“Avoiding me? I told her it was my first time. Wend, there are things we're not born knowing. It's dark in the House of Healing. I hit her jaw with my elbow before I got the knack.”-of moving slowly, touching everywhere. Darkness had its good points.
“She wanted to let you talk to the rest of us. What happened last night?”
“Tarzana. She came back to the House of Healing with me after dinner. I didn't know what she had in mind, so I didn't push. I was hoping she'd tell me why Loria, if she didn't want to see me. Why. But I didn't know how to ask.
“She said, 'Tim, do you want children?'
“I reached out and got her hand and she said, 'No, Tim,' and I stopped.” His memory raced on ahead. Tarzana's voice in the dark: You do want children, don't you?
He'd laughed and said, What, from way over here?
Aren't you interested?
I was, he said lightly, hiding disappointment. It was as if Tarzana blew hot and then cold, offered and then pulled back. Loria had done that too, then relented. He'd have been angry if a Spiral girl did that. Here, he might be missing some signal, some custom.
Loria says she asked you, but you didn't answer, Tarzana said.
She asked, he told Tarzana smugly. I think I answered- He snapped back to the present. “We weren't talking about the same thing at all, were we?”
“No,” said Wend.
“Uh-huh.” How could he not be flattered? And horrified! These waters were deeper than he'd expected. “Loria knows I didn't know anything. She just...
“Went ahead with it,” Wend said.
“Why didn't she just leave? When she knew I had the wrong idea.”
Her mother's lips twitched upward. “Maybe she liked the wrong idea. A girl might. She's seen every Twerdahi boy and man every day of her life. She could wait for a caravan, but that's so...” Wend smiled. “Everyone does that. You're different. You can do things we can't. Not just the bicycle, Tim, that only came with you. But the oven.”
Are all Twerdahl women like this? He chose to ask instead, “So why didn't Loria tell Tarzana?”
“Why don't I ask her that?”
He couldn't stop grinning. “Big joke. On her sister. So why didn't Tarzana leave?”
“Big joke?”
On Loria? On Tim Hann? “Wend, where does that put me? I can't be dating both of your daughters.” A weird impulse made him add, “Can I?”
“No, but you don't have to make up your mind right away.”
“Good,” he said. “Wonderful,” meaning it. Then he said, “Wait. Yes, I do. Is that what I think it is?”
The dust plume had settled some while they talked, but it was still there.
Wend said, “They'll he here late tomorrow. Speckles are cheap after they leave Spiral Town, if they've got any left. We usually wait. Unless we're out.”
“I never told you why I left Spiral Town.”
“Not just following Cavorite?”
Jemmy told her.
Caravan. Merchants' guns. Fedrick blowing a watermelon to bits. Eight years later: caravan. Fedrick again, Fedrick's gun, Fedrick dying on the floor.
Tim Hann was the mask that hid a merchant-killer. Nobody in Twerdahl Town knew that, but they all knew he was a stranger come straight down the Road ahead of the caravan. Anyone in Twerdahl Town might blurt that out to any merchant.
He didn't tell her his name.
She listened and nodded. He was expecting her to shrink from him, but she didn't.
“I think I'd best keep moving down the Road,” he said. “Even if they send someone ahead, I can outride him on a bike.”
“How will you feed yourself?”
“I found you. Further down the Road, maybe there are people too.”
“Speckles? You can't go to merchants, Tim. What do you think you'll do, trade for speckles with locals? They had to buy theirs from merchants. Idon't keep more than I need for my family. Most people don't.”
“Okay, I get stupid and die. At least it's not right away. Wend, I don't really want to leave.”
She said, “Marry Loria or marry Tarzana. Marry into the family. We'll tell them you're one of us. Do you mind changing your name?”
Huh?
“When a wanderer marries a local-”
“No, I don't mind.”
“It's rare, but it has happened.”
“I don't mind.''
“All right. Three days now you've been a Twerdahl. Let a merchant see you on a board first, he'll see you as a Twerdahi whatever you do next.”
“Am I good enough?” A clumsy Twerdahl would catch a suspicious eye.
“I've watched. Tim, you're good with the board.”
“And cooking? Let me do some of the cooking.”
“Right.”
“I need to buy some things. I don't know what you use for money.”
“Money?”
Jemmy was only carrying a few coins, the price of three or four meals. He showed them to Wend. When she shook her head, he gave them to her. It would be bad if merchants found those on him. Then he asked, “What do you do if you want something?”
“Ask. Give something back.”
“With a caravan?”
“With them too, but they want to know what they're getting.”
“I bet they do!”
“What do you need?”
“More clothes. Shoes. Speckles. A board, I guess.”
“Nobody has all of that.”
“I need the whole town to cover for me, to make the merchants think I'm one of them. Wend, what if I give Twerdahl Town my bike?”
“I'll talk to them,” she said. “Over dinner.”
The dust crawled toward Twerdahl Town.
The ovens in the Bloocher kitchen outclassed Tim Hann's first pile of lava chunks. Jemmy was sure he could improve his oven. Sitting on his board, his feet wiggling in the sand, he started making sketches.
A few boys watched over his shoulder and made comments.
The Bednacourt girls came to him, all three. “We've been talking,” Loria said.
“With Wend,” Tarzana said.
“Mother,” amplified Glind.
Men of Jemmy's age surrounded them, and they were all listening. Loria pulled him to his feet. “Let's surf.”
The town's teen boys followed them into the water. Once beyond the waves, the boys who tried to join them were somehow cut off, discouraged. They watched from a distance, while Bednacourt girls surrounded Tim Hann like three predators.
Tim preempted the conversation. “Your mother explained some things. I guess I was a fool.”
“A fool doesn't get what he wants,” Loria said.
“We talked it over,” said Tarzana.
Loria: “You're fianced. Both of us.”
Tarzana:"Dating us, you'd say. But that can't last forever, Tim.”
Glind: “So no sex.”
Tarzana:"Until you make up your mind.”
Tim smiled at Glind and said, “That's easy for you to say.” Glind's eyes dropped. Tarzana hastily said, “No, now, Tim, you shouldn't even be fianced to two women. It's only because you're from up the Road.”
Loria: “Hands off Glind.”
Tim: “I never asked Glind to make babies with me. Why bring her? I'm not as tough as I look,” meaning that two girls should be able to ward off an attack.
Glind's hands thrashed water, turning her board. Tim called, “Big joke, Glind! Glind, I don't mind you talking for your sisters. I don't mind waiting either. I want to know what you're like. Both. What I can't figure out-”
Glind turned her board to face him again. He said, “I can't figure how you and you, and you too, Glind, decided I'd make a good husband. How do you know?”
They didn't answer.
“I told Wend. Did she tell you? The merchants want me. If I can pass for a Twerdahi, they'll pass me by. Did she tell you why they want me?”
“Tell everyone,” Glind said coldly. “At dinner.”
An arc of strangers faced him as they carried their boards in. Surfers straggled in behind him. Jemmy felt like a bug on a pin.