Jack Chalker - Priam's Lens

He found her sitting there, very natural-looking, staring out at the river. It was so natural that it wasn’t until he touched her and saw her open, unblinking eyes that he realized she was dead.

He said a little prayer for her, closed her eyes, and laid her out on the ground. There wasn’t much else he could do now but head back to the other two, which he did in some haste, now suddenly fearing that if Leaf could die like that, so could they.

Both were, however, still alive, much to his relief. “She was alive when I pulled her out, but she was dead when I returned,” he explained. “I do not see any more, but more may have made it farther down. Can you speak? Can you tell me what happened?”

Spotty’s voice was so raspy that it sounded worse than Froggy’s ever had, and speaking was clearly painful for her. “Some Hunters, some crazy, wild folk, they came out of the flowers when the demons came,” Spotty told him. “We fought with them, but they were crazy and began to kill. They kept fighting until they were hacked almost to pieces.” Her tone was flat, her eyes almost blank, as if she were ,relating something she’d heard, not lived through. “They got into our kraal. Some of the babies—”

Her voice trailed off, and it was clear she couldn’t go on.

“What about the rest of the Family?” he pressed, feeling guilty for doing it to her. But he had to know, and Froggy wasn’t in any shape to talk yet.

“Father Alex screamed for us to scatter,” she told him. “The warriors made as much of a line as they could to preserve our way out, but then more Hunters came from the south and we were trapped between. Many of us jumped or fell in the river, having no place to go. Others—I don’t know. Many surely did scatter into the darkness, but how many I can’t say.”

At least he understood the situation. There were always Hunters around of one kind or another, mostly scavenging, feeding off the weak, dead, and dying, trying to figure out how to get a better meal. Being trapped there had obviously brought some in, maybe trapped as well by the new river the demons had made. Then, when the demons went to their groves and began doing whatever it was they did, anyone hiding in there was flushed out. It was always said that to spend even one night in those groves was to go forever mad. Maybe it was true.

“Well, we’re not going anywhere tonight,” he told them. “Both of you come away from the river. I will stand guard as well as I can, but I think we are probably safe for the night here on this side of the river. Get some sleep.”

“And then what?” she asked him in that same flat tone.

“I don’t know, but it will be easier to find out in the daylight,” was all he could think to answer.

They slept on grass in the brush, exhausted, unable to stay awake. Littlefeet intended to stay awake himself, but he, too, had had a very long day, and in any case he was no match right now for any Hunters that might come along. In spite of his wishes, he nodded off himself.

In his mind, in his dreams, he saw it all again, this time not through demon eyes but through someone else’s, someone human. It was horrible, nightmarish, brutal and hopeless. He saw many of his friends get taken down, some of the women grabbed and eaten alive, two Hunters munching on a screeching baby before several women and two warriors fell on them and hacked them to bits with knives and sharp cooking rocks.

With a start he realized that he was seeing it all replayed through Spotty’s eyes, inside her nightmares. He knew this not because he saw anything to indicate it, but because he saw her finally isolated, pushed into the water, struggling and coming up grabbing onto Rockhand’s body, and then, panicked and thrashing, sensing rather than hearing someone on the other shore, someone drilling into her frightened brain, “ Kick! Kick and hold on!”

Somehow he and Spotty had been connected, at least as strongly as he’d been in his dreams to the passing demons. Her being one of the survivors was not as much the marvelous coincidence it first seemed, although it still might be the work of God’s hand. She had heard him while others had not, heard him in her mind, and this had given her the will and strength to make it to him.

It was well past sunup when he awoke and found the two girls still lying there near him. He nervously stared at each, but saw that both breathed; their chests went up and down, and there was some movement now and again. He relaxed.

He thought about scavenging for some food, but decided to wait. He didn’t want to wake them, not now, but he had the feeling that, whatever they did from now on, they should do together; that it was better to be a little hungry than to split up.

The hot sun and the crescendo of insects stirred up by it began to make things uncomfortable, though, and very soon Spotty stirred and then opened her eyes. She looked around, then sat up, frowning.

“Good morning,” he said softly. “Or, rather, more like midday.”

She stared at him in seeming confusion, then managed, “I—I… Do you know me?”

“Of course I do,” he responded, a little confused himself. “Don’t you remember? I’m Littlefeet.”

“Little—No, I, um, I don’t know what I mean. I mean, I can’t seem to remember anything.”

He realized that she wasn’t playing with him. “You really don’t remember who you are?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. It’s like I just, well, woke up. I know your words, I understand you and can speak, but I don’t know anything else. It is a little scary.”

He’d never seen anything like this, but the old tall tales and legends had had stories about this sort of thing. He’d never believed them, but apparently it was possible to lose your memory. Not a little, but mostly. In the stories, people always lost their memories after having something awful done to them, so maybe that was true, too. Even if he’d thought it could really happen to somebody, though, he would never have bet on Spotty. Not tough, caring Spotty.

Froggy sighed, turned over a bit, then opened her eyes. She was short and chubby with big breasts, in dramatic contrast with the taller, thinner Spotty. “Oh, my!” she sighed. “I had such awful dreams!”

“They weren’t dreams,” he told her softly. “Um—do you remember who you are?”

“Urn, yeah, sure. You’re Feet and I’m Froggy and this is Spotty. What are you doing here, anyway? And where’s everybody else?”

“Then you don’t remember,” he replied. Just more than Spotty does.

It turned out that she didn’t, not really. She remembered a lot, but the previous night’s horrors had been totally blotted out, not erased but relegated to confused if frightening nightmares. She found it hard to believe that anything was missing, but was even more astonished to find Spotty completely blank.

“You two went through a lot last night,” he told them. “I think it’ll come back to you, at least some of it, after a while. Some of it, I think, you’d both be better off not getting back.”

“So what do we do now?” Froggy asked him. He’d never taken a lot of notice of her before, but for all the shock and horror of the previous night she seemed in better shape than Spotty.

“Let’s all find something to eat,” he suggested. “It’s not hard over here. Then we’ll work our way up north and see what’s left of the camp. Spotty, you’ll just have to stick with us and trust us until your memory comes back. Okay?”

“I guess,” she replied. “I don’t have anything else I can do, and from what you say, it’s real scary out there.”

He found some melons that made a good breakfast, and then they worked their way back to the river. Mercifully, he saw no bodies around, either floating or against the banks. The current had been swift enough to carry them at least out of sight downriver.