Fish Tails

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Willum could look almost directly down into the town. It seemed completely dead, no sign of life at all. The place might as well have been deserted. The wagon and horsemen thundered on—­the sound clearly audible even at their height—­covering a distance about halfway to the split in the road before any of the riders seemed to notice that they would have to take the right-­hand fork. From the back side of the east wall, unseen, Sun-­wings and Willum dropped into flight and circled high above to look directly down on the notch, then returned to their former resting place.

  “Notch is bigger’n it was,” Willum remarked when they were back on their high terrace. “Looks like those giants been pullin’ stones outta the way.”

  “Do the men in the city know?”

  “Dunno,” said Willum. “They’ll know if they help us, down there, because they’ll see it. Otherwise, we sh’d stop and tell ’um.”

  “We’ll see,” said Sun-­wings. The Gold King’s wagon was approaching the barrier. It stopped. The men and horses milled about, the driver got off the wagon and looked at the other route. Finally he gestured and the mounted men went toward the notch, entering it one at a time. They emerged on the giant-­valley side, milled about, returned to the south side. There were no giants in sight. All the horses were unhitched, then the front two were rehitched.

  “I’d a sent summa those cars through first,” murmured Willum.

  “I imagine anyone who calls himself a king is more interested in being first than in being smart,” murmured Sun-­wings. The wagon started through with just two horses pulling it, several men staying behind with the unhitched ones. There was some confusion, some coming and going, someone carrying a rope.

  “It’s slippery in there,” Willum explained to his huge friend . . . well, he guessed she was his friend. “I think the wagon may’ve slipped off the road. When we went through, Abasio had a rope on the outside a’ the wagon so it wouldn’t slide.”

  Eventually, the men got the wagon on the road and edged out on the giant-­valley side. Two other horses followed, and the men got busy hitching them to the wagon once more. Sun-­wings nudged Willum with her shoulder and pointed with her beak—­beyond the men. There, approaching them one behind the other, were two giants. The men probably didn’t hear the footsteps over the noise of the water. Willum leapt up, put the blanket by the gravel and scooped a quantity of it onto the blanket, grabbed the blanket by the four corners, and turned to watch.

  What happened was almost too fast to follow, men turning, seeing, screaming, running back through the notch, the way blocked by the next group of horses coming through, the first giant arriving, lifting his foot to step on the wagon and crush it like a nutshell, the men using their weapons like little cannons. They made little puffs of smoke with what was probably a bang-­bang noise. The sound barely reached Willum and Sun-­wings, whup, whup. The other giant arrived; there were two more approaching from another direction, then suddenly, horses were grabbed from above and jerked off their feet, their frantic struggles stopping when their heads were bitten off, another foot came down where the wagon had been, a huge mouth expelled a knot of harness that evidently resisted chewing. Blood ran across the giants’ chests. Abasio had given Willum some little distance glasses. Needly told him she’d used them to watch the fish being constructed, and now he used them to watch the wagon, very carefully, noticing where the wagon was, how broken it was. The right side of it had ripped off. A giant tipped it toward that side, and everything dumped out—­cans and cans, yellow, all alike, rolling away along the road, a ­couple among them different, shiny like metal. A foot came down on them, moved on. The metal things were still there, pressed into the ground among the yellow cans. Too small, too round to have been crushed. He heaved a deep breath. There was also a clutter of other things, like little sticks, those were probably the other things Abasio had wanted.

  Willum tried to count the number of men eaten. There had been twelve riders and at least two in the wagon plus all the drivers of cars and trucks. All the horses were dead, being carried away. One of the men was hiding, keeping perfectly still behind a tree. That must be the purple one, fat, older than the others. With all the yelling the giants were doing, he didn’t see what was coming at him from behind. None of the giants wore clothes, and this one was definitely female. She had the man dangling by one leg before he had a chance to yell. He was the last one. Now the giants were picking up bits and pieces of things from the wagon. Putting things in their mouths, sacks of something. One of them wandered away toward the west, toward where Odd Duck had been. He was making a noise, a kind of moaning. Others followed him. The female one turned toward the north. She had half a horse dangling from her hand and was going to take it home, wherever home was. A pair of human legs protruded from the corner of her mouth.

  The moaning turned into a screech, then a howl.

  “Was there something bad in that wagon?” Willum whispered to Sun-­wings.

  “I heard someone say the Gold King was going to poison Sea Duck, if he could get there.” She nodded toward the notch. “The men in those vehicles aren’t going to go through, Willum. I thought they’d turn around and head back, but they aren’t.”

  The men were not. They had gathered around someone who was waving his arms, apparently yelling to them. Heads nodded, the men who weren’t already carrying guns took them from the vehicles, and the whole group, some fifty of them, started marching up the road toward Saltgosh. A ­couple of men aimed their weapons at the town on the ledge and shot at it.

  Sun-­wings murmured, “They intend to use the town for something. I wonder. Those cars and trucks take something to make them run, don’t they? Fuel, Abasio says. Fuel is what makes things run. He says food is ­people fuel. Maybe they’re running out of it.”

  “When the wagon went over, there were lotsa those yellow cans inside. Can you see colors, Sun-­wings? Coyote can’t, I know. Maybe that was what it was.”

  “I can see color, yes. All my sisters can, so far as I know. Could the yellow cans be fuel?”

  The Edgers were approaching the edge of the salt works. Suddenly every window in the town sprouted weapons, and a deadly barrage was aimed down at the massed Edgers. Half of them fell, the rest ran toward the path that led upward to the town.

  “That is a very stupid move,” remarked Sun-­wings. “They aren’t really very . . . intelligent, are they.”

  “ ’Basio said something wunst ‘bout Edgers breedin’ in so much they lost their brains. I told Needly wunst about that, y’gotta breed out some. Otherwise . . . whoops. Looka that!”

  The first half-­dozen climbers had gained the top of the path and had promptly fallen backward onto half a dozen others, the whole group plummeting off the stairs—­Willum noted for the first time that the protective rail had been removed. There were now only about a dozen of the Edgers who were alive and seemingly unwounded. A shout reached them, evidently from within the houses. Someone among the Edgers huddled on the stairs threw his weapon down. In the salt works, men appeared, aiming upward, and others came out of the town, aiming down. The rest of the Edgers threw down their weapons.

  Sun-­wings glanced at the sky. “There’s a moon tonight, but I think we’ll ask your friends for some help in getting in there and picking up the two things you want before dark. I don’t want to get caught on the ground, and I don’t want you to get caught halfway up to a place I can drop from. AND, I don’t want to stress this wing by taking off from the ground or chill it by flying at night. That watchtower of theirs can tell us when the way is clear.”

  “I’m gonna be a little heavier,” said Willum. “Just for a little bit. Just in case.” He climbed back on her shoulders, the gravel-­laden blanket held in his arms. Sun-­wings dropped into flight and returned to the meadow below the town, carefully flying by the watchtower so they could be seen.

  Melkin met them almost as soon as they landed. There was a gre
at howling from over the northern wall. More than one giant voice.

  “We saw some of it,” he said. “What was in that wagon?”

  “Abasio said the Gold King was going to poison the water around Sea Duck,” said the Griffin.

  Willum agreed. “That was parta that ganger leader thinkin’ the Edgers was ’spose to be the only ­people left alive when the world’s all water. I think the giants’re so hungry by this time they’ll put most anything inta their mouths. I think at least one of ’em ate the poison. If there’s any of it left, you might want to get rid of it some way before it kills somebody.”

  “The things you needed?”

  “I think I saw the metal things, and they look all right,” said Willum. “They were in real shiny kinda cans, metal, shaped like a melon. Sun-­wings n’ me saw ’em fall outta the wagon, right beyond the notch, and one of the giants stepped on ’em, so they’re a little buried, but not broke, I don’t think. Right there just inside. But that one giant, he’s just stampin’ around in there. I think maybe Sun-­wings n’ me can get ridda him.”

  He went back to Sun-­wings and talked to her. “Yes,” she said. “I can do that. Now?”

  They took off once more, this time circling to get only a little higher than the northern wall. Sun-­wings asked, “You want to come at it from the front?”

  “The front and a little higher, so it’ll hit him in the eyes!”

  “Then let it go when I say so.” She circled to gain a bit more height, turned, and flew directly at the giant’s head. He was howling, kicking at the wagon, waving his arms aimlessly.

  “The minute he looks up,” said Sun-­wings. She screamed. The giant, mouth open, turned directly toward her, arms coming up. In that same instant Willum dumped the blanket load of gravel and sand, which continued forward and down as Sun-­wings drove her wings down to carry them over the creature’s head. The gravel caught the giant full in the face, mostly around the eyes, and he howled even louder, stumbling back from the wagon, turning to run in the opposite direction.

  They turned back and were down within moments. Sun-­wings was panting. She lay flat, her wings widespread. Melkin ran up to them. “Is she all right?”

  “Have somebody bring her some water,” mumbled Willum. “She’s scared. So’m I.” He knew exactly how she felt. His heart was pounding as though it wanted to break out from behind his ribs.

  Melkin gave instructions while he and Willum were walking across the pastures toward the notch. When Willum could spare the breath, he mumbled, “There’s something else in there I should take a sample back to Abasio. We thought if you’d keep watch for us, I’d sneak in there and grab them and bring them out by the road. That is, if all the men who were with the Gold King are dead.”

  “There were twenty horses.”

  “I counted fifteen they bit the heads off of.”

  “If the giants that’re poisoned die,” said Melkin, “the others’ll eat them.”

  “Then they’ll die, too. But that’ll take a while. I’ll tell Fixit when we get back. Fixit’ll think a’ somethin to get ridda the bodies.”

  “You want to try it now?”

  Willum looked up at the sky, then back at Sun-­wings. “While the light’s still good enough.”

  Half a dozen of the men went with him. Five horses had escaped back through the notch and were tangled in harness near the entry. One of the men went to cut them free while the rest went through the notch, carefully, using the hand rope Abasio had strung there. Four of them kept watch in all directions while Willum went on with the other two. The giant he had blinded was blundering around a little north of them, not far. They could see another one farther back, to the left. Neither of them seemed to be paying any attention to the notch. Willum found the cans pressed deeply into the soil, but Melkin had brought a shovel with him, and they were out in minutes, scratched, slightly dented, but whole. Willum reached into the wreckage of the wagon. There were many yellow cans of something or other and several dozen bars of metal. Had to be metal, they were so heavy. Not long, but very heavy. He passed these and some of the yellow cans to the others and they handed them back through the notch to the far side. They themselves were back through the notch before the giants noticed they were there.

  “Something we came back to tell you, but I ’spect you noticed,” said Willum. “D’jou notice they’d been pullin’ away at that notch. D’you know about Mr. Fixit?”

  “You mentioned him a ­couple of times earlier today, Willum. I don’t know the man, no.”

  “Well, firs’ thing, he’s notta man. Not ezackly, but somethin’ like,” said Willum. “Came in a spaceship, looked kinda like a turtle. I mean the ship looked like a turtle, Mr. Fixit looks like a tree, sort of. Fixit says he can shrink those giants—­only Abasio says he’s not a he. He’s an it, I guess. Anyhow, Fixit can shrink the giants. Or Abasio says there’s a weapon that’ll kill them if Fixit’s here to get the dead bodies away. Fixit’s gone for a while, but it’s comin’ back. If they don’t all die from that poison, Fixit’ll come fix ’em for you.”

  Melkin nodded. “These cans are vehicle fuel, and there’s more in that wagon. We’ll take those if Abasio doesn’t mind, and we can always use the horses, too.” Laden with the rods of metal and the two spherical containers, they emerged to lay the salvage on the stump of the huge tree. Liny found a piece of net they could use to hold the cans. Willum weighed the cans carefully in his hands, weighed the other thing, decided on one can and one bar, and asked Melkin to put the others away until he retrieved them later.

  “Why’re you leaving some?” asked Melkin.

  “She’s been hurt,” said Willum, running a fond hand down Sun-­wings’s shoulder. “An’ her wing’s just healed, and those things’re heavy an’ so was that gravel we hit the giant with. We’ll come get the rest of them when she’s rested some. Or maybe Abasio’ll send a wagon. Or maybe the guy in the turtle ship will come pick them up. Fixit looks really . . . strange, but nice, an’ he’ll ’preciate your holdin’ on to ’em for it. I keep wantin’ to call it a him.” He tied the net securely and set it beside Sun-­wings’ foot so she could carry it rather than add any weight on her shoulders. Then it was just one more climb, one more swoop, one more WHAP, and they were on the way home.

  “You tired, Sun-­wings?” asked Willum.

  “Just a little,” said Sun-­wings, who ached deeply.

  “Take it easy goin’ back, then. Just slip through where it’s easiest.”

  And she did. They came down through the dusk in one long, virtually motionless glide, low over the pass, over Artemisia, the outskirts, the farms, the edge houses, and at last, as darkness fell, a circle of fires that marked the plaza. Half the population of the area seemed to be tending the fires and waiting for the Griffin and the boy. Sun-­wings dropped, braked against the air, dropped again, and was down in the center, crouched, panting.

  Willum didn’t realize he was tired and cold until he stumbled and reached his hands toward the nearest fire. Abasio caught him and carried him to the fireside. Precious Wind, Xulai, and half a dozen Artemisians helped Sun-­wings into her house and brought her a large container of something warm and savory-­smelling. Needly arrived with a crew—­including all six of Grandma’s children—­who sang continuously as, armed with brushes and warm water, they climbed carefully and gently all over the Griffin’s body once again, grooming her until she shone. The brushes, Sun-­wings thought to herself, seemed to work well in relieving the ache. As did what they called music. She had not heard music before. She drank deeply of the tub of thick something . . . soup, Needly said. Chicken soup, with bits of things in it. Grain. Vegetables. Meat. Not a Griffin’s usual diet, but it tasted . . . marvelous. Like eating and drinking both at once. She relaxed, ran her bill along the furry back of Dawn-­song—­who had also enjoyed some soup—­and the two Griffins purred, not noticing that they were, separ
ately, in harmony with the song.

  The can and bar lay on the plaza, still tied in their netting. Abasio heard about the abortive battle the Edgers had tried to start in Saltgosh, also about the additional can and rods of metal and the other contents of the wagon that were in Saltgosh, whenever they wanted to go after them, but that Willum had thought Sun-­wings might be “kinda too tired” to carry back just them. Concealing his interest in Willum’s sincere concern for Sun-­wings’s welfare, Abasio put the salvaged items away carefully in his wagon. Tomorrow, when Fixit came back, it could pick up the rest. Fixit would take the accumulated bits and pieces of whatever it was Fixit needed to make shape-­changer organs for the Griffins. And, perhaps, for other things, too. Certainly for creatures like a bear. And a coyote.

  And maybe an Abasio. Though he already had a shape that would do for aquatic living, it would be more gratifying to look like his son than like an octopus. Not right now, for those feet would not help him do his current job, but perhaps later. And perhaps some of this could be sorted out when Fixit got back, tomorrow.

  FIXIT RETURNED BEFORE DAWN. WHEN Abasio rose, he left Xulai and the babies still asleep, and took care not to wake them. The IGM was sitting in the plaza. Fixit saw Abasio crossing the plaza and came out to invite him to breakfast. “I have human food in the flier. Come have morning meal with me.”

  Abasio fetched the materials Willum and Sun-­wings had picked up and took them with him, just as they were, wrapped in the netting. Fixit stowed the whole bundle in something he called an “analysis locker,” then they sat at a small table that first extruded itself from the floor and then extruded plates with food on them. Abasio was offered and accepted ham and eggs and fruit juice, while Fixit was putting what appeared to be sugar and cream on something that looked like porridge and was probably—­Abasio thought—­ dried, then minced, then stewed not-­­people.