Southshore

by Sheri S. Tepper

  In all that time, she had not seen the fliers. In all that time, she had almost forgotten them.

  In the morning she could forget them completely, for she would be on the River once more, where they could not follow. Westward. To the end of this land, if it had an end. Then south. And if it had no end, then northward once more. Back to Northshore. She had a plentiful supply of dried fruit stored in canvas-sacks, an almost equal supply of sun-dried lizard meat. The last two days she had spent digging edible roots, which lay in well-washed succulence among the other provisions. She had raveled some rope to make a fishing line and curved some fragwood hooks. Even if the strangeys had forsaken her, she should be able to manage. She would not be out of sight of land unless she came to the end of this land and turned north or south once more.

  So she built her small, smokeless fire under cover of the rocks, ate fresh fruits and roots, freshly roasted meat, curled into sleep in satisfied exhaustion. There would be plenty of time to rest on the River.

  During the night there was a tidal surge which washed the canvas-girdled Cheevle half back onto the shore. Medoor Babji, wanting an early start, was on the beach when the sun had barely risen, struggling to get the boat back into the water. Its canvas bottom did not wish to slide on the rough sand, and she swore at it fruitlessly, knowing she would need rollers to get it moving, which meant another day before she could leave.

  The screech that came from behind turned her around, bent her backward over the Cheevle as though to protect it, before she even saw the fusty, raddled form of the flier stalking toward her over the sand. It carried a leaf-wrapped bundle in one set of rudimentary wing fingers. Without asking or being told, Medoor Babji knew they were Tears.

  ‘So, human,’ said Esspill. ‘You tried to trick us.’ It cawed laughter. ‘You did trick stupid Talker. He went that way, long ago. Looking for you.’

  ‘You weren’t tricked?’ she asked from a dry throat, the words croaked almost in the flier’s own harsh tone.

  Esspill shook her head, a mockery of human gesture. ‘Oh, no. Was no meat in those fires. No bones. No reason for them.’

  ‘You’re very smart,’ she gasped. ‘Smarter than I thought.’

  ‘Oh, fliers are smart. Smarter than Talkers think. Talkers think … think they are only smart ones. All words. No faith.’

  ‘Faith?’ She edged to one side, trying to get the boat between her and the flier.

  ‘Stand still,’ it commanded. ‘Don’t try to run. Tears won’t hurt much. After that, humans don’t feel.’ It clacked its jaw several times, salivating onto its own feet, doing a little skipping dance to wipe the feet dry.

  ‘Faith?’ asked Medoor Babji again, thinking furiously. ’What do you mean, faith?’

  ‘No faith in Promise of Potipur. Potipur says breed, grow, have plenty. Talkers say not breed, not grow, live on filth. Now Thraish have herdbeasts again. Soon have many. Then all humans will die. No more filth. No more horgha sloos.’

  ‘But if you breed, your numbers will grow, and you’ll eat all your animals and go hungry again.’

  ‘Promise of Potipur,’ it said stubbornly. ‘Promise. You hold still now. For Tears.’

  ‘Tears don’t work on the Noor,’ she cried. ‘They don’t work on blackskins.’

  The fliers stopped, beak agape. ‘Noor. You are Noor?’

  ‘I am, yes. Medoor Babji. One of the Noor.’

  ‘No. Dark from the sun. Humans turn dark from sun.’

  ‘I am not dark from the sun, Esspill. I was born dark. Look at my hair. The Tears won’t work on the Noor. It won’t grow inside us.’

  ‘Try,’ the flier snarled. ‘Try anyhow.’

  She edged away again, feeling in her sleeve pocket for her knife. ‘I’ll fight,’ she threatened. ‘I may kill you.’

  ‘Fight!’ it commanded. ‘Do that!’

  Wings out, claw fingers stretched wide, talons lifted, beak fully extended, Esspill launched herself at Medoor, who dived in a long, flat dive into the River. It was instinct, not reason. It was the best thing she could have done. She came up in the water, clinging to the bowline of the Cheevle, began tugging at it, frantically working the boat into the water beside her. On the shore the flier danced up and down, pulling the boat away from her, screaming its rage.

  Then it was gargling, its beak wide, eyes bulging. A long wooden shaft protruded from the flier’s breast. She turned around, staring. Through the rocky arms that embraced the bay came another boat, no larger than the Cheevle. In it sat a man. In it stood a … a flier? Not a flier? Something very like, and yet not?

  It had a bow in its wing fingers, an arrow nocked, the arrow pointed at the shore where Esspill still staggered to and fro, falling at last in a shower of dark blood onto the sand.

  ‘Hello?’ called the person. ‘We saw your smoke. We’ve been looking for you for over a week.’

  ‘Thraish,’ cried the other, drumming his keeled breast with his wing fingers to make a hollow thumping. ‘I have killed a Thraish.’ Thumpy-thump, delight in that voice. ‘Look, Burg, I’ve killed a Thraish!’ It turned toward Medoor Babji, bowing. ‘Happy day, woman. I have saved you.’

  ‘We’re called the Treeci,’ he told her, working the sculling oar as they moved down the coast, westward, the Cheevle in tow. ‘Have you heard of us?’

  ‘I have,’ she admitted. ‘There are Treeci on a place called Strinder’s Isle.’

  ‘Oh, there are Treeci on half the islands in the River,’ he said, making an expression that was very smilelike with a cock of head and flirt of eyes.

  ‘That’s possibly an exaggeration,’ said the human person. He was a stout, elderly man with white hair that blew around his head like fluff.

  ‘Possibly. Or possibly an understatement, so far as that goes. What was that Thraish trying to do to you, eat you?’ The Treeci turned to Medoor Babji once more.

  ‘She had Tears of Viranel wrapped up in a leaf. She wanted to put them on me and then eat me. Tears don’t work on the Noor, though. Our skins are too dark.’

  ‘I’ve heard that. Had you heard that, Burg?’

  ‘Oh, it’s probably written down somewhere. In the archives over on Bustleby. It’s probably written down there.’

  ‘You know about the Noor?’

  ‘We have histories, young lady,’ said Burg. ‘We aren’t savages. We’re literate, human and Treeci both.’

  ‘But where – where did you come from?’

  ‘The same place you did, originally. Probably for the same reason. Trying to get away from the senseless conflict over there.’ He jerked a thumb to the north. ‘Long ago. At the time of the Thraish-human wars. They were eating humans then. It’s a wonder they haven’t eaten them all by now.’

  Medoor Babji shook her head. ‘No. No, we have a – they have what my mother calls a detente. An agreement. They eat dead people. Northshore dead people, not Noor dead people.’

  The Treeci spat. ‘Carrion eaters,’ he gasped. ‘So I have heard, but I find it hard to believe, Medoor Babji.’

  ‘Oh, come, Saleff, the Thraish were eating human dead during the wars. You know that.’

  ‘Out of desperation, yes, but …’

  ‘I presume they are no less desperate now.’

  ‘They could do what we did.’

  ‘We’ve talked about this a thousand times,’ the human said irritably. ‘The ones who could do what you did, did what you did. The ones who were left couldn’t do it. They had offspring who also couldn’t do it. The Thraish could no more eat fish and become flightless today than they could become sweet-natured and stop shitting all over their living space. It’s called selective breeding, and they’ve done it.’

  It was only argument, not even addressed to Medoor Babji, but the words rang inside her, setting up strange reverberations. Why? Something fled across her mind, trailing a scent of mystery and marvel. What? She tried to follow it, but it eluded her. She concentrated. Nothing. At least she would remember the words. Selective breeding. Those who c
ould do it, did it. She would think about those words later.

  ‘You know all about them?’ Medoor Babji asked. ‘How do you know all that?’

  ‘Oh, some of us human islanders sneak back to Northshore every now and then. Young ones of us, boys with time on their hands and adventure in their blood. Some of them go and never return, some go and come back, enough to give us an idea what’s going on. One of the more recent returnees was a slave for the Thraish for five years.’

  ‘And they didn’t eat him?’

  ‘Would have, I suppose. He didn’t give them a chance.’ Burg spoke proudly, almost boasting. ‘My son.’

  Silence fell, except for the sloshing of the sculling oar. After a time, Medoor Babji asked, ‘You came to find my smoke?’

  ‘You could have been one of ours,’ said Burg. ‘Lost. We use smoke signals. It looked like that, one fire each day for three days. We do that sometimes. Or sometimes three fires all at once.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Down to Isle Point. West end of the island. You can look across the straits to the chain from there.’

  ‘Who lives there?’

  ‘Treeci, mostly. About a dozen humans, too. Most of our folk are down the chain, on Biddle Island, and Jake’s.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘A few thousand in this chain. The islands aren’t that big. We have to spread out. Otherwise we’d overfish the River, kill off all the edible animals, the way the Thraish did during the hunger.’

  ‘What edible animals?’

  ‘The ones there aren’t any more of on Northshore, girlie. Did you ever see an espot? Or a dingle? Little furry things? ’Course not. Thraish ate ’em all. They’re extinct on Northshore. From what I understand, you’ve no mammals left at all on Northshore.’

  ‘That flier, Esspill, she said they had herdbeasts again. I didn’t know what she meant.’

  The white-haired man pulled in his oar and stared at her, mouth working. ‘Is that possible?’

  ‘A few might have survived,’ the Treeci responded. ‘Somewhere. Perhaps behind the Teeth.’

  ‘If they have herdbeasts again, it’s the end of humans on Northshore,’ the man snarled. ‘You can depend on it. The Thraish will kill them all.’

  Medoor Babji shook her head at him. ‘I don’t think the humans would let them do that,’ she said. ‘I think it might be the Thraish who would end up dead.’

  ‘Hush,’ said the Treeci. ‘Don’t upset yourself, Burg.

  Northshore is none of our business. Don’t we always say that, generation on generation? Northshore isn’t our business.’

  ‘How about Southshore?’ Medoor Babji asked. ‘That’s what we were looking for.’

  ‘Over there,’ said Burg laconically, pointing over his shoulder. ‘That way. About a month’s travel or more.’

  ‘It’s really there?’

  ‘Was the last time we looked. Bersdof’s kids sailed there last year, just for the hell of it.’

  ‘Is it empty, Burg? Is there room there for the Noor?’

  ‘Room for the Noor and anybody else, far’s I know. Nothing there but animals and plants. No human grain over there, though. You’d have to plant that.’

  ‘Why? Why is it just sitting there? Why hasn’t anyone gone there?’ She tried to imagine an empty land, one without Jondarites. It was impossible.

  ‘Well, those of us who fled with the Treeci landed here on the island chain first. Seeing what the Thraish had made of their world, we took it as kind of a religious thing to behave differently. We don’t expand much. Small societies in small places. Closeness. That’s why we haven’t gone to Southshore. As for other people, I don’t know. Maybe the place was just waiting for the Noor.’

  The Treeci Saleff interrupted them with a long-drawn-out hooting call. There was a response in kind from the shore. ‘There’s Isle Point,’ he said, turning to her with his cocked-head smile. She looked shoreward to see the water moving around the end of the island, and a little way westward another island, the long line of land broken only by this narrow strait. A village gathered itself beneath the trees, small wooden houses, curling smoke. A mixed group of humans and Treeci stood on the shore, old and young.

  ‘Will you be my guest?’ Saleff asked. ‘Burg would ask you, I know, but he has a houseful just now. New grandchild.’

  Medoor Babji bowed as best she could in the tilting boat. ‘I would be hònored, Saleff.’

  ‘You’ll be better off,’ Burg snorted. ‘Saleff’s mama -Sterf, her name is – she’s a finer cook than my wife is, that’s honest.’

  ‘My mother will welcome you. As will my nest sister and the young siblings.’

  Medoor Babji bowed again. She was already lost. She had already told them about her need to find the Gift. It would seem rude and ungrateful to mention it again so soon. And yet their invitation had had an air of complacency about it, as though there could be no refusal nor any limit to her stay. She cast a quick look at the horizon. Where was Thrasne? And her people? She swallowed, smoothed the lines out of her forehead, and set herself to be pleasant. The boat was rapidly approaching the shore, and half a dozen people of various kinds were wading out to meet her.

  * * *

  Blint told me once there are fliers who can talk, or at least that some people say they can. At first this seemed a silly thing to believe, but as I got to thinking about it, I wondered if it wasn’t sillier to believe that talk was something only men could do. I’ve heard the strangeys calling, and the sounds they make are so large and complicated they must be words of some terrible, wonderful kind. But the sounds the fliers make, if those are words, they are short words and hard words. And I wish I’d heard the Treeci talk, those Pamra spoke of, for if they can talk, then surely the fliers can, too, and all we’ve thought about them for all our lives must be lies.

  It would be interesting to talk with fliers, and strangeys. Except their words may not mean what our words mean at all, and it would be worse to misunderstand them than to just have them a mystery.

  From Thrasne’s book

  19

  At Isle Point, the house of Saleff squatted beneath a grove of stout trees with ruddy-amber leaves that filtered golden light into the rooms and onto the many porches where Saleff’s kin moved about like orderly ghosts. Medoor Babji was at first amused by and then solicitous of the silence.

  ‘We have a habit of quiet,’ Salef’s mother, Sterf, told her. ‘Originally adopted, I’m sure, out of rebellion against the cacophony of the Thraish. Later it became our own, particularly satisfying trait. The children tend to be a bit loud, of course, and must learn to go into the woods or out on a boat if they wish to shout or yodel or whatever it is they do.’

  There were three children in the house, three young ones, at first alike as puncon fruit in Medoor’s eyes, each then acquiring a mysterious individuality that she found difficult to define. Mintel was the serious one, the quietest. Cimmy was graceful, with a lovely voice. Taneff was the most delightful, curious, always present, full of whispered questions, ready to run quick errands, even without being asked. The three soon named her Cindianda, which meant in their language, they said, ‘little dark human person.’ Medoor Babji thought they might be fibbing to her, that the name might mean something very disrespectful, though Sterf assured her not.

  ‘How old are they?’ she asked, watching them cross the clearing with amazement. They moved like darting dancers, lithe as windblown grass.

  ‘Oh, just fifteen,’ Sterf said, a little wrinkle coming between the large orbs of her eyes. It was one of the things that made Treeci so like humans, the way their faces wrinkled around the eyes. If one looked only at the eyes, not at the flat, flexible horn of their beaks, they could have been humans in disguise, got up for some festival or other. ‘Just fifteen.’ There was something vaguely disquieting in her tone, and Medoor Babji thought back to everything Pamra had told her about the Treeci. Hadn’t there been something? She shook her head, unable to remember. During th
at time Pamra Don and Medoor Babji had known one another – a misnomer of sorts, Medoor felt, since she did not feel she knew Pamra Don at all – Medoor had been so busy wondering what it was about Pamra that held Thrasne in such thrall she had paid too little attention to what Pamra had said.

  ‘Trial and error,’ she murmured to herself, being contrite. When Queen Fibji learned how many times Medoor Babji had remembered that particular lesson on this trip, she would no doubt be greatly gratified.

  Also in the house was the mother of the young ones, Arbsen, who was also Sterf’s daughter and Saleff’s nest sister. Of them all, Arbsen was the most silent, the most withdrawn. Some days she sat on one of the porches, her eyes following the children, broodingly intent. Other days went by during which Medoor Babji did not see her at all. She seemed to spend a great deal of time shut up in her own room at the top of the house, carving things. They were not Thrasne kinds of things, not definable images, but rather strange, winding shapes which seemed to lead from the current and ordinary into realms of difference, strangeness. Several of these articles decorated the walls of the house, and seeing them, Medoor Babji thought of Jarb Houses, wondering if the Treeci had such things. ‘Though I don’t suppose Treeci ever go mad,’ she commented.

  ‘Of course we do,’ said Saleff, amused. ‘We are in all respects civilized.’

  ‘You mean primitives don’t go mad?’

  ‘I mean they don’t consider it madness. They would probably consider it being possessed by the gods, or in thrall to ghosts. Something of that kind.’

  ‘How do you know all this? You’ve never seen a primitive.’

  It came out as more of a challenge than she had intended, but Saleff did not take offense. ‘The humans have books, Medoor Babji. There is a printing press on Shabber’s Island. There are archives on Bustleby. There are men on Jake’s Island who spend all their time collecting information and writing things down. During the hunger – that is, the period before and during the Thraish-human wars after the weehar were all gone – the humans who came here brought many things with them. Books. Musical instruments. Equipment for laboratories where they make medicines. It was part of the reason they came, to preserve their knowledge. The humans called what was happening on Northshore a “new dark age.” You understand that? We have learned from men, but we have also taught them. It has been an equitable exchange.’