Atrus nodded. “Yet if what you say is true, how can I tell if what I am observing relates directly to the phrases in this book? What if other phrases have distorted the end result?”
“That is for you to discover.”
“But if I have only these few phrases…”
Gehn stared at him, then raised an eyebrow, as if to indicate that he ought to be able to work that one out for himself.
“You mean, you want me to guess?”
“No guess, Atrus. Speculate. I want you to try to unravel the puzzle of this world. To look back from the world to the words and attempt to understand exactly why certain things resulted. It is, you will come to see, every bit as important as learning the D’ni words and phrases that purport to describe these things. Indeed, much of my experimenting over the years has been along these very lines. I have learned a great deal from my observations, Atrus, and so will you.”
“Father.”
“Then go now. And take the map, if you wish. I have no further need of it.”
§
Atrus sat in the long meadow above the lake, the folded map in his lap, his father’s notebook open at his side. Surrounded by the thigh-high grass he could not be seen, unless by someone working on the slopes on the far side of the lake, but right now it was midday and the villagers were in their huts, eating.
He had begun with the simplest of the twenty phrases his father had copied out for him—one which related to the composition of the soil here. From his own studies he knew how important the underlying rock and soil was to the kind of Age that resulted, especially the soil. A good rich soil, full of nutrients and minerals, would produce good harvests, which in turn would allow the people of that Age to spend less time carrying out the backbreaking task of cultivation. That was crucially important, for a people who did not have to spend every daylight hour providing food for their tables was a people that would quickly develop a culture. For culture, Atrus understood, was a product of excess.
Yes, he thought, recalling his days in the cleft. He understood it now. Had Anna been born and raised in the cleft, they would not have survived. Had she been simply a cultivator and no more, they would never have had enough, for there had never been enough growing space, enough seeds, enough water—enough of anything—to allow them to survive. What there had been was Anna’s talent as a painter and a sculptor. It was that, ironically, which had kept them alive: that had provided them with the salt they needed, the seeds and flour and fuel, yes, and all of those tiny luxuries that had made life there bearable. Without them they would have died.
As it was, he had grown beyond the expectations of such a dry, uninhabitable place. The rich soil of Anna’s mind had nurtured him, bringing him to ripeness.
Only now did he understand that. After years of blaming her, he saw it clearly once again.
The soil. It was all down to the soil. Growth began not in the sunlight but in the darkness, in tiny cracks, deep down in the earth.
Atrus smiled, then looked to the side, reading the D’ni phrase again. By rights, the soil here ought to have been rich and fertile, yet from his own observations he saw that other factors had affected it somehow. There was a slight acidity to it that was unhealthy.
He frowned, wishing that his father had given him the whole book to read and not just random phrases. Yet he knew how protective his father was of his books.
He was about to lay back and think the problem through, when he heard a tiny cry from somewhere just behind him. Setting the map aside, Atrus stood, looking about him at the meadow.
Nothing. At least nothing he could see. He took a few paces, then frowned. He couldn’t have imagined it, surely?
It came again, this time a clear cry for help.
He ran toward the sound, then stopped, astonished. Just ahead of him the thick grass ended in a narrow chasm about six feet across and twelve or fifteen long—a chasm that had not been there the last time he had looked.
He stepped up to its edge, careful not to fall, and peered down into its darkness. It was the girl—the one he’d seen that first morning. She had fallen in and now seemed stuck up to her knees in the dark earth at the bottom of the crack some eight or ten feet down.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll get you out.”
He turned, looking about him. He needed a rope or a branch or something. Anything he could throw down to her, then haul her up. Yet even as he stood there, thinking about it, he heard the soft fall of earth and, looking back, saw how it had fallen over her, making her position worse.
The edge of the nearest copse was fifty yards away. By the time he got there, broke off a branch and came back, she might quite easily he buried under it.
There was only one way.
He sat down on the edge, then, testing that it would take his weight, turned, and began to lower himself down into the crack, searching the face of it for footholds as he went.
“Reach up!” he called to her. “Reach up and take hold of my right foot.”
He felt something brush the tip of his boot. Too high. He was still too high. The earth he was clinging to didn’t feel all that secure, but he could not abandon her. He moved down a fraction more and felt, as he did, her hand close about his ankle.
“Good!” he said, thankful that she was only a waif of a girl. “Now get a grip with your other hand.”
Two second passed, and then he felt her other hand grip his ankle.
“Okay. Now hold on tight. And don’t struggle. If you struggle, we’ll both fall in again!”
Slowly, painfully slowly, he hauled himself up and over the edge, turning at the end, to reach down and grab her wrists, pulling her up the last few feet.
She sat there, beside him on the grass, trembling, her chest rising and falling as she tried to get her breath, her frightened eyes staring at the black wound in the earth that had almost claimed her.
“Are you okay?” he asked, after a moment.
She went to nod, then shook her head.
He stared at her a moment, then, standing, went back across to where he’d left the map and notebook, and, picking up his cloak, took it back and wrapped it about her shoulders.
She looked to him, grateful, then stared back at the crack. “What is it?” she asked, her voice a whisper.
“I don’t know,” he answered, troubled suddenly, remembering the missing islands on the map. But perhaps my father does.
§
Gehn reached across the desk and drew the case toward him, then, taking the tiny key from the chain about his neck, unlocked the clasps.
“I shall be gone only a few hours,” he said, glancing up at Atrus, who stood on the other side of the desk, the girl beside him. “She will remain here with the acolyte until I return. And you shall say nothing. You understand, Atrus? I do not want the islanders panicked by this. There is a simple explanation and I shall find it.”
Atrus bowed his head.
“Good.” Gehn nodded decisively, then began to pack away all of his books and papers.
“Father?”
“Yes, Atrus?”
“I had planned to go out to the fishing grounds this afternoon. I’d made arrangements with one of the fishermen. Should I cancel that now?”
Gehn paused, considering, then, “No. You had best carry on as though nothing has happened. But try not to be out too long. I shall have need of you when I return.”
“Of course, father.”
“Good. Now go and fetch the acolyte.” He looked to the girl. “You…take a seat in the corner there. And take that cloak off. Only those of D’ni blood should wear such a cloak!”
§
Once his father had gone, Atrus went directly to the harbor. The boat he was to go out on was owned by an old fisherman named Tarkuk, a wizened little man with strangely long fingers. His son, Birili, was a short, heavily muscled young man of few words. He gave Atrus a single glance as he stepped on board; thereafter he barely acknowledged him.
The
y sailed out through the sea channel into the open sea.
Out there, unprotected by the bowl of hills, a breeze blew across the water’s surface, making the boat rise and fall on the choppy surface. As Tarkuk watched from the stern, one long, sun-browned hand on the tiller, a small clay pipe clenched between his small yellow teeth, Birili raised the mast and unfurled the sail.
Atrus watched, fascinated as the square of cloth caught the wind and seemed to swell, tugging against the restraining rope in Birili’s hand. As the boat swung around it slowly gathered speed, gently rising and falling as they made their way around the curve of the island.
He leaned out, looking down through the clear, almost translucent water. The seabed was still visible this close to the island, flat and cluttered, the odd tangle of weeds giving it the appearance of scrubland.
Somewhere around here there had been a second tiny island. Nothing large, but significant enough to have been marked on Gehn’s original map. Now there was nothing.
So what did that mean? What was happening here on the Thirty-seventh Age?
He sniffed the air, conscious of its strong salinity. The lake, too, he’d been told, was salty. The villagers got their water from springs in the surrounding hills and from a single well just behind Gehn’s tent.
Or did, when he wasn’t in residence.
Behind him the island, which still dominated the skyline, was slowly receding. He turned, looking out past Birili and the billowing sail. The sea stretched out into the distance. There, where the horizon ought to be, it seemed hazed.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing toward it.
“What’s what?” Tarkuk asked, leaning forward, trying to see past the sail, as if something was actually on the water itself.
“That mist…”
The old man stared a moment, then turned his head and spat over the edge of the boat.
“It is the mist. It is where the sea ends.”
Atrus frowned. “But surely there’s something out there, beyond the mist?”
But Tarkuk merely looked away.
Atrus looked back. Now that they were closer, he could see that the mist was like a solid barrier, forming a curving wall about the island.
Strange, he thought. It’s as if it all really does end there.
As they came farther around the curve of the island, other boats came into sight, anchored a mile or so out from the land—seven of them in all, forming a huge elliptic on the open water, gently rocking in the warm, pleasant breeze.
They joined the others, lowering the sail, anchoring at what was clearly Tarkuk’s position in that flattened circle.
Each in his place, Atrus thought, conscious of how docile, how amenable these people were.
The old man turned back, a coil of fine-meshed net between his hands. “Would you like to fish, Master?”
“No. I’ll watch, thanks.”
With a nod to his son, Tarkuk turned and, with a strange, looping motion, cast his net out onto the surface of the sea, keeping only the knotted end of a guide string in his hand. Slowly the net drifted to the right, forming a great figure eight in the water. As the string grew taut, he began to haul it in. As he did, Birili cast his own net from the other side of the boat, his stance, his movements so like his father’s that Atrus gave a little laugh of recognition.
The old man had hauled the net over to the side of the boat. Now he leaned over and, with a quick little movement of the wrist, began to loop the net up out of the water and onto the deck.
Atrus sat forward, his eyes wide. The dull brown mesh of the net glistened now with shimmering, wriggling silver. Hundreds and hundreds of tiny silver fish, none longer than his hand, now filled the net. As Tarkuk threw the last coil of the net onto the deck, so Birili, on the other side of the boat, began to draw his in.
So simple, Atrus thought, watching Tarkuk take one of the big rectangular woven baskets from near the bow and, crouching, begin to pluck fish from the net and throw them into it.
Careful not to get in his way and mindful of the gentle sway of the boat, Atrus stepped across and, kneeling, looked into the basket. It was like looking into a chest of silver—only this silver was alive.
Reaching out, he closed his hand about one of the wriggling shapes and tried to pick it up, and found he was holding nothing. The fish had slipped from his grasp.
Atrus raised his fingers to his nose and sniffed, frowning at the unfamiliar smell, then rubbed his thumb across his fingertips. He had not known they would be so slippery, so slick with oil.
Tarkuk had stopped and was watching him, a deep curiosity in his eyes. Atrus met those eyes and smiled, but the old man was not to be reached so easily. He made a small motion at the corner of his mouth, then looked down, getting on with his work again.
He looked to Tarkuk. “It looks like there are enough fish here in this boat to feed the whole village!”
“You think so?” The old man shrugged. “Once you’ve lopped off the head and taken the bones and skin into consideration, there’s not much meat on a single fish. It would take several dozen of them to make a half-decent meal. Besides, we use them for other things, too. For their fat, mainly. We make oil from it, for our lamps.”
Atrus nodded. “And your clothes?”
“Those are made of linen.”
“Linen?”
“There is a plant. It grows on the island. We harvest it and dry it and then weave it into cloth.”
He had seen it but not known what it was. And in his head, Atrus put another piece of the puzzle into place. Fish that had an oily fat for fuel. A plant that could be woven into clothes. Such things, when written in, would allow human life to thrive in a place like this.
He felt a tinge of admiration for Gehn. It was simple, certainly, but clever. Very clever.
“Can we go out farther?”
“Farther?” The old man seemed puzzled by the question.
“Yes…out there, where the mist is.”
Tarkuk stared at him, his face hard, his whole manner suddenly very different. “Why?”
“Because I’d like to see it,” Atrus said, for the first time slightly irritated by the old man’s response.
Birili, he noted, had stopped hauling in his net and had turned to stare at him.
“The currents are too strong out there,” Tarkuk said, as if that settled the matter.
“Nonsense,” Atrus said, knowing suddenly what it was. They were afraid of the mist. They had a superstitious fear of it.
He watched as Tarkuk and his son tersely finished gathering in their nets. Then, when the baskets were fastened and the nets furled beneath the bow seat, a stony-faced Birili hauled up the anchor, then, hoisting the sail again, held the rope taut as the canvas filled.
As they moved out between the boats, Atrus noted the startled looks on the faces of the other fishermen.
Ignoring Tarkuk’s piercing look, he went to the side and trailed his hand briefly in the water, noting how warm it was. The breeze had dropped, but the water was still choppy. Indeed, it seemed to get choppier the farther they sailed from the island.
Ahead, the wall of mist came closer and closer.
Again he let his hand trail lightly in the water, then jerked it back, surprised.
Cold…the water was freezing cold!
Atrus stared down into the water. Out here the water was dark. One could not see where it ended—if it ended—beneath them. He had the sudden, gut-wrenching feeling that they had sailed out over some kind of shelf and that beneath them was a mile or more of water.
Ridiculous, he thought, then turned, looking to where Birili stood, the rope slack in his hand.
He looked to the sail, then frowned. The wind had dropped completely. By rights they ought to be slowing, but the boat was traveling faster than ever.
The currents, he thought, beginning to understand. He turned, looking to the old man. Both he and his son had their eyes closed now, and were kneeling in the bottom of the boat, as if in prayer.
As for the boat, that was sailing itself now, in the grip of something that was drawing it along at a clipping pace.
Slowly the wall of mist approached, filling the sky in front of them. It was cold now, bitterly cold, and as they raced along, the water beneath them seemed to boil and bubble. Then, suddenly, they were alongside that great wall of whiteness, flying along on the surface parallel to it.
Atrus reached across and took the old man’s arm. “Tarkuk! Listen to me! We have to do something!”
Tarkuk opened his eyes and stared at Atrus as if he didn’t recognize him. “Do something?”
“Yes!” Atrus yelled. He looked around, then spied the oars that lay in the bottom of the boat. “Come on! If we all row then we might pull free!”
Tarkuk shook his head slowly, but Atrus would not let him lapse back into his fear. Gripping his shoulders now, he shook him hard.
“Come on! I command you! Now row!”
Coming to himself, Tarkuk met Atrus’s eyes and bowed his head. “As my Master commands.”
Tarkuk stood unsteadily, then, raising his voice, barked orders at his son. At first Birili seemed reluctant, as if he had already consigned himself, body and soul, to the deep. Then, like a sleepwalker waking, he took up his oar and sat.
“Here,” Atrus said, sitting beside him. “Let me help.”
He had sculled his father’s boat often enough in the past to know how to row, and he knew they would get nowhere unless they all pulled together.
“Come on!” he called, encouraging them now. “Row if you want to live!”
They heaved and heaved, fighting the current, struggling to turn the boat back toward the island. For a while it seemed that the current was too strong and that all their efforts were about to end in vain, but then, suddenly, they began to pull away.
Sinews straining, they hauled their way, inch by inch across the dark surface of the water, that massive wall of whiteness receding slowly at their back, until, breathless from the effort, they relaxed, staring back the way they had come.
Atrus stretched his neck and looked up, straight into the sky. He ached. Every muscle in his body ached, yet he felt a great surge of triumph.
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