The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls

by Anissa Gray

  Yobar came back through the hole and touched him by the hand. And when he did, Nafai suddenly shrank down and became a baboon. Then he had no trouble at all getting through the hole. Once he was on the other side, he turned back to human size immediately. And when he turned around to look at the tiny hole, it had changed—it was now as tall as an adult human, and he could pass through standing up.

  In the morning, that was the dream that showed the most promise of being worthwhile. He lay, shivering now and then in the predawn breeze, trying to think of some way to use some insight from the dream. Clearly the dream was reflecting his knowledge that the baboons could pass easily through the barrier, while he, a human, could not. Clearly if he turned into a baboon he could cross the barrier too. But that was exactly what he had wished for the night before, and wishing wasn’t likely to make anything useful happen.

  In the dream, thought Nafai, the hole seemed to be too small for me to get through. But I could have got through it easily at any time, because it was really as tall as a man. The barrier was only in my mind—which is true of this barrier as well. The more firmly I try to cross the barrier, the more firmly I’m rejected. Well, maybe it’s the intention to cross the boundary that pushes me away.

  No, that’s foolish. The barrier must surely have been designed to fend away even people who were completely unaware of the boundary. Wandering hunters, explorers, settlers, merchants—whoever might inadvertently head toward Vusadka—the barrier would turn them away.

  But then, it would take only the mildest of suggestions to turn away someone who had no firm intention of heading toward Vusadka—they wouldn’t even notice they were being turned. After all, did any of us notice that we were avoiding that area on all our hunting trips during all these years in Dostatok? So those original paths didn’t define a sharp, clear border the way that I’m defining it now. And our paths didn’t turn all that sharply … we just lost track of our prey, or for some other reason turned gradually away. So the force the barrier uses must increase with my firm intention to cross it. And if I somehow were able just to wander through here, the barrier’s strength might be much weaker.

  Yet how can I casually and accidentally wander where I know full well that I must go?

  With that thought, his plan came to him full-blown; yet he also hardly dared to think it clearly, lest it trigger the barrier and fail before he tried it. Instead, he began to focus on a whole new intention. He must hunt now, and bring prey to feed the children. He himself was certainly hungry, and if he was hungry then the young ones must be famished. Only the young ones he thought of feeding were the young baboons. He remembered the baboons of the Valley of Mebbekew and felt himself responsible for bringing them meat—as Yobar had scavenged food, to please the females and strengthen the young.

  So he set out in any direction that morning, not particularly orienting himself toward Vusadka, and searched until he found the pellets of a hare. Then he stalked his prey until, within the hour, he was able to put an arrow through it.

  It wasn’t dead, of course—arrows rarely killed immediately, and he usually finished the animal off with his knife. But this time he left it alive, terrified and whimpering; he drew the arrow from its haunch and carried it by the ears. The sounds it made were exactly what he needed—the baboons would be much more interested in a living but injured animal. He had to find the baboons.

  It wasn’t hard—baboons fear few animals, and defend themselves from those by being alert and giving good warning to each other. So they made no effort to be quiet. Nafai found them foraging in a long valley that stretched from west to east, with a stream flowing down the middle. They looked up when they saw him. There was no panic—he was still a safe distance away—and they looked at the hare with great curiosity.

  Nafai moved closer. Now they became alert—the males stood on their foreknuckles and complained a little about his approach. And Nafai felt a great reluctance to come nearer to them.

  But I must come nearer, to give them meat.

  So he took a few more steps toward them, holding the hare out in front of him. He wasn’t sure how they’d take this offering, of course. They might take it as proof that he was a killer, or perhaps as a suggestion that he already had his prey and so they were safe. But some of them had to be thinking of the hare as meat that they would eat. Baboons weren’t the world’s best hunters, but they loved meat, and this bleating hare had to look like a good meal to them.

  He approached slowly, feeling more reluctance with every step. Yet he also saw that more and more of them—especially the juvenile males—were looking from him to the hare. He helped them think more of the meat by averting his own gaze whenever they looked at him—he knew it would only challenge and frighten them if he made eye contact.

  They backed away from him, but not far. As he had expected, their natural tendency was to retreat toward their sleeping cliffs. He followed them. He kept thinking. This is not a good idea. They don’t need this meat. But he shouted down the thoughts, trying to focus on one thing: These mothers need the protein, their babies need to have it from their milk. I’ve got to get this meat to them.

  You can’t, this is stupid, you should drop the hare and then retreat.

  But if I do, then the hare will go to the strongest males and not to the females at all. Somehow I’ve got to get this nearer to them so it can benefit the young ones. That’s my job, as the hunter for this tribe, to bring them food. I’ve got to feed them. I can’t let anything stop me from reaching them.

  How long did it take him? It was so hard to keep his mind on what he was doing. Several times he felt as though he had just awakened, though he knew he had not been asleep, and then he shook himself and pushed on, relentlessly heading toward the females, who increasingly arrayed themselves toward the sleeping cliffs.

  I have to get behind them, closer to the sleeping cliffs than they are, he thought. I’ve got to get on the side where the females are.

  He began to sidle northward, but he never let his attention waver from the females. And, around noon, he finally found himself where he wanted to be—between the baboons and their sleeping cliffs. The hare had finally fallen silent—but the baboons wouldn’t be bothered by the fact that it had already died, since it was alive when it arrived, and besides, they weren’t all that fussy, if the meat was warm. So Nafai tossed the hare toward them, aiming for the center of the group of females.

  Pandemonium broke out, but things went about as Nafai had planned. Some of the juvenile males made a play for the hare, but the older males stood their ground against Nafai himself, for he seemed, at least momentarily, to be a threat. Thus the hare was back among the females, who easily brushed away the juveniles. The hare hadn’t been dead after all—it squealed again as the dominant females tore into it, devouring whatever they could get their teeth into. The fact that baboons didn’t bother with killing their prey before eating it had bothered Nafai when he first lived in close proximity to baboons back in the desert, but he was used to it now, and was delighted that his plan had worked and the females had got to the meat first.

  As the males began to realize that they were missing out on the treat, they grew more and more agitated, and at last Nafai began to back away, closer and closer to the sleeping cliffs; when he was finally far enough away, the males charged into the group, scattering females and pummeling each other in their struggle for scraps of hare. Some of them did indeed come away with big pieces, but Nafai knew that the females had got more than their usual share of the meat. That made him feel good.

  Now, though, it would be best for him to get as far from the baboons as possible. A long way away, up this valley. In fact, it wouldn’t hurt if he found more prey up here, to bring back to them.

  Gradually, though, as he headed farther and farther away from the baboons, he realized that his reluctance was getting easier and easier to fight off. Daringly, he let himself remember his real purpose in coming here. At once his reluctance to proceed returned—it bec
ame almost a panic inside him—but he did not lose control of himself. As he had hoped, the barrier was strongest at the borderline. He could overcome this level of interference—it was more like what he had felt back in Basilica, when he and Issib were first trying to push past the Oversoul’s barriers and think about forbidden things.

  Or maybe I’m feeling easier about it because the barrier has already pushed me away toward the border—maybe without realizing it I’ve been defeated.

  “Am I outside or inside?” he whispered to the Oversoul.

  No answer came at all.

  He felt a thrill of fear. The Oversoul couldn’t see this area itself—what if, when he crossed the border, he simply disappeared from the Oversoul’s sight?

  Then it occurred to him that this could be precisely why the force of the resistance might be weaker now. Maybe, without the Oversoul realizing it, this barrier had combined its own strength with the Oversoul’s power—at the border. But in here, where the Oversoul itself could not penetrate, the barrier had only its own aversive power to draw on, and that’s why it was defeatable.

  It made sense to Nafai, and so he continued to head eastward, toward the center of Vusadka.

  Or had he been heading north? For suddenly, as he crested a hill, he saw a completely barren landscape before him. Not fifty yards away, it was as if someone had built an invisible wall. On one side was the verdance of the land of Dostatok, and on the other side was stark desert—the driest, most lifeless desert Nafai had ever seen. Not a bird, not a lizard, not a weed, nothing with life in it was beyond the line.

  It was too artificial. It had to be a sign of another kind of barrier, another borderline, one that excluded all living things. Perhaps it was a barrier that killed anything that crossed it. Was Nafai expected to cross this?

  “Is there a gateway somewhere?” he asked the Oversoul.

  No answer came.

  Carefully he approached the barrier. When he was near enough, he reached out a hand toward it.

  Invisible it might be, but it was tangible—he could press his hand against it, and feel it sliding under his hand, as if it were faintly slimy and constantly in motion. In a way, though, the very tangibility of it was reassuring—if it kept living things out by blocking their passage, then perhaps it didn’t have any mechanism for killing them.

  Can I cross? If humans can’t cross this boundary, then why bother to have the mental barrier so far back? True, it might be simply a way of preventing humans from seeing this clear borderline and making a famous legend out of it, attracting undue attention to this place. But it was just as possible, as far as Nafai knew, that the barrier of aversion was designed to keep humans away because a determined human being could cross this physical barrier. One barrier for humans, farther out; and another barrier for animals. It made sense.

  Of course, there was no guarantee that just because something made sense to Nafai it would therefore have any relation to reality. For a moment he even thought of returning to Dostatok and telling them what he had discovered so far, so they could explore the Index and find out if there was some clever way to cross the barrier.

  As far as Nafai knew, however, the very thought of returning to Dostatok might be a sign of the barrier working within his mind, trying to get him to find excuses to go away. And maybe the barrier had some kind of intelligence and was able to learn, in which case it might never be fooled again by his device of concentrating on his urgent need to feed the baboons rather than his real purpose of getting past the barrier. No, alone as he was, it was up to him to make a decision.

  It will kill you.

  What was that, the Oversoul talking in his mind? Or the barrier? Or just his own fear? Whatever the source, he knew that the fear was not irrational. Beyond that barrier nothing was alive—there must be a reason for that. Why should he imagine that he would be the exception, the one living thing that could cross? After all, when the barrier was built in the first place, there must have been plants on both sides of the barrier, and even if it were impassable, life should have continued on both sides. Perhaps forty million years of evolution would have made the flora and fauna of the two sides quite different from each other, but life should have flourished, shouldn’t it? Mere isolation couldn’t kill off all life with such brutal thoroughness.

  It will kill you.

  Maybe it will, thought Nafai defiantly. Maybe I’ll die. But the Oversoul brought us here for a purpose—to get us to Earth. Even though the Oversoul couldn’t think directly of Vusadka, or at least could not speak of it to humans, nevertheless Vusadka had to be the reason the Oversoul had brought them here, so close to it. So, one way or another, we have to get past this barrier.

  Only we are not here. Only I am here. And it’s quite possible that no one will ever be here again if I don’t succeed this time. If I fail, then that’s fine, we’ll try then to seek another way in. And if I succeed in crossing the barrier and then find that something beyond it kills me before I can get back, well, the others will at least know, from the fact that I never return, that they have to be more careful about getting into this place.

  Never return.

  He thought of his children—quiet, brilliant Chveya; Zhatva, wise and compassionate; mischievous Motiga; bright-spirited Izuchaya; and the little twins, Serp and Spel. Can I leave them fatherless?

  I can if I must. I can because they’ll have Luet as their mother, and Shuya and Issya to help her, and Father and Mother too. I can leave them if I must because that would be better than returning to them, having failed to fulfill the purpose of our lives for no reason better than fear of my own death.

  He pressed against the barrier. It seemed not to give at all under his hand. The harder he pressed, the more it seemed to slide around under his hand. Yet with all that illusion of sliding, his hand did not actually slip to the right or the left, up or down. In fact, the friction seemed almost perfect—while pressing inward, he couldn’t slide his hand across the surface, even though it felt like the surface was madly sliding in every direction under his hand.

  He stepped back, picked up a rock, and lobbed it at the barrier. It hit the invisible wall, stuck for a moment, and then gradually slid downward.

  This thing isn’t a wall at all, realized Nafai, not if it can grab the stone and then let it slide down. Could it even sense what the thing is that struck it, and respond differently for stones than for, say, birds?

  Nafai picked up a clod of turf. He saw with satisfaction that there were several grubs and an earthworm in it. He heaved it at the barrier.

  Again it stuck for a moment and then began to slide downward. But not at the same rate. The dirt went first, cleanly separated from the roots. Then all the vegetable matter slid down, leaving only the grubs and the earthworm on the face of the barrier. At last they, too, slid down.

  This barrier is able to sort out what strikes it, thought Nafai. It is able to tell the difference between living and dead, between animal and vegetable. Why not between human and nonhuman?

  Nafai looked down at his own clothing. What would the barrier make of that? He had no idea how the barrier sensed the nature of the things that struck it. Perhaps it could tell before he touched it that he was human. But there was also the chance that the clothing would disguise him a little. Of course, he had no idea whether that would be good or bad.

  Again he picked up a rock, but this time he didn’t lob it, he threw it as hard as he could. Again it stuck on the barrier.

  No, this time it stuck in the barrier. Nafai could see by pressing his hands to the barrier on either side of the stone, as it slid downward, that the stone had actually embedded itself in the barrier.

  Nafai took his sling from his belt, laid a stone in the pocket, swung it vigorously, and hurled it at the barrier.

  It stuck, and for a moment Nafai thought that it was going to behave like the other items.

  Instead, the rock clung for a moment and then dropped down inside the barrier.

  It had crossed! It
had had enough momentum and it had passed through. The barrier had slowed it so much that it almost didn’t make it, but it had kept just enough momentum to make it through. The only trouble was that Nafai had no idea how to hurl himself at the barrier with anything like the force that the stone had had. Even if he could, the force of striking it might kill him.

  Maybe the barrier has different rules for humans. Maybe, if I try hard enough, it will let me through.

  Oh, yes, of course it will, Nafai, you fool. The whole barrier system was set up to exclude humans, so of course it will let you pass through.

  Nafai leaned back against the barrier to think. To his surprise, after a couple of moments the barrier began to slide him down toward the ground. Or rather, it slid his clothing toward the ground, taking him with it. It had done nothing of the kind to his hands. When he touched the wall with bare skin, it had let him stay in place and did not move him at all.

  With difficulty he pulled himself away from the invisible wall. It clung to his clothing as it had held the rocks, the dirt, the grass, the grubs and the worm. There are different rules for humans, he realized. This wall does know the difference between me and my clothing.

  Impulsively he stripped off his tunic, baring his arms. Then he swung his arm as fast as he could, hurling his fist into the barrier. It stung like hitting a brick wall—but it passed through.

  It passed through! His fist was on the other side of the barrier, just like the stone that had passed. And where his arm stuck through the barrier he couldn’t feel anything unusual at all. He could unflex his fist on the other side and wiggle his fingers, and though the air was perhaps a bit cooler there, there was no pain, no distortion, no obvious problem at all.