Mari's Tale

1.
The letter


Dearest Heartbound,

Do you remember the mulberry trees we planted by the kezel yard? They are fully grown now, their fruit fat and juicy. Little Tabby, with whom you used to play so happily when his family came around for tea, climbs them so freely now, his arms long and lanky as he swings his little sister up to greedily snatch the highest berries. He has had to install extra security around the apartment now - no-one grows fruit in soil anymore, and weÕre just as likely to have gawping tourists as thieves after a change in diet. Tabby helps care for them now that I cannot; I think his partner and children appreciate the extra income and the change in food. Their youngest, a wild filly by name of Pamel, seems intent on training the largest and most temperamental kezel as a Òvaliant steedÓ. Mari has brought her to me seven times so far with wounds in need of better medical care that my meagre supplies can give. It is a very good thing that the kezel in question is still unable to fly! That event, and its potential for fatal misadventure on PamelÕs part, is yet a good eight moon-meets away.
I planted the ansereth, as you suggested - their fruit will be ready at the next moon-meet, a mere six suncycles away. And then, at the moon-meet after that, I may remove the liquor-medicine from the casks. A mere forty-eight suncycles away! I have agreed to share some of the earnings from selling this fermented gold with Tabby for his assistance in building the special casks we needed. How you would smile, my heart, if you saw how the boy you had near adopted was becoming!
I am so, so sorry, my beloved, that I never granted you the child you so desired. Always, always, I put it off. I hurt you so badly by this, and I have barely lived with this thing I did not allow you for the fifty-six orbits you have been gone. We were not ready, the crop was not looking good, we had no money, there was a disease two colonies over ... thus was the chorus of my excuses for forty-seven orbits, until, one morning ... you were gone from me forever. I still cannot forget that day... I flew in the medic-craft with you; do you remember? Were you conscious then?
You lay so pale on the white, white sheets, your eyelashes dark as night against your pale skin. A tightlipped medic frowned over me as I kept my vigil. Night fell. The rash on your face grew dark and purple, and the room whipped into a last-ditch frenzy. Men in baggy plastic suits came, like the astronauts we see in ancient historical documentaries. I was steered out as scalpels were drawn ... and as the sun blushed over the horizon I was ushered back inside to that silent white room. Your breath came with little sighs. I watched, transfixed, as your chest rose, paused, fell, paused ... each exhalation slightly longer than the inhalation, until...
The light lay golden across your face as you gasped your last breath, a little hiccup in the face of the Nightlady. Although the medics had warned me such would happen, I gasped in my turn and moved a little closer, hoping that somehow, just somehow, you had survived your challenge. But no ... you were gone, and I had refused you that which you most desired. Instead of a child, I gave you a puppy of another species. Such cruelty! Always I had expected Mari to be a temporary alleviation of your longing until things reached that undetermined ÒbetterÓ, yet here she still is today. Poor little Mari. She reads my emotions almost as well as you ever did, and looks at me with her big eyes. She knows that only contact with my dear one will heal this wound, so she stays back, but hurts all the same.
We are standing here, by your memory-pole and memory-box. You saved MellanayÕs life in the end - your lungs to replace her factory-damaged ones. Tabby has never forgotten this, and he comes up here and helps prune the orange tree behind your memory-pole. It is flowering here. Tabby came up here on his heartbinding day and asked specifically for that yearÕs flowers from this tree, even though the main market has song-flowers much more becoming on his partner. Tabby loves his sister still. They live in the same apartment still, each heartbound couple in a wing, but still sharing meals. They have repeatedly invited me to live down in their apartment, but leaving here would be too much like losing you all over again. Tabby is worried - this floor is empty now - but I think the loyalty of Mari soothes him a little.
Oh, heartbound. I am so worried about our Mari. I am old now, old in heart and mind, old and sad. If I die tomorrow, would she be able to give to them what she has to me? Hounds like her usually have only one human pair to whom they bond, and I am very afraid she will not survive. Would it be that I could have the bravery to arrange my own death! Had I the courage, I would go down to the peacemakers. There, I could ensure Tabby or his little Pamel were holding Mari when they let me go, so that as I died she would find another. It would be perfect indeed for young Pamel, for the twenty orbits the hound has left; perhaps Mari would be a play-companion so complete that the kezel would be left in peace!


2.
The old man


The old man looked up from his writing at the shivering hound before him. His joints creaked as he scratched gently between her ears. Gingerly - oh so gingerly - he raised himself from the chair and cast his gaze around for some more paper. Finding a piece amongst the clutter on the table, he pulled it towards him and started writing again.
He was a peculiarity - a man of his era writing with a pen. Born and raised well before pencils made their trendy return, married and left alone before the return of the pen, he wrote with a clean, elaborate hand, strongly suggestive of a lifetimeÕs use of the implement.
He had always rejected the more popular typing, and even digital writing never captured him. His pen was well cared for, but nevertheless looked well used to match. A scanglass in the corner of his room sufficed for the digitisation of his works.
Finishing with a final flourish, he dabbed carefully at wet spots on the paper, wincing as the ink smudged a little. He would file this later. For now, he needed a good strong coffee. Brewing the dark drink always calmed him, steadied him, and today he needed as much calming and steadying as he could get.
Grinding the beans, he stared around him, working out where to start his weekly tidy. A large mound of papers was on the desk, true, but a similar mound was on the floor near the window. The old man frowned. The pile had ... grown since the previous night. He sighed.
Making his way to the rumpled bed, he stood for a moment before the single window, staring out over the wheat-houses and rice-glasses below. As much as the citizens of this and nearby colonies could survive off the nutrient-packets produced in the manufactory in the centre of the dome, there was a certain ... luxury... to having the damper or porridge produced from the grains themselves. Certainly they produced high prices when sold at the big markets in the main settlement a good nine hundred kilometres west. This colony was probably the only colony on the planet to have the right balance of sun and night. Whilst the false-light constantly produced by the lamps overhead did grow the plants, per se, it did not give them the same, well, liveliness in taste, that true sunlight did. Also, many colonies disdained growing true crops, as their disorder and possible dirtiness in growing often harbored pestilence. Even in this colony, there were rumors spread by the harvestfolk and nurtured by the gossips of the community of strange shapes and motions in the shadows of the crops, often coinciding with waves of mysterious fatalities in the community. One such rumor had occurred the moon-meet of his heartboundÕs illness and death.
Bed made, the old man shuffled to the countertop. Displacing Mari, who, as was her usual habit, had deigned to curl up in the middle of the working space in the warmth of the lamp that lit it, he began to sort the papers into the cupboard near the head of the bunk. The letter to his heartbound he put to one side on the table. The gun he kept for protection he placed beside it, still in reach of his low-set bunk.
Just as he finished, a sharp tap on the wall brought his head up and set MariÕs tail to wagging. Judging by the houndÕs response, it would be Tabby there, come to help with the green-space the old man had made in his apartment. A good three quarters of the apartment was devoted thus. The old man had built it when he was a lad, but now it needed TabbyÕs brawn and nimbleness to keep the lighting and plumbing in check, not to mention the pruning and harvesting. The kezel also needed caring for, slightly cramped as they were in the back cage. Their manure scented the apartment but gave the plants inside more life than the commercial life-support chemicals.
Luckily he had made enough coffee for the two of them. This would be the last fresh batch of the year, until the plant had flowered again.

3.
Nighttime



Mari slept. Dreams flashed; forests she had never known, hunts she had never seen, they all flickered past alike. She just kept on running, running over grass, stone, earth. She ran and played next to the man who had cared for her for so long.
Her ears pricked. What was that? Not a kezel; their hooves made very distinctive noises against any flooring. She had long ago, when her human had first introduced her to the creatures, learned to block out their constant racket. Not a human - they always stank of the chemicals they ate, different somehow from those she consumed herself.
There! There it was again. She tensed as a memory, somewhere, somehow, stirred. She recognized that sound. Another set of hands ... there had been another human, a long time ago, who had cared for her similar to how her old human did now. That other human, the female, had left the house with her current human, stinking of illness, and when her human had returned, he had returned alone and smelling of death, grieving as he even did now. From then on, for about a moon-meet after, any outsiders coming to the apartment had also smelt like death, death and burning. But that day there had been this noise also. What was it? Was it the cause of that other humanÕs death?
Mari rose, shaking slightly. She was getting old as her species went, still with at least another twenty orbits to live, but sometimes she thought her human was making her feel at least another ten orbits older! But there - a large shadow rippled on the floor. The curtains were drawn against the false day caused by the lamps far above in the humansÕ dome, with the sun well below the horizon, but abruptly she wished them open. Her eyes were slow to adjust, slower than sleep should make them. She could barely distinguish the shadow from the only slightly smaller mound of papers under the window, but it seemed at least twice her size, lithe and strong in the same manner as serpents.
The shadow moved, clicking softly. It had pincers, she saw, sharp things built to scissor open flesh, and a swollen abdomen. Eggs! This must be how the thing bred.
Very abruptly, the shadow scuttled towards her human, possibly sensing the alertness of its victimÕs guardian. Mari let out a last yelp to awaken the human who had protected her, and sprang towards the creature.



4.
Together


The old man woke with a start, only marginally faster for the desperate yelp from his hound than for the impact of her paws pushing off his chest. He turned his head to see with horror his Mari leaping towards the same species of creature that had killed his heartbound. The parasite, he knew, was strong, too strong, for the hound to handle alone.
He leaped out, grasping the creatureÕs tail as it thrashed. Little Mari was refusing to let go; the old man could see the white of bones poking through her fur, feel the wetness he knew would be crimson. He screamed with rage, lashing out without plan or thought, all strategy thrown to the wind in this furious charge of strength. A white-hot lance struck him in the belly, slicing sideways, but his entire focus was to killing this creature that was stealing his last true joy, that had stolen his heart from his chest. Finally, finally he found the parasiteÕs head, made good his grip upon the vertebra below, and with a last twist ended the thingÕs life.
It did not stop thrashing immediately, of course, but now the old man was focussed on but one thing. He found the tortured bundle of fur and held it close to his chest. As Mari panted with agony, the old manÕs tears dripped steadily and freely onto her bloodied head. A minute, a suncycle, an eternity later, the old man firmed himself against the waves of dizziness passing through him and reached upwards from where they lay on the floor. He pressed the little emergency-call button above his head. His hand slipped slightly on the safety catch of the antique gun as he switched it and lay down on the cold tiled floor. Giving his Mari one last kiss on the nose, and receiving a feeble lap in reply, he took a long look into those knowing eyes, pressed his head to her smaller one, and pulled the trigger.