Maryam once again sets me up in the reality couch. But this time, after the workshop, I throw up. I don’t want to talk slazan. I don’t want to think slazan. I don’t want to be slazan. Maryam waits outside the washroom while I clean up. Once she sees that I won’t collapse, she clasps my shoulder, says she’ll see me tomorrow.
Rebecca finds me at dinner. She’s all smiles and talk. I barely eat. She tells me how beautiful she thinks No Name will be. How lucky I’ll be to get away from the ship, the stale air, the hot tempers. How exciting the work will be, how useful for humanity’s future. After the morning with Jihad, everything Rebecca says strikes me wrong. I tell her I’m going to sleep early, which must have been the wrong thing to say, maybe a piece of argot I hadn’t learned, because she shows up at my cabin not too long after I have dressed for bed. Her smile is tentative, her look fragile, as if she suddenly realizes she might have made a mistake, that maybe I don’t really want her. I almost take her in so as not to hurt her feelings. “I’m sorry, Rebecca, I’d invite you in, but I can barely keep my eyes open.”
I stare through the darkness and imagine I can see the bulkhead. Falling asleep is as likely as finding a slazan homeworld. I count the days until we return to E-donya.
Day 124
Tamr is sitting next to the reality couch the next day when I show up. I almost smile, but she doesn’t look too happy. “I heard,” she says, “that slazans make you sick.”
I know she’s trying to be funny, but I want to tell her to fuck off.
“But I have the cure,” she says. She holds up a bottle of wine.
“I won’t learn a thing if I drink that.”
She opens the bottle. On the console are two cups from the dispensary. She pours wine into each cup, then hands me one.
“What’s the occasion?” I ask.
“You didn’t fuck Rebecca; you might as well settle for wine.”
We end up drinking the entire bottle of wine. The words flow out of us with great ease, but even as the wine loosens whatever is tight within us, we each control the direction of our words, we circumvent talk of the air-circulation systems, we bypass slazans‚ we detour around the war, all to insure that words can remain a commodity, our medium of exchange; and when the bottle is empty, when it is time to leave, Tamr takes me into her arms, her embrace large enough that I feel like I’m being hugged by my mother. I tell myself not to argue with her again about slazans. I couldn’t bear the solitude afterward.
Chapter Eight
The Seventh Night
By the time that Clever Fingers, the almost-a-man with scars from elbow to wrist on one arm, had died, the shadows had grown long, and the silences were terrible. The animal was in its rock, and Huggable had long since fled the area. In the confusion the woman from the waterfalls and the woman who never spoke had also left. But night was too near at hand for any woman from the river’s mouth to find a place to build a fire and settle down safely for the night. Flatface invited Chest Scars to sleep on the other side of her cooking fire, and Flatface’s eldest daughter invited Far Hunter. Childless Crooked invited Lean Against Tree, whom she called Brave Mother for the way she had faced a man’s blows. Squawker had already left while invitations were made, slipping into the forest when no one was thinking about her, and Wisdom looked off into the distance, daring anyone to infringe upon her solitude.
Crooked was watching I, and I knew just what she was thinking: the healer had many fires, and she had a sturdy hut where she could maintain her own solitude. I invited Lightfoot Watcher and her daughter and Arm Scars and her chest-high son and knee-high son.
They walked to I’s shelter, following one by one on the path, sometimes stopping because one of Arm Scars’ sons ran off to chase a yellow-wings or retrieve a dropped sticky ball. At one point, I had to tell Arm Scars’ chest-high son not to gather flatbugs from a particular tree.
Arm Scars did not say anything to her son. Instead she turned to I, as if waiting for an explanation.
Lightfoot Watcher started naming plants for her daughter, and I appreciated the pregnant woman’s show of respect.
Arm Scars’ chest-high son had looked to his mother, who had said nothing, and now he was taking the bugs one by one and dropping them into his mouth.
I gestured at the gentle rise of land. “Flatface gathers from up there down to this path.”
“Who?”
“The first one to invite a woman to share her fire. She has a scar on one cheek.”
“You call her Flatface.”
“Her mother had taken to calling her that. My mother and Flatface shared mothers.”
“The tree should be notched.”
“Who wants to notch trees? Each woman knows where another woman gathers.”
Arm Scars told her son to leave the bugs alone, and her son insisted he was hungry. The mother pulled some nuts from her shoulder bag. “Eat these.” The knee-high son said he wanted some, too. Arm Scars full-stared for the barest of moments at I, then averted her gaze. I wanted to withdraw her invitation, but the woods carried the colors of approaching night. A man called out in the distance, his exact words lost in the music of his call. I did not recognize the voice. Roofer called back his Iamhere-stayaway.
Once they had arrived at I’s camp, Lightfoot Watcher and her daughter, who wanted to play, walked off to find loose firewood. Arm Scars sat at the cooking fire and asked if there was food for her children. It seemed strange to I that Lightfoot, who lived where there were few, was more respectful of I’s solitude than Arm Scars, who lived where there were many. Did living with so little solitude, as the ones of the river’s mouth did, make each one a little less of a person?
Almost all of I’s food was eaten before night filled up the woods, and only after Lightfoot Watcher had offered to help I track a lightfoot did Arm Scars promise to go to the river and catch a number of spawning fish. The promise was not her last word. She sat at the fire, the glow making the scars in her arms look like fresh cuts, and she talked to I like each woman shared the same mother. She talked with I the same way I sometimes sat and talked with Flatface or with Talk Too Much, who it turned out talked a lot less than this woman from the river’s mouth. Lightfoot Watcher had built a new fire where I had kept the waiting fire, and she and her daughter had already curled up for sleep. Throughout the dark a number of males called out their Iamhere-stayaways when each one should have been in a nest and sleeping. The noise should scare off any nightskins roaming the night. The daughter and son were cuddled up by the fire, oblivious to the noise.
Arm Scars had stopped talking, and enough silence followed that I felt it would be proper to seek her own solitude in her shelter. Arm Scars said, “You say nothing. Have I offended you?”
“No.”
“You talk little, even for one who lives by the river.”
In her shelter I played the gzaet, but she did not concentrate on the music. She listened to the occasional long call and its response. She waited for the cry in the night that meant injury. When a cry echoed through the woods, it sounded nothing like the one she had expected; it did not carry the heaviness of a male voice, the pitch of air that carried through a throat-sac. This cry came from a woman’s throat; it was low, deep, and no wind carried it through the night; the cry was carried by the strength of its owner’s voice.
I found the heavy torch. It had been made by a male from the dunes after she had set his arm, which he had broken when, dizzy from fever, he had fallen from his nest. The torch was the last of three, and the wood was black with previous use. Wrapped around the top was dried bark that would catch fire as easily as dried thatching.
She lowered the torch into the cooking fire, and the sudden blaze lit up the camp. Lightfoot Watcher was sitting up, staring into the night. Arm Scars held her knee-high son in her lap and murmured to the taller one. The cry continued. I could not recognize the voice, but it seemed to come from the direction of where Flatface and her eldest daughter lived.
The flame of
the torch dwindled, but the red coals at the tip cast enough light for her to make her way along paths she knew well.
“Where are you going?” asked Lightfoot Watcher, who had already stood, her belly heavy and dark in front of her.
“A woman is in trouble.”
“No,” said Arm Scars, still seated, a hand upon each child. “She is not in trouble. We call her Nightskin because of that. She hunts well, and she cries out her rage.”
It was Far Hunter, then—the tall woman with scars from shoulder to elbow on each arm, with the beginnings of throat pouches along her neck. She was calling out her anger the same way a man would call out his position.
“Why is she angry?” asked Lightfoot Watcher.
“The one who was killed was her mate.”
I sat down and considered this because it made no sense to her. I had cried out into the night after she had lost the infant that had grown from Sour Plum’s pollen, and Crooked had cried out each time she had given birth too early. But neither woman would have cried out like that if Old Sour Plum had died.
“Mates die,” said Lightfoot Watcher, “mates leave. No one mourns.”
“Sometimes,” said Arm Scars, “mates remain. The dead man was called Clever Fingers because he could make anything. Nightskin opened herself only to him because then he would make things only for her.”
“Another woman did not want his gifts?”
“No. His fingers were good, but he was still not a man.”
“But if the gifts are good?”
“A woman wants a healthy child. Clever Fingers has been waiting to be a man for too long. Only Nightskin would mate with him, and now Nightskin carries a child within.”
“She does not look pregnant,” said I.
“She and I shared a mother,” said Arm Scars. “She told me that she no longer feels desire when it comes time.”
“Nightskin,” Lightfoot Watcher said, her words slow and careful, “could have mated with Clever Fingers during her whole desire, but she also could have mated with a full-grown man the day she felt herself open inside for a man’s pollen.”
“Nightskin was lucky Clever Fingers would mate with her. Each was lucky for the other. Until today.”
Lightfoot Watcher turned away, her back to Arm Scars. I felt like doing the same. I had begun to despise this woman who spoke so poorly of the woman who had shared her mother.
Arm Scars started to speak to I, who sat like she was listening but who heard nothing. Far Hunter still cried out. Flatface’s eldest daughter had invited Nightskin to her hut and hearth. I could see Far Hunter sitting upright by the cooking fire, lit by glowing embers. Would Flatface’s eldest daughter be in her hut, feigning sleep, or would she be comforting her infant daughter, aroused and frightened by the nearby cries?
Flatface had told I stories about the ones who lived along the river’s mouth. She had told about one woman who had grown angry at another woman. The first woman had made her body feel anger as if it were desire so she could get mating close to the second woman and kill her. Huggable had lived by the river’s mouth for a time. She had heard Far Hunter’s threats two days ago. I wondered if Huggable could hear this cry, if Huggable understood this warning.
Far Hunter’s cries eventually ceased, giving the night over to the animals to make their own sounds, their own cries of “I am here; stay away.”
The Eighth Day
I, who had slept poorly, forced herself awake with the first light of morning when everything holds the color of mist. Arm Scars’ smaller son was already up, humming softly and digging into the ground with his mother’s digging stick. He stopped, smiled at her, then continued with his work. She walked behind the camp to the midden before heading off to where Huggable had built her hut.
She expected to find the hut and hearth abandoned, to find that Huggable had taken her kaross‚ her bow, and her daughter to some place far away and safe. The hut and hearth, surrounded by brush, appeared empty. The fire was smoldering; no food or arrows were hung awaiting use. One did not enter a hut without invitation, even an abandoned one, but I had lost all respect for Huggable. She entered the hut to see what had been left behind. There were several skins laid by the fire where Huggable and her daughter must have slept. There were two karosses‚ each hanging from a separate curl of wood. The first kaross was poorly crafted and still had patches of lightfoot fur. The second one was well made and filled with fruit. There was no meat. There was no sign of her bow and arrow.
She examined the thatching, the way the sinew had been knotted. The workmanship didn’t show the care of a man who lived nearby. It had the almost-a-man quality of someone who wandered much and worked little. Why had Huggable accepted these gifts?
I was standing by the cooking fire, considering what she should do, when Huggable’s daughter returned to the campsite. She called out “Healer,” started to run forward, then thought better of it and stopped. She looked down toward the ground and away, like a respectful young woman should, and stood there shyly.
“You are well behaved,” said I.
“I don’t mean to intrude,” said Huggable’s daughter.
“And where’s your mother?”
“In the woods still.”
“Hunting longfish with arrows?”
Huggable’s daughter turned away in embarrassment.
“Has she been taken by desire?”
“She wants to have a baby so I won’t be her baby.”
There was a yearning in the voice that echoed a yearning within I, and it made her dislike the girl’s mother even more. She told Huggable’s daughter to stay near the hut before she left to follow the girl’s spore, retracing each step from toe to heel in order to find where her path had diverged from the mother’s. Huggable could give up her solitude to whatever man she desired, but it was wrong to leave a waist-high daughter alone in a hut.
I was near the edge of a ravine when she heard Huggable’s mate call out his Iamhere-stayaways. The voice was distant, but well controlled, not so loud as to create echoes, so that I could tell exactly from what direction the voice originated. The voice didn’t have the deep resonance of a grown man’s call, and I recognized it immediately. I tried to convince herself to turn away, to go back and take responsibility for Huggable’s daughter until her mother returned. But she followed Hugger’s familiar voice, each call getting louder, the sound of his pleasure evident in each noisier call.
The one and the other were near the bank of the river, partially surrounded by brush that had not been burned away this spring, so it was easy to get close enough to see without being seen. Huggable’s pubic apron and bow and quiver had been dropped in one pile; Hugger’s breechclout lay near it. Now Huggable was bent over, one shoulder leaning into a young tree, her arm wrapped around it while Hugger stood behind her and called out with each thrust. Then there was silence, and both breathed heavily. Huggable half stood, half leaned against the tree, her eyes cast forward as she waited for Hugger to start again. Hugger remained behind her, looking up, his head turning back and forth as he searched the brush for sign of any possible competitors. He wasn’t looking very hard because he didn’t see I crouched there, up the hillside. He called out his Iamhere-stayaway‚ and I decided to leave.
But she didn’t leave. She stayed, and soon Huggable leaned against the tree and opened herself to Hugger, who once again thrust and called out. Watching this should have bothered I. She should have felt how the bark of the tree would scratch away at Huggable’s cheek and her shoulder, how the tension would build in her back, and how she would find all of that painful tonight or tomorrow when it was over. But instead she could almost feel Huggable’s pleasure and wanted to share in it, and it was then I realized that her time for this was not too far off.
She made her way back to Huggable’s campsite. The daughter was happy to see I, and I could not just leave her. With Huggable’s fishing stick they sat by the river and caught three small fish, which I cut up and let Huggable’s daughter
cook in the fire.
Huggable returned while I and the daughter were eating. Hugger followed her until he reached the edge of the cleared ground. Once there, he stopped. He remained standing, his eyes respectfully averted, and he would probably remain there until Huggable left. He would follow her until her desire had ended or a larger man, whom Huggable should accept, drove him away.
Huggable walked to her daughter and squatted beside her.
She eyed the healer, and I returned the gaze. Huggable’s face was lined with dried blood on each cheek, and each shoulder was rubbed equally raw. She met eyes with the healer, keeping hers round, hard, and angry. “My daughter can take care of herself.”
The daughter looked back and forth between one woman and the other. I averted her eyes and said nothing. No one should be disliked for the way they talked after so little solitude. But she hated Huggable now. To say so would make the hate touchable.
“My daughter can take care of herself,” she said again.
“A sunskin might disagree,” said I.
“Sunskins stay away from people,” said Huggable.
A child who saw a sunskin would run, and sunskins chased any meat that ran. But I knew that Huggable would insist that her daughter would not run. So there was nothing to say, and I rose, the daughter’s head tilting up. She could feel the daughter’s eyes upon her as she left. She heard the slap, and the daughter’s brief cry. She continued walking.
Only when she was almost there did she realize she was heading toward the clearing.
She expected to find the almost-a-man’s body torn apart by animals. Instead she found nothing. There was no body. She had to recall where Lean Against Tree had stood, along which path Huggable had walked, before she could remember where the almost-a-man’s body had fallen. The blood she could not stop had soaked into the ground, leaving a dark surface, a tiny version of where the boulder had landed. The ground was torn near the body, and she could make out lines in the wet ground where the body must have been dragged. The lines ended at the hard black surface in the center of the clearing.
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