Ursula Vernon - The Tomato Thief

Grandma Harken nodded. She respected owls, but she did not want them hanging around the house.

“May I have some water?” asked the mockingbird-woman.

When someone in the desert asks for water, you give it to them. There weren’t many rules in the desert, but that was one of them. Grandma Harken got up and poured out a glass for each of them.

Then she made coffee. Between last night and tonight, she was running down to the bottom of her supply, but she had a feeling that Marguerite might appreciate it.

As soon as the smell began to fill the room, she was rewarded. The mockingbird-woman’s head lifted and her dark-gray nostrils flared. “Coffee,” she said hoarsely.

“I got a little cream to go in it, if you want it.”

“Be grateful.”

Grandma Harken got out the cream and the sugar, which was nearly as dear as the coffee.

Still, much like tomato sandwiches, there was a time and a place when what you needed was coffee, and nothing else would do.

Grandma poured the coffee out into earthenware mugs and slid the cream across. “From Spangler’s cow.”

(She did not know why she told the mockingbird-woman this—it seemed unlikely that the odd enchanted creature would be familiar with Spangler or her cow. Still, Grandma felt on some level that if you were drinking something that came out of another living being, you ought to be on a first name basis. The cow in question did not actually have a name, other than “that damn cow,” so this was the closest approximation.)

Marguerite wrapped her scaly fingers around the mug and breathed in the steam.

Grandma let her sit in silence with the coffee. When she finally lifted it to her lips, it was a gesture as ritualized and heartfelt as communion.

She closed her eyes and Grandma thought that she might be crying a little, if birds could weep.

Well. Never underestimate the power of a good cup of coffee.

She poured herself a cup. Sleep wasn’t coming tonight anyway.

“I won’t come back,” said Marguerite. Her voice was thick. “I’ll tell him you caught me. He can get his tomatoes somewhere else—”

Her voice cut off suddenly, with a metallic click, as if the cuff on her tongue had struck her teeth.

“I’d rather they didn’t get stolen,” said Grandma Harken mildly. It seemed important to talk to fill the sudden silence. “But you’re welcome to come back, if you like. I don’t mind company.”

She considered for a moment, then added, “Well, specific company.”

Marguerite shook her head. Grandma could see her rolling her tongue around in her mouth, as if trying to find a tender spot. “Not smart,” she said, finally.

“Would you be in danger, then?” asked Grandma Harken.

“Nah.” She spoke slowly, and Grandma got the impression she was picking each word carefully. “Not really. I’m the only one of me. Can’t be another. You understand?”

“Not yet,” said Grandma. “But I’m starting to, I think.”

She poured out more coffee. Marguerite’s hand shook as she added the cream.

“I won’t tell anyone you were here, if it matters.”

“It won’t matter,” said the bird-woman. “Too much talking, now.” She drank the coffee greedily. “Thank you for this. It’s been … a long time.”

Grandma Harken nodded.

The light outside the window was starting to edge toward gray. Marguerite looked at it and sighed.

“Should get going,” she said.

“You can wait ‘til the owls roost, if you want,” said Grandma.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like that.”

Whatever leash she’s on, she’s got some slack, thought Grandma Harken. But does she want off that leash?

“Whereabouts you from?” she asked. “Originally, I mean.”

“Oh, my.” Marguerite leaned back. “North of here a good way. Other side of the Gila.”

Grandma Harken nodded. There were towns up that way, although she’d never been out that far. “You got any people up there that might appreciate word?”

Marguerite inhaled sharply.

After a moment, she said, “No. No sense poking old wounds. Thank you for the thought.”

“Seems I might have poked one myself. I’m sorry.”

Marguerite set down the coffee cup. “No harm done.”

She rose. Grandma Harken saw her only chance slipping away, and decided to be blunt. “You’re got one leg in a trap,” she said. “You want it opened?”

“No one can open it,” said Marguerite.

“If somebody could, though?”

“It’s too dangerous—”

“I’m a lot older than you, and a lot meaner,” said Grandma Harken, annoyed. “And I don’t take kindly to being lectured by a tomato thief. I ain’t promising you anything and you ain’t asking me for anything. Just yes or no.”

The mockingbird-woman stared at her for a moment, then her lips widened in an unwilling grin. Her teeth were shockingly white against her black bird’s tongue.

“I’d give it all,” she said. “But now I’ve got to go.”

“Go slow,” said Grandma Harken. “And watch for owls.”

She opened the door. Marguerite went down the steps and her skin blazed suddenly silver. By the time she reached the bottom step, she was shrinking, as if she were hunching down.

Then she was a mockingbird again. She took three hops on the dusty garden path and launched herself into the air.

Grandma Harken nodded to her and raised a hand. The fiery bird flew to the top of the garden gate, and then away.

“Well,” said Grandma Harken. “Good thing I put on my good boots.” She snatched up the bag by the door, opened the bedroom so that Spookcat could get to water, and took her walking stick into her hand.

Then she opened the garden gate and followed the spark of fire into the desert.

By the time the sun came up, Grandma Harken was hot and thirsty and tired.

Her water bottle was nearly empty. She had lost the mockingbird twice, and then found her again as she took flight. But now it seemed that she had lost her for good.

She was well up in the desert now, and there was something strange going on in the air.

It wasn’t anything you’d notice if you weren’t looking for it. A little bit of heat haze in a place that couldn’t be hot enough yet to ripple. A wash that had water in it, except that Grandma knew damn well that it didn’t, not this time of year. Palo verde needles that moved in a wind that wasn’t happening anywhere near here.

You had to know the desert well, or have a good sense of the uncanny. Grandma had both and she didn’t like it.

“Blessed Saint Anthony,” she muttered. “Somebody’s folding the world.”

There wasn’t any rhyme or reason to it, as near as she could tell. It didn’t look deliberate. It seemed to follow in the wake of the mockingbird.

Two places lying close together, and sometimes you put your foot through one and into the other. Whatever she’s doing, she’s moving in between ‘em.

There wasn’t anything terrible in that other place, so far as Grandma knew—or at least, nothing that wasn’t already terrible in this one. It wasn’t anymore full of monsters than anywhere else. It was just a little bit different. The places bled into each other all the time. It wasn’t at all unnatural.

It was damned inconvenient, though, if you were trying to track a thing the size of a mockingbird.

She stomped over the sand, leaving tracks that were mostly bootprints. Sometimes the world folded around them and the tracks were bare feet.

Once or twice they belonged to a jackrabbit.

She stopped at last, taking another drink of water, and looked around. It was going to be a long way back. If the one wash was still full when she passed it again, she’d have to drink a little water from it.