Shadow's End

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Though I hadn't seen any of the creatures come onto the path behind us, I felt there was something there, following us. I had no sense that we were escaping. We were only moving in nightmare, not waking from it. Perhaps fortunately, we weren't able to get into a panic over it, for our footing required complete concentration. The sea shelf was narrow, uneven, littered with slippery clumps of sea grass and shells and stones that rolled beneath our feet. And, of course, Leelson was right about the tide. When it came in, the water would come up to the path.

  Snark was thinking along the same lines. "Hey, Saluez? Maybe there'll be something in it, somethin' swimming there under the rub and ruckle of the sea. Something else we'd know from olden times. Sharks maybe?"

  I was spared the possibility of reply.

  "Someone ahead," cried Mitigan. He stopped, holding his lamp high to throw light on the way ahead. "I hear someone."

  We all heard it then, a woeful sound. It sounded almost familiar to me, and I remembered when we fell into the vortex. Jiacare had been right behind me, but after him had come at least three others. As we stumbled around the next curve the sound came louder, a solitary weeping over the plaint of the sea, where it fingered in, pestering the cliffs.

  "It's Poracious Luv," said Lutha.

  It was she, huddled upon the path, her clothing in tatters, a muddy heap lying beside her.

  "Dirty as a street rat," Snark murmured from behind me. "Not a high-muck-a-muck now. Just a fat old woman crying."

  As she was, next to the limp sprawl of the old man. So were the mightiest brought to nothing.

  "The Procurator," I said. "That's the tabard he was wearing at Tahs-uppi."

  The path was too narrow to get to him, but Mitigan scrambled down onto the slippery seaside stones to get a look.

  "Dead," he said in an angry, wild-sounding voice. "Dead for some time."

  Leelson said hard words, striking his forehead with his open hand.

  Snark whispered, "All this time they been depending on the Procurator and Poracious Luv to come to the rescue! Now they know it's not gonna happen!"

  As was his custom, and as though we were unable to draw the same inference, Leelson spelled it out for us.

  "Of all those who knew we had gone through the omphalos, only your colleague remains, Mitigan. He and the songfathers."

  The songfathers would do us no good. It would be easier for a gaufer to go through the eye of a needle than a songfather to admit to telling lies.

  "There's my recorder," cried Snark. "Somebody's looking at my recorder!"

  Poracious raised her head and stared at the ex-king. He began to laugh and so did she, neither of them truly amused.

  "By Lord Fathom," he said hopelessly. "We rely on Thosby Anent."

  She repeated the name as though it were an obscenity. "Old Thosby! He had a watchword. What was it?"

  "Vigilance," said Lutha. "Vigilance was his watchword. Chosen more for its brave sound, I'd wager, than for its requirement of diligence."

  Snark was as puzzled by this exchange as I was, but no one took time to explain it. Mitigan and the ex-king hoisted Poracious to her feet, and we went on, stepping over the body of the Procurator. We could not carry him with us.

  "Poor old man," muttered Snark. "All his excitements is over! He wasn't such a bad old boss."

  We said nothing after that as we struggled endlessly on. Each step became harder. There was pain in my belly, pain in my groin. I felt wetness seeping down my thighs. I wept out of weakness and weariness, wiping ineffectually at the tears. I let myself lapse into dream, making up visions, placing myself back on Dinadh, sitting with Shalumn beside the fire, holding her hand in mine while our children slept warm in the hive.

  The vision was ended when I bumped against Lutha, almost knocking her down. Our progress was halted. The sky had lightened. Before us, across yet another of the ramified inlets we had stumbled along through the night, a cliff ran seaward to thrust its rocky jaw into the waves. It looked no different from the dozens of others we had passed, but this particular protrusion seemed to be special. Mitigan was gesturing with the lantern and calling Snark to look where we were.

  "We sure didn't get much forrader," snorted Snark as she climbed around me. "That's my own particular tree up there on the rim. All around here's the caves the shaggies come out of."

  When she reached Mitigan's side, they mumbled together. I saw her wave her fist at him, and she cried, "There's food up there. There's blankets and a stove. There's stuff we need."

  Mitigan's scowl was plain in the light of the lantern. "I can climb it," he admitted.

  In the predawn grayness, we could see a faint shadow trail that laddered across the cliff face. Handholds, perhaps. Foot holes. Something arduous and impossible for any normal being.

  "You'll never get me up there," said Poracious Luv.

  "We don't need to get you up there," Snark said. "When me and Mitigan can get up there, we'll lower the stuff down."

  "The tide's coming in," said Leelson wearily.

  "There's cover," replied Mitigan irritably, pointing across the narrow finger of sea at the cliff wall opposite. There was a gap there, a black hole at the top of a rockfall, one layer atop another, almost like a wide flight of giant stairs.

  No one moved. We merely stood, staring. Like gaufers, I thought.

  "It's above the tide line," Snark said impatiently, her tone urging us onward. "Get on! The seaweed tangles don't go but halfway to the cave door. It's as safe and dry as anyplace we're going to come to."

  "I might manage that," said Poracious in an uncertain voice. She was limping badly, footsore from her many long days on the cliff path. Nonetheless, it was she who led us toward the gap, all but Snark and Mitigan. By the time we'd staggered around the cove and come to the cavern, we could see them far above, like spiders clinging to the cliff face. Day was coming. If there was something following us along the path, we would soon be able to see it.

  It was not long before Mitigan came swarming down a rope and Snark began lowering bundles. The last thing down the cliff was a large jar, not unlike some of the pottery made in Dinadhi hives, followed by Snark herself. When she arrived at the bottom, she picked the jar up tenderly and carried it into our cavern before she brought anything else.

  "My mother's bone jar," she said to me, noting my curious look. "Likely I'm not going back up there. Likely there's room enough in there for me, too."

  Lutha looked up, startled. I kept my own face expressionless, though I knew our thoughts were the same. It was unlikely there would be anyone left to put our bones anywhere in particular. We, like the Procurator, would probably be washed by waves, dismembered by sea creatures, dispersed by the tides.

  Snark brought us blankets and one of the little stoves, which gave us a welcome warmth and light. We huddled around it, all but Mitigan, who remained at the entrance to keep watch for whatever was coming. Something was, we all knew that, and all our eyes shifted to the entrance, then away, then to the entrance again. All we saw was the warrior sharpening his blades, a vague silhouette against the gray spread of a chilly dawn.

  Poracious Luv subsided onto the sand with a moan of exhaustion, her head on her knees. I thought she'd fallen asleep, but after a moment she lifted her head and said plaintively, "I wonder if Behemoth is out there, waiting … "

  Lutha glanced at the opening, as though someone had sounded an alarm. "Behemoth," she said in a wondering voice. "An odd word for you to use, Poracious."

  "Why so?" asked the older woman. "A behemoth is a great beast, isn't it? An old word for some kind of hugeness that lived a long time ago?"

  Lutha nodded. "It's an old word, yes."

  It was a word I'd heard somewhere. "Is it a real word? I mean, does it mean something real?"

  Lutha nodded. "It isn't what it means so much as what it denotes. It means beasts, actually. Plural. But it conveys something more than a mere animal. The connotations are of intractable mightiness, of inexorability and fatefuln
ess."

  Poracious nodded slowly as she slumped, the heavy lines of her body seeming to me inexpressibly weary and dejected.

  "Fatefulness," she said. "I said the same to the old Proc while the world shook around us. That was after we'd had the vision, you see."

  Lutha's eyes came back to us. She raised her eyebrows.

  "I say vision, though maybe it was only old minds playing tricks on old bodies. The old Proc and me, we'd stopped a bit, to rest. He was gray, holding his arm across him as though it hurt. We'd found this place where we could sit … So, we were looking out to sea, and suddenly there was an ark, a great primitive sort of boat, rocking against a wrack of cloud, rain slanting across it like a curtain, wind driving it. It was made out of wood, don't you know. We could see the marks of tools on the sides, and it was loaded with animals … Well, you know the old story, only this was real! And one of the animals put back its head and howled words! 'Beware,' it cried. 'Was it not commanded that each kind should be saved?' "

  Leelson had been listening. Now he frowned down his nose at Poracious, slowly shaking his head. Thus did Fastigats reject the fanciful. Poracious took no notice of him.

  Jiacare, on the other hand, was intrigued. "The ark story is from an ancient literature, isn't it? What was the book called?"

  "It was called, simply, the Book," Leelson said in his usual didactic manner. "It was supplanted by the doctrines of Firstism in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries of the predisperion era."

  He rose, brushed himself off, then went to join Mitigan at the cave entrance.

  The ex-king nudged Poracious. "Did you see anything else in your vision?"

  She shook her head. "Leelson thinks I am hallucinating, but I did see it, and I heard the voice so very clearly." She sighed, dropping her head once more. "Of course, I hadn't eaten for a long time, and we'd been walking endlessly. I know people who are very hungry and tired can see things … "

  Her voice trailed off as though she'd lost the strength to speak.

  Snark said, "Suppose Firsters are wrong. Suppose the universe was made for all kinds of creatures." She took Lutha's hand and gripped it. "Suppose, Lutha!"

  "I don't know," Lutha murmured. "Instinctively, it seems to me Firstism is illogical, but even now it's hard for me to imagine living with creatures. There are no creatures on Central. In my whole life I've only seen two or three other kinds of creatures. Gaufers. And the cats … "

  "You must have seen birds in Simidi-ala," I said. "And we had corn-rats in the hive. And little fishes in the streams. You must have seen them!"

  "Perhaps I did. I don't remember. Of course, I've seen Kachis and shaggies and Rottens. Are they animals?"

  Poracious sighed. "Isn't everything alive either a plant, a human, or an animal?" She rubbed at her head, dragging her hair up in dirty spikes. "When I was a child, there were still a few animals on my home planet. I remember horses. I remember—"

  "Horses," said Jiacare Lostre. "Oh, weren't horses wonderful? So shiny, so majestic, the way their necks arched, the way they pranced, high and proud. I remember seeing one running across a pasture, tail high, with her little one running beside her. Oh, on Kamir, we still had horses in my father's time. And dogs. We used to ride … "

  His voice faded into nostalgic silence. Poracious Luv drew her blanket more tightly around her, extending one hand from this cocoon to stroke the jar Snark had brought down from her cave. She followed the design with her fingers, asking, "Who are these?"

  She was pointing at curvilinear patterns that seemed to make eyes and noses and mouths.

  Snark replied, "Father Endless and Mother Darkness. And the carriers of souls."

  "They have not human faces," Poracious commented. "Why is that?"

  "They are mother and father of all things," I whispered. "Why should they have human faces?"

  "Did your tempter have a human face?" Poracious asked Snark.

  Snark cast a look over her shoulder, to be sure Leelson and Mitigan were still some distance away, before saying, "The songfathers claimed the Gracious One was male and had a human face and a male … body. Considering how the songfathers lied about other stuff, maybe it's just a story they made up."

  Poracious moved slightly, looking at the jar from another angle. "Most gods of most worlds have human faces."

  "Because men make them in their image," Lutha remarked, somewhat bitterly. "To grant mankind license to do what we would do anyway." Her eyes went back to the entrance and she gasped abruptly.

  Snark followed her gaze. The two cats had somehow sneaked by the watchmen. They stood well inside the chamber, crying at us as they rubbed themselves against the stones. Whatever we might have expected, it was not cats. Snark went at once to find a food packet among the store she and Mitigan had lowered from above, and while she opened it the animals arched their backs and wound in and out between her legs. Mitigan and Leelson joined us by the stove, and we all watched while the animals ate. From Leelson's expression, I think he was expecting the cats to speak or go up in a puff of smoke. No one said anything at all until they had finished and departed.

  Mitigan snarled, "Maybe they're spies. For whatever's out there." He stalked back to the entry.

  Leelson joined him, saying, "What is out there? And what's it waiting for?"

  "Poracious says it's Behemoth," said Snark. "Whatever it is, it's more like the cats than it's like us."

  "How?" Poracious demanded. "How like."

  "It's part of something," Snark replied.

  "So are we!" Mitigan asserted angrily.

  She shook her head at him. "No. Not on any homo-normed world. On Central, we didn't depend on anything, and nothing depended on us! We didn't respect anything, and nothing respected us. On natural worlds, life makes a loop. Birth and life and death are all parts of it, and all the parts respect one another. There's no top or bottom. There's just this … honorable dependency. But on homo-normed worlds, no flesh lives but man-flesh."

  "Because we don't need animals!" Leelson asserted angrily.

  "You say we don't," Lutha protested. "But one could argue they need themselves. One could argue that their creator may have purposes for them."

  "Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?" He waved a forefinger in her face. "We can be their creator. We have specifications for every species stored away. They can be reanimated anytime."

  Snark jeered, "Stored away? Like old chairs, in a cellar somewheres? Would that satisfy you, Leelson Famber? Or you, Mitigan. Not living, not breathing, not moving. Just a pattern, in storage. Suppose before they did it to you, they told you, 'Don't worry. We can reanimate you anytime.' How'd you feel about that?"

  "Humans are not animals," Mitigan said angrily. "You can't compare them. The universe was made for man."

  "So you say," Snark crowed, with an outrageous snicker. "Now maybe whatever's out there is remaking the universe. Repopulating it, anyhow."

  "Snark … " Lutha murmured warningly.

  Mitigan's hands twitched toward his weapons; his eyes were hard and slitted. Snark wasn't noticing, or she didn't care.

  "Well, yeah, but look! Look at this world. Look how it's set up. Doesn't it look like a nursery? Some place all clean and ready to multiply life on, and lots of it?"

  "You're saying the world is zf-normed?" asked Leelson, incredulously. "Shaggy-normed. Rotten-normed." He was almost as angry as Mitigan.

  "That's it!" she crowed, a rapscallion, happily infuriating larger and quite dangerous opponents. "Maybe this world is Ularian-normed! Wouldn't that be a joke on us?"

  Mitigan and Leelson were not amused. Before she could say anything else, the ex-king put his hand on Snark's shoulder, calming her, drawing her away. There was enough danger, his eyes said, without causing more among ourselves.

  I sat down beside Lutha and Leely. The boy was busy drawing in the sand, and she watched him, her thoughts written on her face. They were old thoughts, ones she had spoken of: love warring with pain, pain war
ring with love. Leely was uncanny, a changeling, yet flesh of her flesh, fruit of her love for Leelson—which was perhaps something else, not love at all. Leely smiled meltingly up at her. She reached out, and he crawled into her lap to curl up there, playing with her hair. His mouth made silent words. He was trying names for things, silently working them out.

  Poracious reached over and tapped me. "Look," she said, pointing out toward the sky. It took me a moment to realize that day had come and the sun shone in vast emptiness. The night before, the sky had been full of shaggies. Now there were none.

  "Where'd they go?" Snark demanded.

  We went to the cavern opening and looked out. No shaggies. No Rottens.

  "The sea!" Leelson exclaimed.

  It was alive with swimming things. Great fishy creatures, huge as houses. Monstrous shelled things. Eels that squirmed among the rocks along the shore. Various and multiple, fecund and furious, life beat upon the shores of Perdur Alas. We were so awestruck we did not even see the enormous tentacle that reared out of the water and lashed toward us, missing us by a finger!

  We scrambled back, getting out of the way. I had felt this same emotion at the Nodders, when I had known they were capable of killing us easily and quickly, with no one to see or mourn or care. So, too, this great welter of living things could drag us down and drown us, leaving no trace. We were not masters here! This world was not made for man!

  "Eagles," said Poracious.

  We craned our necks to watch eagles for a while. They were as unexpected and marvelous as the other creatures, soaring in splendid spirals against the cloudless sky. Poracious stuttered and muttered, trying to attach a name to every living thing she saw, but Lutha said not a word.

  "Where did they come from?" Leelson cried.

  "The shaggies went," said the ex-king. "The animals came."

  I turned to Lutha, the question in my face.

  She shrugged. "I agree with him. The shaggies bred all kinds of creatures. This life is mutable. It will be what its maker wills."