A Meeting At Corvallis

Rudi nodded thoughtfully. Of course, there weren't all that many really, really old people around at
all. They'd mostly all died the year he was born. Uncle Dennis was fifty-eight, and the oldest person in
Dun Juniper by a decade. There were only six or seven people here older than Mom, who was forty.
Then he called out to the leader of the little column. "Aoife," he said. "Do you think all the old folks
are weird? I mean, you're grown up but you're not old—not real old."
"Thanks!" the woman who'd turn twenty-one in a few months said.
The lantern wavered a little as she looked over her shoulder, and paused to brush snow from her
plaid. "Not really, sprout," she went on. "I was … just a little older than you are now, at the Change. I
remember riding in cars, you know? And TV and lights going on when I pushed a switch … sort of. We
were in a school bus when the Change happened, Dan and Sanjay and me; I can remember that. But I'm
not really sure if I'm remembering all the rest of it, or just remembering remembering or remembering
what the oldsters told me."
That got a chuckle; but then he thought her face went uncertain and a little sad in the white-flecked
dimness. "And it gets more that way all the time; more like remembering a dream." More cheerfully: "But
they do go on about it a lot, don't they? Even Dad."
There were more nods and mutters of agreement.
"Hey, I heard that!"
Chuck's voice came out of the snow-shot darkness. Rolling eyes and sighs were the younger
generation's only defense against tales of the days before the Change. There wasn't much point in talking
about it among themselves.
"Let's have a song!" Rudi said instead.
That brought enthusiastic agreement; it usually would, among a group of Mackenzies. They passed a
few moments arguing over what tune, which was also to be expected. At last, exasperated, Rudi simply
began himself and waited for the others to join in:
"The greenwood sighs and shudders
The westwind wails and mutters—"
There were a few complaints, but the song matched the weather, and most of the youngsters took it
up with bloodthirsty enthusiasm:
"Gray clouds crawl across the sky
The moon hides herjace as the sunlight dies!
And mankind soon shall realize
The Bringer of Storms walks tonight!
No mortal dare to meet the glare
Of the Eye of the Stormbringer
For he is the lightning slinger
The glory singer, The gallows reaper!"
The road wound along between the muddy, reaped potato fields and truck gardens covered in mulch
of wheat-straw and sawdust and spoiled hay; a whiff of manure came from beneath. A rime of ice was
forming in the puddles along the water-furrow from the pond that watered them in the summer; they
tramped on over the plank bridge, then past fenced and hedged pastures, and other fields where the
stems of the winter oats bowed beneath the wet snowflakes. The stock was mostly huddled in the shelter
of board sheds, and the herd-wards forked down hay for them from the stacks or walked their rounds.
They had thick cloaks and jackets and knit vests and leggings, and booths to take shelter from the worst
of the weather; they and hunters in the woods and unlucky travelers were the only ones who'd sleep
outside walls this night.
The song wasn't one he'd have picked if he were going to be rolling in a sleeping bag beneath a tree.
Not out where wolves and bears and tigers and woods-fey roamed—the fey could be friendly or
unfriendly, and were usually tricksey—and where a stranger met might be anything from an outlaw to a
wood-sprite or godling in disguise.
But it was a fine tune when you were heading back to stout gates and bright fires and a good supper.