West of January (16 page)

I had congratulated Sand when I heard the news, of course, and asked him jocularly what factors contributed to his decision. He had produced a leer astonishingly like his brother’s and whispered that Surge was going to bear his child—a fact that everyone but me would have already guessed. I just added more congratulations and complimented him on his taste, carefully not mentioning that I had enjoyed surging with Surge a couple of times myself.

Then we had a big feast honoring Wave, and then one for Misty. They were both widows—Misty’s husband Darkly had broken his neck romping with the great ones. That was why she had not wanted to stay and watch the roughhousing, that time she had snatched me away from Raindrops and led me off to rest. I had heard all about it later, while she wept all over my chest, in great need of more comforting.

Nobody had told me why Wave and Misty were being honored. Or Spiral, or Sea Wind, two other widows whose feasts followed. They were just great people, I was informed, and of course I agreed. Especially about Misty.

As least by this time I had managed to account for the missing men. They had not been sent out like herdmen loners, as I had at first suspected. With very few exceptions, they had been victims of accidents. Fin had drowned collecting oysters. Watery had been stung by a lilbugger, and Sing eaten by darts. Such news did nothing to encourage a novice swimmer and sea hunter. When I thought about all those deaths, I saw that a great many of them could have been prevented, had there been help at hand. Having much more wisdom than courage, I never went hunting alone; nor did I let my romps with Frith get out of hand.

And then—long, long overdue—I solved the mystery of the missing children. I was attending yet another big feast, and I was in a sulk. We had been hunting snark. Pebble had tried to jump it too soon, and he had been brutally stung. Pebble, in consequence, was not present. He was in no danger, everyone had assured me cheerfully. The oozing red welts that covered him and the screams he was not entirely able to suppress—they would pass. So Pebble had been left to suffer alone, writhing in lonely agony, and everyone else had gone off to the big feast, dragging me along also, insisting that Pebble did not need me.

I had assumed then that the big feast was going to be in my honor. I had made the next jump, very shortly after Pebble. That was an unheard-of display of recklessness for me—I must have given Frith the wrong signal in my excitement. But I had made the jump and I had not been stung, and so I could reasonably expect to be honored. Why else would I have been dragged bodily to the feast?

But the feast was to honor yet another widow, Thunder. I liked Thunder—we had made oceanfuls of waves together—yet I did not feel much like singing her praises. I was, perhaps, worried about poor Pebble. I was probably miffed because I thought I deserved the feast more than Thunder did. And I was certainly disturbed by Sparkle.

There I was, sitting on moss in the shade, leaning back against a wall of cane, chewing an insipid chunk of snark while Pebble’s wife snuggled closer and closer. Her shoulder was against my shoulder, her thigh against my thigh. She did this every chance she got. Lately her invitations had become quite blatant. Pebble was my best friend, my first friend—I was not going to bed his wife!

The problem was to stop her bedding me. There are limits beyond which a man’s self-control should not be tested.

Her authority over the others had not faded—no one else would come near me while Sparkle was flirting. She was my friend’s wife. Worst of all, though, I was already half-crazy with desire before she even started.

She had rescued me from the rocks, although I could recall little of that. She had been the first one to visit me in Beholds bower. That experience also was fuzzy in my mind, but it had been glorious therapy for me. I had recovered very rapidly after that. She had comforted me when I was frightened by the great ones. I wanted her desperately.

Crazy! So many gorgeous women available, and I was hankering most after one I must not take. Other wives did not affect me like that. Some of them dropped hints, but I found them easy to refuse. But Sparkle…she roused me like storms raise waves.

And she knew it, damn her!

She sighed. “Yes, Golden?”

“You should not be doing this to me.”

“Want to do much more to you.”

“It is not fair to Pebble.”

“Is sick! Cannot love poor Sparkle. Won’t know!”

“Sparkle! This is wrong! Why are behaving like this?”

“Am trying to get baby.”

I choked on a hunk of snark, and it was a moment before I was able to speak again. But by then I had located young father-to-be Sand putting on airs at the far side of the clearing. Surge was by his side. She bulged visibly now.

So did Wave. So did Misty.
Almighty Father!

“That’s what this feast is for? Because Thunder thinks I’ve—because she’s expecting?”

“Thinks is expecting,” Sparkle said complacently, while the scratch of her fingernail on my backbone was shooting muscle spasms all the way to my toes.

That was why they had all insisted I come to the feast—typical seafolk humor! I was appalled. How stupid could a herdman be? Not one woman in the grove had been visibly pregnant when I had first come, and now there were… I started to count, and my mind was instantly boggled. No one was close enough to overhear, yet my voice shrank almost to a whisper. “But what’s going to happen if Surge’s baby-has blue eyes?”

Sparkle sniggered. “Is still Surge’s baby. Is still Sand’s baby.”

“Oh, is it? Is it really? And whose baby is Misty going to produce?”

“Darkly’s,” Sparkle said airily.

“But he was dead before I came. Long before!”

Sparkle raised delicate eyebrows almost up to her tight brown curls. “So?”

Patiently she explained that any baby born to a widow was naturally regarded as her late husband’s. Only if she remarried would the real father be recognized. So strongly did the seafolk accept that fiction that Sparkle had no doubt at all that Darkly would be the father of Misty’s baby. Blue eyes and gold hair would not change her mind if she did not wish to have it changed.

The seafolk doted on babies. They adored babies—and their womenfolk were not producing them; hence, the promiscuity that I both despised and enjoyed. Apparently every woman was willing to try every man in the hope that the right combination would work the magic.

And into this desperate but unspeakable situation blunders a virile young herdman, raised on a diet of red meat. Impact!

My explanation was all wrong, of course, but it was to take another angel to correct me.

Sparkle leaned crushing against me and gazed soulfully into my eyes. “Need help, Golden!”

“NO!” I insisted, while sweat trickled down my temples and my heart tried to smash itself to pieces on my ribs. “Pebble is my friend.”

“Wants a son very much, Golden.”

Big black eyes, had Sparkle—eyes to melt a man like butter in sunlight. “Then let him make it himself!” I scrambled to my feet and ran from her before my resolution rotted away completely.

I went straight to Sparkle’s bower, but I went alone. I stayed there, laying cool compresses on Pebble to case his pain. He was very grateful, but I suspected he had been surprised to see me.

─♦─

The seafolk had been right, though—a couple of sleeps made Pebble as good as new, completely unrepentant. I knew he would be wise to take things easy, but very unlikely to, so I cornered him and begged his help for my raft.

I had a plentiful supply of wood gathered. The problem had been finding spare rope. Rope was made from vines or sealskin, and everyone in the grove had promised to braid me some. Nobody ever finished any, of course, except old Behold. From her, from odd corners, and with what I had made myself, I had enough to start.

So Pebble and I headed for the margin of the copse, each bearing a weighty bundle. I found a certain irony in thinking how glad he should be to help me leave, for I knew that Sparkle would wear down my resistance eventually—I burned whenever I thought of her. And I was determined to be gone before all those golden-haired babies started to appear. Surely the other men would tie my privates to a boulder and drop it in deep water?

And my ambition to be an angel? I could feel it seeping away. If I didn’t leave soon, I never would.

We loaded my supplies into one of the coracles. I sang for Frith, but Gorf came instead, having noticed Pebble. I tossed him the towing hoop and sat down quickly, knowing how fast a boat would leap forward when a great one began pulling.

It leapt, but seaward. I gestured toward the shore. We continued to plunge in the wrong direction, bouncing violently over the swell, with Pebble leaning back and grinning at my annoyance. I knew the procedure, though. I cast off the towing line and we came to a stop, rocking gently. In a moment Gorf tossed the hoop back at me and raised his head over us to gibber angrily.

So we began again. This time we raced twice around the grove at high speed, until I thought my teeth would be shaken from my head or the boat would fall apart. Once more I had to release the line. All this was typical of the great ones’ idea of fun, but at the third attempt Pebble held up my bale of rope so Gorf could see it. His curiosity aroused, Gorf then took us where we wanted to go.

We beached the boat and indulged ourselves by bathing in the creek, removing the salt that always encrusted us, luxuriously drinking our fill. Then we set out along the shore to my treasure of driftwood. We waded through the edge of the waves, for the dry sand would have roasted our feet. The sun’s reflected glare made my head swim. After the shady grove, the beach was a murderous white crucible and the wind as rough as rasp-shell.

Pebble scratched his woolly pate and studied my collection of tree trunks with a puzzled expression. They were arrayed like the rungs of a ladder, the latest addition already a few steps from the water and the earliest a long way off. “Why did move them so far, Golden?”

“I didn’t,” I said. “I think the wind must roll them. It usually blows shoreward, doesn’t it?”

“Perhaps is why called ‘driftwood’?” he suggested seriously. “Keeps on drifting?”

I admitted I should have thought of that.

So, in our innocence, we decided that the wood itself must be at fault. Not having thought to bring any sort of foot covering, we could not reach it. Pebble yawned, stretched, and lay down in the lacy edges of the ripples. “Too hot! Need rest.”

Not surprised, I sat down beside him to survey the waves breaking and the great ones lolling offshore, spouting and watching what we were doing.

“Sorry are leaving,” Pebble said, his eyes closed against the glare of the sky. “Want you to stay.”

“I made myself a promise. My family all died, Pebble, because there weren’t enough angels. I promised myself I would get to Heaven so I could learn to help people.”

“Can have a new family. Lots of girls! Thump them all the way through moss! Make big, big waves! Make babies.”

“A man is more than just a baby-making machine!” I protested, in a surprising insight for a herdman.

“Are best hunter after me.” Of course he was joking, but I had never heard Pebble sound so close to serious before.

“If I wrapped out two pagnes around my feet,” I said hastily, “I could roll the logs. How many do you think I’ll need?”

Pebble sighed and sat up. “None.”

“What?”

For once there was no smile in that curly mat of beard. “Can ride great ones now, Golden. Suggested raft before that learning. If have to go against flow of river, much easier to carry you than pull raft!”

He nodded and for once looked quite solemn. “Want you to stay, Golden. Women all like you. Need you! Are not enough men.”

“The women like me,” I admitted. “How about the men?”

“Men like you!” His voice went softer. “Need you also, think.”

Startled, I glanced at him and then quickly away. Did he suspect what Sparkle had been proposing?

“I think I should leave,” I said, weakening.

“Sand will have child soon. Want son, Golden!”

I wanted to scream. I knew my face must be burning hotter than the blistering beach behind us. I racked my brain for something to say.

“Merry-son-of-Pebble!” Pebble said sadly. “Have song all ready.” And then he sang a little name song. It was as banal jingle as could be, but it brought tears to my eyes.

He knew about Sparkle’s invitations. He might even have suggested the idea to her, and in another moment he was going to suggest it to me.

“No!” I shouted. “To black hell with the raft, then! I’m not going to stay here and…and… Oh, damn!”

I jumped to my feet and ran into the surf. I dived through the first breaker and started to swim. Soon Frith surfaced below me, and my legs found his back. I headed for the grove.

─♦─

I collected two water bottles, a spear, and a hat as fast as I could, but in one of the leafy corridors, Pebble blocked my path.

He spread his feet and put his hands on his hips. In that stance, Pebble was very wide. “Going to collect oysters!” he announced. Even in the dim green shadow, his smile would not have convinced a blind shark.

“Good!” I said, and my smile probably rang no truer than his. “Make sure someone goes with you, though!”

“Very good for manhood.”

Oysters had that reputation. “Maybe,” I said. “But it would be easier to save the shells and fill them with seawater. They’d taste just the same.”

Pebble regarded me sadly. Then he threw his arms around me and hugged me until my ribs creaked.

“Go in care of Great Mother, Golden.”

“And you,” I mumbled. “Give my love to everybody. Kiss all girls for me.”

He let me by, and I ran for the open sea.

─♦─

I sang for Frith and he came at once. I mounted his back, singing the notes for
far journey.

We headed south. Ironically I could also have gone west, for a ride across the whole width of the March Ocean might have been physically possible, although I never heard tell of anyone trying it. Had I done so and survived, then I should have found the west shore well watered at that time and the herdfolk reestablishing their way of life after the great dying. The future of Vernier might have been changed…but I went south.