Mindbond (12 page)

Perhaps Sakeema was with me after all. The devourers' errand was not with me, and, mindless things, they did not see me with their single eyes. They veered off and flew by me at some distance, bound landward, north toward Seal Hold.

All my anger had left me with a rush like that of retreating water. Sitting upright once again, shaking with a sense of danger, I began calling again, with my hoarse, choking voice and with my mind,
Kor!
Until nightfall I called. But there was no answer.

Somehow, soon after, the tide in me turned, and instead of yearning for Kor to come back to me, I began to long to go to him. Sometime during that same night, perhaps. I remember that I got up unsteadily and walked to the sea, wading into it until the water had me as far as my waist. Tide was rising, calm and chill. There I stood, aching and waiting, whispering to Sakeema, pleading for something, somehow, to happen so that I might enter the sea and search for my bond brother without drowning. Calling to Sakeema—for still, hidden in my secret thoughts, was the belief that Kor was he. But there was no change, no answer, nothing gained—and when the icy water had crept up to my chest and turned my legs and feet to dead wood, I gave it up with a curse and stumbled again onto the rock. There I lay on my clammy ledge, and there was no hope left in me. I deemed myself bereft, betrayed, defeated.

There is no telling how long I lay there. That time on the Greenstone is a blur of wretchedness to me. But when I sat up again it was no longer night.

Haze of vigil was on me, all those days, like the bright sea-haze that hid the sun yet let me see without shadow every leaf of the tangleweed, every small wriggling creature in the shallow pools the tide left on the rocks. So I remember the passing of time only as a haze and a flow, but some moments, dropping through time like a feather from the sky, I remember with a clearness that pierces me like an arrow. The fire dance in the night had been one such span.

The coming of the white seal was another.

It was twilight. The sea seemed very silent, the reaches of it purple and gray, the sky like the inside of a shell, like abalone, streaked the color of lavender. With scarcely a ripple she raised her head above the surface of the violet water and looked at me, and even at the distance I was caught by her glance. As I watched, she swam to the Greenstone stack where I sat, clambered onto it, crawling toward me. With no hurry, but no pause either, she dragged herself up to me over the wave-smoothed rock and did not stop until she had reached my side. There she stood on the heels of her hands, her flippers, with her face turned toward mine, and below her great, seeking eyes I saw the tracks of tears, dark in the white fur. And her eyes wrenched my heart, for they reminded me of Kor's. Like his they were a nameless dusky color made up of all the colors of the sea.

No sooner had she come to me than I reached out to touch her—she was alive, warm, she was there by me, and I had been so alone. I thought nothing more of it than that, but even had I thought to wonder why she had come to me, even had I known, I think still I would have done the same. It was not merely to pat her, as one would pat a dog, stroke her fur. I wanted comfort, and perhaps she did also. Trembling with the vigil weakness, I put my arms around her shoulders and laid my head against the round curve of her neck.

I felt rather than saw the change, for my eyes had closed.… A slight shifting. Bone under the skin. Wet fur, gone. I lifted my head and looked.

She still balanced on the heels of her hands, her feet stretched out behind her. Sea maiden, a face of eerie beauty, delicate as a thin seashell, unsmiling, intent. The salt water still on her—no, there truly were tears clinging below her eyes. A slender body, very pale in the twilight, as naked as mine except for her long, fair hair, which rippled down like water to partly cover her. She made a supple movement and came to her knees—her body was all a graceful flow, her breasts very small but very beautiful. She reached out toward me—if her hands were cold, like Sedna's, I did not feel it. All the love-longing that was in me turned like a spear point toward her. As I moved to meet her embrace I felt no longer weak and chilled, but strong, hot, full.

We lay—not furred like a deer maiden, she, for the fur lay beneath us, her white-furred seal pelt lay beneath us, somehow dry and warm. Her skin, soft, smooth, cool to my touch. Her arms took me in. We kissed. Teeth pointed and sharp beneath her lips, but I was not afraid, not even when she nibbled at the skin of my neck and shoulder, bit gently at my cheekbone.

“What is your name?” I asked her tenderly. “Can you speak to me?”

Her face, great-eyed and beautiful in the twilight, gave me no sign.

“Why do you weep?” I murmured.

She did not answer, but nipped me, as if to say, Do not dally. Her long hands urged my mouth toward her breasts. Then lower.… Ai, the hot tide goes through me to think of that lovemaking. She was as lithe as a seal in water, and hungry. I was all ardor. Once was not enough for either of us.… I hope I pleased her as greatly as she did me. I know that I remember her with longing and awe, for she left me slack and nearly weeping with pleasure, my eyes awash in mist. Or perhaps I was at last warm enough to weep for Kor.… I slept warm afterward, and soundly, with her nestled by my side, her arm over me and her breath stirring the hairs of my chest, nor did I mind the fishy reek of it, or the way she twitched while she slumbered.

When I awoke, she was still lying next to me, her flipper touching mine. I nuzzled her with my snout to rouse her, then rolled over, scrabbling my way with haste toward the sea. Fervidly I wanted to swim in the uplifting salt water, free of the heavy awkwardness my body suffered on land. Also, I had become aware that I was ravenous. I wanted fish.

Crawling, clambering down over the rock, thinking I would never reach the water, wondering why I had climbed so high on the Greenstone …

Home at last, I dove with force, leaving a splash and a swirl behind me, and at once I was in ecstasy.

Swimming. If ever there was another joy to compare with swimming, I could not recall it. Weightless, flying in water as a bird flies in air, streak of bubbles marking my passing, my body so strong, so supple, so graceful, sideward curving. I seemed to remember having been cold and stiff—how could that be? I was warm, my fur so thick that water never touched my skin, and my skin itself was dense against the ocean coldness. Only my flippers felt the chill, and they were leathery, they did not mind it. My ear slots and nostril slots closed of their own doing—seawater could not invade me, but I could make free of it as a deer makes free of meadows. Sinuous but arrow swift, I headed away from the Greenstones, toward the open sea.

Twice I surfaced for air. Below, I encountered currents, the many crossing ocean currents, and on one I tasted the smell of fish. I followed it. A school of herring, countless small, bright bodies swimming as one—I saw the flash of them from yet far away. In a green rush I caught the stragglers and gulped them one after another, swallowing them whole. Struggle and flutter though they might, they could not escape the trap my pointed teeth made for them. Ah, fish, belly-filling fish, food and drink in one! I followed the herring and gulped till I was gorged. Dimly I recalled, or seemed to recall, that I had once been a two-legged upright creature who sputtered in seawater and detested the taste of fish—had I dreamed that? It scarcely seemed possible that it could be true.

There were other seals feeding on the herring. I saw them as distant shadows, no more, for the school was vast, and seals are solitary animals except when they are on land to breed or bask or molt. So I was the more surprised, though well pleased, when the white seal came slipping up to me in a wash of yellow-green waterglow and bumped me with her whiskery nose. We fed side by side for a while, until she nipped me and I chased her. Then she led me shooting to the surface, where she leaped clear of the water. I found that I knew how to do the same. We circled down and leaped again and again, splashing mightily, making our own small fire dance.

My sense of time had left me, even more so than during the vigil. Time made small difference under the sea. I noticed only in passing that it seemed to be night again, that fishes were no longer greenish flashes, but black shadows surrounded by trailing moon-colored streaks. Some of the larger sorts were rising to the upper eddies to prey for their food. Lazing along on my back beneath them, looking up at the surface from underneath, at the wave patterns and the way the crescent moon so crazily spun and jumped, I felt the hunter's urge: how large a fish could I kill? I was no longer very hungry, but I chose one as swift and heavy as a slim fighting cock or a diving hawk, gathered myself, and struck with force. The thing shook itself like a thunderbolt in my mouth, sending up a blaze of waterflame, but it only hastened its own doom. I took it up to the surface, tossed it in the air, and ripped it to bits, gulping them, coughing up the large bones, swallowing the rest. A score of tiny fish gathered around me, feeding on the scraps. The white female rejoined me, stealing a chunk of my kill, speeding away playfully. Utterly delighted, I pursued her, trail of tiny bubbles in my face and the moon-white glow of her soft fur ahead of me—

Dan!

An odd urging, very far away yet warmly within my mind. Something that made my heart leap, though I could not remember why. Featly I bent myself at a slingshot angle and veered off toward it.

Dannoc, you blubberhead, where are you?

Here
, I mindcalled.

Now I remembered, my name was Dan, and it was Kor, Kor, my pod brother, my comrade since we had been pups on the Greenstones together. When our mothers had gone off fishing for days on end and left us, so it seemed, to starve, we had lain side by side on the smooth-worn rocks and sucked each other's flippers and soft weanling fur to comfort each other. Other young males had fought, but we had never fought—

There he was, up ahead, swimming toward me at his best speed from the sea stacks.
Pod brother!
I hailed him, and I met him in a swirl of water, bumping flippers, touching noses—his whiskers jutted sharply toward mine. Ai, the goodly smell of him, the goodly sight! He was of a rich brown color, with a curling mane and flippers so dark they were nearly black. His mind was yelping with joy and astonishment. The joy I shared, but why the surprise?

Dan, how
—
when
—
where have you been?

I was very hungry, and I caught many many fish.

With a flick of her wrists the white seal drifted to my side, hanging back somewhat, her sea-colored eyes very human in her round face.

A sea maiden.
He sounded less baffled now.
You lay with her? Dan, I should have known.

Having been a seal all my life, I did not yet understand.
Should have known what?

That if there was a creature of womanly form within a day's journey
— Something sharp in his tone of mind, even when he gave up the thought and started another.
So she has made a handsome, sun-colored seal of you. Could you not have waited for me? I called and called
—

I
also, called and called!
Memory rushed back into me. I had been myself as I had been born, Dannoc the man on a rock, naked, alone, angry, afraid. I felt it all again, remembering, and I knew Kor felt it as well.

I see.
All edge gone.
When the change came, I forgot at first, as you did. I, also, was very hungry and caught many many fish.
Rueful amusement in Kor's tone. If I had been able to, I would have liked to have laughed with him. But we could not laugh together anymore, not in that human way, and there was cause for fear in me.

Kor, the devourers! Eleven of them passed over, bound inland. Toward the Hold, I thought.

Mahela's minions!
It was a statement and a curse.

I hope their errand was not to Istas.

I hope their errand was not to Tassida.

A jolt of jealousy, as always when he spoke of her. No matter. He knew worse of me.

What can we do?

Can you turn to a man again?
Wryly. He knew as well as I did the answer.

Not likely.

Neither of us would soon walk in human form. I, perhaps never again. The thought scarcely troubled me. We would be fortunate merely to live.

There is nothing for us but to go onward, then.

Onward, to Mahela's realm. Wherever it might be. And whatever strange perils might meet us on the way.

There were no lengthy preparations to make, no provisioning such as was needed for human journeyings. We rose to breathe, cast a glance toward the land mass that glimmered in moonlight, toward dark fir forest sprinkled with the season's first snowfall. Beyond their forested flanks, just a whisper of my beloved snowpeaks. We looked, and then we sank and swam away westward, the shoreline to our tails, our faces turned toward the open sea.

The white female kept pace with us for a while. But when we had ventured beyond the shoals where the herring schooled, she began to circle in distress and make small noises in her throat.

What is it?
I asked her.
Can you mindspeak?
Though I did not expect it of her, and I was not surprised when only silence answered me.

I do not even know her name
, I said to Kor.

Likely she has none.

She has human form. She came to me, comforted me when I badly needed her. I am sorry to leave her.

I touched her nose with mine. She gave a watery chirrup and tried to lead us back the way we had come. When we refused to follow but went onward instead, she trailed after us for some time, calling, her reluctance holding her farther and farther behind, until at last we lost sight and sound of her.

Chapter Nine

But it is beautiful
, my mind murmured to Kor's in awe, and for his own part he was silent, a hush within him that I could feel. If the wonders that lay beneath the sea were all new to me, to him they must have been a longtime dream seen in waking. Everywhere, marvelous creatures, the many fishes with flanks brighter than our swords, and something that shot by like a blunt spear, trailing long legs, and animals like great floating bubbles of many colors. Odd things. Yellow worms. Gilled sea snails, their shells coiled like a wild ram's horn. Flowers that moved, sea daisies, sea asters, orange and blue and purple. And tiny bright things like snow motes drifting upward as if falling through a shimmering green—sky? It scarcely seemed to matter what was up or what was down. The undersea was vast, and as fluid as my new sense of time, and full of shifting shadowlight, and deep, and green. Wet, chill, and green, as if it were always springtime there, greener than any mountain springtime, any aspen grove, any grassland … We saw a swimming snake and caught its musky odor as it flickered past, gone in an eyeblink. We saw a shell lash out with a whip and stun a small fish. Shells shaped like swans' wings, open and probing with something that looked like a tongue. Something all in spines, like a hedgehog. We saw strange plants swaying like dancers in the currents. We saw the prickly orange moss on the rocks. We saw sea butterflies with pink wings flying through the water.