SPIRIT WALKER

Chapter 18: The Love That Burns (part 1 of 2)

The next day, as the men pushed their wagon ten grueling miles through the forest with the scent of the giant red women all about, Theron Scandal acted as a nursemaid to Tirilee.

The men pushed the wagon, grunting and straining to get it up hills, or over tree branches. They stationed two men behind the wagon to push and two at the front to pull on the axletree, while Wisteria walked ahead to clear a trail.

Every mile they stopped to rest, and Scandal would wipe the sweat from his forehead, get a dipper from the water barrel, and offer a drink to Tirilee before he drank himself. While the others threw themselves on the ground in sheer exhaustion, Scandal stood beside the Dryad, speaking softly.

Wisteria did not have to wonder at his kindness. There's something he wants from her, she knew. But she wasn't sure what it was. Did he hope to keep the girl himself, she wondered, or did he just want to sleep with her in her Time of Devotion?

The Dryad did not utter a word from the wagon, not to thank Scandal, not even to whimper in pain when the wagon bumped over a limb.

So Scandal went back to work without hearing her voice. He put his back into pushing or pulling the wagon and showed that he had muscle hidden beneath his beer belly. Afterward, he cooked dinner while everyone else sprawled on the ground like dead things.

When Wisteria went to feed the Dryad, Scandal insisted on doing it himself. In his spare time, he went to hunt in the forest for healing herbs. He was doing double duty, taking an unfair burden on himself, and Wisteria told him so.

"It's nothing," Scandal said. "It's my obligation as a gourmet."

"I don't understand," Wisteria said.

"Simple," Scandal said. "Back in the days of the Starfarers, when men lived a thousand years, gourmets were something! A man started as an apprentice, and for the first hundred years he learned only tactile cookery—the art of pleasing the palate, the nose, the hands. The Starfarers knew that everyone tastes things differently, so gourmets devised tests to see how different palates responded to a meal, and then cooked each dish to please the individual customer. Why, at a banquet, everyone would eat the same thing, yet each plate would be subtly different, to match the tastes of the customer. And they didn't care about just taste, either. Texture—both in the mouth as you chew and on the fingers as you picked it up——color, everything was geared for that one person. Back then, you couldn't be a gourmet until you had been at the job for a hundred years and passed your boards. Then, you graduated to whole new levels of cookery: nutritional, where you fine-tuned your diets to meet customers' nutrient requirements; medicinal . . ."

"Holistic cookery," Phylomon put in.

"That's right, a holistic chef," Scandal said. "I try my hand at everything: tactile, nutritional, medicinal. If ever the red drones are destroyed and we get back to space, that's what I want to be, a holistic chef. Learn their secrets."

Everyone has their dreams, Wisteria thought. For some reason, that day she felt a keen sense of loss. She's lost her home, her family. Her people had lost the stars.

During that day, the scent of cheese had always been with them. Wisteria saw the Dryads twice—slender women for all their height, with nipples dark as chocolate. Wisteria looked over at Tirilee, so thin and childish and innocent.

Scandal fed the girl, who, though still bruised and beaten, recovered some strength. He spoke soothingly as he spooned a hearty stew down her throat, and Wisteria listened to Scandal's words. He did not seem to care if everyone in camp heard him.