Daisy in the Fringe

Dear Diary,

The fight was over and we was all sitting around talking about what to do next.  Hank was doing most of the talking (nothing new about that), and most of it seemed to be about what Dorothy wanted.  One of them folks we was fighting was Dorothy’s brother who’s also her fiance, which seems pretty weird to me but seeing as I ain’t got a brother maybe I just don’t understand.  (Though I have had a fiance, and all in all I’ve got to say I’m just as glad Geoffry ain’t my brother.  He does just fine as my husband.)  Dorothy was saying she wanted her brother to be a brother to Hank, which we all reckoned meant that she wanted Hank to kill him, though that weren’t the case.  And Hank was worrying on whether Dorothy would pick her brother or him, though he didn’t seem to want to buy her jewelry or flowers or say pretty things to her or do anything that might make her want to pick him instead, so I reckon that if Dorothy decides to marry her brother which someone mentioned would destroy the world, Hank has only himself to blame.

Anyway, I wasn’t paying that much mind, seeing as I had lunch to make.  Geoffry helped me, though his help was mostly just getting in the way.  But I liked it anyway: after all we done lately, it was nice to have something normal that needed doing.

But all in all, no one seems to know just what to do.  It seems like everyone has their own path, and I just don’t see how we’re gonna be walking them together in the near future.  Dusty’s got her recording contract, so she has to put together a band and write some songs.  Hank’s got the Knights of Isis to get organized.  And Geoffry’s talking about going wandering and healing people, though that would be easier if the Nihonese gave us that spaceship they said they’d give me.  So I don’t reckon I know just what all we’ll do next.

But it is nice to be back to our part of the world.  Whatever we do, maybe we could find some time to stop off back at Antioch for a while to be at home.  (Geoffry says that even with all his wanderings, that’s still his home.  Which makes it my home too.  Strange to think I got me such a nice home, and I ain’t slept in it more than a few times.  But everything about being married is different, so it ain’t no surprise that home would be different too.)  Then maybe we can go visit Momma and Grandmother too, cause I’d like to see how they’re doing after Momma’s gotten over her sickness.

Anyway, I reckon things will get back a little more to normal.  To a new normal, anyway.  And I’m looking forward to it.  I’m looking forward to taking care of my Geoffry, cooking and cleaning for him and being his nurse and all.  Nihon was nice, but it ain’t like real life.  So I’m ready to find out what my real life is going to be, to spend some time just being Mrs Bentry.

Dear Diary,

So we was up on the Minerva, and Tacita said she saw us fighting in some temple dedicated to the Knights of Isis.  Hank was awfully stubborn about heading down there, something to do with prophecy that I couldn’t make heads or tails of.  But we finally went and it was a good thing we did, because when we got there a whole bunch of folks was getting ready to sacrifice a couple of kids.

(I don’t rightly understand why it is that there’s so much human sacrifice around.  First it was Tacita, then it was a whole bunch of others, and then it was Dusty, though I guess that weren’t so much a sacrifice as an out-and-out torture killing.  It seems every time we turn around, some girl is getting tied to a table by a nutcase with a knife.)

Anyway, we had us a fight with them men, and there was even some of them frog fellers there, and we beat them bad.  I killed a bunch myself, sticking back and shooting them with my new laser rifle.  That thing sure does shoot a treat.

I’m not sure what’s gonna happen next, but I reckon there’s one more little girl that ain’t gonna get sacrificed thanks to us!

Dear Diary,

We’re in the Iron Falcon on our way back to the Minerva.

I reckon it was a successful embassy.  Anyway, the Nihonese don’t seem inclined to go to war with us, and their new emperor likes us just fine.  Further, we got us some high-level folks coming back with us, the Daughter of Heaven, Lord Toda, and Lady Michi.  So I guess all’s well.

But I don’t have my spaceship.  I guess that Emperor Nariaki was too busy to see to it or something.  Oh well, I reckon Geoffry and me will find some way to do without.

It’s gonna be nice to see the girls up on the Minerva.  We got them some awful nice gifts that we picked up in the city.  Tactia and Flanna will look mighty fine dressed up in sailor suits!

Dear Diary,

Once we was up, some samurai feller came by and said he was looking into what had happened with Prince Nobunga.  After a bit it became clear that he had his own ideas of what he wanted us to tell him, and Dusty gave him just what he wanted.  Turns out that it’s a really big deal in these parts to kill an emperor even if he is possessed by his evil demon wife and has just killed the previous emperor before him.  So the investigator feller worked Dusty around to saying that Prince Nobunga had been killed defending his dad (funny that, seeing as the biggest threat to his dad was him) and we just stood by and watched.

Oh well, I suppose there ain’t much harm to it if it keeps us out of trouble, seeing as everyone knows what really happened anyway.  Though I reckon everyone would be better off if the true story came out.  But these Nihonese do things their own way.

After that we was invited to a big conference where they was gonna choose a new emperor.  That was a lot of talk-talk and a lot of politics, some of it about how the folks from Yamato had schemed with Nobunga though I didn’t understand the details of that and really I found it hard to follow anything that was going on.  But by the end of it Prince Nariaki was the new emperor, just as everyone knew he would be, and they all thanked us for all that we’d done.  Then he asked us if we wanted anything as a reward.

Nobody seemed able to think of much that they’d want.  Nobody but me, that is.  I told Nariaki that I’d like a ship that me and Geoffry could make into a traveling clinic that we could take around the villages of the Fringe to help take care of folks who never get to see a doctor at all.  Emperor Nariaki said he’d see what he could do.

I don’t know why nobody else wanted nothing.  Not even Dusty, and she usually has something she’s scheming for.  But I reckon folks are still too unsettled by all that happened, and they probably don’t have a big dream like I do anyway.

Dear Diary,

After the fighting was over, Geoffry and me went to the clinic where they was taking all the soldiers and did what we could to help the wounded.  There was no shortage of wounded, and no lack of things to be done.  It may have been a short war, but there was plenty of hurting to go around.

It was hard work caring for the hurt, hard and messy, the men bleeding and oozing all sorts of ugliness.  There were men who had been cut and men who had been burned, men shot and blowed up and damaged in pretty near every way you can imagine, and we did our best to put them back together as best we could.  By the end of a full day of nursing, working hard by my Geoffry and even taking some patients all on my own, I was so tired I could hardly lift my arms.

But I kept going as long as the patients kept coming.  And though we lost some, too badly hurt for us to do anything but ease their pain as they passed, we saved a whole lot more.  And while the work was hard, I was glad to do it.  It helped make up for the people I’d killed, and putting a hurt man back together is a lot more satisfying than smashing up one who’s whole.

When the new patients stopped coming and the Nihonese doctors was able to handle what remained, Geoffry and me went back to the rooms that the others had snatched, a pair of palace suites that nobody else was using.  I was exhausted after all the fighting and the patching up of folks, but tired as I was I was dirtier still, seeing as I was covered with blood from the fight before I even started patching up wounded which ain’t a clean job.  I don’t reckon I ever been so filthy as I was then, and Geoffry and me chased everyone off from the bathroom and settled into the big Nihonese tub together.

It felt good to wash away the grime, and Geoffry scrubbed my back until I was scoured clean as a frying pan under steel wool.  Then he held me in the hot water while I let loose my tears.  He was awfully worried about me, had been all day, and he stroked my hair and rubbed my back and all over, and before long I started to calm down.  We took one last rinse, then found a big fluffy bed to sleep in and I cradled close to my Geoffry for the first time in days, too tired to do anything but sleep.

It’s morning now and he’s still snoring.  I reckon I should get up and see how Dusty’s doing.  She took an awful fright yesterday and I reckon she must still be pretty shook up.  I probably should have stayed with her yesterday instead of working in the clinic, but the wounded seemed to need me.  She’ll probably snap back quick, she always does, and I’ll find some way to make it up to her.

Dear Diary,

I’ve seen my first war now, and  I only hope it’s my last.  Although it was an awfully small war and only lasted about a day, it sure was ugly.  I don’t want to think what a great big war spreading over planets and years would be like.

Turns out after all we’d been through, we had to go back in the palace after all.  So we got Lady Miyo and the other wounded to the Iron Falcon, got our guns, and went back in.

I took one of them beam rifles that the gray soldiers had.  It shoots a treat, much better and more quiet than my old machine gun.  All you got to do is point it and pull the little trigger, hardly more than a switch.  That’s all it takes to make a living man dead.

Oh diary, it don’t seem right, how easy it is to kill a man.  All you got to do is point the rifle and pull the trigger and you put an end to all the man ever was or ever will be.  All the years of training, all the work his momma put into feeding and cleaning and raising him, all that he loved and hated and dreamed.  All gone with just a little pull of the trigger.

Last night I killed three men by pulling a trigger, guards who just happened to be in our way as we went to free Lord Toda’s men.  They tried to stop us, them and a few others, even shot at us and hit Hank and Prometheus, so we killed them and they didn’t shoot no more.

And that’s not even counting Prince Nobunga and his wife.  I reckon I feel kinda sorry for them.  I mean, Prince Nobunga didn’t ask to have a demon possess him, and I surely doubt his wife asked to have that horrible slug thing inside her head.  They might have been nice people without evil things chewing away at them, the sort you’d enjoy sitting out in the evening and swapping a story with.

But at least I worked up a sweat killing the royals, swinging my sword like that.  It only seems right that killing a person should take some effort.  Cause just pulling a trigger, that hardly seems enough to end a life.

And oh, we freed Toda’s men.  They rescued Nariaki and ended the war, though it took more killing.  But it wasn’t us doing the killing that time, and I sure am happy for that.

Dear Diary,

Oh diary, I don’t know if I like this adventuring life.  Sometimes it’s all exciting, but sometimes it’s just plain awful.  And now’s one of the awful times.

We set watches before going to bed, but somehow that didn’t do no good.  Because when I woke up I was lying on the floor all tied up.  Ever since that time when the Bochley brothers tied me down in the basement of the Cow and Plow nothing’s scared me as much as being tied up, and waking all wrapped in ropes threw me into a panic.  I thrashed about trying to get free and pretty near passed out when I found that I couldn’t break my bonds no how.

After a bit of that I got hold of myself and looked around.  And then things got worse.  Dusty was tied naked to a table in the middle of the room and Prince Nobunga, all dressed up like an emperor, and a wicked woman who I took to be his wife were talking about where to start in on slicing her up.  Lady Michi was there looking scared and the Prince and his wife were telling her all sorts of nasty things to do to Dusty.

I didn’t know what to do.  There weren’t no way I was gonna get out of them bonds but I had to seeing as there weren’t no one else around to help.  I was just starting to fret myself back into a fit again when Lady Michi came over by me and slipped a little knife into my hands.  That at least gave me something to work them ropes with, though it sure was awkward, my hands being behind my back and all.

It took some time to get my hands free and all the while Dusty and Michi was telling nasty stories to Prince N and his wife, stalling for time.  After a bit Dusty even started in on singing, which really kept their eyes on her.  I don’t know how she ever got up the bravery to sing at a time like that.  I never could, even if I could sing.  But she kept on going, even though it took me a confounded long time to get free, and she was still going as I rose as quiet as I could to my feet, which was still tied together.

I’d noticed one of them samurai swords sitting on a nearby shelf, so I did a little flip to take me next to it, pulled the sword, and cut loose my legs.  About then Prince N noticed me and drew his own sword.  We had a bit of a dust-up and I cut off his arm and he collapsed on Dusty, spraying her all over with his blood.  Then Dusty shouted to watch for the wife, as she was the really evil one of the pair, so I cut her head clean off.  And I was just about to start relaxing and see about freeing Dusty when things got really ugly.

First off, the princess’s head flipped over onto Dusty’s belly and started chewing on her.  That got Dusty screaming, and she grabbed at the head to yank it free.  (Dusty had gotten her hands free somehow with help from Michi.)  Then Prince Nobunga stood up and drew his short sword and, looking mighty spry for a feller who’d just had an arm chopped off, he took a swing at me and sliced me right through the belly.  That hurt so much that I had to drop my sword.

Meanwhile Dusty pressed her Artemis symbol into the head and said something to the god and the head blew up like a firecracker in a pumpkin, sending bits of brain and skull everywhere.  But there was some big vile white slug thing living inside like the worm in the apple and it dropped down onto Dusty’s tummy and starting trying to dig its way in.

Dusty really started screaming then, and I grabbed the slug thing and pulled it off her.  Then Prince Nobunga yelled at me to put down his wife (and if he was happy to be married to that slug thing, he sure had strange taste in women) and then took a swing at me with his short sword.  But I blocked it with the slug thing, and the sword sliced right on through, cutting it into halves that gave a last wriggle before settling down dead.  And when that happened, he fell to the ground himself, unmoving.

Well, I didn’t want him getting up again, so I grabbed up a sword and chopped his head clean off.  About then Hank and Prometheus burst into the room.  They freed Dusty and helped her on with the princess’s kimono.  And then we found the old Emperor’s body lying on a bed in the corner, all chopped up something fierce, so I suppose Nobunga was emperor when I killed him and it was me and not Dusty that was meant to kill an emperor after all.

I felt sad for the old emperor, seeing as he was such a nice old gentleman.  But there weren’t no time for grieving, so Hank and Prometheus led us back the way they came down a short staircase.  I put one arm each around Dusty and Michi and helped them as best I could, seeing how shocky they both looked.  Truth to tell, I wasn’t feeling much better myself, but I reckoned I had to keep it together till I could get them to safety.

As we was going down the stairs, Hank told how the menfolk was all in their room when a secret door opened and the Daughter of Heaven’s servant showed up and asked for help.  They went off and fought some samurai and found the Daughter of Heaven all cut up on a bed and Geoffry was there tending to her now.  I started forward a little quicker at that, though Dusty and Lady Michi weren’t able to go but so fast.  I wanted to see Geoffry so, and when we got to the room where he was I just threw myself in his arms and started to bawl.  Then Hank led us back down a secret entrance and got on the radio.

We’re all in some secret passage now while Hank is figuring what we should do next.  He talked with Captain Olo and they got a plan to fly us right out of here.  That sounds good to me, but now he’s talking with Lord Toda and it sounds like we gotta go back into the palace for some fool reason.  That’s gotta be crazy: they don’t know how horrible it was back there and now there’s shooting and a whole civil war going on and they want us to run back into it and I’m already cut and I don’t want to fight no more!

I don’t know what I’ll do.  Even Dusty is scared and Dusty never gets scared and Michi looks like she’s about to faint.  And Geoffry keeps telling me that it’s gonna be all right and to just take a deep breath but I keep breathing and it ain’t all right cause I’m all covered with blood and I don’t like being covered with blood especially when a lot of it’s mine like it is now.  Oh diary, I just want to go home – I don’t want to be an adventurer no more and I don’t want to be an ambassador or a knight of Isis or anything but my Geoffry’s wife, and I never ever wanted to be caught up in the middle of a war in some strange place where they don’t even speak my language anyway.  But that’s where I am now.  And I don’t know how we’re gonna get out, but Hank is calling and I got to go now.

Dear Diary,

It’s the next day now, and things is getting worse.  They won’t let us out of our room, and that means that we’re separated from the menfolk.  If we didn’t have our radios we wouldn’t know what was going on with them at all.  They’re only around the corridor, but the guards (all silver men now, not Lord Toda’s fellers) won’t let us out to go see them or nothing.

Course, I can’t talk to Geoffry at all.  A radio is all well and good for most people, but if all you can do is hand-talk it ain’t no use at all.  I sure wish he was here – things feel safer when he’s around.

We’re hearing all sorts of strange rumors of big things going on in the palace.  They say Lord Toda killed a couple of Prince Nobunga’s men and fighting is spreading all over the place.  But the guards don’t know nothing and all we can do is wait.

We’re gonna set a watch tonight, though I don’t know what we can do if things go bad.  But I sure hope things get right soon.

Dear Diary,

When we got back, Dusty was riling people up.  She’d spent the afternoon at the archivists and she said she met the archivist of love, one of them fellers who studies how people act when they get together.  She joked that Geoffry and me might want to go ask him some questions, but Geoffry whispered in my ear that he’d rather learn with me than ask anyone else, and besides we got them books that Aphrodite (girl not goddess) gave us if we want to learn something new.

I blushed at that and was ready for Dusty to tease me on it, but she’d already picked her next target.  She told Dorothy that the Love Archivist had told her that Dorothy was betrothed to someone else.  Well, that brought out a real to-do: it turns out Dorothy was going to be married to this feller as part of a ritual to bring back gods, she was gonna have his babies and then get sacrificed and they was preparing her for that when we met her back in the crater.  She said she was happy to be with us now, but soon after she went off to her sleep cubicle to be all alone and she stayed there the rest of the night.

I reckon Dorothy must be awfully lonely.  I mean, we’re in a strange place with strange customs, but at least we have other people with us who know our ways.  Dorothy is the only one around from her home and there ain’t nobody around who knows how she grew up or the foods she eats or the gods she worships or anything.  Oh, she’s got Hank for funning with, but she ain’t got anybody she can even talk her own language with.  I tried to imagine how I’d feel if I was here in Nihon all alone, without Geoffry or Dusty or anyone, and I realized how hard it must be for Dorothy.  I’m gonna have to make an effort to be extra special nice to her tomorrow cause I’m thinking she could use a good friend around about now.

After a bit, Lady Michi came back.  She’d been sent for by Prince Nobunga, and he’d done something terrible to her because she was hurting all over and even bleeding.  Geoffry fixed up the physical damage pretty quick, but her heart was still hurting.  Seems that Prince Nobunga had gotten much worse all of a sudden, that his wife was in town and he’d gotten more beastly.  Everyone guessed that maybe the dark presence that Dusty saw in him might get stronger when his wife was around.  We decided we had to do something.

Dusty went off and got a message to Prince Yoshimune, the Monk Prince.  He’s gonna bring his mind-walkers to town to see if they can do something about that dark presence.  But it’s gonna be a few days before he can get here.

Meanwhile, we’re gonna hunker down and keep everything safe.  But we’re worried that maybe word will get out that we know about Prince Nobunga, and someone might take offense at that and do something about it.  We reckon that’s probably why that samurai was slandering Dusty and all, but since that didn’t do them any good, who knows what will happen next.  It sure is troubling, and we’re gonna keep a watch tonight and sleep with our swords handy.

Dear Diary,

Geoffry and me just got back from a nice quiet day alone in town.  (Well, alone except for a samurai guard, anyways.  I sure am getting tired of having guards underfoot wherever we go!  I’d never make a good princess – I get too tired of being surrounded by guards and servants all the time.)

I wore my white sundress with the pink trimmings, the strapless one that’s kept up with elastic around the bodice.  It flows so prettily in the breeze, and Geoffry said he just loved how it looked on me.  He also took every chance to brush my shoulder all day long and walk extra close to me, so I reckon he really must have liked it.

We went to someplace called Rikugien Park.  It’s on the outskirts of the city where there ain’t so many big buildings.  In much of the park you can’t see anything of the city at all which makes it easy to imagine yourself out in the countryside.  Well, out in the countryside if the countryside were so pretty, anyways.  All the landscape was so well managed – the grass was all trimmed to a perfect length, feeling spongy underfoot, and the flowering bushes were bright and cheerful without a dead blossom anywhere in sight.  It must have taken a lot of work, but all we saw of that was a couple little old men with small clippers trimming plants here and there and keeping everything nice.

The park had a little lake with an island in the middle of it.  We went out in a boat and visited a small shrine on the island.  It was pretty, a soft-brown wood with one of them funny little arched tiled roofs that the temples have here.  We lit a stick of smelly stuff to the local gods before wandering off down a pretty little path.

We found a soft tussock of grass on a slope looking down over the lake and lay down and watched the clouds fly past.  (I was worried about getting grass stains on my dress, but Geoffry took off his jacket and let me sit on it, then put his arm behind me and let me rest my back on him so I wouldn’t get stained at all.)  The sky was a deep blue like my Geoffry’s eyes, with the occasional puffy cloud setting off the color.

We talked for a long time about all sorts of things.  About my friends from home, and how strange visiting Hawkinsville had been, and all the things Geoffry wanted to do someday.  I told him how Annie had stayed in Antioch after the wedding and gotten a job as a waitress, and he told me about his two best friends Daniel and Benjamin who he’s known from grade school right on up through medical school.  All that talk got me homesick for our friends and for a place where everyone don’t turn their head to look at the gaijin walking by, where a girl can lie on a hillside with her feller without a swordsman keeping an eye on everything.  It’s been nice visiting Nihon, but I suppose I’m just about ready to go back.

But it was awful nice to have a day out with Geoffry, even if we can’t be completely alone.  Having him ask me about myself, being so curious and really wanting to know what I thought, sure was nice.  I don’t reckon I ever had anyone so interested in me, who wants to know all about me.  And Geoffry’s about the smartest feller I know, which makes having him pay me so much mind even more special, though I can’t help but feel that all my prattle must bore him at least a little.

I wish life could always be like that, lying on a pretty hill under a clear blue sky with my Geoffry’s arm around me keeping me warm.  Though maybe without any samurai around.

We finished our day in the city at a pretty restaurant called Cherry Blossom.  It was paneled with rich wood and the waitresses were all dressed in pretty pink kimonos.  We sat at a quiet table and had some tasty Nihonese food.  I even tried some of that raw fish that they eat here.  It was pretty good, little pieces of fish on small blobs of sticky rice, with other pieces of fish rolled up in rice and seaweed.  I wasn’t expecting to care for it, but it was really good.

Geoffry kept smiling at me all through dinner, his eyes bright in the dim lights.  He didn’t even mind when I laughed at him struggling with them chopsticks they use instead of fork and knifes here.  I got the feel for them pretty quick, but Geoffry was a mite clumsy, which was awfully endearing on him.  But by the end of the dinner, when we had ice cream flavored with odd Nihonese fruits, he had figured it out.

We finished our day in the city strolling through the brightly lit streets under the twilight sky.  I felt like I was glowing, and I wished we didn’t have to go back to the court and complications and sleeping all alone in a little cubicle.  But go back we did, watching the last rays of the sun over the water from the ferry.  A pretty ending to a wonderful day.