Shadow's End

by Sheri S. Tepper

  "We chose the Kachis instead," I said. "Our songfathers chose them."

  "Why?" asked Lutha.

  "It is not something we speak of," I told them. "I have already said more than is proper. We chose them, that is all. We abandoned certain of our gods, and chose these instead, and came here to this world."

  "Through the omphalos?"

  "Through the omphalos."

  They looked at one another in that way they have, like grown-ups amused by the fanciful tales of children.

  "She believes it," said Trompe, staring at me.

  Why would I not believe it? It was true.

  "If you'll allow a non-Fastigat a comment," said Lutha in a dry voice. "As a linguist, I've become aware that there are many kinds of truth—factual truths, scientific truths, spiritual truths, psychological truths. It is no doubt spiritually true that the people of Dinadh emerged from the omphalos. That being so, it doesn't matter whether it's factually true or not." She smiled at me, saying I might believe as I liked, she would not question it.

  "Why do you say that?" Trompe demanded.

  She turned to him, gesturing. "I say it because we can only deal with so many variables at a time! Bernesohn didn't mention emergence stories, he spoke of a place! A geographical location. We need not concern ourselves with what's true or false about the place, at least not until we get there."

  I bowed my head. Exactly. What was true or false did not concern them. Only their duty concerned them, as only my duty now concerned me. My duty and my child to come. The future, to which life itself owes a duty. "To fit into the pattern," say the songfathers. "Each life owes a duty to fit in."

  Even men who know many lies occasionally tell the truth.

  "We must go there, then," said Leelson. "To the place."

  "It is forbidden," I told them. "No outlanders are allowed at the omphalos. Only Dinadhi without stain may attend Tahs-uppi, and the ceremony will be very soon."

  They simply stared at me, knowing what I was feeling. How strange to have people know as these men knew. They knew what I had said was not all I meant.

  "But you're going to take us there," said Leelson at last, prompting me.

  "I will guide you," I whispered. "If you want to go."

  "But I have a map," he said, holding it up for me to see. "Do I need a guide?"

  "You don't have a way to travel," Lutha said. "That's what she means."

  "You would not last an hour after dark," I said quietly. "There are ways and ways. You need someone who knows the ways."

  Not that I knew the ways. I'd never been out after dark, but I'd spoken with herders who had. Leelson moved to the desk, Trompe to the bench, Lutha to her child, all thinking, all deciding, as though this wandering motion helped them think. Perhaps it did.

  "They'd know we were gone," said Lutha, pulling Leely into her lap. "They'd come after us."

  "How would they know?" I asked. "I am your servitor. I take care of your needs. If I do not report that you are gone, who is to know?"

  "They would see we aren't here, see we aren't moving around."

  "They don't look at you anyhow," I said. "That's what I am assigned to do. I look at you so the others don't have to. We do not look at outlanders, we of Dinadh!"

  "They would know you aren't here," said Trompe.

  Lutha said softly, "They don't look at her, either."

  Behind my veil, my mouth twisted. It was true. If Chahdzi or songfather did not see me for a number of days, they would think I was staying out of sight. The sisters below would know they had not seen me there, in our place, but they would not search for me. They knew I served these outlanders. They would wait until my duty was done and I came to them.

  "So they wouldn't know we were gone," said Trompe.

  "No," I said. "They would not know. Not for some time. Songfather may not know until he himself arrives at the omphalos and finds you there."

  "The ceremony is soon?" Lutha demanded.

  "Very soon," I told them. "Within days."

  "Can we get there first?"

  "Not by much," I admitted. "A few days, at most."

  "How do we get there at all?"

  "There are wains here in the canyon, wains that make a safe enclosure for people, with woven panels to make a safe pen for the gaufers that pull them. When the songfathers attend Tahs-uppi, that is how they go. We must take a wain and six gaufers to pull it."

  "Gaufers?" asked Lutha.

  "Woolbeasts. The young are gaufs. Gaufers are the neutered ones."

  I could see her tucking these words away against later need.

  "How do we get these gaufers down from the heights?" asked Leelson.

  "We don't. There are still some here, because all the flocks have not been moved up the trail yet. We must steal them before the flocks are taken up."

  "Food stores?" murmured Trompe.

  "There is much food here in the dispenser," I told them. "Though it is outlander food, I imagine I can figure out how to cook it over a fire."

  They thought about this for some time. Lutha went on cuddling the child. Trompe stared out across the floor of the cave to the canyon. Leelson fiddled with things on the desk, moving them about, here and there. When Leelson turned to me at last, it was not to ask how, but why.

  "If this journey is forbidden," he said, "you may be putting yourself at grave risk."

  Behind my veil I smiled. "What can they do to me that has not already been done? Perhaps they will kill me! They will not do it until after the child is born, and I do not care if they do it then."

  Perhaps it was only what Lutha calls bravado, but I think I was telling the truth.

  I am not much practiced at stealing. We Dinadhi do not steal, not much. Oh, children, sometimes, a little dried fruit more than our share. A handful of nuts. A finger dipped surreptitiously into the honey pot. What else? What is there? Only what we make with our own hands.

  So, considering how to steal a wain and gaufers was a novel thing for me. It had a certain stomach-churning excitement to it. Leaving the outlanders to mutter and worry behind me, I went out onto the lip of the cave and sat with my legs dangling over the edge. Below me, behind screened openings in the canyon wall, the herds have their winter caves. There before the time of First Grass the females bear their young. When all the gaufs have been born and are steady on their legs, the herds are driven up one of the trails onto the grassy forested lands above. Wains are not taken back and forth. They are too bulky and heavy to drag up and down the trails. So there are wains on the heights for the herders to live in, and there are wains in the canyons for the songfathers to travel to and from the little ceremonies at each other's hives and the big ceremonies like Tahs-uppi.

  At the Coming of Cold, the herds come down again, into the caves, where they eat the dried remnants of our gardens, the vines and stalks and even the weeds we have pulled and set aside for them. When they have eaten it all, they eat fungus, as we do, growing as tired of it as we do and becoming eager for the fresh green of the heights. Most of the herds had gone up already, but a few small flocks were left.

  Getting six gaufers away from the herders would be possible. Harnessing them would probably be difficult, though I thought I could figure it out. Harnessing them, hitching them, driving them, all that to be figured out and accomplished without being observed. Which meant at night.

  "What are you thinking?" asked Lutha, coming to sit beside me.

  I told her my thoughts, describing the caves, pointing downward where this one was, and that one, shaking my head at the danger, at the difficulty.

  "When we came to Cochim-Mahn," she said, "we left the hostel and started down the trail when it was barely light. Chahdzi said it wasn't quite proper to start before the dawnsong, but we did it, nonetheless. Suppose we take the animals very early in the morning, just at dawn."

  "The herders would not hear us then," I agreed. "They sleep in the hive, and they do not come out until the daysong."

  "So, if you locate
the animals we need, and if Leelson finds a wain, and if we take all our supplies down, a little at a time … well, then, in a few days … "

  "It must be sooner than that," I told her. "There are only a few animals left in the caves."

  "Well, we'll begin at once," she said. I heard apprehension in her voice. It would have been surprising if she had not felt it. I did.

  "At once," I agreed. "It will take time to carry our supplies down the ladders."

  She sighed deeply. "Do you know the way to the omphalos?"

  "No. But I have heard the stories of the journey, over and over since I was a child. How the wains go, and what people see on the way, and how the … " I had been about to mention what the beautiful people did at Tahs-uppi. That was forbidden. Instead I said weakly, "I've heard how the songfathers draw out the extra days, to balance the seasons."

  "What did they look like, these extra days?" she asked, half smiling.

  I shook my head at her. "No one knows. All those present hide their faces. It would be improper to look."

  "Improper to look at a lot of things around here," she muttered to herself as she rose and went back into the leasehold, to tell the others. I went down the ladders to see if our plan could be made real or would remain only talk.

  The herd caves smell only a little, because the droppings are taken away at once to the caverns where fungus is grown, just as our human waste is taken in the hive. So, when I came to the caves, there were herders moving about with their shovels, cleaning the pens and pretending not to see me. Perhaps they did not see me. I tried to remember if I had seen veiled women before I became one myself, remembering times in childhood when adults had whispered to me that it was not wise to look, not wise or polite to see. So I had not seen. Now I was not seen.

  So much the better. I could take my time. I could linger. I could see where the stoutest gaufers were, two in this pen, three in that, one in the third. When they are neutered, their horns curl tightly instead of growing out to the sides. That way we may drive them in pairs, side by side, without their bumping. The neutered ones get heavier, too, and tamer, for they are constantly handled. There were seven or eight good ones in the pens, and they nosed the woven panels at the front of the caves, soft noses wrinkling, side-whiskers jiggling. They had not been trained not to see me. If I brought tasties for them, they would see me well enough. Well enough to follow me.

  Where was the harness kept? I did not see it in the caves, though there was other equipment hung here and there among the bins of dried fungus. I swept dust from my memory, recalling me as a child, riding on Chahdzi's shoulder, being shown the beasts, the caves, the wains. What had the harness looked like? Chest straps, as I recalled, with fringes on them to keep the insects away from the soft, naked hide between the front legs, where the false udders are. And carved wooden buffer bars, to hold the pairs abreast. Wide hauling straps of gaufer leather, and long, light reins of braided bark fiber, the same as our well ropes.

  There was nothing resembling a harness in the caves.

  Which meant the harness was with the wains. Or in the hive somewhere.

  I passed Leelson Famber on the ladders, murmuring to him that I had not found the harness. He nodded and continued downward. Perhaps he would find it.

  If it was in the hive, it was in the quarters of the herdsmen, where their families lived. I could not go there when the people were there. Perhaps at the morning song, when everyone was gathered behind the doorskins, waiting to go out. Then I could slip inside to look around.

  There was a time I would have hated this sneakiness. Was a time I would have considered it beneath me, beneath any Dinadhi. Now I was no longer a person to be concerned with such things. I was an unperson. I did not exist. Who would point the finger at me when they could not even see me?

  I returned to the leasehold. Lutha was there, feeding the child. I offered to do it for her, and she handed me the spoon with an expression almost of relief. She went to sit in the window, looking out at the day while I plied the spoon. It was like feeding a little animal. He was too old for the breast, but I had the feeling he would best have liked to suckle, for he could have done that without thinking at all. Certainly he could not keep his mind on the spoon.

  He calmed as he grew less hungry. When we were finished, it took a large towel and a bowl of warm water to clean up the boy and the area around him.

  "He has always been this way?" I asked.

  "Yes," she said, her body stiffening. She did not want to talk about it.

  Well then, we would not talk about it.

  "There are some good gaufers down there," I told her. "But I couldn't find the harness. Perhaps Leelson will find it in a wain. Where has Trompe gone?"

  "He's carrying supplies down the ladders," she said with suppressed laughter. "Or was. Here he comes, very hot looking!"

  As he did, out of breath and considerably annoyed.

  "Leelson's found a wain," he said. "It's parked out of sight of the hive, around those stone columns south of the cave. He told me to put the food inside it. Otherwise he thinks it won't last until we're ready to leave."

  I nodded. He was right. Any food left where the Kachis could get it would be either eaten or fouled past use. "Was the harness there?" I asked.

  "I don't know. I didn't look and Leelson didn't say." He collapsed onto a sleeping bench and threw one arm across his face. "Lord, that's a long climb. You Dinadhi must have steel legs and arms, up and down all day as you are."

  "Two trips a day is considered much," I told them. "One is the usual. When the farmers go to work in the fields, they go down at daylight and return before dusk. They carry their lunch with them."

  "We haven't talked about how long this is going to take," he said. "How much food we'll need … "

  "All we can carry," I told him.

  "Then we'll need a faster way of getting it down there."

  Silence, broken by the sound of the door. Leelson, returning.

  "Harness is in the wain," he said. "I counted the individual sets, and it looks like enough for six animals. On my way back, however, I overheard several of the herdsman talking. They're taking the animals up tomorrow."

  Silence again.

  "We'll have to leave before then," murmured Lutha. "Won't we?" She gave me a pleading look, as though hoping I could think of some other choice.

  "No time for sneakiness," I said. "Were there panels on the sides of the wain you chose?"

  He nodded, his lips pressed tightly together. "Yes. I remembered that part. They make up the pen for the gaufers, I presume."

  "Walls and roof, to keep them safe at night," I said. "Tomorrow before light, we'll take all the food from the dispenser, put it in sacks, and drop it into the canyon. We need not carry water. This time of year there will be water along the canyon-bottom trail we'll follow. We'll have to be gone before light." To my own ears, my voice shouted panic, but the others did not seem to hear it. They merely sighed, resolved on the struggle to come but taking no joy in it.

  "They'll know the wain is gone," Trompe objected.

  "Perhaps not," I replied. "There are extra ones. If the one you picked is beyond the pillars, likely it is one that was not to be used this year. Or, if someone sees it is gone, they may think someone moved it. People are always moving wains around. To store things in. Or to repair them."

  "They don't belong to anyone in particular?"

  "They belong to Cochim-Mahn. Not to any particular person. Anyone might move a wain."

  "Well then," said Leelson.

  "I just had a thought," Trompe interrupted. "What about weapons?"

  "Weapons!" I cried. "To use against what?"

  They looked at me, the two men with those expressions they have, reading me, knowing how I felt. Well, I could read their faces as well!

  "No!" I shouted at them. "That is forbidden. You will not!"

  The two exchanged glances, then shrugged, both at once, as by agreement.

  "They are our … " I
said, trying to explain, remembering I couldn't explain.

  "Your what, Saluez?" asked Lutha curiously.

  I could not say. I had already said forbidden things, thought forbidden thoughts. I shook my head at her. Enough. One might do this little wrong thing, or that little wrong thing, but not forever! One could not cut across the pattern over and over again. I had to stop, even though these folk were eager to know more. Let them find out some other way. Let them read it in someone else's feelings. I had said all I could say.

  On Perdur Alas, night on night the monstrosities returned to wander the world. Even when Snark did not see them, she could tell they were present somewhere: just over a cusp of hills, in a valley somewhere, at the bottom of the sea, perhaps, for when she stood with her mouth open and turned about slowly, she could taste them, strongly or faintly. At first she would taste nothing, perhaps, but then her tongue would curl at the subtle disgust of them, the cloying rottenness, the foulness that could not be spat away.

  One taste was enough. Whenever she detected it, she went to ground. Driven as much by instinct as by prior knowledge, she made herself a dozen hidey-holes around the camp and between it and the sea. She dug upward, into the sides of hills, so the tunnels would drain and the holes would stay dry. She made them large enough to be comfortable. She knew if she was surrounded by earth, the beings could not detect her. If she was in a hole, with foliage drawn over her, they could not tell she was there. She thought someone had told her this, just as they'd told her how to dig holes. She seemed to remember these things from that former time.

  The blacknesses, as she called them, did not always come to the camp. Moreover, the blacknesses were not always the same. Occasionally, rarely, they were like the first time, with that same muffled soundlessness, that same trembling of the soil, that same monstrous plodding. More often they were merely shapes against the stars, who brought with them a horrible taste. Very rarely they were both. They came irregularly, once every three to five nights, seldom two nights in a row, always after dark. She wondered if they came to the other side of the planet when it was night there. She dug out the reports and found that the other side of the planet was mostly water, covered by the vast shallow sea that made up nine tenths of Perdur Alas. They came when this side was in darkness, she decided. The other side was not useful to them, or was less useful, or was … unimportant, perhaps. Who knew?