Khe (9 page)

I laughed. It was so obvious. I should make a sled to carry my pack, any food that I found, and firewood. A compact sled, maybe the length from my fingertips to my shoulder, large enough to carry my things, but small enough to easily pull and maneuver.

Among the things I’d stolen from Lunge were two strong, sharp knives. I was lucky that this hillside was rich with rhantan trees, “runt” trees we called them because of their stunted height and slim trunks. I chose one and began sawing through the trunk. Back and forth, back and forth, leaning into the blade, rasp, rasp, rasp.

Most of the morning had gone by the time I’d carved three-quarters of the way through the rhantan. I put my foot against the trunk and gave it a shove. The trunk cracked, splintered, and fell over. I clapped my hands against my thighs in glee.

“Good work, Khe,” I said, needing to hear the praise out loud.

A double reward came from my efforts. The rhantan was infested with blitters. I used the cap from my canteen to scoop out the tiny insects. I’d always hated the sour flavor and slimy texture of blitters, but these tasted wonderful. When I’d eaten them all, I still felt hungry, but not as ravenous as I’d been.

I attacked a second tree. My arms and hands ached. The knife’s blade had gone dull and the work went slowly. I was as stupid as a babbler. I’d taken knives, but no whetstone. Rasp. Rasp. Rasp. Were simple mistakes like forgetting a whetstone going to be my undoing?

The sun had dipped behind the hill and long shadows crept across the land by the time I’d shoved over the second trunk with my shoulder. The second rhantan held no blitters. I needed food.

I hauled myself back up to the hilltop and peered over. No one tended the fields, which seemed odd. They were working so hard yesterday, into the night.

Then I saw why—a corenta was perched on the open land behind me, to the north. The walls and buildings of the trading community hadn’t been there yesterday. It must have arrived in the night. Simanca always said that the corentas were dangerous, the buildings, beasts and doumanas in them without faith, and evil. That was why only she and Tav went to them. I gazed at the corenta, wishing I could see more than just rooftops beyond the high mud walls. The forbidden was always tantalizing.

“Another time,” I told myself, and even as I said it, knew I would never see inside one.

***

The runners for the sled lay next to where I sat cross-legged, peeling gooey, resinous fibers from the back of bark carefully stripped from the rhantan, and braiding them into rope to tie the runners to the sled. I never would have thought of this on my own. I’d seen it on a presentation on the vision stage about life in the old days. It’d looked easy in the presentation. My fingers fumbled at teasing the fibers from the bark. Most broke, but some came away long.

Sweat prickled my scalp. My fingers, covered in rhantan sap, stuck to the fibers. The canteen sat next to me, empty. I put aside the work and hiked to a small spring I’d found some distance from my hillside camp.

Next to the spring, a stand of purple-leafed bushes with small, brown-husked fruit grew. I’d seen birds peck away the fruit’s outer covering and eat the flesh and seeds inside, but was afraid to try them myself. Just because one species can eat something doesn’t mean it won’t hurt another. But I’d found nothing since the small, slimy blitters I’d eaten yesterday. My stomach rumbled. I had to give the fruit a try.

I picked several and sliced through the outer shell with a dulled knife. The fruit came apart in two neat halves. Inside, the flesh was bluish-pink and creamy. Five small white seeds lay in a dead-center star pattern. I cut a chunk with the knife, lifted it to my mouth and chewed. It tasted sweet.

I swallowed the bite, then slipped into the cool, running waters of the stream for a bath while I waited to see how my body took the food. After what seemed a reasonable time had passed and I didn’t get sick, I took another bite. I waited again. Nothing happened. I chuckled under my breath and cut a larger hunk, popped it into my mouth, chewed and swallowed. I felt a tingle in my ear holes and heard a ringing that grew louder and louder.

A sharp pain stabbed through my belly. My stomach heaved. I retched and retched but nothing came out. Sweat covered the parts of my body not under water. My temperature soared, then plunged. I crawled out of the stream and lay on the dirt, shivering head to foot.

My stomach heaved, but again nothing came up. The ringing inside my ear holes vibrated through my whole body. The air shimmered. A small, green-furred beastlet crawled onto my bare foot and stared at me with huge yellow eyes. I tried to shake it off—but there was no beastlet. My stomach heaved again.

I began singing
The Expectation of Returning
, the song for the dying. The words stuck in my throat, but I made myself go on.

“
Sweet and merciful creator, too long have I been gone from you.

My heart cries out in longing to join again with the soul.”

The words floated from my mouth, hanging in the air like text on the vision stage. My words came out in colors—blues, greens, yellows, and oranges. The wind picked them up like dry leaves, spun them around and carried them away.

“
Sweet and merciful creator
…”

The sounds from my mouth were not my words, but the sizzle of lightning, the crackling of fire, the wail of a hurt hatchling. My heart beat against my ribs.

This is death, I thought.

And I did not want it. Not here. Not like this. I’d given up so much to live my last year under my own command—I’d not let life slip so easily from me now.

Long blue ribbons of scream streamed from my mouth, the ribbons stretching on and on, floating upwards and reaching for the sky.

If I run fast, I thought, death can’t catch me.

The ground felt mushy under my feet, like wet wood pulp, though I knew the soil was dry and hard. Trees rose up on either side of the path, chanting
The Expectation
, mocking me.

I covered my ear holes and ran until I reached my camp. The sled was there, chuckling low.

“Just a little more,” the sled said.

I stopped and stared.

“A little more of what?” I asked.

“Sweat and blood. Hope and dreams.”

I knelt by it and stroked its rough sides. “I know you now. I see how you want to be built.

“Build me strong,” the sled said. “We have a long ways to go.”

Even as I saw myself working, twining the ropes, lashing the runners, I knew I wasn’t there, but back beside the poisonous bushes. My fingers bled. I mixed my blood with the rhantan sap that bound the sled together.

On and on I worked, the sled encouraging me, saying, “Yes. This is good.”

At last, exhausted, I sat back. “Done.”

“I am finished,” the sled agreed.

I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, I lay face down in the dirt by the stream and bushes. A hand’s span away, a pool of vomit darkened the ground.

Chapter Ten

Sometimes the river must twist to run true
.

--Praise Song

I must have slept. Night had fallen. In an oily sky, the moon and stars gleamed too brightly. I could hardly bear to look at them. I closed my eyes and lay still—one arm flung over my face. My skin felt clammy and ill fitting over my bones. A chill wind blew.

After a while, I opened my eyes, slowly wriggled my toes, moved my legs, and stretched my arms. My shoulders and arms ached. My hands were smeared with dark blood where I’d somehow cut them, but everything seemed to work. I pushed myself up to a sit. The canteen lay a short distance away. Its silvery side glittered in the star-cast light. I reached over, grabbed it without getting up, and drained the last few drops of water into my dry throat.

It was slow going back to camp on legs that weren’t quite stable. The wind grew mean and icy, whipping the leaves and bending the branches of trees and bushes. The ground was cold under my bare feet. I hugged my arms over my chest and walked bent forward, shrunk into myself for warmth.

The trees that in my delirium seemed to be chanting mockers were simply trees now. I wanted to touch one, to feel the familiar roughness of bark against my hands, but was afraid that if I stopped, I wouldn’t be able to start moving again.

At the hedge of thick bushes that protected the clearing of my camp, I did stop. My neck tingled. The sled was completed.

I stood still—afraid to move toward the sled, afraid it would speak to me again. I stood a long time, taking in shallow gulps of air, trying to work up my courage.

“Go around the sled. It can’t hurt you,” I murmured, not really believing my own words.

I walked toward my kit, keeping my eyes on the sled as I bent down to gather my cloak and put it on. I felt safer behind the fabric barrier, and foolish. There had to be an ordinary explanation for the sled’s completion.

“Think, Khe,” I said, and made myself remember everything that seemed to have happened after the fruit made me sick. Most of it must have been hallucination, the chanting trees and the talking sled, but some of it must have been real.

Maybe something in the fruit gave me extra endurance. There were plenty of substances that did that. We used some of them at Lunge during planting and harvest. I must have returned to camp and finished the sled while I was delirious, and then made my way back to the spring.

There must be something be in the fruit that tricked my mind and made me think I’d heard the sled speaking. We’d learned about plants like that from the vision stage—madness-causing villisity, and sticker brump that could work its way through the soles of your foot to set in its dreamer’s poison.

I felt better having figured a logical explanation. I wrapped up in my cloak and blanket, hoping I wouldn’t dream of chanting trees or talking sleds.

***

In the morning, I piled my few goods onto the sled and hiked down the hill. The valley floor was hard-packed red dirt, with red stones scattered around, as though the tall, twisted, scarlet rocks had leaked all over. A light snow started to fall, dusting the red stones with white. Tufts of tan, weedy grass grew around the feet of the knobby rocks. Here and there something that looked like denish, a bulb crop we’d grown at Lunge, thrust brown stems out of the ground. I pulled the knife out of my pack and made for the denish-looking plants.

The dulled blade wasn’t much help in digging through the compacted soil, but I worked my way down and found the bulb. Like the denish we’d cultivated, the bulb was white with thin orange bands running top to bottom, oblong, but pinched in the middle—a wild cousin of the denish I knew, but smaller, about the size of my fist. I held it in my hand a long moment. What if it was poisonous too?

A long, low growl cut through the air. I jerked my head up and tried to work out where the sound came from. It seemed to come from everywhere, bouncing off the tall stones. My heart beat against my ribs.

A good meal for some beast
—that’s what the doumana at the last commune had said. I squeezed the bulb in my hand. My neck burned muddy-gray. I had nothing to defend myself with but my two short, dull knives. I grabbed the sled’s towrope and leapt to my feet.

What good would running do? If I looked like food sitting there, I’d look and smell the same moving, maybe more so.

I needed food. I couldn’t fight or flee as hungry as I was. I bit into the bulb. It had the same sweet-tart flavor, the same juiciness as denish, but with a slightly bitter edge. I swallowed the first bite and took another, then another, all the time scanning for sight of the beast and listening for its sounds.

The beast called again—not a growl, but a series of sharp whistles. Another answered. Two beasts at least. I needed a weapon. The defenders at Lunge used stun-guns against predators, but I’d never held much less fired a stunner. It’d never crossed my mind to steal one. Stupid. Stupid.

Sharp rocks lay all around. If I could fasten one to a handle, I’d have a spear. I dug through the brush I’d brought from the hill and found a straight piece that would do for a shaft. I needed a long, thin stone. I found two that seemed promising, picking them up with the hem of my cloak, to protect my fingers. A beast called again, closer now.

My neck was on fire, my heart hammering. I made myself sit and carve a notch in the branch to fit the stone. At least three beasts were out there. I heard them, coming closer. I ripped a thin strip off my hip wrap and used it to bind the stone to the shaft. I stood and looked, but couldn’t see anything moving. Which was better—going deeper into the valley or holding still? Staying put, I decided. Better to save my energy.

A beast whistled, but its voice sounded fainter now, moving away from me. Another answered. I cocked my head and listened. The sounds were definitely fainter.

Teeth came at me, as long as my hand, thick as a finger, barbed on the end for holding prey. Teeth, and foul breath, and a huge beaked head covered in shaggy red and white feathers. I jumped back, held my spear with both hands and thrust it towards the beast’s large, round black eyes. The beast lunged sideways, lithe and quick. Towering over me, it stood on two powerful legs. The feathered body was barrel shaped and almost neckless. Its long arms had thick pincher claws where hands might have been.

I jabbed the spear again. Again the beast lunged away, then rushed toward me, swiping at me with its heavy pinchers. I ducked into a crouch and shoved the spear as hard as I could toward the beast’s chest. And missed.

A series of whistles sounded behind me. I whirled and saw two more beasts running toward me. The one before me whistled and clicked to its companions. My neck burned like fire. I turned back, wielding the spear like a club. The razor-edged stone raked across the beast’s arm. Blood spurted from under the feathers.

The wounded beast wailed in pain. Its companions were almost on me. I heard their claws clattering on the loose stones. Snow was falling harder.

The first line of the
Expectation of Returning
rumbled unbidden in my mind.

My furious scream joined the wailing of the wounded beast as I turned and ran.