Rift (9 page)

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By the glow of light from the cave entrance, Nerys knew the storm had passed. Raising up on her elbow from her cocoon of blankets, she could see, beyond the blackened cookfire, the wide expanse of mudflats, and in the far distance a scoured horizon.

The others slept except for Anar, whose eyes, still rimed with sleep, were watching her mother. Nerys put her finger to her lips. She didn’t want to wake her companions and shatter the morning’s peace. Rising, she grabbed the remains of their rabbit dinner, a carcass still skewered on a stick, and padded to the shelf of rock just outside their cave.

Once this had been a cliff at the edge of the inland sea. Or so the story went. Receding year by year from its former domain, the sea relinquished these banks to the mud lands, with their red clumps of reeds. Beyond the flats, beyond the inland sea, lay rumors, wonders, and legends. They would see some of them, she allowed herself to believe. Perhaps they would find Lithia kinder in the west. There might yet be remnant populations of deer, caribou, or buffalo that had found a means to survive. In this way Nerys and her companions might live freely, never groveling to the orthong.

But no, that was a fantasy. Food might be had, but
their lives would be short. Her father died at thirty of indigo, and her mother at thirty-four. And if tales were true, the orthong would fix their lungs and all else that might afflict them. Old women had been seen among the orthong, it was said, women forced to bear unspeakable litters until their wombs turned to jelly. A shadow passed over her for a moment, to think of the ruthless barter: food in return for the bearing of orthong young. By some lights, it was a harsh trade—to those, perhaps, who had never gone to bed hungry and woke to find no breakfast. Better to starve, the menfolk said. But then
they
had no choice.

Nerys cracked open the rabbit bones and sucked on the marrow. Anar crept to her side, saying nothing, but reaching out a thin hand for a share. Nerys let her daughter finish the largest bones while she gazed at the clouds of birds bursting through the clear morning air.

“May I go down to hunt for clams, Mama?”

Nerys nodded her permission and Anar threw the bone scraps over the cliff.

“Did you think the rest of us need no breakfast?” Eiko’s snarl was hard to mistake.

Nerys rose to confront the woman. “There was nothing but bones. No feast, Eiko.”

At Eiko’s glare, Anar set her mouth, not liking the woman’s carping. Then she left the cave, scrambling down the cliffside and scattering nesting birds in white and raucous eruptions.

“Hunters should eat first,” Eiko groused, pulling on her boots.

“Hunters need to hunt,” Nerys said. “Then we eat.” To avoid dealing with Eiko, Nerys turned back to watch the dawn, sparkling orange in the rivulets of seawater, which now at high tide pierced the flats like fingers of fire.

Thallia rose ponderously from her bedroll. Sometimes
slow of mornings, the big woman was strong as a boar and as graceful a runner as Nerys had ever seen.

“If our morning bickering is now done, perhaps someone would build a fire.” She spoke wearily but with a tinge of humor, softening the tension in the quarters.

Nerys prodded the fire pit for coals and in a few minutes they were warming themselves around the fire. With aching bellies, they quickly turned to talk of the day’s hunt. Here in this rookery, a meal of seabird might be had, but the creatures looked to be little more than bone and feather, and were hard to catch. They needed larger prey. Today it would be marsh deer.

Eiko had first spotted the deer at the base of a cliff, just to the south. The arms of the headlands formed a natural pen where they might trap a deer. But it would be hard with only three hunters.

“Anar can help,” Nerys said, her voice casual.

Thallia studied the fire, noncommittal.

“This is no child’s game,” Eiko said. “If she prattles, the deer will flee.”

“She knows how to keep silence. You’ve already taught her to swallow her voice.” Nerys didn’t bother to hide the bitterness in her voice. Anar spoke seldom, knowing how she drew Eiko’s fire.

“Someone had to teach her a child’s place.”

Thallia nudged the fire with a stick, lighting the tip into flame and shaking it into an ember.

“Already this
child
rises before you of a morning, Eiko,” Nerys said, “and is out hunting clams. Perhaps you’ll have your breakfast yet.”

Thallia blew on the stick, flaring the ember. “I say we take up three watch points in the grass near the alcove and spear a fat buck.” She fixed each of them in turn with her steely eyes. “Easier to overlook each other’s faults on a full belly, eh?”

Eiko snorted. “Give me a haunch of deer and I’ll even kiss the brat.”

“Now that would spoil Anar’s appetite, Eiko,” Nerys said.

At that moment Anar scrambled into the cave, clutching the front of her bulging jacket. “Mama! Look at what I’ve found.” She unbuttoned her coat and out clattered a dozen mollusk shells and sand dollars left by the extreme high tides of the storm. She held one up and turned it before the fire to admire its pearly inner lining.

“A pretty little shell,” Eiko said, droll as might be.

“Look, this one has little spines,” Anar said.

Nerys patted her daughter’s arm. “Take these now, Anar. We must leave for the hunt.”

Her daughter settled before the fire to inspect her shells while Eiko grabbed her jacket and spear and stalked from the cave.

Buttoning her jacket, Thallia raised the fur hood over her head. She paused in front of Nerys. “Curb your bile, Nerys.” Her face held that neutrality that made her hard to argue with. “You broke the agreement. We said no children. I don’t begrudge Anar so far, but you break your word, you make enemies. That’s a fair trade.”

Nerys kicked at the fire, sending dirt scudding over the flames. “Let the fire burn down, Anar,” she said. “We don’t need smoke to mark our camp.”

“Can I come, Mama?”

“Not this time, sweet one.” She nodded at her daughter and followed Thallia down the cliffside.

Eiko was far ahead, striding across an expanse of marsh dotted with tussocks of short, reddish reeds. The reddish clumps of the mudflats were a sullen reminder that they must find meat today.

Red was the color of old Lithia. Her palette was brownish and dark here in the scattered saltwater reeds, knee-high and fluttering in the wind. On higher
ground the old hues broke out in blood red, crimson, and dark wine, where centuries-old pods and seeds found new purchase in the changing nursery of Lithia’s soils. Sometimes they followed chemical seams in the ground, or sprouted on the rotting mats of Terran meadows. Other times, a blanket of burnt umber would simply wrap around a still-living Terran tree, the two of them living together, yet apart.

But however it erupted, Lithia’s red always meant the same thing: poison. Its toxins killed quick or slow, but the end was never in doubt. Nor could the claves raise any red thing at all, including tomatoes, berries, beets, cherries, or apples, lest their red mask Lithia’s intrusions.

A briny wind slurred through Nerys’ hair as she hurried to catch up with Thallia. Though she put little store in religion, she made a quick prayer for a good kill and prompt departure from these flatlands, so exposed to enemy eyes from the surrounding cliffs. They had seen no evidence of their pursuers for two days, but it wasn’t just their own clave they had to evade—any other clave would also draw hasty conclusions from women traveling alone. Hatred of the orthong was reflexive. Their monstrous aspect and viciousness, along with the defection of human women, combined to inspire a virulent hate, tainted with the revulsion of bestiality. Nerys suspected that an even stronger—if unspoken—anger welled from jealousy. Those who ran to the orthong would eat well, and they would live. For that, neither the aliens nor the women could be forgiven.

She scanned the high bluffs. Twisted trees rose in black silhouettes against the rising sun. Nerys reached into her pocket and fingered the hard, vermilion berries she and the others kept in case they had need to choose a quick death.

Ahead, Eiko and Thallia had taken up their posts amid widely separated clumps of weeds some hundred
feet from the salt lick alcove. No sign of deer. Nerys hunkered down to wait.

The sun was high before they spotted a group of six does emerging from a path in the headlands. The animals paused at the base a long while, as though reconsidering their venture. Finally they began a dawdling procession toward the alcove.

Nerys couldn’t see Thallia and Eiko, but she was sure they were gripping their spears as hard as she.

The plan was for Eiko and Nerys to run forward at each edge of the cove, forcing the deer straight out the middle, where Thallia would be waiting. Eiko would sound the cry, and on that signal Nerys would rise up, forming the left-hand flank. Thallia carried two spears in case her first missed its mark, but her first throw was likely to be her best.

The does were in the gentle arm of the cliff, licking salt. On her right, Nerys saw with dismay that Eiko was stealing forward to a closer patch of weeds; foolish move, but it put her in a better position to block their southern escape, and the deer did not take alarm. Nerys matched her advance, but froze when one of the animals abruptly lifted its head. In an instant, all the does reacted, heads snapping up in spring-loaded readiness.

Eiko charged. It was a bad move, with Nerys still well back of Eiko’s position. The deer pivoted in unison from Eiko, and seeing an opening between Nerys and the cliff, they sprang for it, with Nerys’ desperate spear throw falling a full twenty feet short. The women gave pursuit, but soon the deer had far outpaced them and disappeared up the defile from which they’d come. Eiko’s curses spoke for them all, but the only sound Nerys made was her stomach registering a gurgling reproach.

Panting, they rested for a moment before resuming their run down the beach. Alerted now, the deer would
be hard to catch. Still, the women had no choice but to track them.

Eiko had ruined the plan, breaking position, and she needed dressing down, but Thallia’s pointed look at Nerys warned her off. They hurried down the beach in silence, Eiko having the grace to be ashamed.

With the deer fled into the headlands, the mudflats stretched barren before them, pimpled with batches of old Lithia and the occasional dusting of birds. For the first time since their escape from the clave, the thought of starvation dipped into Nerys’ mind.

Their course led them past their cliff hideaway. Anar was waiting for them.

“Tell your brat to hunt shells,” Eiko murmured, pushing ahead. Then she stopped in front of the child.

Nerys hurried forward, afraid that Eiko would take out her anger on the girl. But following Eiko’s gaze, she looked down to find a yearling deer bleeding into the sand, dead from Anar’s spear.

“It ran straight to me, Mama!” Anar said, still wild-eyed from her exploit.

Nerys laughed out loud as the women stared in amazement. The animal, with her daughter’s spear impaled in its gut, was as large as Anar herself. Her joy in Anar’s accomplishment was surpassed only by her ravenous hunger. Here was their feast, after all. Even Eiko seemed uncertain whether to laugh or scowl.

Thallia shouldered forward, placing her hand on Anar’s shoulder. “Well done, child,” she said. “You are our best hunter, this day.”

Anar’s smile almost lifted off her face.

“Eiko,” Nerys said, “give Anar a hand to haul her kill up to the cave, will you?” They shared a long look between them. Eiko broke contact first, bending to her task.

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