The Bird of the River

by Kage Baker

  Tulu, dragging a pair of push brooms, approached Eliss. “Do you want to help?”

  “What do I do?” Eliss took a broom.

  “Squish away the mud and push the crabs and snakes back overboard,” Tulu explained. Eliss followed her example cautiously, sweeping all sorts of nasty things into the water—besides the crabs and snakes there were snails, sharp-edged pebbles, and clumps of water weed. As the girls worked, other children were busy behind them, cutting away at the long roots with saws and clippers. In twenty minutes’ time the snag had been stripped clean and set out on the deck to dry in the sun, and the Bird of the River had resumed her journey.

  Eliss made herself useful. It wasn’t hard; there were plenty of jobs to be done on the barge, and everyone except the littlest babies seemed to help out with them. Roots from snags needed collecting, to be woven into baskets or screens. Pots and pans from the galley needed to be scoured. Dinner needed catching, and while only the men went ashore to hunt, fishing from the deck was something anyone could do. When there wasn’t work the little girls like Tulu played with their dolls or pretended to cook using mussel shells as pans. Little boys like Wolkin wrestled each other, or made bows and arrows that never managed to hit anything.

  “Do you know any Yendri fighting moves?” Wolkin asked hopefully. Eliss and Alder, who were waiting in line for breakfast, looked at him in surprise.

  “No,” said Alder.

  “My mother says I can’t fight you because your mother saved me from drowning. Except I wasn’t really drowning. It would take a lot more than an old pier piling to drown me. But anyway she says we have to be friends. So I was just wondering if you know any good Yendri moves.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Your daddy didn’t teach you any?”

  “No,” said Alder, and turned away.

  “We haven’t lived around the Yendri,” said Eliss. “We’ve always lived around seaports. There aren’t a lot of Yendri there.”

  “Oh,” said Wolkin. “Want to see my moves?”

  “All right,” said Eliss, nudging Alder to turn around, but he ignored her. Wolkin proceeded to show her his moves, which mostly involved balancing on one foot while he uttered bloodcurdling screams, followed by a flurry of kicks and swooping gestures. When he finally wound down, Eliss said tactfully: “That’s very nice.”

  “Thanks.” Wolkin did a handstand. “You’re pretty,” he added, as an afterthought.

  “Thank you.” Eliss was astonished. Nobody had ever told her such a thing.

  They collected their bowls of breakfast and carried them back to their tent. Wolkin followed after them, walking on his hands. He fell and rolled into a sitting position outside the tent as they went in.

  “So, we’re going to have a war,” he announced. “I’m the larboard side general. You want to fight on my side? You can be my greenie—I mean, my Yendri forest commando.”

  “I don’t want to,” muttered Alder.

  “Of course he’ll play with you,” said Falena, handing her bowl back to Eliss. “You eat it; I’m not hungry this morning. He’d like to make some friends his own age, wouldn’t you, Alder?”

  “No, I wouldn’t.”

  “Of course he would. Alder, eat your breakfast and go play with your new friend.”

  Alder sighed. He emptied his bowl in a few spoonfuls and crawled out of the tent, and went off with Wolkin.

  “I think he just wanted to sit and watch the water,” said Eliss as she ate.

  “He does that too much,” said Falena crossly. “Just sits there and sulks. It’s not right for a boy his age. They ought to be out doing things.”

  There was a lot of shrill screaming from the direction of the snag, and the pounding of running feet. “He’s a little different, Mama,” said Eliss hesitantly. “He’s maybe not so much like one of us. Maybe he’s more of a Yendri.”

  “They aren’t that different from us,” said Falena. “What he needs is a man around to be a father to him. The gods know I tried to find you kids a father!”

  Eliss thought of Uncle Steelplate, who had used to beat Falena, and who had given her her first pipeful of Yellow. She fought back a wave of anger and said, “Did you ever try to find Alder’s father again?”

  Falena waved her hand. “How was I going to do that? We were miles away from that camp by the time I knew about Alder. And what would you have wanted us to do? Gone and lived in the forest in a bush? Not you. You were always complaining.”

  There was a bellowed order from Captain Glass. The screams on deck fell abruptly silent. Eliss was taking the empty bowls back to the galley when she encountered Wolkin leading Alder, who had a split lip and whose left eye was rapidly swelling shut.

  “What happened?” She dropped to her knees and took Alder by the shoulders. Alder, mortified, said nothing.

  “He just needs to learn some moves,” Wolkin explained helpfully. “My daddy could show him. If you want. My daddy knows a lot of moves. He used to be a captain.”

  “Don’t want to.” Alder put up his hand to hide his eye.

  “I got clubbed on the head, the last time we had a war, and there were buckets of blood,” said Wolkin. “My mother fainted when she saw me. Really.”

  “You’ll be all right.” Eliss tried to give Alder a hug. He shrugged her off and walked away to sit by the rail.

  “I was unconscious for three days and three nights,” said Wolkin, but he was aware he had lost his audience. “I’m sorry. He got mad.”

  “Why do you play war, if people get hurt?” Eliss asked him.

  “He asked that too,” said Wolkin in surprise.

  “Well, why?”

  “Because it’s fun—”

  “White marker!” came a cry from the masthead. “White marker at the milepost!”

  “Strike sail!”

  Wolkin turned and ran. Eliss pulled Alder away from the rail and they went back to the tent. As they approached, Eliss saw Captain Glass walking toward it from the opposite direction. He stopped beside their tent and looked down at Falena.

  “White marker,” he said. “That’s an easy one. Are you feeling up to making a dive?”

  “Yes, sir, of course,” said Falena.

  “Good. Why don’t you get ready?” He walked on forward.

  “Help me, Eliss!” Falena hissed at her, as soon as the captain was out of hearing range. Together they found Falena’s goggles and got her undressed. When they walked forward to join the other divers, Eliss winced to see how painfully thin Falena looked beside them.

  The white buoy was close in, and the snag was easy to spot, protruding up out of the shallows. There were even green leaves on some of the branches.

  “This ought to be really easy,” Eliss murmured in her mother’s ear. Falena just nodded, drawing deep breaths.

  “That’s only a bush,” said Mr. Riveter. “We don’t need a whole crew for that. That won’t even take the capstan. We can pull it out with some rope.”

  “I’ll go down,” said Falena, stepping forward. They passed her the end of a coil of rope. She took it and dove in, vanishing in the dark water.

  They began to recite the Prayer to Brimo as the rope paid out. Midway through the prayer the rope stopped moving. She must be tying it off to the trunk, Eliss was thinking, when there came a sudden burst of air bubbles at the surface.

  “Oh—” Eliss put her hands to her mouth. The Prayer to Brimo stopped. Mrs. Riveter vaulted the rail and plunged in after Falena. Raggedly the prayer was started up again, but most people had lined up along the rail to stare down into the water, unspeaking, uneasy. The musicians fell silent.

  Two wet heads broke the water. Eliss exhaled in relief, before she realized that Falena’s head was lolling on Mrs. Riveter’s shoulder. Mrs. Riveter shouted for help. Two other divers plunged in and together they brought Falena up on the barge. She was limp, her eyes open and staring behind the goggles, her face contorted in an expression of horror.

  “Mama!” screamed Eliss. She fe
ll to her knees beside her mother. Another prayer was started up, this one asking for mercy from the gods, as Mr. Riveter pounded on her mother’s chest. He crouched down to blow air into her mouth. Alder pushed his way through the crowd and stood there, staring. Captain Glass loomed behind him like a mountain. Mrs. Riveter pulled herself up on the barge and sat there, gasping for breath.

  Falena didn’t breathe, didn’t move, didn’t shut her eyes. The words of the prayer droned on. The river flowed on past them all and Eliss heard herself crying and wondered, in a dazed kind of way, how she could still sound so much like a little girl.

  Mr. Riveter lifted his head and looked at her timidly. “She didn’t drown,” he said. “There’s hardly any water in her lungs. Her heart just stopped.” He slipped off the goggles and closed Falena’s eyes.

  “There’s a dead man down there,” said Mrs. Riveter, and coughed. “She was tangled up with him.”

  The cruelest thing was that, however much Eliss tried to feel relief, however hard she tried to remember all the things Falena had done wrong in her life, the bad memories wouldn’t come just then. Instead, the person Falena had become in the last few years faded away and all Eliss could see right now was Falena as she used to be, Falena young and smiling and brave. Her mother, who used to put on a funny hat and dance to make her laugh. Her mother, who had sung to her when she’d been scared and unable to sleep. That Falena, who hadn’t been much older than Eliss was now . . .

  That Falena had been lost for years, but now she was the only mother Eliss could remember. Now she had to mourn for her all over again.

  The other divers went down and brought up the dead man. He was headless, naked except for a pair of leather bracers on his forearms and a big gold bracelet shaped like a coiling snake, that was sunk deeply into his bloated upper arm. There were tattoos on his gray skin. He had been young. Captain Glass, looking at the body, grunted.

  “This is a nobleman,” said Mr. Riveter.

  I killed her, thought Eliss as she lay in the tent with her face buried in Falena’s blanket. She said she didn’t feel strong enough to dive and I made her do it anyway. I killed my mother.

  Alder, who had been sitting upright in silence with tears running down his face, said: “I never asked her about him.”

  Eliss wondered what he meant. There was a soft pat-pat sound, someone tapping the front flap of their tent before pushing it to one side. Mrs. Riveter crouched there, holding out a pair of bowls of boiled grain with ground-peas.

  “You should eat,” she told Alder. “They’re fixing your mother up. She looks as beautiful as a queen. I gave them a new gown with embroidery for her. I’ll let you know when you can come see her.” She set the bowls on the floor of the tent. “Make your sister eat, now.”

  Alder nodded woodenly. Mrs. Riveter withdrew. “You should eat,” he told Eliss. He picked up one of the bowls and stared into it. After a moment he said, “Do you remember my father?”

  “A little,” said Eliss. She sat up and blew her nose.

  “What was he like?”

  “He was just . . . we were traveling with a caravan,” said Eliss. “I forget where we were going. Maybe it was Mount Flame City. I think it was. And the road went through the forests. Some Yendri tribesmen came out of the trees and talked to the caravan master. Everybody was scared because we didn’t know what they’d do. I’d never seen a Yendri before. All they had on was flowers. It turned out they were only there to give us safe conduct until we got out of the forests.

  “There was this one who walked beside our cart. He was good-looking and Mama kept smiling at him. And then . . . I woke up in the night and there was somebody under the blanket with her. They were all giggling and thrashing around and I was too little then to understand what they were doing. The next day the Yendri man made Mama a wreath of flowers. She blushed. She hid it away in her bag.

  “The day after that we were out of the forests and the Yendri left us and went back to wherever it was they belonged. And a couple of months later Mama told me I was going to have a little brother or sister. That’s all I remember,” said Eliss, not adding how their neighbors had been so horrified when Alder had been born, and looked at her mother with such disgust after that, or how people had come and painted nasty words on the house wall until the landlord had asked Falena to leave and take her children with her.

  “Did you ever know his name?”

  “No,” said Eliss. “Unless she called you Alder because that was his name. It’s a Yendri name, not one of our names.”

  Alder nodded. He took up his spoon and began to eat. After a moment Eliss picked up her bowl and spoon and ate too, now and then pausing to wipe away tears. The grain and peas had been cooked in broth and tasted good.

  “There’s a temple here,” said Mr. Riveter. Eliss and Alder looked up at him from where they sat with Falena’s body. Behind him they saw a real town, rising up from the riverbank in blocks of cut limestone. “It’s Slate’s Landing. I’m going to go up and talk to the priest, all right?”

  “Thank you,” said Eliss numbly. She watched him go ashore and climb the hill, walking between the green shadows of the trees and the bars of hot sunlight. Captain Glass had been sitting in silence on the other side of Falena’s body, but now he shifted and spoke.

  “You need to decide what you’re going to do afterward.”

  “I don’t know,” said Eliss. The future in front of her was a terrifying void. She couldn’t imagine life without Falena.

  “You can go ashore and ask for help,” said the captain. “The temple priest has to provide help for orphans. Or you can go back to Salesh, and ask for help at the Divers’ Motherhouse; they’re supposed to provide for any orphans of their girls.”

  “I guess I might,” said Eliss, not wanting to explain in front of Alder that Falena had been expelled from the motherhouse when he had been born.

  “The other thing you could do is stay on board,” said the captain. “But you’d have to make yourselves useful.”

  “We could do that!” Eliss looked up at him. The barge was now the only link with the past, the last place Falena had tried to make a home for them. “I could do anything. Look after babies. Wash dishes. And Alder’s strong. He could do anything too. Couldn’t you?” Alder nodded. “And we could stay in the tent and not have to leave?”

  “If that’s what you want,” said the captain.

  Mr. Riveter came back down the hill with the priest and his assistants, carrying wood for the bier and jars of perfumed oil. Falena’s body was drenched in the sweet oil, scattered with flowers Wolkin and the other children had picked from the long grass on the riverbank. Mr. Riveter and the other men put the bier together and lifted Falena’s body onto it. They went ashore in procession, the priest and the men carrying the bier, Mrs. Riveter walking with Eliss and Alder.

  In the high temple courtyard the sunlight was blinding, reflecting off the white limestone walls. The hot stone underfoot burned their bare feet. The priest brought a torch from the altar fire; even the flame seemed transparent as water in the harsh light, throwing a waterlike shadow on the pavement. The priest looked uncertainly at Eliss and Alder before handing the torch to Mr. Riveter at last.

  Mr. Riveter stepped forward and cleared his throat. “Er . . . to the Blacksmith our own Father. This is Falena Hammertin. She had a hard life and met her death trying to feed her children. Let that be remembered. And . . . carry her through the flame and may she sleep safe in Your arms.”

  He lit the stacked wood under the bier. When they were certain it had lit, Mrs. Riveter put her hands on Eliss’s and Alder’s shoulders.

  “Now we turn our backs and wait,” she told them. “The same way we would if she was getting undressed, because really she’s slipping out of her old body.”

  Eliss, who remembered Uncle Ironbolt’s funeral, nodded. Alder looked unwilling but obeyed. Behind them the flame roared up, uncomfortably hot on their backs.

  Mama, I’m sorry your life was so
hard. Eliss thought about that morning on the hill above the river landing, when Falena had wanted to camp, not to go down and ask for work. If I hadn’t made you get up and come with us, you’d still be alive. But, Mama . . . A torrent of memory came back now and choked her prayer, of all the times Eliss had watched Falena making mistakes, simpering at the wrong men, men like Uncle Steelplate who beat her and stole from her and told her how worthless she was. Why, Mama? Why did you only ever love men like that?

  Eliss pushed the memories away. Falena coming home glassy-eyed, with that funny fixed smile, and telling her something had happened to the rent money. Falena waking her in the night and telling her to dress quickly and quietly, because Uncle Bellows was very, very angry and they had to get out of the house before he came back. Falena lying beside her, wracked with sobs in the darkness in the abandoned shed where they were sheltering from the rain, weeping endlessly as the rain falling. Why, Mama? You could have done anything else with your life.

  And the new life Falena had just begun was finished, and there would be no apologies and no promises to change, not this morning or any morning ever again. Falena’s story was over. The anger swelled and swelled in Eliss until she felt she couldn’t breathe.

  She lifted her head and screamed. The anger shot out with the scream, leaving her empty and sick. Eliss sagged against Mrs. Riveter, who put an arm around her.

  They walked back down to the river afterward. The men stayed to scatter the ashes.

  The corpse they had found in the river was packed in salt and carried ashore, like a package. The priest took charge of it. Mr. Riveter had to make a report to the town’s magistrate and Chief Warden, and came back looking pale and scared.

  “They think the dead boy was one of the Diamondcuts,” Eliss heard him murmuring to Mrs. Riveter. Mrs. Riveter made a shocked noise, and gestured to ward off evil. Eliss felt like doing the same. The Diamondcuts were one of the great families in Mount Flame, wealthy and powerful, far above the levels of the gangs.