by Betsy James
Never before had I stepped, waking, back into the domain of a dream. But it was day—the mist was fading, the sun shone. On our left was the ridge we had run last night, with Sell somewhere beyond it; the bay-front dancing field that had been chaotic as nightmare now looked like a military camp, an anthill, a bowl full of knives. Tiny figures flourished spears that twinkled like antennae; they crawled among the lines of ready manats drawn up on the beach where I had been last night, just north of the unhappy seals. Clink, clink was the sound of stonesmiths finishing knives and spearheads. The Rig host did not look like what it was, a wave poised and toppling. It looked like a paidmen’s camp, like any army in the wicked world, and it rustled, like the crabs on Tadde’s body
Beyond the busy camp a clutter of arems—warrenhouses with their little settlements—rose toward the goblin-stone hills that were half hidden among wisps of cloud and wind-twisted trees. Smoke from many cookfires rose and tangled. Smaller, brighter figures were busy there: The women and children who had kissed me in their dreams were awake now, feeding an invasion. The women would be stirring the copper cook pots, the twins who had played hand slaps begging for scanty scraps. I could almost hear them.
We pulled toward the ranked manats. The shore thickened with warriors. We drew in under the spears, and I could no longer see the cooks and children, only men. I looked for the white patch that would be Queelic’s shirt, on his back or Aieh’s, living or dead; nothing in the Rigi’s land was so white as that milled, bleached, tailored League linen. But I could not see it anywhere.
The manats made the shore first. Then the voi grounded and tilted. Many hands grabbed the gunwale, and lean, brown faces frowned above them. Some men wore sealskins or breechclouts; some were naked; they were Nall multiplied a hundred times, and not one of them was like him.
He raised his tied arms to free me, leaned his forearms on the gunwale, and climbed out onto the sand. I watched him search among the faces, as last night he had not. Sometimes he knew one, for his eyes would stay on it with that new astonishment. Surely they knew him too, but no one spoke to him. Once or twice I heard a murmured tune, the words all blurred: the Rigi’s song. But were these not the Rigi? They were the wave poised to crash, the Reirig’s men.
No one touched me. I held Nall’s forearm; no one jerked my hand away. Only sometimes, as we trudged through the sand behind Hsuu and the armed male horde parted before him like ants from beneath a treading foot, a hand reached out and touched my hair.
Lame, hands tied, Nall rolled in his stride like Mailin’s parrot. His shoulder kept knocking mine. I wanted to whisper I love you, to get it said. But if I was nothing and he was nothing, what was love?
I looked again for Queelic. I needed his simpleminded League talk the way a swimmer needs land. I saw only armed men. Hsuu tossedNall’s knife and Aieh’s skin into the crowd; they vanished with hardly a ripple, as though he had thrown them in the sea. Someone set a spear in Hsuu’s hand.
The shoving male bodies parted to reveal the Reirig’s throne. His sealskin was spread across it, and he across the sealskin, casual and furious. He toyed with his lance. The bony mouth of his estate was empty, now ringed not with peeping babies but with shields, spears, hooks, and knives, hastily hung. No Queelic. No Aieh. Only soldiers.
We jostled to a halt. The Reirig allowed himself to look at us. Under the boredom of his manner his face was that of a dog that will bite, that is restrained only by some caution for itself.
As in the night, he was clad only in his tattoos—by daylight not blue, but black. I could look at him now. I was not in my own nightmare anymore, and anyway he had a hangover; his face was like Seroy’s after late carousal, the skin sagging from his eyes. I had not seen him drinking and wondered whether it was a hangover from too much of himself.
When he tired of ignoring us, he stood to his great height, using the shaft of the lance to pull himself up. The new sun on the oiled planes of his body made him look younger than his spoiled eyes—younger almost than Nall, so scuffed and lopsided and still.
He yawned his leopard’s yawn. Turned on us; whirled the lance, spun it whining into the air once, twice; and when he grabbed it back, he brought the glass blade to rest with its tip over Nall’s heart.
Nall did not move. He looked at the lance as if it were a buttercup, a star. But I looked at the blade, longer than Liu’s before it was broken, and at the curve of Nall’s breast that moved with his breath.
Hsuu looked too, fingering the shaft of his lance. I could not think except in pictures: the Reirig’s blade sunk in Nall’s heart; Hsuu’s blade in the Reirig’s; a blue yell coming from that old man’s mouth, and the wave of boats pouring east behind him, the new king of the sea.
King of the sea. And I his bride?
I broke into a sweat. The Reirig’s blade quivered, slid sideways to hang at my neck instead.
Breath. Breath. I turned my eyes to Nall’s. His were clear and steady, his lips parted.
The blade was withdrawn. The Reirig leaned on his spear, casual and cruel and frightened, and asked Nall the thing he had to know before he killed him.
“What did you hear?”
The warriors hushed their buzz. Behind their silence I could hear the distant chant and chatter of the women and children excluded from the Reirig’s show, and the sound of the sea.
“Nothing,” said Nall.
Hsuu pursed his lips.
The Reirig’s eyes went slits. “You heard nothing?”
“Nothing.”
The Reirig showed his perfect dog’s teeth. He swung the butt of the spear to Nall’s shoulder and shoved. Nall staggered, straightened. His face was open. He was not in trance, not gone away as he had been last night. He was there.
I thought, He is himself. He will live and die as himself, and so shall I.
“The plots of my enemies always fail!” said the Reirig. “This dead man, this ghost has laid his dirty ear to the Gate of the universe—and what has he heard?” He shook the lance. “Nothing! And why? There was nothing left to hear! I heard it all. I am the One Priest! The whole world is mine!”
He thrust out his arms and howled. A babble of comment or assent rose up. He turned to Hsuu, who gazed steadily at Nall, lips pursed. “Behold your son!” he said.
“My son is dead.”
“But this rotten sack was once your son.”
Hsuu’s eyebrow quirked.
“He was of your blood—see what strong blood it is! So I shall honor you; I shall not kill him quickly like a Black Boot, like that idiot pale worm who came among us.”
So the Reirig had not kept his pet. He had killed Ab Harlan’s son, new lover of riddles, the boy who wanted to be a bird. But what about Aieh?
The Reirig prodded Nall again. “This wraith was a Rig once. Let him fight me as a Rig!” Grinning, he laid aside the lance and clapped his hands.
The elders scowled as if at an impiety. But without a word Hsuu gave his spear to be held, came forward, and loosed Nall’s wrists. He did not cut the thong, but untied it and rolled it, as if he used it often.
Nall rubbed the old scars. The elders fidgeted. A screech and yammer began in the crowd behind the warriors: women’s voices now high and loud. Hsuu cocked his head like a fox, and spoke a low word to the Reirig. He had to say it twice, for the Reirig was grimacing and flexing with great show, as if preparing to defend his harem from an insolent contender. When at last he heard Hsuu, he laughed and said, “Better still! Let her see her nani now.”
A narrow lane opened in the crowd of warriors. Even leaning on a stick, she could barely hobble down it—the tiny woman with flyaway white hair around a brown face clean as a bone. She wore her sealskin kirtle, brown freckled with silver like a doeskin; her breasts lay flat on her chest, and she rolled as she walked, as lame as her great-grandson. And why not, when she had walked night into morning, all the way from Selí?
“Ama,” said Nall.
With one finger the Reirig signaled her to come to his
throne. She paid him the attention she would a fly, planted her stick, and turned her fierce old eyes on Nall.
He leaned to her like a leaf to light. But she stood glaring, letting him remember what she had told him: You must not meddle with the Gate!
A laugh like a sob squeaked out of me. She glared at me instead. Stamping with her stick, she set out toward us across the sand.
The Reirig snarled. She ignored him. Two warriors clattered out and took her by her skinny arms; a murmur of displeasure went through the crowd. Shamefaced, the men lifted her clean off her feet and set her down where the Reirig pointed, to one side of the throne.
To struggle was beneath her. She laced her old fingers on the knob of her stick as I, too, was seized, carried, and set down beside her to make the women’s side: the harmless watchers and mourners, and I the lazily garnered prize.
When they set me down, I stumbled. The ama’s old claw steadied me, knucklebones under soft, loose skin. Her voice was for me only—slow, as though she did not often speak Plain.
“He would not be stopped,” she said.
“No.”
“He keeps his word.”
“Yes.”
“He has brought women only grief.”
“Not only grief,” I said.
Her eyes were blue; she was Bian and Mailin and my auntie Jerash in one. She looked me up and down. “Has he got you with child?”
I did not answer. My face, my whole body prickled with heat. Because he might have. It might be so.
In the ruck and passion and madness I had not thought of that. Not once. I had thought only of myself. And now Nall—Nall—stood before me like a wildcat bound at the altar, awaiting the priest’s stone knife.
That old woman gave me the stare, no fooling her. “The world is weighed against one grain of sand,” she said, in the frayed voice that had sung so many lullabies. “For every birth, a death.”
I hated her. I would not hear it. When I had seen no way out, I had been half at peace with dying. But if I was carrying Nall’s child, I could not die, nor him, either. It could not be.
And the world went on just the same.
The Reirig clapped again, a lively sound. Mincing like a stag, he moved onto the pocked sand and crouched, motioning Nall to come to him.
I thought Nall would not go. If nothing mattered, then let the Reirig come to him.
But he gave me one last look, and his ama another. He limped across the sand to the Reirig’s posturing and offered himself into a formal fighting hold, his hands on the taller man’s arms.
The crowd sighed.
Hsuu had his spear again.
The muscles strained in the backs of the two naked men. Nall’s stance was as crooked as his walk. The Reirig looked around with a smirk and in one quick turn threw him, hard.
A grunt from the crowd.
“Up,” said the Reirig.
Nall got up.
“Here.”
Nall went to him, laid his hands on the other’s arms again, was thrown again. Perhaps the Reirig had intended to lay him down with a flourish, but a lame man does not use his weight as his attacker expects; Nall fell crookedly onto the point of his shoulder, and rose slowly.
He took the offered arms again. A mutter ran round. I stood heavy, a bowl poured full. My life is my own, yes; but what if it was not just my life?
They grabbed, grappled. Nall had a doggedness; it was not enough. The Reirig flashed his style, letting Nall nearly toss him before he leaned onto Nall’s lame leg and threw him down.
Nall rose. The Reirig showed his canines, slapped his thighs, inviting the smaller man to another fall. Each time his grip was crueler. I saw what he wanted: to play with Nall like a cat with a vole, then tear out his throat with his teeth, or break his back.
Beside me the ama rocked a little, closed her eyes.
Nall’s patient, fumbling grabs. Sometimes he took a hard fall, as though he were willing. Sometimes he slipped from the Reirig’s hands awkwardly, like an armful of fruit or a spilled toolbox. He moved oddly. He was not doing the things a man does to protect himself; he was wide open, unpredictable.
The Reirig looked confused, the elders puzzled. On Stillness, Nall had been astonished to feel my hands, because they were nothing; under his hands the Reirig was nothing, too.
It seemed the Reirig felt this, and did not like it. The Reirig was something.
He got angry. He began to snatch and clutch and throw more cruelly, yet every throw was half bungled because Nall fell, or stumbled, or fumbled from his grip, or snagged the Reirig’s leg or tipped him sideways and, though he had not the weight to throw him, spoiled his form.
The Reirig began to fight in earnest.
Like sharks smelling blood, warriors and elders leaned forward. Hsuu fingered his spear. Nall hit the ground, rolled, struggled to rise. Fell. Rose.
A low hum began.
I thought it was inside me, rage and despair made audible. But it was the ama keening, a soft, minor wail as at a midnight wake. Almost words; almost Love in the sea of grief.
I could not bear it. Nall fell. Stumbling as he fell, he pulled the Reirig into a clumsy spin that threw him onto one elbow and sprayed sand in his mouth. The elders panted. The ama keened. The Reirig, greased with fury, did not wait for the formal stance but leaped up and grabbed Nall from behind.
Nall twisted half out of his grip. Not far enough; the Reirig fell on him full weight, his hands around his throat, squeezing, cursing as he squeezed.
Nall’s face went black. The ama’s keen rose to a shriek.
I snatched Liu’s knife from my pocket, ran four long steps across the sand, and sliced down across the Reirig’s snarl.
Blood burst out. I met his furious eye as he loosed Nall and swung his arm, hit me in the chest, and sent me staggering. Nall squirmed like a lizard; like a lizard he seemed to scamper over the rock of the Reirig’s body as I sprawled back and the Reirig, following the motion of his arm, fell forward. Nall set his knee between the Reirig’s shoulders, hooked one arm under his chin, and flexed his back.
There was a little sound, domestic and accidental, like setting a bowl down on an egg. The Reirig’s head no longer finished the curve of his back but stood at an angle to it. Then it dropped. Nall dropped on top of it, both hands in the sand.
A roar. The elders, the warriors shouting with bared teeth, shaking their spears; then men with knives running toward us yelling, Hsuu running, raising his spear; the ama’s finishing scream.
Then silence. Only Nall’s sobbing breath.
Nothing moved.
Nothing.
Around us the elders hung in mid-leap, mouths open. The warriors, statues of a battle, held knives that shone, motionless, in the sunlight; they ran, and did not. Like a fly in amber, Hsuu reached for a stride that never came, his lance raised, his mutable face frozen in joy.
I crawled to Nall. The sand crunched under my knees. No sound but that and his racking breath—not even the sea, for every wave stood still, crisp at its untoppling edge.
Shuffle, shuffle in the sand behind me, an old voice crying the name I was never to speak.
“Get up! Foolish children! Come!”
Nall rolled off the Reirig’s body. Half rose. Fell. I plucked at him as in a dream when you must run, run, and cannot. I did not know where I was—in a frozen forest, a picture carved on a vase. Motionless in the air a kittiwake hung painted, each feather bright.
“Get up!”
I got up, reeling. Nall was standing too, clutching me, the ama like a little dog worrying at us, snapping and tugging, yapping, “Come, come!” The world was glass, a glacier that had frozen an army—all but a crease in the air that hung, trembling like the crack between two halves of a stone. As if the world itself were stone.
“There!” She bundled us toward it. I shrank from it, clinging to Nall. She screamed, “Idiot children, go! He rises!”
A bubbling sound: the Reirig’s breathing, as, against the stopped world b
ut no longer ruled by it, he lurched to his feet. Blood poured from his slashed face. His head bobbled to one side like a plum on a broken twig, and his dead lips made a snarl.
“Ama!” said Nall.
But her gnarled monkey hands pushed him, pushed me; he threw his arm round my waist as we fell through the stillness into that trembling line, it pressed us together and delivered us into the dark.
25
A very little ghost for such a long life,
She was child and girl and maid and wife,
Mother and grandmother, cripple and clay.
Her little wraith dissolves in the bright day.
Year Altar Offering. Downshore.
FALLEN ON SAND, my face pressed to Nall’s neck. I was afraid to open my eyes. I did not know what I might see: nothing, a place without being.
His pulse beat at my temple. “O he, Ama!” he said.
I opened one eye. Looked past his shoulder into darkness that was incomplete, there were shapes in it. Smelled earth and stone. So quiet. I held him tighter. “A tomb!” I said.
“Ne, ne. O heart! She has given us into Selí.”
I raised my head. It hurt to move. The place where we lay was no darker than Raím’s bothy; pale morning light glowed at a smoke hole. I began to see an underground room round as a basket, its carved stone walls, the lintel of a door.
An old woman’s tidy daybed of rushes and furs was spread against the wall. Next to the fire pit lay the reed mat where she had sat to spin. Driftwood for the fire lay to hand, with three loaves of bread, a basket of berries, three dried fish lapped in a cloth—the tails stuck out—and two water skins. Someone had worried that she might want, the stubborn old ama who would not go to the dances now that her nani was dead.
I whispered, “Are we alive?”
“Yes. But she is not.”
He half sat up. I was afraid to let go of him, I did not know where I might be swept to. I smelled the honey of a beeswax candle. There was no human sound, but on some unseen beach the sea said hush, hush, like the voice in a shell.
