The Color of Distance (46 page)

“There’s no point in wishing for that. My fate is to leave Narmolom before my time. I’ll just have to make the best of it.”

Ninto brushed her shoulder, and the two turned back toward home.

The village bustled for five days, preparing their farewell feast. Tinka scrubbed feast dishes. Bami and adults streamed in and out of the tree with huge baskets of food. The storeroom was ransacked for preserved delicacies.

Anito wove a funeral coffin. Because she was leaving, a tinka would be sacrificed to take her place. At least, she thought, it would be a wild tinka from the forest, not one from the village. She tried not to think about Moki, but the memories of his valiant struggle to follow them kept springing to mind.

“Rot and infestations on that bami!” Anito muttered, pushing the coffin away and pacing across the room. “If it wasn’t for him, killing a tinka wouldn’t bother me!” She grabbed her gathering sack and headed for the forest. She swung through the trees, flying from branch to branch, fleeing the image of Moki lying in the coffin she was making. Moki was a bami now, and safe from such a sacrifice, but a tinka would be killed to take her place in the coffin.

She paused, panting, beside a waterfall on the river. Someone touched her on the shoulder. It was Ukatonen.

“What’s the matter, Anito?” he asked, his skin speech pastel with gentleness.

“It’s the tinka, en. The one who will be going into my coffin instead of me. It—” She paused looking for a way to explain that wouldn’t make her sound stupid.

“It bothers you,” Ukatonen prompted.

“Yes, en. I keep seeing Moki in that basket. I know it won’t be him, but—”

“It bothers me too.”

“It does?” Anito said.

Ukatonen looked away, turning brown with shame. “It’s the new creature. She’s made me look at the tinka differently. It’s one thing to let the tinka we can’t adopt die a natural death, but this—” He paused. “I’m going to talk with the other enkar and see if we can change this.”

“But that won’t save the life of the tinka who will take my place in the coffin.”

Ukatonen clouded over with sadness. “No.”

“I could always just leave, instead of going through with the funeral 5east.”

“Would you leave Narmolom out of balance?”

Now it was Anito’s turn to look embarrassed. “I guess I can’t just leave. What can I do?”

“Try some subterfuge,” Ukatonen suggested, and then leaned forward to explain what he had in mind.

Anito flickered polite thanks as one of the elders congratulated her on the unusual design of her coffin. Mounds of funeral offerings were piled over the small body of the tinka inside it. At last the speeches were over, and it was time to weave the coffin shut. After that was finished, she and Ninto, whose coffin also held the body of a tinka, shouldered the few belongings that they were taking with them, and followed the procession to the holes where the coffins would be buried. The villagers acted as though they weren’t there. Once the coffins were woven shut, Ninto and Anito were dead to the village.

They stood off to one side, watching as the two coffins were buried near each other in neighboring sun breaks, the two tareenas as close in pretend death as they had been when they lived in the village.

Watching the villagers, Anito felt as though she really had died. There was an impenetrable barrier between her and Narmolom. Even if she returned as an enkar, the villagers would not recognize her. She would be a stranger to them. As far as Narmolom was concerned, she was dead.

Baha, soon to be Bahito, lingered a while after the others had gone, carefully arranging the branches piled on Ninto’s grave. At last he turned to leave. He paused on the edge of the clearing, and looked for a long moment at the spot where his sitik and Anito were standing. He lifted a hand in a brief, forbidden gesture of farewell, then vanished into the forest.

Anito turned to go. Ukatonen, Moki, and Eerin would fall back from the procession and dig up the tinka in her coffin and revive it. The tinka’s breathing rate was slowed so far that it wouldn’t suffocate in the short time it was buried.

Ninto caught at her arm. “Anito, I have a favor to ask you.” She was faintly brown with embarrassment.

“Yes?”

“Will you help me dig up my grave? I didn’t kill the tinka in my coffin. I-I want to set it free.”

Anito rippled laughter. “Yes, Ninto. I will help you. If you will help me dig up my coffin, and free that tinka. But if we wait, Ukatonen and the others will help us both.”

“You mean you—”

“I didn’t kill the tinka either. There’s a makino with a na seed underneath it.”

“That was clever of you. I didn’t leave anything. No tree will sprout from my coffin.” A mist of regret passed across Ninto. “I just couldn’t leave the tinka to die.”

Anito rummaged in her pack and drew out a large brown nut the size of her fist. It was a na tree seed. “It’s from one of Ilto’s trees,” she said. “I was taking it along to remember him by, but this is a better use for it. Let’s dig up the tinka and go kill something to plant the seed in.”

A soft rain began pattering down as they set to work. Ukatonen and the others arrived to help just as they uncovered Ninto’s coffin. Ninto stooped to undo the weaving, and lifted the tinka out. It was alive and unharmed. She set it gently at the base of a tree.

“It’s getting dark,” Anito said. “Let’s go hunting. The others can open my coffin.”

It was fully dark by the time they returned, dragging a large hikani bird between them. Moki was squatting beside the two tinka, watching over them while Ukatonen and Eerin finished piling the branches back on Anito’s grave. The two of them slid the ground bird into the coffin, piling the garlands over it. Ninto rewove the coffin shut, while Anito held a glow-fungus to light what she was doing. Then they reburied the coffin.

“Well, that’s done,” Ukatonen said. “We’d better go. Let’s take the tinka with us. We can leave them near the next village. It’s not likely that anyone would recognize them, but it would be better not to take that chance.”

They slung the tinka over their backs, and set off through the dark forest. Near dawn, Anito stopped.

“We’re near my sitik’s tree,” she said. “I want to visit it.”

“Go on,” Ukatonen told her. “We can wait.”

“I’ll come with you,” Ninto offered.

The young na tree rising from Ilto’s grave was now a thriving young sapling, rising toward the canopy.

“It’s doing well,” Ninto said, indirectly praising Anito’s care of the na tree.

“I hope Yahi takes good care of it,” Anito said.

“I’m sure he will, Anito. He’s a good bami. I’ve asked Baha to look after it as well.”

Anito flickered thanks. “He was a good sitik,” she added after a long pause.

“Yes,” Ninto said, putting her palm against the slender trunk of Ilto’s tree.

Anito placed her hand just below Ninto’s. They reached out with their free hands and linked, their shared sadness mingling and dissipating. Underneath Ninto’s sorrow there was an eagerness to find out what came next. Anito let that feeling flood into her, creating a seed of hope to carry inside her. She was glad that they were doing this together. It was good to have a tareena. Ninto echoed Anito’s gratitude as they slid from the link.

Day was breaking. Long rays of dawn light were turning the mist at the top of the canopy to gold.

Ninto touched Anito’s arm. “Let’s go join the others.”

Anito shouldered her pack, rested her palm one last time on Ilto’s tree in a final gesture of farewell, and turned to follow her tareena.

No, you made a mistake. Try again,” the instructor, a tall, gaunt enkar named Naratonen, told Anito.

Juna watched as Anito repeated the last phrase of a quarbirri. Still dissatisfied, the instructor turned to Ninto, and asked her to try it. She also failed.

“Like this,” Naratonen said, demonstrating a complex hand gesture. “Your color is off too, it should be lighter and more blue, and you’re fading it in too late.”

Juna stretched and yawned. She had been sitting for several hours while Naratonen taught them this quarbirri about the creation of the na tree. She was glad to be allowed to sit in on Ninto and Anito’s enkar training, but just watching demanded great patience and stamina. They had been working through this particular piece for two hours now. Soon it would be noon, and time for her to leave for lunch and then her language lessons. She was looking forward to that.

Anito and Ninto repeated the phrase of the quarbirri again.

“Better. Try again, more slowly this time.”

They did, and Naratonen flickered grudging approval. “It still needs some work, but you’re improving. That’s good enough for now. Go get some lunch and come back later.”

Juna got up to follow them, but Naratonen put a hand on her shoulder to stop her.

“Yes, en,” Juna said, afraid that he was going to complain about her watching the lessons.

“Your speaking stone,” he said. “I understand that it makes pictures of things. Did it make pictures of this lesson?”

“Yes, en.”

“May I see them?”

“Of course, en,” she said. Was the enkar going to forbid her to record his lessons?

She replayed the last fifteen minutes of the lesson. He watched intently.

“How far back does it remember?” he asked her.

“Every lesson that I have been to, it remembers, en. I have taken some parts out of some of them, places where nothing happened, or where you repeated the same movement over and over again.”

“Can I see the part of the lesson where I first showed them the movement?”

“Of course, en,” she said, skipping back to the appropriate part of the lesson.

Naratonen watched the replay of the lesson intently.

“I see,” he commented when the replay was finished. “I needed to slow down. No wonder they didn’t understand. Thank you, Eerin. That is a very useful thing,” he said, gesturing at the computer. “May I come and look at it some more when you aren’t busy?”

Juna hesitated, wondering if this was a good idea. She didn’t want the Tendu to begin coveting human technology. Still, she could hardly refuse an enkar.

“Of course, en. Perhaps tonight, after dinner?”

“Thank you,” he said.

Juna left to join Anito and Ninto for lunch. She would have to hurry. She barely had time to eat before her pupils gathered for class.

It was a big class, by Tendu standards. There were ten pupils, seated in a semicircle, waiting for her to show up. They were impressive students, attentive, tightly focused, and retentive. She rarely had to repeat herself. They could repeat long lists of words perfectly from memory. The hard part was teaching them grammar and meaning. Time and again she had to explain that color had no emotional meaning in Standard. They kept adding color to their words to express emotional content. The idea that there were separate words for happiness, laughter, anger, and so forth was hard for them to accept.

This was her third lesson in the rudiments of diplomatic protocol. It was slow going. She had to stop and explain everything. Today she was explaining the ranking of a ship’s crew.

“First there’s the captain—she’s like the chief elder of a village. She gives orders and is in charge of solving problems if something goes wrong. Then there’s the first mate—he’s in charge when the captain is asleep or resting. If the captain is sick or dies, he takes over.”

“Why don’t they just wake the captain up if something goes wrong?”

“Usually they do, but they need someone in charge when there isn’t an emergency, so that the captain can get some sleep.”

“Why don’t they just stop for the night?”

“Because they can’t,” Juna said firmly. “A ship is very complicated and they need people to watch over it constantly. It’s a bit like a raft on the river, only we’re too far from land to pull the boats ashore at night. Someone needs to steer the boat and watch out for trouble.

“Now, the second mat’e takes over when the first mate and the captain can’t. That way, there’s always someone watching over the ship who is rested and ready to deal with trouble. He ranks below the captain and the first mate.”

“Why? He does the same job.”

The class wore on slowly, each word she explained spawning dozens of new questions. As always, her pupils left the class purple with puzzlement, arguing amongst themselves.

Ukatonen swung down from an upper branch as the class broke up.

“They’re learning well,” he said.

“I suppose so,” Juna responded. “But I don’t think they understand what they’re learning.”

“Neither do Moki, Anito, or myself, but what you are teaching us now will help us understand your people more quickly.”

“I hope so.”

“You’ve been working too hard. Let’s take the afternoon off and go fishing.”

“But I have another class to teach!”

“Tell them to come back tomorrow.”

“But—” Juna began to protest.

“You teach almost every day. None of the enkar do that. Even Anito and Ninto take more time off than you do, and they’re studying to become enkar.”

“All right, let me tell Moki to pass along the word to my students.”

“I was planning on taking him along as well. You’re working him too hard. He needs some time off too.”

“But who will teach the newer classes?”

“Eerin, stop worrying. We have years before your people come back for you. I’ll take over some of the new classes, and Garitonen and some of your other advanced students can take over the others. I’ve already told Garitonen to take over Moki’s class, and he’ll tell the rest to take the day off.”

He tossed her a gathering sack full of fishing gear, and set off in search of Moki. Juna followed him. He was right. She had been working too hard. She didn’t have to teach Standard to every single Tendu on the planet. She already had the beginnings of a solid team of translators.