The Awakeners - Northshore & Southshore

by Sheri S. Tepper

  It seemed unwise, she felt, to stay in the vicinity of the boat, though she did not want to risk losing it. She climbed higher in the tree and took a sighting. It was likely this small bay was unique. The bay lay midway on a line between two tallish hills, one crowned with a monstrous frag tree grove. There seemed to be no other hills within sight.

  She came down the tree in a chastened mood, her desire for vengeance chastened by reality. Esspill, the flier, was as large as she. Lighter, perhaps, but with talons and a sharp, hooked beak. Likely those talons could hold Tears without danger to Esspill herself. Herself. Medoor Babji would have been sure of it even without the verification of their speech.

  But then what was the one called Slooshasill? A male? Not according to the other one. Not male or female. A kind of neuter thing. A Talker.

  Who would have thought the fliers could talk? Queen Fibji had never spoken of any such thing. Of course, there were few fliers seen upon the steppes, but still it was odd that none among the Noor had known. If, in fact, they had not known.

  And now? What?

  She could hide indefinitely. She was confident of that. She had fruit to eat and would eat fish, which the flier creatures would not. Even if Esspill caught every stilt-lizard on the place, which wasn't likely, Medoor Babji could be sure of food.

  But it would have to be a covert, sneaky kind of existence.

  Or, she could fight. Reason said that the odds against her would be reduced if she waited a while. That tall Talker creature was half-starved. The flier wouldn't feed it, and it didn't seem able to catch food for itself. Given only a little time, it would be dead or too weak to threaten her. So, patience was called for.

  Still, it would be a difficult, nervous business, surviving with an eye in the sky looking for her. She went back to her cave, stopping at the snares on the way.

  Two stilt-lizards, not bad. She would smoke them. . . .

  She wouldn't smoke them. Medoor Babji cursed. Smoke would bring the damn feather mops on her in a moment. Smoke could be seen at great distances on any clear day or moonlit night. She would have to salt and sun-dry the meat. She could eat raw fish with resignation, perhaps even with a modicum of pleasure, but she could not face the idea of raw stilt-lizard. Hot bile stirred at the back of her throat. She needed a smoke oven. Perhaps one of the caves....

  Smoke. She thought about that. It might be worth the effort, just to get the creatures away from here. Otherwise they would be haunting her. She thought about it for an hour and then decided upon it. She would begin today. There was no reason to wait.

  One blanket and some food made a small pack. She headed east through the forest, moving as rapidly as possible while still keeping a fairly good watch on the land around her. When darkness came, she stopped on the beach to stack a large pile of wood with a smaller one next to it and then returned to the forest to build a small, smokeless fire of driftwood under cover of a stone outcropping. She cooked a lizard over it, putting the fire out at once when she had eaten.

  At early light, she lit the smaller pile of wood, connecting it to the larger one with a line of thin, dried sticks and shavings. Over the larger woodstack she laid leaves and grasses. By the time it caught and smoked, she should be some miles away to the east.

  An hour later she climbed a tree and peered back the way she had come. A pillar of smoke rose straight into the windless sky, where two black dots swung and circled toward it. She allowed herself a brief moment of self-congratulation, then climbed down to walk east once more.

  After the third smoke on the third morning, she went deeper into the woods and turned back the way she had come. If the fliers were not cleverer than she thought they were, they would go on east, looking for her there. The line of smokes had led them in that direction. There would be no smoke on the following morning, but they might think she had seen them and was hiding from them. If they kept on moving in that direction, she might be free of them for a very long time.

  She slept in the woods for the two nights it took her to return, each time awakened by stirrings and rustlings as though something or someone wandered in the leafy spaces. She was not foolish enough to call out. Her campsites were well hidden. She saw no evidence that anyone had wandered nearby when she woke.

  Still, it made a small itch of apprehension at the back of her mind.

  When she returned to the boat, she unstepped the mast, laying it among fallen logs in the forest, half covering it with branches. The hull she drew deep into the woods, tugging and hauling with much smothered cursing in between. It left a clear and unmistakable trail, one she took great pains to eradicate. She raked away all the ashes of her earlier fire, gathered up the bits of charcoal, and built another fire half a mile down the beach, scattering it when it had burned out. If the fliers had not paid particular attention to the landmarks, they might assume that was the place the boat had been. She scattered some broken wood in that place and drew a heavy timber down the beach into the River. Now it looked as though she or someone had returned, had made some hasty repairs, perhaps, and then pulled the boat out into the water.

  "Where it promptly sank, drowning me," she said with a hopeless look at the carcass of the Cheevle. Two of the holes were small. They could be patched with wood whittled to size and pounded in, caulked with - well, caulked with something or other. Frag pitch. She knew where there were frag trees, and gathering the pitch was merely a matter of cutting the bark and collecting the hardening sap when it gathered in the scar, then melting it in... something.

  The remaining two holes, however, were sizable.

  "When faced with a number of tasks," Queen Fibji had said, "so many that the mind balks at getting them done, pick one or two small ones and begin. When those are done, move on. Never consider all that must be done, for to do so is quite immobilizing..."

  She began. Repairing the two small holes took five days, from dawn to dusk. She had caulked the wood with fresh frag sap, learning that it did quite well if applied in many thin coats and allowed to dry between. Using melted resin would have been quicker. It would also have been impossible. She had nothing she could use for a vessel and could find nothing that would serve. There were no gourds or hard-shelled nuts. Clay could be made into pots, of course, but that would have taken still longer.

  While working, however, she had decided how to mend the larger holes. She would cut flat pieces of wood, glue them to the outside of the boat with frag sap, then cover the entire outside of the boat with the canvas boat cover.

  It took five days more to complete the repairs. She dragged the hull back to the beach and into the water, where she managed to get the canvas under and around it, lacing the rope across the boat to catch the hooks on the opposite side. The mast was up, raised the same way she had raised it when on the River, with panting and grunts and a good deal of helpless cursing. She looked at the thing where it floated, shaking her head. It had a deck of rope, almost a net, where the lines laced across to hold the canvas. She would have to worm her legs between the ropes to sit at the rudder. She would have to wriggle herself beneath them to lie down at night. If there were another storm, she would probably sink.

  In all that time, she had not seen the fliers. In all that time, she had almost forgotten them.

  In the morning she could forget them completely, for she would be on the River once more, where they could not follow. Westward. To the end of this land, if it had an end. Then south. And if it had no end, then northward once more. Back to Northshore. She had a plentiful supply of dried fruit stored in canvas sacks, an almost equal supply of sun-dried lizard meat. The last two days she had spent digging edible roots, which lay in well-washed succulence among the other provisions. She had raveled some rope to make a fishing line and carved some frag wood hooks. Even if the strangeys had forsaken her, she should be able to manage. She would not be out of sight of land unless she came to the end of this land and turned north or south once more.

  So she built her small, smokeless fire under cover
of the rocks, ate fresh fruits and roots, freshly roasted meat, curled into sleep in satisfied exhaustion. There would be plenty of time to rest on the River.

  During the night there was a tidal surge which washed the canvas-girdled Cheevle half back onto the shore. Medoor Babji, wanting an early start, was on the beach when the sun had barely risen, struggling to get the boat back into the water. Its canvas bottom did not wish to slide on the rough sand, and she swore at it fruitlessly, knowing she would need rollers to get it moving, which meant another day before she could leave.

  The screech that came from behind turned her around, bent her backward over the Cheevle as though to protect it, before she even saw the fusty, raddled form of the flier stalking toward her over the sand. It carried a leaf-wrapped bundle in one set of rudimentary wing fingers. Without asking or being told, Medoor Babji knew they were Tears.

  "So, human," said Esspill. "You tried to trick us." It cawed laughter. "You did trick stupid Talker. He went that way, long ago. Looking for you."

  "You weren't tricked?" she asked from a dry throat, the words croaked almost in the flier's own harsh tone.

  Esspill shook her head, a mockery of human gesture. "Oh, no. Was no meat in those fires. No bones. No reason for them."

  "You're very smart," she gasped. "Smarter than I thought."

  "Oh, fliers are smart. Smarter than Talkers think. Talkers think ... think they are only smart ones. All words. No faith."

  "Faith?" She edged to one side, trying to get the boat between her and the flier.

  "Stand still," it commanded. "Don't try to run. Tears won't hurt much. After that, humans don't feel." It clacked its jaw several times, salivating onto its own feet, doing a little skipping dance to wipe the feet dry.

  "Faith?" asked Medoor Babji again, thinking furiously. "What do you mean, faith?"

  "No faith in Promise of Potipur. Potipur says breed, grow, have plenty. Talkers say not breed, not grow, live on filth. Now Thraish have herdbeasts again. Soon have many. Then all humans will die. No more filth. No more horgha sloos."

  "But if you breed, your numbers will grow, and you'll eat all your animals and go hungry again."

  "Promise of Potipur," it said stubbornly. "Promise. You hold still now. For Tears."

  "Tears don't work on the Noor," she cried. "They don't work on blackskins."

  The flier stopped, beak agape. "Noor. You are Noor?"

  "I am, yes. Medoor Babji. One of the Noor."

  "No. Dark from sun. Humans turn dark from sun."

  "I am not dark from the sun, Esspill. I was born dark. Look at my hair. The Tears won't work on the Noor. It won't grow inside us."

  "Try," the flier snarled. "Try anyhow."

  She edged away again, feeling in her sleeve pocket for her knife. "I'll fight," she threatened. "I may kill you."

  "Fight!" it commanded. "Do that!"

  Wings out, claw fingers stretched wide, talons lifted, beak fully extended, Esspill launched herself at Medoor, who dived in a long, flat dive into the River. It was instinct, not reason. It was the best thing she could have done. She came up in the water, clinging to the bowline of the Cheevle, began tugging at it, frantically working the boat into the water beside her. On the shore the flier danced up and down, pulling the boat away from her, screaming its rage.

  Then it was gargling, its beak wide, eyes bulging. A long wooden shaft protruded from the flier's breast. She turned around, staring. Through the rocky arms that embraced the bay came another boat, no larger than the Cheevle. In it sat a man.

  In it stood a ... a flier? Not a flier? Something very like, and yet not?

  It had a bow in its wing fingers, an arrow nocked, the arrow pointed at the shore where Esspill still staggered to and fro, falling at last in a shower of dark blood onto the sand.

  "Hello?" called the person. "We saw your smoke. We've been looking for you for over a week."

  "Thraish," cried the other, drumming his keeled breast with his wing fingers to make a hollow thumping. "I have killed a Thraish." Thumpy-thump, delight in that voice. "Look, Burg, I've killed a Thraish!" It turned toward Medoor Babji, bowing. "Happy day, woman. I have saved you."

  "We're called the Treeci," he told her, working the sculling oar as they moved down the coast, westward, the Cheevle in tow. "Have you heard of us?"

  "I have," she admitted. "There are Treeci on a place called Strinder's Isle."

  "Oh, there are Treeci on half the islands in the River," he said, making an expression that was very smilelike with a cock of head and flirt of eyes.

  "That's possibly an exaggeration," said the human person. He was a stout, elderly man with white hair that blew around his head like fluff.

  "Possibly. Or possibly an understatement, so far as that goes. What was that Thraish trying to do to you, eat you?" The Treeci turned to Medoor Babji once more.

  "She had Tears of Viranel wrapped up in a leaf. She wanted to put them on me and then eat me. Tears don't work on the Noor, though. Our skins are too dark."

  "I've heard that. Had you heard that, Burg?"

  "Oh, it's probably written down somewhere. In the archives over on Bustleby. It's probably written down there."

  "You know about the Noor?"

  "We have histories, young lady," said Burg. "We aren't savages. We're literate, human and Treeci both."

  "But where... where did you come from?"

  "The same place you did, originally. Probably for the same reason. Trying to get away from the senseless conflict over there." He jerked a thumb to the north.

  "Long ago. At the time of the Thraish-human wars. They were eating humans then. It's a wonder they haven't eaten them all by now."

  Medoor Babji shook her head. "No. No, we have a - they have what my mother calls a detente. An agreement. They eat dead people. Northshore dead people, not Noor dead people."

  The Treeci spat. "Carrion eaters," he gasped. "So I have heard, but I find it hard to believe, Medoor Babji."

  "Oh, come, Saleff, the Thraish were eating human dead during the wars. You know that."

  "Out of desperation, yes, but ..."

  "I presume they are no less desperate now."

  "They could do what we did."

  "We've talked about this a thousand times," the human said irritably. "The ones who could do what you did, did what you did. The ones who were left couldn't do it. They had offspring who also couldn't do it. The Thraish could no more eat fish and become flightless today than they could become sweet-natured and stop shitting all over their living space. It's called selective breeding, and they've done it."

  It was only argument, not even addressed to Medoor Babji, but the words rang inside her, setting up strange reverberations. Why? Something fled across her mind, trailing a scent of mystery and marvel. What? She tried to follow it, but it eluded her. She concentrated. Nothing. At least she would remember the words.

  Selective breeding. Those who could do it, did it. She would think about those words later.

  "You know all about them?" Medoor Babji asked. "How do you know all that?"

  "Oh, some of us human islanders sneak back to Northshore every now and then. Young ones of us, boys with time on their hands and adventure in their blood. Some of them go and never return, some go and come back, enough to give us an idea what's going on. One of the more recent returnees was a slave for the Thraish for five years."

  "And they didn't eat him?"

  "Would have, I suppose. He didn't give them a chance." Burg spoke proudly, almost boasting. "My son."

  Silence fell, except for the sloshing of the sculling oar. After a time, Medoor Babji asked, "You came to find my smoke?"

  "You could have been one of ours," said Burg. "Lost. We use smoke signals. It looked like that, one fire each day for three days. We do that sometimes. Or sometimes three fires all at once."

  "Where are we going?"

  "Down to Isle Point. West end of the island. You can look across the straits to the chain from there."

  "
Who lives there?"

  "Treeci, mostly. About a dozen humans, too. Most of our folk are down the chain, on Biddle Island, and Jake's."

  "How many?"

  "A few thousand in this chain. The islands aren't that big. We have to spread out. Otherwise we'd overfish the River, kill off all the edible animals, the way the Thraish did during the hunger."

  "What edible animals?"

  "The ones there aren't any more of on Northshore, girlie. Did you ever see an espot? Or a dingle? Little furry things? 'Course not. Thraish ate 'em all. They're extinct on Northshore. From what I understand, you've no mammals left at all on Northshore."

  "That flier, Esspill, she said they had herdbeasts again. I didn't know what she meant."

  The white-haired man pulled in his oar and stared at her, mouth working. "Is that possible?"

  "A few might have survived," the Treeci responded. "Somewhere. Perhaps behind the Teeth."

  "If they have herdbeasts again, it's the end of humans on Northshore," the man snarled. "You can depend on it. The Thraish will kill them all."

  Medoor Babji shook her head at him. "I don't think the humans would let them do that," she said. "I think it might be the Thraish who would end up dead."

  "Hush," said the Treeci. "Don't upset yourself, Burg. Northshore is none of our business. Don't we always say that, generation on generation? Northshore isn't our business."

  "How about Southshore?" Medoor Babji asked. "That's what we were looking for."

  "Over there," said Burg laconically, pointing over his shoulder. "That way. About a month's travel or more."

  "It's really there?"

  "Was the last time we looked. Bersdof's kids sailed there last year, just for the hell of it."

  "Is it empty, Burg? Is there room there for the Noor?"

  "Room for the Noor and anybody else, far's I know. Nothing there but animals and plants. No human grain over there, though. You'd have to plant that."

  "Why? Why is it just sitting there? Why hasn't anyone gone there?" She tried to imagine an empty land, one without Jondarites. It was impossible.