Fish Tails

by Sheri S. Tepper

“I’m saying before they could say the words, they could sing the music! They could sing. In harmony! Hear a tune one time, and the five of ’em could sing it in harmony and make it sound like they’d rehearsed it for a year! We bought a lot of instruments, too, and later on they learned instruments as well. Some of the old folks are pretty good musicians, too, and sometimes the Home gives the rest of us a concert. Last time, all the music they played and sang was composed by one or another of the Pemblys. Truth to tell, ma’am, I think their folks had more than just an inkling about how talented those little ones were goin’ to be, somehow, because with all of the elder Pemblys lost at one time like that, well, those families left quite a sizable amount to our Home just because they’d been real impressed by our music.”

  Xulai murmured, “Well, one doesn’t ordinarily think about marvelous music and salt mines at the same time, so I can see why you said it was unexpected.”

  Mr. Atterbury frowned. “Oh, if you lived here you’d think of ’em at the same time, ma’am. Sometimes we hire an outsider, or I should say, sometimes we don’t have a young one coming along to take a certain job that needs filling, so we have to bring someone who’s qualified in from outside. No matter how qualified somebody might be, he or she wouldn’t stand a chance of gettin’ the job if they can’t make music. Why, we’d all go crazy back here alone in these winter mountains if we didn’t have our music.”

  As they were helping put away the instruments in the back room, Xulai and Abasio noticed several stacks and baskets of little carved animals, ­people and creatures, most of them quite funny. According to Gum, the children in Saltgosh were born with music in their throats and carving knives in their hands and the carved toys were part of the “what all” that was done down below, in winter. The small wooden creatures had cleverly jointed arms and legs, or wings and fins, or—­later, after Willum had informed the entire village about “first-­generation changers” (Abasio had not thought to silence him on that matter), multiple tentacles, each tentacle with a dozen or more joints that writhed with an amusing jerkiness. If the Sea King were to see them, thought Xulai, he would be most offended.

  Abasio immediately bought a quantity of toys to take with them, letting it be known at the same time that he would buy all the sea-­children toys modeled on Bailai and Gailai that the carvers could come up with in the next few days. All that afternoon, carvers came to peer intently at the babies, who, now that they wore Bertram’s jackets, were unmistakably male or female. Abasio and Xulai had agreed that mer-­toys would be excellent selling tools. “Who could be afraid of a creature that looked exactly like a doll one had played with as a child?” asked Abasio. “Maybe one with a jacket and hat that a child could put on and take off?”

  Xulai’s eyes lit up! Dolls! That was the word she’d missed! Yes! Soft dolls! The kind of thing one put into cradles with infants! She had had such toys, and Abasio remembered having a fuzzy bear with a red, red tongue. Others recalled piglets, raccoons, yarn-­haired little-­boy and little-­girl dolls. No doubt there were women in Saltgosh who would enjoy making extra money by sewing dolls, soft, stuffed sea-­person dolls, sea-­baby dolls, for the cribs of ordinary babies, so they could get used to the shape and the idea. Yes. They subsequently spoke with Bertram’s sister Liny, offering her a sizable sum in advance to pay whatever women might enjoy making the dolls.

  “You can send batches of them on to Bertram with this letter from us asking him to send on to Woldsgard and Wellsport. He may also want to sell some of them to ­people who come to his shop.”

  Liny gave him a searchingly mercantile look. “But your real wish is not so much that they be sold for profit as that they be sent far and wide, eh?”

  “Oh, profit was not the point at all,” said Xulai. “No, our needs are supplied by the ­people who planned and worked on the sea-­children project. Selling the dolls simply gets the wherewithal to buy materials to make more of them! Spreading the image, getting the shape to seem natural to ­people was what we wanted to do.”

  Liny nodded. “Well then, I think we can do that on our own, take our own modest profit, and thank you for the suggestion. The women of Saltgosh have always sold handicrafts of the needle, the loom, the carving knife, or the oven. A nearby sun-­pocket farm raises ginger root for us, and our hard ginger wafers are in great demand by the wagoners—­they keep very well. Though it’s not apparent this late in the season, this route through Saltgosh is well traveled, it’s the only wagon road that fords the Big River and goes on to the coast. Wagoners who come here take our orders for things we need and bring them on their next trip and buy our crafts here to sell elsewhere.

  “I’m sure they’ll buy soft sea-­children dolls for their toddlers. Soft dolls would travel well; they don’t have to be packed carefully as the wooden toys do. All we would need you to do is send us the initial supply of fabric and stuffing together with instructions for ordering more. I can’t think of anything local that will do.”

  She went on murmuring to herself: “It’s too late in the year for a wagon train. A pack train . . . cloth, if there’s one returning empty. Sheep’s wool . . . perfect, but . . . may prove too expensive. There are shepherds . . . driving the stock through soon . . . on their way to winter quarters . . . yarn for the hair . . . yellows, white, reds, browns, black—­and suitable fabrics in various flesh colors . . . Well, we’ll suppose so . . . the legs . . . those may have to be dyed.”

  Gum had stayed longer than he had planned, and he would go as he had come, by the western route that would take him through Flitterbean. Wagoners came that way, Gum remarked, to avoid the wild-­water notch, not the giants, for the giants were a fairly recent addition to the landscape. Or, he admitted, maybe they had only recently reached a size that made them truly troublesome.

  “It’s not a natural cut, through that wall,” Abasio commented.

  Gum shook his head. “Nah. Story is, long ages ago, two men thought they wuz important. Important-­Joe an’ Important-­Jeff, mebbe. Dunno what they wuz important for. So Joe had a place here in the valley and all down to the west, the way the road goes. Jeff had a place t’ other side a’ t’ wall. Jeff needed water, so he had a fella start a tunnel through for him t’get some from t’ river. So Joe sez he had no right, to get the hell out, so Jeff got hisself some stuff from over the pass, and he blew him a hole. Alla top rocks fell in, an’ he took t’ whole river.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Story is ’ey had a battle. Kilt each other. Saltgosh was just a little place then. When it grew some, Saltgosh fixed the river so it went both ways ’cause by that time there ’uz beavers and fish and all kina birds both places, an ’ere was villages growed up along that north fork and all. Goshians say they haven’t seen folks from that way recent. Nobody uses that way much now, ’cep Gold King.”

  Abasio was almost afraid to ask. “Gold King?”

  “He’s a fella got a wagon comes over t’ pass two, three times a year. Men up there, in those little places, where t’ old cities wuz. Those men’re diggers. Moles, some call ’m. They find stuff, oh, joolry, stuff made out a’ silver. N’ they goes up ’ere to the pass n’ they trade what they dug up for stuff the men want: some trades fer gold, or fer drink, mos’ly. Gold King’s got a wagon purty much like yourn. ’Cep it’s gold, a’course.”

  “Made of gold?”

  “C’mon, ’Basio. I ain’t total stupid, y’know. How many horses it ’ud take to haul a wagon made a’ gold? Nah. Got his wagon painted gold is all. An’ he’s usual got six or eight horses hitched to it, at least, and anywhere from six to a dozen riders with all kinds a’ weapons. T’keep the Gold King from gettin’ robbed, y’know.”

  Abasio did know. It had to be the Edges, again. “Where does he go from here, Gum? What’s west of here?”

  “Goes all the way t’the sea, I ’spose. The road goes all that way.”

  The Gold King bought things from the
diggers in the ruins, sold these things to the Edgers, and then . . . what? Took what he got from the Edgers to trade near Wellsport? Wellsport was the only place Tingawa sent ships. That Abasio knew of. Oh, he would like to know what the result of all that trading back and forth was!

  Returning to the subject of the cut through which the river poured, and the farms along the way they had come, Abasio sought out Melkin and suggested it might be time to talk about what they had found beyond the notch. About fifty of them assembled in the men’s hall at the works, and Abasio told them of Odd Duck, displaying the chewed bone and the little skulls, following this with a description of the difficulty they’d had getting through the notch.

  “Everything back to Gravysuck is empty. The villages shown on our map don’t exist anymore. We found houses, fallen in, all empty. But we get here, and no one seems fearful.”

  The men looked at one another. It was Melkin who said, “Caltrops. Do you know what I mean?”

  Abasio did not. Melkin nodded, and a basket was fetched from a storeroom. One of the items in it was set before him: a metal shape of four spikes, so arranged that no matter how it fell, one spike would always point up. The points were very sharp.

  “I was told smaller ones of these were used long, long ago when men fought on horseback,” said Melkin. “If one of these got into a horse’s foot, it would cripple him, and when the horse fell, the man might also be injured. At least he would have to fight on foot. We trade salt for these, many thousands of them. We go over there.” He nodded to the north, vaguely in giant direction. “One quiet man with a few very quiet packhorses or mules and a few men to keep watch. Giants’re so big, they leave clear trails behind them, trees knocked down, everything squashed. We find their trails wherever they come close to our borders. We go a few miles down their paths and come back, putting these behind us. These spikes are big enough the livestock can see them and smell them. Livestock tends to stay off Giant trails anyhow. Giants, well, their eyes and noses are way up there, they don’t see ’em or smell ’em.

  “Nobody human has come that way in . . . two years, maybe more, but we never put any on the roads ­people used, just in case. We didn’t figure on crippling horses or ­people. We’ve already got signs made and men ready to go west and put up warnings. Giants don’t read. Don’t speak any language we know of, either. Make noises, sort of like cows.” He looked at others for confirmation, and they nodded at him. He repeated. “Mostly like cows. Mooing and bellowing.”

  “Anybody coming that way will come through Gravysuck,” said Abasio. “Or through Flitterbean or Asparagoose. Be sure your ­people let them know, because it’s around there where the road forks. These spiky things don’t look like they’d do much damage to the giants I saw.”

  “Not designed to, Abasio. The spikes are just long enough to go through the thick skin on the bottoms of their feet. But before we place them, we dip all four points into something else. The something else is a kind of disease, a kind of rot that goes on working to cripple them, even if the giant pulls this out of his foot. Or hers.”

  Abasio shuddered. “Hers! You mean there are now giantesses?”

  “There are. And giant babies. And whatever fool created them made them even larger than the giants we had more or less learned to live with. The giants coming this near us is recent. ­Couple of years ago was the first time, I guess, and very rarely then. We figured the only place that’d create such things would be the Edges. So how come they’re here, all the way over the mountains from where the Edges are?

  ”We’re just now putting plans in place, letting ­people know. First riders went out about a month ago. Place the boy comes from? They should’ve heard by now. Some of the villages, the ones that are well up on the sides of the mountains, are safe enough so long as they stay high. The big things can’t breathe up there, they like the valleys. The men were due to go over there three days from now to spread caltrops. We were surprised to see the two coming after you. That area near the wall’s been safe.”

  “I’m afraid they heard the boy with us making a lot of noise.”

  “We hope he’s learned how stupid that is.”

  “If he hasn’t, he’s hopeless. You said the stuff goes on working to cripple them. What happens to the cripples?”

  “Their feet rot, they can’t walk, their families kill ’em and eat ’em,” said Melkin. “The mothers coo over the babies, but once they can walk, they’re meat and on their own. We think the more of the giants there are, the fewer of their children survive. They don’t seem to have much . . . much brain. Not much thought. Instinct, some, and that’s about all.”

  Abasio could not speak for a moment. He only whispered at last, “If they eat their own kind, they definitely have Ogre in them?”

  One of the other men, a tall red-­haired one called, as might be supposed, Red, laughed harshly. “They have every damned thing in them that was ever thought of, Abasio. Ogre! Troll! Ghoul! A year ago, sir, I’d have sooner killed you than looked at you, bringing those babies, coming to suggest that we meddle with ourselves the way those creatures have been meddled with. Well, I’ve seen the babies and I’ve heard about the waters, and both have convinced me this particular meddling thing was well intended and lots of sacrifice made for it to be accomplished. Can’t have been easy for you or your good wife, but I believe what I can see: a person can swim like a fish and still be a human being. I can look at your pretty little ones, listen to them laugh and have them grab my finger like my own do, and call out for Mama or Dada or Willum, and I don’t really mind if my grandchildren look like that. Hope I live long enough to see it, maybe swim alongside ’em. Maybe I can believe that, all right, but those doubly damned giants are another thing altogether, and if I had the doing of it, every Edge that was involved in making them . . . I’d drop a gas bomb down it and kill every creature there, just to stop everything they’re doing!”

  The others were nodding in agreement.

  “Any idea which place made them and why that size?” Abasio asked.

  “All we know is Edgers,” said someone. “They may be customers, but I hate ’em. Who else is so shut off from the world it doesn’t matter what they do? Had a contest, probably. Who could do the biggest ones.”

  “It’s more likely the giants have just gone on growing ever since they were made,” said Gister, a quiet, elderly man who spoke little but was always listened to. “I don’t believe they’re new, I think whoever created them just forgot to include the stopping point. Like the tree down there, next to the tunnel. Just goes on growing. If I could only find a male one, I’d be a happy man.” Seeing the question in Abasio’s face, he shook his head and added, “All the trees are female trees, so we’re not getting any seeds. No way to grow new ones. I’d give anything for some pollen from a male tree. Anyhow, I think those giants have just gone on growing like the trees . . .”

  On hearing this, Abasio took a deep breath. It had occurred to him, too, and he agreed that it was most likely. Perhaps even the gentle giants he had known near the archetypal village had gone on growing. He said gravely, “No matter what size they are, they’re going to drown, too, you know. And, gentlemen, I know the Edgers are your customers, but it would be a very good idea not to mention anything about the sea-­children to them or to anyone else moving through. If any of the ­people from the Edges actually come here, don’t say a word about it. If they bring children, be sure your children don’t talk of it. If someone asks, laugh and tell them it’s a fairy story the children like to play at. Just as well let the Edgers be in the dark about it. Otherwise they’ll be trying to take us over and keeping everyone else out.”

  “Well, their drowning couldn’t be soon enough,” snarled Red. “And everybody here’ll keep shut about you and the little ones. We’re used to talking careful around the Edgers.”

  Melkin announced, “That’s why we’ve got some other weapons coming, Abasio. We’ve b
een drilling into the wall, behind the town. We’ve bought cannons to go in there. That’s just in case; we won’t even get them for a ­couple of years. So far, the caltrops have worked well enough. There’s still cattle and horses over there for them to eat, but there’s fewer of them than there were, say, ten years ago. We hate bringing big weapons in, but there’s no way we can just get along if they come into this valley.”

  “Instead of cannon in here, I’d try to hit them with something like your caltrop poison. I’d try very hard not to drop one of them dead in this valley.”

  “Why’s that?” Red wondered, a little belligerently.

  Abasio took a deep breath. He did not want to mention ul xaolat. Still . . . “Figure out how many tons of meat one of those critters weighs, and then figure out what you’re going to do with that much meat rotting in your valley, where you can smell it,” said Abasio. “Or how you’ll work the salt or keep traders coming even supposing the dead giant isn’t lying across the road. And that’s not mentioning other giants smelling it and coming in to eat it.”

  It was quite apparent they had not considered that. Abasio, who had lived for a time in Fantis, where bodies were left for the rats, was familiar both with the smell and the animals who ate corpses. “We’ve also received word that if the bodies are not disposed of promptly, say, by being eaten or burned, certain kinds of flies will lay eggs in the rotting body. The larvae will eat the body, the body has a growth hormone in it that will change the larvae, and they’ll hatch into giant biting insects. We got this information from Tingawa, and information from there is usually accurate. Tingawa is trying to find a poison that would not only kill the giants but also the flies and the fly eggs, but right now it’s only the fact the bodies are being eaten by other giants that’s keeping you free of giant, biting flies. When you get down to the last few, be ready to dispose of the bodies. If they aren’t eaten, you must either bury or burn them.”

  Abasio left them talking about what fuel they could order that would burn hot enough to get rid of the bodies. Just outside, he encountered Gister. “What was that you said about a male tree?”