Chapter 11

Rabbits and Princes

Fortunately for the inhabitants of Caprica the broad stretch of farmland in the central part of the continent was virtually untouched by the war. Farmers were able to continue producing crops to feed the population. Their big complaint was that spare parts for tractors, harvesters and other equipment were increasingly difficult to obtain since the destruction of the northern industrial cities and many of the factories.

-Bartell, History of the Second Cylon War

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"Damn rabbits," Kara said. "They're all over the garden again."

Karl's attitude toward the garden was that there was enough for all of them, including the rabbits. She disagreed. Each day she could see the rabbits making more inroads. They seemed to have multiplied in the six weeks she and Karl had been staying at the little stone house. And the rabbits that were small when they first got there were a lot bigger now.

There was no way to fence them out. The garden was too big. She wondered how the old man and woman had kept the rabbits out and finally remembered they'd had a dog, probably a good rabbit-chasing dog.

"What are you going to do about it?" Karl asked. "They've got a right to eat, too."

For some reason he didn't seem to care too much about anything right now. He didn't help her keep the little house cleaned up or do anything else to help. For six whole weeks she had done it all. And that was getting under her skin in a big way.

She tried to cut him some slack. After all he was a guy and his mother did all that stuff for him. She, on the other hand, had kept her mother's house cleaned up since she was eight years old. Chores, her mother had called them, and Kara had learned to do them fast and well. It was her ticket to getting outside and doing the things she loved to do.

But fair was fair. Karl should be helping her and he wasn't. He never complained. He ate whatever she fixed, but then he left her to clean up everything. She was going through what was in the freezer and the pantry too quickly, so the garden was starting to look more and more important to her.

Her mother wasn't all that great a cook, but she had taught Kara everything she knew. Her father, no, not her father, her mother's husband, Dreilide, the musician as she now thought of him, was really a better cook. He had moved out when she was eight, but she could still remember some of the meals he had cooked, especially the spaghetti. Just thinking about that spaghetti now made her mouth water.

She suddenly wondered if Dreilide had known he wasn't her real father. Thinking about her real father made her want to cry. One of her favorite dreams was to meet Zarek again when she had her mother's Mossinger-45 pistol in her hand. She'd put one right between his eyes just like she knew he or one of his men had done to her father. Like his men had done to Singer.

Every night before she went to sleep she remembered how her father had told her he loved her right before Zarek's men had pulled him away from her. Each night said it back to him, like a prayer, I love you, too, Daddy. She was surprised at how much her love for this almost unknown man had grown in her, for John Gallagher, the pilot who had saved her at the cost of his own life. And then she said a prayer for everyone else she had lost starting with her mother. Most of the time, though, she felt like the gods weren't listening to anything she said.

Kara knew that sooner or later, probably sooner, she and Karl were going to have it out. She could feel it coming, and she knew it was going to be ugly. He'd been her best friend for over five years now and maybe if they were back on Picon they could have found other best friends, but that wasn't possible now. They were stuck with each other.

"I'll tell you what I'm going to do," she said hotly as she stood looking at the garden. "I'm going to kill a few rabbits."

That, at least, got a laugh from Karl. She hadn't heard him laugh since they'd gotten to Caprica. He was sitting under a tree near the garden. "And how are you going to do that? Chase one and catch it? Go ahead. I want to watch. It'll be the most fun I've had since we landed here."

Until he said that she probably would have tried to chase one down and catch it. Now she went back into the house and got her mother's pistol from the bottom of her backpack.

That definitely got a reaction. He yelled at her. "No, Kara! No! Don't! Do you know how far that sound will carry? Frak, don't fire that thing. A damn cannon would be quieter."

"Who do you think is out there to hear it? We're in the middle of gods damned nowhere."

"You never can tell. We've got a good thing here so far. Don't do anything stupid and frak it up. Besides, you don't want to use up all your bullets on rabbits. We might need them later for…something else."

He was right. When it came to being sensible, Karl was always right.

She wasn't ready to let him know it, though. Her anger at his laziness finally boiled over.

"Yeah, you do have a good thing going here. I'm doing all the frakking work. You're about frakking worthless these days."

She stomped back into the house and just to have something to do, she got the kit her mother used to clean the Mossinger and sat down at the kitchen table and cleaned it. It didn't really need it, but she did it anyway, breaking it down just like her mother had taught her, cleaning it carefully with the solvent, and finally lightly oiling the slides before putting it back together. She always concentrated completely when she was doing that and for a while it took her mind off everything else.

It was while she was installing the slide lock on the pistol that she remembered her slingshot. How could she have been so stupid as to forget about her slingshot? She didn't rush, though. She completely finished with the pistol before she slid it into its holster and put it and the cleaning kit back in the bottom of her backpack before getting the slingshot from a side pocket.

She was going rabbit hunting. No noise involved.

Karl was still sitting under a tree near the garden, staring into space and breaking small pieces of bark off a stick.

She had never shot at anything alive before with her slingshot. It was always cans or pinecones, but there was a first time for everything. She grabbed a handful of pebbles from under the gutter's downspout and marched toward the garden.

She got a rabbit in the head with her first shot. She realized later that it was a lucky shot, maybe because there were so many of them in the garden. It was a shot that would take her a week and hours of practice to perfect and achieve again, but she had to admit, the first one was impressive.

She was feeling extremely proud of herself as she marched down to the garden to claim her kill until Karl came up behind her and shoved her, almost pushed her down.

"What did you have to go and do that for? Kill a poor defenseless little rabbit?"

She recovered her balance and turned on him. "Son of a bitch! What'd you push me for? You want to fight? You want to fight over some gods damned stupid rabbit? Okay, go ahead. You get the first punch. Go ahead. Hit me." She dropped the rabbit and the slingshot. "But you'd better make the first one count."

Her fists were clenched. She was ready. They might as well get this over. It had been coming for weeks. Karl was a good fighter and so was she. They were going to hurt each other that much she knew, but there was no stopping it now.

Karl's fists were clenched, too. They were staring at each other, both breathing hard, anger ricocheting between them. He drew back and she braced herself for the blow, but instead of hitting her, his face crumpled. Before she could say or do anything, he turned and ran toward the woods.

She stood there feeling bewildered. What was going on with him? What was going on with her? What was happening to both of them? Were they going crazy? They were best friends, as close as a brother and sister. She loved him just like a brother. She stood there for a few minutes feeling her anger ebb before she followed him.

She found him by the creek. He was sitting with his knees drawn up and his arms across them, face down in his arms crying. She went over and sat down beside him and put her arm around him like he had done to her that night at the airport. For the first time she realized that his shoulders had gotten broader over the last year.

"I miss them so much," he managed to choke out. "You're doing okay. I wish I could be more like you are. You're so tough. Nothing gets to you."

What he said made her want to cry. She swallowed hard. Just watching him cry was getting to her. She took a deep breath. It wouldn't help if she fell apart right now, too.

"I'm not as tough as you think. Do you wish you'd stayed behind with your mother and Marie and let me go by myself?"

"No. That's the worst part. I'm glad I'm here. I'm glad I'm not back there on Picon. I just miss them. I wish they were here with us especially Marie."

"Why wouldn't your mom make her come with us?"

"Because of her asthma."

"She had her inhaler."

"Yeah, but it would have run out sooner or later, and then she might have died. Don't you remember last year when they had to take her to the emergency treatment center? Where would we take her? My mother didn't want either one of us to have to deal with that. What if we'd had to watch Marie die?"

Kara hadn't thought of that. How bad would that have been?

She leaned her head against Karl's shoulder. She swallowed hard again and felt tears sting her eyes. It took a minute, but she fought them down.

"I miss them, too, you know. I miss your mom and dad. They always treated me like I was one of theirs. And I miss my mom, too. And I wish I'd gotten to know my real father. One of these days I'm going to kill that Zarek."

It was the first time she had said the words out loud. It made her feel better.

"I can't believe I was ready to hit you, Kara. I love you like I love Marie."

"I love you, too, Karl. When I was little I always wanted a brother and when I met you I quit wanting one. You're like my brother. And you're my best friend. Please don't get mad at me and push me like that. I was ready to hurt you. If we'd gotten into it, we would have hurt each other bad. We don't need to fight each other."

Karl wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his t-shirt. "I know. I'm sorry. I don't know what happened to me back there. We were about to beat each other up over a stupid rabbit."

"Yeah, that was pretty dumb, wasn't it?" After a minute she said, "You've got to start helping me. You've got to start pulling your weight. I can't keep doing the cooking and cleaning and everything else by myself."

"I know. I will. I've just been so…down. But I will start helping you. You'll just have to show me how to do things."

"No problem. Keeping a place cleaned up and fixing meals is not exactly FTL science. If I can do it, you know it's not."

They sat together for a long time without speaking just enjoying the feeling of being best friends again.

Finally Karl said, "You want me to bury the rabbit for you?"

Kara grinned. "I don't think so. I'm going to cook it."

"Gross," Karl said.

"Then get your own supper."

"What does rabbit taste like?"

"I don't know, but we're going to find out."

...

Everything got better after that. Karl helped her with the cooking and cleaning. She finally had to admit that Karl was a better cook. Cooking just wasn't her thing. And rabbit was very good in a stew with peppers and onions and potatoes. Karl found a recipe for beef stew in one of the old woman's cookbooks and they substituted the rabbit. When they finally figured out that carrots grew under the ground just like the onions and potatoes, they added them, too.

In the late autumn as the days shortened and finally started getting cool, the garden stopped growing. Kara found a whole wall of shelves in the cellar filled with jars of vegetables that the old woman had canned the previous year. There was also a big box of empty jars and lids. Karl was the one who found some instructions on how to can vegetables stuck in one of the old woman's cookbooks. It was too late for the current year, but they made plans to do it the next year. They talked about saving some of the seeds and how they would plant the garden in the spring. Karl found a lot of information in a book called an almanac.

They took a chance and ventured back up the road and picked some corn even though it was old and tough. On the first trip they got two pillowcases full, but when they went back several weeks later, it had been harvested. Even the stalks were gone. They knew then that someone was still alive somewhere nearby. Neither of them wanted to investigate, but the thought was comforting. Somewhere beyond the miles and miles of corn and wheat fields someone else was still alive. They Cylons and their centurions hadn't killed everybody.

They hadn't known for sure until then because early during the second week that they spent at the little house, the television quit working. Kara turned it on one evening and it wouldn't come on. Soon she started smelling something like a fried circuit board, just like what had happened to one of her video games back on Picon. Afraid of a fire she unplugged the television. Karl later told her that it was so old they probably shouldn't have ever turned it off.

The old couple didn't have a radio, so after they heard about the treaty negotiations being started, they didn't know what was happening in the cities or anywhere else. They finally decided that a treaty must have been signed because nothing near them was destroyed and nothing ever fell from the sky again. Several weeks later they started seeing vapor contrails high in the sky. Big ships were flying north and south again, but were they Colonial ships or Cylon ships? They had no way of knowing.

They talked then about trying to walk to one of the towns thirty or forty miles away, but decided that was stupid. What if the towns were full of the toaster Cylons? They decided they were safer where they were.

Karl was the one who said they couldn't quit learning just because they weren't in school anymore. Before he said that, Kara hadn't even thought about school. There was a set of old encyclopedias on the bottom shelf of the bookcase in the little living room. The bookcase was three shelves tall and stretched the length of one wall. They started reading a little each night. It was mostly totally boring for Kara and she felt good if she read a page or two. Sometimes she just pretended to read and daydreamed instead.

She finally picked up one of the novels and decided that reading wasn't such a bad thing after all. When she was reading she could travel to other places and other times and pretend she was other people. The old couple especially seemed to like science fiction and fantasy. Kara found that she liked it, too. With the television broken and no video or board games or even a set of triad cards, what else was there to do now at night except read?

At first Karl stuck to the encyclopedias and the history books. He especially liked the one on the history of transportation in the Colonies. Eventually he started reading the science fiction novels and was soon just as much into them as she was.

She didn't have a favorite book until early in the winter when she got around to a set of three volumes that she had found in the bottom of the nightstand in the bedroom. Volume I was called The Caprican Prince and the Quest for the Talisman. From the first paragraph she was hooked.

In the days when the gods were much closer to man than they are now, a child was born to a maiden of royal blood. Her child's father, she said, had come to her on wings like silver moonlight and had loved her for but a single night and then departed. As proof she showed the priests her son's eyes, which were as blue as the sky at twilight, and on his chest, above his heart, the birthmark in the shape of a pair of wings.

Kara immediately thought of the wings that had been pinned on her father's shirt that night when they had left Picon, silver wings over his heart. So maybe the baby's father had been a pilot just like her father. Completely enthralled she stayed up reading that night until Karl took the book away from her and told her to go to bed.

"We've got a lot of work to do tomorrow to finish cleaning up the garden for the winter. That book isn't going anywhere. It'll be here tomorrow night."

The book was thick and it took her almost a week before she got to the part where the prince, whose name was Olliver, was eighteen years old and ready to go on the quest for a magic talisman. If he found the talisman and proved himself worthy, he would be granted entrance into the realm of the underworld and would meet his father who was imprisoned there for daring to love a mortal woman. Apparently only certain gods were allowed to love mortal women and Olliver's dad wasn't one of them. Olliver was going to have to perform three difficult tasks if he wanted to win his father's freedom.

She so much wanted Prince Olliver to find his father and bring him back to his mother. She almost got tears in her eyes as his mother bid Olliver farewell.

Go, son. Your journey will be hard and there will be many perils, but you will survive because you're the son of a god and you are my son. You will survive and you will bring your father back to me for I will never love another man.

She suddenly remembered her mother's words the night they left Picon. "You will survive this. You're my daughter. You will survive."

She had survived. So far she had survived just like her mother had said she would. She had survived and her mother and father had died.

Kara put the marker in the book and closed it and went over to the sofa where Karl was reading one of the science fiction novels. She sat down on the floor, leaned back against the front of the sofa and closed her hand over the dog tags and the ring.

"What's up?" Karl asked.

"I miss my mother," she said, her voice beginning to tremble. "She wasn't around a lot, but I still miss her. And I know my father's dead, but I want to go to the underworld and find him just like the prince in this book is going to do. See, I'm not so tough after all."

The tears spilled from her eyes and ran down her cheeks.

Karl put his book aside, got down on the floor with her and put his arm around her. She leaned her head against his shoulder. He sat that way with her until she stopped crying.

It was several nights before she could pick up the book again.

...

They hunted the woods for small game. Kara was so good with the slingshot by now that she rarely missed, even if her target was moving. Some things she shot they couldn't eat. But the squirrels were okay, and the rabbits. She wouldn't shoot any birds or ducks, though. She couldn't bring herself to shoot something that had wings, something that took to the sky and soared high above them on the wind.

They learned the land around them and began venturing farther away from the house. Late in the fall they found a large pond several miles away and spent at least a day a week fishing there. Karl knew all about fishing since he and his dad had done that together since he was a little boy. The old man who had lived in the house had a tackle box and some other fishing gear. Karl said it was pretty basic, but he did okay with it. He taught her to fish, too. Kara could never understand why skinning a rabbit didn't bother her but trying to put a worm on a fish hook did.

With the vegetables that the old woman had canned and the game and fish, they were never hungry, but it took most of their time catching and then preparing the meals. Playing and having fun was a part of the distant past.

Keeping the place cleaned up took some time, too. The old couple had let a lot of the heavy cleaning go. Kara couldn't stand a dirty or dusty house. Her mother had instilled that in her. It must have been her Marine training.

On her first big cleanup operation, Kara found a sealed box under the bed that contained the old woman's wedding dress. It wasn't too white any more, but it was still in good shape. One winter night on a whim, she tried it on. The hem ended above her ankles and it was too big for her, but it was the first time in years that Kara could remember seeing herself in a dress. There was a lace veil which she put over her hair. She stood looking in the mirror and was surprised. With her chopped up hair covered by the veil, she looked almost pretty in the soft lace.

She went into the living room and twirled around in front of Karl. "What do you think?"

He looked up from his book and stared. "Lords of Kobol, Kara. Where did you find that?"

"It was under the bed. Do I look like a bride?"

He swallowed hard. "You look…damn…you look beautiful."

"No, I don't."

"Take my word for it. You'd better go take that off…yeah…you'd better." He got up. "I'm, uh, I'm going outside for a few minutes. It's hot in here. I need to cool off."

She took the dress off and put it back in the box but she kept the veil. She could make it into a good fishing net.

When Karl came back in later, he didn't look at her for a long time.

For the first time she realized that he sometimes saw her as more than a sister.

She realized it again when she was reading the second volume of the books, The Caprican Prince and the Silver Arrow.

"What's a wench?" She asked him one night.

"One of those things like Sergeant Taylor used to wind his boat up onto the trailer."

"No, I don't think that's it?"

"Spell it."

"W-e-n-c-h."

"Uh, read the sentence it's in."

"Olliver took the lusty wench to his bed."

"What the heck are you reading?"

"It's about this prince who's looking for a magic talisman to help him find his father. I think the talisman is going to be a silver arrow since that's in the title."

"It's about more than that if it's got a sentence like that in it. It sounds like…I'm not sure you should be reading stuff like that."

"What? All of a sudden you're telling me what I can and can't read?"

His cheeks colored. "No, I mean, it's just you probably shouldn't be reading about people going to bed together. I think what they mean by lusty wench is kind of like a…uh…a hot woman. Is that all it says or is there any more?"

"Well, I haven't got that far, yet." She read on. "Uh, yeah, there's more. Want me to read it out loud?"

"No. Maybe I'll read it later."

She thought she understood what the prince and the lusty wench were doing in his bed until she got to a sentence that puzzled her.

"Okay, what does this mean? He put his hand under her skirt and found her already wet and ready for him."

"Holy frak, Kara. Give me that book."

He got up and tried to take it away from her.

"No," she held on. "Let go. You're not taking this away from me."

"I just want to read it. I'll give it back. I promise."

Reluctantly she let him take the book.

She watched him read the page. "Oh, damn," he said and handed the book back to her. "I'll be back in a little while. I'm going for a walk." He grabbed his jacket and went outside.

He was gone for a long time.

When he got back she still wanted an answer to her question. "I know you understand what they're doing. I mean I understand some of it, but not all of it. Please tell me."

He told her that there were other things men and women could do to each other besides just the one thing she had learned in sex-ed class…the kind of sex that made a baby.

"Like what other things?"

Karl took a deep breath and haltingly, barely glancing at her from time to time, he explained the things that could be done using touching and your mouth to all sorts of body parts.

"Oh," was her only comment when he finished. "How did you learn about that stuff?"

He shrugged. "Guys talk. One time when my dad and I went to Sergeant Taylors house to buy some fishing gear, I saw a magazine in the bathroom with a lot of pictures in it. Sex pictures."

She was still skeptical. "Do people really do stuff like that to each other?"

"Yeah, people really do stuff like that."

"Why?"

"Because I guess they enjoy it. Because it feels good."

"Have you ever…" She didn't even get to finish her question.

"No!"

"You kissed Damaris Benjamin at her birthday party."

"It was more like she kissed me and that's all it was."

"I've never kissed anybody. Nobody's ever kissed me either."

"You've still got plenty of time. There's no need to be in a hurry."

"I'm not."

Karl picked up his book. "When you're through with that…" he said without looking up at her.

"I'll pass it along. You really need to read the first one though before you read this one."

"Okay. Where is it?"

"I put it back in the nightstand."

Karl got up and went into the bedroom. When he came back he had the first volume.

"You'll really like it," she said a minute later.

He was already on the second page and didn't even answer her.

She started reading again. Now that she understood what was happening, though, reading about Prince Olliver and his lusty wench was making her feel funny, like she wanted to kiss somebody or have somebody kiss her, or maybe even do some of the things that they were doing.

She suddenly remembered the way her father had laughed at her that night leaving Picon when she'd told him that she thought sex was gross and wondered why he and her mother had wanted to do it.

If Prince Olliver and his lusty wench liked it and her mother and father liked it, then maybe it wasn't so gross after all.

Maybe one day if she met somebody like Prince Olliver, a man with eyes as blue as the sky at twilight and wings over his heart, she might like it, too.