IGMS Issue 44 (11 page)

"This year, I will join the hunt," I said.

Pehlu nodded. He lay in the dried leaves beneath the trees, his legs folded beneath him. We'd gone over this a hundred times, each time changing slight details.

"When we chase you toward the pens, look for me in the line. Once I see you, I'll trip, and then you jump over me and escape."

His nose twitched, his jaw moving slightly as though he were chewing cud. "I don't know if I can be quick enough."

"I'll fall on the people next to me. You have to be quick enough. It's the only chance we have."

"The only chance
I
have. If I die, you will live on with your people. Why can't you just tell them not to hunt the
kailun
?"

I sat next to him and placed a hand on his back. His fur was coarse and slick. "It's not so simple. None of them want to die. And I'm not yet grown; no one will listen to me. It's like being part of a wave. I can't leap free and tell the rest of the water to stay on the shore." The sun beat down on my shoulders and sweat prickled on my back. "We'll get you out of this. Maybe when I'm older I can do more."

He leaned toward me and placed his head in my lap. I rubbed the nubs of his horns; he'd told me they itched. "I wish we both could do more."

We formed a line at the border of the city at dawn. When we stood shoulder-to-shoulder, my people stretched nearly from one end of the island to the other. I shivered, tied my shawl tighter, and looked down the line. My mother had not yet joined me; she had gone to get her spear.

On my left, my cousins, though older now, still jostled one another. They swatted each other with their sticks. I held mine loosely by my side; it felt as though I held a snake.

The pens stood on the southernmost tip of the island, just before the beach. It would take us until afternoon to get there, driving the deer and
kailun
before us.

"Here." A hand touched my shoulder. My mother stood behind me, offering me a spear. "You're grown now. You needn't use a stick."

I took it, the handle smooth beneath my palms. My fingers trembled. I think I mumbled some sort of thanks, but my tongue was as a piece of bread in my mouth.

She smiled and opened her mouth as if to speak, but the horn blared and then we were moving -- a single solid line of people, footsteps grinding into the dirt, sounding like nothing so much as the hammering of one piece of bamboo into another. I marched with them, one shoulder pressed to my mother's and the other to my cousin's, my heartbeat echoing in my ears like I stood in the vastness of an empty cavern.

The deer fled before us. So did the wild boar, the crabs, and the sandpipers.

I could not tell which were
kailun
and which were not.

Would I even recognize Pehlu? I shouted with the others, whacked the bushes with my spear. This is what we did, how we lived. I fell into the rhythm and it was easy.

I saw him. He didn't run when he spotted us. He faced us down as the other deer ran, his legs tense and his eyes wide. I staggered into my mother, but Pehlu called out to me before I fell.

"What of the others? I'm sorry, but I cannot. I must try to do more."

He dashed away as the brush scraped my knees, as I lost my grip on my spear. When I opened my mouth, only a wordless moan escaped.

"Ulaa," my mother said as she hauled me to my feet, "are you hurt?"

I wrenched my arm free and I ran. I ran with the deer, after them, searching for Pehlu, my Pehlu, who ran races with me on the sand and caught pebbles that I threw into the air. All I saw were the white flashes of deer's tails, the kick of tiny hooves. This was a dream, a terrible dream, and I would wake up soon in my fourth-level bed and I would creep to the shore.

"Pehlu!" I cried out. "Pehlu, please!"

I ran with the deer into the pens, the bamboo fences higher than my head. Pehlu did not reply to me; only the shouts of my people and the pounding of their feet met my ears. Around me, the deer circled one another, their eyes rolling with fear.

"Only a good mother gives her children a name," came the words from behind me, in a roar. I whirled in a circle, my arms outstretched, hopeless and lost as a blind old man.

The deer pressed against one another and the walls, nostrils flaring. I went to them, squeezed my body between theirs. "Pehlu," I whispered.

"What do I see before me but a herd of wild animals, all of them brought up by bad mothers?"

They could not help themselves.

The
kailun
leapt forward, toward the spears, the bows, and the stamping feet. "I have a name!" "I am Kaivuliran!" "Mine is Norisaka!" "I have a wonderful mother!"

And each
kailun
that spoke was felled, the blood running from their noses, my people stepping over them to catch the fleeing spirits in jars. I caught glimpses as the world turned around me: my cousins laughing, one with blood on his stick, the bright blue lights of the
kailun
spirits, and my mother's face, round and dark.

"Ulaa," she said, taking my arm. "Ulaa, you should not be in here. You could get hurt."

Oh I'd been hurt already, though I could not find the words. I tore from her once more, pushing through the crowd of people -- so many people, their sweat mingling with my tears and the taste of bile in the back of my throat. I couldn't speak, couldn't breathe.

And then I was free of them, in the forest, my feet pounding into plants and twigs and dirt, until I couldn't run anymore, until my legs gave way and I crawled beneath the low branches of a tree.

I cried enough tears to fill a bowl. Angry tears, sad tears. I should have tried to do more, no matter that it was hopeless. Now I was bereft of the only friend I had in the world.

The brush stirred behind me. "Ulaa?"

I whirled my head, my hair stuck to my cheeks with my tears.

Pehlu. He approached hesitantly, his tiny hooves finding purchase between the dried leaves on the ground.

Had I dreamed the hunt, or did I dream now? "Pehlu, is that you?"

He folded his legs beneath himself and thrust his head beneath my palm. He trembled at my touch. "Yes. You saved my life."

"Me? How?"

"I tried to save them. I tried so hard. I told them not to answer when your people spoke. It is a great failing of ours, that we cannot help but respond. But though I felt the urge to speak, I knew what your people said was not true. They said that only a good mother gives her children a name. You are not my mother, yet you named me. My mother named me Peluvisinaka, and you named me Pehlu, and I kept my silence.

"I kept my silence while the rest of them died."

He shook and I held him, and as my people passed our hiding spot on their way back to the city, I saw first-grandmother. She stopped in her step, her gaze going to the trees. And then she turned her head, and by all the spirits, the sky, and the ocean itself -- I could have sworn her gaze found our hiding spot at the base of the tree.

I could have sworn she looked straight into my eyes.

That evening, my mother found my fourth-level bed in the sleeper and sat upon the edge. I lay there as the light faded, listening to the low murmur of voices and the soft breathing of those asleep.

She placed a hand on my forehead, brushing away the stray hairs. "Ulaa, you've been acting strange all day. What's been bothering you?"

I wished I could tell her, but I'd tried to speak to her about the
kailun
before. The pallet above me bulged and shifted as my cousin settled into his bed. "I don't know."

From below, on the ground, "I think I know." My mother's taut expression was enough to tell me who spoke, but I peered over the edge of the bed, just to be sure.

First-grandmother stood there, her white hair bright against the stone floor. Outside, the wind picked up, howling through the slats, making the bamboo creak as it swayed. "Come here, child."

I obeyed, because I obeyed in all things except when it related to Pehlu. My mother squeezed my arm as I passed her, a warm, comforting gesture. When I finished climbing down the ladder and pivoted, first-grandmother had approached, her face a handspan from mine. Dark eyes peered at me. "You've befriended one of them, haven't you?"

"Befriended one of who?"

First-grandmother let out her breath in a sigh. "I'm not a fool. I befriended one too, once."

I was about to ask what happened to
her kailun
, when I realized what must have happened. She was first-grandmother, after all.

Others began to sit up in their beds, or to hang over the edges, to watch our exchange. First-grandmother rarely set step from her house except for the hunt and for the ceremonies. Her hand darted out and seized my chin, and I felt the rasp of her fingernails against my skin. "You should not try to protect them. Do you want your cousins to die? Your aunts and uncles? Your mother?"

My heartbeat thrummed, like a sandpiper's. For a moment, I wanted to lower my eyes, to whisper
no
, to climb back into my bed and forget this day. But Pehlu would have been stronger. He had courage. He'd tried to do more.

I held absolutely still, but pitched my voice so that others might hear. "It is not a choice between wanting my family to die and not wanting them to die. I do not want to
kill
." My gaze flicked to my mother, who clutched her gown around the neck, as though it were too tight. There was no turning back. "There are too many of us, first-grandmother."

She released my chin, and I thought she was about to leave. But she only retreated a step and addressed the entire sleeper. "Get up," she called to them. "Get your spears. We missed a
kailun
, and we must find it."

I didn't wait for more words. I shoved first-grandmother aside and threw open the door into an oncoming storm.

"Ulaa!" My mother's voice tore away with the wind, fading into the roar of waves against the shore.

I ran toward the ocean. The rain began as my feet hit the sand. Behind me, first-grandmother would be gathering all the people -- so many people.

"Pehlu!" I called out. I shouted his name, the name I'd given him, over and over, and only the wind answered. I went to the spot where I'd found him as a sandpiper, to the place where he'd emerged as a crab, and even to the bushes where I'd found him as a deer. He did not appear. I went to the waves. White crests formed at the tops, battering the fishermen's boats tied to the pier. Rain soaked my hair, slicking it to my head. I could not believe this was how it ended.

"Ulaa, I am here." A brown snout emerged from the waves, covered in whiskers, and then a rounded head with tiny ears. A seal. He dove into the foam and then emerged again. "Do you like it?"

My smile wobbled. "I do. You are very pretty. But they are looking for you, Pehlu. You need to go."

"What will happen to you?"

I didn't know. Would first-grandmother kill me, the way she'd killed her
kailun
? If she could do it to her
kailun
friend, why not to one of her wayward descendants? I threatened to disrupt her way of life.

A shout sounded from behind me. I turned my head to see people spilling onto the sand, as though it were late morning and not evening. They did not carry baskets and blankets; they carried torches and spears.

"Come with me," Pehlu said. "Quickly. Maybe I can keep you safe."

I went to the nearest boat, and unwound the rope keeping it moored to the pier. Pehlu took the cord between his teeth and I hopped aboard.

My people spread across the beach, and by the time one of them saw me, I was a speck in the roiling seas. Lightning outlined the towering sleepers of the city, which reached into the sky as if trying to grasp the clouds.

Pehlu pulled my boat through the surf while I gripped the side, and each time a wave swelled, the ocean tried to wash me away.

It was the fate my mother had always feared for me.