She was glad to reach the Staré village, just so that the bouncing stopped. Rigi climbed out of the transport behind the adults, waited for Martinus to clamber after her, and then started to follow the others. They had parked just out of sight of the village, around a bend in the trail and Rigi followed the others through the woods, making note of some new-to-her trees including one with a lovely smooth silvery-brown bark. “Here we are,” Micah announced. Rigi looked up from watching her footing and froze, heart pounding, hands cold. Adrenaline poured through her and she backed a step, then another, and another, until she collided with Martinus and Uncle Eb. She tripped, arms flailing, and Uncle Eb caught her, helping her regain her balance.
“Auriga? What’s—”
Behind him, Kor said, “The village walls. They’re almost the same as on the Indria Plateau.”
Rigi couldn’t see anything but the forest outside the Indria village, and the Staré with the spear, and how he lay with his chest shot open. She had to get away, to hide, to flee to where the army was, had to get away—!
Strong hands turned her around, and she felt synthetic under one hand. “Kay, I need you,” she heard faintly over the sound of her racing heart. “Rigi, look at me. Auriga Maris Regina, look at me.” What was Uncle Eb doing here? She needed to get away, to get out of the woods, the woods at night, the Staré hunting her, had to get away!
“Auriga!” Cold splashed her face. Gasping, Rigi blinked, the coughed. “You are not on the Indria Plateau, Rigi. Martinus is with you, Kay and I are with you.” Rigi blinked hard and looked up, seeing her uncle for the first time.
She heard Aunt Kay’s calm, gentle voice. “Rigi, slow down. Take a long slow breath on the count of four. One, two, three, four. Exhale two, three, four. Inhale, two, three, four.” Rigi obeyed without thinking, her heart slowing as her breathing slowed, coming back to herself. She felt Martinus beside her and rested her hand on his shoulder. Martinus was here. She was not on the Indria, she was on Southland with Uncle Eb and Aunt Kay and Kor and Lexi. “That’s right. Ground and calm, Rigi, ground and calm. Join me in the litany for peace. ‘Great Creator, wise Creatrix, makers of all, guardian and protector, merciful and loving, be with Your children. Soothe my mind . . .’” By the time they reached the closing invocation, Rigi had returned fully to herself, the memories fading into memories once more.
“Auriga, we are going to walk to the village. I’m with you, Ebenezer is with you, Martinus and Kor will protect you. You are safe with us.” Her uncle took his hands off her shoulders. He’d shifted, becoming a hunter and warrior. Even though she knew he wasn’t hunting her, it still scared her a little. She must have showed her feelings, because Aunt Kay patted her shoulder. “He is scary, but only to people who want to do harm. Just like Lexi, just like Tomás, just like Martinus. Now come.” A little push started Rigi moving. She felt terrible.
“I’m sorry Aunt Kay. I thought I’d outgrown all that.”
She heard three snorts, human and otherwise. “No, child, you don’t outgrow it. You learn how to cope with it, how to acknowledge it, learn from it, and then keep going. But we’ll talk later.” Rigi swallowed hard, kept her hand on Martinus’s sun-warmed shoulder, and walked forward, head high. She saw the unpeeled logs of the wooden wall around the village and the open gate, the cleared area and the woods. Now she saw the differences as well, the painted posts on either side of the open gate panels, the cluster of hoplings watching Micah talking to a female with pale ears and forefeet shading into a darker body and head with an in-between tail. Cy seemed fascinated by everything, looking left and then right. Rigi and her escort came closer, and Aunt Kay slowed down. Lexi picked up the pace so that he walked on Rigi’s left side, Martinus on her right. If Lexi and Martinus were here, she was not on the Indria Plateau because she had not been allowed to bring Martinus on the expedition. That realization helped break the last bit of memory.
Uncle Eb sauntered up to where Micah stood, once more his usual harmless and eccentric self. Micah broke off the conversation for a moment. “Thorna, this is Ebenezer Trent. His mate Kay Trent is under the tan hat.” Rigi heard Aunt Kay’s theatrically loud sigh. “Lexi, Auriga Bernardi full sister to Cyril, the m-dog Martinus, and Kor. Kor is an Elder. Martinus is guardian to Auriga, who has the Wise Eye.” Rigi echoed her aunt’s sigh. Just what she wanted, to spend the next weeks explaining to every Staré on this half of the continent that she was not specially gifted in any way. “This is Thorna, hunter and tracker for Bigtree Village.”
“Greetings,” Thorna said in Staré. “The Elders are meeting to discuss field allocations and water duties for the next growing seasons, so I have been told to show you what the diggers found when they started work for expanding the wooden wall. This way, please.” She turned and set off at a rapid pace, not looking to see if anyone followed. Rigi followed, a little puzzled but more curious than offended. She heard Kor saying something to Lexi, but she couldn’t quite follow what it was, and the breeze took any scents away from her. Stop that, she scolded herself, nice people don’t eavesdrop and listen in on conversations. It wasn’t any of her business. The group walked around the end of the wall, and Rigi could identify the work area by the black and reddish piles of raw dirt heaped up at the edge of the forest, and the stack of felled logs, trimmed of branches and waiting to be turned into wall. “The Elders say that a spirit village once existed here, long ago, but the river and the ground swallowed it, then the forest covered everything that remained. It all happened at the end of the First World. The current generation is far larger in numbers than those before, and the old live longer, so the current Elders ordered the wall expanded for more houses and a new market space. The diggers found this.” She pointed to a trench.
Rigi eased closer, saw the deep, wide space and knelt to see better. Micah and Uncle Eb climbed down into the trench. The excavation was shoulder deep on them, so a meter and a half? That sounded right. Uncle Eb whistled. Lexi had crouched down beside Rigi and shook his head as if he had water in his ears. “Sorry Lexi, I forgot.” He drew the big knife from his belt and used it to point to a layer of grey-brown sediment between layers of reddish and dark brown-black. “The brown contains the A and B horizons, yes?”
“Yes. Very fertile, as you can tell, and I think it has been enhanced over the centuries, but I have not taken samples back to test. The reddish below is the old soil, and they’ve found bits of metal and ceramic in it, and even industrial glass.” Micah pointed to the grey layer, about ten centimeters thick. “This is river sediment, except it is actually oceanic. There are salt-water shells in it, and what I think is debris from downstream.”
“Why do you think that, sir?” Cyril asked from farther down the edge of the trench.
Micah walked that direction, stopped, pulled out his own knife and worried at something in the grey, removed it, and handed it up to Cyril. “The Staré don’t build with synthetic planks or brick. Not anymore.”
Everyone rushed over to see what Cy had. “Hey, don’t knock me into the hole! Here,” he handed the chunk to Aunt Kay. She studied it, wiped it on her tunic’s hem, looked a little more, and handed it to Lexi. He sniffed and poked at it, then passed it to Kor, who repeated the test as well as licking it, then gave it to Rigi. Eewww, thaaaanks, she thought to herself. Staré spit, how nice. It certainly looked like a chunk of brick or other hard-baked earth chunk, but with rounded corners, as if it had been broken, then tumbled smooth.
“You believe that this is debris from the city downstream, washed this far inland?” Aunt Kay sounded a little skeptical.
“Yes. Thorna says that as you walk the river toward the sea, inside the cutbanks you find larger and larger pieces or debris, and the grey layer gets thicker with larger chunks, as if something settled out of the flood.” He folded his arms and leaned against the trench wall, looking up at them. “This is, if I’m right and everything tests out, this is the evidence of a tsunami. The same tsunami that so badly damaged the city. And I suspect that
the back flow when the water retreated contributed to the silting up of the old harbor.”
“Or it could have happened before the city’s final destruction and we are looking at the remains of an earlier phase, sir,” Rigi felt compelled to say, thinking about all the classes she’d sat through. “And the debris could come from an earlier, smaller settlement between the main city and this location, the spirit village the local elders spoke of.” She used Staré so that Thorna could follow, in case her Common wasn’t that polished or technical.
“Yes,” Micah slumped, the words coming slowly. “Yes, it could be from a different event and a different location. It could be from several years after whatever caused the harbor to be abandoned. Although, based on what Cyril found, I’m more convinced that the two were if not simultaneous, then at least very close in time.”
“Mister Micah, how long do you want the diggers to wait? We need the space and the wall.” Thorna sounded a little impatient, and Rigi sniffed. Yes, impatient and puzzled? Confused? Or was it a form of the irritation scent? She couldn’t quite pin it down. Perhaps there were regional variations on the basic set of pheromones.
“Four more days, please, and then we will have taken all the images, drawings, and measurements we need. I’ll pay for the lost time.”
Thorna’s tail thumped the ground. “No, it is keeping the diggers busy more than the cost.”
“So the legend of the tenth Stamm is true,” Kor murmured from beside Rigi. She looked at the underside of her hat to keep from replying with several Staré jokes she’d heard over the years. She wasn’t supposed to know those. Humans weren’t supposed to know that much about the Stamme.
“Rigi, can you do a quick sketch for me, please,” Uncle Eb called. “Um, ah,” he coughed. “Cyril, can you lend me a hand? My shoulder has exercised veto authority.” Rigi pulled out her sketchbook and sharpened a pencil as her brother helped Uncle Eb clamber out of the trench, pulling carefully on his wrists. “Thank you. Apparently my body has forgotten that I am young and invincible.”
“If only his brain would remember,” Aunt Kay sighed quietly. “Oh dear. The red dirt.” Rigi looked at her uncle’s red trouser knees and shins and winced. Those looked like stains. “Rigi, dear, don’t marry a man who is hard on clothes.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Rigi lifted her overskirt out of the way, went onto one knee, and started sketching, catching the shape of the trench and the dimensions, then the impression of the layers before doing into more detail. She’d need to get into the excavation at some point, but not without a ladder of some sort. After all, she didn’t have a Staré’s leaping legs, or someone else to do her laundry.
She worked until her stomach first growled, then snarled. She stood, staggered a little, and leaned on Martinus for balance. “I think I need some water,” she told him. She got a bottle out of her bag and drained it.
“Here.” Cy handed her a second one. “I’ve been refilling them. Give me yours. The Staré have a purified fountain that we can drink from without too much extra filtration.”
“Thank you.”
“And there’s food. Roasted beast on a stick. I didn’t ask,” he warned, forestalling the usual question.
“I never do. Was the beast fresh?”
“Micah says it was killed last night, so yes. I’ve heard about Staré and aging meat.” He shuddered. “No wonder they cook it to charcoal.”
“I think they like the crunchy texture, but I could be wrong.” Rigi flexed her fingers several times, tucked the sketchpad away and followed her brother to the main gate. She found a fire in a clay fire pot, and sticks with fresh-cooked meat propped up around the fire. Aunt Kay waved her over and handed her a stick. Rigi nibbled, liked it, and ate more of the hot, smoky-sweet meat chunks.
“I do know that it doesn’t taste like chicken,” Cy said. Rigi almost choked at the ancient joke, and the other humans groaned. Lexi’s ears flopped to the left and he rolled his eyes, but kept chewing. Kor and Thorna both made complicated ear waggles of some kind. Was there a Staré equivalent of that terribly old line? Rigi considered as she finished her first stick of meat and started on a second. The others were putting the empty sticks into the fire and she did likewise. She half-recalled something about not telling sweet-stem from race-to-the-bush stalks, but that didn’t have the same connotations, did it? No, not really, at least not from what she remembered overhearing. The meat had a definite grain to it, and she decided that it had been something’s haunch. The marinade or sauce tasted delicious, with a warm aftertaste like a mild smoked pepper sort of flavor. Rigi sniffed as discreetly as possible, trying to identify any of the spices. Was that a hint of ginter, and maybe a touch of the native herb that resembled n’card’mon? She’d try to describe it to Shona and Nahla to see if they could duplicate it.
Micah’s comm beeped with increasing intensity. “I’m not in, I gave at the office, I paid extra last month so it isn’t due, and I voted for the other party,” he muttered, hunting around among the boxes, data-recorders, hand-shooter, and other things on his belt for the offending item. “Yes? You are? Any trouble en route? Oh, dear. Got out by the skin of your teeth then, did you? We’ll be back in a few hours. Leave some hot water or else.” Pause. “I’ll ask Kor which else would be the most appropriate.” Another pause, then, “A wise decision, young man.” He ended the comm. “Yes, that was Tomás Prananda, who is at the camp and who will leave some hot water for the rest of us.”
Lexi had replaced Kor standing beside Thorna. She released a bit of //confused,// then said, “Lexi-sir, what means the dirt-sifter sir?”
“Human hides must be washed with hot water and soap, like their garments. They only brought a single water-hearting device. Dust brushing does not clean them properly,” he added, probably to forestall further questions.
Rigi’s fingers holding the meat skewer twitched as she imagined drawing humans using dust baths and fur-brushes like the Staré did. How would you keep the dust out of everything else in the house? Build a separate outdoors dust-house, like the little toilet-sheds in camps? That would make cleaning Paul easier, if all you had to do was roll him in dust and then brush it back off. Rigi started giggling.
“Something funny, dear?” Aunt Kay asked.
Rigi gulped. “Imagining cleaning Paul the same way Staré clean pouchlings. It might be easier than bathing him with water.”
A thoughtful expression crossed her aunt’s face and she half-frowned with concentration, one eyebrow rising a little as she squinted. “It just might, until he wee’d in the dust basin.”
“And he would.” So much for that idea. “And giving him a full mud coating and then peeling it off to remove the loose fur during first shed might be tricky.”
“Indeed, because if Paul is anything like other little boys, he would try to repeat the experience on his own. Not that little girls are immune to foolishness.” Her aunt gave her a knowing look, and Rigi wondered what Lyria had done that Rigi didn’t remember. Unless Aunt Kay meant that time—? No, she couldn’t know about that. What about—? Surely, not, because Rigi and Lyria had cleaned up everything before Mar woke up and well before their mother got home from her ladies’ meeting. Had they cleaned too well? Rigi gulped.
“I wonder why Tomás is running so late,” Cy mused.
“He doesn’t want to find himself invited to study the soil horizons in the trench?”
“He had equipment inspection,” Kor stated. Cy flinched. So did Uncle Eb and Lexi. It had to be something military then, so Rigi didn’t worry about it.
“Rigi, Lexi, after I make a ladder so that we can get in and out of the excavation with some semblance of dignity, I want you to do measurements and to document every chunk of material visible. Micah and I will start sifting the red dirt, and Kay is—”
“Kay is going to visit the village, see if there are any embroiderers or bead workers willing to let her draw their work, and possibly bargain for some samples.” She had that look Rigi knew from her own mothe
r—no one and no thing short of a solar nova or wombeast stampede through the house would dissuade Mrs. Trent from her task. Apparently Uncle Eb knew the look as well, because he slumped and slouched-oozed down the path to where the vehicles had been parked. Lexi followed at a respectful, and safe, distance. Rigi decided to go to the trench area and look around some. If she was out of the line of sight, she might be out of mind when it came to carrying things. Because she’d much rather go with her aunt to look at embroidery!
By the time they finished that afternoon, Rigi decided that she’d never take up work as a gardener, at least not on the western end of Southland. The grey dirt layer and some of the red dirt had an oily something to them that got into the men’s clothes. She managed to avoid it but only by turning her skirt into a sort of wrapped half-trouser over her under-trousers, terribly unflattering and almost immodest. No wonder Aunt Kay had gone to the village! Rigi drew as asked, then excused herself to take a look around, and to visit the bushes. The Staré had cleared the land between the village and the river for fields and wombow paddocks. Rigi thought she saw some meat-leapers as well, thought she couldn’t tell from the distance. A path led between the areas for grain, beans, and other crops, and Rigi and Martinus took it, walking carefully in case something hungry lurked in the rows of dark, leafy hip-high plants. A mound appeared off to one side, and on a whim Rigi turned and threaded her way on a very narrow track between shoulder-high sweet-stem plants to reach the mound. Nothing edible-looking grew on it, and she did not see any sign of worship areas or other private Staré things, so she climbed up.
From the top of the two-meter high pile she took in the landscape. The river, grey-green with silt from upstream, oozed along between low banks. The Staré kept the banks clear, or so Rigi guessed, because she didn’t see much that stood taller than the clumps of dark-green grass. Well, considering some of the predators that liked to hide on riverbanks and eat people, she’d do the same thing if she lived here. Trees on the far shore marked the edge of the forest, as dark as the one they’d driven through coming here. A variety of green, blue-grey, and ripening yellow fields and pastures extended up and downstream as far as bends in the river, so two or three kilometers, give or take. Rigi took out her sketch book, turned to the last blank page and sharpened her pencil, then let her hands and eyes work, not trying to see anything in particular. The teaching files and her instructors had all been adamant that farming erased archaeological evidence better than anything short of a volcano erupting under the site or a large meteor hitting it. You needed special aerial cameras and side-lighting to see much under fields, and that was after they’d been harvested. Rigi just wanted the general lay of the land, where the trenches were compared to the village and river, that sort of thing.
Stamme: Shikari Book Three Page 19
