“Hi, Lesley!” Thisbe beamed as she entered the living room and found, slouched in the comfort of the sofa, her dear … actually it is difficult to decide whether to call Lesley Thisbe’s ba’sib or her bash’mate, since adopted Lesley is not a ba’sib born in Thisbe’s bash’, but neither is she a bash’mate chosen in adulthood. Either way, Thisbe smiles on her like family. “Oh, and Carlyle, you’re here too, good.” She nodded to the sensayer, who had made a nest of cushions on the sofa opposite. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m sure you want to get our session done so you can get back to the festivities.”
Lesley scooted forward on the sofa, ruining the doodles her fingertip had traced into the plush. “Is Holly stalking you again?”
“No, this is a new one. I’ll handle it.” Thisbe’s fast fingers pulled the pins from her hair, and let its black torrent tumble free from the prison of a professional clip. “Did everything arrive for the barbeque?”
“Yes, though I can’t imagine how the nine of us are supposed to eat all that one day. What are the twins growing in the meatmaker, a whole bison?” Lesley rose, and offered Carlyle a hand up from the couch whose down-soft foam threatened to trap him in its comfort. “Thanks for the session. Another the Tuesday after next?”
“Three o’clock,” he verified.
Thisbe took the least squished fig from the still-too-full bowl on the side table. “Wait, you two just had a session?”
Carlyle smiled. “Yes, but I don’t mind doing another right away.”
“You’re not too tired?”
He shook his head. “I do it all the time.”
Thisbe chuckled. “Quite the voker, aren’t you?”
Carlyle beamed. “Shall we?”
Thisbe led Carlyle downstairs to the darkness of her bedroom, which showed no sign of Dominic’s intrusion. But she did not stop there, stepping out instead into the wildflower trench.
“Are you taking me to them?” Carlyle felt the need to whisper it. “To Bridger?”
“Yes.”
Carlyle tiptoed behind her, savoring the song of insects, the buffeting of grass fluff aglow with slanting sun. To an expert, his delight in the Book of Nature might betray something of Carlyle’s own beliefs, which his sensayer’s vows forbid him to discuss, but I will not strip him naked yet. Eavesdropping through Thisbe’s tracker, I caught the warning whistle of the lookout as the soldiers spotted the approaching pair, but I doubt that a child of peace like Carlyle could differentiate All Clear from birdsong.
“Welcome, Carlyle, Thisbe. Thanks for coming out on a holiday.” It was the Major’s voice, seasoned and powerful, like an old piano which sounds better than new ones because it’s yours.
Thisbe spotted the soldiers, assembled on an upside-down plastic bucket, with chips of wood as benches pulled close around a small block, draped like a banquet table. “No problem, Major. I brought something special today.”
“All right!”
“Three cheers for Thisbe!”
“Set it here!”
Thisbe drew a small box from her pocket, and from it unpacked a tiny banquet in colored clay: cheeses, salami, French bread, pea-sized apples and peaches, a tiny roast fowl with the brown and green speckles of stuffing painted around the edge, milk, wine bottles with tiny intricate labels, plates of cookies and croissants, even a three-tiered wedding cake two centimeters tall.
“Look at all that grub!”
“You’re a goddess of plenty, Thisbe!”
Thisbe basked in their thanks as she set out the tiny meal. Most of the food was not quite to scale with the soldiers, apples the size of volleyballs in their arms, the wine bottles standing higher than the knees of the men who struggled to stand them upright, but it was close enough.
Lieutenant Aimer smiled up at Carlyle. “We usually eat ordinary food, and sawing hunks off a giant strawberry or eating a gingerbread house from inside out is every bit as fun as you’d imagine, but sometimes one just wants to break bread like a normal person.”
Carlyle’s eyes were bright with wonder as he leaned low over the bucket. “I can understand that. Where’s Bridger?”
“Looking at a nest of baby birds.” The Major pointed to some brush nearby, where the boy crouched, half-hidden by the stems.
As when a mountain climber on some cloud-locked peak grows so weary that he forgets the world around him in the pain, and pull, and pain, and pull, aware of nothing but his muscles, fog, and stone, but then suddenly a bright wind sweeps the clouds aside, and there open the boundless blue heavens, the sentinel heads of mountains thrusting through the fog floor, and the climber gasps as he sees, sovereign up above, the terrible, all-giving Sun, so Carlyle gasped at the sight of Bridger. And so he should. So should we all.
“Have they…,” he whispered when his breath returned, “did they make their decision yet? Whether to bring back the one who died?”
“They wanted to talk you first.”
Carlyle’s pale brows arched in wonder at the brave patience of this little boy. “One question for you first.”
“Just one?” the Major teased.
“One above all. Can you tell me whether this is Bridger’s first taste of death? The first time one of the animated toys has died? Apart from the person in the photograph, I heard about that.”
A veteran’s sigh is always heavy. “No, but it’s the first time since Bridger was old enough to understand. There were men from both sides in the soldier playset. When he first animated us we didn’t understand what was going on. There were some casualties in the minutes before we managed to spot the giant three-year-old in the sky and call a truce. Back then Bridger didn’t know enough of the world to understand resurrection, and we didn’t manage to keep the corpses.”
“You fought each other?”
“Green versus Yellow.” The Major nodded to Stander-Y, who still wore the desert beige of the opposing force. “The world has seen more causeless wars.”
Carlyle’s brow furrowed in sympathy.
“We all remember our war,” the Major continued, “the rage of it, the cities, families that never quite existed. My men are eager to talk to you too, but they’ve waited this long and can wait longer. It’s the boy that matters most.” He turned and shouted toward the brush, “Bridger! Come. It’s time.”
Bridger rose from the bushes and approached, his clothing studded with chaff and seeds. Did I not describe him properly before? His clothes were almost as loose as a Cousin’s: a rough, woven child’s wrap with broad blue stripes, oversized enough for his hands to hide in the frayed sleeves, and baggy canvas play-pants, once khaki but grass-stained to a mottled chaos no printed camouflage can match. His face was perfect as an angel’s. It’s not just a pseudo-parent’s love that makes me say so. Even the sloppy clothes could not conceal his fine limbs, slim and lively, like when Cupid is painted as a youth, fragile in Psyche’s arms, instead of as a pudgy infant. His skin was light but not too light, and luminous, like wheat soap, his hair not pure blond but a pale brown graced with blond, like an antique bronze whose gilding has not completely worn away. If Bridger had had parents, they must have been of European stock, but he seemed more a painter’s fantasy than any mother’s son.
“They have a tracker,” Carlyle observed as the boy approached, marking the device clipped over his right ear.
“Yes,” Thisbe answered. “They have to look like a normal kid in case someone spots them. But it’s not on the network, jury-rigged, our own.” Thisbe smiled softly at the child, who dragged his feet as he approached, as if each longed to hide behind the other. “Come here, honey,” the witch coaxed. “I brought you something too.”