He went into the kitchen to brew a cup of peppermint tea. He liked the warmth and reassurance of tea, and the sweet, pungent scent reminded him of the smell of fresh aka leaves. He huddled in front of the stove, waiting for the water to boil.
“Hei, pikkuinen, what are you doing?” It was Eerin’s father.
“Making some tea, Isoisi” he said, using the Finnish word for Grandfather. “Would you like some?”
“You look cold, Moki. Go sit by the heater and warm yourself. I’ll make the tea. Let me guess, you want peppermint, right?”
“Yes, Isoisi” Moki said, “but I should do it. You are an elder, after all, and the father of my sitik.”
Teuvo smiled. “It’s all right, Moki, I may be an elder, but I’m not so ancient that I can’t make a mug of tea for my daughter’s bami. Besides, Juna just stalked up to her room without saying a word, and I want to hear about what went on in the library.”
“Now,” he prompted when they were settled near the heater in the living room, “tell me what happened.”
Moki told him about Bruce’s fears for the child.
“I don’t understand, Isoisi, I thought he was my friend. I thought he liked me. Why is he afraid to let me help Juna with her baby?”
Teuvo stared into his mug of tea. “Many humans are afraid of what’s different, Moki. When I married Juna’s mother, Mariam, both our families were extremely upset.”
“Why?” Moki asked, puzzled.
“Mariam’s skin was even darker than Juna’s, and my skin, as you can see, is light. She and I came from very different people. Our families were afraid of how different we were from each other. They wanted their children to marry someone like them.
“To be honest, it was hard at first. There were some terrible arguments.” Teuvo smiled, remembering. “Sometimes I think the only reason we stayed together was because we couldn’t understand each other’s insults. But there were good times too, lots of them. When she died, I felt like I’d lost my other half.” He paused for a moment, his gaze turned inward, lost in remembrance.
“Most of our relatives forgave us when Juna was born,” Teuvo continued. “It’s amazing how grandchildren can bring a family together again. Our children and grandchildren are very precious to us.
“I’ve had some misgivings about you and Ukatonen and the child,” he admitted. “But I know Juna better than Bruce does, and I trust her judgment. If she’s willing to trust you and Ukatonen, then you must be worthy of that trust.”
“You honor me. I will try to be a good brother to your grandchild,” Moki told Teuvo. He spoke as formally as he could, given the limitations of human sound speech.
Juna’s father chuckled. “Of course you will, pojanpoika, of course you will.”
“But what about Bruce?” Moki asked. “How can I achieve harmony with him?”
Teuvo shook his head, “I don’t know, Moki. You should talk to him, but he may not be as interested in harmony as you are. There may be no solution to this problem, Moki. But if there is, I’m sure you will find it.”
Ukatonen turned up the heat on his warmsuit. It was deadly cold this morning. In the shadow of the barn, the ground was covered with a thin white coating. He took off one of his gloves and touched a stone* covered with the white stuff. The rime coating the stone burned with cold, but disappeared when he touched it, leaving only a dark wet spot on the rock where his finger had been. Ukatonen sniffed his finger, smelling nothing but moisture. He shoved his hand back into his glove, grateful for the heated glove’s warmth. His whole body felt suddenly warmer, as though he had stepped into a warm room. He stood, feeling his hand slowly stop aching from the cold.
“What is this white stuff, Teuvo?” he asked Juna’s father, who was watching him.
“It’s frost, frozen water vapor. It settles onto the ground on cold nights. It’ll be gone as soon as it warms up a bit.”
“It will get warmer, then?” Ukatonen asked. He felt smothered inside the muffling warmsuit. While wearing it, he was restricted to human speech, or to small private words on his face, but in the cold, his skin became sluggish and unresponsive to his thoughts. He pulled his hood more closely around his face, leaving only his eyes and muzzle exposed to the numbing, burning cold.
Teuvo laughed, his breath becoming a white cloud in the cold air. “Of course it will. The pickers are already out in the vineyard, picking the grapes before they thaw for eiswein. I’ll have to go and oversee the crushing in about an hour. But for now”—he held up a pair of halters—“we have a little time to train the colts. They’ll be full of ginger this morning!”
“Ginger?” Ukatonen said, trying to put a questioning inflection into his voice.
“The cold will make them frisky and full of energy.”
“You mammals!” Ukatonen said reprovingly. “No sensible creature would live in a climate like this.”
“Come on, then, Mr. Cold-blood. A little work will warm you up.”
Ukatonen followed Juna’s father out to the relative warmth of the sunlit paddock. Helping Eerin unharness her horse had aroused his curiosity about the massive but gentle animals. They were so big, and yet so amazingly gentle and eager to please. Teuvo had noticed Ukatonen watching the horses, and had invited him to help work with them.
He enjoyed working with the horses. Teuvo seemed to think that he had a real gift for it, but it was just like taming pets at home, only easier. It helped that the horses had a real sweet-tooth, and weren’t afraid of him, but the rest was just patience and timing. Once you understood that they were herd animals, and hated being alone, the rest was easy.
Teuvo was the master of the horse atwa. He moved with the sureness of long practice around the flighty young colts. They were training these two colts to be light draft and riding horses for the Fortunati family, in exchange for help with the harvest. The colts had come up from the outer ring of the station, where the higher gravity helped them put on bone and muscle. According to Teuvo, horses raised in the outer ring were ready to ride four months earlier than horses on Earth.
Teuvo stood at the gate and gave a loud whistle. The horses trotted up, ears forward, eager for their treats, and for company. Ukatonen haltered the animals and led them to the smaller fenced ring to work with them.
“Today,” Teuvo said, “we’re going to work them on the lunge line to take the edge off, then start working them together as a team.”
The morning went well, the horses moving sweetly through their paces. At first they were skittish, but Teuvo and Ukatonen spoke soothingly, doling out treats with a liberal hand, and the colts soon settled down. Then it was a matter of walking the paired horses over carefully spaced poles on the ground to encourage them to synchronize their strides. Ukatonen led the colts, while Teuvo followed along behind, holding the long harness reins and giving commands. Soon they were moving in perfect unison.
The day’s training completed, Ukatonen and Teuvo unharnessed the horses, rubbed them down, and turned them loose in the paddock. Leaning against a metal fence rail, they watched the young horses settle down to graze.
“We did good work today, Ukatonen,” Teuvo said. “I’ve never seen two horses learn to move together that quickly. Look at them now. They’re even grazing in sync.”
Ukatonen nodded, watching the two horses eating in precisely the same rhythm.
“You linked with them, didn’t you?” Teuvo asked.
“I synchronized their body rhythms while I was leading them,” Ukatonen told him. “It is a thing my people do when they need to work together. It will wear off in an hour or two.”