Sandwalker looked up and saw the small forms of Shadow children, hemmed on three sides by the marshmen.
“No,” said Eastwind. “If I am not afraid of these—these are at least men—should I fear those?”
“Perhaps,” Sandwalker said.
The Shadow children came tumbling down the soft slope. In the bright sunlight they looked far smaller than they had by night, bloodless and crook-legged. Sandwalker thought real children looking so would soon die.
“We will soon die,” one of the Shadow children (Sandwalker was not certain which) said. “And be eaten by these. You too.”
Eastwind said: “The ritual eating of gifts given the river is very different from feasting, little mock-men. We shall feast on you.”
The marshman who had called to Eastwind, apparently a man of some importance among them, announced from his place at the rim, “Five, Scholar of the Sky.” He rubbed his hands. “And there’s no sweeter meat than Shadow child’s.”
“Six,” Eastwind corrected him.
“This pit was not dug by hands,” said one of the Shadow children. Several of them were by now poking about, sifting the fine sand through their fingers.
“These are your followers,” Eastwind said to Sandwalker. “Would you care to explain their new home to them?”
“I would if I could, but no one knows why the world is as it is, save that it conforms to the will of God.”
“Learn, then, where you stand. Here—a few hundred paces east—the river widens forever. It is as a stem widens to the flower, save that the flower of the river, which is called Ocean, widens without limit.”
“I don’t believe it,” Sandwalker said.
“Don’t you understand yet? Don’t you know why the river exceeds in holiness both God and the stars? Why children at the beginning of their lives must be washed by it, and its waters muddied with the blood of the very starwalkers should a star fall? The river is Time, and it ends at this sacred place in Ocean, which is the past and extends forever. On the east bank, where the ground is low and the water sometimes sweet and sometimes salt, is the Eye, the great circle from which the starwalkers go forth. On this west bank it has pleased Ocean to build this Other Eye to contain the gifts that will in time be his. Lastvoice, who has thought much on all things, says that the hands of Ocean, which strike the beaches forever, draw forth the sand on which we stand even as more slips down to replace it—having been returned by him to the beaches. Thus it is that The Other Eye is never empty and can never be filled.”
“We wash our children in the river,” Sandwalker said, “because it signifies the purity of God. The root-earth of the trees, their fathers is still upon them and should be washed away. As for the rest of your nonsense, I think it no better than that about our being the same person.”
“Lastvoice has opened the bodies of women…” Eastwind began, then seeing the disgust on Sandwaiker’s face he turned on his heel, grasped the liana, and signaled the men waiting to pull him up. At the rim he waved briefly and called, “Good-by, Mother. Good-by, Brother,” then was gone.
Old Bloodyfinger said in his snarling voice, “You might have got something from him—but he won’t be back.”
Sandwalker shrugged and said: “Do they let us go up to drink? I’m thirsty and there are no pools in this place.”
There was no shade either, but the Shadow children were lying down on the side of the pit which would be shaded first, curling into small, dark balls. Bloodyfinger said, “About sundown they’ll throw down stalks that don’t have much flavor but a lot of iuice. That’s all the drink you’ll get. All the food too.” He jerked a thumb at the Shadow children. “But butchering those vermin would give us food and juicy drink. Three of us, five of them, that’s not bad, and they won’t fight well while the sun is high.”
“Two of you, six of us. And Leaves-you-can-eat won’t fight if I fight him.”
For a moment Bloodyfingers looked angry, and Sandwalker remembering those big fists, readied himself to dodge and kick. Then Bloodyfinger grinned his gap-toothed grin—“Just you and I, huh, boy? Bruising each other while the rest watch and yell. If you win, your friends eat, and if I do—why they come for me after dark. No. In a few days you’ll be hungry—if any of us are alive. I’ll talk to you again then.”
Sandwalker shook his head, but smiled. He had been driven all night by his captors and had spent the morning struggling with the slipping walls, so when Bloodyfinger turned away he scooped a place in the sand near the Shadow children and lay down. After a time the girl Sweetmouth came and lay beside him.
At sunset, as Bloodyfinger had said, the stems of plants were thrown down to them. The Shadow children were beginning to stir, and brought two for Sweetmouth and Sandwalker, Sweetmouth took hers, but she was frightened by the Shadow children’s gleaming eyes. She went to the other side of the pit to sit with Cedar Branches Waving.
The Old Wise One came to sit beside Sandwalker, who noticed that he had no water stalk. Sandwalker said, “Well, what do we do now?”
Talk,” said the Old Wise One.
“Why?”
“Because there is no opportunity to act. It is always wise to talk a great deal, discussjng what has been done and what may be done, when nothing can be done. All the great political movements of history were born in prisons.”
“What are political movements, and history?”
“Your forehead is high and your eyes are far apart,” the Old Wise One said. “Unfortunately like all your species you have your brain in your thorax—” (he tapped Sandwalker’s hard, flat belly, or at least made the gesture of doing so, though his finger had no substance) ’so neither of those indications of mental capacity is valid.”
Sandwalker said tactfully, “All of us have our brains in our stomachs when we are hungry.”
“You mean minds,” the Old Wise One told him, “It is possible for the mind to float fourteen thousand feet or more above the head.”
“The starwalkers of these wetlanders say their minds—perhaps they mean their souls—leave the ground, tumble through space, kick off from sisterworld, and, drawn by the tractive universe, glide, soar, sweep, and whirl among the constellations until dawn, reading everything and tending the whole. So they told me in my captivity.”
The Old Wise One made a spitting sound and asked Sandwalker, “Do you know what a starcrosser is?”
Sandwalker shook his head.
“Have you ever seen a log floating in the river? I mean high in the hills, where the water rushes between stones and the log with it.”
“I rode the river myself that way. That’s how I came to the meadowmeres so quickly.”
“Better yet.” The Old Wise One lifted his head to stare at the night sky. “There,” he said, pointing. “There. What do you call that?”
Sandwalker was trying to follow the direction of his shadowy finger. “Where?” he said. Burning Hair Woman watched with calm, unseeing eyes through the Old Wise One’s hand.
“There, spread across all the heavens from end to end.”
“Oh, that,” Sandwalker said. “That’s the Waterfall.”
“Exactly. Now think of a hollow log big enough for men to get into. That would be a starcrosser.”
“I see.”
“Now humans—my race—actually traveled in those, cruising among the stars before the long dreaming days. We came here that way.”
“I thought you were always here,” Sandwalker said.
The Old Wise One shook his head. “We either came recently or a long, long time ago. I’m not sure which.”
“Don’t your songs tell?”
“We had no songs when we came here—that was one of the reasons we stayed, and why we lost the
