Northshore

by Sheri S. Tepper

  ‘What will you do now?’ asked Pamra. She had stayed out of the way during the worst of it, trying not to show how frightened she was, clinging to Lila as though to some raft on which she might have expected to float to safety. Later, when they had patched the hole, she had gone below to see the black oozing around the patch and had realized it could be only temporary. ‘You’ll have to fix it ashore, won’t you?’

  Thrasne nodded, still numb. It was the first real injury the Gift had received, and he felt it himself, looking at his ribs from time to time as though expecting to see great bruises and rents there, surprised to find himself whole. ‘It’ll take a while. That third rib back is sprung all out of line. All the planks are loose along there. They’re not leaking now, but they will be. Next town’s hopeless, no piers, no shipwrights. Next one on down’s some better, but I’ll have to do most of it myself, most likely.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘A long time. Thirty, forty days, at least. Probably more. They won’t have the planking we need. It’s almost impossible they’d have seasoned wood available. Chances are if they have any, it’ll be green. Or, more likely, still standing. Over a month.’ A month was fifty-one days. ‘Sixty days, maybe. Seventy.’ Still in shock, he wasn’t thinking of her at all. Then he turned to see her look of fear and apprehension, understanding it in the instant. ‘That’d be too long for you to be in one place, wouldn’t it? Dangerous for you. Those hunting you would likely find you. I should have thought of that right off.’

  ‘I can stay here in the owner-house.’ She tried to smile. ‘If the men won’t talk about it.’

  They would talk, of course. No way he could prevent it. ‘You can’t stay cooped up that long. You’d turn all pale, like a mushroom.’ He tried a not-very-successful smile. ‘No. We’ll think of something else.’

  When he came back to the owner-house some hours later, he brought the local chart-of-towns with him, laying it on the table under the lantern where she could see it. ‘I’ve found something,’ a tired smile telling her it was the only thing he’d been able to find. ‘I’d forgotten all about it. Strinder’s Isle.’

  He pointed to the chart, the ragged edge of the River at one side, with its endless list of places, products, local idiosyncrasies, religious taboos. There to the south, a good day’s sail out into the World River, lay a long, wide, inky interruption among the careful notes and the River flow. The eastern end of it was behind them, two towns back. The western end was three towns yet ahead. ‘The only people there are the Strinders,’ he said. ‘And only a few of them left. No guards. No gates. They have a pier here, a little east of Chantry. Chantry’s where we’ll have to get the boat fixed.’

  ‘An island? I never heard of an island in the River.’

  ‘There’s many of them. Most of the ones close to shore are so small they’re only rocks on the charts, dots, places to steer clear of. But Strinder’s Isle, well, it’s a good way out. Out of sight of the shore. Blint used to call there every time he came around. Used to bring in flour and cloth and sweetening. Take out dye shells. The thing is, we can run down along the island, drop you off, then pick you up again at the western end after the ship is fixed. All we’ll need is some kind of signal so you can come down to the west end of the island when it’s time. That way we’ll be with the current, taking you in and getting you off.’

  He misinterpreted her doubtful look. ‘It’s safe enough, Pamra. We’ve got time to drop you off. The Gift isn’t going to sink under us.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ she said, hating herself for seeming to question his provision for her when that very provision might delay and endanger him. ‘It just seemed – is it an empty island? I mean, are there still any people there?’

  Now he was doubtful himself. ‘There used to be. Right along here. A bunch of little houses, some of them scattered back in the trees. Of course, the island mostly belongs to the Treeci. They’re a little like the fliers.’

  ‘Servants of Abricor!’

  ‘Not carrion eaters. No. Not the Servants of Abricor. A different kind of creature. I’ve never seen them anywhere but there, on the island. Bigger legs than the Servants. They have beautiful plumage, but they don’t fly. Flat kind of beaks on them, almost like lips only harder, not those hard, hooked beaks the Servants have. From a distance, they look almost human. I’ve only seen them at a distance, of course, but the Strinders got on well with them.’ He ran a hand across his face, as though trying to wipe away the tiredness. ‘If there’s any way to let you stay there, Pam, it’s best. Truly. Even if you had to stay alone in one of the old houses. The people looking for you won’t find you there. I can guarantee. And we can make it safe and reasonably comfortable for you, even if you have to stay alone.’

  It sounded like abandonment, and he knew it. She could not help but know it, and it made a slow, burning anger in her that there could not be some other way. There was no other way. The alternatives were worse. The Awakeners would send Laughers after her, they weren’t going to stop looking for her, and even death alone on an island would be far preferable to their finding her. She shook herself, made herself sound cheerful about it.

  ‘I’ll go there, Thrasne. Even if there’s no one there. I’ll take Lila, she’ll be company for me. However long it takes, I’ll wait for your signal.’

  When they came to the island, however, she was less sure.

  There were little houses along the shore, most tumbled into piles of gray fragments, log and plank silvered by the sun and the River wind. At last they saw a vague line of smoke ascending, and this led them to a rickety pier and a ramshackle dwelling showing light among the trees.

  The woman who answered their calls had aged like the house. She was rust and dust held together by a net of wrinkles with gray hair wisping around her like smoke. ‘Strinder? Me? Well, of course I’m Strinder, and damn near the last. Did you say you were old Blint’s boy? I seem to remember he had a boy. Think of that, and come in.’

  There were two others on the island, as old as she; an old curmudgeon named Stodder and her own cousin, Bethne. ‘Joy,’ she said to Pamra with a keen glance from under bushy brows. ‘That’s my name. You wouldn’t think it, would you? Not exactly a joyful object, am I? Often wished I’d had a name that aged better. Sophronia. Eugenia. Something with some dignity to it.’

  She looked them over, Pamra and the slow baby. She did not remark then or ever upon the baby’s strangeness, and Pamra came to believe for a time it was because human babies were so far in her past she had forgotten what the usual ones were like. Lila might have fitted her memories of babyness as well as any other.

  When Thrasne left her, it was with a goodly supply of food and with a large supply of wood cut for the old woman’s fires. Though it was warmer on the island than on the shore, the evenings would still be cold for the next three months. Thirty days was the minimum time the repairs would take, but it could be three times that. After thirty days she was to watch the northern shore each evening, a little before dusk, to see three pillars of smoke. When she saw them, she was to make the two- or three-day hike along the flat shore to the western end of the island and camp there until he came for her. ‘If it takes us longer than that, we may be delayed by the Conjunction tides,’ he told her. ‘So don’t be impatient. You can get down to the west end all right?’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes,’ said the old woman. ‘She can get there easy enough. There’s no more wilderness on Strinder’s Island. No more wildness at all. Except for … well, except for what there is, of course.’ If this had been meant to convey something, it failed. Pamra was too agitated at being left behind to pay much attention.

  The Gift pulled away from the isle, Thrasne turning from the high rudder deck to wave to her. When sight of him had faded into the River haze, down and cross stream toward the distant shore, she turned back to the house, the old woman meeting her halfway there.

  ‘Oh, girl, I saw he left you puncon jam. Couldn’t help but see it. I haven’t had puncon jam since my y
oungest daughter was born, she that’s gone now and left only the memory. Would it be ugly of me to beg puncon jam on our fry cakes tonight? I do have a light hand with fry cakes.’ For a time it was as though Joy had returned, so young she sounded, and Pamra was ashamed not to greet this enthusiasm with more spirit of her own. Though she kept counseling herself to be calm, not to consider herself injured, still she felt bereft, grieved, and abandoned, senseless though that was. She found herself blaming Thrasne, senseless though that was as well, ashamed of it and yet unable to stop. Still, faced with the old woman’s delight in having company, she assented to the scheme of puncon jam, assented to having Stodder and Bethne as guests.

  These three were the entire remnant of the Strinders. There had been some younger who had gone away on the River, there had been many younger and older who had died. And now these three remained, not one among them who had ever seen the northern shore or an Awakener or a Servant of Abricor. They knew only the island and the waters around it and the Treeci, who shared both with them.

  It was some time before she met the Treeci. First there were days of walking here and there, weeding a bit of garden, checking the nets to see if anything worth eating had been caught, raking shellfish from the River to dry upon the shore, carrying the dried shells to the pier, where great, wobbly baskets bulged with this reeking harvest awaiting the next Riverboat.

  ‘Not many stop here,’ creaked old Stodder. ‘Let’s see, there’s River Queen, and Moormap’s Fish (Moormap died, but his daughter’s husband kept the Fish) and the Gift, o’ course, and the Startled Wind …’ He went on with his enumeration, Riverboats afloat, Riverboats long gone.

  After their supper they sat on the rickety porch beneath the trees to watch the moons assemble before the old man and the other old woman stumped off to their own falling-down houses in the woods. Pamra stood looking after them, wondering why they did not live together. It would mean only one house to heat, less wood to cut. Far off in the trees came a plangent, bell-tolling sound, and she remembered the creatures Thrasne had mentioned.

  ‘Treeci?’ she asked old Joy.

  ‘Treeci,’ whispered Joy, face in the lamplight alive with old memories, eyes gentle as doves. ‘Treeci. Honoring the moons.’

  They went next day to rake shells. Pamra, Lila, and Joy. Three Treeci came through the trees, calling in bell-like voices, then in human sounds. ‘Joy! We greet!’

  The old woman waved. ‘Binna! Werf! Come meet a visitor from over the River. Her name is Pamra. And the baby, Lila.’ The Treeci bowed, acknowledging the introduction, while Pamra stared.

  They were as tall as she, standing upright on legs not unlike her own, with feathered buttocks that curved as hers did into a narrow waist. The long, two-toed feet might have been human feet stuffed into feathery socks except for the knifelike talons. Above the waist the likeness to humans was less. The arms, ending in three-fingered hands, were fully feathered with long, winglike primaries; their breasts were keeled; their large-eyed faces were full of candid intelligence. ‘Pamra,’ they said, bowing again.

  She bowed in return to Binna, to Werf, then turned to bow to the third member of the group, feeling Joy’s hand tugging at her as she did so. She looked down to see the old woman shaking her head, embarrassed, whispering, ‘No, don’t bow. That’s a male. You don’t bow to them.’

  ‘Why?’ It was startled out of her, not really a question.

  ‘Shhh. Later.’

  ‘Are you having a pleasant visit?’ Binna asked her, taking no notice of this gaffe. The words were clearly articulated, slightly accented but in a pleasant way. Though the lower part of each Treeci face was visored by their shallow beaks, those beaks were soft and flexible, protruding little, moving almost as lips did.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ They talked of the weather for a few moments, of the tides. The third, unnamed Treeci wandered to the shore and stood there, watching the water.

  ‘I came to tell you, Joy,’ said Werf, ‘there’s a new bed of inedible shellies just below the big rocks, beyond the frag grove. Good dye shells! They’re small now, but by Conjunction after this one, they should be good size for your gathering.’

  ‘That’s kind of you,’ she responded warmly. ‘Will you return with us and take tea?’

  They demurred, demurred again, then accepted. It had the pace and quiet predetermination of a ritual. At the house they were joined on the porch by Bethne to drink tea out of fragile old cups as they recited memories of former times, so many memories it was obvious they were more than acquaintances. Joy had brought six cups. Without saying anything to anyone, Werf filled the extra cup and carried it to the rock, where the third Treeci perched in lonely silence. The two conversed in low tones. Werf returned. No one seemed to notice. Before leaving, Werf retrieved the cup and set it upon the table with the others.

  ‘We rejoice in your friendship,’ they called as they were leaving. ‘May your lives extend.’

  Joy gathered up the cups. ‘If you could get me a pail of water, child, I’d get these washed.’

  ‘In a minute. First, tell me about the – the male. Why don’t we talk to him? …’

  ‘It isn’t done.’ The old woman laid a trembling hand on Pamra’s own. ‘Werf is Neff’s mother. She talks to him, you see. And his own sisters do, of course. But no one else. It just isn’t done.’

  ‘Cruel,’ Pamra said, remembering herself as a child. ‘It’s cruel to treat people like that.’

  ‘Ah, but child, they aren’t people, don’t you see.’

  ‘They’re people, Joy. You wouldn’t sit here drinking tea with them unless they were.’ She said this as she would have done to Delia, mistaking Joy for Delia, perhaps, without realizing it.

  ‘In that sense, yes, they’re people and my dearest friends, but you know what I meant.’ She turned away toward her wash basin, holding out the empty pail. ‘They aren’t human people.’

  Pamra forced her feelings off her face. She was living in the old woman’s house, a good old woman, not unlike – not unlike another good old woman whom she had failed in a time of trouble. Let her not trouble this one more. As a guest, she had no right.

  But she felt a sympathetic rebellion for the lonely Treeci, even as she admitted to herself the loneliness might be more in her than in Neff. The rebellion in her was the same it had been when she was eleven or twelve, the same that had led her to say, ‘I can be a Awakener.’ She did not think of this, but only of the sad Treeci. His separation spoke to her.

  Among the Treeci, it seemed, hospitality must be returned. Two days later Joy dressed herself with unaccustomed attention, digging through dusty boxes in search of old finery. She found a glittery scarf for Pamra, a shiny bit of ribbon for Lila’s blanket, and they set out along the shore.

  ‘I suppose eventually you’ll tell me where we’re going?’

  ‘Well, Werf and Binna will expect us. Among the Treeci it’s considered nice to drop by in a couple of days so’s they can show hospitality. They call it returning the opportunity. Very set on it, they are.’

  ‘Why all this sparkle?’

  ‘Do them honor. You wouldn’t have noticed, not being island reared, but they were got up fine for us t’other day. Talons painted; feathers around the eyes dyed. They were making an opportunity to honor us – so they call it. Curious, I expect. About you and the baby. Not been a human baby on Strinder’s for thirty years.’

  Pamra found herself lost in wonder at this, not so much at the fact of it – another race of creatures upon the world with its own habits and customs, speaking not only its own language but a human language as well, curious about human babies – no, not so much at the fact as at her ignorance of it. How could she have grown to be adult without having heard of them? Why had no one spoken of them? And if no one had spoken of the Treeci, how many other wonders in the world might there be, unspoken of?

  Joy had something to say upon that subject. ‘My brother used to say all the Northshore people were so stuffed full of Awakener sh
it they hadn’t room for anything else. Is it true they forbid books there?’

  It was true. Or true enough. There had been books in the Tower. Homiletics. Hermeneutics. Scripture. Difficult books breathing an atmosphere of dusty mystery, unenlightening. There had been no others. Without books, without travel, Pamra could explain her own ignorance. She could not really forgive it.

  The Treeci lived in houses, better kept and better made than those of the human occupants of the island, and there was a teahouse set in a grove where water burbled tranquil music into a stone basin. Young Treeci, half the size of the adults, gathered on the meadow in murmuring groups. Tea was served in ceremonial fashion. Pamra watched the others to see what was proper, getting through the formal bits with some degree of grace. When everyone had a cup, when every cup had been tasted and approved, when the nuts and cakes had been passed around and those had been complimented, then the group could sit back and indulge themselves in conversation. Joy had been right. It was curiosity. All the questions they had been too polite to ask on Strinder territory they felt empowered to ask on their own.

  ‘Is the child yours?’

  ‘Is it a customary child?’

  ‘We thought it was not a customary child. We believe she is t’lick tlassca.’ After some discussion, this term was translated as ‘wonder.’

  ‘Yes,’ Pamra agreed with a rare smile. ‘She is a wonder.’

  ‘Would Pamra stay long?’

  By this time Lila lay on Werf’s lap, patting her feathery bosom with long, stretched gestures, murmuring her own legato music. Werf dripped tea into her mouth, and the baby smiled, an endless smile, like dawn.