* * *
Jack, Torrey, Ben Weber, and Catania knelt together in hemlocks, and looked out through the trees' foliage and a curtain of vine into the clearing. It seeming so bright with sunlight after their days in dark woods. They'd left the other Trappers waiting back by the sleds, their bows strung, arrows nocked.
The girl still stood naked in chill air by the little creek—only she hummed her song, now, instead of singing it. Jack and the others knelt silent, watching as she stooped to pick up a carved-wood comb from a bundle of folded cloth.
The men watched the girl comb out her hair, her heavy breasts swaying with the motion of her arm. As they watched, Catania watched them, and listened to the green girl's humming.
Torrey leaned over and murmured in Jack's ear. "Well, are we going to talk to her, or go on by?"
Jack didn't turn his head. "Why is she alone?"
"Why not?" Ben Weber whispered. "What does she have to be afraid of, in all this forest shit?"
"Maybe us," Jack said.
Catania stood and went quietly back into the forest. Jack supposed she might be angry with him for watching the girl so long, a girl who seemed to be a gift for any harsh passer-by.
But in a few moments, they heard Catania begin to sing at a distance among the trees. She was singing the song the girl had sung, singing the melody ... mimicking the odd words. "Mazy doze ... dozy dose…."
The girl in the clearing started in surprise. She dropped her comb and cowered, hands over her mouth, staring into the greenwood where Catania sang. "An liddel lams be ivy...."
Jack and the others saw the vine curtain shake as Catania pulled a tangle aside and walked into the clearing. She was naked, except for her moccasin-boots. She'd taken off her buckskin shirt, her breastband, and hide trousers, and left her weapons in the woods.
The painted girl stared at Catania and scuttled backward on all fours, her breasts jiggling, her mouth an "O" of fear.
Catania held up open hands. "Now, little lady," she said, "—don't be frightened."
The girl moaned, frightened perhaps by the ugly scar down Catania's cheek, the hunting scars and fresh battle scars on her body.
"Now listen to me—do you speak book-English?" Catania smiled. "I won't hurt you. I have friends with me, and they won't hurt you either.... Aren't you cold without your clothes on? I am."
The painted girl seemed about to scream, and stared at Catania as if she held a drawn bow.
"Oh, for the Weather's sake!" Catania kept smiling, trying to be patient.... Then slowly stopped smiling. She had noticed something. While the girl crouched staring at her, red round mouth open, shoulders trembling so those ridiculous breasts shook like deer-foot jelly ... all that while, her bright brown eyes were watching Catania as calmly, as coldly as a wolverine's. Not frightened. Not frightened at all.
Then it was Catania who began to be afraid. The clearing seemed too sunny, too thick with southern air. She stood thinking what she should say to this little pretender with her fear-filled face and wolverine eyes. Bits of gold hung shining between the girl's breasts.
Catania walked over to the green girl, bent, gripped her by the arm, and hauled her to her feet. "You fat little bitch," she said, "—I'm afraid, and you're not. So what's your secret?"
Someone laughed, high over their heads. "Wise woman!" said a voice from the air.
All around the clearing, the tangled vines and foliage began to shake, the green draperies swaying in sudden folds. Catania looked up to see men coming down from the trees.
Jack and the others had gotten to their feet when Catania went to the girl, Jack holding a branch aside with his left hand, balancing his lance in his right.
When the laughing voice came from high in the trees, he'd turned and shoved Ben Weber hard. "Run! Get back to the others!"
Jack counted a hundred men—more than a hundred—sliding, scrambling down vines into the clearing, foliage falling away so woven netting showed beneath. The men were stocky, light-haired, and pale where skin showed below the sleeves and hems of short green robes of woven cloth. The hair was shaved from their faces, and they were painted with broad bands of green. Gold bracelets gleamed on their arms.
Some had axes strapped to their backs, others short, T-shaped bows—cross-bows, like Salesmen carried when they traveled.
Torrey, standing just behind, took his bow from his shoulder, but Jack said, "Stand still," then bent to lay his lance on the ground, set his bow and quiver beside it.
Out in the clearing, Catania stood naked in the midst of men, while more slid down the vines and jumped to land light as lynxes.
"Such a wise woman…." It was the voice of the one who'd laughed.
Catania looked up. High above, a short fat woman in a green woven robe was clambering down through vine-laced branches. Catania saw her soft shoes and plump white calves under the robe as she came lower.... When she was still higher than Catania's head, gripping only a cord of vine, the fat woman opened her hand and fell. Four men caught her.
Catania hoped that Jack was gone, so these people couldn't find him. She hoped he was gone and safe ... but wished he was with her, just the same.
"What's your name?—Cata? Catan?" The fat woman walked over and reached up to run her finger along the scar down Catania's cheek. She looked like the painted girl, the same pale skin and short round body, except she had only one bright brown eye—the left. Her right eyelid dimpled into an empty socket. The woman's hair was graying light-brown, and braided into one thick intricate rope that hung down her back.
She stroked the scar on Catania's cheek with soft plump hands ... traced it again. "Name?"
"Catania." Catania stood still.
"Ah. And is that your man, the big one over there in the hemlocks?" The woman's voice was low and pleasant, but difficult to understand because she slurred her words, and said some differently.
She kept touching Catania's face until Catania put her hand up, took hold of the woman's fat wrist, and pushed it away.
"Jack?" the woman said, smiling while she rubbed her wrist where Catania had gripped it. "Isn't 'Jack' his name?"
"Yes." Catania thought these people must have been watching the Trappers for days, and come close, to know their names. She saw the men turn to look, and Jack came out of the evergreens armed only with his sheathed knife. He walked across the clearing to Catania and the one-eyed woman, paid no attention to the men.
The one-eyed woman watched Jack come, then stepped in his way and put her palm against the buckskin at his chest. The painted men stood still and watched.
"He stands like a tree, doesn't he?" she said, and looked over her shoulder at Catania. Her eye was bright as a bird's.
"Now," she said to Jack, "—I'll tell you what to do, Hunter." She patted him. "Go back to your people and tell them to stay just where they are. We won't hurt them."
"As you say, Little Mother." Jack smiled at Catania, turned and walked away past the painted men into the woods, and was gone.
The one-eyed woman looked after him. "Not a fool," she said, and seemed displeased, though Jack had obeyed her. She beckoned to a man with many gold bracelets on his arms—he'd been standing by the creek, talking with the singing girl.
This man came to her, and the fat woman whispered in his ear. He nodded, waved four .. . five men to him, and they trotted across the clearing, the way Jack had gone.
Torrey stepped from the woods in front of them. His bow was drawn to the broadhead. "What's your hurry?" he said—-a copybook phrase, and useful.
The man with gold bracelets pulled back his crossbow's string with one hand, and cocked it on a notch of steel. He was a strong man to be able to do that.
"Carlson!" The one-eyed woman called across the clearing. No fighting!" She looked back at Catania. "You tell that Nine-fingers to let them by. They won't hurt tall Jack; they just watch that your people don't go to Gardens."
'Torrey. . . . Let them go."
"In a while." Torrey held his bow be
nt, the arrow's fletching by his ear.
Some of the painted men shifted a little.
"Stand still," Torrey said, and they did. . . . Soon after, he eased his bow and lowered it. "Try to catch him now," he said.
The man wearing many gold bracelets gave Torrey a bad look, then he and his men ducked into the evergreens and were gone.
"Torrey," Catania said, "—go back to the others."
"No," the one-eyed woman said. "We'll keep foolish Nine-fingers with us." Some of her painted men went to stand by Torrey, but didn't touch him.
The naked girl picked up a folded green robe from the ground, shook it out, and wrapped herself in it. Then she came to the one-eyed woman and kissed her on the cheek. The woman took the girl in her arms, and hugged her till she grunted like a puppy.
"This is my daughter, May," the woman said to Catania. "—We wondered if you snow-hunters would harm a pretty girl bathing naked, with gold at her throat. We wondered if you were foolish."
"Not that foolish," Catania said.
When the woman smiled, her empty eye-socket opened a little, and Catania saw a winking edge of wet red. "My name is Mary," the woman said, stroking her daughter's hair. "You hunters don't hunt girls? Or care for gold?"
"We don't hunt girls, or care for gold."
"Not yet," Mary One-eye said, and laughed. "I'll tell you what, Catania Scar-face. You go and put on your clothes. Then you and the Nine-finger fool will come with me to Gardens."
* * *
Jack Monroe ran through the forest as fast as he could. He bit his lip in rage as he ran, and blood dripped into his beard. To have watched for who might follow—and not for who might wait. A bad mistake, his mistake and no one else's.
He stopped running for a moment, and stood without breathing, leaning on his bow-stave. He felt, as he'd felt many times before, something like a hand gripping gently at the back of his neck . . . and knew that painted men were coming behind him now, quiet as a breeze among the firs and hemlocks. Better than I am, in the woods. Coming, but not chasing.
Jack started running again, as fast as he could—leaping the fallen timbers that crossed his way, running though branches whipping at his face. He felt he'd held the Trappers as he'd held the blond woman at Long Ledge cliff—and let them also fall. As he ran, he heard a partridge drumming in the woods.
* * *
Catania and Torrey followed Mary One-eye and her daughter a long way, out of deep forest to woods where more sunlight shone on even shallower snow. No painted men walked with them, though Catania saw shadows in the trees.
The painted men had left Torrey his weapons, and brought Catania her lance, knife, bow, and quiver from the greenwood— so she and Torrey walked armed, and Mary appeared not to mind. It seemed to Catania these people didn't intend to kill them. Or if they did, not now.
They walked through the sunnier forest then along the edge of a steep valley.. . and down a path that led to another path. Then down that, into a many-house place—that must be a town—with a wide fast creek, almost a small river, running through it.
It was the first town Catania had ever seen, and wasn't what she'd thought it would be—nothing like the drawings in copybooks, so she supposed error had crept in where copy-drawing was concerned. Here, there were no hard streets, or buildings made of baked brick or stone. This was a tree-house town of wooden staircases spiraling up great red-barks—the tallest trees she'd ever seen. The staircases climbed more than a bow-shot high, and vine bridges hung from tree to tree, swaying as green-painted people crossed them. Children in green woven cloth were running up there, shouting, playing. ...
Torrey stared. "Mountain Jesus ..." There were very small steep-roof wooden houses everywhere up in the air, houses carved elaborately as memory-sticks, and fastened to tree-trunks or out on thick high branches.
Catania grew dizzy looking up. Stove smoke drifted through the trees.
In one way, this town was like copybook towns. People moved all over it, thick as herding caribou.—There was no place Catania could look without seeing them. It was frightening to be amid such a crowd of strangers, some of whom might be bad.. . . She wondered how anyone could sleep in the midst of so many people, and supposed they must keep night watch against themselves, have guards to guard them from each other.
"Nine hundred," Torrey said. "I count at least nine hundred the herd."
And since Torrey was a chief hunter, Catania supposed he was right... and these, only the ones they saw.
Catania was afraid Mary One-eye would take them climbing up in the trees, but the fat woman stayed on the ground, walking steep and narrow paths where people painted in stripes stood aside to watch them pass. To Catania, all these looked alike. It was hard to see how even their families picked them out. Each person short and pale, fair-haired, with both men and women wearing robes, dark green or brown. All seemed like brothers and sisters.... Twice, little girls reached out to stroke Catania's furs as she passed.
Five or six men, bigger than the others, stood along the way in green robes, with gold bracelets on their arms. These carried axes, had crossbows on their backs, and bowed as Mary One-eye passed.
Catania had read of bowing, but had never seen a man do it, and found it strange. She saw, as they walked past one of these men, that his forearms were webbed with thin white scars from fighting. His pale eyes, as he looked at her, were a fighting man's—wary, observant, and cruel.
Like Jack's, she thought, and was sorry she'd thought it.
Torrey put his hands over his ears as they walked, and Catania realized the town was noisy with talking and other sounds. She'd been looking so hard, she hadn't been listening. There was talking along the path, and talking and shouting up in the trees, as if these people had never had to be quiet, and under it all was a constant rattling noise like elk bucks made, fighting in season— and from farther down the valley, a low growling that never ceased.
Catania started to cover her ears as Torrey had, but thought that might be an offense to the painted-people, so didn't do it. She wished more Trappers had come with them, and would have been happy to see even Jim Olsen scowling, leaning on his lance.
There were those noises ... and there were smells. The town smelled of strange cooking, and too many people in a place.
As they walked a low part of the path, Torrey took his left hand from his ear and pointed up a slope. Catania looked, and saw wide sheets of light-brown cloth and brightly colored cloth hanging from high tree-branches. Under those trees were big wooden boxes with parts that moved and shook back and forth. A woman was sitting before each box, with a boy standing beside her, pushing parts of the box from side to side.... Catania thought those parts were called shuttles, though she couldn't recall where she'd read it.
"What are those things?" Torrey said, and May, Mary's daughter, grinned and looked back at him.
"I think," Catania said, "that they're weaving trade-cloth. I don't remember what the machines are called that the shuttle goes through.... Booms."
"Looms," Mary's daughter said, and laughed at her.
"Thank you," Catania said, surprised such a pretty girl had not been taught manners.
Mary One-eye struck her daughter backhand across the face, a very quick blow that sounded smack. Mary had done it while walking, and kept walking, so Catania saw that manners were still being taught to May.
The girl followed her mother with tears in her eyes, and didn't grin or laugh anymore.
Now, they saw potato-tubs along the spotty snow on the valley's slope, all set out in the sunniest patches. These were like the Trappers' warming tubs, and were set over slow-coal beds. There were sheds beside the tubs, and several little animals with horns staked out to graze. Goats, Catania thought, like the white goats on the Range, but smaller and close-coated.... Past the tethered goats, there were pole racks with plucked birds hanging in smoke over hardwood fires.
"Smell that smoke?" Torrey said. "That's not birch, and not alder either...."
"Oak," Mary One-eye said, and led them past a group of painted people to a level place where green things grew in many long rows in starting boxes. There were more things growing than ever grew on the Range. Many painted people were tending them, putting bulbs or cuttings in big baskets caned in black-and-white crosshatching.
Catania recognized onions, but not much else. There were ranks of other things that looked like people's brains sticking out of the dirt, and round green things the same size, and feathery green fronds sticking up. The whole field was full of plants.... The deep growling noise was louder here.
"Garden," she said to Torrey. They were walking down a path between all the growing things. The town, Catania supposed, had been named in the garden's honor.
"That's right," he said, "—that's what it is. I see onions and I see cabbages from copybooks. But what are those brain things?"
"Cauliflowers," May said, but didn't laugh at him. "And the others are carrots."
"Cauliflowers...." Catania had read of them, and was disappointed. She had supposed they were colored blossoms that were also good to eat—and had imagined Warm-time people sitting in food restaurants, telling jokes and drinking Seven-Up and eating an arrangement of flowers.
... Mary One-eye led them along the creek a little farther, and Catania saw four big sawed-plank houses down the valley— houses much too big to be for people—that had been built beside a wooden bridge over a steep waterfall. That was where the growling noise was coming from—the noise, and a smell like hoof-glue, but stronger.
"Aren't those what were called buildings?" she said. May didn't answer, probably afraid of laughing again at such ignorance.
"Yes," Mary One-eye said. "We make our paper there."
"... You make paper?"
"I don't believe that," Torrey said.
May turned to Torrey, and said, "Yes. We make paper."
"But what is that noise?" Catania said, and supposed she must be a barbarian, as far as these town people were concerned.
"We have a water mill to grind the pulp," Mary One-eye said, "—and the rest is our business." She turned and walked up a steep path to the left. As they climbed, five goats came trotting down past them. A painted little girl followed, with a stick.
SNOWFALL Page 10
