The Collected Short Fiction of C J Cherryh

by C. J. Cherryh

  Mila ran first to meet him, caught his icy arms and looked into Ciag's haggard white face. "Marik?" she asked, striking him to the heart. His eyes took on a wild look.

  "Drowned," he said.

  The villagers closed about, parents seized on Ciag, who flinched from their arms and their eyes, who babbled a tale of a great swelling wave and a struggle to fight the currents which drove their boat. The wind howled over his voice. The rain drove down; and they bore him shuddering and sobbing toward his parents' house and hearth—"Mila?" he asked. "Mila?"

  "Send for Mila," his father said.

  But Mila had run from out the village and down the shore in the night and the drenching wind, by paths she knew in the dark, along the rocks, in the crash of spray.

  There was a place the currents brought all wrecks and flotsam, the finest shells, and once, in the old, unlucky days, the bodies the sea was willing to give back—a place where fanged rocks broke the waves and the sea swirled back into a recess of calmer water. Mila fled there, among rocks awash with spray and the fangs backspilling white torrents under the lightnings.

  There, beached, on its side, lay the brothers' boat.

  She reached it, looked inside, ran her hands over the undamaged wood, her heart broken by sudden surmise. The seas crashed in her ears, her eyes were blurred with salt spray and tears. She looked outward, where the crags called the Teeth broke the white spray—looked over her shoulder villageward, for far away on the wind came voices hailing her: the villagers hailing her, she reckoned—and then not, for these voices sang, rising and falling in the wind, and one of them she knew.

  "Marik?"

  She stepped out into the sea, struggled amid the surge and the wreck, knee-deep, hip-deep, battered by the waves. She found that recess where dead men beached, hating what she came to find, and bound to find it. The voices wailed—low and human ones among them, the villagers certainly, seeking her, wanting her back. She struggled the harder in the surge, drenched in cold rain and the colder breakers of the sea, her feet faltering on rocks which tore numb flesh.

  She found him, in the lightnings and the heaving of the waves, a drifting white figure, face-down. She cried aloud and fought toward him, her skirts swept by the sea. She was no longer cold. The sea caressed and did not bruise. The rain enveloped her like a veil of ice. She was numb with grief.

  He was naked—surely he had cast off every hindrance to try to breast the waves; but the currents were treacherous here and the rocks were cruel and sharp. He had struggled to live, and Ciag had lost him—but not lost the boat, not the precious boat, the boat which brought Ciag home. She reached Marik's body, thrown to and fro by the surge which swept him too, his white limbs loose, his dark hair that spread in the water like weed—she held her dead close and wept, hearing the singing of the wind.

  The body moved gently to the rocking waves, moved—suddenly with will and life, writhed over in her arms, head turning. The eyes were dark and vast in Marik's face; the streaming hair flowed with the currents; the skin was white and no less cold. Dead arms enfolded her, dead lips parted to kiss, and the teeth were razor-sharp, a mouth ribbed and cool and tasting of kelp and sun-warmed sea.

  "Mila!" she heard call distantly.

  Lips clung, teeth pierced, and all the green thunder of the sea roared through her veins. Lips clingingly parted, and cold arms fell away, lithe white body arched to cleave the surge, to flash away with a pale glimmering among the black waves, lost at once in darkness and depths.

  Other voices whispered, murmured. Hands touched her feet, her legs beneath the water, fingers tugged at her skirts; voices sang—and touch and voices vanished together at the next outward surge of the waves.

  "Mila!" Ciag's hoarse voice cried, from somewhere up on the rocks above. Other voices joined his: "Mila!" and rocks crashed and bounced down into the pools with white splashes, from Ciag's reckless course downhill. He floundered out to her, embraced her in hot arms, carried her from the tidepool, himself yielded to the hands of the young men who had dared follow him. Other hands lifted Mila, carried her and him to solid land, chafed her cold flesh and his. Seaweed was tangled about her, and blood and the taste of the sea was on her lips. She shut her eyes to the gray and the dark and saw only sunwarmed green.

  They carried her back to the Widow's house. She lay listlessly beneath many blankets, sipped at soup the Widow poured between her unresisting lips, turned her face from Ciag when he knelt by her bed and pressed her hand. A succession of staring faces that night—Ciag's always—and the Widow's—voices which whispered about her, and she could not hear; but she had heard such whispers before and cared nothing for them.

  Then the storm passed and the day came, gray and cold. She rose up from her bed against the Widow's protest, walked out into the village. The place was deserted: all of them were up the hill at the making of Marik's—empty—cairn, among the others, on the hill's unhallowed left. She walked up the path and watched them at their work. Others moved away, but Ciag came and took her listless hand.

  She gazed at the cairns; and Ciag softly lied—how Marik had been thrown from the boat when they came in among the rocks, how he had tried to save his brother. Mila turned on Ciag a face open and heartless, and drew back her hand, walked away down by the sea, in the roar of the rocks and the peace.

  Ciag came down to her and dragged her back by the hand, while all the villagers stared and muttered—brother against brother, and the evil plain to see.

  Mila came back and stood silent, went back to the village when they went, and surrendered to the Widow's care. She ate, listlessly, listlessly lay abed at evening; but when night came full and the Widow slept, she rose up and slipped out again in her shift, in the bitter cold, to walk along the shore, the lefthand way, below the cairns. She walked by the sea's edge in the tide pools, sat on a stone, gazing out to sea, and the waters, liquid black, reflected a pallid moon.

  So Ciag found her at dawn, and desperately took her hand. She turned on him a soulless smile and pulled away. Perhaps it was the place that daunted him. He stood. She walked away singing, but not the songs she had once sung—loose and tuneless, her singing now, like the sea.

  Villagers shied from her path. Barelimbed in her white shift she walked beside the boats and the nets. The Widow brought her a black shawl, brought her into the house, fed her and warmed her and dressed her in widow's black. Mila stroked her own red hair and sat drowsing until the warmth wearied her. Then she remembered the goats and went out again, but someone else had taken them to pasture.

  She walked, singing her wild, wordless tune, and the winds played merrily among her black skirts, the fringes of her shawl, the strands of her bright hair. She hummed to herself, and fished by the rocks, and at times saw Ciag following. She ran finally, lightly eluding him—sat high among the cairns, among the black goats. The child watching them fled, leaving the place, and her.

  Ciag came, spoke to her madly, forlornly, and she stared through him, walked away, leaving the goats to stray where they would.

  "Mila!" he cried, as he had cried that night.

  She walked among the cairns and back down to the shore, and so to the village, among the hull-up boats, singing to herself, listening to the sea.

  There was, that day, a second drowning: Agil's eldest son, fishing off the rocks, and no body washed ashore. Another cairn rose on the leftward side.

  And on the day after that, Agil's grieving wife drowned herself, so that there was another.

  All the while the stones went into place on the hilltop there was the faint fair singing that was Mila, off along the rocks. The villagers did not speak of it—or of Ciag, absent from them. The luck had gone from Fin-galsey, and they knew it.

  Ciag knew, and kept his lonely boat near the shore, on the fair days when he went out alone. It rocked, at times, out of time with wind and waves. Motions touched it which chilled his heart. Ripples passed round it, and splashes sounded when his back was turned.

  Untroubled, Mila wa
lked the shore, walked the hills, sat among the cairns—by twilight walked the shore, when the last boats had come in.

  He was there by night—he—the white shape beneath the darkling green: she bent low above the waters, reached fingers to pallor which might have been her own image, which vanished with the breaking of the surface. Bubbles swirled on the eddies, broke, vanished, the white shape gone, like a dream.

  So all the days passed, one to the next. Only Ciag brought her gifts, his poor catches, from which she walked away, distractedly—and wherever she walked in the village the children shied away and the goats looked at her from wise slit eyes over the bars of the pen.

  "I'll marry her," Ciag said to the Widow, as if that settled things.

  "Ask her," the Widow said, staring at him from eyes wise as the black goats'.

  He did, and Mila stared through him and stirred the pot she had been set to stir, for she did such simple tasks for the Widow, moving without thought.

  "She will not," the Widow said.

  From that day Ciag grew desperate, spying on her when she would walk by the sea, never far from her—until all the village whispered in fear, not alone of her, but of Ciag. The winter winds blew and the waters heaved: no one ventured to sea, but two children drowned shell-hunting among the rocks, when the high surge ripped at the land. Storm drove at them, a great black wall of cloud coming far across the sea, and the mourning village shut its doors, its dead unfound, at twilight.

  The wind came, the waves crashed on the shore for hours before the gale, and battered at the land. Boats which had always been safe were torn loose and threatened, and young men ran to save them.

  Mila walked, along the shore. The rail had broken at the goats' pen. The beasts scampered free, on this side and on that of her, and up the hill, to huddle shivering and bleating among the cairns, staring after her, on the path which led to Fingal's Head, to the Teeth, and the sea.

  The air was full of spray. The waves thundered and streamed white off the rocks. She walked a dream, in which the cold was warmth, the night was clear, the curtains of wind-borne spray caressed her and desired. The voices in the sea sang siren-songs, male and female choruses. Her feet found the remembered rocks, her blinded eyes sought wraiths in the surge and the backspill. Knee-deep, hip-deep, tuggings of the surge at her skirts, and the voices singing.

  She fell down into the green thunder, a stinging flood into lungs and eyes and ears until the sea was all. Gentle hands reached out for her, pale limbs flashed, and he wrapped her close in his arms and bore her down.

  There was no more pain. Cold arms and dark eyes, hair adrift like seaweed, and the beauty of him, the pale, chill beauty—she began to move, swifter, surer, pacing him, with a twisting torrent of pale bodies spiraling about them both in the green waters—large, deep eyes, delicate, jointed lips, and razor teeth that sparkled like shards of ice, hair flowing like torrents of shadow and pallor, dark and bright, mingling, as hers with his. Familiar faces, child-faces and old faces and faces she had never seen—father and drowned mother and kindred, all the lost souls of Fingalsey. . . .

  And he—holding her fast. She laughed, and swept the currents, one with them and with him, her large eyes seeing the sea as she had never dreamed it, heart swelling with what she had never felt. She joined the song, loving the cold and the power of it.

  She was there—at dawn Ciag found her pale, naked body face down among the rocks, her red hair flowing about her like some strange anemone. "Help," he cried to the villagers who lined the cliff in the foggy dawn. "Help me!"—because she was far out among the rocks, and her dead weight filled his arms.

  But the Widow walked away, and his mother and his father, casting down their torches like falling stars, trailing smoke and fire into the sea; and one by one the others did so, deserting him, and her.

  Ciag wept. He had loved her. He clung to her in the sea. The roar filled his ears, the white spray breaking on the Teeth hit the wind and drenched him even here.

  Something touched him, beneath the water. Not the current, but small tuggings at his clothes, nips at his ankles when he must catch his balance in the water. He refused to let her go, held to her, struggled waist-deep in the surge.

  She turned in his arms; white arms reached and enfolded, vast eyes stared into his, sea-dark; lips touched his, chill, and teeth razory-fine— a taste of sun and sea . . .

  All the green depths—parted from him. The slim white body arched away, scattering drops of sea, a glimmering in the dark waters swifter than sight.

  The voices laughed in the wind, and the taste lingered, blood and sea-wrack.

  "Brother," one called.

  He followed.

  1982

  WILLOW

  Seven days he had been riding, up from the valley and the smoke of burned fields, and down again with the mountain wall at his back, a winding trail of barren crags and eagles' perches, gray sere brush and struggling juniper. The horse he rode plodded in sullen misery, gaunt and galled. His armor was scarred with use and wanted repair he neglected to give it; that was the way he traveled, outward from the war, from his youth which he had lost there and his service which he had left.

  Dubhan was his name, and far across the land in front of him was his home, but the way looked different than it had looked ten years ago. He remembered fields and villages and the sun on the mountains when he rode up to them, when the horse was young, his colors bright and his armor gleaming as he rode up to the duke's service—but now when the winding trail afforded sometime glimpses of the plains, they seemed colorless. It was the season, perhaps; he had come in a springtime. He rode out in a summer's ending, and that might be the reason, or the color might have been in his eyes once, when he had been easily deceived, before the old duke had taught him the world, and the lord he served changed lords, and knights who had defended the land drifted into plunder of it, and the towns fell, and the smokes went up and the fields were sown with bones and iron, and the birds hunted carrion in roofless cottages. Maybe the war had spilled beyond the mountains; maybe it had covered all the world and stripped it bare. It had taken him this long to remember what sunlit green he had seen here once, but no longer seeing it did not surprise him, as worse sights had ceased to surprise him. There were scars on him which had not been there that springtime ten years gone. He ached where the mail bore down on old wounds; pains settled knife-pointed into joints in nighttime cold and made him know what pains years ahead held, lordless and landless and looking—late—for another lord, another place, and some more hopeful war while there was something left of vigor in his arm, some strength to trade on to put a roof over his head before he was too old, and too broken, and finally without hope. Bread to eat, a place to sleep, a little wine for the pains when it rained: that was what he rode out to find.

  At one cut and another the nearer land lay spread below the rocks, dull tapestry of the tops of trees where the trail turned and some slide had taken away the curtaining scrub. The trees came nearer, and stretched farther as the trail wound down the mountainside, more of forest than he recalled. At such vantages he looked out and down, marking what he could of the road to come, all curtained below in trees and gray bush.

  So he saw the birds start up, and drew in the horse so sharply that the old head came up and muscles tensed. A black beating of wings rose above the woods below, and hovered a time before settling back into that rough patterning of treetops elsewhere. He marked where, and moved the horse on, and got his battered shield out of its leather casing. He thought about his armor, regretting mending not done, and took his helmet from where it hung on his saddle, and kept toward the inside of the road whenever he came near some other open place, fearing some movement, some show of metal might betray him—prudence not of cowardice, but of cold purpose.

  That was also the way of the war he had waged, that no one met friends on the road. He rode carefully, and thought about the sound of the horse's hooves and kept off bare stone where he could. He stalked that remem
bered location in the woods below with wolfish hope—of provisions, of which he was scant, and whatever else he could lay hand to. If they were many he would try to ride by; if one man—that was another matter.

  The sun was sinking when he came to that lower ground. The woods held no color but a taint of bloody light beyond the dull leaves. The trees which had seemed small from above arched above the way, gnarled and dark and rustling with the wind. Something had disturbed the leaves and the brush which intruded onto the roadway: a broken branch gleamed white splinters in the twilight. He kept on the way, came on the fresh droppings of a horse, some beast better fed than his, from some other trail than he had followed.

  A thin, high sound disturbed the air, a voice, a woman's—sudden silence. He reined close in, fixed the direction of the sound and rode farther. There was someone in the dark ahead who took no account of the noise she made; and someone there was who did. He drew his sword from its sheath with the softest whisper of metal, kneed the horse further, and it walked warily, ears pricked now, head thrust forward.

  The trail forked sideways, and the leafy carpet was disturbed there, ruffled by some passage. He kneed the horse onto it, kept it walking. Fire gleamed, a bright point through the branches. Again the voice, female and distraught: a man's low laughter . . . and Dubhan's mouth stretched back from his teeth, a little harder breathing, a little grin which had something of humor and something of lust. His heart beat harder, drowning the soft whisper of the horse's moving through the brush—jolted at the sudden rise of a black figure before the light in front of him.

  Two of them, or more. He spurred the horse, broke through the brush into the light, swung the sword and hacked the standing figure, saw one more start up from the woman's white body and wheeled the horse on him, rode him down and reined the horse about the circuit of the camp as two horses broke their picket and crashed off through the brush. The first man, wounded, came at him with a sword; he rode on him again and this time his blade bit between neck and shoulder, tumbled the armorless man into the dead leaves.