Aydwah froze as Slasher came up from beneath the table, paws on the bench and bristling until he looked twice his size-which was considerable, because the dog had more than a trace of plains wolf in his bloodlines, and outweighed his mistress’s 115 pounds. His black lips curled back from long wet yellow-white teeth, and the expression made his tattered ears and the scars on his muzzle stand out. Slasher had been her father’s hunting dog-fighting dog, too; the posse had found him clubbed senseless and left for dead at the ruins of her family’s cabin, and he’d woken to track the war band that carried her off.

“Get me my bow,” Aydwah said, slow and careful, not moving as others tumbled away from the table and backed to a safe distance. “Sami, get me my bow. That there dog is dangerous and has to be put down.”

“You shoot at the dog saved my life, you die,” Sonjuh said flatly. The words left her lips like pebbles, heavy dense things not to be called back. “I’m leaving. I’ll send for my family’s gear later; look after it real careful, or I’ll call the Jefe to set the law on you.”