Fish Tails (40 page)

“I get very angry,” Xulai mumbled, muffled by his chest. “Humans are capable of such dreadful stupidities!”

“How many men and how many women in your village?” Abasio asked Needly, without releasing Xulai. “Do you know?”

Needly laughed, this time a sad trickle of descending sound. “Those men who came hunting me, there was one from each of the ten houses in Tuckwhip.”

Xulai struggled away from Abasio. “So your Pa . . . I mean, Gralf was with them!”

Needly shook her head. “No. The youngest one, the one the Griffin dropped on his head? That was my brother . . . half brother, Grudge. A season ago in those ten houses. Besides Trudis, there were four women past bearing, and three girls: Needly, Flinch, and Slow: eight females in all, and Flinch and Slow are . . . Grandma used the word ‘retarded.' When Grandma was killed and I ran away, that left six. Trudis won't have any other children, she's had none since me, and I think Grandma did something to be sure she won't. I was the oldest girl, the one Digger wanted.”

“So there are no fertile women left, and two little girls who might bear children in seven or eight years. If Digger hadn't taken them and killed them first. And that's it. How many males?”

Needly shook her head. “It's hard to say exactly how many. The ones who don't have houses come and go. Sometimes they go live in the woods or in another village; sometimes they're counted and sometimes not, but there are at least fifteen grown men and as many or more in the bunch of little boys living closer to Tuckwhip than anywhere else.”

“What about the other villages?” Abasio asked.

“The other villages may still have a fertile woman or two, but their number is . . . similarly disproportionate.” She lowered her head, tears still falling into her lap.

“Needly, don't . . .” Xulai left Abasio to put her arms around the child. “I'm so sorry. I've upset you . . .”

Needly gasped, her throat full. “It's just, Xulai, I do miss her so much . . . Talking with you the way Grandma and I used to was almost like having her back, but then you went . . . strange. You sounded like a
Pa
! Horrible and dangerous. Missing her makes me want to cry. Things were just awful in Tuckwhip, but, oh, sometimes we had such . . . such joy together.”

Xulai hugged the girl close. “I apologize for sounding like a . . . an inquisitor. Abasio is right. I dig like a terrier even when I shouldn't. You speak in whatever way you are more comfortable, love. Abasio and I enjoy literate speech, though we try to speak as those around us do!”

Needly wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “There's one more thing about Tuckwhip so you'll understand the whole thing.” Her face said what her mouth did not: she meant these to be the last words about Hench Valley, for she was desperately weary of it. “When the men and boys decide they need to steal women, the villages get together and build a huge bonfire. The men and the boys take their bows and axes, they make a barrel of extra-­strong beer and drink it, they whoop and dance around the fire. When they're tired of doing that, if they're not too drunk, they go off to
steal a woman
just like the myth tells them to.”

“Did it happen while you were there?” Xulai asked.

Needly nodded, gesturing openhanded, as though discarding something. “I remember the fire and the dancing, but I think I was only five the last time it happened.”

Abasio said, “Let me guess. No one came back.”

“No,” said Needly with a crooked smile. “Grandma made a list of all the males who went, and she and I watched for more than a year. She made it a game, asking the women when she went to tend them, had they seen this one or that one. None of them came back.”

Xulai said, “We know Saltgosh made itself raider-­proof, and it's the closest. So, given the village life as you describe it, the young men who are supposedly hunting woman actually just get out of sight of the village, wash off the paint, and keep going.”

“That's what Grandma told me. She said the woman-­stealing myth was a kind of safety valve for the village. Every ten or fifteen years, if there got to be too many postpubertal males to feed, they'd go through what she called the ‘woman-­stealing rite,' but once they were away from the villages, they'd pick up whatever pack they'd hid somewhere and wander off in any direction that looked interesting. She knew that because whenever it happened, the women left behind in Tuckwhip always looked for the men's clothes—­nobody has much more than one spare shirt or so, not in Tuckwhip—­so the women would want to find any that might go to waste. They never found any at all.”

“Which meant they'd hidden their clothes and packs in the woods somewhere?”

“Yes. The fire and the dance and all was just . . . kind of a lie they all told each other.”

Abasio mused, “I think the behavior is fairly common. ­People have certain acceptable rites or observances.
At this new moon we eat apples. At midwinter, we build bonfires at the old sun's death and pray for the new baby sun to be born.
­People grow up: they learn the words; they memorize the story; it gets to be habit. They don't believe that the observance is really necessary, but they go through the motions. Where I grew up, we enjoyed the festivals mostly for the food! There was almost always special food!”

“It's not just Hench Valley, then,” said Needly, with a sigh. “Grandma said if we peeled away all the stories, the real reason the men went and didn't come back was there was nothing to stay for and nothing to return to. What is there in the valley? A few sheep. Not enough anymore for spinning much thread, weaving much cloth. Grandma used the loom a few times; sometimes the women gave her thread as payment for her help, and I have one shirt made from homespun. Cloth was something the men traded for up at the pass. There were a few small fields of wheat; some oats; some barley. A few vegetables in the house gardens, but the women do that. There are a few fruit trees, but no good apple trees anymore. The ­people who knew how to graft the good apple trees died long and long ago . . .” She stared into nothing. “Grandma had one little tree, off in the woods. She'd grafted it herself, long ago, off an old one in the village that she knew wouldn't last much longer. It had tiny, bright red apples; four would fit in my hand. They were so sweet, they tasted of heaven . . .”

Xulai put some honey in a cup of tea and offered it to Needly. “Have some sweetness here, too. So the men really don't do anything but drink?”

Needly took the cup gratefully. “Oh, they're not totally idle. They can raise barley and make beer, but they need to buy the barrels to put it in and to buy other kinds of drink. To make money they spend all their winters digging in the buried city that extends under the whole valley. They dig for parts of machines, for glass, for a metal that runs like water—­live-­silver, they call it. Gralf had a hoard of gold—­we found it one time, an amazing amount of it. They hoard it. Grandma said many of the men had hoards. Old Digger did. They may use a little of it to trade for cloth and things they need, like knives and scythes. Some of the things they find, they keep. Things they can use.”

“Or things women can use?”

“Only if it's something the women use for the men. Like cooking. The men don't cook because that's women's work, but a man might buy a pan or bring one he's dug out, because he knows it takes a pan to cook what he likes to eat. The men without women mostly end up chewing parched grain or eating half-­burned bits of whatever they can kill. A man won't buy cloth for women, but he'll buy it for himself. Maybe he'll ask her how much he needs for a shirt. She'll tell him twice as much as it really takes. She makes the shirt and hides all the leftover and scraps. She cuts up the big pieces and sews them back together so they'll look like scraps. She makes her clothes, the children's clothes, out of that. And she hides what she manages to spin and weave and uses it for herself or her children.”

“I should think the men would see . . .”

Needly shook her head impatiently. “Xulai, you
have to look at something to see it
! A man wants hot tea in the morning. That's what he looks for. If it's there, good; if not, he hits the woman. He never watches her making it. He never watches her do anything. What she does is unimportant.” She stood at the edge of the road, looking out over the far prairies, wiping at her cheeks with the back of her hands.

Xulai sat next to Abasio, who whispered to her. “I think you probably sound a good deal like the child's grandmother, love. It's part of what's troubling her. She talks to you as she would have talked to her grandmother, and when you get imperious, it's as though Granny slapped her face.”

“Oh, Abasio! I don't mean to.”

“I know, but when you become the Princess Xulai, none of your adoring courtiers are quite sure what you mean to be.”

“Well, no more inquisition. If you see me doing it, scratch your nose. Or shake me. Or something.” She stood up and went to empty the dishpan at the side of the clearing where they'd camped, stopping to put her arms around Needly, which she had not done until now, and giving her a close hug. She was a child. Willum's age. A child. No matter she spoke like a professor and acted like a judge, she was a child!

Willum, seeing this, went to Needly's side and gave her a slice of apple, neatly peeled and only very slightly grubby. “I think it'd be more comf'tuble to jus' sort of not think about those old myth things.”

Needly gave him her best excuse for a smile and went to help Xulai clean the campsite and stow things ready for departure. Let them get on their way and think about something absolutely . . . different. External, like . . . ah, Lom! Lying on their straw mattresses under the wagon, they talked about all sorts of things, and last night Willum had told her about that distant world where the two Earth ships had gone all that long time ago. Did they have myths in that world? They spoke of how wonderful it would be to have a clean, new world without any of the old myths in it.

Once they were under way, they all tried to throw off the morning's preoccupation, but their early-morning thoughts had set the mood for the day. Willum was wondering if there might have been myths back in Gravysuck that he had not known were myths. Needly had been thrown back into grieving for Grandma. Xulai was seriously considering using
ul xaolat
to jump to Hench Valley and obliterate it. Except . . . Needly's grandma had told Needly the place was . . . necessary. Abasio was reviewing the dreams he'd been having, dreams, often repeated, and varying from the pertinent to the ridiculous, each with its own internal inconsistencies. When he had been Feblia, Feblia had known what shlubbing was. Feblia, the character, had known! And Abasio had known that Feblia had known. BUT he, Abasio,
did not know
. How could he be aware of knowing something in a dream that he knew nothing about when he was awake? And the creature he had bumped into, Fixit. He . . . or she or it . . . made no sense. Too many things made no sense. He wanted not to think at all, simply to let the time pass until supper, until the warmth of the fire, the aroma and taste of food, the bedtime comfort of Xulai's arms. Or—­if she was still feeling snappishly regal—­he would simply regard her simmering warmth as a hearth fire to sleep beside—­not too closely.

Xulai said, “We should be seeing Kim soon, shouldn't we?” she asked. “It's getting dark.”

Abasio started out of his self-­absorption. “No, not really. The plain below is still sunlit. The sun's directly behind the peak, and we're in the shadow of the mountain. We'll see him soon.”

Xulai murmured, “I've been wondering how we could get the babies safely around the Catlanders, if we have to.”

“I think the Lady Animal would help you,” offered Needly. “If she thought it would help us help her . . .”

“No!” Abasio growled. “I don't know what weapons those gangers have, Needly! The Griffin isn't immortal. When she came down on us yesterday, Xulai could easily have killed the great creature. Some of those same weapons could have ended up in ganger hands. It's not likely, but it is possible! I don't want to put the great creature at risk: not she, not her child, not their kindred. I know . . . I know how she feels.” He, too, had felt the loss of marvelous creatures. Marvelous ­people. He felt that one more such loss might . . . break him in two. There had been too many losses.

“Abasio is right,” Xulai agreed, having given him an analytical glance. “When the Griffin appeared, I was startled into action without any thought at all. Evil things happen when ­people are badly surprised. Let's not borrow trouble. We hoped to come out of the mountains into Artemisia, and we still may do that that. Just because that group over the mountain was made up of gangers doesn't mean we'll find them at the end of this road. Maybe Abasio, as ‘Vahso,' should leave us somewhere and reconnoiter down below. I don't want Kim encountering gangers while he's driving horses that may have been stolen.”

Blue threw up his head, jingling the harness he wore. “They weren't stolen. That fat ganger, back there when we got Kim loose, he said they'd bought those horses before they started up the mountain.”

“Bought?” asked Xulai. “Not thieved? That surprises me!”

Blue nodded. “The men talked and talked. They said that Sybbis doesn't want any trouble from the Artemisians, so she gave her men money to buy horses so nobody'll claim they're stolen. That is, not
originally stolen.
I 'spose we stole 'em, though.” He whinnied laughter.

“Considering how they intended to use the horses, my conscience is clear,” Abasio snarled.

Needly, hearing him, was pleased. Evidently her grandma's definition of morality was shared by other ­people, some of them, at least.
“So long as unnecessary pain is avoided, don't worry what happens to the guilty. Just be
dead sure
they're guilty before they're
surely dead
!”