Dave Duncan - West of January

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.

I waited for Loneliness to find me and start his maniacal laughing and jeering, but he did not come. Perhaps Frith was keeping him away—or maybe he knew that I was not going far.

I felt Frith’s great body tense. Then he issued the brief squawk that meant he was going to submerge. Startled, I sucked in a quick breath and grabbed tight to his fin. Down we went into silent blueness, with me peering anxiously around, wondering what unexpected threat had provoked this. I saw nothing except the vague shapes of the two companions he had invited along, or who had perhaps chosen to come with us. I heard nothing, either—but the great ones did, for they can talk across great distances underwater.

Frith spun around so fast that I was very nearly torn loose. Then he surfaced and went surging back toward the grove at all the speed he dared expose me to, while his comrades bounded around us impatiently. They were singing.

Trying to tell me something.

I had very little skill at understanding the great ones, and this was a very strange song, a single line of melody instead of their usual complex harmonies. It was maddeningly familiar, and so simple a refrain must be a human message.

Then I knew it. It was a name, a human name, transposed into haunting minor keys.

I kicked Frith savagely for more speed. I gripped his fin with all my strength and wept into my shoulder from mingled fear and pain. My arms were almost wrenched from their sockets as he dragged me through the water, streaming behind him like trailing weed. I gasped for breath whenever I had the chance, but the lower he sank in the water, the faster he could travel. Once or twice he slowed slightly, rising so that I could settle onto his back again. It was a form of question: Can you take this? Each time I answered with harder kicks: More speed!

But human hands and shoulders have their limits, and I was being slowly drowned. My grip failed, and I was gone. Frith spun on his tail with a surge of power that seemed to churn the whole ocean; he took me in his mouth. It was neither comfortable nor dignified, but it was faster. Sitting on his tongue, with my legs jammed hard against his palate, I was forced steadily backward through the sea at a pace I had never experienced before. Buffeted by the torrent, crushed by the pressure. I needed all the strength in my ill-used shoulders just to hold my head up and force my chest away from his snout far enough to breathe. I could see nothing but Frith’s great fin and the white wake we were leaving behind us, and I felt every savage beat of his massive tail.