Moon-Flash

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “Why?”

  “Why what?” Kyreol said with her mouth full.

  “Why are we going to Fourteen Falls?”

  She told him about the Hunter. He listened silently, without eating, his eyes big, dark in his face. When she finished, his throat made a noise, as if to clear away a breadcrumb. He opened his mouth, then turned as his fishline twitched. He pulled the fish in. “It’s a dream…” he whispered. “It’s a Hunter’s dream. It means something to him, and he gave it to you, the Healer’s daughter.”

  “Maybe,” Kyreol said doubtfully. “But I think it’s not a dream.”

  “It’s a dream.” His voice came back again, flicking away her uncertainty the way the fish, trapped in his hand, was flicking droplets off its scales. He eased it into a clay water jar. “You’re just not old enough to know what it means.”

  She scowled at his complacency. “Then why are you coming with me?”

  “To see the rainbows, of course.”

  By late afternoon the place-names grew few. Only hunters lived so far from the Face. Black Cove, Flower Marsh, Sun’s Carpet, the clearing where hunters cured hides, swept past them. The River narrowed; its voice began to rumble. When the world grew dark, they tied the boat to a tree. Terje made a fire from the spark in his oil lantern and cooked the fish. They ate, then slept on the boat under the icy shower of stars.

  The next afternoon they left the forests behind. The River seemed to burrow downward into the stony heart of the world. Where the soft bank had been, steep shining walls of black rock rose high above them. The thunder of water bounced from wall to wall and echoed all around them. Kyreol felt uneasy, but Terje, handling the rudder, his hair wet with spray, was grinning. He swung the bow away from a patch of rocks that had grown abruptly out of the water and Kyreol slid to the bottom of the boat.

  He shouted, “The pole!”

  Lifting her head, she stared down a toothy corridor of rocks. The breath left her; Terje yelled exuberantly. She scrambled to her feet, wielding the pole like a weapon against the black teeth. The bow tilted, and down they went, faster than she had ever gone anywhere, into a froth and roar of water. And suddenly, dancing from rock to rock, there were the rainbows.

  “Oh, Terje!”

  “Rock!”

  “Look at that!”

  “Ow!”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Rock! Sunside!”

  She swung the pole, narrowly missing his head again. It was magic. If she looked ahead, there were no rainbows, just the steep glittering path. If she glanced behind there were rainbows. Everywhere. More than fourteen. A hundred—huge rainbows spanning the river, tiny flames of rainbows spanning the white flow of water between two rocks. They swooped down into a deep pool. The water slowed briefly, and Terje looked behind them, laughing at the airy gateways of color they had come through. Then his head snapped around.

  Something grabbed at the boat from beneath, knocking him to the floor. Kyreol shrieked. Down they went again, the safe green pool only a memory. Terje dove for the rudder. The boat tilted, seemed to hang in midair for a moment, then hit the water with a smack. The fish pot spilled; the oil lamp went overboard. Kyreol’s stomach lurched.

  “Terje—”

  “Rock!”

  There were rocks on all sides. Kyreol pushed against the biggest with all her strength; the boat swung away from it and another mountain of rock grazed their side. She wanted to close her eyes, let the river jostle them, spin them, turn them upside-down and inside-out, and cast them finally into some quiet depth. But Terje was still steering and yelling at her. The boat jumped like a fish over another fall and turned sideways.

  “Push!” Terje gasped. “Push!”

  She pushed the pole against a rock, and the boat turned backwards. She saw the rainbows again, burning in the sunset. Something tore against the underside of the boat. Then the river disappeared again.

  “Terje!” she wailed. The boat shot into midair, spun over, and tossed them out like dolls into deep water.

  She went down and down into a grey, raging storm. The River was the world, and the world was a heaving, whirling force, a wilderness of water. It spat her back into the air before she drowned, and she glimpsed the swift, sudden clouds gathering overhead. A rock loomed in front of her. She groped at it; it slid away under her fingers, and the boiling water dragged her under again. The River seemed huge suddenly, swollen beyond its banks. There was no life in it, no fish, no waterweeds, only its own restless, turbulent life. She reached the surface again. Lightning ripped across the swollen clouds; thunder beat at her ears. The River is angry, she thought, trying to swim, but there seemed no place to swim to. The whole world was water. Am I dreaming? she wondered. Am I dead? Pulling herself to the surface again, she tried to see Terje. But rain was pouring out of the clouds, biting her face, and she dove down under again. A long, mournful Terje! wailed through her. Half-swimming, half-pulled by the strange, dark waters, she felt hopelessly adrift in a new world, a nameless place with no rainbows and no human faces.

  Finally, when nothing seemed to exist at all but night and water, when she felt ready to let the River take her, turn her into a piece of itself, she felt a stone bump her knee. She put her hand down onto mud and rocks, then pulled herself forward onto the shores of the world, into the rain and wild lightning, and fell asleep.

  Someone was shaking her. She lifted her head groggily and spit out a few grains of silt. She put her face down again, wanting to go back to sleep, but the hand shook her again.

  “Kyreol.”

  She opened her eyes, groaning a protest. The sky swam soggily overhead, swollen and grey. A stray raindrop smacked her cheek. The stormy river flooded through her memory, and she sat up abruptly, remembering where she was.

  “Terje…”

  He had moved away from her to the bank; he was gazing downriver. They were on a small, sandy wedge of bank, enclosed by jagged cliffs. The River, spilling down from the Falls, had grown enormous.

  “Terje,” she whispered. He couldn’t have heard her, but he turned. His eyes were wide, startled. Wherever the world ends, they told her silently, it doesn’t end at Fourteen Falls. He came back to her side. His skin was scratched, and his hair was matted with sand on one side where he had lain. She felt her own tangled hair. The seed necklace Korre had made for her was gone. Her clothes were torn, her knees were scraped, and her head felt stuffed. She could see the last of the Falls they had gone over, but in the grey sheen of spray she couldn’t see a single rainbow.

  Rain gusted over them. Terje tugged at her arm; she rose stiffly. They crouched at the cliff edge, shivering.

  “Kyreol,” Terje said. He had to put his face close to hers to be heard over the roar of water. He was shielding her face partway with his arm, but the rain ran like a waterfall down his own face.

  “What?”

  “Who was that hunter?”

  She shook her head bewilderedly. He had come into her life and gone, and because of him they were drowning in a squall on a spit of sand someplace beyond the edge of the world.

  Terje said glumly into her ear, “We lost the boat. I saw it break.”

  “I wish we had the oil lamp.”

  “I wish we had the fishlines.”

  “How do you make fire?”

  He shrugged. “Hunters know. I don’t.”

  She was silent. There were always bits of fire in oil lamps, in clay ovens and cooking pits, on torches…she never had to ask where it came from; it was always there, always burning. If you fed it, it never died, and if yours died, you could ask your neighbor for a piece as big as a thumbnail, and from that tiny flame, you could make fires to warm you for the rest of your life. You could give it away a thousand times and still have it.

  “But where did the first flame come from?” She hardly realized she had spoken aloud until she saw the blood rushing into Terje’s face. At first she thought he was going to shout, he looked that angry. Then his muscles went limp, and he
leaned against the wet cliff, laughing.

  She smiled a little, uncertainly, and touched his cheek with one finger. “Your skin changes colors. Mine never does. Don’t worry. We can make another boat when the sky clears.”

  He stared at her. “For what? We’ll have to walk home.”

  “No, so we can—Don’t you want to know where the river goes? Where the Hunter came from? Terje—”

  He had turned to the cliff and was groping for handholds. “All I want to do,” he said, sighing, “is get out of the rain.”

  The cliffs were bulky, lumpy with handholds. When they were midway to the top, the rain began to pour again, as though the entire world were angry at them. Did we do wrong? Kyreol wondered. Will the River ever be peaceful again? The rocks grew slippery; her arms shook with weariness. She heard thunder, a deep, reproachful voice out of the sky. Finally they reached the top, and as they stood panting, the air dissolved into grey, pounding sheets of rain.

  There were a few trees, another wall of rock in front of them. Terje took Kyreol’s wrist, tugged her forward to shelter beside them. She moved mechanically, wondering if this was what birds felt like in the rain: sodden, cold, and blind. Then Terje, groping at the stones, made a noise. He pulled at her again, and suddenly they were out of the rain.

  It was dim in the cave, but dry. They sank to the ground, huddling against each other. Rain sluiced in a silvery veil over the mouth of the cave. They shivered until their muscles warmed with exertion, and they could finally stop and listen to the sounds of their teeth chattering.

  “Well,” Terje said after a while. “I can make vine traps. When the rain stops. When we reach the forest again, I can hunt.”

  “We can’t cook.”

  “Oh. Well, at least the berries are—”

  “Terje. We can’t just turn around and go home.”

  “Yes, we can. We’ve seen the rainbows. That’s enough.”

  “What about the Hunter? What about my mother?”

  “Your mother.” His face turned away from the rain; she felt his eyes. There was a note of wariness in his voice. “What about your mother?”

  “I think—I think the Hunter knows her.”

  “Kyreol, you’re dreaming!”

  “When I said her name, he grew still. So still. As if he held a secret—”

  “Maybe he is only a hunter—maybe the world is only a little bit bigger than this, and that was his secret: that he hunts beyond the Falls.”

  “I don’t think so,” she whispered. “I think the world is huge. And the River knows it all.”

  The mouth of the cave turned a strange, violent white, and she jumped. Thunder rattled like boulders over their heads. She flung her arms around Terje, hiding her eyes.

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  He hugged her comfortingly. “No. It’s just the sky making noise.”

  “How does it do that? Maybe the winds all blow at the same time and crash into each other—”

  “Maybe.”

  “Or maybe—” The lightning flashed again, seemingly at their feet. There was an odd, tearing sound, just before the thunder pounded at their heads again. Kyreol pushed her hands over her ears, squealing. The air smelled peculiar. Then a gust of wind blew through the cave and she coughed on a more familiar smell.

  She lifted her head. Terje was already at the cave mouth. “Kyreol!” She stumbled to her feet, peered out. A tree, split by the lightning, was burning its heart out in the rain.

  “Fire!”

  They dashed out. The fire was struggling against the rain, but they rescued bits of burning splinters, brought them safely into the cave. Kyreol took one of the wood splinters, searched the cave floor for leaves and twigs, while Terje salvaged what he could of the wet blazing wood. Kyreol coaxed the fire anxiously, blowing on it, feeding it tiny dry chips of wood until Terje came in with torches in both hands and the cave swam with heat and light.

  He didn’t stop until he carried every smoldering branch he could find to the fire. By that time, it was so big it drove them farther into the cave. They sat down then, dirty and streaked with smoke, dazed with warmth. Outside, the rain eased to a steady, constant patter, and the thunder grumbled away into the distance.

  “My bones are getting warm,” Kyreol murmured drowsily. The cave walls were sparkling with star-flecks of light. “We’re the First People, and we discovered fire.”

  Terje grunted. He watched the fire through slitted eyes, looking half-asleep and dreaming. “That’s not how the hunters have to do it. They use a stone that carries fire in it. You strike it, and it sparks. Only first you have to speak to it.”

  “What do you say?”

  “You tell it your name, and why you want the fire. Only special stones do that.”

  “Fire from stone, fire out of the air… I thought the world was made of water, but maybe it’s made of fire.”

  “And wind,” Terje murmured as it blew rain into the cave mouth. He was lying lazily, his body curved around the warmth. He shifted slightly, brushed a pebble from underneath his ribs. “And rocks.”

  “Terje, how old do you think the world is?”

  “Old.”

  “Older than the First People? So that when they came, there was already fire to keep them warm, berries to feed them?” She gazed at the fire, seeing the First People in the flames. “Maybe they found fire like we did, a burning tree in the rain… I wonder why they called it fire. Terje, if you saw fire for the first time, would you call it fire?”

  “No,” he said drowsily, “I’d call it berries.”

  “You would not.”

  “Or fish. I’m hungry.”

  “Terje, where do you think words came from?”

  “It’s easier than drawing a picture every time you want something. Do you want me to listen to you? Or do you want me to go out and look for food?”

  “I want you to find the end of the world with me.”

  “Kyreol—”

  “I want to go so far that I won’t have any more questions. Then I want to come back to the Riverworld. The world is round. The Hunter showed me. So any path I take will lead me home.”

  “The Hunter.” He lifted his head, blinking away his drowsiness. “Kyreol, I think this must be the edge of the world. The Hunter is a dreamer from the Riverworld, like you. Because why would anyone from another world dress like a hunter and pretend to be part of the Riverworld? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  What Terje said made so much sense that Kyreol decided to ignore it. “Well. If you think the world is so small, it will be easy for us to find the end of it. Then we can go back. Will you come?” He was silent; she looked at him but his eyes were turned away from her toward the fire. “Terje,” she pleaded softly. “I had a betrothal dream. In it I said goodbye to everyone.”

  “Kyreol—”

  “Please don’t make me go alone.”

  He met her eyes, then. He stretched out his hand, and she reached for it, held it, as she had done years ago when they were children, before she grew so tall. “I don’t want you to leave the Riverworld like your mother and not come back,” he said gruffly. “I always want to know where you are. You make me see things.”

  “Terje, how do dreams know?”

  He made a shape in the air with his free hand, against the fire and darkness. “Everything is one piece. Even dreams.”

  “Then,” she said, trusting him, “there’s no need to be afraid.”

  He didn’t answer. He loosed his hand after a moment and got to his feet. “I’ll find some berries,” he said. “Watch the fire.” At the cave mouth he turned, gazed at it again, reluctant to leave it, remembering the cold. Kyreol said, “Don’t worry,” and he went out into the rain.

  Kyreol stirred stiffly, pulled a twig from the fire. Not all the wishes in the world would keep it going; now that they had light, she could search more carefully for wood. The cave was deeper than she expected. She walked toward the shadows in the back. They parted, revealing not
a cave wall, but a curve in the wall leading into more shadows. She hesitated, forgetting the wood, then went down the passage.

  The ground was soft, chilly underfoot. There was no sound but her breathing. She walked slowly, peering forward at the tiny ring of light until she realized that a mystery lay not at the edge of the light but all around her on the walls.

  She stopped, her breath catching. She raised the light, and a strange animal painted red stared back at her. She moved the light. The sun, the moon, a pattern of stars. Another animal, big, lumbering, with strange teeth. A face painted gold, with an unfamiliar pattern of markings on it. Stick figures fishing in the river, hunting animals. A cliff full of eyes and mouths… No. Windows and doors. A village inside the cliffs…

  Her skin prickled as if a hot wind had blown over her. She said, “Terje,” and her voice came tiny and faraway, as if she had spoken in a dream. The paintings grew larger, more elaborate. A man with a fish’s head arched over her, his toes on the bottom of one wall, his fingertips touching the bottom of the other. A woman with a sun-head. A huge blue bird, wing-tips spanning the walls. How far the passage went, what lay at its end, she didn’t know.

  People. The word gusted through her like a wind. People not of the Riverworld, who wore strange signs on their faces, different clothing. They had painted the walls and gone away, leaving no footprints, nothing, no one to say why the paintings were there.

  “As if,” Kyreol whispered, “someone a long time from now walked into the betrothal cave; all she would see is gold hands. A waterfall, a cave, and the gold hands… She’d have to tell herself a story…” She heard her voice chattering, but she couldn’t stop. “The animals are different. They drew the Falls with the rainbows. The River goes on and on, but they never saw the Face… There’s no story in the Riverworld to explain the paintings. The Hunter wasn’t dreaming. The Riverworld is a tiny dream inside the huge world.”

  The fire ate her twig, began to nibble at her fingers. She turned abruptly, ran back through the silent passageway. “Terje! Terje!”