He couldn’t be sure if this organic box was a med-kit or not, There was an array of what looked like clay balls, but they were rubbery, warm, and alive to the touch. And in the corner were two brown things that looked like bloated leeches.
“Healer,” he said. “I need him awake. I don’t know how to use this healing.”
Nightskin now stood at the edge of the hut and hearth. Healer had walked into the hut. The animal leaned on his crutches just outside the hut’s opening. He wasn’t looking about. He was oblivious to everything but what was happening inside the hut. Healer must not have told him. It would be easy to sneak up on him, easier than sneaking up on a lightfoot, whose ears were always alert to the strange sound, the snap of a twig, the whisper of the brush. But Healer was inside, and Nightskin wanted her outside, in the clear, safe from any harm. Nightskin would wait until Healer went off to gather or to fetch water, but already now one woman and another would be gathering stones, would be heading toward the clearing. She could not keep each one waiting. But if Healer came out and left the two alone inside the shelter, then maybe that would be the best moment to carry out what last night’s desire had promised.
Esoch hardly understood a single word the healer used when she touched the slazan’s face, when she shook his arm, when she pinched one of the hardened swellings on his leg. The slazan breathed. His skin was sapped of all color that came with the flush of blood.
The slazan’s eyes opened.
The healer said something to him.
He shifted his head and looked to Esoch. He spoke in Nostratic. “Do you have the medicine?”
I watched Broken Leg tilt his head forward. Something dropped out of his mouth and into his hand. It was the same color as his tongue. He raised his head and said something to the Stranger. The Stranger spoke at length. One man speaking to another. At length, like one woman talking with another. And using words that I had never heard before. Were these different kinds of words. Were there special words for ki-taal? Do you share those words when you weren’t throwing fire or shooting tiny arrows at each other?
Following the slazan’s instructions, Esoch lifted the darker of the two leechlike creatures out of the open med-kit‚ It had already ingested the medicine ball. The slazan had prepped it so he could take another dose after their meeting. The creature was hard to hold, not because it moved, but because the slime of it was repulsive. He tried to look calm. He wanted the healer to think this was totally normal. “Healer. This has to be placed in the crook of his arm.” With his other hand he tapped the crook of his own arm. He raised the creature. Then gestured again. “The animal will give him the healing.”
The thing Broken Leg held looked like one of the bloodsuckers that clung to any child who thought the nearby swamp was a place to play. I swallowed her own spit once, then twice, tasting bile at the back of her throat. She stretched out her hand, palm facing up. The creature was not as slimy as she had feared. There was a quiet warmth to it, as if it were hibernating. Something stung the center of her palm. She lifted it from the back with her other hand, fumbled, almost dropped it, before she could place it in the crook of the Stranger’s arm. He let out a loud sigh. His body visibly relaxed. He started to sleep again.
I’s hand still stung, and there seemed to be slime across her palm. All she wanted to do was wash it off. She rose. She walked out, leaving Broken Leg and the Stranger, and headed across the hut and hearth and down toward the path and stopped. She had seen something, or had heard something. And she didn’t want to leave anymore. She turned and saw her: Nightskin. Nightskin, too, had stopped. She was waiting to see what I would do. Whom should she betray?
“Go away,” said I.
The healer’s words were firm. The healer’s skin was still soft with desire. Nightskin wanted to turn, but she couldn’t. The women would soon be gathering on the hillside above the boulder.
“Go away,” the healer said, and Esoch understood the words this time, heard that they weren’t ritualistic or directed at him. He started to turn, which suddenly became difficult, placing the left crutch out, trying to swivel on it. He sensed the presence of someone else, wondered who she was.
And there, standing at the edge of the encampment, stood Watcher, the large woman with the gray patches on her neck, the one who had built the solitary fire, who had watched Esoch leave for the swamp, and who, while he was gone, had dug up the body Pauline had buried. Esoch knew why she was here. Three slazans were dead. The second human was still alive.
“Go away,” said I to Nightskin. “There is no need. The Stranger and the not-a-person are going to leave. They are going to leave in the rock.”
Nightskin looked at I, and I could tell that Nightskin did not believe her, that the other woman thought I was lying in order to save each one she had tried to heal.
Nightskin had taken knife out of sheath. She said, “You asked this of me.”
Broken Leg must have understood. His gaze shifted from Nightskin’s knife to I and back to the knife. Why, he must be thinking, why all this trouble in order to die here? I’s quiver of arrows was hanging from the limb of the softbark tree directly behind Nightskin. The stone knife she had given Broken Leg was on the ground beside the bag. The healing knife was in its sheath, at her side. I had never used that knife for anything but healing and the cutting of dead bodies.
Nightskin walked forward. Broken Leg swung his crutch out at her, and she stepped away to avoid it. She held the knife out in front of her. Broken Leg tried to move back, but he stumbled over the Stranger’s pack, fell back, the crutches dropping in different directions, his bottom, then his back, hitting the ground, accompanied by a cry of pain.
And that’s when I took several quick steps, just as Nightskin took her several steps, raised her knife, and I pushed her away. Nightskin stumbled back, regained her balance. Her eyes were wide, her look hard.
“If there will be death,” said I to Nightskin, “then I have to die first.”
Nightskin stood there, knife clenched in fist.
I stood there in front of the not-a-person, her hands empty.
Broken Leg groaned softly behind her.
“Go away,” said I to Nightskin.
Nightskin sheathed her knife. “You asked for them to be gone.”
“I said they would leave. There has been enough death.”
“You said there would be another animal after this one.”
“I said so to Flatface. I said so to Squawker. I said so to Clear Eyes. I never said so to you. I have no words to share with you. This is my hut and hearth. Kill me or leave.”
Nightskin said nothing. The knife rested in its sheath. I waited for it to come back out. I waited for Nightskin to do what she had promised. But Nightskin turned and walked into the woods. She did not stop at the edge of hut and hearth, she did not turn to look back. She was gone. I listened to her footsteps, listened to her snap branches, until she could hear Nightskin no longer.
I’s body began to tremble. Nightskin could return as quietly as she had the first time.
Esoch watched the healer stand there, and he watched her listen to sounds in the distance. It was when she went for her quiver, slung it over her shoulder, that he felt it was safe to get up. He did not believe Watcher had backed down, and he wanted a weapon now. Watcher could hide behind a number of large trees, waiting for them, poised to leap and strike. Or could she really have left? Could the words of the dying slazan have been more than rhetoric: were humans the ones who had to have both the first and last word?
It was a wailing like nothing I had ever heard before. The strength of the sound was like the wind that had sounded of many waterfalls when the rock had fallen to the clearing. This sound came from the same direction, and I felt the same fear take hold of her.
Broken Leg looked to the direction of the sound, but it didn’t seem to frighten him. The Stranger was sitting up and looking in the same direction as Broken Leg.
Then the wailing was over, and the fear refuse
d to leave her.
Esoch watched the healer walk over to her tin piano, set down her quiver of arrows and her bow alongside it, and start to play something that sounded alien, tranquil, and calming. The alarm had frightened her.
The ethnographer fed a medicine ball to the other creature and set it in the crook of his other arm. “Is that a warning?” he asked.
“There are thirty minutes left.”
“And then?”
“Two minutes before midday another alarm will go off. At the end of the two minutes the shuttle will take off. When it leaves the atmosphere, it will self-destruct.”
The ethnographer said nothing, his silence an accusation.
“We have to go,” Esoch said.
“I cannot leave my pack.”
“We have to go.”
“Go. Disengage the self-destruct. Or modify it, if you think I am the enemy.”
Esoch manuevered himself to where the healer was playing the tin piano. “I need to go back to the rock.”
The healer stopped playing, but she did not look up when she spoke. She asked something about the Stranger.
“He is still weak.”
“You and I can’t leave the Stranger here.” She said something about skin of night and returning.
“Skin of Night is what you call the one who”—he didn’t know any word he could use for attack—“who was here?”
“Yes.” The healer almost said something more, but she returned to playing the tin piano.
Inside the hut the ethnographer was already standing, his motions slow and careful. Esoch looked to the sky. The sun was almost overhead, filling the healer’s clearing with light. Leaves were taking on their oranges, yellows, and red. He wanted a chronometer of some sort, some way of knowing exactly how many minutes were left. The feeling deepened when the ethnographer removed what was left of his onesuit and searched through his pack for another.
“We have to go,” he called out in Nostratic. “You can’t stay here.”
The healer looked up at the sound of the words, but the ethnographer said nothing. He bent over the pack again. He pulled out one, two, three sections, which he assembled quickly into a rifle with a needle-thin point.
“Who is that meant for?”
“Anyone who tries to kill us.”
Pauline had a pistol. She could be dead. Esoch knew why. “Can you kill one of your own kind?”
“They’re not my kind.”
And then Esoch was certain that this slazan was a warrior and not an ethnographer.
“I’m ready,” said the warrior.
I listened to the words she did not understand, but their meaninglessness did not matter. What mattered was the long object the colors of the sky and the sun that the Stranger held in his arm. She had never seen anything like it before, but she could guess its purpose, and its size made it threatening. Maybe Nightskin was right—maybe there was no other way to insure the safety of each one here.
“Healer,” said Broken Leg. “Will lead you us to the rock?”
If the Stranger had asked, I would have said no.
“If take us you to the rock, will be we gone. Will be no others. Take us.”
I gestured to the long object in the Stranger’s arms. “That objects stays.”
“No,” said the Stranger.
“I stay then.”
“Healer. Soon will be a loud sound. Sound it louder than a baby’s cry. Will sound it will from the rock. Will sound it loud for a short time. Then will come out fire from the rock and will lift the rock into the sky. If there not we, we will stay.”
I gestured again. “That thing stays.”
“I can lead us there,” said the Stranger.
Broken Leg looked to him. The Stranger said something in those other words. The Stranger walked off. He took the correct path. How did he know? Broken Leg remained for a moment, looked to her. Did he have something to say?
“Am not I healer. Played I once music.”
He looked away and struggled to follow the Stranger’s path. I waited until they were gone. She then took up her quiver, slung it over her shoulder. She slung the bow over the same shoulder. She set off on the path to the clearing.
Esoch and the warrior moved noisily through the forest, several meters apart. The cross pieces of the crutches bit into his armpit; the handgrips dug into his palms. Swinging forward each time, his left foot jarred, and each time the pain jolted through his leg and up through his entire body. He kept telling himself that he would make it, that the pain would be over once they reached the clearing, that he would soon be hooked up to the medcomp. Yet he still wanted to stop. He still wanted to rest here, lean into his despair, and allow the shuttle to leave. Then he wouldn’t have to worry about finding Pauline, if she was alive, or spending months in space waiting for this warrior to be honorable or to betray him; how much did he want to rely on slazan nature? Was there one, singular slazan nature? Which human enemy would he trust with such a deal? Which human would he betray?
The warrior stopped ahead. At first Esoch thought the slazan was waiting for him to catch up, but once he got there, he saw the warrior’s chest heave, the moisture that coated his face. “We have enough time,” the warrior said. “Fifteen minutes.” And he set off.
The next time the warrior stopped to lean against a tree. His whole body sagged, as if it would fall if the tree hadn’t been there. “We still have time,” he said. He didn’t say how long.
Esoch wanted to rest longer. His armpits, the palms of his hands, were rubbed raw. The pain in his leg had become immense. He knew that in any moment he would throw up, and the minute he did, he would collapse in exhaustion. Holding in the nausea was like holding in himself.
The warrior tried to walk quickly, but it was now easy to keep up with him. The voice in Esoch’s head counted each large tree they passed, as if he knew the exact number until they reached the clearing. He couldn’t believe they could travel this slowly and get there in time. All they truly had to do was get inside the shuttle. It didn’t matter if it lifted off, if it headed for space. There was still time to cancel the sequence. But still, the next time they stopped, the warrior against a tree, breathing heavily, Esoch knew they wouldn’t make it.
They came to a small clearing where the path branched off three different ways. The warrior chose the middle path. Esoch hoped he had made the right choice. He breathed, he swung forward, he endured the pain. And then—up in the shuttle, in the day or so it would take to get to the moon—what would happen if the warrior insisted Pauline was dead? What if he refused to wait for Esoch to find her? Esoch kept moving forward, he tried to see into the months ahead, the slazan honoring his word to take Esoch to humanspace‚ so that one day he would walk back into the desert reserve, and there would be N!ai‚ waiting for him, with her own last words.
The leaves ahead took on the same translucent coloring as the leaves at the top of the canopy, and the forest seemed to open and swallow up the light. Ahead there were voices. Ahead there was a dull sound, like something heavy being dropped. The clearing was not empty. Esoch stopped, uncertain what awaited them, uncertain if he wanted to confront it. The warrior kept trudging on. He stopped, looked back. ‘There isn’t much time,” he said. He walked on.
Esoch placed the crutch tips in front, swung his right leg forward, felt himself and all his pain arcing over the crutches. He followed. He saw no other choice.
I followed, too, surprised how close she could get without their noticing. She did not understand how either could keep going. The Stranger, who started at a brisk pace, was soon walking like a shot lightfoot who had bled away all her energy, and Broken Leg kept jumping forward on his crutches, though the pain should have felled him long ago.
After the agonizing slowness of following them here, they approached the clearing. She heard voices. One woman. Silence. Then another. The sound of voices, but not the words. One woman had gone to another, and each had found a purpose in coming to the clearing, the same a
s one woman asking another to hunt, or one woman asking one then another to help force an unwanted man away from the river. No woman had come to her. She almost turned away with that thought.
The warrior had stopped just where the trees at the path ended and the hillside began. Esoch stopped at his side. He was panting. He could feel the sweat. A breeze chilled him. An insect buzzed near his ear. The warrior moved sideways until he was at a more respectful distance.
One by one, women and their children looked up to them. They were standing in the clearing. Esoch counted: five adults, a veritable crowd of slazans‚ spread out on the blackened ground of the clearing, all on the hatchway side of the shuttle. By each woman was a pile of stones. The talking had stopped for a moment. Then one whispered to another. They didn’t seem sure about what to do. It looked as if they were waiting for something, and it hadn’t been for Esoch or the warrior to appear.
The warrior pointed the rifle in their direction and started to walk down the hill, small, careful steps. He looked straight at the shuttle, as if ignoring them would make them unimportant. Esoch was no longer sure if he wanted to follow. After the first slazan had died, Pauline had walked off, alone, to make sure no one else would die. When she had been chased into the swamp, she had not used her pistol in self-defense. And here were more slazans‚ with stones, and he feared them and felt for them at the same time. The warrior called after him, told him to hurry, his rifle aimed right at the slazans in the clearing.
A voice called out. The warrior stopped and looked. Each woman turned to look in that direction. The older children turned to look at the same time. Only then did the tinier children swerve their heads. Esoch followed the direction of their eyes like arrows.
I heard Nightskin’s voice call out, and she ran until she reached the hillside. There was Nightskin, across the way, standing on the same path where the first not-a-person had walked off and disappeared. The midday sun shone down upon the entire clearing and hillside, the colors of the leaves bright, but Nightskin stood there with such firmness in her stance that it was almost as if there were extra light that made her so clearly seen: the strength in her limbs, the gray flaps of skin under her chin, the brightness of her eyes.
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