Calamity's Child (5 page)

Slade sighed.

"Did you fall out of the starweb?"
Arika asked him.

What does it
matter?
He thought again. For surely
Gineah was correct -- no one would come for him now.

"My ...starship... was caught in a
storm," he murmured, which was true, if not factual. "Yes, I fell
out of the starweb."

"And before it fell? Did you live on
your starship?"

As much as I was
able
, he thought, and sighed
again.

"Much of the time. I was ... the
hunter... who went ahead, to find how the land lay, if danger
crouched, or if sweet waters sang..."

This she understood, the order of
march during the gathering season being: scouts, hunters,
gatherers, tents. She also knew that scouts often took harm from
their duty. She shifted, pressing her body against him in a long
hug, and nestled her cheek more closely against his
shoulder.

"Tell me about your mother's
tent."

His mother's
tent
-- almost he laughed. Instead,
he stroked her hair and stared up into the darkness.

"My mother's tent was...full," he said
slowly. "We lived in -- a permanent camp. It was not necessary to
wander in the Warm Days, to spread ourselves thin so that we did
not strain the land. It was," he said, even more slowly, feeling
his way, "a land of plenty. The camp -- it was called
‘Solcintra'."

"There must have been many people in
your camp, Solcintra," Arika said after he had been silent for a
time.

"Yes," he said, "many, many hands of
people."

"What else?" she asked, and this time
he did laugh.

What else, the child
asks.

"Is my question funny?" Arika
demanded, between hurt and angry.

"Not at all," he assured her,
smoothing her shoulder with his hand. "Not at all. Listen, now, and
I will tell you..."

And so he told her, of spaceports, and
shops, and healers, and traffic, and sometime before the gray
uncertain dawn wavered into being, she fell asleep. He held her
then, silent, his thoughts still on the city, his kin, the sky he
would never see again...

*

Arika gained weight as they traveled
into the light, until he was forced to believe what he had not
thought possible. And one night, as they sat companionably at the
fire; he mending a frayed rope, she mending a broken basket, he
asked a question.

"I wonder," he said, watching her face
out of the sides of his eyes. "Will the tent soon welcome a
child?"

Her hands froze, and she raised her
head to stare at him across the fire.

"Perhaps," she said haughtily. Arika
was always haughty in fear.

He preserved his pretense of oblivious
industry. "A child in the tent would be -- a joy," he said. "But
the hunter should be informed, if he will soon need to hunt for
more."

She looked away, throat working. "As
to that -- it is not certain. The women of my tent ...do not
always... birth well."

Her sister, he remembered, whose baby
had been born dead -- and who had herself died of the birth. He
plaited his rope in silence for a few heartbeats, then asked,
quietly, "Is it the Finder blood that puts the babes at
risk?"

She swallowed. "The grandmothers
believe so. They call it a ‘gift', but it eats us up, even those it
allows to be born."

"It does not have to be," he said,
carefully. "My mother, my brother, my sister -- all are gifted as
you are, with an extra pair of eyes, that see what others cannot."
He raised his head and met her stare across the fire.

"You have the blood," she said, with
certainty.

"I do. My mother bore three healthy
children; my sister and my brother, who have extra eyes; myself,
who has but two. So..." Here was the dangerous ground, for hunters
knew nothing of such matters. "So, Arika, my wife, if the child in
your belly is one that we made together, it may be that my
...blood... will lend her strength enough to be born -- and to
thrive."

"It may be," she said quietly, and
sighed, putting her basket aside. "Slade. How do you know these
things?"

He opened his eyes wide and made a
show of innocence. "Things?"

"That without a hunter, there is no
child. How does a hunter put a child in a belly, Slade?"

Well, he had botched it. He sighed,
then smiled at her. "Why, when we enjoy each other, and you take me
into yourself..."

"Enough." She sighed in
her turn. "These things are
erifu
."

"Among the Sanilithe, they
are
erifu,
" he allowed. "In my mother's tent, these things are common
knowledge, shared among sisters and brothers."

She closed her eyes. "You make me
tremble," she murmured, and looked at him once more. "But I see the
fire has not leapt up to consume you, so it must be that the
spirits of your grandmothers allow you this knowledge." She bent
her head. "The child who -- will -- come to us is a child of my
blood -- and yours." She smiled, very slightly. "May your blood
make her strong."

*

Arika waned as the child waxed. Slade
held her at night and tried to will his strength into her, for she,
his precious, for whom he hunted, did not have his blood to make
her strong. Lying awake in the dark, he made plans to dose her from
his dwindling supply of supplements; plans which he abandoned as
morning overtook him. His Arika was a child of this world, and even
as her world was slowly poisoning him, so his needed vitamins might
very well poison her.

He did insist that she refrain from
gathering, and when she protested, told her that he would gather.
Gineah had taught him something of plant lore. This was true
enough, though not as she heard it. Gineah had shown him the fruits
of her labors in the evenings when they both had returned to the
tent, laying out and naming those things she had
gathered.

"I will bring everything to you, and
you will decide if it is good," he told Arika. "But you will not go
out alone, soft on your feet as you are! You put our daughter and
yourself in danger, and I do not allow it!"

A grave breach of
erifu,
that,
and yet, strangely, she laughed.

"Slade. How will you hunt and gather?
Or will you give your spear to me?"

"No, never that," he said, lightly. "A
tent mother must not kill."

"A hunter's work fills the day -- and
a mother's work, too. How will you fit two days into
one?"

"Let me try," he said, urgently, and
took her hands. "Two days. If I fail to gather, or to hunt, we will
-- think of something else."

It was perhaps a measure of how weak
she was that she allowed him his two days of proof.

*

His scheme worked well: In the
morning, he set his traps; his afternoon went to gathering plant
stuffs. When his sack was full; he turned toward the camp of the
day, collecting game from his traps as he went.

On the morning of the sixth day, he
encountered Tania, the grandmother of their group, at the edge of
the camp, gather-bag in hand.

"Good morning, hunter," she said
politely.

Slade touched the tip of his spear to
the ground in respect. "Good morning, grandmother."

"I see that the mother of your tent
sends you to gather in her name."

This
, Slade thought,
could be bad.
He allowed no trace of the thought cross his face. Instead,
he replied calmly, "Grandmother, it is so. Her talent gnaws the
mother of my tent to bone."

Her eyes softened. "It is a harsh
gift," she said slowly. "Do you prepare the gather?"

"No, grandmother; she prepares what I
bring, and shows which I should choose more of, and what is not as
needful to the tent."

"So." She stood up,
shaking out her bag. "
Erifu
is preserved. Good
hunting."

After that, no one questioned
him.

And Arika grew ever more
fragile.

In the evening, she sorted and
prepared what he had gathered, while he performed other needful
tasks. After, they would lie in each other's arms and he would
stroke her until she fell into uneasy sleep.

So, the short summer proceeded.
Slowly, the sky darkened, and the wind carried an edge of ice,
warning that the time to turn to Dark Camp approached.

Slade returned to their tent somewhat
later than usual, burdened by numerous kwevits and an especially
heavy sack of gatherings.

At first, he thought the tent
unoccupied, then, he saw the shape huddled, far in the back, where
the medicines were kept.

Heart in mouth, he dropped his burdens
and rushed forward. Arika was barely conscious, her body soaked
with sweat. Carefully, he straightened her, turned
her...

Her eyes opened, and she knew him.
"Slade. The child comes." Her body arched, and she gasped, eyes
screwing shut.

*

The baby had come quickly, which had
been a blessing. He cleaned her and put her to Arika's breast,
turned -- and looked up into Tania's hard, old eyes.

"Hunters do not deliver children," she
said, coldly.

"This hunter does," he snapped,
perhaps unwisely.

"So I see." She stepped forward. "I
will examine the mother of your tent, hunter. She is frail and I am
many years your elder in the healing arts."

He took a hard breath. "Grandmother, I
know it."

"Good," she said, kneeling at Arika's
side. "Walk around the camp, twice. Slowly, as if you search for
hunt-sign on hard rock. Then you may return."

Almost, he protested. Almost. He had
just reached the entrance when he heard his name and turned
back.

"Grandmother?"

"You did well," she said softly. "Now
go."

*

The child -- Kisam, their daughter --
clung to her small life by will alone, and in her stubbornness
Slade saw generations of Clan Aziel. She nursed, but it seemed her
mother's milk nourished her only enough to keep her soul trapped in
her body -- and in that, too, he saw the effect of his
blood.

His blood.

She sucked the supplement from the tip
of his finger while he cuddled her and prayed, chaotically,
expecting the tiny body at any moment to convulse, and release his
child's willful spirit --

"She is stronger," Arika said next
day, Kisam tucked in the carry-cloth against her breast. "Slade,
does she not seem stronger to you?"

"Yes," he murmured, leaning over to
stroke the small head covered already with plentiful dark curls --
her mother's blood, there. "Yes, she does."

*

They traveled slowly toward Dark Camp,
for Arika's strength was low, and Kisam yet frail, though much
improved. And truthfully, the slower pace was not only to
accommodate the child and her mother. Slade walked sometimes
unsteady, his legs weak, and betimes a high, busy humming in his
ears, and flashes of color across his vision. The spells passed
shortly, and he did not speak to Arika of the matter. And every
other night, as his wife lay in the sleep of exhaustion, he would
nurse Kisam from his dwindling supply of vitamins and tried not to
think what would happen, when, finally, they were gone.

So they arrived at Dark Camp among the
last, and pitched their tent in the fourth tier, considerably
higher than last year. There was firewood waiting, and a
fire-circle, built properly by women's hands, by those who owed
still on Findings past.

Slade saw Arika settled by the fire,
and Kisam on the nurse before he turned to stow his weapons -- and
heard the buzzing begin, growing until it was a black well of sound
into which he toppled, head first, and swooning.

*

He opened his eyes to Gineah's somber
face.

"He wakes," she said, and Arika was
there as well, her eyes wide and frightened.

Carefully, he smiled. "Forgive me,
grandmother. A stupid faint..."

"Not stupid, perhaps," another voice
said, speaking the Sanilithe tongue slowly and with an odd
nuance.

Slade froze, looked to Arika, who
touched his face with fingers that trembled. "A woman of your
mother's tent has come, Slade."

A woman of
his
--

He pushed himself into a sitting
position, despite Arika's protesting hand on his shoulder, and
Gineah's frown. For a heartbeat, his vision was distorted by
spangles of light; when they melted, he saw her, seated like any
ordinary guest by the fire, the baby's basket at her side, a horn
cup cradled between her two hands.

She wore leather, and a wide
Scout-issue belt, hung about with a profusion of objects. Her hair
was brown and curly, her face high-boned and subtle.