Robert Silverberg: At Winter's End

“ Aaoouuuaaah! ” Again.

“It’s Ryyig!” Torlyri exclaimed. “He’s waking up!”

“Gods!” cried Koshmar. “He is! He is!”

Indeed so. Koshmar felt awe flooding her spirit, making her legs go weak. Overwhelmed by sudden vertigo, she had to grasp the wall, leaning against the strip of black stone and whispering again and again, Thekmur Nialli Sismoil, Thekmur Nialli Sismoil. The Dream-Dreamer was sitting bolt upright — when had that ever happened before? — and his eyes were open — no one in the memory of the tribe had ever seen the eyes of Ryyig Dream-Dreamer — and he was crying out, he who had never been known to make any sound more vehement than a snore. His hands raked the air, his lips moved. He seemed to be trying to speak.

“ Aaoouuuaaah! ” cried Ryyig Dream-Dreamer a third time.

Then he closed his eyes and sank back into his unending dream.

In the high-roofed, brightly lit growing-chamber, warm and humid, the women were at work plucking the unwanted flowers from the greenleaf plants and pruning the tendrils of the velvetberry vines. It was quiet work, steady and pleasant.

Minbain straightened abruptly and peered around, frowning, holding her head to one side at a steep angle.

“Is something wrong?” Galihine asked.

“Didn’t you hear anything?”

“Me? Not a thing.”

“A peculiar sound,” said Minbain. She looked from one woman to the other, to Boldirinthe, to Sinistine, to Cheysz, to Galihine again. “Like a groan, it was.”

“Harruel, snorting in his sleep,” Sinistine suggested.

“Koshmar and Torlyri, having a good twine,” said Boldirinthe.

They laughed. Minbain tightened her lips. She was older than the rest of them, and at the best of times she felt distant from them. It was because she had once been a breeder-woman, and after the death of her mate Samnibolon she had become a worker-woman. That was an uncommon thing to do. She suspected that they thought she was strange. Perhaps they believed that the mother of a strange child like Hresh must herself be a little odd. But what did they understand of such things? Not one of the women in the room with her had ever been mated at all, nor borne a child, nor did they know what it was to raise one.

“There,” Minbain said. “There it goes again! You didn’t hear it?”

“Harruel, definitely,” said Sinistine. “He’s dreaming of coupling with you, Minbain.”

Boldirinthe giggled. “Now there’s a match! Minbain and Harruel! Oh, I envy you, Minbain! Think of how he’ll grab you and push you down, and how—”

“Hssh!” Minbain cried. She snatched up her basket of greenleaf blossoms and hurled it at Boldirinthe, who managed barely to deflect it with her elbow. It bounced upward and away, turning upside down, and a mass of the sticky yellow blossoms came tumbling from it, scattering over Sinistine and Cheysz. The women stared. Such a show of temper was a rarity indeed. “Why did you do that?” Cheysz asked. She was a small, sweet-souled woman and she seemed altogether astounded by Minbain’s angry outburst. “Look, they’re stuck to me all over,” Cheysz said, and seemed almost ready to burst into tears. Indeed, the pale chartreuse blossoms, rich with their thick shining nectar, were clinging to her fur in clusters and patches, giving her a bizarre mottled look. Sinistine too was covered with the things, and as she tried to pull one away the fur began to come with it, making her howl with pain. Her pale blue eyes glinted icily with wrath, and, seizing a stout black velvetberry tendril that was lying at her feet, she advanced toward Minbain, wielding it as she would a whip.

“Stop it!” Galihine shouted. “Have you all gone crazy?”

“Listen,” said Minbain. “There’s that sound once more.”

They all fell silent.

“I heard it this time,” said Cheysz.

“Me too,” said Sinistine, staring in wonder. She tossed the velvetberry tendril aside. “Like a groan, yes. Just as you said, Minbain.”

“What could it have been?” Boldirinthe asked.

“Perhaps it’s some god walking around just outside the hatch,” Minbain said. “Emakkis, looking for a lost sheep, maybe. Or Dawinno trying to clear his nose.” She shrugged. “Strange. Very strange. We should remember to tell Thaggoran about it.” Then she turned to Cheysz, smiling apologetically. “Here. Let me help you get those things out of your fur.”

Ryyig had been awake only a moment; the whole thing had come and gone so swiftly that even those who had witnessed it could not fully believe they had seen what they had seen and heard what they had heard. And now the Dream-Dreamer was lost once more in his mysteries, eyes shut, breast rising and falling so slowly that he seemed almost to be carved of stone. But his crying out was significant enough, coming so soon after Thaggoran’s discovery of the ascent of the ice-eaters. These were omens. These were definite harbingers.

To Koshmar they were signs that the new springtime of the world was nearly at hand. Perhaps the time had not yet arrived, but surely it was coming.

Even before this day of strange events, Koshmar had felt changes beginning to develop in the rhythm of the tribe’s life. Everyone had. There had been a stirring in the cocoon, a ferment of the spirits, a sense of new beginnings about to unfold. The old patterns, which had held for thousands upon thousands of years, were breaking up.

Sleep-times had been the first thing to change. Minbain had remarked on that. “I never seem to sleep any more,” she said, and her friend Galihine had nodded, saying, “Nor I. But I’m not tired. Why is that?” It had been the custom among the people of the cocoon to spend more of their time asleep than awake, lying coiled together by twos and threes in intricate furry tangles, lost in hazy dream-fables. No longer. Now everyone seemed strangely alert, restless, active, troubled by the need to fill the extra hours of the day.

The young ones were the worst. “These children!” the gruff warrior Konya had grumbled. “If they’re going to be wild like this, we should put them to military drills!” Indeed they were shattering the tranquillity of the cocoon with their frenzies, Koshmar thought, especially strange little Hresh and lovely sad-eyed Taniane and that brawny, deep-chested Orbin and even plump clumsy Haniman. Young ones were supposed to be lively, but no one could remember anything like the maniacal energy that those four displayed: dancing maddeningly in circles for hour after hour, singing and chanting long skeins of nonsense, clambering hand over hand up the shaggy walls of the cocoon and swinging from the ceiling. Only last week, when Koshmar had been trying to celebrate the rite of Lord Fanigole’s Day, they had had to be ordered into silence, and even then they had been slow to obey. Hresh trying to get outside this morning — it was all part of the same wildness.

Then the breeding pairs had caught the fever, Nittin and Nettin, Jalmud and Valmud, Preyne and Threyne. Plainly enough, all three pairs had accomplished their season’s work — there was no question of it, you could see their swelling bellies — and yet there they were, coupling zealously the whole day long anyway as though someone might accuse them of defaulting on their duty.

And at last the older members of the tribe had been infected by the new restlessness: Thaggoran sniffing around the old deep tunnels for shinestones, burly red-bearded Harruel climbing the walls like a boy, Konya flexing his muscles and pacing back and forth. Koshmar felt it herself. It was like an itch deep down, beneath her fur, beneath the skin itself. Even the ice-eaters were rising. Great changes were coming. Why else would Ryyig Dream-Dreamer have awakened this morning, even for a moment, and cried out that way?