Moon-Flash

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “I don’t understand anything,” Kyreol said with dignity. “But I’m not terrified. Will they stop you from going back to the Riverworld?”

  “They want to,” Orcrow said. “But the final decision is your mother’s. She is the head of the branch of the Agency that watches over the people along the river. And she trained me.” He filled his plate, but didn’t eat. With his head bowed, his hands motionless, he seemed to be waiting for Nara’s judgment.

  “Orcrow,” she said softly, “you brought my child safely down the river to me. When I was young, going down that river, not even the thought of the baby I left behind could stop me. I was very angry with you at first. I trained you; I couldn’t understand how you could have let such a thing happen. But since it was my own child you brought me, I know that if you hadn’t been there, she would have gone alone. And perhaps not survived. So all I can do is thank you. Besides,” she added, as his face eased into a smile, “I want you to go back to the Riverworld.”

  The smile vanished. “Now? I just got here.”

  “I know. But this time you can fly home. I want you to—”

  “Icrane,” he said abruptly, and she nodded, looking away from him.

  “I want—first I disappeared. And then his daughter. I want—”

  “What do you want?” he asked gently. “Do you want me to tell him where you are?”

  There was a little silence. “It’s against the law,” she said reluctantly, but she still couldn’t meet his eyes. “Orcrow, I was his wife. The wife of the Healer of the Riverworld. He knows I’m alive. He can’t even mourn me and then forget me. And now Kyreol has left him, too. And Terje. You know the Riverworld. I won’t ask you to break the law, but just—somehow—let him know that we’re safe and well.”

  Kyreol said suddenly, “You sent him a message, Orcrow. I dreamed it.”

  He gazed at her silently. “I left him a stone.”

  “With three signs painted on it. So he would know I was alive and making my mother’s journey.” She added, “You could give him another message like that. You know that language.”

  He drew breath, turning again to Nara. “You see? They dream our thoughts, they reach out to our world. If children of people who know nothing at all about the world are driven within themselves to explore it, I wonder how long we will be able to disguise ourselves among them. It seems wrong to me that the law should forbid a man’s wife to travel across the world to see him once again. I’ll return, of course. I’ll find some way to tell him. But I think we should begin to go openly at least to the Riverworld, tell them the truth about ourselves. Perhaps then they can teach us to dream again.”

  “Perhaps,” Nara said softly, and gave them a glimpse, for a brief moment, of the longing she still felt for her home. “But, Regny, the very peace and orderliness of their lives might be the source of their dream-power. If we disturb that, we might destroy the very thing we are searching for. Besides, how could we begin to tell them the truth? Where does truth begin, in the Riverworld? With a dream? A place-name? A fire on the moon?”

  “You wouldn’t have to tell them that—”

  “That the Moon-Flash they worship, which blesses their betrothals, brings good fortune, good hunting, children, is no more than…” Her voice faltered suddenly. Kyreol, her hands frozen above her food, felt her mother’s attention even before Nara turned her head slowly, reluctantly, to meet Kyreol’s eyes. Kyreol wanted to speak, but her lips refused to shape the words. What? No more than what? As though Nara’s words held her under a spell, she couldn’t even blink. Nara continued finally, shaping her words very carefully, her voice thread-thin, as though it hurt her to speak, “…the flare of a supply ship’s engines as it makes its final descent to the moon. As it has done every year, on the same night, for four hundred and seventy-nine years, since the Dome realized that people of this world had begun to worship it.”

  11

  AS IN A DREAM, Kyreol felt herself surrounded by night-shadowed people of the Riverworld, their faces turned toward the full moon rising above the white, feathery water rolling down the Face. Fire struck the moon’s side, and small drums began to sound. She saw the Sun-Woman’s blue cheek with the Moon-Flash painted on it, the sign on the desert boy’s painted wrist, the circle and the flame carved into black rock that cradled within it a dead man’s bones. Moon-Flash. Life, betrothal, ritual, love, power, death.

  “A ship.” Her voice made no sound. “Like the one that brought us up here.”

  “Yes.”

  “It makes a fire—”

  “Before it lands. To slow it down, so it won’t crash.”

  “That’s all? Just a ship landing?” She shook her head a little, jerkily. Her cheeks felt hot. “But we—I was betrothed at Moon-Flash. The moon moves to its position among the stars, and we begin to chant—”

  “I know,” Nara said huskily. “I have chanted to the moon.”

  “And then a ship lands on the moon, and we think it’s our good fortune; but it’s not, it’s just somebody else’s ship—”

  “Maybe it is your good fortune. Because you believe it’s true, you make it true. Oh, Kyreol.” She reached out, took Kyreol’s hands between her own, her eyes pleading for understanding, or perhaps forgiveness. “There were people in a city on the moon needing supplies. So long ago, they needed many things. So ships were sent. And gradually, people like Orcrow who studied other cultures began finding the Moon-Flash symbol in carvings, paintings, in rituals. When they finally realized what it was, they began sending the big supply ship on the same night every year. Now, sometimes the ships aren’t even needed; they might carry very little, or nothing. But they’re still sent. Because if the moon people don’t need them, the River-people do.”

  Kyreol stared down at the carpet. “We thought the moon blessed us. And that the world began at the Face and ended at Fourteen Falls, and rainbows grew like flowers you could pick…” A bird cried in its cage behind her. She was on her feet suddenly; she saw Terje’s head jerk up, his shaggy hair swinging free of his face, but she moved before she saw the expression in it. Orcrow stood, upsetting the tray, but she was too quick for him. The door opened as she came toward it. She heard her mother call her name. And then, in a sudden flurry of bird cries, she was free.

  Kyreol, she thought, of the Riverworld, and all she remembered of hidden trailings, secret flights, games of stealth and silence in the forests came back to her. She disappeared like a shadow into the trees. But Terje knew her too well, and Orcrow was a trained Hunter, so she had to make choices fast. She heard laughter and ducked behind a plant pot. Then she saw doors in the far wall open. People walked out of one of the tiny, shifting rooms. The doors snapped shut again. She moved toward them.

  When they opened, emptying themselves of people, she ran forward, out of the trees. In the brief moments before the doors closed behind her, she turned and saw Orcrow staring at her from across the room. His hand went out to her. She saw his mouth move. Wait, Kyreol! She jumped back, panicked, and remembered to speak to the room. It couldn’t go up any farther, so she said, “Down.” The doors closed as Orcrow began to run.

  In the silence, Kyreol leaned against the wall and listened to her heartbeat. The room made its private journey through the Dome; she didn’t know where it would stop. She wished she could stay in it for a while, like a turtle in its shell. She wanted to sit beside the River again, throw stones in it until the world sorted itself out again and she found her place in it once more.

  But the room stopped abruptly. The doors opened; two women walked in, talking. They fell silent as they saw Kyreol, startled by something in her face. But she edged past them quickly, seeing shadows, quiet spaces beyond the doors. The room went on its way. She stood without breathing, staring upward.

  A waterfall made of light poured down from the ceiling. It made no noise, it began and ended nowhere. It fell endlessly, blazing rose, gold, the icy-blue of stars. But there was no water, no stones, no rainbows.

  He
r throat began to ache again and unshed tears. What is this place? she thought. The trees don’t talk, the water isn’t wet. Nothing is real. Not even the Moon-Flash. The River is real, but I can’t get to it. Or maybe it isn’t real. Maybe it doesn’t even know our names; maybe it doesn’t even know the fish… I wish Terje was here. I’m alone, without even the stone, in a place where all the words are new.

  She saw a passageway beyond the lightfall and crept toward it soundlessly. As she entered it, she began to hear voices. She hid herself and peered around a corner.

  Light struck her eyes almost blindingly. Her stomach lurched. She was looking out into space through a window in the Dome wall. A cloud had hurt her eyes. The Dome seemed to rest on it, a whorled, airy field softer than bird down, softer than a child’s breath… She could have curled deep into it and slept if the sun, hidden behind a shield in the wall, hadn’t set the cloud on fire. She heard voices again and dragged her eyes away from the brilliance.

  The big room was full of paintings. But the paintings moved, glowed, changed, spoke. Half-a-dozen people moved among them, speaking to each other, occasionally to the images of ships, clouds, lights, random patterns that flicked endlessly within their frames. One man, eating something as he spoke, touched a cluster of lights in front of a moving ship.

  “YL1415 cleared for entry, gate two. 978TS, your fuel lane is cleared. Take it slow… What’s that? Who?” The image changed to a streak of light. “Computer, we need a translator channel open to 5.97.” He called over his shoulder, “Someone coming in from Xtal.”

  Kyreol edged back through the passageway and went to sit behind the lightfall. The world was impossible. She could hardly tell if the men in there spoke the same language she had learned from the stone. And how could they ever care about a single Moon-Flash? They had a thousand magic lights and were unawed by all of them. How they must laugh at the Riverworld for honoring a ship’s fire. She put her face against her knees. How could they let us believe that, for so many years? It was only a story. The whole Riverworld is nothing but a story. She heard her mother’s words: “Because you believe it’s true, you make it true.” But was even that true? A ship’s landing-fire was a ship’s landing-fire, no matter how much you chanted to it. She stirred restlessly after a while and slipped out of her hiding place.

  She found another of the small moving rooms and told it to take her down. She didn’t know where she was going. Back to the River? I can’t live under this moon, she thought. But… The thought pursued her like a shadow. There is no other moon. I can’t stay here. I can’t go home. I don’t know what to do.

  “Kyreol,” the room said suddenly. “Kyreol.” Kyreol jumped, clung to the wall. Above her head, an amber light was flashing. “Kyreol, please return to the top of the Dome.”

  Kyreol put her hands over her eyes. The room stopped speaking, stopped moving. Its doors opened. Kyreol dodged past the people entering without looking at them. A voice snatched at her, but she ran on until she heard nothing but the sound of her feet on carpets.

  She looked up. She was surrounded by closed doors. They were all alike, all shiny black in the pale walls, with the same seam down the center of them. They were like closed mouths, giving her no answers. She imagined going through one and finding her father behind it, kneeling on his carpet of River-signs, pouring her tea for her.

  Sit down, Kyreol, he might say. Dream for me.

  Dream? But there was nothing left to dream. She ran again, past all the closed doors, down the curved, silent corridor until it widened abruptly in front of her.

  Smells, voices rolled over her. More people than she had ever seen together in her life were crowded in one room. They were getting food out of the walls and eating it. All the smells jumbled together, making her feel sick. What can they be eating? she wondered. Was it ever alive? Or can they tell? She remembered picking berries in the morning light along the river-banks. Then she saw someone look at her and rise, still watching her. She turned quickly.

  There was another corridor angling away from the feeding-room. She ran down that, searching for more moving-rooms. I can go down, she thought, keep going down until I can’t go any farther in the tiny rooms. That’s where the ships are. I’ll hide in one and let it take me back to the River. When I see the River again, I’ll be able to think what to do. There’s no place to think up here. I wish Terje were here.

  She saw another travelling room finally. But someone stood directly in front of it. She ducked back behind a comer and peered out. The man stood with his back to the doors. Something in the expression on his face reminded Kyreol of a hunter stilling himself for a long wait. He’s watching for something, she thought, and then knew what it was. Me.

  She turned, ducked down another hallway and found another guard. She leaned against the wall in the shadows, panting. Why won’t they let me go? I just want to get back to the River. She thought of Terje and of Orcrow and her mother, whom she was leaving behind, but they all seemed far away, people from a dream. I’ll come back to them. But first I have to get to the River.

  She found a moving room finally that wasn’t guarded. She told it to go down and it went down, but not far enough. Its doors opened; she looked out. There were no ships, only a corridor like many others. She spoke to the room again, but it wouldn’t move. Its doors wouldn’t close. Finally she left it.

  The corridor was mysteriously quiet. There were no doors in it, only strange things hanging on its walls. She walked quickly, her breathing unsteady, panicky, for she felt as if she were on a strange earth, with no things on it she could name, and no people. She almost wished the voice would call to her again out of the air. Kyreol. Please return. There were no doors of any kind, anywhere. No moving rooms. She broke into a run.

  The walls spread outward again, flung wide to encircle another huge room. She ran straight into it before she realized that nothing she had seen on the river, nothing of Orcrow’s or her mother’s world, bore the slightest resemblance to anything in this room. It was as though other people, who saw through different eyes, had made the things in it.

  She stopped, appalled. The room was full of dream-shapes, enclosed in cases, or placed on pedestals rising like enormous mushrooms from the floor. All she could guess at was what they were not. Not rock, wood, water, feathers, leather, paint. Not circles exactly, not squares, not quite ovals. Some glowed with colors that made no sense to her eyes. Some appeared to be in movement, though when she looked straight at them, they stilled. Some shapes were huge, weighted to the floor, looming high above her. These had drawings on them, but of nothing she recognized.

  Some things had a melted look, as though they had passed too close to fire, or had solidified before they had been finished. These glowed, like stones that glowed eerily at the edge of vision in dark caves.

  People, she thought numbly, who see in a different light.

  She moved among the pedestals as among trees in a strange forest, trying to find something she recognized. Not even an animal’s face, not even the stick-figure of a man. Only shapes that might have been faces, in a different world, in a distant dream.

  She sat down finally, closing her eyes to block out the bewildering strangeness. She leaned against an enormous wedge that seemed to begin at some point in the air and pour down to the floor in a graceful, frozen moment. It had scrawls all over it, etched into the substance. She could feel them against her cheek like an invisible message. She lifted her fingers, traced them absently, while tears slid down beneath her closed eyes. Maybe that’s what they are, she thought. Tear-tracks. Where am I now? I was trying to find the River. Instead, I found this place that doesn’t even have a word for itself. Her hand moved up and down, up and down the spider-weave of lines. The mass had an odd, silken feel to it, like a stone slick with moss. It soothed her; she huddled closer to it, her ear against the message, her fingertips tracing it. Her thoughts melted away, became formless as the scrawling.

  She dreamed of running, only not down the confusing
corridors of the Dome, but through the black pathways between the stars. An earth hung in the darkness the color of Terje’s eyes. A dusty gold. There were no rivers on its surface. But she could hear the singing of water in great caverns and chasms beneath the land. She ran closer. And then she fell, down, down toward the golden eye.

  She was carving the message with her fingertip. Her hand was very pale, for she lived among the shadowed caverns. Her eyes saw through night. Her fingernail was pointed and hard as metal. As she wrote, she told herself the story…

  Water, take this message to the cave where I began, where the blue crystals shine at night… All waters lead back to the home-place. Bring these words to the one I must leave behind. I am alone here. I will never find my way back. But the water will take my message, carry my sign to you. This is my place to stop. Soon I will go into darkness. When I wake, I will be drawn to seek the upper light, and I will no longer know my sign. I will no longer know you. I must sleep now. My eyes can no longer see the shining stones. Even they will change. I will leave the birth-water. I will drift in the paths of the dusty wind, and no longer remember you. But now I will remember you. I will write your sign. Again. Again. Again. May your eyes find me when your time comes. When you reach the light. May we meet in the wind.

  The water roared, whirling the great message away. Watching it, she gave one cry of love and loneliness and fear of the unknown brightness. Then she slept, and when she woke again she was not alone.

  12

  “TERJE!” She sat straight up out of her sleep and threw her arms around him, hearing his blood beat, wishing she could crawl into his bones. The room was very dark, except for luminous tubes running above the cases and for odd colors that showed here and there in the shadows. He kissed her cheek and then her mouth, until, in a private darkness, she couldn’t find her breath. She pulled away from him, murmuring, then held him tightly again, her eyes against his shoulder. He shifted, sat back on his heels, holding her with his hands. The world seemed simple again, for a moment, just she and Terje exploring something new. She said, or a voice from across the room said, “I don’t want you to leave me. Ever.”