Jo Clayton - Moongather

She stepped into the room, eyes wide with excitement.

There was a bed set up on legs like a cart without wheels. She had no trouble guessing what it was though she’d slept most of her five years on piled-up vinat skins only inches from the frozen earth. She crossed to it and touched the shimmer-soft coverlet, then stroked her hand over the bright, blue-green smoothness, oohing her delight. Still petting the cover she looked around at the other strange things in the room. With great zest she trotted from wall to wall, touching everything she could reach. There were two tapestries, simplified plant forms in strong rhythmic designs, worked in threads that gleamed richly in the brilliant light pouring in through the open window. A bronze chair and a table with a marble top and bronze legs stood next to the window, on the table a bottle of ink,. several sheets of paper, two pen-holders with silver nibs. She lifted the holders, touched the points to the tip of her forefinger. “What are these?”

“For writing.” At her blank look, he joined her at the table, took a pen from her, dipped it into the ink, pulled a sheet of paper close and wrote SERROI on it.

“What’s that?” She touched the first letter with the tip of her finger, pulled the finger away and scowled at the small blue-brown stain on it.

“Your name, child.”

“Show me how to do that.” She fumbled with the pen, started to plunge the end into the ink bottle.

The Noris caught her hand and took the pen from her. “Later. Come here.” He led her to a rack on the wall a little way from the table. “These are books.” Slipping a roll of parchment from the top of the small pyramid, he unrolled it in front of her. She stared at the black marks on the smooth cream-colored surface, touched them tentatively, exclaimed with delight at a delicately painted design on the border. After returning the parchment to its place, he slid a section of the wall aside. Serroi gasped with surprise as she saw her own clothing hanging on hooks and a spare pair of boots pegged to the back wall. “The servants will keep these clean for you. You can dress yourself?”

“I’m not a baby,” Serroi snorted with disgust.

He nodded, the twinkle back in his eyes. He opened a door and displayed a small neat bathroom, showed her how to use the toilet and bathtub. With a chuckle he led her away from the toilet, which fascinated her almost as much as the pens, taking, her back into the bedroom. In their short absence the hands had been busy scattering potted green plants around the room. The Noris turned to Serroi. “Does this please you?”

Serroi nodded shyly. “It’s beautiful,” she murmured.

“Good. Come. There’s another thing I want to show you.”

She followed him out of the room and back down the spiraling stairs, still disliking intensely that wormhole in stone.

The Noris moved down the corridor, his booted feet making no sound at all. Serroi was startled by this; her own boots made scuffing and grating sounds that echoed dully in the dimly lit hall. As she followed him, she looked about curiously, saw a number of alcoves sealed off with bronze slabs like the door to her room. The corridor wound downward, Widened abruptly into a high-walled, four-sided court open to the clean blue of the sky.

A hundred eyes watched as she stepped, blinking, into the brilliant sunlight. Cages lined two of the four walls of the court, walls made of the same shiny black-brown stone as the tower. Each cage was roomy enough to provide its inhabitant with pacing or climbing room. Since the shapes and sizes of the beasts varied considerably, so did the sizes and shapes of the cages. There were dead sections of trees in some, ledges of molded rock, paddings of straw or gravel on the solid floors; in some cases a total environment was provided for the beast, nothing living, though, no green in any cage. Each cage had its feeding tray and waterwell. She recognized several of the animals-chinin with pups about two passages old, an unhappy looking vinat, a prowling irritated sicamar, several carrion birds of the kind that followed the herds-but most of the creatures were strange. There was one sad-faced grey beast with long skinny arms and legs that looked like a parody of man. She watched it as it stared at her then began rooting about in its straw. It startled a giggle out of her when it came up with a piece of nutshell and threw it at her. She dodged the shell and started toward the chinin.

“Serroi, come here.” The Noris sounded amused but she hastened to his side. She was still uncertain about him. He’d done nothing to hurt her, had, in fact, taken good care of her, but she still didn’t know what he wanted from her and he changed sometimes into something she didn’t know. She was gaining a certain amount of assurance, progressing step by tentative step, but she did sense there were things he wouldn’t accept from her. He smiled down into her eager face-but changed again, an empty charming smile; he’d withdrawn himself, she felt he was tired of trying to keep tied to her needs against his own need to soar. “These animals will be your responsibility for the coming year,” he said. “Keep them well and content, feed them, water them, give them exercise. Open any cages you feel safe about. Go up and down between your room and the court whenever you wish, day or night. Anything you need my servants will bring you.”

Serroi plucked nervously at threads in the embroidery on her cloak. “Will I see you?”

He was silent a long time. She sneaked several glances at him, wondering. He was staring at the cages, not seeing them, an odd expression on his face as if she’d startled him again and he’d startled himself by his reaction to her question. She endured the long silence as best she could. He was thinking and when he’d finished, he’d give her an answer.

He looked down at her, his eyes warming again. “You can come talk to me. I’d like that.” He swung a hand in a wide gesture, encompassing all the cages. “Start getting to know the beasts, Serroi. Get yourself settled in your room. My servants will give you your first lessons in writing later this afternoon?” He looked away from her, gazing instead into the featureless blue above. “I’ll send for you after the evening meal.” His feet still making no sound on the stone flags, he walked quickly to the center of the court where a gleaming copper pipe rose from the paving stones. The top end made an abrupt right-angled turn with a bronze hook projecting from a vertical slot. “Come here, Serroi.” When she stood beside him, he pointed at the hook. “Pull down on that.”

Serroi wrapped her small fingers about the hook and tugged. Water gushed from the pipe’s end. Laughing, she thrust her free hand into the cool rushing stream, bent and drank, then let the hook snap back and straightened to look up at the Noris.

He’d put aside, for the moment, his irritations and was smiling gravely down at her. “You can get water for the animals from this. The servants will bring the other things you need to care for them. Can you do this?”

Serroi nodded; hesitantly she stepped closer to him and dared to touch his hand, sliding her fingers along his strange disturbing flesh. She sneaked a look at his face and saw that he was uneasy at her touch, yet at the same time pleased by it . Without another word he walked away, disappearing through the doorway.

The silence in the court lasted several minutes after his departure then died before the coughing roar of the sicamar, a long-haired beast with a flat face, ripping teeth, yellow-green eyes and small round ears. His long fur ranged in color from the palest tan on his underbelly to a brindled chocolate on his back. The tips of the longer fur on the top of his head and around his neck were a yellowish green while the deeper fur was a misty blue-green like the color of new spring grass that rose above the last year’s growth now dead and faded brown. He paced restlessly up and down his cage, a powerful beast, magnificently muscled, in the prime of his life-but not well. Patches of his fur looked dull, ruffled; the yellow-green eyes were filmy and his mouth hung open now and then as if he lacked the will to keep his jaws together. Serroi sucked in a deep breath, shivered. There was an almost imperceptible taint of sickness to the air in the court. Perhaps nothing lived on these islands because nothing could live there. Her head began to ache. There was so much she didn’t understand, so much she couldn’t understand-but she knew the sicamar was suffering; her eye-spot throbbed to his pain. She began walking along the cages, peering solemnly at the animals inside, tilting her head back to inspect those piled high above her. Her eye-spot continued to throb as she started feeling her way into them, but she redirected her efforts, not absorbing now but projecting, reassuring them, caressing them with that deep love she had for all of them, the love pent up inside her that had no other outlet. By the time she finished her round even the air smelled cleaner. The animals were settled in drowsy comfort, in silence or making their various kinds of purring sounds. Content again, she went to the cage with the chinin and opened the door, whistling her old call, laughing as the adults and pups leaped out and pranced around her, sniffing at her, rearing up to lick at her face.