Blade Kin

by David Farland

  To her, it seemed that love flowed out of him, touching her, caressing her. Yet when she looked up into his face, he seemed distant, preoccupied.

  Though his yellow eyes were set deep under his brows like those of a Pwi, Tull was half human. Father says that Tull needs to free himself, Fava thought, but from what?

  Fava could not imagine what ideas circled within his head, so she asked, “What are you thinking about?”

  Tull opened his mouth as if to speak, then seemed to change the subject. “I’ve been thinking about building another room to my hogan, digging back into the hill the way that your father did, but now I’m not so sure. I think I would like to build a bigger house, perhaps north of town.”

  For a moment Fava was at a loss for words. Among her Pwi ancestors, it had always been the woman who built the hogan, and it was therefore the woman’s job to decide whether it should be enlarged, what it should contain.

  But the Pwi of Smilodon Bay had lived near humans for over a century, and among the humans, the home was considered the property of both husband and wife. “Your hogan will be big enough for us,” she assured him.

  “It will be fine for two, but I never meant it for three. With Wayan there, we will always be stepping on each other’s toes. We’ll hardly have room to turn around, and my land doesn’t offer much space to enlarge.”

  Fava supposed he would see the hogan as small. Tull was a big man. “We can wait until summer to build,” Fava said. “If we have to squeeze tight until then, we will just have to suffer.”

  She hugged him, leaning into him with her weight, and he turned his attention from the rudder, kissed her passionately.

  Tull laughed. “I think we’ll have children soon. You’ll need a big house, and you should have the best. You should have a house bigger than the mayor’s, more elegant than the Altairs’ old mansion.”

  “We don’t need a big house,” Fava said. “I just want to be cozy.”

  Tull touched her lips with his finger. He pulled her hand to his mouth, kissed her knuckles. Fava slid a leg over him, pushed Tull back down into the boat. He held the rudder loosely and laughed.

  After a long slow kiss she crouched over him on her palms so that her breasts filled her tunic as they dangled above his chest.

  “Tonight, you will sleep between my legs,” Fava whispered. “Ah, Tell-zhoka-faan! Ah, zhoka-pwichazai!” Tull, give me love that will give me peace! Give me the love that makes people wild!

  Tull trembled slightly. She could feel him, warm between her legs, quivering. She whispered in Pwi, “Ah, poor little mouse, to shake so badly.” She grabbed his sable-red hair, a handful on each side of his temples, and pulled him up to kiss him.

  He hugged her, body and soul, so that she was sure that for the moment he could think of nothing but her.

  Fava silently cursed the woman who had spoken the words “replacement wife,” causing the worms of fear to burrow into her head.

  A cool wind swept from the north that afternoon as they reached the atoll. The honeymoon cabin, among fir trees on a hill, was not built for chill weather, for most Pwi couples married in midsummer, after the crops were planted and before the harvest.

  So Fava set a fire while Tull made trips down to the boat to get food, clothing and warm furs. Fava put a bearskin out before the roaring fire, and on Tull’s last trip, she stripped and wrapped herself in a new blanket.

  The kwea—the sum of the emotions—of the time was strong, as if the goddess Zhofwa herself were in the room, yet Fava still felt unsure. She whispered a prayer softly, “Zhofwa, bringer of love, blow your kisses on Tull. Make him love me. Make him love me.”

  Outside in the bushes, she could hear little sparrows twitting and jumping, and overhead the gravitational wind sighed through the trees as Anee’s largest moon, Thor, began to rise.

  Perspiration dotted her forehead, and Fava wiped it away. Outside, Tull was grunting and struggling with the last load. He swung the door open, and stood staring, admiring, as if awed at her beauty. For one moment the look on his face was that of a little boy, then he dropped his packages and closed the door.

  He came to her, he came, as if the evening breeze carried him, trembling and uncertain, a small flame-red bird in a towering dark-green forest.

  Fires coursed through him, flickered in his flesh, consuming, so that he sighed dry air. “Fava-zhoka-thrall. Fava-zhoka-Pwirandi,” Tull said. “Fava, give me the love that enslaves. Fava, give me the love that makes people crazy.”

  She gazed into his eyes. “I will not be just a replacement wife for you?”

  Wrapping his arms around her, Tull smiled, leaned his forehead against hers, and Fava wished intensely that she were a Spirit Walker, wished she could see into Tull’s soul and know exactly what measure of love he felt for her.

  “When we were children,” Tull said, “I thought of you as if you were a sister. That other woman that I married, it was a mistake. I should have asked you to marry me sooner. Now I see that you will be my one true love. If you were to die right now, I would follow you down to the House of Dust.”

  Fava stood, letting her blanket fall away, naked but for a white comb above her ear. Tull slipped off his own clothes, and let his eyes wander over her pure form, then he leaned into her, and her soft nipples brushed the hair below his chest.

  Tull laid his cheek on her forehead, kissed her beaded perspiration. “You are the generous fruit of my long search, the only companion fit for my devotion.”

  Fava huddled next to him. Her fingers trembled as her hands hesitantly, inexpertly, molded around his thin naked waist—yet she held back.

  She wanted him to be the aggressor; she wanted him to place the first caress. A wise woman had once told her that “of all the body parts, the tongue is most sensual—not for the physical delights it may confer, but for the words it may speak.”

  Fava wanted him to speak those words now, to trumpet an avowal of insatiable passion. She wanted to perfect their communion.

  Fava shifted her weight, leaned into him, her light bones softly whispering in anticipation. What need have we of words, when the whole body sings? she wondered. What need have we of vows, whispered to the darkness?

  A touch, a sigh. Two lovers clutching on the floor can grasp far more than probing flesh, moist lips, a tumultuous wonder or a ravaging ecstasy.

  Tull’s loins shivered, and Fava’s shivered in answer. She kissed the sweat at the hollow beneath his throat, and groaned, her voice a whisper, “You taste of passion.”

  He bent low, embraced her, one kiss cradled between the mounds of her breasts, one kiss placed on her heart. She could hear it beating, the stirring of a crazed animal.

  Tull’s perspiration glistened like nectar on his bronze skin. She kissed his forehead, and it seemed to burn her lips, hotter than mulled wine, sweeter than any memory.

  He carried her to the bear hide then, and laid her in the writhing light next to the fire. In the dancing heat, their bodies sang in harmony.

  ***

  Chapter 2: Honeymoon in Hotland

  As they lay huddled together on the bearskin the next morning, drained and yet full, a cold wind blew through the chinks in the cabin. Tull held Fava and yet stared away, lost in thought, his muscles clenched.

  Fava felt as if something were drawing him away, and he whispered, “I want to go where spring is. I’ve had too much of winter.”

  “South? To Hotland?”

  Tull smiled. “Would that be all right?”

  Hotland, where the ancient Starfarers had placed the dinosaurs. Both Fava and Tull had made the journey many times, for young Pwi often sailed across the ocean to Hotland in the spring to hunt dinosaurs, but they had never gone alone together.

  It would be dangerous without a large hunting party, without the war horns and weaponry and guards. Yet the journey would be thrilling.

  If they sailed south for a few days, spring would be there. She imagined the lush forests of fern. The orchids would be in bloom�
��flame orange, freshly minted gold.

  The pteranodons would be nesting in the cliffs along the beach.

  Sometimes, when people honeymooned here, young men would come and play tricks on them, stealing their clothes and whatnot. She wondered if Tull was afraid of such teasing, or if something even more troubling gnawed at him.

  “Yes,” she agreed finally, “that sounds good.”

  So they sailed south and east to Hotland, stopping at each main river for the night, making love in Pwi hunting lodges along the way.

  The weather turned much warmer than she’d expected, for thermal winds blew out of Hotland’s great central desert.

  After four nights, they had gone farther south than either of them had ever traveled before, and if the Pwi from town like Fish Haven or South Bay had built hunting lodges, Tull and Fava did not find them.

  The weather became warmer at each successive stop, and after five days Fava felt they had gone far enough. They reached a fertile land where orchids bloomed and the air smelled rich, sweet.

  Gray-and-green striped stegosaurs roamed the fields in a loose herd, and among them Fava felt safe from larger predators. It seemed a good place to play.

  But Tull still seemed driven. The next morning, he insisted that they go farther, and as they sailed that day his face became taut, and he stared ahead as if compelled by some force that she did not understand.

  If Tull had been a full-blooded Pwi, Fava would have thought kwea drove him, some memory of being happy and fulfilled here in the south.

  Yet he was sailing into the unknown, and now Fava wondered if it were some evil kwea that compelled him, perhaps a mad need to prove his courage or perhaps he was fleeing some ugly memory from Smilodon Bay.

  He must free himself, she thought. Perhaps that is what he struggles for.

  On the ninth day, they skirted a great school of plesiosaurs fishing near the surface at the mouth of a wide river of blue-gray water.

  They sailed upstream. If it had seemed spring farther north, then here it seemed summer, for the fern trees had grown tall and thick in their foliage.

  Hadrosaurs with their honey-yellow stripes and bright crests of plum, lemon, and robin’s egg, loped along the marshy banks and dug for plants with their wide bills in the shallows, muddying the water.

  The sun was just dying out on the sea when they swung around a bend and came to the ruins of an ancient city made of huge granite blocks, stained crimson by the setting sun.

  The city climbed up the side of a mountain in neat steps, and atop the mountain was a circle of standing statues, images of Neanderthals raising round shields and ancient kutows, double-headed war axes.

  Most of the statues were damaged—broken axes, missing arms. Fronds of giant ferns and flowering vines obscured much of the stonework.

  For a long time, Tull and Fava sat in the evening silence, listening to the whistling songs of frogs, the croaking of pteranodons as they hunted insects above the river.

  “What is this place?” Tull asked.

  “I don’t know.” Fava studied the buildings. “I have never heard rumor of it.” The stones used to raise the walls were huge and rounded, so that many men would have had to carry them. The roofs of the buildings had been made of logs, and had rotted away. Obviously, no one had lived here for decades.

  The buildings were constructed in simple designs. Some door posts had bas-relief representations of Pwi in ancient garb fighting dinosaurs or weaving baskets from palm fronds. The craftsmanship lacked the detail that humans would make with their small hands, yet it was flawless—the kind of work done by Pwi who enjoyed the kwea of their work.

  Tull guided the boat to ancient stone docks, green with algae, and together they climbed up to the city. Once again, Fava looked into Tull’s face, and he seemed distant, driven.

  He’d go into one building, reject it, then look farther on, as if searching.

  The grass was a green carpet beneath them, covered with morning glory, and Tull nearly ran. From the river the city had looked large, but now Fava saw that it was small—twenty buildings that seemed impressive only because they were made from massive stones and all sat on the same side of the hill.

  As they neared the top, Fava saw that the river forked around the hill completely, so that the town was built on an island. When they reached the crest of the hill, Tull stood to catch his breath outside the circle of statues. The totem warriors were mostly broken, with lichen-splotched arms or torsos lying near the feet. Each statue would have stood thirty feet tall, and measured six feet at the base. All the statues were blockish, identical, as if depicting the same warrior again and again.

  Within the circle was a bed of stone with six legs carved like trees. The carved upper branches held the bed, while globes, as if they were worlds, also hung from the branches.

  On the plain below, a hadrosaur bellowed in fear, and shortly thereafter a tyrannosaur roared to announce its kill. Fava stood for a moment, panting, then looked into Tull’s eyes. His face was pale.

  “What frightens you?” she asked.

  “This place,” Tull said. “It feels … strange.”

  Fava shivered. She folded her arms, as if to ward off a chill, but realized that the breeze was warm. “Do you want to sleep here tonight, or should we go on?”

  Tull nodded dumbly. “Let’s sleep here. We can close the stone doors, make it safe. I’ll go down and get the supplies.”

  He sounded almost eager to sleep here. Fava wandered around the table, but would not touch it.

  “Wait,” she said before he could leave. “My father once told me that some places are places of power for a Spirit Walker. He says that in those places it is easier for him to move from our world into the Land of Shapes.”

  The hair on her arms stood on end, and even the animals were silent and avoided this island. Fava did not doubt that this was such a place. “Why else would the ancient Pwi have built this temple, except as a place to take Spirit Walks?”

  “I don’t know,” Tull answered.

  “I’m afraid of this place,” Fava said. “My father says there are creatures in the Land of Shapes—dangerous things. I don’t think we should stay here.”

  “It’s almost dark,” Tull objected. “I don’t think creatures from the Land of Shapes could get us. This will be good enough for one night.” There was a strange look in his eye, almost a hunger, as if he had been seeking this place.

  Fava shook and hugged herself, unsure what to answer.

  Tull went down to the boat, and Fava stood for a moment, studying the canary and crimson blotches of lichen on the standing statues.

  When Tull reappeared carrying their bundles of food and furs, they set a fire and cooked a small dinner, yet Tull would not eat.

  He stared up into the night at the mouth of the temple, at blazing stars, as if his thoughts were a thousand miles away. He hardly spoke at all, and as they lay upon the stone table, cuddling, Fava realized that somehow he seemed further away than ever before.

  Fava rested, the granite cool against her back. The waxing moon, Thor, rose huge in its winter colors of mauve and cinnabar. Woden rose beneath it like a pale blue eye, and one of the red drones, the ancient warships of the Eridani, glided among the pinprick stars of heaven like a flaming comet.

  The shadows of the statues ringed Fava, many with kutows raised high in the air, as if ready to defend the ancient ruins. Down at the river the frogs whistled in the night, while Tull slept softly in her arms.

  Fava closed her eyes, slowed her breathing to match Tull’s. Now was a time for sleep, time for the whole world to sleep.

  She dreamed that she was in a ship, lying in musty-smelling water among bundles of cloth that had somehow become tightly wound about her chest.

  A low groan issued through the bottom of the ship, something barely audible, easily mistaken for the creaking of timbers. But it was not the creaking of timbers. It was the call of a sea serpent—one of the great predators that the ancient Starfarin
g humans had placed in the oceans to keep the dinosaurs from swimming over from Hotland.

  Yet the serpent’s call was distant, so distant. In the dream, Fava climbed up to the deck of the ship, and looked out over an endless blue sea.

  Far away, a great black serpent leapt into the air, its head and neck coming a hundred feet out of the water, its dorsal fins swaying like a huge fan as its bloody red gills flashed in the sunlight.

  Fava wondered why it was bleeding, and the serpent roared. Even from a great distance, its fishy red eye pierced her, as if the creature stared right into her soul.

  Fava opened her eyes and bolted upright, her heart pounding, the serpent’s roar still ringing her ears.

  In the valley below she heard a second roar, a dinosaur crying out in pain. Somehow in the dream, she realized, the two sounds had mingled. Perhaps the roar of the dinosaur had caused the dream.

  Yet Tull lay beside her, tossing and moaning, talking in his sleep. “We are walls, you and I,” he slurred, “meant to protect the small things of the world.”

  He stopped speaking a moment, as if listening to a distant voice. In Craal, Tull had said, he discovered that the sea serpent was his Animal Guide. According to Pwi beliefs, Tull would now become like the serpent.

  Fava had not considered what that might mean. The serpent was restless, vigilant, fierce. Tull shared those traits.

  Tull spoke in his sleep, “Come to me. I can heal you.”

  Fava lay back and closed her eyes, listened to the sound of her heart beating, to the sound of Tull’s heart, the air drawing in and out of their lungs, the whistling of frogs—now grown quite rare—and the roaring and bellows of dinosaurs among the ferns down on the plains below.

  The sounds all seemed unnaturally clear, and she felt almost as if she could move out of her body, draw closer to each sound. She listened to the faraway dinosaurs—the grunting and cracking of bones as a pack of allosaurs fed upon some large beast, the distant call of a giant quetzalcoatlus as it glided through the sky hunting for carrion under the moonlight, the buzz of cicadas.