Louise Cooper - Indigo 06 - Avatar (3 page)

Surely, Grimya thought, Indigo would be safe now. These people were generous and kind, they had helped her in her time of need. There was nothing to fear. The Earth Mother had answered her prayers.

Exhausted, and yet comforted, Grimya slept.

When she awoke, the rain had stopped. With its cessation an eerie quiet had descended; outside, the creatures cowed by the storm hadn’t yet found the courage to start up their clamor again, and even the small night sounds of the forest were absent. Moonlight filtered thinly down through the leaf canopy and in at the windows, pooling in dim patches on the
kemb’s
floor, and from above her head, Grimya heard furtive rustlings amid the dull drip of water as insects stirred in the sodden thatch.

She got to her feet. The woman had laid her on a rough blanket and had left a dish of meat nearby; hunger gnawed at the wolf’s stomach and she couldn’t resist snatching a few mouthfuls before she began to explore her unfamiliar surroundings.

This place, it seemed, was a trading house. Since beginning their long trek into the interior of the Dark Isle, she and Indigo had come upon a number of such stations, which provided a vital service for travelers and local tribes and clans alike. Most of them were owned and run by several generations of a single family, for whom the
kemb
was both workplace and communal home, and the large room in which Grimya had slept was, it seemed, the main store. Sacks and crates of provisions were stacked around the walls, baffling the wolf’s sensitive nose with a confusion of unfamiliar smells, while jumbled among the assortment was a range of implements, from cooking pots to weapons, essential to life in the forest. In one corner stood an open-topped stove blackened with years of use; this, Grimya surmised, was where her hosts cooked their meals. But where were the other rooms, the private chambers? Where was Indigo?

She put her nose to the floor and started to cast about, but it was impossible to isolate any one scent from the plethora of smells. Nor could her telepathic senses pick up any sense of Indigo’s consciousness. Once she thought she detected what might have been the faint trace of a dreaming mind, but it vanished before she could be sure, and with an unhappy whine, the wolf gave up the attempt and resigned herself to finding her friend by other means.

She padded across the floor to the back of the room. Here, in the darkness where the moonlight couldn’t reach, she found two doors. One was barred on the far side, but the other shuddered open when she pushed at it with her muzzle, and Grimya slipped through to find herself in a narrow passage that separated the store from another and more private part of the
kemb
. Dim light from a small window at the passage’s far end revealed three more doorways, each covered by a curtain, and Grimya moved eagerly to investigate them in turn.

The first and second rooms were dark, but a sense of warmth, the faint sounds of breathing and the unfamiliar human scents told Grimya that they were both occupied, though there was no hint of Indigo’s presence. As she pushed her nose through the curtain of the third room, however, Grimya was confronted by the comparatively brilliant light of a small bowl lamp, and behind the lamp a figure rose quickly from its place beside a low bed frame. Thinking it was Indigo, Grimya started forward eagerly, her tail wagging; then the figure flapped its hands urgently at her and hissed anxiously in an unfamiliar voice, and she recognized the young woman who had dried her and ministered to her when they first arrived at the
kemb
. Grimya looked up hopefully, but the woman reached down to grasp the fur at the nape of her neck and tried to push her back out of the room. Though she didn’t understand her speech, the wolf sensed agitation in her mind. Then, as the woman moved around to get a better grip on her scruff, Grimya saw Indigo’s still figure lying on the bed.

No! Please, let me go to her!
Grimya made the telepathic plea instinctively before remembering that she couldn’t communicate, that even if she were to speak aloud, the woman wouldn’t understand her. She whimpered, resisting, her claws scrabbling on the bare floor, and her head ducked from side to side, craning to see her friend. The woman’s tone softened and became sympathetic. She was trying to cajole and explain something at the same time, and she slackened her grip on Grimya long enough to gesture toward the bed and make soothing motions with a flattened palm. Then she put a finger to her lips and pantomimed someone sleeping.

Grimya relented, aware that the woman was only doing what she thought best for Indigo and that she didn’t want her to be disturbed. Head and tail drooping now, the wolf allowed herself to be backed out of the room. She sat down dejectedly in the passage, staring at the curtain that had fallen back into place, blocking any view through the door. If only she could make them understand that she merely wanted to sit by Indigo’s bed, that she wasn’t just a foolish dog and that she knew better than to jump up and lick and whine and make a fuss. She simply wanted—needed—to know how her friend fared and if the fever had left her.

There were sounds from the far side of the curtain, and to Grimya’s surprise, the young woman emerged a few seconds later. She shook the creases of long sitting out of her skirt, pressed the heels of her hands into her back as if to ease stiffness, then moved away along the passage, snapping her fingers to the wolf and uttering an encouraging chirrup as she went.

Grimya padded after her, and in the storeroom the woman set about lighting more lamps and riddling ash from the stove. The patterns of silver-gray light had vanished from the room as the moon set, and outside, the forest was beginning to stir with the approach of dawn. The
kemb’s
other inhabitants would be up and about soon, Grimya surmised, and perhaps dhce the family had set about its business of the day, she would be able to slip away and go to Indigo. Comforted by that thought, she settled back on her makeshift bed and watched the young woman as she went about her work.

Light began to creep into the
kemb
, pushing back the shadows; a few minutes later other human sounds began to impinge on the quiet, and first the young man, then the older woman, then the girl-children came yawning into the room. There was some whispered discussion between the two women, with much muttering and sighing from the elder, but Grimya didn’t comprehend the subject of their conversation until the old woman poured something she’d been stirring on the stove into a wooden bowl and the two of them went back through the door toward the inner rooms. A few minutes passed but they didn’t return, and suddenly a disquieting intuition made the hairs along Grimya’s spine prickle.

The man and the children weren’t watching her, so she rose to her feet and slipped out into the passage. Light glimmered under the curtain of the third room, and as she approached, she heard muted, anxious voices and caught the whiff of a pungent herbal smell.

Grimya’s intuition swelled into fear and she ran to the curtain and pushed through. The women turned, startled, and for a moment their thoughts and emotions showed nakedly on their faces and confirmed the thing she had dreaded most. They were employing all of their skills, but so far, to no avail. Indigo showed not the smallest sign of improvement ... and the women were coming close to despair.

All the women of the
kemb
tried with signs and gentle words to reassure Grimya, but the wolf refused to be comforted and at last, relenting, they allowed her to take up a vigil at Indigo’s bedside. She stayed there throughout the sweltering day, constantly watching her friend’s flushed and feverish face, occasionally reaching out to lick tentatively at one of her burning hands.

For most of the time, Indigo was unconscious, but now and again she would stir and her eyes flicker open, staring with unfocused intensity at the ceiling for a few moments before she began to thrash and cry out in delirium. Grimya had never experienced anything like these bouts, and the wild thoughts that came surging from Indigo’s subconscious like a fire running out of control terrified the wolf. She would rush to the doorway, barking frantically; someone would come running, Indigo’s face and torso would be bathed and another herbal nostrum forced between her clenched teeth. For a while then she’d quieten, but only for a while before the whole ugly cycle began again.

The women were doing all they could, but by evening it was obvious to everyone in the
kemb
that Indigo wasn’t responding to their treatment. Her fever was worse, the intervals between bouts of delirium growing shorter, and the women’s limited healing skills were exhausted. Grimya finally understood that they had given up hope of curing her by normal means when, as night descended on the forest, all the adult females of the family came back into the shuttered and stifling room and gathered around the bed. They lit stubby candles that gave off thick smoke and a smell that made Grimya bare her teeth uneasily, and they began to repeat a peculiar, off-key chant while the old grand-dame shook a carved and tasseled stick over Indigo’s head.

Prayers, or spells ... they had accepted defeat and were trying to help the sick woman by the last resort of an appeal to magic, or to whatever gods or powers they worshiped. Grimya shivered as the monotonous chanting continued. Then, at last, unable to bear it any longer, she slunk away through the curtain to the passage outside, where she lay down with her muzzle on her front paws in abject and helpless misery.

The women continued their vigil until dawn. Sometimes the chanting stopped for a short while and Grimya would raise her head in a mixture of alarm and hope; but then the droning voices picked up the threads once more and the nightmarish ritual went on. Alone in the passage with nothing but her own thoughts for company, Grimya wondered over and again what was to become of Indigo. She believed that the women expected her companion to die, and she couldn’t convey the truth to them: that Indigo couldn’t die, but was destined to live, as she had done for almost fifty years, without aging and without the threat—or the promise—of death.

Yet though her fate might have made her immortal, it wasn’t proof against sickness and disease, and Grimya didn’t know what might befall her friend if the fever refused to loose its hold. Would she be trapped in some kind of limbo, reduced to a helpless shell, yet still clinging to physical life? Would her mind be affected, her body ravaged beyond recovery? Grimya didn’t know the answers, and her speculations frightened her.

She dozed occasionally as the night crawled on, but always there were ugly dreams waiting to pounce and jolt her shuddering out of her sleep. At last, though, she saw the first hint of dawn begin to lighten the narrow window at the end of the passage, and as she stood up, raising her muzzle to sniff the change in the air, the curtain over Indigo’s door shifted and the women came out. They glanced at the wolf but said nothing and moved away toward the main room. Only the young woman who had first befriended Grimya, and who emerged last of all, paused and looked down.

“
Ussh
!” She put a finger to her lips, then crouched to stroke Grimya’s head, speaking to her in a low, calm, but sorrowful voice. Grimya was slowly coming to understand a few snippets of the native language. She knew the words for
no
, for
quiet
and for
sleep
, and could glean meaning from a voice’s inflection, and she surmised that the woman was trying to say that Indigo was sleeping and there was no more to be done for the present. The wolf licked her hand—it was the only way she knew to show her gratitude for the family’s kindness and persistence—then looked hopefully toward the doorway and whined an interrogative. The woman smiled, though sadly, and nodded, lifting the curtain back so that Grimya could enter.

Grimya could hear Indigo’s saw-edged breathing as she approached the bed. She probed tentatively for any sign of recognition, or even life, from her friend’s mind, but there was nothing. Indigo was deeply unconscious, and clearly very ill. The flush on her face had flared into two patches of high, hectic color on her cheeks, her skin was lined and papery, and her eyes had sunk deep in their sockets, giving her a chillingly corpselike look. For a long time Grimya stared at her, her own amber eyes filled with misery. Then, railing at herself because she knew she must accept that there was nothing she could do to help Indigo, or even to communicate with her and try to bring comfort, she lay down at the foot of the low bed frame to take up the vigil that the women had abandoned.

That morning seemed endless to Grimya. The sounds of human activity filtered through the
kemb’s
thin walls from the storeroom, mingling with the soporific background hum of the jungle that surrounded the outpost like a soft blanket. One of the children brought a dish of food and a bowl of water, but though she drank a little, the wolf had no appetite and the meat remained untouched.

Indigo was muttering in her unnatural sleep, turning from side to side as though trying to escape from the private hell of her fever. Twice she screamed out in the tongue of her old homeland, calling to her father and mother and brother, who had been dead for more than half a century, and calling, too, the name of Imyssa, her old nurse. The young woman came in at the sound of her cries and succeeded in calming her, but when she was gone, Indigo began to weep in long, racking, mindless sobs, and her dry lips and swollen tongue whispered another name that Grimya knew all too well.
Fenran
. The lover Indigo had lost, the man whose soul and body were held in a world between worlds, and whom she dreamed of freeing.

The wolf closed her eyes and turned her head away when the whisper shivered through the stifling room, feeling that she was intruding on a place where she had no right to venture, and her tongue lapped at the simmering air as she tried to cool herself a little and think of other things.

Grimya couldn’t judge the hours in this alien latitude, but‘ she thought that it must be nearing noon when she heard the clamor of new arrivals at the
kemb
. The sounds of feet clattering on the wooden steps alerted her; then came exclamations, hastily muted, and new voices—three, perhaps four—in the storeroom. Grimya raised her head, ears pricking forward to catch the nuances of the unfamiliar sounds. She had the distinct impression that the newcomers were people of some importance, for the
kemb
family sounded deferential and it seemed that some kind of interrogation was taking place. Then the door at the end of the passage opened with a sharp jerk and four strange women appeared.