Page 9 of Backpacking through Bedlam

Our tent was set up near the center of the cluster, and not by design; I would have preferred to be closer to the edge, where I could play sentry and be sure nothing was going to get to the children or the elderly without going through me first. But these people saw Thomas as their savior, and me as his beloved wife. They wanted to be close to us, which meant we would always wind up dead in the middle when something like this happened.

One more reason to be eager to get them wherever it was they were going to wind up. We’d never have any real privacy until we did.

I looked around the bustling encampment, trying to find any sign of him, and when I didn’t, I shook my head, grabbed a lantern, and went back into the tent.

The mice had pulled a bunch of fabric scraps, sticks, and rocks into a rough circle and were putting on some sort of complicated pantomime. I stopped, blinking, as I reviewed the rituals I knew were normally performed around this time. Nothing sprang to mind. Finally, I asked, “What are you doing?”

“Priestess!” exalted one of my mice, and the other three joined in, all four of them cheering jubilantly at my return.

“Well, at least you’re glad to see me.” I hung my lantern from the hook on the central pole, filling the tent with a diffuse yellow glow. “So what’s the ritual? I don’t recognize it.”

“This is the Holy Rite of A Spotter Is Better Than the Alternative, Priestess,” said the mouse in Sally’s livery. “It is a newer mystery but still considered essential to understanding the relationship between the Precise Priestess and her consort!”

So one of the rituals about Annie and her Sam, then. Huh. “Why’s he not a god yet?” I asked.

“Priestess?”

“Sam’s a good boy, and he’s devoted to my granddaughter like a dog’s devoted to a bone. He’s not going anywhere any time soon. So why’s he a consort and not a god?”

“When the clergy of the Precise Priestess did begin to discuss his deification, she did appear before them most wrathful, and say, lo, ‘I Want Him To Stick Around, You Meddling Rodents, and You Marrying Us Off Before He’s Even Met My Siblings Won’t Help.’ This caused a Theological Debate among the colony, and we agreed that as each new god or priestess is either born to the family or Pledged to them, we could wait to decide his godhood until he had Pledged properly.”

The other mice murmured agreement. I snorted.

“Glad to see that you can take feedback from the family,” I said. “What about Sally?”

The mice looked perplexed. “The Conscripted Priestess has already been Pledged.”

“I wonder if she’s aware of that,” said Thomas.

I turned, and he was standing behind me, just inside the tent, looking unsure, like he wasn’t confident he’d be welcomed. I straightened, standing to meet him.

“Guess you found the tent,” I said. “I put it up by myself. I was real careful.”

“Alice—” he began.

“You know how I feel about that word,” I snapped. “My father always told me to be careful.”

“Because your father—and oh God, I can’t believe I’m saying something that makes it sound like I agreed with him, about anything, ever, but—your father loved you, and he didn’t want you getting hurt.”

“Guess you found the wrong tent,” I said, and moved to push past him to the exit.

He grabbed my shoulders before I made it more than a few steps.

“Alice, please,” he said.

I turned until we were eye to eye, my jaw set in a stubborn line. He looked back at me, nowhere near so stubborn. His own expression was more one of raw confusion, discomfort and desire warring for possession of his face.

“I spent fifty years thinking I was never going to see you again,” he said, miserably. “Fifty years imagining you alone, abandoned, hating me for leaving you . . . my only comfort was knowing that my deal with the crossroads precluded you making any deals of your own, and even that was a cold comfort, because it was possible the crossroads might declare my exile meant our agreement was fulfilled and they could do whatever they wanted. Fifty years of assassins wearing your face, coming to kill me because they could, because they’d been told it would wipe their own slates clean, sometimes just because they wanted to. Fifty years of missing you.”

“I had fifty years of missing you too,” I said, my own voice stiff.

“You had fifty years and a purpose,” he said. “You were going to find me if it killed you. I didn’t have that. I couldn’t get out. You might as well have been dead, for all the chance there was of me seeing you again. And then, sweet miracle, you fell out of the sky into my own backyard! You were there, alive and still looking for me. You wanted to be with me, after everything. After all the bad decisions, after leaving you, you still wanted me.”

“I still do,” I said, almost in a whisper.

“I thought I was never going to see you again,” he said, and took the hand off my left shoulder, moving to cup my cheek instead. Instinctively, I leaned into his touch. “Can you blame me for not wanting to see you hurt?”

“You don’t tell Sally to be careful.” It sounded petulant even to my own ears. I didn’t pull away.