Moon-Flash (10 page)

“Green Pool . . .”

Terje half-turned. “What?”

“Your sign is Three Rocks. Why would I dream about Green Pool?”

Terje was silent for three dips of the oar. “It’s your mother’s family,” he said gruffly. “What did you dream?”

Kyreol sat up, rocking the boat. “It’s all right, then,” she said in relief.

“What is?”

“They all came together—the Hunter, my father, my sign, my mother’s sign—all in the same dream. The Hunter gave my father some kind of message. So he understands, a little.”

Terje grunted. His shoulders were a strong, pale line against the stars, moving steadily, effortlessly. “Go to sleep,” he said haltingly, in the new language they were learning. “Dream. Dream tomorrow.”

Kyreol closed her eyes.

SHE WOKE UP at dawn, when Terje stopped the boat. The river was flat grey, and so slow the boat barely drifted when he raised the oars. He held them suspended like wings while he stared at the banks. She lifted her head. The land was harsh, treeless; nothing moved around them but thin mists, uncoiling and wisping away from the great stone faces that were watching them.

Kyreol felt a finger of cold run up and down her spine. She moved forward, pushing herself against Terje’s back for comfort.

“What are they?” she whispered.

The faces were scattered all over the banks. They were black, elongated, with big, distant eyes under frowning brows, and full, straight mouths. They looked taller than houses. Stone giants, who had been buried to their necks in the earth, and then forgotten.

She felt Terje draw a soft breath. “They don’t want us here,” he said, trying to figure out what story they were telling. He was right, Kyreol felt; they made her want to leave quickly.

“But what are they guarding? There’s nothing here.” She was still whispering, as though the stone ears could hear. “Terje, they don’t look angry. Not like the mask-faces. They look . . .” What did they look? Cold, lonely, fierce, stuck in dead earth beside the still river . . . Sad?

“Ask the stone.”

But the stone didn’t answer; maybe it was still asleep. “Joran,” Kyreol said, correcting herself. “Joran is asleep.” Stones didn’t speak, not even this one. But stone faces seemed to speak, in a language far simpler than words. She wanted Terje to row again, quickly, but before she could say that, she heard her mouth say, “I want to go look at them.”

Terje turned around. His mouth was open; he closed it, a mute stubborness spreading over his face. “I don’t.”

“But, Terje—”

“Kyreol, you can hear what the faces are saying. There must be a reason why they’re telling us to stay away. I don’t want to find out what.” She drew breath; he gestured, almost losing the oars. “First we almost kill ourselves going down Fourteen Falls. Then we get captured by mask-people. Then we have to learn another language from someone who talks into a stone, when one language is enough for any world—Kyreol, what are you looking for? What is it you want to know? How much farther do you want to go?”

“I don’t know,” she said. She drew away from him. “I want to do what I want to do. You’re just afraid of missing your betrothal.”

“Kyreol, that doesn’t have anything to do with it!”

“They’re just old stones; they can’t hurt us.”

“They’re not just stones. They’re part of somebody’s ritual. Would you want strangers wandering around in the betrothal caves?”

She pointed, east and west. “Look. Do you see anyone?”

He angled the oars into the boat with a clatter. “But why?” he demanded, bewildered and angry. “Why?”

She was silent. Water lapped against the sides of the boat. Three black birds flew over the greyness. She realized then how far she was taking them both, not only from home, but from a way of looking at the world. To Terje, the world beyond Fourteen Falls was difficult and interesting, but he would shed the knowledge of it as a bird sheds water when he went back home. There was something in him that did not want to be changed.

She looked away from his eyes. She scratched her head uncertainly, groping for words. The faces watched, silent, disturbing. “When I see—when I see things like this—or the mask-faces, the cave paintings, it’s like seeing into people’s dreams. Dreams say things without words. They talk about the world. I just want to know why—what people saw to make them build faces like those.” She paused, felt him waiting. “Terje,” she said helplessly. “I didn’t know the world would be this big, beyond Fourteen Falls. I thought it would be simpler. I don’t know how much more of it there is. But it keeps going on, and I keep wanting to see where it goes.”

She raised her eyes finally to his face. He sat very quietly; she was aware, suddenly, of a quietness that always seemed to be with him, even when he was
shouting down the rapids toward the rainbows, or sitting in the dream-cave with a spear in front of him. He was like the Riverworld, peaceful and unafraid. Except when she disturbed him. He made her feel noisy, impulsive, always wanting things without reason, like a child.
Look at this, Terje
—
look at that, Terje.
And suddenly she was looking at Terje and seeing for the first time not the child he had been but what he had become.

She couldn’t speak any more. Somehow they had become two different people. She was sitting in a boat in the middle of a world with a stranger. She felt blood rise into her face and was glad he couldn’t see it. He needed to go home; he needed to become betrothed, take his place as a man in the Riverworld.

“All right,” she whispered. She would do that for him: take him home, because he wouldn’t leave her.

“All right, what?” His voice sounded strange. His eyes seemed as opaque as the water.

“Terje. Let me just look at the faces. And then we’ll go home.”

“All right.” But he couldn’t seem to move. She wondered if he even knew what she had said.

“Terje—”

“Kyreol—”

They both stopped. Then they were both smiling, and his face was familiar again. He lifted the oars as though he had forgotten what he had been arguing about and rowed toward the silent bank.

The faces loomed over them as they moored the boat. They seemed gigantic, eerie, full of secrets locked within the stone. They rose like trees in a treeless field, like questions out of the ground. She stood
in front of one, gazed up at it. It was too big for her to see its full expression. Its mouth turned downward; harsh furrows ran down its cheeks. It seemed to hold not anger, but a terrible silence inside itself. She circled it slowly.

The back of the head was flat and carved with signs. Kyreol traced them with her finger. “The story,” she whispered. “A man . . . three little men . . .”

“Children?”

“Children. Three children? Three animals . . . the children turned into animals?”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Terje, everything in the world doesn’t have to—Oh—” Her voice faltered. “Now the children are inside the animals. Terje, I think they got eaten. The man is crying. Look at the big tears falling down. Now he has a spear, and he’s following the animals . . . Now . . .” she touched a circle with a tiny lightning bolt entering it. “Now . . .” Her fingers traced the rim of the circle, then the bolt of fire. “Moon-Flash,” she said surprisedly, and the back of the face sprang open. A skeleton rattled slowly to its knees, then broke to pieces at their feet.

They were back in the boat so quickly that Kyreol couldn’t remember getting her feet wet. She sat gripping the sides of the boat, her eyes enormous, while Terje spun circles in the shallows. She closed her eyes tightly. They were trapped, they would never get out. The boat lurched forward, skimmed across the water.

“I told you,” she heard Terje say from a distance. “I told you.”

Her voice squeaked, “Just go.” After a while, she let go of the sides of the boat. She wanted to huddle
at the bottom of it, hide until the faces were far behind. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, both to Terje and the bones she had disturbed. “I’m sorry.” She opened her eyes finally and saw trees.

Terje’s rowing slowed. He upended the oars finally, sat panting. His face was a peculiar color, and she remembered he had rowed most of the night. He didn’t say anything. She wondered if he would ever forgive her.

“Terje,” she said tentatively. He looked at her, not seeing her.

“It’s not right,” he whispered. He looked drunk, his face patchy-white and wild-eyed with some idea. She reached for the oars, wondering uneasily if the bones had become a nightmare in his mind.

“I’ll row.”

“No.”

“Terje—I’m sorry—”

“It’s not right.” He grabbed the oars suddenly and steered toward the trees. “You stay. I’ll go.”

Her voice wavered. “Are you going home?”

“No,” he said impatiently. “I’m going to put the bones back.”

Her own bones felt heavy as stones. She wanted to melt like a puddle into the bottom of the boat. “Oh, please,” she breathed. “Oh, please don’t. Terje, please—”

“It’s not right to leave them there.”

“Oh, please.” The boat bumped against the bank.

“Wait here.”

“Terje.”

He glared at her suddenly, scared and furious.
“You don’t disturb things in other people’s places. Especially not the dead. How can we just leave him there?” He tossed her fur onto the bank. “He’ll get rained on—Kyreol, if you don’t get out of the boat, I’ll take you with me.”

She stumbled out, her feet sinking into muddy water. She stood watching as he rowed away, without a glance at her, until he disappeared around the trees. And then her legs shook so much, she had to sit.

It was an endless wait. The leaves sighed. Fish jumped in front of her. The sun came out, drawing the grey out of the water. But Terje didn’t come. He had been taken by ghosts, he had died of terror, something had eaten him . . . She sat still as a statue, scarcely daring to breathe. Her thoughts grew quieter, finally, as the sun warmed her. She thought of the man who had lost his children and then his life. Maybe the stone face protecting him was the most peaceful place he had ever known. Certainly the world itself wasn’t very peaceful. And then she thought of the Moon-Flash. And then of Terje.

He came back finally, his face still looking peculiar, but more peaceful. He smiled a little when he saw her, and she went to meet him. She wanted to put her arms around him; but he had been among the dead by choice, and she felt suddenly too shy to touch him. He sat down on the bank. She sat beside him, and he moved closer, put his arm around her, wanting something living to touch.

She shifted after a while, drawing breath. “Terje.”

“What?”

“The Moon-Flash. It means—it means something
else here.” She paused, remembering. “I touched it, and the stone opened and the bones came out. It means death.”

“Kyreol, it was hard getting the bones back in. They kept sliding out.” He looked at her, the color struggling back into his face. “That’s a sad way to die. No one dies like that in the Riverworld.”

She said reluctantly, “I promised to go back with you now.”

“You did? When?”

“When we were arguing. You—” Her eyes faltered away from his eyes. “Don’t you remember? You need to go home.”

He was silent, frowning puzzledly, not at her, but at something in himself. “I was never so scared in my life,” he confessed. “My hair should be white, like an old man’s. But I don’t think—I don’t want to go home now. Not yet.”

“But—”

“There’s nothing all that different from the Riverworld. People live and die and dream dreams. It’s still all one world.” He was silent again, then he looked straight at her, holding her eyes before she could turn away. “What will you do?” he asked calmly. “Go back to Turtle-Crossing and listen to Korre talk about fishing?”

Her shoulders wriggled under his hold. “Well,” she said irritably, “you won’t go home by yourself. And you have to go home.”

“Why? I think I like being scared.”

“Because—”

“Because why?”

“Because—”

“Why?”

“Because,” she said, exasperated, “I used to be taller than you. And now you’re taller than me. And I don’t know what you’re laughing about—if we were still children, it would be all right.”