The Long List Anthology 2

by Aliette de Bodard

  No. Suresh paid me no mind; I told you that he wouldn’t.

  The name of this cannibal tribe was supposed to be “sharken”: so called because they had mouths full of crooked sawteeth in double rows, like the pale man-eaters that preyed upon fishermen and pearl divers on the northern coasts; called sharken too, for that way of theirs, lurking invisibly in the shadows: until such moment as they brought down swift, terrible death upon the unawares.

  You have to understand, man. They sank whole fortunes into this caravan, Suresh and the merchants. The Great Father, God, couldn’t make them turn back or aside now. We’ll just have to keep an eye out, you and me.

  These folk—extraordinarily plump and well fed, fanged and wholly merciless—refused all meats except for tender cuts flayed off the shanks of men—and boys, especially—who set unwary feet off-Road while traveling through the Wildeeps.

  Mmm . . . but no more, D. I’m serious now. That’s enough. Are you listening? Are you going to let me go? I need to get down to the emburdening. And you need to go roust the brothers out of bed, make sure everybody gets over to Suresh’s on time. And unless I say so, D.: no brother steps off-Road, nobody. You tell them.

  He wanted only to savor this mood, pure joy. Demane dropped a word to the wise, but decided that somebody else, just this once, could go about marshaling the scrappy forces of good sense, those few and sore-beset, against the nigh-invincible armies of foolish hard-headedness. Anyway, it was often true that fear best motivated fools; in which case no one was better suited than Faedou, so deft with a scary story, for persuading Xho Xho and Walead to keep to the straight course. That old man could have you jumping at the knock of your own heart!

  “Just thought you two might like a little heads up,” said Faedou. “Cause those sharken will fry your ass up with some peppers and onions in a heartbeat. Watch out, is all I’m really saying here.”

  Xho Xho and Walead doubted.

  This one said, “You know you lying, Faedou!”

  And that one: “Ain’t no cannibals in the Wildeeps!”

  “Well.” Faedou wearily shook his head. “It’s on you, then.” There was very much a feeling he’d done all any man could: some folks were just doomed. Nothing could save them. “Go on off-Road into them woods if you want to, I guess.” The very cadences of his voice evoked the scene: two young brothers joking, acting a fool, the leaf shadows, some twig breaks, one or the other would whisper (his last words) Man, did you just hear that? What was that? then nothing but screams, blood splattering, limbs in flight asunder from torsos. Both our young heroes ripped horribly to bits. As if to get it right for the eulogy, Faedou asked, “Wha’chall got, sixteen, seventeen years? Not a long life. Sad is what it is. But, yeah, I known some brothers to go that young. Always a damn shame, though.”

  Walead sucked his teeth. Xho Xho drew a deep breath, trying to make his caved chest seem barrel. “I ain’t never scared!” And yet didn’t these two, of all the brothers and merchants, keep most cautiously to the Road? During the hailstorm, Walead and Xho Xho even took a savage beating rather than run for shelter with the rest. The boys pissed from the dirt into the green, fell to the rear of the baggage train for squats right there center-Road, before running to catch up with the caravan’s stragglers.

  • • • •

  Aunty was sister neither to his mother nor father, but seven times the great-grandmother of the former, and five times the latter. She’d neglected to die in the way of other people, and came back through the green hills once or twice each generation. When Demane was six years old, Aunty came again and word went around that nobody younger than thirty should fail to visit her next full moon morning. She meant to teach some likely youth or child to work miracles.

  “Now, I want you to stay your little backside right here in the house.” Demane’s mother held his chin firmly, keeping his gaze fixed to hers. “Do you hear me talking, little boy?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” What he couldn’t understand was why his younger brother and older sister—in fact, the entire world—got to go to Aunty’s gathering. Everyone except for him. “But I want to come too!”

  Whenever Mama took a hard line, sometimes it worked to appeal to Papa. This time, however: “You do what your mama said, Mountain Bear.” His parents looked at each other, an exchange full of tacit secrets. They shed a strange and particular frequency of fear-scent—as before, when Demane used to sniff the air and offer careless remarks concerning someone’s mood, or recent whereabouts. But he knew better now, and never did that anymore, ever, so there was no justice in these deserts, this punishment. The family left. He stayed.

  Some are hellions, and some children a comfort to their parents; some, take your eyes off them for an instant, and they’re already into every sort of mischief. Until that day, Demane had always belonged to that rare few to whom you might speak one gentle word and then trust to obey. But after the family had gone, he waited a while in terror and excitement—then he too donned his wick-leaf cloak, and ran out into the rainy forest, toward the big gathering-house.

  • • • •

  The caravan left the Station much later than planned, not at crack of dawn but nigh unto noon; still, they rode without haste down toward the Wildeeps. It often happens that, when the revels of a night have passed, and the sun sits on high again, a long day follows where nothing much gets done, or only half-assed and very slowly. For the suffering is widespread and horrendous as men repent what they did and shouldn’t have the night before.

  Speaking to the general sentiment, Barkeem said, “That Demon will fuck you up, mayne. I’m hungover as shit.”

  “Somebody kept passing me the jar, though,” said another brother riding, squinty eyed, at one side. “Do any of y’allses head feel like it’s gon’ bust?”

  Yeah, said a majority.

  “We had all better partaken, I warrant, of that potion which does allow the Sorcerer to smile so,” said T-Jawn; “yea, though the sun beats down, and my head cracks apart. For there rides a man qui ne sait rien de notre douleur!”

  “He do look kinda happy, though, don’t he?”

  “Damn, Sorcerer; all your teeth showing! What you got to grin about?”

  “For real, my dude—I need a sip of whatever you had!”

  Demane couldn’t dim the grin, nor even get his lips covering his teeth. “Just a beautiful day out here, is all. Won’t y’all let young Demane be glad for once?”

  “Tch. Cain’t nobody tell me that brother didn’t get him a piece last night. Ain’t nothing but some reeeeeeeally good ass gon’ have a man smiling like that.”

  “Teef, don’t start up. You know the Sorcerer ain’t been up in them damn tents carrying on. It’s true love or nothing for him. Right, Sorcerer? “

  “That’s right, Kazza. Me and the Station just didn’t get along too good. So it feel nice to be on road again.”

  The afternoon reddened and evening came on and still Demane felt in remarkable charity with the world. Slow thunderheads bore down on them. No: as the caravan drew nearer the Crossings they saw it was the towering clouds that stayed put, while their own progress southward overtook the stationary storm.

  Men and their burros straggled out along the Crossings’ pebbled north shore. Oldtimers said nothing should have been easier than to look across the broad shallows and spot the Road, a wide black gap in the jungle’s green wall. But fog had rolled east to west across the south bank as far as eyes could see, and hard rain was falling over the Wildeeps, and only over there. The skies above the caravan were clear.

  “See, this what they need to do,” said Michelo. “Stack up some stones over here on this side—see what I’m saying—to mark where the Road is at over there.”

  “Yeah!” Wilfredo said. “Then you could find that shit, no matter if it was all foggy over the Wildeeps.”

  “No,” said Faedou. “Y’all don’t get it. That wouldn’t work.”

  “Why not, pray?” said T-Jawn. “Some signpost—a waymark—raised
here on the north shore, just across from the Road là-bas: that strikes me a fine idea, Faedou.”

  “Problem is,” said the old man, “it would be ‘waymarks’ all up and down the Crossings. The Road don’t keep to just one spot. Moves around.”

  Across unspeakably vast vacancies, the nearest star blew toward the earth a wind of poisonous fire, which passed harmlessly through the sphere’s upper firmament, never catastrophically across the living surface, thanks to a field surrounding the earth, which fixed the location of all things on the planet by means of subtle pressure-lines palpable to birds, and other sensitive beings. Thanks, of course, to that undimmable brightness in the sky above the Road, Demane could see precisely where it began; but he knew moreover that the Road had shifted in relation to the northbank, nearly three miles eastward from yesterday’s latitude. He wasn’t sure it was wise to admit any of this knowledge.

  He urged his burro nearer the riverbank. Six or seven merchants were there wrangling with Master Suresh over what was to be done. Astride his own burro, the caravanmaster peered at the farshore with a hand at his brow, as if a brave pose might help him see through lashing rain and dense fog. Gathered about and querulously howling at him was that quarter of the merchants most difficult to please. The sense of the mob seemed to be that it was too early to call halt for the day; certainly not before reaching the first well on the Road. There was the feeling too that the rain and fog, that the Road should be hidden from view, represented an outrageous dereliction of Suresh’s responsibilities as caravanmaster.

  The remainder of merchants, and the brothers, all rested, letting their burros graze or drink. Most lay sacked out in the grass, a hood or sleeve drawn over their eyes, while awaiting some decision to come down. Demane examined the caravan for any other who showed signs of being able to see the sky beacon that marked the Road.

  Oh, and whence this high, fine mood of his? Demane had retreated at dawn to a leafy bower in the thickets surrounding Mother of Waters, for the sun rose too bright and timely for further sleep on the sands. But neither had those deep shadows been a site for sleep: he’d just stretched out, just closed his eyes, when the last man expected had come crawling under the briars to him. For such a long time Demane had felt parched and colorless as the landscape through which the caravan had come wending down from Mother of Waters. And how did he feel now, as it got on for dusk, at the threshold of the Wildeeps? Well. Even as this cracked gray earth would revive under the softest downpour, there had fallen on Demane, as it were, a sweet and drenching rain. And just as this dust and these rocks, rained-upon, might sheen over with fresh verdancy, so was Demane turning a toothy grin onto everyone—glad in his heart!—body satisfied, his every thought a hopeful one. Picture the badlands blooming with many-colored wildflowers: some snow-white as eyes rolled back in ecstasy, others the incarnadine of wet lips slack and ajar in desire’s surcease; and little blossoms, springing up among the new grass, mauve as a lover’s bruised flanks, your hands so gently steadying his half of the act up and down in place, on your lap. And where’s he, now? There! Captain stood in the water, the reins of his burro in hand, while the hard current creamed about his ankles and its hooves. He stared crossriver and upwards, at that folded lightning bolt in the sky, shining through rain and fog, marking the Road.

  Last night’s injuries from the Fighthouse could have been healing a fortnight rather than only one, by the looks. At dawn, there’d been nothing halt in Captain’s movements, no wincing wherever touched. Those torn knuckles had already grown thick dry scab. Demane himself was quick to heal from wounds, but hardly like this, not overnight. Now, at the day’s second twilight, about to cross over into the Wildeeps, even the scabs on Captain’s hands had fallen away, and the skin of his knuckles showed raw and pale, not yet tawnied to the proper brownish gold. His bruises, not livid: faded; and the last remnant wound, his left eye, only a little puffy, but fully open, its sclera white and clear.

  Startled, Captain spun about—as happened often when anyone’s regard tarried too long on him. He and Demane spoke then, entirely in nods and glances, a conversation that might be rendered thus:

  You see that there?

  Sure do.

  What should we do?

  My man, YOU the captain.

  Well, I can’t speak in front of all those merchants. Go and tell Master Suresh for me where we should cross for the Road. . . . Please?

  Come on now, I’m just another one of the brothers! You know it’s not right making me talk to the caravanmaster!

  All right, all right. I’ll go too and support what you say, but you speak for me. Let’s go.

  Are you ready to admit yet, chump—that you’re the softest touch there is? Demane sighed. Dismounting he gave his reins to the brother beside him. Then, walking over to Master Suresh amidst the fractious merchants, he felt his stomach sour. However well Demane understood Merqerim, he spoke that dialect poorly. In a bad mood, the caravanmaster liked to mock a foreigner nastily, pretending not to understand a bad accent. It was a bit rough on the feelings, to tell the truth. Demane tried to work up a few short phrases in his head. But you were forever changing the ending-sound of words in Merqerim, which had to go in a very precise order, which was also ever-changing . . . About to turn and say, no, look, wait, the objection was checked with a touch. The captain lay a hand between Demane’s shoulder blades, and sliding that hand to the small of his back, top of his ass, steered Demane through the press of merchants. A friend’s touch—a touch that meant nothing, one that didn’t count—would have been flat and firm, not there and gone, so maddeningly light. Chump!

  “Master Suresh, the Road, she,” (he, it? shoot! which one?) “is right there. I see she.” (No, her, shouldn’t it be? Yes, it should.)

  “What? Are you claiming to know where the Road is?” Peering down, Master Suresh l’Merqerim blinked and bugged his eyes, as if he’d never seen Demane before: this unasked for barbarian in his state of folkloric undress, quite an outlandish interloper, among the garbed and sober colloquies of civilization. “Now I forget: which one would you be? Odell, is it—or is your name Birthday Suit?” Master Suresh enjoyed the pretence that his guardsmen, none of them, were to be told from one another, any more than a perfect stranger from his identical twin. No brother was exempt from this indignity except the captain, who (slick as a snake) had disappeared some few steps back.

  The merchant Iuliano said, “Oh, Suresh, what can you be playing at? This strapping fellow could never be mistaken for another! He is the guardsman the rest of them call ‘the Sorcerer.’” Iuliano’s regard was warm—a bit chilly, though, that of his man Qabr, riding beside him.

  “I, Demane, yes. And the Road is there.” Demane pointed crossriver upstream. “Right there. I sure. I am sure.” Aback their burros, the high-toned crowd all turned to look where Demane pointed. Utterly featureless to their eyes, that foggy bank billowed high as heaven, the color of smoke and ash. They looked back at him; but before the clamor of disbelief could break out, the captain shoved forward. He draped a certifying arm across Demane’s shoulders and said, “It’s true,” his voice as little beautiful, as much gruff¹ as he could make it. Demane forgave the little disappearing act and fell in love all over again, or more so. Whichever. Both.

  The impending uproar dispersed into murmurs.

  “You know as well as I, Captain, what doom befalls that caravan which strays off the safe path. If we cross to the far bank and attempt to wander the perilous wood hoping to chance upon the Road, all our lives may be forfeit. Are you sure then, Captain Isa, we can follow this, this sorcerous fellow?”

  The captain nodded. Suresh stood in his stirrups and bellowed: “FORM UP.”

  • • • •

  She showed her other face to him. “You’re not scared, are you?”

  “No, Aunty.” Demane looked up; and he’d thought her tall before! “Let me see your teeth again.”

  She grinned: a maw full of ivory spikes. When she stretched out both arm
s, unfurling veiny thinskinned wings, Demane laughed and jumped up and down. “Fly! Go up in the air with them!”

  “Not by day, child.” She put down her arms. “Maybe I’ll take you up after dark. If your cousins see something just small and wonderful, they’re ready to scream and cover their eyes. Can you imagine if they saw me looking this way, flying around?”

  “I want to change too! Teach me that.”

  “Ah, Demane, we’ll just have to see, now, won’t we? There’s only a spot of old blood left in you, but it is possible. You’ve got the blood-grace stronger than just about anybody I’ve seen these last couple generations.”

  Every talon on her massive hands looked as bladed and sharp as his mother’s gutting knife. Demane tested with a fingertip.

  “Careful, boy!”

  “Ouch.”

  • • • •

  They forded and crossed the wall of fog. Beyond it, a muggy mist crept along the ground at knee height, and broken cloudcover spat single fat drops, not hard rain. Nothing grew from the black dirt of the Road, which was wide enough for ten to ride abreast. The jungle at either side wasn’t continuous trees but intermittent stands, all overgrown with creepers, moss, and ferns. Between one copse and the next grew tracts of brakes and elephant grass. The greatwork on the Road dimmed Demane’s senses such that, eerily, he could plumb the steamy green landscape with hardly more than human clarity, his scent and taste and hearing so vague and weak that—

  “Hey, Sorcerer. You can ride that burro, you know. Why you down there walking in the dirt?”

  Because he could take the Road’s measure only by touch, through his bare feet. And what had he learned of the Road? “I’m too big,” Demane said, patting at his burro. “Gotta give the poor guy a break every now and then.”

  “They small, but just as strong as camels,” Faedou said. “Son, it ain’t hurting him none for you to ride.”