Chapter 4: Agreements

“The human race divides itself politically into those who want to be controlled, and those who have no such desire.” - Heinlein


The girls were still not happy about it but with Mother Faa there and insisting, Zeremaya got to look at their bodies, see what the problems were. Zeremaya had already known that this was an awkward, difficult joining at best.

Aruin was more or less complete, though her pelvis was rotated forward in such a way that walking was not possible, with neither of the legs developed as they should be.

Inchkin was much more complicated. The two girls had only one belly button. One girl went from head to pelvis to legs. The other girl ended below her ribs. There were folds and redundancies of skin where the second girl’s back met the first girl’s pubic bone that Zeremaya had no way to identify without stroking them and asking which twin felt sensation, and their relationship with her was strained at best.

Inchkin dangled downward, if Aruin could have stood or walked that is. Zeremaya was uncertain how much she could learn from examining them below their join without heavy technology. What she had that still worked could tell her more than her abilities alone could, but not anything about the ethics of what she was being asked to do – make whole, separate children from a physical child and a half. Rather like herself there was no role in society for two people who shared one body, not much different from having one body that was stretched between two cultures. Being a living, breathing collectible shown to others for whatever they would gain from a gander didn’t count. Are we worth more than the lives we live, wondered Zere’maya.

Zeremaya asked first one then the other to wiggle her toes. It was no wonder they did not want to be more closely examined – a fairly easy cut would yield one complete sister – and one dead sister, without kidneys, bladder, probably more.

She thanked them, then walked outside to think. In her own Earth a pair like that would have been separated with the loss of the parasite a tragic need. In anywhere else they would have been cared for and left together, with the minimum done to maintain health, for conjoineds rarely wish to be separated as adults. Humans (as such) were very rare; other kinds of thinking were present in the universe and she had met far stranger than the little girls.

She walked back in.

“As I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here I’m going to give you all my opinion. That may ruddy well kill you, and I don’t know if my answers will be right for you.

Choice number three – what I think we would have done on Earth. You two are separated. Since we don’t have dialysis machines here, you’d have to sleep every night with someone with my healing abilities skin to skin or, if it’s possible, every night we could use technology – which I’d have to teach you and would be very risky – or magic to shunt you two back together every night. If Inchkin doesn’t do either she’ll die of uremia – one of the more pleasant ways to die, I’m told. I’m sure you’ve been told about this choice.

Choice number two – what I think would be done where I’ve been the past twenty years. You’d both be allowed to grow up. You’d be encouraged to learn to live upside down, and encouraged to consider giving up eating at all and most drinking since there’d be such a high risk of you breathing in food and fluids. We’d keep you as small as we could so that your sister could carry you as easily as possible, with the least deformation of her back.

Choice number one – what I think should be done. This is a human’s world and you two need to look as much as possible like two people to everyone else. We deform both of you so that, with the help of a corset like mine, your heads are at a Y to your legs, and who controls the legs is kept quiet.

You’ll wear out from misuse this last way. But – one of you hanging upside down and not eating won’t work here. And if we take you to two, any mishaps and one of you dies. It’s the most freakish choice, but it’s also most fair.”

Inchkin and Aruin were silent. As Gypsy children they would be given more weight to speak than most children in other societies. Mother Faa sat quietly. Zassh picked at a hangnail, looked up, looked over, sighed.

Finally Zassh spoke. “If I were one of only two or three living representatives of such a rare and usually deadly difference, I'd want to be left intact, especially if I could be sure to be perfect if someone changed me. Inchkin and Aruin’s bodies are something special; what you are telling us is that if you change them they will be less than they are now. Why would we want to do that?”

Zeremaya was stunned. “Then why are all the children expecting that I will make them whole and perfect?”

“Because we have someone like you in every town, sometimes several. They would love to experiment on the twins, make something of them that they are not, without any proof to us that they would not in fact kill them in the attempt. I wanted to throw my arms around you and love you when you told me frankly that you knew changing them in itself could kill them.” Said Zassh. Inchkin nodded.

“That’s fair.” Said Zeremaya. “As a favor to me could you encourage the children not to badger me with “When? When? When?” questions then? I can tell you that the people I’ve lived among tend to leave people as they are – changing them only when there is great need. There wouldn’t even be this conversation – except – “ Zeremaya hesitated, “With quality of life issues. Right now the girls are small, but they are likely to be much bigger than any of we women could carry for personal care. I would respectfully suggest that I may be able to help them to walk. I don’t have the ability to change them outside of their will. They are now healthy little girls, and about to go through a growth spurt to compensate for years of not being able to eat properly.”

Aruin gave a big smile “If you mean I could hug my baby and walk around like other kids, that’s great!” Inchkin nodded. I’ll always think of you as ‘booger eater’ thought Zeremaya, smiling.

“That’s the other reason why twins would be separated – weird relationships between the twins because of conjoinment. Inchkin really isn’t a baby ---“

“It’s just a game we play!” interrupted Aruin. Zeremaya looked at Inchkin. She smiled – very cute on that round, slapped-cheeked face. “Life among the monoheads.” She completed.

“I could take you where I come from and you could meet several different sorts of dicephalus intelligences.” Said Zeremaya. “Some species are two-headed like you are. Others join for long periods of time sharing a body while they complete a pregnancy – they tie together and stay together until birth. One intelligent species grows buds. Although you are a very uncommon human being there are worlds where “monoheadedness” is a physical defect.”

“If we were to go to one of those worlds would we be better off walking or buttshuffling?” asked Inkchin.

“You might find your own way to do it. You are also assuming that you’d be around people who walk. I have shoes for parties out there that have fancy, decorated bottoms – because on those worlds my feet are used more like hands are. After all, legs have a longer reach than arms do.”

“Cool!” came a mutual response. Zassh was covering a smile with her hands. Mother Faa was unreadable, but Zeremaya was beginning to get used to that.

“Tell you what.” Said Zeremaya. “Why don’t the two of you work on becoming the first joined-twin contortionists that I have ever heard of. You tell me where you need your bodies to change. I probably will have to tell you that I can’t do for you what you’d like, but if we handle each day as it comes.

“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Cut in Inchkin.

"Yes, that’s right – we’ll work together on this. You two will have to deal with the plain fact that having you two walk is what I believe is right for you while I do what you tell me is right for you. Deal?” she held out a hand. First Inchkin, then Aruin shook solemnly.

“And if you get sneaky or make us make promises that you know we don’t mean, we will send our respects through our big brother Karl, who is stronger than anyone.” Said Aruin.

“Deal. Oh.” Zeremaya’s face fell “Um. Your mother – what will she want for you?” She looked, uneasy at Mother Faa’s face. No change. Then Zash’s.

“Mother will tell you that we are becoming fat. Like you.” Said Inchkin gleefully.

“She’s a bad baby, never mind her.” Said Aruin.

“Ah.” Said Zeremaya.

Zeremaya looked around the vardo, trying to gain a handle on the moment. Zassh and Mother Faa clearly were not about to help her out. They might very well take the side of two little girls, who whatever else they were – were also bright children, and were old hands at dealing with medical types. Ah-hhhhhh.

“Given that I have never cared for a pair of human beings like you before, and that you have had a great deal of experience with us ‘monoheads’ maybe we could try to start this all over. Zassh since you know all three of us, would you please make introductions?” asked Zeremaya.

Zassh started.

“Please allow Zassh a few moments to compose her thoughts.” Interjected Mother Faa, who actually had a faint wash of a smile pass over her face.

“For real?” asked Zassh.

“It is unethical to treat children with unusual anatomies according to a different set of hospitality traditions than other children.” Said Zeremaya, trying to hold her face deadpan.

“Very well then. Inchkin and Aruin of the Spine of the World, yourselves are guests of the People of the Burning Stars – the ones for whom the mulos took pity and under the mercy of our Black Sarah and of Abraham, our Shuvanis made a path for us to walk the other worlds. This world is gripped in ice but the Earth was gripped by those with frozen hearts – so these ten generations we travel star paths, making new lives. Inchkin and Aruin are born to Ulaana who gave them to us for the good of the children, whose father is a man of no consequence.” Zassh gazed firmly at the two girls, who had the look of someone who had seen formal introductions but had not yet been the subject of that honor themselves.

“Zeremaya, you were found by Karl, also a guest of the People of the Burning Stars, who found you wounded and understanding you to be a healer, brought you here to tend to the critical needs of Inchkin and Aruin – who we must save as we can even as one of our own. Your father is a good man of many peoples, and your time is two generations from The Devouring – you are both poshrat – with a Gypsy mother – and bound to another’s curse, belonging to the Deathless until you can fulfill a rash oath, made in anger. Neither Gypsy nor Gajo, neither Mulo nor alive, you remain until your God has mercy on you or until you fulfill what you have created.”

Zeremaya nodded. “I would prefer didikai as I was not raised as a gypsy, but, yes. I don’t think I’ll complain as much about being somewhere in my forties by appearance if in actual time there have been more like three hundred years have passed on my homeworld. I did not know. There hasn’t been any reason to return.”

“Been busy?” asked Inkchin.

“You’d be surprised. It’s a big universe out there and if you’re possibly immortal one thing leads to another and you’re surprised at how late it is.” Replied Zeremaya.

“But you said you left when you’re Zassh’s age – you’re more close to Mother Faa than Zassh and three hundred years isn’t forever.” Said Inchkin.

“Every day I spend among others of my kind – I’m like them. Every day is a repeat of the day before, I heal to whatever I was, forever. Add in the best care of my body and there you have it – life in good health, never-ending. But – if I do something to try to lift my curse or if I go to a world where time moves, my life plays out. I’m two weeks and change older. Every day I wake up is one day I become older. Add in any damage I do to my body – “ Zeremaya shrugged.

“Every good deed has its just punishment. Currently I’m as mortal as any women, plus I’m injured.”

“I don’t know why you’d leave health and safety to come here.” Said Zassh. Zeremaya shook her head.

“I’m still addled enough that I don’t know why I’m here or what I was supposed to be doing. Every now and then I get – glimpses – and sometimes I remember more. I think I’m someone who acts to protect, mediate and represent people on worlds like this so that people on other worlds don’t meddle and muck about. But don’t quote me on that. This is just my hunch; my best guess. I really don’t know.”

Zeremaya left much later, bemused that the twins had found much to console her about rather than she going to help them. They were right, though – she was the one who was different from what she had been, while they were as they had been – healed up from an injury people with ordinary anatomy could have.

She spent some time walking beside the moving vardos – a slow, pleasant, easy stride. Well, how many gypsy hearts must have looked upwards and longed for freedom? How wonderful that some of them found a road away and out.

Here, she knew, there were few people. Most of the roads were open, most campsites not near others. Unlike her home there were already pokeberry plants, hazels and willows to weave, and, obviously, iron. Her heart seemed to burst – how wonderful that people her own family had grieved might be dead, indeed, but dead with children, wandering on – and maybe even between strange worlds no one in the Giorgio world knew existed when she had left.

Too quickly she found her feet dragging and she slowed her step, letting each wagon pass her until she reached Karl’s forge. She swung up easily – she could not forget how to climb a hay wagon, no matter how many hundreds of years she may have lived.

Sarah Mary and Elvis Presley – another gypsy/Indian person like her. Maybe she would meet him in the next town. She felt giddy, like she herself had escaped something.

She lay back on the pile of charcoal, covered with a blanket. Karl’s vardo was so heavy it rocked more than the others. Now that she was used to traveling, traveling with the most sway pleased her. It was like traveling under the hay when she was a girl, the grass her father cut for her pony.

Princess, she thought. It had been many years since she had thought of her pony. Beautiful pinto, feathers that would pride a stallion – she looked like the grumpy gelding. Maybe she would make friends with Puzzle and be able to ride beside from time to time.

“S’weird, Puzzle. I know I’m not the kid I was, but it feels like – everything’s been made right again. I get to be here, and go to school maybe, and become the queer gypsy woman doctor like everyone thought I was going to be. All of a sudden I don’t feel like a grandmother, I don’t feel like I’m in mid-life. I feel like maybe my whole life off of Earth and somewhere else maybe -- maybe just isn’t important. I’ll ---- “she twitched, falling asleep. In her dream Puzzle, her pony, had tried to bite her. Zere’maya kicked at the pony’s face, and in her dream went riding off, only her pony was Princess, and she was even younger, fourteen, riding bareback in the fields next to her house, back home, back on Earth.

Motherhood, and grandmotherhood faded into the background and away.