Jo Clayton: Moongather

When he didn’t answer, she shrank back into her own silence, afraid she’d offended him. Some moments later he looked around, black eyes coming back from vast distance, warming with visible effort. “Your pardon, child?” The soft deep voice wooed her back from her fear, cradling her in its music. She wanted to snuggle against him, be comforted by him, but she didn’t quite dare. There was a barrier unseen and undefined between them; she sensed her affection would not be welcome, at least not now. Later, when she knew more of him, perhaps she could move closer. She needed to be touched, to be given the casual physical affection she’d received from her animals.

“My mind was elsewhere, child.” He shifted the reins into one hand and brushed the wild fleece off her forehead. It should have been a light caress but was not, was too stiff and forced, as if he calculated even the speed and weight of touch required by such a gesture. Deeply disappointed, she forced a quivering smile to hide her confusion. “What did you ask?” he said, looking down at his fingers as if he too didn’t know quite what to make of the failed gesture.

“How may I call you?”

“I have no name.” He spoke slowly, thoughtfully; she saw him give his shoulders a small shake like the twitch she sometimes gave to her boots when her feet were swollen and the boots didn’t want to slide on as they should. Like the boots, too, he grew easier with wear. When he spoke again, he had relaxed until she could feel the return of the warmth that had made her happy enough to come with him, “I am a Wordmaster of the Nearga-Nor. You may call me Ser Noris.”

Serroi shook her hair back over her eyes. “Ser Noris, why did you take me from Grandfather?”

“Were you so happy living with him?’

‘They’re my family.” She didn’t want to think about them; after all they were all she had; they made up the greater portion of the only world she knew. She rubbed her hand back and forth over the leather, leaving behind small wet tracks from her sweaty palms, but stopped asking questions, sensing under his calm exterior a warning restiveness.

Ser Noris dropped back into his silence, his body beside her his mind far away in some world he alone knew. The cart jolted steadily along, the vinat clicking off the hours with the strong rhythmic scissoring of his legs while the long sun rolled around the horizon, the passage of time measured more intimately for Serroi by the growling hunger in her belly. She sat in miserable silence, too shy to speak again.

Perhaps he sensed her need, perhaps it was only a part of his plan, but soon afterward Ser Noris stopped the cart. He fished in the back, gave Serroi a flask of water and some pieces of dried meat. While she ate, he poured water in a basin for the vinat, then stood with his arms crossed over his chest gazing steadily southward while the beast grazed. After a half hour’s halt, he remounted the seat and flicked the vinat into a quick walk.

He drove westward until Serroi was dizzy with sleep, clutching desperately at the seat arm beside her, jerking in and out of a light doze, only half aware of it when the cart stopped its bouncing and the seat creaked as he swung down. She sat blinking hazily while he unharnessed and hobbled the beast and came back for her. He lifted her down and carried her around behind the cart, setting her on her feet and placing her hands on the dangling rear gate so she could hold herself up while he lifted out a bulky bundle whose outside wrapping was a finely tanned vinat hide with the long hair still on it; the bundle was nearly as big as she was and weighed heavily in her weary arms when he handed it to her. “Spread these under the cart, child,” he said. “They’ll give you some shade.”

“Thank you, Ser Noris.”

“Are you hungry, child?”

“No thank you, Ser Noris. Only sleepy.”

“Then sleep.” He left quietly then, walking off toward one of the ever-present outcroppings of rock. Serroi blinked, yawned, spread out the bed roll and was asleep almost before she pulled the hide over her head.

By the next nooning they came to a river, the first Serroi had ever seen. She stared at the rushing water, wider than a dozen streams, fascinated by the swirls of bright blue and green, the rooster tails of foam, the roar that seemed to merge with something deep inside her.

For several more sleeps they followed the river west, eating fish the water threw out at them when Ser Noris commanded it. She watched the water as it widened, watched the land as it changed its form, even its substance, watched the houses they were beginning to pass, her eyes round with wonder.

They reached the sea on a brilliant day when sunlight danced in shards among the waves and the blue of the water was a promise of delight. Where the river poured into a wide shallow bay there was a huddle of steep-roofed buildings, four or five piers reaching out to deep water, a few ships moored at the piers, visible as pointed dots against the bright blue of the sky. Some men, not many, sat in small groups on the piers, old men with yellow-stained beards and pale blue eyes sunk deep in nests of wrinkles, long lean men very different from her windrunner kind. The pale blue eyes followed them as Ser Noris drove the cart onto the first of the piers and out to the end where a small sailing ship was moored. A hunched grey man came limping from one of the buildings and followed them onto the pier. He took the reins from Ser Noris, stood with dull grey patience as Ser Noris climbed down and moved around the end of the cart to hold out his hand for Serroi.

His flesh was cool and smooth, his life running strong under the skin. Serroi shivered as the hand closed over hers. Once again he’d changed; something about him, she didn’t know what, frightened her. He was suddenly the savage animal again, his power visible as a predator’s teeth, as if he’d put a part of himself aside when he traveled inland and was only now reclaiming it. She jumped down from the cart, careless in her distraction, wanting so to get free of that disturbing touch that she stumbled and fell against his legs. With a gasp of dismay, she scrambled away and stood with her back against the cart’s wheel.

He smiled down at her after a moment, patted her gently on the head, took her hand again and led her toward a narrow gangplank. The grey man took the vinat and cart away; as she trudged onto the deck of the ship, Serroi looked over her shoulder at the animal, watching it trot off with a damp sadness about her heart. For the first time she realized she might never see her people again, that she was being cut off from everything she knew. She looked up at the silent Noris, then down again, closing her teeth hard over her lower lip to fight back the surge of loneliness that made her eyes burn with tears.

“Hold onto the mast-this-and don’t be frightened, child.” Ser Noris placed her hand on the smooth wood and waited until she was clutching at the softly humming mast, her cheek pressed against it, then he stepped aside and spoke a WORD.

Invisible hands raised the sails, cast off the mooring lines. Invisible hands held the wheel and turned the ship toward the open sea. Though the wind blew inshore elsewhere, the white sails filled and the ship skimmed over the water, driven by a mage wind that left the old men on the piers gaping.

The humming grew louder in Serroi’s ears; the wind flirted past her, tugging at her curls, flattening her tunic against her narrow body. For the first few minutes she was excited enough and pleased enough at this new experience to forget her sorrows, then her stomach began to protest as the deck moved up and down under her feet and the railing beyond tilted up and down up and down. She looked up at Ser Noris, sweat beading her face, one hand pressed over her mouth.