The Golden Thread by Suzy McKee Charnas

Author:Suzy McKee Charnas [Charnas, Suzy McKee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Speculative Fiction
ISBN: 9781587154805
Publisher: Borgo Press
Published: 1989-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

12

Vandals and Huns

I FOUND LENNIE OUTSIDE on the school steps. “Where’d you go?” I said. “You scared me to death!”

“Out the side door to the other corridor,” he said. “Ssshh, look.”

Bosanka stood with Michael Scott at the school’s front steps: trucklike, booted Bosanka and the beautiful Michael in stone-washed jeans, golden curls, and mountaineer parka. It was a distressing sight.

I turned back to Lennie. “Are you okay?” I said. “Did you see what she did to that poor old chair—?”

“Don’t remind me,” he said painfully. “She opened up a raft of possibilities that I don’t even want to think about. Like, what life was like in her world for the people who weren’t ‘highborn,’ or who weren’t even people, to her.”

“Let alone the animal life,” I said.

“I know,” Lennie said, wincing. He had always been sensitive about the cruelty to animals.

But I was wound up, I just couldn’t stop. “All that stuff about hunting—in the sea and the air—maybe they tore their forests apart, too. Maybe all their plants had consciousness that a ‘highborn’ like Bosanka could wake with her magic and abuse whenever she felt like it! The girl is a total barbarian, like the Huns and the Vandals all wrapped up in one big package.”

He started to say something—maybe a defense of Bosanka, as he’d defended her before—but just then Michael and Bosanka started walking away.

“Come on,” I said. “We still have to talk to her.”

“Right now?” Lennie said, hanging back. “I don’t know, Val. She’s pretty upset.”

“Listen, Lennie,” I said, “even Bosanka might soften up after spending time with Michael Scott. I mean, she is a girl, right? And you have to admit, Michael is gorgeous.”

“And he’s walking around with somebody we know might be a more or less lethal person,” Lennie said with a sideways look at me. “You really think us being around will protect him from her bad temper?”

“Who knows,” I muttered. “Come on.” The thing about your good friends is that they know you so well—even the parts you don’t particularly want them to know.

We followed Bosanka and Michael to the park through the chilly afternoon. Bosanka didn’t have any books for him to carry for her. She didn’t need props.

“How come she didn’t turn you into a deer, or worse?” I asked Lennie.

He zipped his parka shut. The afternoon sunshine didn’t have much warmth in it. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I said to her, ‘Look, we have to talk about this, and I can’t talk if you turn me into a dumb animal.’ She said, ‘You are already dumb animal,’ and stomped out.”

Lennie had a lot of guts, but if I said so I knew he’d get all embarrassed, so I didn’t. Privately, I thought he was amazing.

“Not that there aren’t animals that could talk to you, if you could just crack their code,” he went on. “My dolphin project is about some scientists who are teaching dolphins to talk. Well, communicate, anyway.”

I said, “Lennie, that sounds great.”

“They let you swim with them in the tank,” Lennie said, warming to his theme.

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