by Dave Duncan
“I do need rest,” I agreed.
“My bower!” Misty said.
Raindrops would likely have argued, but I spotted a kiss on her mouth before she could speak. “Yours next time,” I promised.
“Oh yes,” she said breathlessly, and I went off with my arm around Misty.
Apparently I had a real knack for making friends.
─♦─
Later I came to know the great ones better, although I could never join in their play as enthusiastically as the seafolk did, and I never quite understood the relationship between them. Many other peoples train animals and use them, as my father rode his horses. Some beasts, like woollies, are used but never trained. But no other people claim to talk with their livestock, as the seafolk do.
The great ones were not confined or tethered. They seemed to gain little from their association with humans except grooming, for the seamen cleaned parasites from their hides. Yet in return they carried the seamen on their backs to hunt fish, they towed boats, they caught seals or retrieved them, and they indulged in those wild watery romps. Indeed, the great ones usually seemed to initiate the play, so I had to assume that they enjoyed the sport as much as the human participants. That raised a question that worried me greatly—who was master and who was pet?
In Heaven I discussed the great ones many times with Saint Kettle. He had been born a seaman and he looked it—a massive, jocular tub of a man, with a coronet of snowy curls around a bald pate. He was also wise and learned, and I pressed him often to tell me how well he thought the seafolk could truly converse with the great ones. He would never quite commit himself.
“Are they intelligent, then?” I asked him once.
“The great ones? Of course they’re intelligent!” Then he sighed and added quietly, “But I’m none too sure about seafolk.”
—2—
THE GROVE FLOATED IN THE MOUTH of a wide bay between two ranges of hills that ran down into the sea to become islands. At about the time I arrived, the trees rooted themselves to avoid being washed ashore. There was some discussion among the seafolk over this, for they felt happier when their home was mobile. They could have cut the longest roots and then asked the great ones to tow the grove back into deeper water, but nothing was decided, and soon there were too many tethers in place to bother with. It was a pleasant location, all agreed, with a good stream of fresh water nearby. The watervines were not quite adequate, and even seafolk like to wash off the salt sometimes.
As he had promised, Pebble taught me to swim, although almost any child was better at it than I ever became. Then he took me hunting and taught me that also, riding on the backs of the great ones.
The procedure was simple. The hunter took net or spear to the water’s edge and sang his name. Only rarely was there no quick response. It was also possible to sing the name of a particular great one, but he would not always come to such a summons, even if he was in the neighborhood. Usually Pebble rode Gorf. I was never sure whether Gorf was his favorite or he was Gorf’s—probably the latter, for I was adopted by a young male named Frith, who came to my voice more often than any of the others did. He was very patient with my beginner’s shortcomings, but I soon learned the clicking sound that represented laughter.
Eventually the great ones persuaded us that the river I sought lay not far off to the south, and it flowed into the ocean, not out of it as the old folk had expected. A raft or a boat was what I needed, everyone agreed. A raft was easier, so a raft it must be. Driftwood tree trunks were not uncommon, and I began gathering them, with Frith’s assistance, and laying them on the beach to dry out.
I learned to hunt, which was a male occupation, although some men did nothing more than trawl a net. With the great ones’ help, one man could easily have fed the whole tribe.
Pebble’s idea of hunting was nothing like that. The harder the chase, the better the taste, in his view. He even claimed to be fond of oysters, which contain nothing but bland slime. Collecting those was a terrifying business involving diving very deep while tied to rocks; therefore oysters were mostly a test of manhood. I hated diving for oysters. I hated being battered black and blue in a mad pursuit of sunfish, or crawling through underwater caves that might contain all sorts of stabbing, munching monsters.
Pebble seemed to be totally without fear. He must have known of my innate cowardice, but he never mentioned it. He would tell me in vivid detail what horror he had planned for me next, demonstrate how an expert like him could survive it, and then just grin, daring me to try. I’m sure my teeth were visibly chattering with terror many times, my knees knocking, but I would always try to bluff my way through somehow, and Pebble would then pretend to look impressed. It was very childish, really.
Worst of all, perhaps, were the snarks. A snark looks something like a marine woollie, padding madly around on the surface. It is indifferent eating, and it comes armed with deadly pincers and stinging tentacles by the hundred. Given the choice, I would not have gone into the same ocean as a snark, but whenever the great ones reported a snark in the neighborhood, Pebble would insist on organizing a snark hunt.
Spears go right though snarks without effect. The only way to catch one is to put a rope around it and tow it to shore. The only way to put a rope around a snark is to leap over it onboard a great one. And the only way to survive getting that close to a snark is to first run the monster to exhaustion. This needed every rider we could enlist. The great ones seemed to enjoy the romp also—why not? The stings did not affect them! Vigorous splashing alarmed the quarry, so the great ones drove it with their roo-like bounding gait, which was terrifying for a beginner who could not swim well. But I must admit, that snark hunt did have a certain exhilaration to it—a dozen or more great ones, all with riders, arching and leaping over the sea, herding the foaming patch of water where the snark thrashed around, plunging in close when it began to tire, seeing who would be the first to dare try the jump and place the rope. That man was the hero of the hunt, of course. Yes, it was insanity and the stings hurt like hell, but I admit I never turned down an invitation to hunt snark.
And all this I owed to Pebble. Endlessly joyful and willing, brave and gentle without limit, he was the first friend I had ever known. The very idea of friendship was alien to a herdman, and Pebble had to start by teaching me that. He never had a mean thought in his life, Pebble. He was my first friend and the best I would ever have. And in the end, I killed him.
─♦─
Fortunately Violet had warned me that not everyone venerated the Father God of the herdfolk. The seafolk’s deity is the Sea Mother. She is generous and undemanding, asking little of her people. I learned her joyful hymns and tossed small offerings into the water as the seafolk did, and no thunderbolt came to roast my bones. Yet when I was out of earshot of the others, I sang to the Heavenly Father, also—though quietly—just to be sure.
Mathematics was not one of my greater talents, yet I could see that the tribe had fewer children than my father had sired with a mere four women. At first I wondered if the sea was prowled by some marine equivalent of roos, a predator that could carry off youngsters, but then I noticed the absence of pregnancies. The birthrate was at fault, therefore. I assumed that this was due to the fish diet. Certainly I often yearned for red meat.
Company I never had to yearn for. I had only to smile and I would be invited into a bower to rest. Seawomen had very energetic ideas of what resting involved. Even some of the knot-on-the-right wives were not above fluttering eyelashes in my direction. Having unlimited choice available elsewhere, I politely ignored such improper suggestions.
I had innumerable friends, both male and female; I had food and comfort without limit; I had the thrill of hunting and the satisfaction of mastering new skills. What more could a man want?
─♦─
Well, Sparkle for one thing.
And Heaven for another.
How foolish is youth! In the midst of every comfort and satisfaction a man could possibly desire, my ambition to be an an
gel still niggled at me like an unreachable itch. I had promised Violet I would meet him in Heaven. I had promised myself! I was still young enough to believe I could make the world a better place, and my conscience scolded me for tarrying when I should be hurrying. Of course, I didn’t know it was my conscience speaking: I thought it was the Father God.
I was a welcome guest at all the feasting places, rewarding my host with the gift of my catch, when I had one, and with my herdfolk songs. The best melodies I knew were hymns that might have offended the Sea Mother, but my knack for inventing doggerel let me put new words to the old tunes. Young and old, the seafolk loved to laugh, and they liked nothing better than hearing some trivial incident of their commonplace lives turned into a satirical ballad, especially if the victim was known to be within earshot. Often the end of my song would be greeted with laughter and applause pouring in through the walls all around. Then I would have to repeat the song, again and again, until the whole tribe had memorized it and was chorusing in complex harmony. The victim usually sang along as heartily as any.
And eventually I would be lured away to a bower to rest.
I have never thought of myself as clever, yet I cannot imagine why I was so stupid as to miss what those young ladies really wanted. My enlightenment came suddenly, at a big feast.
Feasts were commonplace. A big feast was a special event, involving the whole tribe. No normal eating place could hold everyone at the same time, but the copse happened to have a large natural clearing in the middle that served very well, although it was an odd shape. A big feast was held in someone’s honor—and if there was no one who deserved honoring, an excuse could always be found to honor someone anyway. The first I attended had been dedicated to Surge, to celebrate a proposal of marriage from young Sand. All the other unwed maidens were looking very long-faced, for no other boys seemed about to start developing mustaches and related qualifications.
I had congratulated Sand when I heard the news, of course, and asked him jocularly what factors contributed to his decision. He had produced a leer astonishingly like his brother’s and whispered that Surge was going to bear his child—a fact that everyone but me would have already guessed. I just added more congratulations and complimented him on his taste, carefully not mentioning that I had enjoyed surging with Surge a couple of times myself.
Then we had a big feast honoring Wave, and then one for Misty. They were both widows—Misty’s husband Darkly had broken his neck romping with the great ones. That was why she had not wanted to stay and watch the roughhousing, that time she had snatched me away from Raindrops and led me off to rest. I had heard all about it later, while she wept all over my chest, in great need of more comforting.
Nobody had told me why Wave and Misty were being honored. Or Spiral, or Sea Wind, two other widows whose feasts followed. They were just great people, I was informed, and of course I agreed. Especially about Misty.
As least by this time I had managed to account for the missing men. They had not been sent out like herdmen loners, as I had at first suspected. With very few exceptions, they had been victims of accidents. Fin had drowned collecting oysters. Watery had been stung by a lilbugger, and Sing eaten by darts. Such news did nothing to encourage a novice swimmer and sea hunter. When I thought about all those deaths, I saw that a great many of them could have been prevented, had there been help at hand. Having much more wisdom than courage, I never went hunting alone; nor did I let my romps with Frith get out of hand.
And then—long, long overdue—I solved the mystery of the missing children. I was attending yet another big feast, and I was in a sulk. We had been hunting snark. Pebble had tried to jump it too soon, and he had been brutally stung. Pebble, in consequence, was not present. He was in no danger, everyone had assured me cheerfully. The oozing red welts that covered him and the screams he was not entirely able to suppress—they would pass. So Pebble had been left to suffer alone, writhing in lonely agony, and everyone else had gone off to the big feast, dragging me along also, insisting that Pebble did not need me.
I had assumed then that the big feast was going to be in my honor. I had made the next jump, very shortly after Pebble. That was an unheard-of display of recklessness for me—I must have given Frith the wrong signal in my excitement. But I had made the jump and I had not been stung, and so I could reasonably expect to be honored. Why else would I have been dragged bodily to the feast?
But the feast was to honor yet another widow, Thunder. I liked Thunder—we had made oceanfuls of waves together—yet I did not feel much like singing her praises. I was, perhaps, worried about poor Pebble. I was probably miffed because I thought I deserved the feast more than Thunder did. And I was certainly disturbed by Sparkle.
There I was, sitting on moss in the shade, leaning back against a wall of cane, chewing an insipid chunk of snark while Pebble’s wife snuggled closer and closer. Her shoulder was against my shoulder, her thigh against my thigh. She did this every chance she got. Lately her invitations had become quite blatant. Pebble was my best friend, my first friend—I was not going to bed his wife!
The problem was to stop her bedding me. There are limits beyond which a man’s self-control should not be tested.
Her authority over the others had not faded—no one else would come near me while Sparkle was flirting. She was my friend’s wife. Worst of all, though, I was already half-crazy with desire before she even started.
She had rescued me from the rocks, although I could recall little of that. She had been the first one to visit me in Beholds bower. That experience also was fuzzy in my mind, but it had been glorious therapy for me. I had recovered very rapidly after that. She had comforted me when I was frightened by the great ones. I wanted her desperately.
Crazy! So many gorgeous women available, and I was hankering most after one I must not take. Other wives did not affect me like that. Some of them dropped hints, but I found them easy to refuse. But Sparkle…she roused me like storms raise waves.
And she knew it, damn her!
She sighed. “Yes, Golden?”
“You should not be doing this to me.”
“Want to do much more to you.”
“It is not fair to Pebble.”
“Is sick! Cannot love poor Sparkle. Won’t know!”
“Sparkle! This is wrong! Why are behaving like this?”
“Am trying to get baby.”
I choked on a hunk of snark, and it was a moment before I was able to speak again. But by then I had located young father-to-be Sand putting on airs at the far side of the clearing. Surge was by his side. She bulged visibly now.
So did Wave. So did Misty. Almighty Father!
“That’s what this feast is for? Because Thunder thinks I’ve—because she’s expecting?”
“Thinks is expecting,” Sparkle said complacently, while the scratch of her fingernail on my backbone was shooting muscle spasms all the way to my toes.
That was why they had all insisted I come to the feast—typical seafolk humor! I was appalled. How stupid could a herdman be? Not one woman in the grove had been visibly pregnant when I had first come, and now there were… I started to count, and my mind was instantly boggled. No one was close enough to overhear, yet my voice shrank almost to a whisper. “But what’s going to happen if Surge’s baby-has blue eyes?”
Sparkle sniggered. “Is still Surge’s baby. Is still Sand’s baby.”
“Oh, is it? Is it really? And whose baby is Misty going to produce?”
“Darkly’s,” Sparkle said airily.
“But he was dead before I came. Long before!”
Sparkle raised delicate eyebrows almost up to her tight brown curls. “So?”
Patiently she explained that any baby born to a widow was naturally regarded as her late husband’s. Only if she remarried would the real father be recognized. So strongly did the seafolk accept that fiction that Sparkle had no doubt at all that Darkly would be the father of Misty’s baby. Blue eyes and gold hair would not change her
mind if she did not wish to have it changed.
The seafolk doted on babies. They adored babies—and their womenfolk were not producing them; hence, the promiscuity that I both despised and enjoyed. Apparently every woman was willing to try every man in the hope that the right combination would work the magic.
And into this desperate but unspeakable situation blunders a virile young herdman, raised on a diet of red meat. Impact!
My explanation was all wrong, of course, but it was to take another angel to correct me.
Sparkle leaned crushing against me and gazed soulfully into my eyes. “Need help, Golden!”
“NO!” I insisted, while sweat trickled down my temples and my heart tried to smash itself to pieces on my ribs. “Pebble is my friend.”
“Wants a son very much, Golden.”
Big black eyes, had Sparkle—eyes to melt a man like butter in sunlight. “Then let him make it himself!” I scrambled to my feet and ran from her before my resolution rotted away completely.
I went straight to Sparkle’s bower, but I went alone. I stayed there, laying cool compresses on Pebble to case his pain. He was very grateful, but I suspected he had been surprised to see me.
─♦─
The seafolk had been right, though—a couple of sleeps made Pebble as good as new, completely unrepentant. I knew he would be wise to take things easy, but very unlikely to, so I cornered him and begged his help for my raft.
I had a plentiful supply of wood gathered. The problem had been finding spare rope. Rope was made from vines or sealskin, and everyone in the grove had promised to braid me some. Nobody ever finished any, of course, except old Behold. From her, from odd corners, and with what I had made myself, I had enough to start.
So Pebble and I headed for the margin of the copse, each bearing a weighty bundle. I found a certain irony in thinking how glad he should be to help me leave, for I knew that Sparkle would wear down my resistance eventually—I burned whenever I thought of her. And I was determined to be gone before all those golden-haired babies started to appear. Surely the other men would tie my privates to a boulder and drop it in deep water?