Moon-Flash (4 page)

“What is it?” she whispered. “What did I do?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. There is a strangeness in you . . .”

Her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t want to be strange! Is it because I tell stories? Korre says that’s what’s wrong with me.”

“No, no . . .” He put his hand on her knee, his face easing again, smiling a little. “I like your stories. And Korre tells himself stories every night in his dreams.”

“He dreams about fishing. Will you dream for me?”

“No.”

“But why? You would for anyone else.”

He brushed her cheek again. “It’s a simple reason. I could dream for you, but I think I would not understand the dream.” She opened her mouth to argue, but he held up his hand. “No. You are a Healer’s daughter, and you will see into your own dreaming better than I could.”

“But—”

He laughed and poured her more tea.

She went back home to Turtle-Crossing the next
day. The children gathered around her; she picked up two of them in her strong arms and realized she enjoyed the feel of them. Korre was happy to see her.

“Did you dream?” he asked eagerly, for maybe now she would be content and not argue so much. Kyreol, looking at him, lied for the first time in her life.

“Yes,” she said gruffly.

“What was the dream?”

“I dreamed of the River-tree. I was homesick.” It was on the tip of her tongue to invent a more interesting dream, but Korre liked simple things, so she didn’t. He smiled, pleased, then lifted his face unexpectedly to kiss her cheek. Then he began to talk about his catch, not noticing how she had drawn back from him, startled, sensing dimly how many lies she might have to tell for the rest of her life to keep him happy.

A few days later, she saw Terje. He was poling their boat down the lazy, sandy section at Turtle-Crossing. She was on the bank a ways from the house, digging for turtle eggs. He had the prow of the boat resting on the sand before she noticed him.

She straightened. He seemed a piece of her past, too, like her father’s house, only half-familiar. He dug his pole into the sand and jumped out, narrowly missing her egg basket. He had to look up at her a little more than before. That made her want to laugh suddenly, and her smile made him real, not a memory. He didn’t smile; he was scowling, at her or the hot sun, she couldn’t tell. Then she remembered who he was betrothed to, and she stopped smiling. She bent down, dug in the sand, not looking at him.

“Kyreol.”

“What?”

He didn’t say what, just stood there. She glanced at him finally. The rich, tawny gold of his skin made her blink, and she thought,
We’re different colors, like the birds. I wonder
 . . . But she stifled the question, since there were no answers, and uncovered a nest in the sand. He squatted down, helped her put the eggs in the basket.

She said again, “What?”

He sighed. “Nothing.” Then he added, “I wish you could go fishing with me.”

“I don’t fish anymore,” she said with dignity. “I cook, I make clothes, I take care of the children—Why,” she asked irritably, meeting his eyes finally, “didn’t you tell me you were betrothed to Korre’s sister?”

He shrugged, surprised. “I forgot. She was never in my mind.”

“Well, she’s going to be at the next Moon-Flash. She became a woman last month.” He made a noncommital grunt; she added severely, “That seems like a long time to you. Forever until Moon-Flash. But it’s not, it’s—”

“I know. But why are you angry? That’s the way things are.”

She resisted an impulse to dump the turtle eggs on his head. She turned away instead, searched for another nest. He watched her silently awhile. Then he said softly, “Do you miss me?”

“No. I have Korre, I have a new family. That’s the way the world is.”

“Do you tell him stories?”

“No. The stories are for children.”

He was silent again, gazing down at the empty nest. He said finally, “You used to laugh more. If I were betrothed to you, I’d make you come fishing. I’d make you sit beside me in a tree and talk to me about the world, because no one else sees it the way you do. Sometimes—sometimes I think if you looked enough and talked enough, you’d turn the world into a different shape, a shape I’ve never seen before. But . . .” He scooped sand up in his hand, let it trickle out between his fingers. “There was not enough time. I think about you. Sometimes I dream about you, trying to tell me something.” He brushed his hand clean on his thigh and stood up. She stared at his back as he went to the boat, her hands frozen in the sand. His name filled her throat, like a story that ached to be told. The ghost of a younger Kyreol tugged at her, yearning to be free to follow him. But there was no place in the world for such freedom. She stayed still, her bones heavy, too heavy to move. He shoved the boat out, poled away without looking back. Her hands moved finally; she looked down dully and found more eggs.

At the sixth full moon from Moon-Flash time, there was another ritual. This was in honor of the River, which fed them, accepted their dead, wound through their lives and their dreams. Kyreol sat down with the youngest children under a tree and explained to them what would happen, for it was a solemn ritual, and very long.

“The Healer—my father—rows a boat out to the middle of the River—”

“At Turtle-Crossing?”

“Near River-Tree. Upriver, where it’s slow and broad. In the boat there are two big stones tied to
vines. He throws the stones into the water, and the boat is anchored there. My father is all dressed in the winter skins of animals. He holds fire in one hand and water in the other. A torch and a bowl. Now . . .” She hushed her voice, and the children, clinging to her knees, leaned closer to her. “The moon has set behind the Face, and the world is very dark. My father begins to chant. He says all the names of the living—your names, too. Then he says all the names of the dead that the River has carried away. Then—now, this is a hard part, so listen carefully—he draws all the River-signs on the water with his torch. He makes reflections with fire of the River-Tree, Turtle-Crossing, Little Spring, so that the River will recognize and remember all our signs. Then, when he finishes, he drinks the water in the bowl, and he throws the torch into the water. So then it is very dark.” She paused dramatically. A child whispered,

“Then what does he do?”

“He waits. We all wait.”

“In the dark?”

“Yes.”

“For what?”

“For the sun!” Her fingers swooped down, tickling, and the children bumped against her, giggling helplessly. “Then the happy part begins. Everyone throws gifts into the River—nuts, flowers, feathers—anything that will float. Then there are boat races, as people follow the gifts, to see which the River accepts first, which are snagged, which ones are rejected and washed ashore, which ones keep floating in the sunlight down to the end of the world. Then we all give presents to each other and eat until we can’t eat one
more bite, then we sail back to bed and dream good dreams.”

Kyreol showed the children how to make bracelets of grass and flowers for the River. She made amulets for her father and Korre, circles of leather with their signs painted on them. She made a seed bracelet for Korre’s mother and a feather armband for Korre’s father. She spent two days helping cook for the feast: nut bread, fish stew, shellfish seasoned with herbs, stuffed turtle eggs. On the afternoon before the ritual, she took a basket into the forest to gather musk-berries, which smelled like dead fish, but turned tart and sparkling when you bit into them.

She found them easily by their smell, which even the birds avoided. She was picking them happily, enjoying the warm ground under her bare feet, the lazy, quiet breezes, when suddenly, for no reason at all, her happiness turned upside-down inside her and dissolved into a rainstorm of misery. She dropped the basket, sat down in the crook of a tree, and cried like a baby, noisily and desperately, without even knowing why. And as she cried, all the questions she had ever asked came flooding back to her.

What shape is the world?

Where does the River go?

What lies before the Face, beyond Fourteen Falls?

Did my mother go into a dream? Or did she go beyond the Riverworld?

What are the sun and the stars and the world?

What is the Moon-Flash?

She stayed under the tree until the world was black. Once she heard voices calling her from a distance: Kyreol! Kyreol! But she didn’t move.
This is my time,
she thought.
My time for thinking.
As the thin moon edged upward, she felt an older and younger Kyreol, herself before she had put on the betrothal mask: lean and restive and curious, wondering about lights and shadows, full of tales. A wind whispered among the trees.
Is it the dead? Do they change shape, as Terje says, into water and wind? Do they speak, like fish, with voices we can’t hear?

She rose finally, feeling full of night and wind, and walked silently as an animal down to the River. Her father was there, a torchlight figure standing in the black ritual boat, gazing down at the water. The banks were crowded with people. She took her place among them unnoticed. The Healer was in the middle of the death chant, naming, sign by sign, family by family, those the River had carried away. When he came to the River-Tree sign, she listened carefully. Her mother’s name was not among them. The wind blew the torch-fire into a long blazing ribbon over the water. Finally, hours later it seemed, the torch flew like a star into the water, and the River accepted it.

They waited. The moon set; the world was very dark. The stars faded. Little by little, the winds blew the darkness away, blew in the delicate greys and misty purples of dawn. Kyreol stirred a little, blinking, wondering finally where her Turtle-Crossing family was. Not far from her, still as a tree shadow beneath a tree on the bank, stood the Hunter.

She moved when he moved, swiftly, soundlessly, without questioning herself.
He knows something,
she thought.
He knows.
He went straight into the forest, away from the people and the sunrise.
He doesn’t want to be seen, he doesn’t want the sun to see him. Why?
He drew her deeper into the trees, then made a wide circle back to the bank and headed upriver. She ducked from tree to tree along the bank, keeping him in sight; the water, quickened from its journey down the Face, hid the sound of her following. He rounded a fall of boulders beside the River and seemed to disappear. But she and Terje had explored every secret place on the River they could find. She slipped into a crevice between two great boulders and found him standing in an eerie light, speaking again to his stone.

They stared at one another, Kyreol and the Hunter. He was wearing skins now instead of feathers, and he had a bone knife in his thigh-band. But there was no River-sign on it.

She took a step toward him. The Falls boomed in the distance; the swift water churned past the boulders. The River-voice was strong, tangling in her thoughts. For a moment his face was expressionless, dark as the rock of the Face. Then he took a silent breath. The stone clicked in his hand, opened. He said one word to it.

“Interface.”

“WHO ARE YOU?” Kyreol whispered. He held up his palm, showing her the Hunter’s wavy River-sign on it. His eyes were flat, telling her nothing.

‘Why did you follow me?”

“I want to know about the world.”

He made an arc in the air with his hand. “The River is the world.”

She gazed at him. He looked like a hunter, lean and muscular, with his good-luck stone in his hand and a knife he hadn’t finished carving at his thigh. Hunters were often solitary people, ranging the forests at will, only seen when they brought in their skins and meat, or at rituals. She shifted a little, perplexed. Then the true inner feeling she had about him welled up in her again, and she took a step toward him.

“Then where did my mother go?”

“What?”

“My father said he dreamed my mother found a beautiful stone that opened and said her name, and then she went away. Is that the stone?”

The Hunter’s hand tightened on the stone. “He dreamed—”