Pallahaxi

by Michael Coney

  I sipped thoughtfully at my stuva. “Go back? That sounds pretty risky to me, with the men against me.”

  “The women are for you, and it’s only the hunters that back Stance, among the men. But everybody’s afraid of him. They need a leader, but they’re suspicious of him. He’s unpredictable. They respected Bruno, and you’re his son. If Wand and I spread the word you were coming back, people would rally around you and forget all this religious claptrap.”

  “And kick Stance out? I can’t see that happening. And I can’t use his memory deficiency against him. Nobody would believe me. Stance would bluster his way out of it. No. If Stance ever goes, Trigger will be manchief, not me.”

  “Trigger? Never. He’s as defective as his father. And he’s a fool to boot. He’d be the finish of Yam.” Her rosy face took on an unaccustomed hard look. “I’d kill him myself, first.”

  Her words echoed grimly around the stone walls. I thought about it all. This was the cottage that Charm and I had made into a home. In the corner lay the pile of furs where we’d made love, many times already, with simple delight in each other’s bodies. Outside this door was the wharf where Charm had taught me to swim, only yesterday. A couple of hundred paces away was the men’s village and the fishboats and all the friendly activity, and Charm’s father who was going to teach me to fish.

  This was my home now, wasn’t it?

  Spring read my thoughts.

  “Wand took no account of love,” she said. “She saw it as a simple matter of you striding into Yam all full of courage and challenging Stance for leadership. But it’s not like that, is it? You’re not going anywhere without your girl, and you’re not going to expose her to any danger. I understand that because I had Bruno. Wand never had anyone, so she won’t understand. I’ll just explain to her as best I can.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’ve changed, Hardy. That’s another thing Wand doesn’t know. You used to be so… cynical, somehow. Nothing seemed to matter much to you. Your dad used to worry about it; he said you didn’t like people very much.”

  “With fools like Stance lording it over me, it’s not surprising.”

  “Well, you got away from him. I suppose I can’t blame you for not wanting to go back.”

  “I have responsibilities here, Spring. They’re more important to me than the future of Yam.”

  “I can see that.” She smiled at Charm, rather sadly. “You must do what you think is best, Hardy.”

  They left soon afterward, leaving me feeling sad and guilty.

  But Charm and I were young and resilient. By next morning Yam seemed a long way away, although as we prepared our breakfast I caught Charm glancing at me with a concerned expression.

  “You’re not going, are you?”

  “Of course not.”

  She smiled, punched me lightly on the shoulder, and we resumed our life in Noss.

  A couple of days later Charm’s father, Crane, took me fishing. His skimmer was about eight paces long but very narrow, and it rocked alarmingly when I stepped aboard. I was glad of the new confidence Charm’s swimming lessons had given me. Not that I could have drowned, but a few days ago I might have disgraced myself with panicky screaming if I’d fallen in. Cuff watched from among the rows of false keels on the beach, hoping for disaster.

  “We’ll head upstream first,” said Crane when I was safely seated. “Get you used to the feel of it before we go out to sea.”

  It was a kindly decision. The boat felt very unstable and the slow waves of the open sea would have made it that much worse. I’d been used to my own little sailboat, where any movement on my part was instantly reflected in the attitude of the boat. But Crane’s big skimming fishboat was much heavier, carried more sail, and it wallowed. A slow heeling motion could not immediately be corrected by the crew shifting their weight. As we slid into the middle of the estuary and the wind took hold of the sail, the boat rolled ponderously as though it was never coming back. I suppressed a yell of alarm.

  Things got better when Crane extended the skimming booms on either side: heavy poles, each maybe six paces long, from which the nets hung like wings. These had the effect of balancing the boat.

  “Better now?” asked Crane with a chuckle. His face was lined from years of wind and sun, and it screwed up like a dried yellowball when he smiled.

  I soon found we’d lost little by fishing the upper reaches of the inlet instead of the open sea. As the grume advances around the world the smaller fish flee before it, often to be overtaken and forced to the surface. The larger fish can fight the effect: but they too spend a lot of time resting on the surface, breathing air, summoning up the strength to dive if a predator approaches.

  The situation is different when the grume advances up the estuary, driving the fish before it. Here in the little bays and inflows the dense water meets pockets of normal water like the one Charm rescued me from, when I first met her. The fish take refuge in these pockets in great numbers.

  “There’s Walleye,” Crane said suddenly, startling me out of a reverie as we neared that historic bay.

  The crippled Noss manchief stood at the edge of a low, bushy promontory with two other men. One of the men was bending over, examining something on the rocks. From this distance it was difficult to tell, but it looked like a dead lorin.

  Their voices carried clearly across the water.

  “… . puts a new complexion on things. When they know about this—”

  “They must not know about this.” This in the quavering, slightly shrill tones of Walleye. “That’s the last thing we want at this time. It’s important we pull together.”

  “Besides, it could be a useful tool… .”

  Then they caught sight of us, and we heard Walleye’s sudden shushing noise. They grouped around the object of their attentions as though to shield it from view. We heard a final mutter from Walleye.

  “I’ll take care of this. You forget it.”

  Crane grinned as we slid out of their sight into the little bay. “Amazing how sound carries over the water. I wonder what that was all about.”

  Then we entered less dense water and the skimmer sank until the wavelets lapped worryingly high on the gunwale. I sat very still. I couldn’t swim in this kind of water. Crane pushed the tiller over and gathered in the sail a little, and we changed course to skirt the edge of the grume. The boat rose again, then slowed down. The starboard net, suddenly heavy, caused us to veer toward thin water again.

  “Haul in!” Crane commanded.

  I did as he’d taught me: first pulling on the lower rope to tighten and raise the lower edge of the long net, then on the upper rope to swing the starboard boom and net inboard. The net was fat and glittering with struggling fish. I let go the lower rope and they spilled into the bottom of the boat, jumping and gaping.

  We repeated this three times until the boat’s motion became sluggish and, I thought, dangerous. “You can cover them now,” said Crane, satisfied. As he turned the boat into the wind I waded among the fish, extending a slick skin over them and tamping it down, getting rid of air pockets, packing the fish into an airless struggling mass. Unlike terrestrial fish, our fish can breathe air and have to be suffocated.

  Crane dropped the leeboard — a temporary keel pivoted from the gunwale — and we tacked slowly to and fro against the light breeze. “Think you can face the open sea tomorrow?” he asked.

  “I’d like that.”

  “Can Charm spare you for another day?”

  I thought about it. “If I’m going to live here, I have to earn my keep. She’ll understand that.”

  “There’s more than one decision you’ll have to make.”

  “I’m not going back to Yam, if that’s what you mean.”

  He squinted up at the opposite hillside, so intently that I followed his gaze. “A few years ago there’d be snorters all over that open patch, grubbing up the palpaters and such. You hardly ever see them now. Somet
hing’s happened. Hunting isn’t what it was. But the grume still comes every year, and the fish with it.”

  “This is the place to be,” I said.

  “There’s talk of groups of starving inlanders on the move, attacking villages. I sometimes wonder what would happen if we were attacked. We’re fishermen. We’re not accustomed to using spears and bows. Yam men, on the other hand, hunters… .” He watched me for a reaction.

  “Are you suggesting Yam might attack us if they get hungry enough?”

  “No, Hardy. I’m saying it’s all very well for us to complain about the food we give Yam, but the time may come when we need something they can give. Like protection.”

  “An alliance?”

  “Exactly. And if that came about, you and Charm would be… . Well, let’s say you’d be in the center of things.”

  I pondered on this all the way back to the men’s village.

  Crane’s words were to prove prophetic.

  The grume passed by. With it went the grummets, the grume riders and all the other predators, scavengers and opportunists. Waves steepened, the sea became choppy once more. Dried fish were carried into storage barns and fishermen re-attached false keels to their boats. Then they turned their attention to the cottage roofs. When the first of the aftergrume storms arrived, Noss was ready for it.

  At last the final storm subsided, but now the drench was with us, the rain falling vertically and ceaselessly. People retreated indoors. Only the lorin were still to be seen walking through the village with heads down, fur plastered against their skin, their slow strides seemingly too long for their small bodies. Lox were led into stables or, in many cases, accommodated in the cottages, separated from their owners by a ditch across the floor.

  In this way, Noss prepared for the freeze. Freezes came, freezes went, another year would come and go, life would go on and memory would last forever.

  And it was partly this confident attitude that made the next event so shocking.

  A fish barn was raided one morning.

  Charm and I were visiting Lonessa at the time; a duty visit if ever there was one. She’d received us politely but coldly, allowing Charm to peck her on the cheek but ignoring me. The obligatory mug of stuva, when it arrived, was so weak it might have been dipped straight from a well. Charm did her best to draw me into the halting conversation but had little success until Lonessa suddenly changed her tactics, and began to talk to me as though I were still resident in Yam.

  “And how is Stance these days?” she asked sweetly. “I hear he’s very much involved in the temple. And that cousin of yours — what’s her name? — Fern. Such a pretty little thing. I expect you get along very well together.”

  “Mom,” said Charm, “Are you out of your tiny mind? You know he hasn’t seen them for yonks.”

  Her tone jerked Lonessa back to normality. “Right,” she snarled. “It’s bad enough that the whole village knows what’s going on, but to Rax with them. What turns my stomach is the weird, perverse nature of —”

  There came a timely pounding at the door.

  “Lonessa! Lonessa!”

  “What is it?”

  “The barn! There are men looting the barn!”

  “Tell Walleye, not me! He’s in charge of the men!”

  “They’re not his men!”

  I couldn’t help but feel communication would be improved if the door were open, so I opened it. A drenched woman stumbled in. I shut the door behind her and she leaned against the wall, panting and clutching at her grandmotherly breasts. I’d seen her around; she was Noss Bell, a fish-gutter, fat, elderly and garrulous. Now she really had something to talk about, but she was too breathless to do it justice.

  “Well, whose men are they, for Phu’s sake?” asked Lonessa.

  “I… . I… . I’ve never seen them before!”

  “Why didn’t you tell them to go away?”

  “I did. So did Mave and Fountain and others, but… but they wouldn’t listen. They herded us aside as if we were lox. It was awful! Just look at the bruise on my arm!”

  “I’ll alert Walleye,” I said.

  “You come with me, Charm,” snapped Lonessa. “I want to get to the bottom of this.”

  We left Bell weeping and dripping against the wall and went our separate ways. In a very short time I’d rounded up a posse and we headed back toward the women’s village, not as quickly as we’d have liked because we had to match our pace to Walleye’s limp. Meanwhile Cuff fired questions at me.

  “Who are they, these men? Are they from Yam? It wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “I have no idea where they’re from.”

  “You’d surely have recognized them if they’re from Yam.”

  “I haven’t seen them yet.”

  “So how do you know they’re not from Yam?”

  “Just shut up, will you, Cuff? I’ve told you I don’t know where they’re from. And anyway, they’ll be gone by the time we arrive if you don’t get your dad to hurry up.”

  “Are you criticizing my father? Just who do you think you are, huh? Once we’ve sorted this out, I’m gonna—”

  “I said, shut up.”

  So it was not a united team that arrived at the fish barn. Six women stood outside the double doors of the tall wooden building.

  “They’re still inside,” said Noss Fountain, a tall elderly woman, lips trembling with outrage and incipient crying. “Phu alone knows what they’re doing to Lonessa and Charm.”

  We found Lonessa unharmed, haranguing a group of men dressed in tattered furs while Charm stood by ready to lend assistance. I was relieved to see the men were all strangers. They’d brought a handcart with them, and in the gloomy light of the barn I could see it was piled with dried fish.

  “Put that fish back at once!” Lonessa was shouting. Then she saw us. “It took you long enough. Walleye, you tell these thieves to put everything back.”

  Cuff answered for his father. “You heard. Put it all back on the racks.”

  “We need it.” The speaker was tall and bearded, and looked as though he’d once been a powerful man. Now his furs hung from bony shoulders like limp sails. “We’re starving, can’t you see? We have women and children out there in the hills.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Cuff. “You should have had more forethought. You could have fished the grume at Butcher Bay.”

  “We’re not fishermen. We’re from Totney. The game didn’t show up this year. And our crops failed.” His voice was indistinct because his mouth was full of dried fish. All the strangers were munching and swallowing frantically, as though fearful that we might pry the food from their very mouths. “It’s been a cool summer. We’re not the only ones.” They were a pathetic bunch, huddled protectively around their loaded cart.

  Walleye spoke for the first time. “You could have asked.”

  “You might have refused us.”

  “We are refusing you!” shouted Lonessa. “I’ve heard enough. Now put the fish back and get out!”

  “Like he said, they’re not the only ones,” I said. “There’ll be others like them.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” Lonessa swung round on me angrily.

  “I mean, is this our policy? Are we going to fight off everyone who comes to Noss hungry?”

  “We can’t afford to feed every grubber who can’t plan ahead.”

  “We can afford to feed these few.” I addressed the tall man. “You’re hunters, right? You know how to use spears?”

  He misunderstood me. “We left our spears in the hills. We didn’t come to fight.”

  “But you could, if necessary.” I turned to Walleye. “I think we should take them in, let them live here. We can afford to feed them, easily. And it could be useful to have men who can use spears in Noss.”

  “Protection,” said Walleye thoughtfully. “They could show us how to make spears, and train our men to use them.”

  “It makes
sense,” I said.

  There was an outburst of shouting from Lonessa and Cuff. They were both trying to say the same thing, but they tended to nullify each other. The gist of their problem was that they were not interested in training; they wanted to kick the newcomers out.

  Seizing a moment while the noisy pair were catching breath, Walleye asked the tall man, “Would you agree to throw you lot in with us?”

  “That’s very kind of you.” He held out a hand. “Totney Yard.”

  “Noss Walleye. You’re welcome. Go and bring your women and children.”

  The men departed, still munching. There was a long silence. Both Cuff and Lonessa had been taken aback by Walleye’s unexpected show of leadership in accepting my suggestion. A reappraisal was going on, and it was taking time.

  Charm said, “It’s the best way, Mom.”

  Reluctantly, Lonessa nodded. “But only those eight men and their families. We want no more refugees from Totney, right?”

  Cuff said, “Now we should be able to hold off those freezers from Yam.”

  And so Noss began to arm itself, cutting spears from the forest and training men in their use. The drench continued and it seemed to us that the rain was more chilly than usual. Rumors abounded of bandits in the countryside, and one gang more foolhardy than most actually attacked Mister McNeil’s residence. Helen, the woman whom I’d accompanied to Noss from her croft, brought the news. I hadn’t seen her for some time; word had it that she’d moved in with the Nowhere Man.

  “They came at night,” she told us. “Can you believe it? They must have been desperate. Mister McNeil has some kind of buzzer that sounded suddenly. It woke us all up and the lights came on. And there they were in the garden, ten of them, all ragged and savage.”

  We were gathered in the net loft; some fifteen including Walleye, Cuff and Lonessa. The men had been repairing the nets until Lonessa arrived with Helen; now the fids and leather palms had been laid aside while we listened to the shocking news.