Fish Tails

Xulai nodded. She thought the earliest they could be here would be late winter or spring. The ­people from Tingawa might travel faster, but their speed might depend on the weight of their equipment. But if they use ul xaolat to jump them here once they’re across the sea . . . “Bertram, it could be as soon as a month or two, depending upon how they come.”

  He sighed. “Now that I know it’s not for my whole life, it’s silly that a few months can seem so long.”

  “It’ll be sooner than you’d expect,” said Abasio. “When they get here, ask them to use their far-­talker—­the device we told you about—­to reach Xulai. We’re very interested in what happens.”

  “Abasio . . . ?” Bertram seemed to be fumbling for words.

  Abasio gave him a sympathetic look. “What is it, Bertram? Something we can do?”

  “If I . . . if the books are all taken care of and I don’t have to keep the Volumetarian Oath anymore, and if my friend in Asparagoose—­her name is Mirykel, pronounced like the miracle she is, but not spelled that way—­if she says yes . . . I mean, if she does, and well . . . where should we travel to, to get the best chance at sea-­eggs?”

  Abasio grinned widely. He had already spent considerable time regretting being separated from Bertram. If one ignored fathers-­in-­law and grandfathers-­in-­law—­which one sometimes had to do to save one’s sanity—­he had not had a close male friend since he left certain gang members in the city, years ago—­and even they had not been . . . well, not fellow thinkers. Or thinkers of any description. If Bertram traveled to Wellsport, chances were good Abasio would see him there.

  “Go to Wellsport!” he cried. “I’ll give you a letter to the distribution ­people there and Xulai and I will give you two sea-­eggs. Put them in a safe place. Do not use them until you’re at the Sea Duck. They are not like a bird’s egg, they’re solid, they seemingly keep for years. The ­people at Sea Duck should know where we are, and we’re sure to see you there at some time. You and . . .”

  “Mirykel.”

  “You and Mirykel should go as soon as you can. Is she . . . younger than you? Good! The whole purpose, of course, is to give sea-­eggs to those who can have children. And be sure you visit Mirykel frequently, because I’m counting on you to get some of the young ­people from her village ready to travel to one of the Sea Ducks. It may be that from there, the nearest would be the one south of Artemisia. Sea Duck Three. You’ve heard everything we have to say, you can do the telling for us.”

  Bertram’s eyes lighted up. “Oh, yes, I mean to do it, Abasio. And Mirykel will help. She’s a wonderful woman. None of this Lorpian stuff about her.”

  “Lorpian?”

  “You didn’t catch that? They never called him ‘Uncle,’ they called him ‘Lorp’ because he was a Lorpian, a follower of Akra Vechun Lorp. He’s the Great High Shapist!”

  Abasio shook his head, not getting it.

  Bertram said patiently: “A man named Akra Lorp—­he actually calls himself ‘the Great Lorp’—­started a Shapist sect. He uses as his authority one of the old books in which it is said that God made man in the image of God. Some of us call him Aggravation Lorp. Whatever we call him, he says anything a man does to change his shape, that’s heretical. That’s where Lorp got all that Shapist stuff he was preaching.”

  “Change his shape?”

  “Well, you know . . . for instance, girls. They acquire bosoms. Though I’ve never understood it, no tailor is unaware of the fact that there seemed to be great dissatisfaction attending this acquisition. Either the bosoms are not thought large enough, or they’re too large, or they . . . droop. Accordingly, women create—­sometimes doing it themselves and sometimes it has been known for a tailor to do it—­fancy underwear to hold themselves up or make them more . . . protrusive. This is not such a great matter in these villages where anatomy is taken for granted, but in the more sizable towns, well, you know: the greater the population, the greater the number of silly ­people. According to the Great Lorp, bosom stitchery is heretical. Or if a man loses a leg, that’s a sign God’s cast him out; and if somebody makes him a peg leg, well, that’s heretical. Or if a man puts on a wide belt to pull his belly in.”

  “So the Great Lorp’s God has breasts?”

  Bertram flushed the glossy red-­brown of well-oiled mahogany. “Well if God made both sexes, I assume that meant he had all the requisite patterns in stock. It never made any sense to me, Abasio. But that’s where all that monster stuff is coming from. Just so you’ll be informed.”

  While Bertram was available, Abasio asked if he would look over the map and give his opinion as to the northern route.

  “Odd Duck. Oh, yes, we came through there on the way here. Nice little place, rather isolated, though not that far from Saltgosh, a one-­day, maybe one-­and-­a-­half-­day trip, I should think. Of course, it was around eight years ago, but I don’t suppose it has changed much. It’s named for a peculiar long-­beaked water bird that visits the chain of ponds down that valley and supposedly has never been seen anywhere else. They fly south in winter, but usually not this early, so do take the opportunity to see them.”

  Xulai had used the time they were near Gravysuck, which had orchards, gardens and fields, flocks of chickens, and various animals, to replenish their supplies of dried and preserved meat, legumes, grains, and fruits, dried or preserved, as well as a food new to her: various dry shapes made from flour, water, and eggs that, she was assured, “kep’ practical f’rever.” Willum’s mother had showed her how to boil the shapes until they were rather soft, then put them in a sauce made mostly from a local vine fruit, a large, rather soft red one called, for some unremembered reason, Tom’s toes, which could be used either fresh or dried. There were great racks of them baking in the sun down in Gravysuck—­and Xulai bought a goodly supply of the dried ones. Sausages could be added to the sauce, so she purchased sausage as well, along with a very hard cheese that lasted well and could be grated into other foods. Since they were assured of clean water at least as far as Findem Pass, they could keep the wagon weight down on the uphill trail.

  To pass the time and keep her muscles working, Xulai always gathered field herbs, nuts, fruits, and roots along their way as they traveled. Some they could use themselves, some were for chickens, some few for Blue and Rags, who enjoyed certain fleshy roots but hadn’t the ability to dig them up.

  Traveling in coops on the roof of the wagon—­coops that were moved under the wagon at night—­the chickens would yield a few eggs most days. Redshanks had a coop of his own to which he retreated at sunset, as the hens did to theirs, and all the coops had secure doors that Abasio was careful to close and latch to keep them safe at night. The owls of the region were huge, feather-­horned creatures that could lift a chicken or a rooster with no trouble at all, and whatever scratching about the poultry did in the pen sometimes set up for them during the day, they always returned to their coops under the wagon at dusk as though well aware of the risk.

  In very cold weather the area under the wagon could be warmed at night by enclosing it within a wagon skirt. The smokestack ran across the bottom of the wagon before ascending at the back corner of it. With a slow fire in the little ceramic stove inside the wagon, and the wagon skirt hung on little hooks screwed into the floor, the area beneath the wagon stayed much warmer than the outside air. Now that the drain holes in the wagon floor had been closed, the area under the wagon would be dry once more, so Abasio moved the wagon skirts to a place he could reach easily. Likely nights on the heights of the pass above Artemisia would be considerably cooler.

  They set out before cockcrow, leaving the chicken coops to be uncovered later, when it was warmer. The village was still. They went through it quietly, even the rooster lulled by the familiar motion of the wagon.

  Xulai murmured, “I thought Willum might stay up all night so he could say good-­bye.”

  Abasio smiled. “He may have trie
d to do just that, and fallen soundly asleep around midnight.”

  Beyond the village, scattered farms would take the place of the huddled houses; the little tavern with its oasthouse out back; the tiny general store, resupplied at intervals by traveling merchants and local farms who raised special crops; the mill with its creaking wheel; the tiny open-­fronted chapel or shrine dedicated to a goddess presumably of vegetation and sheep, for her body was made up entirely of the former (pumpkin belly, melon breasts, sheaves of grain for arms and legs) and she was clad in wool. Willum had identified one little building as the school where all children were taught by Ma Garney. Everyone learned to read and write. Some families even had books, for in addition to the big wagons that came by two or three times a year to stock the little village stores, peddlers also came through every now and then. Bertram had standing orders from suppliers in the east, and they included a few books as well as paper and ink to sell. Willum’s school had a dictionary, half a dozen books (which Willum knew by heart), and a few maps of the surrounding countryside. It had a book of poetry, too, and Ma Garney taught them how to make verses and songs.

  Most of the buildings were of stone, some roofs shingled with cedar splits, some thatched with reeds or straw. Any wagon that went into the forest for wood or nuts or wild mushrooms to dry picked up a few angled stones on the way home; stones suitable for building formed a considerable hillock at the edge of the village, there for the use of anyone who needed to repair a chimney or a wall. Some barns and sheds were laid up in earth brick that was replastered with mud each summer, and these had wide eaves to drain the water well away from the walls, walls in many cases invisible behind huge stacks of wood cut for winter fires.

  Sheep and goats were grazing in stubbled grain fields that had been harvested of oats, wheat, corn, and barley, their dung fertilizing the ground for next year’s crop. The orchards had been stripped of pears and apples; the fruit preserved or dried or stored away in lofts. Plums and cherries had ripened earlier, and they, too, had been dried or preserved. In sunny places on the south sides of barns and houses, dried Tom’s-­toes vines rattled in their conical trellises among the drying melon vines, all to be raked up and added to this year’s compost pile along with the barn cleanings. This year’s pile was one of five, next to last year’s pile and piles for two, three, and four years ago. The well-­rotted four-­year-­old pile would be dug into the gardens next spring. In places where the soil was light and sandy, the trenches from which potatoes had been dug awaited spring replanting. Along the stream there were several small rice paddies, now drained for the winter. Rice, said Willum’s mother, was finicky stuff—­all that sprouting in advance and handwork to plant it, but it was traditional for one local family who, legend had it, had been “different” when they settled in Gravysuck. That had been generations ago, and though they now looked just like everyone else, they still grew rice and traded some of the grain for things they did not grow.

  By the time roosters began crowing from distant farmyards, they had left the village and the close-­in farms behind and had passed an evil-­smelling gray swamp with a strange, angular construction on its far side, the whole surrounded by stiff, rattling reeds that carried faded, lilylike blooms. Redshanks, traveling in his covered cage, saw fit to answer the dawn challenges of the distant cocks with a muffled response. As Abasio climbed onto the wagon seat to uncover his cage, he saw tears on Xulai’s cheeks.

  “Oh, love. What?” he asked.

  “It’s just so peaceful and perfect and fruitful and . . . well kept. And it’s all going to be gone.”

  “I know.” He reached for her hand and held it tightly in his own.

  “There’s pastures beneath the sea,” sang Rags. “Planted for you and for me. If we all behave, then beyond the grave, there’s pastures beneath the sea.”

  “Good merciful heavens, Mare, what are you on about,” said Blue. “You sound like that humanish choir in Gravysuck!”

  “They were singing it down in Gravysuck. I wandered down to listen.”

  “Really, Ragweed?” cried Xulai. “Who got them started on that?”

  The horse said thoughtfully, “Willum, I think. He and his ma make up songs. He plays a whistle kind of thing, too, with holes down the sides, and another thing like a . . . what is that thing with strings, Xulai? You play on something like it.”

  “An ondang?”

  “I think Willum calls his a bango; he bangs on it some,” said Blue, taking up the song: “There’s pleasures beneath the sea, provided for you and for me. If we behave well we will not go to hell, we’ll have pleasures beneath the sea.”

  “A boy of many talents.” Abasio grinned. “Is the local religion one that speaks a good deal about hell?”

  “Oh, horse apples,” said Ragweed. “That’s just some Lorpian idea. ­People don’t really believe in it. They figure stuff like that was made up by some cult or other that wanted to control how ­people acted. You can get rich if you control enough ­people, they say.”

  By midmorning they had left the last scattered farms behind them. Only a distant croft here and there, a cluster of sheep on the hillside, a skein of smoke from a charcoal burner’s fire, told them ­people were settled on the land. By noon they were in a forest, mixed evergreens and hardwoods, freckled with sunlight and a-­flicker-­twitter with the cries of birds and the peripatetic scurry of small creatures. The stream ran along beside them, larger than it had been near Gravysuck, for it had been joined by several streamlets on the way. The horses suggested a rest and drink, to which Abasio readily agreed: “Next opening where we can get at the water.”

  It came up soon, a long swale cutting through the forest from higher land on the left down to a winding and widening meadow on the right where the stream ran into a sizable pool fringed with reeds and tall flowering plants before leaving it to meander across a small meadow. The road split ahead of them, an old signpost at the parting directing them east to Saltgosh and Findem Pass; south by west to Asparagoose and Flitterbean.

  “Break time,” said Xulai. The babies had been angels all morning, sitting quietly, watching the world go by, comfortable in their traveling suits. By now the suits would need washing out, and the pasture near the pond would be a good place to do it. Blue and Ragweed trundled the wagon down to the pond. Humans and babies got off. Babies got stripped on the grass and their traveling suits turned inside out to be rinsed out by buckets of water. Then the babies themselves were rinsed by buckets of water before being pitched into the pool, where, with shrieks of joy, they plunged about seeing what they could find.

  “Please, not another turtle,” said Abasio.

  “I just thought,” said Xulai, “are there any poisonous water snakes?”

  “Historically there were,” he said. “I haven’t heard of any existing now.”

  “Then the one Bailai is waving around probably isn’t poisonous?”

  Abasio turned quickly, dropped his clothes in a flurry, and plunged into the water. Two of his arms grabbed the thick, black reptile, two others grabbed his son, another two his daughter, and with the last two he pulled himself onto the grass. Xulai took the children from the waving tentacles.

  “Ut’s only a water snake,” gargled Willum. “Won’t hurt nobody.”

  He was standing beside Xulai, his eyes like moons, watching Abasio’s tentacles pull him slitheringly onto the bank of the pond. He looked up at Xulai. “What’d he do?”

  “He changed into an octopus,” said Xulai matter-­of-­factly. “Before one can have a sea-­child, one has to change into what Abasio is. The next generation are born with fish tails, like the children. But the first generation comes as a . . . shock.”

  “Firs’ generation. You n’ him! You mean you can do like him? Like he did?”

  “I can, yes.”

  “Oh, wow. Could I do that?”

  “If we decided to give you a sea-­egg, yes.??
?

  “I want one!”

  Abasio slithered toward his hastily flung clothing as he said, “Willum, what in hell are you doing here?”

  “I’m off to see the world,” said the boy, totally unabashed.

  “How did you . . . ?”

  “I hid up on top under the canvas, atween the chicken coops. I crawled up in there this mornin’, after you fed ’em.”

  Xulai stared at the wagon top. She and Abasio always tied a canvas over the coops each night, as protection against predators, rain, and wind, though the sides were left partly uncovered for ventilation. Hens did not like being either stifled or wet. There was plenty of room up there for one skinny boy. “We’ll have to take him back,” said Xulai. “Really, Willum! Your mother will be so worried.”

  “I awready tol ’er I ’uz goin’. She’s the one said hide atween the chicken coops. She’s the one said best get it out of my system while I’m young. She told me what kinda ­people t’look out for. She says most ­people take pity on young’uns. When I get older, in a year or so, they won’t be so nice to me.”

  Xulai stared at Abasio, who stared back. After a time Xulai mouthed the word “bay-­bee ten-­der,” and waited while Abasio considered it. When he nodded, Xulai breathed deeply and said, “You’ll have to work to earn your way.”

  “I figgered so,” the boy said contentedly. “Older those fish tails get, the more trouble they’ll be. I knew you’d need help.” He turned curious eyes on Abasio, head tilted at the writhing eight-­legged form for a long, long moment. “Y’gonna eat that snake or let it go?”

  Chapter 4

  Saltgosh Music

  THE WORLD WAS EMPTY OF ­PEOPLE AND ­PEOPLE’S doings on the northern road. The widely scattered farms had vanished entirely. Valley led into valley, the river to the right of the road dwindling as they climbed. Tributary brooklets wriggled down from the left into the road ruts, gargling beneath the wheels before slipping away on the downhill side. Each evening they camped by running water and fell asleep to sedative night sounds: slup-­plip of ripples; intermittent ri-­i-­i-­p of grass torn by grazing horses; drowsy rustles from the chicken coops under the wagon; the fluting hoo-­whoo-­hoos of hunting owls as counterpoint to the erratic, echoic piping of bats. If it had not been for Willum, the days would have been even quieter: the plop of hooves into dry dust, the sigh of a breeze through tall, dried grasses, crisply sequential beats from invisible wings. Ducks, Abasio thought. Ducks or crows; both had distinguishable wing sounds, sharp and purposeful and far more rhythmic than the other wings they occasionally heard. What else could they be but wings? Out of utter silence, a whooosh, then a long, long silence, and then again whooosh . . . from somewhere. Of course, Willum transformed every tranquil moment into one of imminent peril.