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Authors: Joan Slonczewski

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BOOK: A Door Into Ocean
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Trurl moved aside, pressing into her neighbor to make room for two of them on the step. Spinel and Lystra inserted themselves in the lineup, a solid wall of amethyst at the trader's door. Their scent mingled headily with the spices and oil smells at his back, from the shop.
Behind in the shop, hidden voices were muttering. Spinel's pulse quickened. “Will they dump us in the sea?”
“Sh,” said Trurl. “They gave up on that last week. But they still refuse to share speech.”
He sat on in silence. In the harbor, tugboats churned to keep pace with the Sharer raft system. The sea rumbled and groaned, a counterpoint to the muffled voices and footfalls from behind. How many names could come from the sea? Merwen, Usha, Lystra … Spinel? Perhaps the sea would call every name, sometime, if only you waited long enough.
The sun was high, and sweat beaded on their foreheads though the air was still cool. Spinel felt comfortably warm, even sleepy, propped up by Trurl on one side and Lystra on the other. Aside from tugboats, the harbor was deserted, until a small Sharer rowboat appeared. The boat docked, and its occupant walked toward the shop. She was Rilwen.
Lystra's leg tautened beneath his arm. Spinel breathed faster. He wondered whether Rilwen meant to join them or climb over them. Instead, she came to a halt several paces away and gravely regarded her sisters. Then she seated herself crosslegged, facing them, a hunched sphinx. For a long while they sat thus, stare into stare.
Something yanked Spinel's shoulder and dragged him up the step. He cried out and twisted in the doorway, to face a hulk of a man in billowing shirt and trousers who thrust his lips out in amazement. “By the Nine,” the man growled down at Spinel, “just what're the likes of you doing here? If you're a catfish, I'm a cut chalcedony.”
“What do you mean, ‘catfish'? I'm—” Spinel grimaced and stumbled as the man pulled him into the shop.
“Easy now,” called a voice from the darkness. As Spinel's eyes adjusted to the absence of sunlight, he recognized Kyril behind the counter. The face of the genial proprietor was now drawn and tight-lipped.
“Son,” Kyril said, “you look like you need to raise your dose of Apurpure.”
“What dose? Let me go.”
“Catfish-lover.” His captor's grip drove pins into his flesh. “That Hyalite degenerate is bad enough—at least she comes here dressed decent. You know you'll sprout gills and a tail before long?”
“That's a damned—” Spinel swallowed the rest of his retort, fearing the fellow would smash his face in.
“Release him, Rutile,” said Kyril in a tired voice.
Rutile did so, with a shove.
“Son, you're in bad trouble,” said Kyril. “We could ship you back to prison.”
“
Prison
? What for?”
“Disorderly conduct. Indecent exposure.”
Spinel flushed. “I'll ship you back. For lies and indecent pricing. And selling starstones, to boot.”
Rutile grumbled,
“That's
a lie. No law against it, anyhow.” But he sketched a starsign in the air.
“False advertising?” Kyril suggested with a quirk in his lip. “You might have a case—against the Hyalite House, not us. Son, do you think I see any of those profits? I earn a wage; I got a wife and kids back home. And we're all scared out of our socks, now that the moon trade's dropped to zero. The Council is ready to fire the lot of us.”
“Well,” said Spinel, “I used to go hungry sometimes, when the stoneshop got no customers. But at least we did honest work.”
“Let me at him,” said Rutile. “I'll teach the kid a lesson.”
“Look, son,” said Kyril, “I'll drop charges, if you cooperate. I must send you back to Valedon, for your own good.”
“No.” Whatever would Cyan say, to have him back in disgrace? Spinel raised his voice. “No, you can't send me back!”
The men looked up. Sharers from the step were entering the store, Lystra, Trurl, and the Kiri-el sister. “Share the day, sisters,” came Trurl's nasal voice. “We are deeply honored that at last you share words with us. Has Spinel explained the case to your satisfaction?”
“Cursed catfish! Get out, or I'll—”
“Shut up, Rutile,” Kyril barked at him. In a cordial tone he said, “Share the day, Trurl Slowthinker. Did Sharers not agree to remain outside the shop, if left alone?”
“But sister Rutile herself invited one of us inside.”
“The boy is a Valan, subject to Valan law.”
“Indeed,” said Trurl. “Spinel is even a ‘shaper of stone.' Did he share with you our problem with stonetrading?”
“He accused us of ‘liesharing.' It takes two to share a lie,” Kyril said smoothly.
“And two to cure it,” Trurl agreed.
“Get out!
” Rutile was hoarse. “They broke the truce; dump them, I say.”
“Leave us,” Kyril pleaded. “Leave now, and we'll keep the peace.”
“You are angry. You are unable to share reason now. We'll leave.” Trurl headed for the door, and the others followed.
Spinel started out, but Rutile's arm snagged him. “Ow! Let me go.”
Lystra swung her hip back through the doorway. “Spinel comes too.”
“We're just sending him home,” said Kyril.
“No, you won't, you'll send me to—”
Rutile clapped a hand over Spinel's mouth. Spinel writhed and tried to scream.
“Spinel comes too,” Lystra repeated.
The other sisters entered the shop, all five of them.
“I can't take any more!” Rutile yelled over Spinel's ear. “If I don't dump them out, I'll knock them all senseless.”
Kyril threw up his hands. “What can I tell you? Go on, dump them in the sea.”
Rutile bellowed some names, and other men appeared. Over the din, Lystra called out, “If Spinel doesn't come too, every mother and child of Per-elion will show up tomorrow, enough of us to sink your raft.”
“We'll dump him too, the catfish-lover. Haul them out, men,” ordered Rutile.
The Sharers went limp. Their flesh squeaked on the linoleum as they were dragged out by their feet, including pregnant Elonwy, with some difficulty since a fully relaxed body is slippery to maneuver. Spinel kicked and bit at the three Valans who hustled him out, until one cuffed his head and stunned him. All seven witnessers were crowded into a small craft similar to the one in which Merwen and Usha had lived on Valedon. When the traders' raft dipped out of sight, all were shoved overboard.
Spinel gasped for breath among the rolling waves. Lystra and Trurl made sure he kept up with them for the long pull back to Raia-el.
 
After dinner, Berenice was looking forward to schooltime, when Spinel turned to her. “I know where your ‘wealth' comes from, Nisi the Deceiver.” He spoke Sharer, except for the one word.
Berenice realized, with alarm and a touch of envy, that Spinel was absorbing Shora far more rapidly than she had, for all her childhood years on the Ocean Moon. Merwen's success had astounded her; she had been convinced the sudden “purple” would drive Spinel mad. Perhaps the way of Sharers came easier to a signless youth with so little to lose.
“I know my own name, at least,” she replied to him.
“So you're frank about liesharing. What good is it?”
“Beware to share quick judgment, shaper of stone. Whose stones have we traded, all these years?”
Spinel looked startled. “Well, I didn't know,” he said, switching to Valan. “We sold you no starstones, that's for sure.”
“No wonder you stayed poor.” His self-righteousness nettled her. “Would your father have stopped selling to us, had he known?”
“We needed the business, to eat. Just like Kyril.” Spinel bit his lip. “But you're a lady; you have power. Why can't you use it for justice?”
Berenice sighed. “Power is a ‘sharing' thing even on Valedon. The more power you hold, the more power holds you. What gives me power: my family? My own mother once sent a police squad here to kidnap me.”
“Kidnap you? Whatever for?”
“To turn my head away from Sharer nonsense. In those days my behavior was an acute embarrassment to the House,” she added dryly.
“Well? Did you escape?”
“I hid beneath the raft, where the shockwraith dwells. The ships and sirens and sniffer servos did not think to look there. Later, my mother came to her senses—and I came to mine. I stopped making trouble, came home a few weeks each year, and accepted the fiancé they chose.” They knew her taste, she thought ruefully. “And I agreed to—” She stopped. Though Sharers knew of Berenice's ongoing dialogue with Talion, they could not guess what a slippery game it was.
“Well, we'll show them,” Spinel announced. “We'll send all the traders back where they came from, for good.”
“A regular Doorcloser you've become.” Berenice sighed and shook her head. “Soon they won't need trade anymore. They'll gather their own herbs and seasilk. It's started already; the boycott will only hasten it.”
“But—we won't let them, that's all,” Spinel insisted. “We'll fight them off.”
“How? You're here, and I'm here, to prove Valans human. Even Yinevra will not strike another human.”
“That's crazy. You can't just sit back and die.”
“At best, you could hope for accommodation.”
Spinel looked away, his eyes anxious and his mouth small. “Is that what Merwen thinks?” he asked in a low voice.
Berenice smiled wryly. “I wish I knew what Merwen thinks. One hope remains: when Malachite comes—”
Spinel gasped and clapped his hands. “The Patriarch's Envoy—
here?
He'll set everything right.”
“So long as both sides stay cool until then.”
THERE WAS NO end in sight to the boycott, so the shockwraith hunt could be put off no longer. Yinevra had been an expert hunter, ten years ago, before steel cables came and the hunts were abandoned. So Yinevra planned the hunt, and Lystra was determined to go.
Merwen shared fear for her daughter. On the night before the hunt, she visited Yinevra. “Lystra is on starworm duty tonight,” Merwen reminded her. “She will be tired tomorrow.”
“We all are.” Yinevra's chin jutted at Merwen. “We all wear our webbing to the bone. Such is the price of independence.”
Merwen stilled her body, letting tension ebb through her fingers. “Lystra is not as independent as she seems. She has yet to name herself.”
“She is strict with herself, that girl.”
“And subconsciously, perhaps, she still wants me to be strict with her.”
“Well, then,” said Yinevra. “See to it that she shares your will on this matter.”
Merwen was thinking that she could sleep outside the silkhouse that night, if Lystra insisted on joining the hunt. Then Lystra would shout and stamp her feet and be secretly glad to give in.
A smile fluttered at Yinevra's lips. As so often, she must have read Merwen's thoughts. “Am I to believe that the subtlest wordweaver Shora ever named, who opened hearts between Gatherings Unspoken for a decade, and has flung herself undaunted at the Stone Moon—can't share the will of her own daughter? What a mystery is life.”
“A wordweaver's tongue is tied fast in her own home.” A rush of anger followed her calm reply, and she nearly let out the one word that would have crushed in return. Merwen held back, partly because she recognized the old anger welling up with it, for the wrong she should long ago have forgiven.
At any rate, Yinevra the Unforgiven lapsed into pensiveness. “Lystra knows her selfname. She is waiting for Rilwen,” Yinevra said, supplying the word herself. The two girls were lovesharers, and Lystra still hoped the other would heal. Their love would have brought peace to their mothers, as well; instead, Rilwen's fate had driven them apart.
Merwen pressed Yinevra's hand. “I share your sorrow. And you see why it is you who must tell Lystra to stop putting off her life.”
A series of fleeting expressions played over her face. “I'm trying, Merwen, though not with words. Words will help your daughter no more than mine.”
 
As it turned out, everyone had some role to fill in the hunt, even the younger ones, who would wait at the airhole to assist the hunters beneath the raft's underside. Spinel said he wanted to go down with the hunters, just to get a glimpse of the dreadful beast.
“Will he be safe, Usha?” Merwen asked. “He swims better now, but still—”
“He swims,” Lystra interrupted, “well enough to watch by the airhole. Someone must be posted there. Why do you fuss over him so? You'd think he was prize breeding stock.”
Usha was scandalized. “I've had it with you, daughter,” Usha declared.
“If my ears have to share another shred of such nonsense I'll hold my breath until—”
“All
right
, I'm sorry. Let me go. We've got to set the bait, and the knives and the …” Lystra left, with the usual spring in her step, although dark rings surrounded her eyes.
Merwen turned to Spinel. She lifted his hand and circled the palm with her finger. “Are you sure? I promised,” she reminded him.
“I'll be all right. I want to share my part,” he said.
 
Lystra watched Yinevra descend the airhole, gripping niches carved into the raftwood as she went. A rope at her waist would hold her, in the unlikely event that she slipped. It was perhaps a dozen sister-lengths to the underside, about halfway out from the center of the raft core, which was as far as a shockwraith normally wandered. Shockwraiths avoided ocean turbulence, which could disrupt their delicate stomach bulbs.
The rope tugged, so Yinevra was clear. Lalor went down next, then Kithril, Yinevra's lovesharer. Lalor's lovesharer, Shaalrim, would have gone, an excellent swimmer with a very cool head, but now that a child swam inside her it was out of the question. Shaalrim had shared her sisters' judgment philosophically and now was here to hoist the net full of bait down the airhole. Wellen stood by proudly, having caught the bait fish and tied them into the net. Mirri the apprentice lifeshaper was prepared for emergencies. Merwen and others stood by, and even Weia was there, ready to scream for help in case of trouble.
And at the edge of the airbell stood Flossa and Spinel, ready to descend as watchers. They were adjusting beacons on their heads. Lystra tapped her own for surety, snug against her forehead. She pulled on her long gloves shaped from the hide of a trailfin, the one denizen of the dark side who was safe from the shockwraith. Trailfin hide was impervious to the formic acid that filled the shockwraith's delicate stomach bulbs. “Name your duties, sisters,” Lystra said.
Flossa said, “We'll watch for the signal, like this.” Her hand capped her beacon, on and off.
“Then we tug the rope,” said Spinel. “For the sisters above.”
“And we make sure not to wait too long for air, since there is no airbell and only one hole. And we never, ever, touch a shockwraith arm,” Flossa concluded.
“Even with gloves,” agreed Lystra. “Right.” She took up her grappling
pole, patted the knives at her belt, pulled at her rope once more, then started to climb down.
It was a long vertical tunnel, dank and gloomy. Light was at only one end—the receding end. The sudden touch of black sea chilled her.
With a few last breaths, she plunged below. Her beacon faintly penetrated the gloom. She tugged the rope for Flossa and Spinel to descend.
Already, three other beacons loomed around her and light flashed from grappling poles. Yinevra swam over to clasp her hand, an infinitely welcome reach from the darkness.
The net of bait fish hung, several scissor-kicks away. Spots flickered past, tiny creatures with glowing photophores, but no sign yet of that dread creature of darkness. Lalor and Kithril with their beacons waited patiently. A glance over her shoulder showed Lystra two more beacons beneath the airhole, their pale glow embracing the silhouettes of Flossa and Spinel.
Spinel the Valan. The enigma of him elicited reactions as ambivalent as they were extreme. A hateful malefreak, and a shaper of stone, he was also hardworking and infectiously eager to please. And he had the nerve to share witness with stonetraders, an act which deeply moved her. Even Nisi had not done this, for all that her own mothers were traders. Though admittedly, Mother was always hardest to defy. Merwen, now—why did Lystra's own mother insist on complicating their world so, at a time when complexity brought worse threats than any shockwraith? If that shockwraith got hold of one Valan, now, that would simplify—
But this thought, and her brief wish for it, made her shudder all over. The grappling pole slipped from her hand and floated upward; she darted up to snatch it back. She swam to the airhole and smiled encouragement to both watchers. Spinel nodded and went on watching the bait, his mouth small and his eyes ever so earnest above his upturned nose. Lystra could have cursed him forever for his lack of any cause to curse, or any sign of what Yinevra judged of his kind.
Lalor grabbed Lystra's arm and pointed. In the distance grew a pale haze, faint as a cloud in the night sky. It rolled forward beneath the tangle of dead branch roots. The haze brightened and resolved into blue spots. Those spots were the stomach bulbs, which by their glow would attract hungry things, to burst open at a touch.
The hunters gathered immediately at the airhole, just in case the shockwraith chose them over the bait fish.
As it drew near, hundreds of the blue spots delineated the invisible arms. It seemed to pause between fish and humans, then it decided on fish. It settled beneath the hung net and swung several arms around: five, six, seven … out of perhaps twenty.
Yinevra handsignaled to Lalor, who pulled over another bundle of fish buoyed with airblossoms to float almost freely. Lystra helped her tug it halfway within reach of the beast, then propelled it further with her pole. Several more arms twined ponderously around this unprecedented feast. Six lines of blue dots still hung free, of which one was a specialized arm for sensing and mating which must not be touched at all.
Now Yinevra glided toward one line of dots that looped apart from the rest. She swung the tip of her pole to the base of the arm. A knife sprung; the arm slipped away. The rest of the beast remained still, unaware, because the cut had come just at the proper spot. Yinevra retreated, away from any trail of acid.
Lystra knew she must be turning white, for urgent need squeezed her lungs. No time for that; she kicked and headed for the cut arm, extended her pole, and sank a hook just below one of the bulbs. The bulb seemed to watch her, a baleful eye. She pulled the arm away, and Kithril tied a rope to secure it. When the hunt was done, and all the hunters safely up, the arms would be hauled up to the surface, where the stomach bulbs could be emptied without trouble.
Now she darted to the airhole and gasped for breath. Yinevra's head poked up beside her, cramped in the vertical tunnel. Yinevra gave Lystra a rough hug, saying, “There, sister, one's in the bag. But no heroics, please; your breath comes first. If we lose one arm to the deep, that's nothing, but if we lose you, who'll grab the next one?”
Lystra gulped air and plunged downward again.
The next arm she cut herself, with Yinevra's hand to guide her pole. The cut sent a shock to her own flesh, for she knew well enough the feel of a blade. Shockwraiths did not seem to feel as humans did, but who could say for sure? At any rate, this beast would survive with the arms that remained, and with such a fine meal provided, it would soon grow back the rest.
Two more arms yielded to the knife, and two free ones remained,
one the sensing arm, which could not be touched. Yinevra approached the last arm to be cut.
Inexplicably, this one came alive, undulating like a watersnake. The blue string danced in random waves, moving perilously near the airhole. Flossa streaked up the airhole quick as a minnow, but Spinel hung below.
Lystra waved her hand across her beacon, then again, urgently. Spinel just stayed there, staring, as if in a dream. What was the matter with him? Could he not see the whip of lights, drifting ever nearer the airhole? Already the beam of his beacon merged with the blue at his feet.
A few swift kicks sent her to his side. She grabbed him by the arm and lunged upward. She had not quite reached the airhole before her mind cut short.
 
Spinel awoke. Pain pried his leg, a thousand stonecutters chiseling at him, shaping a tomb in Cyan's basement. But I'm not granite, he insisted; you can't make a tombstone of me. I'm only a poor stonecutter's son … .
The pain receded slightly, a mixed blessing since now his awareness was more acute. Two faces hovered above him, Usha's and Merwen's, long and somber as the day he fell from the firemerchant's netleaf tree. What are you going to do with me? I
am
hurt, Usha, this time.
“You'll get better.” Usha's voice was oddly distant. Her face was a moon, dipping to the horizon, touching his leg. Spinel was floating on a watery cushion, weak all over, and his legs would not move.
“Did I … ?” He stretched his neck. “What happened?”
“One burst just at your ankle.” Usha was doing something to his leg, he could not see what, but he saw the vines trailing down.
Merwen leaned over him, her face etched in detail, her round cheekbones, gold settings for her eyes. “You will be whole again. I know.” Her head turned slightly, exposing the scar, a ribbon that streaked her neck. Spinel thought, How much closer death once touched her. He raised a trembling finger to trace the thickened skin.
She clasped his hand. “How is the pain?”
“Not … so bad.” Spinel remembered her promise. “Not so bad as … the … alone.” He squeezed her hand to his chest. Sudden tears were flowing, unstoppable. For the briefest time but nearly too long,
when the blue lights had wandered near, he had wanted death more than anything, to make it all easy, for good. How strong he had thought he was, before, when he had first turned amethyst; yet still, to go on in this world, or in any world, felt impossibly hard at times.
 
Within a day Spinel was out of the chamber of lifeshaping, to rest his leg in the silkhouse. He lounged luxuriously in seasilk and gazed over the panels that swooped above, some of which he had helped to install. The house was never quite the same after it was rebuilt; old nooks and turns were lost forever, and new unexpected twists had appeared. And the “painted” surfaces, a wall carpet of gold and green with intricate red lines that tantalized him to name their forms, were ever-changing as the fungi grew.
Usha came to inspect him. She kneaded his ankle critically. Already it was mottled with scarring. “The scar is too shallow.”
BOOK: A Door Into Ocean
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