The Color of Distance

by Amy Thomson

  Ukatonen touched her shoulder with a ripple of regret. “Thank you, Anito,” he said, “but you need to listen to the villagers tell about the new creatures. Perhaps later.”

  They rejoined the village elders, who were sitting around the edge of the pool talking. A few were linked in allu-a over in the shadows. Conversation ceased as Ukatonen and Anito joined the group.

  “Please tell us about the new creatures,” Ukatonen asked.

  A rainbow of responses erupted, mostly in shades of anger and fear. Ukatonen held up his hands, and the flickering colors dimmed.

  “You, Korto,” he said, pointing at one of the elders. “You and your bami were the first to see them. Tell me what happened.”

  Korto moved forward into the speaker’s position. She ducked her head shyly at the enkar. “The afternoon rains had started to fall. My bami and I were on our way to South Point beach to gather yarram and lyarrin, when we heard a strange sound. We looked out at the ocean, and a large white thing floated out there, making a growling noise. At first I thought it was one of those giant teatari that the lyali-Tendu tell of, but it didn’t have long arms. It came right up onto the beach. It opened up a hole in its belly and some new creatures came out, five of them, I think. They were all white, like they were sick. They walked up and down the beach, and climbed up onto the cliff. Then they went back and climbed into the big thing’s belly. After a while the growly creature began moving up the path to the cliff. It didn’t have legs; it moved on silver strips of stone that rolled along the ground. It was very heavy and left deep tracks in the beach sand. I sent my bami to the village to tell them what was going on.

  “Once the big white thing was up on the cliff face, other creatures got out. They made holes in the rock, and filled them with something. Then there was a loud noise. It shook the ground and the trees, scaring all the animals. I—” Korto flushed deep brown. “1 ran away, en. The noise frightened me. That was all I saw.”

  “Thank you, kene, you did well,” Ukatonen told her, deep blue with approval. His praise only deepened her embarrassment, but Anito saw an azure circle of pride flare on her back as the young elder returned to her seat.

  “Who saw the creatures next?”

  Flickers of conversation passed across the assembled elders like wind through the trees. Two elders stepped forward. One of them said:

  “Lalito sent us to see what Korto had found. We went to the cliff. They were making the deathstone tree that they left behind. Other new creatures burned away all of the plants on the cliffs. Then they put a thick sheet of something that was clear like water, only harder, down on the ground. It began to swell, until it looked like a bubble, only much bigger. It was at least eight yai across, en, and as tall as the canopy. The end of the bubble was connected to the big white growly thing. They began pulling things out of the thing’s belly, and making big boxes inside the bubble. There were at least a dozen of the creatures, en. They took off their white coverings when they were inside, and we could see that they had brown skin and fur on the tops of their heads, like an ika flower. They wore coverings under the white coverings. They were very strange, en. They would capture and kill things, but not eat them. They took them apart, en, but they didn’t eat them.”

  “What else did they do?” Ukatonen asked.

  Lalito stepped forward into the speaker’s position.

  “They flew through the air in noisy creatures made of stone,” the chief elder said. “They gathered all kinds of plants and insects. They wrapped whole trees in that clear stuff, and then poisoned everything inside. Then they cut the trees down and picked all of the dead things out of them. After they caught and killed a couple of tinka, we moved to a tree on the far side of our territory. There wasn’t enough food. Several elders chose to die or leave so that the rest would have enough to eat. We have moved back to this side of the territory, but they burned some of our best forest. We lost five young na trees, and many of our most productive fruit trees.

  “We cannot afford to have a village as large as we had before. Our bami are going to have to wait for years before they can become elders. There is no place for them to fill. It will be many years before we are back in balance. Never have I seen such a terrible calamity, en! I don’t know what to do!”

  Ukatonen ducked his chin, and sat, staring off into space for a long moment.

  “Your troubles are not new,” he said at last. He held up his hands to dim the ripple of disbelief that ran across the villagers. “While the new creatures are something we have never seen before, other villages have lost large portions of forest, sometimes larger than what you have lost. Their forests were destroyed by fire, storms, floods, mud slides, or earthquakes. Those villages have come back, and so will yours. The enkar know of your trouble. They have sent me to help you. Others will come. We will show you how to restore your ruined forest. In a few seasons you will have more food than before. I will speak to the sea people on behalf of the enkar, and ask them to provide you with more food until then. The sea people owe the enkar many debts. They will provide the food. Send some of your people to the mountain tribes, and trade dried yarram for food. I grant you permission to hunt the wild lands as though they were your own lands for nine seasons. After that, you will not need them.”

  “But, en,” said Lalito, “we will owe the enkar a great debt. How shall we repay you?”

  “By sending your elders to become enkar, instead of letting them die, or by sending us some of your young and gifted bami.”

  Lalito turned a dull orange. “What you ask is a great sacrifice, en. You want us to send our tired old elders to you. They will die alone and friendless. You ask for our bami, our future. You ask us to send them out into a strange, harsh world, away from the village that raised them. How can we do this?”

  “My life,” Ukatonen said gently, “is not empty. I have lived long and well. If sometimes I am alone, far from people who know me, then I also enjoy my friends more when I see them. And I have friends in many places. Every village welcomes me. It is not a bad life. It is full of interesting things.” He paused. “If you do not wish my help, or the help of the plants and animals that I carry, then I will go, and you may solve your problems by yourself.” He got up to leave, ignoring the protests and pleas of the villagers.

  Lalito caught at his elbow. “Please, en. We meant no offense to you or the other enkar. It’s just that we will miss our people when they go to you.”

  “Your elders would be dead, and there are always tinka eager to become bami,” Ukatonen said. “But I thank you for accepting my offer. Those you send to us will not regret it. Tomorrow, I will begin helping you rebuild your village. I must go and rest now.” He turned and left the pool.

  Anito, not wanting to face the villagers alone, followed him. He seemed preoccupied and angry.

  When they reached their room, Anito touched him gently on the shoulder. He turned and looked at her, the red glow of his anger fading.

  “What’s the matter, en?” she asked.

  “Nothing that I can change,” he said, a mist of regret clouding his words. “It is hard, sometimes, talking to people in the villages. They see things so differently.”

  Anito remembered his earlier words. He was tired and lonely. It must be very hard to be an enkar. They spent so much time alone. She was glad that she had her village to return to, where she would be among her own people. She missed them so much. “Would you like to link with me, en?” she offered, holding out her arms.

  Ukatonen turned an affectionate sea-green. “Yes I would. Thank you.”

  They entered the link, their presences swirling around each other. Anito allowed herself to feel all the loneliness bottled up inside her. She felt Ukatonen do the same. The bitter tide of loneliness that filled them drained away as they basked in each other’s presence. Ukatonen’s power and skill and Anito’s youth and energy flowed together until they were in harmony. At last they broke the link. They sat for a moment, savoring the well-being and closenes
s they felt and then got up and went to bed.

  When Anito woke the next morning, she thought that she was back at Narmolom. Then she sat up, and realized that home was still far away. A wave of sadness clouded her skin. It was the sense of balance and harmony left over from last night that had fooled her into thinking that she was home. Ukatonen was up, probably talking to the villagers. She rose and went out to the wild lands to gather breakfast for the three of them. She caught a fine big ponderi in a nearby stream. It would make an excellent breakfast, and she could save a fillet to give as a guest gift to Lalito. She watched the shifting patches of brown, green, and black fading as the fish died, hoping she could read the future in its skin, as the enkar were said to do. She saw nothing but a dying fish.

  The new creature was sitting on the edge of the sleeping ledge when Anito arrived back at the room.

  She held out the leaf cone full of fish. “Hungry?” she asked.

  “Thank you, Anito,” the creature replied in clear, understandable skin speech, as it reached out to take some fish.

  Anito almost dropped the leaf cone. She looked questioningly at the new creature.

  “Ukatonen,” the creature said, holding out its arms as though requesting a link.

  Ukatonen had linked with the new creature, and given it the ability to speak. It was deep work, and he had done it without a monitor, on a creature that had already killed two highly skilled elders.

  “Not good,” Anito told the new creature. “Ukatonen get sick. I fix.”

  When Ukatonen returned a few minutes later, Anito seized his arm. “Linking with the new creature is dangerous! You should have let me monitor you! Do you want to die like Kirito and Ilto?”

  Ukatonen drew himself up and turned red. “I am an enkar! I don’t need a monitor!”

  “And I know that creature better than anyone living. I watched Kirito die. I tasted the taint that killed Ilto. The new creature is my atwa! If you die, it is my responsibility. How could I repay the enkar for your death? My village would have to spend several generations working off that debt! I refuse to carry that burden.”

  “Anito,” Ukatonen said gently, “Eerin asked me for allu-a. I chose to do it. Even if I died, it would not be your fault. The enkar carry the burden of responsibility for the decisions they make. Your village would owe us nothing.”

  “But I would blame myself. Before he died, Ilto taught me how to find and clear out the new creature’s taint without hurting myself. Let me check and see if you are clean. If you died because of my inaction, I would feel indebted, and my village would carry that debt,” Anito said. “Please, en, let me try. I don’t want you to be sick because of my atwa. You are too important to me. If I am wrong, then I am the one who looks silly. If I am right, then you would be spared sickness and death.”

  Ukatonen looked at her, his skin a muddy blur of conflicting emotions. At last he held out his arms, asking for allu-a. “Thank you, kene.”

  The two of them settled themselves in a corner. Anito linked with him. She searched through his body, and found nothing. Apparently Ilto had successfully blocked the new creature from tainting others.

  “The new creature didn’t make you sick, en. Please forgive me for doubting your abilities.” Anito looked down, embarrassed.

  Ukatonen touched her shoulder. “It’s all right, Anito. Thank you for being concerned. I will ask you before I link with Eerin again. Where is she, anyway?”

  Anito looked around. The new creature was gone, along with a gathering bag and its talking stone. Anito rippled puzzlement and irritation. “I’d better go and find it.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  It was raining hard by the time they reached the coast. The new creature was huddled under the deathstone tree, talking in its noisy language to its invisible new creatures. Several deep cuts ran across one shoulder, red and angry underneath a strange, translucent foam. Those wounds needed to be taken care of, or the creature would get sick. Anito felt a flicker of irritation at its carelessness.

  She beckoned the new creature into the forest and, after considerable argument, persuaded the new creature to allow her and Ukatonen to heal the cuts. When they were done, they went back out to the deathstone tree. Ukatonen questioned the creature. “What is this?” he asked, pointing to the talking box.

  The creature’s face tightened in thought. “I talk to my people. My people very far. This box sends talk.”

  “I show,” it said. It began making noises at the box.

  Ukatonen watched intently, ears wide, then asked if he could talk to its people. The new creature fiddled with its talking stone and then guided the enkar so that he stood in front of the talking stone. Then she nodded.

  Ukatonen introduced himself, and explained that the village was angry at the new creatures for burning down their forest, and asked them how they were going-to bring everything back into harmony.

  The creature looked uncomfortable and unhappy. She glanced from the forest to Ukatonen and back to the box that talked to the other new creatures. Then it sat down in front of the box, and began making noises. Anito listened carefully, but nothing in the stream of guttural sounds made any sense at all.

  The creature finished the message. Anito and Ukatonen watched the box intently for a reply.

  The creature touched Ukatonen on the shoulder. “My people are far,” it said, gesturing skyward, as though its people lived in the clouds. “They not speak—” The creature paused, searching for words. “It be night when they speak back to us.”

  “Where are your people?” Ukatonen asked. “How do they hear you?”

  The creature thought for a while, as though searching for words. Finally it set a large round pebble on the ground, touched it, then pointed at the sky. “Rock is,” it said, pointing again at the sky.

  “Rock is clouds?” Ukatonen suggested.

  The new creature shook its head, and tried again. At last Ukatonen understood. “Rock is sun,” he said, and taught the creature how to form the word. The creature picked up a second rock. After more discussion, it declared that rock to be the ground they sat on. Another stone became the place where its people were.

  Anito shook her head. What the creature was saying made no sense. It was saying that its people lived in the sky like birds. But the new creature couldn’t fly. It was even afraid to climb trees. How could her people live in the sky?

  “Not can be,” Anito said, mirroring Ukatonen’s words.

  The discussion got even crazier after that. Not only did the new creature claim that its people lived in the sky, it also claimed that they traveled from star to star. It told them that the stars were like the sun, which made no sense at all. They were smaller and you could only see them at night.

  Not that Anito was crazy enough to stick her head out of the canopy at night, where a bael could hear her with its keen night-ears, and catch her. The creature claimed that its people were on their way to another star, and that they couldn’t turn around and come back. They would return a long time from now. It wasn’t clear whether Eerin was talking months, seasons, or years, but it was a long time. By the time the sun came up tomorrow, her people would be too far away to hear her words.

  The creature’s story was impossible, and yet Anito had heard it talking to the box and heard the box talk back. She had heard equally impossible stories about the new creatures from the villagers. If it really was from another star, then that would explain why its body was so strange. What if the stories were true? What if the new creature’s people really could travel between the stars?

  The venom lines tightened along Anito’s back, but she didn’t let her fear color her skin. She got up and walked into the forest, leaving Ukato-nen to talk to the new creature. She needed to feel the forest around her, feel the reassurance of familiar things, while she thought this out.

  Anito climbed high into the branches of the biggest tree in the area. She settled herself in a crotch and thought of nothing at all, letting the gentle sway
of the branches soothe her. At last she was calm. What kind of atwa had she taken on? If Eerin’s people really could travel between the stars, what did that mean for the Tendu? Could they come back and burn down the rest of the forest? What could her people do to stop them? Suddenly, the harmony of Anito’s world seemed very vulnerable. Even this great tree with its broad branches and massive roots seemed as fragile and easily destroyed as a bird’s egg.

  A rustle in the branches made Anito look around. It was Ukatonen. He settled himself next to Anito.

  “Your sitik died too soon,” he said after a long moment of silence. “Things are becoming very interesting. Your atwa is going to be very important to all of us, Anito.”

  “I am not worthy of it, en,” Anito said. “Please, find someone else who knows more than I do, someone who can do a better job.”

  “There is no one, kene. You know more about the new creature than anyone else.”

  “But I know so little about anything else,” Anito said, bright orange with fear. “I’m just out of werrun.”

  “Then you must learn, kene,” Ukatonen told her. “You must learn.” He swung off the branch and was soon lost in the canopy, leaving Anito alone.

  Chapter 10

  Juna tilted her head from side to side, stretching out the kinks in her neck as she tried to focus on what the villagers were saying. She was exhausted, physically and emotionally, after her farewell to the Kotani Maru, but she had to pay attention. Her life might depend on this conversation.

  The villagers were discussing what should be done about the destroyed section of forest. Anito had explained to her that the villagers were Tfery angry and wanted to punish her for the forest’s destruction. Ukato-nen would listen and decide what should be done.

  Anito told her that the villagers were describing in detail what they had lost, and suggesting suitable punishments. Most wanted to keep Juna as some kind of slave, but a few of the suggestions involved pain, injury, and even death.