Jo Clayton: Blue Magic

She woke late in the afternoon of the following day, stiff, sore, hungry, thirsty, sea salt and anger bitter in her mouth. The summer sun was hot and the air in the aspen grove heavy with that heat. Her aches and bruises said stay where you are, don’t move, but the clamor in her belly and the sweat that crawled stickily over her body spoke more strongly. Gathering will and the remnants of her strength she crawled from her nest among the leaves and used the smooth powdery trunk of the nearest aspen to pull herself onto her feet.

She leaned against the tree and drew a little on its strength though all her magics had their cost and her need would always outpace the gain; as soon as her will weakened she’d pay that cost and it would be a heavy one. Stupid and more than stupid wasting her strength heaving that curse after the Captain and his crew; what she’d thrown so thoughtlessly away last night might mean the difference between living and dying this day. She grimaced and gave regret a pass, few things more futile than going over and over past mistakes; learn from them if there was anything-to learn, then let them go and save your strength for today’s problems which are usually more than sufficient. Yesterday banished, she turned her mind to present needs.

Food, water, shelter, and where should she go from here? Food? It was summer, there should be mushrooms, berries, even acorns if those dark green crowns farther inland were oaks. She touched her arms, felt the knives snugged under her sleeves; she kept hold of them when she went override and didn’t start swimming until they were sheathed. There were plenty of saplings near to hand. She could make cords for snares from their fibrous inner bark, for a sling too, if she sacrificed a bit of her shirt for the pocket and found a few smooth stones. There were birds about, she could hear them, they’d feed her, their blood would help with her thirst, though finding fresh water was becoming more urgent as time slid past, not just for thirst, she needed to wash the dried salt off her skin. She pushed away from the aspen and turned back her cuffs. Where do I go from here? After working stiff fingers until she could hold a knife without fear of dropping it, she began slicing through the bark of a sapling as big around as her thumb. No point in calling water and using that as a guide, she was surrounded by water and she wasn’t enough of a diviner to tell fresh from salt. Ah well, this was one of Cheonea’s Finger Headlands, salt sea on one side, salt inlet on the other; if she paralleled the inlet shore she was bound to come on streams and eventually into a settlement. The folk in the Finger Vales were said to be fierce and clannish and quick to defend themselves from encroachment, but courteous enough to a stranger who showed them courtesy and generous to those in need who happened their way. She sliced the bark free in narrow strips, peeling them away from the wood and draping them over her knee, glancing at the sky now and then to measure how much light she had left. No point in making snares, she didn’t have time to hunt out game trails, she wanted to be on her way come the morning. She left the first sapling with half its bark, not wanting to kill it entirely, moved on to another. A sling, yes, I’m rusty, have to get close and hope for a bit of luck…

She finished the cords, made her sling, found some pebbles and some luck and dined on plump brispouls roasted over a fire it took her some muscle and blisters to make, a firebow had never been her favorite tool and she was even less fond of it now. The pouls had a strong taste and the only salt she had was crusted on her skin, but they were hot and tender and made a pleasant weight in her stomach; she finished the meal with a bark basket of mourrberries sweet and juicy (though she had to spend half an hour dislodging small flat seeds from between her teeth). By that time the sunset had faded and the stars were out thick as fleas on a piedog’s hide. Sighing, her discomforts reduced to a minimum, she got heavily to her feet, stripped off her trousers and shirt (leaving her boots on as she had the night before because she knew she’d never get her feet back in them), she wadded up her trousers and scrubbed hard at all the skin she could reach. The scum left behind when the sea water dried was already raising rashes and in the worst of those rashes her skin was starting to crack. When she’d done all she could, she dressed, dumped dirt on the remnants of the fire, smothering it carefully (she didn’t relish the thought of waking in the center of a forest fire). A short distance away, she made a new sleeping nest, lay down in it and pulled dry leaves over her. Very soon she sank into a sleep so deep she did not notice the short fierce rain an hour later.

She woke with the dawn, shivering and feeling the bite at the back of the eyes that meant a head cold fruiting in her. She rubbed the heel of her left hand over the medal hanging between her breasts. Ah Brann, oh Brann, why aren’t you here when I need you? With a coughing laugh, she stretched, strained the muscles in face and body, slapped at her soggy shirt and trousers, knocking away the damp leaves clinging to her. She shivered, feeling uncertain, there was something… She looked at the three saplings she’d stripped of half their bark, shivered again as an image popped into her head of babies crying in pain and shock. Following an impulse that was half delirium, she scored the palm of her left hand with one of her knives and smeared the blood from the wound along the wounded sides of the little trees. She felt easier at once and almost at once found a clean pool of water in the rotted crotch of a lightning blasted tree. She drank, washed her wounded hand, then set off along the mountainside, keeping the morning wind in her face since as far as she could tell, it was blowing out of the northeast and that was where she wanted to go.

She walked all morning in a haze of growing discomfort as the cold grew worse and her cut hand throbbed. Twice she stopped at berry thickets and ate as much as she could hold and took more of the fruit with her pouched in the tail of her shirt. A little after the sun reached zenith she came to a small stream; with the expenditure of will and much patience combined with quick hands, she scooped out two unwary trout, then stripped and used the sand collected around the stones in the streambed to scrub herself clean, she even let down her hair and used the sand on that though she wasn’t too sure of the result and never managed to get all the grit washed out of the tangled mass. After she pounded some of the dirt out of her clothing and spread it to dry over a small bushy conifer, she cooked the trout on a sliver of shale and finished off the berries. The sun was warm and soothing, the stream sang the knots out of her soul and even the cold seemed to loose its hold on head and chest. Her shirt and trousers were still wet when she finished eating, so she stretched out on her stomach on a long slant of granite that jutted into the stream and lay with her head on her crossed arms, her aching eyes shut.

The sun had vanished behind the trees when she woke. She yawned, went still. Something resilient and rather warm was pressed against her side. Warily she eased her head up until she could look over her shoulder. A large snake, she couldn’t read the kind in the inadequate view she had, lay in irregular loops on the warm stone, taking heat from it and her. Its head was lifting, she could feel it stirring as it sensed the change in her. She summoned concentration, licked her lips and began whistling a two-note sleepsong, the sound of it hardly louder than the less constant music of the stream, on and on, until the snake lowered its head and the loops of its body stretched and loosened. She threw herself away from it and curled onto her feet, her heart fluttering, her breath coming quick and shallow. The snake reared its black head, seemed to stare at her, split red tongue tasting the air. For a moment snake and woman held that tense pose, then the snake dropped its head and flowed from the stone into the water and went swimming off, a ripple of black, black head lifted. She dropped her shoulders and sighed, weariness and sickness flooding over her again. She pulled her trousers and shirt off the baby fir and shook them out more carefully than she would have before the snake: Shivering with a sudden chill she strapped on her knives, pulled on her shirt and trousers, swung the long double belt about her and buckled it tight. She checked about the rock, collected odds and ends she’d emptied from her pockets when she washed her clothes, went on her knees and drank sparingly from the stream, then started on. There was at least an hour left before sundown and she might as well use it.