Moon-Flash

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  At the sixth full moon from Moon-Flash time, there was another ritual. This was in honor of the River, which fed them, accepted their dead, wound through their lives and their dreams. Kyreol sat down with the youngest children under a tree and explained to them what would happen, for it was a solemn ritual, and very long.

  “The Healer—my father—rows a boat out to the middle of the River—”

  “At Turtle-Crossing?”

  “Near River-Tree. Upriver, where it’s slow and broad. In the boat there are two big stones tied to vines. He throws the stones into the water, and the boat is anchored there. My father is all dressed in the winter skins of animals. He holds fire in one hand and water in the other. A torch and a bowl. Now…” She hushed her voice, and the children, clinging to her knees, leaned closer to her. “The moon has set behind the Face, and the world is very dark. My father begins to chant. He says all the names of the living—your names, too. Then he says all the names of the dead that the River has carried away. Then—now, this is a hard part, so listen carefully—he draws all the River-signs on the water with his torch. He makes reflections with fire of the River-Tree, Turtle-Crossing, Little Spring, so that the River will recognize and remember all our signs. Then, when he finishes, he drinks the water in the bowl, and he throws the torch into the water. So then it is very dark.” She paused dramatically. A child whispered,

  “Then what does he do?”

  “He waits. We all wait.”

  “In the dark?”

  “Yes.”

  “For what?”

  “For the sun!” Her fingers swooped down, tickling, and the children bumped against her, giggling helplessly. “Then the happy part begins. Everyone throws gifts into the River—nuts, flowers, feathers—anything that will float. Then there are boat races, as people follow the gifts, to see which the River accepts first, which are snagged, which ones are rejected and washed ashore, which ones keep floating in the sunlight down to the end of the world. Then we all give presents to each other and eat until we can’t eat one more bite, then we sail back to bed and dream good dreams.”

  Kyreol showed the children how to make bracelets of grass and flowers for the River. She made amulets for her father and Korre, circles of leather with their signs painted on them. She made a seed bracelet for Korre’s mother and a feather armband for Korre’s father. She spent two days helping cook for the feast: nut bread, fish stew, shellfish seasoned with herbs, stuffed turtle eggs. On the afternoon before the ritual, she took a basket into the forest to gather musk-berries, which smelled like dead fish, but turned tart and sparkling when you bit into them.

  She found them easily by their smell, which even the birds avoided. She was picking them happily, enjoying the warm ground under her bare feet, the lazy, quiet breezes, when suddenly, for no reason at all, her happiness turned upside-down inside her and dissolved into a rainstorm of misery. She dropped the basket, sat down in the crook of a tree, and cried like a baby, noisily and desperately, without even knowing why. And as she cried, all the questions she had ever asked came flooding back to her.

  What shape is the world?

  Where does the River go?

  What lies before the Face, beyond Fourteen Falls?

  Did my mother go into a dream? Or did she go beyond the Riverworld?

  What are the sun and the stars and the world?

  What is the Moon-Flash?

  She stayed under the tree until the world was black. Once she heard voices calling her from a distance: Kyreol! Kyreol! But she didn’t move. This is my time, she thought. My time for thinking. As the thin moon edged upward, she felt an older and younger Kyreol, herself before she had put on the betrothal mask: lean and restive and curious, wondering about lights and shadows, full of tales. A wind whispered among the trees. Is it the dead? Do they change shape, as Terje says, into water and wind? Do they speak, like fish, with voices we can’t hear?

  She rose finally, feeling full of night and wind, and walked silently as an animal down to the River. Her father was there, a torchlight figure standing in the black ritual boat, gazing down at the water. The banks were crowded with people. She took her place among them unnoticed. The Healer was in the middle of the death chant, naming, sign by sign, family by family, those the River had carried away. When he came to the River-Tree sign, she listened carefully. Her mother’s name was not among them. The wind blew the torch-fire into a long blazing ribbon over the water. Finally, hours later it seemed, the torch flew like a star into the water, and the River accepted it.

  They waited. The moon set; the world was very dark. The stars faded. Little by little, the winds blew the darkness away, blew in the delicate greys and misty purples of dawn. Kyreol stirred a little, blinking, wondering finally where her Turtle-Crossing family was. Not far from her, still as a tree shadow beneath a tree on the bank, stood the Hunter.

  She moved when he moved, swiftly, soundlessly, without questioning herself. He knows something, she thought. He knows. He went straight into the forest, away from the people and the sunrise. He doesn’t want to be seen, he doesn’t want the sun to see him. Why? He drew her deeper into the trees, then made a wide circle back to the bank and headed upriver. She ducked from tree to tree along the bank, keeping him in sight; the water, quickened from its journey down the Face, hid the sound of her following. He rounded a fall of boulders beside the River and seemed to disappear. But she and Terje had explored every secret place on the River they could find. She slipped into a crevice between two great boulders and found him standing in an eerie light, speaking again to his stone.

  They stared at one another, Kyreol and the Hunter. He was wearing skins now instead of feathers, and he had a bone knife in his thigh-band. But there was no River-sign on it.

  She took a step toward him. The Falls boomed in the distance; the swift water churned past the boulders. The River-voice was strong, tangling in her thoughts. For a moment his face was expressionless, dark as the rock of the Face. Then he took a silent breath. The stone clicked in his hand, opened. He said one word to it.

  “Interface.”

  3

  “WHO ARE YOU?” Kyreol whispered. He held up his palm, showing her the Hunter’s wavy River-sign on it. His eyes were flat, telling her nothing.

  “Why did you follow me?”

  “I want to know about the world.”

  He made an arc in the air with his hand. “The River is the world.”

  She gazed at him. He looked like a hunter, lean and muscular, with his good-luck stone in his hand and a knife he hadn’t finished carving at his thigh. Hunters were often solitary people, ranging the forests at will, only seen when they brought in their skins and meat, or at rituals. She shifted a little, perplexed. Then the true inner feeling she had about him welled up in her again, and she took a step toward him.

  “Then where did my mother go?”

  “What?”

  “My father said he dreamed my mother found a beautiful stone that opened and said her name, and then she went away. Is that the stone?”

  The Hunter’s hand tightened on the stone. “He dreamed—”

  “It was a stone like a star.”

  “This is my hunting stone. My fortune.” Then he asked slowly, “What is your mother’s name?”

  “Nara. Of River-Tree and Turtle-Crossing. Everyone knew her.”

  He stood very still. He seemed to have withdrawn into himself, like water seeping into earth, leaving only his shape, motionless, shadow-dark, which a grazing animal would hardly notice. She took a small step forward, her voice small in his silence.

  “Please. Please tell me. I want to know so many things. I want to—”

  “Go back,” he said brusquely. “Go back to the rituals. Your answers are there.”

  “No!” she cried despairingly. “There’s only one answer: ‘This is the way the world is.’ But it doesn’t tell me about the world. What makes trees grow, why birds and people are different colors, where the River comes from, where it
goes, what the Moon-Flash is. If you don’t tell me, I’ll go back to Korre and have babies, and I’ll tell them stories, but I’ll never know anything, never.”

  He didn’t move; he almost didn’t seem to be breathing. “I am a hunter. Why do you ask me these things? You should ask the Healer.”

  “I’ve heard you speak to your stone. You know words my father doesn’t know. You know—” She stopped, watching the expression well into his eyes. “You know,” she whispered.

  He was silent for a long time. He was the Hunter, but something in his face made her feel that she had trapped him and he could not escape. He shifted finally, looking completely bewildered, and asked gently, “Who are you?”

  “Kyreol, of River-Tree and Turtle-Crossing. You saw me betrothed.”

  “Oh, yes. Your face was painted then; I didn’t recognize you.”

  “What does ‘interface’ mean?”

  “It means—it means two worlds touching. Yours and mine. It means I may not be able to return to the Riverworld, now that you’ve seen me.”

  “Why?” she asked puzzledly. “Are you a ghost? Are you from a dream?”

  He smiled. “No.”

  “Then where are you from?”

  He gazed at her again, silently. Then he squatted down, drew a circle with his fingers on the sandy floor of the cave. “This is the world.”

  “It is round!” Then she asked suspiciously, “Is it flat-round, or round like a berry?”

  “Like a berry.” He drew the wavy line she recognized down the center of the world. “This is the River.”

  “I know.” She touched the top of the world. “And this is the Face.”

  “No.” He made a tiny dot halfway to the center of the world. “The Face is here.” He made another tiny dot, very close to the first dot. “There is Fourteen Falls.”

  “Wait—” she whispered. His hand stopped. She was shaking her head; her body made a step back from him. “Nothing can be that big. It’s only a tale, you dreamed it.”

  He opened his hand quickly, brushed the world away and rose. “It’s only a dream,” he said gently. “I am a hunter. Go back to the ritual. You will never see me again. I am part of the dream.”

  She stared down at the sand where his drawing had been. “Past Fourteen Falls. Are there other place-names? What—what is the name of the place you came from?”

  He was motionless again before her, a hunter, another teller of tales. “The River is the world. There is nothing beyond Fourteen Falls.”

  She stood staring at the sand where he had left his handprint long after he had gone.

  The sun had risen; she could hear shouting and laughter from the distance. She walked back down the River slowly, thinking, It is true. It isn’t true. But he knew where my mother went. I could see that in his eyes. He is a hunter, he is a dream. The world is little. The world is huge. I forgot to ask him what the Moon-Flash is. She didn’t realize she was back among people until Korre shouted at her.

  “Kyreol! Kyreol!” He ran to her, threw a necklace of flowers over her head, and kissed her cheek. “Where have you been?”

  “Here,” she said simply, because the world was either so huge there was no room for “here” and “there” in. their tiny piece of it, or else the River was the World, and everywhere was “here.” Korre shook his head bewilderedly.

  “No one could find you.”

  “I was thinking.”

  “Oh.” He still looked puzzled, but he ignored the puzzlement. “Did you get the musk-berries? Come and eat—” He put his arm around her, but she stood still, pulling against him.

  “I’m not hungry. I’m still thinking.”

  “Kyreol…”

  She shrugged him away, suddenly irritable. “You go eat.”

  “No,” he said calmly. “You come with me. I want you with me.”

  “Korre—”

  “You are betrothed. This is ritual-time. I want you with me.”

  She eyed him. His face was young and stubborn. She wondered what it would look like old and stubborn. His voice would be deep; he would be taller than she. Kyreol. Come with me. She would have no reason to argue, for the Hunter was gone forever and even his handprint would be brushed away by the footprints of other curious children. He was no dream, she knew. He had drawn her a picture of the world and then gone somewhere into it. Somewhere past Fourteen Falls, beyond the Face.

  “Kyreol.”

  “Wait,” she pleaded. “I want to see my father. I haven’t given him his gift yet. You eat. I’ll join you—”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  She swallowed an exasperated sigh. If she had to live with him, she might as well do it peacefully “Korre,” she said very patiently, “I am a Healer’s daughter. Sometimes I see things, and then I have to be alone to think about them.”

  Unexpectedly, that made sense to him. “All right,” he said reluctantly, “but come back soon.”

  “I will.” She kissed his cheek suddenly, surprising both of them. “Save me some turtle eggs.”

  He smiled at her shyly, pleased. “I will. Hurry.”

  She walked through the crowd without seeing her father. She didn’t really want to talk to him anyway; he didn’t know how to draw her a picture of the world. The River was full of children’s rafts following the floating gifts. They passed her noisily, shouting, splashing, pushing each other into the water. The River carried them away finally. She reached her favorite place on the bank near her father’s house and sat down in a coil of tree roots to think.

  A little while later, she stirred and threw a stone in the water. Thinking did no good whatsoever. Then, unexpectedly, the River sent her a gift. She cupped her hands to her mouth and called, “Terje!”

  He was sailing past her, stalking a River-gift, in the boat that they had made. When he saw her, he angled the boat in the current, poled over to her. His face seemed odd to her, distant, as if he had forgotten her name, and the strange jumble of things she wanted to tell him dwindled away. The River-gift, a necklace of seed pods, drifted past them.

  He jumped off the boat and pulled it partway up the bank, his head turned toward the gift. “It’s Jage’s gift. She wanted me to see how far it went.”

  “Oh,” Kyreol said. Jage was Terje’s betrothed. She assumed dignity, her shoulders drawing back, her chin lifting, though she felt suddenly lonely. He looked at her finally.

  “What?”

  “Oh. Nothing.”

  “Well, what? You called me.”

  “I just wanted to tell you something. But it doesn’t matter. You have Jage to think about now.”

  He gazed at her, his face puckering in bewilderment. “What did you want to tell me?”

  “I need to use the boat. That’s all. But we can follow Jage’s gift first.” She climbed in. “Hurry. You can still see it. It’s important, too. Maybe more important, if you’re right about everything. The world will be as you see it.”

  He got in beside her, shoved the boat away from the bank with his pole. “Kyreol—”

  “Her handprint will be on that wall, next Moon-Flash. She’ll come to live with you. That’s the way things should be.”

  “Kyreol—”

  “I’m just going for a little way. Then I’ll be back.” They caught the current again. The seed pods spun gently in an eddy, then drew them on. Terje poled to catch up with them. “What,” he demanded, “are you talking about? How far are you going?”

  “Just a little way. To Fourteen Falls.”

  He stared at her, his face blank with astonishment, clinging so long to the pole he nearly fell overboard. “That’s the end of the world!”

  She stood like a dark figurehead at the prow of the boat, turned backward, saying goodbye to her world, or maybe only leaving it so that she could greet it again. “Kyreol…of River-Tree and Turtle-Crossing,” she whispered, so not to forget. Behind her, the River-gift of Terje’s betrothed caught in a snag and stopped moving. Terje lifted the pole out of the water and sat
down.

  “Can we be back by Moon-Flash?”

  “Of course,” she said, annoyed. “You won’t miss your betrothal.” Then, listening to his words, she smiled.

  4

  FOURTEEN FALLS, the River’s end, was the birthplace of all the rainbows in the world. They grew like seedlings in the water, blossomed, and when they reached their full size, detached themselves and drifted through the world. Long ago, during a terrible famine, a hunter had strayed too far downriver, farther than anyone had ever gone, and he had seen more rainbows than he could count. He had broken his bow so, braving the wild currents, he had picked a small rainbow and strung it. Wherever he shot his arrows, they struck plump birds and beasts, until he had enough food to feed everyone in the Riverworld. Since then, a rainbow meant good luck to whoever saw it, and hunters carved rainbows on their bows in memory of the first man who had plucked the magic out of Fourteen Falls.

  Terje and Kyreol got to the rainbow garden at the end of the world much faster than they expected to.

  On the first day, the River took them at a leisurely pace past all the place-names they knew. Most of the houses stood empty, sunning their round baked walls like mud turtles in the light. At Little Spring an old man, who was too frail to make the journey to the ritual-place, bent over his fishlines, catching his supper. He wore the mark of a silver stream on his forehead and a black feather for the dead tucked behind his ear. He waved to them, smiling, his black face wrinkled like water. Farewell. Kyreol waved back. The River bore them onward.

  The current quickened; by midday they no longer needed to pole. Kyreol took the rudder and Terje baited fishlines, trailed them from the stern. Then he sat beside Kyreol and unwrapped a leaf full of nut bread, which he had taken from the feast. They ate it together.