Orson Card - Ruins

“He is half naked,” said the woman. “He has an ugly on his face.”

“That he does,” said Rigg. “But it wasn’t all that pretty before.”

The woman seemed mildly perplexed. Clearly Rigg did not understand the context well enough yet to make a joke.

“We come from beyond the Wall,” said Rigg.

The women looked at each other in astonishment, and then at Larex, who smiled and nodded, giving that slight bow of his head that Rigg had never seen Father do, but which Vadesh had done all the time.

“You came through hell to speak to us,” said the woman, and the others echoed the sentence. To Rigg, it seemed that this was some kind of quotation. Maybe a bit of scripture or an adage or a ritual greeting.

“Hell stepped aside to let us pass,” Rigg answered. Yes, they had sort of passed through hell, or parts of it, when they first crossed the Wall into Vadeshfold. But they had only heard faint echoes of hell when they came through the Wall to Larfold just now.

The woman came and enfolded him in an embrace that was anything but ritualized. She meant it with her whole body. And in a moment the other two women had embraced him as well.

“I told them you were coming,” said Larex.

“How did you know?” asked Rigg.

“When the Odinfolders made you,” said Larex, “the purpose was to make Wall crossers who would visit every wallfold. Eventually you’ll get everywhere.”

“That’s not an answer,” said Rigg.

“The knife is a communicator,” said Larex. “I’ve been following your movements.”

The women released him from their embrace—then stroked his body, his hair, his face.

“You live in the sea,” said Rigg to the women.

“The sea,” they answered, saying nothing but that word, several times, and meaning different things each time they said it. Rigg understood all the meanings: Home. Dark-and-dangerous. Eating place.

“Why did you come on shore?” asked Rigg.

“Why don’t you come into the sea?” she asked in reply.

“I would die there,” said Rigg. “But your body was made to walk on land.”

“My body on land,” she said. “And my mantle in the sea. Two friends made one by blood.”

This last phrase seemed alien to Rigg, as if he were incapable of understanding some nuance that he had no mental preparation to receive. Clearly she was indicating the mantle when she spoke of friends made one, but Loaf didn’t speak of his facemask as some kind of friend.

“Hard to believe it’s a facemask,” murmured Olivenko.

“Something like it,” said Rigg. “I think we’ve answered the question of how they breathe.” He said this in the language of Odinfold, which they had spoken so long in the library that it was the first that came to mind.

Loaf stepped forward. “Can you show us how this mantle lets you live in the water?”

“You don’t know?” asked a woman.

Loaf shrugged.

“Then what is that for?” she asked, pointing to his face.

“Ugly. Ugly,” murmured the other two women, as if they were captioning a picture of Loaf’s facemask.

And it was true. Where Loaf’s facemask made him misshapen, replacing his eyes with asymmetric imitations, their mantles seemed to blend seamlessly into their bodies. When they moved, it was as if the women’s own skin moved. And maybe it was part of their skin now.

The woman who had fed a bug to Rigg passed her hand up the front of her body and closed her eyes. At once her mantle shifted, rising up her neck like someone pulling off a sweater. It covered her whole head, then suddenly sucked in and clung as if to a skeleton. New eyes—bigger ones—extruded from the sides of her head, like the eyes of a fish. And when she opened her mouth to speak, a membrane covered her mouth. It deadened her voice, though she could still speak through it.

“I can go in the water now,” she said. “But I know that I am not myself a waterbreather. My friend breathes the water, and passes the result to me in my blood.” She looked at Loaf. “He can’t go in the water, not with that one. It’s only an animal.”

“And your mantle is not?”

“It is the companion of my heart,” she said. “It is the sister of my soul.”

“Air in the water,” chanted another.

“Light in the darkness,” murmured the third.

“So you all have these mantles?” asked Rigg.

“Without them we would die,” said the leader.

“So why did you murder my father?” demanded Param.

So much for diplomacy, thought Rigg.

“Your father?” asked the woman who led them.

“Knosso, king of Stashiland,” said Param.

“He crossed over far to the west of here,” said Olivenko. “Then you dragged him out of his boat and drowned him.”

The women backed away, puzzled by the accusation and by Param’s vehemence in saying it.

“Do you mean the man who dances on water?”

To Rigg that seemed as apt a description of travel in a small boat as these people were likely to see it. “Yes,” said Rigg.

“But he isn’t dead,” said one woman.

“Should we fetch him?” asked another.

“Yes,” said Rigg. “In our wallfold, we thought him dead.”

“Why should he be dead?” they asked. “Was he deserving of death?”

“No,” said Olivenko, perhaps a bit too fervently. “So are you saying that this man-who-dances-on-water is still alive?”

“Of course,” said the leading woman. “Shall we bring him now, or do you have more questions to ask us first?”

“Please bring him, yes,” said Rigg.

“I thought you’d want to see him as soon as I saw you,” said one of the other women.

“I know he’ll want to see you ,” said the third.

“Let me send out a call for him,” said the leader. Without further discussion, she ran to the nearest water—the river, in this case—and ducked her mantled head into it. She stayed a long time—at least it seemed long to Rigg, who instinctively held his breath as if his own head were also underwater.

Then she lifted her head out of the water, dropping a spray of water that caught the sunlight like stars.

She sat on the riverbank and laughed. “He’s very happy,” she called out. “He’s coming now.”

“Knosso,” murmured Olivenko. “Is it really possible he didn’t die?”

“They must have had a mantle waiting for him,” said Loaf.

“Of course we did,” said one of the remaining women. “Didn’t the Landsman tell us he was going to float to us on the waves?”

“So when you dragged him under the water—”

“It was to keep his evil wife from killing him,” said a woman.

“And he had so many questions saved up for us,” said the other woman.

“I can’t wait like this,” said Param, sounding distressed. “I can’t. I won’t.” And then she disappeared.

Of course, thought Rigg. By slicing time until she sees Father Knosso come out of the water, she will spend only moments waiting, while we might spend hours.

But it wasn’t hours, it wasn’t many minutes, until, out of the waves of the sea and the currents of the river, there arose a host of hundreds of mantle-wearing people, men and women, striding out of the water, their mantles receding from their faces, eyes appearing where they should be in human faces, mouths opening, smiling, calling greetings to the women, who called out in reply. Here, meet these people from overWall.

Then the Larfolders turned and parted and made a way for one man who strode laughing from the waves and fairly ran up the beach toward them. “Where’s my Param?” he cried. “They said my daughter was here!”

Rigg knew that Param couldn’t hear when she was slicing time, but she didn’t have to. She must have recognized his face as soon as it emerged from under the receding mantle, and she became visible again, running across the sand to embrace her father.