“Mindik, quit teasing Chera,” Lynn ordered her middle son, though one corner of her mouth, the corner Mindik could see and Chera couldn’t, quivered with shared amusement.

  Mindik grinned; however, without pausing to take a full breath, Lynn continued, “Chera, please tell us your secret. We really want to know.”

  It didn’t take much effort for her to manage the situation. She had perfected the technique over the years.

  Chera lost his huff. At the same time his nose lofted upwards, “I assume all of you remember Keshua told Bumbly Bell I was always right.”

  “How could we forget? You mention it every fifteen minutes,” complained Loraf.

  “Keshua didn’t say ‘always’,” Bumbly Bell commented, her eyes laughing.

  “He said and I quote, ‘Chera is right,’ meaning basically that I am always right,” the young man lectured, nose still high.

  Unfortunately several pieces of wet lettuce happened to waft through the air and land on top of the uplifted facial feature, effectively interrupting him.

  “Do you have a secret or don’t you,” asked his father.

  “I do,” Chera promised him, brushing the lettuce off and glaring at his brothers.

  He glanced toward the porch, and Bumbly Bell beamed at him in her old happy way. When she looked like that, Chera’s heart had a tendency toward spasms. He had fully intended to drag out his announcement as long as possible, but one could not drag out an announcement when one had a spasmodic heart.

  “We’re engaged,” he said simply and smiled at Bumbly Bell as his family shouted their congratulations.

  “Not that it’s any surprise,” Mindik told him, and Loraf snorted agreement. Chera began to glower again, but it was his father who intervened this time.

  “Party’s over. Time to go,” Chell said, and everyone rushed to clean up.

  Before the picnic lunch, they had carried outside all of Faso’s minor jewels and loaded them into handcarts.

  Bumbly Bell was giving the whole assortment to the Parsleyville school teachers, who planned to illustrate mathematical principles with them. One hundred divided by five would take on real meaning when the students could arrange five piles of twenty rocks apiece. There would be plenty of rocks to spare for artwork too. In fact, the upsurge of interest in rock collecting that spread from Parsleyville to the rest of the Stalli mountain range dated from this very year.

  Bumbly Bell carried her empty plate into the kitchen and gazed around with a sense of relief. The cottage wasn’t cluttered now those rocks were gone.

  “What color did you say you wanted for curtain material?” asked her fiancé, bursting into the room and immediately rushing to the kitchen window to spy on his father and brothers.

  Chell, Loraf, Mindik, and Chera had each claimed one of the handcarts. They planned to see who could get to the village school first, and Bumbly Bell knew Chera didn’t want the others to leave before him.

  “White for the big bedroom, yellow for the kitchen, pink for the back bedroom, and Stalli blue to make ties with,” she reminded him quickly.

  “Right,” Chera replied, heading for the door, but before he got there, he paused and stared at her quizzically.

  “You’re sure?” he asked.

  It sounded like a question about the curtain colors, but Bumbly Bell knew what he meant. She answered more firmly than she felt, “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “We’re leaving now,” Chell shouted from the yard.

  “Gotta go,” muttered the young man as he shot out the door.

  Bumbly Bell ran over to the kitchen window and watched them start off. The four men were laughing at each other as their handcarts tilted crazily from one side to the other.

  She laughed too and then quieted down.

  “I’m sure,” she repeated.

  Ten

  Doing It

  While Bumbly Bell convalesced, Chera painted the window frames a traditional Stalli blue. Lynn scrubbed the wooden walls and floors. Chell used rocks from his quarry to build a low wall that encircled the garden area, which everyone but Bumbly Bell weeded and hoed.

  Barrow refused to let Bumbly Bell do anything strenuous. He wouldn’t even let her walk into the village.

  “Not yet. Wait a little longer,” the healer insisted.

  The village women offered to make her two new quilts, one for the back bedroom and one for the master bedroom off the kitchen. Bumbly Bell chose blue and white for the master bedroom but scandalized everyone by picking pink and white for the back bedroom. A rumble of discontent ran through the quilters, even as their fingers flew over the material. Pink and white! PINK AND WHITE! Where was the Stalli blue?

  Stubbornly the women embroidered tiny blue flowers along the border, letting the young woman know in no uncertain terms that Stallis always put blue into their quilts. Always!

  Bumbly Bell thanked them publicly and laughed at them privately.

  She was tired of staying at home. Everyone was taking care of her. They were absolutely zealous in their care of her, and she was tired of it. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until a week after the quilts were finished that Barrow finally gave her permission to walk into town.

  Late in the afternoon, she stood on the porch waiting impatiently for Chera, who’d wanted to go with her. Bumbly Bell had agreed readily enough in the morning. But if he doesn’t come soon, I might change my mind, she thought threateningly.

  Directly in front of her, Sunshine was napping again on the porch railing, and Bumbly Bell gently stroked the thick yellow hair. The cat had lost weight. Her bones were easy to feel even underneath all her hair. On an impulse Bumbly Bell leaned over and whispered into the yellow ears.

  Sunshine lifted her head and stared at her. The young woman smiled and nodded.

  Then she lifted her own head and listened. Chera was whistling on the quarry path. Running down the porch steps, she hopped from one foot to the other.

  At the end of the path, Chera stopped short when he saw her jiggling in front of her cottage, her face lit up in the old way. He smiled, remembering the little girl who had run around her yard laughing at him.

  Bumbly Bell laughed.

  “Are you going to stand there and stare at me or are we going to walk into the village?”

  Chera strode out of the woods and into the yard. “We’re going. I was remembering you as a little girl.”

  He took her hand and they started down the road. As they went, Sunshine sat up on the porch railing. Her tail curled around her front legs, and her body stilled.

  “I hope we have a little girl who looks just like you,” Chera told his fiancée right before they reached the town.

  Her face drooped. “Barrow doesn’t know what effects the laudon may have had on my body. I don’t know if I can have children,” she reminded him.

  Chera’s eyebrows made a stern hitch upwards and his face resembled that of a lecturer of many years’ experience.

  “Now, Bumbly Bell, Keshua told you, ‘Chera is right,’ you may recall, and I say you are going to have children. You need to listen to me, not a cautious, tell-the-patient-everything-that-could-possibly-go-wrong healer.”

  To his relief Bumbly Bell brightened up again as they entered the village.

  R

  Faso sat on the far end of the front porch.

  The home for elderly people was well planned. A sturdy railing ran the length of the porch, with a break in the middle where the porch opened into a wide sunny deck. There were no steps between the porch and deck. That way the less mobile residents of the house could go out into the sun with ease.

  Faso never went out into the sun. She always sat in the far end of the porch, where she twisted the folds of her dress between her fingers and stared at the floor. There was a big bush growing in front of the porch there. Sometimes she glanced at the bush. Not as many people could see her because of it, and she was glad it was there. Most of the time, however, she stared at the floor.

  When she had first arrived, several of the home’s residents had let her know exactly what they thought of her. In the way of older people, they had repeated their opinions several times a day. Eventually they had gotten their points across even to Faso’s dull mind.

  Consequently she sat alone at the end of the porch. If it rained, she still sat there under the porch roof, twisting her dress between her fingers.

  There were some wise kindly people in Parsleyville, a few of them under her same roof. They’d visited Faso and tried to talk to her, but she had always winced away without responding. After they had left, she’d cried without making any noise.

  The crying sessions had been lengthening lately.

  Late that afternoon Faso noticed her dress was hanging loosely on her body. It used to fit too tightly, and she had talked about getting a new one. Now she wouldn’t need to bother. Her skirt had wrinkled beneath her fingers, and she tried to smooth the material out. Slow tears started rolling down her cheeks.

  “Aunt Faso, Aunt Faso,” came the clear call that people said afterwards could be heard even in Keshua’s country.

  Faso stared in the direction of the call. A young woman was running toward the home, a young woman whose face shone even from a distance. She jumped onto the wide deck and then ran to the porch and down its length—all the way to where Faso sat at the far end.

  Throwing her arms around the old woman, Bumbly Bell hugged her aunt, and with shaking hesitant movements Faso hugged her back. The slow tears became a heavy downpour.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Faso wailed, and the words burst out of her so loudly everyone on the deck heard them easily, even the hard of hearing who had leaned in that direction and cupped hands around ears to facilitate matters.

  “I’m sorry, Bumble, for those bad things I did. Finken thought of them, but I helped him do them. It wasn’t enough to forget about the bad parts. I should never, ever have helped with them. I’m—”

  “I forgive you, Aunt Faso, and so does Keshua,” interrupted Bumbly Bell.

  Her aunt looked extremely doubtful. “He does? I don’t see how—”

  Once again Bumbly Bell interrupted her.

  “Yes, he does! He told me so,” she stated emphatically in a carrying voice that was heard not only by the people on the deck, but also by those who had the misfortune to be in the house at such an interesting time.

  Faso stared at the young woman kneeling in front of her. Brown eyes sparkled. Dark hair that had gone limp and dull over the past four years bounced with a sheen even the shade from the bush couldn’t hide.

  “Why, you’re beautiful, Bumble,” said Faso wonderingly.

  “Bumbly Bell,” a male voice corrected her.

  Chera had finally caught up. He leaned against the railing a little ways down the porch, and Faso winced as she caught sight of him. She dropped her gaze to the floor of the porch.

  “What?” she mumbled.

  “Keshua said to call her Bumbly Bell,” Chera explained more patiently than he normally did.

  “All right,” the old woman agreed humbly and turned back to the bright face in front of her.

  “I knew it was wrong, but now I see it,” she muttered to herself.

  “Aunt Faso, we’re going to take you home,” Bumbly Bell announced.

  “What?” Faso asked again.

  She didn’t understand what Bumbly Bell meant. She lived here now. The wise ones had brought her.

  The young woman repeated firmly, “We’re going to take you home. The wise ones have given their consent, because it’s from Keshua. I saw him in a dream, and he told me what he wanted.”

  “Go home?” whispered Faso, and the edges of her mouth turned up for the first time in weeks.

  “Yes! We’ll get your things later. Right now Chera and I will walk you home,” Bumbly Bell stated triumphantly.

  Nobody had ever seen anything like it. They all agreed on that, even those who didn’t actually see it but were close enough to have a firm opinion on the matter.

  There had never been anything to match the sight of Faso walking down the porch, across the deck, and out onto the road. The old woman’s smile reached from one side of her face to the other, and she held tightly onto the arms of the young man and woman on either side of her. Bumbly Bell’s face was radiant; Chera’s less so, but even he accepted the tight grip and put one hand over Faso’s when she needed help down the deck steps.

  The watchers on the deck glanced at each other. One of them let out an experimental cheer and then, as if the cheer had seasoned the air but not quite enough, everyone joined in. Several of the older men whooped, and a frail looking woman let out a piercing whistle and then chortled with pleasure. She hadn’t whistled for years.

  Faso walked slowly through the village to the road that led home. Long before they reached the two neighboring cottages, the older woman began panting. Chera urged her on, partially carrying her; however, Faso’s face lit up when a bright yellow body that had sat like a statue ever since Bumbly Bell and Chera had left, hurled itself off the porch railing and ran toward the returning trio.

  Yes, Sunshine ran to greet Faso, and little mewing sounds came from the cat’s throat, sounds Bumbly Bell felt sure were meant to let Faso know how glad Sunshine was to see her again. Nobody had ever heard such mews from the sour-faced cat, and to tell the truth, nobody ever heard them again, but that afternoon they were the only sounds Sunshine could make.

  They led Faso into the cottage kitchen and across the room to her rocking chair that now had a soft new cushion in its seat. Mewing all the while, Sunshine managed to jump on the cushion before Faso could sit on it, which meant Chera had to scoop the cat up in his free hand while he lowered Faso.

  The welcoming mews abruptly ended.

  Wriggling out of the young man’s grasp, Sunshine sat on the new blue rug and shot a hind leg into the air. With a meaningful glance toward Chera, she started washing her lower parts.

  Faso laughed until she cried. “I’ve come home all right,” she told them.

  She cried again when she saw her newly painted back bedroom. “I always liked pink but I didn’t think anyone knew it.”

  Bumbly Bell smiled at her. Sick and lethargic, notwithstanding, the old Bumble had known a few things.

  The next time Faso cried was when Lynn visited, and what was left of resentment in Lynn’s heart trickled away with the old woman’s tears. To Faso’s obvious delight, the two of them chatted over many a cup of tea in the months to come.

  R

  Chera and Bumbly Bell married not long after Faso moved in with her niece. The three of them lived together in Bumbly Bell’s cottage, and sometimes Chera wondered who got on his nerves the most, Faso or Sunshine. For the most part though, they lived together harmoniously.

  One morning Sunshine clawed something out of a crack in the floor and began batting it around with her paws. Watching her affectionately from the comfort of her rocking chair, Faso suddenly gasped.

  “Chera, can you get it? That thing Sunshine’s playing with—can you get it?” she asked loudly.

  Rolling his eyes with a long-suffering air, Chera looked as if Faso had asked him to climb onto the ceiling upside down.

  “You can’t take anything away from a cat, particularly not this cat,” he grumbled.

  “Yes, you can. It’s easy,” Bumbly Bell announced and jumped from her chair.

  She took the leftover fish from their supper and put it in Sunshine’s bowl.

  “You have to give them something they want more,” she explained.

  Sunshine deserted her plaything immediately and crouched over the fish, growling and casting suspicious glances at Chera.

  Grinning, he walked over to the deserted plaything and picked it up.

  “It’s only a brown rock,” he said handing it to Faso.

  Faso took the rock into trembling hands. A few tears rolled down her wrinkly cheeks, and Bumbly Bell came over to stand beside Chera. They gazed at the old woman with concern in their faces.

  “It’s the jewel Finken was working on that last day. He said it was our best one,” Faso explained through her tears.

  People from Parsleyville had placed the stiffened bodies of the squirrels and other animals in the archives. They had buried the bodies of the petrified people. Presumably the jewels in Finken’s pocket were still there, but nobody had wanted to chip away at the old man’s remains to check on them.

  “The best one,” Faso repeated, holding the rock up to the light.

  The brown stone sparkled when the light hit it, and Bumbly Bell marveled.

  “Why, it’s pretty,” she said.

  “Finken thought you had taken it and it was Sunshine all along,” Faso whispered shaking her head sadly.

  “What do you want to do with it?” asked Chera.

  “Send it to Munta Hill and sell it,” the old woman said right away.

  Chera didn’t think she had ever had such a quick thought in her life.

  “The wise ones’ll take the money. They’ll know what to do with it.”

  The deed was done and the jewel sold for more than any of the Stallis had thought possible. Their overall opinion of Munta Hill fell, but the wise ones distributed the money among those who needed it, and the village’s overall estimation of Faso rose.

  Sunshine died the morning after she had retrieved the jewel from its hiding place. They found her on the kitchen windowsill, lying in the warmth of the morning light.

  Faso cried for several days. A few weeks after that she died too, but her last days weren’t unhappy. Up to the very final hour, she mumbled her thanks to Keshua, the one who had forgiven her and let her come home.

  R

  Two years later, Bumbly Bell finally got pregnant. She was ecstatic.

  Chera was happy too. He was very happy, he kept telling himself, but the young man couldn’t help but worry.

  How would the long term use of laudon affect things now? Could Bumbly Bell carry a baby throughout the months of pregnancy? Would the baby develop normally? Was she strong enough to survive the stress of giving birth?

  Cedar was born five weeks early. The premature baby boy almost died, and Bumbly Bell herself lost consciousness towards the end of labor. Barrow was barely able to revive her.