Helliconia: Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer, Helliconia Winter (37 page)

Two older women dodged about with buckets, gathering up spongey white entrails. They would boil the mess down later to distil a coarse sugar from it. The coir would be used for ropes and mats, the flesh for fuel for the various corps.

From the paddlelike digging paws of the stungebag, oils would be extracted to form a narcotic called rungebel.

The older women were exchanging impolite remarks with the men, who grinned and stood in nonchalant poses about the hillside. It was unusual for stungebags to venture near human habitation. The beasts were easy to kill, and every part of them
was useful to the fragile economy. The present kill was thirty metres long, and would benefit the community for days to come.

Pigs ran squealing round Vry’s feet as they rooted among the fibrous debris. Their swineherds were working below in the brassimips. Nothing of the giant trees was visible above ground except heavy fungoid leaves, cosseting the earth with their twisted growth pattern. The leaves stirred like elephant ears, not from the prevailing breeze but from draughts of warm air blowing out of the crowns of the trees.

A dozen brassimips formed the patch. The tree rarely grew singly. The soil about each tree bulged upwards and was starred with cracks, suggesting the considerable bulk of vegetation below. The heat that the trees syphoned up to their leaf system enabled the plants to thaw frozen ground, so that they continued to grow even in permafrost conditions.

Jassiklas lived under the leathery leaves. They took advantage of the sheltering warmth to put forth timid brown-blue flowers. As Vry stooped to pick one, Dathka returned to her side and spoke.

‘I’m going into the tree.’

She construed this as an invitation to join him, and followed. A slave was pulling up leather buckets full of chips from the interior and throwing them to the pigs. Pulped brassimip chips had fed Embruddock’s pigs through the dark centuries.

‘That’s what attracted the stungebag,’ Vry said. The monstrous animals were as fond of brassimip as the pigs.

A wood ladder led into the tree. As she followed Dathka down, her eyes came for a moment level with the ground. As if drowning in earth, she saw the leather leaves waving about her. Beyond the backs of the pigs were the men, fur-clad, standing among the wreckage of the giant stungebag. There was snowy high ground and a sky of slate over all. She climbed down into the tree.

Warm air assailed her cheeks, making her blink, carrying with it a perfumed rotting smell that both repelled and attracted her. The air had come from a long way down; brassimip roots bored far into the crust. With age, the core of the tree commenced a fermenting process which released a hardening substance resembling keratin. A tube formed through the centre of the tree.
A heat pump was established, warming leaves and underground branches with heat trapped at lower levels.

This favourable environment created a refuge for several sorts of animal, some decidedly nasty.

Dathka reached out a hand to steady Vry. She climbed off the ladder beside him and stood in a bulb-shaped natural chamber. Three dirty-looking women were working there. They greeted Vry, then went on scraping chips of brassimip flesh from the walls of the trees, loading them into the bucket.

Brassimip had a flavour rather like parsnip or turnip, but was bitter. Humans ate it only in times of starvation. Normally, it made pig feed – in particular, feed for the sows whose milk went to the making of rathel, Oldorando’s staple winter drink.

A narrow gallery opened to one side. It led into the topmost branch of the tree, the leaves of which would surface in a bunch some distance away. Mature brassimips had six branches. The topmost branches were generally left to grow without interference; being nearest to the surface, they harboured a variety of sheltering nasties.

Dathka indicated the central tube going down into the darkness. He climbed down. After a moment’s hesitation, Vry followed, and the women paused in their labours to watch her go, smiling part in sympathy, part in mockery. Directly she got into the tube, it was completely dark. Below was only the eternal night of earth. She thought that she, like Shay Tal, was having to descend into the world of fessups to gather knowledge, despite her protests.

The tube was marked by growth rings which formed ridges. The ridges were used as steps. The tube was narrow enough for anyone ascending or descending to plant her back securely against the opposite side of the tube.

Rising air whispered in their ears. A cobwebby thing, a living ghost, brushed Vry’s cheek. She resisted an impulse to scream.

They climbed down to a point where the second branches left the main trunk. Here the bulb-shaped chamber was even smaller than the one above; they stood close, heads together. Vry could smell Dathka and feel his body against hers. Something stirred in her.

‘See the lights?’ Dathka said.

There was tension in his voice. She fought with herself, terrified by the lust that flooded her. Should he lay a finger on her, this silent man, she would fall into his arms, would rip away her furs, strip herself naked, fall copulating with him in the dark subterranean bed. Obscenely delightful images filled her.

‘I want to go up again,’ she said, forcing the words from her throat.

‘Don’t be scared. Look at the lights.’

In a daze, she looked about, still catching his scent. She was staring into the second branch down from the surface. There spots of light, starlike – galaxies of red stars, imprisoned in the tree.

He shuffled in front of her, eclipsing constellations with his shoulder. He thrust something pillowlike into her arms. It was light, covered with what she took for coir, as stiff as the hairs of a stungebag. Its star eyes looked unwinkingly up at her. In her confused state she did not identify it.

‘What is it?’

For answer – perhaps he felt her desire after all; but could he make no stronger response, if so? – Dathka stroked her face with a clumsy tenderness.

‘Oh, Dathka,’ she sighed. Trembling took her, beginning from the viscera and spreading through her eddre. She could not control herself.

‘We’ll take it up. Don’t be scared.’

The black-haired pigs were scuttling among the brassimip leaves as they emerged into daylight. The world seemed blindingly bright, the ring of axes intolerably loud, the scent of jassiklas unduly strong.

Vry sank down and listlessly regarded the small crystalline animal she held. It was in a state like the phagor’s tether, curled into a ball with its nose tucked into its tail, its four legs folded neatly into its stomach. It was immobile, and felt as if made of glass. She could not uncurl it. Its eyes fixed her with a remote gaze, unwinking between immobile lids. Through its dusty grey coat, striations of faded colour showed.

In some way, she hated it, as she hated him – so insensitive to a woman’s feelings that he had mistaken her trembling for the
vibrations of fear. Yet she was grateful that his stupidity had prevented her from certain disgrace, grateful and resentful.

‘It’s a glossy,’ Dathka said, squatting by her, looking aslant into her face as if puzzled.

‘A gossie?’ For a moment she wondered if he was trying to be uncharacteristically funny.

‘A
glossy
. They hibernate in the brassimips, where it’s warm. Take it home.’

‘Shay Tal and I have seen them west of the river. Hoxneys. That’s what they’re called when they emerge from hibernation.’ And what would Shay Tal have thought if …

‘Take it,’ he repeated. ‘A present from me.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, with contempt. She rose, emotions in place again.

She found she had blood on her cheek, where he had stroked her with his cut hand.

The slaves were still hacking away at the monstrous carcass. Laintal Ay had arrived, and was talking to Tanth Ein and Aoz Roon. The latter summoned Dathka vigorously, waving his hand over his head in command. With a resigned look of farewell to Vry, Dathka made off towards the Lord of Embruddock.

The busy things men did were nothing to her. She tucked the glossy between her arm and her shallow bosom and turned downhill towards the distant towers.

When she heard the sound of someone running to catch her up, she said to herself, Well, he’s too late now, but it was Laintal Ay.

‘I’ll walk down with you, Vry,’ he said. As she remarked, he seemed in a carefree mood.

‘I thought you were having trouble with Aoz Roon.’

‘Oh, he’s always a bit touchy after a brush with Shay Tal. He’s a great man, really. I’m pleased about the stungebag, too. Now that the weather is warming up, they’re harder to find.’

The children were still romping by the geysers. Laintal Ay admired her glossy, and burst into a snatch of hunter’s song:

‘You are in a good humour! Is Oyre being nice to you?’

‘Oyre’s always nice.’

They went their different ways, Vry heading for her ruined tower, where she showed her present to Shay Tal. Shay Tal examined the little crystalline animal.

‘It’s not good to eat at this stage of its life. The flesh may be poisonous.’

‘I don’t plan to eat it. I want to guard it till it wakes.’

‘Life is serious, my dear. We may have to go hungry if Aoz Roon sets himself firmly against us.’ She contemplated Vry for a while without speaking, as was increasingly her habit. ‘I shall fast and defy him. I need no material things. I can be as ruthless with myself as he can be with me.’

‘But really he …’ Words failed Vry. She could utter no reassurance to the older woman, who continued determinedly.

‘As I told you, I have two immediate intentions. First, I shall conduct a scientific experiment to determine my powers. Then I shall descend into the world of the gossies, to hold concourse with Loilanun. She must now know much that I don’t. Depending on what I learn from these things, I may decide to leave Oldorando entirely.’

‘Oh, don’t leave, please, ma’am. Are you sure that’s the right thing to do? I’ll go with you if you go, I swear!’

‘We’ll see about that. Leave me now, please.’

Feeling deflated, Vry climbed the ladder to her ruinous room. She flung herself down on her couch.

‘I want a lover, that’s what I want. A lover … Life’s so empty …’

But after a while, she roused herself and looked out of the window at the sky, where clouds and birds sailed. At least it was better to be here than in the world below, where Shay Tal planned to go.

She recalled Laintal Ay’s song. The woman who had written
the song – if it was a woman – had known that the snow would eventually disappear and that flowers and animals would emerge. Perhaps it would happen.

From her nighttime observations, she knew that there were changes in the sky. The stars were not fessups but fires, fires burning not in rock but air. Imagine a great fire burning in outer darkness. As it came nearer, its warmth would be felt. Perhaps the two sentinels would draw nearer, and warm the world.

Then the glossies would come back to life; turning into hoxneys with high-stepping tread, just as the song had it.

She determined to concentrate on her astronomy. The stars knew more than the gossies, for all that Shay Tal said, though it was shocking to find that one disagreed with such a majestic person.

She tucked the glossy into a warm corner by her couch, wrapping the pathetic little thing in fur so that only its face showed. Day by day, she willed it to come alive. She whispered to it and encouraged it. She longed to see it grow and skip about her room. But after a few days, the gleam in the glossy’s eyes dimmed and went out; the creature had expired with never a blink.

Despairingly, Vry took it to the crumbling top of the tower and flung the bundle away. It was still wrapped in furs, as if it were a dead baby.

A passion of restlessness seized Shay Tal. More and more, her statements became preachments. Though the other women brought her food, she preferred to starve herself, preparing to go into deep pauk to confer with the illustrious dead. If wisdom was not found there, then she would look farther afield, beyond the farmyard.

First, she determined to test out her own powers of sorcery. A few miles away to the east lay Fish Lake, scene of her ‘miracle’. While she teased herself as to the true nature of what had happened there, the citizens of Oldorando were in no doubt. Throughout that cold spring, they made pilgrimages to gaze upon the spectacle in the ice, and to tremble with fear not unmixed with pride. The pilgrims encountered numbers of Borlienians who also came to marvel. Once, two phagors were seen, cowbirds perched
with folded wings upon their shoulders, standing mute upon the far shore, regarding their crystalline dead.

As warmth returned to the world, the tableau began to slip. What was awesome turned grotesque. One morning, the ice was gone, the statuary became a heap of decomposing flesh. Visitors encountered nothing more impressive than a floating eyeball or a mop of hide. Fish Lake itself drained and disappeared almost as rapidly as it had formed. All that remained to mark the miracle was a pile of bones and curving kaidaw horns. But the memory remained, enlarging through the lenses of reminiscence. And Shay Tal’s doubts remained.