“No,” she said. She stopped playing and stood. She walked over to the hut and looked in on the Stranger. She could not hear him breathe, but she could see his chest rise and fall. She heard the not-a-person move about, she heard the crutches knock together, scrape against ground. She knew he was standing again. She turned to face him.
“His healing,” he said. “Dig it I from the ground.”
“No.”
Broken Leg looked to his feet for a moment, then raised his eyes to meet hers. “The rock,” he said. “Healing have I in the rock. Me take to the rock.”
“I will play music for him.”
“Dies he. Dies he.
What was she to say? She feared leaving the Stranger alone, for what if Nightskin arrived? But she would lead Broken Leg to the rock. “Will you make the rock go away?”
He spoke slowly. “Give I the one in the hut healing from the rock. Then take I the one to the rock. Then will be gone the rock.”
I looked to the Stranger in the hut. Each choice was a bad one. Her quiver and bow hung from the sturdy limb of a smoothbark tree. She took down arrows and bow, though she knew she could never use them.
Esoch followed the healer. He should have been paying attention to the trails she took, but all of his attention was devoted to using the crutches. He finally got the hang of it, standing on his right foot, placing crutches in front, leaning forward, then swinging through, right foot landing, left leg feeling the jar, the pain augmented more than he could have imagined. His stomach and bowels loosened, his head felt empty. The healer did not walk quickly. She stopped constantly, glanced over her shoulder to see where Esoch was, then continued on. He tried to look for landmarks now, some way to make sense of the trail, but he found himself watching the healer, the way her back moved, the way the pubic skirt hid her buttocks, the quiver of arrows bouncing against her back, the bow strung over the other shoulder. She was not hunting; why did she need bow and arrow?
But soon he had stopped thinking about that. Soon he had stopped noticing landmarks. Soon he had stopped noticing the pain. It was amazing how easily the human mind could adapt to the utterly foreign; perhaps this was the root of all mass evil: you were a forager when need be, a drunk when need be, and a soldier when need be, and all the private fears that made you unique remained quiet and buried inside. At what point did the need-be’s change you forever? Could he ever be a Ju/wa again, could he ever again fit into the difficult pattern of sharing and complaining, talking and arguing? He longed for the communal dance; did he long for the sweat and the dryness of hunting during the summer, the freezing-cold nights, the too-many children who died before they were weaned? Maybe he was better off saving the ethnographer’s life and seeing if that mattered enough for the slazan to let the human live. Maybe there were answers there.
But what if the ethnographer was lying to begin with?
He rehearsed the words a number of times in his head before he spoke them to her back.
“Healer?”
She slowed. “What?”
“The woman.” He did not know what words to use.
“What woman?”
“The woman in the rock. The woman who was there before me. The one who walked off into the woods.”
“What about her?”
“The other one said she was dead.”
“What?”
“The other one told me she was dead.”
The healer stopped and turned. Esoch stopped. His injured leg throbbed. Without movement the pain seemed to double. The cross pieces dug into his armpits. The healer said nothing.
“Healer?”
The words came out too quickly. He heard the words left and no see.
“The one in the hut told me different.”
“The one is sick.” The healer’s eyes became hard and round. She did not look away from him. The stare made him uncomfortable. He did not know what it meant. The healer spoke very slowly, taking care with each word. “The one is sick. He says things. The woman is gone. No one has seen her.”
Esoch looked to the ground. Dirt looked like dirt. He considered the possibility that the healer might lie. She would not want him to know that Pauline was dead, that one of her own had hunted her down. She would fear losing his trust if he knew a slazan hand killed Pauline. She didn’t know how badly he needed to get to the shuttle. “Healer?” he said.
“The woman is gone.” The healer turned and resumed walking. Esoch had taken several swings forward when she stopped again. “Will you share words?”
Esoch stopped a second time. The pain was hard, like his leg had been cast in metal. The sun could be seen through the canopy. It didn’t look like it was too high up, but how long until it reached the center of the sky? What could he do? The polite reply came readily. “I have words to share.”
“What happened between,” and he lost track of the words. “Between?”
“You and”—she used the word that meant someone from another place—“and”—she used the foul word for giving a hug. Who was she talking about? She repeated the words. She meant Esoch, the ethnographer, and, with growing apprehension, he realized she meant the one the ethnographer had shot at, the slazan local who must have died. “What happened?” she asked again. She had a right to know; he didn’t know if he should tell her.
Broken Leg said nothing, so I spoke again. “The almost-a-man I called Hugger was attacking you. He had a knife. He was going to kill you. Did you kill him?”
I had to ask it a second time before Broken Leg said, “No. The one other did.”
“The other one?”
“Yes. The other one.” Now that he had the word right, his pronunciation was harder to understand.
“How? How did he do it?”
Broken Leg said nothing. He hung there on the crutches, and she became aware of the tautness in his neck, the strength he was using to hold himself up.
I said, “The other one held something in his hand.”
“Yes. That is what killed”—and the word Hugger sounded more like hug-hug. “Throws the thing in hand something like fire. Hard fire.”
If she hadn’t seen Hugger’s chest, I wouldn’t have accepted this. And even though she accepted it, part of her did not believe it. “And the other one threw fire at you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Esoch knew that until now the story had him as a victim. Victims aren’t very threatening in stories. He didn’t want to be threatening.
“Why?” She asked again.
“I thought he was going to throw fire at me. The thing in my hand throws”—he thought for a moment—“tiny arrows that hurt you because they fly so fast. I shot one at him.” He repeated himself twice, trying different words.
“Why would he throw fire at you?”
Esoch was first surprised how readily he understood the healer. He was also surprised at how willing he was to answer. He wanted her trust. He wanted no stories the ethnographer could later betray.
I did not know what she would hear. She listened for, and expected, a lie. The words were confused again, like those of a child explaining something only a grown woman could understand. Broken Leg said there were ones who the other one lived with. There were ones where he lived. She didn’t understand the next bit until he said it again with new words. It sounded as if those who were like Broken Leg acted the way a mother with one child and another will act, which is together. And what was more difficult to understand was that Broken Leg talked as if the ones with whom the Stranger lived behaved the same way. He talked about many as if all those ones together could behave like one person. She tried to imagine it like he was talking about only two people. One person, being many ones, and one not-a-person, being many of those. And each one tried to use the same land as the other. And one disagreed with the other. Then there was something about the disagreement.
“What do you call that? What is the word?”
There was no slazan word he knew. So he used the Arabic word,
which was the language in which he had first learned the appropriate vocabulary. Qital: warfare.
She said it. It sounded nothing like the Arabic. “What is it?” He already realized that he couldn’t explain warfare, not in any way that would put the shoot-out into a meaningful context.
“And because of this”—she used her version of the Arabic again—“you threw arrows and the other one threw fire?”
He could read the look of horror on her face. He didn’t know how he recognized it. Or maybe he just expected it and knew how to read whatever expression appeared.
The healer slowed her speech again. “If there was another one like the Stranger, and if there was another one like you, then the two would have ki-taal.”
Esoch understood each word, but he was unsure of the meaning.
“If another and another like the Stranger came, and another and another like you came, then the ones like the Stranger would want the ones like me to help them.”
Esoch felt everything sink through him. She understood what an ally was. She understood the nature of this war. She didn’t know about space travel, about the immense distances, but she knew that if more like the ethnographer showed up, she would be expected to fight with them. How horrifying to her would that be?
She was speaking again, this time quickly, about going back. Esoch was certain that it was fear he saw on her face. She was scared of this war, and she was scared of what he might have in the rock.
Esoch watched her walk back down the path. He looked in the direction where they had been headed. Would this path lead them to the shuttle? If he could get there on his own, everything would be fine. The self-destruct would be shut down. He could synthesize some amphetamine that might do the trick for the ethnographer.
“Come on,” shouted the healer.
She had stopped to wait for him.
He headed off for the shuttle, along the path they had been taking. He moved as quickly as he could; his left foot touched the ground, and the pain he felt seemed to fill his body. He didn’t hear her come after him, nor did he watch her overtake him. The pain subsided, and there she stood in front of him.
What now? She had asked all the right questions. She knew what war was. She would try to stop him. Without her help he would never make it to the shuttle.
He followed her and tried to think of a way to regain her trust. Before the ethnographer died. Before the shuttle lifted off.
In the distance a slazan male called out, his voice a long, high-pitched echo carrying through the woods.
* * * * *
Nightskin first shared words with Flatface, who then left her hut and hearth to share the same words with her eldest daughter, who would go to share the same words with Squawker while Flatface spoke with Many Wrinkles, whom the healer called Wisdom. While the same words spread from woman to woman, Nightskin did not go directly to the healer’s hut and hearth; first she made her way to the clearing.
The sun was breaking from its embrace with the trees when she stepped on the hillside. Spots on the boulder shone back the light like small, tiny suns. Across the darkened ground lay what scavengers had left. Insects huddled together over what little meat remained on Rival’s bones. Some other bones had been picked clean, and she did not know which of those bones had once belonged to Clever Fingers and which to Rival. Although there had yet been no full moon, Nightskin could not believe that a true body remained in the clearing. She had told Flatface that the clearing was empty of everything but the rock; she knew no woman would come to the clearing if they saw where the eyes had been plucked from Rival’s skull and the half ear that still remained.
Nightskin walked down the hill and over to Rival’s skull. The stink was terrible. What she planned to do was worse. No woman would take meat from the hand that did what she planned to do. Nightskin felt herself tremble, even though the outside of her body was as still as a rock. She felt the same anxiety she had felt the night she had come to the hillside to sit by a fire, to wait for the animal to leave so she could go down and dig Clever Fingers out of the ground and allow his true body to escape. She remembered lying at the edge of the hole she had dug, her arms extended, pulling wet clay and dirt away from Clever Fingers’ face and chest, and she wondered if the true body had already come free, if it had pressed against the dirt, trapped, trying to escape, if it had flown into the air the moment she had cleared away the dirt, if she had breathed it in. That would explain why she was now capable of reaching through a cloud of insects to pick up Rival’s skull, slick with the saliva of other animals, why she could carry it to the edge of the clearing that overlooked the lake, and why she could toss it down the hill and watch it bounce and roll until it disappeared into the brush. Would it matter much if she breathed in Rival’s true body as well? She gathered more of his remains and did the same. She carried the bones that had been picked clean, and she told herself that they had belonged to Clever Fingers. She tried to see the way his hands had held the knife that had cut the leather for her kaross, the way the fingers had tied the beads to the fringes. But the mind’s eye would not see what she wanted it to see. All she saw were bones tumbling down a hill. Soon the clearing was the clearing she had described to Flatface, empty of everything but the boulder.
Nightskin tried to wash her hands in the brook. She scrubbed them with dirt, but the hands still felt like they touched Rival’s skull. She made her way toward the healer’s hut and hearth and stopped when she saw, far from the trail, several moonleaf plants. She chewed on several, taking in the bitter taste, waiting for the calm that followed. She thought again of Clever Fingers’ body beneath the ground, and she blamed the animal. She remembered opening herself to Clever Fingers, who was now gone, and she blamed the animal. She built her hatred with the same care a woman builds a fire that is meant to last through the night.
She was chewing on another moonleaf when she heard voices. She crouched low, as if she had heard a lightfoot. She moved slowly, keeping herself near trees, until she was close enough to see that it was the healer and the second animal. The animal was on crutches, and all he wore was a breechclout. He looked almost like a boy just before he started to grow into a man.
The healer turned and walked. The animal soon followed.
This is when Nightskin heard Old Sour Plum’s long call. This is when she began to follow their trail.
I was relieved to find the Stranger still lying there. Nightskin had not yet come, and what was she to do?
The Stranger breathed like the air was thick, and when she lifted the blanket, she saw the bumps had hardened. His skin looked like that of the infant a day before the infant had died.
Broken Leg leaned forward on his crutches. His face was layered with sweat. His eyes had darkened. “Healer,” he said. “Let me the bag have. Let him the healing have.”
I felt the hardened bumps. Her music had done nothing.
The healer’s silence, Esoch assumed, was the silence of guilt. She didn’t want the ethnographer to die. But the pack contained things she feared. The shuttle contained things she feared. She was right to fear those things. He searched for words. If he didn’t say the right thing, then the ethnographer would die, and Esoch would remain here for years, if not forever.
“Healer,” he said again, “you have shared your music. I said I would share something. I can make the rock go. I can take the”—he searched for the word that she had used—“the Stranger with me to the rock, and the rock will leave.”
The healer looked up at him. “The rock will go. You will go. The Stranger will go. You will not come back.”
“Yes.” The moment he said it, he knew it was a lie. He knew that once he had saved the ethnographer’s life, he would come back, and he would stay until he found Pauline or Pauline’s body.
“Stay here,” she said. She stood up and edged around him. “Stay here.”
He waited. He listened to her move out back. He listened to her dig. He listened to her grunt when she lifted up the pack. He waited, kn
owing that he had to earn her trust. Without her trust they were never going back to the rock.
The healer dropped the pack in front of him, not out of malice, he quickly realized once he took hold of it, but because of its tremendous weight. Just three days ago the frail slazan now lying by the gray ash had carried this to meet him, to work out a deal.
Esoch searched for a way to open it and found none. It was perfectly sealed. “I need a knife.”
I handed him the stone knife and backed away. Broken Leg touched the tip of the knife to a topmost corner, and like a mouth opening, a line emerged around the edges, and the top rolled back. Broken Leg, too, seemed surprised, for he leaned away from the bag, wobbled on his crutches, while the whole bag toppled over like a felled animal. The things in it rolled out. Broken Leg said a word she had never heard before. It didn’t even sound like a word, but he said it several times.
“Healer,” he said, “help.”
She looked at the pile of shapes that had rolled out onto the ground. Broken Leg could not just bend over and pick them up. She did not even want to touch them. The shapes were strange, as strange as anything inside the boulder.
Broken Leg spoke quickly, and his words were poorly formed this time. The only word she could understand was die. She knew who was dying. She knelt by the spilled things. Broken Leg pointed. She touched something. It felt like the skin of a live animal. Broken Leg spoke, pointed again. She picked up the thing next to it. “Yes,” he said. It had the shape of a small carry bag. She handed it to Broken Leg.
Esoch almost dropped it. There was something about it that felt like the skin of an animal just after it had died. He knew what it was, remembered the nature of slazan biological mechanics. Dikobe’s knife hilt had been based on the design of a slazan knife that had been traded to humans during the ten years of first contact. He didn’t use the healer’s stone knife this time. He pinched a corner, and the organic box opened. It was still unnerving to watch, but he was ready for the way everything slid open, the faint sucking noise that went with it.
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