Life with the Tumblers
by
Mary E. Lowd
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Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Mary E. Lowd
* * *
The boy didn't know how long six months would be. He was only five, and it sounded like forever. His mother, however, knew exactly how long six months would be. She could measure it out against the milestones of her life. It was the time between a kiss and the promise that bound her and Derrick together. It was the time between deciding pregnancy was unbearable and finally bearing Kyan. She knew six months. It was too long, and not nearly long enough.
"I hope you know what you're getting into."
Arlene brushed Derrick's worry aside with an amused shake of her head. "Of course, I don't. That's why I'm going. Complete immersion in the tumbler culture is the only way to really progress my studies."
"I just hope you're not too busy taking notes on those savage tumblers to look after Kyan."
Kyan looked up from the fortress he built on the floor: "Is Uncle Sleatoo a savage?"
Arlene grimaced. "They're not savages."
"Neither is he your uncle," Derrick told Kyan. "I don't want you calling him that."
"Don't worry, I'll make sure that your son remembers he's a human boy and not the nephew of a plant." Arlene moved closer to Derrick, slipping her arm around his back. "What're you really worried about?"
Derrick enfolded her in his arms. "I just want you to be careful out there. I'm not used to having you and Kyan so far out of my sight."
Arlene kissed her husband reassuringly, and whispered in his ear, "We'll be back before you know it."
The rest of the evening passed in a blur of preparations. Arlene planned to leave at dawn because it gave her sisters-in-law less of a chance to interfere. She knew they were afraid of the tumbler town, and she didn't want them filling Kyan's head with nonsense stories right as they were about to leave. Until now, they'd held their tongues, not believing she'd go through with it. Tomorrow, it would be too real, and she knew they would make a scene.
In the dark of morning Arlene finished the last minute packing, and Kyan played a game he called "packing." He put a few of his toys in and out of his own little knapsack, while Arlene packed everything he'd really need. Sleatoo met them at the edge of town, and Arlene entered a different world. That morning she'd been the wife of a farmer, and secondly she'd been a scientist. From the moment she kissed her husband goodbye, sending him out to work the fields, she was on sabbatical and could be a scientist first.
* * *
The tumbler village glowed with balls of light in the distance. Sleatoo told her the balls were hives of sun-bees, kept by a caste of beekeepers. Sleatoo's closest relative was a beekeeper, but Arlene didn't understand the relationship between them. In six years of talking to Sleatoo, Arlene could never get far enough past the language barrier to really understand the familial structure of tumbler society.
Tomorrow she would see it, and the abstract words she knew of Sleatoo's language would finally have concrete images to hang on.
"Why didn't Sleatoo stay to dinner with us?" Kyan asked.
"The tumblers don't eat like us, honey. They absorb light and minerals into their leaves."
Kyan wrinkled his nose, not understanding.
"Sleatoo says they have bathhouses, and when they soak in the mineral treated water, all the food they need soaks into them."
"It's like if I put my hand in the soup?"
"Yes, honey, careful," Arlene brushed Kyan's hand away. "The soup's hot." She was cooking it over their portable camp stove.
Even during sabbatical from being a wife, being a mother never stops.
* * *
During the days, Arlene and Kyan moved among the tumblers. Arlene equipped her son daily with the raw materials to amuse and feed himself in the foreign landscape of the tumbler town: educational drives for his com-pad and a pack of bread, cheeses, and smoked meat. As the sun went down, they shared a hot meal over the camp stove, beyond the fringe of the tumbler town. But, during the day, Kyan was his own keeper.
Arlene worried. She trusted her son, but she didn't know what rules to give him, since she didn't know what transgressions would offend the tumblers.
Arlene watched the tumblers in silence, scribbling notes into her notebook. The tumbler way of life entered her eyes and exited through her fingertips. Her notes tantalized with the promise to coalesce into a whole string of academic papers. Once she got home, she'd have the raw material to keep her busy for months going on years.