This time I swim while he pushes the bowawa along. He’s so little and light that the bowawa doesn’t fill up as fast as it does when I’m in it since I’m so fine and big. We stay just beyond the surf and I find a tiny beach only big enough for us. Nobody lives there, not even a seal. I’m thinking that here he’ll learn a whole new thing. He’ll be a real Person and smile a lot and then I’ll be able to love him and let myself have this child of the air and land.
He thinks to sit and dry himself, but I tell him to lie down. I tell him it’s time for something different and that the land has made him forget himself. “I’ve heard,” I say, “of an uncle who stayed out on the land too long and when he came back the sun was stuck in his eyes so he could hardly see, and stuck inside his thoughts, too.”
I start by stroking his belly fur as I did before, but then his penis comes out. I say, “Not yet.” I stroke him all over and lick and hold him to my big, round breasts. He plays with the nipples a little and hugs me, but he doesn’t do much more than that. He lets me do the playing and I gladly do, but he keeps trying to come in from the back all the time. I laugh and stop him and make him follow me into the water. I do it as we do it. I make him come to me face to face, looking into my eyes. I play until he’s tired. He doesn’t laugh like we do, but he likes it. Afterwards he falls asleep with a little half-smile on his face. He never thought things could be like this. He’s surprised. He didn’t know we were as smart as this, but we are and we also know many other things. Now I’ll be able to love him. We can go to the second corner of the world where he’ll be cooler and I’ll go gladly and help him get there.
In the morning he tells me about wree. He says wree is a very good land thing and there are some up in the second corner. He said we had part of one that had washed up to us. He says wree makes shady places where he can live there and stretch his arms there like they like to stretch. He tells me about fruwa and kinds of land berries and leaves that you can eat like we chew on sea lettuce. He says there are places where the land is the best of all possible places. He says when I see wree I’ll believe him.
After he fixes the bowawa, he chips at a stone. He chips until the stone begins to look like me. “This is you,” he says. “You are the ma of all the mas, and I like you like I’ve not liked any other creature here. Don’t forget that,” he says, “no matter what happens,” and I’m thinking he’s cured of all the bad things. He’s cured because of love. He might not know that word, but he has the feeling.
I tell him I love him. I’m not sure about that, but it’s always better to say it than not, because later might be too late.
ZUESA
I should have been working on the boat, but I worked on the stone instead. I needed a rest… the first real rest since they dropped me off here. And this turned out to be a good time to teach her a few things. I told her about civilization, what it is and how important it is. I told her what she means to me. I confessed that, without her, nothing will come of me at all. I told her how I need to become the big head uncle of all of them, and that I want her to be Big Ma with me. She just laughed, but she really listened when I told her about trees and the climbing stairs and the vines and the kites we ride. I explained about writing and how the trees had given us smooth barks to write on before we invented paper. I told her the trees had given us the ideas for almost everything. This time wasn’t wasted, because she began to understand things, and I saw, also, that she’s beginning to love me. She said so. I need her to feel this way. When she almost ran off, I realized how lost I’d be.
After spending this sex time on the beach with her, I realize why I’d been able to succeed with the seeding as well as I have. When it comes to sex, they take their time about it. They even consider that a virtue, and I admit they have a point, but one hasn’t very often got a whole afternoon, not if one is in charge of several others of lower ranks. Even then I had things I should have been doing, yet I let myself rest. I thought, maybe one more day of it while I finished the statue, which is part of my plan.
I sat and carved, and later I told her about my mother. I told her Mother could fight as well as a man, though I had to use their words “scuffle” and “tussle.” They aren’t advanced enough to have a word for war that I can tell. I told her I’d never seen Mother cry, even when my brother was brought in so mangled he’d never swing in the trees again, having been beaten in battle (I had, of course, to use their word scuffle again) by the men of the lesser trees. Those little trees, I told her, grow in the mountains, which are cliffs like she’s never imagined could exist. The trees and we men of the valley are larger. All the valleys have larger men. If one of those mountain men had been left off here, they’d really have had something to laugh about, and then she’d have seen how big I am compared to them. I told her there had been thirteen symbols on my headdress. I told her how red Mother is, and how I wanted red sons so they could be my men of fire. She said they would be beautiful and that sometimes the People also have red hair on their heads, though that’s rare. But I said beautiful was not what I wanted my sons to be. I wanted to say impressive and grand, but I couldn’t find the words in their language except uncle or ma or moon or sun. (I thought it ironic that one so huge and so hairless… that one with buttocks like buttocks I’d never seen before could speak about beauty. And yet I must admit she was looking pretty good to me. I can see a kind of beauty in her odd, sea-colored eyes and in her long hair, also like the sea in the way it hangs down her back in waves.)
I’ve begun to write all this out for my sons. I’m using the back of my number codes list. I’ll not have any use for that again. First I made an alphabet for them and then addressed them as “Conquerors” as well as “Your Excellencies.” Also I’ve put some writing (the simple humble form) along the sides of the boat so as to teach my new Zoe. I want the first words she learns to read to be “Your Excellency.”
Tomorrow I’ll get back to work. I’ve rested too long and wasted too much seed and the energy to spend it. I’ll sleep turned away.
VENUS
We go, then, in the bowawa and I sit with him so we can be together in it though I’d rather be swimming. I touch his feet that are there in front of me. I tickle his toes. He looks at me like he cares about me, though he doesn’t smile. I’m thinking his eyes are the color of the bottom of the sea in a murky place. Then he asks me to say that I’ll keep his baby son and not let him get swept away.
“Why would I let that happen,” I say, “when I love you now?”
“Say anyway,” he says. “Cross your arms over your breasts like this and say it.” And I do it though I don’t know why I need to when I already said I wouldn’t let it happen.
This is one of those strange, cloudy days. I can remember the last time I saw a day like this. It was before I became a woman. I’m hoping there might even be sprinkling like there was that time, and maybe flowers might come out and we could go into the land and cover our heads with all the yellow we’d want and we’d dance and bugs would come out and dance with us. I tell Zat One about it. I tell him I want him to see such a thing as those flowers which I’ve only seen twice before and that even Old Man Lost Egg has only seen six times in all his long life. And I tell Zat One about the little bugs that come to hop with us. He says he’ll not go see it. He doesn’t have time. Time, he says, is the most important thing of all and we mustn’t waste it, but I think going into land to see the flowers would be using time well and I remember how Old Man Lost Egg says he would like to see those flowers once more before being taken with the tide, so I hope it will happen again now for him.
We go on and the sky water doesn’t come. The clouds go away overhead, but hang a long ways off on the edge of the world circle, out where the sky and sea roll into one thing so it’s easy to see that the sea is the low part of the sky and the sky the high part of the sea. I’ve seen Berry Island, and other islands, too, float on the sky some mornings and some evenings, too, so that if Zat One comes from the stars, as he says, that is
n’t so strange, it’s just a long way around. It’s wree that surprises me—that such a thing like a giant seaweed could grow also on the land.
After a while we come to another nice beach full of People. Maybe as many as I would count up on hands and feet if I had six toes and six fingers like Deep Diver. We land there. Everybody pretends not to look, but they do anyway, and laugh behind their hands at Zat One, but they look at me, not laughing. I’m a fine big ma. I’m just what all the People like best, which is why one like Deep Diver wants me and I want him for the same reasons. I never wanted a little furry one like Zat One.
He calls out to them, but they only stare at the clouds that hang in the elbow where the sky rises from the sea. Then Zat One holds up the ma stone he carved and they do come.
They’ve never seen such a thing as a ma to fit the hand like this one does. Zat One is saying, “This is great ma of the sun and I’m her greatest uncle. I’m here to bring you many new things.” Then he makes fie and shows them how to do it, but they’re like us, they don’t care about fie. They like the little ma stone. And then they call me ma, though no one ever called me that except as a joke when I was thin and little and couldn’t have been a ma at all.
I tell them that I’m The One with Zat One, and no more than just what they see. Zat One gets angry when I say that, but I think he can’t say no in front of all these People. But then he does and not just once. “No, no, no, no,” he says and in a voice more like a sea gull than a Person. The People turn their faces to the elbow of the sky again and I see—and I’m sorry for it—that he’s counting up the women who are just coming into their fat, and I say, “No,” to him then, so we are two strange People (if Zat One really is a Person) that say no to each to other.
“I must,” he says.
“I will keep you from it,” I say.
“This is important. This is what I’ve been dropped from the sky for.”
“This is not a loving nor a playful thing.”
“Love has nothing to do with it. I need fie People, and you need them, too, even if you don’t know it.”
He’s yelling this. The People haven’t heard such a thing before except if it’s a game. They want to make it into something funny. They begin to dance and throw sand and imitate his yelling and everything gets confused and full of sand, so that everybody gets sand in their eyes. During this time I see already he has gone to two young ones just coming into fat. It’s as if the anger and confusion makes him even faster and better at it than if things are calm and happy.
Then I’m the one shrieking like a sea gull. I say he’s a shark that steals women and right then he’s in the middle of having another one.
The People don’t understand because it’s from the back and on land, but then they see it’s true. “Swim him off.” I keep yelling it, and pull at him, and he’s hitting me. These are real hits. I didn’t think he would do such a thing. Then I give the whistle that means shark, which should never, ever, be given except when there is a shark. When I do that, one big uncle comes with a stone and hits Zat One on the head as though to open a clam. I’ve not seen this done to a Person before, nor to any seal or any such thing. Zat One takes that thing like his finger that he wears on those strings he has. He kills that big uncle in one of those flashes. All the People step away, then, except for me. I’m still trying to pull Zat One away. Another big uncle comes, but I can see he doesn’t know what to do. Before he can think of something, there’s another flash and he’s down, too. After that, Zat One is running to the bowawa, pushing off and going on as fast as he can. They’re telling me to get away from their beach, too, so I go. I follow him, but not near. He calls, but I don’t come. He’s calling, “Zoe, Zoe,” which he’s been calling me now, but I don’t want to be reminded of that land ma he was telling about.
Pretty soon I see him do a strange thing. He passes by an island and there’s an otter lady lying on her back in the water near it. She has her little white, fuzzy baby resting on her chest. Zat One floats over there slowly, as if he thought she would swim away, but she’s not afraid. Why should she be? She probably plays with those People from that last beach. She might even trade babies with those mas, sometimes putting one of theirs on her stomach while they hold hers. My People do that sometimes, too. Zat One comes closer and then reaches over suddenly and takes the baby. He grabs it by the back flippers and swings it up and around and down against a hard part of the bowawa. The otter lady makes a sad sound that I make, too, and dives away, and I know, even more than I knew before, that I must get rid of Zat One.
He pushes the bowawa on until he comes to a place too small for anybody to live there except maybe one or two, but nobody lives like that so there’s nobody there. He makes fie out of dried sea weed and dead grasses. Then he cuts up the baby otter and puts its parts on stones in fie. After that he sits and dries himself in the setting sun. I don’t go close because I don’t want to see him eat the baby. I sleep resting on the waves out from the shore in the seaweed. It’s a nice calm night. I eat a few clams. I open them with a stone on my chest like the otters do. Then I lie on my back and doze.
In the morning I see he’s already making another ma stone to take the place of the one that got left back there. This one’s bigger. I come in close to get a better look, because this stone ma doesn’t have any feet or hands, which is funny. I laugh out loud and he turns and sees me there. “I know you’ll not leave me,” he says. “You said you loved me and you don’t know how not to say what you mean. You don’t even have a word for not saying what’s real.”
I stop laughing and don’t answer.
He carves and chips all that day and eats the baby, which makes me not hungry. The next morning I see he sits sad, maybe because he sees how I am, but maybe not. He used to sit sad all the time, though not so much lately. He sits sad, but he goes on carving that bigger ma stone. It’s the size of two, maybe even three hands. Having three hands makes me smile, but I don’t laugh out loud. I don’t want him to hear me. He’s eaten more of the baby and he’s stretched the little white fur on bones. I think how my People would gather around the otter baby and its mother and say what a wonderful baby it is. Tears come to me as I think this. I miss my brothers and sisters and all the mas and uncles. I miss laughing together and hugging. I miss my cousin’s baby, which I’m thinking of as though she was that baby otter. I’m wondering if Zat One would do such a thing to that baby, too. And I’m missing Old Man Lost Egg’s talk about how the world is, and I think I’ll have things to tell, too. I can say already how round and round again the world is and I have lots to say that nobody else has had to say. They’ll hardly recognize me. I even wonder at myself that I have this thing I have to do because the waves won’t do it for me. Even when they had the chance they didn’t do it. Why must it be that I must become like a wave and suck away Zat One all by myself ?
The next day Zat One puts what’s left of the baby in the bowawa, and the big ma stone, and goes off again. I follow, but well behind. He lands on the next big beach with People on it. I see him holding up the ma stone. I can’t hear him, but I can guess what he’s saying. He’s waving his arms around the way he does and pointing at the sun. This time it looks as if he’s making the sun the most important one of all, though we all know water is what we can’t do without. There are three red-headed ones here. I know this is important to him so I come in. The People see me coming but he doesn’t. I pick up a stone almost as big as the ma stone he’s holding and I wait behind him while he talks. This time he says that the ma of the sun is the most powerful because it’s the sun that kills. That’s proof of its power. “Water gives and the sun kills,” he says, “and this is why the sun is above everything else.”This is a new thing. I wait because I don’t want to be mistaken about him. I want to make sure he’s going to do what I think he’s going to do. All those People have moved out of the water on to the beach and are looking at the ma stone. Even though I’m behind him, I know his little penis is peeping out because I c
an see that the People are looking at it and covering their mouths with their hands, and I also see that he has somebody picked out. She’s sitting close to him and she’s beautiful even though she’s not into her full fat. She’s one of the red-haired ones.
I’m holding the rock ready to do something but now he’s being different again. He’s saying he’ll leave the ma stone in exchange for the red-haired woman. He says he’s been looking for just this one for a long time. Then he asks her to come and be the greatest ma of the sun and I can see she doesn’t know how to answer or what to do. I think she wants to say no, but not in front of her own People.
“You have the hair of fie,” he says, and then makes fie for them.
These People are a little different about that fie. They seem to like it, no matter that it’s much too hot to be of any use. Maybe that’s because there are those red-haired ones here. Zat One is telling them that those red People are the fie People and that they’re like the sun, but they keep saying they’re just like everybody else and that if he knew them better he would know that. Then he tells them he’ll take the red-haired Person out in the bowawa. He says, just for the time it takes to snatch a fish, and she does get up to see what that bowawa is like. He leads her to it but then I see that she sees what’s left of the otter baby in it. Most of the baby is touched with fie and doesn’t look like anything anymore, but Zat One has kept the white fur of it stretched out on those bones. You can see what it used to be. You can also see, when you’re close to it, who the bowawa is made of. She sees that, too, but he pushes her in. I’m behind them and I see he takes her from the back right then, as though that act is a way to push her into the bowawa, and I know she isn’t sure what happened to her. I’m not surprised he never feels the fun of anything. I can tell by now that those who don’t feel fun are dangerous. I’m wondering if his babies will be strange and terrible. I’m thinking I’ll kill mine right away before I get to know it. I’ll kill it even if it looks like a real Person. Only the present will go on and on. I crossed my arms and said I wouldn’t kill it, but I’m thinking I might change what I said to a better saying.
The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1 Page 75