Knows Best

Earlier that very day Han had assured a fellow laborer from the other side of the city that the Bantim rumors, while exaggerated, were not just lies made up by the big eastern-city guys to bait the little western-city ones with hope and thus keep them down and docile. "I've been down there all the time, that's where I met my girl," he had said, his eager goodwill resultant of that very event. He had urged the sad and sorry skeptic to go down himself when the moon grew fuller again. It was, he said, a matter of going to the eastern edge of town and just following the music.

What Han actually said was, more exactly: "Wahl, pahl, y'jist git to de ostern pahrt div de city. Pahst de buil-dins ahn all. Ahn den y'jist follah de treetohps. Ahn de music, 'cause dey allus play on de faugh moon nahts." But this would be very tiresome even for those who spoke that language to read, and so we attempt to strike a balance, on the understanding that lower-class people throughout this land favored the 'ah' sound, including the transplated Nominarians. But however he had said it, with short 'a' or short 'i,' the general accuracy of his directions remains undisputed. It was how he himself had found it back when he was too young to have much of a memory for landmarks, the most important of which were above his eye level at that age.

That was not, however, how he was finding the Bantim house tonight. For one, he no longer even had to think over the way, so naturally it came to him, and for another, there was just a slip of a moon and therefore no music. This was why he went. The Bantim jollifications were great fun, and now great in his mind for sentimental memories, but at them he could not talk to Mrs. Bantim.

So instead of following the music, one would, that night, follow the trees - the cheerfulest group of the stern and stately evergreens known to anyone who saw them. The skeptic would have bought the idea of successful laborers, and of sucessful Nominarians, of house-owning laborers and even of house-owning Nominarians, but he could not conceive of tree-growing Nominarians, or tree-growing laborers, or even of tree-growing rick folk, and left Han's company believing in the Bantims but unconvinced of their trees. Thickets did not grow in their saltwater port of a city. It had been tried again and again. The Bantims' was the only patch for hundreds of miles, with no one save themselves the faintest idea of how they had taken root. There they grew, in an area comparable to a city building on its side, right by their tumbledown home and the bitter, ill-tempered ocean - "the Old Shrew's Sea," it was called - all still rather young as pine trees go, but growing, and thriving, and living, their shaggy tops bold and ample and unafraid. Wealthy parties from all around coveted that piece of land; it was a miracle that the Bantims had withstood all the many powerful attempts, all the many underheaded attempts, and all the even more numerous powerful and underhanded attempts to drive, or fine, or by gunpoint force them off. The superstitious Nominarians, whom Han was kin to, often insisted that every tree would "lah dahn ahn dah" should a Mundaskee - in plain talk, a non-Nominarian - come to own them. The Mundaskee, it was said, knew about this curse too.

Something had certainly intimidated or halted the Mundaskee, and it was more likely a curse or some other nonsense than Mrs. Bantim, whose face upon seeing Han split into a smile in the manner of an overipe fruit bursting. When he was near enough, she hugged him tightly. If there was any supernatural power hovering over the Bantim house, felt Han, then its source and its manifestation was the freedom of tactility.

"You lazy bastard," she laughed, her accent at least twice as broad as Han's. "Take this! Do something useful. You don't do noddin. Why aren't you workin' tonight?"

"I can' work tonight," said Han, whose grin might actually have been wider for once than hers as he accepted the washboard. Freed from one chore, Mrs. Bantim ran inside to get supplies for the next, and reermerged swiftly with an armsload of old clothes, dried from a recent washing. She sat on the ground, spread them around her, and began to rip them apart in order to save what good material was left as Han repeated: "I can' work tonight!"

"You can' work ahnynight."

"I take night shifts sometime, Miz Bantim." Han sounded offended. "But not tonight. Eundri! Go in and work tonight!"

"Whas so dif-fer-ent about dis one? I work eddy-day."

She looked it - in her agile and capable movements, in the speed with which she was reducing the pile into two, in her thick arms and thickened face. Mrs. Bantim also looked the picture of a Norminarian witch, especially with her dark and prominent mole. She was too old for Han to know that the mole had once been what had transformed her from passable to pretty. All that was left of that were her quick eyes, which moved easily ten times as fast as the rest of her body and sometimes dizzied the young folk she and her man invited over every month.

"Too happy," said Han, rolling out the words with supreme satisfaction. "Too happy - jus' too damned happy."

"When I happy, I work more. De only way to get innything done. These here clothes, now. Auyl de gi'ls johbbing in de soty don't got one hint on how to stay in decent stitches. Dey will be happy wit what I will give dem dis night." Her eyes took on a crafty glint which humanized her saintlike, almost prissy tone. "And den dey thank me wit doin' fa-vaurs for me'n Urne!"

Han laughed. Anything and everything was humorous and delightful. "Besho one of them girls, Miz Bantim?"

"A-ha," Mrs. Bantim nodded. "Besho. She 'splains eddy-thing, no?"

"Ev'ything!"

Betraying his Norminarian blood, Han was usually quite reserved, but of late he had discovered that part of his reserve included reserves of exclamations.

"You happy wit her. I see I see." There was no pause between her declarations of sound vision. "Why you not wit her den?"

"Miz Bantim," Han said solemnly, employing the powers of scintillation so recently infused in him. "I tell you true that the lovely Miz Besho and I are with each other all the time - auyl d'time. The lovely Miz Belamni has her night shifts this week, else all the time would be this right now time too."

"It's too bad, when de shifts work aught lak dat."

Han dropped his soberness. "Miz Bantim! Shifts! Shifts! We's above shifts right now. I've been dyin' to tell you - but nah. Nah. You ain't gonna believe me, I know you ain't," he finished on a planative note, making a preemptive avowal of his verity.

"Young man," she said in a rather deep tone. "Adder livin' dese thousands moons, dere's not much I'm not likely to b'lieve if'n it's from someone I've known since he was lithpin'."

Remembering those days, he overflowed with the sort of affection that sweeps away round-abouts. "The other day - the other day - we - " As impatient as he had been to tell her, the words came hard and sounded ridiculous as he proofread them in his head now. He stared down into the sloshing and sousy water, rubbing Mr. Bantim's tunic harder and harder. "We were walkin' - walkin' at the shore - I mean, we've done that before - but last time - last time we were, I swear to Eundri, we were risin' into the air -"

She calmly cut into his agony of joy and confusion and worry over how to make her believe him. "De raught wurd for it eez 'levitahting'."

Han's violent scrubbed stopped. He stared in amazement. Normally it would have been because Miz Bantim, like "most people," didn't casually drop four-syllable words about. Today there was her matter-of-fact acceptance of this outlandish account. "Levitahting?"

"Dat's de one. De real one. De one de book-wrauters use. Keep on wit dem washin's."

Perfunctorily, his arms moved the familiar motions. But he stared at her. "I swear it happened."

"'Course it happened. You got Nominarian blood in you. Not a lot - not 'nough for de real big magic - "

An instinctive and incredulous laugh at Nominarian whimsy died when he realized that he had just proposed it. 'What, d'you mean you'n your man got to see some 'real big magic'?"

"You bet," she said, and Han wasn't sure whether to believe her still. So many Nominarians loved to claim experiences of the supernatural, and so ingrained was his disbelief. "How far up 'ja go?"

"You tell me yours firs'," Han said. Later he would be ashamed of the challenge in his voice.

"Taller dan dese here trees," she said promptly. "Highest we edder got."

He stared. "We - we got up a couple of inches." He blushed deeply. "I mean, I know that isn't - almost a foot. I mean, I was looking down, and we was walkin', and there weren't no footprints - there was this long trail behind us though - "

"You get higher. You stay togedder, you get higher'n dat."

"So that's - so that's - you'n Mr. Bantim?"

"Dat's us!" She laughed. "I got up a liddle bit wit one odder boy. But we didn' stay togedder long enough. Urne's de one."

"You keep gettin' higher then? Then - so you got past the trees the last time?"

"Naw! We got past de trees when we was young."

"So - so it wears off? Like, when you fall out of love."

"Will you wash while you talk? Naw, we ain't fall out of love. Our love jus' too old for dem highjinks now."

Strange, how, when presented with such wonders and miracles in the past few minutes, he could be so inducted to it as to be disillusioned now by some detail of it! How quick to grasp the impossible - how quick to render it mundane. Han was of two minds to hear this. One was that the general attitude of his generation was correct, in opposition to the older folks' insistence that love lasted longer than the "crazy part of it". The magic had worn off - the Bantims had been together so long. They barely even spoke to each other anymore. Mrs. Bantim was deluding herself. His second mind was that she might have been bluffing the whole time, and had thrown that tidbit in to get out of proving it.

But his second mind faltered. Nominarian mysticism was the best answer he had for a confounding occurrence that he knew firsthand had happened.

She was still speaking, in a rather absent, old-womanish manner. "Our feet, dey stay on de ground now. Once de love gets old enough it eidder puts down roots or it dies. And it can' put down roots till it get old 'nough."

"Why's that, though? That's - that's just something Nominarian?" It could not have been universal, or it would have been part of his "ways of the world" education, gotten secondhand from "people talking".

"Yep. It happens when de people are in physical contact - you was holding hands, you two? - have bonded spiritually and are experiencing even de fahntest suggesdin of sexuality."

"What on earth you talkin'?" Han was shocked at her further sesquipedalians. From her, of all people!

She looked up from her basting with sheepish pride. "I read it. Dere's a book abou' it."

"Where'd you get a book?" His tone was accusing - accusing her of violating so many of his accepted beliefs of the world in so short a period.

"From de library."

"In the city?"

"Yep."

"They wouldn' let a Nominarian in the library! And you - well - I'm sorry, but you - you look Nominarian."

"Don' 'pologize! Dere's no shame in looking Nominarian. You don' look it, an' I was allus disappointed by dat."

"How'd you get into the library?" She might find ripping the frayed threads from her old rags fascinatnig, but he was not so easily distracted from the crucial points.

"Ah, well. It took a while, y'know. Many many days I tried. Most'y I got threw out. I kep' watchin' the librarians' shifts and tryin' them all out. Get a feel for dem. One I found was crooked. 'Nother was a coward. Never force me out 'less someone brought it up. I try bribin' the first wit a saplin'. De mawr fool me. 'Course he took it and didn' let me in. Den I find all de shifts of de odder. One night, it all empty, I go in."

"And he jus' let you?"

"He pretend to be workin' on sommin else. He was okay man. Just not a brave one."

"And there was a book?"

"Mm - hold on."

Han thought the wait for her to finish sewing up a gaping hole, needle in mouth, would drive him to madness. He wisely put in the time scrubbing with furious speed, trying to free up his attention for what she would finish saying when she was done. The sun, he noted, was beginning to set. Strangely, it was every bit as beautiful as the night he and Besho had "levitahted."

In any case, he knew she wasn't lying. She wouldn't go to the lengths of those words for a tale.

"All dem scholars, you know. Got noddin mawr to do 'cept learn all 'bout stuff ain't dere business. What business dat scholar have wit Nominarians? Noddin, I tell you. Tell you true. But it had it all in dere, and dat was useful. Dere's all sawrts of 'counts of it. He jus' heard 'bout people like you and Besho, t'ough…"

"Wait," said Han slowly. "How can you read?"

As slowly, she laughed. "No mawr queshens! You ask too much."

"Miz Bantim! You can' read."

"No, but I can tell someone who can read what I'm after," she laughed, evidently pleased with the acute memory of her craftiness.

"But you said - you said there wasn't no one - no one in there 'cept the librarian - "

She swore.

"I didn' mean for no one to know dat! Dat's why I never tell even Urne. Oh, Urne, he would tell far'n wide. Dat librar'an did me a good turn. Was agains' de rules. I wudn' 'bout to go ruinin' him."

"He was a right coward-bastard, Nominarians are 'llowed in de library!"

"Yeah, well. I feel sorry for him. Ain't him ever levitahte."

"Dat's de tru'," Han growled. He took out his anger Muskakee-ward (he was mostly Muskakee himself, but the bigoted ones made him just about commit murder sometimes) on the washing. In the scorching water, it felt like his skin had gone, so high was the blood to the surface. They would crack once he took them out again and exposed them to air.

"Boy, you 'sperience love enough, you don' go 'round hatin' people so much. Sure, some people. Whole groups, even. But you love each single person wit just a liddle bit of de love you have wit de man - or de woman - you levitahte wit."

"Besho's got some Nominarian blood too, then?"

"Naw - you only need one person got some of de blood. Besho's all Muskakee so far as I know. Dat book I read - " She craned her neck around, a quick, birdlike movement. "Eundri! It's geddin' dark. Urne! Urne!…"

"Wait!" Han let what was in his hands fall lazily to the bottom through the water. "What about this?"

"What about it?"

"What more?"

She was standing and gathering. "What mawr? I tol' you all about it. You know all 'bout it anyway, it happen to you enough."

"But - but the book - you were going to tell me what the book said!"

"Ahm." Standing, she blinked up at him. "Said abou'…?"

He squinted, trying to remember. "Somethin' about Besh… about Muskakees?"

"Oh oh. Wahl dat was jus' sayin' dat some div de biggest cases div magic happened when on'y one person had a lot div Nominarian blood…" Her voice trailed off as she corner eyed her man's approach to the door, a swinging metal pail in hand. Han, feeling wronged, thought that Urne Bantim looked absurdly like a little boy ready for his first day of school at that moment. She turned back to him without acknowledging Mr. Bantim, save perhaps for eye contact that dazed Han had missed. "Han, you finish put washing away for me? I have de clodes for de gi'ls."

He wanted to protest, or at least bargain his laundrying services for more information, but most of all to say no altogether. But she looked up at him with beseeching and familiar eyes. The latter quality carried the day. For young men the world over, Muskakee and Nominarian, rich and poor, might deny the whole world, their mothers included, but never their mother-like figures.

"'Right," he sighed. "I'll finish these for you. You take the clodes - make sure Besho gets some…"

She smiled swiftly. Already she and her husband were moving toward their thicket to the city. "Dat's right. Till la-der, loverboy."

"Till later."

That excitement, having promised more than it had fulfilled, left him feeling deflated. As he did carry out the chore, the skin of his hands visibly cracking open in various lines, he lacked his usual energy. There were Nominarian wonders - but not much, really - some useless rising into the air, which was something of a bother when one considered it. And having his and Besho's relationship so parallel to the Bantims further lethargized him. Things were glorious now - but they would change. One day Besho would look as worn out and sound as unoriginal as the Nominarian woman who now clothed her. He hoped, however, that he would avoid seeming quite so flaccid to the world as Urne Bantim. Not even Bantim's skill with the violin could compensate for his current fatness.

It was dark before Han had finished and could set out home. Even the Old Shrew had the strange enthrall of the crashing shoreline under moon and starlight that night, but Han was blind to it as he set off in what would have been a huff had he not been under that sudden, unaccountable weariness. He shuffled, then, rather than stomped, following the path the Bantims had blazed, as it were, just under an hour earlier. As he walked, he tried to create fantasies of telling Besho all about the magic they had created together and its Nominarian origins, but somehow they all fell rather flat even within his own mind, where such things out to be better than they will be outside of it.

This accounts for his distraction at first, and for his abrupt attention about midway through the thicket. As he shook out of his mind, he listened rather than merely heard the cold, grey waves crashing along the shore. It reminded him to take note of his surroundings - many an unwary Nominarian had been robbed or beaten or killed or all three before, and many of them after nightfall. Suddenly paranoid lest he die right now - when, really, he least wanted to, when having just discovered the brink of the wondrous - he jerked about much as Mrs. Bantim had earlier.

Something had caught his eye - but further circumspection proved that it was nothing at eye level. With cautious reluctance, he turned from the hunt for nothing and back around. His gaze swept the ground as he did so.

He had spotted merely footprints, the Bantims', no doubt. With a self-deprecating snort, Han was about to move on when another thought popped up, and he looked down again, fully expecting to feel exasperated with himself. Instead he squinted. There seemed to be a small green shoot in the midst of it, which was odd, but rather sweet - the sort of thing Besho would like to see at some point.

But there were more things growing. He walked all about, a few inches here and there, examining their footprints in the springy ground - ground that wasn't all that springy, come to think of it. He was leaving only very light indentations here and there. And things were growing out of them. A very few pine shoots. Fledging tussocks. Foot-shaped pockets of moss. Small flowers, here and there.

Then he looked up, and squinted toward the city buildings, just visible through what little was left of the Bantim's little nursery, to where Besho was laboring, to where the Bantims were spreading what rich Muskakee considered rags and what Besho's friends considered wealth.

So very well. He didn't have to worry about everything between them ending the moment the levitahting did now, apprently.

He noted a bunch of long-beaked birds around one of the prints and tiptoed over to examine it. No longer was he tired, and, he instinctively felt, nor would he be until he had seen inside every last one.