Chap. 264 Hazel's Tale

Chap. 264 Hazel’s Tale

After several minutes, K’ndar and the horses had come to an agreement and began work.

He’d half expected to either hear Hazel prattle, or merely direct him from station to station.

He was wrong.

Hazel sat alongside him. Teak, the cat, sat between them. Once in a while, the cat would make a comment. At every stop, she jumped down to inspect the actions of the humans loading the wagon.

He was tickled by the cat’s obvious intelligence. Siskin would launch, as well, but didn’t take long to fill up on crawlers. Eventually, he left to go sleep on Raventh.

Throughout the day, Hazel regaled him with tales of the past. He was fascinated. He’d learned history, of course, but Pern’s history created by historians-and there were very few-was dry, dull statistics. It was NOT the same history as that of an elderly woman who’d lived through it. Her mind was a library of the past. Her thoughts flitted from one to another, but always came back to the main topic.

Later, he hardly remembered taking on cargo and dropping it off at the Hold. His hands and eyes drove, his mind listened.

“I’ve lived so long, K’nmar, that I have memories of memories. I’ve forgotten sequences, names..so you’ll have to forgive me if I repeat myself. I’m told I do that often, now.”

“It’s alright, ma’am. I’m enjoying just listening.”

“I’m what you youngsters call an Old Timer,” she started out. “See that fork in the path to the left? Bear that way, that’s our next pickup. I came forward with my first husband, a blue rider. To think he’d spent twenty years fighting Thread without a scratch, only to be killed after we jumped here! Oh, it was heartbreaking, K’nmar. I so loved that man. He was much older than me, you know, he’d lost his first partner to firehead...have you ever heard of firehead? Oh, of course, all you youngsters are vaccinated for it now. Had I known I’d be left a widow with two children, I doubt I would have left my time.

But, where was I to go? The Weyrs emptied. The Holds were so inclusive by then, if you weren’t born there, you weren’t welcome. I wasn’t even welcome in my own natal Hold, but it was a just a cothold. And I didn’t want to be a Wanderer. Oh, some dragon riders stayed, but things had gotten bad.”

“Bad? Bad weather?”

“Bad treatment, from the Holds and Halls. Thread had stopped oh, five years before. The Holds quickly realized that they no longer had to fear losing everything to Thread, so they stopped tithing, or if they did, we got the dregs...the old cow that was about to drop dead, the horse-we called them runner beast back then, which is silly considering I’ve never seen a draft horse run-the horses would be all worn out from hard work.

The tithing grew thinner and thinner, later and later. It was little by little, K’nmar, they didn’t stop all at once. No, every tithe was just short of this or ‘didn’t make it to harvest’ that. Like this cargo of grapes? Turn here, please, grapes became, well, we were told the crop had failed, but in reality, the Holds just made them into wine for themselves.

And when you think of it, there were, oh,1800 riders, family and staff in the five Weyrs, without a job, they got bored. Restless. Fights began to break out. Indeed, dragonriders began to make raids on the holds, just to get something to eat. They were desperate times, K’nmar. It wasn’t the first time, either. Every time a Pass ended, within a generation, dragonriders became non-entities. Thought of as parasites. Moochers. And every time a Pass began, it was “oh my goodness, what IS this stuff, oh, save us, save us dragonrider! It was re-inventing the bucket, every time.

So..mind you, I was just a wife to a blue rider at Fort Weyr. When we were told we were going to leave, jump 400 years into the future, we were all confused. Time travel? Was she serious? What to take? What to leave? It was an all in one go, you know, no going back because you forgot something. We were scared. But things had deteriorated to the point where it was launch or starve.

I’m not like the old Old Timers, I was so young, just barely 20, and not a rider, so I had no say in our move here to Southern. I rwanted to stay at Fort Weyr. When we landed here on Southern, I remember staring at the trees, these trees! so tall, and everything so very green. It was so odd that we didn’t have to root out every bit of green, like we did during Thread. Oh, Thread was dreadful. I remember being a little girl and hearing the alarms, and running for cover. The men folk went out with agenothree sprayers to kill what Thread had escaped the dragons. It was impressive, K’ndar, to see a sky full of dragons, all belching flames, you could hear the riders calling out warnings-’Ware! ‘Ware! Inbound from the southwest!” and the sky turning black with what looked like rain but it was deadly. It would hiss and skitter around on the stone flagging, you didn’t dare go stomp on it, like it were a bug. It was nasty, oh, you know much better than I, being a rider! Then we get here and there’s grubs that eat it, and the greenery, it was so beautiful! The flowers! It was like Thread had never existed.

Some of the riders began to argue again, they had wanted something to do but now it wasn’t fighting Thread. They resented F’lar, so young, so inexperienced, telling them what to do! There, see over on that hill side? That’s where we’re going next.

It was so utterly strange, K’nmar, to leave Fort Weyr one day, a place we’d lived in for over two thousand years and so full of people and life, and the next day, return to a place that had been empty for 400 years. Dust up to your ankles, manylegs webs everywhere, birds and wherries nesting atop your dragon’s couch, guano, bones and feathers and hide from tunnel snake kills, just the smell of long emptiness. It took us women a week to just clean the place up.

I missed Fort Weyr, I missed the old times. There were times I wanted to go back, but that time jump was brutal. Let’s never mind that I didn’t have a dragon, after my man had been killed. It took me weeks to adapt. My kids? Didn’t faze them a bit, they were out and about immediately.

I was so lonely. But these were my people, by then. My milk family had stayed behind. It’s hard to grasp, even now, that one day I was in Fort Weyr, I was twenty, and the next day, I was four hundred and twenty years old, and all the people that had been left behind were long dead. And the people here were different. They had different ideas, different accents. I didn’t feel that old...I do now, though! My children kept me going, K’nmar, and being in an active, thread fighting weyr, well that made things easier to bear. I knew how to function.

It was beautiful, though. Here, I mean. I was so used to living in caves, stone walls, stone floors, stone benches, my back end was always aching, I had no meat on my butt. Sitting on my hip bones! Here, it was warm, and green.”

“What was it like, being part of the Move to Southern?”

“Oldtimers..funny, I don’t think of myself as one but I was, I am, aren’t I? Most of the folks who’d come forward were up north for a while, but they caused a lot of problems. They thought they’d been lied to by Lessa. They felt as if they’d earned their retirement from fighting Thread. So we were sent to Lord Toric. He wanted to enlarge his Hold but didn’t want to pay for it, so he convinced most of us to do that work for him. But even that didn’t pan out so well, most of them just couldn’t adapt to living here in this time. You heard it all the time, how wrong these youngsters were, how better it was back in the Old Time. Most especially they hated Lessa for ‘tricking them’ into jumping forward, and sneered at F’lar for being ‘too young and inexperienced to tell them what to do.” It was as if they’d completely forgotten the very reason we jumped in the first place.

Me..and others, about twelve of us, we could see the writing on the slate. We were all the youngest of the Old Timers, we hadn’t had our brains stratified yet. We decided to strike out on our own, cross over Toric’s boundaries into what was then still no man’s land. There was me, my kids, two dragonriders on a blue and a green, ten or eleven other ground folk and um..a few other kids, one a baby in arms, the blue rider’s wife had given birth just before we jumped. We were given a bunch of old, broken tools, a few old horses and an old cow, and what we’d brought with us. That’s all when we struck out on our own.

The dragon riders knew where Toric’s Hold boundaries were. Beyond them there was nothing but wilderness. It hadn’t been surveyed yet, so it didn’t belong to anyone. Oh, those dragons, they were our life savers. They’d bring in a fresh kill, or fish. The riders went out ahead of us, every day, flying, searching for a place to call home. We walked and walked, slowly, because we had to cut the vegetation. I had blisters on my blisters! But I learned how to use a machete, you can bet on it. The horses always had to be handled because they were afraid of the dragons. They carried what tools and baggage they could, we had to go slowly because they were so old. We camped out under the stars. We had to keep a fire going at night, one always keeping watch, otherwise the beasts would have been killed. We walked all day, and slept in the trees at night. There were whers and wherries everywhere. I was bug bit from top to toe. We got pretty hungry, but then we found fruit trees, oh, it was so good, I can still taste them.”

About a week..it seemed like years of walking, the green, no, maybe it was the blue, came back to say that there was the perfect place for us, kilometers ahead. He said it was near a waterfall. My son and his friend went on ahead of us, even though we told them to stick with us. My boy said he could hear water singing. He was so brave, the vegetation was so thick, only the paths made by the wherries were open, and he wasn’t afraid of getting lost. That boy had a compass in his head, he did. I heard him shouting at the top of his lungs, Mum, Mum hurry up! It’s big!! And when we finally found him, he was standing atop a rock in the middle of the river, just above the waterfall. Fool kid, I thought he’d go over. But no.

The dragons had landed in the only clear area, atop a series of caverns. It was so beautiful, though I’ve not been there in years. I’m getting too old. We tied a rope to a tree overhanging this deep pool at the base of the falls and went swinging out over the water, let go the rope and fell in, kerplunk! Oh, it was so fun! So that’s how it got its name, Singing Waters. The cavern where the horses are kept? We lived in that cavern for over a year, with the dragons sleeping atop it and the horses and the one cow in amongst us. That was our base of operations while we carved a home out of the wilderness. The blue rider took his wife and baby to Benden to formally appeal to the Conclave to establish our own Hold. They were gone two weeks, and when they got back, they all came down with firehead. The baby died, poor thing! We all caught it from her, I think. We were all alone out here, K’nmar. But we managed. Being free of Holder and Weyr, it was wonderful. See that loading dock over there? Ease up parallel to it, this is the vineyard, they’ll be wanting to load bins.”

So entranced had he been with her story that he hardly remembered the loading or even driving back to the Hold to unload the bins.

“What will they do with the grapes?”

“They smash them up, strain the juice, add some mumbojumbo over them and then cask them up for years. I don’t plan on smashing grapes, that was one task I somehow managed to evade all these years.”

“Begging your pardon, ma’am, I don’t think you should be expected to do anything save direct me from one station to the next.”

She laughed. It sounded like a soft wind in the webs of a manylegs.

“I stay busy, K’nmar. I don’t get around as quickly as I’d like. I loved riding horses, and dragons! but I don’t dare ride anymore. If I fall off, I might break! Ah, there we are. Pull up to that loading dock.”

“Good MORNING, Hazel, and driver? Who are you? Where is Ayden?” said a young woman, as K’ndar deftly steered the team to stop precisely parallel to a wooden dock. The woman stepped onto the cargo bed to check the bins filled with grapes.

“Oh, lovely” she breathed. The scent from the grapes in the warm sun was intoxicating.

“Good morning, Ashmead! This is K’nmar, he’s driving for Ayden. Morgan’s indisposed. Permanently. He bit off more than he could chew, you didn’t hear?” Hazel said.

“I’d heard he attacked a dragonrider. Fool!!! Was he drunk? I steer clear of him if I can at all help it. Didn’t take but six months for him to make a Hold full of enemies. Here, you two, and you? Let’s pull those bins off the wagon. My, this is a NICE year, look at these beauties!” She pulled a grape off a vine and popped it into her mouth. Three husky looking drudges jumped to the cargo bed and muscled the loaded bins onto the loading dock.

“Do you like wine, K’nmar? Come by here in three years for a taste of this year’s casking. Hey! Easy there, you, drop that bin and I’ll have you picking up every last grape.”

The drudge cringed, not out of fear, but from embarrassment at mishandling a bin.

“I’ve..um, I’ve not tried your wine, Ashmead, but Lord Dorn gave me a cask of last year’s vintage in barter. I took it to my cothold for my mother’s wedding. She was VERY appreciative of it.”

Ashmead smiled. “That was my first year’s casking. I’m glad to hear she liked it.”

The day flew by. At lunch break, Kitten and Ace had been unhitched immediately and turned out. When K’nmar returned to start the afternoon’s work, he found Hazel had already been helped up to her perch on the bench seat. Teak the cat, sitting beside her, kept a critical eye on the two journeymen harnessing a pair of roan geldings.

A small man approached him. He watched the journeymen critically, then, satisfied, turned to K’ndar.

“You’re K’ndar?”

“Yes, sir. Rider of brown Raventh, staff biologist at Landing,” he said. The man nodded.

“I hear your natal cothold was the one who bred Cat Face.”

Hazel looked down at the Herdmaster and cleared her throat.

“Herdmaster, her name is Kitten, now. Always was. K’nmar here named her when she was foaled.”

He nodded. “Yes’m. Kitten. Ayden told me. I’m fine with that. K’nmar?”

He looked the man in the eye and shook his head gently, and then made the slightest nod towards Hazel.

The man smiled, knowing. “Dragonrider, I must say that your cothold breeds the best horses I’ve ever had the pleasure of handling. And you trained her?”

“I learned to break and train from my uncle and my father. When I was ten, they gave me Kitten to train her by myself.”

“My compliments. Kitten is wonderfully trained, easily handled.”

“Thank you. I had good teachers.” His father had been a bastard in all other things, but when it came to breeding and training horses, he had no equal.

“I’m glad you’re here. I’ve always wondered about their breeding. Hitch these boys up, please,” he said to the journeyman nearest him.

“Aye, sir. Good morning, Hazel,” the teen said.

“This team, here, these roans? They’re both from your cothold, they’re twenty and twenty one, now but you’d never know it. Good bone, good minds.”

K’ndar nodded. “I can see they’re well cared for, Herdmaster. I didn’t know them, I was just a pup then, too young to even muck and groom. But I can see our herd sire in them.”

“He was a good un,’ but, Cat Fa...I mean, Kitten, she’s not by the same stallion, is she.”

“No, sir. Her dam and our herd sire, Drummer, were brother and sister. Kitten was by a Wanderer’s stallion, I have no idea who the man was or the name of his horse. He was walking his stallion from cothold to cothold. Forever after, my father used to kick himself, he was saying, I should have bartered for that stallion! But I doubt the Wanderer would have sold him.”

“K’nmar, we need to get rolling, if we want to get done in time for dinner,” Hazel said.

“Yes,m,” K’ndar said. He caught the Herdmaster’s eye. The man grinned.

____________________________________________________________

They were done. He helped Hazel down from the bench seat. The Headmaster's drudges came up to unharness the roans.

“Thank you, lad. Hear that cracking? Those are my bones, telling me I’ve sat too long. They sort of knit together after a long day,” she said. She reached for his hand with her free one. “You’ve been an excellent listener, K’nmar, and I thank you for your patience with my nattering.”

“It wasn’t nattering, my lady, and it was my pleasure. You made the day fly by.”

The cat jumped down from her lofty perch. She wrapped herself around the old woman’s ankles, mewing.

“Yes, Miss Teak, it’s dinner time.” She began to walk slowly away, then turned.

“K’nmar?”

“Ma’am?”

“K’nmar. Thread is gone, and Pern is the better for it. But now that it’s gone, you dragonriders are in the same peril that earlier generations were. Every time a Pass ended, dragons were forgotten. This last time, your time before we jumped, they almost were extinct. Do everything in your power, as a dragon rider, tell all the dragonriders, they must stay relevant. Relevant, K’nmar!” She rapped her cane on the ground for emphasis.

“Dragons must find a purpose and serve it. You, all dragonriders, must keep dragons a vital part of Pern. Don’t let the land walkers forget again what dragons do for Pern. Don’t let the land walkers forget you this time.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, awed. What a class act, he thought.

“Come along, poppet,” she said to the cat. She walked slowly away. Teak curled her tail around the woman’s leg.

He was harnessing Raventh to return to Landing when Raylan came up to him.

“Hello, K’ndar! How’s things?”

“Oh, sir, you know. Yesterday I was so tired after haying I couldn’t see straight. Today was MUCH easier, I drove a team. How about yourself?”

Raylan looked at his fingers ruefully. They were purple. “Today I picked berries. And berries and more berries! Francie said I should have been weighed before we picked them. I love berry pies, but I think I am berried out for the rest of the year. I saw you slogging away at haying yesterday. Not a job I would have wanted.”

K’ndar shrugged his shoulders, still sore from yesterday’s labor. Having done the hardest job of all somehow gave him a feeling of superiority.

“It’s okay. Luck of the draw.”

“You missed a nice get together last night, K’ndar. We’re not expected to return to Landing, you must know that. Where are you going?”

For a moment he wondered if Raylan was hazing him. He couldn’t possibly have forgotten the little episode of Jomoke? Had he forgotten his ‘suggestion’ that K’ndar had better get cracking on his data input before the meeting?

He decided no, he wasn’t being hazed, just confused at the sudden change in priorities. He was tired enough to allow himself sarcasm.

“I’m going back to Landing. I have a backlog of data to input. I neglected to do it as I was sent off on a wild wherry chase. So I need to leave, I’ll get something to eat at home and then get cracking.”

Raylan grimaced.

“K’ndar, I’m sorry. I came down hard on you. Can you forgive me, please? Is your backlog so big you must keep at it?”

“Um…” he thought. He’d been so taken up in Hazel’s reminiscing that he had trouble dragging himself back to thinking about data.

“Well, no……..”

“Stay here. There’s plenty of bunks available, either with us Landers, or with your weyrfolk. The food is outstanding, the wine and ale even better. “

K’ndar allowed his snit full bloom.

“Now I’m confused, sir. It was so important for me to get caught up on my data input that I worked til midnight last night, AFTER a long day of putting up hay, and now it’s not?”

Raylan sighed. “You’ve always been upfront with me, K’ndar, and I’ve tried so with you. It would seem that I’ve failed. Yes, it’s important. No, it’s not so important that you have work yourself to death to get it done.

Francie has threatened me with divorce if I “make you work late at Landing after working your arse off on harvest.” She wants to see your face, in her words, “scrubbed or not,” at the get together tonight. She wants to discuss dragons, lizards, and horses. She wants you to get a solid meal in you. And she wants you to meet some of the girls here. I may be Science Division Chief, but when my wife pulls rank on me, I’ve learned, life is far easier when I say “Yes, Dear.”