Jo Clayton - Moongather

The grey woman waved a hand at the shining tree. Serroi darted to the glowing fruit and ate eagerly. Fire burned in her, seared her, consumed her; again she fought to control the burning. Again she won the fight. She thrust the fire from her, handled it, let it burst into the air over her head.

They flew on, the grey woman taking her many places, showing her many things, testing her again and again, speaking no word, simply guiding her, letting her do and be.

Then they were back with her-who-lay-on-the-sand, the vinat standing silent guard over the body. The flesh was on the bones, the eyes plump under closed eyelids. She looked worn and hungry, the girl curled up on the sand, lips cracking, feet wrapped in bloody rags, a ragged brown robe half covering a soiled white shift. The veiled woman bent over her, touched her cheek with cool fingers, then she looked back, her unseen eyes fixed on the spirit-Serroi as she spoke for the first time, her voice low and rich. “Cherish all things that live,” she said, then she was gone, fading into the clear hard air of the desert night.

The body pulled spirit-Serroi. Wriggling about, pushing, shoving, she fitted herself back into her flesh.

When she woke, the moons were rising. She tried to sit up, fell back as her arms collapsed under her, tried again and trembled upright. She rubbed at her eyes, vaguely surprised to see no vinat, no blue and crimson flowers. A dream, just a fever dream. She pushed up onto her knees, rested a moment, then got to her feet and stood swaying as she brushed feebly at the sand crusting her clothing. Abandoning this, she straightened and turned slowly while she desired water. When the tug came, it came far stronger than before; through her weariness and pain she knew a flash of hope. From somewhere strength came into her; like a river of fire it flowed into her. She could feel her bones glowing. With trembling fingers she tied the cloth around her neck and began walking in the direction her eye-spot pulled her. The fire slowly died but while it was there the desert was eerily beautiful for her, a continually changing pattern of black, grey and silver.

Nijilic TheDom led the long ragged scatter of moons waxing to half across the starfields, its milky light shimmering through the air and touching surfaces into brightness.

As the night progressed, her dream-fire left her and, she began drifting in and out of consciousness, sometimes coming to herself with her face in the sand and no idea of how she got there. Sand under her feet changed and hardened, was covered with small stones that struck sharply into the soles of her dragging feet. She stumbled along half conscious weaving around larger and larger boulders until she lost all idea of direction.

Suddenly her eye-spot began throbbing frantically. She leaned against a boulder, resting and listening, holding her breath as she waited. She heard a thready tinkle, a faint bubbling. She pushed away from the stone, walked half a dozen steps and fell to her knees beside a small, shining pool at the base of a sharp rise. She dipped a trembling hand into the pool and stared at the water quicksilvering out of her palm. Dark and secret, the pool caught the starshine and shimmered the broken light back to her. She dipped her hand again, not quite believing that she could come back to life.

She stretched out flat and buried her face, in the coolness, drank and drank until she could hold no more. The water was joy, in her and on her. Then, as in the dream, her, stomach cramped. She, gasped and rose to her knees, clutching at her middle, groaning and throwing herself about as the pain pulsed through her. After a few moments, though, the teaching of the dream reached into her and she brought her body under control. She stretched out, gasping, on the sand until the sun threw up fans of light on the eastern horizon, warning her that she needed to find shelter. She dragged herself onto her feet and looked around. A pile of large boulders leaned against a cliff about twice her height, forming a shallow hollow that looked big enough to hold her. She stripped off her outer robe, dipped it in the water, then settled herself in the hollow, the dripping robe spread over her.

She slept the morning through, slept better than she had in days, dreamed a little without the vivid awareness of the previous day. She woke at a scurrying sound, a tickling over her leg. A small grey-green lizard was running up the side of the boulder by her knee. She watched as it ran in and out of shadow and finally scurried toward her head. Choking down her reluctance, she snatched the lizard from the rock and killed it.

Using a sharp-edged flake of stone, she skinned the lizard, ate the meat raw off the small bones, then braved the sun to wash hands and face at the pool. She took only a few mouthfuls of water, having learned a hard lesson, wet her robe again, and went back to try sleeping the rest of the day away.

She stayed at the tiny spring the next night, continuing to rest and rebuild her strength. She ate more lizards and some of the bitter herbs growing in cracks of the rock. When the sun went down again, she drank as much as she could hold, soaked all her clothing in the water of the pool, then wrapped it around her. As soon as she had her direction, she scrambled up the boulders, dragged herself over the steep rise, and set out for the next water.

The hard earth was littered with small sharp bits of rock that could cut to the bone if her foot came down wrong on one of them. This slowed her, put a strain on her strength; she felt her bones beginning to glow again as if they sucked heat and energy from the stones that threatened her. The fire upheld her for a long time, draining slowly away as she made detours around cracks in the earth too wide to leap over and too steep-sometimes even undercut-to climb.

The sun came up before she found the second water. She wound the spare cloth around her head and walked on until she found a crack with negotiable walls. She spent the day there, dozing and enduring. It was both easier and harder to endure, now that she knew there’d be an end to thirst and pain, now that she was wholly sure she’d get out of this desert alive. She was more impatient than ever to cross the last miles of stone and sand. The day went on and on, seemed never to end.

That night the walking was hard. The land was again rising and there were far more rocks, larger rocks, strewn over the unforgiving surface. The night was bright enough with Nijilic TheDom and his companions hanging overhead, but moonlight was treacherous, fooling her with pools of sharp-edged shadow that was just enough different from sun-shadow to throw off her depth-perception.

When the sun rose, she had not yet reached the spring. The pull on her eye-spot was so strong that she kept on. Before the stone grew hot enough to burn her, she saw dusty green and a few birds soaring on leather wings.

The spring welled up from the rock and ran off to the southeast in a small, noisy stream. There was a patch of stunted brush, birds’ nests in holes in the rock and in the bushes, some small rodents.

She drank, sparingly this time, then looked around. A rodent poked a quivering nose out from under a stone, was joined by a second, then a third, all staring at her from bright beady eyes. Again she nerved herself and moved cautiously about, gathering small stones. She closed her eyes, opened them again. The rodents were still there. “The Maiden forgive me, small brothers,” she whispered, then threw the stones one after another. Two rodents fell dead and the other vanished.

She rubbed at her eyes, then sighed, sat down and skinned the beasts with a bit of knife-edged stone. The flesh was redder and sweeter than the lizard meat. When she finished them, she explored the nests, took three of the eggs and sucked out their contents, throwing the shells away. She drank again, spat out the first mouthful, drank heavily, then rested a moment, her face immersed in the water.