West of January (33 page)

The three canoes headed upstream, eastward. The current was sluggish, the still waters moving without a ripple, dark with the reflections of the undersides of branches arching overhead. Paddles flashed in a murderously swift rhythm, but the canoes were large and we made slow progress along that serpentine tree canyon. Later the sun came out, with patches of blue showing high above us. Then came thick clouds of insects to torture the paddlers. I alone was well protected in my voluminous burnoose, although I soon began to feel like a steamed fish.

Eventually I recovered enough from my shock to twist around and talk to my guard. He was quite willing to be friendly, as long as I behaved myself. His name, he told me, was Shisisannis, and he was of the snakefolk. When the other canoes happened to be close, I noticed that two or three of the men were obviously of another race, more like the lanky black angel I had met earlier. Those, Shisisannis said in a contemptuous tone, were swampmen. Swampers were cowardly types who fought with bows, he explained, while real men used spears.

How did snakefolk gain their name? I asked. He grinned and reached behind him for a bulging sack, weighty enough to test even his brawny shoulders. Already I had begun to regret the question, but he untied the neck and peered inside. Then he shot a powerful walnut-colored hand in and pulled out the head of a snake, a snake so large that his hand could not close around its neck. I bleated in fear, seeing yellow crystal eyes staring at me and a forked tongue flicker.

“This is Silent Lover,” Shisisannis said fondly. “Do not be alarmed. As long as I keep my thumb hard just here, she cannot move.”

I believed him, but I was very glad when he closed the bag again. He explained, at length and eagerly, how he hunted with his scaly friend, hanging her on a branch above a game trail. Then he would circle around through the jungle, seeking to drive some unsuspecting victim underneath. His snake would fall onto the victim and crush it. The trick was to get to her before she began to swallow and then to use that secret grip again to immobilize her. He bragged a lot about the things she had caught for him, most of them creatures I had never heard of.

Despite my shock, my fear, and my bereavement, I rather liked Shisisannis. Only much later did I learn that no other race ever trusts the snakefolk. I had no need to trust him, though. I had no choices to make.

─♦─

We paused briefly to eat. The canoes were beached, but the men ate where they had been kneeling. Then they set off again. I was impressed. Except for Shisisannis, who was both my guard and the overall leader, every man was working at his utmost. They poured sweat, they were tormented by insects that they could not brush off, and their endurance was astonishing. I said so.

Shisisannis gleamed his teeth at me again. “Ayasseshas told us to hurry back. Nothing else matters. She is eager to meet you, wetlander.” He sighed. “Ah, how I envy you.”

“Why?”

He looked surprised. “You do not know?”

I shook my head, and then decided he might not be able to see that gesture inside my shroud. “No.”

“Then I say only that you are about to have the most glorious experience that any man can hope for in his lifetime. Few are ever so favored. You are fortunate beyond imagining.”

This was not what the angel had said. Or Hrarrh. But it might just possibly explain Misi. Had she parted with me out of love, so that I could enjoy this promised paradise? Of course that was a ridiculous idea, but it was all I had, and I clung to it.

“You speak from experience?” I asked.

“Indeed I do!” Shisisannis rolled his eyes in rapture.

“Describe it.”

“It is beyond words.”

I gave up.

A man in one of the other canoes signaled that it was time to stop. He did so by collapsing. His companions tried to keep up for a while, until another of them did the same. Shisisannis called a halt. The paddlers beached their canoes and prepared to make camp, every one of them staggering from total exhaustion. Even in the mine, I had never seen a group of men more weary. Some needed help even to stand. However this Ayasseshas did it, she inspired a devotion that went beyond pain to the very limits of endurance. Shisisannis had said they would die for her, and now I believed him.

Shisisannis himself lifted me ashore and told me to walk. I set off with my absurd skirt held high, but the ground was tangled with lush undergrowth and I fell repeatedly. Each time I raised myself again, buttocks first, walking my hands backward and keeping my throbbing furnace knees straight. I heard chuckles of amusement, but I persevered until I took a worse than average tumble and Shisisannis s voice behind me said that was enough. I lay on my belly and panted, groaning at my weakness and humiliation. Eventually I recovered enough to roll over and sit up. I had covered about fifty paces, yet I felt as exhausted as the paddlers.

Food was passed, but half of the men were asleep before it even reached them. Soon they all were, stretched out on crumpled bushes or wet moss. Only Shisisannis remained awake. He sat on his heels, alert and watching, a darker shape of menace in a deep gloom, staring at me without a blink.

Back from the water’s edge, the undergrowth was not as thick as it had been on the bank. All around us, giant pillars of trees rose up ten times higher than any I had ever seen on the grasslands, seeming as solid as rocks nearby, but fading away with distance into murky wraiths. The close-packed jungle trees grew almost vertical, with little twist. Only rare speckles of blue showed through the canopy roof and the thick tresses of creepers suspended from every twig. The air was cool and damp, reeking of mold and rain, and so laden with water that it was visible, a dark mist hanging in all the vacant spaces. I was grateful for my all-enveloping garment, wondering how my near-naked companions could bear the chill. Bright-hued birds flashed past sometimes, and their calls echoed eerily among the continual faint dripping sounds. It was creepy and oppressive.

“Food?” Shisisannis inquired.

“I’m not hungry.”

He shrugged and continued to stare.

Nor was I sleepy. One thing was certain, however: I was not going to escape. I might be capable of launching one of the canoes, if I could reach them, although they had been pulled well clear of the water, but Shisisannis was not going to take his eyes off me. He could apparently squat there in the undergrowth forever, watching me, unblinking, with hunters’ patience. He was not even bothering to swat at the bugs and flies that walked on him.

I lay back, head on hands, and reviewed my hopeless position, bitter with the rank taste of betrayal and the dread of unknown horrors to come. Oh, Misi…how did I fail you? I wallowed in the depths of my ill luck, I soared to heights of self-pity, and I piled up mountains of despair. At last, though, another problem asserted itself, one of the trivial indignities that our bodies use to mock our souls when they seek to transcend mundane affairs. I sat up to meet Shisisannis’s unwavering gaze. I explained.

He shrugged and pointed with his chin. “Go that way.”

My captors had all stayed between me and the river, and he had told me that I should go deeper into the jungle. I was not to be allowed to approach the canoes.

So I rolled over and levered myself vertical again. I raised my long skirt, and I rocked my way cautiously through the tangles, my bare feet sinking into clammy moss and a mush of rotted leaves. Shisisannis would be able to see me and hear me, and without question, catch me if he wanted. I found a fallen tree to use as a seat. I attended to my needs.

I stood again and was about to return…

Bird calls, the stirring of the wind, and dripping… The sky had turned gray once more and probably rain was falling on the forest roof, but I could hear something else, a deep humming. It was tantalizingly faint, but as I concentrated it grew more distinct, nearer, and I could tell that it was song, a gleam of silver melody in the green hush. Someone was coming!

I wondered if Shisisannis could hear it yet. I glanced covertly in his direction; he did not seem to have moved. How much time would I have before he roused his warriors? How far could I travel before he came after me?

Cautiously I planned a path between the nearest obstacles and then rocked my way slowly forward. I could not tell if I was hearing a wordless voice or an instrument, or both together, but the tones were growing louder, and I was sure that the source was approaching.
Rescue!
Music meant hope. It meant people, my fellow man. If spinsters were as horribly evil as the angel had suggested, then surely other human beings would take pity on me. No matter who this musician was, I could hardly be worse off than I was now.

I still did not know whether the sound came from throat or fingers or both, but I was certain the singer was not animal or bird. And it was beautiful! It soared. It brought tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat. It spoke of love and longing and compassion. Strangely, it reminded me strongly of some of the herdfolk songs that my mother had sung to me when I was very small. No one capable of such beauty could be so heartless as to turn down the pleas of a helpless captive.

Faster I drove my crippled legs, reeling dangerously, tripping, staggering, and never heeding the jarring pains. The melody welled up in unbearable glory, close now, and yet I could see no one in the dense gloom. I wanted to call out, but I dared not interrupt that peerless refrain. Never had I heard such music—

Two strong hands slammed against the sides of my hood, covering my ears and then holding my head up when I would have fallen with the shock. Shisisannis steadied me, then transferred his grip to my shoulders. I twisted around to stare at the dark contempt lurking amid the green and yellow serpents of his tattoos. The song had gone and I could hear nothing but a faint and distant humming.

“That’s close enough, wetlander.”

“What? Who? Wh—”

He raised his eyebrows in mockery. “I said
spinster,
not
spinner.”

“I don’t understand!”

The hum had become melody again, faint and far off. He pointed. “Between those trees, see? No, closer.”

A man’s length before me, outlined only by faint silver spangles of dew…a giant web.

“Harp spider, wetlander. There she is, up there. See her?”

Bewildered, I looked where he pointed. I could see nothing but trailing moss and dark clutters of twigs. Then I made out a tangle of furry legs as long as my shins… I shuddered and recoiled backward. Shisisannis caught me and steadied me again.

“I’d let you go to her lover’s kiss, wetlander, if that was what you really wanted, but Ayasseshas told me to bring you whole and healthy, and her I will obey.”

“I’d have been trapped in that web?”

The aria was soaring louder and nearer again, heart-rending in its wistful glory.

“Oh, you’d have broken free. Only small animals get really caught. But her ladyship would have had her fangs in you before you did. You would not have gone far, and you would not have shaken her off.”

“But the song!” I protested, grateful that my hood hid the tears that were soaking into my beard.

“Cover your ears!”

I did that and then listened again…a faint humming, far off.

“Do that when it gets too strong,” Shisisannis said. “Now, come back and enjoy it at a safe distance. She might jump.”

With a shudder of revulsion and fear, I wrenched my feet around and rolled away from the harp spider’s web. There could be worse things than spinsters, I thought.

—2—

T
HE EXHAUSTED ROWERS
were given little more time to rest. Shisisannis kicked a few awake. They scrambled up without a whisper of complaint and began kicking others, while Shisisannis himself draped me over his shoulder and trotted effortlessly back to the canoes. The others came running after, hastily wolfing down food on the way, laughing and joking in their eagerness to be off. I knew enough about physical overload to know how their bodies must ache. I marveled at their zeal and puzzled over its source. It certainly did not stem from fear, for the ants had never inspired such dedication and no one could have used more fear than they.

The second leg of the journey was shorter and also much hotter. Of course, climate is normally invariant, its changes too slow for men to notice, and this unnatural unpredictability troubled me. Much later I was to hear the saints talk of weather and the torus of instability, but I never truly understood how those worked. Whatever they were, we were within them, beset by unpredictable alternations of sun and storm that did nothing to calm my jangled nerves.

Sweltering within my gown, peering out from the hood, I could see no difference between one bend of the river and the next, but apparently my captors did. A shout of challenge rang out, and all at once they all rose upright on one knee in racing stance. The paddles flashed even more furiously, and the canoes themselves seemed to rise from the water and fly. The pace was brutal, inhuman torment. They could not sustain it, I thought, but they kept it up far longer than I would have believed possible, six men with two passengers in our craft, against five men in each of the others. Ours came in second, driving onto a muddy beach that apparently marked the finish line. The paddlers flopped over, lungs rasping, as the third canoe slid in at our side.

The winners attempted a cheer of derision and triumph, but they were too winded to sound convincing, and still I could see no landmark to determine why this spot on the bank was different from any other. The spinster’s lair was well concealed.

Laughing but still gasping, my captors scrambled out and pulled the canoes higher. Shisisannis untied me and bellowed: “Ing-aa?”

One of the black, woolly-haired swampmen stepped over from the winning canoe. He was decorated with beads instead of tattoos, but he looked every bit as intimidating as the snakemen, and I had met trees that would have been proud to have had sons so tall.

“You won. You can deliver the goods,” Shisisannis said offhandedly as he lifted the bag that contained Silent Lover.