“Do you?” Kerish did not seem particularly interested. She was warm by the fire, as a cat is warm, languorous and easy in her body. She took another bite of meat.
Byth tried again. “I don’t sleep well when it’s very cold.”
Ah, thought Kerish. Yes. She looked at him in the firelight. An old man, a ruin of a man. But the ruin of a man who had once been handsome. A woman with a little imagination could, in a dim light, see him as still handsome. And he was kind.
Ah, thought Kerish again. I might as well get it over with. It won’t be so bad, not if I set myself to enjoying.
She rose and went to sit beside Byth. Close beside him. “There are three private huts,” she said in a low voice. “One is occupied, but … perhaps you might sleep better in one of the others? If you had company?”
Watching them, Kesair felt the sea singing in her blood. Answering the tug of the tides. She glanced covertly at Fintan.
If he felt her eyes on him he gave no sign. He was talking to Elisbut. The potter was responding vivaciously, with smiles and expansive gestures and occasional laughter, obviously enjoying herself.
I don’t care, Kesair thought. I’m only with him because I meant one name but said another.
I wish I were with Byth.
She rose and walked restlessly to the edge of the compound. They had established themselves on the headland. Below, no distance away, was the sea.
Out of the corner of his eye, Fintan watched her. He smiled and nodded to Elisbut, paying superficial attention, which was all she needed to encourage her flow of words. But his true focus was Kesair. He knew where she stood, how she stood—straight-backed, almost leaning forward, her arms folded across her chest for warmth.
He knew everything but what she thought and felt. Did she care about anything?
Below her was the sea. Kesair could see the luster of the water, far out. Its power was so immense, its presence so demanding, that her awareness of Fintan fell from her. The sea absorbed her thoughts as it had absorbed the existence of millions.
All those lives destroyed, she thought. Or were they? Do they still exist in some way, as part of the sea? Can life be destroyed? Or merely transmuted?
She had never thought such thoughts before. Where did they come from?
4
Once the mating dance had begun, it continued throughout the winter. Mindful of the injunction not to get all the strong women pregnant at the same time, each man concentrated on only a portion of his group. Fintan spent time in the private hut with Elisbut and with dark-haired Surcha. But never with Kesair.
The little girls were very curious. Covering giggling mouths with their hands, they crept as close to the private huts as they dared and tried to hear what was happening inside. They made wild guesses. “I think the men and women go in there to fight!” little Datseba said. “They grunt and squeal, don’t they?”
As the group waited for spring, there was a subtle shift in its dynamic. Kesair was the acknowledged leader, but as one woman and then another conceived, the pregnant women became the focal point of the community and their men strutted proudly.
Elisbut and Murra announced their pregnancies within days of one another. But it was Kerish who caused the most excitement. When she told Byth he had sired a child, his joy overflowed.
“What do you think of this old man now, eh?” he kept asking people. “This old man? Eh?” He could not stop grinning. He treated Kerish as if she were made of spun glass, and found tiny presents to give her. He wrapped her in his warmest blanket and quoted everything she said, no matter how banal.
The little girls laughed and giggled and watched with wide eyes.
More and more, Kesair spent her time alone on the beach. The susurration of the sea was her companion’s voice. The incoming tide laid gifts at her feet. She found pieces of flint, bits of colored glass, twisted fragments of forged metal. Once a human thigh bone, sand-scoured to ivory.
What the sea had taken it gave back transformed.
She tried to get others to share and appreciate her growing awareness, but she could not adequately articulate her discoveries, and the others were too busy or preoccupied to listen.
“You’re in danger of becoming a fanatic,” Ladra warned her, “and nobody likes a fanatic. We’ve been through a lot, but you mustn’t give in to these wild notions of yours, Kesair. You’ll lose everyone’s respect if you do. What has the sea done for us but flooded the land and killed people? I’ll tell you what I think about the sea. I piss in it!”
Ayn put it more delicately. “I would like to stop and listen to what you’re trying to tell me, Kesair, honestly I would. But you know yourself there is work to be done. You assigned it. You can’t expect us to abandon our chores now, when we need every pair of hands, to come and listen to you talk about, well, about something no one understands. I’m sure you mean well, but it’s really just superstition, isn’t it? Worshiping the invisible, so to speak?
“We don’t have time for that sort of nonsense anymore, Kesair. As a race we’ve long since grown beyond it. Come now, come away from the sea, back to the huts and the fire. And your loom, that’s where you’re needed. We need your talents and your strength and your energy more than you need to be staring out at the sea all the time.”
Kesair began to feel a sort of pity for them. They were blinded by daily routines. They were deaf to the voices she heard.
Alone, she began collecting shells and stones, secreting them in a tiny cove sheltered by dark boulders. Almost every day she went there. Only the most bitter weather could keep her away. Answering some deep need beyond the design of rational thought, she began assembling her stones and shells into a tower, a conical symbol rising from the sand. On the rare days of pale winter sun and deceptive warmth she could spend a whole morning there, frowning at her handiwork, perhaps moving just one shell a fraction to the left.
At night she dreamed of the cove and the tower.
The days were growing longer, misty and mild.
The people began to talk of leaving the compound and seeking land to farm. As their infants grew inside them, Elisbut and Kerish and Murra and Surcha turned their thoughts inward, but their companions began looking outward.
Ladra became the spokesman for those who were anxious to find their own place and build new lives. Approaching Kesair, he said, “We’ve waited long enough. I want our share of the livestock and those sacks of seed we brought. My women and I are going farther inland, where there is land that will grow grain.”
“What do you know of growing grain?” Kesair asked him.
He bristled. “Leel comes from a farming family, she knows. And we’ll learn.”
“You didn’t used to be such an optimist.”
“That was before. This is now. This is a new world, we can do as we like here and that makes everything different.”
“Are your women able to travel?”
“The pregnant ones? Murra can, she’s not too big yet. And Velabro. She doesn’t expect to give birth until early summer, so we should leave as soon as we can in order to be settled in new homes by then. The winter’s over, Kesair. Or hadn’t you noticed? This is a good land with a mild climate. We’re going to enjoy ourselves here.”
“Is that what it’s about?”
Ladra frowned at her. “You’re aren’t going to try to keep us all here, are you?”
“Why would I do that?”
“You enjoy being in charge. You’re like Fintan, you want to tell other people what to do. I don’t mind it, coming from you, but I have to go my own way.”
“I never said otherwise,” Kesair reminded him. “I agreed that the groups should split up, remember. When the time is right. But …”
“But what?” he asked with sudden suspicion.
“But don’t you think you should make an effort to … to placate … to ask for … before you go, shouldn’t you …” The words dried on her tongue.
“Are you trying to get us to pray again, Kesair? F
orget it. You’re getting tiresome, you know.”
Preparations began for the departure of Ladra’s group. Kesair supervised the meticulous division of provisions into three equal parts, counted almost to the last seed. She knew how Ladra would complain if he thought he was being cheated.
Then she went for her usual walk by the sea—and returned with a new suggestion.
“We’re all going to need to find land we can raise crops on,” she said. “and we can’t predict what dangers may lie inland. I say the three groups should leave together now, and stay together until we have some idea what to expect in the interior of the island. When we’re certain it’s safe to divide our numbers, we can split up and each group can choose its own land.”
Fintan said, “I’m surprised at you. I thought you would want us, at least, to stay here by the sea you’re so fond of.”
“I can leave the sea,” she told him, adding cryptically, “as long as I stay near water.”
The others approved of her suggestion. “Kesair makes good sense, as usual,” Surcha remarked to Murra.
“She’s strange, that one. Nothing like the rest of us. But you have to admire her,” Murra replied. “Where would we be if not for her?”
Excitedly, the entire colony prepared for departure. Even old Nanno had spots of color on her seamed cheeks. The young girls were giddy, and Byth, bemused by approaching fatherhood, spoke dreamily of “the warm valley I’ll find for me and my chicks.”
Kesair paid one last visit to the sea. The water was deep green, streaked with foam. Their abandoned boat was a forlorn splash of fading ruby against the emerald water.
Slowly, thoughtfully, Kesair dismantled her tower. She put the stones and shells back where she had originally found them, except for one particular shell that she held to her ear, then tucked for safekeeping in the bosom of her gown.
Returning to her people, she assigned herders for the livestock and supervised the final departure arrangements. The soon-to-be-deserted compound presented a forlorn sight. “We can’t leave it like this,” Kesair said. “We must clear away the midden heaps, burn our garbage and those broken timbers, and …”
“Forget it,” Ladra said. “Let them rot where they are. No one wants to waste time building up another fire.”
The others echoed his words. Their future was tugging at them, they were impatient to go. If Kesair held them back a moment longer they might turn on her.
Reluctantly, she gave the order to leave. But the mess they left behind remained like a dark stain at the back of her mind. She could not stop feeling guilty about it.
Traveling inland, they used the watercourses to make their way through a chain of low mountains carpeted with heather and bracken. Because their pace was adjusted to that of the slowest among them, they had ample time to appreciate the beauty of the land they were crossing. Green, lush, misty.
It took Fintan’s breath away. He frequently stopped to stare.
Once, captivated by a spectacular view of a series of lakes nestled among hauntingly lovely hills, he lingered to admire until the others were long out of sight. He did not realize Kesair had come back, worried, to look for him. But when he started forward again he caught a glimpse of her looking toward him from atop an outcropping of rock. Her figure was a dark column silhouetted against the sky, holding up the dome of heaven.
Fintan’s breath was suddenly harsh in his throat.
Daily, the air grew warmer. A scent of green, as thick as moss, hung in the air. Soft, moist air. The pregnant women ripened. Their flesh took on the luster of pearls.
A sort of madness infected Ladra. Losing all restraint, he insisted on sleeping with every one of his women as often as he could. Soon he would not even wait until nightfall, but would pull the nearest woman behind a tree or a boulder and take her without ceremony, like a rutting goat.
Byth was appalled. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me, and my women aren’t complaining.”
“They are. To my women.”
“They’re boasting, because they know you aren’t satisfying your women,” Ladra said spitefully.
The old man’s eyes blazed. “I’m not mauling them every chance I get, if that’s what you mean. You act like a man demented, Ladra, and it’s making the rest of us uncomfortable.”
“You’re just jealous!”
Hornetlike, anger hummed in the air between the two men. Kesair became aware of it. She stepped between them. “We can’t afford to quarrel,” she said. “Walk on now, you’re holding us up.”
At her urging they resumed the march. But like Byth, Kesair was worried by Ladra’s behavior.
He could not control his passions. The very air he breathed was saturated with the impulse to life. The cells of his body responded. They combusted independently of his reasoning mind, burning him with lust. He could concentrate on nothing but the sweet heavy pressure in his groin, driving him, demanding, insatiable.
“I think Ladra’s sick,” Kesair remarked to Fintan. They were following a thread of water leading eastward from the mountains.
“What makes you think so?”
“Look at his eyes. They’re glassy, wild, and he’s sweating heavily. It isn’t that warm yet. His face is ashen, too, as if the color’s being leached out of it.”
Fintan grinned. “I’d say everything’s leached out of him by now.”
“I’m serious. I’m worried about him.”
“What am I supposed to do about it? I don’t know anything about illness. If he is ill, and I’m not so sure.”
But Kesair was sure.
Feeling her concerned gaze upon him, Ladra intepreted it as something else. He began watching for his chance.
Kesair did not always walk with Fintan and his other women. She preferred to find a path of her own, a little distance from anyone else. She would stroll along lost in her own thoughts, aware of the location of the others but not with them.
Ladra made it his business to know where she was. Even when with another woman, he knew where Kesair was; how near to him, how close to some place where he could cut her off from the others and take her the way she wanted. The way they all wanted. They all wanted him, wanted Ladra. Wanted, wanted, needed, had to …
His eyes glittered in his pasty face like broken glass.
On a morning of soft rain, they were late in leaving the camp they had made for themselves in a glade in an oak forest. Moving inland, they had found vast expanses of forest land, huge primordial oaks, elm, trees whose leaf and bark they could not identify mingling with more familiar species, all surging upward in search of the sun.
There was no sun this morning. The air was saturated with the mist that oozed from every pore of the land, bearing the scent of earth and water. The day had a curious languor. Kesair, lying in her blankets, reluctant to get up, had a fanciful half-dream of floating in her mother’s womb. When she did arise her eyes were still brimming with the dream. Her lips curved in a private smile.
Watching her covertly, Ladra noticed.
Today, he thought.
They set off once more. Water oozed into the footprints they left behind in the mossy soil.
As they walked together, Byth confided to Kerish, “If there is a good valley beyond this forest we’re going to stop there. I see no need to go farther, nor have we met any real dangers. Aside from game, this entire island is uninhabited. We could settle anywhere, don’t you agree? So why keep on?”
Kerish, heavily pregnant, nodded. “We must stop soon.” She smoothed her hands down the bulging moon of her belly. “We will have to stop,” she added meaningfully.
The baby inside her shifted, made groping motions with its unseen hands, wriggled down toward the tunnel that led Out.
The forest was increasingly dense. They were following a winding stream that offered the only open pathway, though its banks were slippery with moss and studded with frequent clumps of vegetation. Once Kerish slipped and cried out. Byth tried to catch h
er, but he was not quick enough. She saved herself by a desperate grab at a holly bush. The prickles tore her hands, making them bleed.
She caught her breath with a sob. “I have to stop soon,” she said to Byth. “I can’t go much farther.”
He wondered if they should simply turn back. It would be a long journey to the last night’s camping place. Better they go on. Or stop here, though the forest was damp and gloomy, an uninviting haven. It was hard to know what to do. He felt his responsibilities pressing down on him. My chicks. I must do what is right for my chicks.
Walking in the lead, Fintan suddenly called back over his shoulder, “I see a wedge of brightness up ahead. I think we’ll be out of this forest in a little while.”
Ladra grunted deep in his throat. He was walking a few paces behind Kesair, who as usual was eschewing the common path and treading her own way among the trees. She had taken off her cloak and stuffed it into the pack on her back, for it was warm in the forest. Warm and close.
Warm and wet. Ladra’s eyes followed the clench-and-relax of her buttocks, clearly visible beneath the fabric of her gown.
Off to their left yawned the mouth of a small cave, almost hidden by moss and shrubbery as it backed into a hill. Ladra’s darting eyes observed the cave; returned to Kesair.
“Kesair,” he said. Very softly. “Kesair.”
She heard him the second time and glanced back. “What is it?”
“Did you see that?”
“What?”
“Something just moved inside that cave. Something large. I think it’s watching us.”
“Are you sure?” Kesair stopped walking and turned to face the cave. “I don’t see anything. Should we call Fintan?”
“I can do anything Fintan can do,” Ladra said petulantly. “If there’s any danger, you’re safe enough with me. But I think we should take a look. Just because we haven’t seen any large predators yet doesn’t mean there are none. If one is in that cave, I want to know.”
She nodded agreement and came back toward him. “Be ready,” she warned. Her own long knife was already in her hand, taken in one smooth motion from the scabbard on her belt.
The Elementals Page 4
