I started toward the reeds. The wind was still blowing. Leaves rustled, and the grove was full of moving shadows. Here and there a beam of moonlight penetrated the foliage, and I could make out a branch or a stem of monster grass. But for the most part I saw very little, except for the moon ahead of me and the lake aglitter with yellow light. A lovely evening, except for the bugs.
When I was a short distance from camp—thirty meters at the most—hands grabbed my neck. I tried to yell and couldn’t. The hands pressed in, choking. I grabbed at them. I couldn’t break the grip. “Unh,” said the person in back of me. It was a deep, low, satisfied sound. The person turned, dragging me around, and slammed my body against something that was hard.
The person let go. A moment later I was on the ground, belly down with my face pressed against something that felt lumpy. A root? The base of a tree?
The person rolled me onto my back. I kept still. Maybe he or she would think I was already dead. He or she leaned close. I heard heavy breathing, then smelled the person’s breath.
Mouthwash, I thought.
More heavy breathing. I had a sense the person was going to touch me.
Someone shouted nearby.
The person straightened up. A moment later he or she was gone.
My throat hurt. So did my shoulder and my arm. I inhaled slowly and carefully. So far, so good. My lungs still seemed to work. I exhaled, then raised myself up on one elbow. I could move. My neck was not broken.
I turned my head and felt a twinge of pain. The camp. Where was it? I saw a dim red glow. The fire. I got up on my knees. As I did so a figure jumped in front of the glow, visible for a moment. Then it was gone.
What?
There was something next to me. I touched it. Monster grass. A big smooth stem. That must have been what I’d hit when my attacker swung me around. I’d been picked up and slammed against a tree, the way a human would knock a shoe against a post to get off dry mud.
Aiya! I climbed to my feet, bracing myself against the stem of the monster grass. For a moment I felt dizzy. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe evenly, but not deeply.
“Monster!” It was a scream. Inahooli. That lunatic.
I opened my eyes. Next to the fire two figures struggled. They were on the ground, rolling over and over. I couldn’t make out who they were.
I began to walk. It was possible, though I still felt dizzy. The campfire—and the two figures—went in and out of focus.
A voice cried, “Help me!”
It was the oracle. He was in the fight. But where was Derek? I reached the edge of the camp and looked around. There he was. Three meters away. He lay on his back, half in moonlight and half in shadow. His hair was loose and had fallen forward. Long, pale, and tangled, it covered most of his face. I bent and brushed it to one side. His eyes were closed. There was blood around his nose and mouth.
“Help!” the oracle cried again.
I saw Derek’s spear near him on the ground. The blade shone faintly in the moonlight. He must have dropped it when Inahooli got him. I picked it up and walked around the fire, moving carefully. There was something wrong with my sense of balance.
Inahooli was on top. It had to be her. She wore a new tunic, pale with a lot of embroidery. The oracle had nothing like that. She straddled him. Her hands were on his face. I thought I saw her thumbs go into his eyes. The oracle screamed. I raised the spear and drove it into her back.
She cried out. There was fury in the sound. No pain. She twisted, trying to see who had done this thing. I let go of the spear. The oracle pushed up. She tumbled off him. A moment later he was on his feet. She was on the ground, on her side, groaning, beginning to feel the pain.
“Are you all right?” the oracle asked.
“No. Find out how Derek is.” I went down on my knees next to the woman. The knife blade had gone into her lower back under the ribs. What had it hit? I had no idea. There wasn’t much blood. Should I try to pull the spear out? Or would that increase the bleeding? My eyes went out of focus. I lifted my head and breathed fresh air. Inahooli was moving, trying to find a comfortable position. “Be still,” I said.
“Demon.”
I took her wrist and tried to find a pulse. She pulled her arm away. “Leave me alone.” She grimaced. “Aiya! The pain!” She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together.
I took hold of her wrist again. This time she didn’t pull away. I found the pulse. But how was I going to measure it? Not in beats per minute. I didn’t have a way to measure time. And I didn’t know what was normal for her people. Fifty beats a minute? Seventy? Or a hundred? I would have to compare her pulse rate with that of another native. “Oracle?”
“Give us a minute,” Derek said in English.
I looked around. He was standing, holding on to the oracle with one hand. With the other hand he rubbed his forehead. “Ouch!”
“A concussion?” I said.
“Maybe. I can remember what happened. I think I can. That argues against a concussion. Maybe you had better check the size of my pupils.”
“Okay.”
The oracle said, “Speak a language I can understand.”
Derek made the gesture of assent. “I was checking the grove, going in a circle, making sure everything was okay.
“When I got back to camp, you were gone, Lixia. I called your name and got no answer. That worried me—a little, not enough. I thought Inahooli was a fool. I didn’t think she’d be able to get past me. I went looking for you.
“I found Inahooli.” He sounded puzzled, as if he could not understand how any of this could have happened to Derek Sea Warrior, Ph.D. “I didn’t see her coming. She appeared out of nowhere and grabbed the spear from me. She just grabbed and pulled and it was gone. She used it as a club. Right across the face.” He felt his nose. “I don’t think it’s broken.”
“Is that where the blood came from?”
“What blood?” He wiped below his nose, then looked at his hand. “Oh. That blood. I think so. The thing I don’t understand is—why didn’t she stab me?”
“She was going to,” the oracle said. “After you fell. But you yelled before she hit you. I woke up and saw what was happening. I got to her before she drove the spear in. I jumped on her back and bit her shoulder. That made her drop the spear.”
Inahooli groaned. I was still holding her wrist. Her pulse seemed slower than before. “Oracle, come here. I want to find out how quickly your heart is beating.”
“Why?”
I thought for a moment. How was I going to explain? “When one of my people is sick, her heart beats differently.”
“Than what?”
“Than it does when she is well. And a wise person—a person skilled in healing—can listen to the heart or feel the way it beats and tell how sick the woman is.”
“I know that,” the oracle said. “Remember, my mother is a shamaness. She taught me a few things when I lived in her house. But I haven’t been injured. Why do you want to know how my heart is doing?”
“To compare.” I waved at Inahooli with my free hand. “I don’t know what her heartbeat ought to be. I don’t know what is right for your people.”
The oracle glanced at Derek. “Can you stand by yourself?”
“I think so.” Derek let go of him.
The oracle walked over to Inahooli. He crouched down and took her wrist from me. “We don’t belong to the same people, Inahooli and I. But all hearts beat in the same fashion.” He paused, tilting his head and frowning. “It is going a little too fast, but remember she has been fighting.” He laid the wrist down. “We will pull out the spear and bind up the wound. Even though I am a man and she is crazy, I cannot walk away and leave her in this condition.”
Inahooli opened her eyes. “You are all demons.”
“Don’t talk,” the oracle said. He took hold of her tunic where the spear had cut it and pulled gently. The fabric tore. In a moment or two he had the tunic off. He gave it to me. “Tear it in pieces.�
�
I did what he asked. It wasn’t easy. I kept running into embroidery. Fortunately I had sharp incisors. I bit through the threads, then went back to tearing. When I was done the oracle said, “We need more cloth.”
What did we have? My shirt and Derek’s. I looked at my comrade. He was still upright, but he hadn’t moved any closer to us. He seemed—in the dim light—to be swaying. He looked worse than I felt. I unfastened my shirt and pulled it off.
The oracle looked at me. “What is that across your chest?”
How does one explain a brassiere to an alien? I tugged at the shirt. There was a weak seam. It tore. “I’ll tell you later,” I said.
Derek walked over to us. He stumbled once.
“How are you?” I asked.
“Okay. Dizzy and confused. I didn’t really expect her to come back. I was only being careful. Why’d she do it?”
I finished tearing, then I made the gesture of uncertainty.
The oracle had his hand on the spear. He began to pull. Inahooli gasped. “It will be over soon,” he told her. He glanced at me. “Have the cloth ready.” He pulled again. The spear came out. I saw the blade, covered with dark blood. He laid the weapon down, then leaned forward and peered at the wound. “It is bleeding, but slowly. It is a flow, not a rush. That is a good sign. Give me the cloth.”
I handed him a piece of tunic. He made it into a pad and tied it in place over the wound, using the rest of the cloth, the beautifully embroidered pieces of native fabric and my denim shirt.
A bug got me on my bare shoulder. I slapped it.
“Wood,” said Derek. “There’s a tree—I guess you would call it a tree—down and dry not far from here. Come on.”
We went into the dark grove. Derek found his piece of monster grass: a huge fallen stem. It lay in moonlight. There was a growth on it, something analogous to fungus. It looked like coral, delicate and intricate. Pale branches divided and redivided. Either they were translucent or they glowed with their own light. I couldn’t tell which. But the thing had a dim radiance. I stared at it. Another bug bit me, this time on the arm. “Let’s hurry,” I said.
We gathered wood and carried it back to camp. Derek rebuilt the fire. When it was burning brightly, I checked his eyes. The pupils were of equal size. No concussion.
I went over to the oracle. “How is she?”
“Her heartbeat has slowed down. But I do not like the way she breathes. My mother’s sister made a noise like that when she had the coughing sickness. She did not live.”
I listened. The oracle was right. Inahooli sounded congested, as if she had a bad cold or pneumonia.
“She told me she was cold,” the oracle said. “I put Nia’s cloak over her. Aiya! It is good that Nia left it!”
Derek spoke in English, “If she doesn’t make it, remember it was self-defense.”
“I should have hit her over the head or kicked her. Distracted her and given the oracle a chance to get away. Do you have any idea what this is going to do to my karma?”
“I told you before,” the oracle said. “Speak a language I can understand.”
“This will bring bad luck,” I said. “To do this—to harm another person—is to act like an animal, without reason or compassion. People—true people—don’t harm each other.”
“Do you really believe that?” Derek asked. “And if so, what about the man in the canyon? He’s dead, and—from what I heard—you helped.”
“I didn’t intend to kill him, and I did not deliver the fatal blow. Nia did. I don’t know what was going through her mind. In any case, that’s her problem, not mine. I try not to impose my system of ethics on the people I study. Here—” I paused. “I drove the blade in. So it’s my problem and my karma. And I’m not entirely sure what I was intending. Maybe I wanted to kill Inahooli. I never expected to become a Buddha, but I thought I’d do better than this.”
“What is a Buddha?” the oracle asked.
“A person who understands what is going on. Or maybe a person who doesn’t understand what is going on and doesn’t care.”
“That makes no sense.”
Inahooli groaned and moved restlessly. Her eyes opened, but she didn’t look at us. She was staring up at nothing.
Derek leaned forward. “Inahooli? Can you hear what I’m saying?”
She looked at me. “I thought when autumn came I would be an important woman.”
“Why did you come back?”
She moved her head slightly. Her eyes met his. “Do you think I believed you? Those crazy stories? I knew that you were demons.”
I said, “You mean you were pretending? The story about the shamaness was a lie?”
“A trick.” She pulled her lips back, so her teeth were exposed. It was not a smile. “You are very stupid demons.” She paused for a moment and breathed in and out. Her eyes narrowed. “The pain is terrible.” She looked at the oracle. “Will I live through this?”
“I don’t know.”
She blinked. “Aiya! The luck that I’ve been having!”
“What do you expect when you creep up on people in the darkness and try to do them harm? What spirit will approve of behavior like that?”
“I was angry.”
The oracle frowned. “That is no excuse. When I get angry, I throw rocks or jump up and down and scream or—if I am very angry—I make up a nasty song and sing it as loudly as I can. That is the right way to be angry. It is not right to throw people around. Only crazy men do that.”
“I tried to yell and jump up and down. It did no good. There was too much anger.” Inahooli frowned. “It was like the lake of boiling mud—in me, in my gut, churning and exploding.”
Derek said in English, “Bicarbonate of soda.”
“Be quiet,” I said.
“I could not endure the anger. I had to do something big.” She closed her eyes a moment, then opened them. “I am not going to talk anymore. It hurts. It is too much trouble.” She closed her eyes again.
I shivered. Derek put more wood on the fire. Flames leaped up. “It’s burning too quickly. I don’t think it will last till morning.” He looked at me. “You’re cold, aren’t you?”
I made the gesture of agreement. “And the bugs are getting to me. They must have decided I smell like food.”
He unfastened his shirt and took it off. “Here.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Stay in motion.” He looked at the lake. “The moon is still up. I think I have time. You stay here, Lixia.”
He walked into the darkness.
I opened my mouth to call after him, then decided what the heck. I put the shirt on.
The oracle said, “Where is he going?”
I made the gesture that meant “who knows?”
“He certainly moves quickly when he decides he ought to do something.”
“Yes.”
Inahooli groaned and bit her lip. The oracle took hold of her wrist. “The beat is getting weaker. I think she will die.”
She opened her eyes. Her pupils had expanded, and I could barely see her irises. There was a little orange in the corners, but the middle of each eye was dark. “No.”
“Yes,” said the oracle. “I do not lie.”
She closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing. It was becoming more difficult for her. Strange! To watch a person struggle to do something as easy and as ordinary as drawing a breath.
I got up and put more wood on the fire. Then I came back and sat down. I listened. Each inhalation was a gasp. When she exhaled I heard a whistle. The air was coming out through some kind of obstruction. A liquid. Blood. I must have gotten a lung when I drove the spear into her.
The breathing went on for another hour or two. I got up once and put more wood on the fire, then stood leaning over the flames. Hot air rose around me. My goose bumps disappeared, and feeling returned to my hands. Odd! That I was so cold. It was, after all, the middle of summer. But the night was cool, and there was a wind blowing. The bugs
were gone. The wind must have blown them away.
I went back to Inahooli. I sat down and listened. Her breath went in and out. The sound was harsh and desperate. Toward dawn it became erratic. There were pauses, as if she were drifting in and out of sleep—the breath stopping for a moment as she came awake. But she wasn’t ever really awake. I rubbed my hands. They were numb with cold. The oracle sat quietly.
At dawn the breathing stopped. The oracle felt her wrist and then her neck. “No beat.” He stood up. “Aiya! I am stiff.” He stretched and yawned, then rubbed his arms. “My feet are numb.” He hopped from one foot to the other.
I got up and stretched. My neck and shoulder hurt, and there were minor things wrong all over my body: aches, twinges, areas of stiffness.
I looked at Inahooli. I could make out her position, even under the cloak. She lay on her side, her knees drawn up and her arms folded against her chest. Her head was bent forward. Her chin was tucked in. I couldn’t see her face.
I was a killer. The real thing this time, not merely an accomplice. I looked east. Red light shone between two stems of monster grass. The sun was coming up.
The oracle stopped hopping. “This is a good time for a song. One came to me while I watched her.” He pointed at Inahooli, then sang, using the language of gifts. I was able to get most of the song. Later he explained the verses I had not understood.
“Aiya! Hai-aiya!
What a situation!
Even you, Inahooli,
don’t deserve
to end like this.
“Where are your sisters?
They ought to mourn you,
rocking and moaning
at the entrance to your house.
“Where are your cousins?
They ought to mourn you,
bringing gifts
to bury in your grave.
“Aiya! Hai-aiya!
What a situation!
Even you, Inahooli,
don’t deserve
to end like this.”
He paused for a moment, frowning and scratching the back of his neck. “There is one more verse,” he said. “I just heard it in my mind. Give me a moment to arrange the words.” He bit his thumbnail, then sang:
A Woman of the Iron People Page 21
