The Bird of the River

by Kage Baker

  Eliss had an eerie sense of disconnectedness from them, as though they were characters in a play she was watching. This was the end of Mama’s life, she thought. What do I want to do with my own? Not that the poor ever had much of a choice; you took what you could get in life, and were grateful if you got anything. All the same—

  “Saw you going in,” said someone at her shoulder. Eliss turned and saw the oldest of the adolescent boys in the family who had gone into the Forge before her.

  “That’s right,” she said, and turned her gaze back to the Bird of the River.

  “So . . . are you a widow or something?”

  Startled, she looked back at him. “No. Why are you asking, anyway?”

  “Because I saw you didn’t have a husband on your offering. Just you and a little boy. So I wondered if you needed money.”

  “I have money, thank you.” Eliss turned away from him, pulling her shawl close.

  “I mean, I wondered if you ever did things for money.” The boy sidled around into her field of vision.

  “No.” She was more startled than offended. He was trying to proposition a girl here, of all places? She started to walk away from him, but he followed and grabbed her arm.

  “Sure? Because you could make two gold crowns. We could go over to the ruins, nobody’d see us. Look.” He held out the coins in his palm.

  “No. Really.” Eliss tried to pull her arm loose. He wouldn’t let go. “Take your hand off me. I mean it.”

  He looked scared but mastered himself enough to grin at her. “O-or what? What’ll you do, beggar girl?”

  “This.” Eliss showed him what Uncle Ironbolt had taught her to do if she was ever grabbed. His face went a nasty color and he doubled up, clutching himself.

  “How dare you insult my wife!” shouted Krelan, appearing suddenly beside her.

  “What have you done to my son?” screamed the boy’s mother, racing toward them with the rest of his family close behind.

  “He propositioned me,” said Eliss. “At the Forge!”

  “She’s lying, I didn’t—” the boy said, gasping.

  “He’d never do such a thing!” The mother leaned in threateningly. Eliss leaned away.

  “How dare you call my wife a liar!” said Krelan, in tones of outrage.

  “He offered me two gold crowns,” said Eliss, miserably aware that everyone on the Bird of the River’s deck could see the farce being played out.

  “What a filthy lie! Where would a boy his age get two gold crowns?” the mother shrieked.

  “They’re in his hand right now,” said Eliss.

  “They had better not be.” The boy’s father stepped forward suddenly. He crouched and prized his son’s hand open. The coins were still there, glued to the boy’s palm with sweat. “Where did you get these?” he said, thunder in his voice. The boy stared up at him in appalled silence. The father raised his hand to clout him. The mother grabbed the father’s arm.

  “Don’t hit him! If you weren’t such a brute he wouldn’t do these things!”

  “Let’s go,” said Krelan in an undertone, putting his arm around Eliss. They slunk away through the crowd that was beginning to gather, and walked on down to the quay. Half the deck watch of the Bird were lined up and applauded Krelan and Eliss as they came up the gangplank. To Eliss’s horror, Alder and Wolkin stood there too, staring. Alder had gone very pale.

  “You should have beat him up,” Wolkin told Krelan accusingly.

  “No,” said Alder in a choked voice. “I should have—” He turned and stalked away.

  Eliss didn’t notice Alder wasn’t on board until the evening of the next day, when they had left Forge far behind them.

  The Bird had just anchored for the night. Eliss climbed down from the masthead and, not seeing Alder anywhere on deck, went and crouched down to peer into the tent, where he had been sulking that morning before they left Forge. The tent was empty.

  He’s playing somewhere with Wolkin, she thought, but just to be certain she went and looked in the areas on the aft deck where Alder sometimes hid himself when he was in a bad mood. He wasn’t hiding. With an impatient shrug she collected their bowls from the tent and went to stand in the dinner queue outside the deckhouse.

  Dinner that night was fish stew. Krelan saluted her with the ladle as he gave her her portions. Carefully carrying two full bowls, she started back toward her tent and saw Mrs. Riveter waiting in line with Wolkin and Tulu.

  “Wolkin, where’s Alder? Can you go tell him he needs to come eat his dinner?”

  Wolkin stared at her a long moment, his eyes perfectly round. Then he burst into tears and ran away.

  “What in the world?” Mrs. Riveter turned to look after him. “Wolkin!”

  “What’s he done now?” Mr. Riveter said, coming up the companionway.

  “She just asked him to go find Alder—”

  “Wolkin! Come here!” Mr. Riveter sprinted across the deck after Wolkin, who was hiding behind one of the capstans. Eliss, standing perfectly still with two bowls of hot stew in her hands, heard her heart pounding in her ears. She set the two bowls down on a bench beside the deckhouse. She told herself that nothing was wrong.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Mr. Riveter demanded, dragging Wolkin back by one hand. Wolkin was crying, wiping away tears with the other hand and leaving dirt-trails across his face.

  “Wolkin, where’s Alder?” Eliss asked, keeping the panic out of her voice.

  Wolkin only sobbed. Mrs. Riveter came and knelt beside him. “Wolkin, why are you crying?”

  “They were talking last night,” said Tulu.

  “Shut up!” Wolkin howled, stamping his feet. “He went back to the Yendri. He said he wanted to find his daddy. I wanted to go too but he wouldn’t let me. He sneaked ashore this morning before we left.”

  “You knew about this?” Mrs. Riveter grabbed Wolkin by the shoulders. Eliss found herself observing everything in close focus: the folds of the scarf with which Mrs. Riveter had bound up her hair, the snail-smear tracks of tears on Wolkin’s bare chest, the pink and green beads in Tulu’s necklace. She put out a hand and braced herself against the side of the deckhouse.

  “We have to go back,” she said, as calmly as she could. “We have to turn around and go back.”

  There was a silence, punctuated only by Wolkin’s sniffling.

  “Er,” said Mr. Riveter. “Well. To be honest. We can’t go back. The Bird doesn’t turn around. Except at a lake. I, er, I think it might be best—I mean, he wanted to go live with his people, and he’s at the age where a boy needs his father, or somebody like a father anyway, and—and—”

  Eliss turned and ran back to the tent. She crawled in, looking frantically for Alder’s bag. It was gone, along with his blanket. She backed out of the tent to find that Mr. and Mrs. Riveter had followed her. So had Wolkin, who was rubbing his eyes.

  “What did he tell you?” she demanded of Wolkin.

  “He said—he said you weren’t alone anymore. Not now you had a boyfriend. So he was free to go. Because he couldn’t protect you from anything. And he didn’t like living with us. Not the people on the Bird but—” Wolkin made a wide gesture. “Children of the Sun.”

  “But he’s only ten.” Eliss felt her voice breaking. “He’s never been by himself. I’m supposed to look after him.”

  “You can’t look after him your whole life, dear,” said Mrs. Riveter, taking her by the hands and lifting her to her feet. “Maybe it really is for the best. Think how happy he was, when we stopped at Moonport.”

  It was true. The shock of change made her reel, but Eliss could see Alder so clearly in her mind’s eye, sure and confident, following the river back to the Yendri settlement. He had always known how to find food. He would be all right. And he wouldn’t think twice about her, left alone here.

  Krelan came running across the deck to them. “Eliss! I’ll go after him for you. Let me get my bag and I’ll swim ashore.”

  “No,” she told him
, swallowing back the hard knot of anger and grief. “They’re right. He wasn’t ever happy except with the Yendri. If you brought him back he’d only run away again.”

  “If you’re sure.” He took her hand and looked into her eyes. “I’m sorry, though.”

  Eliss was grateful, the next day, to be able to escape up the mast. She sat alone on her high platform and focused all her attention on the wide expanse of green water. Twice she caught unmarked snags, with no more warning than a shadow under the water in the first instance and a trailing branch in the second. One of the polemen saluted her and yelled, “Sandgrind’s grandkid, that’s you!”

  When evening came they moored at an island in the river. Mr. Riveter and two others among the fathers went ashore briefly and made certain it was safe; then the children ran ashore and picked berries and ran wild until their mothers called them back at suppertime. Eliss stayed aloft until the first stars appeared, when it began to get chilly. As she came down, a small shadow stepped out from the aft deck. It was Wolkin, looking melancholy.

  “Mama would like to talk to you,” he said.

  “Why aren’t you in having supper?”

  “I won’t eat until you do. That’s my punishment. I’m punishing myself for not telling you about Alder.”

  Eliss reached out and took his hand. “You couldn’t have stopped him. Nobody could ever make him do something he didn’t want to do. Don’t feel bad.”

  “I tried,” Wolkin said. “He was just so mad.”

  “Let’s not talk about it anymore,” said Eliss, feeling the knot of unhappiness coming back. She squeezed his hand and they walked over to the deckhouse. Mrs. Riveter and Pentra Smith were sitting together in the dusk.

  “Are you going to eat something now?” Mrs. Riveter asked Wolkin.

  “I guess so.” He heaved a theatrical sigh and then looked up at Eliss. “You want me to go fetch your dinner? I could do that! I’ll go fetch your dinner.”

  He ran off. Mrs. Riveter patted the bench beside her. “Sit down, Eliss.”

  Eliss obeyed, feeling an eerie thankfulness at being told what to do. Mrs. Riveter and Pentra looked at each other and Mrs. Riveter cleared her throat. “I hope you won’t mind a personal question, dear.”

  Eliss shook her head. “What is it?”

  “Are you and the—the spitboy—planning to pair up?”

  “No.” Eliss felt her mouth go dry. “We’re just good friends.”

  “That’s good. It’s nice that you’re walking together, but, you know—”

  “Oh, I know. I mean, he’s an aristocrat and when he finishes—I mean, when whatever it is blows over, he’ll go back to his family.”

  “So he will,” said Mrs. Riveter, sounding relieved. “In the meantime . . . since you haven’t paired up with anyone, it’s not really right for you to sleep in that tent all alone, Eliss. Not as young as you are.”

  “I can look out for myself.”

  “Yes, we all saw that. All the same . . .”

  “There are two bunks in my cabin,” said Pentra Smith. “I’ve been stacking rolls of paper on one of them. The paper can go in a locker now, if you’d like to sleep in the bunk.”

  Eliss sat wordless a moment, stunned. “But I don’t rate a cabin,” she stammered.

  “Oh, I think you do,” said Pentra. “With the crew calling you Sandgrind’s kin? You’re as good a lookout as he was, and you’re young. You may become even better.”

  “Here’s your supper,” yelled Wolkin through a full mouth, running with a bowl and spoon. He held it out to Eliss. “It’s peas and rice and things. It’s good.”

  “Thank you.” Eliss took the bowl. Last night the tent had been full of ghosts. It was the last link with Falena, the last place they’d all been together. That hadn’t stopped Alder from leaving, though. She’d lain awake a long while wondering where he was, whether he was scared, whether he was hungry. But Alder was becoming a man now, and men never wondered the same way as women about the people they left behind, did they?

  Eliss thought about The Silvergilts of Delairia, about how often she’d longed to escape her family and be part of someone else’s. It had happened now, hadn’t it? Except for the fact that she hadn’t run away anywhere; her family had escaped her.

  Wolkin sat down and leaned against her. “Do you like it?”

  She spooned up a mouthful and nodded. “It’s good.”

  “Now you can do something else for her,” said Mrs. Riveter. Wolkin jumped up and saluted. “Go get her bag out of the tent and take it to Pentra’s cabin.”

  “Aye aye!” Wolkin ran halfway to the tent and then came sprinting back. “What about the boyfriend’s bag?”

  “Oh! That comes too. Please,” said Eliss.

  Wolkin made a face, but he turned and ran to obey.

  “You can have the drawers on that side,” Pentra told her, rearranging folded clothing. Eliss stared around at the cabin. It was tiny, but as neatly fitted together as the inside of a sewing box, with a bunk against either wall and a dresser built into the wall opposite the door.

  “I don’t think I’ll need all of them,” said Eliss, feeling awkward. “More like only one. I don’t have much of anything.”

  “Ah, but you will have,” said Pentra. “When we get back to the coast and everyone gets paid, you’ll want to buy yourself a good wardrobe, won’t you?”

  “I guess I will.” Slowly Eliss went through her bag and placed its contents, one by one, on the bed. Her spare tunic, her spare pair of long stockings, the pretty shawl Wolkin had given her, the tangled mass of Falena’s clothing that she hadn’t been able to bring herself to think about. An old metal comb. A little box containing the oddments she’d saved from childhood: a broken string of beads, a little figure of a man Uncle Ironbolt had carved for her, a seashell, a piece of glass colored an impossible deep blue.

  Eliss put the clothes in a drawer and set the comb and the little box on her side of the dresser top, since Pentra had thoughtfully swept her belongings to one side. Eliss looked at them self-consciously. How glamorous Pentra’s things were, compared to her own: a pair of cut-crystal perfume vials, a comb and brush set inlaid with silver, a matching jar holding several long hair pins of silver, of jade, of mother-of-pearl. A jewel case upholstered in brocade.

  And Pentra was like her things, elegant and poised as she rearranged her side of the cabin. She spoke with just a trace of the accent of the western islands, well-bred and educated. Her clothing was sober and practical, but Eliss had glimpsed some beautiful silks and brocades as Pentra had emptied the other side of the dresser for her.

  “This is very kind of you,” said Eliss.

  “Not at all,” Pentra replied, briskly gathering up rolls up paper. “I’ve felt a bit guilty having the whole place to myself, to tell you the truth.” She opened a locker under the bunk and slid them in. “And if I have too much room my belongings tend to rather sprawl outward into every available corner. This is the best solution to both our difficulties.”

  “I’m glad.” Eliss tried the locker under her own bunk. It opened smoothly. She put in Krelan’s bag. “Er . . . you should know that I’m keeping Krelan’s things for him, because he doesn’t have any place for them in the galley. So he might come knocking sometimes.”

  “Krelan.” Pentra sounded amused. “The little spitboy. He seems like a nice enough young man.”

  “He is.” Eliss remembered him offering to go after Alder. She wanted to ask Pentra about her Yendri lover, how they’d met and whether she’d had the same troubles Falena had had. Instead, she asked: “How did you become a cartographer?”

  “I like certainty.” Pentra took out a nightgown of white lawn. Turning her back, she slipped out of her clothing and pulled on the gown. “I mean, I suppose that was at the root of it. My grandfather had a big library, and when we used to go to his estate for the summer I loved to look at the collection of atlases. There was one in particular that was just beautiful, with pictures in the margins in colo
red ink. Dragons and mermaids and all sorts of creatures. And a compass rose so lovely . . . I’ll show you how lovely it was.”

  Turning back, she displayed her bare shoulder. Eliss saw an intricate compass rose tattooed there, beautifully worked in scarlet and blue, black, and gold. “I loved it so much I sneaked out of our compound and had it copied onto my own skin,” said Pentra. “My father and mother were aghast, of course. Girls mustn’t have themselves tattooed! It was perhaps their first inkling that I wasn’t the daughter they had planned on having. However, I think it’s brought me good luck. I always know exactly where I am, in a manner of speaking.”

  She slipped into bed. “A map gives you that too. You can look down on the world just as the gods must, and see everything that exists all laid out before you, with everything showing its proper relationship to everything else. You can travel, in a sense, without ever leaving your library. When I got a little older I drew maps of my own, made-up places. I had a tutor who encouraged me, and then I discovered that there were people who actually drew maps for a living!”

  “And you studied and got certified as a cartographer?” Eliss climbed into her own bunk, uncomfortably aware that she had nothing more than her tunic to sleep in. Pentra raised an eyebrow, but did not comment upon it.

  “Not just then.” She leaned up on her elbow and blew out the lamp. Her voice in the darkness sounded wry. “My tutor encouraged me until my family discovered he was spending his time persuading me to scholarly pursuits, at which point they discharged him.

  “What I was supposed to be gaining from my education, you see, was a light gloss of intellectual sophistication, such as familiarity with the better-born poets, overlaying a solid foundation of dancing, music, painting, and household management. Just what I would need to shine as the lady wife of some politician or courtier or—better still—as a duchess or countess.

  “I suppose I knew all this from the time I was a baby, really, but you can know something for a long time without being really aware of what it means. I was rather shocked on the day I was called before my family’s council and informed that I had been engaged to marry a man I had never met.”