Shadow's End

by Sheri S. Tepper

  If it had not been for Leely, perhaps we could have slept, but he would have none of it. He wanted to see what was going on. Finally, Lutha took him to the wagon door, cracked it a bit wider, and sat there with him for a long time while he reached toward the white arms, the white faces, the sharp teeth, and cried, "Dananana. Dananana."

  I stood behind them, looking out, and Lutha heard my indrawn breath.

  "What is it?" she asked, looking up at me.

  "So many," I blurted. "There are so many of them!" I had never seen that many in Cochim-Mahn. I wondered if they were following us or traveling to the omphalos. Then I relaxed, remembering. Of course they were going to Tahs-uppi. They were a part of it!

  Eventually Leely tired, and Lutha laid him down, shutting the door tightly. Even then, it was a long time before he slept.

  When Leelson woke us before dawn in the morning, the Kachis had gone. The ground outside the panels was littered with their droppings. I have a hard time reconciling the mess they make with … with what they are. Holy creatures should not smell like that. I was eager to leave, but Lutha insisted we take time to cut fodder, storing it on top of the wagon. Then we took down the panels, stacked them on the racks, hitched the gaufers, and were gone before light. We were, as we had planned, into the southern canyon by the time the sun rose. Too deep to be seen from Cochim-Mahn, which was good, but lost in deep shadow ourselves, which we had not thought on.

  Leelson unfolded Bernesohn Famber's map on the seat beside him and traced our route with his finger.

  "This canyon branches into another," he said. "One leading southwest. Is that right?"

  I rehearsed the way as we children had learned it from songfather. "The Canyon of Cochim-Mahn to the Lost Things Canyon. This canyon to the Burning Springs. Burning Springs to the Nodders. Beyond the Nodders, the omphalos."

  He tracked my words on the map. "Burning Springs?" he asked me. "It's printed here, but what is it?"

  "Songfather told us it's a flammable gas that comes up through fissures in the rock. There is water that comes also. The gas was ignited at some time or other, perhaps by lightning, and it burns in the water. Sometimes the place is called the Fountains of Fire or Canyon of Fire. There is a superstition that drinking the water from there will keep—"

  I caught myself in time. I had not said it.

  "Keep what?" Leelson asked.

  "Keep one in good health," I said. Masanees had mixed her medicine with water brought from the Canyon of Fire. So she said.

  He gave me an odd look. I suppose he read my discomfort, but at least he did not ask me anything more.

  "What are the Nodders?" Lutha asked.

  "Tall thin pillars of rock. Many of them. With stone tops that move sometimes. Songfather says when the wind blows strongly, they nod."

  "If that is true," remarked Trompe, "sometimes they no doubt come crashing down."

  "I don't know," I confessed. "Songfather never mentioned that."

  "No animals?" Leelson asked. "Nothing dangerous except the Kachis?"

  "The beautiful people are as they are, which is as the Gracious One wills," I replied. Who knew what the Gracious One willed?

  "No known dangers, then?" Leelson smiled, reading my mind.

  I flushed. "None."

  I was more worried about the known than the unknown. Known dangers were quite bad enough. These feelings were justified at about midmorning when we began to hear wings. At first it was just a barely heard flutter behind us. When we looked, we saw nothing. The noise grew more frequent the farther we went. I caught Lutha and Leelson exchanging long glances. I felt myself growing pale and sick. I knew the sound. Oh, yes, I knew the sound.

  Then we heard the noise from before us as well. Both behind and before. Casting a quick look around, I surprised a pale shadowy movement on the canyon wall to our left. Then I saw them everywhere, pallid shapes slipping behind rocks. More than I had ever seen before.

  "They're all around us," I said in a voice that I could not keep from sounding terrified. "They're all around us."

  "I thought they didn't," said Trompe. "In daylight … "

  "But it isn't daylight," I cried.

  It was daytime, but we were still in deepest shadow. The sun lay upon the wall to our right, perhaps a third of the way up, a long line of brilliance that inched downward slowly … so slowly.

  "We could stop and set up the shelter," said Lutha.

  "I read that as a bad choice," said Leelson, keeping his eyes on the trail. "The minute we try it, they'll be on us."

  "You can feel them?"

  "If it is them I'm feeling, yes."

  "Then what? What, Leelson!"

  "Keep your eyes on the sun line, there on the right-hand wall. How long would you say until it hits us?"

  "I have no idea! Saluez?"

  "Not long," I mumbled. "But maybe too long."

  "I think not," said Leelson. "I'm getting feelings of slyness, of calculation. They want to be sure of us. They aren't yet. They're cunning."

  "You speak as though they were rational beings," Lutha objected.

  I pinched my lips shut and said nothing. Trompe looked at me curiously, his brows knit together. I concentrated on the lower pool at Cochim-Mahn, thinking deliberately of its coolness and the light-less depths within the stone. Leelson looked away, perhaps foiled, perhaps merely respecting my desire not to be thought at.

  "We'll talk of something else," he said firmly. "Trompe, how were the league championships coming when you left Prime?"

  Trompe responded, and the two of them talked in quite natural voices about interalliance sports of various kinds. Their voices seemed normal and casual, but their eyes were narrowed in concentration. I stayed frozen in place, gathered into myself, my face hidden in my hands. I could still hear the Kachis, even above the sound of the men's voices. Lutha put her arm around me and squeezed. I scarcely felt it.

  Then, suddenly, "Here," said Leelson.

  I slitted one eye and peeked. We had come to a puddle of sunlight, a spot where the eastern canyon wall dipped low to let the sun through. Leelson got down from the wagon and pretended to check the wheels; Trompe joined him, the two of them continuing their discussion. Lutha and I merely waited. Silence. The Kachis were not going to announce their presence. They didn't know about Fastigats. They didn't know we had heard them, that their slyness had been interpreted. It was obvious they didn't yet want us to know they were there.

  We waited in the puddle of light until the sun flooded the bottom of the canyon. Only then did Leelson cluck to the animals and we moved on, more rapidly. Trompe buried himself in the map, measuring and muttering.

  "There's a turn to the west ahead," he said. "Quite a lengthy east-west arm. That should be lighted for its entire distance. If we hurry, we may make it before the sun drops behind the west rim."

  "If everyone who can will walk, we can hurry more easily," remarked Leelson, his voice little more than a whisper.

  I had thought my legs wouldn't hold me, but it was actually easier to walk than to sit. Walking gave my trembling muscles something to do. Even Leely walked, all of us except Leelson striding along, and the gaufers moving almost with alacrity. The Kachis kept pace with us, fluttering among the stones at the eastern side of the canyon, more of them every moment. If we had not known to look for them, we might not have seen them. When they were still, they appeared to be only some lighter blotch on the stone itself.

  It was not long until we came to the turning, not in actual time, though it seemed endless. The sun had shifted from the west side of the canyon to the center, from the center to the east. We were driving close to the eastern wall when we came to the turn, and now we moved around the corner into the light of Lady Day, she who smiled fully upon us as we moved toward the west.

  Behind us in the narrow canyon, one lone derisive cry, faint and far, immediately silenced. If we had been near the sea, it might have been mistaken for the call of a bird, but we have no large inland birds.
<
br />   "They want to get ahead of us," said Leelson. "There are shadowed ways in and among the rocks along the walls."

  Lutha shivered. I swallowed over and over, not to let the bitterness in my throat rise into my mouth. Then, all at once, Leely pulled away from Lutha and began to run back, as though he had been attracted by that lone cry.

  Lutha caught up to him and seized him, but he struggled, pulling so strongly that Trompe had to help her restrain him and shut him in the wagon. There he raged incoherently for a time before falling asleep.

  Late in the afternoon we stopped, still in the east-west part of the canyon. Ahead of us it turned south again, though the map indicated the southward arm was not a long one.

  "That's where they probably expected to find us tonight," remarked Leelson, pointing to the turn ahead. "Instead we'll stay right here, make an extra long halt, and not leave here until that southern arm is in full sunlight. Besides, there's grass here, enough to supplement what we cut earlier."

  This time we had less struggle with the panels, we knew how to handle the gaufers. It was they who found water, a tiny spring that seeped from the canyon wall. By the time the sun set, we were safely shut in. The men fell asleep almost immediately, though Lutha and I were still awake.

  Tonight Leely showed no interest in the Kachis. They came, as before, to gnaw the panels, to reach through with their long, white arms, but he curled himself into slumber and did not seem to care. Instead it was I who stood at the crack in the wagon door, looking out at them, at the faces of those who crossed the narrow line of light that escaped through the doorway.

  Lutha heard me gasp and came to stand beside me.

  "What is it, Saluez?"

  I was so surprised, I spoke without thinking. "I just saw him, the outlander ghost!"

  "You mean … Bernesohn Famber?" she asked in an incredulous voice.

  "See, see," I said, pointing. "Look, there he is again. The one with the twisted shoulders."

  She stared out, turned to me, and stared again. "I see a Kachis with twisted shoulders, Saluez."

  "That's him! That's how we know him. He, too, had twisted shoulders."

  Only then, I realized what I had said.

  I clung to her. "Don't tell," I begged. "Please. Don't tell the men that the Kachis are the spirits of our departed! I'm not supposed to talk about it!"

  She pressed my lips with her fingers, a soft pressure through the fabric of my veil. "Shhh. I won't, if you don't want me to, but you must tell me, Saluez. I need to know. When someone here on Dinadh … goes, he comes back as a ghost?"

  "When people's bodies don't work anymore, their spirits depart the human bodies and find Kachis bodies. We invite them to return to us. We promise to feed them and care for them. The Kachis were made by the Gracious One, just for this purpose, to hold our spirits. And they do come back, where we can see them, and they live for many, many years, staying with us, enjoying the lives of their children and grandchildren, eating, coming to our … taking part in our lives."

  "All of your people who … die, Saluez?"

  She didn't understand! "But we don't die. Don't you see! We don't die, not anymore. No. We just change our forms, that's all. From human form into Kachis form, but we know who we are, we are still alive."

  She mused a long time. "I see," she said at last. "So your mother is out there somewhere, Saluez?"

  I could not answer her. She should not have asked that. I turned my face from her and went to my place to sleep.

  Halach, songfather of Cochim-Mahn, finished his salute to Lady Day, took the three ritual steps into her light, then fastened his robe and looked around for his breakfast. Someone should have come with it from the hive the moment he sang, "Go forth!"

  He grumbled, his belly grumbling with him, missing Saluez. She had never been late with his breakfast. Shuddering, he put the thought aside. It was forbidden to think these things. One could not think kindly of someone who had doubted, who had had heretical ideas. And she had, had doubted, had fallen away from grace, otherwise … otherwise she would not be down below with the other veiled doubters and recalcitrants. Lady Day had smitten them, and Weaving Woman had made dark patterns of them, and the Gracious One had turned his back upon them. Praise to the deities who knew the inner hearts of women, darker and more devious than those of men!

  Shalumn hastily approached, bearing a bowl and ewer. He held out his hands for the ritual washing. Then Shalumn handed him his food bowl and politely turned away, looking out over the canyon.

  He forgave her tardiness with his first bite.

  "Only a little time until Tahs-uppi," he remarked. "Would you like to see the ceremony?"

  She was very still. What ailed her? He spared her a curious glance before returning to his meal.

  "I am better suited to my duty here, songfather."

  Was she refusing to attend? For the goddesses' sakes, he hadn't been suggesting anything improper. Surely she didn't think …

  He made the matter clearer. "Hazini will be accompanying me, along with her father. I thought you might be company for her."

  She didn't look at him. "Thank you, songfather. It is a kind thought. But I am better suited to my duty here."

  He put down the bowl and stared. "What is it, Shalumn? Something is troubling you."

  "Nothing one may speak of, songfather."

  He dropped his voice to a confidential whisper. "One may speak of anything to a songfather."

  She confronted him, her eyes filled with tears. "I fear Saluez has gone into shadow, songfather."

  Confused for the moment, he could not understand what she was saying. Those behind the veil were said to be in shadow, and of course Saluez was among them. "Into shadow? But … " Of course those who passed on were also said to be in shadow. Though veiled women couldn't be said to pass on. Because they had doubted the Great Gift of the Gracious One, veiled women truly died. They were not accorded the right of living on in Kachis form. Shalumn must mean something else!

  "Tell me!" he demanded in a whisper. "You think she's gone"—he gestured outward, at the canyons, the mesas, the distant glinting mountain peaks, all the faraway that was Dinadh—"there?"

  "Yes, songfather."

  "What makes you think so?"

  "I haven't seen … not for days."

  He sighed, surprising himself with the realization that it was a sigh of relief.

  He reached out to shake the girl gently. "Shalumn. Shalumn, you were her friend. You recognize her shape, her walk. Of course you watch for her, even though you know it is forbidden. That's quite common, my dear, and it is not a severe sin. But it's customary for those behind the veil to spend days below, in their own place, unseen by anyone."

  "But she cares for the outlanders! No one else has been given the duty! And no one has seen them, either!"

  "Put it out of your mind," he said sternly. "Hear me, Shalumn. Put it out of your mind." Her voice had been too full of grief. She should not feel so about a doubter!

  "Songfather," she said submissively, bowing her head. "I will do as you say."

  He turned his back on her and resumed eating. So no one had seen Saluez for a few days. Well, that was as it should be. No Dinadhi should see her at all. She was a trash-person. Just as the outlanders were trash-people. Dinadhi didn't look at trash-people, or look for them, for that matter.

  Still, it was strange no one had encountered the outlanders. On the ladders, perhaps. Even trash-persons took up space on the ladders. One had to wait. Or step aside. One noticed.

  He scraped the sides of his bowl with his spoon. Not long now until there'd be some greens. Early greens, springing up along the streamlets, a welcome addition to the diet. If those gaufers that had gotten loose somehow didn't eat them all first.

  Strange, that. Six gaufers had escaped their pens. Songfather had assumed they'd been let loose by someone. Some child, too frightened to confess. But the six missing ones had been a hitch. Almost. Two leaders, right and left, who as mere gaufs
had established their right to that position by kicking and biting their herd mates into submission. Two followers, right and left, who did not kick or bite at all, and two middles—though they were both left middles.

  Who would steal a hitch? And for what? Some young man who wanted to prove himself, taking the animals onto the heights, maybe finding an unused wagon there. But to do what? To go where?

  To Simidi-ala, perhaps? Sometimes young people did run off to Simidi-ala. They grew bored with the Dinadhi way of life. They did not treasure the Great Gift enough. They decided they wanted excitement, and off they went. Hive-reared, they knew the only way they could get there was in a herder's wain. Fully half the population of Simidi-ala was made up of runaways, which was another reason for not trusting those at Simidi-ala. Apostates, all of them. Apostates and renegades.

  He chewed the last bite thoughtfully. Young people were always interested in Simidi-ala. When Saluez was young, she had asked a lot of questions about the port city, so many that he'd taken her there himself during one brief visit.

  He stared blindly at the opposite canyon wall. Saluez couldn't have taken a hitch. A mere girl? Not strong. Now wounded, though he did not know how badly. It was better not to know how badly. Better if loved ones never knew. Too many questions if they knew. Too many doubts. Saluez couldn't have taken the gaufers. It was physically impossible.

  But she had been tending the outlanders. Taking care of the Famber family. Who, so Shalumn said, nobody had seen for a while. Of course, they wouldn't know about a hitch.