He calmed as he grew less hungry. When we were finished, it took a large towel and a bowl of warm water to clean up the boy and the area around him.
“He has always been this way?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, her body stiffening. She did not want to talk about it.
Well then, we would not talk about it.
“There are some good gaufers down there,” I told her. “But I couldn’t find the harness. Perhaps Leelson will find it in a wain. Where has Trompe gone?”
“He’s carrying supplies down the ladders,” she said with suppressed laughter. “Or was. Here he comes, very hot looking!”
As he did, out of breath and considerably annoyed.
“Leelson’s found a wain,” he said. “It’s parked out of sight of the hive, around those stone columns south of the cave. He told me to put the food inside it. Otherwise he thinks it won’t last until we’re ready to leave.”
I nodded. He was right. Any food left where the Kachis could get it would be either eaten or fouled past use. “Was the harness there?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t look and Leelson didn’t say.” He collapsed onto a sleeping bench and threw one arm across his face. “Lord, that’s a long climb. You Dinadhi must have steel legs and arms, up and down all day as you are.”
“Two trips a day is considered much,” I told them. “One is the usual. When the farmers go to work in the fields, they go down at daylight and return before dusk. They carry their lunch with them.”
“We haven’t talked about how long this is going to take,” he said. “How much food we’ll need …”
“All we can carry,” I told him.
“Then we’ll need a faster way of getting it down there.”
Silence, broken by the sound of the door. Leelson, returning.
“Harness is in the wain,” he said. “I counted the individual sets, and it looks like enough for six animals. On my way back, however, I overheard several of the herdsman talking. They’re taking the animals up tomorrow.”
Silence again.
“We’ll have to leave before then,” murmured Lutha. “Won’t we?” She gave me a pleading look, as though hoping I could think of some other choice.
“No time for sneakiness,” I said. “Were there panels on the sides of the wain you chose?”
He nodded, his lips pressed tightly together. “Yes. I remembered that part. They make up the pen for the gaufers, I presume.”
“Walls and roof, to keep them safe at night,” I said. “Tomorrow before light, we’ll take all the food from the dispenser, put it in sacks, and drop it into the canyon. We need not carry water. This time of year there will be water along the canyon-bottom trail we’ll follow. We’ll have to be gone before light.” To my own ears, my voice shouted panic, but the others did not seem to hear it. They merely sighed, resolved on the struggle to come but taking no joy in it.
“They’ll know the wain is gone,” Trompe objected.
“Perhaps not,” I replied. “There are extra ones. If the one you picked is beyond the pillars, likely it is one that was not to be used this year. Or, if someone sees it is gone, they may think someone moved it. People are always moving wains around. To store things in. Or to repair them.”
“They don’t belong to anyone in particular?”
“They belong to Cochim-Mahn. Not to any particular person. Anyone might move a wain.”
“Well then,” said Leelson.
“I just had a thought,” Trompe interrupted. “What about weapons?”
“Weapons!” I cried. “To use against what?”
They looked at me, the two men with those expressions they have, reading me, knowing how I felt. Well, I could read their faces as well!
“No!” I shouted at them. “That is forbidden. You will not!”
The two exchanged glances, then shrugged, both at once, as by agreement.
“They are our …” I said, trying to explain, remembering I couldn’t explain.
“Your what, Saluez?” asked Lutha curiously.
I could not say. I had already said forbidden things, thought forbidden thoughts. I shook my head at her. Enough. One might do this little wrong thing, or that little wrong thing, but not forever! One could not cut across the pattern over and over again. I had to stop, even though these folk were eager to know more. Let them find out some other way. Let them read it in someone else’s feelings. I had said all I could say.
On Perdur Alas, night on night the monstrosities returned to wander the world. Even when Snark did not see them, she could tell they were present somewhere: just over a cusp of hills, in a valley somewhere, at the bottom of the sea, perhaps, for when she stood with her mouth open and turned about slowly, she could taste them, strongly or faintly. At first she would taste nothing, perhaps, but then her tongue would curl at the subtle disgust of them, the cloying rottenness, the foulness that could not be spat away.
One taste was enough. Whenever she detected it, she went to ground. Driven as much by instinct as by prior knowledge, she made herself a dozen hidey-holes around the camp and between it and the sea. She dug upward, into the sides of hills, so the tunnels would drain and the holes would stay dry. She made them large enough to be comfortable. She knew if she was surrounded by earth, the beings could not detect her. If she was in a hole, with foliage drawn over her, they could not tell she was there. She thought someone had told her this, just as they’d told her how to dig holes. She seemed to remember these things from that former time.
The blacknesses, as she called them, did not always come to the camp. Moreover, the blacknesses were not always the same. Occasionally, rarely, they were like the first time, with that same muffled soundlessness, that same trembling of the soil, that same monstrous plodding. More often they were merely
