Fish Tails

by Sheri S. Tepper

  The rope in his hand tugged. He dropped it as he would have a snake, watching it. It didn’t move, so it hadn’t been grabbed, it was just . . . stuck somewhere. He looked over his shoulder; something was blocking the light from the tunnel behind him, but the wagon was well past the angle. There was a sound from behind them, a shout magnified by the tunnel walls as a great howling. The horses shook; Abasio clung to the ladder and called to them, as much to himself as to them, “It can’t get in here. Take it easy. Don’t panic.” The opening was close ahead of them, the walls were smoother, the waters less violently constricted, the road almost completely flat and dry. Some quiet part of Abasio’s mind noted that a tunnel had been started from this end and decently cut in a workmanlike manner that continued as far as the turn before being disastrously interrupted.

  The horses emerged into sunlight. Abasio had already decided the thin rope would stay where it was, threaded through the iron rings. It made a good handhold, at least, and it would take too long to loosen. Not to mention bringing him within reaching distance of whatever . . . However, several turns of the heavier rope he had tied to the wagon lay at the bottom of the pillarlike stone near the entrance where he had dropped it; the rest of it lay along the wall all the way to the corner and a little past. With the light blocked at the other end, it was unlikely any . . . thing would see it moving. The near end of it was probably far enough on this side of the angle to be invisible from the entrance. ­Probably . . .

  He dropped from the ladder and went back. As he approached the bend, however, he stopped. The tunnel seemed much darker. If he pulled the rope from here, he couldn’t be seen, and with so little light, a moving rope couldn’t be. Had they seen the wagon and the horses, or merely heard Willum’s noise? He stepped back and located two rocks in the river’s edge with a narrow slot between them. If he could get down behind them, he would be able to see the entrance at the expense of getting soaked. His feet squelched inside his boots, and he fought down a ridiculous urge to laugh. He could not possibly get any wetter than he already was.

  Dropping into a crawl, he went over the edge of the road and down among the rocks that made up the riverbank, cold water now running up his back and sloshing over his shoulders while an endless torrent dropped on his head. It was possible to get wetter. He raised his head to look through the slot, staying motionless. The interrupted and jagged hole that served as tunnel entry now contained two faces. No, the entry was now almost filled with two faces and parts of shoulders. One of the bodies that came along with the faces must be lying along the road; the other had to be kneeling on the far side of the river, bending forward, the top of its head next to the cheek of its companion. Yes, what he saw beyond the chin of the one to the left was not a pile of rocks. It was a hand. A thumb, really. Just one thumb.

  These were not giants as he remembered them from the war at the Place of Power. Those had been big, yes: fifteen to twenty feet tall, their proportions had been in keeping, stocky, thick-­legged. They had been very wide, very strong. These were vastly bigger. He solemnly resolved not to pull on the rope if it gave any resistance. A tug-­of-­war would not be appropriate. The one to Abasio’s right had thrust his right hand into the river, feeling its way up the stream. The water, already half blocked by the huge lower arm, became even deeper. The hand at the end of the arm came out of the water, a hand the size of the side of their wagon, and smacked down in irritation, which drove a fountain of icy water upward—­into the hugely gaping nostrils of the wide, flat nose. The nose wrinkled.

  Abasio wriggled back around the angle, grabbed the end of his rope, and ran. The sneeze caught him halfway along the angle and propelled him out onto the road. He was still holding the end of the rope. Evidently it hadn’t caught on anything. Or . . . perhaps the sneeze had made the thing in there . . . drop it. Or . . . it really didn’t matter which. No. It really didn’t.

  He got to his feet and plodded out into the sunlight, shivering only partly from the cold. Water was draining from every part of him. He simply stood, incapable of any further action, the rope trailing from his hand. Kim took it from him and began to coil its sodden length onto its usual hook. Abasio was staring, counting: three horses. Blue, Rags, Socky. Correct as to number and name. Four ­people, including him. One female, one male, one noisy brat, and him. Right. Babies? Must be in the wagon. Otherwise Xulai would be screaming, and she wasn’t. Yet. Everyone was here and safe. Maybe safe. Willum and Xulai were staring at him from terrified faces, unspeaking. The horses were visibly trembling—­even phlegmatic Blue . . .

  Everyone was carefully not asking the question he didn’t have an answer to. Can those things at the other end of that notch get in here?

  “Good grass,” remarked Blue in voice that sounded almost normal. “That’ll be nice for a change. Animals seem to be enjoying it.”

  Momentarily derailed from either fright or fury, Abasio looked past them. Blue was right, as usual: the fields were dotted with grazing animals, sheep, goats, cows, horses; every one of them could hear that howling, but none of them were in a panic, none of them were running. Abasio simply stared at them, his mind frantically scanning for something, anything that would put the enormous faces out of his mind.

  What came, ridiculously, was himself, in his dream, hanging above the quiet pool in that dreamworld while the little boy, Crash, asked: “What’s bao? Do we got it?”

  Why would his subconscious come up with that? Perhaps bow: weapon. Well, yes, but it was also a gesture of respect or subservience, a tied ribbon, half a dog bark. Perhaps it was bough: a branch of a tree. Was that helpful? At one time ­people had carried green boughs as indications that they came in peace. Not helpful. What did the little boy mean? Why was it important? Could it be a magic spell to quell monsters? Silently Abasio answered Crash’s question: “What is it? I dunno if we have it. Do we need it? No, to all of the above and get out of my head!”

  Blue said calmly, “Forest grass doesn’t have much flavor, doesn’t get enough sun.”

  Slowly the tower dream evaporated, the giant faces dissolved into mist, and their surroundings penetrated reality. The wagon had emerged into a green, sunlit valley carpeted by rich grasslands, a valley limited on the south by forested mountains and in the near west by a tumulose of low, furzy hills. Abasio turned to look at the wall behind him again. The near side was a sheer vertical wall running from east to west, as far as he could see: a true wall, perpendicular to the valley floor they stood upon, towering above the trees as it disappeared into the west. The only scenario he could think of was that it had been one thick stratum of hard stone, originally laid down horizontally, as a thick sheet of lava, and then improbably thrust up in a vertical wall during that most recent upheaval . . . a thousand years ago, more or less. It could have had softer layers on either side that had since eroded away. Abasio stared at wall, wall at Abasio. He could not estimate the actual thickness. Panic had thickened it, increasing fear; fear thinned it, lessening good sense. Did it matter? It was high enough, thick enough, and strong enough to keep those things out. Otherwise, as Blue kept trying to tell him, all these placidly grazing animals would be in complete panic.

  If the tunnel had been completed as started from this end, if it had been made neatly, smoothly cut all the way through, then the things on the other side could have crawled through long since. One at a time, of course. If the workmen had done a good job, the giants would be in here right now eating his family. However, the notch was anything but neat or smooth. The opening extended all the way to the top of the wall, projected in splintered fangs of rock that interlocked viciously with others from the far side. Preventing the giants from getting through. And obviously they couldn’t climb the wall. And if one of them tried to crawl through, its body would block the water. Probably neither one of them liked water up its nose.

  Xulai, Kim, and Willum were waiting for Abasio to acknowledge being alive. They weren’t going to do/say/think/de
cide anything until he did. When he finally blinked owlishly at them, they were evidently . . . reassured, though Abasio was . . . not.

  “When I got here and saw that,” Kim said, choking on the words as he waved at the notch, “I thought you might need help with the wagon, so I waited. Didn’t expect . . . the other thing.”

  Willum could hold himself no longer. He shouted, “Wuz it giants, ’Basio?”

  Willum’s question was answered by a shout/cry/yell, something-­or-­other kind of furious sound issuing from the tunnel. As Abasio had feared, the cry was one of hunger along with the anger/frustration. He did not trust himself to speak. He merely held up two fingers. When his breathing slowed, he said, “Willum, if you don’t keep your mouth shut, they’ll probably follow the sound here. I’m going to give you to them. They can eat you first!”

  Turning to Xulai, he murmured, “The livestock in those fields wouldn’t be there if those creatures hunted in here. They evidently can’t get through there.”

  Xulai, forcing herself to stop shaking, had spread her cloak along one side of the wagon and fastened it there to dry. Now she took Abasio’s to the other side while Abasio sat on the wagon step to strip off his outer clothes and boots. Barefoot, cursing, he stepped into the wagon, dried himself, put on dry underclothes and trousers, and came out to take towels and brushes to the horses. They were still shivering, only partly from being soaked with very cold water, a state that was not improved by Abasio’s continuous, fluent, polysyllabic damnation of map makers who’d had the stupidity, malfeasance, and egregious unprofessionalism not to bother indicating either this barrier or the fact that there were giants on the prowl. There was a taxable city beyond this point, he muttered. The map had been provided by the tax-­hogs. They had to have been here! They had to have seen this road! Were tax collectors predation-­proof? There was no excuse for it! He choked, gargled, stopped to clear his throat and breathe. Breathing felt . . . pleasant. He bit his tongue and went on breathing.

  Certainly this valley gave no evidence of predation. The trees were alive with birdsong. River and road wound peacefully down toward them from the east, the road swerving back and forth in languid S’s as it paralleled the north side of the river’s meanders.

  Abasio held out his hands. They were still trembling. Willum was pouring questions from an uncountable store, but for the moment he was not yelling them. Of course, he hadn’t seen giants. Abasio wished he hadn’t seen them either. He was not allowed to forget, for Xulai asked, “What did they look like?”

  “All I could see were faces.”

  “And?”

  Abasio shook himself like a dog. “I need a dry shirt.”

  Xulai busied herself finding a dry shirt, socks, and shoes for Abasio; she had already put dry blankets around the babies. Though it was clear to everyone who had been around the children for any length of time that they did not feel cold as Xulai and Abasio did, she was unable to convince herself the babies were not in frequent and perpetual need of dry blankets. Xulai would put blankets on fish, so Willum said. Abasio thought Willum was probably right. She would; and without asking them first, either.

  He stopped at the wagon step to pick up his boots and turn them over to drain. He had only the one pair. He did have two pairs of shoes, however. Which he had told Xulai he didn’t need to bring. Which she had insisted he bring. He wondered, briefly, where he might find a boot maker. Considering . . . everything, he really needed a spare pair.

  “Now tell us what you saw,” said Xulai, handing him a dry shirt.

  He breathed some more. It took a while before his throat would open. “I saw two faces, part of one shoulder, one hand and lower arm. I should say each eye was about the size of my hand. The one . . . the one that was lying in the road had his mouth slightly open. The teeth were a lot wider than . . . those marks on the bone Willum found: eyebrows, hair, dark. Skin and hair dirty or dark or both. No clothes, of course. That is, I didn’t see any. The ones I used to know wore clothes. I think. I don’t remember their being naa . . .” He choked, unable to force the word out.

  “Abasio. Shhh. Breathe.”

  “I am breathing. They were breathing. They had very wide noses. Possibly they hunt by smell. Couldn’t see the ears, but I’m quite sure they had located us by sound.”

  “Oh, wow,” said Willum.

  Xulai handed him dry socks and gave him time to get them on.

  He said, his voice grating, “If we’d fiddled around just a few moments more outside that notch, they’d have had us, horses and all. And the babies. And the sea-­eggs.”

  “But they’re not in here! They can’t get in here,” cried Willum.

  “I hope that’s true, yes. And if you, Willum, hadn’t spent the last hours on the way here making as much racket as you possibly could, they might not have found us in the first place.”

  “You mean I brought ’em,” said Willum, eyes wide. “I didn’t mean ta—­”

  “Willum, you never mean ta. I’m not angry at you yet. However, it is not necessary for you to make all possible noise at every possible occasion. When there are evil things out in the world, smart animals are quiet. You do not hear mice making echoes in the kitchen when the cat is there.” He heard his own voice, loud and trembling with . . . what? Just plain fear was what.

  Willum actually seemed to be listening. Abasio turned away and took a deep breath to calm himself. From behind him Willum crowed at the top of his lungs, “It’s a room, Abasio!”

  Abasio turned, glaring. Willum went on loudly, “Did’ja notice we’re in a room! Doesn’t have a roof, but it’s a room. Like for giants, Abasio. The ones you saw. You think they’ll keep tryin’ to come in here?”

  Abasio grabbed him and shook him, hard. “Well, now they can hear you yelling again, so my bet is they’ll sure try, won’t they? They’re hungry, Willum. And you are food. Maybe if I let them have you, they’ll leave the rest of us alone. At least they won’t be able to find us so easily!”

  “Y’mean they’re still out there?” Willum paled. “I thought we got away!” He looked puzzled. “Ya mean—­I shouldn’t yell, huh?”

  Xulai shook her head at Abasio, took Willum by the shoulder, and escorted him into the wagon, where Abasio heard her voice raised. Willum had a very thick skin. It might be necessary to get through his hide with something like a bullwhip. It might be necessary to cut through that skin with a chisel first, then use the bullwhip! Though, come to think of it, Xulai’s voice could flay one almost like a whip when sufficiently aroused. She did sound aroused. Go to it, Xulai! He sat down on a convenient stump and tried not to think of anything. Not giants. Not Willum. Not Willum’s skin . . . ears . . . hearing . . . he didn’t listen.

  Or, he thought to himself in a moment of revelation as he recalled the time they had spent in and near Gravysuck, the conversations he had overheard, it was possible that Willum had never learned to listen because very little if anything had ever been said to him or within his hearing that required listening to.

  Xulai came to the wagon door and handed Abasio his shoes. Kim was standing next to Socky, both of them shivering. She cried, “Kim, you’re freezing! Come in and get yourself changed. I put a towel and dry clothes out for you.” Kim and Socky carried only what would be needed during the day; everything else traveled with the wagon.

  Abasio put on his shoes and forced himself to examine the surroundings. The great upheaval that had created the northern wall behind them had created the eastern wall as well. They were now enclosed on north and east by cliffs of ruddy stone. That northeast corner of the space did have, as Willum had suggested, the vertical walls and enclosed feeling of a room—­if one could accept sky as a ceiling. The south side of the valley was all mountains, rising rather steeply and thickly forested. They were not enclosed on the west. The wall went on west, the mountains went on a little south of west, the area gradually widening the farther one
looked. The enclosed space was triangular, the tip of the triangle chopped off by the eastern wall, which was not complete. It had a gap at its southern end where the road and the river came through. Through that gap they would come to Findem Pass.

  Xulai came out of the wagon carrying cups and a pitcher. She was followed by Willum, a Willum who was neither shouting nor running anywhere, who did, indeed, seem rather thoughtful as he moved away down the road. Abasio gave her a questioning look.

  She handed a cup of hot tea to Abasio. When Willum was out of earshot, she cleared her throat, with only limited success. She still sounded choked as she murmured, “Two things, Abasio. When I heard them coming, the . . . the giants, I reached for a weapon, that is, for ul xaolat. I started to ask it to . . . to kill those things. Then I remembered Precious Wind insisting that before I did anything irrevocable, I ask the device for possible . . . side effects. So I did, and it said don’t drop those bodies out there or everyone within several days’ travel would die along with them. It didn’t say why.”

  “Will it tell you why?”

  “Probably. When I stop shaking enough to sit down and read it. Second thing: Willum. He’s a liability, Abasio. He’s a risk to our . . . duty, our quest. We may have to send him back. I’ve pointed out as forcibly as possible that we cannot possibly take a mere farm boy with us. I told him that farm boys don’t have to think, because they just do the same things year after year, and so long as they get the chores done the way they’ve always been done, nobody cares if they spend the rest of their time yelling and pounding on things. I explained that traveling through strange territory is not like that, and his mother should have thought of that before she told him to go with us, unless maybe she just wanted to get rid of him and his noise. Traveling is always dangerous in one way or another, and if Willum cannot change from a farm boy into a traveling boy VERY quickly, when we get to Saltgosh we’ll make arrangements to send him back to Gravysuck.”