A Woman of the Iron People

by Eleanor Arnason

  What was available? Fish in the river. The trees were full of birds, and I had seen a little animal about the size of a squirrel. It was furry and arboreal with a long tail that looked prehensile. The animal was common on the island.

  I had no way of catching the birds or the furry animals. I might be able to make a fish trap. I had watched Nia.

  There were plants. I was a little worried about them. Organisms that couldn’t run often relied on poison as a protection.

  I could collect some likely specimens and test them by eating small quantities.

  There were bugs. Grubs were a source of protein. I didn’t think they were likely to be poisonous.

  What about animals other than fish? Were there things like clams or crayfish? There was a lot about this planet I didn’t know.

  Time for more exploring. I used the wet sock to wash off my legs, thinking—as I did so—that I was going to have to find something to use as a menstrual pad. This was awfully damn messy and maybe dangerous: I did not like the idea of leaving a trail of blood. I rinsed the sock and laid it out to dry, put on my underpants and shirt, and walked to the forest.

  For the next couple of hours I lifted fallen branches and turned over stones, picked leaves and pulled up roots. It was hot among the trees. After a while I took off my shirt and turned it into a carry bag. Sweat ran down my back and between my breasts. Bugs hummed around me. Only a few bit. I didn’t know why. Maybe there was only one species that thought I was edible, and that species came out at night. Maybe … To hell with it. I wasn’t going to theorize.

  I found a bush covered with round purple berries. Birds flew out of it as I approached. The ground was covered with purple-white droppings. That seemed to indicate edibility.

  A dead branch turned out to be the home of many yellow grubs. I added them to my bag. They squirmed among the berries.

  Another dead branch had no animal life that I could find, but the inner bark was soft and came off easily in long sheets. I ought to be able to fashion an absorbent pad. The bark went in with the grubs and berries.

  I spent half an hour watching the arboreal animals. They whistled and chirped and threw things at me. Twigs, mostly. I stayed where I was and stared at them, hoping they’d throw something useful. One finally did. A half-eaten fruit. I picked it up.

  Somewhere on the island was a tree that bore fruit that was oval and indigo-blue and edible. I put the fruit into my bag, added a few samples of plant life, and went back to the shore.

  My clothes were almost dry. I washed again—myself and the underpants. Then I constructed a pad out of bark. The result was not lovely, and I had no way to attach it to my pants. One of the senior members of my family had told me over and over, “Never go anywhere without at least two safety pins.”

  Here I was, years and light-years from home on a planet in another star system, proving that Perdita had been right.

  I put on my jeans and tucked the pad into them. With luck, it would stay in place.

  I got out the indigo fruit—the grubs were still lively—and cut away the part that had been chewed by the arboreal animal. I ate the rest. It was mushy and sweet. Not bad, though I preferred fruit that was a little less ripe.

  What next? I was getting hungry, but not hungry enough to eat the grubs. I ought to find a use for them. It would be wasteful to let them die. If they weren’t going to be dinner, then they’d have to be bait.

  I glanced at the sky. It was still full of light. I ought to have time to make a fish trap. I had seen a plant in the middle of the island that I might be able to use.

  I carried my bag full of maggots into the shade, left it there, and went back into the forest.

  There was a slight depression in the middle of the island. The ground was boggy, and the chief form of vegetation was something that looked like a reed. Each plant consisted of a single purple stalk a little over two meters tall. At the top of each stalk was a crest made of magenta fibers—like gossamer, they were so fine and light.

  I cut a dozen of the stalks. As I sawed, the plants shook, and the magenta fibers broke free.

  When I was half done, I noticed that all the plants were losing their fibers—even the ones I had not touched and hadn’t gone near. Some of the fibers drifted down and lay in the mud. Most floated off, twisting and coiling in currents I could not feel. A few landed on me. They were quite ordinary—like thread. I brushed them off and finished cutting. By the time I was done the entire grove was bare.

  No way of telling what my recorder had seen, dangling and swaying at the end of its chain. I described what had happened out loud. “My bet is—the fibers are flowers or maybe runners that travel through the air. The plants release them when they are injured. Somehow the plants are connected. An injury to one is an injury to all. If I’m wrong and the fibers are a method of protection—maybe this message will serve as a warning.” I carried my stalks back to the beach.

  Now. String. I decided to use my sock. It was made of a really remarkable yarn, a cotton-and-synthetic combination—not as absorbent as cotton, but far more durable. The sock had no holes, even after all the traveling I had done.

  I made my trap, stopping now and then to close my eyes and visualize Nia at work, bending and fastening branches. She had deft fingers, the backs covered with brown fur. Dark bare palms. Muscular forearms. Her voice—deep and slow—explained what she was doing.

  How I missed those people!

  I added a stone for weight, as she had told me, then the grubs. They were getting less lively. I waded into the river. In that area—in front of my beach—it was shallow. There was an inlet protected by the tangle of driftwood. Where the driftwood stopped, the river bottom went down. The water changed from transparent to a dark opaque greenish brown. A drop-off. I set my trap there, next to the drop-off and close to the tangle of driftwood.

  I waded back, looking down through the water. There were trails in the sand. I followed one. Where it ended, I dug. Aiya! Something hard! I pulled it out. A gray cone, full of pink tentacles. The tentacles waved in an agitated fashion.

  I tossed the creature on the shore and went on hunting. I found half a dozen of the animals. Hermit squid, I called them. The shells ranged in size from five to ten centimeters. The animals looked edible to me. More edible than the grubs or the various plants I had gathered.

  The sun was low by now. My beach was in shadow. I gathered driftwood and built a fire. The stars came out. I wrapped a hermit squid in leaves and baked it in the coals. It sizzled but did not scream, for which I was grateful. I was willing to kill animals and eat them. I accepted that addition to my karmic burden. But I didn’t like my victims to be noisy.

  I pulled the bundle of leaves out of the fire and unwrapped it. The shell was still gray. The tentacles had turned a lovely cherry-red. I opened my knife and dug the animal out of its shell. The body was cone-shaped and mottled red and orange. I sniffed. It smelled of nothing in particular. I cut it open. There was nothing repulsive inside. No gut full of black gunk. No sack of ink or venom. No bones and no spines.

  “Here goes.” I ate the thing. It was rubbery and had a peppery flavor. I liked it.

  I thought of cooking another animal, but decided to wait and see if the first one killed me.

  A hard decision. My stomach rumbled. I could eat some berries. No. One food at a time. If I got sick, I wanted to be able to tell what to avoid in the future.

  Bugs appeared out of the darkness. I put more wood on the fire and shifted position. I was in the smoke now. The bugs left me alone.

  After an hour or so I looked at the rest of the animals. Their tentacles waved feebly. They were dying. If they were like shellfish on Earth, they would go bad fast. And I was getting really hungry. I decided to take the risk. I wrapped them up and stuck them in the coals. They sizzled.

  How could I ask the bodhisattva for compassion when I felt nothing for these little beings except an ineffectual guilt? And what in hell was wrong with me? Was I reverting? I was
a modern person, a native of Hawaii. I knew nothing about the religious beliefs of the ancient Chinese, except what I had read in books or heard when I did a study of the Chinese community in Melbourne. So why was I praying to the bodhisattva? And why did I care what happened to these wretched little animals? I added more wood to the fire.

  I ate the rest of the hermit squid, then told the recorder what I had done and went to sleep. I woke in the morning, feeling perfectly okay.

  Another bright day. I paid a visit to a log in the wood and—as I did so—thought longingly of the bathrooms on the ship. Washed at the edge of the river. Ate berries. Got bark and made a new menstrual pad. I put the damn thing on and buried the previous one. Then I waded out to my fish trap. I pulled it up.

  I had something. It was not a fish.

  It sat hunched in the middle of the trap, legs folded up. There were—I counted—ten legs. Each was long and narrow, folded three times. The body was round and hard, striped and spotted brown and tan. There was a head at one end. The head consisted of mandibles and eyes. The mandibles clicked. The eyes glared up at me. I counted. The animal had six eyes, four large and two small. All were faceted. What I had was a large spider in a hard shell. A spider with too many legs.

  Click. Click.

  I had wanted a tasty little fish.

  “Okay,” I said. “Are you edible? How do I cook you?”

  Click.

  It might be delicious, as good as the hermit squid. The folded legs moved slightly. The eyes glared. I was—of course—reading expression into the eyes, which looked like black beads and did not, in reality, express anything. The mandibles clicked. I opened the trap and shook.

  The animal fell into the water and was gone. I carried the trap back to shore and set it down. Then I returned to the inlet. I waded around, looking for trails in the sand, and found three hermit squid. They were breakfast.

  After I was done I went exploring in the wood. I found more grubs and a plant that looked familiar. It had frilly blue leaves and a fat root. I was pretty sure that Nia had gathered plants like this. The root was baked, as I remembered. It was starchy and tasteless but filling. I pulled up nine or ten.

  The arboreal animals made noises above me. They threw more twigs. I waited, hoping for another piece of fruit. No such luck. I gave up finally and went back to the shore, rebaited my trap and gathered driftwood. I was starting to feel a little bored. I was going to be stuck on the island for another three or four days. I wasn’t going to starve and I didn’t need a shelter. What was I going to do?

  I scratched myself absently. I could look for a natural bug repellent. I could practice my calligraphy in the sand. I could sleep a lot. I could negotiate with the spirits: Guan Yin and the Mother of Mothers or the odd little spirit who had appeared in my dream.

  Ask them for what? To save me and my friends.

  I could think about what I was going to do after I crossed the river. There was forest over there. Tanajin had mentioned an animal called the killer of the forest. It did not sound like anything I wanted to meet. What about the lizards? They were migratory. They did not like fast water. Maybe they went overland when they came to the rapids. I imagined them, huge and dark and dangerous, moving through the shadows of the forest.

  How fast were they on land? Could I outrun them?

  I could build a signal fire. If my friends were alive, they’d see it.

  I decided to build the fire. Not today. The sun was well into the west. By the time I had enough wood gathered, it’d be night. That would be tomorrow’s project.

  I checked the trap again. It was empty. I looked for hermit squid. I found none. Dinner would have to be the roots. I washed them in the river and baked them in my fire.

  The sun went down. I ate the roots. They tasted like nothing in particular. I described them—and the creature I had found in the trap—to my recorder. Then I went to sleep.

  I woke with indigestion. The fire was a heap of coals. Stars filled the sky. And I had a really terrible case of gas.

  Those damn roots! I must have been wrong. They weren’t the kind that Nia had found. I rebuilt the fire and sat next to it, waiting for the pain to go away or worsen.

  If I got out alive, I was going to name this place. If I had to, I would stand over the members of the cartography team as they input the information. Most likely I would call it Little Bug Island, though I also liked the Island of Petty Aggravations. That had a ring. I imagined people in the future looking at the name and saying, “There has to be a story here. What were the aggravations? And who was the person who was aggravated?”

  The pain stopped finally. I went back to sleep.

  The next morning was sunny with a bit of haze, cool at the moment. I waded out to my trap.

  Ah! I had a fish. It was large and orange with a dark blue dorsal fin. There were long, narrow, pale blue tendrils around its mouth. They moved slowly, feeling the air or maybe tasting it.

  “You’re ugly,” I said.

  The fish opened its mouth and croaked.

  “The same to me, eh?”

  The fish croaked again.

  I wasn’t especially hungry, not after a night of indigestion. The fish would keep. I lowered the trap into the water and waded to shore.

  I spent the morning gathering driftwood. By noon I was covered with sweat and a little queasy from the heat. The sky was full of high clouds, barely visible through the haze. The trees along my beach were motionless. There was going to be a storm, but not for a while. I lit the signal fire.

  It caught slowly. I added dry leaves and pieces of bark. The flames licked around the twisted white branches. Smoke rose. The heat was intense. I moved back and looked around. The sky was empty except for the clouds and the haze.

  No one else was signaling.

  Be patient, I told myself. I added more wood.

  I kept the fire going most of the afternoon. More clouds moved in. A wind began to blow. My trail of smoke went sideways rather than up. I went and got my fish and killed it, cleaned it, and baked it in the coals at the edge of the fire.

  There were whitecaps on the river now. Thunder rumbled to the west of me. I ate the fish. It had a muddy flavor. I should have kept it alive for three days in clean running water or else smoked it. That’s what you did with carp. I licked my fingers. The first drops of rain came down, hissing in my fire. I moved into the shelter of the trees.

  Lightning flashed. Thunder made loud noises. Rain fell in sheets that swept over the river, billowing in front of the wind. I huddled under a bush, and water dripped through the foliage above me, forming pools on the ground.

  The storm moved east finally. The rain stopped. I crawled out from under my bush, took off my clothes, and wrung them out, then went to look at my fire. It was soaked. There was no way to relight it. Tomorrow maybe.

  But everything was still wet then, and I spent the day foraging. The hermit squid had vanished. I found new grubs and the tree with indigo fruit. The tree had a straight trunk, and the fruit was high up. This was no problem. The branches were full of animals. I stood and waited. The animals became uneasy. They chirped and whistled.

  “The same to you,” I said.

  They threw fruit. I gathered it. They made more angry noises.

  “T.S.”

  I rebaited my trap and rebuilt my cooking fire, then made a new menstrual pad. The flow had almost stopped. I was going to be able to leave the island in another day or two.

  Lunch was cold fish. Dessert was a piece of fruit. I spent the afternoon resting. Around sunset I checked the trap. Nothing. I lowered it and heard a noise. I looked up. Birds. They were so high that I couldn’t make out any detail. They certainly were numerous. The flock extended from north to south as far as I could see in either direction. It was a band that wavered continuously, growing broad, then narrow, sometimes breaking, then re-forming. There were thousands of birds up there. Maybe millions. They called to one another as they flew. Their cry was high and shrill—clearly aud
ible, in spite of distance. On and on it went. I had never seen this many birds.

  The end came in sight. A few stragglers—subsidiary bunches—followed all the rest. A hundred here. Two hundred there. Flying south, crying, “Hey, wait for us.”

  Then the sky was empty. I waded back to shore.

  A fall migration. The lizards went south by water. The birds went south by air. But so many! I remembered what I’d read about America before the coming of civilization. Herds of buffalo that covered the prairie. Flocks of birds that made the sky go dark at noon.

  I scratched my head. It itched. I needed soap and a shower.

  The next day was clear and bright. I rebuilt the signal fire. This time it caught. At noon I checked my trap. The grubs were gone. Something had eaten them and left. I went foraging again, along the edges of the island. I found a few dead fish. They had been dead for a while, and they did not look appealing. At the southern end of the island I found an animal. A biped. It lay on the beach, half in the water. Dead, but not for long. It was less than a meter. Its feathers were blue-green, the color of the sky, and it had a long red crest. The arms ended in delicate claws. The hind legs were designed for running. The open mouth was full of teeth. A lovely little predator. An eater of what? Large flying bugs? Or maybe little furry creatures.

  I carried it back to my fire and cut it up. Most of it I buried, but I used a couple of pieces to rebait my trap.

  After that I sat and watched the river, looking for lizards. I saw none. It ought to be safe to swim across.

  Toward evening I saw a trail of smoke to the east of me. Downriver. I stood and grinned at the narrow line—like the stroke of a pencil. I had company. I’d wait another day. Keep my fire burning. If no one came to me, I’d head downriver.

  I wondered briefly who had made the fire. Was it one of my comrades or someone else? A solitary hunter. A group of women on a journey. Traders from the Amber People.