Nightpool (14 page)

It was the day that Mitta cut the last cast
from his leg with a sharpened shell, and massaged his leg and
pronounced it mended, that she said, “I think you must begin to
cook your meals, Tebriel. You are not looking well, and you are
eating less and less.”

He stared at Mitta. Cooked food would taste
wonderful. “But cook how? There’s no way to make fire, Mitta. You
need flint.”

Mitta glanced at the tumbling cubs, then
sent them out to play. When they were gone, she said quietly, “You
must steal what you need to make fire.”

He stared at her. “Steal it where? And what
would Thakkur say?”

“Thakkur agrees with me. You are too thin
and pale. Maybe raw food does not agree with you.” She touched
Teb’s hand with a gentle paw. “Charkky and Mikk will go with you;
they will like another ramble before winter. You will take the
raft. You can steal what you need from the place of battle where
they found you. Steal it from the dead.”

Teb sat quiet for some time. Mitta turned to
her weaving, working feathers in with moss. Already the blanket was
a fourth finished. She said nothing until Teb said suddenly, “You
think if I go there, I’ll remember. Who I am, and what happened to
me there.”

She looked at him evenly, a wild, steady
look, the kind of look a hunting otter fixes on its prey.

“Perhaps, Tebriel. Do you think it is worth
trying?”

It was later that he wondered uneasily if he
was afraid to go back there, afraid of remembering. But that was
silly. They would go there to the coast of

Baylentha, and he would find, somewhere
among the bodies, which by now must be nothing but skeletons, the
small striking flint he would need to make fire, and maybe a pan to
cook in, maybe a good knife dropped and forgotten. And maybe he
would find himself, maybe he would meet Tebriel there and know him
and know all that had happened in his life.

“Hah,” said Charkky, “it’s barely light.
I’ll just nip down for a flounder, on our way.”

“You keep pushing the raft,” said Mikk.
“I’ll get the flounder.” He dove so suddenly he seemed to
disappear, and was back in no time with a fine silvery flat fish
with both its eyes on one side of its head. He bit it in half and
gave the tail half to Charkky; then both otters swam along pushing
the raft, each holding the great piece of fish in his mouth,
chewing away. Teb watched them for a moment, then turned his
attention to the gray heaving sea and the first hint of sunrise in
the east where the sea met the sky. He had breakfasted on cattail
root and a plant that Mitta called water lettuce, and he thought
with longing of cooked food, porridge and mutton and berry pies and
ham. Though he could not imagine the food in any setting, not a
room, or even catch the vision of a cookfire. He knew what a flint
striker would look like, though, and he hoped there would be a
flint somewhere on the battleground. He had turned to watching the
high cliff that marked the edge of the mainland when the raft
gained speed suddenly, and four more otters popped up with dripping
whiskers to stare at him as they pushed. Jukka and Hokki and Litta,
three bright young females, and Kkelpin, a black scar on his
shoulder showing beneath the foaming water. The raft moved so fast
now Teb felt he was almost flying, and a song made itself in his
head as they sped along, about the six otters and the sea and the
tall black cliffs and the gulls.

“What are you grinning about?” Charkky said,
poking his head up over the edge of the raft. “What are you
thinking, Tebriel?”

“That I’m going as fast as king of the ocean
now, and you’re six fine steeds pulling me.”

He got a face full of water for that, and he
managed to push Charkky under, but only because Charkky let him. By
midmorning the sun had burned the clouds away and the day was hot,
and Teb watched the swimming otters with envy, and let his feet
trail over, until he realized it made a drag on the raft.

“Come in,” shouted Charkky, popping up in a
distant wave. They were taking turns now, pushing.

“Hah,” said Mikk, leaping up onto the raft.
“Have a swim, Tebriel.”

“I don’t know if I can swim. I don’t
remember . . .”

“We’ll help you. It’s simple.”

“Simple for you, maybe.” He was so hot and
itchy, and the water was so cool. He knelt, watching the swells and
wondering if he would sink. But how could he sink with six otters
crowded around ready to pull him out? If he couldn’t swim, though,
he would look like a fool.

But then at last he could stand it no
longer, and he slipped in and let the cool water take him, easy,
buoying him—and he was floating.

“If you can float,” said Charkky, “you can
swim.”

Jukka looked skeptical, her dark face close
to Teb’s, as if she meant to save him.

He tried wriggling as the otters did, but he
went under, and when he came up they were all laughing at him.

“You’re not an otter,” Charkky said. “I
don’t think . . .”

“You’ve no tail for wriggling and
thrusting,” Jukka said, huffing at him with an otterish giggle.

“Float again,” said Mikk. “Move your arms
and legs; they’re all you have to move when you haven’t a
tail.”

“He doesn’t even have webs between his
toes,” said Litta, with a small female smirk. “How can he
. . . ?”

“Just do it,” said Mikk, scowling at
Litta.

“Don’t think about it,” said Kkelpin. “It
will come easier if you just do what comes naturally.”

Teb lay flat on his face and felt the cool
salty water soothe him, and soon he was stroking out, kicking. Then
he was really swimming, as if his body had known all along. He
kicked and reached in a long, easy crawl in the rolling ocean,
surrounded by diving, laughing otters. He glanced back to see the
raft coming along, pushed by one otter, then another. He hadn’t
realized how much they had been slowing for him, bobbing and
waiting and pacing him patiently; now he felt he was almost flying
through the clear green sea.

Then at last, when the muscles of his hurt
leg began to ache, he flipped back onto the raft, and again his
steeds sent it speeding.

“You swim like a fish,” said Charkky. “Look
ahead, we’re coming to the cave of the ghost.”

“What is that?” Teb could see a dark cleft
dividing the cliff; then when they drew closer he could see it was
a cave. A clattering rose suddenly, and an immense flock of birds
burst out and went sweeping away over the sea, to wheel far out,
screaming.

“Cormorants,” shouted Mikk.

“Is that the ghost?”

This made Charkky and Hokki laugh and
dive.

“You won’t see the ghost,” Mikk said. “No
one does; he lives on the white cliffs in the cave.” They were
opposite the opening now, and Teb could see that the cave was huge.
A damp, cold breath blew out of it, smelling of bird droppings, and
the jagged stone inside was covered with droppings heavy and white
as snow.

“It is said he comes out to make the storms
of the sea,” said Jukka, shaking water over Teb. “That his birds
stir the wind into storm, and he himself roils the sea and makes it
heave and churn.”

The birds returned, wheeling over them, and
when the raft was past the cave, the flock swept back in and
vanished. And suddenly a song filled Teb’s mind with words crying
in his head, and he sat wondering at it and examining it as the
tall cliffs passed, for it was not just a song about the ghost and
the things he was seeing, but stretched far back in time, a song
alive with wrecked ships and drowned cities and things he had never
known.

Or, things he
thought
he had never
known—but how could he tell?

He watched Charkky dive down to retrieve
oysters from the undersea caves, then lie on his back shucking and
eating them. He could not see the land above the cliffs—they were
far too tall—but green grass hung over where some of the cliff had
crumbled out from beneath the turf. And once, just beyond the cave
of the ghost, he saw horses silhouetted against the sky, and that,
too, made a yearning in him, so he could almost smell their sweet
scent and feel them warm and silky beneath his hands.

Why did it all stay hidden? And what was the
song that had come, so different from the others? Why did it make
him lonely?

The sun was just overhead when they came to
the Bay of Ottra and were surrounded at once by a mob of splashing,
diving, huffing otters. He remembered the sea alive with them when
he had come this way before, shaken with fever and pain, his leg
like a shattered stone hung to his body, heavy and useless and
hurting. He remembered being taken to the marsh and fed there among
the tall, bright green grass in a bright green otter holt. He had
not remembered all this before. But of course, Charkky and Mikk had
told him how it was; he was only remembering their tale. He looked
at the crowd of curious otters splashing and pushing close to the
raft and listened to Mikk tell why they had come, and he felt very
silly when they rolled over in the water laughing and barking
because the little band was going to steal fire.

“Not steal fire,” said Mikk. “Steal the
thing that makes fire.”

“But who would want fire? What’s it good
for? Oh, humans use it in Ratnisbon, all right, but it makes such a
smell.”

“It’s to cook food,” Teb said. “I
want. . .”

“He wants to cook his food,” said Charkky.
“He’s human; his habits aren’t the same as ours.”

The otters went silent, staring up at Teb,
thinking about this strange new idea.

“Well,” said one at last, “yes, they do cook
food in Ratnisbon. On the boats, too, in the harbor. You can smell
it.”

“But what is it that makes fire?” cried
someone.

“A small flint, a little piece of metal that
can strike a spark,” Teb said. “Like a tiny bit of lightning. That
will light the kindling, and the kindling will make the wood burn.
Every soldier carries a flint,” he said, puzzling that he should
know this.

“You won’t find much on that battlefield,”
said old Flokk, who was a friend of Ekkthurian’s. “A band of
soldiers went back and carried a wagonload away. And then the
buzzards came and stayed for weeks.”

“Ebis’s soldiers took it all into
Ratnisbon,” said a pale old female with a torn ear, who was
floating near the raft. “Saddles, cooking gear, blankets. They
buried the dead soldiers.” The Rushmarsh otters were more
sophisticated than the Nightpool clan, living as they did so close
to Ratnisbon. They made a hobby of watching humans, though they
kept themselves hidden and secret.

Teb sighed. “It sounds as if there won’t be
anything left.”

“Maybe,” said Mikk. “Who knows what a band
of soldiers might overlook?”

“There’s a great cage there,” said a
broad-faced otter. “Big enough for ten hydruses. You wouldn’t
believe that men could build a cage that big, or that they would
want to. Made out of whole trees, it is. We don’t know what it’s
for, but the door to it stands wide open.”

Teb frowned, puzzled. But the fleeting
twinge of memory vanished into shadow and left only fear behind it.
He saw Mikk watching him, and he thought Mikk guessed what he was
feeling.

“There are a great many boats anchored at
Cape Bay,” said the Rushmarsh leader. Feskken had surfaced moments
before, his pale tan coat bright amid the darker crowd. His dark
muzzle made him look as if he’d had his nose in the mud. He looked
Teb over. “You look much better now, boy, than last time I saw you
with your leg all swollen. I expect you had all better come into
Rushmarsh and wait until it grows dark to cross the bays, with all
the boats about. A raft can’t dive and swim underwater. Come, and
take a meal with us.”

So the raft was pulled into Rushmarsh along
a small stream and wedged deep into the tall eelgrass. Then the
otters led Teb across the marsh to their green grass holts, nearly
invisible until one was right on them. Inside the largest holt,
they feasted on raw oysters and shrimps and on the nutty roots of
marsh lilies, which Teb found delicious.

“We have none of that at Nightpool,” Mikk
said. “It’s one of the reasons we like to come to Rushmarsh. “

“Couldn’t you plant it?” Teb said. “Wouldn’t
it grow in the valley at Nightpool?”

The otters had never thought of such a
thing.

“Why not?” said Feskken. “Great fishes, why
didn’t anyone think of that? I’ll send some youngsters at once to
dig the plants up. They multiply well, we know that, for the whole
south stream bed is alive with them.”‘

“It would be better,” Teb said, “to get them
on our way back so they’d be fresher.” He didn’t know how he knew
about gardening, but he did know. “They start to die the minute you
pull them, and they need to have life to take root.”

“I’m glad we didn’t try to cross the harbors
in the daytime,” Mikk said. “I’ve never seen so many boats.” The
otters had a clear view of the ocean down the stream channel,
though to the humans out there, looking toward the marsh, nothing
was visible but a mass of green eelgrass.

“Word is,” Feskken said, “that fighting in
the north has driven those folk out, that the dark raiders are
defeating the lands east of Chagrel. Ebis the Black has given the
refugees sanctuary. They have made a large camp at the edge of the
city just at the skirts of the castle.”

Teb sat very still when he heard the name
Ebis the Black. And when Feskken spoke of Sivich, he went chilled
and thought he was really on the edge of remembering. And yet he
could not remember. Mikk was watching him again, with that worried
little cock of his head. Teb felt sure that when he got to the
place of battle where he had been hurt, he would remember.

It was well after dark when they started out
again on the sea, and Teb found the heaving ocean frightening in
darkness. The raft seemed small and frail now, and where starlight
touched the water, he kept watching for sharks, though the otters
all said they could feel the vibrations of such creatures long
before they were close.