Ширли Мерфи - Nightpool

He missed Thakkur, though, and the long evenings of storytelling. He went back often, but it was not quite the same as listening to Thakkur’s tales curled up under the cover, ready for sleep. And there was no strong pounding of the sea in Mitta’s cave, only a faint echo accompanying the sleepy whimpers of the cubs. Teb began to put himself to sleep by trying out different stories about himself. Was he a fisherman’s son? A blacksmith’s helper? Where had the scars come from? No story he could imagine seemed to stir a memory, even that of a slave, though it would explain the scars. And then one morning, Mitta found the note.

She had laid his bloody tunic and ripped trousers away at the back of her cave and given him a moss wrap to wear. But one morning early the three tumbling cubs found the clothes and pulled them out and began a rough game with them until Mitta returned and snatched them away. As she straightened them, her busy paws found a piece of paper deep in the tunic pocket.

It was wrinkled and torn, and had been wet, so the writing was blurred. He stared at it and knew—he knew—but then it was gone, the knowledge gone. He tried to make out the words.

After a long time, Mitta said, “What does it tell you?”

“I can’t read it,” he said, puzzling. “I can see the letters plainly under the blur. But I don’t know what they say.” He frowned. “I can’t read, Mitta. I don’t know how to read.” He felt strange and empty. Surely he had known how to read; he was not a baby, but half grown.

“Is it such a bad thing not to know how to read?” Mitta said. “Otters don’t know how.”

“I think it’s a bad thing for humans.” He stared at the paper, perplexed. But it was not until two days later, when he had picked it up for the hundredth time to try to puzzle it out, that he suddenly saw one word in a new way and could read it.

“Tebriel!” he shouted, startling the tumbling cubs. “Tebriel! My name is Tebriel.”

The three cubs crowded around him. “Tebriel! Tebriel! Let us see!”

“Right here,” he said, pointing. “Plain as your whiskers, it says ‘Tebriel.’”

They glided up onto his knees and stared at the crumpled paper, but it was only blurred squiggles to their eyes.

“If you can read your name,” said Mitta, “can you read the rest?”

“No,” he said, frowning at the faded paper.

“Is the paper so very important?”

“It might tell me who I am.”

“But you know who,” cried the cubs. “You are Tebriel. Teb, Teb, Tebriel,” they chattered.

“I don’t know who, though. I don’t know who Tebriel is.”

“Perhaps Thakkur can conjure a vision that will tell you,” said Mitta. “In the sacred shell, in the great hall. Your name will help him, something to bring the vision.”

“He can do it,” cried the bigger male cub.

“He can do it at the meeting to decide . . .” began the female, then looked distressed.

“Meeting to decide what?” said Teb.

Mitta sighed. “You will have to know soon enough.”

The cubs were silent now.

“To decide about you,” Mitta said. “To decide whether you can stay at Nightpool. It will be voted on. Some . . . some of the clan want to send you away.”

“Oh,” Teb said. “I see. Well, I am well now; my leg is all but mended. I can go away now.”

“And where would you go, when you don’t know who you are? There are the scars of a whip on your back, Tebriel. And the marks of a chain on your ankle. Do you think you can wander across Tirror in any safety when you don’t know whom to trust, and who might again make you a prisoner?”

“Then I must wait for the vision to tell me.”

“If Thakkur can bring a vision. It is not always so. Sometimes it takes much more than the germ of a word to bring knowledge through the sacred shell.” Mitta pulled a squirming cub to her and fondled his ears. “Thakkur’s visions are not such an easy magic as young cubs would like to believe.”

Chapter 10

Across the vast floor of the meeting cave, otters drew close to one another in untidy groups, a mass of dark velvet with gleaming dark eyes flashing looks at one another. On the stone dais at the back, Thakkur, white against the dark coats of the twelve council members, stood at prayer.

The walls of the cave were set with pieces of shells of all kinds, in every color a shell can be, to make pictures, the pictures of animals, so that Teb was caught in a memory that stirred him terribly. What was this feeling? What was he trying to remember? He sat on a stone bench against the wall of the cave, between Charkky and Mikk, staring around at the animal pictures caught in a shaft of sunlight, and could almost see other pictures, another place very like this; yet when he tried to bring his thoughts clear, that other place vanished.

He studied these pictures, frowning. They showed otters. And foxes. Wolves and great cats and one old badger. They showed three unicorns. They showed a whole cloud of owls flying. And on the wall behind the dais was the picture that stirred him most. There, caught in flight, was an immense dragon, her wings spread halfway round the walls as she twisted in flight, gleaming. She struck him dumb with wonder, with recognition, with awe and yearning and confusion.

He could not understand his emotions, and the more he tried the more confused he got, until his mind churned into a muddle and he gave it up, and attended instead to Thakkur’s prayers.

They were gentle prayers of joy, and of thanksgiving for the good run of fishes, the good and plentiful yields of oysters and clams and periwinkles, and all the crops the otters harvested. And then a prayer of thanksgiving, too, for Teb himself, that he had healed and was well again. And then Thakkur turned to face the giant clamshell that stood upright on a stone pedestal at the center back of the dais. The cave became hushed as the white otter raised his paws, then stood motionless, his back very straight. He spoke so softly Teb could not make out the words, but soon the concave face of the shell began to shine with a smoky light. Vague shadows moved across it. Thakkur spoke Teb’s name three times, then waited. No image came clear, and again he spoke. ‘Tebriel. Tebriel.”

No image formed, and at long last the shadows across the shell vanished. Thakkur turned to face the gathered otters, and a sigh of disappointment filled the cave.

“I can bring nothing clear. I can bring no image to show us who you are, Tebriel.”

“Then,” spoke up Ekkthurian sharply, “we will discuss what to do with the boy.”

Beside Teb, Charkky sat up straighter, his whiskers twitching with anger. “The devil take Ekkthurian,” he said softly. “The sharks take him!”

Mikkian sat very still, one paw lifted to his whiskers in a stiff, arrested gesture. Then he turned to look at Teb, his whiskers bristling and his round dark eyes flashing, and a little growl deep in his throat. “Don’t pay any attention to what he’s going to say. Old Ekkthurian’s nothing but a grouch.”

But the sense of peace and unity that the prayers had brought, and that Thakkur’s attempt at vision had brought, dissolved as Ekkthurian rose from his place in the council ring, his voice harsh and hissing.

“The boy is healed. His fever is cured. His limb mended. I saw him walk here to the meeting cave by himself, on the sapling crutch. I say it is time he move on. Nightpool is not meant for humans.”

“What reasons do you have for hurrying our guest away?” asked Thakkur.

“We do not receive guests at Nightpool, except others of the clan. We never have. Only the otters of Rushmarsh are welcome.”

“Has that been put to a vote?” inquired Thakkur.

“No vote is needed. That is our custom.”