by Betsy James
Nall would say no more. With my eyes I tried to tell him I would go with him into the mouth of death—but not if she were there.
Queelic looked at Aieh’s open boat. “I guess I have to go in that?”
“My voii? How else? Did you fly here?”
“The fishermen’s boat was bigger. They tied me up.”
“Shall I tie you up?”
“No.”
“You would lie quieter. Your great boots will put holes in the hull.”
“He’ll take them off,” said Nall. Queelic began to tug at his boots. In the end I had to help him; a Leagueman’s boots require a servant, or a wife.
His feet were white as grubs and looked crooked. Aieh stared at them. So did he, as if he had never seen them before. He clutched the boots to his heart.
Aieh slipped past me and laid her hand on Nall’s breast, saying, “The open sea is ours, and by the time we make the islands, the dusk will hide us.” To Queelic she said, “Get into my voi, Pimple Boy. Look where you put your feet.”
18
Odor of stars, of dark dew.
The day birds cower.
The night moth plunges
And shivers in the white flower.
Moonlight Chant. The Rigi.
WE PUSHED OFF from the Isle of Bones, onto the blue deep. The wind soughed and buffeted, but the sky was clear.
Aieh had chivvied Queelic into the stern of her boat. There he crouched, clutching the oily thwarts while she rowed quick as a water strider, glancing over her shoulder. He fixed his eyes on the horizon.
I fixed mine on the blue spiral on Nall’s back, and paddled. Now I should speak, I thought.
I composed words in my mind. Nall. I was wondering…. Excuse me, Nall—could we talk? Do you mind if we talk? I understand that you—It seems as though—I think I deserve—If you would just—
Not one word came out of my mouth. We paddled. After a while my thoughts turned into, Why don’t you talk? Damn you, could you say something? Can’t you see that I’m—Do you realize that you’re—that we’re—
Neither of us spoke. The manat cut the dusky water with a rustle. Once something big rose behind us and exhaled, phoo! But when I turned to look, I saw nothing. I thought of nameless great beings, gliding beneath us in the deep.
The islands hung motionless, yet drew nearer. Time went on, we did not speak, until it had been so long that it felt stupid to say anything and I could feel desolate, rescued from having to.
We paddled west. Sometimes we waited for Aieh to catch up—she was one rower to our two—still without a word between us. Slow as a dream, the islands rose out of the sea.
They were cliffs and pillars, arches and mounts, crags and sloping cones, all glinting and dim. They were rounded like bread loaves or pointed like awls, square and crumbling like ruined palaces, or so furred with trees that the shadow forests seemed to rise straight out of the water. Each island wore a ghostly dome of cloud that mimicked its shape.
By then the sun had slid low, turning the blue water to purple, like the heart of an amethyst. When it sank at last, it left its glow in a green sky with the slimmest feather of a moon.
We stole among the islands as we had stolen among the shrines. Like the shrines, they seemed to move. They swung like boats drifting at anchor; I knew it was we who moved, not they, but my eyes would not believe it. As we crept along the first strait, they seemed to circle us, to loom, to slip behind us, until when I looked where we had come from, the way was closed by shadow.
My heart beat hard. The jerk of Nall’s head was tense, quick. On swell or shadowy hillside was no human sign, only water and shapes made by water. Just once did I see, far away along a ripple of reflected light, a fleck that might have been a voi with many paddlers, and once, on a dark hillside, a little orange seed of fire. We passed skerries luminous with brooding birds; here and there a wing stretched, was folded. Dusk rose around us, like water poured into a bowl.
We waited for Aieh in the wave-wash at the foot of a cliff. She came alongside with a one-handed hook stroke that slid the voi sideways. Queelic made a gulping sound.
“He vomited,” she said.
Nall said, “Do not speak so loud.”
She pointed to a swelling darkness in the west, and in a whisper she said, “Home. No Black Boot has seen it since the world began.” Her look said that Queelic and I were dogs, we would piss on paradise. “There are more Rigi than all the Black Boots under the moon, more than all the seal-killers, and tonight we shall be gathered, every one.”
Queelic said faintly, “Is that where we’re going?”
“Hai! There they would eat you!” To Nall she said, “Remember to keep wide of the rocks.”
He nodded. I did not trust her and said, “Surely there will be boats about, on their way to the gathering?”
“Would we be so stupid as to use a traveled track, Scarred Girl? Besides, the whole world is at the Counting Downward dance.”
“Counting?” groaned Queelic as the boats jigged up and down. “Counting” is the League word for “prayer”; Leaguemen carry counting beads. “Counting dance?” he said.
“Not for you, Vomiting Boy.”
Nall said, “Before Least and Long Nights we dance the Counting Downward Nights.”
We dance. We, the Rigi.
The shell-colored twilight dimmed to black. Nall and his flicking paddle became only a shape, until my eyes grew used to starlight and I could see the shine of his sweat. A greenish gleam dripped from our paddles and marked our vanishing wake.
I saw no other boats. Yet I felt watched. I wanted to make myself small, or stop my heart’s beating. The night went on—surely it was midnight; as we crept west through the forest of islands, the body of the Home Stone grew huge before us, more smelled than seen. A breeze turned back from the cliffs, bringing the odor of cedar and night-blooming flowers. Nall stopped paddling to breathe it. Paddled again. Breathed. At the waft of another odor, deep as honeysuckle, he shipped his oar.
Aieh’s voi slipped past us. I heard a soft phrase in Rig. Nall started; he took up his paddle and pulled the manat under a dark cliff slit by ravines and draped with shadowy vines.
Waves crackled at a cluster of rocks. Aieh waited to be sure he was with her and then, with the twist of an oar, drove her voi straight into the cliff.
Nall bent his back. A black crack widened in the stone, and the manat dove into it like a fish into a hole in a reef. Rock whirled past my face, a trailing vine brushed my lips, and we were through the gap into a round, steep-walled cove. The sound of water was loud. Cliffs rose out of the sea, clotted with ferny shadow, below them a tiny beach where the prow of the voi stilled in the sand.
Crack—crash—a white goat burst from cover, clattering up an impossible cliff to vanish at the top.
Nall pulled the manat’s nose to shore and slid into the water with no splash. I could not see his face. He steadied the hull for me to climb out, then held the gunwale of the voi.
Queelic rose up, fell back. Nall heaved him out and set him in shin-deep water. Still clutching his boots, Queelic tottered up the beach and sat down in the same sprawled position as before.
Nall dragged the manat higher. He took my paddle and stowed it. He did not stow his own, but stood leaning on it, turning his head left and right. So had blind Raím stood, catching familiar air currents on cheek and thigh. I thought of Creek and earth things: clay, cedar smoke, Raím’s freckled shoulder.
Nall said to Queelic, “Here is where you must stay.”
Queelic nodded, looking around at the trailing dark vines, the dome of starlight high above. Aieh lingered behind the prow of her voi, watching us. Her eyes seemed darker. I thought, As soon as Nall and I leave for the Gate, Queelic’s life will be short.
I said to her, “Do you give your word that you’ll—” What? Leave him alone until the next lot of Rigi find him? Until everyone in Downshore is dead? Until Nall and I have done what we have to do, which is I don’t know w
hat, and can come back to rescue Ab Harlan’s son?
Aieh shrugged.
It could not be helped. I looked at Queelic for the last time. He gazed back calmly. As I turned to the manat Nall said, “Kat, you’ll stay with Queelic.”
“No, I won’t,” I said. Then, “What?”
“Aieh was wise to bring him. He will be company.”
“I’m not staying here,” I said like a simpleton. “I’m going to the Gate with you.”
He would not look at me. “I shall take you no farther.”
“Take me? We’re together!”
“We were. But from here I shall go on alone, to Stillness before the Gate, and listen. I will come back for you—if I live.”
And if you die? I had known I might die—indeed, at first I had not cared—but I would die with him. “I’m not leaving you,” I said.
“Yes.”
“I won’t, Nall!”
“Beyond this there is no safe place for you.”
“Safe!” Did he think I would be safer with Aieh and her knife? “What do I care for safety?”
“I care.” But his eyes slid away. Surely Aieh had talked him into this, at the shrines. His face was white in the gloom. He said again, “If I live, I will come—”
“My life is my own, to risk as I will!”
He looked at me straight then, with his hero’s face on. In a terrible, low voice he said, “But mine is not my own. I serve the world. I am to listen, and I cannot hear; it is ‘Nall! Nall!’—all noise and strife. I must have silence! Alone, I will have silence.”
So it was not even a desire for my safety that made him abandon me, but my grubby, quarreling heart. Even Aieh looked shocked. It was not to this she had coaxed him, for she was half the quarrel.
I could not bear my shame and fell back on rage. “You never told me that! You never said!”
“Because I am a fool. And how can I tell you everything, in this world that changes and changes?”
“Everything? You’ve told me nothing! Why didn’t you speak to me? Have you no tongue?”
“Doesn’t grief come soon enough? I would spare you—”
“Spare me? My grief is mine! I feel it! You rob me!”
“Kat—”
“Oh,” I said, “must I remember you like this, with lies in your mouth?”
He put his hand over his eyes.
Aieh said, “Listen.”
She was touching Nall’s arm.
“There is more than one road to the Gate,” she said.
He shook her off. But she caught his hand and held it, saying, “Listen to me. Do not think I say this for the sake of that girl who will be dirt. I say it because I want your happiness, and it seems hers is yours. Hide the manat here and go overland. She can stay with you a little longer so, and drink all the grief she wants.” She put her hand over his heart. “Nall!”
He stared, that she should call him by that name.
“Take her to our ama, in Selí. Let our ama see you for one instant; how can you come so far and never greet her, who loves you and thinks you are dead forever? Leave the girl in Selí and swim from there—oh, fool and hero—and then go die at the Gate.”
“Selí? What safety would there be for her there?”
“I am not ‘her’!” I said. “I have a name!”
“As to safety, there is none. But there are a thousand hiding places in the woods and warrenhouse, and our ama is there alone; she does not go to the dances anymore, now that her nani is dead. And I will watch over that scarred girl. I swear I will not bring her to harm,” said Aieh. “By Tadde’s soul I swear!”
“The land way is too risky,” said Nall, “and I am lame.”
“Hey,” said Queelic. “Look!”
He pointed at the water. In the waves that washed in rings off the rocky walls a dark head bobbed, round and big and coming.
He scrambled away on all fours like a crab. I backed up the beach, as out of the lipping pool rose a sleek shape bigger than a man. On its streaming shoulder was a dark blotch the shape of a human hand.
Aieh stepped behind Nall with a whining cry. The seal drew itself half out of the water, starlight on its liquid eye. It nosed Nall’s manat, tipping it gently on its side; my paddle clattered inside the hull. It put back its head and made a moan, a singing that was not quite, or no longer, words.
Aieh stepped forward, trembling. The seal slid back into the water. As it vanished she plunged in to her thighs, crying, “Tadde! Taddiki!”
Queelic murmured, “It said something.”
Aieh turned back weeping to the shore. In the waves, even in the little wind, I heard the echo of those almost-words, a voice trying to speak.
“What did it say?” said Queelic.
Nall, on an inbreath, said, “‘Go on beyond the reef.’”
“No!” said Aieh. “He said, ‘On, on to Selí!”
I said nothing, for what I had heard, or almost heard, in the Plain tongue that is spoken by all peoples and has no magic at all, was Love in the sea of grief.
Queelic said, “But it spoke Hessdish, like a Leagueman. It said—” And then, “What—what was it?”
No one answered him. Aieh spoke in Rig, wept, spoke, then changed to the Plain tongue as if to share her victory. “He is not lost. Bij, you have saved him to me!”
“Nall is my name. Nall!”
“That name is nothing. Soon Tadde will pass the Gate and all speech will be taken from him, but you heard him: He bids you go the land way, to Selí. See—he overturned your manat!”
Nall swung his head as if to clear it. “Beyond the reef, he said.”
“Self!”
But I had understood something, seen it like a vista lit by a lightning flash: that if it had been Dai listening to that seal, he might have heard, Lowing upon the heath. Or Raím, Loom and the comb’s teeth. And what might Bian have heard? Or Nondany? When the world speaks in its inhuman tongue, why do we hear what we do?
For an instant my misery was pierced and stripped away and I was myself, eager, without rage or confusion. Then I heard Aieh say again, “To Sell! You can take the girl—”
“Beyond the reef. Alone.”
Aieh turned to me. Not loud, she said, “You see? He never loved you.”
Nall straightened.
“Do as you wish,” she said. “I know my brother’s voice.” She strode away. I saw the whites of her eyes as she looked back, watching.
In a low, driven voice Nall said, “Kat, that is not true.” He took my hand and held it to his mouth. But his eyes still went to Aieh’s; I pulled my hand away. He caught it again, gripping it so hard that it hurt. “So be it. Have your grief; maybe my ama will give you hers. We will go to Selí.”
My hand let itself be held. My heart, hearing even a hint of what it wanted to hear, unclenched a little. On the way to Selí I would make no trouble; he would see how good I could be, he would take me with him to the Gate.
Nall went to Aieh, speaking in Rig. He was angry. I went hot and black with triumph. She stood stiff, her back to him, saying sullenly, “By Tadde’s soul I swore!”
He turned away from both of us, righted the manat, stowed the second paddle, and lifted the boat to hide it under vines well above the tidemark.
Aieh did not speak. She went to her voi and stowed gear also, then pulled the boat higher on the gravel.
Queelic said, “Kat, help me get my boots back on.”
“I’m not your slave! Did nobody ever teach you to say ‘please’?”
“Please.”
It was the first time I had heard that word from a League-man’s mouth. I bullied him into his boots. He did not need them anyway, to sit on the sand.
He said, “Which way’s west?”
“Please.”
“Please, which—”
“Ask Nall.”
Nall, pointing over the leafy brow of the cliff, said, “That star.”
“Thank you,” said Queelic. With his booted feet splayed in front o
f him, he gazed at that star.
We climbed up the way the goat had gone. A narrow trail threaded the cliff, and a thin rill of springwater ran beside it. I pushed my mouth into that trickle and drank. Moss sprang under my hands, sedge whipped my cheek. Scrambling, sometimes on all fours, I followed Aieh and Nall up through vining herbs whose odors were deep and strange.
They were not strange to Nall. In the patches of starshine I watched him brush his hand here and there, crush a leaf in his fingers. White flowers overhung the muddy trail, more musky than sweet; he pulled them down to his face.
Aieh was climbing ahead; she turned back with a dark clump of something in her hands and held it out to him. At first he shook his head. Then he took it, and she went on. As I came up behind him, I saw he held flowers so black that if they bloomed in sunlight they must be red, their odor half fungus, half perfume. He did not show them to me, but climbed on, holding them, until abruptly he threw them away.
The track led into a ravine, winding and climbing to the cliff top. There the west wind met us, and the enormous, glittering sky
I could not see the ocean, but I could feel it out there, encircling us. We stood at the edge of a meadow of rippling grass, which like the Isle of Bones, tilted westward, tipping us as if toward a last waterfall, over the brink of the world.
Far down the dark way behind us some animal thrashed in the underbrush. Nall took my hand, whispering in Rig.
“What?” I said.
He shook his head and said in Plain, “Keep to the shadow.” His hand was tense and wet. We skirted the meadow, wading thigh-deep in grass until we could duck among thick-leafed bushes taller than a man. I could see no big trees, but I heard wind in branches somewhere—haash, haash. When Nall dropped my hand, my fingers smelled of the black flowers.
The bushes stooped away from the wind. Between them the grass was shorter, and from the corner of my eye I thought I saw movement—snake or weasel. Nall moved as though he knew each step by heart.
The copse went on and on, miles, broken here and there by fields of stunted barley, scatters of scrawny plants as cool as cabbage, hairy as squash. There began to be hills around us, crumpled and dim and shivering with leaf. Panting, we paused in speckled shadow. From over our heads came a breathy cry.
