The Collected Short Fiction of C J Cherryh

by C. J. Cherryh

  But in his fingers lay another thing, which gleamed like the summer moon amid his hand.

  Clean it was from his keeping, and loved. She gathered it to her. The silver chain went again about her neck and the stone rested where it ought. She bent last and kissed him to his long sleep, fading then to otherwhere.

  She dreamed at times then, waking or sleeping; for when she held close the stone and thought of him she heard a fair, far music, for a part of his heart was there too, a gift of himself.

  She sang sometimes, hearing it, wherever she walked.

  That gift, she gave to him.

  1981

  SEA CHANGE

  They had come to Fingalsey from elsewhere, and the sea did not love them. It could have been that their ill luck followed them from that elsewhere, but however that might have been (later generations did not remember) ill luck was on them here.

  It was a gray village next to the barren rocks of which it was made. There might have been color in Fingalsey once, but sea wind had scoured the timbers of the doors and windows and salt mist had corroded them into grooved writhing channels, and somber gray lichens clung to the stones of the village as much as they blotched the living rocks of the island, the one peak which was the heart and height of this barren sweep. Fingalsey was dull and colorless even to the black goats which grazed the heights and to the weathered black boats hull-up on its beach. It agreed not at all with the sea and sky when the sun shone in a blue heaven; and agreed well when, more often than not, the cold mists settled or cloud scudded and hostile waves beat at the rocks. They netted from those rocks on such days, the people of Fingalsey, in their drab homespun, culled shellfish in the shallows, slung at birds, herded their meager goats—with fear set out in their little boats to risk the tides and the rocks—knowing their luck, that the sea hated them.

  It had voices, this sea. It murmured and complained constantly to the shore. It roared and wailed in storm. It took lives, and souls, and broke boats and gnawed at the shore.

  But Malley went down to it one day, wandered from childbed and walked down by the rocks one spring. She was the first who went gladly—having given life, took an end of it: hugged the sea to her breast and gave herself to it in turn . . . a fine fair spring day, that Malley died, and left a life behind.

  The father—the child had none, unless the rumors were true, and Malley who loved the sea had consorted there with Minyk's-son, who drowned the month before, whose boat was broken and who never came home again. An unlucky child, the women in the village whispered of the red-haired babe Malley left. Dead father, dead mother. The sea's child. Ill luck's daughter.

  Hush! hissed the Widow, Malley's mother, rocking the babe in her arms; and such was the look in the Widow's sad eyes that there was no arguing.

  The whispers which died slowly in Fingalsey—did die; the child grew fair, hair red as evening sun, eyes blue as the rare clear skies. The sun danced about her as she played, and the wind played pranks. She was all the gaiety, all the colors that Fingalsey was not, all the laughter they had never had—the first of three hearty, healthy children of that exceptional year; and first of years of bright-cheeked children, in years of calmer winds and full bellies. The boats went out and came home again safe. The sea brought up fish and shellfish. The goats grew sleek and fat on grass that throve in mild summers.

  Fingalsey's child, they never called her now, Mila and Widow's granddaughter, the luck, brought of the gift the sea was given, summer and brightness. Before her, before Malley went to the sea, the dead had almost outnumbered the living in Fingalsey . . . the quiet, sunken graves of the dead high up the hill, a graveyard overgrazed by goats and drowned when the rains came . . . the level, empty graves of the unfound dead, the lost ones, the unhallowed, which the sea took and did not return—the cairns of gray, lichened stone which marked these empty places had become a village reduced in scale, tenantless, doorless houses on the hill's unhallowed side, above the rocks where the sea gnawed hungrily in storm, where goats wandered conscienceless.

  But in these years healthy children played there, and grew, and in spring found flowers blooming among the forgotten cairns, grass and brush grown high. There was laughter in Fingalsey, and new nets hung among the racks by seaside. Houses once giving way to time, empty and with roofs sagging—were lived-in and thriving, filled with new marriages and new babies.

  Came the summers one by one, sixteen of them. The sea's child became a fair young girl and her two year-mates fair youths. Mila tended the Widow's goats (and from that time the herd thrived amazingly, and the Widow prospered, in milk and good white cheeses). She waded the calm pools below the cairns culling shellfish with her age-mates, netting what fish ventured within her reach, laughing and giving away what she and the Widow had beyond their needs.

  Her year-mates grew tall, twin brothers, Ciag and Marik Tyl's-sons. They were dark as Mila was bright, of dark parents and loving. The luck that was Mila's they shared, so that when their aging father found the sea too strenuous they took out the boat and the nets together, fared out recklessly and with unfailing fortune. The sea played games with them, and they laughed and dared it.

  They shared boat, shared nets, shared house, shared table.

  One thing at last they did not share, and that was the Widow's red-haired granddaughter.

  Inevitably they must love her. All Fingalsey loved her. Fingalsey hearts soared to hear her singing, merry trills and cheerful tunes of her own making. Young men's eyes burned to see her walking, a flash of white and gold and sunset on the hillside paths, among the black goats, or running down the trail to the sea, skipping from the curling tide and laughing at the old gray demon, making nothing of his bluster and his threats.

  They loved. That was, after all, as Mila expected, having had nothing but love—having expected nothing else all her life. In such abundance, she did not know the degrees and qualities of love, knew nothing of selfishness, nothing of want or of things out of reach.

  Marik surprised her on the high path, as she was bringing the goats home—he waited to give her gifts, the best of the catch they had gotten, carried in a seagrass basket . . . but then, he had given her gifts all his life, and she had given him as many—a perfect shell, a prized piece of wood the sea had shaped; whatever Mila had, she gave away again. She smiled at him and gave her hands when he reached, and gave her lips when he kissed—but differently this time: she gazed at him after with flushed delight.

  "I love you," he said. She knew this was true: she never doubted: and that this love was forever, she never doubted that either, or why else was the Widow the Widow, solitary? That was the only shadow on her happiness, to think in that moment on the Widow, her loneliness, having lost husband, lost daughter, black-clad forever.

  "I love you," she said, because she always had . . . but she had never reckoned who it would be out of all the folk she loved that she would become the Widow for, if luck should turn. Marik kissed her again and would have done more than kissed, but the Widow had counseled Mila some things, and she would not. She fled, blushing with confusion.

  And met Ciag coming up the self-same path.

  Marik came hastening down behind, with a basket of forgotten fish on his arm, seaward running. She stopped. Marik did, in hot consternation. Ciag had stopped first of all, his face gone stark and grim.

  No words were spoken, no move made, but for the white gulls which screamed to the winds aloft, the rustle of the grass and the dull murmur of the sea which was never absent, day or night, from the ears and minds of Fingalsey.

  Mila went quite pale, and skipped by on the shoulder of the hill, fled faster—gone from innocence, for suddenly she perceived a hurt inevitable, and something beyond mending.

  Ciag came the next day, waiting beside the Widow's door in the morning. He had brought his own gift, a garland of daisies and primroses. He offered it with the merry flourish with which he had offered her a thousand gifts. He was skilled at weaving garlands as he was nets and cords and a
ll such things—slighter than his brother Marik and quicker. She did not mean to take it, but so brightly and so quickly he offered it to her hands, that her hands reached on their own; and when they had touched the flowers they touched his hands. His fingers closed on hers, and his eyes were full of grief.

  "I love you," he said, "too."

  "I love you," she whispered, for she found it true. It had always been true: her two year-brothers, her dearest friends, the other portions of her soul. But she pushed the flowers back at him.

  He thrust them a second time at her, laughing as if it meant nothing. "But they have to be for you," he said. "I made them for you. Who else?"

  She put them on, but she would not let him kiss her, though he tried. She fled from the Widow's door to the midst of the street. . . and stopped, for there stood Marik.

  She had not remembered the fishes. She had left them in Marik's hand on the hillside, running from him. But she wore Ciag's garland. There was anger on Marik's brow.

  She fled them both, running, as far as the goats' pen . . . she let them forth, snatched up her staff, walked in their midst, flower-decked, up the hillside, away from them both. All that day she found no song to sing for her charges, not then or coming home.

  The brothers both met her that evening, each with a basket holding one great fish, as alike as rivalry could make them. She laughed at that and took the gifts; but there was hardness in Ciag's eyes and deep wounding in Marik's—her laughter died, when she looked into Marik's face. She still wore the flowers, day-faded and limp about her neck. She took Marik's gift first now, held it closer in her arm; took Ciag's basket and hardly looked at it. Then Marik's face lost some of its wounded look; and Ciag's bore a deeper shadow.

  Mila fled away inside the Widow's house, and that evening had appetite for neither gift.

  Every day after that they gifted her, both laughing, as if they had discovered amusement in their plight. Then the knot bound up in Mila's heart loosed: she took every gift and laughed with them when they laughed, walked with them both—but not separately—waded with them among the pools and shared goat's-cheese with them when they scanted their fishing and their own parents to be with her. She sang again, and laughed, but sometimes the songs died away into hollowness when she was alone, and sometimes the laughter was difficult—because she knew that someday she had to choose, that someday the both of them would not be with her, but one alone.

  One gray fall day, with the storms beating at the shore and all minds numbed by the vast sound, it was Marik who found her, in that gray mist, by the boats which huddled like plain dark stones, hull-up along the shore, by the nets which hung ghostly and dripping in the fog.

  "I have no gift today," he said.

  She smiled at him all the same, shrugged, stood numb and cold while he took her hand, numb until she thought how she had waited for this time. Her eyes gave him yes, and drifted high toward the hill.

  He would go now. He tugged on her hand.

  "Tomorrow morning," she said, counting on another day of fog, and pulled her hand away.

  He was there, before the dawning, perhaps all the night. She walked up the hill in the dark, having slipped out of her warm bed in the Widow's house, having flung on her skirt and shawl—barefoot over the wet ground and the cold rocks, up the far shoulder of the hill, among the cairns, that side furthest from the sight of the village. The sea crashed at the foot of the hill, drowning all small sounds. The fog occasionally became leaden droplets. A shadow waited for her among the waist-high cairns.

  What if it should be Ciag? she thought in fear, and knew by that fear which brother she chose, and that she had long since chosen. It was not Ciag: she knew Marik's stature, tall and strong—knew the touch of his callused hands, his warmth, looked into his face in the dark and came into his shadowy arms as into a haven safe and longed-for.

  He spoke her name—Mila, Mila, over and over, like a song. She kissed him silent and stayed still a time, where she wanted to be.

  "What of Ciag?" she asked then sadly. "What of him?"

  "What of Ciag?" he echoed in a hard-edged voice.

  "He'll be alone," she said. "I want him for my friend, Marik." She felt Marik's body within her arms breathe out a sigh as if he had feared all his life and gave up fear forever.

  "He'll mend in time. He'll hold our children and sit by our fire and forget his temper. He's my brother. He'll forgive."

  "Shall I marry you?" she asked.

  "Will you?"

  She would. She nodded against him, kissed him, full of warmth. "But don't tell Ciag. I will." She thought that this was right, though it was the bravest thing she had ever thought to do.

  "I will," said Marik.

  That was a claim she gladly gave place to.

  There was no sound there but the sea. The sun rose on them twined in each other, and rose more quickly, more treacherously quickly than they would have believed, sunk as they were in love. There was the dull roar of sea and wind, wind to take the fog; there was the night and suddenly light; and they hastened back, going separate paths, different directions to the village in headlong flight. The light grew as the wind and sun stripped away the mist, so that it was possible to tell color. The traitor goats were bleating in their pens, and Mila could see below the hill a figure waiting.

  Marik's trail led down first: she saw him reach that place and pause; saw the two youths stare at each other face to face. She shrank down against the rocks, not wanting to be seen, not daring—waited there, cold and shivering while the light grew and the village stirred to life—until she realized to her distress that with people awake there was no hope of coming unseen back to the village.

  She walked back up the hill and down again by yet another trail. When anxious searchers found her, she was walking along the rocks below the cairns, her feet quite chilled, her skirts made a pocket, full of shellfish. "I couldn't sleep," she told the grim-faced men and women who had turned out searching for her. Beyond their faces she saw—her heart stopped—Marik and Ciag both, faces hard and not at all bewildered by her behavior. Other faces among the crowd grew frowns, suspecting; the youngest stayed puzzled.

  She must walk past Ciag and Marik both in returning to the village among her would-be rescuers—must hug the Widow when she had dumped her shellfish at the porch; and the Widow held her back then and looked at her in the eyes—looked deep and wisely, as if she knew something of her shame.

  So did others. There were whispers in the village that day, whispers from which she had been safe all her life till now—whispers which blamed her, and both brothers. The brothers glowered and said nothing. There was a fight by the nets, and Agil's eldest son had a broken tooth and Ciag a gashed hand, both the brothers against the three strong sons of Agil.

  The girls and women whispered too, more viciously. The Widow held her peace, waiting, perhaps, on Mila to speak, which Mila would not, could not. Mila took the goats up the hill the next morning and sat frowning at the ground and staring out at the sea, which was gray as the skies were gray, and bristling with the roughness of winter winds.

  Gifts resumed on the morrow, both brothers in full view of the village. That turned the gossip to amazement, and in some hearts, to bitter jealousy, because Marik and Ciag were the handsomest and richest young men in the village, and deeply, forlornly, the young girls had had hope of one or the other of them. Witchery, they whispered at their mending, hating Mila. And the women recalled drowned mother, drowned father, and bastardy. The sea's bastard, rumors ran the louder. Ill luck, Agil's eldest son murmured among the young men, to salve the hurt of his broken tooth; and Agil himself repeated it in council, until the whole village was miserable.

  Mila wept, and waited for Marik to do something. The look in Ciag's eyes these days was unbearable; and she imagined that Marik might after all have talked to him. Perhaps it was now for her, to refuse Ciag's gifts, but she did not know.

  The sea roughened, shivering in winter, and the waves came high up the shore. T
he slighter boats did not launch at all. The brothers went out day by day, defying the waves, giving the best they caught—poor in this season—to Mila, neglecting their own parents, who walked sorrowful and shamed amid the gossip of the village.

  On a certain day, storm boded, and no boats put out at all. The men huddled in the hall, mourning over the weather.

  But Marik went down to the boats and stared out at the sea; and Ciag joined him there. "Will you go out?" Ciag asked; he spoke little to Marik, because he was bitter with his brother, who had told him the truth: let Mila refuse me herself, Ciag had said; and because he loved Ciag, Marik was caught between. Now—"Dare you go?" Ciag asked again; and Marik felt the sting of challenge, which of them was the better man, which of them dared more for Mila's gift.

  "Aye," Marik answered, and set his shoulder to the boat. The two of them heaved her out, ignoring the black cloud which lay in the east of Fingalsey. Marik went for his reasons, that his pride was stung; and Ciag went for his, which were dark and bitter—while the sea sang with voices long unheard on Fingalsey.

  That was dawning. By noon, there was dire foreboding in the village, because there was one boat out, and they all knew whose. By afternoon the rain had begun, and winds drove the waves higher, sending white breakers against the rocks at Fingal's Head.

  Evening came, and folk gathered at the brothers' door, in the wind and driving rain, to bestow their pity on the brothers' hearrtsick parents. But the Widow did not come, while Mila—Mila huddled between the houses and against the wall, and listened to the gossip of the gathered crowd, shivering in the rain and lightning.

  Then, in full dark, a walker came up the shore, amid the howling of the wind-racked sea—a man dark and draggled and reeling with exhaustion, from across the Head.