The Ghost Sister (18 page)

I turned to say something to Sereth and saw that Morrac was staring at his twin with an expression I was unable to interpret. Since their initial spat, they had barely spoken during the journey. An undercurrent of poison seemed to
flow beneath their words, like a serpent in a tidal pool. But then I dismissed it, painfully conscious of the fact that I would soon be leaving my lover behind and that I wouldn't see him again for days.

Damoth had already set, but the western sky was still crimson with the last of the light, a fire above the islands which, invisible before, now rose stark and black. On the farthest peak, a beacon burned above the squat tower of the Etarres lighthouse. The outer edges of the square were lost in the soft, purple shadows of the summer twilight. Behind, the lamps of the town had been lit and I could see movement as people came out onto the balconies and verandas of the tall houses. At the top of the town, a symbol, glowing red, hung in the limpid air, and I recognized it for the win-tervine mark of Morrac's clan House, Rhir Dath, guarded and secret behind its upraised defenses. I thought for a moment of how it would be if I could lay aside my duty to Hessan's house in Tetherau, and go with Morrac to the dark rooms of Rhir Dath, have him lie in my arms in the heart of the summer night as the house curved silent above us, and say everything that I'd never been able to say before.

We watched as the boat drew near to the wharf, its ocher sails fluttering in the evening wind from the sea. A globe lamp on the topmast announced its presence as it slipped into the calm harbor of the port. We collected our baggage and stood in anticipation, waiting to embark, but it was some time before the crowd thinned. Morrac said nothing to me as we waited, but as our turn to embark grew closer he embraced me suddenly and fiercely, as if he'd had to make up his mind to do so. Then I felt his warm mouth against mine as he kissed me. I was painfully aware of the whole length of his body, the elegant frame taut against my own. He held me so tightly that we might have been going forever, rather than just a few days. Then he released me, and after a moment's hesitation put his arms around his sur-
prised sister. He whispered something in her ear, and she gave a faint smile. It was time to be going.

We climbed the gangway, feeling the shallow dip and wallow of the boat beneath us. We were the last to board and, leaving the promissory note for service, took our place on deck amongst the bundles as the boat cast off from shore. I saw Morrac fade into the darkness as he turned to go.

We've been wrangling for over a day about what to do with Mevennen. Bel's all for taking her to the ruins right away and showing her the generator to bear out our story, but I think we should let the girl settle down before we start battering her with news of our discoveries. And I'd like to find out more about her before she gets distracted by the wonders of Outreven. I talked to her again last night, and once again we came back to this question of the bloodmind.

Mevennen's people remind me of an old legend that I came across in Irie St Syre: tales of the
loup-garou
, the werewolf, changing from human to animal and back again as the moon waxes and wanes. A monster, I always thought, but ultimately a tragic one. These people are psychologically akin to the
loup-garou.
They seem to have developed societal mechanisms for dealing with their reversions, a dysfunctional culture which has turned a curse of nature into— what? Hardly a virtue, but at least a meaningful part of life. I have so many questions about this part of their natures. Is the bloodmind something that Elshonu Shikiriye tried to breed into the colonists, and if so, why? What benefits would it confer upon a society—if any? Or is it
just a genetic accident, and if so, could it be corrected? What would happen to the Mondhaith if they were freed from its curse—how would they develop? It occurs to me that perhaps they have found the way to deal with the worst part of their nature: to give it outlets for catharsis rather than denying it wholesale. Maybe—but though there is no religious framework to give moral impetus, from what Eleres and Mevennen have told me, it remains an unsettled alliance between the two aspects of nature.

I remember another story that they tell on parts of Irie St Syre, a very old tale from one of the ancient religions of Earth. I recalled it in the orchard when I was waiting for Bel to find Mevennen, and it keeps coming back to mind. The story is about the garden named Eden, and the two people who are cast out because they gain self-awareness and language. This world reminds me of that garden, but the legends say also that it was a paradise. Not so here. But perhaps that other garden was no true paradise, either, and its inhabitants might not see fit to return to it if they could. Yet, religion or not, if troubled Eleres is anything to go by, these people of Monde D'Isle still seem to suffer over what they cannot help, and maybe this is what makes us all human, in the end.

And we're hardly perfect, either. It's as though, having failed to evolve anything better than an uneasy and ultimately disastrous relationship to our homeworld of Earth, we're now incapable of leaving anything alone. Everything has to be made to fit something else; we have a pathological need to impose order. But that's an issue for long discussion, and I'd rather not go head to head with Dia again just yet.

As for personal matters, Bel Zhur seems happier now that Mevennen's here. Bel's very solicitous and protective toward her, and Dia just goes about with an air of vindication. I suspect Dia disapproves of Bel's increasing obsession with Mevennen, but I don't know when, or whether, she'll
say anything. Bel's twenty-four years old and she's still blaming herself for her lover's death. I've never been much of a one for that fey left-me-here-on-the-cold-hill's-side quality, but Mevennen, bless her heart, has got it in abundance and so had Eve Cheng. I suspect it's more as a result of Mevennen's illness than some innate defect of character, but it's certainly appealing to a particular type of person. Such as Bel Zhur.

I've spent a lot of time talking to Mevennen already, and she's managed to shed some light on many of the things— biology aside—that have been preoccupying me about this society. The culture's rather more sophisticated than I'd thought: literature and art are on the rise, and the history of the past few hundred years is vaguely known. Mevennen talks of history and memory as though speaking of a place: you can see the past, she says. It stretches out before you, as though you're standing on a high hill, so that you see most clearly that which is most recent. The distant past is like a far country, and though you may catch glimpses of it now and again, it is hard to reach. I suppose that in a society as preoccupied as these folk seem to be with the land, many metaphors are geographical.

The
satahrachin
, Mevennen says, are the wisest of all, for they can experience not only the world itself, but also the past. Although there's no organized religion (which, I must say, is a bit of a relief); the Mondhaith don't worship anything, nor do they believe in gods. The role of the priestess on Irie—the keepers of memory and lore, the guardians of past and future knowledge—is taken by the
sa-tahrachin.
I asked Mevennen what is so special about these people, and as far I can understand it, it relates partly to memory, and partly to the fact that they possess a greater capacity to control the bloodmind. The
satahrachin
resemble normal humans far more closely than the rest of the Mondhaith; it is as though they form the missing bridge between us.

I asked Mevennen if she knows why some people are
sa-tahrachin
and others not. She said no, and that she does not know why some folk end up more “human” than the rest. It happens fairly rarely. I'd suggest that it is a recessive gene, a random reversion to original type (more or less, since the
satahrachin
apparently do go out in the world as children. I wonder what it must be like for them? Do they have consciousness throughout their childhoods, as we do? It makes me grow cold, to think of a “normal” human child set loose in such a wilderness). But Mevennen is adamant that the
satahrachin
are not priestesses, or priests, as we would know them. The world itself—its landscapes and its seasons—seem to have taken the place of deity. (Not hard to see why that is, if Mevennen's subjective reports are anything to go by.)

The
satahrachin
also remember who their children are, even long after their birth, which Mevennen's people apparently don't do—at first I found this deeply odd, but then I remembered that, after all, most animals'attachment to their offspring doesn't last long after weaning, turning to indifference and sometimes even hostility. As to
why
the Mondhaith should have reverted to this pattern, I don't know. Here, we get back to this strange animal consciousness again.

“Don't you know who your mother is?” I asked Mevennen, and she just shrugged—an anomalously human gesture.

“Why would I care?” she asked, puzzled, then, “And why would she care about me?”

I couldn't let this go—I asked her if she had any idea of her parentage and, thus pressed, she said she thought her mother was one of “Luta's” daughters. Luta is apparently one of the
satahrachin
in Mevennen's clan, and remembers who her kids are. But relationships within the clan itself are divided between siblings and cousins: across the generation is important, rather than a vertical relationship between parent and child. Mevennen knows that she has aunts and
uncles, because she knows who her cousins are; Luta and the other
satahrachin
could specify the relationships for certain, but Mevennen says that it's something you can
feel.
If they can sense who their brothers and sisters are, then why not their parents? But there
is
a bond, Mevennen tells me: the mother knows if the child is alive, out there in the world, and she is often there to see the child come home. After that, the child is once again left to go its own way, and the bond withers. The clans seem to function a little like feline prides: parents are around, but there's no special relationship, and the main relationships are between siblings and mates. I don't pretend to understand this very well. Mevennen also told me more about the Mondhaith's highly unorthodox methods of child-rearing—or antichild-rearing.

“The children go to the wild,” echoed Mevennen airily, when I asked her.

“What exactly do you mean by that?” I said. “When do they go?”

“When they are very young … several months, a year. As soon as they can walk and feed themselves, they are taken somewhere they can hunt—or where there is food, like the funeral places where folk leave offerings—and there we leave them.”

Having divined that the children of her species evidently grow rather faster than those of normal humans, I asked why the children weren't simply kept at home. After all, the mortality rate must be pretty high—not prohibitively so, otherwise there wouldn't be anyone left, but it seems a pretty extreme method of raising one's young. I was reminded of the ancient Spartans, though they only exposed the children overnight. Mevennen replied that it was “too dangerous” to keep the children at home; they are feral, like animals, and do not adapt well to “captivity” —the blood-mind again. It seems that the kids return home, rather in the manner of young birds who migrate and then come back to
their old nests or burrows, once they reach puberty. Quite what sexual maturity has to do with reverting to a more normal human state of consciousness remains to be seen and Mevennen, not being a xenobiologist, was unable to explain it. She said that it has something to do with “crossing the house defenses.” I don't know what this means, and Mevennen and I got ourselves in a tangle trying to work out what she meant.

Once the offspring return home, they are soon conscious and self-aware, and language and other conceptual abilities seem to come very quickly. They also gain a greater control over the bloodmind itself, although this is by no means total—as was so tragically illustrated on the day of the hunt. This would, in part, explain why a total lack of education in the early years has not prevented these people from developing a culture. Also they live longer than humans—presumably if you've survived your childhood, you're tough enough to withstand anything.

So where does Mevennen herself fit into all this, our brave, skeptical, unsettled guest? I asked her many more questions, and she has answered some of them—but as with all anthropological investigations, her answers have only given rise to more questions. My surmise would be that Mevennen is a mutation of some kind, a throwback to a type that is closer to the human, but yet not a
satahrach.
She does not enter into the bloodmind. I'd expect this to have psychological effects (alienation, isolation from her kindred et cetera—perhaps this is what she means by that curious phrase “hearing the world” ) but we're still not quite sure exactly why this seems to affect her so badly physically. It could be psychosomatic, but I am reluctant to fall into the trap of attributing psychological causes to physical ailments—one look at the sorry history of diagnosis of female illnesses will tell us why. Moreover—and very worryingly— Mevennen seems to be becoming increasingly dependent
on the sedatives. Well, we'll keep on trying to figure her out, and no doubt she feels the same about us.

The boat's passage out of Etarres was quiet. We left the harbor mouth behind and sailed beneath the lighthouse island. I did not want to look back and see the town fall into the darkness, the wintervine sign of Morrac's clan House fade to a point of light, so I closed my eyes and listened to the rustling sails above my head and the slap of the sea against the ribs of the boat, then the roaring of the beacon fire above us. I came close to falling asleep, and when I finally roused myself and walked across to the rail of the boat, I saw that the coast was only a thin shadowy line far away to the east, an uneven smear against the bright summer night. Rhe hung low over the western horizon, directly above a black peak.To the left, the smaller humps of islets broke the line of the ocean. The moon Embar swung in a great crescent to the north, still warmed by the light of the summer sun to a yellow sickle. Elowen had not yet climbed out of the well, as they say, although a faint nimbus of light over the sea promised her imminent rise, like a thumbprint against the clear sky.