Northshore

by Sheri S. Tepper

  ‘Why had she come?’

  Without thinking to censor what she said, Pamra told them why she had come. Not all, merely some. Awakeners were part of the reason, and the Servants of Abricor. There was a sad murmuring, a shaking of feathered heads.

  ‘They were kin to us one time, those fliers of the North-shore. Those you call Servants of Abricor. We remember that time in our histories. There was a time when honor could have been retained. Our tribe, the Treeci, chose the way of honor. They, those who remained, chose otherwise. There are certain words in our language which go back to that time which those on the Northshore no longer know. Words like “decency.” And “dignity.” It makes us sad what they have become.’ Werf shook her feathered head in sadness, widening the plumy circles around her eyes.

  Binna changed the subject, and Pamra kept quiet, abashed at the sadness she had caused.

  ‘We thought you might like to see some of our dancing,’ said Binna, nodding at a young Treeci, who went racing away with this message. In moments there were sounds of a drum and a rhythmic tinkling.

  From the teahouse the Treeci watched indulgently, even proudly. On the lawn the young Treeci sat, whispering, a few going so far as to point with wingtips, as though accidentally. Looking at these youths, Pamra could not tell whether they were male or female; they had no distinguishing colors, they were merely young. Perhaps there was a stage in development in which it did not matter, for all the young ones murmured together, moved about in giggling groups, walked with entwined fingers and heads tilted toward one another.

  The dancers, however, were all male. Pamra could feel it. They twirled and postured, stamped, wings wide with each feather displayed, chest feathers fluffed, those around the eyes widened into flashing circles. Their flat beaks had been rouged, their talons painted. Beside her Werf sat smiling, wing fingers tapping in time to the drums, eyes moist. Pamra followed the direction of her eyes. Werf’s son, Neff, among the dancers, magnificent in his grace and strength, the dance itself stimulating, breathtaking. Without thinking, Pamra started to say something about this, some small, complimentary remark, only to feel Joy’s fingers biting into her arm. Confused, she confronted the old woman’s forbidding eyes with wide, excited eyes of her own. This, too, was not to be spoken of. Pamra pulled her arm away. She wanted to say something, do something. Her face was flushed, red; she could feel the heat in it, in her arms trembling with the music.

  Binna had been watching her. Now she said something loudly, a cutting metal sound, and the dance ended in a ragged cacophony of drum and bell. There was conversation then, apologies, a rapid murmur of polite talk covering the sudden end of the entertainment. Pamra did not understand it.

  Then they were on their way home. ‘Binna apologized,’ said Joy. There was sorrow in her voice, as though she had been given news of a grave illness or death.

  ‘For what? I don’t understand.’

  ‘For the dancing. They had not realized you would be – moved by it.’

  ‘It was exciting! That’s wrong?’ Pamra wanted to laugh. ‘Isn’t that the object of it all?’

  ‘No. Never. That would be unseemly.’ This, too, was forbidden ground. Joy would not talk of it further.

  Her reticence broke the fragile confidence that had been building between them. Now Pamra could not feel comfortable. Each remark had to be weighed for acceptability. There were too many areas of taboo. She began to take long walks, carrying the slow baby in her shawl, far down the shore toward the west, far into the forest toward the south, roaming the rolling island woods to pass the time and leave the old woman alone. Joy did not object. She seemed to have withdrawn from Pamra as though Pamra had been culpable of some social error that only time would dilute. Her feelings did not seem to convey disapproval so much as sorrow. It was easier for them both when they were apart.

  Once or twice she encountered Binna or Werf on her solitary walks. She transgressed politeness to ask them a few things about old times and the Servants of Abricor. They were not reluctant to talk, merely distressed by it, their pain so palpable that she gave it up. What she had learned from them was already a lumpish knot in her throat, confirming her knowledge that in the Tower she had been used and lied to.

  Pamra found a favorite place along the shore, high among a cluster of lichened stones. It was almost a little room, sheltered from the sky, with a tiny moss yard and minuscule pool of rain-water. Here Lila could lie for long hours on the moss, singing her drawn-out notes of gladness. Pamra merely sat, hypnotized by the sound and the River flow.

  It was there that Neff came.

  She arrived at her sitting place one afternoon to find a spray of flowers laid upon the moss, a delicate crimson bouquet tied with a knot of violet grass, the whole displayed as in a picture. Someone.

  From the top of the rock she searched the area. He was sitting on the Rivershore, face turned from her as though to make it easy for her not to see him. She did see him, and the frustration that had simmered in her for days brought a flush to her cheeks. She would not take part in this silly custom of silence when he had been so thoughtful. She waved, beckoned, called, ‘Come up!’

  He came leaping up the rocks in one flowing motion of power, posed upon the ridge in a posture so unconsciously graceful that she drew breath, belly clenching and loosing like a knot untied. ‘Artist’s blood,’ they might have called such a feeling on the Northshore. ‘Artist’s eyes,’ Thrasne would have said. She was not thinking of Thrasne; she was breathing deeply, almost unaware of her own body.

  She motioned to the rock across from her, a flat place with a convenient arm and back for leaning, her own favorite seat. He sat there, looking at her from enormous eyes. ‘You’re Neff,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you?’ He would not speak, she thought, unless she spoke to him first.

  ‘Yes,’ he said in his bell voice. ‘Neff!’

  ‘Your mother has been very kind to me. Won’t you tell me something about that dance you did the other day? It was very beautiful.’

  ‘Just the dance.’ He turned away in shyness, looking at her from one eye only. ‘The dance we do.’

  ‘I see.’ She was at a loss. ‘We have no dances like that on the Northshore. At least none I have seen.’

  ‘Tell me of the Northshore,’ he begged, the words tumbling over one another in their eagerness. ‘Tell me of the Northshore. There! Over there!’

  Poor thing, she thought with immediate sympathy. He’s an explorer at heart. She told him about the Northshore. Wary of those subjects that caused discomfort, she did not speak of the Awakeners or the Servants of Abricor, but of more usual things. Festivals. The Candy Tree. Planting pamet and gathering the ripe pods. Fruit harvest in the puncon groves. As she spoke, she realized how little she actually knew of the life of the people. All her memories were of childhood, before entering the Tower. She could not share with him any memories after that.

  ‘The one who brought you, will he come back for you?’

  ‘Yes. He’ll be back. When the boat is fixed.’

  ‘Would you – would he let me see the boat?’

  ‘Haven’t you seen boats before? Haven’t you seen them when they come to pick up the dye shells?’

  ‘I mean, would he let me go on it? See it? See the inside of it?’

  ‘I’m sure he would.’ If those biddies will let you, she thought. ‘Would that be all right with the … others?’

  He shook his head, the edges of his beak flushing as though rouged. ‘Mother wouldn’t let me.’

  ‘We’ll have to arrange it without her knowing, then.’ There it was, out in the open. Rebellion.

  He seemed frightened by this; frightened and stimulated at the same time. He stood, posing, stamped, extended his wings, looked at her flirtatiously out of one eye. Then she blushed, and he turned away, as suddenly shy. ‘That would be wonderful. Please. Do that.’ He jittered from foot to foot, finally murmuring, ‘I have to go now.’ He sped away down the rocks.

  ‘Neff,’ she called, una
ble to let him go. ‘Thank you for the flowers.’

  ‘We give them like that,’ he called. ‘We Treeci. To our sisters.’

  So then, she thought, half in amusement. I’m one of his family. So much for the old woman’s distinctions. If he thought of Pamra as a sister, then it would be all right to talk to him. They did talk to their sisters.

  That night she got out the puncon jam. Jam seemed to loosen Joy’s old tongue. Forbidden subject or not, Pamra wanted to learn about the Treeci.

  ‘The young ones,’ she said casually, ‘all appear to be about the same age. I didn’t see any babies.’

  ‘No, there won’t be any babies for almost a year. They only breed one year in ten. My brother used to say it had something to do with keeping the population in balance. They don’t have any more than the island can keep. Sensible of them, he used to say.’

  ‘I didn’t see any males among the children.’

  ‘You probably did. Far as the Treeci are concerned, children are just children. Can’t tell male from female till they get to be about fifteen.’

  ‘So the one that came here, with his mother, he was over fifteen?’

  ‘Nineteen,’ said Joy, burrowing into the jam pot. ‘Nineteen last Conjunction.’

  ‘You know that? So exactly?’

  ‘Well, of course. I know all Werf’s children, have for years. She used to bring Neff and his sisters here from the time they were just hatchlings. I used to feed them nut cookies and play hide and go find with them in the woods.’

  ‘But now you don’t talk to Neff? After being his friend when he was a child?’ She could not keep the outrage from her voice.

  The old woman pushed her chair back from the table, stood to confront her accusing look. ‘Girl, you’re my guest and I’ll give you guest rights, but don’t lay your voice on me for things you don’t understand. I never said I couldn’t talk to Neff, being almost his mother and him as dear to me as my own ever were, I said you couldn’t. I said to you before, they’re not people. Not human people. You’ve got to give them their own way!’

  There were tears in the old woman’s eyes, and it was that which softened Pamra. If she was already grieved over whatever it was, there was no point in adding to her grief. So Pamra bowed her head in submission, making her apologies, promising not to bring up the matter again. It did not change her mind. Cruelty was cruelty. If Neff got pleasure out of making her an honorary sister, why, then she would be his honorary sister.

  At the end of thirty days, she began to make regular trips at dusk each day, looking for Thrasne’s signal fires. More and more often during these excursions, Neff appeared, though he never did when one of the old people accompanied her. At other times during the day she would find flowers strewn in her path, a necklace of bright petals strung on grass, bouquets of herbs smelling of damp woods or sunny meadows. She began to look forward to the evening walks, began to slip away early without inviting Joy or Bethne or Stodder to come along.

  ‘Your man, he’ll be back for you,’ said Joy.

  ‘I know he will. He said it might take a long time.’

  ‘Thought you might be worried. You’re spending so much time alone.’ This with a sidelong, questioning look.

  For several nights thereafter she invited the oldsters to come with her, paying particular attention to being chatty with them. Thereafter she included one or more of them every few days, merely to allay their concern, she told herself. No point in distressing them.

  ‘Tell me about the baby,’ said Neff. He would hold Lila for hours, fascinated by her leisurely, graceful movements. Pamra saw him trying to mimic them in dance, long, stretched extensions of wing and leg as though he would reach himself through into Lila’s timeless world and make himself a place there. Often he danced for Pamra, without music, humming to himself in a strangely moving, unmelodic way.

  ‘What is that music?’ she asked at last.

  ‘Just … just music. The music,’ he said, flushing. He had done that more in recent days, the red moving in from the edges of his beak toward the center. The feathers on his chest were turning crimson as well, and the wide, plumy ones around his eyes. When he looked at her like that, she wanted to hold him, tell him everything was fine. It made her ache for him.

  ‘Tell me of this man who hunts you!’ he asked.

  ‘How did you know about that?’

  ‘I heard Mother talking. They think the Awakeners are very cruel to raise up the dead, who should lie asleep. Also our kin, the Servants. They think them stupid, vicious, and cruel, also.’

  Not more cruel than they, she thought, stroking the line of his jaw, the feathers of his chest. She could tell he liked having her do that, liked having her near him.

  ‘I suppose every group of people has its own cruelties,’ she said, wondering if he would say anything about his own treatment at the hands of his people. Remembering her own rebellion as a child, she could not accept his passivity. Perhaps it lay in the fact that all males were treated much alike; perhaps that made it seem less cruel. ‘Don’t your friends miss you when you’re off here with me?’

  ‘They are mostly alone. Besides’ – he flushed – ‘I am a Talker. They aren’t Talkers. Males aren’t much. Only one in each thousand males is a Talker, they say.’

  ‘You mean other males don’t talk? Never did?’

  ‘They talk like everyone when they are children. When they grow up, though, talking goes. Except once in a while, one like me. It makes it harder.’

  She could not bear the thought. The safest one to ask seemed to be old Stodder.

  ‘Is it true the male Treeci can’t talk?’

  ‘Oh, they can talk. They just don’t much.’

  ‘What do you mean, they don’t much?’

  ‘They just lose interest, that’s all. I suppose they figure why talk if you don’t have to?’ This seemed to her to be Stodder’s own philosophy. She seldom heard him speak unless asked a direct question.

  Upon examination, his comment made some sense. During visits to the Treeci village, Pamra noticed how cosseted the males really were. Why would they talk when every need was met before they had a chance to utter it? Each one had a circle of children seeing to his grooming, his food, his drink. Every male had a mother, sisters.

  Though she went to the watching place each evening, there were still no signal fires. Stodder counted the days until Conjunction and remarked that the Gift of Potipur would likely not come until after the flood tides. ‘Thrasne’s a good boatman. He won’t risk the Gift.’

  ‘Do you really think he won’t come until after the flood tides, Stodder?’

  ‘Ah, girl, he could still get here. Don’t leave off looking for the fires. Just don’t be disappointed.’

  Was she disappointed? Did she care if Thrasne came soon or late? What were they to one another, after all? She frowned at this new consideration. It was an uncomfortable thought because she should have been able to answer it and could not. She didn’t know. ‘Does he love me?’ She whispered the question, looking for the answer in Lila’s eyes, which lightened almost imperceptibly into a smile. ‘Does Thrasne love me?’ Suddenly she thought of things he had done, gifts he had given. Was that why?

  What did the question mean? If he did or not, what difference did it make?

  She wrapped herself warmly in a heavy shawl and went to the rocks with Bethne, seeing nothing on the Northshore, hearing nothing but the usual shush of wind and River sounds. They turned to walk back along the ridge in the dusk, the light of Potipur casting a ruddy glow along the slopes, making black pits of shadow. In a clearing at the foot of the hill, there were two Treeci dancing, male and female. ‘Beautiful,’ whispered Pamra. ‘Look, Bethne. Look how beautiful.’

  The male Treeci called plaintively into the dusk; the female responded, the two voices like a duet, sweeter than one could bear.

  ‘What are they saying?’ Pamra stopped, straining to hear, until Bethne tugged her along.

  ‘Come along. It isn’t
polite to listen in. What he’s singing is ‘ ‘Tell me of my children …” It’s a song the young males sing. So she sings to him of his children, how strong and graceful they will be.’

  ‘Tell me of my children,’ Pamra mused. Sentimental, that. Unlike Neff. He was all ‘tell me,’ but about a hundred other things.

  ‘Tell me about the Southshore.’

  ‘Neff, no one knows anything about the Southshore. Maybe people went there once, but no one does now. Thrasne says the World River is twenty-four hundred miles wide, and no one goes farther out than Strinder’s Isle. All the measurements are in the old chart-of-towns. That amazes me, but it’s true.’

  ‘Are there Treeci there?’

  For all I know there could be.’

  ‘I could get there, in a boat. With a sail.’

  ‘Why would you want to do that?’

  ‘I just thought of it, that’s all.’ He rose, jittering, unable to keep still, pulled her up to dance with him. This was new, their dancing together. When they were exhausted by it, they lay curled in the moss bed side-by-side, she stroking his feathered chest, dreamy and quiet.

  ‘You are my sister,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you. It’s all right for me to be here. You really are my sister.’

  ‘Of course,’ she choked. ‘Of course I am.’

  The next evening Pamra and Joy found the approach to her lookout place ankle deep in water. ‘Conjunction,’ said Joy, measuring the water with her eyes. ‘Moons are pulling that water right up here, aren’t they. Well, if Thrasne doesn’t get back for you in the next few days, he won’t come until low-water-after-the-moons. There’s no place to tie up for long at the west end. He’ll have better sense than to try.’

  Pamra tried to feel disappointment. The feeling would not come. She was not concerned. Not upset. All it meant was she would have more time with Neff. More time to dance, to sing, to lie together in the dusk watching the moons move among the stars. He had become so beautiful in recent days. Because of their friendship, she told herself. Because he had someone to talk to.