The White Bone (27 page)

“Torrent the Trunk Bull,” she finishes, “has not heard this.”

“I dare say he has not,” Tall Time rumbles.

She gestures at the wall. “Keep touching the marks.”

Tall Time hears her brittle voice behind a cacophonous twittering. Another voice–a familiar one–says, “The white bone.” He is drifting into a vision and wants to tell I-Flounder but he cannot speak. He is looking at the dead foliage of the huge acacia from the fourth likeness. It swarms with derelict weaver-bird nests, they swing in the wind. He is unable to direct his gaze downward. He feels, as he did not the first time, that he is seeing through an eye in the centre of his forehead. With torturous slowness the eye travels to the horizon–a range of low blue hills–and then back to the base of the tree and a pile of she-one dung. Past the tree is a jumping mongoose, more mongooses, all of them jumping and twittering. And now a she-one’s foot, a suppurating shin. His gaze draws back. It is Date Bed. He hardly recognizes her, she is so emaciated. Where are the rest of the She-S’s? Where is Mud? “Mud!” he bellows within his head, and it seems that Date Bed hears. She turns to face him and he sees her pitifully narrow skull and the purple wound above her eye. She sways. In her trunk she clutches something. The white bone! She has it! She curls her trunk under her chin, twists as if to look over her shoulder and then jerks forward, flinging her trunk open, releasing the bone. Where it hits the ground dust sprouts and arcs off and his third eye closes in on a single speck. The speck sails, and his eye rides it for miles, for days, over the blue hills and then along a riverbed to a plain and across the plain to an escarpment, across the escarpment, down the far side to a swamp, and surrounding the swamp the land is all green. Grass, papyrus. A delirium of green… .

The eyes of the We-F’s are aimed low to protect him from the glare. He says that he was gone for a long time and I-Flounder tells him, No, only moments. Did the calf throw the that-way bone? she asks. Yes, he answers, she did. Did he mark how it landed? No. No? But–listen to him–he saw The Safe Place itself, he was led to it from the spot where the that-way bone landed! Is he certain? As certain as he can be, if he indeed had a vision and not a dream. You had a vision, I-Flounder says. Very well then, he says, he saw The Safe Place. What is it like? Green, green. Could he locate the vicinity where the that-way bone was thrown, where the calf is? He believes so. He is an inferior tracker, is he not? Not a master, it is true, but no, not inferior. Is it far away, this vicinity? Ten days away. Beyond the desert.

Silence.

“Ah, the newborns,” he says as it dawns how treacherous it would be for the small calves, doughty as they are but forest dwellers, after all, to try to cross the desert, let alone the plain.

I-Flounder says, “If we set out and find that the journey proves too arduous, we shall return and await the rains. The Safe Place won’t disappear before then.” She glances behind her at the white mouth of the cave. “We shall leave tomorrow evening. Now let us drink and weep for my sister. And then we shall rest while you describe the vision in all its particulars so that we ourselves may imagine the route.”

There are beds of mulch at the rear of the cave. His is large and fresh … evidently it awaited him. The calves and I-Fix lie in a row at his tail end, Sink Hole and I-Fix pressed against the wall as if to keep as much distance as possible between themselves and him. I-Flirt’s bed is next to his, and once he is settled she lowers herself down, sighing, grunting, shifting and finally going still with her rump against his back, a most provocative and inappropriate position, but he fears offending her and doesn’t move away.

On his other side I-Flounder lies facing him. During his recounting of the vision she frequently interrupts to ask about bird calls, the shape of the horizon, the exact placement of bushes, rocks, the texture and incline of the ground, the light. She does the same as he is describing how to get from here to the blue hills. He says that at some point during their journey, if dung or any other practical sign indicates that Mud and the She-S’s are in another direction, he may be the one to part company. He confesses that he is sorely worried to have found Date Bed alone in the vision, and I-Fix says harshly, “Your Mud is not dead.”

He cannot speak, he is so overcome. Why did he not think to ask if any of them had envisioned the She-S’s? That they had envisioned only himself and Torrent he took for granted.

“The big cows call her She-Spurns,” I-Fix says, as if no name was more odious.

“Is she well?” he asks.

“She is lame. She is gaunt.”

Her tone implies that these afflictions are self-imposed, but he is too full of emotion to retreat from her bewildering hostility, and he asks, “Where is she?”

“She
was
in a region of black boulders. Five hundred miles south of here, judging by the shadows and the light.”

“The Spill,” he says. “When do you think this was?”

“I had the vision five days ago. I was seeing the near future. I cannot be more precise.”

“How many cows were with her?”

“Three. And only the one calf, the newborn. There was a longbody stretching and meowing nearby. It was exceedingly strange.”

“Me-Me,” he says, alarmed. “It must be her. She is nefarious. A longbody who craves the flesh of she-one newborns.” A startling thought occurs to him. “I wonder if she is descended from the longbody who ate the newborn white one?”

“We know nothing of this longbody,” I-Flounder says. The light in her eyes deepens. “Is it your intention to go directly to The Spill?” she asks.

“Yes, Matriarch.”

“I caution you against it. I caution you to go first to The Safe Place.”

“Why?”

“Once you are there and have gathered your strength, you will be better able to resume your search.”

“I am strong already,” he says, but he understands that her answer is an evasion. He is shaken again by the thought that she has envisioned him in peril … perhaps dead. If so, it doesn’t matter where he goes; his fate will prevail regardless. Why, then, is she warning him? Is she able to envision what
might
be? Or has she seen not a vision at all but some powerful Lost One omen? In either event, he finds that he isn’t brave enough–or mad enough–to oppose her.

“Very well,” he says finally.

She closes her eyes. Within seconds all of them do. The cave amplifies into blackness.

The cheetah must see that they are watching her–certainly she can’t doubt that they have caught her odour–and yet she creeps between the boulders in a crouch, as if she is stalking them.

“The damned thing’s deranged,” She-Soothes bellows.

The cheetah freezes mid-stride. When she starts moving again, Mud says, “Matriarch, how close are we going to let her come?”

“As close as she dares,” says She-Snorts.

They stand on the bank of Jaw-Log River where only moments ago She-Screams stood and called them cowards, traitors. It is dawn. Cold and no wind. More out of habit than caution (a cheetah is scarcely a threat to three cows) they have formed a truncated V formation: She-Snorts at the apex, She-Soothes at her left shoulder, Mud at her right. Bent lies in the crux.

“She-Soothes wants to charge,” the nurse cow trumpets. The cheetah is now so close that her nauseatingly sweet odour obliges them to squeeze the tips of their trunks together.

“No,” She-Snorts rumbles.

The cheetah sits. She lifts her right paw and appears to study it. She extends it toward them, and they all swivel their trunks to scent behind themselves. Mud also peers over her shoulder. Nothing, there’s nothing that way. The cheetah stops pointing and licks her other paw and rubs the black lines of “mock head drool”
*
that run from each of her eyes.

She-Snorts says smugly, “She is not as calm as she pretends to be.”

The cheetah drops her paw and begins to chirp.

“She’s appealing to our mind talker,” She-Snorts says.

“Date Bed’s not here!” She-Soothes roars.

The cheetah stops chirping.

“That’s right!” She-Soothes trumpets. “Shut your stinking hole!”

“How can we know if it’s Me-Me?” Mud asks.

“Me-Me?” She-Soothes bellows.

“Who else would it be?” the matriarch says.

“Well,” She-Soothes roars, “if it’s Me-Me, She-Soothes will tell you what she’s pointing at! She’s pointing at The Safe Place!”

She-Snorts shakes her head. “No, I don’t think that’s it.”

As if her attention has been captured by something over The Spill, Me-Me looks west. She starts circling toward Mud while still faced away, and the three cows step to the right so that the apex of their V remains fixed on her. She halts. When she resumes her approach, she makes no pretence of her ambition. Shoulders bulked, she zigzags her head to catch glimpses of Bent.

“Be off!” She-Soothes trumpets. Me-Me goes still but holds her ground.

She-Soothes rushes her, and Me-Me makes a leisurely swing around and lopes between the boulders. When She-Soothes pulls up, Me-Me turns and sits. She studies her right paw again. Again points it their way. Since they are now faced northwest (the first time she pointed, they were faced due west), she can’t be indicating the way to The Safe Place.

“It’s as if she is saying, ‘You,'” Mud rumbles. “ ‘You are the ones.’ ”

“Which ones?” She-Soothes bellows, trotting back to them.

She-Snorts says, “There is a second odour.” Her eyes are shut, she is scenting hard. “It’s very insistent but faint. Something she has brushed against, I would imagine. I can’t quite catch it. It is too corrupted by
her
odour.”

“She-Soothes could chase her out of scent completely!” the nurse cow roars.

“She’ll only come back,” She-Snorts says.

“What does she want with Bent, anyhow?” She-Soothes rumbles. “Longbodies don’t eat she-ones.”

“Not normally,” She-Snorts says. She opens her eyes. “We’ll keep our trunks on her while we browse.”

The heat on The Spill will be terrible in a few hours, impossible for Bent to walk in, so the plan is to wait until dusk before setting off for Feed Swamp. Mud asks about the underscents. (If they travel by night there is the risk ofunderscents masking any odours leading to Date Bed.) But She-Snorts doesn’t think they’ll be very strong out there, it’s too barren.

“What about Me-Me?” She-Soothes roars.

“She’ll follow us,” She-Snorts says.

“Follow us!”

“I would imagine so.”

“Follow
us!” the nurse cow roars again. She picks up a log and hurls it.

“She-Measures advised us to indulge her,” She-Snorts rumbles. “Indulge her we shall. For now.”

She sounds exhausted suddenly. Defeated, even. Mud thinks, Why wouldn’t she be? In only a few hours the family has dwindled from seven (including Hail Stones) to four, one of them a calf with rickety knees and no stamina. Five days it took Torrent to cross The Spill. How long will it take the four of them to cross, half-starved as they are? How is it possible that Date Bed made the trek? Probably she didn’t. But since she somehow found her way here, and since there is no sign of her anywhere to the east, and since to the north is desert and to the south a vast wire fence and a huge aggregation of humans, what alternative do they have except to head west?

They start to forage, alert to Me-Me, who sits facing them. They scour the savaged ebony trees and Phoenix palms for strips of bark. They tusk the riverbank to unearth roots. Mud has the guilty thought that it is just as well that Hail Stones and Swamp and She-Screams went away, there’s little enough to eat here as it is. And yet she already misses Hail Stones: her fellow interloper and cripple, her would-beand longed-for suitor. She frets for him, and for Swamp, too. Not for She-Screams, who may already be dead and in any event is past saving. “Poor She-Screams,” she thinks, to muster pity, but the silence in the wake of the big cow’s absence is such a relief that she can’t pretend to miss her. She looks east, half-expecting to see the dust squall that would signal one of them returning. She-Soothes and She-Snorts occasionally scent that way. Nobody mentions the departed. For an hour or so She-Soothes mutters about the perils of family rifts, but then she roars, “What’s done is done!” and beams at Mud and She-Snorts as if this conclusion, her habitual one, were a great revelation and a great relief.

A little later, the water hole that Date Bed excavated dries up, and She-Snorts digs another, whose weak seepage requires them to kneel and drink with their mouths, as Bent does. Bent stays close to his mother and glances wild-eyed at Me-Me. Once, he turns to Me-Me, opens his ears and bleats a feeble “Be off!” and Me-Me responds with a curiously tender chirp that terrifies him. He ducks under She-Soothes and tugs on her breasts, but she has had no milk for three days now, so she pulls away and prepares to feed him the contents of her stomach. It is nothing anybody wants to witness. As her shrivelled hide sucks at her ribcage, she yanks up his trunk and puts her mouth as close to his as she can, but most of the vomit lands on his face. Today he refuses to swallow. Breathing hard in the awful heat, She-Soothes doesn’t scold him. She showers him with dirt. Showers herself. The flies lift as the dirt falls. The flies fall back down, thick as the dirt.