"Ssh, keep your voice down."
"Freak! Freak! Freak! Freak! Freak!" Jane/202 leaned into the doorway. "Freak!"
"All right then, Jane/202, if that's how you're going to be," said Jane/208 calmly. She knew she ought to be imploring her lover to stay. That was what Jane/202 wanted. A little bit of abasement and she would soften. But just then Jane/208 was too exhausted, too irritable and too proud to want to play such games, and besides, given Mother Cave's instruction that the driftling should be kept away from the rest of the Parthenai, Jane/202 leaving was probably a blessing in disguise. For Jane/202's own good, Jane/208 decided to let her go. It hurt, but then so did all sacrifices, and she prayed that, when the driftling was well enough to fend for herself, there would be a chance for her and Jane/202 to make amends, to reconcile, to start over.
"Tell everybody," she simply said, "that Mother Cave has advised that for the time being no one but me is to have any contact with the driftling."
"Did she give a reason?" Jane/208's coolness had disappointed Jane/202.
"She didn't have to. She's Mother Cave."
"Of course," Jane/202 said with a contemptuous snort. "She's Mother Cave."
Jane/208 watched Jane/202 stride away, tossing her damp blonde hair and stamping great dents in the shingles. She felt her eyes prickle with tears and she sniffed them back hard, telling herself to be brave, to think of the tribe rather than herself. It wasn't much comfort, but it was the best she could manage under the circumstances. She turned and went back into the shelter.
"I'm sorry about that," she said to the driftling. "Now, are you hungry?"
Warily the driftling nodded.
"Well then, let's get you something to eat."
Thanks to Jane/208's ministrations, the driftling's condition slowly improved. Her eyes gained a lustre, she was able to sit upright for longer and longer periods of time, and after much straining she succeeded in squeezing out a couple of small stools which Jane/208 disposed of beneath the pebbles as conscientiously as a mother would her infant's. When, however, the moon waxed full and the time for bleeding came around, she realised that the driftling still had some way to go before her recovery was complete because, while every tribeswoman of child-bearing age went around stanched for three days, the driftling did not leak so much as a drop. No doubt the tumours between her legs were interfering with her menstrual functions, just as the lump in her throat was interfering with her speech, but that only added weight to Jane/208's diagnosis: in someone who was not pregnant - and the driftling was clearly not - the absence of bleeding was a sure sign of ill-health.
They talked infrequently. Conversation was hard for the driftling. Not only did she find it an effort to speak, but every question Jane/208 asked her about her tribe and her island and her village caused her agonies of confusion. She didn't know her name. She could remember nothing of where she came from or how she came to be floating in the sea. All she could recall was a storm and being thrown into waves that tossed her about and tore the clothes from her back like a child tearing the wings off a fly.
Jane/208 knew about amnesia: Jane/186, daughter of Jane/134, had stumbled once and concussed herself on a rock, and for several days afterward had been unable to remember her own name/number or recognise the faces of any of her sisters, until, of course, Mother Cave had restored her to her senses. Once Mother Cave got her metaphorical hands on the driftling, she, too, would recall everything.
Jane/208 was too tactful and embarrassed to ask the driftling about her deformities and facial hair. She reckoned that the driftling herself would talk about those when she was ready.
The driftling seemed perpetually fascinated by her surroundings, and Jane/208 often found her peering out through the gaps between the slats of the shelter's walls, watching the village and the Parthenai who wandered by. She asked to be allowed to go out and walk around, but Jane/208 explained that this was impossible. When asked why, Jane/208 replied that Mother Cave had said so. When asked who Mother Cave was, Jane/208 found herself unable offer an adequate answer.
"Mother Cave is our nurse, our goddess, our keeper," she said, but that didn't even begin to describe Mother Cave's importance, her significance, her influence over the Parthenai. How could you encapsulate in mere words the place/person were life began and life was maintained and life ended?
Jane/208's devotion to caring for the driftling was absolute. She left the shelter only to fetch food or water, and if visitors came she turned them away at the door flap politely but firmly, using Mother Cave's name to lend the rejections authority. She could not realise that, at the nightly fire gatherings, Jane/197 was using her selfless dedication as an example of the absurd lengths to which the Parthenai went to indulge Mother Cave's whims.
"What do we have to fear from this stranger?" said Jane/197 to the assembled tribe one evening. "Nothing! Yet Mother Cave would keep her from us until she has resolved what to do about her, as if we are children incapable of making decisions for ourselves. And she gets Jane/208 - poor, innocent, faithful Jane/208 - to do her dirty work for her. Are these the actions of an entity we should trust? Does this fill you with confidence that Mother Cave is the one to whom we should look for direction?"
There were murmurs to the effect that Mother Cave's will was not to be disputed, her motives were not to be questioned, and it was unwise to risk incurring her anger because, if she so wished, Mother Cave could refuse to heal the sick and get would-be mothers with child, and then what would become of the tribe?
Jane/197 answered them with a haughty laugh and a glittering eye. "I'm not saying that we should do without her altogether, for Mother Cave fulfils many a useful purpose. I'm merely saying that rather than devote ourselves slavishly to her as we do, we should have faith in ourselves to act wisely and independently, without feeling we have to run and ask her opinion every time one of us stubs a toe or cracks a fingernail. Mother Cave is old and not always reliable. Something that Jane/190, if you'll recall, found out to her cost."
"And who would take her place as arbiter and chief decision-maker?" someone grumbled. "You?"
"I can think of worse candidates," said Jane/197.
Restless in the shelter, Jane/208 and the driftling listened to the distant voices of the gathering, as they had on previous evenings.
"I would like to meet. These other women some. Time," said the driftling.
"Until Mother Cave says you can, it is impossible."
"I. Would like to meet. Mother Cave too."
"That will surely happen."
"What are. They talking about out there? It sounds. Like they're arguing."
"They are, although I can't quite make out what they're saying." Jane/208 thought, however, that she had a pretty good idea what the topic of discussion was. One voice was dominating: Jane/197's. "They should start singing the songs and telling the stories soon, I hope. Would you like me to join in when they do, so that you can hear them?"
"That would be. Nice. Jane/208, you've. Been very kind. To me."
"My duty."
"I find myself. Thinking very fond. Thoughts about you."
"Thank you."
The debate eventually subsided, and the songs and stories began. Jane/208 recognised each by its tune or by the cadence of its opening lines, and she knew them all, word for word. The Tale of a Turtle, the Ballad of the Lost Albatross, Lila and the Little Whale, Why Seagulls All Look Alike, How the Walrus Won Her Whiskers - she sang or spoke along to each, to the driftling's evident delight.
The climax was, as always, a retelling of the story of the creation of the Parthenai. Four generations ago, the First Jane came to the island, travelling alone across the swelling sea in an ark of iron, the rusting remnants of which could still be found among the Parthenai's shelters: here a strut used to prop up a doorway, there a scrap of tarpaulin offering a rainproof roof. With her she brought the raw materials required to build Mother Cave, and also the egg, extracted from her own body, that became Jane/2, whom she raise
d up wise and strong. Mother and daughter lived happily on the beach together, their every need tended to by Mother Cave, but as time went by the First Jane grew old and unwell, until soon she was sick beyond the power of Mother Cave to cure. When the day came that she was so ill she could barely breathe, she begged Jane/2 to help her walk up to Mother Cave, and there she bade her only daughter farewell, assuring her that Mother Cave would continue to look after her and any daughters she might have. And then the First Jane disappeared into the second chamber of Mother Cave, and was never seen again.
"We Parthenai are the descendants of Jane/2," said Jane/208, intoning the words along with the other tribeswomen outside by the fires, "and through her we are all joined to the First Jane."
With that, the Parthenai fell silent, and Jane/208 with them, her throat dry and her tongue tired from so much talking.
"Thank you," said the driftling.
"You're welcome," said Jane/208, and lay down on the shingles, curled up and closed her eyes.
The gathering dispersed, and the Parthenai drifted back to their shelters, muttering amongst themselves. Jane/208 heard nothing: she was fast asleep.
So deeply asleep that when she felt a hand touch her between the legs, she assumed it was Jane/202's, forgetting that Jane/202 no longer lived in the shelter, and she let the hand caress her and murmured her lover's name sweetly. Somewhere between dreaming and waking she imagined she saw Jane/202 crouching over her, the glossy swoop of her blonde hair hanging around the curve of her neck and down over one breast, the other breast standing proud in all its firm, conical glory, and at this the rubbing at her crotch summoned a delicious, blooming warmth.
Jane/202 had come back. Her lover had come back.
The caressing stopped, and Jane/208 moaned softly in disappointment, and then she heard a grunt and a shifting of pebbles and smelled a strange, sharp scent she didn't recognise. Somewhere in the atavistic deeps of her mind the scent awoke an ancient anxiety. She stirred. She ordered her eyes to open, but her body was too enervated to obey her brain straight away.
Hands rolled her roughly on to her back. Something jabbed at the soft intimacy of her genitalia. Not a finger. Too blunt, too thick.
Now her eyes snapped open and she found herself staring up at the driftling.
The driftling, frowning in concentration, was crouched between Jane/208's legs and fumbling with the tumours, the uppermost of which, the split one, had become grotesquely distended while the lower pair, by contrast, had shrivelled tightly up, as though the other was sapping the lifestuff out of them.
And Jane/208 realised, with a shock of horrified disgust, that the driftling was trying to shove the raw-looking head of the split one into her.
It was a simple matter for Jane/208 to deliver a stunning blow to the side of the driftling's head. All the Parthenai, by virtue of their harsh lifestyle, were lithe, wiry and sinewy-strong. The driftling slumped to one side, groaning, and Jane/208 aimed a revolted punch at the three throbbing tumours.
The driftling shrieked horribly and clutched herself into a ball. A spurt of vomit coughed from her mouth.
Jane/208 did not need to raise the alarm. In heartbeats, a dozen of her sisters had appeared at the entrance to her shelter.
"What's going on?"
"What happened?"
"Who was that screaming?"
Jane/197 shouldered her way through the crowd, Jane/202 in her wake, and crawled in through the doorway. She took one look at the writhing driftling, and then at Jane/208 (flushed, furious, fearful), and nodded as if she had suspected all along that something like this might happen. As Jane/208 haltingly explained the nature of the driftling's assault on her, Jane/197's nods only deepened.
"Clearly those tumours are some kind of parasite," Jane/197 said. "They were forcing her to spread their infection to another host: you, Jane/208. That must be why she was thrown out from her own tribe and abandoned to the mercies of the sea. Well, we can cure her of what ails her."
Jane/197 drew a knife from her belt and gestured to a couple of the tribeswomen outside to come in. They obeyed her unhesitatingly.
Jane/208, looking at the driftling, pitiful in her pain and helplessness, said, "Shouldn't we at least wait until someone has talked to -"
"Don't say it, Jane/208," Jane/197 snapped. "Mention the words 'Mother Cave' within earshot of me again, and so help me I'll use this knife on you. Let's do something by ourselves for a change, eh?"
"Yes," said Jane/202 viciously. "Shut up about Mother Cave, Jane/208."
Jane/208 flinched as if whipped.
Jane/197 told the other two Parthenai, Jane/201 and Jane/217, to take an arm each. They spread the driftling out flat on her back. Spittle and vomit were strung across her facial hair and her eyeballs twitched dementedly in their sockets. Gradually she became aware of what was happening around her, to her, but by the time she had fully recovered her wits from Jane/208's two savage blows, Jane/197 was straddling her thighs, Jane/202 was holding down her ankles, and Jane/201 and Jane/217 had her outstretched arms pinned securely beneath their knees.
In the streaks of moonshine that angled in through the chinks in the walls, the razor-sharp whelk-shell blade of Jane/197's knife glinted. Everyone - those inside, those standing outside the doorway looking in, Jane/208, Jane/202, the driftling - was briefly mesmerised by the play of silvery light over the blade's nacreous inner surface.
Then the driftling started to scream. Shudder and scream. Twist, squirm and scream.
"I don't think we should be doing this," said Jane/208.
"Doing what?" said Jane/197. "We're doing nothing more than your precious Mother Cave would do herself, were she capable of making up her mind. We're sending her a signal that we don't have to rely on her any more. A symbolic gesture, you might say. Besides, we won't be harming this poor, diseased creature. We'll be making her better."
Jane/208's misgivings continued to grind away inside her belly, but she understood that there was no way she was going to be able to alter the course of events. She and all the Parthenai would simply have to live with the consequences of Jane/197's actions.
Jane/197 seized the bunch of bulbous tumours, now restored to something like their original dimensions, and wrenched them away from the driftling's pelvis, stretching taut the skin that attached them.
The driftling let out a heart-rending howl and began to buck, her spine arching like a leaping dolphin's back, but the Parthenai were easily able to restrain her. Her eyes were swollen with terror and her face was scarlet and the veins in her temples pulsed fatly.
Jane/197 brought the edge of the blade to the base of the tumours.
"Keep a tight grip on her," she told her accomplices, then added over her shoulder, "Somebody go and fetch a brand from the fire so that we can cauterise the wound."
The driftling's frantic gaze found Jane/208, and hoarsely she begged her to help, please help.
Jane/208 slowly shook her head, as powerless in her own way as the driftling.
Before Jane/197 made the first cut, she glanced at the lump in the driftling's throat, which was working convulsively.
"That will have to go next," she said.
There followed two long, feverish days during which the driftling raged and writhed with the pain of her wounds, uttering tiny glottal clucks that were unborn screams. An infection set in beneath her bandages, and Jane/208 arranged for her to be taken to Mother Cave for healing.
If Mother Cave was angry that the Parthenai had taken matters into their own hands, she did not show it. She said nothing, and cured the driftling on the steel table with her corroded scalpels and needles.
Shocking as Jane/197's act was, Mother Cave's silence on the subject was even more alarming, and the tribe feared that they had mortally offended her. An atmosphere of dread enveloped the village, and grew so thick and oppressive, so full of averted gazes and nervous mutters, that finally Jane/208, out of frustration more than anything, went up to Mother Cave, sat in the chair a
nd asked her what she was thinking.
What has been done is for the best.
But, Jane/208 insisted, hadn't the Parthenai acted disrespectfully?
A spark of independence is not disrespect. Absolute independence of me is impossible. I am Mother Cave. I am your nurse, your goddess, your keeper. Without me there is no life. My daughters have defied me, but they will never be free of me. Our relationship has changed, that is all. The children want their mother to know that they have begun to outgrow her. It was inevitable.
So the driftling's arrival had been a bad omen?
All omens are open to interpretation, Jane/208, daughter of Jane/151, granddaughter of Jane/93. She was an omen of change perhaps. Perhaps not. It makes no difference. A change has occurred, and changes cannot be amended, they can only be endured. The driftling must take her place among the Parthenai. What happens to the tribe now is up to the tribe.
Not up to Mother Cave?
I have done as much as I can.
Jane/208 left Mother Cave far from reassured. It sounded as if, in her secret depths of thought, Mother Cave was sad and troubled. But the news Jane/208 conveyed to her sisters was good news. Mother Cave had forgiven them.
Despite her barbarous appearance and her muteness, the driftling was quickly accepted into the tribe and was assigned chores which she performed well but without a spark of enthusiasm. She was docile and inoffensive, to such a degree that Jane/197 suggested that Mother Cave had done more than heal the driftling's infected wounds and had, in fact, effected some permanent alteration to her brain. Whether this was the case or not, what was indisputably true was that the life seemed to have been drained out of her, and the trauma caused by Jane/197's impromptu operation lingered for a long time in dark purple shadows beneath her eyes.
Around the evening fires the driftling would sit and listen to the stories but would not, because she could not, join in. A shelter was constructed for her with all the usual ceremony and celebration, decorations were donated, and she moved in and, as far as anyone could tell, seemed content. Pained and melancholic, but content.
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