“That is because I like to eat it, easy to remember.”
“I have some of it dried that I can cook for you.”
“Save it. You will want it for yourself. And tomorrow we will have many new things for you to try. We will take the berries and make ekkotaz. You are going to like that.”
The Sasku girl was small, no bigger than her children were when they were little. Merrith wanted to reach out and touch her hair. But that was not right, not with a grown woman. The girl was better now. Merrith walked on along the fires, just wanting to be alone. Or maybe she did not want to be alone and that was the trouble. Her daughters grown, gone. Soled dead in the murgu city. Melde now with her hunter, with sammad Sorli. No one knew where they were for they had gone north when the others had fled to the west. Perhaps she was still alive somewhere. But Merrith’s own hunter, Ulfadan, wasn’t. She knew that the Tanu do not mourn the dead, knew that every hunter found his rightful place when his tharm was there in the stars. She looked up at the star-filled sky, then back at the fires and sighed. Better a hunter alive than a tharm in the sky. She was a strong woman. But she was also alone.
“Don’t walk too far from the fires,” a voice called out. “There are murgu out there.”
She squinted in the firelight to see who the guard was. “Ilgeth, I have killed more murgu than you have ever seen. Just keep your death-stick pointed out there and I will take care of myself.”
The sammads slept but the fires burned brightly. Guards watched the forest. Something crashed about in the darkness and there were shrill squeals of pain. It was always like this. Without the death-sticks they could not stay this far to the south. Only the tiny but deadly darts could kill the large murgu that hunted here.
The noises of death in the forest woke Herilak who had only been lightly asleep. He looked up at the starlit sky through the open tent flap. Something buzzed in his ear and he slapped the flying insect. The hunting would be good tomorrow. But he did not want to stay here too long. Kerrick was out there somewhere and he was going to find him. That meant searching carefully along the track as he went, to see if other tracks went off of it. There should be other sammads out here, perhaps Kerrick was with one of them. As soon as they had hunted and the mastodons had eaten their fill they must go on.
A bright line of fire struck across the sky, then died away. A new tharm perhaps. Not Kerrick’s, he hoped that it was not Kerrick’s.
CHAPTER NINE
Enge hantehei, ate embokeka iirubushei kaksheise, heawahei; hevai’ihei, kaksheinte, enpeleiuu asahen enge.
To leave father’s love and enter the embrace of the sea is the first pain of life — the first joy is the comrades who join you there.
Here, just beyond the breaking waves, was a very satisfying place to be. Vainte floated with her body submerged, her head above the water. The waves rose and fell under her with an easy rolling motion, marching in from the ocean in steady rows. Lifting her, passing on, curling and crashing onto the sand in a surge of white foam. When the waves rose the highest she looked towards the shore and could see beyond the green wall of the jungle to a row of gray mountains far inland. Had she seen them before? She could not remember; it did not matter. She opened her nose flaps and blew them clear of water, inhaled again and again. The transparent membranes slid over her eyes as she slipped under the water, dived deep.
Deeper and deeper until the water darkened and the surface was a distant glitter high above her. She was a strong swimmer now, almost a part of the underwater world. The seaweed beds were just below her, bowing and swaying in the undercurrents from the shore. Small fish sheltered here, darting for safety as she moved towards them. They were not worth pursuing. Ahead she saw something better, a large school of flat, multicolored fish moving like an underwater rainbow. Vainte rolled over and kicked in their direction, arms extended, her tail and legs moving together to drive her forward.
Dark forms arrowed down before her, she twisted aside; she was not the only one to see the fish. More than once she had been pursued by large predators and had to escape by swimming ashore. Were these the same? No, they were smaller and more numerous and somehow familiar. For too long now she had existed in a timeless state, seeing but not thinking, making no effort to rationally analyze what was before her eyes, so that at first she did not recognize them. Hanging motionless in the water, a thin stream of bubbles rising from her nostrils, she watched as they approached. Only when they were very close did she realize that she was looking at other Yilane.
The pain in her chest and a growing darkness before her eyes forced her to realize that she had been down too long, drove her to the surface to gasp in air. The shock of seeing Yilane in this empty place tore at the fog that had clouded her mind, idle so long. An efenburu of young in the sea, come here from some distant city, that is what they must be. But the young elininyil never ventured far from their birth beaches. And there was something else, something different. These creatures were too large, far too large to be an unemerged efenburu. They were fully grown. If so — what were they doing here?
A head surfaced nearby, then another and another. As she had seen them, so had they seen her. Unthinkingly Vainte turned in the water, swam towards shore, away from their presence. Into the breaking surf, riding it up onto the sand, then struggling through the surge to the familiar beach beyond. When her feet left the sand and slapped through the mud she halted, looking at the trees and swamp ahead of her. What was she doing? What did she want to do? Was she fleeing from them?
Unaccustomed questions, unaccustomed thought. She felt restive, disturbed at the idea of trying to escape. She had never before retreated, had never sought to flee from difficulties. Then why was she doing it now? Although she had been standing with arms hanging limply, head lowered, when she turned about to face the ocean her head was high, her back straight. Dark figures were emerging from the surf and she walked slowly towards them and stopped at the edge of the sand.
Those closest to her halted, knee-deep in the surf, staring with expressions of doubt on their partly opened mouths. She stared back assessing them. Fully grown fargi. But they stood with a blankness of movement that communicated very little.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” she said.
The one she addressed, the nearest, moved back a few steps in the water. As she did this she raised the palms of her hands. The colors moved in the simplest of patterns, unaccompanied by sounds of any kind.
Together, she said. Together.
Vainte signed back the same, scarcely realizing she was doing it. Had not done this since she had first emerged from the sea a timeless time ago. It took an effort to recall exactly what it meant. Yes, of course, it was the simple recognition between efensele in the sea. Together.
The speaker was shouldered roughly aside, staggered and fell. A larger fargi strode forward onto the sand but stopped at the water’s edge.
“Do… what I say… you do that.”
Her expressions were clumsy, her vocalizations crude and hard to understand. Who was this creature? What were they all doing here?
These considerations were driven away by a spurt of anger, an emotion unfelt since she had come to this beach, to this place. Her nostrils flared wide and her crest flowed with color.
“Who is this fargi, an upright worm that stands before me and issues orders?”
It came out imperiously, automatically. The fargi gaped with incomprehension, understanding nothing of her quick communication. She saw this and began to understand a little. She spoke again, slowly and simply.
“Silence. You are inferiority before superiority. I command you. Speak name.” She had to repeat this, in simpler form, mostly arm movements and color changes before it was understood.
“Velikrei,” she said. Vainte noted with approval that the fargi shoulders had slumped and her body was now
