The Shore of Women

by Pamela Sargent

  I walked on, scarcely seeing where I went, and at last my anger cooled. I too had sought time away from her, had been happy for moments away from her sullen gaze. Perhaps love only thrived when barriers had to be overcome before having it. Perhaps danger had fired our passion and made our times together more precious.

  Birana had told me that she was well, yet I wondered. During the winter and spring, I had grown used to the pattern of her cycle, of the times she would bleed and wear the soft skins we had taken from small game. It came to me that she had not bled for some time. I had not spoken of this to her, knowing that she grew shyer when that time came and blushed if I spoke of it. She had not bled, and that could be a sign of illness.

  I halted and cursed myself silently. My anger had been so strong that I had not thought of her at all. I had learned healing from Wirlan and had forgotten to be a healer. I should have stayed, tried to find out what might be wrong. She had wanted me to leave. She was trying to hide her illness from me, perhaps hoping it would pass while I was gone. She would have turned to me for help before, would have trusted me.

  I had to go back, yet hesitated, surprised at how much I feared what she might say. I could walk on, could still return before evening after seeing more of this land. I climbed to the top of a hill and looked east, then to the south.

  Southeast of the hill, at the limits of my vision, a black form fluttered near the ground. I descended the hill and began to run toward this sight. As I neared it, I saw that black birds were feeding on a carcass.

  The birds spread their wings and flew away as I approached. Panting for breath, I gazed down at the carcass. A small calf had died. The birds had pecked away much of its meat while flies and tiny worms were now feeding on the rest. I would get no meat from this calf, but my mind was not on food.

  An arrow was lodged in what was left of the animal’s shoulder. I blinked, hardly able to believe what I saw, then leaned over and pulled the shaft out. Another arrow lay among the calf’s ribs.

  I turned the arrow over in my hands, put it into my quiver, and began to search the ground. The trail, barely visible amid the grass, led south. Someone had shot this creature but had failed to track it here—for what reason I did not know.

  Someone lived on this land, perhaps not far from me. I wanted to follow this trail while it was still fresh, find out where it might lead me, and then remembered Birana. This trail might be a long one that would carry me far from her. Better to return to our shelter, to see if she was well enough to travel, to follow this trail together.

  I ran as fast as I could, slowing only when the hill covering our shelter was in sight. Birana sat by the fire, head bowed, hands around a sharpened stick. As I came nearer, I saw that her shoulders were shaking.

  She looked up. Tears streaked her face. “Birana,” I said, “I decided I could not leave you alone if you might be ill, and now—I have found something.”

  Her eyes gazed at me in despair. I sank down beside her. “Birana, are you still ill? You must tell me so that I can help you.”

  “You can’t help me now. I’m pregnant.”

  I gaped at her, not sure I understood.

  “I’m pregnant!” she shouted. “There’s a child growing inside me now. How can I have a child out here?”

  I could not speak for a moment. “But you told me…” I said at last. “You said there were times this could not happen. I’ve been careful. Much of the time I held my seed back so that it wouldn’t enter you. How can this be?”

  “It seems we weren’t careful enough.” She dropped the stick. “I was going to abort it while you were gone, stab inside myself with this stick to kill it. I couldn’t do it.”

  I reached for her; she pushed me away. “This is what you’ve done to me, and I let you do it.”

  “I didn’t mean for this to come to you,” I said. “If I could change it.… Birana, what can we do?”

  “I might die if I have this child. I might also die if I abort it.”

  I cursed myself for my helplessness, for my love for her. My eyes fell to her belly, and then another feeling came to me, that awe I had felt when I had worshipped her kind. “This child inside you,” I murmured, “it has my seed. It’s inside you and is part of you, but something of me is in it as well.”

  Her arm lashed out at me; I took the blow without flinching. “Is that all you can think, that it’s yours? See what you think of it when I’m dead, when you won’t be able to care for the child and it dies as well.”

  I seized her by the arms and shook her. “I would see it die to have you live. But if its death would bring death to you…” My hands dropped. “Those in the enclaves bring such children out of themselves and yet do not die.”

  “They have physicians—healers.”

  “I’ve learned some of the healing arts. Can’t I use them to help you somehow?” I pondered all she had told me. “You said that men and women lived together in ancient times before your kind mastered its magic. They must have known ways to pass through such a time. You must tell me what you know, what will happen inside your body, so that I can help you.”

  “I’ve told you what will happen,” she said. “My belly will grow very large. Eventually, it’ll be hard even to walk. I won’t be able to hunt after a while, and you’ll be caring for me alone. The birth will cause great pain, and there’s a chance I won’t be able to deliver the child. Even if I do and manage to survive that, the child may die. It’ll be a helpless, tiny creature for a long time, completely dependent on me, and I’ll be completely dependent on you. You can’t care for us both alone.”

  I set down my quiver and took out the arrow I had found. “Perhaps I won’t have to care for you alone. I discovered a dead animal not far from here. This arrow was in the body, and another lay beside it. Do you see what this means? Others live on this land.”

  Her face grew paler. “That can’t be true. A band couldn’t live here for long. There are no shrines, no places where men can be called.”

  “Here is the arrow,” I replied, “and it is not one of ours. Someone aimed it at that calf but did not track it here. Perhaps those men fear the north or found other meat closer to their camp. Perhaps they have come to this land only for a time, to hunt and then return to their own region. We can follow that beast’s tracks. If we were with a band again, all the men could care for you and that child.”

  She shook her head. “How could we possibly explain that to them?” She stood up and paced by the fire. “You know what it was like when we lived with a band. These men may want what I’ve given to you when they learn what I am. I couldn’t bear it.”

  “There is something else. You hoped for a refuge once. You said it would have to be here, far from the enclaves, on land where men do not wander. Perhaps this arrow came from such a place.” I wanted to believe this, wanted to give her some hope, however small.

  “There’s no such place, Arvil. I’m sure of that now. It’s a story a condemned woman tells herself when there is no other hope.”

  “We’ve lived, have we not?” I said softly. “Couldn’t there be others like us?” She clasped her hands together as her eyes widened; I had awakened some hope in her. “We have a summer to seek for those who made this arrow. Wouldn’t it be better to look than to stay here? If we find no one, we cannot be worse off than we are. If they’re men with whom we cannot live safely, we can return here and prepare for the winter. They’ll be too awed by you to stand against you if you wish to leave.”

  She folded her arms and stared at the fire.

  “We’ll have to go soon, while I can still find the trail,” I said. “This is all I can do for you now. This arrow is a sign we must heed.” I could not let her die and refused to believe that she might.

  “Very well,” she whispered. “Anything’s better than staying in this accursed place. We’ll go. We’ll leave now.”

  We scattered the rocks and ashes of our fire. Vines and leaves would hide the entrance to our shelter. We strapped our p
acks and quivers to our backs, picked up our spears and bows, and began another journey.

  I led her to the calf’s body. Drops of blood marked the creature’s path; we followed the trail through the grasslands until it grew too dark to see. I made a shelter with our spears and coats; Birana stretched out on the ground. As I lay next to her, I put my hand on her arm.

  “You can do what you like with me,” she said. “You can’t possibly do anything more to me than you already have.”

  Shame and guilt filled me. “Do you think I want that now? Do you think I can lie with you and have you hate me for what I’ve done?”

  “It might have been better if you had forced yourself on me in the beginning. I would have learned to hate you then, I would have given you as little as possible, and maybe this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “Do not say that. You’ll live and this will pass.” I ached to hold her, to comfort her somehow. “If you wish it, I’ll never lie with you again.”

  She drew my hand to her belly. “I brought this on myself. I can’t blame you for everything. Even if I had known this would happen, I might still have lain with you.” She sighed. “All my life, before I was expelled, I looked forward to the time when I would have a child. I wanted to be a better mother to it than my mother was to me. I wanted a daughter I could love, who would know her mother loved her. Even now, while I hope this child is never born, I think of when I longed for one.”

  “I will help you, Birana. I’ll do everything I can for this child.”

  “Even if it lives, what kind of life can it have?”

  “It will have what we can give it.” I held her, stroking her hair until she slept.

  The trail led us south and then east. We moved slowly as I searched the ground for signs. The calf had grazed at a clump of grass, had fallen by a pool. We followed the trail for three days; Birana rarely spoke, and when she did, her voice had the flat tone of one without hope.

  On the fourth day, I lost the trail but found another sign of men. A place on the rocky ground was marked by charred wood. Someone had camped here, had come this far before turning back. I looked toward the rockier, more forbidding land to the east. “There,” I said, pointing at a bush. “Those branches were broken by someone who passed that way. We may have another trail to follow now.”

  We walked on. Although there were many rocks to tread upon, these men had walked over the marshier ground around them, not troubling to hide their tracks. We came to another pool of water, but a brackish smell hung over the pool, and we did not drink.

  Birana clutched at her stomach; I wondered if her sickness was upon her again, as it had been during the past days. She had explained that it would pass, that it was only an early sign of the child inside her, but I worried that her body could not feed the child if she did not hold her own food. “We’ll have to find water before long,” she said.

  “Those who made these tracks would have needed water as well. They will lead us to it.” I heard a cry above me and looked up. Great white birds flew overhead, birds I had never seen before. This was a new land, unlike any I had seen, and I wondered what it might hold.

  We continued east while I noted other signs—a tiny, torn bit of leather, a hole in the ground where a man might have leaned against his spear, wastes where another had relieved himself. They had moved over this land as though they felt no danger from enemies who might follow.

  By afternoon, I grew aware of a sound I had not heard before. A distant roar drummed at my ears, a roar that swelled and faded and swelled again, a sound like a mighty wind and yet unlike it.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “That sound.”

  Birana stiffened. “I think… I’m not sure…”

  I bounded over the grassland amid the rocks, drawn by the roar, which grew louder as I ran. Birana hastened after me. We scrambled up other rocks and then before me, rolling toward a shore of sand and rock, was a body of water that seemed to stretch to the ends of the earth.

  I let out a cry. The roar drowned out my voice. The blue-green water rose and fell as white waves crashed against the shore.

  I ran toward the water, drawn by the sound and the salty smell, and danced as the waves lapped at my feet. I had thought of the lake as vast, yet this body of water dwarfed the lake. There was no end to it.

  Bright objects lay scattered on the sand. I picked one up and touched its spirals, marveling at its stripes. “What magic made this?” I shouted above the roar as I turned to Birana.

  “No magic,” she cried back. “The sea made it. This is the ocean, Arvil. This is as far east as we can go.” She sank down onto the sand.

  I filled my lungs with the air of the sea. Birana’s kind had retreated from this shore. It came to me that only the strongest spirits could live here, ones who could look upon the sea and meet its power with their own courage, for this sea retreated from the shore and then covered it again, pounding against the sand and crushing the treasures that lay there while depositing new ones.

  I dropped my belongings, took off my shirt, and lay on the warm sand. The ocean’s sounds surrounded me. I had never seen the ocean before, and yet its rhythmic sound seemed familiar.

  “A man could build a great boat,” I said at last, “and move upon this sea.”

  “Men did so once.”

  “Perhaps they will again. I would do so if I could.” I sat up and gazed to the south. I had lost the trail in the sand, but a black spot marred a white patch of shore. Birana stood up as I got to my feet. “There,” I said. “Another fire. These strangers have gone south.”

  Her hand slipped into mine. “We can turn back,” she said. “We have water for only three more days, maybe four, and we can’t drink the sea. If we go on and find no water, we may be unable to turn back by then. We know this route now—we could return another time with more supplies.”

  “Is that why you talk of turning back?” I asked. “Or is it that you fear what we may find?” She did not reply. “Birana, they may move their camp in this season. If we leave and return later on, any trail will be harder to find. We might have to roam far to discover where they’ve gone.” I released her hand. “But I must do as you wish. I have brought enough harm to you. I won’t force you on a journey you do not want to make.”

  She pressed her lips together, then said, “I suppose we must go on.” She stared down at her belly. “Maybe the effort will cause me to lose this child.”

  “Do not say it.” Somehow I felt that her life was now tied to the life within her, that if the child were lost, I would lose her as well.

  The sea was ever-changing. Storm clouds appeared in the east, and I was unable to tell if the storm would reach shore and lash us with its wind or drift away. The ocean’s greenish waters became gray as the sky clouded, then darkened as the waves rose to white peaks. I huddled with Birana by a rock as a storm raged.

  Near another place, where a fire had been built, lay the bones of fish. The waves washed other fish ashore, but we ate none of them. We had a little food left, and I did not know these fish well enough to be sure they were safe to eat. I gathered a few of the most beautiful objects the sea gave up to us. The ocean had robbed me of my will. I imagined wandering along the shore endlessly with each day bringing me another treasure, revealing another of the sea’s many aspects.

  Birana had shed her shirt. Her skin grew browner, and although she was thinner, her breasts had swelled. I thought of when I had first seen her and of how she had tried to cover herself. I knew her body well, and yet now her form would become something new to me.

  We drank as little of our water as we could, but on the fourth day of our journey along the shore, I knew we would have to find more. I retreated from the ocean’s edge to the steeper slopes bordering the beach, then waited for Birana to catch up to me.

  “We must leave this shore and search for water,” I said to her. “This sea will steal my soul if we remain.”
r />   She nodded. We climbed up the slope with difficulty, feeling the sand shift under our feet until we came to the top.

  I now saw more of the land to the south and knew we had come to water we might drink. Farther ahead, the ocean had formed a bay. Through the rocks on the shore, a wide river fed the sea, flowing under willows with drooping limbs and on through marshland around the shore.

  “We’ll have water,” Birana said.

  “Those men might have made their camp along that river.” I turned toward her. “Perhaps you should cover yourself.”

  She shook her head. “Better that they see what I am.”

  We picked up our pace and were soon among the trees. I ran to the riverbank, tasted of the water, and drank from my hands. As I rose, a small object on the ground caught my eye. I bent and picked it up.

  “Look at this stone,” I said. “It was part of a tool. A hand shaped this and made the edge sharp. Look here.” I touched a fern. “Someone has cut at this plant, has foraged here not long ago.”

  She filled a waterskin, drank, then faced me. “They may be upriver,” she said. Fear flickered in her eyes. “We had better find out what kind of men they are.”

  “Wait here. I can go alone, see if it is safe first.”

  “No, Arvil. I can’t go back now no matter what lies ahead. I’ll come with you.”

  I gripped my spear as we walked up the river. The banks narrowed until the other side was clearly visible. As we crept through underbrush, a voice reached me, a high, light voice like a boy’s.

  Near the bank, two foragers clothed only in loincloths stooped over the ground. A hand pulled at a root and tossed it into a leather sack. The foragers stood up, turned toward us, dropped their sacks, and let out wild cries.

  Birana gasped. I nearly cried out myself, but my voice caught in my throat. I stared at the pair’s beardless faces and then at their breasts, hardly able to believe what I saw.