Moon-Flash (11 page)

He stopped laughing. With the sun in his eyes, it was hard for her to tell what he was thinking. He stood up suddenly, pushed the boat back into the water and got in.

“Where are you going?” she called.

“Fishing.” He read her thoughts, then, and tossed her the crystal before she asked for it.

“Terje—”

“Nothing has changed,” he said calmly. “You just think it has.”

She sat back down on the bank, bewildered. I’ve changed, she thought, and tried to hear the new blood flowing through her heart. But all she could hear were singing birds.

She opened the stone finally. “Joran,” she said, and he answered. She made a weave of the two languages, too impatient to wait for him to translate. “This morning, we saw the faces beside the river.”

“The faces?”

“The black stone faces with the dead inside them—”

“Kyreol,” he shouted, and she drew back, wondering how such a delicate thing could hold so huge a shout. “How do you know about the dead?”

“It was an accident,” she said in a small voice. “I touched a Moon-Flash, and the bones fell out. Terje put them back. What did you say?”

“Never mind. Go on.”

“That’s what I wanted to ask about. The Moon-Flash.
In the Riverworld, it is a sign for the living. Here, it is a sign for the dead. Which is it, really? The Moon-Flash?”

She heard the stone sigh. “If you go far enough,” Joran said, “you’ll find out. I can’t tell you.”

“But you know.”

“I can’t tell you, Kyreol. Child, how have you gotten so far down the river and survived? Do you have any idea who those graves belong to?”

“No.”

“One of the fiercest river-tribes in the world. If they had caught you on their sacred ground, they would have killed you.”

“Oh,” she said without sound.

“Where are you now?”

“There was no one there. Among the dead.”

“You were very lucky. Where are you?”

“Downriver, beside some trees. Terje is catching breakfast.”

“Well, breakfast can wait. You get back in the boat and get out of there. You’re probably out of danger now, but go anyway.” She sighed. “And where is that blasted Orcrow? He’ll be lucky if he finds a job recycling garbage after this.”

“Stone,” she interrupted. “Where in this world is there a safe place?”

“Home. Where you came from.”

“Please—”

“Outside of stray animals, storms and the river itself, you’ll be safe. For a while. Shall I send someone?”

“Soon, I think,” she whispered. “But not yet.”

She called Terje. He had caught a fish, but they didn’t stop to cook it. Since he had been up most of
the night, she rowed, and he slept until midday, when they found a secluded clearing where they could build a fire. Then he rowed, while she cast out the lines, caught more fish for their supper. The river grew deep and swift, carrying them farther and farther from the place of the dead, until, by evening, it seemed to have swept them into yet another world of bare, rolling hills, small groves of twisted trees and birds that flamed like scraps of the sunset among the branches.

They stopped finally in the shadow of a hill. The river’s voice, rattling through rock shallows, was a soothing sound. The world seemed peaceful again, uninhabited by dreams. They lay close to the fire after they had eaten, watching the little boat-moon sail among the star-fish.

“I’m getting tired of eating fish,” Terje murmured, just before he drifted to sleep. Kyreol, closing her eyes, saw the dark, grieving faces rise once again out of a dank mist and shivered. She reached out, stirred the fire. Light touched her face like a hand, and she floated again downriver for a while, laughing, fishing, eating fruit yellow as sunlight. Then the faces again . . . the Moon-Flash . . .

She opened her eyes. Terje lay with his face toward the stars, one arm crooked around his head. The fire sparked, warming her again. She lifted her dark fingers, caught fire in them, then let them fall again, close to Terje’s hand. Such a small distance between them . . . between touching and not touching, waking and sleeping. She raised her head a little, watched the light flow across his face, and something filled her like another set of bones within her bones, covered her like
a second skin, made her unfamiliar to herself, until she felt that she breathed the dark, smoky air into a different body.

“Terje,” she whispered, wondering what was happening to her. His head turned slightly; he opened his eyes. Or else she fell asleep, then, and dreamed that he watched her, as quietly and intently, until she fell asleep.

THE NEXT MORNING, before she even opened her eyes, Kyreol tried to count the days until Moon-Flash. But she had lost track of the patterns of the moon, and the days on the river had flowed together like water. Even her body, startled by the long journey, had forgotten to respond to the moon-changes. She opened her eyes. A red sun rose slowly; birds began calling to it. The wind came out of the nameless desert, touched her face lightly.
Where are we?
she wondered.
We’re in the middle of nowhere. No one came to name this place.
Terje stirred as the light touched his eyes. She watched him blink, coming back from the journey of his dreams. He turned his head after a moment, saw her awake and smiled.

His hand came out of the fur, closed over her fingers. She lay looking at him, dark and silent, until his hand rose, ran over her face softly, like the wind. She bent her head very slowly, a new movement, something her body had decided to do. Their lips touched lightly, like leaves.

She sat up again, feeling the blood rush into her face.

“Terje.” Her voice sounded husky.

“What?”

“When is the Moon-Flash?”

He drew breath silently, loosed it just as silently. Then, abruptly, he rose. “I don’t know. Ask the stone.” He took two steps away from her, then knelt down beside her, held her arms. “Kyreol,” he said softly, “I don’t know what to do.”

“Well,” she said bleakly, her hands rising to his shoulders. His skin was warm, damp from sleep, his muscles hard from rowing. She swallowed. “I don’t either,” she whispered. “Maybe, if we are patient, the river will tell us.”

He said nothing more. He waded into the water until it covered all of him like a skin, then he dove deep, surfaced farther away, dove deep again. Kyreol gathered wood, puzzling over the problem. She wanted Terje, wanted him with her always. She wanted to breathe the air that he breathed, dream the same dreams, grow so close to him that she wouldn’t be able to remember whose face was whose. But there was Korre. And there was Jage. And if they did grow so close, she and Terje, there would be no place for them within the familiar life and rituals of the Riverworld.

Terje came back finally and took the boat out to fish. He was gone a long time. She searched the trees and bushes and found birds pecking at small red fruit on a tree. She picked one and tasted it. It was sweet, juicy, with a single pit inside. She climbed the tree and tossed handfuls down to the ground.

By the time she jumped down from the tree, she
felt better.
We can ask my father,
she thought.
He’ll know what we should do.
She gathered the fruit. Terje had returned; he was whittling twigs to spit the fish on. His face looked calmer. She felt shy of him suddenly, unable to meet his eyes. But he sensed that. He laid aside his knife and stood up to kiss her cheek. When she looked at him finally, he was smiling, and they could talk again.

The world loomed in front of them, vast, dangerous, and even more mysterious than before. They went on because it didn’t seem time, yet, to go back. There were too many questions unanswered; they hadn’t come to the Hunter’s world, yet. The moon’s eye closed and opened, alternately watching and dreaming. By day, the sky blazed above them, so taut and blue-white it might have been made of crystal. Once, twice, during the long journey, things disturbed it. Tiny things no bigger than insects, silver, red. Kyreol, lounging in the boat while Terje rowed, a big leaf over her head to shield her eyes from the sun, followed the flight of one of the glittering things. It left a gossamer scar across the sky like a spider’s casting.

“Terje,” she said, waving her leaf at it. “Is that thing very tiny or very big?”

Terje gazed upward. The oars stilled in his hands; the boat drifted. His mouth opened a little. “I don’t know. Sometimes stars do that . . . but not so slowly.”

“Well, are stars tiny or big?”

His mouth closed, curled upward. “How would I know? I don’t know more than you do.”

“Yes, you do.”

“How could I?”

She nibbled on the leaf-edge, searching for words.
“For you, the world is one big piece, and all the little pieces you see already fit somewhere into your big piece. I just see the little pieces, all jumbled up, all different, with nothing making much sense.”

“You’re not making much sense.”

“Now you sound like Korre.” As soon as she said the name, she was sorry. Their eyes met; little questions passed between them. Will you go back to Korre? What will you do if I do? What will you do if I don’t?

The river seemed to flow forever through a flat, gold land with no people and few animals. All days became the same day, peaceful, uneventful, until it seemed they had entered a timeless country; they were trapped in the endless boundary of the world. Only the growing collection of new words the stone taught them made one afternoon different from another. Then one day the river curled unexpectedly back into time, making them realize how far they had come from the Face.

Kyreol was rowing, looking ahead for the Hunter’s world while Terje fished for dinner, his face toward the past. Kyreol, trying to stay awake under the glittering sun, watched the oar bend into a crooked line beneath the water and wondered why it did that. She watched their shadows lengthen slowly and wondered why people stayed at one height during the day, but their shadows grew constantly big and small. She watched a bird dive for a fish and wondered why the First Bird, who dwelt in the air, had decided to eat its First Fish, who lived in water. She made up a story about an argument between them that grew so heated the bird ate the fish to make it stop talking. It made Terje laugh. Then something she had been
watching without thinking about for a long time began to grow bigger and become strange.

Ahead, the bare land wrinkled into small hills. There seemed to be a dust storm around them, but there was, she realized, no wind. Yet dust flew off them in little puffs. As she leaned forward, unconsciously putting more strength into her rowing, she saw something walk over one of the hills.

“Terje.”

There were more movements. She stopped rowing suddenly and reached for the stone. Terje turned around.

“People,” he said, surprised.

“Maybe it’s another burial ground,” Kyreol said nervously. She opened the crystal. “Joran.”

“Kyreol,” the stone said, and asked immediately, as always, “where are you?”

“Stone, there are some little hills in front of us. Dust is blowing across them, but there’s no wind. And there are people. Is it dangerous? Are they burying their dead?”

The stone was silent. Kyreol waited, then peered into it, then shook it. “Stone—”

“I’m here. I can’t believe you’ve made it so far already.”

“Where are we?”

“Kyreol, I don’t know what to do with you anymore.”

“That’s all right, Stone. I don’t either. But what—Will we be safe?”

“Oh, yes. Very safe. Just row past the hills, and—”

“What are they?”

“You’ll see a house. A big house made of sandstone.
Stop there. The man there will be able to answer your questions. Talk to me again when you get there.”

“Whose house?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll let him know you’re coming.”

“All right.” She paused, eyeing the fragile threads inside the crystal, and asked in spite of herself, “Joran, how do you do that?”

“What?”

“Put your voice into the stone.” The stone sighed. “Also, we saw some little tiny things high in the sky. They flew—”

“Kyreol, I must go. Orcrow will explain everything. He’d better. Don’t worry—”

“But where is he?” Kyreol asked. The stone didn’t answer.