Fish Tails

by Sheri S. Tepper

  As Willum yodeled it: “Too much nothing!” with the ing, ing, ing, ing coming back from all sides like the resonance of a huge bell.

  “Hush, Willum,” snarled Xulai.

  Which he did, for perhaps four or five wheel revolutions. When Willum could be silenced, if only briefly, they could hear other things, particularly an anonymous cooing that seemingly arose from the depths of the black and featureless forests farther away. The cooing didn’t come from anywhere. Abasio remembered pigeons from his youth. They had inhabited the barn as though by right and had made similar sounds. Softly insinuating. Sugary sweet. The barn sounds had not, as these sounds did, raised the hairs on the back of his neck or set his eyes searching for a defensible position. Thinking to dispel childhood terrors, he mentioned it to Xulai. She thrust herself into the circle of his arms, whispering that the sounds frightened her. She hated what she called their “ubiety.” She didn’t mean ubiquity. Not that they were from everywhere. She meant they could be from anywhere!

  Then, a moment later, with a shaky laugh, she admitted that she might be generating some of the effect herself. In rebellion against the stupefying silence, she had been counting how many echoes each sound evoked. Bailai’s shriek of hunger on last waking, she said, had bounced back at her clearly at least six separate times. And, of course, there was Willum’s constant racket. The boy generated noise merely by existing. If he wasn’t using a stout stick to whack stones off the road, each whack accompanied by a shout, he was making a yodeling search for a new echo—­or a new footstep. Shivering deliciously, he claimed he heard footsteps from behind them, or maybe across the valley, or up one of those side hills. “Crunch, crunch, crunch,” he yelled. “Something big!”

  Neither Abasio nor Xulai had heard anything, but then they had been on the wagon seat, where the rattle-­crack of the wheels snapping across fallen twigs would cover other sounds—­even a few of Willum’s. Asking for, even insisting on quiet from Willum had thus far done no good at all.

  On what the maps declared would be their last day’s journey to Saltgosh, Willum raised his usual noise level by yodeling an unfamiliar song:

  “Fahma Donal hadda fahm, see, I seed, I sow ah. Onna fahm he hadda cow, see, I seed, I sow ah. Feeda cow with corn I grow, feed it so the cow will know, moo-­moo here and moo-­moo there, moo-­moo moo-­moo ever’where, see, I seed, I sow ah . . .” as it went on from the cow to the goat and sheep, pig and horse, chickens and geese.

  “What does it mean?” asked Xulai, having been unable to decipher either the words or the sense of it.

  “It’s the bargain song,” said Willum. “Din’t you ever hear it? Ages old, Ma says. About the bargain the farmer makes with his stock. He grows food and feeds them, they give him eggs or milk or meat in return. He tells ’m, ‘See, I seed, I sow all.’ Only when ya sing it, it gets kinda what she said, you know, when ya run the words together an make ’em sorta soft?”

  “Slurred?”

  “Thassit. Gets kinda slurred when ya sing it. Grandma—­that’s my ma’s ma—­she says ever child ever was learnt that song, even when they weren’t farm ­people. It wuzz . . .”

  “Traditional.”

  “Like that, yeah.”

  “Who was Farmer Donal?”

  Willum shrugged. “Justa name, she says. Could be Fahma Brewer or Fahma Miller, whatever farmer was aroun’ back then. She says ya go back far enough, wuzza time afore there was even cities an’ near ever’body was farm folks.”

  And that gave Xulai something to ponder over: this current age of Earth was not, as she had supposed, new and strange. It was old . . . and strange.

  The road was double or triple the length the map indicated. Every straight line on the map was actually a lethargic snake, slowly squirming along the outthrust elbows of the mountain. The map also indicated the village of Odd Duck was a fairly sizable place, but they had almost passed through it before they knew they were there. A short length of fence on their right alerted them, five or six erect posts with most of the connecting rails in place: both rails and posts of that silver-­gray, grooved and striated appearance that spoke of long drying. It had been kept standing by a gnarled grapevine, still waving tattered guidons of dried leaf as Willum strained at it, jerking it away before Xulai could stop him. Only then she and Abasio saw what he had seen: the white rib cage, the arm bones thrust through the rails, the neck bones still supporting the front two-­thirds of a skull.

  Willum, farm-­raised, accustomed to butchery, was seemingly unaffected as he cried loudly, “Somethin’s bit the back of its head off! Izzit a man or a woman?”

  Xulai, unwilling to set an example of weakness, swallowed hard and promised herself a crying fit, later, after she looked at the pelvis. She and Willum searched. There was no pelvis, or any legs. She explained to Willum why that particular bone was needed for sexual differentiation, pleased to note that her voice stayed reasonably level when screaming would have been more appropriate. She had been well prepared for rejection and hostility on this journey, but not for . . . whatever this was.

  Abasio unhitched Blue and Rags so they could have a look around. Horses, along with dogs, cats, indeed, almost any animal, could often see—­or sense—­things humans did not, and Blue often offered helpful insights. Now that they knew where they were, they could interpret the fragments of rafter and beam on the dust piles spaced out along the river, the scattered falls of roughly squared chimney stones. The village was now occupied by beavers who had created an extensive waterway along the river, one with several smaller ponds and at least two lodges. Across the river a dozen cows lay chewing their cud at the edge of the forest while an equal number of horses grazed nearby.

  Blue had in mind recruiting an additional two-­horse hitch, but his mere approach sent all the animals galloping wildly into the cover of the trees. He returned, shaking his head.

  “Wanna know why it’s called Odd Duck?” he asked. “That pond over there’s got a bunch a the oddest ducks I ever saw. Red feathers, beaks like on—­what you call those tall ones with long, long necks, Xulai? Ones that eat fish?”

  “Herons?”

  “Like them. One was out there swimmin’ around like a duck, stabbin’ down till it got a fish speared on its beak, then it paddled to the edge, waddled out, shook the fish off on the ground. Rest of ’em gathered around, all’v’em pinchin’ off bits an’ throwin’ their heads back to swallow! Odd ducks. Ha.”

  Willum returned to exploration, scuffling through the fallen houses, calling out his findings. “There’s more bones, they got tooth marks, Abasio.” He came toward them carrying a human thighbone. “Look here. That’s the mark of a dog tooth, that’s what Ma calls ’em even though she says no acshul dog’d want the ones we got. And see here, how it slid off the bone, and there’s the back teeth.”

  The marks were clear, a canine tooth that had bitten down, then slipped off the far side of the bone, each tooth imprinted on the bone by a jaw wider than the thigh had been long.

  “See the shape a’ that jaw,” Willum went on. “See, that’s not pointy like a bear or a wolf. That curves more like yours and mine, Abasio. See that. But it’s big. Lot’s bigger’n you.” He laid the bone down and went off to see what else he could find, in a few minutes summoning them both to examine a pile of huge dried turds that he was poking at with a long stick, raking out the inclusions: small skulls. “How old’d you say those are, Xulai?” he asked in a suddenly quiet and grieving voice. “Just babies, an’t they?”

  “About the age of the twins,” she said, swallowing horror. “A year or two old.”

  Willum dropped the stick and was off again, wiping at his cheeks with the backs of his hands. Abasio murmured, “What do you think?”

  “I think what you think. I think after Bertram came this way, something else came this way: Giant. Or Troll. Or Ogre. Or something not necessarily human-­shaped, but big.”

&nbs
p; “The giants I met before . . .” He cleared his throat. “They didn’t eat ­people.”

  “The ones you met before were actors in the whole archetypal village thing. Precious Wind has a saying. Hunger finds its own meat.” She stared at the cattle, slowly emerging from among the trees. “Why not the cattle, though?”

  “Probably the cattle stayed closer to the trees and could run faster. And did.” He purposely did not add, “And do.” Instead he cleared his throat, adding, “Cattle and horses can lose themselves pretty well once they get into the forest. They, too, were once wild creatures.” He picked up the thighbone and the little skulls, wrapped them, and put them in one of the hidden compartments under the wagon. At some point, he might have to convince someone that he hadn’t been seeing things.

  Abasio beckoned to Willum and took a last look around while he slowly rejoined them, still searching every corner and pile. They moved leisurely, reminding one another of things that should have warned them: there had been no roads leading away to farms or neighbors; no one had spoken of the village in Gravysuck—­except Bertram, but he had been in Gravysuck for fifteen years. Perhaps this destruction had been old news. Or perhaps no one in Gravysuck had known of it.

  “No Fahma Donal here,” said Willum with finality. “Was once, but he’s gone.” He paled, head coming up, listening. The cooing again. Rebounding. From every direction. Some of them very close. They all heard it. If a pigeon made that sound, it was a pigeon the size of a very large cow. Cow elephant, Abasio thought to himself, remembering books he had seen in Tingawa. Tingawa claimed there were still elephants alive on the mainland west of the islands.

  Not far from the ruined village the road made a brief climb, then went down into another, narrower valley that led more nearly eastward. The tumbled stone at the bottoms of the walls on either side had left extravagantly toothy ridges above what appeared and disappeared above the trees, gradually coming closer and closer to one another. Willum once again amused himself shouting and listening to the echoes that volleyed back and forth until Abasio, whose prior nine warnings had been ignored, told him to be silent or be gagged. Xulai remarked sleepily that they seemed to be inside the jaws of some long-­snouted monster.

  Willum took the remark as possible truth and managed to talk himself, loudly, into a pleasurable panic that would have become even louder had they not emerged from the trees to confront a problem more immediate than being eaten by mountains. Kim stood awaiting them in the middle of the road; Socky grazed on the verge. Not far behind Kim, both river and road disappeared into a gaping hole. Abasio, Willum at his heels, left the wagon to stand as Kim was standing, staring at what confronted them. Xulai, who could see quite well from the wagon seat, did not join them. She was mentally, angrily, reviewing the map they had used in planning this route. The map had not shown any sign of . . . this barrier.

  The two sidewalls that had been angling toward each other met here, in this pocket of stone. At some much earlier time, someone had made a hole in the pocket. Both road and river emerged from the hole, a notch barely wide enough for the wild riot of water on the right, even less adequate for the road on the left. Abasio peered at the narrow, canted shelf the road occupied, his back rigid with . . . probably terminal annoyance. Xulai heaved a deep breath.

  Though the spray obscured all but the nearest bit of the tunnel, Abasio surmised from the way the light fell from above it that the passage rose—­not very steeply—­then turned abruptly to the left toward another source of light. At that point, presumably, the tunnel had reached the other side of the wall. The tunnel was lit by light falling through jagged gaps from above, enough of it reflected back and forth to have encouraged the growth of a glistening green slickness on every surface.

  Kim said, “There’s rings set into the wall over the road, Abasio. Metal rings, and they look like they’d hold . . .”

  Willum was already peering into the hole. Abasio said, “Willum, I wager you are most surefooted of us. Stay tight against the rock on your left and do not run. Find out for us how far this . . . burrow goes—­wait!” He turned slowly, peering into the west, his finger to his lips . . .

  Xulai whispered, “Abasio?”

  He stilled her with a gesture. Then she heard what he had probably heard: a very loud sound quite a way off. Abasio didn’t move. They waited: another sound. And another. And another: footsteps.

  “It’s coming this way,” said Abasio, turning. Willum was already gone.

  “Wagons have been through here,” murmured Blue, his voice shaking. “There are places where the wall is scarred. I think it looks worse than it is. The road’s washed to rock, Abasio, no mud . . .”

  Willum’s treble voice came back to them, the echoes in the notch making him sound like an army. “It’s no way a’tall, Abasio. Jus’ one long sorta curve, and that’s it.”

  Abasio stuck his head into the notch, calling, “Stay there.” He reached up to the hooks high on the left side of the wagon and lifted off two coils of rope, a thin one over his right shoulder, a long, heavy one over his left. He called, “Xulai, you and Kim get the babies through first! Follow me!” He beckoned and she came toward him, one child on each arm. Kim took one from her.

  The horses followed, getting as close to the entrance as they could get. Abasio placed the coil of heavy rope against the wall and tied the end of it to a heavy iron ring that formed part of the wagon frame at the right rear corner. “Blue, everything’s covered with green slime, and it’s slick. Wait here until I get them through . . .”

  The huge footsteps were louder.

  Abasio felt his way along the left wall. A shallow declivity in the rock wall began a few paces inside the notch, the hollow hidden from the entrance by an almost smooth pillar of stone. A metal ring had been drilled into the wall near the pillar, and there were others along the wall, about shoulder high. He tied the thin line to the first ring and threaded the other end through the other rings he found as he followed Willum. He was trying to do it quickly while counting arm spans of rope, but the footing was as treacherous as Abasio had feared: the road did slope rather steeply upward as well as canting toward the water. Luckily enough light was reflected off the wet surfaces above to let them see where they put their feet.

  “It’s not a tunnel,” Xulai shouted from close behind him, barely audible above the roar of the water. Abasio glanced back. Both she and Kim had one hand on the rope. He nodded. No, it wasn’t a tunnel. He thought it likely someone had attempted a tunnel, but at some point while making the initial bore, the wall above it had shattered and dropped huge, sharp-­edged chunks into the flow. The metal rings set about head high into the tunnel wall had been there long enough that they were almost totally obscured by the same slick growth that covered the road.

  Willum had been right: the wall they penetrated was not a thick one; the notch led south at the point of entry, but it soon angled to the left and emerged pointed southeast. From this point on, the road was level. Abasio tied off the rope handhold and beckoned Xulai past him, and Kim. And Socky, who had very sensibly decided not to wait.

  He ran back toward the wagon, one hand on the rope he had strung. Blue and Rags were already inside; both horses were trembling. Abasio heard the crashing sound of approaching footsteps even over the roar of the water. The rocks in the stream sent enough water splashing upward that every stone above them poured like a pitcher. It was like standing under a waterfall. Water streamed down the back of his neck under his collar, onto his bare back, and down, leaving the bottoms of his trouser legs in tributary streams. He dropped two loops of the thick rope around the smooth, pillarlike stone he’d picked, took a position in the declivity behind it that was hidden, he prayed, from the entrance. He pulled the rope tight, calling, “Go, Blue. Take it slow.” The wagon was not a full length beyond the pillar before the wheels began to slide toward the water. Abasio braced himself and pulled, keeping the rope tight. The road
was barely the width of the wagon, giving him just enough angle to keep the wheels from sliding off. He counted arm lengths of rope as he played them out, mentally counting down from the total he had strung getting to the angle where the road flattened and was not wet! If they could only get past that angle . . .

  The crashing of enormous, running feet was loud enough to be heard over the water by the time the front of the wagon reached the angle. At that point, the road flattened instead of canting to the right. Abasio held fast until the wagon end was almost past the angle, then let the rope fall and scrambled along the wall, one hand on the rope through the rings, reaching the wagon just as it angled away. He called Blue to a halt and reached for the knot on the wagon. Having the wagon immobilized by a rope entangled among the rocks would not be a good thing. The knot was wet, impossible. He cursed himself. Wrong type of knot! He knew better! Stupid! He drew his knife and sawed through the rope, held on to the cut end of it, and shouted to Blue, “Go! Go!” as he jumped for the ladder on the left rear corner of the wagon. The few seconds taken up in reaching and passing the angle seemed to last an eternity. Everything was slow. If he’d used the right knot, it would have untied. Maybe. He’d never tried it with wet rope. If he’d had an ax he could have cut the rope more quickly . . . well, next time he’d have an ax. Next time?