On the Banks of the River of Heaven

by Richard Parks

  Hakuryo stood there for a long time, now alone on the mountainside. He tried to meditate on what had happened to him; old habits were hard to break. Yet after a while, and also for the first time in his life, Hakuryo was aware of being alone. Or rather, being separated from the life of the world. This world. His home. He decided that being alone was not such a grand or desirable thing as he had once thought.

  In a story less true than this one, perhaps it would be said that Hakuryo focused his meditations on the meaning of his encounter with the Celestial Maiden and achieved Enlightenment, becoming a great priest and teacher, later to be copied in wood or stone and called a saint. As I said before, this is not one of those stories.

  Instead, what happened next was that Hakuryo crossed the mountain and went down to the sea, where he cast off his monk’s robes to become a simple fisherman. That is why, in many tellings Other than this one, he is a fisherman from the start and not a monk at all, but that actually came later.

  Hakuryo never did learn to meditate in the properly prescribed manner, nor did he ever have a statue. He did learn to throw his nets and to haul them in with the same attention whether they were full or empty, and to understand and appreciate the eternity between one breath and the next, and the dance of sunlight on the ocean. And yes, in time and despite himself, people were drawn to him and he became both a great priest and teacher, though he never wore the robes of either priest or monk again.

  There was only one thing that interrupted Hakuryo’s peace for the rest of his days, and it was simply this: whenever a crane flew by, whether it was a flock or simply one lone bird, Hakuryo would stop whatever he was doing, no matter how trivial or how important, to watch them until they vanished from sight.

  All the while his face would come alive in an expression of excitement and joy that none of his fellow fisherman or even his followers could quite comprehend nor he, great teacher that he was, explain. He just fixed his sight on the cranes whenever that was possible and smiled as they flew, watching their white feathers glistening in the sun.

  Skin Deep

  The hardest part of Ceren’s day was simply deciding what skin to put on in the morning. Making an informed decision required that she have a clear view of her entire day, and who other than a prisoner in a dungeon or a stone statue on a pedestal had that particular luxury?

  Ceren went into her Gran’s store-room where the skins were kept. She still thought of the store-room as her grandmother’s, just as the small cottage in the woods and the one sheep and a milk goat in the pen out back belonged to her Gran as well. Ceren still felt as if she was just borrowing the lot, even though she had been on her own for two full seasons of the sixteen she had lived. Yet she still felt like a usurper, even though she herself had buried her grandmother under the cedar tree and there were no other relatives to make a claim. She especially felt that way about the skins, since Gran herself hadn’t owned those, at least to Ceren’s way of thinking. Borrowed, one and all.

  They lay on a series of broad, flat shelves in the store-room, covered with muslin to keep the dust off, neatly arranged just as a carpenter would organize his tools, all close to hand and suited for the purpose. Here was the one her Gran had always called the Oaf—not very bright, but large and strong and useful when there were large loads to be shifted or firewood to cut. There was the Tinker—slight and small, but very clever with his hands and good at making and mending. On the next highest shelf was the Soldier. Ceren had only worn him once, when the Red Company had been hired to raid the northern borders and all the farmers kept their axes and haying forks near to hand. She didn’t like wearing him. He had seen horrible things, done as much, and the shell remembered, and thus so did she. She wore him for two days, but by the third she decided she’d rather take her chances with the raiders. The Soldier was for imminent threats and no other.

  The skin on the highest shelf she had never worn at all. Never even seen it without its translucent covering of muslin, though now that Gran was gone there was nothing to prevent her. That skin frightened Ceren even more than The Soldier did. Gran had told her that at most she would wear the skin once or twice in her life, that she would know why when the time came. Otherwise, best not to look at it or think about it too much. Ceren didn’t understand what her Gran was talking about, and that frightened her most of all because the old woman had flatly refused to explain or even mention the matter again. But there lay the skin on its high shelf. Sleeping, supposedly. That’s what they all were supposed to do when not needed, but Ceren wasn’t so sure about this one. It wasn’t sleeping, she was certain. It was waiting for the day when Ceren would be compelled to put it on and become someone else, someone she had never been before.

  It’ll be worse than the Soldier, she thought. Has to be, for Gran to be so leery of it.

  The day her grandmother had spoken of was not here yet, since Ceren felt no compulsion to find the stepstool and reach the mysterious skin on the high shelf. Today was a work day, and so today there was no guessing to be done. Ceren slipped out of her thin shift and hung it on a peg. Then she slipped the muslin coverlet off of the Oaf. She had need of his strength this fine morning. She could have even used that strength to get the skin of its shelf in the first place, but for the moment she had to make do with what she had. She used both hands and finally pulled it down.

  Like cowhide, the skin was heavier than it looked. Unlike cowhide, it still bore an uncanny resemblance to the person who had once owned it, only with empty eye-sockets now and a face and form much flatter than originally made, or so Ceren imagined. Gran never said where any particular skin came from; Ceren wasn’t sure that the old woman even knew.

  “They once belonged to someone else. Now they belong to us, our rightful property. I also came into a wash basin, a hammer, a saw and a fine, sharp chisel when my own mam died, and I didn’t ask where they came from. Your mam would have got them, had she lived, but she wouldn’t wonder about those things and neither should you.”

  Ceren had changed the subject then because her Gran had that little glow in her good eye that told anyone with sense that they were messing around in a place that shouldn’t be messed around in. Ceren, whatever her faults, had sense.

  It took all of her strength, but Ceren managed to hold up the skin she as breathed softly on that special spot on the back of its neck that Gran had showed her. The skin split open, crown to crack, and Ceren stepped into it like she’d step into a dancing gown—if she’d had such a thing or a maid or friend to lace up the back when she was done.

  Next came the uncomfortable part. Ceren always tried not to think about it too much, but she didn’t believe she would ever get used to it, even if she lived to be as old as Gran did before she died. First Ceren was aware of being in what felt like a leather cloak way too large for her. That feeling lasted for only a moment before the cloak felt as if it was shrinking in on her, but she knew it must have been herself getting . . . well, stretchy, since the Oaf was a big man, and soon so was she. Her small breasts flattened as if someone was pushing them, her torso thickened, her legs got longer and then there was this clumsy, uncomfortable thing between them. She felt her new mouth and eyes slip into place. When it was all over, she felt a mile high, and for the first dizzying seconds she was afraid that she might fall. Now she could clearly see the covering of muslin over the topmost skin on its shelf. She looked away, closed her eyes.

  The uncomfortable part wasn’t quite over; there was one final bit when Ceren was no longer completely Ceren. There was someone else present in her head, someone else’s thoughts and memories to contend with. Fortunately the Oaf hadn’t been particularly keen on thought, and so there wasn’t as much to deal with.

  The Soldier hadn’t been quite so easy. Ceren tried not to remember.

  “Time to go to work,” she said aloud in a voice much lower than her own, and the part of her that wasn’t Ceren at all but now served her understood.

  She was never sure how much of what followed w
as her direction or The Oaf’s understanding. Ceren knew the job that needed doing—a dead tree had fallen across the spring-fed brook that brought water to her animals and had diverted most of it into a nearby gully. That tree would have to be cleared, but while Ceren rightly thought of the axe and the saw, it was the Oaf who added the iron bar from her meager store of tools and set off toward the spring, whistling a tune that Ceren did not know, nor would it have mattered much if she did know, as she had never had the knack of whistling. Ceren was content to listen as she—or rather they—set out on the path to the head of the spring.

  Ceren’s small cottage nestled into the base of a high ridge in the foothills of the Pinetop Mountains. The artesian spring gave clear cold water year round, or at least it did before the tree dammed up the brook. Now the brook was down to a trickle, and the goat especially had been eyeing her reprovingly for the last two mornings as she milked it.

  The Oaf had been right about the iron bar. It was a large old tree, more dried-out than rotten. Even with her new strength, it took Ceren a good bit of the morning with the axe and saw and then a bit more of that same morning with the iron bar and a large rock for a fulcrum to shift the tree trunk out of the brook. She moved a few stones to reinforce the banks and then it was finally done. The brook flowed freely again.

  The Oaf cupped his calloused hands and drank from the small pool that formed beneath the spring. Ceren knew he wanted to sit down on a section of the removed log and rest, but Ceren noticed a plume of smoke from the other side of the ridge and gave in to curiosity. The ridge was steep, but spindly oak saplings and a few older trees grew along most of the slope, and she made her borrowed climb up to the top using the trees for handholds.

  My own skin is better suited for this climb, she thought, but The Oaf, though not nearly so nimble as Ceren’s own lithe frame, finally managed to scramble to the top.

  Someone was clearing a field along the north-south road in the next valley. Ceren recognized the signs: a section of woodland with its trees cut, waste fires for the wood that couldn’t be reused, a pair of oxen to help pull the stumps. She counted three men working and one woman. The farmhouse was already well under way. Ceren sighed. She wasn’t happy about other people being so close; her family’s distrust of any and all others was bred deep. Yet most of the land along the road this far from the village of Endby was unclaimed, the farm did not infringe on her own holdings, and at least they were on the other side of the ridge, so she wouldn’t even have to see them if she didn’t want to.

  Ceren had just started to turn away to make the climb back down before she noticed one lone figure making its way down the road. It was difficult at the distance, but Ceren was fairly sure that he was one of the men from the new homestead.

  Doubtless headed toward the village on some errand or other.

  Ceren watched for a while just to be sure and soon realized the wisdom of caution. The ridge sloped downward farther east just before it met the road. To her considerable surprise, when the man passed the treeline he did not continue on the road but rather stepped off onto the path leading to her own cottage. She swore softly, though through the Oaf’s lips it came out rather more loud than she intended. Ceren hurried her borrowed form back down the ridge to the path from the spring, but despite her hurry, the stranger was no more than ten paces from her when she emerged into the clearing.

  “Hullo there,” said the stranger.

  Ceren got her first good look at the man. He was wearing his work clothes, old but well-mended. He was young, with fair hair escaping from the cloth he’d tied around his head against the sun, and skin tanned from a life spent mainly outside. She judged him not more than a year or so older than she herself. Well-formed, or at least to the extent that Ceren could tell about such things. There weren’t that many young men in the village to compare to, most were away on the surrounding farms, and those who were present always looked at her askance when she went into town, if they looked at her at all. It used to upset her, but Ceren’s grandmother had been completely untroubled by this.

  “Of course they look away. You’re a witch, girl, the daughter of a witch and the granddaughter of a witch, the same as me. They’re afraid of you, and if you know what’s what, you’ll make sure they stay that way.”

  The memory passed in a flash, and for a moment Ceren didn’t know what to do. The stranger just looked at her then repeated, “Hullo? Can you hear me?”

  Ceren spoke through her borrowed mouth and tried to keep her tone under control. The Oaf had a tendency to bellow like a bull if not held in check. “Hello. I’m sorry I was . . . thinking about something. What do you want?”

  “I’m looking for the Wise Woman of Endby. I was told she lived here. Is this your home, then?”

  “The Wise Woman is dead, and of course this isn’t my home. I just do some work for her granddaughter who lives here now,” Ceren/Oaf said.

  “So I was given to understand, but is her granddaughter not a . . . not of the trade?”

  Ceren nearly smiled with her borrowed face in spite of herself. The stranger’s phrasing was almost tactful. Obviously he wanted something. But what? She finally noticed the stained bandage on the young man’s right forearm, mostly covered by the sleeve of his shirt. Obviously, he needed mending. That was something Ceren could do even without a borrowed skin.

  “She is,” Ceren said. “If you’ll wait out here, I’ll go fetch her.”

  By this point Ceren was used to her borrowed form, but she still almost banged her head on the cottage’s low door when she went inside. She made her way quickly to the store-room and tapped the back of her neck three times with her left hand.

  “Done with ye, off with ye!”

  The skin split up the back again like the skin of a snake and sloughed off, leaving Ceren standing naked, dazed, and confused for several moments before she came fully to herself again. She quickly pulled her clothes back on and then took just as much time as she needed to arrange the Oaf back on his shelf and cover him with muslin until the next time he’d be needed.

  When she emerged from the cottage, blinking in the sunlight, the young man, who had taken a seat on a stump, got to his feet. He had pulled the cloth from his head like a gentleman removing his cap in the presence of a lady. For a moment Ceren just stared at him, but she remembered her tongue soon enough.

  “My hired man said I’m needed out here. I’m Ceren, Aydden Shinlock’s grand-daughter. Who are you?”

  “My name’s Kinan Baleson. My family is working a new holding just beyond the ridge there,” he said, pointing at the ridge where Ceren-oaf had stood just a short time before. “I need your help.”

  “That’s as may be. What ails you?”

  “It’s this . . . .” he said, pulling back the sleeve covering the bandage on his right forearm.

  Just as Ceren had surmised, he’d injured himself while clearing land at the new croft, slipped and gouged his arm on the teeth of a bow saw. “My Ma did what she knew to do, but she says it’s getting poisoned. She said to give you this . . . ” He held out a silver penny. “We don’t have a lot of money, but if this isn’t enough, we have eggs, and we’ll have some mutton come fall.”

  “Unless the hurt is greater than I think, it’ll do.”

  Ceren took the coin and then grasped his hand to hold the arm steady and immediately realized the young man was blushing and she almost did the same.

  Why is he doing that? I’m no simpering village maid.

  She concentrated on the arm to cover her own confusion and began to unwrap the bandage, but before she’d even begun she knew that Kinan’s mother had the right of it. The drainage from the wound was a sickly yellow, but to her relief it had not yet gone green. If that had happened, the choice would have been his arm or his life.

  “Should have come to me sooner,” Ceren said, “with all proper respect to your mother.”

  “She tried to make me come yesterday,” Kinan said gruffly, “but there’s so much to do—”
/>
  “Which would be managed better with two arms than one,” Ceren said, planting a single seed of fear the way her Gran had taught her. In this case Ceren could see the wisdom of it. Better a little fear in the present than a lifetime disadvantage. “Hold still now.”

  Kinan did as he was told. Ceren finished unwrapping the bandage and pulled it away to get a good look at the wound. The gash was about two inches long, but narrow and surprisingly clean-edged, considering what had made it. The cut started a hand’s width past his wrist, almost neatly in the top of the forearm. A little deep but not a lot more than a scratch, relatively speaking. Yet the area around the cut had turned an angry shade of red, and yellowish pus continued to ooze from the wound.

  “Sit down on that stump. I’ll be back in a moment.”

  Ceren picked up her water bucket, went to the stream and pulled up a good measure of cold, clear water. Before she returned to Kinan, she went back into her cottage and brought out of her healer’s box, a simple pine chest where her Gran had kept her more precious herbs and tools. While most everything else in her life felt borrowed, Ceren considered that this box belonged to her. She had earned it. Both by assisting her Gran in her healer’s work for years and by being naturally good at that work. Ceren inherited the box, inherited in a way that didn’t seem to apply to the rest of the things around her.

  Especially the skins.

  Ceren carefully washed out the gash as Kinan gritted his teeth, which Ceren judged he did more from anticipation than actual added pain. A wound of this sort had its own level of pain which nothing Ceren had done—yet—was going to change. Once the wound was cleaned out, she leaned close and sniffed it.

  “I can’t imagine it smells like posies,” Kinan said, forcing a smile.