Chloë (6 page)
Chloë
giggled as she tried on her backpack, “I’ve never gone on a trip like this
before. So it is a half day trip to Edmundshire? It looked pretty
far on the map.”
“Well
it is about a two hour walk to the river. From there we catch a barge and
float the rest of the way down to the city. The good part is that it
means we will only have to lug these packs for those first few hours,” replied
Heather.
“I
thought the river flowed south?” asked Chloë a little confused.
“It
does,” grinned Heather cryptically.
“And
Edmundshire is to the north… So are we skipping out and going to another town?”
asked Chloë fairly bewildered.
Heather
laughed, “No, not really. There is a Gatehouse in the town to the south
that connects directly to Edmundshire there in the north. Thus we can
either walk six hours north over rough terrain, or take a casual float south
for an hour and a half or two and then take the Gate back north.”
“So
what is with these gatehouses?” Chloë was now completely lost.
Heather
knitted her brow, “Um, seriously, you’ve never heard about the Highland
Gatehouses? Maybe you are used to them being called the barbicans…”
Chloë’s
blank look spoke volumes.
“Oh!”
replied Heather, actually mildly embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I figured you would
have heard of them; they are one of the Highland’s unique features.”
Chloë
shook her head and laughed, “Sorry, no. It’s only by accident that I even
learned your language. Back on Bervik III, the Highlands only ever came
up from a historical perspective.”
“Bervik
III?” asked Heather suddenly. “That is where you are from?”
Chloë
nodded, “I didn’t really want it to get around, but you know so much about me
already. So you’ve heard of it before?”
Heather
had an evil grin but was busting her gut to maintain control; she didn’t make
it and broke out laughing, “Oh, I wonder if Dad knows that…” She then
broke into a laughing fit so hard she started to cry and hyperventilate both.
“Calm
down girl! It’s not that big of a deal,” Chloë offered as she tried to
help stabilize Heather.
“Oh…
I’m sorry about that,” gasped Heather. “Where were we before I lost it?”
“Gatehouses?”
replied Chloë suddenly slightly worried about Heather’s emotional stability.
“Right,
Gatehouses,” replied Heather as she calmed her breathing. “The Gatehouses
have portals that connect from one to another. The science types refer to
them as stabilized wormholes.”
“Wormholes?
As in like what starships use?” gasped Chloë as she started to understand
the utility and uniqueness of the situation. “So we just go from one gate
house and instantly pop out of the other a hundred miles away?”
“Pretty
much. What is really awesome is watching them pull these barges and small
boats out of the water, put them on rollers and then run them through the
wormholes. Those same craft are
always
flowing downstream between
those two towns.”
“Well
that certainly beats having to drag them backwards upstream or just throwing
them away.”
“Exactly.
So, now does it all make good sense?” asked Heather with a broad grin.
“Yep,
float south, take the wormhole-gate thingy north, and we’re there!”
“Exactly!”
beamed Heather.
“So
what was the whole thing about Bervik III?” asked Chloë carefully.
Heather
broke into a fit of laughing, “Oh… my… um, just ask me on another day.”
Chloë
shrugged with some resignation, “Okay, I’ll ask later. Don’t think I’ll
forget!”
“Gotcha!
Come on, let’s fill up and head out!”
“Girls?”
called Ivy from the hall.
“Yes,
First Mother?” replied Heather as she poked her head into the hall.
“What’s up? Need us to hang around for a few more days?”
Ivy
laughed, “No. I think Maria’s plan is wonderful. I just thought
you’d like to know that April and May will be joining you in the evening two
days from now. They’ve been asked to play at a wedding reception.”
Heather
grinned, “And I know what that means!”
“What?”
asked Chloë.
“Dancing!”
beamed Heather.
Chloë
laughed, “You do like your dancing don’t you.”
“Doesn’t
everyone?”
It
was a pleasant enough walk. Heaven knows Chloë had walked further just a
few days earlier in the cold and biting rain, but walking the sylvan path with
Heather was a wonderful change from that earlier traveling. Her pack full
of clothes and just a light snack was fairly heavy. Well, not really
that
heavy, but it was the heaviest thing she had ever had to carry such a
distance. Always before, someone else, a servant, would have carried such
a heavy thing for her. But Chloë enjoyed the honest work of doing things
for herself. The entire concept of being self-reliant was alien to her
upbringing and she loved the contrast. Here was Heather, her friend of
just a few days, off looking for an apprenticeship while she was just tagging
along. Ultimately she was going to have to think about continuing her
education in a more practical direction. She wasn’t going to be someone’s
trophy wife, some broodmare to be passed along as a political favor.
Chloë
marveled at Heather and her independence: she had a part time job and was now
traveling a hundred miles from home with no escort, male, parent or otherwise
and both Heather and her parents were comfortable with the arrangement.
Chloë greatly enjoyed her company and was struck by the thought that if Chloë
hadn’t showed up, Heather would probably be making this same journey regardless
but
alone!
Traveling so far from home with a friend is one thing,
but to do it alone? Heather had a level of discipline and independence
that Chloë had never even imagined for herself.
Trophy
wife. Now
there
was a concept that seemed to be alien to these
people. Chloë still giggled at the thought of Ivy, First Mother, as
running the house. And then there was Maggie, Lady Mayor of the
town. That was such a change from the palace. If a woman had spoken
up there, she’d be sent to her room. Here, the women ran most of the
politics. Well, there were four times as many of them as
well. It was all very odd. Even the relationship between Ivy and
Llewellyn was different than what she would have expected in a straight role
reversal. Ivy was head of the house, but Llewellyn certainly wasn’t
subservient. Heck, none of the other mothers were really subservient,
more that each had a job to do and they did it. It was an exotic
symbiosis that she hadn’t expected.
“Heather,”
prodded Chloë, “how normal is your family?”
Heather
laughed immediately, “Um, not very! It’s huge for one and everyone there
is such a wonderful live wire.”
Chloë
smiled, “Yes, they are all quite unique and strong people. But I
was more asking about their relationships between each other.”
“Well,
Dad is kinda glued to Moira right now because she is… well… that is still quite
odd, but he is,” Heather laughed, “Dad is strange any way you look at him.”
“Hmm.
Well, I only have your family to compare to so let me ask this a different
way: the social order and precedence. You family appears to be a
unit rather than First Mother and her minions, if that makes any sense.”
“Minions,”
laughed Heather, “That’s rich. I think we kids would constitute the
minions.” Heather thought a bit before continuing, “I’m not sure if you
would say our family is typical in that regard, but we are close to the ideal,
I guess. Did that make sense? A good family is a unit, not a First
Mother and her supporters.” Heather laughed, she did that a lot,
“Something else you may not have caught onto: the parents will all but tie
their tails in knots to not pay attention to the
biological
mother of a
given child. A good mother treats
all
the children like her own,
even when it is kind of obvious. Ivy and me for example; you don’t end up
with this much red hair by accident. But if you ask
any
of my
mothers, I am
her
child.”
“I
confess I had been trying to figure out which kids went with which biological
mother. I guess that is actually bad form.”
“Yep.
I wouldn’t do that; it is very impolite. That is one of the fun parts of
twins―there is an immediate level of ambiguity!”
Chloë
grinned, “Well, now knowing, I’ll try to avoid that little social
faux pas
.
It is pretty wild watching how much the twins, young and old, enjoy the
confusion they cause.”
“Oh,
oh yes! Then there are those evil triplets. I swear they swap
names.”
“I’ve
never seen any twin males up here.”
“Neither
have I,” replied Heather with a shrug. “What’s it like in the lowlands?”
“Oof!
If I think back to biology class, fraternal twins are one in fifty and
identical twins are one in two hundred. Male or female. Triplets
are screaming rare.”
“That’s
one thing we have in common at least!”
“Um,
can I ask another question?” asked Chloë timidly.
“We’ve
still got most of the day to travel, so sure! It helps pass the time.”
“Have
you really thought about what you want to do for a living, and can you make any
suggestions for someone with a formal, but utterly worthless education?”
“Oh,
if I only knew…”
The
next leg of the trip went pretty much as Heather had described. After a
long, but pleasant, two hour hike, they arrived at a small village of just a
handful of buildings. It operated as a simple dock and ferry service for
people and goods traversing the river. They hopped onto a covered barge
along with two other people and started floating down the river at a gentle
pace.
“The
ferry is free?” Chloë asked somewhat surprised.
“People
can take a barge for free if there is room available. If you want to
guarantee a spot or take a sail or paddle boat, then that costs.”
“It
seems that they would be losing money letting people ride for free.”
“Well,
it’s the people who are paying for the bulk cargo that make the rules.
The guys guiding the barges just do the same thing regardless. The
merchant’s point of view is if you get to a market town with more money in your
pockets, you’re more likely to
spend
it at the town and everyone gets a
share.”
“That
is quite practical.”
“Not
sure if it actually pans out in the math, but it is pretty much a tradition
more than anything I guess.”
“Your
town seemed to have a big market; these are bigger then, I take it?”
“Yep.
Edmundshire is the largest town within two hundred miles. More of a
commercial hub than an agricultural hub.”
“Hence
your Mother’s idea that it may be a better place to look for an
apprenticeship.”
“Yep,
yep! It’s a nice town, lots of cool shops and new faces to meet.”
Heather blew a raspberry. “It’s just not fun spending all that time
looking for schooling or a job.”
Chloë
laughed, “Well, it beats getting married off!”
“You
got me there. That still sounds so weird, honestly. And at your
age? Yiesh!”
Chloë
smiled and nodded. Things were just so different… not just different,
better
.
A
little more than an hour later, they found themselves floating up to the docks
and the low boat ramps that made up the outer reaches of Tavelton or South
Edmundshire as several people joked. The most immediate feature was the
large monolithic stone structure that was the so-called Gatehouse. It was
massive
! It was easily a four story tall block of solid living
stone that had been intricately and lovingly carved. The structure had a
massive set of stone doors that stood open revealing a simple hall with three
well-carved interior walls. But it was the center of each wall that
caught Chloë’s eyes: they were portals. Wormholes by any other name, they
were fascinating to watch as she could see out of them and into other
Gatehouses and passages that she knew to be hundreds of miles away.
Heather
laughed as she watched Chloë gawk at the structure. “The Gatehouse back home is
actually larger, and has more interior rooms. I should have taken you by
that one before we came here.”
“And
it is carved like this one?” asked Chloë flabbergasted.
“Yep,
top to bottom, carved over every square inch. They say it is a
single solid block, that’s cool in its own right, but the fascinating part is
how detailed the carvings are, and the structure is at
least
ten
thousand years old. No sign of weathering or anything.”
Chloë
nodded as she appreciated the uniqueness of the artifacts. “Ten thousand years
of rain and you’d expect at least a little wear and tear. So who made
these?”
Heather
smiled as she shook her head. “We have no clue. They were here when the
Highlands government was restructured some eighteen hundred years ago.
Even back then they just called them ‘the Ancients.’ Not much of a
name, but, well, you had to call them something.”
“We
just walk through the portal and ‘poof’ we are in Edmundshire?”
“Well,
there is not ‘poof,’
per se
, and we actually end up a quarter mile
outside of town, but yes, more or less. Shall we?”
Chloë
grinned and took Heather’s hand as she timidly approached the portal. It
looked like nothing; that is to say, there wasn’t even a shimmer save for the
very perimeter of the wormhole. It just looked like the world continued as it
should. It was quite bizarre. When one traveled through a wormhole
in the blackness of space, the portal was only open for a split second, so
there was no chance to marvel. Here, it was like time stood still.
“And they don’t require some insane power source to operate?”
“Not
that we know of, come on! Let’s get to town!” Heather pulled her
through the threshold and they instantly found themselves standing in a similar
Gatehouse just outside of Edmundshire. The trees visible outside were
much shorter, almost exclusively pines and the air had a bit of a chill to
it. Chloë shuddered lightly against the cold.
“Sorry,
should have warned you about the temperature, it’s about another two thousand
feet higher in elevation. We are just barely below the tree line.”
“And
there isn’t a strong wind at the portal from the difference in air pressure?”
Heather
just stood there, “Um, no. I’d never thought about that, but you are
right. There ought to be a stiff breeze. Hmm… something to ask
Maria about when we get home.” She smiled broadly as they stepped out
into the sun. “Well, we can do that later. Come on! Let’s go
check out the town!” Heather started a light jog down the path beckoning
Chloë to follow. Chloë just grinned and started after her. Once
Heather got going, it was impossible to slow her down!
They
quickly made their way down the short cobblestone road and turned to enter the
town; it was just like the other town, but much, much larger! Stone
and timber frame were the norm as before, but the buildings were larger, the
streets broader, the fountains more ornate. In the distance she could
make out the soaring roof of what she guessed was the town hall, easily six or
seven stories tall. On the side road, Chloë could make out beasts of
burden, large elk of some type, hauling carts and dragging barges down stone
lined canals.
Heather
noticed Chloë watching the elk pull the barges and interjected, “The canals
make a big ‘H’ through the town. They keep the pedestrian paths clear of
the canals and then they take a break twice a day, every day, to clean the
animal, um, ‘stuff’ off of those side streets. Then they flood the canals
twice a week, drain them and then refill them. Keeps things quite tidy!”
“Yes
indeed! So they hose the animal waste into the canals and then take care
of it later, but at regular times. Quite practical.”
Heather
shook her head, “Nope, there are side vents to fast moving sewer lines that
they use for the animal waste, they hardly ever have waste end up in the
canals. They drain those mainly to make sure icky bugs don’t set up
house!”
“Wow!”
remarked Chloë, “That is quite a system. It is such a bizarre
dichotomy—beasts of burden in the side streets and artificial wormholes
connecting the towns.”
Heather
just shrugged, “Never thought about it. It’s just what I grew up
with. Come on, my cousins’ inn is toward the middle of town. Let’s
get there so we can lose these backpacks.”
Chloë
nodded and smiled, “Let’s!”
The
pair quickly threaded their way through the town and converged on a four story
structure with a fanciful sign of two foxes playing leap-frog hanging out
front. As they turned to face into the structure, Chloë could finally
make out the lettering:
Playful Fox Inn, Daily or Weekly Rates. Pub Open
Noon-Ten o’clock. Ellis Foxglove Proprietor.
They moved inside and
blinked as they tried to adjust to the dimmer light. Heather ignored the
front desk and turned and poked her head into the attached pub on the ground
floor. Like the lobby, it was simple but tidy. Massive wooden
tables with alternating benches and chairs filled the room. Heather’s attention
was with the lone woman busily preparing the room, “Hi, Kelly! Where is
Ellis?”
The
woman stopped from her work and turned and smiled before closing and hugging
Heather, “Oh, hello, dear! Glad you made it so quickly. Ellis is in
back. Let’s go!”
Heather
motioned for Chloë to follow and the three of them were soon in the back
storage rooms where Kelly passed the two girls off to an older lady with a
white coat and black rosettes, almost exactly like Chloë’s. Silly as it
may be, that helped her feel more comfortable immediately.
“Good
to see you!” beamed Ellis as she hugged Heather. “The trip went well
then, I take it? Oh, and so you must be Chloë. Maria’s letter
mentioned you would be coming along. I’m Ellis, proprietor here. Do
you want to see your rooms first, or grab lunch?”
Both
sounded very good, but the desire to lose the backpacks was stronger. The
pair was soon shown to a pair of adjoining rooms on the second floor facing the
town center. A quick bounce on the ever-so-comfortable beds, and they
returned to the pub for a simple, but very filling lunch.
“I
took the liberty of telling Fiona Greenburrow you were coming to town,” offered
Ellis as the two younger girls ate. Heather’s fur suddenly flared and
stood on end causing Ellis to break out laughing. “No, she’s not trying to set
you up with a boy again. She wants to know if you will help with the
weddings coming up day after next. It’s four new families and six family
additions and they are all holding a joint reception.”
“So…
what does she need me for?” asked Heather suspiciously.
“Dance
instructor for the younger crowd as well as for some Lowlanders who will be
visiting. A lowlander is marrying a local, so his family isn’t going to
be used to our customs,” grinned Ellis back. “See, nothing scary.”
Heather
visible relaxed, “Ok, doing a crash course in local dance. Now that does
sound like fun.”
“Good,
if you could meet her after lunch she would really appreciate it.”
Heather
nodded and turned to Chloë, “Now’s the chance to learn some local dances.”
“That
sounds like fun,” replied Chloë with a broad grin.
