Then, suddenly, “Here,” said Leelson.
I slitted one eye and peeked. We had come to a puddle of sunlight, a spot where the eastern canyon wall dipped low to let the sun through. Leelson got down from the wagon and pretended to check the wheels; Trompe joined him, the two of them continuing their discussion. Lutha and I merely waited. Silence. The Kachis were not going to announce their presence. They didn’t know about Fastigats. They didn’t know we had heard them, that their slyness had been interpreted. It was obvious they didn’t yet want us to know they were there.
We waited in the puddle of light until the sun flooded the bottom of the canyon. Only then did Leelson cluck to the animals and we moved on, more rapidly. Trompe buried himself in the map, measuring and muttering.
“There’s a turn to the west ahead,” he said. “Quite a lengthy east-west arm. That should be lighted for its entire distance. If we hurry, we may make it before the sun drops behind the west rim.”
“If everyone who can will walk, we can hurry more easily,” remarked Leelson, his voice little more than a whisper.
I had thought my legs wouldn’t hold me, but it was actually easier to walk than to sit. Walking gave my trembling muscles something to do. Even Leely walked, all of us except Leelson striding along, and the gaufers moving almost with alacrity. The Kachis kept pace with us, fluttering among the stones at the eastern side of the canyon, more of them every moment. If we had not known to look for them, we might not have seen them. When they were still, they appeared to be only some lighter blotch on the stone itself.
It was not long until we came to the turning, not in actual time, though it seemed endless. The sun had shifted from the west side of the canyon to the center, from the center to the east. We were driving close to the eastern wall when we came to the turn, and now we moved around the corner into the light of Lady Day, she who smiled fully upon us as we moved toward the west.
Behind us in the narrow canyon, one lone derisive cry, faint and far, immediately silenced. If we had been near the sea, it might have been mistaken for the call of a bird, but we have no large inland birds.
“They want to get ahead of us,” said Leelson. “There are shadowed ways in and among the rocks along the walls.”
Lutha shivered. I swallowed over and over, not to let the bitterness in my throat rise into my mouth. Then, all at once, Leely pulled away from Lutha and began to run back, as though he had been attracted by that lone cry.
Lutha caught up to him and seized him, but he struggled, pulling so strongly that Trompe had to help her restrain him and shut him in the wagon. There he raged incoherently for a time before falling asleep.
Late in the afternoon we stopped, still in the east-west part of the canyon. Ahead of us it turned south again, though the map indicated the southward arm was not a long one.
“That’s where they probably expected to find us tonight,” remarked Leelson, pointing to the turn ahead. “Instead we’ll stay right here, make an extra long halt, and not leave here until that southern arm is in full sunlight. Besides, there’s grass here, enough to supplement what we cut earlier.”
This time we had less struggle with the panels, we knew how to handle the gaufers. It was they who found water, a tiny spring that seeped from the canyon wall. By the time the sun set, we were safely shut in. The men fell asleep almost immediately, though Lutha and I were still awake.
Tonight Leely showed no interest in the Kachis. They came, as before, to gnaw the panels, to reach through with their long, white arms, but he curled himself into slumber and did not seem to care. Instead it was I who stood at the crack in the wagon door, looking out at them, at the faces of those who crossed the narrow line of light that escaped through the doorway.
Lutha heard me gasp and came to stand beside me.
“What is it, Saluez?”
I was so surprised, I spoke without thinking. “I just saw him, the outlander ghost!”
“You mean … Bernesohn Famber?” she asked in an incredulous voice.
“See, see,” I said, pointing. “Look, there he is again. The one with the twisted shoulders.”
She stared out, turned to me, and stared again. “I see a Kachis with twisted shoulders, Saluez.”
“That’s him! That’s how we know him. He, too, had twisted shoulders.”
Only then, I realized what I had said.
I clung to her. “Don’t tell,” I begged. “Please. Don’t tell the men that the Kachis are the spirits of our departed! I’m not supposed to talk about it!”
She pressed my lips with her fingers, a soft pressure through the fabric of my veil. “Shhh. I won’t, if you don’t want me to, but you must tell me, Saluez. I need to know. When someone here on Dinadh … goes, he comes back as a ghost?”
“When people’s bodies don’t work anymore, their spirits depart the human bodies and find Kachis bodies. We invite them to return to us. We promise to feed them and care for them. The Kachis were made by the Gracious One, just for this purpose, to hold our spirits. And they do come back, where we can see them, and they live for many, many years, staying with us, enjoying the lives of their children and grandchildren, eating, coming to our … taking part in our lives.”
“All of your people who … die, Saluez?”
She didn’t understand! “But we don’t die. Don’t you see! We don’t die, not anymore. No. We just change our forms, that’s all. From human form into Kachis form, but we know who we are, we are still alive.”
She mused a
