by Betsy James
Queelic made a choking sound.
I pulled the rope out of my bodice. “I stole your rope.”
“So I supposed.”
“Aieh!” said Queelic. “What will happen to you?”
“I shall die.”
“From that little cut? It’s nothing!”
“I shall die because I have no skin. The spell of binding wants a death; and I need to die. I did wrong.” She huddled down smaller. “Perhaps that man will come back from the Gate and give me my skin again. But I do not think he will come back.”
“He came back before!” I said.
“He was a different man then. Now he is possessed. It is a priest’s work he wants—but he is only a man. The Gate will swallow him.” Aieh looked beyond us. “These are great times, when the wave rises and the tide turns on one water drop. Such times want lives, they want souls, and one gives them, like a gift.”
Queelic clenched his fist. She turned her huge eyes to him. “You are so strange! Day-colored, like her. I wish I could have seen your land.” She smiled a little. “All night long Tadde’s kin and mine have been starting fights, now here, now there, so the Reirig might have our blood to entertain him, and not yours. We are a quarrelsome people, but not like this.”
I said, “I have killed you.”
“You are not important enough to kill me. By blessing or rope or blood, I would have given that man my skin and, skinless, died. And I sent him to Tadde’s manat, on the beach there beyond the seals’ beach, for fear he was too weak to swim.”
“I gave him nothing. I gave him dirt.”
“When he said he must speak to you, I thought, At least he will go in good heart.’”
“I filled him with poison!”
“Never think it is only you,” said Aieh. Her face looked older, and so sad. “Think how I have been!” She put her hand on mine. “That man will wreak upon you what he has upon me, just by being who he is. You and I are braided together, tight as my hair rope.”
“Aieh. It takes a little time to rig a manat, maybe he’s still on the beach. I’ll run. I’ll give him your rope and beg his pardon—”
“Do not try to stop him!”
“Never. Never again.” I was running already, with no thought that anyone might stop me. I turned back. “Aieh. When he took your skin, he knew you would die?”
“For all of us. As it is for all of us he listens. Even the Black Boots.” She said dryly, “We shall be heroes.”
“Sister—”
“Go ahead, Kat,” said Queelic. “I’ll take care of her.”
He was unbuttoning his shirt. It was dirty and torn, but he held it out to Aieh like ermine. “Come here. I mean, please come here. Put this on.” His body was bony and shining in the firelight, a few gold hairs on his chest.
She stared. Then she crept to him. Queelic helped her arms through the full sleeves, pulled the shirt straight, and buttoned it up. Then he who had never put his arms around anyone put his arms around Aieh.
“Listen, please,” he said. “I’m going to tell you about numbers, and the stars.”
22
Star at the world’s edge
sinking
White stone through green water
sinking
Whale in the blue deep
sinking
Chant. The Rigi.
I COULD NOT TELL what I was running in, but it felt nasty—offal or excrement. I slipped, caught myself, and ran where Aieh had pointed, straight through the seal colony toward the far curve of the beach.
Nobody stopped me. I was too fast to stop. They were dancing the wave higher and higher, and I was one water drop, no more. Another snarling quarrel began; I ran straight through it under the Reirig’s startled face, as though a spell had broken.
The seals groaned and squalled, they recoiled from me, trying to flop away. The bulls terrified me, male mountains with necks quick as snakes. They were rousing, bellowing. I stepped on a fat calf, it bawled, I fell and was up again in the same roll, dodging through the spaces the seals kept around themselves in order to tolerate one another. At every instant I was inside some body’s boundaries, and that body screamed.
I thought, If I live, I could learn it, maybe—this stink and press and fear and all this rage. But I won’t live.
Closer to the beach my running drove the seals into the sea. Like sand crumbling at the edge of a flood, they fell into the water, a wave of frightened shapes that swam a little way and turned back, bound to the shore. The splash of big bodies muddled the sound of the drum. I heard the shouts of the Reirig’s men behind me, but they were few; no one dared to plunge into the chaos of panicked seals. Abandoned calves squalled. One lay shuddering; a bull had flounced over it and broken its back.
Against the distant west the Gate was black. It roared. Next to it I could see, faintly, the jagged skerry called Stillness.
The calf with the broken back lay motionless. So did hundreds of black seals at the far end of the beach. I looked again and saw they were manats laid out in rows like weapons, death ready to race east. Nall would be there, rigging Tadde’s boat.
I ran. But when I came to the empty boats, he was not there. No one was; all were at the dance. There were tiny manats like rolled leaves, made for one person, but I did not think of those. I chose a two-hatch boat because it looked like Nall’s. The paddles rattled in it as I dragged it to the water.
A strict, practical part of myself had taken charge. It was my father in me, and for the first time in my life I praised him, seeing worth in his orderliness. As though I knew what I were doing I made a lightning check of the gear: air bladders full, bailer in place, even a water skin that I shifted to the front hatch. I snatched a second skin from another boat so mine would steer as if with the weight of a second paddler. I could not believe how wise and skilled I was. As the Reirig’s men came howling round the end of the seal colony, I shoved off from the beach into the waves, barely wetting my legs, fending off with the paddle.
I was a bird that had learned to fly. The manat breasted the water like a gull in air, perfectly balanced. I took up the stroke and swung into the bay, traveling more quickly than I could have believed—so quickly that I laughed, thinking that on the journey west Nall must have made us go slowly on purpose. Glancing back, I saw that I had truly won away: No manat followed me. In palest dawn light the gesticulating dark figures of the Reirig’s men stood together on the beach.
The sea was mine. In no time I was in the middle of the bay. There was Stillness, its ragged crest a little south of the Gate. With easy strokes on either side I pointed the bow toward it.
As though from a trance, I woke to two things. One was that Nall’s comforting torso was not between me and the sea. The other was that the manat was going quickly—too quickly—toward the Gate.
I wanted to go to Stillness, where Nall had gone in Tadde’s manat. Not to the Gate.
I pulled with the right-hand paddle blade to swing the nose of the boat south. It turned, but not enough. The manat still went fast, but sideways. It was incredible how fast it went, sucked west. I saw why no other manat would dare that sea: The whole ocean was leaving the beach at once, pouring out through the Gate.
I began to paddle in earnest, pulling and pulling on the right. Sideways and helpless, I went nowhere but west, in the grip of the tide. Right, right, right, I dug in the water, straightening the boat a little, going broadside and a little forward, hearing a roar in my ears.
Panic rushed over me, blotting out the stars. I saw my foolishness: Puny and stupid in a two-person boat, I was rolling like a minnow down the gullet of the sea.
The thought of Nall fell away from me as if he were dead already. Like a demon I paddled crosswise to the race with no thought but Get me out, get me out, I promise I’ll never leave the shore.
The world became a roar. The water felt different and I thought, This is it.
I glanced around, still paddling, to find I was out of the main rip into slower wate
r, drifting sideways toward Stillness.
My whole will was for shore, for life in its cranky commonness, morning and workday and no glory. I knew Nall at last by what sucked him from me, a force like ocean; it had nothing to do with my silly human desires.
He was not for me. I would win back through the islands, east to the mainland and then to Raím—I was bad enough for Raím, I knew that now.
I wrenched the bow east. The sky was light.
But the sea was too strong. Paddle as I might, I went nowhere, fighting and fighting the crazy dimpled water of the race on my left now, hearing behind me the roar of the Gate.
In the end my arms gave out, and the drift began.
I could not bear to be swallowed from behind. Planting the paddle, I swung the boat around and saw Stillness only a few strokes away, water creaming against its shoreward side.
From somewhere I dragged the strength for those strokes, brought the manat abreast of the rock and crashed into it. I dropped the paddle; it surged away in the sea. With both hands I grabbed a knob of rock, lost my grip, fell sideways and grabbed another, hauled myself out of the boat, and flung myself across a ledge.
The lightened hull leaped after the lost paddle. But I was only half out of the hatch; I hooked my foot and caught the coaming, grabbed downward and crooked my elbow through it. I lay flat on the ledge with the boat trying to yank me off until a wave lifted it. I scrambled sideways into a crack in the stone, dragging the manat like an extra body. Once on solid rock my legs found a life of their own. My hands did not work, but with my elbow crooked I could drag the manat upward, out of the sea. It wedged itself upright in the crack, gear and ballast thumping down into the stern.
With mad logic I decided the crack was as good a place as any to dock it. I unhooked my elbow, pawed at the bow line, and carried it to the top of the rock, looking for something to tie it to.
I found a wave-scrubbed hole in the stone. A rope was tied to it already but there was room for another. I nursed my arms, fed the line through the hole in the rock, and with my hands beginning to wake again I tied such a clumsy knot that I tied a second for safety. I was seeing more clearly and tied the knots by the pale light of morning.
I looked down at the manat where it stood on its tail. My numb reasonableness dissolved, and a wail squeezed out of me into the dawn full of roaring.
I remembered why I had come. I looked down on Stillness. The strange rope in the boat hitch led to a little manat hardly longer than a man, tucked into a horizontal ledge that seemed made for it. Tied to its forward deck under crossed thongs, empty eyes staring, was Aieh’s sealskin.
Nall’s breechclout was tied with it, and his belt and knife. Nall was not there.
I looked again. I clambered down, around, everywhere on the rock. He was not there.
The wind blew; it tossed spume over me. Through flying water I looked west, and saw the Gate close and clear for the first time.
It had taken shape in the dawn light, but west of it the night was still dark. The line of air between the stones had no color, and it trembled.
I dropped my eyes to its foot. A black cone of water, shapeless at the gap, rushed through it into the dark. Before it a field of chasing crosscurrents boiled white, and in the middle of that field was Nall.
He was swimming toward the Gate. In the opal light I saw his dark head, his arm flung up, flung up, regular as a drummer’s.
It is a priest’s work he wants. Greater risk means greater truth: He would not listen from Stillness, but from the sea itself, like a seal priest.
I knew the pull of that current. A swimming man would be sucked instantly into the dark. So he was not human.
Then I saw in the water with him a seal, weaving and diving, meeting him and parting, bearing him up. They played; the seal rose, it carried him landward a little, twisted, dove again.
He was at his work, in his element, with his people. How beautiful he was! And how foreign; the longer I watched, the stranger he became. I was right: I must go home to the Hills.
I looked again. Stared hard.
He was swimming, or trying to swim, away from the Gate. The seal that played with him stayed him, bore him, lost him, rose under him as he slid away. The dimpled black water sucked west.
“Oh—,” I said.
I had told Aieh that I would never stop him, would never interfere with what he chose for himself. But how could I know what he had chosen?
I scrambled to the top of the rock and stood with the eastern light behind me, staring over the hissing sea. He swam like a human swimmer, plodding, drawing nearer, falling back as the seal wreathed and dove around him. He was no nearer. I knew the shape of his arm.
Then the paler flash of his face. He stopped swimming, was sucked backward. The seal caught and carried him, lost him. He swam again, faster. His face flashed, flashed. He was looking; had he seen me? Was his arm swimming or signaling? Was the seal playing with him, kind and kind, or trying to bear him east?
He stopped waving—if it was a wave—and only swam, dragged west.
“What shall I do?” I said. If he had seen me, it was not to recognize me, only a human shape against the whitening sky. Maybe he did not want anything, there where he played, alive in the water with his own.
But that laboring stroke, trying and trying to pull east.
“I don’t know!” But my body had decided for me. I scrabbled at my boat for the bow line.
It was nothing, barely ten feet long. I dug in the loose gear fallen into the stern: water skin, second paddle, bailer. Here was more rope. I scrambled to the tiny manat and searched that, too, finding only the bow line, which I cut with Nall’s knife. Back on top of the rock I looked for him in the crazy water.
There he was. Still swimming, stroke and stroke, but farther away. The seal was with him, I could not tell whether its dance was rescue or the game a cat plays with a mouse. The Gate pulled them west. Nall’s head rose for an instant; he was dragged back.
I tied the lines together. Back at my own boat I yanked the air bladder free of the bow and tied it to the end of the rope. From the crest of the rock I screamed, “Nall!”
He could not have heard me. But as his face blinked toward me, I raised bladder and rope against the lightening east and threw them, aiming a little in front of him.
He saw. He lunged forward in the water. He wanted it.
But where the rope should have landed was nothing. The wind had caught the bladder and blown it back. And the rope was not long enough.
He was losing ground. Perhaps he was losing heart; he must have seen that the rope was too short. He fell back, he took up his dogged crawl but it had gaps in it, as my paddling had broken when exhaustion came on.
The seal rose below him. Their dark bodies made one for a moment, plunging eastward until Nall slipped again into the wash.
I hauled in the rope in wet loops, ran to my manat, and again scratched frantically in the stern. There was no more rope.
Only then did I remember Aieh’s hair.
I pulled the coil from my bodice. Its fine braids shone in the rising light. With the knot that does not slip I tied the hair to the end of the wet rope—twice, three times, because it felt so fragile. The knot held, or seemed to. To the end of Aieh’s rope I tied the deer mouse sash, then the air bladder.
I looked for a stone to weight the bladder in the wind, but Stillness was scoured bare by waves, Liu’s knife was near weightless, and there was nothing in the boats, neither stone nor sinker.
Nall’s stroke was failing, he was falling back. The seal could not hold him; a seal has no hands.
To the air bladder, by its purse strings, I tied the pouch of gold. Coiling the combined ropes, I screamed “Nall!” across the boiling ocean. Then I threw.
The wind blew the bladder. I had to haul it back, re-guess my aim, and throw again. But the rope was long enough. The little swimmer flailing the water saw it go over him, grabbed for it, missed. He stopped swimming and let himself d
rift.
I thought, He doesn’t want it. He wants to go to the dark.
But he was only letting the water carry him within reach of the floating bladder. I felt the drag on the rope, and began to haul him in.
I used my back, I got under the rope and leaned my whole body to swing each coil around a jag of rock. I was in terror that the hair rope would break, the knots part. They held. I hauled him closer. He had the bladder clamped under his arm, and he kicked, not strongly. Beneath him the seal’s dark body rose and rose.
I dragged him to the rock. He slammed against it in the water. He did not climb out, but held the bladder and let himself be slammed against the rock. I put a last hitch around the stone, climbed down, and grabbed him by the hair.
A wave lifted him, or the seal did. I got him under one armpit and heaved.
He came alive and resistant, a willful, angular weight like a crab held by the carapace. He swung his arms as if to grab the rock, and hit me in the face. I dragged him right out of the water. He was much heavier than a manat.
He clung to the rock, then to me as if I were the rock. I thought his living grip would kill me. I stared over his shoulder into the boiling water as the seal rose and dove, rose and dove. I saw the mark on its shoulder, the shape of a human hand.
It turned west, breaking the foam, dwindling in my sight until it entered the glassy cone of water, became wholly seal, and passed out through the Gate.
He was as cold as the sea.
He clutched me. Then he seemed to see where he was, who I was, and rolled away from me. I thought he would roll back into the water, and grabbed after him.
With the hand he had waved for rescue he pushed me away.
I pulled my hands back to my chest. He heaved himself onto his elbows, gasping, shuddering. He stilled. Gape-mouthed, he looked up.
“You,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I said like a fool. “I am so sorry.”
