A Bait of Dreams

by Clayton, Jo;

  When it became evident that she wasn’t going to say more, Deel swung her legs around and pushed up. She sat scratching idly at one palm, a small muscle jerking at the corner of her left eye. Things were coming back to her too, things she hadn’t thought about in years, things she didn’t want to think about. The suckerlings behind her stirred, leaves rustling as they brushed against each other. At first she thought her movements had tilted the boat into them, then she felt a breeze tugging at her hair—little more than a sighing against her face that came and went. Snatches of birdsong came from the trees and a coughing bark from somewhere near the cliffs upriver. The molten glow of the River was beginning to soften. The interminable day was after all falling toward its end. Deel stopped scratching, smoothed her palms over the sweat-slick skin of her thighs, her cafta still bunched around her hips. “I was a four-winter bride,” she burst out. Gleia’s head came up. She leaned forward, her brown eyes bright with interest. Deel pressed her palms together. “Only fourteen years-standard when I married Alahar.” She touched her tongue to her lips, leaned against the boat’s side, her eyes closed. When she spoke again her voice was soft and dreamy, she felt like she was floating outside her body. “All of us in the islands married young,” she said. “After all, what else was there to do? No one had to work very hard to live a good life, the islands were generous that way. Alahar was my cousin, tall and strong and beautiful and I wanted him terribly. He chose me, I think, because he liked the way I danced. He loved dancing almost more than anything. We went to live on a little island not far from Burung. Tattin it was called. It had a few trees, a spring. You could walk across it in a sneeze and a half. Our families built us a house. We had a feast. Then we were alone. Alahar taught me to dive and handle the fish-boat for him. He found a good spot for pearls. We never worked very hard, diving was more like playing. I found a big kala shell washed on the beach one day. I put it on a shelf. After a few months it was heaped with pearls, all sizes, shapes and colors. We used to play with them and dream wild dreams about what we would buy with them.” She stopped, swallowed, went on. “Between the trips to Burung, the drinking and dancing and the games we played at home, I was so happy … so happy … and marrow-of-my-bones-sure this happiness was going to last forever.” She sighed, opened her eyes. “Well, I was very young.”

  “Young,” Gleia said wistfully. “I don’t think I was ever young. Not that way.”

  Deel rubbed at her nose. “I was pregnant by the time we started getting ready to move to the Caves. Well, I’d been married over two years by then and was beginning to wonder. I was far enough along that I was glad I was going to be with my mother for the next few months. Alahar was getting restless too; he wasn’t sure he wanted the baby, it interfered with our good times, I couldn’t go swimming and diving with him anymore and I was starting to get nervous about being out in the fishboat. We had our first serious quarrel, made it up, but I was moody and unsure of myself and our second quarrel followed fast on the first. We made that up, but it wasn’t the same between us. One day when we were packing up the fishboat a couple of Alahar’s friends came by to tell him a trade ship was anchored in Burung’s Bay. They stood there on the sand ignoring me, talking a hundred words a breath, slapping each other’s forearms, jigging from foot to foot, laughing, excited. After the friends took off Alahar was going to leave me alone and sail the outrigger to Burung. I yelled at him and cursed him and drove him away when he tried to convince me that he needed a new knife and he wanted to buy me a mirror to celebrate our baby. All I could think was he was leaving me alone. In the end he got angry too, jerked the outrigger into the water and took off.” Deel stopped talking, dropped her head onto arms crossed over her knees.

  With a soft exclamation, Gleia crossed to her and sat beside her, closing warm strong fingers about her hand. She said nothing, but Deel relaxed under the strong current of sympathy flowing to her. She lifted her head. The story wasn’t finished yet. Painful images boiled in her. She had to get rid of them before she could be at peace again.

  “I didn’t worry that first night when he wasn’t back. Besides, I was still on the boil because I knew he was fooling around with his old gang, bragging about this and that, maybe flirting some, drinking the shua wine he liked a little too much. When the second night came and went without him, I lost my temper again and took the fishboat to Burung.

  “The tradeship was putting out to sea when I sailed into the bay. I ran the boat up onto the beach and went steaming about Bararigash hunting for Alahar. Lots of people had seen him, some had talked to him. Several said he’d been showing pearls to one of the traders off the ship. But no one had seen him since yesterday morning. When high heat came on, I went into the council house to wait it out; I sat in a corner, refusing to talk to anyone. My anger cooled as the heat rose. I was beginning to be frightened. I could understand his staying to drink and dance, but why hadn’t he come back to me so we could unsay the things we said and be happy again?

  “At dusk I walked along the beach, kicking through the foam edging the incoming tide. I didn’t know what to do. One time I stopped and looked back. I could hear the drums and the shell horns and some laughter, someone singing, could see the glow of the bonfires built on the sand. I didn’t go back. I felt better when I was moving so I just kept walking. I came to a place where a lot of rocks had tumbled down the mountainside and spilled onto the beach and into the water.

  “Alahar was there, sitting with his back against one of the rocks. He was dead, of course. Crabs were starting to nibble at his legs, birds had eaten his eyes. A mirror lay beside one knee, laid flat so it wouldn’t break. His hands were locked tight about something. I couldn’t bear to touch him, but all I could think was I had to find out what he had in his hand. I pried his fingers open and watched a small crystal drop from them and roll over one foot. A Ranga Eye. He’d traded our pearls for my mirror and a Ranga Eye. It lay on the sand glowing in the moonlight. I looked down at it, started to kick at it, but stopped my foot, afraid if I touched it, it would eat me too. I got down on my knees, the child was heavy in me, so it was hard; but I did it. I took a rock and killed the Eye. I beat it into slivers and dust. When I’d finished it, I got back on my feet, took hold of Alahar’s wrists and dragged him across the beach and gave him to the sea. It was a stupid thing to do; I should have gone back to the village for help, but I didn’t even think of that. I waded back to the beach, got on my knees again and smashed the mirror, grinding the shards into the sand with the fragments of the Eye. Then my pains started. I tried to get back to the village. I didn’t make it. A courting couple found me before I bled to death. My mother took care of me, gave my baby to the sea for me and tried to comfort me. I wouldn’t be comforted. I hugged my grief to me like it was my baby. As soon as I could get around I pestered everyone in Barangash until I had everything they could remember about the trade ship, its captain and the trader Alahar had talked to. I loaded up the fishboat and took off early one morning for the mainland. I was going to hunt down that trader and kill him. I did manage to get there, the mainland, I mean—luck of the crazy, I suppose.” She slipped her hand from Gleia’s, started scratching absently at her palm again. “I never found him, of course. Since then … since then, I’ve stayed alive.”

  “Ranga Eye.” There was an odd note in Gleia’s voice.

  Deel swung around, startled. “What?”

  “Nothing. Never mind.” Gleia stood. “I’m sorry.” She spread her hands helplessly, turned and walked toward the cabin.

  Gleia knelt beside the bunk watching Shounach sleep. Three of us. Spaceman, southron, and me. All of us brought here, three currents meeting, sucked in by that horror. She drew her fingertips gently along his jawline. Deel said she killed it. I never thought of them being alive. Leeches, that’s what they are. Sucking at us. Shining egg-shaped stone, like solidified water, green-tinted mountain water, nestling into the curve of her palm. Weaving pictures of her heart’s desire. She held it, seduced by its whis
pers and the images it wove from veils of colored light. Held it and forgot the world outside, forgot to eat, to wash, everything—until she recognized the trap and wrenched herself free.…

  And still felt the pain at that loss—even now, even after almost ten years-standard had passed. Remembering, she shuddered. They weave wonders for us to hold us while they eat. She took one of Shounach’s hands. The bandages felt dry and brittle; the skin she could see looked pale and healthy. She began working at the knots. While they eat, she thought and felt sick. Madar bless, we’ll find their source and destroy it. Then maybe both of us can find some peace for a while.

  Deel stirred from a dream-ridden doze as the sound of voices drifted to her from the cabin. She yawned, listened drowsily to the crackling tension in the broken tones. Arguing about something, she thought. She lay watching the clouds pile up overhead, darkening and dropping lower as the double sun started its long setting and the wind blew strongly along the boat, rippling the worn cloth of her old cafta against her body. Storm tonight. She yawned again and wondered idly what the Juggler had done to stir up Gleia’s temper. When the cabin door crashed open, she sat up hastily, shaking down her sleeves and twitching the hem of her cafta over her knees. The Juggler was scowling over his shoulder at Gleia who stood with her back braced against the overhanging roof of the low cabin. “So you’re finally awake,” Deel said.

  “So it seems.” He crossed the space between them with two long strides, his face smoothing between one foot-fall and the next, and stood smiling down at her, eyes darkening to a cool gray-green and gleaming with appreciation as they moved over her. “I owe you, Dancer.”

  Her pulse quickened and she felt a familiar ache in her groin. Surprised, she started to smile, then remembered where she was and who he was and looked away. “I’ll settle for an explanation.”

  “Of what?” He started to look at Gleia but checked the turn of his head. There was a sudden taut stillness about him that reminded her of a tars she’d seen once, motionless except for the tiny jerks of his tail—then he changed. His eyes warmed and he relaxed; in the next moment he was focused so intently on her that she had trouble breathing.

  I don’t need this, she thought. “Where we’re going and why. What’s driving you.” She got to her feet and glared at him, using her surge of anger to fight off the effect he was having on her. “I’m tired of walking in a fog.” She folded her arms over her breasts and hugged them tight against her. When she felt resistance draining from her with her anger, when she found herself wanting to smile, to reach out and touch his face, she dropped her eyes and turned her shoulder to him.

  Gleia stood where she’d been before, a faint line between her brows. She was tense, her temper roused by the exchange in the cabin and by what she saw happening in front of her. Deel felt a sudden kinship with her, an urge to join with her against the man. Whatever his reasons the Juggler was being deliberately provocative. To both of them. Deel took a step backward, felt the railing touch her legs. “Well?” she said sharply. “You going to give me an answer or not? That all your fine words are worth?”

  He moved past her and stood in the bow, looking out over the River, one hand resting lightly on the horan’s papery bark. “Let it lay, Dancer.” Light from the setting suns swept across his face. She noticed for the first time the network of very fine lines written across his face, noticed also that there was no sign remaining of the cuts, bruises and burns that had been there last night.

  Deel stared. How old? And healed already? What is he? As if he read her thoughts, he glanced back at her and smiled. She shivered at the heat he could rouse in her. No, she thought, not again. You don’t distract me that way again. “No,” she said. “I can’t let it lie. Give me an answer.”

  “Tell her.”

  Deel swung around. Gleia’s face was strained, the brands on her cheek harsh black lines on the matte brown skin as the slanting light deepened the shadows.

  “You can’t use her without her consent, I won’t.…” Gleia pressed her lips together. When the Juggler continued to say nothing, she jerked her head up and back, her eyes glittering, her nostrils flaring.

  Boom, Deel thought. Hit the bastard hard. She suppressed a grin, then sobered, stood frowning. Use me?

  “The three of us,” Gleia said. Her voice was harsh, angry. “We’ve all been burned. Ranga Eyes—they’re what drives him; he’s tracing them to their source. They brought us to Istir, now they’re taking us upriver. When we find that source, we’re going to blow it to Aschla’s dark. You lost a husband to an Eye. Shounach lost a brother. Me, I had a brush with one that almost.… well, never mind that. He thinks Hankir Kan holds the key to the next leg of our journey and he wants to dangle you in front of him as bait for a trap.” She glared defiantly past Deel at the Juggler. “I told you I was going to tell her. Live with it.”

  The Juggler was furious. His eyes were narrowed to slits, muscles knotted at the corners of his wide mouth. Gleia stood stiff and silent now, scowling back at him, her hands closed hard over the edge of the cabin roof. Deel thrust her fingers through her hair. “Bait?” She looked from one to the other. “No! Kan? Let him … no!” She ran across the deck swung onto the arching limb, ran across it and up the bank.

  The wind whipped clouds past overhead; moonlight flickered in nervous gleams as shadows flitted across the clearing. By mutual consent the three avoided the confines of the boat while they waited for the storm to break. The Juggler sat with his back against the old bydarrakh, watching the silver gleams of moonlight on the dark water. Deel and Gleia sat talking, short exchanges separated by long silences.

  After one of these silences Deel jumped to her feet and began prowling through the trees around the clearing, the wind snatching at her cafta, snarling her hair, tossing long canes of pricklebushes at her, their red-tipped barbs threatening to snag and tear the cafta. On impulse, she began dancing with the canes, coming close, then swaying back, sometimes a step or two, sometimes a slow whirl, dancing with them like a lamia worshipping her serpents, moving through the trees and back into the clearing, flitting in and out of moonshadow.

  Music behind her startled her into stumbling. She swung around. The Juggler sat as before by the bydarrakh, his legs crossed in front of him, his bright hair whipping in the wind, but now he was turned from the river and playing a shepherd’s pipe, his long fingers dancing over the stops as he searched for the rhythm of the storm that wouldn’t come down, teasing a music from the wind and from the River and the rustle of the leaves—and from her. She stood watching him, her feet hesitating with him, her body moving in slowly augmented oscillations until she matched herself to the pipe’s song as it firmed into a melody. She flung her arms out. Forgetting her restlessness, her fears and her anxieties, she danced with the wild song of the pipe, glorying in the play of her muscles and the beat of her feet against the ground—until she collapsed beside him, laughing, panting, dabbing at the sweat on her face and arms.

  He set the pipe aside, pulled her down until her head lay in his lap and began smoothing wisps of hair off her face, each touch a caress setting her on fire with need for him. With a sharp cry she rolled onto her side and pressed her face against the bare skin of his chest where his jacket fell apart, her arms closing about him, holding him. He smoothed his hand along the side of her head, then his fingers began playing in the tiny hairs at the base of her skull and sliding lightly along her neck and shoulder, back and forth, very softly until she shuddered under them.

  Gleia stood watching Deel dance around the small clearing, catching the wind and turning in it, her cafta pasted one moment against her long body, then billowing away, concentration turning her face into a mask of strained serenity—around and around, playing with the wind, defying the wind, teasing it into partnering her, catching the thread of the pipe music and weaving it into the wind. Breath caught in her throat at the wonder she was watching, a dull pain under her heart at the absorption on Shounach’s face as his eyes followed the
Dancer, Gleia stood on the horan’s arching limb and felt the crackle of the brittle papery bark, the brush of the five-fingered leaves, the heavy wood shifting under her feet, the wind-driven limb swaying against her hand, felt everything around her with an intensity indistinguishable from pain. She wanted to run along the limb and join them, she wanted to climb down onto the boat and shut herself in the cabin until she could face the two of them again. She didn’t move. Stirred profoundly by the beauty of dance, dancer and music, she watched until Shounach put his hands on Deel’s shoulders and pulled her down against him. Then she wrenched herself around and jumped onto the boat. Crouching at the rail, she stared past the suckerlings at the sliding dark water, refusing to think, driving away images that tried to surface until she felt like a spring wound so tight a touch would send her flying apart.

  Lightning glared momentarily. As she pressed her hands over her eyes, thunder crashed so close overhead that she tottered, her heart racing, then tumbled back onto her buttocks. As she picked herself up and knelt beside the rail again, she heard a soft thud behind her. She twisted around. Deel stood by the horan, her face a blur with dark eye smudges. “I suppose you expect me to tell you I’m sorry,” she said.