Chuck snorted; he tended to pessimism, as befitted a gardener-turned-farmer.
"You're here and you're Chief. We're alive where most aren't," he pointed out. "And we're doing much better than most who are still alive. The two things are probably connected. Anyway, to repeat the question: "
Juniper shrugged, stroking her daughter's hair. "As to what it was like: some of it was very bad. Most of it was worse. And a few things like Corvallis were encouraging, which is what I'll make the most of when we have everyone together."
"You're turning into a politician, Juney," Dennis said, grinning.
"Now you're getting nasty," she said.
Then her smile died. "Hope is as essential as food. We have some here, of both. Out there: "
Judy went on grimly: "The bad news there is what broke up those refugee camps around Salem and Albany, apart from plain old-fashioned starvation."
She looked around the circle of faces; Juniper put her hand over Eilir's eyes; the girl stirred restively, and she sighed and removed the fingers. This wasn't a world where you could shelter children much; not anymore.
"Plague."
There were murmured invocations, and some old-fashioned blaspheming of the Christian deity.
"What sort of plague?" Dennis asked.
Judy snorted, and her husband chuckled, being more accustomed to the fact that she said exactly what she meant when medical matters came up. She scowled at him as she replied: "I'm not joking and it's not funny at all."
"Sorry-"
"It's Yersinia pestis. The Plague. The Black Death. Those camps were filthy and swarming with rats, and plague's a species-jumper endemic among ground squirrels here in the West. Then it got into someone's lungs and changed to the pneumonic form-which is standard in a big outbreak-and that spreads from person to person, no fleas needed. Spreads very easily. Plus pneumonic plague'll kill you fast, sometimes in a day. It's been a long time since our ancestors were exposed, much. Mortality rate of over ninety percent, like a virgin-field epidemic, and they ran out of antibiotics quickly."
That shocked Dennis into silence, not something easy to accomplish.
"I identified cholera morbus and typhus, too: and half a dozen other diseases. but the plague's worst of all. They tried to burn the bodies, but that broke down. We could see the smoke from the death-pits still rising around Salem."
"And we could smell it," Juniper said quietly. "We might think of setting out parties to burn down abandoned sections and clear out the rats."
Judy shook her head. "We're going to have to pull in our horns-set up a quarantine. And we shouldn't send anyone into the valley until the first hard frost unless it's life or death for the clan. With the plague and the cholera and typhus piled on top of sheer hunger: this time next year: a hundred thousand left between Eugene and Portland? Fifty thousand? Less?"
A cry from the heart: "If only we had some antibiotics! There probably are some left, but we can't find or ship them."
"Shit," her husband said quietly.
"Yes."
"And you haven't heard about what's happening in Portland," Juniper said. "We met a group that had come through the city-come all the way from Idaho-and: "
When she'd finished the silence went on until Juniper reached out and took the last of the cauliflower.
"Well, we don't have to think about this Protector person for a while. The sickness will shut the valley down until autumn."
There were some things you simply couldn't think about too much, or you'd lose the will to live. She suspected that many had sat down and died for just that reason.
"What did we trade the Smiths for this stuff?" she said in a lighter tone. "I'd have said they wouldn't spit on us if we were dying of thirst, for fear it would give us the strength to crawl to water."
The stay-at-homes looked at each other before turning back to her; she recognized the gesture as one showing more bad news was on the way. There had been an awful lot of that, since the Change.
"Bandits hit the Smith farm," Dennis said. "Took them by surprise. No survivors except for Mark."
That was the Smith's youngest, about seven. She winced; she hadn't liked the family, they'd been rude to her and Eilir before the Change and downright nasty to the Mackenzies since, but: And their children had been just children, and they'd taken in as many relatives from town and plain refugees as they could and not starve right away. And treated them fairly, which was more than you could say for some.
"Mark got out and ran to the Carsons', and they got a message to us; Cynthia galloped up on their horse. We called out everyone and trapped the bandits, there were about a dozen of them-took them by surprise, nobody on our side hurt much. None got away."
"Blessed be," Juniper said sadly. "I wondered what Cynthia Carson was doing, on guard duty here and calling herself a Mackenzie. Her whole family moved in, then?"
"Joined the clan formally the next day, them and all their dependents," Chuck Barstow said. "Not to mention the Georges, the Mercers, and the Brogies. They weren't happy with the way the Sutterdown militia showed up a day late and a dollar short, as usual."
She blinked, a snow pea pod halfway to her lips. That was an awful lot of people. He went on:
"The whole thing scared them all several different shades of green, and I don't blame them; it was damned ugly at the Smith place, and they saw it-the bandits had the whole bunch hung up by their heels and: well, I don't know if they were Eaters or just vicious. The problem is: "
"Oh," Juniper said. "Let me guess. Cynthia wants to join the coven, not just the clan-I remember her asking questions- and her folks aren't enthusiastic about it?"
"Worse. She and her mother and her brother want to join, and her father isn't too enthusiastic. Not that he's a bigot, he just thinks we're weird."
"We're Witches, Chuck," she said reasonably. "We are weird."
"Could be worse, from his point of view," he said. "We could be strict Gardnerians, and do everything nekkid."
"Wait a minute," Sally said, looking down at herself as the Wiccans laughed. "I hadn't noticed you guys got upset about skin, much. For example, right now we are naked."
"Well, yeah," Chuck replied. "But that's because right now we're in a bathtub."
That time everyone laughed; Sally joined in, then went on: "Who's Gardner? I've heard you coveners mention him."
Chuck grinned. He'd always enjoyed the early history of the modern Craft.
"Gardner was this early Wiccan dude over in England, back in the forties, fifties," he said. "In our particular Tradition, we sort of save skyclad work for special ceremonies or solitary rituals and use robes most or the time, but he thought you should do pretty well all the rituals skyclad, which is Wiccaspeak for bare-assed."
Juniper popped another piece of carrot into her mouth, savoring the earthy sweetness.
"There are two schools of thought on that," she said around it. "One is that the Goddess revealed to Gardner that you ought to always be skyclad in the Circle so you could conduct energy better, and it had nothing to do with sex. Then there's the other school, to which I subscribe."
"What's that?" Dennis asked.
"That's the school which says that Gardner was a lecherous, voyeuristic, horny old he-goat who loved to prance through the woods with nekkid women, but since he was also an Englishman born in 1884, he had to come up with a religious justification for it."
She sighed. "Of course, he did do a lot for the Craft; he's one of our modern founders. He just had: problems. And mind you, Gardnerians don't have his problems; they simply end up taking off their clothes an awful lot, even in really cold weather: chilblains, head colds: "
"Purists," Chuck said, and grinned. "Say, how many Gardnerians does it take to change a light bulb? Twelve: consisting of evenly matched male-female pairs to balance the Divine energy with a leader as number thirteen to-"
The Wiccans all chuckled, and then Juniper went on: "Back to business: I'll talk to John Carson and his family. Cynthia's a bit young for such a major decision: "