The Elementals

by Morgan Llywelyn

  “And so I am, which is just my point. Before my wife died I sired seven children on the dear woman, all of whom grew up to have more children. They went out on their own long ago, but let me assure you I am patriarch of a large brood of extremely healthy …” A shadow crossed his face. “At least, they were healthy. Strong, intelligent. Exactly the sort of people we need. I can give the colony many more like them. Divide the women equally and I can take care of mine, never fear.”

  Later, Fintan said privately to Ladra, “How many women are going to want to go with an old man?”

  “That will be Kesair’s problem, won’t it?”

  Kesair. As he lay wrapped in his blankets that night, listening to Byth snore like pebbles rattled in a bucket, and Ladra toss restlessly in his own bed, Fintan thought of Kesair and brooded on the choices she might make.

  The perpetually moist air of the land they had found lay lightly on his skin; permeated his lungs; surrounded and contained him. A damp, penetrating cold seeped into his bones.

  Fintan pulled his blankets more tightly around his shoulders. He was uneasy.

  He did not sleep well.

  3

  When he emerged from the hut in the morning, the rain had passed and a radiant autumn sunshine was gilding Kesair’s face as she came toward him. She was returning from a dawn visit to the seashore, a strange habit she had adopted. Beckoning her aside, Fintan told her of his discussion with the other men, and Ladra’s suggestion.

  “So Ladra thought of that, did he?” She smiled, which irritated Fintan. “Good for him. Of course I’ll divide the women among you. They will see the necessity for it; I’ll talk to them and explain. Some of them may not like it, however. It’s a pity we don’t have a better choice of men.”

  Fintan bristled. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean, I assume I shall have to select one of the three of you for myself, and it’s not a particularly appealing thought.”

  There! she thought. See how you like that!

  Fintan bit back an angry response. The thought briefly crossed his mind that Kesair might prefer women, but he discarded the idea. There was something in the back of her eyes that told him otherwise, he was sure of it.

  Perhaps she just was not interested in sex. But he did not believe that either.

  When Kesair talked to the other women, she got mixed responses. Some were plainly horrified. “It sounds like dividing a herd of cows among three bulls,” Leel complained.

  “I don’t see what else there is to do,” Kesair said flatly. “There aren’t enough men to go around, and we have to think of the future. If this island has enough resources to allow us to survive, we must start planning for the next generation here.”

  “I refuse to be a breeding animal!”

  “That’s your prerogative, no one’s going to force you. You’ll simply be left out.” Kesair folded her arms, waiting.

  Left out. Leel hesitated, considering the ramifications. Kesair had chosen the phrase deliberately, and it carried weight. In a more subdued tone, Leel said, “Can’t we at least choose our men?”

  “If we tried, there would surely be quarrels and resentment. And the distribution would probably be uneven. No, I think it’s better we make an unemotional assignment and abide by it. We can do that, I know we can,” she added with a confidence she did not feel.

  Some of them accepted. Others refused for a while. But in the end they agreed. Kesair had been thinking about the matter for longer than they had, and had her arguments skillfully prepared.

  The night before Kesair was to announce her decisions, she walked alone by the sea. Without even bothering to eat an evening meal, she had gone to the beach, drawn by the hissing of the foam. The white sand glimmered in the moonlight. A cold wind blew off the ocean. Kesair shivered, then wrapped her woolen cloak more tightly around her shoulders.

  After tomorrow, she thought, our lives will be changed in ways we cannot yet imagine.

  She had counseled a pragmatic, unemotional approach to the situation, but she was too wise to believe it possible. By its very nature sex involved passion, and when human passions were aroused anything might happen.

  Like someone exploring a sore tooth with just the tip of the tongue, Kesair let her thoughts skim the surface of her personal history. She thought for one brief moment of the man who had hurt her more than she would have believed possible. She had thought her emotions were cauterized by the experience.

  Now she knew they were not. She could feel. She could be hurt again. She did not want to be hurt again.

  In sharply delineated footprints the soft sand recorded every step she took at the ocean’s edge. A blurred area showed where she finally halted and stood gazing outward, lost in thought, then started forward as if to enter the water, hesitated, scuttled backward, stopped again, stood at last immobile. Caught. Held.

  She breathed shallowly. She did not want the sound of her own breath to interfere with the voice of the sea. She listened, and that voice built, became a great rolling thunder resonating through her bones, a massive muffled booming as if some mighty heart were beating there, out beyond the breakers. A long sigh …

  “What?” Kesair asked eagerly. “What?”

  The new day dawned cold and crisp. As the people assembled in the open space around which they had built the huts and pens, Kesair studied their faces. The men looked more anxious than the women. In their faces was a tension, a wary watchfulness of one another.

  By contrast the women stood quietly, looking from one male face to the other with a glance both dispassionate and measuring.

  “The sooner we get this over the better,” Kesair announced. “There is no way to divide fifty evenly, so I’ve decided that two men will take seventeen women each, and the other man will have sixteen. Fintan and Byth have seventeen.” She saw the look of surprised anger on Ladra’s face but went on smoothly, “Byth’s group will include Nanno and the girl children, because I am sure Nanno would prefer being with a man of her generation and the children already consider Byth as a grandfather.”

  Ladra’s expression eased slightly. “Fintan still has more women than I do,” he pointed out. “Shouldn’t I get the best ones, to make up for that?”

  “‘Best’ women?” Leel challenged. “Do you think it’s your place to grade us on merit? Are you asking for the prettiest as if the others were inferior?” Her eyes were blazing. Leel was thin and dark and very intense, with a temper like the crack of a whip.

  Kesair smiled to herself. She meant Leel for Ladra; let the two of them blunt their bad tempers on one another.

  “Silence, both of you,” she commanded.

  Smoothly, without pausing for comment or reaction, she called out the names as she had mentally arranged them the day before. Ramé, who was calm and steady, was assigned to Ladra. The reliable Ayn, who had nursing skills, was paired with Byth. Kesair wanted to have at least one woman whose common sense she trusted in each group. Elisbut she assigned to Fintan. Velabro for Ladra. Barra for Byth. Salmé for Fintan. Murra for Ladra.

  When she paired Kerish with Byth an astonished light leaped in the old man’s eyes.

  “Kerish will warm your blood,” Kesair told him, smiling.

  So the beauty of the colony went to a grandfather. To their credit, neither Ladra nor Fintan voiced an objection. Each grudgingly admitted to himself the wisdom of the choice, and was thankful that at least his rival would not have Kerish. She was ideal for stimulating an old man’s virility.

  As the number of unassigned women dwindled, Ladra kept trying to catch Kesair’s eye. Fintan did not look at her. He accepted the assignments impassively, with a brief nod to each woman who was named for him. He might have been accepting a portion of food, or clothing, for all the emotion he showed.

  He does not want to be hurt, so he pretends not to care, Kesair thought.

  The day before, she had decided to assign herself to Byth’s group. Byth in the role of father figure was appealing to her. Her o
wn father had been loved, but was long dead. Besides, Byth would probably not make much in the way of sexual demands on her, not when he had Kerish.

  The naming went on.

  Kesair had given so much thought to her choices that she could recite them automatically, allowing her tongue to follow the grooves she had worn in her mind. she hardly had to think, merely to say, “Ashti to Ladra, Datseba to Byth, Kesair to Fintan …”

  The words flashed through the air before she realized what she had said. Her tongue had betrayed her. She drew in a startled breath, as if she could unsay the words by inhaling them.

  Fintan was looking at her now.

  She dare not contradict herself and say she meant Byth instead. She would look like a fool.

  She made herself go on. “Leel to Ladra …” But her heart was pounding as it had pounded the night before, when, all her choices made, she had gone for a walk by the sea.

  Fintan’s grey eyes were gazing at her fixedly. Ladra was flushed with anger.

  She swallowed hard, trying to steady herself. Listening to her own words, she realized she had almost completed the list of names. The mother with the baby she must now give to Byth, to make the numbers come out right.

  When the woman smiled with relief Kesair felt a stab of jealousy.

  Once the divisions were made, people were curiously uncomfortable with each other. No one seemed to know what to do next until Byth said, “Come to me, all my chicks. This occasion deserves to be celebrated.”

  After a momentary hesitation, his women joined him. The littlest girl, Datseba, stood close beside him and slipped her small hand into his.

  Byth grinned. Ignoring the arthritic twinge in his shoulder, he made an all-encompassing gesture with his free arm. “Follow me, please.”

  He led them to the men’s hut, where he kept his small hoard of personal effects. Each female was given something. Datseba received a tiny carved figurine he had once meant for his own granddaughter, but not sent to her before the flood separated them forever. Old Nanno beamed toothlessly when Byth wrapped his favorite woolen scarf around her neck. Kerish was awarded the only gold ornament Byth possessed. He presented it with a gallant speech. “This dims by comparison with your beauty,” he said.

  The others watched from a distance as Byth won the hearts of each of his women in turn.

  “An old man can get away with that,” Ladra muttered. He began calling the names of his own assigned women. They stepped forward, some willingly, several reluctantly. When they were gathered around him he turned toward Kesair. “Am I expected to build individual homes for them or what? How are we going to do this?”

  Kesair gave him a blank look, suddenly embarrassed to realize her careful planning had not foreseen the next step.

  Fintan spoke up, and she was silently grateful. “We should stay as we are through the winter, until we know what winters are like on this island. In the spring we can go out and let each group find a different location for itself, some place with good soil for farming.

  “This winter will give us time to get used to the new, ah, arrangements, and to plan for the future. Plus we will have the security of being together through the hard season.”

  Ladra cleared his throat. “What are we going to do about beds? As it is, the women sleep in several huts, the men sleep in another, it’s awkward, considering.”

  In spite of himself, Fintan glanced at Kesair. She met his eyes unflinchingly but said nothing.

  He scratched his jaw reflectively, wondering why she was leaving it to him to answer. “I don’t think we should rush things,” he said at last. “This isn’t the way relationships were … before. We’re all going to have to get used to the idea. Allow some time, and I suspect it will sort itself out. We might build a few, ah, private huts, where couples can be alone together. When they want to. But it’s up to you, of course.”

  Fintan’s words relieved some of the tension. As if saved from some disaster, the people threw themselves into their day’s tasks with excessive enthusiasm, talking about everything but the change in the social order. Yet Kesair noticed the way Velabro kept glancing at Ladra. The way Elisbut winked at Fintan.

  Kesair said nothing to Fintan beyond the requirements of their tasks. She was more formal with him than she had ever been. He showed the same attitude toward her. There was a new brittleness in their voices when they spoke to each other.

  If she is so indifferent to me, Fintan was thinking, why did she burden me with herself?

  Is he angry? Kesair wondered. He said he didn’t want me, but I didn’t think he meant it. What if he did?

  They had other things to worry about. Winter was rushing in upon them. Every day seemed perceptibly shorter than the one before, and an awareness of night and dark and cold permeated everyone’s thought. Almost daily, Kesair examined their supplies, watching with alarm as they dwindled. She organized hunting parties. The men went after the red deer with limited success; they were unused to hunting for the sake of survival. The deer, who were accustomed to avoiding predators, usually escaped them. Two does and a half-grown buck were all the men could bring down in a fortnight of hard effort. Then the deer took to the mountains and were seen no more, hiding successfully in enshrouding mist.

  “You’ve led us to this place to starve,” Ladra accused Kesair.

  She read the same accusation in other eyes. They were already cold, and growing increasingly fearful of hunger. They had found a good harvest of autumn nuts and berries, but these would not see them through the winter.

  In an effort to cheer them, Kesair ordered a huge fire built in the center of the compound and kept burning night and day, so its warmth was constantly available and its light could challenge the increasingly gloomy atmosphere. There were numerous cloudmuffled days when the sun never broke through the heavy overcast and the people were trapped in a perpetual twilight.

  Kesair fought their depression with the fire. They huddled around it gratefully.

  In its light, however, she could see their faces growing thinner. She cut back rations again and yet again, ruthlessly, in an effort to make them last. But last until what?

  Instinct drove her to the sea at last. Buffeted by a gale, she walked along the wind-whipped shore, watching great crested white dragons rise out of the surf and fall back, snarling. The ocean wore a savage face. Yet she stayed beside it, numb with cold. She remained until the icy wisdom of the sea seeped into the marrow of her bones.

  With chattering teeth she returned to the compound.

  The fire was a warm orange god, shedding beneficent heat and light on its worshipers.

  But there were other gods.

  “Extinguish that blaze,” Kesair ordered.

  Shocked faces turned to stare at her. “What are you saying?” Byth cried.

  “We are spending all our strength gathering wood for the fire. Then we crouch beside it until it’s time to go get more wood. We are doing nothing else, and we’re wasting wood. If we moved around more briskly we wouldn’t be as cold. Bring buckets of water, dig earth and throw it over, to extinguish the fire. Then let’s start seriously finding food for ourselves. We can’t afford to pamper ourselves any longer.”

  It was the least popular order she had issued. People whined, protested, argued bitterly. Byth the kindly, the avuncular, called her a fool to her face. Salmé accused her of being callous. Datseba began to cry. Byth put a protective arm around the girl and glared over her head at Kesair. He looked like an eagle defending its nestling.

  Unexpectedly, Ladra got to his feet with a grunt and began kicking dirt on the fire. “She’s right,” he said. “Everyone has to be right sometime. Let’s go hunting.”

  Fintan raised his eyebrows in surprise. Ladra had been the first to be disheartened by their lack of success as hunters and abandon the effort. “The deer are long gone,” he pointed out.

  “We weren’t good at catching deer anyway,” Ladra replied. “But we’ve seen lots of birds, and there are any number of small
animals in the woods. I’ve heard them even if I haven’t seen them.”

  No one had any experience of building traps or setting snares. They had never required such primitive skills. But the weapons they had tried to use on the deer were not suitable for birds and small game, so they had to discover new techniques.

  Working together, Murra and Ladra invented a clumsy trap that was nevertheless capable of catching hares and stoats, and minuscule voles. Stoat and vole were only edible if one were starving, but Kesair ordered that they be cooked anyway, and the people try to acquire a taste for them. Hare, roasted or boiled with root vegetables, became a staple of their diet.

  As a weaver, Kesair was the one to construct snares to hide in woodland undergrowth. These produced a constant supply of small birds to augment the diet, even in the worst weather. Particularly in the worst weather, when birds took shelter in cover.

  They would not have to eat their few livestock. The land was supporting them. Cow and goat and sheep would live to see the spring and reproduce themselves, guaranteeing herds and flocks.

  When they were sure they could make it through the winter, people’s attention began to turn to other matters. Kesair had rewarded their diligence by allowing a fire in the compound at night, but smaller than before, not so lavishly wasteful of timber. Sitting around the campfire, eating their evening meal, men and women glanced at one another meaningfully.

  Ladra and Murra were the first to go off together and make use of the private huts built on the far side of the compound. The others pretended not to notice. Since they shared quarters on the crowded boat, they had learned to erect invisible screens of privacy for the most personal functions.

  The night Ladra took the first of his women to a private hut, Byth could not eat his meal. He sat staring at the food. Then he looked at Kerish, sitting cross-legged several paces from him, glowing from the heat of the fire, tearing meat from bones with her strong young teeth.

  “Ah … Kerish,” he said softly.

  She glanced up.

  “It’s going to be cold tonight. I think I smell ice on the wind.”