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Authors: Joan Slonczewski

BOOK: A Door Into Ocean
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“Did it heal wrong?” How had a scar grown so fast, anyhow? “You won't have to … cut it open again, will you?”
“Cut open? What kind of creature do you think I am?” She scrutinized the scar, rather as Cyan would examine a gem on the lap wheel. “Cut, indeed,” she muttered. “You want a bright mark, don't you, brave as a stretchmark after childbirth. Thus your sisters will see and respect your experience of life.” She looked up again. “Your flesh is not what I'm used to. I'll do better next time” Abruptly she left.
Later, Lady Nisi was less modest about Usha's handiwork. “Even Hospital Iridis could not have done better,” she assured him, “and it would have taken weeks to heal.”
“Weeks in the hospital? My folks could never afford that.”
That took her aback. “Well, I would have paid for you.”
“Thank you, my lady.” But his irony escaped her.
To pass the time while his leg strengthened, Spinel puzzled over a pair of clickflies that perched splaylegged on his arm or spun webs from wall to wall when he clucked commands he had learnshared in the evenings. All the while they rasped back at him with their violin mandibles. They could spell out whole books and even diagrams across their webs, guided by the coded clicks that Spinel haltingly produced. They could put what they heard into extra chromosomes and pass it on to their offspring; that was how volumes of news got spread, limited only by clickfly flight. “Chromosome” was a word for which Spinel
had no Valan equivalent in his eight years of schooling, but he envisioned something like Oolite's string of alphabet beads.
Lystra came in, carrying a spinning wheel that she stood nearby. This was odd, for he knew that she hated the indoors, and himself even worse, though not as badly as she used to. He watched her thread the spindle and chose his words with care. “Were the shockwraith arms recovered?”
“Yes.” Lystra nodded over her work. “Treated with enzymes, they'll make a starworm harness in no time.”
One harness? There would have to be more hunts, lots more.
She set her foot at the pedal. A broad streak crossed her foot and toes, where a web scallop was shriveled back. “You too!” Spinel exclaimed. Something pricked his memory.
“It's all right.” She wrinkled her nose. “They won't let me back at the starworms yet. I have to spin—I can't bear to sit still.” She adjusted her seat, an elevated part of the apparatus, the only sort of “chair” Sharers seemed to have. The drive wheel whirled, and the spindle purred. At the spindle head, her fingers alighted like a butterfly folding its wings. Her left hand fed fibers to the thread, while the right maintained a delicate twist between thumb and forefinger. Her hands were in precise control, while her muscular leg pumped the pedal.
Something came over Spinel, and he hastily cast down his eyes, as if too close a stare might drive away a wild bird. He looked again at her stricken foot and had an indescribable realization. “That was for me.”
Lystra's spindle purred on; she seemed not to hear. Or perhaps he had not spoken aloud.
THE SEA HAD begun to swallow. Not yet here in Per-elion, of course, but sisters on the northernmost rafts had sighted whirlpools.
The news came overnight by starworm song. The starworm song
could not actually be heard by human ears. It was detected by a raftweed whose taproot reached into the sea, covered with pressure-sensitive hairs. The root hairs picked up the subsonic vibrations of the song; in response, the blossoms of the raftweed opened and closed. Thus Sharers could watch the “signal blossoms” at the appointed times for news from their sisters across the globe.
From Lrina-el came word of a boat fallen to one of the whirlpools, and nine lives reclaimed by their First Namer. Lystra shuddered when she took that message from the signal blossoms. Mourning songs were sung, and Merwen and Usha entered whitetrance for one of the dead, whom they had known.
That same day, traders informed the witnessers at their doors that all “prices” would fall to one-fifth and that no more stone would be shared with those whom the Gathering had Unspoken.
Lystra flung off the hapless clickfly that told her, but it recovered to soar away to the next silkhouse. Why now, just when Sharers had begun to stop depending on traders? Hard times were ahead, when everyone would be tempted most.
Something must be done—quickly. But Merwen and Usha were in whitetrance, no telling for how long, and Lystra herself could not get them out. Only a small child could reach someone in whitetrance without fear of triggering death. “Weia! Wellen! Where are you minnows when I need you?”
At the water's edge, Wellen and Flossa lay wrestling in a fury, hands grasping chins in a grip that could suffocate. Lystra wrenched them apart. “You ‘trollbrats'! What's this about now?”
“
She
tore the net,” was Flossa's shrill accusation.
“But
she
… overfilled it!” Wellen gasped.
“Flossa.” Lystra's voice was barely audible. “Only days ago, lives of shockwraith hunters depended on you.”
The girl winced and averted her eyes. With a finger she raised a corner of the torn net. “I'll mend it.”
“And Wellen, if you're still an infant, then you can bring your mother out of whitetrance.”
“No, I'm too old.” Wellen looked as if she would burst into tears, but she plodded silently back to the silkhouse.
At last Lystra found Weia behind the house, playing giant-steps by herself. The toddler let herself be coaxed into waking her mother and mothersister from their trance.
Her fingertips still pale, Merwen heard Lystra out. Then she said, “For this you break my peace with the dead? If traders share reason, it's all to the good.”
“But, Mother! We can't just go back to the old way.”
“The Gathering will decide.”
Lystra took a deep breath. “Yes. And this time, I'll be among them.”
At that, the sun might have dawned. Merwen glowed all over, and Lystra felt a webspan taller for having spoken. She hugged Merwen as tightly as the day her mother came home. Then a sadness flowed out of her as she thought of Rilwen, and of how she had waited that they might take their names together. Their love could wait forever; but the Door of the Selfname, like the Last Door, could never really be shared. It had taken the touch of a shockwraith to remind her that a life postponed too long might never be lived.
WHEN THE SEA SWALLOWS
 
 
IT WAS THREE months since Merwen had come home when the first seaswallower came within sight of Raia-el.
From a spire of the silkhouse, Merwen watched through binoculars. In the distance a thumbprint depressed the sea, its whorls lined by raft seedlings, spiraling into a white vortex. Unseen below, the grandmother of cephaglobinids sucked at all that dwelled in the sun-drenched upper waters, from myriad plankton to an occasional free starworm, as well as hosts of raft seedlings that would otherwise choke the ocean. Yes, the seaswallower had its place in the web.
When the Gathering next met, there was the question of trade to thrash out, on top of the familiar hardships of swallower season. But first of all came Lystra with her selfname.
A fine rain was falling, little more than mist, and the air smelled of damp weeds. The cloud cover was white with a touch of the olive hue that Merwen had once seen in Spinel. Lystra sat apart, glistening with beaded raindrops, roughly halfway between her mother and Yinevra.
It was Trurl's lovesharer, Perlianir, who put the Three Doors before Lystra, the same three that Nisi had named when she came to share the Gathering. The Names of the Doors were the oldest tradition known, older than genetic records, as old as the lips of Shora herself: the First Door of the Sun, the Last Door Unshared, and the Door of the Self. It was said that Shora would live forever, so long as the Names were remembered.
To the Door of the Self, Lystra responded, “Intemperate One.”
Merwen kept a straight face, but Usha smiled. Usha had forecast accurately the selfname of their firstborn. Elsewhere there was a tumult of cheers and hugs for Lystra, and Merwen beamed with joy, though she also felt keenly for Nisi the Deceiver, whose selfname had met less of a welcome.
The rest of the agenda was more sobering. No fishing disputes or family quarrels, but the treacherous explosion of fleshborers that came in swallower season. “Let everyone watch where she swims,” Usha cautioned, “even outside the known nesting holes. Fleshborers grow as
numerous as raft seedlings, and mad with hunger; no repellent can turn them back. Just yesterday a youngster was half eaten alive, before we fished her out and got her below for lifeshaping.”
It was enough to share fear with the most fearless. There was much talk of stronger repellents and parasite infestations to cut down the numbers, but from long experience they knew that patience and vigilance worked best. Fleshborers too had their place in the web and would bring an end to their own season.
Many sisters shared a similar judgment of the Valan stonetraders. Yinevra, though, did not yet agree. “Valans have no place in the web. The question is this: When will Shora expel that which Shora never brought through the ocean door?”
“Do they eat us?” Merwen whispered. Yinevra's head turned, and Merwen wished her words unspoken. She and her old friend were like stormclouds now; the slightest spark set off lightning between them.
“Valans eat fish, and they call us fish.” Yinevra scanned the Gathering. “Who will they eat next?”
The allusion to death-hastening drew fewer scandalized reactions than usual. From all that Merwen and others had reported, the fact of widespread death-hastening on the Stone Moon was common knowledge, but the potential for it here was dismissed as something Shora would not allow. Merwen sensed this dismissal and worried over it, despite the recent trend toward harmony. In this she agreed with Yinevra; but beyond …
A hand fluttered: Shaalrim the Lazy. “Sisters, I think we get too excited about stone. If someone wants to share little stone-bits because they're pretty and bring smiles to children's eyes, why not?”
There was a slippery truth in that. “The traders agreed to respect our Unspoken once more,” someone pointed out.
“Are we
dreaming?
” Yinevra exclaimed. “Trawlers still clean out rafts full of fish—and their noise still drowns the starworm's song. How long must this go on? I say, let us Unspeak them all, for good.”
“Unforgiver, we know what you say,” declared Trurl. She asked the Gathering, “Who else is ready to Unspeak our guests from the Stone Moon?”
Several moved, but none jumped to respond. After a decent interval, Merwen observed, “Even our own Unspoken sisters stay bound to us, by submerged branches to our central raft. What bonds hold us to Valans?” She was thinking of Nisi and Spinel.
Shaalrim had something else in mind. “Don't forget all the good things traders share with us, from kitchen knives to starworm cables. They can't be all bad.”
Lystra burst out, “But that's just what we've got to steer clear of! We can't depend on traders, ever. Their very words carry poison—even Spinel the stoneshaper says that.”
What notion was this? Merwen had seen too little of Spinel lately.
“And which of us is perfectly dependable?” Shaalrim asked.
Lystra frowned defensively. “Some more than others. Traders depend on force only. We pulled out of their grasp; now let's keep it that way.” She sat down. Not bad, for her first time, thought Merwen.
Trurl's eyelids nearly closed. “What force wins yields to force, Intemperate One.”
There was an uncomfortable pause. Someone muttered, “How can infants who can't even name themselves ever know what true force means?”
In the end there was no agreement, on Raia-el or beyond. Clickflies told of Gatherings that kept up the boycott, of others who relaxed, and of others whose debate raged on. Among the Per-elion rafts, individual witnessers continued at the traders' raft—beside the shop steps, not on them. Trade reopened, but volume returned to a fraction of what it had been, despite the lowered “prices.”
 
For her part, Lystra made up with Nisi, ending the Unspeech between them. And one day, for the first time in over two months of vigils there, Lystra entered Kyril's store for business—a small errand, and not for herself.
Her glance, brief but penetrating, took in the shelves which were filled to bursting with bolts of cloth, wire spools, firecrystals, and the everpresent bewitching gemstones. In an aisle Lalor was stacking plastic bowls. “To stock up against the next boycott,” she cheerfully explained.
Lystra glowered without deigning to reply. What a disgrace, for a shockwraith hunter.
Kyril laughed heartily at the joke. “Why, Lystra,” he said, “is it really you? Share the day, what an immense honor it is, and a pleasure too, to see you indoors for a change.”
“Good day,” Lystra said clearly in Valan. “I am called the Intemperate One now.”
The trader shook his head. “Why must you sisters beat your breasts with your names? Be positive, I say; look where the wave catches sunlight.”
She stopped, an arm's-length from the counter. “I only came to pick up mail for Spinel the stoneshaper.”
“Ah, the Chrysolite boy. What's he been up to?”
“Spinning our seasilk. And hunting shockwraith,” she pointedly added.
“Earning his keep, eh? Glad to hear it. Well, here's the freightship mailbag.” He fished out two smudged bits of web-thin material. Lystra wondered how such inert objects could carry thoughts to Spinel all the way from the Stone Moon. “They're pretty old by now,” Kyril said, “but I'm afraid you'll hear nothing recent from Chrysoport for a while because—” He stopped himself for some reason and pretended to rummage beneath the counter.
Lystra handed over a pod of redleaf medicine that Usha had grown and powdered, to share for the mail handling. With his usual bad manners, Kyril weighed out a small portion for “payment” instead of accepting the whole. “Anything else?” he asked. “Did you look at our stock? All cut-rate—get your steel cables for next to nothing.”
“And gemstones too.”
“But we don't touch anybody with a problem, no way. On the Trade Council's orders, did you hear? Hyalite himself drew up the new rules. You left us no choice, and that's a fact. The customer's always right, I say. And did you hear even Malachite is coming to Shora? Once the swallowers clear out, that is.”
“That reminds me,” Lystra said. “How do you keep swallowers so far away from your raft?”
“If you like, we'll send a crew to protect your raft, too.”
Lystra waved her hand in disgust. “Just watch which poisons you use here. The first dead fish I see floating—”
“Come now, Lystra, that was before your time. Say—” Kyril sprang up a ladder and pulled down a handful of plugged squeeze tubes. “New type of roofing cement, guaranteed stormproof for five years. Why not give it a try?”
“No more trading for me.” She fingered Spinel's letters.
“Look, just try one, for free.”
“A gift?”
“Sure, why not? Tell all your sisters to come back, too.”
Lystra set the rest of her redleaf on the counter. “Then this, too, is a gift. I don't want your children to starve. But so long as one gemstone sits on your shelf, I won't depend on you, Kyril.”

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