The Moon and the Face

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “I thought I was,” Regny said bewilderedly. “What’s the matter?”

  “The Healer had a dream—”

  “About Kyreol?”

  “No.” A predawn breeze stirred across the dark water, carrying cold, familiar smells. “He dreamed about the new Healer.”

  Regny grunted softly. “He can die in peace, then. That amazes me, how the Riverworld takes care of itself. Who did he dream of?”

  “Me.”

  Regny was so still for a moment he might have vanished in the dark. When he spoke, his voice made almost no sound. “What?”

  “That’s who he saw. Me.” He lifted his head, straining to see Regny’s face. His own voice shook. “I don’t—I don’t know what—I don’t feel it—”

  “That’s crazy. It makes no sense. He’s a dying man, catching at a bit of hope. He’s delirious—he thinks you’re still part of the Riverworld, that you never left—”

  “You didn’t say he was crazy when he dreamed Kyreol was in trouble. He was absolutely right. Regny, I’m scared. Can I say no to a dream? Do I even have a choice? Or are his dreams mirrors—mirrors of the future?”

  Regny breathed something inaudible. He bent down next to Terje, pulled something out of his boot. A light flared between them; they could see each other’s faces. Regny’s looked as though it had been carved out of the hard black stone of the Face.

  “What did he dream?”

  “That I—I held the River in one hand and the Moon-Flash in the other. He said it meant the River had chosen me. The Moon-Flash! Regny, how can I—”

  “You can’t. If that’s not what you want. You’d have to want it. In your heart. Wouldn’t you?”

  Terje felt himself relax a little. “I would think so. That’s what frightened me. That he saw something I couldn’t see, but that his seeing would make it true anyway. There’s never been a Healer in my family. Kyreol was always the one with all the good dreams…”

  “I still think,” Regny said softly, “he just invented some hope for himself, so that he could die without feeling he failed the Riverworld.”

  “Maybe. But his mind seemed clear. He said he knew you.”

  “What?”

  “I mentioned you—that you’d helped me and Kyreol go downriver. No more than that. But he recognized you when I said your name. He said he saw you many times at rituals. He thought you were a ghost, wandering in and out of the Riverworld. You looked like a hunter, but your mind—your thoughts were different.”

  He heard Regny swallow. Regny was silent; they both were. A bird cried softly, once. Terje touched his eyes again, felt the tears slide under his fingers.

  “It’s too much,” Regny whispered. “It’s too much. Do you want to return to the Dome?”

  “I can’t leave him. Korre’s mother said—she said—a day or two at the most.”

  “Then you go back. I’ll stay for the rituals. You can’t worry about both the Healer and Kyreol.”

  “He knows all the rituals. The burial ritual. The ritual for the new Healer. There’s no one to perform them.”

  “That’s not your concern,” Regny said. “You don’t know them either.”

  “No.” He leaned back, his face quieter. “I don’t know what to say to him when he wakes and looks at me. There’s no time to teach me anything, anyway. He’s too sick.”

  “Then don’t worry about it.”

  “I do worry. When he’s gone, what will become of the Riverworld without a Healer?”

  Regny was silent again. He ran his hand through his hair, sighing. “I don’t know. I do know that all this shouldn’t have fallen on your shoulders.”

  Terje shrugged slightly, as if settling a burden. Regny rose, giving him a quick pat on the way up.

  “Come on. Let’s go downriver where we can build a fire. You need sleep, and I’m starving.”

  ★

  TERJE WOKE at noon the next day. He lay without thinking, watched the green leaves overhead tremble against the blue sky. They sifted the light, loosed it in patches of gold on the sand. He remembered, briefly and intensely, waking with Kyreol beside him on the River, farther down. The air had been that warm, laden with gold. Kyreol had leaned over, out of her dreams, and kissed him, betrothed as she was to Korre, and he had known then that she would never return to the Riverworld.

  Kyreol.

  The Healer.

  He turned his head, saw the River.

  He got up, sighing, brushed the sand and leaves off his face, and walked straight into the water until it rose above his head and he floated on it, letting it carry him like a twig until he was finally awake. Then he waded out, ate a handful of nuts, and walked back upriver to the Healer’s house.

  He sat at the Healer’s side, drinking tea, waiting for the Healer to speak of his dream again. But Icrane’s mind was roaming earlier years, when Nara was with him and a tiny Kyreol brought him shells and flowers and small stones, chattering like a bird.

  He said abruptly, interrupting his own memories, “I sent them dreams, so they won’t grieve.”

  Terje put his cup down carefully, feeling a cold finger of wonder down his spine. “How can you know?” he whispered. “Can you be sure they’ll dream your dreams?”

  The Healer smiled. His face was grey-black, sunken, slick with sweat, but his eyes were peaceful. “Everything is one. We are as close as dreams, always. You know that.”

  “I don’t dream like you do. I have simple dreams.”

  “Kyreol was always with you.”

  “What—”

  “She dreamed for you.”

  “She—” He paused, blinking, groping at the Healer’s meaning. “She won’t stay with me here,” he said finally.

  Icrane only said tranquilly, “I know.”

  Terje felt something deep in him grow hard and crystal-clear, focusing his thoughts. I won’t leave her. Not for this. Not for anything. He didn’t speak, but Icrane saw the change in his eyes. His smile only deepened a little, as if he were pleased.

  “The world,” he said, his voice so fragile each word sounded new, “dreams, and the dream is the World. You will know—all that you need to know.”

  The hardness in Terje snapped. He leaned forward, his face against the pallet, felt the Healer touch him. “I don’t,” he pleaded. “I don’t know anything. I don’t know herbs or teas, or what happens in the betrothal caves. I don’t know the words to any ritual. Dream again. The Riverworld must have a Healer. I’m not a healer. I belong to the Dome. Dream someone else. I’m ignorant; I don’t have any gifts; I don’t dream the future—I’m not the one the Riverworld needs. Dream again. Please.”

  “I did,” Icrane said. He smoothed Terje’s hair affectionately. His voice came from very far away, from another dream, another place. “Don’t be afraid. Everything is simple. Look—” His hand slid down next to Terje’s cheek. “Look,” he whispered. Terje raised his head.

  He moved a moment. His bones were stiff, as if he had been kneeling at Icrane’s side for hours. The trembling began as he rose. Korre’s mother, stirring soup, dropped the spoon in the pot with a clatter.

  She moved swiftly, bent over the Healer’s body. Terje stepped away, went to the open door. He felt, gazing at the sunlit River, the young men fishing, the women washing clothes, as if he were a stranger not only to the Riverworld, but to the entire planet. There must be, he sensed, a special burial ritual for a Healer. But what it might be, he had no idea. All ritual, he realized slowly, had died with Icrane.

  A sound broke out of him, of sorrow and terror. Now what? he thought, his heart pounding. Now what? A woman bent over her washing at the far side of the river stopped moving. She stared across at him, sensing something. She touched the woman beside her, pointed.

  There was a hiss inside the house. Terje coughed on a sudden wave of smoke. Korre’s mother had put the fire out. The women across the water rose slowly, wet clothes in their hands.

  And then, as he looked back at them, helpless, afraid, and lon
ely, the world straightened itself out under his eyes. Everything is simple, Icrane had said. Look. He was still Terje of the Dome and of the Riverworld. He stood on familiar earth, watching the River he had been born beside. He knew no ritual words, but he knew what was in his heart. The future—any future—was simply one step at a time out of the heart.

  He sagged against the doorway, feeling the tears on his face. Icrane himself had seen the world beyond the Falls, had summoned change into the Riverworld. Terje was part of the change, and somehow the dream of Terje had brought peace to the Healer.

  Regny was walking up the river toward him. But Terje lingered in the doorway, death at his back, the life of the Riverworld in front of him, knowing, without knowing how he knew, that every step he took now would be a step into the Healer’s final dream.

  10

  NIGHT HAD seeped again into the white city, and the alien and the computer were still talking. Kyreol sat in a comer and watched. Now and then a screen would light up, show a graph or a sweep of stars or an image from Niade’s watery surface. The alien would make noises at it, and the screen would darken.

  Kyreol’s eyes closed, opened again. She had eaten something dry from her pack. The alien did not seem interested in food. Its children were sleeping, little motionless bumps of color in its neck fur. Kyreol wondered at them ceaselessly, fascinated. They were so tiny, compared to the seven-foot alien. They seemed to need nothing except what they found burrowing into the thick fur. Did they drop off like seedpods when they grew too big to be carried? And after, did they still cling to their parent, like human children, needing to be given food, shelter, knowledge, understanding? Or did they become self-sufficient very fast? She imagined a swarm of fur-puffs with legs, all coming up to the alien’s knee, making demands in their high voices, practicing all the noises they knew. How many were there? Once she had counted six. Another time ten. Ten children, all growing up at once. Did the alien have to raise all of them all by itself?

  Her eyes closed again. She tugged the raincoat closer, chilly in the moon’s night. She didn’t want to sleep, she wanted to watch the screens. But her eyes kept falling… She let them stay closed for just a moment…

  She saw her father’s face. He was smiling at her, peacefully. His lips moved; he seemed to say her name.

  Kyreol.

  She opened her eyes, stared into the shadows. Her throat made a small, scratchy sound. What was that? A dream? But she hadn’t been asleep… And why Icrane’s face here, on a moon far removed from the Riverworld?

  She remembered then the dark, harsh, sorrowing face Terje had held in his hand in her last dream. She made another noise, shaking her head. The alien turned to gaze at her.

  It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible. Icrane’s face had been so calm, as if he were handing her a cup of morning tea. But what was Terje doing in her other dream, with the River in his hand and the Moon-Flash on his forehead?

  What was going on in the Riverworld?

  She pushed the blanket aside restlessly and stood up, went to the alien’s side. Its big hands moved across colored lights and clusters of symbols. The image on a screen shifted, turned white. Kyreol watched it a moment, then sighed. It was just the moon’s surface, on the day side, with one of its interminable dust storms. The image changed. More dust storm.

  The alien made a sound like a shrieking tea kettle.

  It patted Kyreol on the back and pointed to the screen. Kyreol blinked, her mind working very slowly.

  Images of the moon…on the day side…

  How?

  Cameras, somewhere. Or some kind of information-gathering equipment.

  So?

  She shook her head slightly, her breathing quickening. The image changed again, this time to a line of twilight melting into black. “We can see,” she whispered. “If they’re out there—Joss or your people—we can see them—” She moved closer to the screen, staring at it, waiting for the next change of image to bring her Joss’s face. The alien made a small pop, like a mud bubble breaking, and went back to work.

  It terrified itself once, miscalculating. The great dock gate overhead began to grind closed with a noise like a building collapsing. The alien sat down on the floor, wailing; all its eyes disappeared and its hands covered the younglings. Kyreol, alarmed, touched a light at random. The computer wailed, too, an astringent, ear-splitting complaint at misuse.

  “I’m sorry!” Kyreol shouted at it, her hands over her ears. The alien’s head went down between its knees at the racket.

  But somehow, eventually the alien found courage enough to uncurl itself and sort out the problems. It pointed at the screen again, and Kyreol settled down to watch, scarcely breathing, lest she miss small figures fighting through the dust.

  After half an hour, her eyes were heavy; she could scarcely hold them open.

  Dust.

  Dust.

  More dust.

  Why, she wondered, breathing deeply, pulling herself straight, would people put cameras all over such a wasteland? Unless they were just seeing the same patch of land again and again. The images were coded; their coordinates were marked; but what two blues and four yellows and forty-eight other different colors meant, she had no idea.

  For shuttles, maybe? To watch their flight across the surface?

  Another screen, above the first one, blinked awake. Niade. Its moons, in varying stages of light and dark, arranged with eerie beauty around the planet. The stars.

  Thanos.

  She jumped when she saw it. It filled the screen; she recognized the green and brown swirls of land beneath the clouds. And there was the river—her River, crawling down half the world, parting the deserts to reach the sea.

  Home.

  She pointed at it, turning to the alien. Its beak clicked unintelligibly. Its fingers skimmed across the panel of lights and buttons. A sound came out of the panel, a warning. Then a beam of color streaked out of it, angling upward through the open roof, shooting far out into the night.

  Kyreol stared at it. The alien, sinking downward once again in the dust, sang softly.

  The signal. Color coming from a colorless moon. The message. We are here.

  Kyreol looked at the alien. Its eyes were pale again, but the sounds it made seemed content. It stroked the sleeping fur-balls; one eye shut, and then another.

  You sleep, Kyreol thought. You just saved our lives.

  She watched the screen again, marveling at the alien, determined to find its people for it. It was big, ungainly, ugly, loving, nervous, and so intelligent the intricacies of the Dome would probably be child’s play to it. She had told it once where her world was; and in spite of all its own fears and troubles, it had remembered…

  Images changed on the screen every twenty seconds. Dust. Dark. Dust. Dark. Once, she saw her own ship, a mangled silver bird, barely visible in the light of a neighboring moon. Nothing moved…

  “Joss,” she whispered. “Where are you?”

  Her thoughts strayed to Terje. What was he doing with the River in his hand? And his face full of sunlight? He was supposed to be in shadows, watching a ritual, so silent within the Riverworld that he disturbed not even a pebble. A sudden, despairing impatience rose up in her. Joss, and Terje, and Icrane… What were they all doing, impinging on her dreams, hinting of mysteries, hinting of death? She might as well have been trapped in a vacuum as on that moon, where all her questions were soundless and there was no one to ask.

  A tear rolled down her cheek as she watched. She brushed at it with her wrist. I’m just tired, she thought. More dust. Shadows in the dust. She saw Icrane’s face again, tranquil, saying her name soundlessly.

  The death-statue in Terje’s hand.

  Terje holding the River.

  Her eyes stung. She whispered, “No. Not now. I have to watch…” The dust blurred in front of her eyes. “Nothing,” she said calmly, “is certain. Nobody can tell me anything yet—no one even knows where I am. There’s nothing to be sad about yet…” Her
voice sank again into a whisper. “Which one? Which of them is the message about?”

  The alien stirred behind her. She heard a noise from it. She didn’t turn, but instead stared stiffly at the screen, willing herself quiet.

  Shadows. Shadows in the wind.

  She held out her hand to the alien, gesturing without looking, without knowing if it could understand the gesture.

  Something is out there.

  It stood behind her, its beak chattering. It touched a light; the image held.

  White dust and shadows. The day side of the moon. Dark patches moving against the wind. They were moving closer to the camera, but they weren’t getting any clearer. Still dark, smudged beneath streaks of dust. Kyreol blinked, her eyes stinging with tiredness. They moved so slowly, it seemed; their faces would never become clear.

  The alien made a mewing sound. Kyreol stared at the screen, her bones frozen. She tried to blink the image clear, but that’s all there was of it: dark, faceless shadows moving across the stormy daylight of the moon. Not human. Not tall, furry aliens. A third kind of people.

  She sat down in the dust with a thump. More strangers, another language, more mysteries, more confusions. The alien thumped down beside her. All its eyes closed. Kyreol buried her face against her knees. After a moment, she shifted closer to the bright fur, comforting herself with the warmth and the softness and the random noises of the alien young. The big fingers stroked her hair lightly. The alien made a noise like a sorrowing whale and was still.

  11

  THE RIVERWORLD people gathered, as night fell, one last time around the Healer’s house. Boats, lit by torch fire were poled up the slow currents to cluster in the dark, calm water beyond the house. The hunters came, stepping soundlessly through the forest. The gathering was silent; only very young children spoke now and then, briefly and softly. They all waited. Within the Healer’s house, Terje and Regny watched. Icrane’s body lay under a blanket of feathers the Riverworld women had sewn for him. A flame burned in an oil lamp. It lit Regny’s profile, designs in the various ritual carpets rolled in a comer, a glassy sheen in the dark tumble of feathers over the pallet.