by Jo Clayton
There was no music on this world.
At least, not on this island. She’d seen birdlike things flying about, but she’d never heard them make a sound. When Seruchel taught her the leaf rhyme, she didn’t sing it, didn’t even chant it. Nobody whistled here, none of the Pandai sang while they worked. They were cheerful, friendly people, they worked, though not hard, enough to keep themselves in comfort, they carved every surface they could set a knife to, they made bright colored dyes for the cloth they wove. But she’d never seen them dance and she’d never heard them sing.
The food was dust on her tongue and the craving for tong akar was like a fire in her, but she fought it off and continued to stare at the trunk. “Smarada diam, log. You’ll be a drum some day. When I’m finished with you. And someday I’ll dance to your sound.”
For the next month she labored over the piece of stump, hollowing it out chip by chip. She had to be very careful because the grain was so straight, the texture so soft she could break the round she was trying to create with the slightest extra pressure or a careless cut with the knife. A chisel or a gouge would have been better, but the knife was the only tool she owned; her father had carefully removed her weapons before he returned her belongings. Perhaps he was afraid she’d commit suicide with them, but knew she’d need the knife. Or maybe it was the Jilitera who’d purged her pack. It didn’t really matter.
As the hole through the middle grew larger and larger, she had to work to restrain her impatience. She wanted to dance. She needed to dance even more than she was coming to need the tung akar. Since she was born, she’d been immersed in music of one sort or another. Her mother was a singer and had clapped hands for her when she was a baby and sung songs for her to dance to when she was older. On her ship she had a library of recordings she played constantly so she lived in sound like a fish in water, only marginally aware of it most of the time, yet needing it for her soul’s health.
Seruchel climbed onto the black lava outcropping where Lylunda was sitting and crouched beside her, watching her hands as she chipped away at the interior of the log section. “Diam, Luna. What you making?”
“Diam, Seru. I’m hoping it’ll be a drum.” Lylunda brushed chips of wood from her mezu, watched them splash into the sea water lapping gently at the base of the rock.
“Oh. I know drums. We don’t make them, but the Berotong Pandai have some.”
“Berotong Pandai?”
“Mm-hm. Canoe people. They come by two, three times a year.” Seruchel wrinkled her nose. “Weird folk, they make me feel itchy when I think about them. They’re Pandai like us, but they’re unh! different.”
“How different?” She turned the log a few degrees and began working on a new section, tucking away the shudder in Seruchel’s voice to think about later.
“Omel oma,” Seruchel tapped a short stubby finger against her knee as if she were counting the ways of weird. “They live on those berontas all the time, they’re biiiig, like they’re two sometimes three boats with a floor built across them and house on that floor. They brag they go all the way round the world each trip. I’ve never seen the same ones twice, so maybe that’s true. We trade stuff with them. Like for axes and knives and needles and stuff like that. They get them from the starmen, they say, and maybe that’s true also because Pandai-don’t work metal.”
“And they have drums?”
“They beat on them to let us know they’re coming so we can bring out our trade.”
“Do they chorous?”
“What’s chorous?”
Lylunda stilled her hands and stared at the girl, startled. The language didn’t have a word for dance. She’d used the interlingue without thinking about it. She must have been doing that all along when she thought about the drum and dancing. ’Moving to mousika ah! You don’t have a word for that either. I’ll show you.”
Lylunda carried the knife and the log to the end of the outcropping, set them down out of the reach of the wind, and jumped to the sand. “Stay up there and watch, Seru. And listen.”
She moved a few steps until she was standing on sand that was damp enough not to drag at her feet. For a moment she stood with eyes closed, clapping her hands to catch the rhythm she wanted, then she began one of the stamping swaying dances she’d learned from the Tiker worlds, a child’s version of the voor tikeri. She wasn’t a good whistler, but she did manage to improvise a few trills to the clicking of her thumbs and fingers.
When her mouth went dry, she stopped and walked back to the lava outcrop. “That’s chorous and a bad attempt at mousika, Ser…” She broke off. The girl’s eyes were glazed and she was staring out across the water; it was obvious-and disturbing-that she hadn’t seen or heard any of Lylunda’s performance. “Never mind,” she said. “Best, I suppose, that we just forget it. Come on, teach me how to find more tiauch, I’ve got a want in my mouth for tiauch stew.”
When Lylunda had the inside and outside of the wooden ring rubbed smooth, she passed her hands over it, smiling with pleasure in her work. Then she set it aside and went looking for waxberries and chedik vines. The Pandai used the berries to make candles for their scraped shell lamps and, mixed with chemidik, they made good polish for furniture and the inside walls of their houses since that mix kept insects away from the wood. Chemidik came from sap milked from chedik vines and cooked over a slow fire for several days.
Lylunda was getting more than a little tired of things like that. Every time you wanted something, it took days, maybe even months and lots of planning. If you wanted a new mezu, you had to go cut enough pieces of torech vine to fill up the retting pond and wait till the fibers rotted clear of the rest, then you had to beat, the fibers, get them spun into thread, then the length of cloth woven on a loom, then you had to dye the cloth, either a solid color or spend yet more time with the tedious process of batiking to get a pattern dyed into the cloth; to set the colors so they wouldn’t wash out or fade, you had to steep the cloth in mix of cold water and oma which you made by macerating a fungus that grew from the roots of lalou trees. Everything was like that. The Pandai shared the jobs, but they were always working with an eye on the months ahead, getting things ready so they would be there when they were needed to get other things ready. It wasn’t hard work or even unpleasant, it was just so damn constant.
When she first walked up that white sand path that ran along the beach, she thought with despair: How am I ever going to get through the days? What will I do?
She shook her head. “Idiot that’s what I was.” The more she had to do for herself, the more she wanted additional hours in the day to give her time to get it done.
Lylunda stroked her fingertips down the smooth wood; after the waxing, it had a lovely golden brown glow. “I need something for a drum head. Which could be a problem. They don’t do leather, and the cloth they weave is too coarse, too soft, no snap to it. Maybe I should wait until the Barotongs come drifting by.” She shivered. “And maybe not. If I cut up the gearsac it’s got some bounce anyway… borrow a needle from Outocha and hem it so the cord doesn’t pull through… I’m not going anywhere… I wish I knew what I was doing…”
The drum looked good when she was finished, with its matte black heads, its greenish cord, and the golden wood. She reached toward it, drew her hand back. Not yet. It has to be special. Moonlight. Yes. I’ll take it to the beach. I’ll play my drum in the moonlight.
The sky was clear of clouds, filled with the brilliant glitter of the closely packed stars of Pseudo Cluster, enough light to turn the beach into an abstract painting in black and white. The two moons were already high, the outer one a hairline crescent, the nearer, several hours behind it, in its gibbous phase.
She stood, her feet cold on the damp sand, but not so cold as she was inside as she realized just how long she’d spent working on the drum. Days had sneaked away on her… weeks… no, more. At least a month and a half. What else had she lost?
She climbed onto the lava outcrop and walked slowly to the pillow
humps at its tip, working her tongue in her mouth, seeking to taste how much tung akar she’d eaten without being aware of what she was doing. She couldn’t, of course, and it was a silly thing to try, but she had to do something to push back the billows of panic that kept trying to drown her.
She settled herself on the cold stone with the drum between her knees, closed her eyes, and tried to call up music she knew, let it flow through her body. It was hard. As if she were being pushed away…
When she could finally feel a simple beat, she set her fingers on the drum head and began to tap it out.
The sound was thin, dull. There was no resonance. It wasn’t music. It wasn’t even noise. She could barely hear the sound above the siss siss of the waves.
Maybe it’s me,. she thought. I don’t know how to make it talk to me. She closed her eyes and struggled to remember what she’d seen drummers do, but the memories were faint as faded watercolors and they kept slipping away for her.
“Aahhhhh!” she screamed and flung the drum away from her, then sat with her head resting on her crossed arms, her body heaving as she sobbed out her frustration, fear and grief.
9
Lylunda lifted her head as the shell string by the front door clattered and clanked; she sighed and snuggled into her covers, closed her eyes and tried to drift back into the dream she’d been having. It wasn’t a pleasant dream, but it was better than being awake.
A hand closed on her shoulder, someone shook her.
She pried her eyes open. Seruchel bending over her, the smiles fled from her mouth. “Luna, Luna, get up. Please.”
“Di’m, Seru,” she mumbled. “Go ’way.”
Seruchel shook her some more, but Lylunda closed her eyes tightly and ignored the child until Seru gave up and left. Then her mind started going round and round about her father, his promise to come get her, how much she didn’t believe that, the addiction to the tung akar, her horrified suspicion that if she completed the Tung Bond and he did come, she couldn’t leave without the tung killing her. She tried not to think of that, but the notion sat like a dark fungus in her mind.
“Jojing doors without locks. Everybody and his dog can walk in.” Muttering obscenities under her breath, she crawled out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen, vomited into the sink, an acrid yellow fluid that she washed away before it made her sick again. She splashed water onto her face, stood leaning against the counter, her body shaking, her knees threatening to fold under her. “What’s happening to me? I’m acting like I was three years old and sulking because Ma took my candy away. I’m not like this.”
“No, you’re not. Diam, Luna.”
Lylunda eased herself around, scowled at Outocha. “Seru ran to get you, didn’t she. So I don’t want to be here.”
“We know. Sometimes, Luna, when you fight what is, you only hurt yourself. If you could just accept us, you’d have a good life here.”
“Turn Pandai?” Lylunda pushed away from the sink, made it to the table and lowered herself into one of the chairs. “Sit if you will, Outocha.”
“Thank you.” The Pandai woman arranged herself in the chair across the table from Lylunda, reached out and touched her wrist lightly, then drew her hand back. “Yes. As our elders did. Is our life so bad, Luna?”
“It’s a good life for those who like it, but for me, it’d be like cutting off an arm and a leg. I’d have to be someone else, not me. And I’d lose my mousika.” She watched Outocha’s eyes go blank. “You don’t have a word for it. You can’t even think about it. I want my life back, Outocha.”
“You won’t have any kind of life if you keep on the way you’ve been.” The older woman reached out again, wrapped her hands around Lylunda’s wrists, her thumbs pressed on the big veins; there was electricity in her touch, then a sense of drawing out, as if she pulled strength from Lylunda to augment her own. She closed her eyes, the vertical line deepening between her sun-bleached brows; when her voice came, it had a distant, hollow sound. “It is difficult… sometimes… to remember… my mother told me of… of a way to slow the closing of the bond.-She got the last words out in a rush, squeezed her ’eyes more tightly shut. “A tea… yes, an infusion of ahhhh… of cherar leaves.”
There was a long pause. When Outocha spoke again, Lylunda had to strain to hear the faint whisper. “It is dangerous; if you get the wrong leaves, gather them at the wrong time, try to store them, cherar will kill you. You must pick the pale green leaves without the red veins, they’re the youngest and the only ones it’s safe to use. And you have to gather them when it’s light enough to see but before the sun has cleared the world’s edge. No more than twelve leaves. You must take a bowl with you and a pestle and mash the leaves into a paste as soon as you’ve gathered the twelve. You bring the paste home, soak it in cold water, not hot water, never hot water. When the water turns a dark blue-green, you strain, it through cloth into a bottle with a wax stopper. You drink two fingers of the liquid a day until it is gone. Then you gather more.” her eyes went blank again, her hands left Lylunda’s wrists to rest on the table, wholly relaxed with the fingers lightly curled.
Lylunda leaned forward tensely. “Will you show me where to find cherar and what it looks like?”
“What?” Life came back to Outocha’s face. She frowned. “Why?”
For an instant Lylunda was as astonished as she’d been when Seruchel wasn’t allowed to be aware of music. This was the aspect of the Tung Bond that terrified her most; whatever acted to diminish that bond was counted as enemy and as much as possible not permitted to happen. The kindness of the Pandai woman could for a moment override this, but not for long. And that’s the joy of the telilu, she thought suddenly. It lets them remember what the Bond has forced them to forget. No wonder I thought I heard something like singing. Oy, Jaink help me, 1 have to get away from this world. Somehow… Aloud, she said “It’s part of my lessoning, isn’t it. To learn all the plants of the island, I mean. The bad as well as the good.”
“Are you feeling well enough to walk a while?”
“Slow and easy, if you don’t mind, but it’ll be good for me to get out. You’re right, I can’t sleep my days away without getting really sick.” Hope, she thought
Better than a hit of pelar. If only she shows me the right plant. With the Bond pulling her about, who knows…, when she took my hand she could override that.. maybe that’ll work, she points out the plant; I take her hand and ask if she’s sure… jojing tung…
10
Lylunda tilted the cup, then straightened it and watched the murky liquid oil back down the sides. Even after the straining it looked like cheap ink that was beginning to separate its solids from the liquid base. “Two fingers a day? I don’t know…”
Closing her eyes, she downed the mess, then groped for the water gourd so she could wash the taste from her mouth. Taste? As if something had solidified the stench off a slaughterhouse on a hot, steamy summer day.
Her stomach cramped. She staggered to the table, caught-hold of the edge, and crabbed around it until she reached one of the chairs. She lowered herself onto the sea, then she hunched over, hugging herself, rocking from buttock to buttock.
The cramps only lasted a few minutes, then the churning in her stomach and the pressure against her sphincters gave her just enough warning to let her reach the fresher and get herself seated before everything let go.
She spent the afternoon swimming in the sunwarmed seawater of the small inlet north of Chiouti. The sea cradled her and fed energy into her. When she reluctantly dragged herself from the water, wrapped a spare mezu around her shoulders and started walking back to her house, she felt more like herself than she had in weeks.
She walked through the village, greeting folk involved in the continual work of supplying themselves with the necessities of life. They smiled and nodded and answered her greetings, but it seemed to her that once again they were on the far side of a glass pane and not quite real as ancient museum dioramas were never quite real no matter how muc
h art was expended in their making. In an odd sort of way it was comforting, a sign that her morning’s ordeal was not worthless.
When she showed up later in the afternoon to do her share of the work in the combing and spinning sheds, the women there seemed to have trouble remembering that she was among them though there was the usual laughter and jokes as they passed the hanks of dried fiber about, or wound the spun thread onto cones for the looms. They weren’t trying to be unfriendly, but the startled looks when they noticed her and their shaky smiles made her uneasy. She left the sheds after half an hour and went to sit on the lava pile staring out across the blinding blue of the sea.
She tossed a fragment of black rock into the water hissing about the foot of the pile. “I went too far,” she said. “Purged too much. I have to find a balance, something that will let me be here, but keep my roots shallow enough so I can tear loose without bleeding to death.”
After a while she heard a clunking sound, got to her feet, and looked down. The drum she’d spent so much futile effort on was bobbing in the water and bumping against the rocks, driftwood of a different sort. She lay on her stomach, caught hold of the cord that laced the heads on, and pulled it up. The chemidik wax on the wood had kept water out and the working of the sun and the sea had tightened the heads. Water had gotten inside, but only a little, just enough to slosh about when she shook it.
She settled back on the rock and tapped the head. The sound had changed. Or was it that she’d changed? It still wasn’t loud or like any drum she remembered, but it sang to her. She closed her eyes and called up the music she and Qatifa had danced to, it seemed a century ago. Tump tump ti tump ti tah tump ti tump…
She played till her fingers were raw and the day darkened toward sunset and the evening breeze came cold off the sea.
