There were two ladders leading down to the first spring, two ladders more to the first pool, where he’d been scraping algae that morning. Six more ladders led to the second spring and pool, the big one that was still under construction, and then two to the bottom, where the orchards and gardens and grain fields were. From there it was an easy walk down the canyon to the feeding stones where the beautiful people would come to feed at dusk. Lovely on wings, the Kachis, he hummed beneath his breath. Lovely on wings, both powerful and wise.
“See them come on their wings of light,” he sang softly. “See them emerge from the shadows of the trees. Beautiful on wings …” Though sometimes he wondered if he really wanted…No. That had been decided long ago.
He muttered these same phrases to me, sometimes. Whispering as though he didn’t intend me to hear. Or, perhaps, intended that I should hear without being certain he intended it. A hint, rather than a word. Which is the same way certain other information was transmitted. No one had really said it.
When he came to the level of the spring, he slowed his climb, taking extra care. There the water falls into the first pool from such a height that it is often blown onto the ladder rungs and into the carved climbing holes, making the footing treacherous. Wetness spread beside him, dripping from the higher to the lower rocks, in some places running in tiny moss-edged diagonals across the almost vertical surfaces of the stones. This was rain that had fallen far from here, high up, soaking into the flesh of the mesa to emerge at last like blood from a wound.
Arriving at the first pool, he stopped to ease the straps over his shoulders as he listened to the spring dripping musically into the shallow puddle at the lip. From the shallow it runs back into the cavern where he’d been working. There the water glints, sending wavering glimmers of reflected light up the smooth vertical shaft that emerges before the hive. This is the household pool from which the people of Cochim-Mahn take water for cooking and hivekeeping. Several large round pots hung before him, tipped on their sides in their rope cradles, ready to be lowered into the water. As he rested, a pot dropped downward, filled, leveled, and then jerked upward, dripping and sloshing as it went. He could hear women singing, Yeeah-mai, Eeah-mai, as they turned the spool to wind the rope. Our water, our blood; our water, our blood.
Beneath the sound of their voices chortled the sound of the second spring, the larger one, so powerful at this time of year that it actually spurts from the side of the mountain, arching out between two chunks of green stone to fall chuckling into the big pool the people of Cochim-Mahn have been building for a long, long time. Generations of our people have carved out the mountain behind the waterlip, caulking the cracks to make a place for the water to rest away from the sucking wind and the thirsty sun. Huge stone pillars have been left to hold the mountain up, and among these monstrous trunks the water lies smooth as a mirror, stretching far back into the darkness, deep in some places as four or five tall men.
Between first pool and second, the ladders are shorter and quite dry. My father made quick work of them. The main water gate stands beside the second pool, where well-caulked wooden pipes lead downward to the tanks below. There, also, is the stone house of the seasonally elected watermaster, one who will assure fair distribution of crop water. This early in the year the house was empty, no water was being used except the bucketsful that had been carried to the fruit trees. From far back in the darkness, my father could hear the tap of hammers. There, behind a cofferdam, several of our kinsmen were cutting more stone away, making the storage pond even larger.
The last ladders are the longest, down to the canyon floor where a trickle of meltwater, all that had escaped the traps of the hives upstream, ran between green banks dotted with flowers. From here it is an easy trot to the feeding stones.
The stones are huge and flat. Later in the season, when true warmth comes, the people of the nearer towns spend a day here, scrubbing away the grease and winter-filth and scenting the place with fragrant smoke and fresh herbs. My father ignored the smell as he set the open end of the sack at the lip of the dished stone, then turned to spill its contents behind him. He left without looking back. It is not polite to look at other persons’ food or at persons who are eating; so it is not polite to observe the Kachis either. Looking at another person’s food implies that one has not had enough. Looking at another person’s food is like begging. Only babies and dogs look at people eating.
He set out at a trot for the ladders. Behind him he heard nothing. He slowed. Stopped. Turned. Nothing. Usually there was a call from a tree-clustered canyon and an answering chirrup from somewhere nearer. Usually he had to hurry to be away from the feeding rocks before dusk.
But tonight, nothing. The Kachis were elsewhere. Unwillingly, my father turned his eyes where the rim of the canyon gleamed high and bright in the last of the light, toward the House Without a Name.
Dusk on Dinadh.
Below in the canyon was only darkness. Beneath the arch of the cave, shadows gathered.
