Nightpool

by Murphy, Shirley Rousseau

  “The blood will attract sharks and killer fish,” said Mikk. “Maybe we should have left him.”

  “He’d have died,” said Charkky.

  “If you have any ideas about how to explain bringing a human home to the island, I’d like to hear them.”

  “It was your idea, too.”

  “I’m having second thoughts, is all.”

  “We’ll just have to tell Thakkur the truth,” Charkky said, shaking spray from his whiskers. “There’s nothing else one can do, with Thakkur.”

  When Teb woke again, confused and frightened to find himself adrift in the sea, Charkky dove for sea urchins and opened them for him. Then, seeing the boy was too sick to eat properly, he shelled the urchins and chewed them, then spat them into Teb’s mouth. Teb was too weak to resist, and the rich protein seemed to give him strength.

  By late afternoon they had worked their way around the coast past the Bay of Fear, and past Cape Bay, into the deep shelter of the Bay of Ottra, and to the wetlands that marked the Rushmarsh Colony. The two otters had cousins and all manner of relatives here. They were surrounded at once by a crowd of inquisitive otters chittering and staring and shouting questions, otters so thick in the water around the raft that Teb could have walked to shore on their heads.

  “What is it?” shouted a curious young otter, splashing up to the raft.

  “It’s a human,” Mikk said shortly, scowling at him.

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “It’s not an it. It’s a he. He’s hurt; we’re taking him home to Nightpool.”

  An old otter, heavily whiskered and portly, came to float on his back near the raft, ogling Teb. “They won’t let you keep him. The council won’t allow such a thing.”

  “That’s silly,” said Mikk. “Why wouldn’t they? Mitta can doctor him, she—”

  “It’s no good having a human at Nightpool. Having a human know its secrets. You should know better, young Mikk.”

  “He’s only young, like us. He wouldn’t—”

  “So much the more reason. Ekkthurian will never allow it.”

  “Ekkthurian is only one of the council, and he is not the leader,” Mikkian said. “Thakkur won’t turn him away.” But he wondered if he was right. He wondered what Thakkur would say.

  And he wondered if he dared to suggest they spend the night in Rushmarsh. They could not make it home before dark, and he didn’t much like the thought of traveling with the smell of blood from the boy’s leg all around them, in waters where sharks were known to swim. He saw the Rushmarsh leader swimming out toward them, his pale tan head clearly visible among the crowds of darker, teeming otters.

  “Feskken will let him spend the night here,” Mikk said boldly.

  “He never will,” said the portly otter. “Never.”

  Chapter 8

  The dragons’ mating dance grew frenzied; they raced between tall white clouds, banked and leaped through Tirror’s winds, while below them the seas spun away, scattered with strings of small island continents like emerald beads upon the indigo water. The winds twisted and changed direction, driven by the dragons themselves, caught in raging and time-honored passion.

  At first, Dawncloud wanted to turn back to Tebriel, but her breeding cycle was very close. It was the only time the eggs could be made fertile, and this breeding was so important, for she and the male might be the last singing dragons in all of Tirror. She knew she had loosed Tebriel—she had seen him run. She began to sense at last, with the feel of rightness that sometimes came to her, that the boy was safe, that there was someone to keep him now, tenderly feed and warm him. Such a little while more, in the dragon’s time sense, that the child need be tended and watched over.

  The male bellowed to shake the peaks and breathed lightning and flame into the sky, so the winds grew searing hot and beat around the twining two with gale force. The male was old; this would be his last breeding. He was heavier and much larger than she, and of rougher build, but he was as graceful as a male can be in the mating dance. When Dawncloud’s inner clock was sure, she rose directly into the sunset and he followed her, and they danced the final rituals, then bred high above Tirror in the orange-stained sky.

  The old male died soon after breeding. The female mourned him briefly, then left him on the stony ridge. She moved high above clouds, south toward Lair Island, toward the peak on which she herself had been hatched, toward that jutting tangle of bare mountains that rises between Dubla and Fendreth-Teching. She sensed other creatures there, but they would soon be gone, for she would allow no threat to her eggs.

  *

  In Rushmarsh the crowd of otters exclaimed over Teb. Their leader, Feskken of the pale tan coat and dark muzzle, escorted the raft to shore, scowling at the few who complained and sending them on other business. ‘The boy will die without rest. He needs food and quiet until morning.”

  Charkky and Mikk looked at Feskken gratefully and pushed the raft in among the grasses of Rushmarsh, where they would be safe for the night. There they fed Teb again with chewed seafood and told their tale to Feskken and the gathering of otters in the great meeting holt in the center of Rushmarsh, a holt woven of the living green grasses of the marsh and so quite invisible from any distance, as were all the holts in Rushmarsh. Feskken sent two otters to pack Teb’s wounds with damp moss and to feed him horserush tea to ease the pain. Teb hardly knew he ate or drank, and kept falling in and out of consciousness. The horserush tea made him sleep, and he knew nothing more until he woke the next morning on the raft again when the first wave hit him. He was sweating with pain again and shivering, and the otters were afraid for him. They gave him more of the tea, carefully stored in a clamshell, and again the pain eased, and Teb lay watching the sea roll and heave, and drowsing.

  “Mitta will help him,” Charkky said. “She’ll know what to do.” He splashed more cold salty water over the seaweed that packed Teb’s leg and touched the boy’s cheek with a hesitant paw. Teb only blinked at him. “I wish he could tell us his name,” said Charkky. But Teb couldn’t, he couldn’t dredge any name up out of the darkness.

  “He’s weary with pain,” Mikk said. “He’s half gone in shock and sickness.”

  The journey took half the day, the two otters pushing and pulling the raft, a slow cumbersome way to travel for those who could flip through the sea like hawking swallows, weightless and free. By the time they sighted Nightpool, both were weary indeed of the slow, willful raft that bucked and halted at every wave. Teb had thrown up twice and was so white they were sure he would die.

  “We shouldn’t have brought him,” said Mikk. “We should have left him on the battlefield.”

  “You know you couldn’t have.”

  “What is Thakkur going to say?”

  “What is Ekkthurian going to say is more the question.”

  “Who cares what Ekkthurian says. He’s nothing but a troublemaker.”

  “Well, whatever anyone says, it’ll come soon enough. Look, they’re gathered on the cliff, and there’s Thakkur.”

  *

  The dragon took one meal after the breeding, dropping down onto a mountain pasture to snatch up sheep and goats. She ate only the aged and crippled, hunting the domestic mammals as the wolf hunts, for food only, and selectively. She had seen other dragons below her as she traveled, common dragons lairing in the mountains over which she flew, but there were none like herself. None frightened her, though if they came for her eggs, she would kill them.

  At midmorning she took possession of the entire tangle of peaks that made up the Lair, driving out two common dragons, several king lizards, and a black python, and eating their eggs and newborn so they would not return to their nests. Then she began to uproot trees from the countryside below and, on the highest peak of the Lair, to weave her nest from the trunks, curving the smaller branches and twigs inward to make a soft bed. She sensed the five young within her with a terrible joy of love and possession.

  When she was ready to lay, she killed t
wo angora goats and three sheep, and laid them around the nest in a circle, then ripped their bellies open. These would receive her five eggs, to warm and nurture them. When all was ready, she crouched, bellowed again to shake the sky, and began to lay.

  *

  Teb’s first view of Nightpool was a towering black rock jutting up out of the pounding sea. Then of a crowd of otters silhouetted along the high cliff looking down at him; then, like birds swooping, they dove into the sea and came up bobbing all around him, chattering and sending the raft rocking. Pretty soon he was being carried up the steep cliff, biting his lip against the pain of movement. It was all like a disjointed dream—some parts fuzzy, or filled only with physical pain, then a scene coming suddenly clear. Then he was in a cave, lying on a low stone shelf, and otters stood looking down at him. One, a plump female, began to examine his leg, feeling the broken bones with fingers so gentle they were like the touch of a moth. She felt Teb’s fevered face, then began barking directions in a sharp, keening voice that sent young otters flying out the door. “I want wood for splints. Get straight driftwood. I want horserush, crush it well and make the tea with it, stir it and stir it until it is all brown. I want moss dampened in the sea, and braided eelgrass for binding the splints. And I want fresh clay in the biggest clamshell, well moistened.”

  When she had sent the young otters away, she sat with her paw on Teb’s forehead, studying his face, her big dark eyes very gentle. He could hear voices outside the cave, and some of them were angry. Arguments flew in and out of his consciousness as he dozed and woke.

  Once he felt his head lifted, and then he tasted the familiar horserush brew. And then later he felt a tug at his clothes and saw that the female otter was cutting away his trousers with a sharp clamshell. His boots were already gone. She undid his tunic, lifted him again, and slid it off, then covered him with a thick moss blanket. The chain was gone from his leg. It had been on his left leg. It was his right leg that was so filled with pain. He thought he remembered something like flame searing off the chain, but nothing would come clear. There were voices somewhere nearby, still arguing, but there was no one in the cave save the small, pudgy female. He could hear the argument clearly.

  “The boy can’t be kept here; such a thing is impossible.”

  “Of course we’ll keep him. He needs help.”

  “He won’t even tell us his name. I call that suspicious.”

  “He can’t tell us his name. Can’t you see how sick he is?”

  “It’s far too dangerous to have a human here. It’s never been done,” said the querulous voice. Teb tried to shut the voices out. The pain was coming back, and he felt sick.

  “Hah! Thakkur can’t let him stay. The council will vote him down.” And then the voices grew silent suddenly.

  Teb saw a white otter enter the cave, rearing tall, his coat like snow against the dark stone wall. He stood looking down at Teb, searching his face with great dark eyes.

  “I am Thakkur,” he said quietly. Then, “Come, Mitta, let’s look at the leg.” He pulled the moss cover back, then scowled, touching Teb’s leg delicately. “It’s twice the size of the other leg and purple as sea urchins. Can we heal it?”

  “We will try.”

  “And what are those scars on his ankles? Old scars—as if chains had been wrapped around them.”

  “Slaves are chained,” she said. She covered Teb to the waist with the moss blanket. “The ribs are hurt, too. And there are old, healed scars on his back. As from lashings with a whip.”

  Thakkur lifted Teb’s shoulders gently, to look. The smell of him, as of all the otters, was a fishy breath. He laid Teb down again, and his dark eyes were expanding pools into which Teb in his half consciousness seemed to be falling.

  “Can you tell us your name, child? Who are you?”

  But Teb couldn’t dredge it up. He shook his head feebly. The pain was too great to think, the throbbing in his leg and ribs like a drum beating, sucking him down. Mitta gave him more tea, and soon again he was dropping away into darkness, in and out of consciousness.

  Then he woke a little more, for they were doing something to his leg. He lay watching them, the white otter and the smaller, rounder brown Mitta. He studied her squarish, furred face and her round dark eyes, which looked at him so gently, and her spiky, drooping whiskers. She hadn’t any chin, and when she spoke, her dark nose twitched and her whiskers trembled.

  “We must set the leg, Thakkur and I. We will do it as gently as we can. But there will be pain again when we pull and the bones pop into place. It cannot be helped.”

  He felt their paws on his leg, felt them grip and knew a surge of fear at new pain. Their paws touched his leg, investigating, searching, as he lay trying to put down the fear.

  “Is the splint ready?” said the white otter.

  “Yes, here. And the clay.”

  “All right, then. Steady now, boy. It won’t take long.”

  And then the pain struck him so his whole body was afire and tears spurting from his eyes, and he heard a crunching of bone. Then it was over.

  He felt himself covered again, felt the gentle paws, felt at last the sweet coolness as the wet clay pack was worked around his splinted leg. Then, exhausted, he slept, only vaguely aware of Mitta laying her head on his chest to listen, and then the two otters sitting nearby, talking softly.

  “I’m afraid for him,” Mitta said. “The clay will help soak infection from the leg, but it’s more than that.”

  “The ribs are broken, too. We will bind them,” Thakkur said.

  “But look how old the cuts on his arm are. He has had a long time of being hurt, perhaps being cold and without proper food. There is a sickness there in his chest, as a creature will get when it is harried and cold and without rest.”

  “We can only do our best for him.”

  “We must get food down him. Charkky and Mikk were right to chew shellfish for him, and I will do the same.”

  “We can all do that, if needed. I will choose half a dozen to help tend him, so you can return to your cubs when you wish. We can only do our best,” he repeated. “And make a prayer at meeting.”

  “And keep Ekkthurian away from him.” She raised her eyes to Thakkur. “I’m glad he is in your cave, where he will know added protection. Who is this boy? Mikk said there was a terrible battle where they found him. The dark ones, I suppose, raging and making trouble. I do wish humans could be content with the land, and with the riches we all have.”

  “Some humans can,” said Thakkur shortly. “It’s the dark ones—Quazelzeg and his kind.”

  “If they keep on, nothing will be safe. Nothing will be left.”

  Thakkur nodded. “Not even Nightpool.” He patted Mitta’s forepaw. “The boy will tell us more when he is well again.”

  Mitta looked at him doubtfully.

  “He will get well, Mitta. He must. I feel it is important—that the boy is important somehow.” Thakkur turned and left his cave, and Mitta settled down on a stone bench near Teb and took up her weaving again. Her paws were never idle, those busy otter paws mending and weaving and shucking shellfish, cleaning and grooming herself, changing Teb’s bandages and gently feeding him.

  And so began a strange, disjointed, dreamlike time for Teb, when he would wake and see daylight outside the cave, or darkness and stars, sometimes a moon, but with no idea of passing days. He was vaguely aware sometimes of being waked and his head held up, and food spooned into his mouth on a shell, of being told to swallow though he felt too tired to swallow. Aware of things done to his leg, of covers pulled over him or removed. Aware of the furred paws tending him and of the softness of otter voices, of their soft “Hah” of greeting. Strangely aware sometimes of dreams that tangled into senselessness when he tried to remember them.

  Often he woke moaning with terror and visions of men with knives bending over him, and then Mitta would come and hold him like her own child and nuzzle his neck until he felt comforted.

  But the terror of
not knowing who he was, of not even knowing his name, could not be comforted.

  Chapter 9

  Summer grew hot, but the sea wind helped to calm Teb’s fever. The otters bathed him with cool water and fed him pulverized shellfish and roots and strange fish juices. He drifted in and out of dreams and fragmented scenes and made little sense of anything until one morning, late into the fall of the year, with the sea running warm and green and gulls screaming out over the waves, he woke at last with a clear, eager curiosity and stared around the cave where he lay, and frowned at the white otter who stood tall, looking down at him.

  He tried to remember where he was, and why he was here. He tried to put together the dreams of fighting and of dragons, with the otters coming and going and the constant pounding of the sea, the pounding that filled his ears now as he gazed at a patch of sunlight across the white otter’s shoulder, and then at the smaller, dark, round otter who moved beside him carrying a clamshell.

  “Mitta,” Teb said, “Mitta.”

  They helped him to sit up and placed the clamshell in his lap. He felt starved, but he stared down at the mess of raw shellfish, then looked back at them helplessly. “It’s raw. It’s—”

  “You have been eating raw fish all summer,” said the white otter. “I am Thakkur. You are in the otter colony of Nightpool.”

  Teb stared at Thakkur and back at the food, and almost retched. “If you could make a fire, maybe I could cook it,” he said helplessly.