by Greg Keyes
“Before you could feel his coldness, his hunger,” Perkar explained. “Now…”
“Now it feels like something living,” Ngangata finished for him.
Perkar nodded and shuffled his feet on the narrow stone beach, suddenly nervous. Nevertheless, he reached into a small sack at his waist and produced a handful of flower petals, which he sprinkled into the quieter eddies near shore. He cleared his throat and sang—tentatively, but gradually with more confidence and volume:
“Stream Goddess I
Long hair curling down from the hills
Long arms reaching down the valley
Reposing in my watery dwelling
On and on go I
In the same manner, from year to year…”
Perkar sang on, the song of the Stream Goddess as she had taught it to his father’s father, many years past. When he had sung it before, it had been to a quiet stream in his clan’s pasture, a little stream he could almost leap across. Here, the crash of the rapids almost seemed to add a rhythm to his words, and then new words entirely, so that seamlessly, he was singing verses to the Song of the Stream Goddess that had never been before. And then, almost without him noticing, he was not singing at all, but the song continued, and from the nearest eddy, a head rose, long black hair swirling in the agitated water, ancient, amber eyes in the face of a young woman gazing up at them with what appeared to be humor.
“… then came a mortal man,” she sang.
“His mother named him for the oak
For the spot where his caul was buried
In the very place I flowed
He grew like a weed
And he came to love me—”
Perkar stood, more and more embarrassed as the song continued, but by now it was a story they all knew. She sang of his foolishness, she sang of her anger, she sang of death. But in the end she finished:
“On and on go I
But not the same now, year to year.
The Old Man eats me not
No longer quickens he with my pain
By foolishness I was saved
By the love of mortal man I was redeemed
And on and on go I
Each year better than the last
No winter cold to eat me
Each season a different-colored spring.”
And as she sang her final verse, she rose up, more magnificent than he had ever seen her, and Perkar’s knees quaked, and without even thinking he knelt.
She approached and ran her fingers playfully through his hair.
“Stand up, silly thing,” she admonished. “We have been more familiar than this.”
“Yes,” he began, “but…” He shrugged helplessly but then met her eyes. “I don’t deserve this, to be part of your song.”
She laughed, the same silvery music he had heard for the first time what seemed like centuries ago. “Deserving has nothing to do with it,” she replied. “The Changeling is part of my song, and his name never deserved to be sung. But that is how the songs of gods and goddesses must be. You are a part of my story, Perkar, a part I cherish. After all, it was your love that ended my pain and gave me this.” She swept her arms wide, indicating the joyful crash of the water.
He kept his gaze frankly on hers. “Long ago, you told me not to be a boy, dreaming of the impossible. But I loved you so much, and I was so stupid. I would have done anything for you—save to heed your warnings. But this thing I have finally accomplished—in your song you say that my love saved you. But I must tell you truthfully, Goddess, I did not do all of this for love of you.”
She smiled even wider and swept her gaze across Ngangata, Tsem, Yuu’han, and Hezhi.
“He is such a silly thing sometimes, is he not?” She sighed. She turned back to him, her look one of mock despair. Then she gestured to Hezhi.
Tentatively Hezhi stepped forward. The Stream Goddess was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. Even though she had thought she understood Perkar, she suddenly realized that she had not. She knew, intellectually, that much of what he had done had been motivated by a love for this goddess, but to actually see her, hear her voice, made it all different. Hezhi’s heart seemed to sag in her chest, as she remembered her own shadowed, ungainly outline on the floor in “Sheldu’s” damakuta. Regardless, she approached the goddess and was faintly astonished when the strange woman reached and took her hand. The skin of the goddess was cool and damp, but otherwise felt Human enough.
She was even more astonished when the goddess squeezed her hand and then placed it in Perkar’s.
“I never said it was love for me that ended the Changeling and set me free,” the goddess explained. “Only the love of a mortal man. Your love for your people, Perkar, your love for these companions, and your love for this girl. Those are the loves of a man, sweet thing, and those are what set me free.”
“I love you, too,” Perkar answered.
“Of course you do. How could you not? But you understand now what I told you so long ago.”
“I think so. I no longer dream of you somehow becoming my wife, if that is what you mean.”
She only smiled at him and then turned back to Hezhi. “Child, I have a gift for you.”
“For me?”
A second column of water rose and became something dimmer, more ghostlike than the very real goddess; but it congealed into a recognizable form nevertheless.
“Ghan!” Hezhi cried.
“More or less,” the apparition said curtly—but more than a hint of a smile graced his usually severe features. “Changed but not changed. When you chew up a piece of meat and spit the gristle out—I think I must be mostly gristle.”
“Ghan!” She was weeping again, though she thought that by now she would have no salt or water left in her body.
“Hush, child. You know how I despise such displays.”
“Do you?” Hezhi answered, wiping the lachryma from her cheeks. “I read your letter, the one you sent by the Mang. The one in which you said you loved me, that I was like the daughter—”
“Yes, yes,” he replied testily. “Old men sometimes write maudlin things.” He softened. “And I probably meant them.”
“What will become of the library?” Hezhi asked. And then, in a blinding flash of insight, “Of Nhol?”
Ghan shrugged. “The library was my life, but I’m oddly glad now that I did not spend my last days in it. The books remain, and there is always someone. Someone like you and me, at least every generation or two. They will wait, just as they did for you. As for Nhol, who knows?”
“They will not worship me,” the goddess said. “I will not have it. It causes me more pain than pleasure. But I will not harm them, though it is a city that he built. Human Beings are able to change; that is the most—perhaps the only—wonderful thing about your kind. They will be as happy or happier without the River as they were with their god, given time.”
Ghan smiled. “It will be an interesting time, these next few years. I intend to observe them.”
“Observe?”
“The goddess has graciously consented to take this that remains of me downstream with her.”
The goddess nodded confirmation. “Unlike the Changeling, I have no desire to flow through a sterile land. I am more comfortable with neighbors, frog gods, heron lords, swampmasters. Perhaps your old teacher can take up residence in one of the many vacant places—a stream, a field, a mountain. I will invite others, too.”
“And who…” Perkar frowned and began again. “What of the stream that you inhabited of old?”
“Ah, that,” she said. “That is already taken care of; a new goddess lives there. Give her flowers as you did me.” She smiled oddly, a bit mysteriously, with some sadness, and came closer to him, speaking very softly. “Farewell, love. I have become large indeed, and it is a new thing. I have not yet flowed my length, and part of him still lives, though I slay more of him each instant. But it may be that when I have attained my length I will drowse for a time, and when I waken
it may be to your great-grandchildren rather than you. I may never speak to you like this again. But of all mortals I have loved, you were both the sweetest and the most worrisome. You made me less a goddess and more Human than you will ever know. Farewell.” She stepped farther from him.
“Good-bye, Goddess,” he answered, trying unsuccessfully to keep his voice from shaking.
“Fare you well, Hezhi,” Ghan said, as the two of them began to collapse back into the water they were formed of. “Perhaps you will burn incense for me someday.”
Then he and the goddess were gone. The five mortals silently watched the bright play of the river for a time, before Tsem cleared his throat.
“Ah…” he began.
“Yes, Tsem?” Hezhi asked.
“Do you think it would be, ah… disrespectful if we were to take a bath, you know—here?”
Perkar, oddly enough, was the first to start laughing. It was more joyful than their nervous tittering back in Erikwer, almost exuberant.
“I could use a bath,” he replied, when he could. “I’m all for that, and I don’t think she would mind at all.”
They did bathe, then, and climbed back up, and afterward Perkar and Ngangata hunted, returning with a small antelope. They set it to roasting on the flame that Yuu’han, Hezhi, and Tsem had built in their absence. They cooked the meat, and later, licking the grease from their fingers, they watched the sun go down.
“Well, what now?” Tsem sighed. “What do we do now?”
“Now,” Perkar said, “we go back to my people. We tell them about the new bargain with the Forest Lord, about the new valleys he has opened for colonization.”
“That will end the war?” Yuu’han asked a little harshly.
Perkar turned a concerned gaze on the Mang. “I know a lot of your people have died,” he said softly. “Saying I’m sorry means nothing, I know.”
“They were warriors,” he responded. “They chose their deaths. But I have to know, after all of this, after aiding you even against my own, that it was worth it.”
“It was worth it,” Ngangata answered. “The war will end. Perkar’s people talk a lot about fighting and glory, but they would actually much rather tend their cows in peace. In the lands they have taken from your people, they would never know peace.”
“That is true,” Yuu’han conceded. “We would fight for the plains our horses graze upon until none of us were left alive.”
“And we know that,” Perkar assured him. “Only desperation drove my people to attack yours. Now they can settle peacefully in lands that are more suited to cattle, anyway. You can return to your folk and tell them the war will end, my friend.”
“That pleases me. It would please my uncle, as well.”
“Your uncle was a good man, a great man,” Perkar said. “I’m sorry for what happened to him.”
Yuu’han smiled faintly. “He knew he would die. He knew that he would die as soon as he left his island. He had a vision.”
“Then why…” Hezhi began.
“He was old, but he was still a man,” Yuu’han explained. “Still Mang. If he had lived much longer, he might have lost that, might have become another pack for his clan to carry about with them. We would have done that, for he was dear to us. But he would have hated it. He saw a path that would bring his death, but also much glory, many songs.”
“Piraku,” Perkar said.
“As you call it. He died quickly, with little pain, but valiantly. And he cared about you all, was willing to give his life.” He looked uncomfortable. “As was I. I only ask that you remember where he died, honor his spirit now and then.”
“I don’t think we will soon forget Erikwer,” Ngangata replied. “And I’m certain your uncle will soon wear other clothes; perhaps those of a stallion or a hawk.”
“It may be. Or perhaps he roams with his old mount, Firehoof, in the plains of the Ghostland. Either way, I’m sure he is just the same as he was, a noisy, perverse old man.”
“Almost certainly.”
“In any event, we will remember him,” Perkar promised, “and I will send him plenty of woti and beer, wherever he dwells now. Starting when we get home, and I have something to send him. You will join me in some woti, I hope. In a toast to him.”
“I think I will return along the river,” Yuu’han said, shaking his head. “It will be quicker and easier than traveling through the mountains, and now the Changeling is… friendlier.”
“When will you leave?”
“In the morning, I think.”
“That will be a long journey alone,” Ngangata said.
Yuu’han shrugged. “I will not be alone. My cousin will be with me.” He jerked his head toward his mount, Huu’yen.
“Of course. But we will miss you,” Perkar said.
“And I all of you.”
They talked a bit longer, of inconsequential things, watching the red-eyed Fire Goddess in her hearth of stones, and one by one they fell asleep, and though Ngangata stood sentinel, even he was blissfully snoring when the new morning dawned.
EPILOGUE
A Different-Colored Spring
The warm vapor of black woti carried up into Perkar’s nostrils, a delicious scent. The promise of its taste tugged powerfully at him, pulling him back across the years to his first sip of the dark, warm drink, and for an instant he felt anew everything he had known then: pride, joy, love, and above all, hope. The promise that his life had just begun, that the great fields of the world were stretched out before him. Had the sunlight really ever seemed so golden, so untarnished?
That had been only five years ago. This was the fifth anniversary of his manhood rite, of the day when his father had trounced him so soundly before his whole family, when he had been given his first sword.
“Drink it, son,” his father exhorted. “You have been home for more than a year; time enough has passed. Put away your mourning and drink.”
Perkar hesitated, still. The smell was so fine. What had he told Karak, a year and some months ago? You have made me like a ghost, able to appreciate only the smell, never the taste…
Something like that. He smiled thinly, raised the cup to his father. He had never thought of Sherye as old before, but he seemed old now. In the two years Perkar had been gone, his sire looked as if he had aged ten. His hair was more than half gray, his eyes compassed by seams of pain and worry.
“To your Piraku, Father,” Perkar said. He lifted the small cup and drank. The wine seemed to rush into his head, filling it with smoke and honey before it burned its way, pleasantly, to his belly.
“To your Piraku, my son,” his father answered, and drank his own. The older man then poured them both another cup.
“Perhaps I am flesh again now,” Perkar murmured, and this time when he smiled, it felt more genuine.
“What do you mean?” his father asked.
“Nothing.” Perkar shook his head. “Something best forgotten.”
Sherye measured him with iron-gray eyes and smiled ruefully. “My son goes away and returns with a mouthful of cryptic remarks. But at least he returns. And today he is a man for five years.” He raised the second cup in salute. Together they drank.
The warmth from the first cup was beginning to reach into Perkar’s blood, and finally he felt his shoulders begin to relax. He sagged back a bit on his pillow. They sat alone, his father and he, in the banquet hall of the damakuta where Perkar had been born. Only a handful of candles burnished the walls of polished red cedar, while above, the steep pitch of the ceiling climbed into darkness. The low table before them held only the bowl of hot water, the pitcher of woti it warmed, and their cups.
“I feel that I have been a man for only a year,” Perkar admitted. “Two at best. I don’t know. I only know that I was not a man when I set out with the Kapaka.”
Sherye barked out a short, harsh laugh as he poured yet more woti. “We are never men when we say we are, son—it’s only later, when we question our worth, that we stand some chance of find
ing it.” He tossed down the third cup, waited for Perkar to do likewise, and then poured a fourth.
“You intend for us to get drunk tonight, don’t you, Father?” Perkar asked, already beginning to feel somewhat light-headed.
“Very drunk,” his father conceded. “Very.”
Six drinks later they were well on their way. Perkar felt his face numbing and softening, and to his horror, tears welled behind his eyes. In his months of self-enforced temperance, he had forgotten the power of woti to draw out the hidden, to release things best bound—to make hardened men bawl like mouseling infants.
His father swayed back and forth when he next spoke, the rustling of his rust-and-black quilted robe the only other sound.
“When will you take the land, son? When will you build your own home? Your younger brother—Henyi—is already gone four months.”
Perkar bit his lip. He had tried to remain silent on this issue, keep it in. But suddenly he felt the words bolt past his lips like a willful steed.
“When all have chosen,” he cried, louder than he wished. “When all whom I wronged have picked the choicest land for pasture. Then I will go.”
His father waved his hand impatiently. “Many whom you wronged are dead.”
“Their children, then.”
“How many generations will you pay, my son? You have redressed your misdeeds—stopped the war with the Mang and haggled new land for the Cattle Folk. Truth to tell, none of us would have known your blame, had you not returned to tell us of what happened. Yours is not the first expedition to go into Balat and not return.”
“Yes,” Perkar said. “I have heard some accused the Alwat—Akera and his brothers even went to hunt them.”
“And found none,” his father pointed out. “No harm was done.”
It seemed to Perkar that harm had been done, if the reputation of the Alwat had been further blemished. And even though the truth of the matter was now widely known, men like Akera would still count the imaginary grudge in a tally against the Alwat. Thus truth was the servant of desire. But the blame against the Alwat was not the worst distortion. “The most embarrassing thing is the way people treat me,” Perkar muttered.
