A/N: In this fic, which is a sort of sequel to Scientist King (it takes place about 2 years later), Daine and Numair travel from mistywabbit's home town to mine. It starts off kind of angsty, but will get funnier later. Also, Daine may seem really out of character in this chapter, but that's quite deliberate and was kind of necessary.
Disclaimer: Tamora Pierce invented all the people mentioned in this chapter, and the names of the animals are borrowed from her work as well. The plot (well, most of the plot) and nearly all the words belong to me.
Chapter 1: Edinburgh, April
Numair Salmalín swung down from his bicycle and walked the machine in through the front gate of a large whitewashed cottage in the village of Swanston. It was a mild Tuesday in late April, and the five-mile ride from the University of Edinburgh campus had been pleasant enough, but he was tired and rather sweaty and looking forward to a cold drink and a clean shirt.
Stowing his very large shoes and the bicycle helmet his wife insisted he wear in the closet in the entry, he became aware of a profound silence and a worrying absence of wagging tails, furry bodies and large pink tongues. This was puzzling. He had seen the car outside in the drive, and Daine's bicycle had been leaning against the wall beside the door when he put his own there; she must be home already (if, indeed, she had ever left). She might have taken the dogs for a walk, true, but in that case why were all the cats not mobbing him in expectation of food and ear scratching?
"Daine?" he called. "Sweetheart, are you home?"
There was no reply, and the silence seemed to deepen. Numair shivered. "Mammoth? Mangle?" he tried again, as he walked through the silent downstairs rooms (no sound from the radio or the CD player; no cooking smells from the kitchen), and finally, as a last resort, "Spots! Cloud! Griiifff-in!"
Still no answer of any sort.
Anxious now, dreading what he would find, he climbed the stairs to the upper floor. The small study he shared with Daine (scrupulously tidy and organized, in sharp contrast to the rest of their house) was silent and empty, and no sound of shower or lavatory came from the bathroom. Finally, reaching the back of the house, Numair quietly opened the door to the bedroom.
"Oh," he said softly, feeling helpless and hating the feeling.
He had found Daine, and he had found the dogs and the cats. They were awake—the cats snuggled in around her, purring soothingly, Mammoth sprawled alongside her like a huge furry pillow, little Mangle alert and on guard at the foot of the bed. She was sleeping, her face blotched and swollen from weeping and (he was gripped by a spasm of love and pity) her thumb in her mouth.
It was hardly the first time he had seen her like this, but the experience seemed to hurt more every time. These days he scarcely bothered to wonder what had triggered it; the number of things that could send her into a downward spiral seemed nearly endless. Perhaps some colleague at the Zoo had announced she was pregnant (or, worse, pregnant again); perhaps one of the animals had had a difficult delivery, or rejected its offspring; perhaps she had simply passed too many voluminously pregnant women or too many babies in prams in the street today.
The whole situation mystified and depressed him. One would not think, to see Daine like this, that she was in fact a capable, intelligent twenty-seven-year-old woman with not one but two responsible jobs, nor that she could walk all day with a forty-pound pack or cycle up a forty-five-degree incline; one would not think that she had bravely faced down events and circumstances that would have driven most people to the brink of nervous breakdown. She looked, at the moment, like nothing so much as a miserable, untidy teenager who had cried herself to sleep over some half-imagined emotional wound. For days, sometimes weeks, at a time she was her usual cheerful and practical self, level-headed and teasing and apparently happy; and then, without warning, the black mood would descend, and nothing he could do seemed to alleviate it.
Of course he did everything he could. He held her while she cried; he coaxed her to eat, made her milky tea and wrapped her in blankets on the sofa, did her chores for her and rang the Zoo and the University to explain that she was ill; in bed at night, he opened his arms to her when she seemed to want that, and kept his hands strictly to himself when she did not. They had been to doctors, had tests, been told that nothing was wrong with either of them and counselled to have patience. He listened and reassured; he ran interference with well-meaning friends and acquaintances; he resolutely pushed away the traitorous thought, She didn't always feel like this; having each other was enough for both of us, once. We used to be happy together.
He coped, somehow or other. What other choice was there?
And eventually, half a day later, a day or two days (on one distressing occasion, four), she would wake in the morning looking confused, eat an enormous breakfast, and go on as though nothing had happened.
It wasn't that he didn't want the same thing she did. Though he had never given much thought to children (or to marriage, come to that) before her, the idea of their children, once started, had become dear to him—the more so because it meant so much to her.
But this—this black misery and helplessness—nothing could be worth this, could it?
It had all begun, of course, with that disastrous trip to the bioterrorism conference. Before, their life together had been happy and relatively unremarkable; they had not (at least, he had not) given much thought to the future, except to be happy that they would be spending it together. But after that nightmare experience, everything had been different. They had grown closer than ever, and that was good; she had finally known, and forgiven him for, all the unpleasant things he had been afraid to tell her about his younger self, and that was good, too. But they had been responsible (albeit indirectly) for more than one death; they had feared for their own lives, and for each other's; they had descended briefly but rapidly into something very like hell. For months afterward they had suffered from nightmares, and every goodbye was irrationally difficult and fearful; their mobile-phone bill quadrupled because one of them was ringing the other every hour, just in case.
Six months after that trip, Daine's friends Miri and Evin had produced a bouncing baby boy. Daine and Numair had taken a weekend drive down to Salisbury to inspect little Nathan, and the sight of her expertly cradling the tiny, squirming bundle of arms and legs and pudgy cheeks, cooing softly at it until it stared, fascinated, into her eyes, had done something to him that he couldn't quite explain. And then she had handed him the baby and, instead of laughing at his considerably less competent handling, had smiled at him indulgently and said, "Don't worry, 'Mair—you'll learn."
That night, back in their room at a local bed-and-breakfast, they had looked out her packet of pills and ceremoniously flushed the remaining five "reminder" ones down the loo.
They had been happier than ever, at first, dreaming and planning and having playful arguments about what to name their baby and where to send it to school. Now, more than a year later, he hesitated even to bring the subject up. He thought sometimes that this hurt most of all: the idea that, after all they had been through together, a topic existed that the two of them could not discuss.
Now, more immediately, he wondered what to do. If I wake her now, the beasties will berate me, and she'll probably cry all evening. But if I don't, she'll be awake all night and we'll both be hopeless in the morning. Neither prospect was particularly appealing. In fact, if he were honest with himself, what Numair mostly wanted to do was shoo the cats and dogs off the bed and curl up beside Daine himself.
But sooner or later everyone would be hungry, and the dogs would need to be let out, and there were papers to be marked and page proofs to be corrected and washing-up to be done and a stack of post to be opened, and someone would have to look after it all.
So, instead, he leaned over the cats, kissed his wife's cheek, and gently squeezed her shoulder. "Sweetheart," he said softly, "Daine, wake up."
She stirred; her eyes opened briefly, then closed again, and she settled back into sleep. His hand still on her shoulder, he shook her gently. "You'll miss supper," he coaxed. "Come on, love. Wake up."
This time she opened her eyes properly and shifted to look in his direction. Seeing him, she smiled and put up her arms for a hug, and for a moment he thought it would all be all right. Then, as suddenly as a cloud blowing across the sun, the smile faded and her face went shuttered and blank. The cats glared at Numair, and Mangle leapt melodramatically from the bed and stalked off.
Leaning down, he gathered her into his arms and lifted her from the bed like a child. Her arms went round his neck, but she wouldn't meet his eyes. "I'm here now, love," he whispered into her hair. "It'll be all right, I promise." Even as he spoke the words he wondered what was wrong with him, to be making such a rash promise. But surely … surely everything would be all right, eventually. Something would happen; they would find a solution, somehow. Together.
"I'm here," he repeated. "You'll be all right, sweetheart."
By way of an answer, Daine clung to him ever more tightly as he carried her down the stairs.
"What was it this time?" he asked her gently, as she picked at rice and stir-fried mixed vegetables in peanut sauce on the other side of the table in the back garden. Sometimes—occasionally—if he could draw her out, persuade her to talk (not about the root problem, never that, but about the proximate trigger, whatever it had been), the mood seemed to pass a little faster. Or, more likely, it makes no difference, and I only do it because the silence is so unnerving.
"I read an article," she said, almost inaudibly.
He waited for her to continue; when she didn't, he prompted, "What did it say?"
There was a long pause, then, "That women experience a significant decline in fertility after age twenty-seven. Someone did a study, in America."
He sighed and reached across the table to squeeze her hand. "Statistics like that don't necessarily mean anything for any individual person, love," he pointed out, in his most reasonable voice. "You're still so young—"
Daine yanked her hand away. "Numair, I'm twenty-seven!" She hurled the words at him like some sort of accusation.
"I do know that," he replied mildly. "Where was this study published?"
"Human Reproduction," she admitted, with some reluctance.
He quirked an eyebrow at her. "Professional reading?"
"Not exactly." She seemed to be growing annoyed with him, and, perversely, he was glad of it: anything was better than the shell-shocked blankness he had come home to. Of course he loved Daine in all her moods—it was impossible to imagine not loving her, or loving her less than completely—but when the blackness took her he missed, sometimes with a desperate intensity, the playful and determined and staunchly practical woman he had fallen in love with all those years ago.
"Sweeting, I really think—"
"Don't you dare tell me I just need to relax!" she half-shouted. "If one more person tells me to just relax and let Nature take its course I'll—I'll—"
She turned away and burst into tears.
"Who's been saying such things?" Numair knelt beside his wife's chair and let her sob against his shoulder. Thinking, How many people has she told? He hadn't told anyone at all, out of some sort of idiotic male pride, he supposed, though he knew most of their friends must have guessed what was going on.
Daine sniffled. "Just … people," she said indistinctly. "It's what everyone says. Stop thinking about it. Stop trying so hard. Someone told me I'm under too much stress in my job, and I ought to give up working and stay at home and relax."
He couldn't help chuckling at this. "Someone who doesn't know you very well, I presume."
Incredibly, she raised her head and gave him a tiny smile. "You presume correctly, Professor." The smile faded. "I'm so sorry, 'Mair," she said, sounding hopeless. "I know I've been horrid lately. I don't mean to be, it's just …"
Sitting back on his heels on the flagstones, he put a long finger to his lips. "Don't," he said. "You needn't." They had been friends for nearly eleven years, lovers for eight, married for five—did she really think he might expect her to apologize for something she couldn't help?
Still, they were talking about it, after a fashion, and the world hadn't ended. This, surely, was progress of a sort.
"I love you," she whispered.
"And I love you, dear one," he replied, dropping a kiss on her forehead as he got to his feet. "Now, eat up while I fetch the post. There's an enormous envelope from Canada addressed to you, and I'm most anxious to see what's in it."
"Calgary?" Numair inquired, perplexed. "Isn't that that place on the Isle of Mull where we camped on the beach and counted eagles?"
"It's also a city in Canada, apparently," Daine said. "With a 'world-class' zoo. And a university that's opening a new vet school."
He studied her as she studied the sheaf of papers from the large, official-looking University of Calgary envelope. She still looked tired and strained, but her absorbed expression and a certain set of her shoulders told him that something in the letter genuinely interested her. Even better, while reading it she had absent-mindedly eaten nearly half her supper.
"This is very funny," she said after a few minutes, looking up at him, bemused. "Peculiar, I mean. They want to offer a zoological and wildlife medicine programme, and they want me to come there and help them plan it. Expenses paid. For two weeks in July. Me."
"Well, of course you," Numair countered. "You are an acknowledged expert in the field, are you not?"
"You're the famous one."
"Ah, but I am just a common or garden genius." She made a face at him, and he hid a smile. "You are the one and only Beast Whisperer."
"But I don't know anything about planning curriculum," Daine argued. "The Dick School hasn't even got a course like that—not a proper one. I did all those externships through the Zebra Foundation, and went round with you doing wildlife things, and volunteered at the Zoo—"
"I'm sure there will be other people with expertise in curriculum planning. They want you because you understand things other people don't. And you might learn a great deal, too. One ought to take every opportunity to learn new things, you know, vetkin."
She frowned. "You talk as though I were actually going to do this."
"Aren't you? It sounds a fascinating exercise. Not to mention the offer to pay your way to Canada, which—"
"But … but they want me to come for two weeks, 'Mair. I can't—it would be—"
He didn't let her finish. "We'll both go," he said firmly. "When do we start?"
She gaped at him.
"I mean it," he added. "We haven't had a proper holiday in—in forever. We never had a proper honeymoon, for that matter. We ought to—"
"Of course we had a honeymoon," Daine objected. "Neither of us did any work for a week after we got married." She paused. "Well, nearly a week. Well … three or four days, at any rate."
"Q.E.D.," Numair said triumphantly. "Clearly, we need a holiday."
"What about the beasties? Onua can't look after them then—she was just telling me yesterday that she'll be abroad most of this summer."
"Young Aly can come and house-sit. She'll do fine—even Griffin likes her." There was an accusing yowl from the afore-named marmalade cat, who had taken up a station under the table while they were talking.
"And can we really afford to pay your way there?" Inwardly, he crowed with delight at her dry tone.
"We'll work something out," he said. "Stop eating takeaways—swear off petrol for the next two months. We're not paupers, you know, we only think we are because we both grew up that way. Now, how much holiday do the Zoo owe you?"
She shrugged. "A few weeks," she admitted grudgingly. "Four or five. Maybe ... maybe six."
"Splendid." Numair rubbed his hands together in the manner of one preparing to get down to work. "Now, July, you said? When in July?"