The Awakeners: Northshore & Southshore

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Occasional outcroppings of the black stone broke the flatness of the land, peculiarly fluid-looking piles of it, as though it had been poured and then hardened. Medoor Babji found herself staring at it, trying to fathom what it made her think of, and realized it was like sugar candy poured out upon the slab, before it was worked and pulled. There were places on the steppes of the Noor, places near the Teeth of the North, where similar glossy stone was found. The wise men among her people said it came from the center of the earth, out of fiery vents, with great noise and plumes of ash. If so here, it had been long ago. Green lay over all, blanketing and softening.

  There were many tiny streams. Once or twice she stopped, thinking she had heard something moving off in the woods among the recurrent bird noise. Once she looked shoreward between two groves to see a winged figure standing upon a rocky point, ready to dive into the sea. She blinked, and it was gone. It had not looked real, even at first, she told herself. Sun dazzle and weariness and being alone caused people to see things. The Noor were well aware of that. ‘Steppe visions,’ they called them. Well, these would be ‘River visions.’ When the sun had fallen before her, she turned to put it at her back, moving closer to the shore for the return trip.

  Her mind was set on the outline of the boat, the stack of leafy branches she had placed over the fire. So it was she almost passed her campsite by, not recognizing it. The boat was shattered, great holes bashed through the planking as though by some heavy missile, a great spear, perhaps, thrust and withdrawn, thrust and withdrawn again. The fire was scattered into gray ash. The stilt-lizard meat was gone. All around the site and in the stream lay small blobs of guano, white and reeking.

  Their footprints crosshatched the shoreline, coming out of nothing. Fliers. They had ruined her boat. They had stolen her meat. They had fouled her campsite and the stream. Two of them, she thought, who had walked side by side to do their hateful damage.

  Worse, they had laid a trap for her. She put out her hand to coil some of the rope. She had almost touched it when a familiar glisten on the rough twist caught her eye. She put her hands behind her and bent forward, peering. A Tear of Viranel. Oh, hadn’t the Noor learned long and long ago to watch for that glisten as they walked the steppes? The Tears could not kill them, but they made nasty sores where they touched, sores that were painful for a long time and took weeks to heal. Tears would grow anywhere, sometimes here, sometimes there. The Noor spread wood ashes on any patches they found, but the danger was always there. Medoor cursed, briefly, suddenly aware of danger from an active intelligence, out there, somewhere. They hadn’t seen her except at a distance. They didn’t know she was a Noor.

  There were other Tears at the site. Not many she could find in the failing light. The destroyers had not bothered to rip the canvas cover away from the boat; the blankets were untouched. She took them. The light was too poor to do more than that. Tomorrow she would return to see what else could be salvaged. She stepped carefully away from the place, watching where she put her feet, scraping them again and again through the dry sand to remove any Tear that might have clung to her shoes.

  Then she was back among the trees, looking up through the boughs into an empty, amber sky. They had spied on her, without doubt, seeing her easily on that barren beach. Now perhaps she could return the favor. Medoor Babji’s lips parted in a snarl, an expression her mother would have recognized. When darkness came, she was well hidden in a copse of thick foliage, well wrapped against the night’s chill, reasonably well fed on the fruit she had gathered during the day, and perhaps unreasonably set upon vengeance.

  Inside her, shut away, someone grieved anew for Thrasne, for the near-kin, for all old, familiar, and much loved things. She had no way to repair the boat. Without it – without it her whole life might well be lived upon this shore. She shuddered with tears that she would not allow herself to shed, summoning anger instead.

  In the earliest light of morning she went to the beach and salvaged all the rope she could lay hands on as well as all the canvas. They had been fairly clever in placing the Tears where she might have been expected to put her hands. She dragged her salvage through the ashes of her fire again and again, meantime protecting her hands with canvas strips cut from the boat cover. She would not cut the sail. Not yet. Morning and calm showed only four planks of the boat actually splintered. Perhaps, somehow, she would think of a way to restore them.

  Heavily laden with her salvage, she went back into the woods and sought a cave, thrusting a long stick into every opening she found until she located a bottle-shaped hole in one of the black-rock outcroppings. The neck was almost too narrow for her to wriggle through, but inside it opened out into a comfortable shape, smooth-walled. Here she stored the blankets, the rope, the canvas, her snares. The opening was hidden behind freshly cut branches. She brought out the snares to set them among the rocks where a streamlet rattled out of the forest onto the beach, hiding them with branches cut from the nearest tree. It trembled oddly when she cut it, but Medoor Babji had no time to pay attention to that. She picked fruit once more, filling her sleeve pockets. Then she went back to the shore to keep watch.

  From a horizontal branch halfway up the largest tree in a small grove of frag trees, she could see the wrecked boat, the scattered ashes of her fire.

  It was after noon when they came, spiraling down to land at the edge of the sand, their feet just above the waterline, as though fearful of it. They stalked into the campsite, examining each step of the way with nodding heads, peering eyes. One was of an unfamiliar type, taller and more slender than the other, better-groomed, with a shine to his feathers. The other was fusty and scurfy, feathers awry, and yet of the two, this one appeared the stronger and more vital.

  ‘It came back,’ croaked the taller one in harsh but understandable human language.

  The other answered, making sounds Medoor Babji could not understand.

  ‘Speak in meat talk,’ the first croaked again. ‘I don’t understand your flier talk.’

  ‘Horgha sloos, something-something,’ the second said in a hideous, screeching tone. Then, in recognizable speech, ‘Meat-talk soils my mouth.’

  ‘Then let your mouth be filthy,’ commanded the first. Though the shorter being croaked its speech, as though words were seldom used, the taller creature’s words were clear and understandable. From her perch above them, Medoor Babji named it a Talker, unaware it was the name the whole class of creatures had chosen for themselves. It went on, ‘At least I can understand meat talk. You barbarians from the wild lands talk like savages.’

  The shorter flier deposited a blob of shit and held its wings at a threatening angle. ‘Fliers not savages. Fliers important. We keeping meat animals in our care. Your highmost Talker commanded. We do. You, Slooshasill, nothing but Talons servant, do nothing, blat, blat, blat. Share meat. Dirty yourself.’

  ‘Stop your words,’ screamed the Talker in a rage. ‘All that is unimportant. Do not speak of what is true on Northshore. We are not on Northshore. Thraish cannot fly over water, but storm can blow where Thraish cannot fly. Storm brought wind; wind brought us here. Now is only one importance. Food to keep us alive. Living or not living. Human meant much food, but human is gone.’

  ‘Maybe got Tears on it. Maybe wandered off.’ The flier opened its wings. For some reason, Medoor Babji thought it might be a female. Something in the way it moved, like a crouching barnyard fowl.

  ‘No. Rope is gone. Cloth is gone. Ashes are spread around. Human took those things. Human saw and avoided Tears.’

  The other cocked its head, took quick steps toward the waterside, then darted sideways with a hideous, serpentine stretch of the neck to snatch an unwary stilt-lizard that had poked its head from among the rocks. Medoor Babji watched in horrid fascination as the flier tossed the lizard up, caught it, tossed it again, each time cutting it as it struggled and shrieked, gulping it down at last while it still wriggled feebly, all its bones broken.

  ‘Not enough of those, Esspill,’
said the tall flier in a bleak tone. ‘Not enough to keep us alive long.’

  ‘Enough for me,’ replied the other one. ‘Enough for unimportant Esspill. Savage Esspill. Not enough for Slooshasill, important Slooshasill, Fourth Degree, that one can eat fish.’

  The Talker darted his beak at the shorter bird, bloodying its head just above the beak. Dust rose around them as they fought, screamed, beat at one another with their wings. Then was silence. The dust settled. Medoor Babji could see them crouched across from each other, panting. The taller one had had the worst of it. Hungry, her mind said to her in Aunty Borab’s voice. That one’s half-starved.

  ‘Only filth eat fish,’ the one called Slooshasill said at last. ‘Only ground crawlers eat them.’

  ‘Then catch lizards for yourself!’

  ‘I am Talker.’ In her hiding place, Medoor Babji’s mouth twisted in amusement. She had named the creature correctly.

  ‘You are flier. You are supposed to catch them. Fliers are supposed to bring food for Talkers. Females are to serve males!’

  ‘Males,’ the flier screamed in scorn. ‘At mating time, Esspill will serve males. Talkers not males. And Slooshasill not even Talker now. Slooshasill nothing.’

  They still crouched. ‘When we get back to Northshore, Slooshasill will again be Talker. You will be punished, then, Esspill.’

  ‘How get there? Cannot fly over water.’

  ‘Did,’ said the other in a hopeless tone. ‘Did fly.’

  ‘Didn’t. Wind carried. Couldn’t stop. Wind brought. Wind will have to take back again. Can’t fly over water.’

  A long silence. At last the Talker asked, in a tone that could only be the Thraish equivalent of a whine, ‘What we do now, Esspill?’

  ‘What you do, don’t know. What I do is get more Tears. Then find human. Put Tears on. Eat it. I be strong then. Fly back. Fear or not.’ It was an empty threat. Even to Medoor Babji, unused to the sound of flier talk, it came across as mere bluster. The wings came down in a hard buffet, throwing sand into a quickly falling cloud. Medoor dodged behind the trunk of the tree, afraid to be seen. When she came out again, both pairs of wings were above her, above the land, one in the lead, the other following. She watched them as they circled low above the forest, low above the beach, searching. Never, not even for a moment, did they fly out over the open water.

  It seemed unwise, she felt, to stay in the vicinity of the boat, though she did not want to risk losing it. She climbed higher in the tree and took a sighting. It was likely this small bay was unique. The bay lay midway on a line between two tallish hills, one crowned with a monstrous frag tree grove. There seemed to be no other hills within sight.

  She came down the tree in a chastened mood, her desire for vengeance disciplined by reality. Esspill, the flier, was as large as she. Lighter, perhaps, but with talons and a sharp, hooked beak. Likely those talons could hold Tears without danger to Esspill herself. Herself. Medoor Babji would have been sure of it even without the verification of their speech.

  But then what was the one called Slooshasill? A male? Not according to the other one. Not male or female. A kind of neuter thing. A Talker.

  Who would have thought the fliers could talk? Queen Fibji had never spoken of any such thing. Of course, there were few fliers seen upon the steppes, but still it was odd that none among the Noor had known. If, in fact, they had not known.

  And now? What?

  She could hide indefinitely. She was confident of that. She had fruit and would eat fish, which the flier creatures would not. Even if Esspill caught every stilt-lizard on the place, which wasn’t likely, Medoor Babji could be sure of food. But it would have to be a covert, sneaky kind of existence.

  Or, she could fight. Reason said that odds against her would be reduced if she waited a while. That tall Talker creature was half-starved. The flier wouldn’t feed it, and it didn’t seem able to catch food for itself. Given only a little time, it would be dead or too weak to threaten her. So, patience was called for.

  Still, it would be a difficult, nervous business, surviving with an eye in the sky looking for her. She went back to her cave, stopping at the snares on the way. Two stilt-lizards, not bad. She would smoke them …

  She wouldn’t smoke them. Medoor Babji cursed. Smoke would bring the damn feather mops on her in a moment. Smoke could be seen at great distances on any clear day or moonlit night. She would have to salt and sun-dry the meat. She could eat raw fish with resignation, perhaps even with a modicum of pleasure, but she could not face the idea of raw stilt-lizard. Hot bile stirred at the back of her throat. She needed a smoke oven. Perhaps one of the caves …

  Smoke. She thought about that. It might be worth the effort, just to get the creatures away from here. Otherwise they would be haunting her. She thought about it for an hour and then decided upon it. She would begin today. There was no reason to wait.

  One blanket and some food made a small pack. She headed east through the forest, moving as rapidly as possible while still keeping a fairly good watch on the land around her. When darkness came, she stopped on the beach to stack a large pile of wood with a smaller one next to it and then returned to the forest to build a small, smokeless fire of driftwood under cover of a stone outcropping. She cooked a lizard over it, putting the fire out at once when she had eaten.

  At early light, she lit the smaller pile of wood, connecting it to the larger one with a line of thin, dried sticks and shavings. Over the larger woodstack she laid leaves and grasses. By the time it caught and smoked, she should be some miles away to the east.

  An hour later she climbed a tree and peered back the way she had come. A pillar of smoke rose straight into the windless sky, where two black dots swung and circled toward it. She allowed herself a brief moment of self-congratulation, then climbed down to walk east once more.

  After the third smoke on the third morning, she went deeper into the woods and turned back the way she had come. If the fliers were not cleverer than she thought they were, they would go on east, looking for her there. The line of smokes had led them in that direction. There would be no smoke on the following morning, but they might think she had seen them and was hiding from them. If they kept on moving in that direction, she might be free of them for a very long time.

  She slept in the woods for the two nights it took her to return, each time awakened by stirrings and rustlings as though something or someone wandered in the leafy spaces. She was not foolish enough to call out. Her campsites were well hidden. She saw no evidence that anyone had wandered nearby when she woke. Still, it made a small itch of apprehension at the back of her mind.

  When she returned to the boat, she unstepped the mast, laying it among fallen logs in the forest, half covering it with branches. The hull she drew deep into woods, tugging and hauling with much smothered cursing in between. It left a clear and unmistakable trail, one she took a great pains to eradicate. She raked away all the ashes of her earlier fire, gathered up the bits of charcoal, and built another fire half a mile down the beach, scattering it when it had burned out. If the fliers had not paid particular attention to the landmarks, they might assume that was the place the boat had been. She scattered some broken wood in that place and drew a heavy timber down the beach into the River. Now it looked as though she or someone had returned, had made some hasty repairs, perhaps, and then pulled the boat out into the water.

  ‘Where it promptly sank, drowning me,’ she said with a hopeless look at the carcass of the Cheevle. Two of the holes were small. They could be patched with wood whittled to size and pounded in, caulked with – well, caulked with something or other. Frag pitch. She knew where there were frag trees, and gathering the pitch was merely a matter of cutting the bark and collecting the hardening sap when it gathered in the scar, then melting it in – in something.

  The remaining two holes, however, were sizable.

  ‘When faced with a number of tasks,’ Queen Fibji had said, ‘so many that the mind balks at getting them done, pick one
or two small ones and begin. When those are done, move on. Never consider all that must be done, for to do so is quite immobilizing …’

  She began. Repairing the two small holes took five days, from dawn to dusk. She had caulked the wood with fresh frag sap, learning that it did quite well if applied in many thin coats and allowed to dry between. Using melted resin would have been quicker. It would also have been impossible. She had nothing she could use for a vessel and could find nothing that would serve. There were no gourds or hard-shelled nuts. Clay could be made into pots, of course, but that would have taken still longer.

  While working, however, she had decided how to mend the larger holes. She would cut flat pieces of wood, glue them to the outside of the boat with frag sap, then cover the entire outside of the boat with the canvas boat cover.

  It took five days more to complete the repairs. She dragged the hull back to the beach and into the water, where she managed to get the canvas under and around it, lacing the rope across the boat to catch the hooks on the opposite side. The mast was up, raised the same way she had raised it when on the River, with panting and grunts and a good deal of helpless cursing. She looked at the thing where it floated, shaking her head. It had a deck of rope, almost a net, where the lines laced across to hold the canvas. She would have to worm her legs between the ropes to sit at the rudder. She would have to wriggle herself beneath them to lie down at night. If there were another storm, she would probably sink.