Knowing that maybe, just maybe, my decision had been the reason she died.
I’d been holding Ochiba’s hand at the end. I cried along with her Family, and Dominic—grudgingly—had even asked me to speak for Ochiba at her Burning.
A damn small consolation.
Euzhan, Ochiba’s third named child, was especially precious to Dominic, the head of Family Allen-Shimmura. Euz was normal and healthy. As we all knew too well, any child was precious, but one such as Euzhan was priceless. The growing fear that something tragic had happened to Euzhan was a black weight on my soul.
“Who was watching Euz?”
“Bui,” Elio answered. “Poor kid. Dominic’ll have him skinned alive if Euz is hurt.”
Nearly all of the Allen-Shimmura family were out searching for Euzhan now, along with many from the other Families. The buildings were being scoured one more time; a large party had gone into the cultivated fields to the southeast of the compound and were prowling the rows of white-bean stalks and scarlet faux-wheat. Elio and I had gone out along the edge of Tlilipan. I’d been half-afraid we’d see Euzhan’s tiny footprints pressed in the mud flats along the pond’s shore, but there’d been nothing but the cloverleaf tracks of skimmers. That didn’t mean that Euzhan hadn’t fallen into one of the patches of wet marsh between the colony and Tlilipan, or that a prowling grumbler hadn’t come across her unconscious body and dragged her off, still half-alive, to a rocky lair along the river.…
I forced the thoughts away. I shivered under my sweater and shrugged the strap of the medical kit higher on my shoulder. I’ve never been particularly religious, but I found myself praying to whatever kami happened to be watching.
Just let her be all right. Let her come toddling out of some forgotten hole in the compound, scared and dirty, but unharmed.
The sun was prowling the tops of the low western hills, the river trees painting long, grotesque shadows which rippled over the bluefern-pocked marshland. Not far away was the pit where we’d dug the Miccail body from the peat. Behind the trees, the chill breeze brought the thin, faint sound of voices from below the Rock, calling for Euzhan. I turned to look, squinting back up the rutted dirt road. There, a tall blackness loomed against the sky: the Rock. The first generation had carved a labyrinth of tunnels in the monolithic hill of bare stone perched alongside the river; from the various openings, we’d added structures that poked out like wood, steel, and glass growths on the stone, so that the Families lived half in and half out of the granite crag. Now, in its darkness, the familiar lights of the Family compounds glistened.
The Rock. Home to all of us.
“Let’s keep looking,” I told Elio. “We still have time before it gets too dark.”
Elio nodded. Where his light skin met the dark cloth of his shirt there was a knife-sharp contrast that stood out even in the dusk. “Fine. We should spread out a bit.…”
Elio looked so forlorn that I found myself wanting to move closer to him, to hug him. As much as I might have denied it to Ghost, the truth was that Elio was someone I genuinely liked. Maybe it was because he was so plain, with that pale, blotchy skin, his off-center mouth and wide nose, and his gawky, nervous presence. Elio was not one of the popular men, not one of those who spend every possible night in some woman’s room, but we talked well, and I liked the way he walked and the fact that one side of his mouth went higher than the other when he smiled. I liked the warmth in his voice.
He was tapping the rifle stock angrily, staring out into the marsh. I touched his arm; he jerked away. Under the deep ridges of his brows, his black eyes glinted. I could read nothing in them, couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “Let’s go find Euz,” I said.
The light had slid into a deep gold, almost liquid. The sun was half lost behind slopes gone black with shadow. If we were going to continue searching, we’d have to go back soon for lights. Elio and I moved slowly around the marsh’s edge, calling Euz’s name and peering under the low-hanging limbs of the amberdrop trees, brushing aside the sticky, purplish leaves. Darkness crept slowly over the landscape, the temperature dropping as rapidly as the sun. The marsh steamed in the cooling air, the evening fog already cloud-thick near the river. Our breaths formed small thunderheads before us. Neither of the moons—the brooding Longago or its smaller, fleeter companion Faraway—were up yet. At the zenith, the stars were hard, bright points set in satin, though a faint trace of deep blue lingered at the horizon. Near the compound, outside the fences, someone had lit a large bonfire; the breeze brought the scent of smoke.
“El? It’s way past SixthHour, and it’s getting too dark to see.…”
“All right,” Elio sighed. “I guess we might as well—”
Before he could finish, a grumbler’s basso growl shivered the evening quiet, sinister and low. “Over there,” I whispered, pointing. Elio unslung the rifle. “Come on.”
I moved out into the wet ground, and Elio followed.
The grumblers were scavengers, nearly two meters in height, looking like a cut-and-paste, two-legged hybrid of great ape and Komodo dragon, though—like the Miccail and several other local species—they were probably biologically closer to an Earth marsupial than anything else. They walked upright if stooped over, their clawed front hands pulled close, slinking through the night. They were rarely seen near our settlement, seeming to fear the presence of the noisy humans. Sometimes alone, sometimes running in a small pack, they were also generally quiet—hearing one meant that the creature was close, and that it had found something. Grumblers were thieves and scavengers, snatching the kills of other, smaller predators or pouncing on an unsuspecting animal if it looked tiny and helpless enough. I hated them: they were ugly, cowardly, and mean beasts. They invariably ran if challenged.
If one had crept this close to the compound, then it had spotted something worth the danger to itself. Elio and I ran.
The grumbler was leaning over something in a small hollow, still mewling in its bass voice. Hearing us approach, it stood upright, turning its furred snout toward us and exposing double rows of needled teeth. The twinned tongue that was common in Mictlanian wildlife slithered in the mouth. Straggling fur swung under its chin like dreadlocks. Shorter fur cradled the socket of the central lens—like that of the Miccail—placed high in the forehead. The grumbler glared and cocked its head as if appraising us.
It growled. I couldn’t see what it had been crouching over, but the grumbler appeared decidedly irritated at having been disturbed. The long, thin arms sliced the air in our direction, the curved slashing claws on the fingers extended. They looked sharper and longer than I remembered.
“Shoo!” I shouted. “Get out of here!” I waved my arms at it The few times I’d met grumblers before, that had been enough; they’d skulked away like scolded children.
This one didn’t move. It growled again, and it took a step toward us.
“Hey—” Elio said behind me. He fired the rifle into the air once. The percussive report echoed over the marsh, deafening. The grumbler jumped backward, crouching, but it held its ground. It snarled now, and took a step forward. I waved at it again.
“Ana…” Elio said warningly.
The grumbler gave him no time to say more.
It leaped toward me.
Improvisation, my great-grandmother Anaïs has often told me, is not just for musicians. Of course, Geema Ana usually says that when she’s decided to use coarse red thread rather than thin white in the pattern she’s weaving. I don’t think she had situations like this in mind. Or maybe she did, since she was talking about using the materials at hand for your task. For the first time in my life, I demonstrated that I had that skill: I swung my medical bag.
The heavy leather hit the creature in the side of the head and sent it reeling down into the marsh on all fours. The bag broke open, the strap tearing as the contents tumbled out. Shaking its ugly head, the dreadlocks caked with mud, the grumbler snarled and hissed. It gathered itself to leap again. I doubted that the now-empty b
ag was going to stop it a second time, and I had the feeling that I’d pretty much exhausted my improvisational repertoire.
Elio fired from his hip, with no time to aim. A jagged line of small scarlet craters appeared on the grumbler’s muscular chest, and it shrieked, twisting in midair. The grumbler collapsed on the ground in front of me, still slashing with its claws and snapping.
Elio brought the rifle to his shoulder, aimed carefully between the eyes that glared at him in defiance, and pulled the trigger.
The grumbler twitched once and lay still. Its eyes were still open, staring at death with a decided fury.
“What was that all about?” I said. I could hardly hear over the sound of blood pounding in my head.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen one do that before.” Elio still hadn’t lowered the rifle, as if he were waiting for the grumbler to move again. His face was paler than usual, with a prominent red flush on the cheeks. I could see something dark huddled on the ground where the grumbler had been.
“Elio! There she is!”
I ran.
Euzhan was unconscious, lying on her back. “Oh, God,” Elio whispered. I knew he was staring at the girl’s blouse—it was torn, and blood darkened the cloth just above the navel. I knelt beside her and gently pulled up the shirt.
The grumbler’s claws had laid Euzhan open. The gash was long and deep, exposing the fatty tissue and tearing into muscles, though thankfully it looked like the abdominal wall was intact. “Damn…” I muttered; then, for Elio’s benefit: “It looks worse than it is.” Euzhan had lost blood; it pooled dark and thick under her, but the wound was seeping rather than pulsing—no arterial loss. I allowed myself a quick sigh of relief: we could get her back to the clinic, then. Still, she’d lost a lot of blood, and the unconsciousness worried me.
I quickly probed the rest of body, checked the limbs, felt under the head. There was a swelling bump on the back of her skull, but other than that and the grumbler’s wound, Euzhan appeared unharmed. As I tucked the girl’s blouse back down, her eyes fluttered open. “Anaïs? Elio? I’m awful cold,” Euzhan said sleepily. I smiled at her and stroked her cheek.
“I’m sure you are, love. Here, Anaïs has a sweater you can wear until we get you back.” Euzhan nodded, then her eyes closed again. “Euzhan,” I said quietly but firmly. “Euz, no sleeping now, love. I need you to stay awake and talk to me. Do you understand?”
Long eyelashes lifted slightly. Her breath deepened. “Am I going to die, Ana?”
I could barely answer through the sudden constriction in my throat. “No, honey. You’re not going to die. I promise. You lay there very still now, and keep those pretty eyes open. I need to talk to your da a second.”
“I think we found her in time,” I told Elio, covering Euzhan in my sweater. “But we need to move quickly. We have to get her back to the clinic where I can work on her. What I’ve got in the kit isn’t going to do it. Go get us some help. We’ll need a stretcher.”
Elio didn’t move. He stood there, staring down at Euzhan, his eyes wide with worry and fear. I prodded him. “I need you to go now, El. Don’t worry—she’ll be fine.”
That shook him out of his stasis. Elio nodded and broke into a run, calling back to the settlement as he ran.
She’ll be fine, I’d promised him.
I hoped I was going to be right.
.
CONTEXT: Faika Koda-Shimmura
“They found Euzhan, Geema Tozo.” Faika was still breathing hard from the exertion of climbing the stairs to Geema’s loft in the tower. Faika, who’d been part of those searching near the old landing pad, had been with the group that helped bring Euzhan back to the Rock. She was still buzzing from the excitement.
Tozo lifted her head from the fragrant incense burning in an ornate holder set on top of a small Miccail stele Tozo used as an altar, but she didn’t turn toward Faika. She kept her hands folded together in meditation, her breathing calm and centered, a distinct contrast to Faika’s gasping. Several polished stones were set around the base of the stele. Tozo reached out and touched them, each in turn. “I know,” she said. “I felt it. She’s hurt but alive.”
Geema Tozo’s tone indicated that her words were more statement than question. But then Tozo always said that she actually talked with the kami that lived around the Rock. There were others who were devout, but Tozo lived Njia—The Way—as no one else did; at least it seemed so to Faika’s somewhat prejudiced eyes. Faika was sure that when the current Kiria, Tami, chose a replacement this coming LastDay, Tozo would be the next Kiria. Faika was a little disappointed that her news wasn’t quite the bombshell she’d hoped, but she was also proud that her Geema could know it, just from listening to the voices in her head.
“They took her to the clinic?” Tozo asked. She turned finally. Her face was a network of fine wrinkles, like a piece of paper folded over and over, and the eyes were the brown of nuts in the late fall. Both her hands (and her feet, as Faika knew from seeing Tozo in the Baths) were webbed with a thin sheath of pink skin between the fingers, and the lower half of her face was squeezed together in a faint suggestion of a snout. Faika thought Tozo looked like some ancient and beautiful aquatic animal.
“Hai,” Faika answered. “Anaïs and Elio found her, and Anaïs was taking care of her. There was a lot of blood. A grumbler—”
“I know,” Geema Tozo said, and Faika nodded. The incense hissed and sputtered behind Tozo, and she closed her eyes briefly. “There’s trouble coming, Faika. I can feel it. The kami, the old ones, are stirring. Anaïs…” Tozo sighed.
“Come help me up, child,” she said to Faika, extending her hand. “Let’s go downstairs. I can smell Giosha’s dinner even through the incense, and my stomach’s rumbling. What’s done is done, and we can’t change it.”
.
INTERLUDE: KaiSa
KaiSa stood on the bluff that overlooked the sea. As Kai expected, BieTe was there: the OldFather for the local settlement. He was squatting in front of the nasituda, (See Appendix ‘A’ for a detailed glossary of terms) the Telling Stone. In one hand he held a bronze drill, in the other was the chipped bulk of his favorite hammerstone. The salt-laden wind ruffled his hair. The sound of his carving was loud in the morning stillness, each note brilliant and distinct against the rhythmic background of surf, separated by a moment of aching silence and anticipation: T-ching. T-ching. T-ching. Bie was wearing his ceremonial red robes: the shangaa. Flakes of the translucent pale crystal of the stone had settled in his lap, like spring petals on a field of blood.
Bie must have heard Kai’s approach, but he gave no sign. KaiSa sniffed the air, fragrant with brine and crisp with the promise of new snow, and opened ker mouth wide to taste all the glorious scents. “The wind is calling the new season, OldFather,” ke said. “Can’t you hear it?”
Bie grimaced. He snorted once and bared the hard-ridged gums of his mouth in a wide negative without turning around. T-ching. T-ching. “I hear—” T-ching. “—nothing.”
Bie put down the hammerstone. He blew across the carving so that milky rock powder curled into the breeze and away. He stood, lifted his shangaa above the hips and carefully urinated on the column. Afterward, he wiped away the excess with the robe’s hem to join the multitude of other stains there, a ceremonial three strokes of the cloth: for earth, for air, for water. Where Bie’s urine had splashed onto the newly-carved surface, the almost colorless rock slowly darkened to a vivid yellow-orange, highlighting the new figures and matching the other carvings on the stele, while the weathered, oxidized surface of the Telling Stone remained frosty white. Kai could read the hieroglyphic, pictorial writing: the glyph of the OldFather, the wavy line that indicated birth, the glyph of other-self, the slash that made the second figure a diminutive, and the dark circle of femininity.
I, BieTe, declare here that a new female child has been born.
“I decided to take a walk after the birth,” Kai said. “Has MasTa named the child?”
“I�
�ve not heard her name. Mas said that VeiSaTi hasn’t spoken it yet.”
Where there should have been joy, there was instead a hue of sullenness in Bie’s voice, and Kai knew that ke was the cause of it. Kai nodded. “Mas will give the child strength.” Then, because ke knew that it would prick the aloofness that Bie had gathered around himself, ke added: “Mas is a delight, very beautiful and very wise. We’re both lucky to enjoy her love.”
Kai could see Bie’s throat pulse at that. “I know what you’re thinking,” Bie said. “I know why you came to find me. You’re telling me you want to go.” Bie’s gaze, as brown as the stones of the sea-bluff, drifted away from Kai down to the surging waves, then back. “But I don’t want you to leave.”
Kai knew this was coming, though ke had hoped that this time it would be different, that for once ker love and affection might emerge unmarred and free of the memory of anger or violence. But—as with most times before—ker wish would not be granted. Kai’s mentor JaqSaTu had warned ker of this years ago, when Kai was still bright with the optimism of the newly initiated.
Jaq handed Kai a paglanut and closed ker fingers around the thin, chitinous shell. “Each time, you will think your hands have been filled with joy, but you will be wrong.” Jaq told ker. Ke increased the pressure on Kai’s fingers, until the ripe nut had broken open. The scent of corruption filled Kai’s nostrils—all but one small kernel of the nut was rotten. Jaq plucked the good kernel from the mess in Kai’s hand and held it in front of ker. “You will learn to find the nourishment among the rot, or you will starve.”
Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 2: May 2013 Page 23